Greek Slavery History

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The United States is considered the first democracy of modern times, and an influential oasis of free speech and equal rights for all, yet this supposed utopia gained its power and influence from the oppression of black slaves. The Atlantic slave trade began when the Muslim curtain blocked import of slaves from the East, so in order to fill a labor shortage at sugar plantations in the Caribbean, Europe turned to West Africa. The export of slave-farmed sugar from the Americas helped the Western world gain the dominance it still holds today. Slavery continued as a widespread practice in America for centuries on, even as egalitarian and humanitarian ideas blossomed during the Enlightenment. Peculiarly, slavery continued on after the American revolution, …show more content…
The civilizations of Greece and Rome are two examples of slave based societies. Greek and Roman slavery were similar to New World slavery in their dehumanizing natures. According to Philip D Morgan’s The Origins of American Slavery, “Parallels of between ancient and New World slavery abound: from the dehumanizing device of , addressing male slaves of any age as ‘boy’, the use of branding and head shaving as modes of humiliation, the comic inventiveness in naming slaves (a practice American masters continued simply by using classical names)”(30). Slavery in the Old World was predecessor for New World slavery similar in importance to its society and dehumanizing nature. Additionally, Africans slave were used in the Muslim world, according to Slavery: Enforced Migration by Spodek, “Long before Europeans arrived on the Atlantic coast, slavery was big business in these African states, much of it transacted by Arab Muslim traders”(492). Slavery is not only nonexclusive to the Americas, it isn’t even exclusive to the Western hemisphere. In the old world, one could be enslaved as a result of war, debt, or crime. Race was not a factor in enslavement, therefore, a master could theoretically become a slave himself (Kagan 150). Slavery in the Old World wasn’t race-based, but instead caused by misfortunes that could befall anyone. Slavery has had …show more content…
At first, slaves and masters were differentiated by their differences in religion. “The Invention of Race” by Campbell and Oakes explains the problem of using religion as a divisor “Colonists also confronted a dramatic increase in the population of Christian Africans, further undermining the distinction between heathen and Christian that initially served as a rationale for the specific enslavement of Africans”(178). Although colonists originally justified slavery using the non-Christian beliefs of Africans, this justification no longer sufficed. Following the conversion to Christianity of many Africans, racial differences replaced religious as the main rationale for slavery. “The Terrible Paradox” is a phrase describing the rise of freedoms and intellect in the 8th century Western world at the same time as the worst form of slavery to ever exist. In The Historical Roots of Racism by Bernard Lewis, the solution for “The Terrible Paradox” is described “...enslavement was justified, not as in other societies by the presumed barbarism or paganism of the enslaved, but by his innate racial inferiority. In this way, Western society was able to salve its conscience in the philisophic and scientific language of the Enlightenment”(24). For the first time, the belief that a racial group is
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