Context – ‘Free’ vs ‘Unfree’
Although while many think first of democracy and the origins of present-day representative
government when discussing Athens or Rome, Greek and Roman societies were also
among the earliest examples of ‘slave societies’. A ‘slave society’ is defined, broadly
speaking, as one in which the institution of slavery is both accepted and an essential
component of socio-economic life. Although some in the Greco-Roman world did question
the justification for slavery, and slave rebellions remained endemic, there was no
widespread social or political movement to end the practice. Even new religions like
Christianity, which would become important in organising support for the abolition movement
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tended to support or reinforce the existing social
order in the ancient world.1 Historical studies of slavery in the ancient Mediterranean have
therefore featured prominently in debates about the nature of slavery as an institution.
An important note here is that while, broadly speaking, a major social division in world
history has been between ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ groups, in practice there were many forms and
degrees of ‘unfreedom’. For example, while differences in appearance or origin (‘race’)
became one of the markers of ‘slave’ vs. ‘free’ in the Atlantic world, with West Africans
becoming identified almost exclusively with the state of being a ‘slave’, this was not the case
in the ancient world. Nor was it always expected that slavery would be a life (or as was often
the case in the Atlantic world, a death) sentence. Whereas ‘manumission’, the freeing of an
individual slave by her owner, or the practice of a slave purchasing his own freedom was a
relatively unusual act in the history of the Atlantic slave trade, it was accepted as a common
legal and social practice in late Roman society. People in the ancient Mediterranean world
might lose their freedom for a variety of reasons, and then earn or regain it. For example, an
individual might, temporarily, lose their freedom due to owing money that they did not have
the means to repay, a form of slavery called ‘debt-bondage’. Debt-bondage, and especially
the practice of selling children to pay for family debt, is still a common form of slavery today.
(This will be explored further in the final segment on ‘unfree’ and coerced labour in the late
twentieth century.)
Historians use broad categories and concepts (‘unfree’ vs. ‘free’, ‘slavery’) as a valuable
shorthand when formulating theories about how change occurs over time, but we also have
to remember not to let these categories and concepts override the diversity and complexity
of historical experience. Robert J. Steinfeld and Stanley Engerman, two leading historians of
slavery, remind us that while ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ may be fundamental social categories, the
division between who is free and who is not is not a ‘natural’ one. Instead, the boundary has
been drawn differently by different societies over time.2 For example, in the Ottoman empire,
some extremely powerful individuals were, in fact, slaves: under the kul system, the sultan
owned key ministers and generals as a means of ensuring their loyalty and also of keeping
the imperial administration within the imperial household. Some of these slave-generals went
1
‘Slavery was legal and common in the Jewish, Greek and Roman societies in which Christianity
emerged and developed. Christians, who debated every aspect of theology, Christology and
ecclesiology, likewise debated the nature of slaves and slavery. Although the words of some ancient
Christian can be summoned to rebut almost any generalisation about the ancient Church and slavery,
Christians, who frequently insisted that the distinction between free and slave was of no importance in
the eyes of God, typically supported the institution of slavery.’ Glancy, Jennifer. "Slavery and the rise
of Christianity." The Ancient Mediterranean World. Eds. Keith Bradley and Paul Cartledge. Cambridge
University Press, 2011, p. 456.
2
Robert J. Steinfeld and Stanley Engerman, ‘Labor--Free or Coerced? A Historical Reassessment of
Differences and Similarities,’ in Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Free and Unfree Labour:
The Debate Continues (Bern, 1997), pp. 107-26
on to become regional governors or power brokers in their own right.3 We should be careful
therefore not to make assumptions about ‘slavery’ based on a single society or slavesystem.
Just as the boundary between slavery and freedom is not ‘natural’, or drawn in the same
place throughout human history, ‘free’ wage labour and slave labour systems actually have a
great deal in common. As C.A. Bayly notes, ‘the violence and cruelty of the slave trade and
the exploitation of the slaves cannot obscure the fact that this was a flexible, financially
sophisticated, consumer-oriented, technologically innovative form of human beastliness.’4
‘Modern’ free-market capitalism emerged hand-in-hand with Atlantic slavery. Also, both slave
and ‘free’ labour regimes are not solely determined by economics, but are ‘enforced’ or
reinforced by social, cultural and ideological values and belief systems. Slave systems may
rely on violence and physical restraint to force or coerce slaves to work, but as Karl Marx
argued, wage labourers are also ‘forced’ to sell their labour in exchange for subsistence.
Marx suggested that ‘free’ wage labour systems operate with a ‘double sense’ of freedom.
Workers have an apparently free choice of employment, but they are also ‘free’ of
alternatives to the labour market: they can ‘sell’ their labour to employers for wages, or face
starvation.5 And physical coercion can also be a factor in ‘free’ wage labour markets, for
example, the locking of ‘free’ mill workers into factories in nineteenth century U.S. and
Britain, or the use of waged, but also carefully controlled, child labour across the
industrialising world. Slavery is one means of ‘bonding’ labour to economic production, but it
is not the only means. Therefore, rather than seeing slavery as an aberration, and freedom
as a ‘natural’ state, historian David Northrup argues, we should instead ask how a concept of
‘freedom’ emerged from a long history of enslaved and coerced labour. (David Northrup,
‘Free and Unfree Labour Migration, 1600-1900: An Introduction’. Journal of World History,
Vol. 14:2 (June 2003), pp. 125-180)
3
Ehud R. Toledano, "Enslavement in the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern Period." The
Cambridge World History of Slavery, David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. Cambridge University
Press, 2011, pp. 28-44.
4
C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons.
Blackwell History of the World. Malden, MA ; Oxford: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 40-41
5
Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I. The Process of Capitalist Production.
Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1906, p. 785
Available at:
http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Marx/mrxCpA26.html#Part%20VIII,%20Chapter%2026