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Starr on Slavery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Carl N. Degler
Affiliation:
Vassar College

Extract

Chester G. Starr's recent article in the Journal (March 1958), “An Overdose of Slavery,” does a fine job of showing that people other than slaves worked in antiquity, but it leaves hanging the crucial question regarding the place of slavery in the economy of the ancient world. Moreover, Starr enters a strong plea against comparing ancient and modern slavery. These two aspects of his paper I think merit some further comment.

Type
Note
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1959

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References

1 Owsley, Frank L., Plain Folk of the Old South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1949)Google Scholar makes it quite clear that the nonslaveholders of the antebellum South worked hard. See also Gray, L. C., History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1933), I, ch. xxiGoogle Scholar.

2 Cairnes, J. E., The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs (New York: Carleton, 1862), p. 54Google Scholar.

3 , Owsley, Plain Folk., p. 4Google Scholar, sketches the influence of Cairnes book on historians of American slavery; Verlinden, Charles, L'Esclavage dans L'Europe medievale (Bruges: De Tempel, 1955), I, 43Google Scholar.

4 Heitland, W. E., Agricola (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1921), p. 156Google Scholar; Barrow, R. H., Slavery in the Roman Empire (London: Mediuen, 1928), p. 230Google Scholar; Zimmern, Alfred E., The Greek Commonwealth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911), p. 380Google Scholar; Sargent, Rachel L., The Size of the Slave Population at Athens During the Fifth and Fourth Centuries Before Christ (Urbana, III.: University of Illinois, 1924), p. 39Google Scholar; Yeo, Cedric A., “The Economics of Roman and American Slavery,” Finanzarchiv, n.f. XIII (1951-1952), 463–4, 466, 470Google Scholar; , Zimmern, quoted in Sargent, Slave Population, pp. 3940Google Scholar.

5 Jones, A. H. M., “The Economic Basis of the Athenian Democracy,” Past and Present, I (02 1952), 25Google Scholar. Ehrenberg, Victor, The People of Aristophanes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1943), p. 141Google Scholar, also denies that the “economic life at Athens was …based on slave-labour,” but his criterion also seems to be whether slaves constituted a majority of the work-ing population. The kind of imprecision that can result from the use of such a criterion is apparent when he says, pp. 136-7: slavery “was necessary and needed everywhere, but radier as supplementary and not as part of the foundations of economic life.” “Foundation” is here apparently taken to mean “necessary for sustaining life”—a definition that would make all forms of production other than subsistence agriculture in any kind of society, including our own, merely “supplementary.” However, see William Linn Westermann, “Athenaeus and the Slaves of Athens,” Athenian Studies Presented to William Scott Ferguson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1940), p. 470Google Scholar, where the same general conclusion is drawn but with the recognition that it applies only if a numerical test of importance is used.

6 See especially ch. v of Karl Polanyi et al., eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1957)Google Scholar for a provocative interpretation of the coming of the market to the ancient world. Rostovtzeff, M., Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), pp. 482–84Google Scholar also rejects the view that antiquity was a primitive or household economy.

7 Westermann, William Linn, The Slave Systems of Greek, and Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1955), p. 90Google Scholar; Gummerus, Herman, “Industrie und Handel,” in Paulys-Wissowa Real-Encyclopadie der Classischen Altertumswissenschajt, p. 1535Google Scholar. It should be observed that his attribution of great importance to slavery for the rise of industry does not depend upon slaves making up a majority of the labor force, for all through the article the large number of free workers in industry is acknowledged.

8 Rostovtzeff, M., Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), p. 1260Google Scholar. Earlier, p. 1258, he writes: “Modern scholars, recoiling from the grossly exaggerated and untenable Marxian doctrine regarding the role of slavery in ancient times, are inclined to minimize the numbers of slaves and the part played by them in pre-Hellenistic Greek economy. It must be emphasized, however, that antiquity was unanimous in believing that slaves were numerous in the ancient city-states of Greece” though the actual figures set down at the time were probably exaggerations.

9 , Barrow, Roman Slavery, p. 97Google Scholar, for example, admits slavery did not create the latifundia, but it did provide the labor “which made them possible.” Frank, Tenney, ed., An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1940), V, 208Google Scholar, gives a concrete example of how the availability of slave labor made it possible for the Roman building industry, after Nero's fire, to shift from travertine to brick. , Jones, “Economic Basis,” pp. 2122Google Scholar, offers examples of Athenian family fortunes and businesses developed from the use of slave labor.

10 Meyer, Eduard, Kleine Schriften (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1924), I, 187–88, 196-98Google Scholar.

11 , Yeo, “Roman and American Slavery,” pp. 467–70Google Scholar. , Barrow, Roman Slavery, p. 231Google Scholar, points to grazing as the Roman equivalent of the staple crops produced by slaves in the American South.

12 Gray, , Southern Agriculture, I, 486Google Scholar; Phillips, U. B., Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1929), pp. 352–53Google Scholar; Frank, L.Owsley, Harriet, “The Economic Basis of Society in the Late Ante-Bellum South,” Journal of Southern History, VI (02 1940), 44Google Scholar.

13 , Barrow, Roman Slavery, pp. 34Google Scholar; , Heitland, Agricola, p. 450Google Scholar; Verlinden, , L'Esclavage medievale, I, 4647Google Scholar.

14 Michell, H., The Economics of Ancient Greece (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1940), p. 152Google Scholar; Boak, A. E. R., Manpower Shortage and the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1955), p. 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; , Zimmern, Greek Commonwealth, p. 383Google Scholar; , Sargent, Slave Population, pp. 122–23Google Scholar; , Westermann, Slave Systems, p. 120Google Scholar.

15 Frank, Tenney, Aspects of Social Behavior in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932), p. 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frank, , ed., Economic Survey, I, 234Google Scholar; V, 240, 181; Frank, Tenney, “Race Mixture in the Roman Empire,” American Historical Review, XXI (07 1916), 699700Google Scholar; , Heitland, Agricola, pp. 169Google Scholar, 257, 260; , Barrow, Roman Slavery, pp. 50Google Scholar, 213; , Yeo, “Roman and American Slavery,” pp. 459–60Google Scholar.

16 Conrad, A. H. and Meyer, J. R., “The Economics of Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South,” Journal of Political Economy, LXVI (03 1958), 110–15Google Scholar, present convincing statistical evidence of deliberate efforts to raise slaves. See also Bancroft, Frederic, Slave-Trading in the Old South (Baltimore: J. H. Furst, 1931), ch. iv for documentary evidenceGoogle Scholar.

17 , Westermann, Slave Systems, p. 86Google Scholar.

18 Buckland, W. W., The Roman Law of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), p. 5511Google Scholar.

19 , Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 8586Google Scholar; Frank, , ed., Economic Survey, II, 281, 286Google Scholar; , Barrow, Roman Slavery, p. 9Google Scholar; , Rostovtzeff, Hellenistic World, p. 1261Google Scholar.

20 , Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 32Google Scholar, 89-90, 154; Frank, , ed., Economic Survey, I, 383–84Google Scholar; , Frank, “Race Mixture,” pp. 698–99Google Scholar; , Barrow, Roman Slavery, pp. 63, 186-88Google Scholar.

21 Tannenbaum, Frank, Slave and Citizen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), pp. 5365, 99-100Google Scholar.

22 , Conrad and , Meyer, “The Economics of Slavery,” pp. 115–19Google Scholar; , Gray, Southern Agriculture, I, 476–77Google Scholar. See also Stampp, Kenneth, The Peculiar Institution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956)Google Scholar, ch. ix, and Eaton, Clement, A History of the Old South (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1949), pp. 276–78Google Scholar and 280 for further references to the literature.

23 , Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 100–2Google Scholar.

24 , Heitland, Agricola, pp. 156–57Google Scholar, and , Michell, Economics of Ancient Greece, pp. 162Google Scholar, 166, are especially convinced of its inefficiency and unprofitability. But see the penetrating remarks on the subject in Verlinden, L'Esclavage medievale, I, 45, and the sound argument for believing in the profitability of Roman slavery in , Yeo, “Roman and American Slavery,” pp. 465–72Google Scholar.

25 Robert, Joseph C, The Tobacco Kingdom (Durham, N. C: Duke University Press, 1938), ch. xGoogle Scholar; , Stampp, Peculiar Institution, pp. 6067Google Scholar; Bruce, Kathleen, Virginia Iron Manufacture in the Slave Era (New York: Century Company, 1931), ch. viGoogle Scholar.

26 , Stampp, Peculiar Institution, pp. 6773Google Scholar; , Owsley, Plain Folk., p. 82Google Scholar; , Rostovtzeff, Hellenistic World, p. 182Google Scholar; , Michell, Economics of Ancient Greece, pp. 160–61Google Scholar.

27 , Stampp, Peculiar Institution, pp. 9697Google Scholar.

28 , Barrow, Roman Slavery, pp. 100–2, 121Google Scholar.