Figure 1.1 From Origins of the Political Order, Francis Fukuyama, Ottoman Empire in the 1500s[1]
It is common
to hear people say that the advancement and wealth of European Colonial powers
was based on slavery. For example, this article from the Guardian, “The
west’s wealth is based on slavery. Reparations should be paid.”[2]
It is wrong to say that West’s wealth is because of slavery and therefore this
concept needs to be challenged. Yes, the western colonial powers engaged in the
abominable act of slavery, taking advantage of the African slave trade,
purchasing slaves from African and Islamic slave traders, and transporting them
to many of their colonies. This cannot and should not be denied. But the
European economic powers were not based on slavery, and it is not the reason
they developed beyond other nations. This is an important distinction, it is
one thing to say a society engaged in slavery, it is another to say a society’s
institutions are based on slavery.
Especially
when you consider that the British tax payer only just finished paying off the
borrowed money which freed the slaves of Britain's empire in 2015.[3]
Britain and other European nations have spent a lot of money and expended a lot
of man-power to show how sorry they were for their participation in slavery.
The
advancement of European Colonial powers was based on industry, innovation and
exploration, often carried out by private individuals with state commissions,
but also by government initiated economic endeavours. Generally private and
state European institutions worked together in the vast colonies across the
world. The East India Company is an example of one of the powerful companies
that drove English Colonial power across the globe.
To the
West’s shame slavery played a part in these colonial expansions. But it is not
credible to say that the West’s participation in slavery caused it to surpass
non-western expansionist powers. For one, all powerful states in this era
engaged in slavery. Secondly, and importantly, it is more likely that slavery
contributed to slowing the advancement of western powers in certain ways, rather
than it being the primary factor allowing it to dominate those other powers.
Just compare
the north and south of the United States prior to the civil war. In the south,
which increasingly relied on slave labour compared to the north where it began
to wane sooner, we see a large divide in economic development. This is at least
partially because of slavery. “Although slavery was highly profitable, it had a
negative impact on the southern economy. It impeded the development of industry
and cities and contributed to high debts, soil exhaustion, and a lack of
technological innovation.”[4]
In fact, it is now generally agreed amongst economists that slavery is not only
wrong, but an inherently inefficient economic system.[5]
There is no
need to convince people today that slavery is evil. Though slavery is practiced
far and wide, mostly commonly outside the modern West[6],
it is roundly condemned. And while it may be to a degree distasteful to talk
about such a degrading institution in economic terms, it is important to
establish that it is not a superior system for long term wealth building, but
rather an inferior system. This is important to show because if the European
powers had have relied on slavery to drive their economic progress and overtake
everyone else as they are accused of having done, then the West likely never
would have expanded as successfully as it did:
“Slavery is one of humanity’s great evils. Despite its
ubiquity throughout human history, some forms were particularly abhorrent and
vile. While all slavery was and is wrong on moral grounds, it also has economic
problems. Taken together, these reasons suggest that slavery should end on its
own, even if it never does in practice.
Slavery is economically inefficient. If slaveholders made
decisions purely on economics and not corrupt emotion, the practice would
likely cease to exist in many of its forms.
While modern defenders of slavery are hard to find, many
nonetheless believe it is economically efficient. After all, slaveholders have
no labor costs. Many people wrongly believe this simply means the twisted
enterprise is an economic powerhouse, but limiting slavery to wages misses
other costs that diminish the economic value of slavery to the slaveholder…
…A slaveholder has to pay for the room and board, food,
clothing, and medical treatment of his slaves. Of course, this can be
incredibly minimal—even dehumanizing—but costs nonetheless he would not incur
if he did not treat them as living property. A wage reflects value added and is
not meant to compensate workers for the food and board they need to survive.
With slavery, instead of paying a low wage commensurate with the value created,
the slaveholder pays for these living expenses directly.”[7]
In other
words, you are better off paying free people to do the work, and allowing them
to manage their life expenses, rather than enslaving people and having to
provide them with everything necessary to be good workers. Therefore, the
reason slavery cannot be used to explain the dominance of the West, is because
it is not sufficient to explain how it could have advanced beyond other
contemporary world powers. Slavery is neither good, nor does it have the best long
term effect on a society's prosperity. We can condemn it both on moral and
practical grounds, it is bad and dumb. Though moral grounds are certainly enough.
But, more
importantly, it was not Colonial European expansive powers that were based on
slavery. There are, however, empires we can look to as examples of this kind of
structure. The Mamluk and Ottoman Turkish Empires serve as famous and genuine
examples of powers that were intrinsically based on slavery. They did not just
engage in it, the institution of slavery was utilized by these societies in
order to develop beyond tribal kin-based societies and was key to making their
states strong over the long term and their expansion possible.
Indeed - and
this is important for everyone to know - it is likely that far more European
Christians were made slaves in the pre-colonial and early colonial period than Europeans took or bought slaves from outside of Europe. If you look at the map above, figure
1.1, comparing the Ottoman Empire to the contemporary Western powers, you can
see why. The Ottoman Empire drew its slaves from conquered Christian European
lands, and from raiding unconquered lands. These were states, empires, that did
rely on slavery, and ultimately declined probably in part because they
relied on slavery.
The reason
their institutionalisation of slavery ultimately helped to contribute to their
decline is that to continue to replenish the ranks of slaves the empire needed
to continue to expand. But expansion always comes to an end. Rome faced a
similar problem as its expansion slowed. Their reliance on slavery of foreign
peoples also created a class of people inside the empire who were ‘other’ to
it, and having classes of such people within your empire, especially exploited
people, can lead to them eventually overtaking the empire, which is exactly
what happened to these empires. The very institutions of slavery that made the
Mamluk and Ottoman empires stronger than their predecessors, created the
conditions for those empires to fall.
Francis
Fukuyama[8]
explains how this institutional slavery worked in his book The Origins of
the Political Order:
“The dirlik system rested on the system of military slavery,
without which it could not be properly managed. The Ottomans built on the
military slave systems created by the Abbasids and Mamluks, as well as those
used by other Turkish rulers, but eliminated many of the features that made the
Mamluk system so dysfunctional.
First and most
important was that there now was a clear distinction between civilian and
military authority, and a strict subordination of the latter to the former. The
military slaves emerged initially as an outgrowth of the sultan’s household, as
in the case of the Ayyubid Mamluks. Unlike the latter, however, the Ottoman
ruling house remained in control of the slave hierarchy until much later in the
empire. The dynastic principle applied only within the Ottoman ruling family;
no slave, no matter how high ranking or talented, could aspire to become sultan
himself or hope to found his own minidynasty within the military institution.
As a result, the civilian authorities could establish clear rules for
recruitment, training, and promotion that focused on building an effective
military and administrative institution, without having to worry constantly
about that institution trying to seize power in its own name.
The effort to prevent dynasties from forming within the
military led to strict rules regarding children and inheritance. The sons of
Janissaries were not allowed to become Janissaries, and indeed, in the early
days of the empire, Janissaries were not allowed to marry and have families.
The sons of the elite sipahis of the Porte were allowed to enter the corps of
sipahi-oghlans as pages, but their grandsons were rigidly excluded. The
Ottomans from the beginning seemed to understand the logic of military slavery
as designed to prevent the emergence of an entrenched hereditary elite.
Recruitment and promotion in the slave system were based on merit and service,
for which the slaves were rewarded with tax exemptions and estates. Ogier
Ghiselin de Busbecq, ambassador of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to the court of
Suleiman the Magnificent, noted that the lack of a blood nobility allowed the
sultan to pick his slaves and advance them according to their abilities. “The
shepherd who rose to become an illustrious grand vezir was a figure that never
ceased to fascinate European observers.”
The Ottomans improved on the Mamluk system by maintaining a
strict distinction between the people recruited into the ruling institution as
non-Muslim slaves—the askeri—and the rest of the empire’s Muslim and non-Muslim
citizens, the reaya. A member of the reaya could have a family, own property,
and bequeath his property and rights to land to his children and all later
descendants. The reaya could also organize themselves into semiautonomous,
self-governing communities based on sectarian affiliation known as millets. But
none among the reaya could aspire to become a member of the ruling elite, to
bear arms, or to serve as a soldier or bureaucrat in the Ottoman
administration. The cadres of the askeri had to be constantly renewed from year
to year by new Christian recruits who had broken all of their ties to their
families and were loyal to the Ottoman state. There were no guilds, factions,
or self-governing associations among the askeri; they were supposed to have
loyalties to the ruling dynasty alone.”
So, the
Ottoman’s developed an elaborate system of government that was based on a slave
military that was trained and brainwashed, really, to be loyal to the state,
i.e. the Sultan and his reign, above all else. These slave soldiers, called Janissaries
could advance to high ranks, lived reasonably elite lives, but could be
demoted, or removed at a moment’s notice, and could not pass the advantages of
their positions onto their descendants. Do not confuse the positions that these
slaves could advance to with privilege, this was an abhorrent practice as
Fukuyama[9]
explains,
“In the early sixteenth century, at the height of the
greatness of the Ottoman Empire, a highly unusual procedure unfolded roughly
every four years. The Byzantine capital of Constantinople had fallen to the
Turks in 1453; Ottoman armies had conquered Hungary in the Battle of Mohács in
1526 and were turned back at the gates of Vienna in 1529. Throughout the Balkan
provinces of the empire, a group of officials would spread out, looking for
young boys between the ages of twelve and twenty. This was the devshirme, or
levy of Christian youths. Like football scouts, these officials were expert at
judging the physical and mental potential of young males, and each had a quota
to fulfill that was set back in Istanbul, the Ottoman capital. When an official
visited a village, the Christian priest was required to produce a list of all
male children baptized there, and those of the appropriate age would be brought
before the officials for inspection. The most promising boys were forcibly
taken from their parents and led off in groups of 100 to 150. Their names were
carefully inscribed in a register both when they were taken from their villages
and when they arrived in Istanbul, and the registers compared, since parents
occasionally tried to buy their children out of the levy. Some parents with
particularly strong and healthy sons might have all of them taken from them;
the official would return to Istanbul with his captives and the families would
never see their children again. It is estimated that about three thousand boys
a year were taken in this fashion in this period of the empire.”
This is clearly
an abhorrent practice, indeed the Bible condemns such stealing of human lives,
Exodus 21:16 – “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession
of him, shall be put to death.” Imagine the emotions going through the minds of
Christian fathers and mothers as they helplessly watched their sons being taken
away.
It is
important to note that this practice was not periphery to these Mamluk and
Ottoman empires. Their power structures were not possible without this slavery. An Islamic scholar from the fourteenth century notes,
“When the [Abbasid] state was drowned in decadence and luxury
and donned the garments of calamity and impotence and was overthrown by the
heathen Tatars, who abolished the seat of the Caliphate and obliterated the
splendor of the lands and made unbelief prevail in place of belief, because the
people of the faith, sunk in self-indulgence, preoccupied with pleasure and
abandoned to luxury, had become deficient in energy and reluctant to rally in
defense, and had stripped off the skin of courage and the emblem of
manhood—then, it was God’s benevolence that He rescued the faith by reviving
its dying breath and restoring the unity of the Muslims in the Egyptian realms,
preserving the order and defending the walls of Islam. He did this by sending
to the Muslims, from this Turkish nation and from among its great and numerous
tribes, rulers to defend them and utterly loyal helpers, who were brought from
the House of War to the House of Islam under the rule of slavery, which hides
in itself a divine blessing. By means of slavery they learn glory and blessing and
are exposed to divine providence; cured by slavery, they enter the Muslim
religion with the firm resolve of true believers and yet with nomadic virtues
unsullied by debased nature, unadulterated with the filth of pleasure,
undefiled by the ways of civilized living, and with their ardor unbroken by the
profusion of luxury.”[10]
I am not
making the case that Christendom was innocent of slavery and the Islamic world guilty,
not at all. It is well known that Christian preachers used the Bible to justify
slavery in the American south, and at other points in history. The Bible’s
teaching on slavery is complicated, though as seen above it categorically
condemns stealing people, and this is true in both Testaments. If this command,
to not steal people, is followed it virtually renders many forms of slavery
impossible.
I only share
this quote to show that slavery was not periphery to these Middle Eastern
empires, it was not something they just did. It was a central aspect of how
they were structured. The Mamluk and Ottoman empires required the institution
of slavery to function. Mamluk slave armies were instrumental in defeating both
Mongol invasions and European crusading armies, and ensuring the safety of
these expansive kingdoms. These empires show us what a society based on slavery
looks like, though there are many other examples throughout history.
Eventually
these Ottoman slave soldiers took over the empire, and this precipitated its
decline:
“The institutions of the Ottoman state were a curious mixture
of modern and patrimonial, and it decayed when the patrimonial elements
entrenched themselves at the expense of the modern ones. The Ottomans perfected
the military slave system of the Mamluks, but they too eventually succumbed to
the natural human desire of their elites to pass on status and resources to
their children.”[11]
In other
words, tribal based family loyalty eventually overcame the very institutions
that were put in place to direct loyalty to the state, instead of to family
based tribal loyalties. The result was that the servants eventually became the
masters, and the system which enabled these slave run empires to expand fell
apart. The Sultan’s eventually became puppets of their slaves.
But note who
was doing the enslaving and who were the slaves in this situation. Remember the
word slave comes from Slav,[12]
a European people group who experienced oppression often from both East and
West, but especially the East. White privilege - which is really an
anti-Christian, anti-western concept - is as about as useful a lens to look at
history, as a pair of glasses is to study the sun. The history of slavery,
colonialism and expansion is incredibly complex, and all societies have been on
both ends of these forces.
It is
important to note, that while the bulk of the European victims of the Islamic
slave trade came from Eastern and Southern Europe, the slave raids of groups
like the Barbary pirates were common enough, and oppressive enough to leave a
mark on the minds of Europeans in the far West, even as far as the British and
Irish Isles. A particularly good example of this, is a poem written by Thomas
Osbourne Davis’[13] titled
The Sack of Baltimore (1814-15). I want to share it in full, because it
is powerful and shows how even the so-called privileged Brits were prone to
slavery raids in this era. It recounts a raid on the town of Baltimore in West
Cork, in Ireland, by Ottoman raiders, led by a European slave captain named Jan
Janszoon, also known as Murad Reis the Younger.[14]
Read the poem carefully, it recounts a quiet village being awoken by a fire and
clashes of steel, and even shares with us the possible fates of those captured
and taken as slaves.
|
“THE SUMMER sun is falling soft on Carbery’s hundred
isles, |
|
The summer sun is gleaming still through
Gabriel’s rough defiles; |
|
Old Innisherkin’s crumbled fane looks like a
moulting bird, |
|
And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is
heard: |
|
The hookers lie upon the beach; the children
cease their play; |
|
The gossips leave the little inn; the households
kneel to pray; |
|
And full of love, and peace, and rest, its daily
labor o’er, |
|
Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of
Baltimore. |
|
|
|
A deeper rest, a starry trance, has come with
midnight there; |
|
No sound, except that throbbing wave, in earth,
or sea, or air! |
|
The massive capes and ruin’d towers seem
conscious of the calm; |
|
The fibrous sod and stunted trees are breathing
heavy balm. |
|
So still the night, these two long barques round
Dunashad that glide |
|
Must trust their oars, methinks not few, against
the ebbing tide. |
|
Oh, some sweet mission of true love must urge
them to the shore! |
|
They bring some lover to his bride who sighs in
Baltimore. |
|
|
|
All, all asleep within each roof along that rocky
street, |
|
And these must be the lover’s friends, with
gently gliding feet— |
|
A stifled gasp, a dreamy noise! “The roof is in a
flame!” |
|
From out their beds and to their doors rush maid
and sire and dame, |
|
And meet upon the threshold stone the gleaming
sabre’s fall, |
|
And o’er each black and bearded face the white or
crimson shawl. |
|
The yell of “Allah!” breaks above the prayer, and
shriek, and roar: |
|
O blessed God! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore! |
|
|
|
Then flung the youth his naked hand against the
shearing sword; |
|
Then sprung the mother on the brand with which
her son was gor’d; |
|
Then sunk the grandsire on the floor, his
grand-babes clutching wild; |
|
Then fled the maiden moaning faint, and nestled
with the child: |
|
But see! yon pirate strangled lies, and crush’d
with splashing heel, |
|
While o’er him in an Irish hand there sweeps his
Syrian steel: |
|
Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and misers
yield their store, |
|
There ’s one hearth well avenged in the sack of
Baltimore. |
|
|
|
Midsummer morn in woodland nigh the birds begin
to sing, |
|
They see not now the milking maids,—deserted is
the spring; |
|
Midsummer day this gallant rides from distant
Bandon’s town, |
|
These hookers cross’d from stormy Skull, that
skiff from Affadown; |
|
They only found the smoking walls with neighbors’
blood besprent, |
|
And on the strewed and trampled beach awhile they
wildly went, |
|
Then dash’d to sea, and pass’d Cape Clear, and
saw, five leagues before, |
|
The pirate-galley vanishing that ravaged
Baltimore. |
|
|
|
Oh, some must tug the galley’s oar, and some must
tend the steed; |
|
This boy will bear a Scheik’s chibouk, and that a
Bey’s jerreed. |
|
Oh, some are for the arsenals by beauteous
Dardanelles; |
|
And some are in the caravan to Mecca’s sandy
dells. |
|
The maid that Bandon gallant sought is chosen for
the Dey: |
|
She ’s safe—she’s dead—she stabb’d him in the
midst of his Serai! |
|
And when to die a death of fire that noble maid
they bore, |
|
She only smiled, O’Driscoll’s child; she thought
of Baltimore. |
|
|
|
’T is two long years since sunk the town beneath
that bloody band, |
|
And all around its trampled hearths a larger
concourse stand, |
|
Where high upon a gallows-tree a yelling wretch
is seen: |
|
’T is Hackett of Dungarvan—he who steer’d the
Algerine! |
|
He fell amid a sullen shout with scarce a passing
prayer, |
|
For he had slain the kith and kin of many a
hundred there. |
|
Some mutter’d of MacMurchadh, who brought the
Norman o’er; |
|
Some curs’d him with Iscariot, that day in
Baltimore.”[15] |
Osborne here
writes about something that much of Europe experienced for a long time: Common
and vicious raids across western lands taking European boys and girls, men and
women as slaves. The eventual rise of the Western Colonial powers to world
class status really put an end to more slavery than it created. Centuries of Christian sons stolen
from their families and often made into the force of oppression for those empires,
and daughters taken to be made the wives of slave soldiers, or put in the
harems of Ottoman lords and kings, were not really stopped until European
powers were incredibly strong. Europe has experienced its fair share of the
pain of slavery. Again, let me note, the word slave comes from a European
people, the Slavic people, who were often taken as slaves.
It was
wrong, stupid and evil for Europeans to engage in slavery. But there is a
bigger picture, here. This was a worldwide institution. Just look again at the picture
above and the size of the Ottoman Empire compared to the equivalent European
powers in the 1500’s. No wonder the West felt compelled to advance, and it took
a long time for it to advance enough to stop the raids upon their shores. It
eventually took European and even American navies to stop these raids on
European shores and European trade ships.
The American
Marines remember their battle with the slave power, the Barbary Pirates, whom
they fought at Tripoli and other places, in their famous official hymn,
"From
the Halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country's battles
In the air, on land, and sea;
First to fight for right and freedom
And to keep our honor clean;
We are proud to claim the title
Of United States Marine."[16]
What were
the Marines fighting for against the Barbary pirates? To stop the pirates from
raiding American merchant vessels and taking American citizens as slaves.
To accuse
the West of being the primary agents of slavery is immoral, untrue, and
downright wrong. To say that the West only got as powerful as it did because of
slavery, is also wrong, because other empires were engaged in slavery, many to
a much higher level and yet the West outstripped them. Therefore, slavery
cannot be the reason the West got so rich and so powerful, there are clearly
other reasons. One of which, and there are many, is that the West moved away
from slavery before any other civilisation.
The Western
Colonial powers will always have to own up to the charge of having engaged in
slavery. But Colonial power was not based on it, and this is likely at least a
part of the reason why it advanced beyond empires which did rely on it. Because
the West was able to innovate and create labour forces with increasing capital
to invest themselves. This created a spiral of success.
Rather than
trying to point fingers at the ancestors of particular people who took other
people as slaves, all nations should be trying to forgive and forget and move
on without a grudge, because no people has a clean ledger in this regard. Especially
because there were empires intrinsically based on slavery, and they were not
European colonial powers.
List of
References:
[1]
Fukuyama, Francis 2011, The Origins of Political Order (pp. 217-218).
Profile. Kindle Edition.
[2]
Andrews, Kehinde 2017, “The west’s wealth is based on slavery. Reparations
should be paid
Kehinde Andrews”, The Guardian, accessed 23/06/2021
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/28/slavery-reparations-west-wealth-equality-world-race.
[3]Barrie,
Joshua 2018, “How taxpayers were still paying for British slave trade nearly
200 years later”, Mirror UK, accessed 23/06/2021, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/taxpayers-still-paying-british-slave-12019829.
[4] Ben,
2021, “What was the economic impact of slavery in the South?” Mvorganizing.org,
accessed 23/06/2021, https://www.mvorganizing.org/what-was-the-economic-impact-of-slavery-in-the-south/.
[5]
Benjamin R. Dierker 2019, “Slavery Was Never Economically Efficient
While modern defenders of slavery are hard to find,
many nonetheless believe it is economically efficient.” Foundation for
Economic Education, accessed 23.06/2021, https://fee.org/articles/slavery-was-never-economically-efficient/.
[6] “Slavery
Today: Countries With The Highest Prevalence Of Modern Slaves”, WorldAtlas, accessed
23/06/2021, https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-modern-slaves-today.html
[7] Benjamin R. Dierker 2019, “Slavery
Was Never Economically Efficient
While
modern defenders of slavery are hard to find, many nonetheless believe it is
economically efficient.” Foundation for Economic Education, accessed 23/06/2021,
https://fee.org/articles/slavery-was-never-economically-efficient/.
[8] Fukuyama,
Francis 2011, The Origins of Political Order (pp. 218-220). Profile.
Kindle Edition.
[9] Ibid
(pp. 189-190).
[10] Ibid
(p. 203).
[11] Ibid
(p. 215).
[12] Online
Etymology Dictionary, slave (n.) accessed 23/06/2021, https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave.
[14] Sack
of Baltimore, accessed 23/06/2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Baltimore
[15] Davis,
Thomas Osborne 1814-1815, The Sack of Baltimore, https://www.bartleby.com/246/207.html
No comments:
Post a Comment