Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, Sept. 28, 2023 "Does the History of Slavery Matter Today?"

September 28, 2023

Troy D. Smith

“Does the History of Slavery Matter Today?”

This week I am going to talk about a sensitive, and unpleasant, topic: slavery. A few week ago, my friend John Gottlied, after condemning the blot of slavery in the harshest terms, pointed out that there were slaves before Thomas Jefferson. This is very true. I am not really reacting to John here, but rather to what I think a lot of people feel: that while slavery was a travesty, it is not fair to lay all blame for it on Europeans, as if they and their descendants were uniquely guilty, when it had existed for millennia. It also occurred to me that a lot of people might not be aware of how slavery grew, and of how the transatlantic slave trade really WAS new and different, not having the historical context. It further occurred to me that future generations will understand it even less, as our current state government (and others around the country) are determined to make sure no one ever really has to think about it (or know about it) much. From some people’s perspective, if Americans simply stopped ever talking or thinking about slavery, they would stop thinking and talking about race… and it would go away. I disagree, of course.

I encourage students to watch the brilliant (and fact-based) film “Twelve Years a Slave,” which I think is the most accurate portrayal of slavery ever to be shown onscreen. I urge them that, when certain difficult scenes occur, they should not obey their instincts and close their eyes or turn away. They must witness. That has been one of the biggest problems of our country -our collective tendency to look away and not acknowledge realities that make us feel bad. That is by no means a new or recent phenomenon.

The history of slavery is one of my primary research areas and the focus of my Ph.D., so I’ve spent a lot of time learning about it… and thinking about it. I want to spend just a little time this week talking about that institution as it existed before Columbus sailed across the ocean, and then later explain what changed, how, and why.

Here’s the short, easy version of slavery: it has probably existed for as long as humans have. For as long as there have been separate bands of people who can look at those outside their group as enemies and lesser beings who can justifiably be exploited. In the ancient world, you usually became a slave by virtue of a stronger country or band conquering yours. You were more likely to become the property of a king or kingdom than of an individual, and you were lumped in with all the other captives to work on major projects for that kingdom -building roads, pyramids, great walls, et cetera. Eventually, though, slaves did become commodities to be sold on the open market. In many cases, slavers traveled with imperial armies. Sometimes individuals had contracts with the king to buy captives and re-sell them at a profit to other individuals, where they would most often become household servants or work in mines or other hard physical jobs.

However. Those captives were still just a by-product of war in the ancient world -not the GOAL of war.

By the Middle Ages, an extensive slave trade had developed in northern Africa and the middle east, controlled primarily by Arabs. They bought captives from Sub-Saharan Africa, from other parts of the middle east, and from Europe. Race was not a factor. Anyone could become a slave. Most of the slaves from that route became household servants or laborers in the Arab world, but some were sold farther afield. There was an effort in the middle ages, in modern day Iraq, to have large numbers of slaves concentrated on massive farms or mining operations, but frequent revolts kept that from catching on.

What changed? To be continued.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.