[HN Gopher] Normans and Slavery: Breaking the Bonds
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Normans and Slavery: Breaking the Bonds
Author : pepys
Score : 102 points
Date : 2024-09-27 04:31 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| paleotrope wrote:
| A skeptical read would be that the economics of Norman style
| feudalism heavily relies on the peasants to work the land.
| Obviously you need the peasants to stay in their place. If all
| the warrior caste have the same perspective, you can't be carting
| off the population and selling them off overseas, without some
| major friction. And if you are trying to "take" some land from
| another warlord, it's not going to be very economical for you to
| sell off the peasants, cause then who is going to work the land?
| arethuza wrote:
| The Normans were pretty harsh in their treatment of rebellious
| areas - the "Harrying of the North" being particularly brutal:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrying_of_the_North
| paleotrope wrote:
| Yeah but that region wasn't as economically important. And it
| had a critical problem where it was the border region with
| Scotland and a preferred entry point for the Danes.
| Depopulating the area makes sense from a medieval military
| perspective because invaders won't have crops and
| infrastructure to pull from as they transverse the region.
| Other states in this time period had similar state-directed
| depopulated areas on the border for the same reasons.
| nerdponx wrote:
| What are some other examples? That's such a fascinating
| practice. Was it done in the ancient world as well? What
| about in other places (Asia, Americas)?
| pigscantfly wrote:
| Other folks may have more apt examples to share, but I
| would examine the history of Dacia and also the Sasanian
| fortification lines both east and west (but especially
| east) of the Caspian Sea -- both of which separated the
| empire from nomadic tribes of the steppe.
|
| I believe these involved depopulated regions both north
| and south of the main defensive structures to allow
| harrying of invading forces while denying access to
| plundered resources.
|
| Eventually, they were overcome by the Hephthalites (aka
| White Huns) following heavy Sasanian losses north of the
| limes in the AD 484 Battle of Herat, but it's interesting
| to note that the defensive structures separating southern
| 'civilization' from the steppe were considered a joint
| responsibility of the predominant (Roman/Sasanian)
| empires in spite of their generally being at war with
| each other, as the nomads were a shared threat.
|
| Edit: Another great example is drawn from Caesar's
| description of Helvetian practices in his Gallic Wars;
| the Helvetians, a Germanic tribe located in modern
| Switzerland, had deliberately depopulated a wide area
| around their territory for defensive purposes.
| ceuk wrote:
| I'd go slightly further than "pretty harsh". It was basically
| ethnic cleansing. Albeit an incomplete and fairly moderate
| one as these sorts of genocidal things go
| PeterCorless wrote:
| The Normans were the great "levelers" of society. Yes, they may
| have raised up the slave, but they also deprived many others of
| their historical rights, say, of "sake and soke."
|
| Sake was the right to hold low court on your own land.
|
| Soke was the right to pay your taxes and infeudate yourself to
| the lord of your choice. There was an entire class of Anglo-
| Saxons known as "sokesmen." They practically disappeared
| overnight, historically-speaking.
|
| Normans placed severe restrictions on your infeudation. None of
| this "I'll withhold my allegiance simply because my local baron
| is a tyrant" thing. Nope. Doesn't matter. Good, bad or evil, you
| owe your fealty to the local ruler.
|
| So, while the Normans may have been a relief for the very, very
| bottom, they were very, very bad for the equivalent of the
| "middle class" of commoners.
| acc4everypici wrote:
| but did "the middle class" exist back then?
|
| I thought "middle class" arose out of the bourgeois class later
| on?
|
| It's like when I realized that slaves under christianity were
| not horribly abused as they were part of the church but simply
| didn't own very many things
|
| slavery became awuful around things like deciding black people
| were closer to animals so it was ok to exploit them but really
| they were competing, or rather, trying to keep up with steam-
| based looms which were much faster at processing cotton so pick
| that cotton faster *cracks whip *
| actionfromafar wrote:
| If being raped, castrated or stoned to death was not horribly
| abused, I don't know what is.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > but did "the middle class" exist back then?
|
| Not as we would recognize it today, but there were always
| merchants, craftsman and petty gentry that would have a
| measure of freedom and earning that serfs did not have the
| ability to achieve.
| dingnuts wrote:
| when I read Road to Wigan Pier I realized that the 20th
| Century British term "middle class" had an almost
| unrecognizable meaning compared to what Americans think of
| as "middle class"
|
| So the first thing you need to figure out, to answer the
| question "did the middle class exist back then" is: which
| cultural definition of middle class are we even using to
| begin with?
| bee_rider wrote:
| What's that definition?
|
| I've always heard that it was the class in between the
| upper class/nobility, and the working class. That is, the
| class that isn't able to just indefinitely stop working
| and sustain itself by things they own. But also isn't
| living paycheck-to-paycheck and forced to work.
| Professionals in lucrative careers and successful small
| business owners. This makes more sense to me that the
| sort of typical misapplication to people around median
| income in the US.
|
| Around median income is already a thing we have a name
| for (we can call it median income), and it tells us
| approximately nothing about their position in terms of
| labor relations or social class.
|
| Working class people should unionize, they should band
| together to prevent exploitation. Middle class people
| don't have to worry about exploitation, they can walk if
| they want to. They should form guilds and professional
| societies, to keep unqualified pretenders out of their
| fields.
| rsynnott wrote:
| "Middle class" is super-poorly defined. Marxists use it
| to mean petit bourgeoisie (ie people who own capital,
| plus professionals, so right from the start you have an
| anomaly, in that, say, a doctor is middle class even if
| they don't own anything; it's not purely capitalists). As
| you say Americans tend to use it to mean 'practically
| everybody'. The British definition has always been
| complex and is at this point probably complex enough that
| it's impossible to fully pin down; a huge part of it is
| _self-identification_ (there are plenty of British
| millionaires who consider themselves working class).
| bee_rider wrote:
| I mean, I kinda get it, if you want to retire in the US
| you probably need a million dollars at least (although,
| not just in the bank, spread throughout retirement funds
| and real estate). So I could see a working class
| millionaire. Technically a retiree is living off their
| wealth, but IMO that's an edge case.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| "Middle class" is often used as a translation of
| "bourgeoisie" from "bourgeois" which literally means
| "town dweller" ie. a city dweller.[0] It also means
| "someone who belongs to neither the aristocratic,
| clerical, nor military classes."[0] This distinction was
| useful because the Three Estates system grouped both city
| dwellers and peasants into a single class (the third
| estate).[1] Similarly the English word "middle class" was
| at one point used by Marxists to describe non-
| aristocratic, non-working class urbanites and equated
| middle class directly with "bourgeoisie."[2] This class
| included factory owners who could be richer than the
| average noble. Our modern usage of "middle class" would
| never include factory owners, bankers etc. but this
| definition did.
|
| You end up with something like this:
|
| Old: Nobles -> "Middle class" -> Peasants
|
| Marxist: -> Nobles -> "Middle class" -> Working Class
|
| In both of these, "middle class" means "Not a noble.
| Could be a rich merchant"
|
| Modern: Rich -> "Middle class" -> Working class
|
| Here, "middle class" means "Middle income. Owns a house
| or an expensive apartment." "Working class" is the common
| term used here but also includes people that do not work.
|
| >Around median income is already a thing we have a name
| for (we can call it median income),
|
| Nobody uses this term. For example, nobody would say they
| are a "median income" family. Additionally, not all of
| what people today would consider "working class" work for
| other people, and cannot join a union. For example,
| street vendors often do not make much money[3] and it
| does not make much sense to categorize them as "middle
| class" because they are not being exploited by their
| employer (as they have no employer). Unions exist for
| highly skilled jobs as well, such as air traffic
| controllers, which make $137,380 per year on
| average.[4][5] Defining "middle class" as someone who
| "doesn't need a union" (taking how to qualify that as
| given) also leaves open the question of what the "upper
| class" means in that scenario, being that we are not
| using income as the barometer for class in favor of union
| status. Would the street vendor be "upper class" if he
| had a worker? If anything, I would say we already have a
| term for what you are essentially describing: "unskilled
| labor." Unskilled laborers need unions more than skilled
| ones. This is a direct effect of unskilled laborers
| making less money due to lack of a marketable skill.
|
| >it tells us approximately nothing about their position
| in terms of labor relations or social class.
|
| It actually tells us a great deal about social class.
| People of similar incomes will live in their own
| neighborhood whether or not they have that money from
| being in a union or from a non union job (leaving the
| definition of that aside). It is all decided by income
| level. Living in a middle class suburb is a vastly
| different experience from living in an apartment in a
| poor neighborhood in the city.
|
| Lastly, the "right" definition is not really important as
| much as explaining what you mean by that word when you
| use it. In the context of history, as in this article,
| the definition definitely matters.
|
| [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bourgeois#French
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates_of_the_realm#Th
| ird_Est...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class#History_an
| d_evolu...
|
| [3] https://hunterurbanreview.commons.gc.cuny.edu/the-
| smallest-o... - this article says the average salary for
| street vendors in NYC is $14,000 which I think is too low
| to be correct but I can imagine many are making less than
| average salary.
|
| [4] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-
| moving/a...
|
| [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Air_Traffic_Co
| ntrolle...
| arrosenberg wrote:
| You don't need to answer that, in fact, I explicitly
| handwaved it away. The question is - is there a class
| between the elites and the serfs, and the answer is
| always yes. There are always people that the elites need
| in order to operate a successful polity, but those people
| are not part of the ruling class.
| aetherson wrote:
| Hot take: slavery was actually always awful.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Hard agree. It is true that being a slave in one culture is
| much better experience than others. But that's only a
| matter of degree.
|
| Example: You intentionally killed someone and are convicted
| of it. You have done a bad thing. The how and why only
| determines your sentence, not whether or not you committed
| a crime
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > "the middle class"
|
| I assume small landholders, yeomen etc. and such would be the
| equivalent of the middle class in such a society.
|
| > slaves under christianity were not horribly abused as they
| were part of the church
|
| I'm not sure that's strictly true. It of course varied by
| time and place and the Church tried to somewhat limit the
| worst abuse.
|
| Also a clear workaround was to enslave infidels. Muslims
| enslaved Christians (and basically depopulate many coastal
| areas across the Mediterranean), in turn Christians were fine
| with enslaving Muslims (all though they didn't necessarily
| have that many opportunities) and East European pagans were
| fair game to everyone.
| paganel wrote:
| As an Eastern-European, I can definitely say that after
| year 1000 we were not pagans, but Christian-Ortodox, but
| it's true that the Genoese and the Venetians trading us
| around the Black Sea called us "schismatics", i.e. just one
| step above pagans.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > called us "schismatics", i.e. just one step above
| pagans.
|
| I guess technically it was a "hack" though, the Genoese
| bought anyone the Mongols were selling and shipped them
| to Egypt and other Muslim states without anyone back at
| home asking too many questions..
|
| Until of course the Ottomans got right of the middle men
| and took over the slave trade themselves.
| itohihiyt wrote:
| This is certainly a popular modern narrative.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| As I read, this is pretty much what the article says. The very
| very bottom may have been as many as 30 % of the total
| population.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| Isn't this a quite common pattern in history repeating itself?
| Including the reaction of the historians, to gloss over it?
|
| The pattern that, a cohort of a society that under previous rule
| didn't have any right nor representation, acquire that as a side-
| effect during invasion of competing faction. Often under brutal
| circumstances, but the effect can be clearly seen if you how a
| society change during such over-hauling effect.
|
| Japans invasion of South-east Asia comes to mind. Mostly for
| their own benefit, installing puppet-government, but it seems to
| be a contributing factor to decolonization of SEA of European
| influence. Depending on the source you read, this is probably
| glossed over to great deal.
|
| I assume you can probably find similar cases in places like Spain
| (Reconquest), Christianization of East/North Europe, Islamic
| conquest of Middle East/Indus etc.
| kentosi-dw wrote:
| Can someone explain what the deal was with selling slaves to
| Ireland? It makes it seem like Ireland was some wealthy nation
| buying slaves.
| pyrale wrote:
| Ireland had viking settlement activity in the 800s and 900s.
| Newly formed settlements/kingdoms were consumers of slaves to
| further develop. But also, maybe they were named simply because
| Irish viking rulers had close ties with York, and therefore,
| there was more trade between nearby and politically close
| viking kingdoms.
| Zuider wrote:
| At the time, Ireland was indeed a wealthy country, having made
| its fortune selling leather to the Romans three centuries
| before, because the semi-nomadic Irish cultivated large herds
| of cattle roaming on unfenced plains, while the settled Britons
| kept sheep. This permitted the establishment of a culturally
| sophisticated Gaelic Order so stable that it was able to
| assimilate the invading Vikings and the first wave of Normans,
| who actually went native and began speaking the Irish language.
| stult wrote:
| Ireland was colonized by the vikings from the 8th century
| onward, who continued their long history of seaborne trade even
| after they abandoned the practice of raiding for which they are
| more famous. So they had the liquid wealth (primarily gold and
| silver) and the cultural willingness to acquire slaves. The
| viking settlements became the first large towns in Ireland, and
| supported the first sophisticated cash economy on the island
| capable of generating the liquidity for purchasing slaves from
| abroad. While the native Celtic Irish also had a history of
| slave-holding and raiding (see, e.g., the life of St. Patrick),
| they produced and held significantly less liquid wealth than
| the viking settlers and never established the large scale
| trading communities necessary for slave markets to emerge. As a
| result, pre-viking native Irish slavery did not involve large
| scale cash-based slave trading.
|
| Also worth mentioning that the scale of the medieval British
| slave trade was likely small relative to the total populations
| of either England or Ireland, because it disproportionately
| consisted of the sale of young women as concubines. Note that
| there is a difference between the size of the enslaved
| population and the size of the slave trade. While as much as
| 30% of the population of Anglo-Saxon England may have been
| enslaved and the vast majority of those were economic slaves,
| only a small portion were ever bought or sold on the slave
| markets, and an even smaller portion sold to the foreign
| market.
|
| There was simply less demand for purchasing economic slaves
| because Ireland did not have a robust cash economy for
| agricultural goods that would have generated the revenue
| necessary to acquire slaves. That is, acquiring economic slaves
| for cash only makes sense if those slaves can be used to
| generate further cash. Concubinage was an exception because in
| economic terms it is a form of consumption rather than
| investment. Economic slaves were more likely to be acquired via
| raiding or conquest, which effectively converts a surplus in
| defense spending into an economic investment.
|
| Which isn't to say economic slaves weren't bought and sold,
| just that demand for them was weak and likely the trade only
| existed because acquiring them was a "free" byproduct for a
| seller who acquired them while conducting raids aimed at
| acquiring liquid wealth and potential concubines. As in, a
| viking group may have raided a village with the specific intent
| of seizing any valuables and young women, but figured that they
| might as well take the young men too because they could at
| least get _something_ in exchange for them. Demand for
| agricultural economic slaves was low because the productivity
| of early medieval agricultural workers was extremely low. Once
| the Christian church turned against concubinage and extra-
| marital relationships in general, the demand for slaves
| disappeared, reducing the incentive to raid and thus the
| incidental production of economic slaves. Which is a corollary
| of the argument the OP article proposes for the decline in
| Norman slavery.
|
| Bottom line, a relatively narrow class of wealthy traders and
| viking raiders in Ireland would have been purchasers in the
| slave markets, even though the country as a whole wasn't
| especially wealthy and did not need to be for the slave trade
| to exist.
| randcraw wrote:
| A very interesting article, especially in that historians still
| aren't sure why war-based slavery died out completely in Britain
| in only 60 years -- between 1066 and 1120. You have to wonder if
| there was mostly an economic reason for it, like making more
| money from renting to serfs than owning them and having to house
| and upkeep them (as the article suggests). I can't believe the
| angels of lords' better natures was the catalyst. The uptake of
| Christianity thereabouts begat 800 years earlier with
| Charlemagne; that's a heck of a long gestation to develop a moral
| conscience.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Around 800 AD with Charlemagne. He was not 800 years before
| 1066, or even 1120.
| randcraw wrote:
| Sorry. Meant Constantine (350 AD) -- far more significant to
| the rise of Christian morals than Charlemagne.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Um, Charlemagne was emperor from 800 to 828, only a bit more
| than 200 years earlier, not 800. Still plenty long enough
| though.
| card_zero wrote:
| Well, they hadn't invented progress yet, there was no hurry.
| traject_ wrote:
| The timeline overlaps with the Peace of God movement and the
| Gregorian reforms which legal historian Harold Berman calls the
| Papal Revolution in his book _Law and Revolution: The Formation
| of the Western Legal Tradition_. Also coincides with the
| beginnings of renavatio that Charles Taylor mentions in _A
| Secular Age_. You could argue though that perhaps it took some
| time until the population fully Christianized; it is precisely
| in this time period we start seeing the use of familiar
| Biblical along with a set of standardized Germanic first names
| all across Europe while old Germanic naming conventions start
| to disappear.
| wrp wrote:
| The author of TFA and a few others like it is Marc Morris. To get
| his viewpoint at greater length, see his _The Norman Conquest:
| The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England_
| (2012).
|
| Since at least the 19th century, there has been sharp controversy
| among English academics over whether the Norman invasion was a
| good or bad thing. Morris is strongly on the "good" side. For a
| view from the other direction, try the short and readable _The
| Norman Conquest: A Very Short Introduction_ by George Garnett
| (2009).
| trhway wrote:
| >'I prohibit the sale of any man by another outside of the
| country,' says the ninth law of William the Conqueror
|
| preventing "hands drain" so to speak. They did Doomsday book,
| kind of stabilized the land ownership and revenue/taxes
| extraction based on it, and the land needs hands to produce the
| revenue.
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