History buffs - historical slave turnover question

[Celebrim]

It is an interesting question of why not further large scale slave revolts. Not certain that I totally buy this explanation, but certainly a lot of these were factors.

As I understood it Roman agriculture got more large scale not less as time went by, were the major revolts of that period all coming out of a particular model of plantation?

Certainly I would also expect that as infrastructure within the core imperial domains got better it became harder to organize anything so much as bandits without running into a pretty swift and nasty response from local forces.

The basis of all three big slave revolts where the Latifundia (big essentially government owned plantations) that the Romans had set up in southern Italy and Sicily after conquering the italian kingdoms there. Similar plantations would be started on these models elsewhere, but my guess is that the slave populations there were indiginous rather than imported. Not every Roman approved of the practice. Pliny hated it and argued in favor of free peasant farmers. Several Roman plays critiqued the holding of slaves in satire.

My understanding was that after the slave revolts, the Romans turned back toward the tenant/landlord model of landuse and away from the slave plantation. The Latifundia continued, but they were increasingly reliant on peasant tenants that were in theory at least free and who were allowed to retain the surplus of the land. This might well be part of the origin of the serf system, but like everything else between the end of Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages, its really hard to track what was going on because just about no writing remains from that period.

After Marius, every legonairre got a farm on retirement. Before Marius, the Romans were having a hard time finding enough free land holders to recruit into the army. The small roman citizen farmer was becoming extinct at precisely the time that Roman was needing to field larger armies. One could imagine that in the decades and centuries following Marius, the empire was filling up with the families of legonairre free holders that had been born Greek or German or whatever but which now held Roman citizenship, had fought in its wars, and had a nice plot of land. This helped replenish the Roman 'yeomanry', and (along with sale of citizenships to the merchant class) helped made the burden of living under the empire more tolerable.

I agree with you that the causes are probably complex, and with S'mon in that the Romans probably got better at putting these things down.

Also, whether you are aware of it or not, we are starting to tread on some of the most explosive political ground in all of the study of history. If the other side of this debate could refrain from blowing up and flaming me over my description of the Latifundia as 'big government owned plantations', I'd really appreciate it.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

It was my impression that the Latifundia continued to expand after the revolts and that they continued to be slave driven, but I don't know if there was some sort of reform on the level of the ager publica in Sicily and the South of Italy after the revolts to break up the slave population or make the system more maneagable in general. I'll look into it and see what I can find.

I know that after the revolts the model of the great Northern Italian villas was more along the lines of self-sufficient haciendas and certainly by Augustine's time the African villas are manned more by tennant peasants than by slaves, but I don't when that change occured prior to Augustine.

 

[boredgremlin]

Successfully killing all the French and creating an independent state?

Lol you been to haiti recently? They probably should have kept the french around.

 

[Conaill]

Since there are some nations that allow harsher treatment of slaves, and others that are more moderate, I will likely bump up the 3.57% number to one that is slightly higher - maybe 4.00% or 4.50%. However, even in the nations that allow harsher treatment, slaves are not exactly cheap, so it is worth it to keep them alive and not abuse them too much.

A quick plug in my little excel table with a 4.5% turnover rate gives me 391,000 slaves worldwide in the past 10 years. So, with a total population on the continent of about 20 million, that still means that less than 2% of the population is in enslaved. Not quite Spartan numbers.

No need to pull out Excel. Here's a quick little calculation to figure out how many slaves you will eventually converge to:

At "steady state", i.e. once the total number of slaves stabilizes, the number of new slaves has to be equal to the number of slaves that die each year. If you assume a fixed percentage die each year the math becomes very simple.

In your original setup, you had 50,000 new slaves per year, and 1/8 of the slaves died each year. That means that eventually, the total number of slaves will stabilize to a whopping 400,000 (400,000 x 1/8 = 50,000).

With 50,000 new slaves per year and only a 4.5% "turnover" rate, you would eventually converge to an amazing 1.1 million slaves!

The larger the turnover rate, the faster you will reach this steady state slave population level (the amount of time needed to reach this level will be inverse proportional to the rate). The 10 year brute-force calculation you've been doing is only relevant if slavery has really only been going on for the past 10 years.

 

[NewJeffCTHome]

No need to pull out Excel. Here's a quick little calculation to figure out how many slaves you will eventually converge to:

At "steady state", i.e. once the total number of slaves stabilizes, the number of new slaves has to be equal to the number of slaves that die each year. If you assume a fixed percentage die each year the math becomes very simple.

In your original setup, you had 50,000 new slaves per year, and 1/8 of the slaves died each year. That means that eventually, the total number of slaves will stabilize to a whopping 400,000 (400,000 x 1/8 = 50,000).

With 50,000 new slaves per year and only a 4.5% "turnover" rate, you would eventually converge to an amazing 1.1 million slaves!

The larger the turnover rate, the faster you will reach this steady state slave population level (the amount of time needed to reach this level will be inverse proportional to the rate). The 10 year brute-force calculation you've been doing is only relevant if slavery has really only been going on for the past 10 years.

Thanks - how do you come up with your numbers? Are you a mathmatician, actuary or statistician? But, 1.1 million slaves is a lot in a land with a population of 20 million. I'm not sure if I want it over 5 percent of the population... but, that could make it even scarier for the PCs (if they get their hands on that artifact, they'll control 1.1 million people!!!!)

 

[Conaill]

Thanks - how do you come up with your numbers? Are you a mathmatician, actuary or statistician?

Just basic math, balancing the number of new slaves and the number of slaves lost every year. If the first is larger than the second, the total population of slaves will go up. If it is smaller, the total population will go down. So the stable population level is the one where the influx of slaves is equal to the outflux.

influx = 50,000
outflux = 4.5% of X, where X is the total population of slaves

4.5% X = 50,000 => X = 1.111 million

But, 1.1 million slaves is a lot in a land with a population of 20 million. I'm not sure if I want it over 5 percent of the population... but, that could make it even scarier for the PCs (if they get their hands on that artifact, they'll control 1.1 million people!!!!)

I'm not sure 1 in 20 is all that much in a country that relies fairly heavily on slavery. Someone brought up a 20/80% mix earlier, with some disagreement on whether it shoudl be 20% slaves, or 80% slaves.

Time for the historians to pipe up again: What fraction of population consisted of slaves in some historical examples? How about the southern US in the 19th century, for example?

 

[PaulGreystoke]

Time for the historians to pipe up again: What fraction of population consisted of slaves in some historical examples? How about the southern US in the 19th century, for example?

IIRC 40% of the population of the South were slaves. There were about 400,000 slaveholders in the South according to the Census of 1860. The vast majority of these slaveholders owned 20 or fewer slaves. But the majority of slaves were owned by the small minority of slaveholders that owned 20 or more slaves - with the "great planters" owning upwards of 200 slaves each. Thus the "typical" slaveholder did not necessarily own the "typical" slave.

Does this help at all? :shrug:

 

[TheAuldGrump]

It is also of note that for the slaves used in the South more slaves died in transit than on the plantations - losing 1/3 of your 'cargo' was acceptable. Disease, dehydration, starvation, suffocation, even murder among the slaves over what food and water was made available.... all took terrible tolls. If you want a high turnover the place to look is in the transportation of the 'merchandise'.

Slave revolts were actually rare, grim as it sounds most slaves came from slave using cultures...

The Auld Grump

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Slave revolts were actually rare, grim as it sounds most slaves came from slave using cultures...

The Auld Grump

Though they happened more often than most people are aware of, slave revolts and race riots aren't things that are covered very well in most history classes.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Lol you been to haiti recently? They probably should have kept the french around.

Unless I'm missing something, which is altogether possible, yes it was succesful and no they shouldn't have kept the French around.

The basic time line is as follows:

Initial revolt under religious leader named Boukman: plantations are burned, French flee to coastal cities.

Francois Dominique Toussaint organizes military forces for slaves, I wish I knew more about how he organized this all I've seen is a theory that many of the slaves had been trained soldiers in Africa, and plays off interested European colonial powers against each other. Eventually he becomes consul of Haiti, apparently most of the action was on the Dominican Republic side of the island, and is beloved by both French and former slaves. Eventually Napolean decides to unseat him and sends an army to do so. Toussaint engages in a guerilla war, eventually making peace and keeping it until the French betray him. He dies in prison.

Under a new leader, Dessalines, the slaves resist French forces under Leclerc and then Rochambeau all three leaders pursued policies of attrocity. Supposedly the French just slaughtered anyone they found who wasn't French and Dessalines just slaughtered opposition. Either way it looks like both sides were actively destroying non-combatants. Rochambeau surrenders on November 28, 1803.

It looks like at least one of the deciding factors of the success of the revolution was that they did it during a time of great internal and external danger for France, Napolean wasn't in much of a position to support the French forces once he had sent them, though the initial government under Toussaint seemed like a pretty interesting compromise and success in its own right that France bungled horribly.

Here's a site, its spin is pretty obvious, but it's also nicely concise and has far less of it than you are generally likely to find on the internet.

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/DIASPORA/HAITI.HTM

Here's something equally good from the other side:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0323/p15s01-bogn.htm