D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Mordhau]

I am a great admirer of Finley's Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology. To the best of my knowledge - which is neither expert nor completely uninformed - there was no abolitionist movement, or even ideology, in Rome. As I understand it, the goal of Spartacus's revolt was to achieve freedom, but not to abolish the institution of slavery.

Yes. Although Aristotle in the Politics writes:

" others however maintain that for one man to be another man's master is contrary to nature, because it is only convention that makes the one a slave and the other a freeman and there is no difference between them by nature, and that therefore it is unjust, for it is based on force."

Which seems to indicate that the idea that slavery as a whole was wrong was not entirely unthinkable in the ancient world. (Aristotle unfortunately argues against the above proposition).

 

[Mind of tempest]

Yes. Although Aristotle in the Politics writes:

" others however maintain that for one man to be another man's master is contrary to nature, because it is only convention that makes the one a slave and the other a freeman and there is no difference between them by nature, and that therefore it is unjust, for it is based on force."

Which seems to indicate that the idea that slavery as a whole was wrong was not entirely unthinkable in the ancient world. (Aristotle unfortunately argues against the above proposition).

I have heard of this bit which suggests history was not as neat and ordered as we have it depicted to us?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I am a great admirer of Finley's Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology. To the best of my knowledge - which is neither expert nor completely uninformed - there was no abolitionist movement, or even ideology, in Rome. As I understand it, the goal of Spartacus's revolt was to achieve freedom, but not to abolish the institution of slavery.

Finley, AFAIK, is just an example of the problem I discussed above. We only have upper-class and elite opinions on slavery and is itself rather outdated, given it's from before I was born and I'm old. Sources, translations, and archaeology have changed a lot since then.

Claiming to know what Spartacus was after in detail is pretty silly. It's been in the interest of elites to cast Spartacus as selfishly motivated for a very long time, and indeed during the cold war, failing to do so lead to suspicions of Communist sympathies, because a great number of Communist organisations used Spartacus's name and invoked him. So you see this hilarious spike in "Spartacus was just trying to flee!" stuff from the 60s through the 80s. Interpretations will always be coloured by the time and the pretense that was less true in 1978 than now, say, would be very foolish. Indeed, evidence and methodology improve.

That said, I agree there was absolutely no evidence for an abolition movement in Rome. Anyone trying to help slaves escape was brutally dealt with. Anyone expressing any significant sympathy for slaves in the pre-Christian era was seen as a churl and a fool at best. From the evidence we have, however, we can certainly say that the relationship that the middle and working classes had with slaves and slavery was rather different to the elites, even by the accounts of those elites and that they appear to have had a great deal more sympathy for slaves (and why wouldn't they - people they knew would have been enslaved). Indeed there's also some "these slaves are taking our jobs!" at times, and I don't believe the masses would have been so dim as to blame the slaves.

Re Spartacus hard claims either way are not at all supported by the limited evidence. He certainly did not flee when he could have, indeed he turned around, but equally we don't have any proof that he wanted to free everyone and our only sources are hideously biased. We only know what he actually did, which was to free slaves and kill slave-owners. Certainly of interest though is that the Romans don't suggest he was a hypocrite, taking slaves himself, and do seem to suggest he freed all the slaves in a region, not just those militarily useful to him.

But it's all speculation unless another source or some amazing archaeology emerges.

 

[Mordhau]

I have heard of this bit which suggests history was not as neat and ordered as we have it depicted to us?

It never is of course. Another example would the the frequently repeated claim that there were no athiests in the middle ages.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The irish are "the irish" and the Scots are "the scots" because they have been continiously living in Ireland and Scotland for the past 200 years.

I identify as Scottish, even though I was born and lived most of my life in England.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Um.... There was bloody conflict between Irish and British in living memory. There was a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, and threat of another as recently as this past September, if I recall correctly.

The Irish aren't "the Irish" and the Scots aren't "the Scots" - separate peoples from the British - because of connections from last month, or last decade. They are from a sense of identity going back centuries. Every human culture has this, and it doesn't go away when you have to move.

@billd91 is almost right - but the clinging to identity doesn't come from backlash. That identity hangs around even if you don't suffer any significant blacklash. Humans simply tend to take part of their identity from distant origins.

Which is a shame, because this is much of the soil that racism is rooted in.

I agree with all of this but I think there's a distinction between someone who primarily acts and identifies as one culture (American) and whose last Scottish ancestor was 200 years ago, and indeed may be equally descended from Germans or whatever, who sometimes identifies as Scottish, and between some who actually lives in Scotland and is primarily Scottish, culturally. I don't doubt their feeling of connection, but it's not really the same thing.

And yes a lot of racism springs from there.

As for bloody conflicts, well, a huge amount of IRA funding and a lot of their weapons were courtesy of Americans identifying as Irish-American, so it certainly has real-world impacts.

(For the record I've literally always thought we should give NI back, it's a ridiculous situation.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I identify as Scottish, even though I was born and lived most of my life in England.

I identify as British myself, living in England. My father is Scottish and my mother Northern and I find the idea of being "English" somewhat perplexing. In part this is because "English" identity has historically been defined in ways that tend to exclude or denigrate the North (one might argue this continues to this day).

 

[GothicEmperor]

I've had this sneaking suspicion that DnD Orcs were in some way informed by American stereotypes of their indigenous people (they're religious nomadic people with a supposed disregard for civilization and violent tendencies? okay...) and it's interesting to see an example where that's more explicit. I always make my orcs much more Tolkienian culturally (warped Elves that are at least on par technologically with others) just so I don't have to deal with that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I've had this sneaking suspicion that DnD Orcs were in some way informed by American stereotypes of their indigenous people (they're religious nomadic people with a supposed disregard for civilization and violent tendencies? okay...) and it's interesting to see an example where that's more explicit. I always make my orcs much more Tolkienian culturally (warped Elves that are at least on par technologically with others) just so I don't have to deal with that.

That's an interesting point that is rarely noted. Tolkien's Orcs are technologically sophisticated, moreso than the "good guys" and certainly not opposed to megastructures or cities. One might argue the Shire was more "civilized" with Sharkey running it, at least if you consider Victorian London more civilized than some rural village.

For D&D to flip that completely and recast them as basically low tech nomads and opposed to civilization is striking and yes unavoidably informative.

People also rarely note Tolkien was a utopian anarchist who was extremely clear in his support for anarchist terrorism, but his letters make that unavoidable (a 1943 one particularly). Who is against civilization now? Especially as his self-insert character is Tom Bombadil, who espouses the virtues of living in a forest and not doing any work. (To be fair it's more like Bombadil is the only major character people asked Tolkien if was a self-insert which he got coy and "maybe"-ish about. Others like Aragorn or Frodo he sternly denied.)

 

[Mordhau]

I've had this sneaking suspicion that DnD Orcs were in some way informed by American stereotypes of their indigenous people (they're religious nomadic people with a supposed disregard for civilization and violent tendencies? okay...) and it's interesting to see an example where that's more explicit. I always make my orcs much more Tolkienian culturally (warped Elves that are at least on par technologically with others) just so I don't have to deal with that.

I think it's a little more complex than that. I think D&D orcs are first defined by the desire to tell the kind of stories that a lot of writers grew up with, i.e Western ones with cowboys and indians and the like. That doesn't mean that Orcs were based on Indigenous Americans, but rather they drifted to fill the same structural narrative role.

Now of course, when you do that, people will recognise the narrative and start filling the details back in.