History buffs - historical slave turnover question

[NewJeffCTHome]

To get back on track - an Abolitionist group might be an interesting plotline - even when slavery is legal it may not be universaly accepted. And some of the Abolitionists used tactics very much akin to terrorists today. (John Brown coming to mind. Hmmm, an undead John Brown, who's body is a moulderin' but not in the grave...) They may have a good goal, but their means may be very unsavory indeed.

The Auld Grump

Well, in addition to there being a lawful-evil god that rules over this evil theocracy and promotes the slave-trade, there is also a chaotic good deity who works against this evil god in that its primary task is freeing of slaves & promoting the idea that slavery is evil.

As well, this campaign setting has an organization that is dedicated to freeing slaves wherever possible. However, their methods are not always good - more like, ends justify the means. It's made up of escaped slaves now dedicated to freeing slaves any way they can. While they sometimes align with the clerics of the C/G god, they are often the types that will free the slaves & then kill all their masters.

 

[boredgremlin]

sounds like what you really want is an abolitionist campaign. Stop playing by the RAW. Or common sense. Just make the slavers evil, thier god stronger, and the PC's instigators of change. You dont really want historical facts. Seems like you want things to make all slavers stupid and easiliy beaten. This is a very different thread.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

sounds like what you really want is an abolitionist campaign. Stop playing by the RAW. Or common sense. Just make the slavers evil, thier god stronger, and the PC's instigators of change. You dont really want historical facts. Seems like you want things to make all slavers stupid and easiliy beaten. This is a very different thread.

I don't get where you're getting that at all.

Where I you, JeffCTHome, I would look at West African cultures. Many of them were heavilly involved in the slave trade in a manner very similar to the system you describe here.

Indeed there were several local deities and temple complexes that were active slave traders in their own right. There's a very amusing account of this in Neal Stephenson's Baroque cycle. I think the Ibo were involved in the slave trade, but I'll have to dig for a bit to find some sources.

Cultures that were slave traders are notoriously reluctant to talk about it at this point. Among other things, knowledge of who is descended from former slaves is a widely known but taboo topic. Very often it's a source of shame for the community.

I don't know if there were too many incipient abolitionist movements, in Stephenson's account everyone who speaks up about the practice is quickly sold into slavery. Thus taking care of the problem rather neatly.

On the other hand, there was a competing religion in that people who were baptized before they were enslaved could not be purchased by Europeans. Naturally this made Christian missionaries rather unpopular as they could rapidly shrink you're potential market. Looking at their tactics might give you some ideas.

 

[boredgremlin]

Not even close. African cultures like most cultures expected thier slaves to go home one day. They took slaves temporarily during war. Then the winning tribe kept the slaves for a while afterwords.
He seems to want a religious empire, with an economy based on slavery that is easily overthrown by the PC's. That is very different then any real slave culture, ever.
And certainly far different then cultures who assumed slaves were temporary commodities. Even the name slave is a misnomer in this case. We called these people indentured servants. Temporary laborers with few rights are very different then slaves who the major religion says should be worked to death for the betterment of thier owners.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

No, no, I can assure you that the hundreds of years in which states like the Kingdom of Dahomey or Oyo participated in the trans-Saharan slave trade even before they began selling slaves to Europeans probably made them very well aware of the fact that those people were not coming back. Someone has been candy-coating the truth for you on this as well as the realities of French history. If this same source has been telling you that depictions of Aztec sacrifices were allegorical I recommend you transfer. Slaves often had defined rights within the culture, but that did not prevent them from being sold at tremendous profits to groups outside of the culture and we've already repeatedly noted that most slave holding cultures have some form of limited protection for the slaves.

Most large states that have trafficked in slaves have used religion as an ideological cover for doing so, including the Sudan today and the US in the past. And there have been any number of smaller explicitly theocratic states and institutions that participated in the slave trade directly. The most infamous example was an oracle, it's mentioned in the Stephenson narrative and shows up in collaquilisms as the Big Ju Ju, if I recall correctly, which is actually just a mispronounciation of its real name. Ku Jlope is what google is pulling up, though the links it's pulling up are mostly dead. I'll see if I can pull some authors up for you.

The following site seems to be an excellent starting point for investigating this. It's a bit simple in that it's built for somebody's class, but it's also got a very nice series of links you can follow, though most of them are pictures. I'll see what more substantial things I can dig up.

http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/timelines/htimeline3.htm

Benin seens like a good place to start your research and modelling. I had been hoping to find someplace more explicitly theocratic, but Benin is pretty sweet in its own way and it was huge and powerful so it fits your scale better. Primarilly made up of city states that shared a culture and poltical infrastructure so that might help you model a relgiosly defined state in many ways as well.

 

[orsal]

Cultures that were slave traders are notoriously reluctant to talk about it at this point. Among other things, knowledge of who is descended from former slaves is a widely known but taboo topic. Very often it's a source of shame for the community.

One thing that really surprised me on a recent trip to Africa is that "slave" has become a caste -- people of slave descent are still referred to as slaves, even though that isn't their actual status.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

One thing that really surprised me on a recent trip to Africa is that "slave" has become a caste -- people of slave descent are still referred to as slaves, even though that isn't their actual status.

Yeah, it's really pretty horrifying how much that economy influenced everything.

 

[NewJeffCTHome]

sounds like what you really want is an abolitionist campaign. Stop playing by the RAW. Or common sense. Just make the slavers evil, thier god stronger, and the PC's instigators of change. You dont really want historical facts. Seems like you want things to make all slavers stupid and easiliy beaten. This is a very different thread.

I'm actually not looking for an abolitionist campaign. I was hoping to have the PCs go up against minions of this evil god and oppose their attempts to find this ancient artifact that the minions think (via some dark prophecy, perhaps) that this artifact will allow them to control all the slaves in the world. So, I wanted to make sure I impressed upon the PCs how awesome a potential force this could be.

 

[boredgremlin]

No, no, I can assure you that the hundreds of years in which states like the Kingdom of Dahomey or Oyo participated in the trans-Saharan slave trade even before they began selling slaves to Europeans probably made them very well aware of the fact that those people were not coming back. Someone has been candy-coating the truth for you on this as well as the realities of French history. If this same source has been telling you that depictions of Aztec sacrifices were allegorical I recommend you transfer. Slaves often had defined rights within the culture, but that did not prevent them from being sold at tremendous profits to groups outside of the culture and we've already repeatedly noted that most slave holding cultures have some form of limited protection for the slaves.

Most large states that have trafficked in slaves have used religion as an ideological cover for doing so, including the Sudan today and the US in the past. And there have been any number of smaller explicitly theocratic states and institutions that participated in the slave trade directly. The most infamous example was an oracle, it's mentioned in the Stephenson narrative and shows up in collaquilisms as the Big Ju Ju, if I recall correctly, which is actually just a mispronounciation of its real name. Ku Jlope is what google is pulling up, though the links it's pulling up are mostly dead. I'll see if I can pull some authors up for you.

The following site seems to be an excellent starting point for investigating this. It's a bit simple in that it's built for somebody's class, but it's also got a very nice series of links you can follow, though most of them are pictures. I'll see what more substantial things I can dig up.

http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/timelines/htimeline3.htm

Benin seens like a good place to start your research and modelling. I had been hoping to find someplace more explicitly theocratic, but Benin is pretty sweet in its own way and it was huge and powerful so it fits your scale better. Primarilly made up of city states that shared a culture and poltical infrastructure so that might help you model a relgiosly defined state in many ways as well.

I never quite bought the idea that the africans thought they were coming back either. But its what they are teaching now. Probably PC bull.
Anyway D&D religions are different then real world religions. Real world religions have humans who make rules and claim they from some divine being. With no real proof available. D&D religions have priests healing the sick, raising the dead and hurling fire at heretics as a regular matter in the course of a day. Not sure about this world but many game worlds have even had really angry gods come down and kick some non believer butt in person.
There is a very large differecne between a psuedo political organization disguised as a religion saying something and a D&D cleric calling a flame strike from the heavens to prove his point. At every period in history belief in the major religions has been spotty at best. However when your local priest can raise a corpse or call fire from the sky to prove his god exists and is powerful it makes it pretty hard to be an athiest. lol.

 

[Glyfair]

The slave economy was already losing economic ground to an industrialized economy.

I recently saw an article on Snopes that noted that if it wasn't for tobacco and cotton, slavery wouldn't have been economical (at least in an agricultural area). Slaves were too expensive to keep unless they were involved in a year round industry. Most other farming products only needed significant labor at planting and harvest. Tobbaco and cotton were exceptions to this.