History buffs - historical slave turnover question

[Wilphe]

The naval press of the English seamen can also be viewed as a form of temporary slave taking... though once taken they were paid the same as any other tar. And led to the War of 1812...

By that measure conscription is slavery...

 

[Wilphe]

People get it on, wherever they are. As such, you would also geta few more slaves appearing when the slaves have children. I assume that the culture we are talking about would then enslave these children. So, how many more slaves can you get through this?

Entirely depends on the conditions and the demographics.

Some slave populations are not self-sustaining. The Atlantic slave-system certainly wasn't: if you have a situation where the slaves are valued for their hard physical work then the slavers will often buy males and not worry too much about a balance of sexes. Sure having your female slaves breed sounds good but consider it:
You are taking them out of the workforce while they are pregent and nursing and won't recieve any return on that investment for at least 16 years.
It's easier to buy fresh of the boat; so that's what they did.
It's only the period between the shutting down of the slave trade post 1807 and the abolition of slavery itself that you see real efforts made to encourage captive breeding because the economics then made sense.


As a general point:
It's a lot easier for slaves to raise a family if they aren't being randomly killed, harassed or tortured and their relationships aren't being broken up. So the more humane the conditions - the more likely the population is to sustain itself.

 

[Celebrim]

By that measure conscription is slavery...

English naval presses differed from conscription in at least one significant aspect. The English were not particularly fastidious about pressing the citizens of other nations into service. One might argue that the imprestment was a form of arbitrary, random, and harsh conscription when carried out on the citizen's of ones own nation. But in the case of pressing foreign citizen's into HMS, then I think that the appelation slavery applies.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

By that measure conscription is slavery...

No, because by English press if you spoke English you were English - they pressed Swiss, Dutch, and American sailors - who were not subjects of the British crown (which is why I mentioened the War of 1812...). This is indeed slave taking.

The Auld Grump

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

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.

Naturally there is going to be some translation between a DnD culture and a real world culture, but that doesn't discredit the value of historical input.

I'd argue you are being a tad naive about the state of both real world and DnD religions. What you consider real proof in a secular and skeptical culture is going to be very different from what someone who comes from a culture that regularly sees people die of curses is going to consider real proof. Oracles are extremely powerful institutions in a legal and cultural sense if nothing else, in many ways they are going to be far more powerful than a DnD church that has to rely on individual clerics for its divine power rather than institutional procedure. Atheism/Agnosticism isn't really something that exists as a constant cultural variable.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Entirely depends on the conditions and the demographics.

Some slave populations are not self-sustaining. The Atlantic slave-system certainly wasn't: if you have a situation where the slaves are valued for their hard physical work then the slavers will often buy males and not worry too much about a balance of sexes. Sure having your female slaves breed sounds good but consider it:
You are taking them out of the workforce while they are pregent and nursing and won't recieve any return on that investment for at least 16 years.
It's easier to buy fresh of the boat; so that's what they did.
It's only the period between the shutting down of the slave trade post 1807 and the abolition of slavery itself that you see real efforts made to encourage captive breeding because the economics then made sense.

As a general point:
It's a lot easier for slaves to raise a family if they aren't being randomly killed, harassed or tortured and their relationships aren't being broken up. So the more humane the conditions - the more likely the population is to sustain itself.

There's certainly truth to all of these points, but it's also worth pointing that all of the points that were involved in the Atlantic slave trade now have large populations descended from those slaves so some sort of sustainability or even flourishing was achieved even in nations that modelled the above dynamics very closely.

 

[Wilphe]

Quite - but the dynamics have changed as those populations have been emancipated. They aren't still living under the same conditions they were when they were enslaved.

 

[Wilphe]

No, because by English press if you spoke English you were English - they pressed Swiss, Dutch, and American sailors - who were not subjects of the British crown (which is why I mentioened the War of 1812...). This is indeed slave taking.

The Auld Grump

Well that depends if you can get out of your commitments by saying "I'm not British anymore, I'm a citizen of the US* which by the way didn't even exist when I was born"

&

In certain circumstances you'd get treated as British even if you weren't born there; either through serving on a British merchant ship for long enough or marrying a British citizen.


* Regardless the Admiralty would probably have respected American protections had they been worth the paper they were written on - but they weren't.
All you had to do was go to an American Consul and swear that you were an American citizen - the Consul would then give a signed Protection stating that they had seen you swear that you were an American citizen. At no point did they check up that you were who you said you were; nor did that Protection have a description on it so you could sell it on to somone else for cash.

When the Admiralty gave a Protection they included a description and, because they had a centrally administered system, were able to ensure that they were only given out to people who actually existed.


I'm not saying that people didn't get pressed who shouldn't have been; it's just a matter of putting the other side of the argument.

It depends how desperate they are for men and how tolerant the pressing officer is for the same old excuses he heard last time.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Well that depends if you can get out of your commitments by saying "I'm not British anymore, I'm a citizen of the US* which by the way didn't even exist when I was born"
.

Or Swiss, or Dutch, or German... Nor are they your commitments - you are not a citizen of the UK, the UK has signed treaties recognizing the reality of your nation - nor does it (or in this case did it) matter whether or not it existed when you were born - once a nation has been recognized it is a separate political entity, as a citizen of that political entity you bear the rights, responsibilities, and priviledges of that nation. That had already been determined following the Swiss Wars of Confederation. Rather like somebody breaking into your home and drafting you into the French army on the grounds that you speak French. The UK was being censured for the press by several nations at the time, not merely the US.

The Auld Grump

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Entirely depends on the conditions and the demographics.
You are taking them out of the workforce while they are pregent and nursing and won't recieve any return on that investment for at least 16 years.

This part I had to take issue with, if you are working in any sort of agrarian economy you get use out of people a lot earlier than 16 years.

Certainly not as fast as you would get use out of other forms of chattel, but if you've bought women, and there are any number of reasons to buy women, you may as well let them be pregnant and help feed their kids.