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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 804852" data-attributes="member: 7240">Re: slaveryDavid, I'm glad to see you've done a lot of research into slaves' rights in the southern US. You've provided some very interesting information I haven't seen before. My knowledge of slavery in Dixie is limited to the antebellum period which, you acknowledge, was a nadir in terms of slaves' rights. I'd be very interested in hearing the sources you're citing for this information; I'd love to see how the legal framework for chattel slavery evolves self-purchase.However, you seem to be putting forward some very incorrect views about slavery everywhere else in the world.[QUPTE]"colonial Spanish and Portuguese societies in the New World were slave-based societies, absolutely dependent on slave labour. They gave slaves rights."Did they now?  These rights may have existed in some lawbooks back in Europe.  They did not exist in the Americas where the slaved died in droves from harsh treatment.</blockquote>Actually David, I'm sitting here with a book of primary documents with pages and pages of legal proceedings by slaves against their owners. I also have a text with numerous statistics gleaned from thousands of additional court transcripts listing helpful things like the average rates of self-purchase, average prices, average length of time people spent as slaves within Spanish and Portuguese colonial possessions. Did I say slaves didn't die in large numbers from harsh treatment? No. I said that their death rates from dangerous work were lower than that of wages labourers. What the texts I have emphasize is that in sectors with high death rates, like mining, slaves were generally kept out of the high risk activities and used in lower-risk activities. I think saying that the length of time a society keeps a system of slavery has nothing whatsoever to do with the features of the system itself is a pretty dubious claim on its face. That's extremely interesting. Did this purchase require the owner's consent or could there be court-ordered manumission (as was pervasive in Latin America)?Here, I think you're making a mistake. Have you looked at the treatment of Latin American mining slaves? Also, it's generally acknowledged that slave prices were higher in Latin America than in the US because a higher rate of importation was required due to the legal assumption that all foundlings are born free. Thus, the "sold down the river" phenomenon was much less common because many slaves who believed their children would be sold abandoned them to religious organizations. Can you refer me to the book you got this from? I've been wanting to read up on Athenian slavery for some time. This statistic is likely factoring out the considerable rates of child abandonment to take advantage of the legal loophole for foundlings. Also, many slaves also waited to marry and start families until they got out of slavery. One of the features of Latin American slavery is that there are many instances of couples marrying late in life, in many cases, too late to have children.Here, we're right on the same page even if we're disputing the nature of the different historical models, which is really a side argument anyway.[/QUOTE]

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