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Revision as of 16:50, 26 September 2005

Serfs

Please do not use the term serf outside of mediaeval Europe, unless specifically marked as an analogy; the question of whether the helots and penestae were analogous to serfs, and if so, how closely, is extremely controversial. Septentrionalis 28 June 2005 21:24 (UTC)

P.S. Read Finley and Marc Bloch on "ever-extending feudalism/"

Did the helots of Laconia share language and culture with those of Messenia? The last paragraph should supply evidence, or be phrased to avoid the question.

What I wrote was entirely based on GEM de Ste Croi The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World. It is difficult to use him as evidence that the hellots were serfs and as such distinct from slaves because he considers it so obvious that it needs no justification. One of the key differences that he draws attention to is that serfs (hellots) rebelled and slaves didn't. That the two groups were distict runs thru his work.Dejvid 29 June 2005 09:41 (UTC)

Reaching for my Ste Croix it seems he does after all explain his reasons. A 'were the hellots serfs of mere slaves?' section, would be in order me thinks.Dejvid 29 June 2005 09:53 (UTC)

Yes, that is Ste. Croix's POV (and he may be right; POV doesn't equal "wrong"). But too much of Misplaced Pages has been produced by taking one book, even an excellent book, and writing edits from its POV as if it were consensus. Please don't do this until you read other books too. Septentrionalis 29 June 2005 22:53 (UTC)

You are right, I should have sourced that bit from Ste Croix. Perhaps the contention that Hellots are not serfs needs to be sourced? Wiki is a joint work and we all fill in for each others weaknesses.Dejvid 30 June 2005 20:28 (UTC)

The contention that helots should not be called serfs can be derived from Sir Moses Finley, citing the mediaevalist Marc Bloch. But it is a matter of fact: serfdom is a specific system, and it is pure conjecture that ancient Greece was at all similar to it. Ste. Croix is, in effect, proposing a convention, and it has not in fact been generally adopted; the usage is strongly tied to Ste. Croix's Marxist theory that every history must develope in pre-ordained stages, identical with those Marx and Engels set down for modern Europe. Septentrionalis 30 June 2005 22:26 (UTC)

We know very little about the helots, and less than that about the penestae. Were they are adscripti glebae, in any sense? Were they Dorian, Achaean, Arcadian, Pelasgian, or a mixture (all have been argued)? were they the same in Messenia?

I have also removed a duplicate paragraph; Ste. Croix's theories have been mentioned once; any more would be unbalanced, at least for this length of article. Septentrionalis 30 June 2005 22:26 (UTC)

By all means include more of Finley's views but I see no reason to cut de Ste Croix. If at the moment you feel it is distorted then increase the rest. The Ancient period on Wiki has pages on the most insignificant skirmish - there is plenty of justification for expanding something so important as slavery.Dejvid 30 June 2005 22:36 (UTC)

Whether such groups should be classified as slaves or serfs is extremely controversial with many academics contending that the term serf should not be used outside the medieval period.

False; their classification as slaves is ancient: Isocrates 6,27. It is not controversial except to User:Iasson, who believes that douloi were freemen. Septentrionalis 19:26, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I'm a bit confused, what has Iasson got to do with our discussion here? As to the slave hellot distiction it is true, as Ste Croix condceeds, that the ancients tended to use the same term for both. However slave in modern English is normally applied to someone who is completly the property of another while serf is someone who is boud to the land but has fixed obligations. (Okay you can get terms like "wage slavery" but such a phrasing is intentionally retorical.) A slave has to do whatever is the whim of his owner. It is not in dispute that Sparta was not a feudal society. Ste Croix goes to some length to emphasize that that there is not automatic link between feudalism in the sense of a fief system and serfdom. I suggested earlier that it would be of value to have Finley's views on the page. I do think tho that you are the best person to do that as you agree with him.Dejvid 22:06, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

This isn't Finlay; this is Liddell and Scott. A helot was a doulos and the English for doulos is "slave". Septentrionalis 02:17, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I may be misreading this but you do seem to be treating this as a re-run of an argument you have had with someone else. As I was not party to that argument it makes things very confusing for me. It would help if you were more explicit about these past arguments rather expect me to pick it up from allusions. For starters the meaning of the word doulos is not important to me except to the extent in bears on the serf-slave distinction. Serf an slave are modern English words whatever there origins. If you look slave and serf up in the dictionary you will find two quite definitions and certainly in my dictionary serfs are defined as laborer bound to the land with no reference to feudalism. Serf in fact comes from the Roman word for slave but it is the meaning in modern English that is at issue here. (By all means quote Liddell and Scott on the page if you like)Dejvid 13:13, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

My point is simple: to use "slave" in ancient Greece for any other purpose than to translate the Greek doulos is an abuse of the English language. In that sense, helots were slaves. The person with no rights whatever is a strawman who did not exist anywhere; neither at Sparta or at Athens (nor, for that matter, in Mississippi). To suggest that helots were not slaves is a falsehood; to affirm that they were a special category of slaves is obvious; to call that category serfs, without extreme caution and express acknowledgement of the analogy, is to assert what we have no evidence for whatever. Septentrionalis 17:17, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry but slave is a normal English word and is not simply the translation of "doulos". When you use the slave it will be understood to mean a status equivalent to that of the US South pre civil war. The concept of serfs has a very clear meaning and indeed is defined separately from slaves in the anti slavery convention 0f 1956. An Atheninan slave master could sell his slave to whomsoever he wished, like wise a Virginian slave holder. A hellot was bound to the land which meant he was not subject to that. But why does this have to be so either-or. The page can include both points of view. Isn't that the normal way of reaching a concensus on Wiki?Dejvid 18:17, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, serf has a clear meaning. This is precisely why it should not be used, except with great care, in a context where there is no evidence that it applies. What is inaccurate about the sentence under discussion, however, is a different question : its implication that helots were not slaves, which is false. Septentrionalis 20:18, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I would, btw, regard it as a great kindness if you would consult any other book on classical slavery (I mentioned Finlay's because it is famous and recently reprinted, not out of partisanship) in addition to Ste. Croix before continuing this discussion. Ste. Croix wrote a polemic in favor of a particular application of historical materialism, and is therefore by nature PoV. Septentrionalis 20:18, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Can we settle on the distinction that helots were not chattel slaves? Septentrionalis 18:46, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Whether they are serfs or slaves is to an extent one of definition and that kind of dispute is less important and almost impossible to resolve. That helots were a kind of intermediate group is the important point. But the wording is more that just about definitions. The reason why, I suspect, that you dislike the term and I like it is that it makes links to different groups who had the same experience in different periods. You assumed wrongly that 1956 was a typo. Clearly if people felt the need to draw up a convention in the middle of the twentieth century to extend the protection that existed to prevent people being treated as slaves to another group who they defined as serfs them somewhere in the world there were people bound to the land in that way. I don't know what groups prompted this concern but I doubt that these serfs lived under a feudal system.

Further, while Ste Croix is unique to the extent that he insists on the label, quite a lot of people seem to use the word serf in relation to helots. Peter Green talking about a group between slave and free says they can be loosely if somewhat anachronistically called serfs if somewhat.

I have suggested several times that the best solution is to expand the Greek section. At the moment ste Croix's views get a disproportionate amount of space but at the same time his views are dismissed. That is a kind of balance but not an ideal one. It seems to be that you have not read ste Croix for some time. He really isn't as dogmatic as you seem to have remembered him. Please, you have up to now seemed to ignore my suggestion of putting other peoples views (Finlay et al) in which case ste Croix would have proportionately less space. The reason I started editing here was because it seemed far to short and laconic given that it is so important a field.

Please let me know why you seem so reluctant to expand the page as a solution.Dejvid 22:00, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

The bits I've included from Finley are from his book "The Ancient Economy". I don't have access to his book on Slavery so I have no ideas had changed by the time he wrote that book.Dejvid 20:26, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Why I reverted this page back to Slavery in antiquity from Slavery in the ancient Mediterranean

1. while antiquity has been extended to cover China and even for all I know the Aztecs (and that is probably a good thing) it traditionally has meant before about 500 CE in West Eurasia. No one is going to be shocked to find the contents of the page not being so wide.
2. in any case if someone wants to write a section on these other regions there is no problem
3. the page concetrates on the three civilisations for who the most detailed sources exist. Discusion on slavery in Parthia or among the ancient Germans logically belongs here. Further the Roman Empire included Britania and that can not by any stretch of the imagination be considered part of the Mediterranean region. Dejvid 17:42, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I have now sussed why the move was made. There is now a Slavery in Japan page but the point that this page logically cover a wider area than just the Med still stands. I'd have nothing against Slavery in West Eurasia. Dejvid 23:13, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

de Sainte Croix's reasons for arguing that Hellots were serfs

"believed in economic determinism, and attempted to show that 
ancient society passed through exactly the same 
economic, and consequently social, forms as medieval and modern Europe"

I may be missing something but this seems to have little relation to what de Sainte Croix was arguing. It might well be what Marx would have come out with and it is true that de Sainte Croix was a Marxist but it doesn't follow that de Sainte Croix used Marxism in such a dogmatic way. For one thing, the way de Sainte Croix goes out of his way to restrict the concept of feudalism and argues that serfdom can exist in societies that were not feudal suggests that he had moved on from Marx's simplistic epochism. Where in the book I referenced does he seem to be arguing along the lines you suggest?Dejvid 17:49, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

This is an odd reading of what I added. I did not say Ste. Croix proved the status of the helots from economic determinism; he made claims about the status of the helots, in order to prove economic determinism. If the present text is misleading on this, please amend; I don't see it. Septentrionalis 18:20, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

No I did understand your point (though I may not have expressed myself very well) but I don't see that his motive can be what you suggest. de Sainte Croix argues that places such as Sparta and Thessaly were exceptions. It's a good 30 years since I'v read Marx but as I recall his model was that societies go thru stages primitive-communism >> chattel-slavery >> feudalism >> capitalism with the next stage being communism (which is a bit overdue by Marx's expectations). As I understand Marx's model, a feature like serfdom belongs solely to feudalism and if it existed in a chattel slavery it should have been a harbinger of the next stage. de Sainte Croix, however, says that the tendency was for such serf relations to disappear over time as they did in Sparta itself. Further he argues that the origin of helotory was not economic development but due to conquest by the Spartans. In short, the fact that he thinks the helots were serfs shows that he realized that history is more complex than the stage model of Marx.

It seems to me that the Finley-de Sainte Croix debate revolves round the fact that de Sainte Croix looks at what the relation of the helots to their masters consisted of. Finley concerns himself with to whomDejvid 19:20, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

That is part of it; although Finley also argues very strongly that slavery is an essentially unlimited relation, which can change at the master's whim - and that this is what matters, even if there is a custom on what whims ought to be (this is directed more against the German "slavery wasn't so bad" people than Ste. Croix).

The other part is that most of the ancient evidence on helotry is to whom - because it's some philosopher writing about the Spartiates. Septentrionalis 21:47, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Note: the anon presumably removed the external link because it no longer works. Septentrionalis 16:50, 26 September 2005 (UTC)