Talk:Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom

Untitled

This is just a start - should include appropriate legislation etc for all countries and UN - please help especially with links etc.

539 BCE

Cyrus abolished slavery after conquering Babylon in 539bce. That should definitely be on here. 204.148.73.182 (talk) 02:42, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

We have no genuine evidence that Cyrus abolished slavery and considerably evidence to the contrary, that it was not abolished under Cyrus or his successors (there are numerous slave sale contracts preserved from Achaemenid times, some of which reference direct involvement of the Achaemenid bureaucracy in facilitating (and taxing) such sales: see for example Stolper, Registration and Taxation of Slave Sales in Achaemenid Babylonia).

What you are likely thinking of, as discussed on the Cyrus Cylinder page of this encyclopedia, is a modern forgery purporting to be a translation of the Cyrus Cylinder, which claims to abolish slavery along with other human rights initiatives and which has circulated widely on the Internet (and is not infrequently encountered, and subsequently cited in good faith, by people unaware that it is fake). Aithiopika (talk) 19:05, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This is not true. Many human rights organisations recognise the Cyrus cylinder as a human rights charter. It might not be as full fledged as modern versions of human rights legislation, but it is an example of the earliest form of human rights law. The fact that the burden placed on the Cyrus cylinder is so high is just a matter of racism and there being a higher burden of proof placed on non-white people and their historical artifacts/events.

We have no evidence of chattel slavery in Persia, even with the link you provided. So based on that, we can conclude that chattel slavery has been abolished, and Persia should also be on the list.

I mean, even with your link, it is debatable as to what slavery is. Slavery is a spectrum, and even the modern worker today could be considered to be a wage slave in capitalist society. From my perspective, when I think of a slave, I think of the old school chattel slave that made up the bulk of labour of societies like Greece and Rome. This was simply not present in Persia. Most of the agriculture or labour was made from the labour of free people.

It is based on this concept, that Persia should be included in that list.

I will continue to undo your changes based on this. TwoArms225 (talk) 03:45, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, first off, I'm not a huge fan of the assumption that the motivation for deleting ancient Persia from this list must be racist. I refer you to a prior comment linked below if you would like reassurance that I have in fact deleted some bogus claims about abolition in the pasty-whitest parts of the ancient world, such as Ireland, as well. I'm not pursuing an anti-Persian agenda here, although I do dislike the shoddiness of a number of entries on this list and an overall lack of focus, especially in the medieval portion of the list, on, you know, "abolition of slavery and serfdom."

So, I do agree with your followup post's point that the list, especially the medieval portion, includes a large number of weak entries that are only tangentially, if at all, related to abolition. I fail to see why things like a single individual slaveowner manumitting some slaves or an effort to ransom war prisoners should be listed on this timeline. I suggested in a now archived talk comment that a lot of those types of entries should be deleted, but so far nobody other than me has replied to that suggestion, and I haven't made time to look comprehensively at more than a handful of entries. If you would like to take on the task of reviewing a few of those claims and confirming that they should be deleted, I for one would applaud the effort. I would propose that if the list includes dubious entries, the correct approach is to delete them and improve the standard of the list, not to add more dubious entries on the basis that they are no more dubious than some existing ones.

I'm going to pass on the topic of whether modern wage labor is tantamount to slavery. Re "old school chattel slavery" - I take chattel to mean the exercise of property rights over human beings - the ancient Persians did practice it, and we do have evidence. You haven't said why you are unconvinced by the Stolper article (are you proposing that Persians practiced and supported slavery in Babylonia while simultaneously opposing and abolishing it in Persia proper?). But there are plenty of sources, and that was just one. If you clarify what you're looking for I could likely point you to a different source that specifically addresses it. Aithiopika (talk) 21:38, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

You also undid a change that was undeniable. 50,000 Jews were freed upon the conquest of Babylon. That is a fact. Your table includes examples of other rulers that freed slaves (even if it wasn't state policy to abolish slavery or wasn't enforced by the state). Why can't we include the people that were free'd by Cyrus the great? TwoArms225 (talk) 03:48, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

It isn't my table.

But as far as the story in the Book of Ezra, I did some poking around the story today since you mentioned it. It says of the returnees, "The whole company numbered 42,360, besides their 7,337 male and female slaves; and they also had 200 male and female singers." At least according to the first-listed translation, the NIV (2.64-65), though I'm aware that translating words for slavery and servitude in the Bible is a fraught topic and there are other translations that seem more euphemistic (maidservants instead of female slaves and the like).

But at least in translation, if anyone at all is being freed from slavery as part of the story described in Ezra, I'm not sure who. Not the 42k, who are being allowed to return from exile but who aren't slaves to begin with. Not the 7k, since the reason they are being brought along is that they are slaves, which there's no mention that Cyrus does anything to change. So who?

Am I missing something? I try to avoid getting too deep into Hebrew Bible slavery stuff since a lot of it seems like just an extended culture wars fight I don't want to get into, so I might be....? Aithiopika (talk) 02:39, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Venice

Are these final abolitions or does this list include abolitions that were later reinstated? Slavery was alive and well in Venice in the 15th century:

source: The Human Swarm (M.W. Moffett), Domestic Slavery in Renaissance Italy (Sally McKee) Twistybrastrap (talk) 15:38, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

About slavery and forced penal labor

I feel like slavery of convicted prisoners is ultimately ignored in this article. When slavery is banned with explicit exemption of prisoners is the case in many countries, we should place more emphasis on that fact when saying “all countries have abolished slavery”. 2603:8000:FA00:5020:1578:B1E8:40CD:73FA (talk) 03:52, 5 February 2024 (UTC)