Slavery in History

by Adam Gurowski

The Phœnicians, then, were the great, and, in all probability, the exclusive slave-traders of those times. The traffic had its chief centre in Byblos, Sidon and Tyre—the depots, bazaars, and storehouses of which were always glutted with human merchandise.

In times positively historical, when Phœnicia had come to be the mighty and flourishing emporium of the world's trade, foreign slaves constituted the immense majority of the population of her cities—as indeed was the case with most of the commercial cities of antiquity; but none of them were so crowded with slaves as were Byblos, Tyre, and Sidon. In consequence of this agglomeration, slavery gradually crept from the market and the household into general industry and agriculture. The slaves thus employed by the Phœnicians may be classified as follows: 1. Slaves of luxury, living in the house of the master; 2. Slaves employed in various branches of manufacture, as weavers, dyers, and artisans of all kinds—as also in the manual labors common to every maritime and commercial city; 3. Agricultural slaves.

This vast accumulation of slaves begat repeated and bloody revolts during the whole historic existence of Phœnicia. The scanty and comparatively insignificant fragments of her history which now exist are filled with accounts of such revolts, generally ending as most fearful tragedies. An uprising of this kind occurred in Tyre about ten centuries B.C.; and history records, that at that time the king, the aristocracy, all the masters, and even great numbers of non-slaveholding freemen were slaughtered. The women, however, were saved and married by the slaves; and thus many primitive oligarchic families entirely disappeared. Frequent servile revolts and insurrections of this kind resulted at length in the partial emancipation of the slaves and their conquest of certain civil rights.

In keeping with the almost boundless accumulation of wealth in those cities was the increase in the number of slaves. As a consequence, the free laborers, artisans, and farmers became impoverished and dispossessed; and, as was natural, they often joined the insurgent bondmen. The oligarchs also sent out these poor freemen wherever Phœnician ships could carry them, or wherever there was a chance of establishing factories, cities, or colonies. Such was the common origin of those primitive Phœnician settlements, which were scattered north and west on almost every shore. In most regions, even in Libya, their object was simply commercial and not at all of a conquering character. At any rate the newcomers soon intermarried and mixed with the natives.

The slaveholding rulers were now forced to sustain a hired soldiery to keep down the slaves—not for defence against an external but an internal foe. Among these hirelings were the Carryians, Lydians, Libyans, and Libyo-Phœnicians. To such motley mercenaries were they obliged to intrust the security of their homes and municipalities. At times this hireling soldiery joined the revolted slaves, and they formed but a poor defence against the Egyptians, or against Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Alexandrian conquest. To all these empires the Phœnician slaveholders were obliged to pay tribute, until finally Alexander massacred or enslaved them all—slaveholders and slaves alike.

Already some of the violent pro-slavery militants in the slave section of the United States express their purpose to invoke the aid of France in their schemes of secession and conquest, and propose that their cities and states be occupied by French garrisons. What a striking analogy with the course of the fated Phœnicians! And if eventually France should listen to their humble prayer and send defenders to these terrified slave-masters, climatic reasons would induce her to furnish such troops as are naturally fitted to bear the tropical heats of the slave-coast—the malarious regions of Louisiana and South Carolina. Such would be her Zouaves and Turcos—the Zouaves enemies of every kind of slavery, and the Turcos negroes themselves. Where then would be their defenders and their security? Every French soldier, even if neither Zouave nor Turco, would, in all probability, side at once with the oppressed against the oppressor. The prejudice of race, so prevalent in America, is not a European characteristic: it did not exist in antiquity; it does not prevail in Europe now.

It was not the existence of an oriental political despotism in Phœnicia—it was domestic slavery, which, penetrating into industry and agriculture, destroyed the richest, most enterprising, and most daring community of remote antiquity. Cicero wrote their epitaph: "Fallacissimum esse genus Phœnicum, omnia monumenta vetustatis atque omnes historia nobis prodiderunt."

When, therefore, positive history slowly rises on the limitless horizon of time, Phœnicia appears as an ominous illustration of how domestic slavery, from an external social monstrosity, tends to become a chronic but corrosive disease. And neither does the evidence of history end with her. Over and over again will it be found that slavery, after eating so deeply into the social organism as to become constitutional and chronic, has the same ultimate issue, even as a virus slowly but surely penetrates from the extremities into the vitals of the animal organism.

The intermediate stages of such diseases and the process of the symptoms are often modified in their outward manifestations to such an extent as to lead even the keen observer astray. But it is only he who can unerringly diagnosticate the nature of the disease who can ever become a great healer: he discovers the true character and source of the malady, whatever may be its external complications, and from whatever conditions and influences they may result. Some symptoms may increase, others decrease in intensity and virulence in the physiological as in the social disease—they are, however, secondary. The parallel holds good—the principle remaining unchanged: life becomes extinct for similar reasons in the animal as in the social and political body.