Hacker News Reader

Comment by barry-cotter | Hacker News Reader

> Slave revolts have been common throughout history, and while largely unsuccessful they disagree with your assessment.

Here is a complete list of all historically attested successful slave revolts: Haiti, 1791

That’s it. Revolutions require leadership. Overwhelming that’s going to be the educated or otherwise reasonably comfortable, or those who were recently so and want it back. Peasant revolts fail without leaders, who are either going to be nobles or bourgeois. Those who can’t organize can’t win and a bureaucracy requires literate men, who are very unlikely to be poor. Revolutions win. Slave revolts not so much.

View on HN

Slaves actually called slaves where relatively uncommon in history. Include peasant uprisings and several more become relevant. However, the important bit for US isn’t the long term results it’s the chaos involved in these civil wars.

The Third Servile War for example grew from 70 slave-gladiators to ~120,000 men in 2 years and won several significant battles vs the Roman Army. You really don’t want to see the modern version of that kind of fighting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Servile_War

> Slaves actually called slaves where relatively uncommon in history.

I really don’t think this is true. Human property varied in how common it was but the institution existed in every agricultural society I’m aware of up until at least three 1600s when serfdom died out in England. That’s probably the first society in which humans were not held as property. Western Europe was also likely the first agricultural society not to have chattel slavery but I’m less confident. Certainly slavery was practiced in the Moslem world into the 1900s and well attested all over Asia and in most of Africa and the Americas.

when serfdom died out in England You’re equating serfdom with slavery when my point is separating slavery by name excludes such classes. India and China for example where very stratified societies, but slavery was effectively a separate and less common institution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India

Anyway, by relatively uncommon I mean compared to the US concept of slavery where they made up a huge chunk of the southern workforce and could be sold between individuals.

The third servile war was hardly successful. They all ended up literally crucified.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com