Slavery In History

by Adam G. de Gurowski

Slavery In History by Adam G. De Gurowski traces the history and critique of domestic slavery across civilizations, arguing that slavery is a social disease that corrupts both oppressors and society. The work surveys ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, and the Hebrews, then moves through Greece, Rome, and the medieval and modern world, showing how slavery arose from conquest, debt, and social derangement and how it reshaped economies, politics, and culture. The author employs a pathologic metaphor, drawing on medical authorities such as Rokitansky, to insist that slavery is not an natural condition but a disease that attacks the vitality of nations, undermines free labor, and weakens republican life. Across civilizations—from Egypt and Phoenicia to Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, and across the European continents—De Gurowski argues that domestic bondage recurs as a chronic illness. While Christianity condemns slaveholding, the Church often fails to abolish slavery, and the book culminates in a call for emancipation and universal human rights. It aims to demonstrate slavery’s universal harms and to advocate abolition as essential to civilization.

Genres: History

302 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2010

Reviews

[Adam McPhee · Rating 3 out of 5]

An abolitionist history of ancient and early medieval slavery from a Polish count who became a translator for Abraham Lincoln's State Department during the American Civil War. I read the Project Gutenberg version, which doesn't seem to be listed on goodreads. Some of the history is a little dated and the prose was a little stilted at times, but I thought it was fun and I loved how almost every chapter ended with a rant against the slave owners of the South.

[Tristan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a public domain ebook of a tract originally published in 1860 in the USA by an exiled Polish count, who incurred the wrath of the Russian government in particular for his liberal and social-democratic views. He was politically active throughout Western Europe before settling in the USA where he campaigned against slavery and the apologists of slavery.

As the latter pointed to history to justify their abhorrent practices, the author takes them to task here with a short but detailed review of slavery in history. He describes violence, oppression, and slavery as diseases of society. He demonstrates that political slavery was principally the fate of the defeated in battle, rather than an economic construct, in earliest historical societies, and that subsequent trade in slaves as an economic resource tended invariably to corrode the exploiting society, leading to the downfall of empires. The author vigorously demonstrates that slavery in the classical age bore no inference of inferiority of the enslaved - much to the contrary - but that the racism against Africans of American slaveholders is but a modern construct and a means of justifying to themselves their abhorrent practices that is in no way condoned or even demanded (as claimed by the slaveholders) by biblical study. The author also draws parallels between the documented relationship between Spartans and Helots and the fear of Southern slaveholders for the Black slaves, which leads to increasing cruelty and repression, and to the supposed right to bear arms. This way he shows that the Southern states were already at the time of writing showing the degeneracy and societal collapse that afflicted all historical societies which embraced slavery. The author illustrates this with a startling economic history of Rome, which collapsed as an empire when the majority of its inhabitants were slaves and had no incentive to defend it, and when there were too few freemen to build an army that barbarian mercenaries had to be hired, and they of course had no incentive to see off their kinsmen.

This book is not a dispassionate history but a polemic with a purpose. It is not the easiest argument to follow because it responds to the abhorrent views openly held at the time by the apologists of slavery rather than coolly setting out facts to be independently interpreted.

It is nevertheless an interesting and instructing read, and an important early voice raised against a new phenomenon of racism. The points made a century and a half ago are still relevant today.

[Luis Argudo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Won't recommend.

Does not get to the point. Doesn't create a clear image of what's going on. Questionable sources. Well it's cheap for a reason.