Pre-industrial societies without slavery

[Number24]

Sadly slavery has been the norm for musch of human history. I belive many hunter-gatherer and nomad societies didn't have slaves, possibly because having slaves was impreactical in a small society where personal initiative was key. But in what pre-industrial societies was slavery forbidden or simply didn't exist? I limit it to the pre-industrial age because the anti-slavery movement managed to outlaw slavery in many countries in the 19th Century, leading to the general ban on slavery today.

For the purpose of this thread slavery is defined as any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property.

I think slavery wasn't an issue in medieval Western Europe.

 

[Nemowork]

It depends on how you define serfdom and labourers being tied to a Lords land?

 

[Millennium 7]

I think slavery wasn't an issue in medieval Western Europe.

Serfs could be sold with the land they belonged to ...

 

[Ichon]

Most nomads I have ever read about had slaves. Raiding and nomadic life go together. Hunter gatherers and slaves is more problematic what you call people taken from neighboring group or adopted into tribe after their former tribe is killed. They always will have lower social status in the new group and few rights but Hunter gatherers as group has few enforced rights and no system of property laws as you described as the numbers are too small to have anything other than inherited customs and social stigmas. Same way even if a person is bottom of the social order it makes little sense to have a slave toiling away as their labor isn't any better with someone watching over them to enforce work and the level above subsistence is so low not much to be gained by a slave class.

There were lots of slaves in some places in Western medieval Europe. Christians couldn't enslave each other but there were lots of gray area in both law and practice not to mention many areas were not fully Christianized for centuries.

 

[Emperor of Wurttemburg 43]

Sadly slavery has been the norm for musch of human history. I belive many hunter-gatherer and nomad societies didn't have slaves, possibly because having slaves was impreactical in a small society where personal initiative was key. But in what pre-industrial societies was slavery forbidden or simply didn't exist? I limit it to the pre-industrial age because the anti-slavery movement managed to outlaw slavery in many countries in the 19th Century, leading to the general ban on slavery today.

For the purpose of this thread slavery is defined as any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property.

I think slavery wasn't an issue in medieval Western Europe.

Slavery was condemned for much of history, which is part of why the whole "it was a different time" argument to defend people supporting it in the past makes me so angry. Persia and Zoroastrianism is the most notable example(which ruled the Middle East for most of the millenia between Cyrus and Muhammad) but we study slave societies like Athens and Sparta far more in the American education and it creates this false perception that slavery was always okay when it wasn't, or was not institutional/hereditary.

 

[Gabbar Singh]

Slavery was condemned for much of history, which is part of why the whole "it was a different time" argument to defend people supporting it in the past makes me so angry. Persia and Zoroastrianism is the most notable example(which ruled the Middle East for most of the millenia between Cyrus and Muhammad) but we study slave societies like Athens and Sparta far more in the American education and it creates this false perception that slavery was always okay when it wasn't, or was not institutional/hereditary.

India didn't have real slavery either. The caste system was bad enough, but not as bad as slavery.