From the Book “Encyclopedia of World Slavery” by Macmillan
While the customs of slavery in the Americas usually put “black” Africans and their descendants at the beck and call of European or
European-descended “whites”, at most places and times race has not been central among the distinctions observed between masters and
slaves. Most slaves in the ancient Mediterranean came from other cultures, culture that the Greeks and Romans viewed as “barbarian”.
But there were Greek slaves in Greece and Italian slaves in Rome. Africans regarded themselves as members of many distinct groups,
and those who were Muslims regarded those who were not as kaffirs-unbelievers-and thus enslavable.
The Aztec in Mexico enslaved the neighboring meso-American populations they conquered in the fifteenth century. In Slavery and
Social Death Orlando Patterson the leading sociologist of slavery, wrote, “There is nothing notably peculiar about the institution of
slavery.
2006-09-09
02:17:45
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