One would argue that if state directly own slaves who produce goods, they still be useful as state will then sell those goods, and receive money for it, as alternative to money that it would get from taxation.
- 3
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Those slaves that European was buying was most often in fact obtained though raiding in wars between different african states. But i agree, with general point.
- 3
Indeed, theyll have to model indian ocean and trans saharan slavery. Also important to note that Portugese slavery wasnt initially racial, religious instead, but became racial overtime. This policy will also need to be modelled in game just as in eu4 we could endorse le casas or not
- 2
- 1
- 1
A good breakdown of the issue of comparing enslaved to free standards of living.
That's for sure. Most institutions in society were first out of rational economics factors, and gradually settled into institutionalised cultural and poltical structure.
And I think that in ideal situation, the former which should be simulated or realised by [player's behaviour limited by the general mechanics of game], instead of featured contents.
That's the ideal situation, because after all, an european christian was less likely to be treated as a slave than Africans, who was kinda "others" to europeans who actually owned the slavery.
- 1
Yes, "American Slavery" wasn't fully codified as racial until after Bacon's Rebellion. But, Carribean slavery was incredibly racial from an early time. Each island was almost like a miniature sugar manufacturing site where one of the required inputs was human laborers, some of whom would die.
Madeira's sugar plantations, started in the very early 15th century (1425? I forget with certainty anyhow) and later Sao Tome after Madeira ran out of trees for energy for sugar production were early examples.
These became the model for the Carribean on a larger scale. A small number of wealthy Europeans living as the ruling class over a modest number of indentured servants/soldiers and a larger number of black slaves from West Africa or occasionally from continental Americas.
The Portuguese didn't set out to establish a race-based model. But, it happened anyhow and was easy once transplanted to the Carribean to be 100% certain that black people on the islands were all/predominantly slaves.
This model expanded to all the various Carribean colonial islands and created a way for Europeans to break free from their prior well-established 5% return on land/capital that was so normalized that even Jane Austen brings it up.
- 5
- 1
i'm not qualified to talk about it but it is a very complex thing to think about when you start factoring in things like the relation between the lowest strata of a society's standard of living and the impact on productivity and economic growth which would need to be factored in for the black-death setting of the game's start date. similarly, assuming an end date similar to EU4, to be accurate the game would need to be able to model the de-industrialisation of India and the stagflation the continent experienced as a result of several factors which included the expansion of slavery.
there's also the reality of internal discontent. while Haiti is the most well-known example, slave revolts happened all over the world throughout the time period with varying degrees of success. further, public opinion in Britain heavily opposing slavery lead to it shaping policy to avoid discontent among the British public to the point where they felt they had to push for anti-slavery gestures even during the Congress of Vienna despite the government of the time leaning more towards the conservative faction of the Liberal party.
- 3
- 1
I firmly disagree with the idea that India was industrialised at all prior to Company Rule, but where does the idea that slavery expanded during Company Rule
I wouldnt say public opinion heavily opposed slavery, more there were several popular abolitionist campaigns, while not necessarily having majority support
- 2
- 1
EU4 and strategy games in general are meant to engage your brain, not your heart or your gut. Games do not and should not have any moral obligation to compromise their design for this.
And why do you need to feel bad? Is it to fulfill some moral imperative? As long as you understand the evil of slavery and the necessity of working against its modern-day practice, there is no need to put yourself through any emotional stress.
- 9
- 3
Sans black slaves that is most of history though, a wealthy elite, a adoring soldiery, and a majority labourers
Portugal was able to estabilsh the model many European colonisers would follow, but its still the case that from the first European colony in 1492 in the Carribean, only with the Vallodid Debates of the 1550s, or the New Laws of the 1540s would slavery of natives be abolished. Thats still roughly 50 years before the policy officially swaps to importing black slaves bought from the Portugese, with this privilege later given to the Dutch and English. Whilst slaves had been imported before to account for the declining taino population of Hispaniola, getting around mercantilist embargos, and the semi hidden trade routes, would make it harder to do before Casas' winning the day, which in game might not even happen. With said alt his that could even lead to Latin America being more hispanicised and less native.
Similarly Jamaica was long settled by Irish indentured servants with slaves only becoming the majority population once land could no longer be divivded up to make new households
Go on?
I think a lot of people are confusing "slavery was good for the kinds of people who wrote histories and have histories written about them" with "slavery was good for the national economy writ large." It depressed wages and made it easier to keep the poors under the thumb of the wealthy; do as I say without complaint or I'll replace you with a slave, but there's a good reason most of the European nations had banned slavery in their European empires long before they banned it in the colonies and why they slave empires of Iberia and the UK (among others) tried so hard to justify the slavery of *others* in religious terms.
It's referred to as deindustrialisation but it's not saying that India was industrialised in the 19th century sense. It's the pivot under EIC rule in India from an economy dominated by artisanal craftsmen and the export of processed goods to a primarily agrarian economy devoted to raw resource extraction. With regards to slavery, I'm having trouble finding a good quotable sentence but Chapter 11 of Volume 4 of the Cambridge World History of Slavery is dedicated to India and details how slavery was massively expanded under European colonial rule (the French were just as bad).
I might be wrong on this tbh. I recently watched some detailed content on the Congress of Vienna and that was the youtuber's interpretation of the political situation in Britain at the time but I haven't read any authoritative sources on the matter
- 4
Unfortunately, you would likely not see large-scale movements against slavery until the very end of the game, if we want to model the kind of liberal abolitionist tradition (and even that was not set in stone - it struggled with the notion of 'responsible government', and slavery was not abolished even with the very radical demands of the French Third Estate in the initial events of 1789, as potentially harming a source of revenue wasn't seen as a great idea in the fiscal crisis).
Beforehand, you would see the 'you can't enslave people if they are your own religion' argument, or the 'you can't enslave New World people who haven't had the chance to know they're not heretics', which still allows you to enslave other groups of people and so isn't a great argument for a modern day player that should, I hope, care about all people across the world. You could have events showing the negative side effects, but that could also be exploited by bad-intentioned players who revel in the suffering. So it's pretty tricky.
That's probably not wrong if you're talking about the economy in a holistic sense, and assuming slaves can uniformly fill the role of any worker. However, in the kind of Triangle Trade slavery that would likely emerge during most games, that is not really the case, since as you said, it is only being carried out in the colonies, specifically for the kind of extremely intense work that cannot truly be done safely but still produces a very profitable good (like sugar) and is hard to induce people to migrate over to do that kind of labor.
The racialization of slavery also meant that, essentially, slaves and free people were hardly ever competing for the same kind of work - a white Frenchman would not migrate to Saint-Domingue to work as a domestic servant, as it was known that all those jobs would be filled by slaves. So instead of keeping the poor people under the thumb of the wealthy, you had things like the poor artisan worker petits blancs of Saint-Domingue looking down upon the wealthy free colored people who owned plantations.
So, while you could say your economy would take a hit if you start with slavery in your own metropole, it is pretty hard to justify the player seeing an immediate economic hit to themselves if a certain kind of specialized system is set up at the right time.
Edit: Though of course, a big downside to that kind of intense slavery is uprisings, which would involve a huge number of the populations and see a massive amount of attrition for anyone trying to put it down, thanks to tropical disease
Last edited:
- 2
- 1
- 1
To quote Henry Bartle Frer, who sat on the Viceroy's Council in the mid-nineteenth:
Choice quotes from Andrea Major's Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772–1843:
Major also quotes a 1758 edition of the East India Chronicle. Not relevant for our purposes, but I thought the Orientalism was very interesting - even before the conquest of the Bengal the EIC was positioning itself as the "liberators" of Indians:
Or this one:
(all emphases mine)
- 3
- 1
- 1
Its going to be interesting to see which tags are playable at game start in SEA
Disagree with that, we might as well be doing logic puzzles then. Part of the fun of having pops is that it engages your heart
- 4
- 1
Hopefully they will represent slavery fairly and not just as the 'evil' choice, but rather a system that had been in place for a long time with genuine cultural and economic reasons for engaging in it by all parties (except for the slaves obviously).
For the African nations that sold slaves it was a great source of revenue. For the people that traded them it was lucrative. For the plantation owners it was lucrative. Ending it today seems like a no-brainer but that should not be the case for the game. Ending it, or not engaging in it, should come at a cost. Ideally a great one.
Potential Mechanic...
Generating Slaves
Enslaver culture nations could have a mechanic whereby they raid for slaves or capture them naturally after battles, sieges and as part of peace treaties. That increases their slave pop.
Trading Slaves
Non enslaver culture nations would grant slave trade licences to their merchant estate. The merchant estate would pay the slaver culture nations from their own resources.
The slaves would then be 'sold' to and 'owned' by the noble estate of the country. Money would then transfer from the noble estates to the merchant estates of the purchasing nation. This represents the private incentives for slavery and the private transactions.
The player could tax each transaction.
In addition to taxing the trade, the benefits of slaves would be the rapid and reliable source of workers for low population provinces (most likely colonies) that would otherwise find it hard to get the manpower needed to be of any value. The boosts the economy and enriches the noble and merchant estates.
Opportunity Cost
Not engaging in the slave trade would not only lose out on trade income, but hinder the growth of provinces (especially low pop undesirable ones) and losing other benefits/gaining penalties depending on the culture specific. It has to be enough to give the player serious reason to question if they should engage in the trade so the player doesn't get to make a virtuous act without actual cost.
Ending Slavery
Stopping the slave trade within your own country could face opposition from your estates, which may need to be bribed or placated to agree, or could trigger a civil war.
Ending slavery for your subjects should lead to similar issues, perhaps even breakaways or independence movements for those that practice slavery.
Ending the slave trade internationally could be a peace condition, or a threat used as a 'Great Power Action'.
Choosing to end the slave trade in your own land should not come with any bonuses, just turn the slaves into freemen pops. This represents the fact that ending it is a moral act and not an obvious 'win win' act. Choosing to end it in your subjects or internationally should give penalties to enslaver nations and those engaging in the trade, but huge bonus to nations opposed to it.
Note that I did not specify a specific trade. Slavery was endemic and the game should not focus on a single slave trade. I fear that it may put too much focus on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade for obvious reasons. That would be a mistake. The game should leave open natural routes, ie the trans-Atlantic, trans-Saharan, Berber, etc but allow them to emerge as a useful, even vital, mechanic. This would give a very unique and enjoyable game mechanic, while providing a nuanced understanding of why such a thing even existed in the first place.
Thoughts?
For the African nations that sold slaves it was a great source of revenue. For the people that traded them it was lucrative. For the plantation owners it was lucrative. Ending it today seems like a no-brainer but that should not be the case for the game. Ending it, or not engaging in it, should come at a cost. Ideally a great one.
Potential Mechanic...
Generating Slaves
Enslaver culture nations could have a mechanic whereby they raid for slaves or capture them naturally after battles, sieges and as part of peace treaties. That increases their slave pop.
Trading Slaves
Non enslaver culture nations would grant slave trade licences to their merchant estate. The merchant estate would pay the slaver culture nations from their own resources.
The slaves would then be 'sold' to and 'owned' by the noble estate of the country. Money would then transfer from the noble estates to the merchant estates of the purchasing nation. This represents the private incentives for slavery and the private transactions.
The player could tax each transaction.
In addition to taxing the trade, the benefits of slaves would be the rapid and reliable source of workers for low population provinces (most likely colonies) that would otherwise find it hard to get the manpower needed to be of any value. The boosts the economy and enriches the noble and merchant estates.
Opportunity Cost
Not engaging in the slave trade would not only lose out on trade income, but hinder the growth of provinces (especially low pop undesirable ones) and losing other benefits/gaining penalties depending on the culture specific. It has to be enough to give the player serious reason to question if they should engage in the trade so the player doesn't get to make a virtuous act without actual cost.
Ending Slavery
Stopping the slave trade within your own country could face opposition from your estates, which may need to be bribed or placated to agree, or could trigger a civil war.
Ending slavery for your subjects should lead to similar issues, perhaps even breakaways or independence movements for those that practice slavery.
Ending the slave trade internationally could be a peace condition, or a threat used as a 'Great Power Action'.
Choosing to end the slave trade in your own land should not come with any bonuses, just turn the slaves into freemen pops. This represents the fact that ending it is a moral act and not an obvious 'win win' act. Choosing to end it in your subjects or internationally should give penalties to enslaver nations and those engaging in the trade, but huge bonus to nations opposed to it.
Note that I did not specify a specific trade. Slavery was endemic and the game should not focus on a single slave trade. I fear that it may put too much focus on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade for obvious reasons. That would be a mistake. The game should leave open natural routes, ie the trans-Atlantic, trans-Saharan, Berber, etc but allow them to emerge as a useful, even vital, mechanic. This would give a very unique and enjoyable game mechanic, while providing a nuanced understanding of why such a thing even existed in the first place.
Thoughts?
- 2
- 1
- 1
Really like the Great Power action idea, I was trying to think of how you could do the British navy blockades but that would work great.
Will the player have control over trade ships? I hope not as it was more autonomous