Could a Roman Empire style civilization exist without slavery?

Question

(Later Edit: Clarifying my question to could Rome, its empire, its complex urban civilization, grandeur, and vast public works be built without slavery in its era or the middle ages?)

Could a civilization at the scale of the Roman Empire in its period exist without slavery? I am looking for technology including medieval period technology that could have allowed it. I am trying to create a realistic Roman Empire style civilization without slavery in a world that mixes classical era and middle ages technology.

The Roman Empire's 'greatness' was essentially built on slavery and surplus wealth created by slavery from agriculture, mining, and the spoils of war. It was also built to a lesser extent on trade, uniformity, unified monetary policy as the primary minter of coinage, and monopolies on trade. There was the Pax Romana it created to create a wealthy complex civilization with widespread trade networks, but this was built in Rome which was built on slavery. The later Eastern Roman Empire aka Byzantine Empire would build its wealth on trade but be significantly less powerful as well as less wealthy than Rome.

Of course, technology played a part in Rome's glory, but the material wealth from slavery allowed a complex society to emerge with relative luxury in urban areas. This then allowed such technology and skilled craftsmanship to be developed in a complex society. The patrician class often owned large plantations and mining operations where slaves toiled away. Julius Caesar once sold 53,000 Gauls to slave dealers on the spot as historically recorded. Slaves were divided into several categories such as prison labor and prisoners of war.

Slaves were needed to build the massive public works of Rome, engage in large-scale mining operations, and engage in 'factory farming' with large-scale monoculture plantations.

The excess wealth of the patrician class necessarily built on slavery allowed taxation which expanded the public purse and later private purse of the emperors. This wealth was then used to pay the legions of the Empire and construct the massive public works, baths, monuments, palaces, villas, etc. Often the wealthy patricians and emperors would build the great works that are the hallmark of Rome with their funds. The patronage of the patrician class funded skilled craftsmen, artisans, architects, thinkers, and others in creating the advanced 'culture' Rome possessed. Such great urban civilization was not truly seen again for centuries.

Could there be such an Empire in that era absent slavery? One could say it could be serfdom instead of slavery, but serfdom is a somewhat different institution. What technology or social structure could make it possible? Trade monopoly alone would not make for a very realistic world, and the Eastern Roman Empire aka Byzantine Empire, as well as the greatest mercantile republics in the Middle Ages, did not possess the glory, wealth, or power of Rome. Nor were they able to create the 'Pax Romana' that allowed the Empire to have massive cities with complex trade networks existing in relative peace.

Answer 1

I actually think it could, but it would need some very good reason to not have slavery. As others have noted forced labor has been a major factor in civilization. And this is kind of inevitable as the ability to arrange labor for public works such as irrigation, walls, roads, and harbors has been the big selling point of governments in ancient times. So using your own people for forced labor would occur in most civilizations and using captured people as slaves would follow quite naturally. In fact, it might be possible that slavery is older as it happens naturally even in chiefdoms and tribes that do not really have forced labor otherwise.

Also, while I am dubious about the economy of the empire requiring or even benefiting from slavery, slavery was a large factor in motivating and paying for invasions. So if you want a large empire, you'd also need some strong mechanic driving expansion to compensate for not making large profits from selling slaves.

I probably should explain why I do not think slavery is an economic necessity as such as most seem to think it is. Basically while slave based economy is hugely profitable, the benefits only accessible for people who already have sufficient property. So it basically makes the rich richer.

This isn't a bad thing as it allows people to accumulate the large fortunes needed to make large investments. However that requires that there are large investments that expand the economy available. Otherwise the capital is expended on luxury and vanity projects. This is of limited benefit to the economy as whole.

And it isn't free either, the land used for slave plantations is not available for other uses, which has consequences to free farmers. The enrichment of the very rich also leads to social imbalances that impact the political and legal systems. This leads to corruption and inefficiency.

So I am not at all convinced that a civilization with slave based economy would as a whole be better off than a non-slave based one just because the rich elites hugely benefit from slave economy.

But as said in the beginning you'd need good reasons to not have slaves and to be expansionist enough to build an empire. Religion maybe? Some religions have restrictions on slavery and promote violent expansion to non-believers.

Answer 2

The necessary labor could be drawn from multiple sources:

• The incarcerated - hard labor as part of a sentence for a convicted criminal is not a new concept, and it's one that operated for centuries. Even in "first world" countries today there is the watered down version in the form of community service.

• Indentured servitude - making someone work off a debt was another common practice at many points in history.

• Social mobility - for the low-born but ambitious they could agree to work for X years in order to gain citizenship or a similar societal perk

• "National Service" - similar to the concept in many countries (even today) where the young are required to complete a certain amount of time performing the labor, it's just that it's a non-military form.

• The army - armies don't spend all their time fighting. Having them perform labor during their non-war time not only helps keep them occupied (less time to cause trouble) but also would keep them fit. Yes you are still paying them but you'd be paying them if they were sitting around the barracks practicing marching every now and again.

None of these would provide enough manpower to replace slavery on its own but a combination quite possibly would.

Answer 3

I'm going for a definitive YES

Contrary to what one could think - and apparently, most users in SE think - slavery is bad for the economy. Slavery is the worst form of unequality, and it gives way to economical stagnation. As the rich landowners got vasts latifundia and made them produce with slave work, the small farmer couldn't compete in price, so they got broke, sold their lands (to the same landowners) and, in many cases, got themselves into serfdom by debts - another form of slavery.

This was a positive feedback loop, which ended with the roman economy first, and with the roman empire itself later. The taxes that can be collected from a handful of extremely rich people are always but a tiny fraction of those which can be collected for the whole of the middle class. By centrifuging roman society to the extremes of the welfare line (a tiny handful of filthy rich patrician houses, and millions of proletarians) Rome find itself ever less capable of doing things. Its military and territorial expansion nearly ends with the Republic, and its public works didn't last much longer.

With the beggining of the Empire, most of the wealth of the empire came through trade and taxes from its eastern provinces in middle East, as slavery made many labour positions in Italy and other heavily romanized european provinces unprofitable. Later emperors complained about old fertile italian lands being empty and abandoned to the forces of nature, and even tried to repopulate them and making them productive again, with no success. Simply, slavery is not economically viable, even it may look so at first glance.

Have you ever wondered why the USA raised to a global superpower while the spanish and portuguese colonies sank to third world ratings? The easy (and racist) explanation given talks about the superiority of british (and, less frequently, french and dutch) and protestant values over the dagoes catholicism, but then, why is Jamaica not as rich as Japan? The reality is, the countries that had economies based on slavery never grew really wealthy. That's true even for the USA, whose northern states were far, far richer than the southern ones - the ones based on slave work.

Simply put, had Rome abolished slavery, the roman empire would still be here TODAY. And probably ruling all over the world.

EDIT: Even expanding my argument. Several books have been written on why empires fall. One of the commonest views is that unequality makes them weaker until they break. Thirty years after the undisputable prime time of the roman society - the stiff-upper-lip times of the second punic war, with romans keeping calm and carrying on with Hannibal at the gates - four roman legions were unable to take the tiny town of Numantia, in northern Iberia. The town was tiny, and had no mighty fortifications - just a wooden pallisade. What happened?

What happened was that, after fighting so bravely against Hannibal, most of the veterans of that war found themselves broke - the lands they were given as retirement pay weren't profitable against the massive production the wealthy patrician could produce with the land grabs and slaves that the war have allowed them to get. As a result, what once was a proud army of free citizens fighting for their homeland turned into a heavily demoralized conscript corps, sent to a far away foreign land (the iberian peninsula) to fight against people they had nothing against for, with only death, maiming or complete financial losses as possible outcomes - think about the USA in Vietnam.

The roman legions, who had defeated so many enemies before, turned into an army of cowards led by corrupt officials, as the Jugurthine wars were going to prove. This decadence was only stopped when Marius decided to profesionalize the legion, making it a standing army - the same solution that was taken in the USA.

Because of slavery, conquering Germania or Britain was not profitable (Britain conquest started out of a personal decision of emperor Claudius, but was never completed) and Rome lost the power to expand its frontiers. Without it, more lands would mean more (free) people to tax, and after a time of (re)construction the new territories would become a healthy source of income - and by healthy I mean stable and reliable, no matter how much rich.

The main problem with old civilizations is taxation. They had no efficient way to tax its citizens, but no matter how taxes were applied, a slave-free economy would generate more revenue, thus increasing Rome's power. The latter emperors raised taxation on the slave trade, or extended Rome's citizenship to more and more (finally all) of the inhabitants of the empire trying to expand its taxing base, but to no avail. With a failing economy and an expensive army mostly formed by foreign mercenaries of germanic origin, the last times of the roman empire were a neverending series of uprisings and revolts, with the roman legions naming and removing emperors at will. And you can trace all these malladies to the unequality and economical stagnation due to slavery.

Incidentally, the eastern roman empire managed to survive for nearly a thousand years more, and christianity (and the end of slavery, even if replaced by some sort of forced serfdom in many cases) played a key role in its success - and later demise, due to religion schisms, but that's another story to be told in another time. ;)

Answer 4

Slave labour is not necessarily required, but some form of forced labour is
I think it depends on what you mean by slavery. Although some will say this is hairy splitting, I say given the nature of the question, this is a hair that very much needs to be split. Slave labour is merely the extreme end of a more general classification of indentured servitude.

I doubt any ancient civilization could have arisen to greatness without a large measure of indentured servitude or forced labour. And I accept that traditional slavery was endemic throughout the ancient world, but slavery is not the only source of labour available and it is not inconceivable that a society might have arisen based wholly or in large part on other forms of indentured servitude.

There is much evidence that the pyramids were not built by slaves, but by forced labour. How is this different from slavery? The slave simply has to do what he or she is told until they die or are released by their owner. The forced labourer is also forced to work but only for a relatively short period, after that they are free again and they may (or may not) be rewarded for their services.

Payment might also come in other forms. For instance forced labour for the king might be considered a civic duty that most people accepted or become accustomed to. Those who accepted it willingly and completed their task might be seen as better citizens. Building a structure like a pyramid for a god/king might even be thought of as an insurance policy. If the god/king is looked after, then he will ensure the rains come and protect the people etc.

Although slaves were no doubt used in the construction of the great pyramids to some extent there simply weren’t enough slaves available so they would have been greatly outnumbered by other types of forced labourers. Similar situations can be found in Mesoamerica where other great pyramids were constructed in part or in whole by various forms of forced labour.

So in summary slavery is not necessary, forced labour is. For those who say that forced labour is slavery then the definition of slavery is very wide and all forms of national service and military conscription are slavery.

Answer 5

Yes.

Have you ever watched 300? Do you remember the bad guys in that movie, with the scary huge army and spooky masks? Well, it turns out they weren't so bad, after all.

The largest empire in our planet's history by share of the world's population (forty-four percent!) did not have mass slavery: The Achaemenid empire. In fact, mass slavery has never been practiced in Persia/Iran.

The Achaemenid empire had a centralized bureaucracy, road systems, a postal system, an official language, civil services, and a large professional army. The empire featured large cities, incredible wealth, temples, palaces, mausoleums and at its peak contained 6 of the 7 wonders of the world (Great Pyramids, Hanging Gardens, Mausoleum at Harlicarnassus, Lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Temple of Artemis.)

Perseoplis, the capital, was built by paid workers. Although the Achaemenid empire was not as big as the Roman empire, I think it is fair to say that it is of a similar scale--it even contained a larger percentage of the world population.

Answer 6

Cynical answer: No chance

Civilisation is built on slavery.

While we look at our current civilisation and lifestyle and think we don't have slaves, the system for outsourcing manufacturing allows us an even lower labour cost. The daily wages for many of the people making our "affordable" consumer goods are below what it would cost to feed and house them as slaves in the west.

Whether called slaves, serfs, bonded labour, or given any other of a string of names, civilisations, and empires especially, are built on unwaged labour, slaves.

If we consider the Roman empire specifically, we think of arts, temples, decadence. All of this is supported by a vast army of slaves. Without those slaves what we consider to be the Roman empire would not be. It could still be a military empire, but it would be a very different beast.

Answer 7

I would like to point out that Rome wasn't always totally dependent on slaves and that the dependence on slaves was highly regional. The dependence on slaves was greatest in the early empire, but the earlier Roman Republic successfully expanded by allying with neighbors or getting conquered people to work within the Roman system. There were also plenty of small farmers to work the land and independent craftsman who go things done.

Once slaves started becoming plentiful, Rome did become dependent on them, or at least the wealthy class did, as they bought up all the land and bought cheap slaves to replace the small landholders that had previously done the job.

As expansion stopped later on in the empire period, slaves were no longer as cheap and plentiful as they had been beforehand. I don't have a lot of information on this, but from what I understand, the importance of slavery slowly decreased over time with slaves gradually gaining more rights. By the late empire, particularly with Christianity becoming the main religion, the importance of slavery had drastically decreased. They were still around, but were no longer the main driver of the economy that they had been back in the days of the early empire. At some point they disappeared also entirely. There were a few slaves in Italy in the medieval period, but they tended to be owned by rich households acting as domestic servants. At any rate, most of the slaves had disappeared by the time the western part of the empire came to an end. I'm still looking for information about exactly when that happened and why.

There were huge social costs to all those cheap slaves. Small farmers and craftsmen were often made destitute and unemployed by the huge farms and cheap slave labor, who could produce crops and goods a lot cheaper. Those unemployed flocked to the cities and became part of a massive poor (and rather unhappy) urban population. The wealthy of Rome had to give away free food and free entertainment (bread and circuses) to keep the unemployed from rioting and rebelling.

The eastern empire was far less dependent on slavery. It was mostly the western empire that had a huge slave population, mostly occupied with mining (a very dangerous occupation back then) and farming. It was the eastern empire that had the most prosperous economy and the highest amount of wealth. Egypt was probably the wealthiest province, and Egypt did not use large numbers of slaves.

So I could imagine an empire that was more like the eastern provinces, where the economy could function without slavery. Slavery was a huge driver in rapid economic expansion in the west and the rise of large urban populations, but I think that it would have been possible to have maintained the empire without slavery.

Smaller farmers would have paid more taxes and provided a bigger tax base. The wealthy slaveholders tended to be very good at avoiding taxation, leaving the burden of taxation to follow mainly on the poor and middle class. I think that not only would the empire have been maintained but it would have been economically healthier. Consumer goods would not have been as cheap but the wealth would have been better distributed and more available to tax collectors and the economy as a whole.

Answer 8

Short answer: NO

Slavery has been for a long time the only way to have available cheap work force. As a reference, slavery abolition in the US started from the Northern states, where industrialization was already emerging and there were no more human labor intensive situations.

At the time of the Roman Empire the tech level was still far from industrial revolution, and renouncing to slavery would have simply chopped away the legs of the empire. For another historical reference, look what happened to Sparta (a reality way smaller than Rome) when they lost their mass of disposable slaves: they had to bid farewell to their renowned agoghe and the power of Sparta was gone.

Answer 9

Yes it's possible that roman civilization could have substituted indentured servants for slaves in fact many historians will argue that slavery in Rome was more like indentured servants then slavery. Make a few changes could make even more like indentured servitude.

1. have a set time limit on how long some one can be a slave. Slavery in Rome was usually temporary, but this would be more official.

2. Grant citizenship to any freedman that completed his contract as a indentured servant. A similar system was set up for the roman military. See have how successful this offer was, you see none Romans actually volunteering to become indentured servants.

These are small changes and would not have made Rome unstable or threaten their lifestyle.

Answer 10

Yes. If you consider the teaching of Malcom Gladwell's book Outliers, see the chapter about cultural heritage. One thing is that your civ's staple food started with something like rice. To maximize your harvest, it takes motivated, back-breaking, attention to detail, hard work. To make a Sweeping Generalization, slaves don't like being slaves, and will not work as hard or do a good job at taking care of rice like independent owners. His observation of eastern history is that where rice is the crop, family farms / owner operated farms out-compete farms using forced labour. (Higher yield wins over cheap labour).

One of the other things to remember is that slavery depresses the wages of unskilled labour, but high labour costs drive innovation in favour of productivity gains. (Higher general labour costs also means that the masses are paid enough to buy things.) Some authors attribute the labour shortage caused by plague in Europe as a key factor in technical advancement that eventually ended the middle ages.

The wind mill, the water mill, threshing machines, and basic mechanical combine harvesters pulled by ox or horse can be far more productive than using humans to crush, grind, cut, etc. That is within the technical ability of a civilization that made printing presses for coins, aqueducts, various types of concrete, and indoor plumbing. Same goes for the spinning wheel, that is just wood and metal in the right shape.

Can great works be done by an ancient civilizations without slaves? Well, Egypt built the pyramids. https://www.seeker.com/slaves-didnt-build-pyramids-egypt-1764995593.html

http://www.messagetoeagle.com/worlds-first-documented-labor-strike-took-place-in-ancient-egypt-in-the-12th-century-bc/

Answer 11

Basically, no.

The economic basis of a society determines its form. The Roman Empire was built around slavery. A society that is not built around slavery, is a radically different society.

This question is tagged "medieval", and the argument I'm familiar with is that the collapse of the Western Roman Empire was fundamentally due to the limitations of its economic model, of urban centers supported by slavery. Roman cities consumed more than they produced. The economy was more efficient, and material conditions for most people were significantly better in the less centralized, more distributed economy of medieval Europe.

You may as well say that what a Roman Empire without slavery would be like, is medieval Italy.

Answer 12

IMHO there are two different problems:

1. make great empire
2. make empire roman style

to achive 1. you need a lot of human and lot of work done, but it can be build by free people and with (mainly) good equlity along them. But it would need be else driven by some "big case" (religion or so) or it would end with something totally different than roman empire

to make 2. you need some kind of organisation, where is few insanly rich people, who have insane income and not enought place to expand even more so if they want to spend their income and make some impression on other rich, they are force to build extravagantly big and complex projects, like villas, scuptures, aquaducts and such, to present their power.

And that also need to have really many other people to work for them, because such big projects just needs too many work hours to be done (if you do not have powerfull engines to do it), one person (or small couple) envision it and many do it in relatively short time (couple of years, not couple of generations), so the one with the vision and power see the result and can it personally use (no point to build villas for your grand grand childs, while living three generations in tent). And you need a lot of work hours just to keep them running (cleaning, repairs, ....)

And to have collect such many work hours you need some power over a lot of people to contribute. In slavery it is easy - you own them. In religion you make them beleive, that it is somehow required by the God(s) (the best building in middle age village was usually church). In capitalism you need pay them and so on ...

If there is not much inequality (or power, or "big case"), than you get lot of smaller buildings as anyone can have aproximatively the same and so it ends in roughly similar buildings, which is probabelly overall better but there are no so insane big artefacts.

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So for Roman style culture you need a lot of people and few of them insane rich. With limited resources that leaves not much for the majority. You can divide the majority to some middle class ("citizens"), but then the rest must be even more poor (limited sources again).

Depending on your environment (there can be lot of easy obtainable food and metals and stones and quality wood) you can have even the poor to have realitively good live (compared to other countries at this technology level), but still it needs them to be "poor enought" to work for those insane rich building their wonderfull villas and such (as oppsition to buiding something for themself and just enjoy the life, if there would be enought resources for them to do so.).

Answer 13

Additional to the L.Dutch.

Vast empires need slavery to maintain it's supremacy over large regions. There is simply not enough "imperials" to do all the work. The mundane work need to be done by someone. But as nobility on the conquered territories wouldn't like to change their status (automatically being sub par to their Roman counterparts) someone need to fetch the water or work in the mines.

The slaves were automatically acquired with every won battle. So you needed to give them some kind of job where you would/could control the angry, able, strong people, while at the same time the job would fatigue them.

Slavery is a solution to a problem not a thing on it's own.

Answer 14

It could be possible, but you'd need to rewrite all the political and social systems Rome had. I think the only way for this to exist would be a very socialist or even communist society, where everyone works and resources get distributed evenly among all working people, and the remainder is given to the ones without a job. In modern countries, people are forced to work for up to 30 years to pay off that house that they bought. If they don't, they get their property taken away and can get punished. This is, in a sense, slavery. People have the illusion of choice, but you need to buy a house unless you rent a small room for the rest of your life, which no one wants. If you don't work, you don't get a house, don't get good food, don't get a television and don't get a phone. Society is, and always has been, built upon forced labor, and the only way to fix it would be to create a system like the ones in early tribes, where everyone works, except for those who are very young or old, and those who can but don't want to get kicked out.

Answer 15

You need to define your terms very carefully.

In Roman times, and in fact in all times up to Roman and well into the second millennium, there was no term for employer or employee. There was no concept of working for another for wages, under an employment contract as we know it. The closest thing was a King who amassed an army, but even they were not paid, except for room and board. Knights were rewarded, not paid.

You either made money, or you made or sold goods.

If you made money, you did not need employees. You did so on your own initiative (lending out money to others, renting land or lodgings).

If you made or sold goods, you did so yourself. If you had a helper, he was an apprentice. Your obligation was room and board. If you needed more assistance, you called the person a 'slave', not an 'employee'. You were a 'slave owner', not an 'employer'.

You either worked for yourself, you were a member of the court, or you were a slave. If you couldn't be a slave, then you begged for whatever living you could make. There was no 'working class'.

So what you are asking is, 'Could Roman Civilization have developed without some form of employer relationship?' Or 'Could Roman Civilization have developed based purely on individual enterprise?' and the answer is probably a negative.