If I had a dollar for every pixel in this meme, I’d have something like 20 dollars.
SartenSinAceite on
Kinda how it goes to talk about anything from over 80 years ago, let alone +100.
We split hairs based on opinions made by some Rennaisance era dude who was probably just fanfic-ing, and we present it as damn facts.
The bottomline is to make your own historical fanfic
Snoo-6218 on
does it really matter? serfdom is basically just a kind of slavery. the difference is “I own you” vs “I own the land you live on and therefore you”. While this might make for some differences in the legal system of whatever country this is taking place in ultimately your life is not your own.
CauseCertain1672 on
serfdom was a form of slavery
Etherealwarbear on
Isn’t serfdom basically a form of slavery, since serfs worked for their lords for basically nothing whilst being viewed as property? Especially since they didn’t own anything they worked on or lived in.
Is there more of a caveat I’m missing?
Deltasims on
Great meme!
But for some reason, your meme appears to be low res. But when you open it in a new tab, it’s fine
GuyTallman on
When you ritualistically kill them to control their population and beat them annually to “show them their place” I think pedantry about naming conventions goes out the window.
Karuzus on
Heliotage was definetly not a form of serfdom even if we would consider serfdom a form of slavery. Heliotage was a slavery but slavery in ancient greece and rome were tied to your economic status (whuch in modern terms would make everyone with a debt a slave (unless they can actualy pay it)) which meant it was very diferent for wiedly hated slavery that existed in early modern and industrial era
whistleridge on
The Spartans literally built their entire identity and culture around always having enough armed force available to brutally suppress a Helot uprising.
Whether you call them serfs or slaves is immaterial. What’s material is that they were brutally repressed to the point that only the permanent threat of the instantaneous use of brutal and lethal armed force kept them in place.
faceintheblue on
It’s such a silly argument. Why do we need to define the lot of a helot with reference to serfdom or chattel slavery thousands of years later? A helot does not need to be a serf or a slave. The word helot has literally passed down to English as its own noun exclusive of those other terms.
Do we know all the rules of Helotism? No. Do we know more about it than most other forms of contemporary slavery? I would argue yes. In trying to ‘other’ and explain the Spartan State, outside commentators were describing Helots in contrast to what was ‘normal’ elsewhere, and we don’t actually have a clear picture of the contemporary baseline. We fill in gasp from our understanding of slavery before and after, but we probably know more about helots when there were helots than their equivalent ‘tied to the land and denied access to weapons forced labourers’ in the rest of Greece or the Balkans or Asia Minor.
Let the Helots be what the were without fighting over how you want to split the hairs between them being more of one and less of the other. They’re far enough apart from both that those arguments are not worth having.
bothVoltairefan on
Question: is it possible that the precise nature of helotage changed throughout its history so sometimes it was slavery and other times it was closer serfdom?
N3wW3irdAm3rica on
Maybe I’m extreme but I think it all effectively counts as slavery. Throw modern prison labour and minimum wage/gig work in there, too. The eternal servant underclass
GustavoistSoldier on
Another debate is whether witch burnings were human sacrifice comparable to the Aztec sacrifices the Spanish stopped.
Healthy_Razzmatazz38 on
its not a debate, once you’re legally allowed to hunt the serfs they’re not serfs anymore.
14 Comments
If I had a dollar for every pixel in this meme, I’d have something like 20 dollars.
Kinda how it goes to talk about anything from over 80 years ago, let alone +100.
We split hairs based on opinions made by some Rennaisance era dude who was probably just fanfic-ing, and we present it as damn facts.
The bottomline is to make your own historical fanfic
does it really matter? serfdom is basically just a kind of slavery. the difference is “I own you” vs “I own the land you live on and therefore you”. While this might make for some differences in the legal system of whatever country this is taking place in ultimately your life is not your own.
serfdom was a form of slavery
Isn’t serfdom basically a form of slavery, since serfs worked for their lords for basically nothing whilst being viewed as property? Especially since they didn’t own anything they worked on or lived in.
Is there more of a caveat I’m missing?
Great meme!
But for some reason, your meme appears to be low res. But when you open it in a new tab, it’s fine
When you ritualistically kill them to control their population and beat them annually to “show them their place” I think pedantry about naming conventions goes out the window.
Heliotage was definetly not a form of serfdom even if we would consider serfdom a form of slavery. Heliotage was a slavery but slavery in ancient greece and rome were tied to your economic status (whuch in modern terms would make everyone with a debt a slave (unless they can actualy pay it)) which meant it was very diferent for wiedly hated slavery that existed in early modern and industrial era
The Spartans literally built their entire identity and culture around always having enough armed force available to brutally suppress a Helot uprising.
Whether you call them serfs or slaves is immaterial. What’s material is that they were brutally repressed to the point that only the permanent threat of the instantaneous use of brutal and lethal armed force kept them in place.
It’s such a silly argument. Why do we need to define the lot of a helot with reference to serfdom or chattel slavery thousands of years later? A helot does not need to be a serf or a slave. The word helot has literally passed down to English as its own noun exclusive of those other terms.
Do we know all the rules of Helotism? No. Do we know more about it than most other forms of contemporary slavery? I would argue yes. In trying to ‘other’ and explain the Spartan State, outside commentators were describing Helots in contrast to what was ‘normal’ elsewhere, and we don’t actually have a clear picture of the contemporary baseline. We fill in gasp from our understanding of slavery before and after, but we probably know more about helots when there were helots than their equivalent ‘tied to the land and denied access to weapons forced labourers’ in the rest of Greece or the Balkans or Asia Minor.
Let the Helots be what the were without fighting over how you want to split the hairs between them being more of one and less of the other. They’re far enough apart from both that those arguments are not worth having.
Question: is it possible that the precise nature of helotage changed throughout its history so sometimes it was slavery and other times it was closer serfdom?
Maybe I’m extreme but I think it all effectively counts as slavery. Throw modern prison labour and minimum wage/gig work in there, too. The eternal servant underclass
Another debate is whether witch burnings were human sacrifice comparable to the Aztec sacrifices the Spanish stopped.
its not a debate, once you’re legally allowed to hunt the serfs they’re not serfs anymore.