Re: Military slavery

On Sat, 10 Nov 2001 14:48:41 +0100, Dr. R.J. Barendse wrote:
>Much appreciated but P.M. Holt is a specialist
>on medieval Syria not on the Sudan; the Mahdist
>state left fairly substantial archives and I
>don't consider people specialists who have not
>read the relevant archives.

According to the Columbia card catalog, Holt has written twice as 
many books on the Sudan as on Syria.

>I can't speak for the Mahdist state but I have
>read a bit more than 2.000 pages on slavery in
>medieval India and I can see three reasons why
>the slave soldiers had `pluck' and that has
>nothing to do with them wanting to be free.

Good, if I ever write an article on medieval India, I will look you 
up.

>One: we should be very careful to speak about
>slavery in `Islam' in general.
>On the one hand you have work-slaves, which are
>cheap and all too often maltreated and then you
>have the special military slaves, the
>recruitment of whom was a kind of `headhunting'
>- in 17 th century India a work-slave cost round
>and about 40 rupees a military slave (Ethiopians
>mostly) cost up to 300. (The year-salary of a

(obscure and irrelevant data snipped)

Look, it is really quite simple. The unrest in the Sudan was related 
to its role in the supply of chattel slaves to Egypt, which had 
become a major supplier of cotton during the American civil war, when 
that supply was effectively cut off. When the Mahdists made 
incursions into Southern Sudan, the traditional export base of slaves 
and ivory, the first thing they did was cut off the supply of chattel 
slaves. Precapitalist slavery remained but it was of a completely 
different character. It had more in common with traditional African 
(or indigenous American) societies. I will try to explain the 
differences in the course of this article I am working on over the 
next few days.

>Now - no matter what the Islamic puricists might
>say nowadays the conquering armies of Islam were
>to all evidence very, very drunk and very, very
>`stoned' indeed. And in all evidence I have seen
>the African mercenary slave-
>soldiers were the heaviest drinkers (and opium
>-addicts) of them all (not that the other
>soldiers were averse to drink: Pashtoo soldiers
>- yes that's Taliban history - did, well, like a
>bit of alcohol, to put it mildly). That is: the
>slave-soldiers had more `pluck' on the
>battlefield since they were the part of the army
>which had had, well, quite a large share in the
>army-
>rations of rice-whisky and opium.

This outburst is not about the Mahdi. It is about Kashmir, I would 
surmise.

>If you want to have some idea of how a very,
>very worked-up and very, very, very drunk or
>stoned mass of very young men from fifteen to
>twenty reacts to an opponent take a good look at
>European football-hooligans or for that matter
>at the New York crime-scene... it's not pleasant

Er. Okay.


-- 
Louis Proyect, lnp3@panix.com on 11/10/2001

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