I wish I’d thought to pick ‘Atrocitologist’ as a screen name. Oh well.
I can’t think of any medieval atrocities comparable in scope to those of either the Roman or Victorian eras. But I don’t think that has anything to do with philosophy or tolerance, it’s just that Rome and pre-Victorian England were a lot more powerful and effective than any of the intermediate governments, and so were able to achieve greater scope than e.g. Poland ever could.
But to your more general point: modern racism is just a special case of the human tendency to define ingroup/outgroup divisions, right? It’s ok to enslave Them, because they’re not Us. That finding is extremely robust through history: Greeks enslaved other Greeks (but they called themselves Spartans and Helots), Italians enslaved other Italians (but the victims were never Roman citizens so it didn’t count), the Jews wiped out the Amelikites (they worshipped the wrong gods, what can you do?) and French nobles ruled over French serfs (but you can’t compare a noble to a serf).
Italians enslaved other Italians (but the victims were never Roman citizens so it didn’t count)
Romans could be sold into slavery to pay off their debts.
The Romans were reletively free of out-group hostility—they felt the barbarians outside the empire were savages, but they tended to absorb local power structures and religions, granting the local nobles (if they cooperated) Roman citizenship, (which was more exclusive than, say, American citizenship,) and while there was some generic snobbery there does not appear to be any belief that non-Romans were inherently inferior. Once they joined the empire, they gained all the rights and privileges of your average Roman (including protection from those barbarian savages over the hill.)
I wish I’d thought to pick ‘Atrocitologist’ as a screen name. Oh well.
I can’t think of any medieval atrocities comparable in scope to those of either the Roman or Victorian eras. But I don’t think that has anything to do with philosophy or tolerance, it’s just that Rome and pre-Victorian England were a lot more powerful and effective than any of the intermediate governments, and so were able to achieve greater scope than e.g. Poland ever could.
But to your more general point: modern racism is just a special case of the human tendency to define ingroup/outgroup divisions, right? It’s ok to enslave Them, because they’re not Us. That finding is extremely robust through history: Greeks enslaved other Greeks (but they called themselves Spartans and Helots), Italians enslaved other Italians (but the victims were never Roman citizens so it didn’t count), the Jews wiped out the Amelikites (they worshipped the wrong gods, what can you do?) and French nobles ruled over French serfs (but you can’t compare a noble to a serf).
Romans could be sold into slavery to pay off their debts.
The Romans were reletively free of out-group hostility—they felt the barbarians outside the empire were savages, but they tended to absorb local power structures and religions, granting the local nobles (if they cooperated) Roman citizenship, (which was more exclusive than, say, American citizenship,) and while there was some generic snobbery there does not appear to be any belief that non-Romans were inherently inferior. Once they joined the empire, they gained all the rights and privileges of your average Roman (including protection from those barbarian savages over the hill.)