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What is ‘slavery’ according to Miers and Kopytoff and according to Meillassoux?

INTRODUCTION

For much of the twentieth century, academic and legal discussions of slavery were defined by the

Western imaginary of the New World plantation slave. As Miers and Kopytoff write, this slave is

“a commodity, to be bought and sold and inherited. He is a chattel, totally in the possession of another person who uses him for private ends. He has no control over his destiny, no choice of occupation or employer, no rights to property or marriage, and no control over the fate of his children. He can be inherited, moved or sold without regard to his feelings, and may be ill-treated, sometimes even killed, with impunity.”1

Miers and Kopytoff’s description is intended to emphasise the fact that the conventional Western

understanding of slavery centres on the notion of ‘property’, and that it usually defines the slave by a

total lack of rights and by poor treatment. Moreover, the structure of their description inadvertently

underlines two other important features of conventional definitions of slavery: first, that many focus

on understanding the intrinsic nature of the slave as a being, rather than slavery as a historical process;

and second, that the slave is unthinkingly gendered as male, by many scholars as well as in the public

imagination.

The inadequacies of this conception of slavery have increasingly become apparent: scholars of

societies ranging from the classical world to medieval Russia to early modern Asia have emphasised

its inapplicability to their areas of study, claiming that New World slavery was a truly exceptional form;

meanwhile, greater variation and complexity has been recognised even within American slavery.2

Slavery is particularly central to studies of Africa, partly due to significant interest in the connections

between internal slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, as well as the question of whether African

slavery was more ‘benign’ than its New World counterpart. However, historians of African slavery

continued to sidestep problems of definition for decades. For example, in a 1969 article on the

connections between domestic slavery and the slave trade, Fage admitted that analysis was

“complicated by the problem of deciding what institution or institutions in West African societies

corresponded to the European idea of slavery”. However, he went on to offer what he calls a

“straightforward definition of slavery” in which the slave was “a man or woman who was owned by

some other person, whose labour was regarded as having economic value, and whose person had

1 Miers & Kopytoff 1977, p. 3. 2 For summaries of some such definitional debates with respect to south and southeast Asia, see Casiro 1986 and Miers 2003. On Russia and the Classical World, see Kolchin 1986 and Kopytoff 1982. On New World slavery, its uniqueness and complexity, see Kolchin 1986, pp. 767, 777.

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commercial value”.3 Although scholars at this time were becoming more aware of the problems of

definition, they still ultimately returned to definitions of slavery based upon the condition of slaves

themselves, and centring on notions of property and economics.

From the 1970s onwards, scholars began to make more serious attempts to address the problem of

definition. Reviewers of Miers and Kopytoff’s 1977 edited volume on forms of slavery in Africa

portrayed their theoretical framework for understanding the term ‘slavery’ as part of a “radical

turnaround” or “transformation” in the field.4 However, although their work was recognised as a

major contribution, it also provoked disagreement and debate. Fifteen years later, Claude

Meillassoux’s The Anthropology of Slavery offered one of the longest and most detailed critiques of

their analysis of how slavery related to African kinship structures. This essay will take a thematic

approach to these two works, considering how they challenge conventional notions of slavery and

identifying areas of agreement and of divergence between them. It will thus use these analyses as a

lens through which to consider the ongoing debates about the nature of slavery in West Africa and

beyond.

SLAVERY, KINSHIP, AND INTEGRATION

One of the central problems with Western comprehensions of slavery is that they tend to define the

institution in relation to an abstract notion of ‘freedom’. As Miers notes, “complete freedom obviously

exists only in theory”.5 All individuals have social, economic and political limitations upon their

freedom, and there are many situations in which an individual’s autonomy may be severely restricted

– for example, through economic destitution, total submission to the authority of a spouse or relative,

conscription of contracted labour, or physical imprisonment – without their being considered a slave.

One point of agreement between Meillassoux and Kopytoff and Miers is their critique of this aspect

of conventional notions of slavery: both works claim that it is most meaningful to understand slaves

not as less ‘free’ than all other members of society, but rather as outsiders to society as a whole. This

idea is not unique – the idea of slave as outsider has long been noted in relation to classical Rome6 –

but these works were among the first to elaborate and conceptualise it with regard to African

societies.

3 Fage 1969, p. 394. 4 Klein 1978, p. 599; Cooper 1979, p. 103; Last 1979, p. 82. 5 Miers 2003, p. 2. 6 See Cooper 1979, pp. 105-106.

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Kopytoff and Miers write that “the insider in most traditional societies of Africa was not an

autonomous individual” but rather was defined by “belonging to a kin group… which was the

fundamental social, legal, political, and ritual protective unit”.7 The key words here are ‘belonging’ and

‘protective’ – social status and lifestyle was dependent upon integration into a society through

recognition as kin, resulting in protection by the kin group and its leaders. They thus argue that slavery

is defined by relative exclusion from these structures of belonging and protection: they note that the

Giriama consider the opposite of ‘slave’ to be ‘Gariama’, or that the Duala use the same word to refer

to free foreigners as their own slaves,8 and the same phenomenon is found in Igboland, where one of

Carolyn Brown’s informants used the terms ‘slave’ and ‘indigene’ as opposites.9

Meillassoux, similarly, recognises that many kin members – particularly wives, children, and cadets –

were “subject to the absolute power of the head of the family” and, as dependents, were obliged to

work for him.10 These people are therefore distinguished from slaves not by their degree of ‘freedom’,

but by recognition of their inherent ‘belonging’ in the community. Meillassoux justaposes ‘kin’ with

‘aliens’, arguing that the fundamental distinction between the two is a question not of blood relation

but of ‘congeneration’ or growing up together.11

However, although Kopytoff and Miers and Meillassoux agree that slavery is the opposite of kinship,

one of their most significant disagreements centres on the potential for movement between the two

states. Kopytoff and Miers posit a ‘slavery-to-kinship continuum’ in African societies, upon which all

individuals can be situated, and along which there is potential for certain social circumscribed

movement.12 Kinship and slavery are thus not seen as two uniform, discrete categories: although the

two extremities on the spectrum may be polar opposites, there are many degrees of marginality

between the two. By contrast, Meillassoux is deeply critical of this notion, and instead views slavery

and kinship as so “strictly antinomic” and not part of the same spectrum, rejecting the possibility for

gradual movement between the two.13

However, while Miers and Kopytoff’s continuum model is not perfect, many of Meillassoux’s criticisms

of it fail to take account of the subtleties of their argument. One of the primary criticisms of Miers and

Kopytoff’s ‘slavery-to-kinship continuum’ is that it equates slavery with family relations, thus risking

7 Kopytoff & Miers 1997, p. 17. 8 Ibid., pp. 17-18. 9 ‘Struggles in 20th Century Igboland’, p. 4. 10 Meillassoux 1992, p. 10. 11 Ibid., pp. 23-25. 12 Kopytoff & Miers 1997, pp. 23-24. 13 Meillassoux 1992, p. 14.

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becoming apologist or presenting African slavery as ‘benign’: Meillassoux claims that seeing slavery as

“an extension of kinship”, as he puts it, inadvertently endorses “an apologist ideology in which the

slave-owner tries to pass off those he exploits as his beloved children”.14 However, Miers and

Kopytoff’s argument does not imply that slavery is a form of kinship, but rather that the two are

antithetical extremes of social relation, but with a number of other intermediate statuses available

between the two. To acknowledge that absolute belonging and absolute marginalisation are not the

only available statuses, but that there are other available positions in society on a sliding scale

between the two, is not to imply that the two are intrinsically the same. Kopytoff and Miers

themselves pre-emptively address this criticism when they write that the spectrum “should not be

misunderstood to mean that a ‘slave’ in Africa was always a quasi kinsman and never a chattel”, but

that both of these positions lay along a spectrum, where the two ends represent polar opposites but

the centre represents a more ambiguous shading of marginality.15 Furthermore, they point out that,

while kinship metaphors used about slavery or other power relations in the West are, indeed, usually

intended to emphasise affection and nurture, in Africa they more often express authority and

hierarchy.16

One of the key flaws in Meillassoux’s argument against the slavery-to-kinship continuum is an

oversimplified view of kinship. His assertion that there are no intermediate states between kinship

and marginality denies not only the existence of partially-integrated slaves, but also of inequalities in

kinship structures. Essentially, he argues that kinship relations are based upon “a codified expression

of the common development of men relative to each other”, whereby men essentially pay into the

shared pool of resources during their productive life, and are therefore entitled to take from this pool

in order to feed their young children, or sustain themselves in old age. It is this “closed system, which

can be penetrated only by birth”, which apparently prevents any possibility of integration for the

slave.17 The slave’s status, for Meillassoux, is characterised by a denial of the right to paternity.18

However, this idealised view of egalitarian kinship relations centred on the father-son relationship,

describes only the position of relatively privileged, able-bodied men within a society. It fails to consider

the differing position of wives – brides brought in from outside the kinship are penetrating the closed

system through a means other than birth, but this is not accounted for – and of marginalised kin such

as illegitimate children, orphans, daughters who are to be married outside the kin group, or poor or

14 Ibid., p. 15. 15 Kopytoff & Miers 1997, pp. 23-24. 16 See ibid., pp. 23-25; Kopytoff 1982, p. 215. 17 Meillassoux 1992, p. 25. 18 Ibid., pp. 27, 35.

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infirm relations. Ultimately, the marginality of an individual in society will be determined by their age,

gender, wealth, and so on, and not simply by their status as ‘slave’ or ‘free’.

If we follow Meillassoux in defining slavery in opposition to the position of the father figures who are

most central to the majority of kinship structures, then it is easy to produce a dichotomy. However,

the picture blurs when we compare the status and livelihoods of, for example, a free and a slave wife.

From colonial records of the 1900 case of Beydy Couloubaly, we see the difficulty of formal or legal

distinction between these two categories. The initial difficulty of the colonial officials in deducing

whether Couloubaly’s three ‘wives’ were in fact free wives or his slaves is understandable; however,

what is even more striking is the continued blurring of these two categories once they had judged that

all three women had been initially bought as slaves. As a slave wife who had borne her master’s

children was not considered saleable in local customs, the French assumed that this meant that she

was ‘free’; in fact, she and her children were still considered slaves, just with slightly different rights

in recognition of the steps they had taken along the continuum towards integration as kin.19

Furthermore, once the colonial authorities recognised the emancipation of the two women who had

still been ‘slaves’ (according to their understanding) at the time of their escape, they stated that their

case was now a concern for the divorce courts.20 This would seem to suggest that these women were

considered wives like any others, but with the added feature of their slavery, emphasising the

ambiguity of the distinction between free and slave wives. This emphasises the importance of

comparing ‘slaves’ to their ‘free’ counterparts, rather than to the social ideal of the position accorded

to the most privileged men in society. Miers and Kopytoff’s model of degrees of marginality and the

movement along a continuum are thus much more useful for understanding this case than

Meillassoux’s rigid insistence that slavery is always the polar opposite of kinship.

Miers and Kopytoff note that slaves note that their edited volume contains no case studies of outsiders

who begin as slaves and are fully incorporated as kin within a single generation; rather, they gradually

acquire extra formal rights and/or informal emotional ties within the group which move them slightly

further from absolute marginality. Only over several generations can this lead to integration as ‘kin’

within the master’s society (as suggested by the case above, where slaves became unsaleable if they

had kinship ties to their master, but remained slaves). Meillassoux does, in fact, recognise that it was

possible in many societies for aliens to begin in a new society as ‘slaves’ and become integrated over

the course of several generations; however, he essentially excludes such cases from his definition of

slavery, writing that in a “non-slave society… the position of children of alien origin gradually becomes

19 ‘The Beydy Couloubaly Petition’, p. 2. 20 Ibid., p. 3.

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comparable to that of the children of other families whose genealogical roots rarely go back further

than five generations. At the end of this period, re-absorption has been completed”.21 This seems to

suggest that a community cannot be called a ‘slave society’ if it contains outsiders who retain

marginalised status throughout their lifetime, and pass on some portion of their marginality to their

descendants, provided that this marginality is sufficiently reduced so as to disappear after a century

or more. In fact, the ‘absorption’ that he is describing is precisely what Miers and Kopytoff mean by

integration, or people moving along the slavery-to-kinship continuum both within and across several

generations. Meillassoux’s rejection of this integration as a part of ‘slavery’ is essentially based upon

a self-fulfilling definition in which anyone who can hope for their ancestors to be integrated is not

truly part of a slave society (however much they are seen as a slave by that society, and however

numerous the slaves within that society), and can thus be excluded from his description of slavery as

a social institution.

Meillassoux thus seems to object to Miers and Kopytoff’s idea of a continuum partly on the basis of a

belief that they see all forms of slavery as fundamentally similar to kinship – something which they

firmly state is not the case – and partly stemming from his own very narrow view of what counts as a

‘slave society’. This latter point is rooted in his understanding of slavery as a primarily economic

institution, which will be explored below.

SLAVERY, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

Along with the idea of slavery as the opposite of ‘freedom’, Miers and Kopytoff also reject the

simplified image of the slave as ‘a commodity, to be bought and sold’, who is thus the ‘property’ of

another individual. Meillassoux initially appears to agree with aspects of this position: both works note

that not all slaves are considered saleable, whereas some people deemed free may be sold in certain

contexts.22 Meillassoux elaborates on this by stressing that the legal understanding of slaves as

possessions and thus objects not only denies their status as human beings (the very basis of their value

to their masters), but also because it defines them only in terms of the individual, one-to-one

relationship of ownership, rather than in relation to the wider society.23 Miers and Kopytoff,

meanwhile, argue that the notion of ‘property’ is different in each culture, and that African kin groups

are thought to have certain ‘ownership’ rights over all their members: they therefore argue that we

21 Meillassoux 1992, p. 32. 22 Miers & Kopytoff 1977, pp. 3, 10; Meillassoux 1992, p. 11. 23 Meillassoux 1992, p. 10.

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should use the notion of ‘rights-in-persons’ when discussing African cultures, and analyse how these

rights differed between slaves and kin in each particular society.24

However, on closer examination, the relationship between slavery and economics, and the role of the

notion of ‘property’, form another key site of disagreement. Meillassoux is deeply critical of Miers and

Kopytoff’s notion of ‘rights-in-persons’, arguing that it is ethnocentrically based upon “the strict

application of Western notions of law and of liberal economics”, and specifically upon the European

legal notions of usus, fructus and abusus, which delineate different forms of claim to ‘property’. He

insinuates that Miers and Kopytoff’s recognition of the importance of accumulating dependants in

many African societies is an espousal of conservative classical economics.25

However, the only economic principle in Miers and Kopytoff’s reasoning seems to be that many

individuals and groups are interested in increasing their financial, political and social capital, which I

would argue is hardly a Eurocentric or economics-centred perspective. Furthermore, they emphasise

and explain the many non-economic uses to which slaves are put in various societies, whether as

reproducers, political supporters, military protection, or status symbols. By contrast, Meillassoux’s

argument is centred entirely on the economic basis of slavery, ignoring these other factors – his

argument thus excludes many forms of slavery which do not fit this definition. Furthermore, it is based

on a uniquely Marxist views of ‘class’, taken from models which are based upon observation of

capitalist, nineteenth-century European societies. It is therefore Meillassoux, rather than Miers and

Kopytoff, who is more Eurocentric and narrowly economic in focus.

Despite recognising that not all slaves are saleable and that the relationship of ‘possession’ does not

sufficiently recognise the structural, societally-defined position of the slave, Meillassoux continues to

view slavery as a ‘mode of production’, in which slaves are “the primordial form of property”26 and

their function is always primarily economic. Meillassoux recognises social, political and other factors

only as secondary and almost incidental aspects of these relations: where slaves are not used as

producers, he argues that they are nonetheless primarily intended to increase society’s overall

productive capacity – for example, by undertaking wars to capture further slaves.27 Meillassoux’s

insistence on the economic basis of all slavery leads him to claim that slavery exists only where there

is a ‘class’ of slaves and the whole economy is thus based upon a slave system. He states that “so-

called ‘patriarchal’ slavery should not… be identified as a class relation… As I see it, this is not, strictly

24 Miers & Kopytoff 1977, pp. 7-12. 25 Meillassoux 1992, pp. 13-14. 26 Lovejoy 1991, p. 138. 27 Meillassoux 1992, p. 15.

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speaking, slavery, but rather an isolated phenomenon of subservience.”28 This seems to include any

society where slaves are kept by small family groups, but where this is a widespread phenomenon

sanctioned by the whole of society, such as the Gando of northern Benin, where a widespread cultural

and social phenomenon saw many families taking one or two slave children.29 In fact, Meillassoux is

correct that such apparently individual relationships are actually defined structurally in relation to the

entire society and kin group within which each family is operating.

Meillassoux thus offers a self-fulfilling definition in which any society without ‘class relations’, similar

to the European economic structures observed by Marx, cannot be seen as a slave society. Elsewhere

he claims that captives only truly become slaves if they “permanently free from labour a stable class

of masters”.30 Klein notes that Meillassoux’s writings on slavery centre on the concept of ‘mode of

production’, but this concept is “never precisely defined”.31 Meillassoux thus limits the term ‘slavery’

only to ‘slave systems’ – that is, societies where the whole economy and mode of production is based

on slavery. The category of ‘slave system’ is useful in understanding the ways in which slaves can be

put to economic use; however, to recognise it as the only possible form of slave society ignores the

numerous other ways in which slaves can form part of a society’s structure. Miers and Kopytoff,

meanwhile, describe many of these other possible forms of slave society, and their notions of ‘rights-

in-persons’ and the ‘slavery-to-kinship continuum’ seem to better account for this variety than

Meillassoux’s somewhat limited view.

Quite apart from Meillassoux’s rejection of slavery which occurs in a familial setting, there are still

many different forms of complex slave society evident in African history, only some of which placed

all slaves in a single, economically-directed stratum at the bottom of society. There are many instances

of African societies in which slaves functioned as a political or military elite, or as valued skilled

workers, instead of or in addition to being used as basic economic producers.32 Miers and Kopytoff

argue that many such slaves were in fact given these positions of authority precisely because of their

slave status, as their situation as detached outsiders meant that they had no competing loyalties, and

were also less of a threat to their masters’ position than his kin, particularly in the case of royal

families.33 This is convincing, and demonstrates how well-adapted Miers and Kopytoff’s idea of

28 Meillassoux 1992, p. 19. 29 Yesterday’s Slaves, 2011. 30 Ibid., p. 34. 31 Klein 1978, p. 603. 32 Examples include the tonjonw, elite slave warriors in the Segu Bambara (see Roberts 1980); the ‘Amazons’, hundreds of slave women who acted as the Dahomian king’s ‘wives’ and palace guards (Law 1993); or the use of Hausa slaves as specialised grooms in Oyo (Law 1975). These were not isolated examples; many others are offered and discussed by Miers and Kopytoff themselves. 33 Miers & Kopytoff 1977, pp. 28, 46-47.

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‘institutionalised marginality’ is to explaining a wide variety of slave societies, unlike Meillassoux’s

more limited economic vision.

Miers and Kopytoff go on to argue that we should distinguish between slaves who form a single, low

social stratum, like those envisaged by Meillassoux, and those whose slave status “can be regarded as

placing them on the side of the society rather than at the bottom”.34 This is less convincing: although

it is true that in such systems, slaves may have worldly power, wealth or privileges which are not open

to some free individuals, this does not mean that their slave status does not also give them a lower

social status – at least when compared to free individuals with a similar degree of wealth and power,

and perhaps even when compared to some free individuals whose social standing may be lower than

theirs in other ways. Miers acknowledges this intersection of different types of inequality in a later

work, writing that successful slaves “might be better off than the free in terms of lifestyle, although

they could never be their social equals”.35 In complex societies where there were groups of both

labouring and elite slaves, there was certainly a more complex form of social stratification than in

societies where they simply formed a single stratum at the bottom of society, but we must be careful

not to misinterpret this as meaning that slaves formed a parallel but equal social organisation at the

‘side’ of society. If slave status is defined by marginality and by lack of protection by kin, then even a

slave who becomes the mother of a king can never truly have the same social position as her free

counterpart.

Despite these weaknesses, Miers and Kopytoff’s recognition of the multiple ways in which slaves can

be built into social structures offers a much stronger explanation of the huge variety found within the

institution of slavery in Africa than Meillassoux’s limited view of slavery as a kind of proto-proletariat,

used only for its labour and freeing a whole class of masters from the obligation to work. Together

with their explanation of how and why many societies allow for the gradual reduction of marginality

and integration as kin, this offers a much more subtle picture of the social and political foundations of

slavery, where Meillassoux considers only its economic functions. Some reviewers have criticised

Miers and Kopytoff for downplaying the economic functions of slavery too much; and indeed, we must

be careful not to claim that it was always a primarily social institution, but to recognise that it fulfilled

different functions in different societies.36 However, Miers and Kopytoff were writing against a

tradition which paid little or no attention to the social and political position of slaves, assuming them

to derive their unique status from a definition as ‘property’. Their more socially-based model of ‘the

34 Ibid., p. 41. 35 Miers 2003, p. 5. 36 Klein 1978, p. 606; Kolchin 1986, pp. 772-773.

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institutionalisation of marginality’ and the lack of protection that comes from kin helps us to make

sense of slavery in contexts where slaves are used for a variety of functions, including as labourers.

BEYOND KOPYTOFF & MIERS AND MEILLASSOUX: REACHING FOR A PROCESSUAL FRAMEWORK

Overall, therefore, Miers and Kopytoff’s understanding of slavery offers a more useful framework than

Meillassoux’s for understanding the complexities of social, political and economic relations in a wide

variety of slave societies. However, it is important to note that neither Slavery in Africa nor The

Anthropology of Slavery actually sets out to find a universal definition of slavery. Miers and Kopytoff

explicitly reject such an aim, calling it “a fruitless effort in semantics”; instead, their initial stated aim

is to offer “a framework within which these institutions [in various societies in their edited volume]

can be understood and the full range of variations be seen”.37 By the end of their introduction,

however, this aim has shifted somewhat, as they claim to wish to deconstruct the term slavery and

suggest the search for an entirely new vocabulary to express the relations they have been describing.38

Meillassoux, meanwhile, states that his focus is upon the definition of slavery, which “must be

generally accepted if a real discussion is to take place”.39

The difference in the stated aims of the two works invites an analysis of how well each has adhered

to these aims, and what gaps are therefore left to be filled by future analysis. Their conflict of opinion

also raises the question of whether we need a universal definition of slavery, and what uses such a

definition could serve. While Meillassoux claims to offer a definition of slavery, in fact his analysis

repeatedly shows itself to be primarily concerned with “the genesis of slavery”,40 as he tries to

formulate a universal pattern for how African ‘domestic societies’ developed into slave systems,

concluding that the genesis of slavery is to be found in the transition to a market economy and

particularly in Africa’s integration into world trade.41 Quite apart from the remarkable degree of

passivity which this idea attributes to African ‘domestic societies’, which in Meillassoux’s vision seem

to represent an unspoilt state of nature, it is necessarily problematic to try to retrieve the origins of

slavery from the distant past, much less to reach universal truths about its emergence across the

whole of Africa.42

37 Miers & Kopytoff 1977, p. 7. 38 Ibid., pp. 77-78. 39 Meillassoux 1992, p. 22. 40 Ibid., pp. 14-15, 20, 36. 41 Ibid., p. 40. 42 Klein 1978, p. 608 ; Kopytoff 1982, p. 224.

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However, it should also be considered whether, if we take Meillassoux’s stated aim to provide a

definition of slavery at face value, we agree that this is a worthy pursuit, given Miers and Kopytoff’s

insistence that such an exercise is futile. First, it is important to note the pressing need for a formal,

workable definition of slavery in international law, as current ambiguities may be hindering legal

action against contemporary slavery.43 However, in the context of historical study, a framework for

understanding slavery as a varied historical process, which manifested differently in various places

and at different times, is likely to prove more useful than a universal, ahistorical and totalising

definition of slavery as a ‘thing’, although Miers and Kopytoff do not offer a convincing argument that

it is impossible to reach such a framework through continued use of the word ‘slavery’.

Miers and Kopytoff’s notions of rights-in-person and a slavery-to-kinship continuum go some way to

offering such a framework; however, they fall at the last hurdle, because they share with Meillassoux

a belief that there must necessarily be something unique about African slavery, a characteristic which

is shared by slavery across the continent but which is not found elsewhere in the world. Cooper argues

that “it is useful to speak of slavery, but it is not useful to speak of ‘African slavery’, as if a form of

slavery were co-terminous with the continent”.44 However, Miers and Kopytoff do just that,

repeatedly stating that the ‘slavery-to-kinship continuum’ is a unique feature of African slavery,

without offering evidence for this claim. This tendency towards essentialising ‘African’ slavery can best

be combatted by universal comparisons and collaboration between scholars who continue to be

limited by regional boundaries in analysing slavery, in order to create a model for understanding the

diversity of these forms of servitude across human history.

43 Miers 2003, p. 14. 44 Cooper 1979, p. 106.

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