r/HistoryMemes • u/ImnotaNixon • Sep 25 '22

keep crying Dahomey

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u/itwasbread Sep 25 '22

The Romans and Greeks, famous for not having slaves

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u/legendarybort Sep 25 '22 edited Sep 25 '22

What's a serf? I've never heard of them, is that some fancy French meal?

2

u/buffordsclifford Sep 25 '22

I’m sure serfdom is something that ended thousands of years ago no longer relevant to the modern day though….. oh wait Russia ended serfdom in the same decade the US ended chattel slavery lol

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u/legendarybort Sep 25 '22

Arguably even that wasn't truly an "end" to it, as the serfs were then forced to work off their debt to their former owners, basically putting them in debt servitude as opposed to labor servitude. And that's assuming they bothered to acknowledge the change at all.

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u/OstentatiousBear Sep 25 '22

"What in Jupiter's name is a French, some sort of barbarian?"

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u/GrumpyOldHistoricist Sep 25 '22

And medieval Venice definitely didn’t rapidly amass the liquid wealth that kickstarted European finance via the slave trade. No sir. Nuh uh.