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Different ways to fake slavery
Jan. 4th, 2008 07:50 pmOooh, it's so entertaining to watch how social institutions survive by fleeeexxxxxing around the boundaries of legal restrictions. This is quite amusing when it's stuff like how duelists who followed the approved Code were rarely tried for murder during the 100+ years when dueling was technically illegal but socially acceptable in lots of places (why yes, I did love "By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions" by Richard Cohen. "Gentlemen's Blood: A History of Dueling from Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk" by Barbara Holland is entertaining too but more for anecdotes than for history structure bits.).
It is less amusing when I read about the "hut tax", one of those clever extensions of slavery-by-other-means where you take a culture that does not have cash money (or at least, none you're going to recognize) and you announce that each household owes a cash tax. This tax can only be raised by working for you.
It reminds me tangentially of a particularly fierce American land grab that I think I remember reading about in Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States", where a whole bunch of farmers who owned mid-sized plots were told they owed these cash payments in a time when the whole country was chronically short on silver. (I think I recall a bit where paper money was specified as being unacceptable for this debt even though it was OK tender for other purchases at the same time.) The farmholders had to sell the land to get the payments (there was a bit of a riot or something where they tried to resist at first?) which of course had the effect of giving a whole bunch of rich folks control over those plots of land. (And since they got the silver back too as payment for whatever the tax/fine/debt thing was, they basically waved a piece of paper in the air and used it to get the land for free. Which they couldn't have done without armed backing. As, I imagine, the hut tax couldn't have been enforced without armed backing.)
J. has been pushing for a few weeks when I'm done with this book where I read nothing but romance novels and I can see his point. On that front, "The Spymaster's Lady" was as entertaining as everyone on the internet said it was.
It is less amusing when I read about the "hut tax", one of those clever extensions of slavery-by-other-means where you take a culture that does not have cash money (or at least, none you're going to recognize) and you announce that each household owes a cash tax. This tax can only be raised by working for you.
It reminds me tangentially of a particularly fierce American land grab that I think I remember reading about in Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States", where a whole bunch of farmers who owned mid-sized plots were told they owed these cash payments in a time when the whole country was chronically short on silver. (I think I recall a bit where paper money was specified as being unacceptable for this debt even though it was OK tender for other purchases at the same time.) The farmholders had to sell the land to get the payments (there was a bit of a riot or something where they tried to resist at first?) which of course had the effect of giving a whole bunch of rich folks control over those plots of land. (And since they got the silver back too as payment for whatever the tax/fine/debt thing was, they basically waved a piece of paper in the air and used it to get the land for free. Which they couldn't have done without armed backing. As, I imagine, the hut tax couldn't have been enforced without armed backing.)
J. has been pushing for a few weeks when I'm done with this book where I read nothing but romance novels and I can see his point. On that front, "The Spymaster's Lady" was as entertaining as everyone on the internet said it was.
