Again, that’s not American style slavery. They aren’t taking slaves to build a labor force, they are making slaves of war prisoners and criminals for the most part. There are no slave markets in Orgrimmar. Slavery is not integrated into the economy the way it was in the American South. Both peons and peasants are more of a social caste state, where those who don’t wind up on a higher caste just seem to collect.
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If you mean Spiketooth, he was Rehgar’s assistant in the Varian comics, so not speculation.
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Peasants were at least quasi-slaves, by modern standards. They were bound to their lord’s estate from birth and could not leave unless he allowed them to. And he very, very rarely let a perfectly good worker leave.
Orcs are a somewhat collectivist honor based culture, so they base your worth on how good you can fight (or otherwise serve the clan); Peons likely are just really inept at everything so they are forced into doing the dirty grunt work no respectable warrior would ever do. Back on Draenor they likely would of just… been left to die, but exposure to human culture and Azeroth not being Australia:The Planet caused a few shifts in orcish thinking.
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Well, more specifically serfs were a form of slave, bound to the land and not allowed to leave without their Lord’s allowance.
Peasants are just broadly the poor agrarian class, of which serfs are a type; historically some peasants were serfs when serfdom was in effect, but the peasantry also comprised landowning Freemen and tenant farmers, who had more rights than serfs, were allowed to pursue certain avenues of upward social mobility and worked for themselves or someone else of varying social status (including other peasants), while serfs were legally bound forever to their position as such at the pleasure of their lord.
While various degrees of peasantry (from the RTS- style “units” to quest-giving farmers, field laborers and the like) are encountered in Azeroth’s kingdoms, actual serfs don’t really appear very often; in fact the first and only NPC’s thus far identified as serfs in-game were in Stormsong Valley.
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My headcanon has always been that peons are orcs that were either the poor results of Gul’dan’s Fel magic aging experiments prior to the First War, or orcs that reacted badly to the Fel blood and the subsequent longer term effects. We don’t see any peons among the Mag’har, for example, nor with the Iron Horde (at least as far as I know).
It could be that peons won’t be around after a few more generations.
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I do find it fairly weird that the architects and primary builders of stuff for both humans and orcs are just really lowly in society and treated horribly.
Then other races hold their architects in great esteem and treat them well. Or even make them their racial leaders like with gnomes.
Imagine the culture shock of draenei showing up to Stormwind for the first time and meeting peasants and just being like “You treat your artificers like this?!”
Ah yes, you are correct. I did generalize a bit too much. In my head I had divided Freemen and Peasants for some reason.
Do we have any evidence that peons/peasants also design the buildings they construct?
Just the opposite for humans: Baros Alexston was the designer of Stormwind’s reconstruction and the Alliance garrison in WoD.
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I feel like that is way worse.
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I was going to post this… but I debated in my head if he counts as a Human worker, himself.
He isn’t exactly a Hero Unit, or a mounted knight, or some other Alliance Unit.
In practise however, societies that did that generally had laws and regulations on slave treatment not found in American chattel slavery. American style slavery was pretty much the most dehumanising form of it.
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Oh and duh, Gazlowe was his equivalent both for Org and the Horde garrison. I didn’t think of him at first because I was trying to think of orc architects specifically.
So no, the peons and peasants aren’t the designers.
At that level you have tradesmen who are the beginnings of a middle class.
Which society? Everything I look up says gladitoral slaves were kept in cells and treated as property. Socially they were segrated and looked down upon and faced punishment like beatings or being killed during training (in extremely harsh conditions). There living situation was a cell while they were not fighting to the death.
The only difference between agricultural and gladitoral slavery from ancient times is one works on a farm the other is forced to kill or be kill.
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There were also avenues in gladitorial slavery for the gladiators to win better status or their freedom, especially if they knew how to work a crowd and were good performers. I’m not condoning either form. Also gladiatorial slavery was pretty much equal opportunity, not generally race based. And as such, not the same type of implied dehumanization.
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Thats true, the plus side was you could rank up and they did not discriminate. I just feel fighting for your life is one of the most traumatizing things. The nature of it feels like nothing else where I think more people would rather do one over the other. Atleast I would.
But yes and I agree, both are horrible.
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I’m not going to rank which which is more traumatic, on one you have the real risk of injury and death. (Not every match was a kill or be killed, btw, they only had so many gladiators who could decently fight on hand) On the other hand you had the very real risk that your spouse and/or family would be broken up, sold other plantations, and never be seen again. Or maybe the master might take a liking to you and decide that you were going to bear his replacement workers. Your life was not your own and would never be unless you were lucky to have one of those masters who’d free you in his will.
Thomas Jefferson was so much in debt when he died, none of his slaves were manumitted… they were sold off to help pay his debts.
Like I said, I’ve no interest in a “which was worse” comparison, I’m only noting differences, but I feel that they are important in contexts especially if we are going to use them as basis for comparisons to the situations we see on Azeroth.
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Hot take: Slavery is bad, all slavery is bad. Roman Style, American style, gladiatorial, its all bad.
This is such a bizarre and weird take to make that its somehow okay and cool as long as its not “American Style”, which is a stupid term as America didnt invent or even popularize chattel slavery, but that’s neither here nor there.
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And that is a dishonest reading of my text. I made it clear that I was not going into any ethical or moral comparisons, but highlighting the very real differences between the two. And American slavery is the worst of the two… because in some forms IT IS STILL VERY MUCH WITH US. We wre the last of the Western nations to make an official end to the slave trade, but the culture behind slavery persisted in the forms of share cropping Jim Crow laws and is still with us in the form human of trafficking and prisons for profit. There’s even a modern story of a New York Times writer who suddenly found himself inheriting a Philipino slave that his parents had kept.
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