Indentured servitude was often voluntarily performed in order to pay off a debt, or earn some form of compensation, such as a trade. (in that way it’s essentially the ancient version of an unpaid internship) If you were indentured, you did not get a salary of any sort. Furthermore indentured individuals could be bought and sold on a market. So you could be indentured to Person A, then sold on a market and find yourself indentured to Person B.
It’s a fancy form of slavery.
Only unlike slavery, there was a set end date to your indentured servitude, as per your contract with the person who you originally indentured yourself to.
Also the key point there is that there’s a contract. If I volunteer to help you, and then I do a bit of work for you and leave, then nothing’s wrong there. I’m not an indentured servant, nor am I a slave, because I can leave at any time.
But if you mistreat me, force me to do backbreaking labor, and then when I try to leave, you force me to stay, then you’ve essentially turned me into a slave.
Only if you’ve never taken five minutes to look into the history of indentured servants. They had contracts, protection under the law, and in most cases (It was occasionally an option in place of prison for some convicts) entered into willingly in exchange for things like passage, apprenticeships, or both.
Then it isn’t slavery, it’s contracted work… slavery is forced lifetime labor against one’s own will, contracted labor is not…
This is not how that works, you’re still breaking a legally binding contract if you leave as an indentured servant and refuse to do the work agreed upon, which is what the Pandaren did…
Mistreating the person working for you is illegal as Simplyred pointed out, as is not doing the work the indentured was contracted by legal document or agreement to do.
There was no contract, and the Alliance were literally forcing the Pandaren to stay and do backbreaking labor, without pay, and without breaks.
That’s slavery.
End of story.
Here’s some of the lines the Pandaren say when you tell them they can go home, and sometimes you have to kill the Alliance that are watching over them to do so:
Can… can I go home?
Get me out of here!
I can leave now?
I miss my home!
Thanks! I’m outta here!
You’re right. I didn’t sign up to build a war base.
You… you’re not one of the Alliance? Good.
Also when you talk to some of the Pandaren before you tell them they can go home, you can see them saying things like this:
These working conditions are horrible! We haven’t had a beer break in HOURS!
Are you here to give me my break? It feels like I’ve been working forever!
<She/He wipes the sweat from <her/his> brow.>
Hello there, < class >. You here to help?
Wow… These Alliance sure do have us working hard…
So… thirsty…
I thought we were just building houses, not a fortress.
I’ve never worked this hard before in my life! I don’t like it!
Were they though? Cause you just tell the Pandaren to go home… and none of that proves they were there against their will…
And all that you just posted? Just makes THE PANDAREN seem like the unreliable allies…
They literally complain about…working I guess? “I didn’t sign up to build a fortress!”.
At most you could argue there was a labor mix up with the agreement, seeing as the Pandaren who volunteered apparently thought they were building houses…
The Alliance quest actually outright states that the Horde kidnapped children and other villagers as forced labor and bargaining chips with the remaining villagers. THAT is slavery.
Yes. It was even briefly mentioned during the quest where you are dealing with the sentient apes. If I remember correctly the lore book can be found in that same location as well.
It is, but you forget that the goblin rebellion was NOT that long ago. Goblins have only been free from Zandalari slavery for a little over 100 years. Your two examples are NOT equivalent at all… night elves enslaved nascent humans for a brief period around 10,000 years ago. Zandalari enslaved the goblins FOR nearly 10,000 years.
As for your comparison to IRL history… Americans had slaves for only a few hundred years, and between when slavery was outlawed and the nation as a whole truly became anti slavery was long enough for all generations who saw slavery to die off. Zandalari Trolls on the otherhand had slaves for 10,000 years, and have very long life spans, the generation that witnessed the goblin rebellion is very much still alive today. Not to mention the GOBLINS rebelled, not the anti-slavery portion of the Zandalari empire.
Shhh, you’ll wake the people defending the slavery if you say things like that.
End of the day, the reality of slavery in the Warcraft universe is that we only have confirmed reports of three of the playable races being opposed to slavery, all of them being races of the Horde. Those three being the Zandalari, Vulpera and regular Trolls (at least some of them, it’s unclear about all the various species).
Other races have either openly engaged in slavery or they’ve stayed silent about the issue and we have no lore one way or another to determine their views. So it is something that happens and happens often enough to still be of concern.
Don’t the Zandalari use slaves under the caste system? Like they have people considered so low on the social status totem pole they’re not even considered fellow Trolls.
The Zandalari, as confirmed in Vol’jin: Shadow of the Horde and a quest chain in BFA do not tolerate slavery and look down on those who practice it, seeing themselves as better than slavers.
“Zandalari society has remained an unchanging hierarchy for thousands of years. Hardworking farmers, fishers, and craftsmen form the peasant caste, the foundation of the empire. Zandalari elders tell them what to harvest, when to plant, and how to behave. To disobey the elders is to disobey the gods, an offense punishable by exile or death.”-Zandalari, culture and people, WoWpedia.
Tell me you don’t know how a caste society works, without telling me you don’t know how a caste society works.
What is on display from the Zandalari is no different from the medieval caste society. Peasants worked where the nobles said they could work, grew what the nobles said they could grow, and disobeying the nobles resulted in imprisonment or death.
They may have been looked down on, but they were not slaves.
And as I just said, we have lore that clearly states the Zandalari do not tolerate slavery and see anyone who engages in slavery as weaker than them.
It’s definitely not against the law for either side because of the existence of exceptions. So expect it to be a topic that they don’t really care about.
I used your definition of slavery… by your own definition, a caste system such as the medieval one practiced by kings/lords and the Zandalari IS slavery…
Forced to work? Check.
Threatened with death? Check.
Not paid and cannot own your own stuff? Check.
My definition of slavery is when someone is forced into unpaid servitude. That’s not how a caste system operates. Peasant classes in caste systems have the freedom to do what they wish with respect to their daily lives, and they have the right to sell their goods and earn a wage. They are not slaves.
They do. The Zandalari elders tell them how to behave. So in practice what that means is putting down rules like. Don’t look an Elder in the eyes, bow when one passes, don’t spit in the presence of a superior, stuff like that.
It isn’t a regimented system where every minute of every day a Zandalari’s life is monitored.
Again, we have very specific lore that states the Zandalari do not practice slavery. This is not up for debate.
If you want to ignore the lore and claim they’re doing slavery anyway, then fine, but I won’t debate the issue further.
“Zandalari society has remained an unchanging hierarchy for thousands of years. Hardworking farmers, fishers, and craftsmen form the peasant caste, the foundation of the empire. Zandalari elders tell them what to harvest, when to plant, and how to behave. To disobey the elders is to disobey the gods, an offense punishable by exile or death.”-Zandalari, culture and people, WoWpedia.
