Slavery has been an ugly part of human history. It has taken many forms. Some are types of self -enslavement, requiring the consent of the individual. These include subjection to hatred, anger, self-condemnation, self-abasement, drugs, and liquor. But when we think of slavery, we usually think of the physical ownership of one human being by another acquired through war, slave trade, or barter. In some instances the individual has been allowed to work off his enslavement and buy his freedom. In certain American Indian cultures slaves have been adopted into the families that owned them and given full tribal rights. In most slavery the physical bondage has been accompanied by encroachments of various forms of self-enslavement.
Various theories of economic enslavement exercised by one class over another, well exemplified by the feudal system, are also familiar. And there have been two threads running throughout this whole phenomenon: the story of the "clever slave," the imaginative one who, living by his wits, lied, cheated, and stole from the master (usually with great good humor); the other, the story of the "good master," who treated his slaves lovingly and kindly (except in respect of their freedom), treating the "clever slave" with a certain amount of compassion.
In the life of almost all the world the bondman has disappeared. But slavery has not. And the two myths of slavery, the "clever slave" and the "good master," persist.
