Comparative Politics

Course: Geography and Political Imagination

Slavery in Larry Wolff's “Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization

in the Mind of Enlightenment”

“How can a country be said to be civilized, in which domestic slavery still

exists?” is the question asked by William Coxe and which Larry Wolff chooses to address at
the end of the chapter ”Possessing Eastern Europe”, chapter concentrating on the Western
Europe travelers' accounts about countries such as Russia, Poland and even Moldavia,
accounts concentrating on slavery, its forms and practices.

Slavery is described along this chapter through travelers accounts of Eastern

Europe, accounts that concentrate mainly on Russia in the period of Enlightenment, it seems
in the purpose of contrasting the West and the East by using this reference. However, a
critique may be delivered concerning the acceptance that the various travelers in the Eastern
countries of Europe understand by it, a confusion between serfdom and slavery occurring
very often in these accounts.

Going further, it is interesting that the image serfdom receives from the
different travelers since,more than being considered just one aspect of the existence of the
Eastern states, it comes to define the very state and to be even responsible for all the negative
traits this presents, such as the lack of modernity.

In addition to this, slavery/ serfdom is presented as malignant not only for the
state, but also for the human soul, apparently the Man turned slave losing with his own
freedom also his humanity.

This approach, given the Enlightenment writers relating upon slavery in

Eastern Europe, seems understandable, moreover that this is a period in which more
emphasis starts to be put on the whole existence of the man, the soul starting to matter as
much as the body, and thus, once one element is enslaved, the other must follow along.

This view may be, of course, contested by writers such as the Parents of the
Church, Saint Augustine arguing that the “flesh” is merely what connects Man to his sinful
nature, while the soul is what matters and that may reach absolution from the sins of the
flesh, should it search it.

Thus this double nature of Man eludes the travelers selected by Wolff in his
paper, travelers such as Casanova, Segur, Coxe, Marshall or Tott, which seem to have only a
limited view on the matter, from the beginning failing to grant the Eastern European serfs no
more than a lower than Men statute.

In fact, by describing the Russian serfs as traders of their own kin, as in

Casanova's story, without concentrating more on the authority of the Russian noble mediating
the transaction within a feudal state, but rather on the sum and the businesslike manner in
which a father sells his own daughter to sexual slavery, or Marshall's account of the forced
marriages between serfs in Russia, him stating that this situation makes those serfs less than
men, maybe even worse than animals, since they consider they have no affection for their
spouses or for their offspring, seems to provide a rather narrow minded approach to the
matter of slavery, or better said serfdom in Eastern Europe at the time of the Enlightenment.

Furthermore, the fact that the different authors employ the term slavery rather
than that of serfdom is also suggestive to the confusing manner in which they approach this
institution that is characteristic to the Eastern countries of Europe, but which has not as many
common points with the slavery in which the African slaves found themselves on the
plantations in the South of the United States.

While the situation of the serfs is one that had been encountered also in the
feudal Western Europe where vassals to the king received and owned villages with serfs, the
African slaves in America made up a trade, a source of profit out of an activity that supposed
their capture, inhuman treatment during their journey to America and then their auction to the
highest bidder, similar to the case of cattle.

On the other hand, while Eastern Europe may and for sure was backward at
the time the respective travelers “discovered” it, the backwardness suggests that the
institutions of the modern state based on the social contract have not yet evolved. Moreover,
the serfs may appear as a class of their own, but not as slaves, slavery existing, of course, but
not being the state of the general population. The slaves were usually made up of the gypsy
population, such as was the cause in the Romanian principates.

As such, there may not be equality between the serfs of Eastern Europe and
the African slaves, nor between them and the ones from the Ancient Empires, given that there
is an inherent difference in their nature of slavery or serfdom, as it is our case, since the serfs
have clear obligations and rejoice their autonomy and are allowed to own property even if
not land. Should it be the case, the image of Eastern Europe would have remained through
history as that of a region made up of a slave-owning elite and its slaves, rather than a
backward region that conserved the feudal relations until late in history.

In fact, the accounts of the travelers talk about the obligations the serfs had in
regards to the nobles, but those may be interpreted, since, for example, the account
concerning the Moldavians present the Turks making claims on the Moldavian population,
but while respecting the structure of power, addressing not the actual source of food, but
rather the leader of the community, the elder, which is the one in charge with meeting their
claims.

In addition to this, the Romanian principates under Turkish rule were never
“enslaved” as such, but rather under occupation, the Turks did not alter the structure of the
state, but only made their claims in men and money, set the rulers and left the principates to
their own management for as long as they did not contest the Sultan's authority. Michael the
Great, for example, was not known as the leader of a slave revolt just as there were no slaves
aside from a limited ethnic group represented by the gypsy population which were classified
as “robi”.

In addition, the serfs rejoiced the use of the land within the feudal relations,
and they paid for this by laboring the lands of the nobles and paying a tax in product and
money, while a slave would not have to do such a thing, given that their own existence and
thus all the results of their money would have belonged to their master. Of course, the serfs
were tied to the land of the noble, but that was merely out of necessity, in order to prevent the
migration of population, leaving the land not toiled and the nobles in bankruptcy.

Also, the accounts of the obligation of “breeding” for the perpetuation of

slavery, is merely an exaggerated account, given that this aspect of existence was an inherent
and imminent one at that time within society, the noble not being the one having to mind for
it.

On the other hand, the accounts of the nobles relative to slavery are
interesting, since they seem to attempt to conceptualize through the use of this variable,
Eastern European despotism and interpret backwardness as the direct result of it.
 As such, the different accounts which concentrate upon the aspects of the
Eastern European society such as the cult for violence and corporal punishments, the lack of
respect for human life, the necessity of having a hierarchy in place for the functioning of the
society ruled by a what Segur characterizes as “despotism without limits” are really
illustrative and pertinent as to render the backwardness of Eastern Europe, but they must be
approached while taking into consideration their source, in our case the Western intellectuals
which are in the first place travelers, travelers which are naturally prone to exaggeration,
moreover should the gap between their countries of origin and the visited Eastern regions be
a considerable one.

Moreover, Segur considers “manners as a means of civilization”, thus a

society cultivating violence and slavery may not be accounted for a civilized society,
according to the Western standard, thus turning Eastern Europe into a oddity, a live case-
study that may be approached and within which the traveler, as in Casanova's case, being
able to escape his own self, like during a role-play, may set up a new ethos constructed
according to new manners and values, proper to that very society.

It is, in fact, this aspect that attracts the attention of the Westerners, not only
the fact that the backwardness allows to study in real time the institutions that the West has
transcended, but also theories on the functioning of the institutions may be tested.

Going further, Eastern Europe is also identified by the travelers as being at the
outskirts of the “civilized” world, given that it stands as the border with the Orient, reason for
which the travelers might be influenced by this situation in assessing its institutions. On the
other hand, given it was a region where at the time of the accounts even the agrarian society
was rudimentary, the travelers might be entitled to assess in this manner the state of affairs
and the lack of modernity which was a valid assumption.

On the other hand, upon research, there are some variables that may not be
extracted from their very context, in our case the historical context and the wars being fought
in the area between two backward powers, Russia and the Ottomans and the semi-
backwardness (at least in what concerns productivity) of the Habsburg Empire which overlap
in the area. Moreover, there is also the point of meeting of two different rites, Christianity
and Islam, these also contributing in an extended manner to the profile of the Eastern
European, at least as in terms of what Hans Morgenthau identifies as “national character”, to
the national character of the Eastern European contributing mainly the two variables-
ethnicity within diversity and religion, causing thus the “manners” which the travelers
identified as lacking, or rather promoting a language of violence, known to all people, but
easier to employ in societies where the statal framework has not yet been implemented as to
have the “monopoly of the legitimate violence”.

In fact, the accounts of the travelers pertaining to Catherine's the Great court
state to the slavery in which everybody found in regards to the Empress, given that the
Empress was the one to which everybody should swear allegiance, she was the one to have
the monopoly of violence and the one establishing the hierarchy upon which this violence
was to be transmitted- a very interesting account is that of the Empress granting military
positions even to the foreigners as a manner of connecting them to the state, but also the
manner in which violence passed as a chain from the higher ranks of the hierarchy to the
lowest, as main manner of manifestation of the discontent.

As such, in Russia described by the travelers, Catherine the Great is the state,
she is the law, the judge and the executor, and the institution it represents is the one that in
fact seems to suffice for the ruling of the land. Of course, this appears as the main flaw in the
functioning of the state, and the very hint to backwardness, no matter the reforms set in
place, as long as the state is not generated by modern institutions and within a valid
framework that would overthrow the feudal relations of vassality.

To conclude, the accounts of the travelers that “imagine” Eastern Europe,

according to Larry Wolff, paint an interesting picture of the situation in this part of the world
at that time, moreover in relation to slavery, or rather serfdom. In the description of slavery
exaggeration specific to travel literature and the wonders of discovery may be observed, but
even this very approach is highly suggestive in what regards the differences that existed
between the West and the East at the time, differences that may be explained by a multitude
of factors, such as the geographical position of these countries at the border with the Orient.

On the other hand, the peculiarities of the practices that the travelers encounter
and describe may of course be explained not only by the specificity of the region, but also by
the common practices and the diverse heritage of empires composed of populations that
would pass through the process of nation-building following the First World War.

However, pertaining to what travelers identified as slavery in Eastern Europe,

slavery specific to backward countries and which served as the main obstacle to
modernization, even though serfdom does not fit the generic definition of slavery as retained
at the time, the system that it sustained can be indeed held accountable even for the legacy
that manifests itself in the present, since having the majority of a population that has no sense
of property (situation to which communism has also contributed) represents the main
obstacle towards a modern society on its way to development by encouraging private
initiative and the commercial exchanges that would lead even to the successful alteration of
a “national character” crystallized around backward values.

REFERENCE:

WOLFF, Larry, “Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization in the Mind of
Enlightenment”, Stanford University Press, 1994