This presentation will explore the practice of slavery as it has manifested across global cultures from antiquity up to the present. It interrogates a theory first proposed by ancient historian M.I. Finley in the mid-20th century that has become a staple of scholarship in all fields of slavery studies. Finley posited that all slaveholding societies can be divided into two groups, “Slave Societies” and “Societies with Slaves,” and that this distinction shaped social and economic relations in the two kinds of societies in fundamentally different ways. Noel Lenski has argued instead that this binary obscures more than it reveals in the essay on which the session is.

We will explore the truly global reach of slaving and enslavement stretching backward from the late 19th century CE to the third millennium BCE. In so doing, we will contextualize the intensification of slaveholding practices in certain periods and places, focusing particularly on ancient Rome and the U.S. South. By questioning the ‘slave society/societies with slaves’ binary, we come to better understand not just the deep and sordid history of slavery but also the ongoing struggles faced by the U.S. and the globe. The presentation sets a foundation for examining both the aftereffects of widespread enslavement and the ongoing battle to prevent slavery from arising in the present world in new and insidious forms.