Passing judgement on people who lived so distantly in space and time is hard; e.g. for an Atzec warrior becoming a living offer to the Sun God was seen as a glorious death. Or a Chinese peasant mother would have been rather happy to know that her good looking son, once castrated, had become a eunuch at the Imperial Court, serving the Scion of Heaven.
There is as much slavery occuring today as any point in the past. If slavery is abhorrent now, it was abhorrent then. It takes thoughtlessness or indifference to say exploitation was somehow different then, and that a slave's life matters less, because it was in the past.
I am personally OK with passing harsh judgement of slavers, regardless of place or time.
Passing judgement on people who lived so distantly in space and time is hard; e.g. for an Atzec warrior becoming a living offer to the Sun God was seen as a glorious death. Or a Chinese peasant mother would have been rather happy to know that her good looking son, once castrated, had become a eunuch at the Imperial Court, serving the Scion of Heaven.
There is as much slavery occuring today as any point in the past. If slavery is abhorrent now, it was abhorrent then. It takes thoughtlessness or indifference to say exploitation was somehow different then, and that a slave's life matters less, because it was in the past.