by Nancy Reagin
Slavery is one of the oldest known human institutions. Only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—after more than four millennia of human history—did slavery come under significant political and cultural attack. The late eighteenth-century opposition to slavery, which became the international abolitionist movement, was not immediately successful. On the eve of the American Revolution, slavery was legal everywhere in the New World, everywhere in Africa, in most of Asia, and throughout the Mediterranean basin. Only in Northern Europe had slavery disappeared. Slavery as a system did not exist in France, but slaves from Haiti and other French colonies were regularly brought to the metropolis and held there.5 There was no system of slavery in Great Britain, and by the time of the Revolution, it was no longer legal for colonial residents or absentee British planters to bring their slaves into Britain. In 1772, in the case of Somerset v. Stewart, the Court of King’s Bench ruled that slaves could not be kept in Great Britain against their will.6 Lord Chief Justice Mansfield held that “the state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory, it’s so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law.”7
Although slavery would not be allowed in Britain, Mansfield had no interest in interfering with the lucrative African slave trade or the vast fortunes being made in the American colonies—where slave labor produced sugar in the Caribbean and tobacco, rice, and indigo on the mainland colonies. Thus, Lord Mansfield also declared that “contract for sale of a slave is good here; the sale is a matter to which the law properly and readily attaches, and will maintain the price according to the agreement.”8 Thus, the British were heavily involved in the African slave trade, and thousands of wealthy Britons owned slaves in the Caribbean, as absentee sugar planters, even if they could not bring their slaves home to London or Liverpool. During and immediately after the American Revolution, the New England and Middle Atlantic states either ended slavery directly or set it on the road to extinction in those states through gradual emancipation laws. Still, the institution remained firmly established in the new American Republic, just as it could be found in the galactic republic of Star Wars on Outer Rim worlds such as Tatooine and other planets under Hutt control.9
An etching showing the stowage of slaves on the British slave ship Brookes, c. 1788.
After the Revolution, slavery remained secure in the American South. The new American nation, the world’s first successful republic and the first place to provide political rights for substantial numbers of citizens, was a slaveholder’s republic. The irony of American slave-owners such as Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Mason fighting to gain their liberty was not lost on British Tories, who mocked the American revolutionaries: not a few Englishmen read the Declaration of Independence, mostly written by Thomas Jefferson (who famously owned about 150 slaves at the time), and wondered, as did Samuel Johnson, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”10 The irony, of course, is that political liberty, democratic elections, and a republican form of government are not necessarily incompatible with slavery.
Nineteenth-century England and France had limited suffrage and were hardly democratic in any meaningful way. Perhaps because the power of the voters was limited, these nations were able to abolish slavery in their New World colonies. In the American republic, however, the vast majority of free men could vote. The Americans created a written constitution that supported civil liberties, due process of law, private property, and peaceful political change. Yet this constitution made it impossible to end slavery through the political process.11 Indeed, the end to American slavery came through a Civil War and the loss of some 630,000 lives (the equivalent of about 6.5 million people today).
The abolition of slavery in the United States (1865) and the end of serfdom in Russia (1861) set the stage for the final abolition of slavery in the New World. Not until 1890—with the adoption of the Brussels Act—was there a comprehensive multilateral treaty directed specifically against the African slave trade. This international agreement really only affected Europe and the Western Hemisphere, however. It did not end slavery in Africa, the Middle East, or the rest of Asia, where slavery continued openly and vigorously well into the twentieth century. Moreover, slavelike conditions continued, especially in the African colonies controlled by the “civilized” nations of Western Europe.
Dozens of captives rescued from a slave ship in 1884.
At the end of the nineteenth century, European nations hurried to colonize most of Africa, in what was called the “scramble for Africa.” These Europeans agreed that colonization was necessary to bring civilization to what they called the Dark Continent, and that one clear mark of civilization was the abolition of slavery. In their rush to control vast chunks of Africa, European imperialists agreed that slavery should be abolished under their tutelage and rule, but they all understood that “beyond the line” of Western society, slavery and other forms of forced labor would be eliminated slowly and only “as far as possible.” The nations signing the Brussels Act pledged to bring civilization to Africa, but this did not preclude violent conquest of additional territories in pursuit of ending the slave trade. Nor did the act either discourage or prevent, within the colonized areas, massive use of coerced native labor that resembled slavery.12
After World War I, the League of Nations organized a new international effort to finally abolish slavery. The Slavery Convention of 1926 was designed to pursue slavery and the slave trade into every corner of what Europeans considered to be the uncivilized world. The convention also committed the signatories to attack slavery “in all its forms,” including child trafficking, concubinage, debt-bondage, and forced labor.13 Slavery was now defined as “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.” The world community thought that slavery was on its last legs, but in fact it was not.
Less than a decade after the leading nations of the world pledged to end slavery “in all its forms,” the institution reemerged in new forms: Soviet gulags, German concentration camps and slave labor battalions, and Japanese POW camps and brothels run by the imperial army, where “comfort women” from all over Asia, as well as captured Australian nurses, were turned into sex slaves for the benefit of Japanese soldiers. In the six years between 1939 and 1945, Germany imported nearly as many slaves from other European nations as the New World plantation regimes imported from Africa in the nearly four hundred years between the discovery of the New World in 1492 and the final end of the African slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century. After World War II, German and Japanese leaders were tried and executed for “crimes against humanity” that included enslavement. Not surprisingly, enslavement was the first violation of human rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
In the modern world, slavery has been formally abolished in almost every country. Yet real slavery—the buying and selling of people—exists in many places outside the Western world. Slavelike conditions—including forced labor, forced prostitution, and illegal working conditions—can be found throughout the world.
“There Is Still Slavery in the Galaxy”: Star Wars and Slavery
To some extent, the Star Wars movies replicate the history of human bondage. The Star Wars galaxy is dominated by a modern, civilized Republic, yet it also has vestiges of the ancient and medieval worlds. Clothing often resembles modern notions of Roman garb; democracy exists, but there are still noble titles and royal families. Slavery should have been thoroughly abolished in the futuristic Republic that we enter at the beginning of The Phantom Menace, yet bondage is found in a variety of ways.14 On the “Outer Rim” of the galaxy, slavery flourishes—just as it did “beyond the line” of civilization in the European conquest of America and Africa.
The planet Kashyyyk, home to the Wookiees, is a hunting ground for slavers.15 Han Solo’s Wookiee partner, Chewbacca, was a slave he rescued. In some ways, this resembled the behavior of English adventurers (the Spanish would have called them pirates), like Francis Drake and John Hawkins, who liberated Spanish slaves in the sixteenth century Caribbean and then incorporated the former slaves into their crews. Drake and Hawkins, who sailed the Spanish Main seeking plunder and liberating slaves, might be seen as models for Han Solo, the smuggler, pirate, but ultimately the liberator.
On other planets in the world of Star Wars, people are bought and sold, and enslavement is open and unchallenged. We encounter a young Anakin Skywalker as a slave, and yet almost no one is dismayed by his bondage. It is a fact of life on the Outer Rim of the galaxy, “beyond the line” of true civilization. However, the naive Padmé Amidala, in Attack of the Clones, encountering the unambiguous slavery on Tatooine, declares, “I can’t believe there is still slavery in the galaxy.”
Yet forms of slavery also appear in the more civilized portions of the galaxy. This is not surprising, because, as art imitates life, even where slavery is banned, bondage often appears. Although slavery was not legal in England in the late eighteenth century, more than ten thousand slaves were probably in the realm on the eve of the American Revolution, serving mostly as household servants, as coachmen, and occasionally as cabin boys on ships. In the galaxy of Star Wars, slavery was similarly possible, even if not legally sanctioned.
Working our way through the six movies, we find slavery in the Republic and in the Empire. We find it on the rim of the galaxy, on small out-of-the-way planets, and in the heart of the galaxy.
Anakin Skywalker, Slave
In The Phantom Menace, we encounter obvious and familiar forms of slavery. Slavery is illegal in the Republic, but it exists in the Outer Rim, where the Republic has influence but no direct power. This is much like the world in the late nineteenth century. At the Berlin Conference of 1884 and the Brussels Convention of 1889, the major powers of Europe, as well as the United States, agreed to a complete end to the African slave trade and to end human bondage wherever these Western powers had influence. Yet in reality, slavery, bondage, and “slavelike conditions” proliferated in the European colonies of Africa, because the colonizing powers tacitly agreed that there would be little investigation of actual conditions “beyond the line” of civilization. At meetings in Europe, the representatives of republics and constitutional monarchies could agree to bring civilization to Africa, but on the ground, human freedom was fragile and often nonexistent.
Such is the case on Tatooine, where Shmi Skywalker and her young son, Anakin, are slaves. Shmi had been born free but was captured by pirates (along with her family) and sold into slavery; she and her son are eventually acquired by Gardulla the Hutt.16
Just as slavery on the periphery of civilization resembles the world of the nineteenth century, Shmi’s own story is familiar to all scholars of slavery. At various times in human history, capture by pirates or slave hunters was common and accepted. The very word slave comes from the word Slav, a reference to the Slavic peoples of the Baltic region, who were so commonly captured and enslaved by the Vikings that being a Slav became synonymous with lifetime servitude—slavery. Thus, Shmi was similar to the tens of thousands of Slavs who were seized by pirates, Viking raiders, and others and carried off to the Mediterranean basin, where they were sold into a lifetime of bondage. When these Slavs arrived in medieval Italy, France, or Greece, no one questioned their status; no one wondered or asked how they became slaves. Their status was simply taken for granted.
The same process also applied to Africans, kidnapped from their homes by other Africans who operated as slave catchers. The captives were marched to the coast and sold to European traders, who then brought them to the Americas, where they were sold and often resold. No one in Brazil, the Caribbean, or the American South questioned the provenance of slaves who were brought from Africa. As with medieval Slavs, their chains were proof enough of their status. So, too, with Shmi. She appears on the planet Tatooine as a slave available for purchase, so Gardulla the Hutt buys Shmi and her son, as she apparently buys other slaves brought to the planet.17
Gardulla later loses Shmi and her son, Anakin, to Watto the Toydarian in a bet over a Podrace. This is typical of the nature of slavery. Slaves in the ancient world, the medieval world, and the American South were property, to be bought, sold, given away, and used as collateral for debt or even to settle a wager.
When Qui-Gon Jinn, a Jedi Master, lands on Tatooine to repair his ship, he comes to the junkyard of Watto, looking for spare parts. There Jinn meets the young Anakin and, later, his mother, who are Watto’s slaves. Anakin has dreamed of becoming a Jedi, and in one of his dreams he “came back” to Tatooine as a Jedi “and freed all the slaves.” On meeting a real Jedi, the child Anakin thinks his dream will come true. He will be emancipated by Jinn, and then he can become a Jedi and return to free the slaves. Thus, the seemingly naive Anakin asks Jinn if he has come liberate him. Jinn honestly replies, “I didn’t actually come here to free slaves.” This is surely beyond the powers of a Jedi Knight, even though the Jedi are dedicated to justice. Slavery might be wrong and in violation of the laws of the Republic, but in a remote place such as Tatooine, it is a reality.
Yet on this trip to Tatooine, Jinn does free Anakin. Almost immediately after he encounters Anakin, Jinn realizes that this is an unusual child, with power and a connection to the Force. Jinn tests Anakin, discovering that he has an extraordinary high level of midi-chlorians, indicating that he has the potential to be a great Jedi. Yet Anakin is a slave, and Jinn does not have the money to buy him. Instead, he makes a wager with Watto that Anakin will win the Boonta Eve Podrace. If Anakin wins, then Jinn will become his owner. If Anakin loses, then Watto will take possession of Jinn’s ship. Jinn also tries to gain Anakin’s mother, Shmi, as part of the bet, but Watto has no interest in losing her. He can afford to lose a small boy in a bet over a race. Slave children are potentially valuable, but in the harsh world of Tatooine where life is fragile, a young child might never become a valuable adult slave. Shmi is pretty, however, young enough to bear children, and valuable. Watto will not risk losing her.
Qui-Gon wagers with Watto to win Anakin’s freedom. (The Phantom Menace)
Anakin, of course, wins the race. The Force is with him. His victory is also his ticket to freedom, just as many slaves, such as the Charleston, South Carolina, bondsman Denmark Vesey, gained freedom by winning lotteries. But Anakin’s freedom comes at a great cost. Anakin has to choose between freedom—and the chance to become a Jedi—and living with his mother. It is a cruel choice. In many ways, it reminds us of one of the great horrors of slavery in the United States, where families were often disrupted and broken apart by the whims of the masters. It was common to give small children as gifts for weddings or other special occasions. Children and parents were thus often separated by sale or movement. For example, the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass saw his mother for the last time when he was seven, about the same age Anakin is when forced to choose between freedom and family. For most slaves who escaped bondage, the same choice was before them. They might escape on their own, but they could not take family members with them.
Shmi encourages her son to choose freedom. When he wins the Podrace and thus the chance to escape his bondage, his mother tells him, “You have given hope to those who have none.” She then urges him to leave, even though he must leave her. “Now you are free, your dreams can come true” she tells him. So, Anakin leaves with Jinn and his Padawan (apprentice), Obi-Wan Kenobi. He is no longer a slave but a free person, soon to be an apprentice himself, learning to become a Jedi.
One might argue that Anakin is simply compelled to exchange one form of slavery—as the property of another—for a different kind of bondage, the ever-obedient apprentice in a strict monastic order, where selfishness and greed are submerged and, as much as possible, elimina
ted. Anakin will resist the obedience, break rules, and, of course, ultimately be seduced by the dark side of the Force. One key to this obedience is the elimination of anger and hatred. Yet for an ex-slave forced to abandon his mother, this might never be possible. He is free, but his mother remains in bondage. He can grow and excel, but only at a huge cost. The cost leads to both anger and guilt. Anakin must feel pangs of conscience that he gained freedom but his mother could not.
Anakin preparing to leave his mother, Shmi, on Tatooine. (The Phantom Menace)
The theme of Star Wars is ultimately the struggle between good and evil—the struggle between the light side of the Force and the dark side. The crisis of the galaxy is exacerbated by the transformation of Anakin Skywalker from an agent of good into Darth Vader, the embodiment of evil. Ultimately, Anakin can be seduced by the dark side because of his enormous pent-up anger. The slave boy, free himself, can never forget that his mother is still in bondage. Eventually, he returns to Tatooine to find his mother. By now, he is a Jedi, powerful and skilled.