Proslavery thought
To be proslavery is to support slavery.
It is sometimes found in the thought of ancient philosophers, religious texts, and in American and British writings especially before the American Civil War, but also later through the 20th century.
In the Muslim world, slavery was traditionally sanctioned by religious scripture until the abolition of slavery in the 20th century, when new intepretations were made that prohibited slavery; however traditional intepretation were still argued by religious extremists in the 21st century.
Arguments in favor of slavery include deference to religious scripture, some people being natural slaves in need of supervision, slaves often being better off than the poorest non-slaves, practical social benefit for the society as a whole, and slavery being a time-proven practice by multiple great civilizations.
Ancient, medieval and early modern Jewish views
Jewish views on slavery are varied both religiously and historically. Judaism's ancient and medieval religious texts contain numerous laws governing the ownership and treatment of slaves. Texts that contain such regulations include the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the 12th-century Mishneh Torah by rabbi Maimonides, and the 16th-century Shulchan Aruch by rabbi Yosef Karo. The original Israelite slavery laws found in the Hebrew Bible bear some resemblance to the 18th-century BCE slavery laws of Hammurabi. The regulations changed over time. The Hebrew Bible contained two sets of laws, one for Canaanite slaves, and a more lenient set of laws for Hebrew slaves. From the time of the Pentateuch, the laws designated for Canaanites were applied to all non-Hebrew slaves. The Talmud's slavery laws, which were established in the second through the fifth centuries CE, contain a single set of rules for all slaves, although there are a few exceptions where Hebrew slaves are treated differently from non-Hebrew slaves. The laws include punishment for slave owners that mistreat their slaves. In the modern era, when the abolitionist movement sought to outlaw slavery, some supporters of slavery used the laws to provide religious justification for the practice of slavery.Today, slavery is considered absolutely unacceptable in Judaism.
Ancient Greek views
Greek philosopher Aristotle claimed that some people were slaves by nature, and as a result of this belief, he argued that their enslavement was the only way to serve their best interests. However, what Aristotle meant by the word "slavery" is regarded by some political philosophers today to be a subject of controversy. He wrote in book I of the Politics:
Accordingly, those who are as different as the soul from the body or man from beast—and they are in this state if their work is the use of the body, and if this is the best that can come from them—are slaves by nature. For them it is better to be ruled in accordance with this sort of rule, if such is the case for the other things mentioned. For he is a slave by nature who is capable of belonging to another–which is also why he belongs to another–and who participates in reason only to the extent of perceiving it, but does not have it.
Plato supported slavery in his Laws.
Early Christian views
Among the Church Fathers, the majority opinion was in favour of the moral permissibility of slavery. According to Augustine, God approved of the flogging of disobedient slaves: "You must use the whip, use it! God allows it. Rather, he is angered if you do not lash the slave. But do it in a loving and not a cruel spirit." John Chrysostom wrote that "to discipline and punish ignorant slaves is a great accolade, and not a perchance commendation". Tertullian condemned the Marcionites for their advocacy of the liberation of slaves: "what is more unrighteous, more unjust, more dishonest, than to benefit a foreign slave in such a way as to take him away from his master, claim him who is someone else's property".Thomas Aquinas argued that slavery was not part of natural law, but nonetheless he defended it as a consequence of human sinfulness and necessary for the good of society. He viewed the natural state of humanity as that which had existed prior to the fall of man, in which slavery was non-existent; on those grounds, many commentators see him as rejecting Aristotle's claim that some people were naturally slaves, although it is a matter of controversy as to whether he fully rejected Aristotle's views on the matter.
Islamic views
traditionally permits slavery, but regulates it.Islamic law states that what God has made halal can not be made haram by man. Islamic law permitted slavery, and slavery survived longest in the Muslim world: by the time of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery in 1950–1951, legal chattel slavery still existed only in the Islamic Arabian Peninsula: in Oman, in Qatar, in Saudi Arabia, in the Trucial States and in Yemen. Legal chattel slavery was finally abolished in the Arabian Peninsula in the 1960s: in Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1962, in Dubai in 1963, and Oman, as the last, in 1970; alongside slavery in Mauritania, which was banned in 1981, these were the last five nations in the world to abolish slavery. On the Arabian Peninsula, chattel slavery was replaced by the kafala system, which has been referred to as modern slavery.
Slavery could not be banned in the Muslim world if it was permitted by Islamic law, since what had been made halal by God can not be made haram by human. Consequently, when slavery was indeed banned in Islamic nations, Islamic sholars started to reinterpret Islamic texts, arguing that Islam prohibited slavery. This was necessary to justify the prohibition of slavery. This intepretation had not been the leading one before.
Most contemporary Islamic authorities argue that slavery is inapplicable in the modern world.
Nonetheless, a minority of contemporary Islamic jurists defend slavery by arguing that it is still relevant and permissible today, and it is actively practiced by Islamist extremist groups, such as Boko Haram in northern Nigeria and Islamic State in parts of Syria and Iraq.
Al-Farabi, early Islamic philosopher and jurist, wrote in support of slavery, arguing that some people are slaves by nature.
British proslavery movement
The British proslavery movement opposed the abolition of the slave trade – from when the campaign for its abolition first began in 1783 until 1807, when it was abolished – and then opposed the abolition of slavery itself in British colonies until that was legislated in 1833. Most of the British defenders of slavery were absentee owners of plantations in the British West Indies who economically benefited from the continuation of the institution.Paula E. Dumas, in her study of the history of the British proslavery movement, draws a distinction between anti-abolitionist and proslavery positions: "Anti-abolition arguments in this period focused on defects in the abolitionist platform, emphasising the illegal, illogical, inhumane, or pro-French nature of their aims. Proslavery arguments, on the other hand, positively promoted slavery and the slave trade". Dumas notes that proslavery positions largely disappeared from the British parliament after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. However, other authors do not so clearly draw such a distinction and include what Dumas calls anti-abolitionism in the topic of proslavery. Dumas traces the beginning of organised British proslavery movement to 1787, when the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants formed a subcommittee to organise opposition to abolitionism.
British proslavery thinkers defended slavery on the basis of the Bible. Politician Isaac Gascoyne gave a speech to the House of Commons on 10 June 1806 in which he argued that slavery was authorised by Leviticus 25:44-46. Similarly, on 23 February 1807, George Hibbert gave a speech to the House of Commons defending slavery on the basis of the Old Testament and the Epistle to Philemon. Dumas notes that attempts to directly defend slavery on the basis of the Bible largely disappeared following the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, but its defenders still drew on religious arguments, such that the institution of slavery benefited slaves by encouraging them to convert to Christianity.
After the abolition of the slave trade, British defenders of slavery drew a distinction between slavery itself and the slave trade, acknowledging the latter to be prohibited by the Bible, but arguing that the Bible permitted the former.
The American proslavery movement drew at times on the British proslavery movement as support. For example, Thomas Roderick Dew, in an essay published in September 1832, quoted approvingly British Foreign Secretary George Canning's speech to the House of Commons of 16 March 1824 opposing abolition, in which he compared emancipated slaves to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
John Locke
discusses slavery in his Second Treatise of Government. He rejects the idea that a person could voluntarily consent to enslavement, saying "a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact or by his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another". However, he goes on to argue that enslavement of those who are guilty of capital offences is permissible. He also defends the enslavement of those captured in war: "This is the perfect condition of slavery, which is nothing else, but the state of war continued, between a lawful conqueror and a captive".James Farr describes John Locke as "a merchant adventurer in the African slave trade and an instrument of English colonial policy who proposed legislation to ensure that 'every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves'". Farr argues that Locke's theoretical justifications of slavery were inadequate to justify his practical involvement in the slave trade. He sees this contradiction as ultimately unsolvable:
Locke never addressed, much less resolved, this contradiction. On Afro-American slavery, silence seems to have been his principal bequest to posterity. Locke's silence is all the more difficult to fathom inasmuch as in the Two Treatises he developed a general theory and justification of slavery for captives taken in a just war... I hope to show that this theory is woefully inadequate as an account of Afro-American slavery and, further, that Locke knew this... Locke's silence about the Afro-American slave practices that he helped forward remains profoundly unsettling and poses one of the greatest problems for understanding Locke as a theorist and political actor.
While Locke criticised slavery as "so vile and miserable an estate of man", Farr argues that this statement was meant primarily as a condemnation of the "enslavement" of the English, not necessarily as a judgement of the Atlantic slave trade.