Talk:List of slave owners

message: I'd like to revisit the discussion above and once again suggest shortening the list to slave owners after abolitionism emerged as a political force. There is no point in listing every affluent notable Roman. Pinkbeast (talk) 09:37, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  'Contrary to nature' does not equal abolitionist. And is there any evidence for abolitionism in ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia or any other Bronze Age society? If not then how can one claim it has existed as long as there has been slavery?LastDodo (talk) 10:51, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shorten list 

message: The image in the right-side Infobox of leg irons used on prisoners implies that slaves did something wrong and deserved to be slaves.  I know this is subtle, but it screamed out at me...so maybe there are others who see this too.  There are many appropriate images to place in this article; This is just not one of them.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.207.130.235 (talk) 20:21, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image in Infoxbox Implies Slaves were Guilty of Something 

message: "Slave owner" implies that enslaved individuals can be "owned" like property. Instead "enslaver" or something similar should be used, to remove this implication that humans can be property, rather than the reality that the enslavers are enforcing the state slavery on other people.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.187.88.97 (talk) 16:41, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be confusing to the majority of visitors to this page as it implies the slave holders were the original people who enslaved, which generally they were not.LastDodo (talk) 15:00, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terminology 

message: There are quite a few emperors, pharaohs, kings and other rulers on this list. While many of these people surely did own slaves personally, there were also many periods of history where slavery was restricted to states. I think we ought to distinguish between people who enslaved others in a private capacity vs. those who were served by people enslaved by the state they ruled. Some will argue that modern prison labor is a form of state slavery; will we be adding the recent governors of Arkansas to this list? pburka (talk) 17:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems reasonable to separate rulers from individual owners. Guettarda (talk) 00:33, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

text: I think it would be problematic to make distinctions. In some time periods the state was the property of the ruler, in others there was a sharp division, and in many cases it was a murky mix of the two. I would say that if someone benefited personally from the labor of an enslaved person - if they were served by household slaves, or if slaves worked on plantations or businesses producing goods for them - then they are a "slave holder" (which might be a better term than "slave owner".) If a certain person was the "Wazir of Whatsit" and it is known that there were slaves at the court of Whatsit, I can't see not listing the Wazir.Brianyoumans (talk) 16:20, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: For many periods of history slave ownership was restricted to the state; personal ownership of slaves was rarer. In fact, even when the United States abolished slavery an exception was left for "punishment for crime," and convict leasing wasn't outlawed until 1941. Various public officials in the United States still benefit directly from prison laborers as servants today, and forced labor as state punishment is still common around the world. My feeling is that we should keep the criteria for inclusion fairly tight, and I'm leaning towards including only people who enslaved others (i.e. owned, traded, or commanded slaves) in a personal capacity. (I'm not trying to draw a moral distinction; but I'm concerned the list might become unmanageable if the criteria for inclusion are too open ended.) If we're going to include rulers, then I think we still need a reference directly supporting them personally owning slaves; we shouldn't infer it from their position. pburka (talk) 18:17, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: "forced labor as state punishment is still common around the world" The main article here is Unfree labour and not slavery. And which source would define those bound by such obligations as slaves? Dimadick (talk) 16:09, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Sources like Current Affairs, Ad Week and Forbes, might, for example. That's why I'm suggesting that we not include people forced to labor by the state: it makes the scope of the list easier to manage. pburka (talk) 17:11, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Emperors and the like 

message: hi all, I note that  presently there are around 230 people listed in this article, of those about 190 lived 17th to 19th cents, and yet, for example, there are 1000s of romans at the category:Roman people by century, the majority of whom were slave owners (let alone all the other ancient peoples), who have not been included. Why the undue weight?". Coolabahapple (talk) 13:42, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The vast majority of people who lived in the Roman Empire were not slave owners, of course, and we shouldn't assume that simply because someone lived at that time that they were. However the Romans in Wikipedia skew heavily towards the aristocracy, so are more likely to have enslaved people. Of the Romans currently included in this list, most are unreferenced and most of their individual articles don't mention them being slave owners. I support the inclusion of more ancient people who are documented by reliable sources as owning or trading slaves. I encourage you to add references for the ones currently in the list and to expand it with additional people supported by sources. As the list grows, we should consider organizing it by era or regime, perhaps, instead of alphabetically. (I think you could find other ways this list is unbalanced, too: of the 18th and 19th century inclusions, a disproportionate number are Black people who owned or traded slaves, presumably because their cases are more unusual and therefore more interesting.) pburka (talk) 14:27, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Of the Romans currently included in this list, most are unreferenced and most of their individual articles don't mention them being slave owners'. Nor do they mention they own clothes, yet we can be sure they did, for as with slaves, it would be truly remarkable if they did not, even more so that none would mention this. LastDodo (talk) 12:18, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  At the moment this list is [[WP:UNDUE|unbalanced]] 

message: The comment about Penn being a slave owner "despite being a Quaker" is close to ahistorical - Penn died in 1718; the first Quaker meeting to condemn slavery in America was in 1711, and it was not widely discouraged among American Quakers until the 1750s. I haven't been able to figure out what the state of things was in England where Penn was, but abolition didn't really get much of a start there generally until about the 1770s. Brianyoumans (talk) 15:58, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not very familiar with the history of Quakerism and was trying to summarize the info on his page, particularly this: "Other Pennsylvania Quakers were more outspoken and proactive, being among the earliest fighters against slavery in America, led by Daniel Pastorius, founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania." as well as this sentence from the referenced newspaper: "It may be more surprising that our beloved Quaker founder, William Penn - a man who championed nonviolence and religious tolerance - was also a slave owner." Should we just drop the reference to Quakerism? pburka (talk) 16:10, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

text: I would drop the reference to Quakerism. If you read The Journal of John Woolman you can see that there were still plenty of slaveholding Quakers even in the 1740s. Pastorius may have begun the conversation in America with his piece in 1688, but it took a long time before his ideas were seriously considered. I don't think Penn was outside the Quaker mainstream at the time in being a slaveholder. Brianyoumans (talk) 20:05, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: . pburka (talk) 22:12, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Penn

message: The U.S. Census has the names of a few million slave owners, for example.census.govBilipede (talk) 22:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Renaming the page wouldn't change anything. Wikipedia lists of people contain no WP:REDLINKs, and thus only people who are notable per WP:BIO. — Chrisahn (talk) 20:01, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change the name to "List of NOTABLE slave owners) 

message: Historically, most royal rulers all around the globe over the centuries have owned slaves. They could potentially all be added to this article. For example, every signle Ottoman sultan could be inkluded in this list. So I am a little unsure who to include. Are this list only to include American slave ovners of American enslaved people? --Aciram (talk) 17:44, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who to include? 

message: It's been nearly one year since this page was nominated for deletion. The result of the discussion was a clear consensus to keep, but several editors noted that the page was poorly referenced. I've spent some time over the last year correcting this by adding references and context to most of the entries. There are now over two hundred references, almost all to reliable and explicit secondary sources. For some I haven't been able to find strong, secondary sources demonstrating "a consensus of historical evidence" as required by the lead. In some cases I found only primary sources (e.g. census records) or implied slave ownership ("planter" usually means slave owner, but it could depend on context). I was able to find reliable and explicit sources for some of the listed monarchs and figures from antiquity, but not most of them. As the list is now mostly sourced, I plan to start removing the unreferenced entries; we can address any poorly referenced ones in a subsequent round. I plan to relocate any removed entries into a subsection of this comment. pburka (talk) 21:53, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pruning 

message: ==== A ====
* Gnaeus Julius Agricola (AD 40–93), Roman general.
* Aleijadinho (1730/1738–1814), Brazilian sculptor and architect.
* Askia Mohammad I (1493–1528), also known as Askia the Great, ruler of the Songhai Empire.
* Jeptha Atherton, North Carolina
* Atahualpa (1502–1533), last Inca Emperor.
==== B ====
* Jacques Baby (1731–1789), French Canadian fur trader and landowner in Upper Canada
* William Wyatt Bibb (1781–1821), U.S. Congressman and 1st Governor of Alabama
* Brennus, a Gallic chieftain who led a sack of Rome in 387 BC
==== C ====
* Augustus Caesar (63 BC–14 AD), Roman emperor
* Julius Caesar (100–44 BC), Roman dictator
* Caligula (AD 12–41), Roman emperor
* Daniel Clark (1766–1813), Louisiana politician
* Claudius (10 BC–54 AD), Roman emperor
* Philip Cook (1817–1894), U.S. Congressman and Confederate general
* Samuel Cooper (1798–1876), United States Army staff officer and Confederate general
* George W. Crawford (1798–1872), 21st U.S. Secretary of War, 38th Governor of Georgia, and U.S. Congressman
==== D ====
* Richard Duncan (−1819) Landowner in New York state and Upper Canada and Upper Canada government official
==== E ====
* Peter Early (1773–1818), U.S. Congressman and 28th Governor of Georgia
==== F ====
*George Fitzhugh, a propagandist in the Antebellum South.
*Mariana Franko (d. after 1777), free person of color in Curaçao, in the Dutch West Indies. She is known as the central figure in a famous court case.
==== G ====
*Edward James Gay (18161889), U.S. Congressional representative from Louisiana
*Ghezo, King of the Dahomey in present-day Benin from 1818 to 1858
==== H ====
*Hadrian (76–138 AD), Roman emperor
*Hannibal (247 – 183/181 BC), Carthaginian general during the Second Punic War.
*Thomas C. Hindman (1828–1868), American politician, Confederate general, and planter
*Horace (65–8 BC), Roman poet
*Eppa Hunton, U.S. Senator from Virginia and a Confederate officer
==== L ====
* William Lowndes (1782–1822), American politician
==== M ====
*Yaqub al-Mansur (1160–1199), the third Almohad Muslim Caliph.
==== N ====
*Nero (37–68 AD), Roman emperor
* Nyberg -- This needs some sort of context
==== P ====
*Philip III of Macedon (359–317 BC), king of Macedonia
*Pompey (106–48 BC)
*Ptolemy I of Egypt
*Ptolemy II of Egypt (309–246 BC)
*Ptolemy III of Egypt
*Ptolemy IV of Egypt
*Ptolemy V of Egypt
*Ptolemy VI of Egypt (185–145 BC)
*Ptolemy VII of Egypt
*Ptolemy VIII of Egypt (182–116 BC)
*Ptolemy IX of Egypt (143/142 – 81 BC)
*Ptolemy X of Egypt (117–51 BC)
*Ptolemy XI of Egypt
*Ptolemy XII of Egypt
*Ptolemy XIII of Egypt (62/61 – 47 BC)
*Ptolemy XIV of Egypt (60/59 – 44 BC)
*Ptolemy of Mauretania (13/9 BC – 40 AD)
==== R ====
* J. G. M. Ramsey (1797–1884), American historian, physician, planter, and businessman.
* Stedman Rawlins (c. 1784–1830), English Governor of Saint Christopher (Saint Kitts) and plantation owner.
* William Barton Rogers (1804–1882), geologist, University of Virginia professor, founder of MIT.
==== S ====
*Majid bin Said of Zanzibar (1837–1870), first Sultan of Zanzibar.
*Thuwaini bin Said, Sultan of Muscat and Oman (1821–1866)
*William K. Sebastian (1812–1865), American politician
*Ismail Ibn Sharif (1632–1727)
*Benjamin Smith (1717–1770), slave trader
*Solomon (990–931 BC), ancient King of Israel
*Peter Burwell Starke (1813–1888), politician and Confederate general
*Sulla (138–78 BC), Roman consul and dictator
==== T ====
*Tegbessou King of the Kingdom of Dahomey from 1740 until 1774.
*Tewodros I, Emperor of Abyssinia from 1413 until 1414.
*Tiberius (42 BC – 37 AD) Roman emperor
*George Troup (1780–1856), U.S. Congressman and 32nd Governor of Georgia
==== V ====
* James Vann (1766–1809), Cherokee chief and holder of more than one hundred slaves in Georgia.
. I've removed about 60 unreferenced entries from the list and preserved them above. I encourage other editors to research them and, if you can find a reliable, secondary source, return them to the main list along with a few words of context and a citation. pburka (talk) 19:34, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unreferenced pruned entries 

message: * James Vann (1766–1809), Cherokee chief and holder of more than one hundred slaves in Georgia.
. I've removed about 60 unreferenced entries from the list and preserved them above. I encourage other editors to research them and, if you can find a reliable, secondary source, return them to the main list along with a few words of context and a citation. pburka (talk) 19:34, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  V