Democrats and slaves

Is it a paradox that the society that created the world’s first citizen democracy – in its original sense of people-power – also created the world’s first society with large numbers of slaves, in the fullest sense of wholly owned human chattels? Or was there some essential causal connection between these two inventions by the ancient Greek city of Athens? It seems a problem worth constantly re-exploring, not least today, when freedom and democracy – always coupled together – are two of the most powerful political slogans on offer.

They managed these things differently, once upon a time. A little over 150 years ago, the northern and southern states of the (dis) United States went to war – in large part, over these very issues. That wasn’t entirely