Which is an important part of most imperial economies

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The Second Punic War, for example, swept southern Italy of its peasants. Small farms were replaced by huge estates worked by slave gangs. Inevitably many slaves or descendents of slaves become citizens sooner or later. Slaves have no homeland and are expected to forget those which they did have so when Dionysius of Syracuse freed his slaves he did so in order to increase the number of those who had a stake in the fight for the independence of Syracuse. The loyalty of an imperial fighting force and the comparatively low numbers of conquerors in relation to the populations which they conquer are made up for by superior technics, superior organization, and staying power: the imperial army can draw on vastly greater resources to those of any rebels.

Slavery,, is a disincentive to technical invention job function email list and as it is technical superiority which plays a key role in the rise of an empire, this disincentive may ultimately be fatal. Slavery ruins the home labour market just as imperial exploitation and piracy ultimately ruins the home producer. The only loyalty expected of a slave is to his master, not to a place. The empire is the persuit of power at the expense of home. Home becomes unimportant. The empire is limited not by the right of place but the right of power. It shatters other kingdoms and tribes and draws them into slavery, obliterating their homelands as it carves out new provinces determined by bureaucratic regulation, not the acknowledgement of geographical or ethnic borders.

The European carve-up of Africa is a case in point. Slaves are shipped off to distant lands. Communication is speeded up. The importance of place is reduced. Important is the name, the seal, the title of ownership. The centre of the world is the empire's capital. The soldier is sent to distant wars, the civil servant posted to a place his family cannot find on a map. Empires undermine loyalty to homeland, insisting instead on duty to a sovereign, a seal, a stamp, a flag, a sign.