Caribbean Vs Russian Serfs Essay

While both oppressed people with meager rights, Caribbean slaves and Russian serfs have some differences, especially on the relationship with land. Caribbean slaves, most of whom are kidnapped from African continent, suffered from harsh conditions with propinquity to their owners. Similarly, serfs in Russian Empire even experienced more brutality of the Russian nobility and tzar. Whereas they are both located in the lowest social status, they have some minor differences.
To begin with, their identities were different, despite the fact that they underwent similar cruel conditions. Serfdom in Russia is only a epitome of European feudal dependency on peasants, though it lasted much longer in Russia. Russian serfs were owned by no one but bounded
to the land they lived upon. They had lifelong tenancy on the same land. In other words, their labor force was kind of the bonus of ownership of a certain piece of land. Serfs had agreement to work on a land, therefore observing the rules offered by the landlord on the land. Compared with serfs in Russia, Carribbean slaves experienced much inferior status. Slaves in Caribbean were tied with the owner who purchased them, considered as a personal item with the owner. They had no rights, no interests, no land, no lifelong tenancy. More pitiably, Caribbean slaves did not even live in their own countries, their hometown. Forced to traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, a process with surprisingly high casuaty, the slaves were laboring on the land they knew nothing about. Conversely, serfs in Russia, at least, lived on their land they agreed to work. Nevertheless, no matter their identities and slightly differing conception, selfs and slaves were both heavily oppressed. Slavery and Serfdom were both hereditary, which means that their posterities were all shamed.
Caribean slaves’ and Russian serfs’ inferior social status and identities contributed to their modest human rights.
While slaves were almost considered as a hard property of the owners (items had no rights by the owners’ standard), serfs did have little, if no, liberty. According to the Code of Law in 1649, Russian landlords had no rights to kill the serfs, though punishment was permissable. Serfs in Russia, technically, were bound to the land, instead of the landowners. They could have little property and personal items, but that fact would be they were severly exploited. The little rights does not mean that serfs’ conditions surpassed slaves’ much. Serfs still did not have the freedom of movement. In the late seventeenth centuary, serfs could be transferred, if not sold, to another landowners without land. In other words, this change defiantly ignored the concept of serfdom, the bound to land. In both Caribbean territories and Russian empire, landowners had the rights to catch the fugitives (runaways) and the serfs or slaves were often cruelly punished, such as whipping for hours, if not killed.
In conclusion, Russian serfdom and Caribbean slavery had some slightly differences, while the conditions of serfs and slavers were similarly harsh. Although Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861 and Caribbean slavery was abolished in the nineteenth century, the traumas of the serdom and slavery equally equally tarnish the history of the human beings, bringing suffering to millions of
innocent people.