Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/809

 SOCIAL ASSIMILATION 79$

The conquerors enslave the subject men and marry the pick of the subject women. Thus the subjugated people forms a lower stratum in the new group. Slavery, the inevitable result of con- quest, denotes progress, however, for it supersedes slaughter. The chronicles of all peoples show the sequence of slavery on war, says Spencer. The Egyptians had a slave class recruited in war, and Assyrian history, through its inscriptions, reveals a state of society similar to that existing in Egypt. The Hebrews were slave-owners, and they themselves became later enslaved by the Romans. Semi-barbarous society, as seen in existing tribes, repeats the story. "The Damaras are idle creatures. What is not done by the women is left to the slaves, who are either descendants of impoverished members of their own tribe . ... or captured bushmen." "The Biluchi (a tribe of Asia) do not themselves do the laborious work of cultivation, but impose it upon the Jutts, the ancient inhabitants whom they have subjugated. Says Tennent: 'Slavery in Ceylon was an attribute of race ; and those condemned to it were doomed to toil from their birth.'" 1 After the conquest the conquering minority perceives that without some degree of adjustment or accommodation it will be impossible for the victor and the van- quished to live side by side, and so a definition of position and rights follows, which, in the course of time, develops into insti- tutions. Common life is now more advantageous than isolated life. Hence adjustment is made, the first result of which is some sort of political organization the establishment of social order which is the necessary basis of social progress. Exploita- tion is the dominant note in the treatment of the conquered by the conquerors, and social inequality becomes the principle of organization in the new society. The conquered people are enslaved, or at least become a vast industrial mass which must work for the conquerors. In the course of time they are differ- entiated into classes of more or less social esteem. The con- querors reserve to themselves the right of control, and soon form the military, priestly, and political classes of the group. The castes of the East point to subject or conquering races : the

1 SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, Vol. Ill, 468, 469.