Was slavery legal in the UFP?

[Vger23]

Yes it was absolutely legal.

Bow down to your masters, you petty slaves.

 

[Kor]

Conditions for Federation membership didn't seem as stringent in the TOS era. Things were more "hands-off" then.

Criteria such as having a single unified planetary government, not having a caste system with its associated discrimination, and even being warp-capable before contact could possibly be initiated, came out of later Trek spinoffs.

Kor

 

[Ceridwen]

I've theorized that the Vulcans were meant to be somewhat analogous to the Japanese. An enemy turned ally. America defeated and occupied Japan post WWII. The Earth/Vulcan situation might be similar.

That's certainly implied by the dialogue in "Whom Gods Destroy": "They were humanitarians and statesmen, and they had a dream. A dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars, a dream that made Mister Spock and me brothers." Maybe not a full-on enemy, but the union between Earth and Vulcan seems fairly recent, according to that episode, when Kirk was a cadet on the Axanar peace mission.

 

[BillJ]

That's certainly implied by the dialogue in "Whom Gods Destroy": "They were humanitarians and statesmen, and they had a dream. A dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars, a dream that made Mister Spock and me brothers." Maybe not a full-on enemy, but the union between Earth and Vulcan seems fairly recent, according to that episode, when Kirk was a cadet on the Axanar peace mission.

The Federation itself seemed much younger and influx in TOS than what is presented in later series.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Boyce cites the stereotypical, extreme example of Orion businessmen's chief product as a) a dumb joke or b) to snap Pike out of this uncharacteristic, unrealistic, morose line of thinking.

Aren't there some practices which are tolerated because they're a prominent part of another's culture, or useful enough for certain (supposed) reasons to look the other way?

 

[Ssosmcin]

I took it more as slavery was how Orion traders earned their living. They're separate from the Federation.

"You an Orion Trader dealing with green animal women? Slaves?"

Pike went right to "the point is..."

Like, "shit that was a bad example."

I'm sure there's more than one occupation to be had in the Orion system.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I took it more as slavery was how Orion traders earned their living. They're separate from the Federation.

"You an Orion Trader dealing with green animal women? Slaves?"

Pike went right to "the point is..."

Like, "shit that was a bad example."

I'm sure there's more than one occupation to be had in the Orion system.

Some are pirates.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Some are pirates.

Right? Exactly!

 

[comsol]

Even as a kid, I had the sense that the "conquered" line was McCoy teasing Spock, as the way Kelly delivered the line never really seemed to me that he meant that Vulcan was actually conqured.

Now as an adult, I wonder if the intent was a more figurative "conquering" - like Earthmen showing up at Vulcan and ending their isolationism or something, similar to Commodore Perry sailing into Tokyo Bay.

My assumption has been that McCoy was talking about Vulcan being "conquered" by logic.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

As I recall, the never-made script for Starfleet Academy by Harve Bennett and David Loughry had a villain from a planet whose economy was dependent on slavery who was trying to prevent slavery from being outlawed in the UFP.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Thanks! I couldn't remember the episode where that was uttered, for some reason I thought it was a little later, but yeah, they never really expanded or followed up on that. Maybe it made it seem like Spock was "allowed" to serve with Earthmen, but not really being equal despite being smarter. By the time we get to Journey To Babel, we feel like Vulcan stands beside Earth as an equal and always has done.

In the 1860s, America lost a war to themselves, and I believe that the Same thing happened on Vulcan 2 thousand years before Kirk's Birth.

 

[Henoch]

That's certainly implied by the dialogue in "Whom Gods Destroy": "They were humanitarians and statesmen, and they had a dream. A dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars, a dream that made Mister Spock and me brothers." Maybe not a full-on enemy, but the union between Earth and Vulcan seems fairly recent, according to that episode, when Kirk was a cadet on the Axanar peace mission.

And from Court Martial:

KIRK: Timothy, I haven't seen you since the Vulcanian expedition. (no reply) Well, I see our graduating class from the Academy is well represented. Corrigan. Teller.

Depends what was the Vulcanian expedition? By definition, an "expedition" is a journey or voyage undertaken by a group of people with a particular purpose, especially that of exploration, scientific research, or war. Was it a peaceful visit/tour/vacation to Vulcan by cadets to experience a foreign planet/culture or was it something to with a war? I would like to know.

 

[Vagabond Elf]

Depends what was the Vulcanian expedition was? By definition, an "expedition" is a journey or voyage undertaken by a group of people with a particular purpose, especially that of exploration, scientific research, or war. Was it a peaceful visit/tour/vacation to Vulcan by cadets to experience a foreign planet/culture or was it something to with a war? I would like to know.

My personal interpretation is that it was an expedition led by Vulcan, which is noteworthy because Vulcan in TOS clearly isn't all that invested in the Federation's federal institutions.

TOS has a lot of "not actually human but hard to tell the difference from the outside" going on with things like Rigellians, Ardanans, and a lot of others - in TNG, these people would have had minor prosthetics, but not in TOS. Heck, in TOS even a Klingon or an Orion is just a weirdly-coloured human. And so I assume that many of the apparently-Human people we see in Star Fleet aren't, actually. But the "major powers" - Vulcan, Andor, Tellar - are notable by their absence. It suggests they aren't super active in the Star Fleet. So an expedition initiated by the Vulcan government would be memorable and "Vulcanian Expedition" could well become the casual way of referring to it.

To the original question: various elements in TOS imply to me that the relative power of individual members is high compared to the central government, which implies there's a lot of "we don't agree but we can't change it because it's an internal matter" which suggests that if a system allowed for slavery before joining the Federation, the Federation couldn't force them to change it. That said, I suspect there's no legal mechanism for moving those slaves elsewhere, either - for comparison, the British Empire made it illegal to buy or sell slaves in 1807, but didn't make it illegal to own slaves until 1833. So I imagine (and this is of course headcanon) that if one of the Ardanan miners or Orion dancing girls made it off-world and onto a Star Fleet or other Federation controlled facility or ship, they'd instantly cease to be a slave.

By TNG the central government is stronger and the cultural ideals are more unified across the membership, but in TOS the Federation is more of a loose gaggle of states vaguely co-operating than a single polity.

 

[Noname Given]

I know that. But a high ranking member of the science and military arm of the UFP is considering it as a job.

Yep. And if he did so (per dialogue in the episode) he become a resident I'm the Orion Colonies.

And at least in the 23rd century a member world was able to live as it's inhabitants choose.

Per Kirk in TIS S2 Fridays Child:

KIRK: 'The Earth Federation offers one other thing, Akaar. Our laws. And the highest of all our laws states that your world is yours and will always remain yours..."

Meaning they could enact whatever local laws and customs they want without Federation interference.

The Federation might require certain obligations yes, but in TOS you saw member Worlds with a variety of different laws and customs and no one batted an eye at that arrangement.

 

[Qonundrum]

The situation in "The Cloud Minders" is more on point. Ardana was a member of the Federation, and the Federation did not seem terribly concerned about how the zenite was being mined until the Disrupters interrupted delivery, setting off the events of the story.

&

The Federation in TOS seemed more like a loose confederation of allied worlds than some large, centralized interstellar government. With each planet largely left to their devices and some of the more remote worlds seldom visited by strangers.

Note how often Spock needs to explain Vulcan culture and history to his crewmates, if only for the sake of the audience. One gets the impression -- on TOS at least -- that Vulcan is still an exotic and mysterious place for the average human. (This doesn't quite mesh with later series depicting Earth and Vulcan being well-acquainted for centuries by then, but, of course, none of that had been established back in sixties.)

With regards to Ardana, it seems like the Federation at large had no idea what was actually going on there -- and made the mistake of taking the oh-so cultured and civilized Ardanans at face value.

Oops!

The Federation weren't micromanagers then! They'd have put a stop to Plasus long before then for bypassing anti-slavery laws that would be (required, for lack of better word) for Federation membership.

 

[Greg Cox]

Conditions for Federation membership didn't seem as stringent in the TOS era. Things were more "hands-off" then.

Criteria such as having a single unified planetary government, not having a caste system with its associated discrimination, and even being warp-capable before contact could possibly be initiated, came out of later Trek spinoffs.

Kor

Exactly. A lot of confusion comes from folks trying to retroactively apply TNG-era lore to the Original Series.

 

[drt]

TOS has a lot of "not actually human but hard to tell the difference from the outside" going on with things like Rigellians, Ardanans, and a lot of others - in TNG, these people would have had minor prosthetics, but not in TOS. Heck, in TOS even a Klingon or an Orion is just a weirdly-coloured human. And so I assume that many of the apparently-Human people we see in Star Fleet aren't, actually. But the "major powers" - Vulcan, Andor, Tellar - are notable by their absence.

Exactly. A lot of confusion comes from folks trying to retroactively apply TNG-era lore to the Original Series.

Yeah, the designation of those aliens as the "major powers" is a fanon thing that became canonized in the later series. There's nothing in the original series that indicates the Andorians or Tellarites were of particular importance to the Federation, but fans decided they were key members because those aliens got speaking lines in "Journey to Babel" (an argument can be made the Vulcans were more important since they did have their own fully Vulcan-crewed starship at the tim).

On that note, I sort of lean towards the idea that for the Original Series that the Federation was largely founded by Earth and her independent colonies, with the alien members added later - as this helps explain how human-centric everything is, plus the general unfamiliarity with important alien races such as the Vulcans.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

Exactly. A lot of confusion comes from folks trying to retroactively apply TNG-era lore to the Original Series.

Which is why those 62 yr old lines got my attention. I sincerely believed that you couldn't have slavery or sentient being trafficking on your world in any form and still join the TOS era (or even ArcherSpeech Day era) UFP. Makes all those high fallutin' words about species dignity ring a little hollower, don't it?

Seems to me it would be a hard push to achieve that by Picard's era if his words were true.