Note 59 — Chapter I · DEFINITION AND DISTINCTION FROM KINDRED PHENOMENA.

Here the debtor pawns one of the members of his family; among some other peoples (e.g. in the Malay Archipelago) he pawns himself; this is not essential. The main fact is that the pawn is in “bondage”, however temporarily, that he “has to serve his master.” Therefore, as long as the debt remains unpaid, the pawn is in the same condition as a slave. He has not to perform a fixed amount of labour, he must serve his master without any limitation; the master has over him a power that is, in principle, unlimited. Now we have to inquire: Is this pawn a slave, i.e. is he the property of his master? In a legal sense the creditor has not a right of property over his pawn; his right agrees with a kind of pignus which the Romans called antichresis, i.e. something yielding profit was handed over to the creditor, who utilized it instead of receiving the usual interest59. Yet the right of the holder of the pawn bore much resemblance to that of the owner: he had a utilis in rem actio, a vindicatio pignoris60. We, for our purpose, may classify the pawns among the slaves, if we can prove that sociologically a system of pawning performs the same function as a slave-system. And this certainly is the case. The same system of compulsory labour, the same subjection of the entire person exists, whether the subjected are perpetually slaves or temporarily pawns, viz. in those cases where, as among the Tshi-speaking peoples, the master’s power is in principle unlimited. Where pawns have a fixed amount of work to do, they are temporary serfs; but where (as is most often the case) no limit is put to the amount of work the master may exact from them, they are temporary slaves, and as long as they are slaves, take the same place as other slaves in the social system.