Slavery
Encyclopedia
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property
to be bought and sold, and are forced to work
. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation
. Historically the institution was called "slavery" and was accepted by societies; in more recent times slavery is not acceptable, but conditions tantamount to slavery although not called such continue, with debt bondage
, indentured servitude
, serfdom
, domestic servants
kept in captivity, adoption
in which children are effectively forced to work as slaves, child soldiers
, and forced marriage
.
Slavery predates written records and has existed in many culture
s. The number of slaves today is higher than at any point in history
, remaining as high as 12 million
to 27 million, though this is probably the smallest proportion of the world's population in history. Most are debt slaves
, largely in South Asia
, who are under debt bondage
incurred by lenders, sometimes even for generations. Human trafficking
is primarily used for forcing women
and child
ren into sex industries
.
From about the nineteenth century "slavery" has been very closely associated with enslavement of non-white, usually black, people by white people. Historically there was no such association; enslavement of any group of people, typically prisoners in a war, by any other, and capturing individuals to become slaves was commonplace.
In pre-industrial societies slaves and their labour were economically extremely important. In modern mechanised societies there is less need for sheer massive manpower; Norbert Wiener
wrote that "mechanical labor has most of the economic properties of slave labor, though ... it does not involve the direct demoralizing effects of human cruelty."
sclave, from the Medieval Latin
sclavus, from the Byzantine Greek σκλάβος.
The word σκλάβος, in turn, comes from the ethnonym 'Slav'; an older theory connected it to the Greek verb skyleúo 'to strip a slain enemy'.
, chattels, of an owner and are bought and sold as commodities, is the original form of slavery. It is the least prevalent form of slavery today.
or bonded labor occurs when a person pledges themselves against a loan. The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their parents' debt. It is the most widespread form of slavery today.
is the illegal trade in human beings to work as slaves, in many cases providing sexual services.
, conscription
and penal labor
.
s. Prehistoric graves from about 8000 BC in Lower Egypt suggest that a Libyan people enslaved a San-like tribe. Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer
populations, as slavery is a system of social stratification. Mass slavery also requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Due to these factors, the practice of slavery would have only proliferated after the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution
about 11,000 years ago.
In the earliest known records slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi
(ca. 1760 BC), for example, stated that death was prescribed for anyone who helped a slave to escape, as well as for anyone who sheltered a fugitive. The Bible
refers uncritically to slavery as an established institution.
Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization, including Sumer
, Ancient Egypt
, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria
, Ancient India
, Ancient Greece
, the Roman Empire
, the Islam
ic Caliphate
, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas
. Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery
, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war
, child abandonment
, and the birth of slave children to slaves.
go as far back as Mycenaean Greece
. It is certain that Classical Athens
had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC; two to four fifths of thepopulation were slaves. As the Roman Republic
expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Greeks
, Illyrians
, Berbers
, Germans
, Britons
, Thracians
, Gauls
, Jews
, Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labour, but also for amusement (e.g. gladiator
s and sex slaves
). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts
(see Roman Servile Wars
); the Third Servile War
led by Spartacus
being the most famous and severe. By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society. At the least, some 25% of the population of Ancient Rome
was enslaved. According to some scholars, slaves represented 35% or more of
Italy
's population. In the city of Rome
alone, under the Roman Empire
, there were about 400,000 slaves. During the millennium from the emergence of the Roman Empire to its eventual decline, at least 100 million people were captured or sold as slaves throughout the Mediterranean and its hinterlands.
slave trade was mainly confined to the South and East: the Byzantine Empire
and the Muslim world
were the destinations, pagan
Central
and Eastern Europe
, along with the Caucasus
and Tartary
, were important sources. Viking
, Arab, Greek
and Jewish
merchants (known as Radhanite
s) were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages. The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj rebellion
which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world.
Medieval Spain
and Portugal
were the scene of almost constant Muslim
invasion of the predominantly Christian
area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus
to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In raid against Lisbon
, Portugal
in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba
, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves. From the 11th to the 19th century, North Africa
n Barbary Pirates
engaged in Razzias
, raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian
slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria
and Morocco
.
At the time of the Domesday Book
, compiled in 1086, nearly 10% of the English
population were slaves. Slavery in early medieval Europe
was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it — or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at e.g. the Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102)
, and the Council of Armagh (1171). In 1452, Pope Nicholas V
issued the papal bull
Dum Diversas
, granting Afonso V of Portugal
the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery which legitimized the slave trade, at least as a result of war. The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex
bull of 1455. However, Pope Paul III
forbade enslavement of the native American
s in 1537 in his papal bull Sublimus Dei
. Dominican friars who arrived at the Spanish settlement at Santo Domingo
strongly denounced the enslavement of the local native Americans. Along with other priests, they opposed their treatment as unjust and illegal in an audience with the Spanish king and in the subsequent royal commission.
The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe
brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world. From the mid to late 14th, through early 18th centuries, the Ottoman devşirme–janissary
system enslaved and forcibly converted to Islam an estimated 500,000 to one million non–Muslim (primarily Balkan Christian) adolescent males. After the Battle of Lepanto
approximately 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed from the Ottoman fleet. A few years later Cervantes
, who later wrote the famous book Don Quixote, was captured by corsairs and enslaved in Algiers, attempted to escape and was eventually ransom
ed; he wrote about the plight of Christian slaves in his fiction. Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into jasyr. Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into Poland–Lithuania between 1474–1569. There were more than 100,000 Russian captives in the Kazan Khanate
alone in 1551.
Approximately 10–20% of the rural population of Carolingian Europe
consisted of slaves. In Western Europe slavery largely disappeared by the later Middle Ages
. The trade of slaves in England
was made illegal in 1102, although England went on to become very active in the lucrative trading of African slaves to America from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Thrall
dom in Scandinavia was finally abolished in the mid-14th century. Slavery persisted longer in Eastern Europe
. Slavery in Poland
was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania
, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom
. In Kievan Rus
and Muscovy
, the slaves were usually classified as kholop
s.
In early Islam
ic states of the western Sudan, including Ghana
(750–1076), Mali
(1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai
(1275–1591), about a third of the population were enslaved.
Ibn Battuta
tells us several times that he was given or purchased slaves. The great 14th-century scholar Ibn Khaldun
, wrote: "the Black nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Blacks) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals". Slaves were purchased or captured on the frontiers of the Islamic world
and then imported to the major centers, where there were slave markets from which they were widely distributed. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the black Zanj
slaves may have constituted at least a half of the total population in lower Iraq
. At the same time, many tens of thousands of slaves in the region were also imported from Central Asia
and the Caucasus
. Many slaves were taken in the wars with the Christian nations of medieval Europe.
Slavery remained a major institution in Russia
until 1723, when Peter the Great
converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679. Russia
's more than 23 million privately-held serfs were freed from their lords by an edict of Alexander II
in 1861. State-owned serfs were emancipated
in 1866.
During the Second World War (1939-1945) Nazi Germany effectively enslaved many people
, both those considered undesirable and citizens of countries they conquered.
, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In Sierra Leone
in the 19th century about half of the population consisted of enslaved people.
In the 19th century at least half the population was enslaved among the Duala
of the Cameroon
, the Igbo
and other peoples of the lower Niger
, the Kongo
, and the Kasanje kingdom and Chokwe of Angola
. Among the Ashanti and Yoruba
a third of the population consisted of enslaved people.
The population of the Kanem
(1600–1800) was about a third-enslaved. It was perhaps 40% in Bornu
(1580–1890). Between 1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the Fulani jihad
states consisted of slaves.
The population of the Sokoto
caliphate formed by Fulanis and Hausas
in northern Nigeria
and Cameroon was half-slave in the 19th century. Between 65% to 90% population of Arab-Swahili
Zanzibar
was enslaved. The Swahili-Arab slave trade reached its height about 150 years ago, when, for example, approximately 20,000 slaves were considered to be carried yearly from Nkhotakota
on Lake Malawi to Kilwa. Roughly half the population of Madagascar
was enslaved.
According to the Encyclopedia of African History
, "It is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labor was extensive, especially in agriculture." The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia
in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of between 8 and 16 million.
Hugh Clapperton
in 1824 believed that half the population of Kano
were enslaved people. According to W. A. Veenhoven, "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal
, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way... Keltie
(The Partition of Africa, London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone
puts the figure as high as ten to one."
One of the most famous slave traders on the East African coast was Tippu Tip
, who was himself the grandson of an enslaved African. The prazeros slave traders, descendants of Portuguese and Africans, operated along the Zambezi
. North of the Zambezi, the waYao and Makua people
played a similar role as professional slave raiders and traders. The Nyamwezi
slave traders operated further north under the leadership of Msiri and Mirambo
.
. A slave market for captured Russian
and Persian
slaves was centred in the Central Asia
n khanate of Khiva
. According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere
(who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in India
in 1841. About 15% of the population of Malabar
were slaves. Slavery was abolished in British India by the Indian Slavery
Act V. of 1843. In Istanbul
about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves.
In East Asia
, the Imperial
government formally abolished slavery in China
in 1906, and the law became effective in 1910. Slave rebellion in China at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century was so extensive that owners eventually converted the institution into a female-dominated one. The Nangzan
in Tibet
an history were, according to Chinese sources, hereditary household slaves.
Indigenous slaves existed in Korea
. Slavery was officially abolished with the Gabo Reform
of 1894 but continued in reality until 1930. During the Joseon Dynasty
(1392–1910) about 30% to 50% of the Korean population were slaves. In late 16th century Japan
slavery as such was officially banned, but forms of contract and indentured labor persisted alongside the period penal codes' forced labor.
In Southeast Asia
, a quarter to a third of seventeenth- to twentieth-century populations in some areas of Thailand
and Burma were slaves. The hill tribe people in Indochina
were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians." A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large scale".
, and played a major role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering at least one revolution
and one civil war
, as well as numerous rebellions.
Slavery was prominent in Africa
, across the Atlantic Ocean
from the Americas, long before the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade. The maritime town of Lagos
, Portugal, Europe, was the first slave market created in Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale of imported African slaves – the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444. In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania
.
By 1552 black African
slaves made up 10 percent of the population of Lisbon
. In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas – in the case of Portugal, especially Brazil
. In the 15th century one third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.
Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World
. The Spanish
conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour, part of the wider Atlantic slave trade
. The Spanish colonies
were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba
and Hispaniola
,.
Bartolomé de Las Casas
a 16th-century Dominican
friar
and Spanish
historian participated in campaigns in Cuba (at Bayamo
and Camagüey
) and was present at the massacre of Hatuey
; his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement away from the use of natives as slaves and towards the importation of African Blacks as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the native
population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population (Laws of Burgos, 1512–1513).
The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. In 1518, Charles I of Spain
agreed to ship slaves directly from Africa. England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade
. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake
and his associates. A black man named Anthony Johnson of Virginia first introduced permanent black slavery in the 1650s by becoming the first holder in America of permanent black slaves. By 1750, slavery was a legal institution in all of the 13 American colonies
, and the profits of the slave trade and of West Indian
plantations amounted to 5% of the British economy
at the time of the Industrial Revolution
.
The Transatlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms, such as the Oyo empire
(Yoruba
), the Ashanti Empire
, the kingdom of Dahomey
, and the Aro Confederacy
. Europeans rarely entered the interior of Africa, due to fierce African resistance. The slaves were brought to coastal outposts where they were traded for goods.
An estimated 12 million Africans arrived in the Americas
from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Of these, an estimated 645,000 were brought to what is now the United States
. The usual estimate is that about 15 per cent of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships. Approximately 6 million black Africans were killed by others in tribal wars.
The white citizens of Virginia decided to treat the first Africans in Virginia as indentured servant
s. Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants. In 1655, John Casor
, a black man, became the first legally recognized slave in the present United States. According to the 1860 U.S. census, 393,975 individuals, representing 8% of all US families, owned 3,950,528 slaves. One-third of Southern families owned slaves.
The largest number of slaves were shipped to Brazil
. In the Spanish viceroyalty of New Granada
, corresponding mainly to modern Panama
, Colombia
, and Venezuela
, the free black population in 1789 was 420,000, whereas African slaves numbered only 20,000. Free blacks also outnumbered slaves in Brazil. In Cuba
, by contrast, free blacks made up only 15% in 1827; and in the French colony of Saint-Domingue
(present-day Haiti
) it was a mere 5% in 1789. Some half-million slaves, most of them born in Africa, worked the booming plantations of Saint-Domingue.
Author Charles Rappleye argued that
Although the trans-Atlantic slave trade ended shortly after the American Revolution, slavery remained a central economic institution in the Southern states of the United States
, from where slavery expanded with the westward movement of population. Historian Peter Kolchin wrote, "By breaking up existing families and forcing slaves to relocate far from everyone and everything they knew" this migration "replicated (if on a reduced level) many of [the] horrors" of the Atlantic slave trade.
Historian Ira Berlin
called this forced migration the Second Middle Passage
. Characterizing it as the "central event" in the life of a slave between the American Revolution
and the Civil War, Berlin wrote that whether they were uprooted themselves or simply lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily moved, "the massive deportation traumatized black people, both slave and free."
By 1860, 500,000 slaves had grown to 4 million. As long as slavery expanded, it remained profitable and powerful and was unlikely to disappear. Although complete statistics are lacking, it is estimated that 1,000,000 slaves moved west from the Old South
between 1790 and 1860.
Most of the slaves were moved from Maryland
, Virginia
, and the Carolinas
. Michael Tadman, in a 1989 book Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South, indicates that 60–70% of interregional migrations were the result of the sale of slaves. In 1820 a child in the Upper South had a 30% chance to be sold south by 1860.
According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates
and sold as slaves in North Africa
and Ottoman Empire
between the 16th and 19th centuries. There was also an extensive trade in Christian slaves in the Black Sea region for several centuries until the Crimean Khanate
was destroyed by the Russian Empire
in 1783. In the 1570s close to 20,000 slaves a year were being sold in the Crimean port of Kaffa. The slaves were captured in southern Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia
, Wallachia
, and Circassia
by Tatar
horsemen in a trade known as the "harvesting of the steppe". In Podolia
alone, about one-third of all the villages were destroyed or abandoned between 1578 and 1583. Some researchers estimate that altogether more than 3 million people were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate. It is estimated that up to 75% of the Crimean population consisted of slaves or
freedmen.
The Arab slave trade
lasted more than a millennium. As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia
’s slave population was estimated at 300,000. Along with Yemen, the Saudis only abolished slavery in 1962. Slaves in the Arab World
came from many different regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa
(mainly Zanj
), the Caucasus
(mainly Circassians), Central Asia
(mainly Tartars
), and Central
and Eastern Europe
(mainly Saqaliba
).
Under Oman
i Arabs Zanzibar
became East Africa
's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 enslaved Africans passing through every year during the 19th century. Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea
, Indian Ocean
, and Sahara
Desert from 650 AD to 1900 AD. Eduard Rüppell
described the heavy mortality of the enslaved Sudanese before reaching Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5000 made it to Egypt."
Central and Eastern European slaves were generally known as Saqaliba
(i.e., Slavs). The Moors
, starting in the 8th century, also raided coastal areas around the Mediterranean
and Atlantic Ocean
, and became known as the Barbary pirates
. It is estimated that they captured 1.25 million white slaves from Western Europe
and North America
between the 16th and 19th centuries. The mortality rate was very high. For instance, when plague broke out in Algiers
' overcrowded slave pens in 1662, some said that it carried off 10,000–20,000 of the city's 30,000 captives.
There are more slaves today than at any point in history
, remaining as high as 12 million
to 27 million, even though slavery is now outlawed in all countries. Several estimates of the number of slaves in the world have been provided. According to a broad definition of slavery used by Kevin Bales
of Free the Slaves
(FTS), an advocacy group linked with Anti-Slavery International
, there were 27 million people in slavery in 1999, spread all over the world. In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of 12.3 million forced labourers in the world,. Thanks to the ILO Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour (SAP-FL), the work of the ILO has been spearheaded in this field since early 2002. The Programme has successfully raised global awareness and understanding of modern forced labour; assisted governments to develop and implement new laws, policies and action plans; developed and disseminated guidance and training materials on key aspects of forced labour and human trafficking
; implemented innovative programmes which combine policy development, capacity building of law enforcement and labour market institutions, and targeted, field-based projects of direct support for both prevention of forced labour and identification and rehabilitation of its victims. Siddharth Kara
has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into the following three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage
(18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million). Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009.
The Middle East Quarterly
reports that slavery is still endemic in Sudan
. In June and July 2007, 570 people who had been enslaved by brick manufacturers
in Shanxi
and Henan
were freed by the Chinese government. Among those rescued were 69 children. In response, the Chinese government assembled a force of 35,000 police to check northern Chinese brick kilns for slaves, sent dozens of kiln supervisors to prison, punished 95 officials in Shanxi province for dereliction of duty, and sentenced one kiln foreman to death for killing an enslaved worker. In 2008, the Nepal
ese government abolished the Haliya
system of forced labour, freeing about 20,000 people. An estimated 40 million people in India
, most of them Dalit
s or "untouchables", are bonded
workers, working in slave-like conditions in order to pay off debts. Though slavery was officially abolished in China in 1910, the practice continues unofficially in some regions of the country. In Brazil
more than 5,000 slaves were rescued by authorities in 2008 as part of a government initiative to eradicate slavery.
In Mauritania
, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981), it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved with many used as bonded labour
. Slavery in Mauritania
was criminalized in August 2007. In Niger
, slavery is also a current phenomenon. A Nigerien study has found that more than 800,000 people are enslaved, almost 8% of the population. Many pygmies in the Republic of Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo belong from birth to Bantus in a system of slavery. Some tribal sheiks in Iraq
still keep blacks
, called Abd, which means servant or slave in Arabic, as slaves. Child slavery
has commonly been used in the production of cash crop
s and mining. According to the U.S. Department of State
, more than 109,000 children were working on cocoa farms alone in Côte d'Ivoire
(Ivory Coast) in "the worst forms of child labor" in 2002. Poverty has forced at least 225,000 Haiti
an children to work as restavec
s (unpaid household servants); the United Nations considers this to be a modern-day form of slavery.
Trafficking in human beings (also called human trafficking) is one method of obtaining slaves. Victims are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction. Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding
with drugs of abuse
to control their victims. "Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors," reports the U.S. Department of State in a 2008 study.
While the majority of victims are women, and sometimes children, who are forced into prostitution
(in which case the practice is called sex trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are forced into manual labour
. Due to the illegal nature of human trafficking, its exact extent is unknown. A U.S. Government report published in 2005, estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally. Another research effort revealed that between 1.5 million and 1.8 million individuals are trafficked either internally or internationally each year, 500,000 to 600,000 of whom are sex trafficking victims.
— as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves.
The Greek Stoics advocated the brotherhood of humanity and the natural equality of all human beings, and consistently critiqued slavery as against the law of nature. Emperor Wang Mang
abolished slave trading (although not slavery) in China
in 9 CE
.
The Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the right to enslave native Americans. A prominent critic of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies
was Bartolomé de las Casas
, who opposed the enslavement of Native Americans, and later also of Africans in America.
One of the first protests against the enslavement of Africans came from German and Dutch Quakers
in Pennsylvania in 1688. One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England
in 1772, with British judge Lord Mansfield
, whose opinion in Somersett's Case
was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions (such as the American colonies) could not be enforced in England. In 1777, Vermont
became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery (at the time Vermont was an independent nation). In 1794, under the Jacobins, Revolutionary France
abolished slavery. There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work of the British Anti-Slavery Society
.
William Wilberforce
received much of the credit although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Thomas Clarkson
. Wilberforce was also urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger
, to make the issue his own, and was also given support by reformed Evangelical John Newton
. The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on 25 March 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire
, Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. After the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade was passed, these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies. In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, Anti-Slavery International
, was formed in Britain by Joseph Sturge
, which campaigned to outlaw slavery in other countries.
Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron
seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos
", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.
.png)
In the United States
, abolitionist pressure produced a series of small steps towards emancipation. After January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited, but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; and those slaves already in the U.S. were only legally emancipated
in 1863. Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad
. Violence soon erupted, with the anti-slavery forces led by John Brown
, and Bleeding Kansas
, involving anti-slavery and pro-slavery settlers, became a symbol for the nationwide clash over slavery. By 1860 the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War
, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States.
In 1863 Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation
, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
(1865) prohibited slavery throughout the country.
In the 1860s, David Livingstone
's reports of atrocities within the Arab slave trade
in Africa stirred up the interest of the British public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern trade", at Zanzibar
in particular.
On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly
adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
, which declared freedom from slavery is an internationally recognized human right
. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
states:
Groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Group
, Anti-Slavery International
, Free the Slaves
, the Anti-Slavery Society
, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society continue to campaign to rid the world of slavery.
announced it will be seeking "to prosecute members of the ruling Myanmar junta
for crimes against humanity" over the continuous forced labour
of its citizens by the military at the International Court of Justice
. According to the International Labor Organization
(ILO), an estimated 800,000 people are subject to forced labour in Myanmar. It is estimated that in the last fifty years 40-50 million people have been sent to laogai
, the system of forced labor camps in the People's Republic of China
.
The Ecowas
Court of Justice is hearing the case of Hadijatou Mani in late 2008, where Ms. Mani hopes to compel the government of Niger
to end slavery in its jurisdiction. Cases brought by her in local courts have failed so far.
Economists have attempted to model during which circumstances slavery (and variants such as serfdom
) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for land owners when land is abundant but labour is not, so paid workers can demand high wages. If labour is abundant but land is scarce, then it becomes more costly for the land owners to have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only demand low wages due to the competition. Thus first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew. It was reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia (serfdom) as large new land areas with few people became available.. In his books, Time on the Cross
and Without Consent or Contract: the Rise and Fall of American Slavery, Robert Fogel
maintains that slavery was in fact a profitable method of production, especially on bigger plantations growing cotton that fetched high prices in the world market. It gave whites in the South higher average incomes than those in the North, but most of the money was spent on buying slaves and plantations.
Slavery is more common when the labour done is relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large scale growing of a single crop. It is much more difficult and costly to check that slaves are doing their best and with good quality when they are doing complex tasks. Therefore, slavery was seen as the most efficient method of production for large scale crops like sugar and cotton, whose output was based on economies of scale. This enabled a gang system
of labor to be prominent on large plantations where field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision. Each work gang was based on an internal division of labor that not only assigned every member of the gang to a precise task but simultaneously made his or her performance dependent on the actions of the others. The hoe hands chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excessive sprouts. The plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the rows of cotton plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an early version of the assembly line later to be found in factories.
Critics since the 18th century have argued that slavery tends to retard technological advancement, since the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading the efficiency of labour. Because of this, theoretical knowledge and learning in Greece—and later in Rome—was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.
Adam Smith
made the argument that free labor was economically better than slave labor, and argued further that slavery in Europe ended during the Middle Ages, and only then after both the church and state were separate, independent and strong institutions, that it is nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic and republican forms of governments since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves, and that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom when there was centralized government, or a central authority like a king or the church. Similar arguments appear later in the works of Auguste Comte
, especially when it comes to Adam Smith's belief in the separation of powers
or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith stated in the Lectures on Jurisprudence, "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues."
The weighted average global sales price of a slave is calculated to be approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa.
Worldwide slavery is a criminal offense but slave owners can get very high returns for their risk. According to researcher Siddharth Kara
, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $91.2 billion. That is second only to drug trafficking in terms of global criminal enterprises. The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $3,175, with a low of an average $950 for bonded labor and $29,210 for a trafficked sex slave. Approximately forty percent of all slave profits each year are generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4 percent of the world's 29 million slaves.
Robert E. Wright
has developed a model
that helps to predict when firms (individuals, companies) will be more likely to use slaves rather than wage workers, indentured servants, family members, or other types of laborers.
On May 21, 2001, the National Assembly of France passed the Taubira
law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity
. Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, remain an open issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first Europeans arrived and the Atlantic slave trade
was performed with a high degree of involvement of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African societies and individuals. Indeed, as already mentioned in this article, slavery persists in several areas of West Africa
until the present day.
Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade
. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.
The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery
and is still being pursued by a number of entities across the world. For example, the Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action Plan.
In September, 2006, it was reported that the UK Government may issue a "statement of regret" over slavery, an act that was followed through by a "public statement of sorrow" from Tony Blair
on November 27, 2006.
On February 25, 2007 the state of Virginia
resolved to 'profoundly regret' and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery. Unique and the first of its kind in the U.S., the apology was unanimously passed in both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown
, where the first slaves were imported into North America in 1619.
On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone
of London
, United Kingdom apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial slave trade
. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery," he said pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Jesse Jackson
praised Livingstone, and added that reparations should be made, one of his common arguments.
On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives
passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws. In June 2009, the US Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery".
matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since former slaves' relative lack of money means they often have limited access to a potentially expensive and futile legal process
. Mandatory systems of fines and reparations paid to an as yet undetermined group of claimants from fines, paid by unspecified parties, and collected by authorities have been proposed by advocates to alleviate this "civil court problem." Since in almost all cases there are no living ex-slaves or living ex-slave owners these movements have gained little traction. In nearly all cases the judicial system
has ruled that the statute of limitations
on these possible claims has long since expired.
generated with :de:Wikipedia:Helferlein/VBA-Macro for EXCEL tableconversion V1.7<\hiddentext>>
Slavery by region
Slavery by religion and era
Opposition and resistance
Uncited sources
United States
Slavery in the modern era
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
to be bought and sold, and are forced to work
Unfree labour
Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery as well as all other related institutions .-Payment for unfree labour:If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms:...
. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation
Remuneration
Remuneration is the total compensation that an employee receives in exchange for the service they perform for their employer. Typically, this consists of monetary rewards, also referred to as wage or salary...
. Historically the institution was called "slavery" and was accepted by societies; in more recent times slavery is not acceptable, but conditions tantamount to slavery although not called such continue, with debt bondage
Debt bondage
Debt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...
, indentured servitude
Indentured servant
Indentured servitude refers to the historical practice of contracting to work for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities during the term of indenture. Usually the father made the arrangements and signed...
, serfdom
Serfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
, domestic servants
Domestic worker
A domestic worker is a man, woman or child who works within the employer's household. Domestic workers perform a variety of household services for an individual or a family, from providing care for children and elderly dependents to cleaning and household maintenance, known as housekeeping...
kept in captivity, adoption
Adoption
Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...
in which children are effectively forced to work as slaves, child soldiers
Military use of children
The military use of children takes three distinct forms: children can take direct part in hostilities , or they can be used in support roles such as porters, spies, messengers, look outs, and sexual slaves; or they can be used for political advantage either as human shields or in...
, and forced marriage
Forced marriage
Forced marriage is a term used to describe a marriage in which one or both of the parties is married without his or her consent or against his or her will...
.
Slavery predates written records and has existed in many culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
s. The number of slaves today is higher than at any point in history
History of slavery
The history of slavery covers slave systems in historical perspective in which one human being is legally the property of another, can be bought or sold, is not allowed to escape and must work for the owner without any choice involved...
, remaining as high as 12 million
Million
One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione , from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.In scientific notation, it is written as or just 106...
to 27 million, though this is probably the smallest proportion of the world's population in history. Most are debt slaves
Debt bondage
Debt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...
, largely in South Asia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
, who are under debt bondage
Debt bondage
Debt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...
incurred by lenders, sometimes even for generations. Human trafficking
Human trafficking
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...
is primarily used for forcing women
Woman
A woman , pl: women is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent...
and child
Child
Biologically, a child is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. Some vernacular definitions of a child include the fetus, as being an unborn child. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority...
ren into sex industries
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
.
From about the nineteenth century "slavery" has been very closely associated with enslavement of non-white, usually black, people by white people. Historically there was no such association; enslavement of any group of people, typically prisoners in a war, by any other, and capturing individuals to become slaves was commonplace.
In pre-industrial societies slaves and their labour were economically extremely important. In modern mechanised societies there is less need for sheer massive manpower; Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
wrote that "mechanical labor has most of the economic properties of slave labor, though ... it does not involve the direct demoralizing effects of human cruelty."
Etymology
The English word slave comes from Old FrenchOld French
Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
sclave, from the Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...
sclavus, from the Byzantine Greek σκλάβος.
The word σκλάβος, in turn, comes from the ethnonym 'Slav'; an older theory connected it to the Greek verb skyleúo 'to strip a slain enemy'.
Types
Chattel slavery
Chattel slavery, so named because people are treated as the personal propertyPersonal property
Personal property, roughly speaking, is private property that is moveable, as opposed to real property or real estate. In the common law systems personal property may also be called chattels or personalty. In the civil law systems personal property is often called movable property or movables - any...
, chattels, of an owner and are bought and sold as commodities, is the original form of slavery. It is the least prevalent form of slavery today.
Bonded labor
Debt bondageDebt bondage
Debt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...
or bonded labor occurs when a person pledges themselves against a loan. The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their parents' debt. It is the most widespread form of slavery today.
Human trafficking
Human traffickingHuman trafficking
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...
is the illegal trade in human beings to work as slaves, in many cases providing sexual services.
Forced labor
Forced labor is when an individual is forced to work against their will, under threat of violence or other punishment, with restrictions on their freedom. It is also used to describe all types of slavery and may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdomSerfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
, conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
and penal labor
Penal labour
Penal labour is a form of unfree labour in which prisoners perform work, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence which involve penal labour include penal servitude and imprisonment with hard labour...
.
History
Early history
Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many cultureCulture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
s. Prehistoric graves from about 8000 BC in Lower Egypt suggest that a Libyan people enslaved a San-like tribe. Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
populations, as slavery is a system of social stratification. Mass slavery also requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Due to these factors, the practice of slavery would have only proliferated after the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution
Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution. It was the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and settlement. Archaeological data indicates that various forms of plants and animal domestication evolved independently in 6 separate locations worldwide circa...
about 11,000 years ago.
In the earliest known records slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi
Code of Hammurabi
The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved Babylonian law code, dating to ca. 1780 BC . It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay...
(ca. 1760 BC), for example, stated that death was prescribed for anyone who helped a slave to escape, as well as for anyone who sheltered a fugitive. The Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
refers uncritically to slavery as an established institution.
Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization, including Sumer
Sumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
, Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria
Assyria
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
, Ancient India
Bronze Age India
The Bronze Age in South Asia begins around 3000 BC, and in the end gives rise to the Indus Valley Civilization, which had its mature period between 2600 BC and 1900 BC. It continues into the Rigvedic period, the early part of the Vedic period...
, Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
, the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, the Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic Caliphate
Caliphate
The term caliphate, "dominion of a caliph " , refers to the first system of government established in Islam and represented the political unity of the Muslim Ummah...
, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
. Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery
Debt bondage
Debt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...
, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
, child abandonment
Child abandonment
Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting them. Causes include many social and cultural factors as well as mental illness. An abandoned child is called a foundling .-Causes:Poverty is often a...
, and the birth of slave children to slaves.
Classical Antiquity
Records of slavery in Ancient GreeceSlavery in Ancient Greece
Slavery was common practice and an integral component of ancient Greece throughout its rich history, as it was in other societies of the time including ancient Israel and early Christian societies. It is estimated that in Athens, the majority of citizens owned at least one slave...
go as far back as Mycenaean Greece
Mycenaean Greece
Mycenaean Greece was a cultural period of Bronze Age Greece taking its name from the archaeological site of Mycenae in northeastern Argolis, in the Peloponnese of southern Greece. Athens, Pylos, Thebes, and Tiryns are also important Mycenaean sites...
. It is certain that Classical Athens
Classical Athens
The city of Athens during the classical period of Ancient Greece was a notable polis of Attica, Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. Athenian democracy was established in 508 BC under Cleisthenes following the tyranny of Hippias...
had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC; two to four fifths of thepopulation were slaves. As the Roman Republic
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...
expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Greeks
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
, Illyrians
Illyrians
The Illyrians were a group of tribes who inhabited part of the western Balkans in antiquity and the south-eastern coasts of the Italian peninsula...
, Berbers
Berber people
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...
, Germans
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
, Britons
Britons (historical)
The Britons were the Celtic people culturally dominating Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Early Middle Ages. They spoke the Insular Celtic language known as British or Brythonic...
, Thracians
Thracians
The ancient Thracians were a group of Indo-European tribes inhabiting areas including Thrace in Southeastern Europe. They spoke the Thracian language – a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family...
, Gauls
Gauls
The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish....
, Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labour, but also for amusement (e.g. gladiator
Gladiator
A gladiator was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their legal and social standing and their lives by appearing in the...
s and sex slaves
Sexual slavery
Sexual slavery is when unwilling people are coerced into slavery for sexual exploitation. The incidence of sexual slavery by country has been studied and tabulated by UNESCO, with the cooperation of various international agencies...
). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts
Slave rebellion
A slave rebellion is an armed uprising by slaves. Slave rebellions have occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery, and are amongst the most feared events for slaveholders...
(see Roman Servile Wars
Roman Servile Wars
The Servile Wars were a series of three slave revolts in the late Roman Republic. See:...
); the Third Servile War
Third Servile War
The Third Servile War , also called the Gladiator War and the War of Spartacus by Plutarch, was the last of a series of unrelated and unsuccessful slave rebellions against the Roman Republic, known collectively as the Roman Servile Wars...
led by Spartacus
Spartacus
Spartacus was a famous leader of the slaves in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable...
being the most famous and severe. By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society. At the least, some 25% of the population of Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
was enslaved. According to some scholars, slaves represented 35% or more of
Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
's population. In the city of Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
alone, under the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, there were about 400,000 slaves. During the millennium from the emergence of the Roman Empire to its eventual decline, at least 100 million people were captured or sold as slaves throughout the Mediterranean and its hinterlands.
Medieval Europe
The early medievalEarly Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages was the period of European history lasting from the 5th century to approximately 1000. The Early Middle Ages followed the decline of the Western Roman Empire and preceded the High Middle Ages...
slave trade was mainly confined to the South and East: the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
and the Muslim world
Muslim world
The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization...
were the destinations, pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
Central
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, along with the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
and Tartary
Tartary
Tartary or Great Tartary was a name used by Europeans from the Middle Ages until the twentieth century to designate the Great Steppe, that is the great tract of northern and central Asia stretching from the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean inhabited mostly by Turkic, Mongol...
, were important sources. Viking
Viking
The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
, Arab, Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
and Jewish
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
merchants (known as Radhanite
Radhanite
The Radhanites were medieval Jewish merchants. Whether the term, which is used by only a limited number of primary sources, refers to a specific guild, or a clan, or is a generic term for Jewish merchants in the trans-Eurasian trade network is unclear...
s) were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages. The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj rebellion
Zanj Rebellion
The Zanj Rebellion was the culmination of series of small revolts. It took place near the city of Basra, located in southern Iraq over a period of fifteen years . It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over “tens of thousands of lives in...
which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world.
Medieval Spain
Spain in the Middle Ages
After the disorders of the passage of the Vandals and Alans down the Mediterranean coast of Hispania from 408, the history of Medieval Spain begins with the Iberian kingdom of the Arianist Visigoths , who were converted to Catholicism with their king Reccared in 587...
and Portugal
History of Portugal
The history of Portugal, a European and an Atlantic nation, dates back to the Early Middle Ages. In the 15th and 16th centuries, it ascended to the status of a world power during Europe's "Age of Discovery" as it built up a vast empire including possessions in South America, Africa, Asia and...
were the scene of almost constant Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
invasion of the predominantly Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...
to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In raid against Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba
Córdoba, Spain
-History:The first trace of human presence in the area are remains of a Neanderthal Man, dating to c. 32,000 BC. In the 8th century BC, during the ancient Tartessos period, a pre-urban settlement existed. The population gradually learned copper and silver metallurgy...
, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves. From the 11th to the 19th century, North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
n Barbary Pirates
Barbary corsairs
The Barbary Corsairs, sometimes called Ottoman Corsairs or Barbary Pirates, were pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, a term derived from the name of its Berber...
engaged in Razzias
Ghazw
Ghazi or ghazah is an Arabic term that means "to raid/foray." From it evolved the word "Ghazwa" which specifically refers to a battle led by the Islamic prophet Muhammad.In English language literature the word often appears as razzia, deriving from French, although it probably...
, raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
and Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
.
At the time of the Domesday Book
Domesday Book
Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...
, compiled in 1086, nearly 10% of the English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
population were slaves. Slavery in early medieval Europe
Slavery in medieval Europe
Slavery in early medieval Europe was relatively common. It was widespread at the end of antiquity. The etymology of the word slave comes from this period, the word sklabos meaning Slav. Slavery declined in the Middle Ages in most parts of Europe as serfdom slowly rose, but it never completely...
was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it — or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at e.g. the Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102)
Council of London (1102)
The Council of London in 1102 was a Roman Catholic church council of the church in England convened by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, to debate and pass decrees to reform the clergy. The council made several decisions, including confirming homosexuality as a sin in the English and wider church,...
, and the Council of Armagh (1171). In 1452, Pope Nicholas V
Pope Nicholas V
Pope Nicholas V , born Tommaso Parentucelli, was Pope from March 6, 1447 to his death in 1455.-Biography:He was born at Sarzana, Liguria, where his father was a physician...
issued the papal bull
Papal bull
A Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end in order to authenticate it....
Dum Diversas
Dum Diversas
Dum Diversas is a papal bull issued on June 18, 1452 by Pope Nicholas V, that is credited by some with "ushering in the West African slave trade." It authorized Afonso V of Portugal to conquer Saracens and pagans and consign them to indefinite slavery...
, granting Afonso V of Portugal
Afonso V of Portugal
Afonso V KG , called the African , was the twelfth King of Portugal and the Algarves. His sobriquet refers to his conquests in Northern Africa.-Early life:...
the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery which legitimized the slave trade, at least as a result of war. The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex
Romanus Pontifex
Romanus Pontifex is a papal bull written January 8, 1455 by Pope Nicholas V to King Afonso V of Portugal. As a follow-up to the Dum Diversas, it confirmed to the Crown of Portugal dominion over all lands discovered or conquered during the Age of Discovery. Along with encouraging the seizure of the...
bull of 1455. However, Pope Paul III
Pope Paul III
Pope Paul III , born Alessandro Farnese, was Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1534 to his death in 1549. He came to the papal throne in an era following the sack of Rome in 1527 and rife with uncertainties in the Catholic Church following the Protestant Reformation...
forbade enslavement of the native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
s in 1537 in his papal bull Sublimus Dei
Sublimus Dei
Sublimus Dei is a papal bull promulgated by Pope Paul III on June 2, 1537, which forbids the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and all other people...
. Dominican friars who arrived at the Spanish settlement at Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo, known officially as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Its metropolitan population was 2,084,852 in 2003, and estimated at 3,294,385 in 2010. The city is located on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River...
strongly denounced the enslavement of the local native Americans. Along with other priests, they opposed their treatment as unjust and illegal in an audience with the Spanish king and in the subsequent royal commission.
The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe
Ottoman wars in Europe
The wars of the Ottoman Empire in Europe are also sometimes referred to as the Ottoman Wars or as Turkish Wars, particularly in older, European texts.- Rise :...
brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world. From the mid to late 14th, through early 18th centuries, the Ottoman devşirme–janissary
Janissary
The Janissaries were infantry units that formed the Ottoman sultan's household troops and bodyguards...
system enslaved and forcibly converted to Islam an estimated 500,000 to one million non–Muslim (primarily Balkan Christian) adolescent males. After the Battle of Lepanto
Battle of Lepanto (1571)
The Battle of Lepanto took place on 7 October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Catholic maritime states, decisively defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire in five hours of fighting on the northern edge of the Gulf of Patras, off western Greece...
approximately 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed from the Ottoman fleet. A few years later Cervantes
Cervantes
-People:*Alfonso J. Cervantes , mayor of St. Louis, Missouri*Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, 16th-century man of letters*Ignacio Cervantes, Cuban composer*Jorge Cervantes, a world-renowned expert on indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse cannabis cultivation...
, who later wrote the famous book Don Quixote, was captured by corsairs and enslaved in Algiers, attempted to escape and was eventually ransom
Ransom
Ransom is the practice of holding a prisoner or item to extort money or property to secure their release, or it can refer to the sum of money involved.In an early German law, a similar concept was called bad influence...
ed; he wrote about the plight of Christian slaves in his fiction. Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into jasyr. Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into Poland–Lithuania between 1474–1569. There were more than 100,000 Russian captives in the Kazan Khanate
Khanate of Kazan
The Khanate of Kazan was a medieval Tatar state which occupied the territory of former Volga Bulgaria between 1438 and 1552. Its khans were the patrilineal descendants of Toqa Temür, the thirteenth son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan. The khanate covered contemporary Tatarstan, Mari El,...
alone in 1551.
Approximately 10–20% of the rural population of Carolingian Europe
Carolingian Empire
Carolingian Empire is a historiographical term which has been used to refer to the realm of the Franks under the Carolingian dynasty in the Early Middle Ages. This dynasty is seen as the founders of France and Germany, and its beginning date is based on the crowning of Charlemagne, or Charles the...
consisted of slaves. In Western Europe slavery largely disappeared by the later Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
. The trade of slaves in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
was made illegal in 1102, although England went on to become very active in the lucrative trading of African slaves to America from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Thrall
Thrall
Thrall was the term for a serf or unfree servant in Scandinavian culture during the Viking Age.Thralls were the lowest in the social order and usually provided unskilled labor during the Viking era.-Etymology:...
dom in Scandinavia was finally abolished in the mid-14th century. Slavery persisted longer in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
. Slavery in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom
Serfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
. In Kievan Rus
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
and Muscovy
Grand Duchy of Moscow
The Grand Duchy of Moscow or Grand Principality of Moscow, also known in English simply as Muscovy , was a late medieval Rus' principality centered on Moscow, and the predecessor state of the early modern Tsardom of Russia....
, the slaves were usually classified as kholop
Kholop
Kholops were feudally dependent people in Russia between the 10th and early 18th centuries. Their legal status was close to that of serfs.- Etymology :The word kholop was first mentioned in a chronicle for the year of 986. Its etymology is unclear...
s.
Islamic world
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic states of the western Sudan, including Ghana
Ghana Empire
The Ghana Empire or Wagadou Empire was located in what is now southeastern Mauritania, and Western Mali. Complex societies had existed in the region since about 1500 BCE, and around Ghana's core region since about 300 CE...
(750–1076), Mali
Mali Empire
The Mali Empire or Mandingo Empire or Manden Kurufa was a West African empire of the Mandinka from c. 1230 to c. 1600. The empire was founded by Sundiata Keita and became renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Mansa Musa I...
(1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai
Songhai Empire
The Songhai Empire, also known as the Songhay Empire, was a state located in western Africa. From the early 15th to the late 16th century, Songhai was one of the largest Islamic empires in history. This empire bore the same name as its leading ethnic group, the Songhai. Its capital was the city...
(1275–1591), about a third of the population were enslaved.
Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta
Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta , or simply Ibn Battuta, also known as Shams ad–Din , was a Muslim Moroccan Berber explorer, known for his extensive travels published in the Rihla...
tells us several times that he was given or purchased slaves. The great 14th-century scholar Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun was an Arab Tunisian historiographer and historian who is often viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology and economics...
, wrote: "the Black nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Blacks) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals". Slaves were purchased or captured on the frontiers of the Islamic world
Muslim world
The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization...
and then imported to the major centers, where there were slave markets from which they were widely distributed. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the black Zanj
Zanj
Zanj was a name used by medieval Arab geographers to refer to both a certain portion of the coast of East Africa and its inhabitants, Bantu-speaking peoples called the Zanj...
slaves may have constituted at least a half of the total population in lower Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
. At the same time, many tens of thousands of slaves in the region were also imported from Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
and the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
. Many slaves were taken in the wars with the Christian nations of medieval Europe.
Europe
Tsardom of Russia
The Tsardom of Russia was the name of the centralized Russian state from Ivan IV's assumption of the title of Tsar in 1547 till Peter the Great's foundation of the Russian Empire in 1721.From 1550 to 1700, Russia grew 35,000 km2 a year...
until 1723, when Peter the Great
Peter I of Russia
Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...
converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679. Russia
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
's more than 23 million privately-held serfs were freed from their lords by an edict of Alexander II
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
in 1861. State-owned serfs were emancipated
Emancipation reform of 1861
The Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia was the first and most important of liberal reforms effected during the reign of Alexander II of Russia. The reform, together with a related reform in 1861, amounted to the liquidation of serf dependence previously suffered by peasants of the Russian Empire...
in 1866.
During the Second World War (1939-1945) Nazi Germany effectively enslaved many people
Forced labor in Germany during World War II
The use of forced labour in Nazi Germany and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in German-occupied...
, both those considered undesirable and citizens of countries they conquered.
Africa
In SenegambiaSénégambia Confederation
Senegambia, officially the Senegambia Confederation, was a loose confederation between the West African countries of Senegal and its neighbour the Gambia, which is almost completely surrounded by Senegal. The confederation came into existence on 1 February 1982 following an agreement between the...
, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
in the 19th century about half of the population consisted of enslaved people.
In the 19th century at least half the population was enslaved among the Duala
Duala people
The Duala are an ethnic group of Cameroon. They primarily inhabit the littoral region to the coast and form a portion of the Sawa, or Cameroonian coastal peoples...
of the Cameroon
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...
, the Igbo
Igbo people
Igbo people, also referred to as the Ibo, Ebo, Eboans or Heebo are an ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects; today, a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism...
and other peoples of the lower Niger
Niger River
The Niger River is the principal river of western Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea...
, the Kongo
Kingdom of Kongo
The Kingdom of Kongo was an African kingdom located in west central Africa in what are now northern Angola, Cabinda, the Republic of the Congo, and the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo...
, and the Kasanje kingdom and Chokwe of Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
. Among the Ashanti and Yoruba
Yoruba people
The Yoruba people are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. The majority of the Yoruba speak the Yoruba language...
a third of the population consisted of enslaved people.
The population of the Kanem
Kanem Empire
The Kanem Empire was located in the present countries of Chad, Nigeria and Libya. At its height it encompassed an area covering not only much of Chad, but also parts of southern Libya , eastern Niger and north-eastern Nigeria...
(1600–1800) was about a third-enslaved. It was perhaps 40% in Bornu
Bornu Empire
The Bornu Empire was an African state of Nigeria from 1396 to 1893. It was a continuation of the great Kanem Empire founded centuries earlier by the Sayfawa Dynasty...
(1580–1890). Between 1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the Fulani jihad
Fulani War
The Fulani War of 1804-1810, also known as the Fulani Jihad or Jihad of Usman dan Fodio, was a military conquest in present day Nigeria and Cameroon. Expelled from Gobir by his former student Yunfa in 1802, Islamic reformer Usman dan Fodio assembled a Fulani army to lead in jihad against the Hausa...
states consisted of slaves.
The population of the Sokoto
Sokoto
Sokoto is a city located in the extreme northwest of Nigeria, near to the confluence of the Sokoto River and the Rima River. As of 2006 it has a population of 427,760...
caliphate formed by Fulanis and Hausas
Hausa-Fulani
Hausa-Fulani is a term used to refer collectively to the Hausa and Fulani people of West Africa. The two are grouped together because since the Fulani War their histories have been largely intertwined...
in northern Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
and Cameroon was half-slave in the 19th century. Between 65% to 90% population of Arab-Swahili
Swahili people
The Swahili people are a Bantu ethnic group and culture found in East Africa, mainly in the coastal regions and the islands of Kenya, Tanzania and north Mozambique. According to JoshuaProject, the Swahili number in at around 1,328,000. The name Swahili is derived from the Arabic word Sawahil,...
Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
was enslaved. The Swahili-Arab slave trade reached its height about 150 years ago, when, for example, approximately 20,000 slaves were considered to be carried yearly from Nkhotakota
Nkhotakota
Nkhotakota is a town and one of the districts in the Central Region of Malawi. It is on the shore of Lake Malawi and is one of the main ports on Lake Malawi. As of 2008, Nkhotakota had a population estimated at 33,150...
on Lake Malawi to Kilwa. Roughly half the population of Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...
was enslaved.
According to the Encyclopedia of African History
Encyclopedia of African History
The Encyclopedia of African History is a three-volume work dedicated to African history. It was edited by Kevin Shillington and published in New York by Routledge in November 2004,...
, "It is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labor was extensive, especially in agriculture." The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of between 8 and 16 million.
Hugh Clapperton
Hugh Clapperton
Hugh Clapperton was a Scottish traveller and explorer of West and Central Africa.He was born in Annan, Dumfriesshire, where his father was a surgeon. He gained some knowledge of practical mathematics and navigation, and at thirteen was apprenticed on board a vessel which traded between Liverpool...
in 1824 believed that half the population of Kano
Kano
Kano is a city in Nigeria and the capital of Kano State in Northern Nigeria. Its metropolitan population is the second largest in Nigeria after Lagos. The Kano Urban area covers 137 sq.km and comprises six Local Government Area - Kano Municipal, Fagge, Dala, Gwale, Tarauni and Nassarawa - with a...
were enslaved people. According to W. A. Veenhoven, "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal
Gustav Nachtigal
Gustav Nachtigal was a German explorer of Central and West Africa. He is further known as the German Empire's consul-general for Tunisia and Commissioner for West Africa. His mission as commissioner resulted in Togoland and Kamerun becoming the first colonies of a German colonial empire...
, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way... Keltie
John Scott Keltie
Sir John Scott Keltie F.R.G.S., F.S.S was a Scottish geographer, best known for his work with the Royal Geographic Society.Keltie was born in Dundee, and attended school in Perth...
(The Partition of Africa, London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone
David Livingstone
David Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa. His meeting with H. M. Stanley gave rise to the popular quotation, "Dr...
puts the figure as high as ten to one."
One of the most famous slave traders on the East African coast was Tippu Tip
Tippu Tip
Tippu Tip or Tib , real name Hamad bin Muḥammad bin Jumah bin Rajab bin Muḥammad bin Sa‘īd al-Murghabī, , was a Swahili-Zanzibari trader. He was famously known as Tippu Tib after an eye disease which made him blind...
, who was himself the grandson of an enslaved African. The prazeros slave traders, descendants of Portuguese and Africans, operated along the Zambezi
Zambezi
The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. The area of its basin is , slightly less than half that of the Nile...
. North of the Zambezi, the waYao and Makua people
Makua people
The Makua are the largest ethnic group in northern Mozambique, and also have a large population across the border in the Masasi District of Mtwara Region in southern Tanzania. They live in the region to the north of the Zambezi River...
played a similar role as professional slave raiders and traders. The Nyamwezi
Nyamwezi
The Nyamwezi, or Wanyamwezi, are the second-largest of over 120 ethnic groups in Tanzania. They live in the northwest central area of the country, between Lake Victoria and Lake Rukwa...
slave traders operated further north under the leadership of Msiri and Mirambo
Mirambo
Mtyela Kasanda, better known as Mirambo , was a Nyamwezi warlord, from 1860 to 1884. Mirambo started out as a trader, and owned trade caravans traveling from the Great Lakes region in western Tanzania to the coast, mostly dealing with ivory and slaves...
.
Asia
As late as 1908, women slaves were still sold in the Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
. A slave market for captured Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
and Persian
Persian people
The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...
slaves was centred in the Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
n khanate of Khiva
Khanate of Khiva
The Khanate of Khiva was the name of a Uzbek state that existed in the historical region of Khwarezm from 1511 to 1920, except for a period of Persian occupation by Nadir Shah between 1740–1746. It was the patrilineal descendants of Shayban , the fifth son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan...
. According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere
Henry Bartle Frere
Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere, 1st Baronet, GCB, GCSI, was a British colonial administrator.-Early life:Frere was born at Clydach House, Clydach, Monmouthshire, the son of Edward Frere, manager of Clydach Ironworks...
(who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in India
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...
in 1841. About 15% of the population of Malabar
Malabar District
Malabar District was an administrative district of Madras Presidency in British India and independent India's Madras State. The British district included the present-day districts of Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram, Palakkad , and Chavakad Taluk of Thrissur District in the northern part of...
were slaves. Slavery was abolished in British India by the Indian Slavery
Slavery in India
The history of slavery in India is complicated by the presence of factors which relate to the definition, ideological and religious perceptions, difficulties in obtaining and interpreting written sources, and perceptions of political impact of interpretations of written sources...
Act V. of 1843. In Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves.
In East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
, the Imperial
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
government formally abolished slavery in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
in 1906, and the law became effective in 1910. Slave rebellion in China at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century was so extensive that owners eventually converted the institution into a female-dominated one. The Nangzan
Social classes of Tibet
There were three main social groups in Tibet prior to 1959, namely ordinary laypeople , lay nobility , and monks...
in Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
an history were, according to Chinese sources, hereditary household slaves.
Indigenous slaves existed in Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
. Slavery was officially abolished with the Gabo Reform
Gabo Reform
The Gabo Reform describes a series of sweeping reforms introduced in Joseon Dynasty Korea beginning in 1894 and ending in 1896, during the reign of King Gojong, in response to the Donghak Peasant Revolution. Historians debate the degree of Japanese influence in this program, as well as its effect...
of 1894 but continued in reality until 1930. During the Joseon Dynasty
Joseon Dynasty
Joseon , was a Korean state founded by Taejo Yi Seong-gye that lasted for approximately five centuries. It was founded in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Goryeo at what is today the city of Kaesong. Early on, Korea was retitled and the capital was relocated to modern-day Seoul...
(1392–1910) about 30% to 50% of the Korean population were slaves. In late 16th century Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
slavery as such was officially banned, but forms of contract and indentured labor persisted alongside the period penal codes' forced labor.
In Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
, a quarter to a third of seventeenth- to twentieth-century populations in some areas of Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
and Burma were slaves. The hill tribe people in Indochina
Indochina
The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...
were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians." A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large scale".
Americas
Slavery in the Americas had a contentious history, dating back at least to the AztecsAztec slavery
In the structure of the Aztec or Mexica society, Slaves or tlacotin also constituted an important class.This slavery was very different from what Europeans of the same period were to establish in their colonies, although it had much in common with the slaves of classical antiquity. First, slavery...
, and played a major role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering at least one revolution
Haitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution was a period of conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic...
and one civil war
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, as well as numerous rebellions.
Slavery was prominent in Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, across the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
from the Americas, long before the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade. The maritime town of Lagos
Lagos, Portugal
Lagos is a municipality at the mouth of Bensafrim River and along the Atlantic Ocean, in the Barlavento region of the Algarve, in southern Portugal....
, Portugal, Europe, was the first slave market created in Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale of imported African slaves – the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444. In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania
Mauritania
Mauritania is a country in the Maghreb and West Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, by Western Sahara in the north, by Algeria in the northeast, by Mali in the east and southeast, and by Senegal in the southwest...
.
By 1552 black African
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
slaves made up 10 percent of the population of Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
. In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas – in the case of Portugal, especially Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. In the 15th century one third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.
Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
. The Spanish
Spanish people
The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....
conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour, part of the wider Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
. The Spanish colonies
Slavery in the Spanish New World colonies
Slavery in the Spanish colonies began with the enslavement of the local indigenous peoples in their homelands by Spanish settlers. Enslavement and production quotas were used to force the local labor to bring a return on the expedition and colonization investments...
were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
and Hispaniola
Hispaniola
Hispaniola is a major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island is located between the islands of Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, within the hurricane belt...
,.
Bartolomé de Las Casas
Bartolomé de las Casas O.P. was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians"...
a 16th-century Dominican
Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...
friar
Friar
A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders.-Friars and monks:...
and Spanish
Spanish people
The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....
historian participated in campaigns in Cuba (at Bayamo
Bayamo
Bayamo is the capital city of the Granma Province of Cuba, and one of the largest cities in the Oriente region.The community of Bayamo lies on a plain by the Bayamon River...
and Camagüey
Camagüey
Camagüey is a city and municipality in central Cuba and is the nation's third largest city. It is the capital of the Camagüey Province.After almost continuous attacks from pirates the original city was moved inland in 1528.The new city was built with a confusing lay-out of winding alleys that made...
) and was present at the massacre of Hatuey
Hatuey
Hatuey was a Taíno Cacique from the island of Hispaniola who lived in the early sixteenth century. He has attained legendary status for leading a group of natives in a fight against the invading Spaniards, and thus becoming the second fighter against colonialism in the New World after Anacaona...
; his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement away from the use of natives as slaves and towards the importation of African Blacks as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the native
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population (Laws of Burgos, 1512–1513).
The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. In 1518, Charles I of Spain
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.As...
agreed to ship slaves directly from Africa. England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake
Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He also carried out the...
and his associates. A black man named Anthony Johnson of Virginia first introduced permanent black slavery in the 1650s by becoming the first holder in America of permanent black slaves. By 1750, slavery was a legal institution in all of the 13 American colonies
European colonization of the Americas
The start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492. The first Europeans to reach the Americas were the Vikings during the 11th century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement in present day Newfoundland...
, and the profits of the slave trade and of West Indian
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
plantations amounted to 5% of the British economy
Economic history of the United Kingdom
The economic history of the United Kingdom deals with the history of the economy of the United Kingdom from the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain on May 1st, 1707, with the political union of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland...
at the time of the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
.
Oyo Empire
The Oyo Empire was a Yoruba empire of what is today southwestern Nigeria. The empire was established before the 14th century and grew to become one of the largest West African states encountered by European explorers. It rose to preeminence through its possession of a powerful cavalry and wealth...
(Yoruba
Yoruba people
The Yoruba people are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. The majority of the Yoruba speak the Yoruba language...
), the Ashanti Empire
Ashanti Empire
The Ashanti Empire , also Asanteman was a West Africa state of the Ashanti people, the Akan people of the Ashanti Region, now in Ghana. The Ashanti or Asante are a major ethnic group in Ghana, a powerful, militaristic and highly disciplined people of West Africa...
, the kingdom of Dahomey
Dahomey
Dahomey was a country in west Africa in what is now the Republic of Benin. The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful west African state that was founded in the seventeenth century and survived until 1894. From 1894 until 1960 Dahomey was a part of French West Africa. The independent Republic of Dahomey...
, and the Aro Confederacy
Aro Confederacy
The Aro Confederacy was a political union orchestrated by the Igbo subgroup, the Aro people, centered in Arochukwu in present day Southeastern Nigeria. Their influence and presence was across Eastern Nigeria into parts of the Niger Delta and Southern Igala during the 18th and 19th centuries...
. Europeans rarely entered the interior of Africa, due to fierce African resistance. The slaves were brought to coastal outposts where they were traded for goods.
An estimated 12 million Africans arrived in the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Of these, an estimated 645,000 were brought to what is now the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The usual estimate is that about 15 per cent of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships. Approximately 6 million black Africans were killed by others in tribal wars.
The white citizens of Virginia decided to treat the first Africans in Virginia as indentured servant
Indentured servant
Indentured servitude refers to the historical practice of contracting to work for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities during the term of indenture. Usually the father made the arrangements and signed...
s. Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants. In 1655, John Casor
John Casor
John Casor , a servant in Northampton County in the Virginia Colony, in 1654 became the first person of African descent in the Thirteen Colonies to be declared by the county court a slave for life. In one of the earliest freedom suits, Casor argued that he was an indentured servant who had been...
, a black man, became the first legally recognized slave in the present United States. According to the 1860 U.S. census, 393,975 individuals, representing 8% of all US families, owned 3,950,528 slaves. One-third of Southern families owned slaves.
The largest number of slaves were shipped to Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. In the Spanish viceroyalty of New Granada
Viceroyalty of New Granada
The Viceroyalty of New Granada was the name given on 27 May 1717, to a Spanish colonial jurisdiction in northern South America, corresponding mainly to modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. The territory corresponding to Panama was incorporated later in 1739...
, corresponding mainly to modern Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, and Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, the free black population in 1789 was 420,000, whereas African slaves numbered only 20,000. Free blacks also outnumbered slaves in Brazil. In Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, by contrast, free blacks made up only 15% in 1827; and in the French colony of Saint-Domingue
Saint-Domingue
The labour for these plantations was provided by an estimated 790,000 African slaves . Between 1764 and 1771, the average annual importation of slaves varied between 10,000-15,000; by 1786 it was about 28,000, and from 1787 onward, the colony received more than 40,000 slaves a year...
(present-day Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
) it was a mere 5% in 1789. Some half-million slaves, most of them born in Africa, worked the booming plantations of Saint-Domingue.
Although the trans-Atlantic slave trade ended shortly after the American Revolution, slavery remained a central economic institution in the Southern states of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, from where slavery expanded with the westward movement of population. Historian Peter Kolchin wrote, "By breaking up existing families and forcing slaves to relocate far from everyone and everything they knew" this migration "replicated (if on a reduced level) many of [the] horrors" of the Atlantic slave trade.
Historian Ira Berlin
Ira Berlin
Ira Berlin is an American historian, a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, and a past President of the Organization of American Historians. Berlin is the author of such books as Many Thousands Gone and Generations of Captivity.-Biography:Berlin received his Ph.D....
called this forced migration the Second Middle Passage
Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of people from Africa were shipped to the New World, as part of the Atlantic slave trade...
. Characterizing it as the "central event" in the life of a slave between the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
and the Civil War, Berlin wrote that whether they were uprooted themselves or simply lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily moved, "the massive deportation traumatized black people, both slave and free."
By 1860, 500,000 slaves had grown to 4 million. As long as slavery expanded, it remained profitable and powerful and was unlikely to disappear. Although complete statistics are lacking, it is estimated that 1,000,000 slaves moved west from the Old South
Old South
Geographically, Old South is a subregion of the American South, differentiated from the "Deep South" as being the Southern States represented in the original thirteen American colonies, as well as a way of describing the former lifestyle in the Southern United States. Culturally, the term can be...
between 1790 and 1860.
Most of the slaves were moved from Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, and the Carolinas
The Carolinas
The Carolinas is a term used in the United States to refer collectively to the states of North and South Carolina. Together, the two states + have a population of 13,942,126. "Carolina" would be the fifth most populous state behind California, Texas, New York, and Florida...
. Michael Tadman, in a 1989 book Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South, indicates that 60–70% of interregional migrations were the result of the sale of slaves. In 1820 a child in the Upper South had a 30% chance to be sold south by 1860.
Middle East
Barbary corsairs
The Barbary Corsairs, sometimes called Ottoman Corsairs or Barbary Pirates, were pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, a term derived from the name of its Berber...
and sold as slaves in North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
and Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
between the 16th and 19th centuries. There was also an extensive trade in Christian slaves in the Black Sea region for several centuries until the Crimean Khanate
Crimean Khanate
Crimean Khanate, or Khanate of Crimea , was a state ruled by Crimean Tatars from 1441 to 1783. Its native name was . Its khans were the patrilineal descendants of Toqa Temür, the thirteenth son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan...
was destroyed by the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
in 1783. In the 1570s close to 20,000 slaves a year were being sold in the Crimean port of Kaffa. The slaves were captured in southern Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
, Wallachia
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...
, and Circassia
Circassia
Circassia was an independent mountainous country located in the Caucasus region of Eurasia and was the largest and most important country in the Caucasus. Circassia was located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea...
by Tatar
Tatars
Tatars are a Turkic speaking ethnic group , numbering roughly 7 million.The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of around 5.5 million, about 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan.Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,...
horsemen in a trade known as the "harvesting of the steppe". In Podolia
Podolia
The region of Podolia is an historical region in the west-central and south-west portions of present-day Ukraine, corresponding to Khmelnytskyi Oblast and Vinnytsia Oblast. Northern Transnistria, in Moldova, is also a part of Podolia...
alone, about one-third of all the villages were destroyed or abandoned between 1578 and 1583. Some researchers estimate that altogether more than 3 million people were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate. It is estimated that up to 75% of the Crimean population consisted of slaves or
freedmen.
The Arab slave trade
Arab slave trade
The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in the Arab World, mainly Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa and certain parts of Europe during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade was focused on the slave markets of the Middle East and North Africa...
lasted more than a millennium. As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
’s slave population was estimated at 300,000. Along with Yemen, the Saudis only abolished slavery in 1962. Slaves in the Arab World
Arab world
The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...
came from many different regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...
(mainly Zanj
Zanj
Zanj was a name used by medieval Arab geographers to refer to both a certain portion of the coast of East Africa and its inhabitants, Bantu-speaking peoples called the Zanj...
), the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
(mainly Circassians), Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
(mainly Tartars
Tartary
Tartary or Great Tartary was a name used by Europeans from the Middle Ages until the twentieth century to designate the Great Steppe, that is the great tract of northern and central Asia stretching from the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean inhabited mostly by Turkic, Mongol...
), and Central
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
(mainly Saqaliba
Saqaliba
Saqaliba refers to the Slavs, particularly Slavic slaves and mercenaries in the medieval Arab world, in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily and Al-Andalus. It is generally thought that the Arabic term is a Byzantine loanword: saqlab, siklab, saqlabi etc. is a corruption of Greek Sklavinoi for...
).
Under Oman
Oman
Oman , officially called the Sultanate of Oman , is an Arab state in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the southwest. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the...
i Arabs Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
became East Africa
East Africa
East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 enslaved Africans passing through every year during the 19th century. Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea
Red Sea
The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...
, Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
, and Sahara
Sahara
The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...
Desert from 650 AD to 1900 AD. Eduard Rüppell
Eduard Rüppell
Wilhelm Peter Eduard Simon Rüppell was a German naturalist and explorer. Rüppell is occasionally transliterated to "Rueppell" for the English alphabet....
described the heavy mortality of the enslaved Sudanese before reaching Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5000 made it to Egypt."
Central and Eastern European slaves were generally known as Saqaliba
Saqaliba
Saqaliba refers to the Slavs, particularly Slavic slaves and mercenaries in the medieval Arab world, in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily and Al-Andalus. It is generally thought that the Arabic term is a Byzantine loanword: saqlab, siklab, saqlabi etc. is a corruption of Greek Sklavinoi for...
(i.e., Slavs). The Moors
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...
, starting in the 8th century, also raided coastal areas around the Mediterranean
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
and Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
, and became known as the Barbary pirates
Barbary corsairs
The Barbary Corsairs, sometimes called Ottoman Corsairs or Barbary Pirates, were pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, a term derived from the name of its Berber...
. It is estimated that they captured 1.25 million white slaves from Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
and North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
between the 16th and 19th centuries. The mortality rate was very high. For instance, when plague broke out in Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
' overcrowded slave pens in 1662, some said that it carried off 10,000–20,000 of the city's 30,000 captives.
Present day
History of slavery
The history of slavery covers slave systems in historical perspective in which one human being is legally the property of another, can be bought or sold, is not allowed to escape and must work for the owner without any choice involved...
, remaining as high as 12 million
Million
One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione , from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.In scientific notation, it is written as or just 106...
to 27 million, even though slavery is now outlawed in all countries. Several estimates of the number of slaves in the world have been provided. According to a broad definition of slavery used by Kevin Bales
Kevin Bales
Kevin Bales is an expert on modern slavery and President of Free the Slaves. Free the Slaves is the US sister organization of Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights organization. He is currently based in Washington, D.C....
of Free the Slaves
Free the Slaves
Free the Slaves is an international non-governmental organization and lobby group, established to campaign against the modern practice of slavery around the world. Formed in 2001, it is the largest anti-slavery organization in the U.S. It is the sister-organization of Anti-Slavery International...
(FTS), an advocacy group linked with Anti-Slavery International
Anti-Slavery International
Anti-Slavery International is an international nongovernmental organization, charity and a lobby group, based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1839, it is the world's oldest international human rights organization, and the only charity in the United Kingdom to work exclusively against slavery and...
, there were 27 million people in slavery in 1999, spread all over the world. In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of 12.3 million forced labourers in the world,. Thanks to the ILO Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour (SAP-FL), the work of the ILO has been spearheaded in this field since early 2002. The Programme has successfully raised global awareness and understanding of modern forced labour; assisted governments to develop and implement new laws, policies and action plans; developed and disseminated guidance and training materials on key aspects of forced labour and human trafficking
Human trafficking
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...
; implemented innovative programmes which combine policy development, capacity building of law enforcement and labour market institutions, and targeted, field-based projects of direct support for both prevention of forced labour and identification and rehabilitation of its victims. Siddharth Kara
Siddharth Kara
Siddharth Kara is an author and one of the world's foremost experts on modern day slavery and human trafficking. He is the first Fellow on Human Trafficking with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University...
has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into the following three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage
Debt bondage
Debt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...
(18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million). Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009.
The Middle East Quarterly
Middle East Quarterly
Middle East Quarterly is a peer reviewed quarterly journal, a publication of the American conservative think tank Middle East Forum founded by Daniel Pipes in 1994. It is devoted to subjects relating to the Middle East and Islam and analyzes the region "explicitly from the viewpoint of American...
reports that slavery is still endemic in Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
. In June and July 2007, 570 people who had been enslaved by brick manufacturers
2007 Chinese slave scandal
The 2007 Chinese slave scandal was a series of forced labour cases in Shanxi, China. Thousands of Chinese people including children had been forced to work as slaves in illegal brickyards, and tortured by the owners of the brickyards...
in Shanxi
Shanxi
' is a province in Northern China. Its one-character abbreviation is "晋" , after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period....
and Henan
Henan
Henan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan...
were freed by the Chinese government. Among those rescued were 69 children. In response, the Chinese government assembled a force of 35,000 police to check northern Chinese brick kilns for slaves, sent dozens of kiln supervisors to prison, punished 95 officials in Shanxi province for dereliction of duty, and sentenced one kiln foreman to death for killing an enslaved worker. In 2008, the Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
ese government abolished the Haliya
Haliya
Haliya is an agricultural bonded laborer who works on another person's land. The literal meaning of Haliya is 'one who ploughs'. Haliyas can be found throughout Nepal. But the Haliya system in the far western hilly part of Nepal is considered a bonded labor system.As of September 2008 the system...
system of forced labour, freeing about 20,000 people. An estimated 40 million people in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, most of them Dalit
Dalit
Dalit is a designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as Untouchable. Dalits are a mixed population, consisting of numerous castes from all over South Asia; they speak a variety of languages and practice a multitude of religions...
s or "untouchables", are bonded
Debt bondage
Debt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...
workers, working in slave-like conditions in order to pay off debts. Though slavery was officially abolished in China in 1910, the practice continues unofficially in some regions of the country. In Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
more than 5,000 slaves were rescued by authorities in 2008 as part of a government initiative to eradicate slavery.
In Mauritania
Slavery in Mauritania
Slavery in Mauritania is an entrenched phenomenon the national government has repeatedly tried to abolish, banning the practice in 1905, 1981, and August 2007...
, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981), it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved with many used as bonded labour
Debt bondage
Debt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...
. Slavery in Mauritania
Slavery in modern Africa
Slavery in Africa continues today. Slavery existed in Africa before the arrival of the Atlantic slave trade, as did an internal African slave trade and an Arab slave trade...
was criminalized in August 2007. In Niger
Niger
Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
, slavery is also a current phenomenon. A Nigerien study has found that more than 800,000 people are enslaved, almost 8% of the population. Many pygmies in the Republic of Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo belong from birth to Bantus in a system of slavery. Some tribal sheiks in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
still keep blacks
Afro-Arab
Afro-Arab refers to people of mixed Black African and genealogical Arab ancestral heritage and/or linguistically and culturally Arabized Black Africans...
, called Abd, which means servant or slave in Arabic, as slaves. Child slavery
Child slavery
-History:In the past, many children have been sold into slavery in order for their family to repay debts or for crimes. Sometimes this is also to give the children a better life than what they had with their family....
has commonly been used in the production of cash crop
Cash crop
In agriculture, a cash crop is a crop which is grown for profit.The term is used to differentiate from subsistence crops, which are those fed to the producer's own livestock or grown as food for the producer's family...
s and mining. According to the U.S. Department of State
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
, more than 109,000 children were working on cocoa farms alone in Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire
The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...
(Ivory Coast) in "the worst forms of child labor" in 2002. Poverty has forced at least 225,000 Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
an children to work as restavec
Restavec
A restavec is a child in Haiti who is sent by their parents to work for a host household as a domestic servant because the parents lack the resources required to support the child...
s (unpaid household servants); the United Nations considers this to be a modern-day form of slavery.
Trafficking in human beings (also called human trafficking) is one method of obtaining slaves. Victims are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction. Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding
Force-feeding
Force-feeding is the practice of feeding a person or an animal against their will. "Gavage" is supplying a nutritional substance by means of a small plastic tube passed through the nose or mouth into the stomach, not explicitly 'forcibly'....
with drugs of abuse
Drug abuse
Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, refers to a maladaptive pattern of use of a substance that is not considered dependent. The term "drug abuse" does not exclude dependency, but is otherwise used in a similar manner in nonmedical contexts...
to control their victims. "Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors," reports the U.S. Department of State in a 2008 study.
While the majority of victims are women, and sometimes children, who are forced into prostitution
Forced prostitution
Forced prostitution, also known as involuntary prostitution, is the act of performing sexual activity in exchange for money on a non-voluntary basis. There are a wide range of entry routes into prostitution, ranging from "voluntary and deliberate" entry, "semi-voluntary" based on pressure of...
(in which case the practice is called sex trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are forced into manual labour
Manual labour
Manual labour , manual or manual work is physical work done by people, most especially in contrast to that done by machines, and also to that done by working animals...
. Due to the illegal nature of human trafficking, its exact extent is unknown. A U.S. Government report published in 2005, estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally. Another research effort revealed that between 1.5 million and 1.8 million individuals are trafficked either internally or internationally each year, 500,000 to 600,000 of whom are sex trafficking victims.
Abolitionism
Slavery has existed, in one form or another, through the whole of recorded human historyHistory of the world
The history of the world or human history is the history of humanity from the earliest times to the present, in all places on Earth, beginning with the Paleolithic Era. It excludes non-human natural history and geological history, except insofar as the natural world substantially affects human lives...
— as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves.
The Greek Stoics advocated the brotherhood of humanity and the natural equality of all human beings, and consistently critiqued slavery as against the law of nature. Emperor Wang Mang
Wang Mang
Wang Mang , courtesy name Jujun , was a Han Dynasty official who seized the throne from the Liu family and founded the Xin Dynasty , ruling AD 9–23. The Han dynasty was restored after his overthrow and his rule marks the separation between the Western Han Dynasty and Eastern Han Dynasty...
abolished slave trading (although not slavery) in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
in 9 CE
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
.
The Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the right to enslave native Americans. A prominent critic of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies
Slavery in the Spanish New World colonies
Slavery in the Spanish colonies began with the enslavement of the local indigenous peoples in their homelands by Spanish settlers. Enslavement and production quotas were used to force the local labor to bring a return on the expedition and colonization investments...
was Bartolomé de las Casas
Bartolomé de Las Casas
Bartolomé de las Casas O.P. was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians"...
, who opposed the enslavement of Native Americans, and later also of Africans in America.
One of the first protests against the enslavement of Africans came from German and Dutch Quakers
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
in Pennsylvania in 1688. One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in 1772, with British judge Lord Mansfield
William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield
William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, SL, PC was a British barrister, politician and judge noted for his reform of English law. Born to Scottish nobility, he was educated in Perth, Scotland before moving to London at the age of 13 to take up a place at Westminster School...
, whose opinion in Somersett's Case
Somersett's Case
R v Knowles, ex parte Somersett 20 State Tr 1 is a famous judgment of the English Court of King's Bench in 1772 which held that slavery was unsupported by law in England and Wales...
was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions (such as the American colonies) could not be enforced in England. In 1777, Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery (at the time Vermont was an independent nation). In 1794, under the Jacobins, Revolutionary France
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
abolished slavery. There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work of the British Anti-Slavery Society
Anti-Slavery Society
The Anti-Slavery Society or A.S.S. was the everyday name of two different British organizations.The first was founded in 1823 and was committed to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. Its official name was the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the...
.
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire...
received much of the credit although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Thomas Clarkson
Thomas Clarkson
Thomas Clarkson , was an English abolitionist, and a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire. He helped found The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and helped achieve passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which ended British trade in slaves...
. Wilberforce was also urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
, to make the issue his own, and was also given support by reformed Evangelical John Newton
John Newton
John Henry Newton was a British sailor and Anglican clergyman. Starting his career on the sea at a young age, he became involved with the slave trade for a few years. After experiencing a religious conversion, he became a minister, hymn-writer, and later a prominent supporter of the abolition of...
. The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on 25 March 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
, Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. After the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade was passed, these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies. In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, Anti-Slavery International
Anti-Slavery International
Anti-Slavery International is an international nongovernmental organization, charity and a lobby group, based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1839, it is the world's oldest international human rights organization, and the only charity in the United Kingdom to work exclusively against slavery and...
, was formed in Britain by Joseph Sturge
Joseph Sturge
Joseph Sturge , son of a farmer in Gloucestershire, was an English Quaker, abolitionist and activist. He founded the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society . He worked throughout his life in Radical political actions supporting pacifism, working-class rights, and the universal emancipation of...
, which campaigned to outlaw slavery in other countries.
Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron
West Africa Squadron
The Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron at substantial expense in 1808 after Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807. The squadron's task was to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa...
seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos
Lagos
Lagos is a port and the most populous conurbation in Nigeria. With a population of 7,937,932, it is currently the third most populous city in Africa after Cairo and Kinshasa, and currently estimated to be the second fastest growing city in Africa...
", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, abolitionist pressure produced a series of small steps towards emancipation. After January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited, but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; and those slaves already in the U.S. were only legally emancipated
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly...
in 1863. Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
. Violence soon erupted, with the anti-slavery forces led by John Brown
John Brown (abolitionist)
John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...
, and Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War, was a series of violent events, involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the western frontier towns of the U.S. state of Missouri roughly between 1854 and 1858...
, involving anti-slavery and pro-slavery settlers, became a symbol for the nationwide clash over slavery. By 1860 the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States.
In 1863 Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly...
, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On...
(1865) prohibited slavery throughout the country.
David Livingstone
David Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa. His meeting with H. M. Stanley gave rise to the popular quotation, "Dr...
's reports of atrocities within the Arab slave trade
Arab slave trade
The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in the Arab World, mainly Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa and certain parts of Europe during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade was focused on the slave markets of the Middle East and North Africa...
in Africa stirred up the interest of the British public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern trade", at Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
in particular.
On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly
United Nations General Assembly
For two articles dealing with membership in the General Assembly, see:* General Assembly members* General Assembly observersThe United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation...
adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
, which declared freedom from slavery is an internationally recognized human right
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
states:
Groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Group
American Anti-Slavery Group
The American Anti-Slavery Group is a non profit coalition of abolitionist organizations that engages in political activism to abolish slavery in the world today...
, Anti-Slavery International
Anti-Slavery International
Anti-Slavery International is an international nongovernmental organization, charity and a lobby group, based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1839, it is the world's oldest international human rights organization, and the only charity in the United Kingdom to work exclusively against slavery and...
, Free the Slaves
Free the Slaves
Free the Slaves is an international non-governmental organization and lobby group, established to campaign against the modern practice of slavery around the world. Formed in 2001, it is the largest anti-slavery organization in the U.S. It is the sister-organization of Anti-Slavery International...
, the Anti-Slavery Society
Anti-Slavery Society
The Anti-Slavery Society or A.S.S. was the everyday name of two different British organizations.The first was founded in 1823 and was committed to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. Its official name was the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the...
, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society continue to campaign to rid the world of slavery.
Legal actions
In November 2006, the International Labour OrganizationInternational Labour Organization
The International Labour Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that deals with labour issues pertaining to international labour standards. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. Its secretariat — the people who are employed by it throughout the world — is known as the...
announced it will be seeking "to prosecute members of the ruling Myanmar junta
State Peace and Development Council
The State Peace and Development Council was the official name of the military regime of Burma , which seized power in 1988. On 30 March 2011, Senior General Than Shwe signed a decree to officially dissolve the Council....
for crimes against humanity" over the continuous forced labour
Unfree labour
Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery as well as all other related institutions .-Payment for unfree labour:If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms:...
of its citizens by the military at the International Court of Justice
International Court of Justice
The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands...
. According to the International Labor Organization
International Labour Organization
The International Labour Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that deals with labour issues pertaining to international labour standards. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. Its secretariat — the people who are employed by it throughout the world — is known as the...
(ILO), an estimated 800,000 people are subject to forced labour in Myanmar. It is estimated that in the last fifty years 40-50 million people have been sent to laogai
Laogai
Laogai , the abbreviation for Láodòng Gǎizào , which means "reform through labor," is a slogan of the Chinese criminal justice system and has been used to refer to the use of prison labor and prison farms in the People's Republic of China . It is estimated that in the last fifty years more than...
, the system of forced labor camps in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
.
The Ecowas
Economic Community of West African States
The Economic Community of West African States is a regional group of fifteen West African countries. Founded on 28 May 1975, with the signing of the Treaty of Lagos, its mission is to promote economic integration across the region....
Court of Justice is hearing the case of Hadijatou Mani in late 2008, where Ms. Mani hopes to compel the government of Niger
Niger
Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
to end slavery in its jurisdiction. Cases brought by her in local courts have failed so far.
Economics
Serfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for land owners when land is abundant but labour is not, so paid workers can demand high wages. If labour is abundant but land is scarce, then it becomes more costly for the land owners to have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only demand low wages due to the competition. Thus first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew. It was reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia (serfdom) as large new land areas with few people became available.. In his books, Time on the Cross
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery is a book authored by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman-Content:Time on the Cross directly challenged the long-held conclusions that American slavery was unprofitable, a moribund institution, inefficient, and extremely harsh for...
and Without Consent or Contract: the Rise and Fall of American Slavery, Robert Fogel
Robert Fogel
Robert William Fogel is an American economic historian and scientist, and winner of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He is now the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of American Institutions and director of the Center for Population Economics at the...
maintains that slavery was in fact a profitable method of production, especially on bigger plantations growing cotton that fetched high prices in the world market. It gave whites in the South higher average incomes than those in the North, but most of the money was spent on buying slaves and plantations.
Slavery is more common when the labour done is relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large scale growing of a single crop. It is much more difficult and costly to check that slaves are doing their best and with good quality when they are doing complex tasks. Therefore, slavery was seen as the most efficient method of production for large scale crops like sugar and cotton, whose output was based on economies of scale. This enabled a gang system
Gang system
The gang system is a reference within slavery to a division of labor established on the plantation. It is the more brutal of two main types of labor systems. The other form, known as the Task System, was less harsh and allowed the slaves more autonomy than did the gang system...
of labor to be prominent on large plantations where field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision. Each work gang was based on an internal division of labor that not only assigned every member of the gang to a precise task but simultaneously made his or her performance dependent on the actions of the others. The hoe hands chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excessive sprouts. The plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the rows of cotton plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an early version of the assembly line later to be found in factories.
Critics since the 18th century have argued that slavery tends to retard technological advancement, since the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading the efficiency of labour. Because of this, theoretical knowledge and learning in Greece—and later in Rome—was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
made the argument that free labor was economically better than slave labor, and argued further that slavery in Europe ended during the Middle Ages, and only then after both the church and state were separate, independent and strong institutions, that it is nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic and republican forms of governments since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves, and that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom when there was centralized government, or a central authority like a king or the church. Similar arguments appear later in the works of Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
, especially when it comes to Adam Smith's belief in the separation of powers
Separation of powers
The separation of powers, often imprecisely used interchangeably with the trias politica principle, is a model for the governance of a state. The model was first developed in ancient Greece and came into widespread use by the Roman Republic as part of the unmodified Constitution of the Roman Republic...
or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith stated in the Lectures on Jurisprudence, "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues."
The weighted average global sales price of a slave is calculated to be approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa.
Worldwide slavery is a criminal offense but slave owners can get very high returns for their risk. According to researcher Siddharth Kara
Siddharth Kara
Siddharth Kara is an author and one of the world's foremost experts on modern day slavery and human trafficking. He is the first Fellow on Human Trafficking with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University...
, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $91.2 billion. That is second only to drug trafficking in terms of global criminal enterprises. The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $3,175, with a low of an average $950 for bonded labor and $29,210 for a trafficked sex slave. Approximately forty percent of all slave profits each year are generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4 percent of the world's 29 million slaves.
Robert E. Wright
Robert E. Wright
Robert E. Wright is a business, economic, financial, and monetary historian and the inaugural Rudy and Marilyn Nef Family Chair of Political Economy at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota...
has developed a model
Conceptual model
In the most general sense, a model is anything used in any way to represent anything else. Some models are physical objects, for instance, a toy model which may be assembled, and may even be made to work like the object it represents. They are used to help us know and understand the subject matter...
that helps to predict when firms (individuals, companies) will be more likely to use slaves rather than wage workers, indentured servants, family members, or other types of laborers.
Apologies
Christiane Taubira
Christiane Taubira or Christiane Taubira-Delannon is a French politician. President of her party Walwari, she has served as a deputy at the French National Assembly since 1993, and was re-elected in 1997. Non-affiliated in 1993, she then voted for the investiture of the conservative Edouard...
law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity
Crime against humanity
Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings...
. Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, remain an open issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first Europeans arrived and the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
was performed with a high degree of involvement of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African societies and individuals. Indeed, as already mentioned in this article, slavery persists in several areas of West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
until the present day.
There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Calabar and other southern parts of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans.
Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.
The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery
Reparations for slavery
Reparations for slavery is a proposal that some type of compensation should be provided to the descendants of enslaved people in the United States, in consideration of the coerced and uncompensated labor their ancestors performed over several centuries...
and is still being pursued by a number of entities across the world. For example, the Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action Plan.
In September, 2006, it was reported that the UK Government may issue a "statement of regret" over slavery, an act that was followed through by a "public statement of sorrow" from Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
on November 27, 2006.
On February 25, 2007 the state of Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
resolved to 'profoundly regret' and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery. Unique and the first of its kind in the U.S., the apology was unanimously passed in both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown
Jamestown, Virginia
Jamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607 , it was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, following several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke...
, where the first slaves were imported into North America in 1619.
On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone
Ken Livingstone
Kenneth Robert "Ken" Livingstone is an English politician who is currently a member of the centrist to centre-left Labour Party...
of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, United Kingdom apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial slave trade
History of slavery
The history of slavery covers slave systems in historical perspective in which one human being is legally the property of another, can be bought or sold, is not allowed to escape and must work for the owner without any choice involved...
. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery," he said pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
praised Livingstone, and added that reparations should be made, one of his common arguments.
On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws. In June 2009, the US Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery".
Reparations
There have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves, or sometimes their descendants. Claims for reparations for being held in slavery are handled as a civil lawPrivate law
Private law is that part of a civil law legal system which is part of the jus commune that involves relationships between individuals, such as the law of contracts or torts, as it is called in the common law, and the law of obligations as it is called in civilian legal systems...
matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since former slaves' relative lack of money means they often have limited access to a potentially expensive and futile legal process
Service of process
Service of process is the procedure employed to give legal notice to a person of a court or administrative body's exercise of its jurisdiction over that person so as to enable that person to respond to the proceeding before the court, body or other tribunal...
. Mandatory systems of fines and reparations paid to an as yet undetermined group of claimants from fines, paid by unspecified parties, and collected by authorities have been proposed by advocates to alleviate this "civil court problem." Since in almost all cases there are no living ex-slaves or living ex-slave owners these movements have gained little traction. In nearly all cases the judicial system
Judiciary
The judiciary is the system of courts that interprets and applies the law in the name of the state. The judiciary also provides a mechanism for the resolution of disputes...
has ruled that the statute of limitations
Statute of limitations
A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...
on these possible claims has long since expired.
Other uses of the term
The word slavery is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing.- Many argue that military draftsConscriptionConscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
and other forms of coerced government labour constitute state-operated slavery. - Some libertariansLibertarianismLibertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
and anarcho-capitalistsAnarcho-capitalismAnarcho-capitalism is a libertarian and individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favour of individual sovereignty in a free market...
view government taxTaxTo tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
ation as a form of slavery. - Some proponents of animal rightsAnimal rightsAnimal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
apply the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves.
Movies
| Year | Original title | English title (if different) |
Format | Film genre | Director | Actor | Country | Book | Author |
| 1960 | Spartacus | | | historical drama film, historical epic | Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career... | Kirk Douglas Kirk Douglas Kirk Douglas is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past , Champion , Ace in the Hole , The Bad and the Beautiful , Lust for Life , Paths of Glory , Gunfight at the O.K... | | | |
|||||||
| 1969 | Queimada Burn! Burn! is a 1969 film directed by Gillo Pontecorvo; starring Marlon Brando. The plot is loosely based on events in the history of Guadeloupe.The main character is named after William Walker, the famous American filibuster... |
Burn! Burn! Burn! is a 1969 film directed by Gillo Pontecorvo; starring Marlon Brando. The plot is loosely based on events in the history of Guadeloupe.The main character is named after William Walker, the famous American filibuster... | | drama | Gillo Pontecorvo Gillo Pontecorvo Gillo Pontecorvo was an Italian filmmaker. He worked as a film director for more than a decade before his best known film La battaglia di Algeri was released... | Marlon Brando Marlon Brando Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St... | | | |
|||||||
| 1977 | Roots Roots (TV miniseries) Roots is a 1977 American television miniseries based on Alex Haley's fictional novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Roots received 36 Emmy Award nominations, winning nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings with the finale still... |
| TV series | drama, historical drama film | Chomsky Marvin J. Chomsky Marvin J. Chomsky is an American television and film director. He has also worked as a producer. He is a cousin of academic Noam Chomsky.... , Erman John Erman John Erman is an American television and film director, actor and producer.Born in Chicago, Illinois, Erman spent the early years of his career, after a few small roles in films such as The Cosmic Man , directing episodes of such primetime series as Peyton Place, The Fugitive, The Outer Limits,... , Greene et Moses Gilbert Moses Gilbert Moses III was an American stage, screen, and television director.-Early life and career:Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Moses was the co-founder of the Free Southern Theater company, an important pioneer of African-American theatre... | | | Roots: The Saga of an American Family Roots: The Saga of an American Family Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a novel written by Alex Haley and first published in 1976. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his descendants in the U.S.... | Alex Haley Alex Haley Alexander Murray Palmer Haley was an African-American writer. He is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.-Early life:... |
|||||||
| 1997 | Amistad | | | drama | Steven Spielberg Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an... | | | | |
|||||||
| 1998 | Beloved Beloved (film) Beloved is a 1998 film based on Toni Morrison's 1987 novel of the same name. It was directed by Jonathan Demme, and was produced by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions. The film stars Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover.-Plot:... |
| | drama | Jonathan Demme Jonathan Demme Robert Jonathan Demme is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. Best known for directing The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, he has also directed the acclaimed movies Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married, the Talking Heads concert movie Stop... | | | | Toni Morrison Toni Morrison Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved... |
|||||||
| 2005 | 500 Years Later 500 Years Later 500 Years Later is the title of an independent documentary film directed by Owen 'Alik Shahadah, written by M. K. Asante, Jr. released in 2005. It won five international film festival awards in the category of Best Documentary... |
| | documentary | Owen 'Alik Shahadah Owen 'Alik Shahadah Owen 'Alik Shahadah is a director, African writer, and scholar. He is best known for authoring works, which deal with African history, social justice, environmental issues, education and world peace... | | , | | |
|||||||
| 2006 | Amazing Grace Amazing Grace (2006 film) Amazing Grace is a 2006 U.S.–UK co-production film, directed by Michael Apted, about the campaign against slave trade in the British Empire, led by William Wilberforce, who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament. The title is a reference to the hymn... |
| | drama, historical drama film | Michael Apted Michael Apted Michael David Apted, CMG is an English director, producer, writer and actor. He is one of the most prolific British film directors of his generation but is best known for his work on the Up Series of documentaries and the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough.On 29 June 2003 he was elected... | | , | | |
|||||||
| 2007 | Trade Trade (film) Trade is a 2007 American film directed by Marco Kreuzpaintner and starring Kevin Kline. It was produced by Roland Emmerich and Rosilyn Heller. The film premiered January 23, 2007 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and opened in limited release on September 28, 2007... |
| | thriller | Marco Kreuzpaintner Marco Kreuzpaintner Marco Kreuzpaintner is a German film director and screenwriter.-Life:Kreuzpaintner was born March 11, 1977 in Rosenheim in Bavaria, Germany. He studied History of Art in Salzburg. He is a self-taught filmmaker with a background in film, advertising and music video production. He was the assistant... | | , | | |
See also
Various- AbuseAbuseAbuse is the improper usage or treatment for a bad purpose, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, sexual assault, violation, rape, unjust practices; wrongful practice or custom; offense; crime, or otherwise...
- Abolition of slavery timelineAbolition of slavery timelineAbolition of slavery occurred as abolition in specific countries, abolition of the trade in slaves and abolition throughout empires. Each of these steps was usually the result of a separate law or action.-Ancient times:...
- List of known slaves
- BandeirantesBandeirantesThe bandeirantes were composed of Indians , caboclos , and some whites who were the captains of the Bandeiras. Members of the 16th–18th century South American slave-hunting expeditions called bandeiras...
- BlackbirdingBlackbirdingBlackbirding is a term that refers to recruitment of people through trickery and kidnappings to work as labourers. From the 1860s blackbirding ships were engaged in seeking workers to mine the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands in Peru...
- Child labour
- Trafficking of childrenTrafficking of childrenTrafficking of children is a form of human trafficking. It is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receiving of children for the purpose of exploitation....
- CoolieCoolieHistorically, a coolie was a manual labourer or slave from Asia, particularly China, India, and the Phillipines during the 19th century and early 20th century...
s - ConscriptionConscriptionConscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
- FazendaFazendaFazendas were coffee plantations that spread into the interior of Brazil between 1840 and 1896. They created major export commodities for Brazilian trade, but also led to intensification of slavery in Brazil.- Creation of fazendas :...
s
- FreebornFreeborn"Freeborn" is a term associated with political agitator John Lilburne , a member of the Levellers, a 17th-century English political party. As a word, "freeborn" means to be born free, rather than to be born in slavery or bondage or vassalage...
- ImpressmentImpressmentImpressment, colloquially, "the Press", was the act of taking men into a navy by force and without notice. It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to...
- Industrial slaveIndustrial slaveAn industrial slave is a type of slave who typically worked in an industrial setting. These slaves often had work that was more dangerous than agricultural slaves.-United States:...
- Involuntary servitudeInvoluntary servitudeInvoluntary servitude is a United States legal and constitutional term for a person laboring against that person's will to benefit another, under some form of coercion other than the worker's financial needs...
- Master-slave dialecticMaster-slave dialecticThe Master-Slave dialectic is a famous passage of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. It is widely considered a key element in Hegel's philosophical system, and has heavily influenced many subsequent philosophers...
- Sambo's GraveSambo's GraveSambo's Grave is the burial site of a dark skinned cabin boy or slave, on unconsecrated ground in a field near the small village of Sunderland Point, near Heysham and Overton, Lancashire, North West England. Sunderland Point was a port, serving cotton, sugar and slave ships from the West Indies and...
- SerfdomSerfdomSerfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
- Sexual slaverySexual slaverySexual slavery is when unwilling people are coerced into slavery for sexual exploitation. The incidence of sexual slavery by country has been studied and tabulated by UNESCO, with the cooperation of various international agencies...
- Forced prostitutionForced prostitutionForced prostitution, also known as involuntary prostitution, is the act of performing sexual activity in exchange for money on a non-voluntary basis. There are a wide range of entry routes into prostitution, ranging from "voluntary and deliberate" entry, "semi-voluntary" based on pressure of...
- Slavery at common lawSlavery at common lawSlavery at common law in former colonies of the British Empire, developed slowly over centuries, characterised by inconsistent decisions and varying rationales for the treatment of slavery, the slave trade, and the rights of slaves and slave owners...
- Slavery and religionSlavery and religionThe issue of religion and slavery is an area of historical research into the relationship between the world's major religions and the practice of slavery.- Slavery in the Bible :...
- Slave shipSlave shipSlave ships were large cargo ships specially converted for the purpose of transporting slaves, especially newly purchased African slaves to Americas....
- SweatshopSweatshopSweatshop is a negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for very low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labour laws may be violated. Sweatshops may have...
- Taxation as slaveryTaxation as slaveryTaxation as slavery is the belief that taxation results in an unfree society in which individuals are forced to work to enrich the government and the recipients of largesse, rather than for their own benefit....
- Trafficking in human beingsHuman traffickingHuman trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...
- Debt bondageDebt bondageDebt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...
- ExploitationExploitationThis article discusses the term exploitation in the meaning of using something in an unjust or cruel manner.- As unjust benefit :In political economy, economics, and sociology, exploitation involves a persistent social relationship in which certain persons are being mistreated or unfairly used for...
- UnderclassUnderclassThe term underclass refers to a segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class. The general idea that a class system includes a population under the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences...
- Forced labour
- Wage slaveryWage slaveryWage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor, and to highlight similarities between owning and employing a person...
- William Lynch speechWilliam Lynch SpeechThe William Lynch speech is an address purportedly delivered by William Lynch to an audience on the bank of the James River in Virginia in 1712 regarding control of slaves within the colony...
- History of coffee#Coffee and slavery
- WorkhouseWorkhouseIn England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a spike, was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment...
/PoorhousePoorhouseA poorhouse or workhouse was a government-run facility in the past for the support and housing of dependent or needy persons, typically run by a local government entity such as a county or municipality.... - PrisonerPrisonerA prisoner is someone incarcerated in a prison, jail or similar facility.Prisoner or The Prisoner may also refer to:* Prisoner of war, a soldier in wartime, held as by an enemy* Political prisoner, someone held in prison for their ideology...
Slavery by region
- European
- Slavery in Bermuda
- Nazi GermanyNazi GermanyNazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
- Slavery in Nazi GermanyNazi concentration campsNazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
- Forced labor in Germany during World War IIForced labor in Germany during World War IIThe use of forced labour in Nazi Germany and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in German-occupied...
- Slavery in Nazi Germany
- ThrallThrallThrall was the term for a serf or unfree servant in Scandinavian culture during the Viking Age.Thralls were the lowest in the social order and usually provided unskilled labor during the Viking era.-Etymology:...
s (slaves of the vikingVikingThe term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
s) - Swedish slave tradeSwedish slave tradeThe Swedish slave trade occurred in the early history of Sweden, and again during the 17th century, around the time Swedish overseas colonies were established in North America and in Africa . It remained legal until 1813....
- Africa
- Slavery in MauritaniaSlavery in MauritaniaSlavery in Mauritania is an entrenched phenomenon the national government has repeatedly tried to abolish, banning the practice in 1905, 1981, and August 2007...
- Slavery in modern AfricaSlavery in modern AfricaSlavery in Africa continues today. Slavery existed in Africa before the arrival of the Atlantic slave trade, as did an internal African slave trade and an Arab slave trade...
- African slave tradeAfrican slave tradeSystems of servitude and slavery were common in many parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In some African societies, the enslaved people were also indentured servants and fully integrated; in others, they were treated much worse...
- Atlantic slave tradeAtlantic slave tradeThe Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
- Royal African CompanyRoyal African CompanyThe Royal African Company was a slaving company set up by the Stuart family and London merchants once the former retook the English throne in the English Restoration of 1660...
- Royal African Company
- Slavery in Mauritania
- Slavery in Asia
- Middle East
- Barbary pirateBarbary corsairsThe Barbary Corsairs, sometimes called Ottoman Corsairs or Barbary Pirates, were pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, a term derived from the name of its Berber...
- Slavery in SudanSlavery in SudanSlavery in Sudan began in ancient times, and has continued to the present day. During the Arab slave trade, many Black-Sudanese were purchased as slaves and brought for work in the Middle East....
- Arab slave tradeArab slave tradeThe Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in the Arab World, mainly Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa and certain parts of Europe during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade was focused on the slave markets of the Middle East and North Africa...
- SaqalibaSaqalibaSaqaliba refers to the Slavs, particularly Slavic slaves and mercenaries in the medieval Arab world, in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily and Al-Andalus. It is generally thought that the Arabic term is a Byzantine loanword: saqlab, siklab, saqlabi etc. is a corruption of Greek Sklavinoi for...
- Barbary pirate
- Russia
- Slavery in Soviet UnionGulagThe Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
- KholopKholopKholops were feudally dependent people in Russia between the 10th and early 18th centuries. Their legal status was close to that of serfs.- Etymology :The word kholop was first mentioned in a chronicle for the year of 986. Its etymology is unclear...
s (semi-slaves in RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
)
- Slavery in Soviet Union
- Far East
- Slavery in seventeenth-century ChinaSlavery in seventeenth-century ChinaBooi Aha is a Manchu word literally meaning "household person", referring to a hereditarily servile people in the 17th century China. It is often directly translated as the "bondservant", although sometimes also rendered as "Nucai" or "slave".-Usage:In his book China Marches West, Peter C...
- Slave trade in Macau
- Slavery in JapanSlavery in JapanDuring most of the history of the country, the practice of slavery in Japan involved only indigenous Japanese, as the export and import of slaves was significantly restricted by isolation of the group of islands from other areas of Asia...
- HistoryCocos (Keeling) IslandsThe Territory of the Cocos Islands, also called Cocos Islands and Keeling Islands, is a territory of Australia, located in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Christmas Island and approximately midway between Australia and Sri Lanka....
- Slavery in seventeenth-century China
- Middle East
- America
- Aztec slaveryAztec slaveryIn the structure of the Aztec or Mexica society, Slaves or tlacotin also constituted an important class.This slavery was very different from what Europeans of the same period were to establish in their colonies, although it had much in common with the slaves of classical antiquity. First, slavery...
- Slavery in BrazilSlavery in BrazilSlavery in Brazil shaped the country's social structure and ethnic landscape. During the colonial epoch and for over six decades after the 1822 independence, slavery was a mainstay of the Brazilian economy, especially in mining, cotton, and sugar cane production.Brazil obtained an estimated 35% of...
- QuilomboQuilomboA quilombo is a Brazilian hinterland settlement founded by people of African origin, Quilombolas, or Maroons. Most of the inhabitants of quilombos were escaped slaves and, in some cases, a minority of marginalised Portuguese, Brazilian aboriginals, Jews and Arabs, and/or other non-black,...
- Quilombo
- Slavery in CanadaSlavery in CanadaSlavery in what now comprises Canada existed into the 1830s, when slavery was officially abolished. Some slaves were of African descent, while others were aboriginal . Slavery which was practiced within Canada's current geography, was practiced primarily by Aboriginal groups...
- Coastwise slave tradeCoastwise slave tradeThe coastwise slave trade existed along the eastern coastal areas of North America. Shiploads and boatloads of slaves were transported from place to place on the waterways that exist there. Hundreds of vessels of various sizes and capacities were employed in the transporting of slaves from place...
- Slavery in Puerto Rico
- History of slavery in TexasHistory of slavery in TexasThe history of slavery in Texas began slowly, as the Spanish did not rely on it for labor during their years of control. The use of slavery expanded when British-American settlers from the Southeastern United States crossed the Mississippi River and brought slaves with them...
- Slavery in the United States
- Origins of the American Civil WarOrigins of the American Civil WarThe main explanation for the origins of the American Civil War is slavery, especially Southern anger at the attempts by Northern antislavery political forces to block the expansion of slavery into the western territories...
- North Carolina v. MannNorth Carolina v. MannNorth Carolina v. Mann, 13 N.C. 263 , is a decision in which the Supreme Court of North Carolina ruled that slaveowners had absolute authority over their slaves and could not be found guilty of committing violence against them.-Background:In 1829, Elizabeth Jones, who owned a slave named...
- George Washington#Washington and slavery
- Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White DreamForced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White DreamForced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream is a book by the African American scholar and historian, Lerone Bennett, Jr., published in 2000. It attacks Abraham Lincoln and claims that his reputation as the "Great Emancipator" is undeserved....
- United States National Slavery MuseumUnited States National Slavery MuseumThe United States National Slavery Museum is a non-profit organization based in Fredericksburg, Virginia, that has been fundraising and campaigning since 2001 to establish a national museum on slavery in America. The museum is intended to have as its primary mission education, re-education, and...
- The Slave CommunityThe Slave CommunityThe Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South is a book written by American historian John W. Blassingame. Published in 1972, it is one of the first historical studies of slavery in the United States to be presented from the perspective of the enslaved...
(book)
- Origins of the American Civil War
- Aztec slavery
Slavery by religion and era
- History of slaveryHistory of slaveryThe history of slavery covers slave systems in historical perspective in which one human being is legally the property of another, can be bought or sold, is not allowed to escape and must work for the owner without any choice involved...
- Christianity and slaveryChristianity and slaveryChristian views on slavery are varied both regionally and historically. Slavery in different forms has been imposed by Christians for over 18 centuries. In the early years of Christianity, slavery was a normal feature of the economy and society in the Roman Empire, and this remained well into the...
- The Bible and slaveryThe Bible and slaveryThe Bible contains several references to slavery. The Bible nowhere explicitly condemns slavery, but allowed a regulated practice of it, especially under the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament. Male Israelite slaves were to be offered release after six years of service, with some...
- Pope Nicholas V and slavery
- The Bible and slavery
- Islam and slaveryIslam and SlaveryIslamic views on slavery first developed out of the slavery practices of pre-Islamic Arabia. During the wars between different states/tribes in various parts of the world, prisoners/captives were either killed or enslaved...
- Judaism and slaveryJudaism and slaveryJudaisms religious texts contain numerous laws governing the ownership and treatment of slaves. Texts that contain such regulations include the Tanakh , the Talmud, the 12th century Mishneh Torah by noted rabbi Maimonides, and the 16th century Shulchan Aruch by rabbi Yosef Karo...
- The ExodusThe ExodusThe Exodus is the story of the departure of the Israelites from ancient Egypt described in the Hebrew Bible.Narrowly defined, the term refers only to the departure from Egypt described in the Book of Exodus; more widely, it takes in the subsequent law-givings and wanderings in the wilderness...
- PassoverPassoverPassover is a Jewish holiday and festival. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt...
- The Exodus
- Bahá'í Faith on slavery
- Slavery in antiquitySlavery in antiquitySlavery in the ancient world, specifically, in Mediterranean cultures, comprised a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery as a punishment for crime, and the enslavement of prisoners of war....
- Slavery in ancient GreeceSlavery in Ancient GreeceSlavery was common practice and an integral component of ancient Greece throughout its rich history, as it was in other societies of the time including ancient Israel and early Christian societies. It is estimated that in Athens, the majority of citizens owned at least one slave...
- Slavery in ancient RomeSlavery in ancient RomeThe institution of slavery in ancient Rome played an important role in society and the Roman economy. Besides manual labor on farms and in mines, slaves performed many domestic services and a variety of other tasks, such as accounting...
- SpartacusSpartacusSpartacus was a famous leader of the slaves in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable...
- Spartacus
- Slavery in ancient Greece
- Slavery in medieval EuropeSlavery in medieval EuropeSlavery in early medieval Europe was relatively common. It was widespread at the end of antiquity. The etymology of the word slave comes from this period, the word sklabos meaning Slav. Slavery declined in the Middle Ages in most parts of Europe as serfdom slowly rose, but it never completely...
- Modern slavery
- Forced prostitutionForced prostitutionForced prostitution, also known as involuntary prostitution, is the act of performing sexual activity in exchange for money on a non-voluntary basis. There are a wide range of entry routes into prostitution, ranging from "voluntary and deliberate" entry, "semi-voluntary" based on pressure of...
- Forced prostitution
- Papal bullPapal bullA Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end in order to authenticate it....
s on slavery- Sicut DudumSicut DudumSicut Dudum is a papal bull promulgated by Pope Eugene IV in Florence on January 13, 1435, which forbade the enslavement of local natives in the Canary Islands who had converted to Christianity.- Background :...
(1435) - Dum diversasDum DiversasDum Diversas is a papal bull issued on June 18, 1452 by Pope Nicholas V, that is credited by some with "ushering in the West African slave trade." It authorized Afonso V of Portugal to conquer Saracens and pagans and consign them to indefinite slavery...
(1452) - Romanus PontifexRomanus PontifexRomanus Pontifex is a papal bull written January 8, 1455 by Pope Nicholas V to King Afonso V of Portugal. As a follow-up to the Dum Diversas, it confirmed to the Crown of Portugal dominion over all lands discovered or conquered during the Age of Discovery. Along with encouraging the seizure of the...
(1455) - Sublimus DeiSublimus DeiSublimus Dei is a papal bull promulgated by Pope Paul III on June 2, 1537, which forbids the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and all other people...
(1537)
- Sicut Dudum
Opposition and resistance
- Abolition of slavery timelineAbolition of slavery timelineAbolition of slavery occurred as abolition in specific countries, abolition of the trade in slaves and abolition throughout empires. Each of these steps was usually the result of a separate law or action.-Ancient times:...
- Compensated emancipationCompensated EmancipationCompensated emancipation was a method of ending slavery in countries where slavery was legal. This involved the person who was recognized as the owner of a slave being compensated monetarily or by a period of labor for releasing the slave...
- The Emancipation NetworkThe Emancipation NetworkThe Emancipation Network is an international organization dedicated to fighting human trafficking and modern day slavery. It helps survivors of slavery rebuild their lives after rescue from slavery, through economic empowerment, education and help reintegrating into society...
- First Servile WarFirst Servile WarThe First Servile War of 135–132 BC was an unsuccessful rebellion of slaves against the Roman Republic. The war was prompted by slave revolts in Enna on the island of Sicily. It was led by Eunus, a former slave claiming to be a prophet, and Cleon, a Cilician who became Eunus's military commander...
- International YearInternational Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its AbolitionThe United Nations General Assembly declared 2004 as the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition ....
- List of notable opponents of slavery
- Slave rebellionSlave rebellionA slave rebellion is an armed uprising by slaves. Slave rebellions have occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery, and are amongst the most feared events for slaveholders...
- Slave narrativeSlave narrativeThe slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada and Caribbean nations...
- The State of Bonded Labor in PakistanThe State of Bonded Labor in PakistanThe State of Bonded Labor in Pakistan, by Shujaat Ali Rahi, is a treatise that reflects the status of bonded labor in Pakistan, a country with an estimated population of 1.7 million in bonded labor. The book has been published by National Coalition Against Bonded Labor , with the support of TRoCAIRE...
Surveys and reference
- Bales, Kevin, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (1999)
- Campbell, Gwyn, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph C. Miller, eds. Women and Slavery. Volume 1: Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval Atlantic; Women and Slavery. Volume 2: The Modern Atlantic (2007)
- Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (1999)
- Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in Western CultureThe Problem of Slavery in Western CultureThe Problem of Slavery in Western Culture written by David Brion Davis and published by Cornell University Press in 1966 won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1967. It was republished in 1988 by Oxford University Press-References:...
(1988) - Drescher, Seymour. Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (2009) highly regarded history of slavery and its abolition, worldwide
- Finkelman, Paul, ed. Encyclopedia of Slavery (1999)
- Lal, K. S.K. S. LalKishori Saran Lal was an Indian historian. He wrote many historical books, mainly on medieval India. Many of his books, such as History of the Khaljis and Twilight of the Sultanate, are regarded as standard works....
Muslim Slave System in Medieval India (1994) ISBN 81-85689-67-9 - Gordon, M. Slavery in the Arab World (1989)
- Greene, Jacqueline. Slavery in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, (2001), ISBN 0-531-16538-8
- Miers, Suzanne, and Igor Kopytoff, eds. Slavery In Africa: Historical & Anthropological Perspectives (1979)
- Morgan, Kenneth. Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America (2008)
- Postma, Johannes. The Atlantic Slave Trade, (2003)
- Rodriguez, Junius P., ed., The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1997)
- Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia (2007)
- Shell, Robert Carl-HeinzRobert Carl-Heinz ShellRobert Carl-Heinz Shell is a renowned South African author and professor of African Studies. He was born in the Cape Province of South Africa...
Children Of Bondage: A Social History Of The Slave Society At The Cape Of Good Hope, 1652–1813 (1994) - William Linn Westermann, The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity (1955), ISBN 0-87169-040-3
Uncited sources
- Hogendorn, Jan and Johnson Marion: The Shell Money of the Slave Trade. African Studies Series 49, Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, Cambridge, 1986. - The Slavery Reader, ed. by Rigas Doganis, Gad Heuman, James Walvin, Routledge 2003
United States
- Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1999), most important recent survey
- Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II Doubleday (March 23, 2008), ISBN 0-385-50625-2 ISBN 978-0-385-50625-0
- Boles, John. Black Southerners: 1619–1869 (1983) brief survey
- Engerman, Stanley L. Terms of Labor: Slavery, Serfdom, and Free Labor (1999)
- Genovese Eugene D.Eugene D. GenoveseEugene Dominic Genovese is an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He has been noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and slaves in the South. His work Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made won the...
Roll, Jordan Roll (1974), classic study- Richard H. King, "Marxism and the Slave South", American Quarterly 29 (1977), 117–31, a critique of Genovese
- Escott, Paul D. "Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom" Journal of Southern History, Vol. 67, 2001
- Parish, Peter J. Slavery: History and Historians (1989)
- Phillips, Ulrich B.Ulrich Bonnell PhillipsUlrich Bonnell Phillips was an American historian who studied the American antebellum South and slavery. Phillips concentrated on the large plantations that dominated the Southern economy, and he did not investigate the numerous small farmers who held few slaves...
American Negro Slavery:A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime (1918; paperback reprint 1966), southern white perspective - Phillips, Ulrich B. Life and Labor in the Old South (1929)
- Sellers, James B. Slavery in Alabama (1950).
- Sydnor, Charles S. Slavery in Mississippi (1933
- Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956), a rebuttal of U B Philipps
- Vorenberg, Michael . Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (2001)
- Weinstein, Allen, Frank O. Gatell, and Lewis Sarasohn, eds., American Negro Slavery: A Modern Reader, third ed. (1978)
- Mintz, S. Slavery Facts & Myths, Digital History
Slavery in the modern era
- Jesse Sage and Liora Kasten, Enslaved: True Stories of Modern Day Slavery, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008 ISBN 978-1-4039-7493-8
- Tom Brass, Marcel van der Linden, and Jan Lucassen, Free and Unfree Labour. Amsterdam: International Institute for Social History, 1993
- Tom Brass, Towards a Comparative Political Economy of Unfree Labour: Case Studies and Debates, London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999. 400 pages.
- Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues, Bern: Peter Lang AG, 1997. 600 pages. A volume containing contributions by all the most important writers on modern forms of unfree labour.
- Kevin Bales, Disposable People. New Slavery in the Global Economy, Revised Edition, University of California PressUniversity of California PressUniversity of California Press, also known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish books and papers for the faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868...
2004, ISBN 0-520-24384-6 - Kevin Bales (ed.), Understanding Global Slavery Today. A Reader, University of California Press 2005, ISBN 0-520-24507-5freak
- Kevin Bales, Ending Slavery: How We Free Today's Slaves, University of California Press 2007, ISBN 978-0-520-25470-1.
- Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis, Slave: My True Story, ISBN 1-58648-212-2. Mende is a NubaNubaNuba is a collective term used here for the peoples who inhabit the Nuba Mountains, in Sudan, Africa. Although the term is used to describe them as if they composed a single group, the Nuba are multiple distinct peoples and speak different languages...
, captured at 12 years old. She was granted political asylumRight of asylumRight of asylum is an ancient juridical notion, under which a person persecuted for political opinions or religious beliefs in his or her own country may be protected by another sovereign authority, a foreign country, or church sanctuaries...
by the British governmentGovernment of the United KingdomHer Majesty's Government is the central government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Government is led by the Prime Minister, who selects all the remaining Ministers...
in 2003. - Gary Craig, Aline Gaus, Mick Wilkinson, Klara Skrivankova and Aidan McQuade (2007). Contemporary slavery in the UK: Overview and key issues, Joseph Rowntree FoundationRowntree trustsThe four Rowntree Trusts are funded from the legacies of the Quaker chocolate entrepreneurs and social reformers Joseph Rowntree andBenjamin Seebohm Rowntree. The trusts are based in the Rowntrees' home city ofYork, England...
. ISBN 978-1-85935-573-2. - Somaly Mam Foundation
- Thomas Sowell, The Real History of Slavery, in: Black Rednecks and White Liberals, San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005. ISBN 978-1-59403-086-4.
External links
Historical- Slavery Resource Guide, from the Library of Congress
- Digital Library on American Slavery
- African Holocaust
- Emory and Oxford College
- Slavery Fact Sheets, Digital History
- The West African Squadron and slave trade
- Slavery – PBS
- Understanding Slavery
- Slavery
- Slavery Museum. Great Britain.
- Archives on slavery held by the University of London
- Modern Slavery - slideshow by The First PostThe First PostThe First Post is a British daily online news magazine based in London. It was launched in August 2005. It publishes news, current affairs, lifestyle, opinion, arts and sports pages, and it features an online games arcade and a cinema featuring short films, virals, trailers and eyewitness news...
- Mémoire St Barth (archives & history of slavery, slave trade and their abolition), Comité de Liaison et d'Application des Sources Historiques.