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Slavery is a condition in which one person, known as a slave, is under the control of another. Slavery almost always occurs for the purpose of securing the labour of the slave. A specific form, known as chattel slavery, is defined by the absolute legal ownership of a person or persons, including the legal right to buy and sell them just as one would a lamp or an article of clothing.

Definitions

The 1926 Slavery Convention described slavery as "...the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised..." Therefore, slaves cannot leave an owner or employer without explicit permission, and they will be returned if they escape. Therefore a system of slavery; as opposed to the isolated instances found in any society — requires official, legal recognition of ownership, or widespread tacit arrangements with local authorities, by masters who have some influence because of their social and/or economic status.

The word slave comes from the Latin term sclavus. The current usage of the word serfdom is not usually synonymous with slavery, because serfs are considered to have had some rights. In the strictest sense of the word, "slaves" are people who are not only owned, but who have no rights and are also not paid.

The International Labour Organization defines "forced labour" as "all work or service which is extracted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily", albeit with certain exceptions: military service, convicts, emergencies and minor community services. [1]. The ILO asserts that child labour amounts to forced labour in which the child's work is exacted from the family as a whole.

In some historical contexts, compulsory labour to repay debts by adults has been regarded as slavery, depending upon the rights held by such individuals.

Mandatory military service in liberal democracies is a controversial subject: one view is that conscripts are not "slaves", as they have substantial legal rights, and any government which took it upon itself to implement conscription, outside a time of extreme national emergency, would eventually face a backlash at an election. Another view interprets acceptance of conscription as a sign of chauvinist, ultra-nationalist and/or fascist ideologies, justified by philosophies such as the Hegelian notion of nations having rights which supersede those of individuals.

In United States legal usage, the term involuntary servitude means a condition of labouring for another without one's willful consent. It does not necessarily mean the complete lack of freedom found in chattel slavery.

Many progressive thinkers have discussed the idea of "wage slavery", although it is generally accepted that payment of a wage signifies "free labour", with the quite different disadvantages experienced by such workers.

Ordinary citizens in totalitarian states are not generally considered slaves, as the only real point of comparison is restrictions on movement.

Unfree labour

Main article: Unfree labour

Most people subject to the above conditions are covered by the generic term unfree labour, which includes all forms of slavery and similar labour systems. Unfree labour is now the preferred term of many scholars, because of the wide variety of ambiguities that may be attached to words like "slavery". One reason is that references to disparate, heterogenous types of labour have been translated into the English as "slavery".

The British historian Sir Moses Finley, one of the most distinguished scholars of ancient slavery, suggested that "slavery" was imprecise and that chattel slavery, in which the slave has no legal rights and could be bought and sold, was sufficiently different from other forms of unfree labour, and a greater violation of human rights, to be labeled distinctively.

How do people become slaves?

Historically, slaves were often those humans of a different ethnicity, nationality, religion, sex or race than the dominant or aspirationally dominant group; typically taken prisoner as a result of warfare, capture meant death or slavery if one paid no ransom. Societies characterized by poverty, population pressures, and cultural and technological lag are frequently exporters of slaves to more developed nations. Today most slaves are rural people forced to move to cities, or those purchased in rural areas and sold into slavery in cities. These moves take place due to loss of subsistence agriculture, thefts of land, and population increases.

Some researchers have recently suggested that ancient Greco-Roman slavery may have been related to the practice of infanticide. Unwanted infants were exposed to nature to die; these were then often rescued by slavetraders, who raised them as slaves.

In many cultures, persons convicted of serious crimes could be sold into slavery. The proceeds from this sale were often used to compensate the victims.

Also, persons have been sold into slavery so that the money could be used to pay off debts. This could range from a king ordering a debtor sold with all his family, to the poor selling off their own children. In times of dire need such as famine, people have offered themselves into slavery not for a purchase price, but merely so that their new master would feed them.

In most institutions of slavery, the children of slaves are themselves the property of the master. Laws varied as to whether the status of the mother or of the father determined the fate of the child.

History

Europe and the Mediterranean

The ancient Mediterranean civilizations

Main article: Slavery in the ancient Mediterranean

See also: Slavery in Abrahamic religions.

Slavery in the ancient Mediterranean cultures, including Greece and Rome (and parts of the Roman Empire), and the Islamic Caliphate was a mixture of debt-slavery, marriage, slavery as a punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, and the birth of slave children to slaves.

Medieval Europe

Main article: Slavery in medieval Europe

For Christian views on slavery, see Religion and slavery.

Traditional slavery reappeared during the Middle Ages in Continental Europe and in the 12th century in Scandinavia. On the other hand, an unconverted non-Christian could be kept legally and sold as a slave, and during the High Middle Ages, Muslims and Pagans were often captured and sold as slaves. They were traded openly in many cities, including Marseille, Dublin and Prague, and many were sold to buyers in the Islamic Middle East. This practice continued until the end of the 14th century, when the last non-Christian country in Europe, Lithuania, converted to Catholicism.

Early Modern Europe

In the 17th century, slavery was used as punishment by conquering English Parliament armies against native Catholics in Ireland. Between the years 1659 and 1663, during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland by the New Model Army, under the command of Oliver Cromwell, thousands of Irish Catholics were forced into slavery. Cromwell had a deep religious dislike of the Catholic religion, and many Irish Catholics who had participated in Confederate Ireland had all their land confiscated and were transported to the British West Indies as slaves.

Item 20 of The Grand Remonstrance[2], a list of grievances committed by King Charles I and presented to him in 1641, contains the following:

"20. And although all this was taken upon pretence of guarding the seas, yet a new unheard-of tax of ship-money was devised, and upon the same pretence, by both which there was charged upon the subject near £700,000 some years, and yet the merchants have been left so naked to the violence of the Turkish pirates, that many great ships of value and thousands of His Majesty's subjects have been taken by them, and do still remain in miserable slavery."

The Church was fully implicated. Slaves owned by the Anglican Church's Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts on its sugar plantations in the West Indies had the word "society" branded on their chests with red-hot irons.

When slaves were emancipated through the British Parliament in 1834 the British Government paid compensation to slave owners (slaves got nothing). In one case the Bishop of Exeter and three business colleagues got handsome compensation for the 665 slaves they had to set free.

Recently (2006), Southwark Bishop Thomas Butler, at the Anglican Church's General Synod stated "The profits from the slave trade were part of the bedrock of our country's industrial development".

Slavery existed in Eastern Europe during this period (particularly in Russia and Poland). Only in 1768 was a law passed in Poland that discontinued the nobility's control of the right to life or death of serfs. Some of the Roma people were enslaved over five centuries in Romania until abolition in 1864.

Slavery in the French Republic was abolished on February 4, 1794.

Modern Europe

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Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime created many Arbeitslager (labour camps) in Germany and Eastern Europe. Prisoners in Nazi labour camps were worked to death on short rations and in bad conditions, or killed if they became unable to work. Millions died as a direct result of forced labour under the Nazis.

Main article: Gulag

Between 1930 and 1960, the Soviet regime created many Lagerey (labour camps) in Siberia. Prisoners in Soviet labor camps were worked to death on extreme production quotas, brutality, hunger and harsh elements. Fatality rate was as high as 80% during the first months in many camps. Millions died as a direct result of forced labour under the Soviets.

Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East

For Muslim views on slavery, see Religion and slavery.

The Arab world has traded in slaves like many other cultures of the region. The Moors, starting in the 8th century, raided coastal areas of the Mediterranean and Northern European (including British and even as far north as Scandinavian) coastal areas and would carry away sometimes whole villages to the Moorish slave markets on the Barbary Coast. Nautical traders from the United States became targets, and frequent victims, of the Barbary pirates, as soon as that nation began trading with Europe and refused to pay the required tribute to the North African states. The slave trade from East Africa to Arabia was dominated by Arab and African traders in the coastal cities of Zanzibar, Dar Es Salaam and Mombasa.

Many Slavic males from the Balkans, and Turkic and Circassian males from the Caucasus Mountains and the eastern Black Sea regions were taken away from their homes and families and enlisted into special soldier classes of the army of the Ottoman Empire. These soldier classes were named Janissaries in the Balkans and Asia Minor, and Mamelukes in Egypt. The Janissaries eventually became a decisive factor in the intrigues of the Istanbul court of the Ottoman sultans, while the Mamelukes were mainly responsible for the expulsion of the Crusaders from Palestine.

The Arab trade in slaves continued into the 20th century. T. E. Lawrence documented practices in which African Muslims performing the hajj would bring a son with them to Mecca and there sell him into slavery. [3] Slave owning and slave-like working conditions have been documented up to and including the present, in countries of the Middle East. Though the subject is considered taboo in the affected regions, a leading Saudi government cleric and author of the country's religious curriculum has called for the outright re-legalization of slavery. [4], [5]

Slavery in Africa

Main article: African slave trade

French historian Fernand Braudel noted that slavery was endemic in Africa and part of the structure of everyday life. "Slavery came in different guises in different societies: there were court slaves, slaves incorporated into princely armies, domestic and household slaves, slaves working on the land, in industry, as couriers and intermediaries, even as traders" (Braudel 1984 p 435). During the 16th century, Europe began to outpace the Arab world in the export traffic, with its slave traffic from Africa to the Americas. The Dutch imported slaves from Asia into their colony in South Africa. Later, The United Kingdom, which held vast colonial territories on the African continent (including South Africa), made the practice of slavery illegal in these regions. Ironically, the end of the slave trade and the decline of slavery was imposed upon Africa by its European conquerors. This action is what today may be called an instance of cultural imperialism.

The nature of the slave societies differed greatly across the continent. There were large plantations worked by slaves in Egypt, the Sudan and Zanzibar, but this was not a typical use of slaves in Africa as a whole. In some slave societies, slaves were protected and incorporated into the slave-owning family. In others, slaves were brutally abused, and even used for human sacrifices.

Slavery in North Africa

As practiced in ancient Egypt, slavery was not in accord with the modern view of the term. Persons became "slaves" in ancient Egypt by virtue of being captives (or prisoners) of war, committing criminal or other indecent acts, or indebtedness. In many instances, some peasants in ancient Egypt led better livelihoods as slaves than as free persons: Some Egyptian peasants purposely sold themselves into slavery as a means of repaying their debts. Though slaves in ancient Egypt could be sold, inherited or offered as gifts, they were not prohibited from learning, achieving greater social rank, purchasing property or negotiating other contracts. One papyrus from the New Kingdom even records masters being testified against by slave witnesses. Slave children apparently enjoyed some authoritative protection, as a letter from the 18th dynasty records limits to their use for harsh labor, and Egyptian households further bore the responsibility of adequately raising children of slave parents.

In the 15th and 16th centuries slaves were imported from Europe to North Africa. Slave-taking persisted into the 19th century when Barbary pirates would capture ships and enslave the crew. In all, about 1.5 million Europeans were transported to the Barbary Coast. It was a period when Europe was preoccupied by sectarian wars and European navies were depleted. The trade was run by expelled Moors and the slaving expeditions were often captained by Europeans with North African crews. In the early 19th century, European powers started to take action to free Christian slaves. The first major action was the bombardment of Algiers in 1816.

Slavery in Sub-Saharan Africa

Prior to the 16th century, the bulk of slaves exported from Africa were shipped from East Africa to the Arabian peninsula. Zanzibar became a leading port on this trade. Arab slave traders differed from European traders in that they would often conduct raiding expeditions themselves, sometimes penetrating deep into the continent. They also differed in that their market greatly preferred the purchase of female slaves over male slaves.

The increased presence of European rivals along the East coast led Arab traders to concentrate on the overland slave caravan routes across the Sahara from the Sahel to North Africa. The German explorer Gustav Nachtigal reported seeing slave caravans departing from Kukawa in Bornu bound for Tripoli and Egypt in 1870. The slave trade represented the major source of revenue for the state of Bornu as late as 1898. Further south, the eastern regions of the Central African Republic have never recovered demographically from the impact of nineteenth-century raids from the Sudan and still have a population density of less than 1 person/km?.

The Middle Passage, the crossing of the Atlantic to the Americas, endured by slaves laid out in rows in the holds of ships, was only one element of the well-known triangular trade engaged in by Portuguese, Dutch, French and British. Ships having landed slaves in Caribbean ports would take on sugar, indigo, raw cotton, and later coffee, and make for Liverpool, Nantes, Lisbon or Amsterdam. Ships leaving European ports for West Africa would carry printed cotton textiles, some originally from India, copper utensils and bangles, pewter plates and pots, iron bars more valued than gold, hats, trinkets, gunpowder and firearms and alcohol. Tropical shipworms were eliminated in the cold Atlantic waters, and at each unloading, a profit was made.

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 coastal African kingdoms through more formal trade agreements with European traders or by slave raiding parties through more informal bounty agreements with European traders. The people captured on these expeditions were shipped by European traders to the colonies of the New World. As a result of the Spanish War of Succession, the United Kingdom obtained the monopoly (asiento de negros) of transporting captive Africans to Spanish America. It is estimated that over the centuries, twelve to twenty million people were shipped as slaves from Africa by European traders, of whom some 15 percent died during the terrible voyage, many during the arduous journey through the Middle Passage. The great majority were shipped to the Americas, but also went to Europe and the south of Africa.

Some historians conclude that the total loss in persons removed, those who died on the arduous march to coastal slave marts and those killed in slave raids, far exceeded the 65-75 million inhabitants remaining in Sub-Saharan Africa at the trade's end. Others believe that slavers had a vested interest in capturing rather than killing, and in keeping their captives alive; and that this coupled with the disproportionate removal of males and the introduction of new crops from the Americas (cassava, maize) would have limited general population decline to particular regions of western Africa around 1760-1810, and in Mozambique and neighbouring areas half a century later. There has also been speculation that within Africa, females were most often captured as brides, with their male protectors being a "bycatch" who would have been killed if there had not been an export market for them.

Modern Africa

Slavery persists in Africa more than in all other continents. Slavery in Mauritania was legally abolished by laws passed in 1905, 1961, and 1981, but several human rights organizations are reporting that the practice continues there. The trading of children has been reported in modern Nigeria and Benin. In parts of Ghana, a family may be punished for an offense by having to turn over a virgin female to serve as a sex slave within the offended family. In this instance, the woman does not gain the title of "wife". In parts of Ghana, Togo, and Benin, shrine slavery persists, despite being illegal in Ghana since 1998. In this system of slavery, sometimes called trokosi (in Ghana) or voodoosi in Togo and Benin, or ritual servitude, young virgin girls are given as slaves in traditional shrines and are used sexually by the priests in addition to providing free labor for the shrine. In the Sudan, slavery continues as part of an ongoing civil war. Evidence emerged in the late 1990s of systematic slavery in cacao plantations in West Africa. See the chocolate and slavery article.

Slavery in the Americas

Slavery among indigenous people of America

Main article: Slavery in the Spanish New World colonies

In Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica the most common forms of slavery were those of prisoners-of-war and debtors. People unable to pay back a debt could be sentenced to work as a slave to the person owed until the debt was worked off. Slavery was not usually hereditary; children of slaves were born free. In Tahuantinsuyu (or Inca Empire), workers were subject to a mita in lieu of taxes which they paid by working for the government. Each ayllu, or extended family, would decide which family member to send to do the work.

Slavery in Brazil

During the colonial epoch, slavery was a mainstay of the Brazilian economy, especially in mining and sugar cane production.

Brazil obtained 37% of all African slaves traded, and more than 3 million slaves were sent to this one country. Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade African slaves to work the sugar plantations once the native Tupi deteriorated. Although Portuguese Prime Minister Marquês do Pombal abolished slavery in mainland Portugal on the February 12th, 1761, slavery continued in her overseas colonies. The African slaves were useful for the sugar plantations in many ways. First, African slaves had immunities to tropical diseases. The white workers were less able to fend off deadly diseases of the Caribbean, such as malaria. Second, the benefits of the slaves far exceeded the costs. After 2-3 years, slaves worked off their worth, and plantation owners began to make profits from them. Plantation owners made lucrative profits even though there was approximately a 10% death rate per year, mainly due to harsh working conditions.

The very harsh manual labour of the sugar cane fields saw slaves use hoes to dig large trenches. The slaves planted sugar cane in the trenches and then used their bare hands to spread manure. The average life span of a slave was eight years. In the mid to late 19th century, many Amerindians were enslaved to work on rubber plantations. See I?? for more information.

The Clapham Sect, a group of Victorian Evangelical politicians, campaigned during most of the 19th century for the United Kingdom to use its influence and power to stop the traffic of slaves to Brazil. Besides moral qualms, the low cost of slave-produced Brazilian sugar meant that British colonies in the West Indies were unable to match the market prices of Brazilian sugar, and each Briton was consuming 16 pounds (7 kg) of sugar a year by the 19th century. This combination led to intensive pressure from the British government for Brazil to end this practice, which it did by steps over several decades.

Brazil's 1877-78 Grande Seca (Great Drought) in the cotton-growing northeast, led to major turmoil, starvation, poverty and internal migration. As wealthy plantation holders rushed to sell their slaves south, popular resistance and resentment grew, inspiring numerous emancipation societies. They succeeded in banning slavery altogether in the province of Ceara by 1884. (Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, 88-90) Slavery was legally ended nationwide on May 13 by the Lei Aurea ("Golden Law") of 1888.

Despite its prohibition, slavery persists in agricultural and rural industrial labor in Brazil (Kevin Bales, Disposable People).

Slavery in the British and French Caribbean

Main article: Slavery in the British and French Caribbean

Slavery was commonly used in the parts of the Caribbean controlled by France and the British Empire. The Lesser Antilles islands of Barbados, Antigua, Martinique and Guadeloupe, which were the first important slave societies of the Caribbean, began the widespread use of African slaves by the end of the 17th century, as their economies converted from tobacco to sugar production.

The slaves were treated terribly, often beaten and raped. They had such miserable lives that death was considered a welcome release.

By the middle of the 18th century, British Jamaica and French Saint-Domingue had become the largest slave societies of the region, rivaling Brazil as a destination for enslaved Africans. Due to overwork, the death rates for Caribbean slaves were higher than birth rates. The conditions led to increasing numbers of slave revolts, campaigns against slavery in Europe, and the abolition of slavery in the European empires.

Slavery in North America

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The first imported Africans were brought as indentured servants, not slaves. They were required, as white indentured servants were, to serve seven years. Many were brought to the British North American colonies, specifically Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. However, the slave trade did not immediately expand in North America. Mexico and Canada had completely abolished slavery by 1810.

Slavery under European rule began with importation of European indentured labourers, was followed by the enslavement of indigenous peoples in the Caribbean, and eventually was primarily replaced with Africans imported through a large slave trade.

The shift from indentured servants to African slaves was prompted by a growing lower class of former servants who had worked through the terms of their indentures and thus became competitors of their former masters. These newly freed servants were rarely able to support themselves comfortably, and the tobacco industry was increasingly dominated by large planters. This caused domestic unrest culminating in Bacon's Rebellion. Eventually, chattel slavery became the norm in regions dominated by plantations.

Many slaves were owned by plantation owners who lived in Britain. The British courts had made a series of contradictory rulings on the legality of slavery (National Archives Link) which encouraged several thousand slaves to flee the newly-independent United States as refugees along with the retreating British in 1783. The British courts having ruled in 1772 that such slaves could not be forcibly returned to North America (see James Somersett for a review of the Somerset Decision), the British Government resettled them as free men in Sierra Leone.

File:Slavetreatment.jpe
Example of slave treatment: Back deeply scarred from whipping

Several slave rebellions took place during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Through the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (also known as the Freedom Ordinance) under the Continental Congress, slavery was prohibited in the Interior/Central States. In the East, though, slavery was not abolished until later. The importation of slaves into the United States was banned on January 1, 1808; but not the internal slave trade, or involvement in the international slave trade externally.

Aggregation of northern free states gave rise to one contiguous geographic area, north of the Ohio River and the old Mason-Dixon line. This separation of a free North and an enslaved South launched a massive political, cultural and economic struggle.

Refugees from slavery fled the South across the Ohio River to the North via the Underground Railroad, and their presence agitated Northerners. Midwestern state governments asserted States Rights arguments to refuse Federal jurisdiction over fugitives.

The Dred Scott decision of 1857 asserted that one could take one's property anywhere (Even if one's property was chattel and one crossed into a free state), virtually legalizing slavery in the free states. It also asserted that African Americans could not be citizens, as many Northern states granted blacks citizenship, who (in some states) could even vote. This was an example of Slave Power, the plantation aristocracy's attempt to control the North. This turned Northern public opinion even further against slavery. After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, armed conflict broke out in Kansas Territory, where the question of whether it would be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state had been left to the inhabitants. The radical abolitionist John Brown was active in the mayhem and killing in "Bleeding Kansas." Anti-slavery legislators took office under the banner of the Republican Party.

In the election of 1860, the Republicans swept Abraham Lincoln into the Presidency (with only 39.8% of the popular vote) and legislators into Congress. Lincoln however, did not appear on the ballots in most southern states and his election split the nation along sectional lines. After decades of controlling the Federal Government, the Southern states seceded from the U.S. (the Union) to form the Confederate States of America.


The Civil War spelled the end for chattel slavery in America. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was a reluctant gesture that proclaimed freedom for slaves within the Confederacy, although not those in strategically important Border states. However, the proclamation made the abolition of slavery an official war goal and it was implemented as the Union captured territory from the Confederacy. Slaves in many parts of the south were freed by Union armies or when they simply left their former owners. Many joined the Union Army as workers or troops, and many more fled to Northern cities. Many also attempted to follow Gen. Sherman's army out of the south. This proved to be very unsuccesful for the slaves, because Sherman did not want involve himself with black slaves. After the number of slaves following his army grew so large, he ordered a bridge be destroyed while leaving South and prevented the slaves from fleeing. The slaves were ultimatley captured and sent back to their owners. This destroyed the hopes of many trying to flee to the North and tarnished the perception that the Northern army was fighting to free the slaves.


Towards the end of the war, President Lincoln began his thoughts of a 13th amendment that would completely abolish slavery in the United States. The 13th amendment was passed before the Southern states could be restored into the Union. If the Union had been completely against the ideology of slavery, the amendment would have passed easlily, but it was not an easy battle. The amendment passed through the Senate in April of 1864, but the House did not approve of the amendment. Lincoln's efforts finally pushed the amendment through the House almost a year later with a vote of 119-56. Thus, the the perception the American Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery is a false accusation.


Many of the Confederate Generals disagreed with slavery and openly admitted that it would not last. General Robert E. Lee was a very faith built man with his main objective in life built on Christianity. Though he owned slaves and managed his family's plantation outside of Washington, D.C., he believed the practice would end regardless of who won the war. General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, also a devout Christian, opposed slavery. Jackson even established churches for African-Americans, and continually aided their congregations with tithes before and during the war until his death.

After the failure of Reconstruction, freed slaves in the United States were treated as second class citizens. For decades after their emancipation, many slaves living in the South sharecropped and had a low standard of living. In some states, it was only after the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s that blacks obtained legal status as full citizens (see segregation).

Although slavery has been illegal in the United States for nearly a century and a half, the United States Department of Labor occasionally prosecutes cases against people for false imprisonment and involuntary servitude. These cases often involve illegal immigrants who are forced to work as slaves in factories to pay off a debt claimed by the people who transported them into the United States. Other cases have involved domestics.

Slavery in Asia

South Asia

Though any formalised slave trade has not existed in South Asia, unfree labour has existed for centuries, in different forms. The most common forms have been kinds of bonded labour. During the epoch of Quach and the Mughals, debt bondage reached its peak, and it was common for money lenders to make slaves of peasants and others who failed to repay debts. Under these practices, more than one generation could be forced into unfree labour; for example, a son could be sold into bonded labour for life to pay off the debt, along with interest.

Much of the northern and central parts of the subcontinent was ruled by the so-called Slave Dynasty from 1206-1290: Qutb-ud-din Aybak, a slave of Muhammad Ghori rose to power following his master's death. For almost a century, his descendants ruled presiding over the introduction of Tankas and building of Qutub Minar.

Japan

Main article: Slavery in Japan

Slavery in Japan was, for most of its history, indigenous, since the export and import of slaves was restricted by Japan being a group of islands. The export of a slave from Japan is recorded in 3rd century Chinese history, although the system involved is unclear. These slaves were called Seiko (??) (lit. "worldly affairs").

In the 8th century, a slave was called Nuhi (??) and series of laws on slavery was issued. In an area of present-day Ibaraki prefecture, out of a population of 190,000, around 2,000 were slaves; the proportion is believed to have been even higher in western Japan.

By the time of the Sengoku period (1467-1615), the attitude that slavery was anachronistic had become widespread. In a meeting with Catholic priests, Oda Nobunaga was presented with a black slave, the first recorded encounter between a Japanese and an African. In 1588, Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered all slave trading to be abolished. This was continued by his successors.

As the Empire of Japan annexed Asian countries, from the late 19th century onwards, archaic institutions including slavery were abolished in those countries. However, during the Pacific War of 1937-45, the Japanese military used hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war as forced labour, on projects such as the Burma Railway. (For further details, see Japanese war crimes.)

Korea

Indigenous slaves existed in Korea. It is widely known that the last names "Chun", "Bang", "Ji", and "Chuk" are recognizable as last names having once been given to slaves.

Aotearoa / New Zealand

In traditional Maori society, prisoners of war became slaves, (unless released, ransomed or eaten). With some exceptions, the child of a slave remained a slave. As far as it is possible to tell slavery seems to have increased in the early Nineteenth century, as a result of increased numbers of prisoners being taken by Maori military leaders such as Hongi Hika and Te Rauparaha in the Musket Wars, the need for labour to supply whalers and traders with food, flax and timber in return for western goods and missionary comdemnation of cannibalism. Slavery was outlawed on English Annexation of New Zealand in 1840, immediately prior to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, although it did not end completely until government was effectively extended over the whole of the country with the defeat of the King movement in the New Zealand Wars of the mid 1860s.

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Child Slavery: Trafficked children as young as 2 years old are forced to work up to 18 hours a day as camel jockeys in the Middle East - Pic by Ansar Burney Trust

Middle East

Children as young as two years old are used for slavery as child camel jockeys across the Arab countries of the Middle East. Though strict laws have been introduced recently in Qatar and UAE - thanks to better awareness of the issue and lobbying by human rights organisations such as the Ansar Burney Trust - the use of children still continues in the far flung areas and during secret night time races.

Abolitionist movements

Main article: Abolitionism

Slavery has existed, in one form or another, for several thousand years. So, too, have movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves. Moses led Israelite slaves from ancient Egypt according to the Biblical Book of Exodus - possibly the first detailed account of a movement to free slaves, though modern archeology throws doubt on the claims of such a mass exodus. However, abolitionism should be distinguished from efforts to help a particular group of slaves, or to restrict one practice, such as the slave trade.

In 1772, a legal case concerning James Somersett made it illegal to remove a slave from England against his will. A similar case, that of Joseph Knight, took place in Scotland five years later and ruled slavery to be contrary to the law of Scotland.

Following the work of campaigners in the United Kingdom, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed by Parliament on March 25, 1807. The act imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. The intention was to entirely outlaw the slave trade within the whole British Empire.

The Slavery Abolition Act, passed on August 23, 1833, outlawed slavery itself in the British colonies. On August 1, 1834 all slaves in the British Empire were emancipated, but still indentured to their former owners in an apprenticeship system which was finally abolished in 1838.

Proclamation of the abolition of slavery by Victor Hughes in the Guadeloupe, the 1st November 1794

There were slaves in mainland France, but the institution was never fully authorized there. However, slavery was vitally important in France's Caribbean possessions, especially Saint-Domingue. In 1793, unable to repress the massive slave revolt of August 1791 that had become the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolutionary commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel declared general emancipation. In Paris, on February 4, 1794, Abbé Grégoire and the Convention ratified this action by officially abolishing slavery in all French territories. Napoleon sent troops to the Caribbean in 1802 to try to re-establish slavery. They succeeded in Guadeloupe, but the ex-slaves of Saint-Domingue defeated the French army and declared independence. The colony became Haiti, the first black republic, on January 1, 1804.

Sierra Leone was established as a country for former slaves of the British Empire in Africa. Liberia served an analogous purpose for American slaves. The goal of the abolitionists was repatriation of the slaves to Africa. Also some trade unions did not want the cheap labour of former slaves around. Nevertheless, most former slaves stayed in America.

Slaves in the United States who escaped ownership would often make their way north to Canada via the "Underground Railroad". Famously active abolitionists of the U.S. include Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass and John Brown. Slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865.

The 1926 Slavery Convention, an initiative of the League of Nations, was a turning point in banning global slavery. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the UN General Assembly, explicity banned slavery. The United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery was convened to outlaw and ban slavery worldwide, including child slavery. In December 1966, the UN General Assembly adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was developed from the Universal Declaraction of Human Rights. Article 8 of this international treaty bans slavery. The treaty came into force in March 1976 after it had been ratified by 35 nations. As of November 2003, 104 nations had ratified the treaty.

Apologies

In June 1997, Tony Hall, a Democratic representative for Dayton, Ohio proposed a national apology by the U.S. government for slavery.

At the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, at Durban, South Africa, the US representatives walked out, on the instructions of Colin Powell. A South African Government spokesman claimed that "the general perception among all delegates is that the US does not want to confront the real issues of slavery and all its manifestations." However, the US delegates argued that they left over a resolution that equated Zionism with racism.

At the same time the British, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese delegations blocked an EU apology for slavery.

The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery and is still being pursued across the world. For example, the Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action Plan.

Reparations

Main article: Reparations for slavery

As noted above, there have been movements to achieve reparations for those held in involuntary servitude, or sometimes their descendants. There is a growing modern movement to donate funds achieved in reparations efforts not to the descendants of those held as slaves in prior generations, but instead to donate them to those freed from slavery in this generation, in other countries and circumstances.

In general, reparation for being held in slavery is handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since slaves are exactly those people who have no access to the legal process. Systems of fines and reparations paid from fines collected by authorities, rather than in civil courts, have been proposed to alleviate this in some nations.

In the United States, the reparations movement often cites the 40 acres and a mule decree. Recent effort have also targeted businesses that profited from the slave trade and issuing insurance on slaves.

In Africa, the 2nd World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission was convened in Ghana in 2000. Its deliberations concluded with a Petition being served in the International Court at the Hague for USD$777 trillion against the United States, Canada, and European Union members for "unlawful removal and destruction of Petitioners' mineral and human resources from the African continent" between 1503 up to the end of the colonialism era in the late 1950s and 1960s.

The contemporary status of slavery

According to the Anti-Slavery Society, "Although there is no longer any state which recognizes, or which will enforce, a claim by a person to a right of property over another, the abolition of slavery does not mean that it ceased to exist. There are millions of people throughout the world — mainly children — in conditions of slavery, as well as in various forms of servitude which are in many respects similar to slavery."[6] It further notes that slavery, particularly child slavery, was on the rise in 2003. It points out that there are countless others in other forms of servitude (such as pawnage, bonded labor and servile concubinage, which are not slavery in the narrow legal sense.

The economics of contemporary slavery

According to a broader definition used by Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves, another advocacy group linked with Anti-Slavery International, there are 27 million people (though some put the number as high as 200 million) in slavery today, spread all over the world (Kevin Bales, Disposable People). This is, also according to that group:

  • The largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history.
  • The smallest percentage of the total human population that has ever been enslaved at once.
  • Reducing the price of slaves to as low as US$40 in Mali for young adult male labourers, to a high of US$1000 or so in Thailand for HIV-free young females suitable for use in brothels (where they invariably contract HIV). This represents the price paid to the person, or parents.
  • This represents the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave in raw labour terms—while the price of a comparable male slave in 1850 America would have been about US$1000 in the currency of the time, that represents US$38,000 in today's dollars, thus slaves, at least of that category, now cost only one one-thousandth (0.1%) of their price 150 years ago.

As a result, the economics of slavery is stark: the yield of profit per year for those buying and controlling a slave is over 800% on average, as opposed to the 5% per year that would have been the expected payback for buying a slave in colonial times. This combines with the high potential to lose a slave (have them stolen, escape, or freed by unfriendly authorities) to yield what are called disposable people—those who can be exploited intensely for a short time and then discarded, such as the prostitutes thrown out on city streets to die once they contract HIV, or those forced to work in mines.

Human trafficking

Main article: Trafficking in human beings

Trafficking in human beings, sometimes called human trafficking, or sex trafficking (as the majority of victims are women or children forced into prostitution) is not the same as people smuggling. A smuggler will facilitate illegal entry into a country for a fee, but on arrival at their destination, the smuggled person is free; the trafficking victim is enslaved. Victims do not agree to be trafficked: they are tricked, lured by false promises, or forced into it. Traffickers use coercive tactics including deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat and use of physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs of abuse to control their victims. Whilst the majority of victims are women, and sometimes children, forced into prostitution, other victims include men, women and children forced into manual labor.

Due to the illegal nature of trafficking, the exact extent is unknown. A US Government report published in 2003, estimates that 800,000-900,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.

External links - The contemporary status of slavery

  • Stop The Traffik - This charity aims to expose and stop human slavery. It also promotes Freedom Day on 25th March 2007, the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. If you want to make a difference then here is an excellent place to start.

Potential for total abolition

Those 27 million people produce a gross economic product of US $13 billion annually. This is also a smaller percentage of the world economy than slavery has produced at any prior point in human history. That, plus the universal criminal status of slavery, the lack of moral arguments for it in modern discourse, and the many conventions and agreements to abolish it worldwide, make it likely that it can be eliminated in this generation, according to Free The Slaves. There are no nations whose economies would be substantially affected by the true abolition of slavery.

A first step towards this objective is the Cocoa Protocol, by which the entire cocoa industry worldwide has accepted full moral and legal responsibility for the entire comprehensive outcome of their production processes. Negotiations for this protocol were initiated for cotton, sugar and other commodity items in the 19th century—taking about 140 years to complete. Thus it seems that this is also a turning point in history, where all commodity markets can slowly lever licensing and other requirements to ensure that slavery is eliminated from production, one industry at a time, as a sectoral simultaneous policy that does not cause disadvantages for any one market player.

Famous slaves and former slaves

From the list of famous slaves:

Films

  • Alex Haley, "Roots", 1977 miniseries based on the book by Alex Haley
  • Sergio Giral,
    • El Otro Francisco - "The Other Francisco, 1975
    • "Cimarron," 1967
    • "Maluala", 1979

References

  • Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, vol. III: The Perspective of the World (1984, originally published in French, 1979.)
  • Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (1999)
  • Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1988)
  • Finkelman, Paul. Encyclopedia of Slavery (1999)
  • Rodriguez, ed. Junius P. The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1997)

USA

Primary sources

  • The Antislavery Literature Project - a scholarly source for primary literature on US slavery, with some contemporary slavery accounts. Site includes educational digital videos.
  • The Slavery Reader, ed. by Rigas Doganis, Gad Heuman, James Walvin, Routledge 2003

See also

Media

Video on Child Slavery in the Middle East - an Emmy and duPont award winning documentary

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