Contents hide

(Top)
Etymology
Terminology
Toggle Terminology subsection
Characteristics
Toggle Characteristics subsection
Legal aspects
Toggle Legal aspects subsection
History
Toggle History subsection
Contemporary slavery
Toggle Contemporary slavery subsection
Abolitionism
Toggle Abolitionism subsection
Apologies
Toggle Apologies subsection
Media
See also
References
Toggle References subsection
Further reading
Toggle Further reading subsection
External links
Toggle External links subsection

Slavery
156 languages
Article
Talk
Read
View source
View history
Tools
Appearance hide

Text
Small
Standard
Large
Width
Standard
 Wide
Color (beta)
Automatic
Light
Dark

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Slaves)

"Slave" and "Slaves" redirect here. For other uses, see Slave (disambiguation).
"Slave master" redirects here. For other uses, see Slave Master (disambiguation).
"Slave labour" redirects here. For the Banksy artwork, see Slave Labour (mural).

Part of a series on

Forced labour and slavery

show

Contemporary

show

Historical

show

By country or region

show
 Religion

show

Opposition and resistance

show

Related

● V
● T
● E

Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their

[1]
labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work
and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavement is the
placement of a person into slavery, and the person is called a slave or an enslaved
person (see § Terminology).
 Photograph of a slave boy in the Sultanate of Zanzibar. 'An Arab master's punishment for a
slight offence.' circa 1890.

Many historical cases of enslavement occurred as a result of breaking the law,

becoming indebted, suffering a military defeat, or exploitation for cheaper labor;
other forms of slavery were instituted along demographic lines such as race or sex.
Slaves may be kept in bondage for life, or for a fixed period of time after which they
[2]
would be granted freedom. Although slavery is usually involuntary and involves
coercion, there are also cases where people voluntarily enter into slavery to pay a
debt or earn money due to poverty. In the course of human history, slavery was a
[3]
typical feature of civilization, and was legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed
[4][5]
in most countries of the world, except as a punishment for a crime.

In chattel slavery, the slave is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the
slave owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes the conditions of
[6]
unfree labour and forced labour that most slaves endure.

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania was the last country in the world to officially ban
[7] [8]
slavery, in 1981, with legal prosecution of slaveholders established in 2007.
However, in 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26% were children,
were still enslaved throughout the world despite slavery being illegal. In the modern
world, more than 50% of slaves provide forced labour, usually in the factories and
[9]
sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy. In industrialised
countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery; in non-industrialised
[6]
countries, people in debt bondage are common, others include captive domestic
[10]
servants, people in forced marriages, and child soldiers.

Etymology
The word slave was borrowed into Middle English through the Old French esclave
which ultimately derives from Byzantine Greek σκλάβος (sklábos) or εσκλαβήνος
(ésklabḗnos).

According to the widespread view, which has been known since the 18th century, the
Byzantine Σκλάβινοι (Sklábinoi), Έσκλαβηνοί (Ésklabēnoí), borrowed from a Slavic
tribe self-name *Slověne, turned into σκλάβος, εσκλαβήνος (Late Latin sclāvus) in
the meaning 'prisoner of war slave', 'slave' in the 8th/9th century, because they often
[11][12][13][14]
became captured and enslaved. However this version has been disputed
[15][16]
since the 19th century.

An alternative contemporary hypothesis states that Medieval Latin sclāvus via

*scylāvus derives from Byzantine σκυλάω (skūláō, skyláō) or σκυλεύω (skūleúō,
skyleúō) with the meaning "to strip the enemy (killed in a battle)" or "to make booty /
[17][18][19][20] [21]
extract spoils of war". This version has been criticized as well.

Terminology
There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer"
or "enslaved person", rather than "slave", should be used when describing the
victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave
perpetuates the crime of slavery in language by reducing its victims to a nonhuman
noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were"
(see also People-first language). Other historians prefer slave because the term is
familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with
[22]
person implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow.

Chattel slavery

Flogging a slave fastened to the ground, illustration in an 1853 anti-slavery pamphlet

A poster for a slave auction in Georgia, U.S., 1860

 Portrait of an older woman in New Orleans with her enslaved servant girl in the mid-19th
century

As a social institution, chattel slavery classes slaves as chattels (personal property)

[23]
owned by the enslaver; like livestock, they can be bought and sold at will. Chattel
slavery was historically the normal form of slavery and was practiced in places such
as the Roman Empire and classical Greece, where it was considered a keystone of
[24][25][26]
society. Other places where it was extensively practiced include Medieval
[27] [28]
Egypt, Subsaharan Africa, Brazil, the Antebellum United States, and parts of
[29][30]
the Caribbean such as Cuba and Haiti. The Iroquois enslaved others in ways
[31]
that "looked very like chattel slavery."

Beginning in the 18th century, a series of abolitionist movements saw slavery as a

violation of the slaves' rights as people ("all men are created equal"), and sought to
abolish it. Abolitionism encountered extreme resistance but was eventually
successful. Several of the states of the United States began abolishing slavery
during the American Revolutionary War. The French Revolution tried to abolish
slavery in 1794, but a permanent abolition did not occur until 1848. In much of the
British Empire, slavery was subject to abolition in 1833, throughout the United States
it was abolished in 1865 and in Cuba in 1886. The last country in the Americas to
[32]
abolish slavery was Brazil, in 1888.

Chattel slavery survived longest in the Middle East. After the Trans-Atlantic slave
trade had been suppressed, the ancient Trans-Saharan slave trade, the Indian
Ocean slave trade and the Red Sea slave trade continued to traffic slaves from the
African continent to the Middle East. During the 20th century, the issue of chattel
slavery was addressed and investigated globally by international bodies created by
the League of Nations and the United Nations, such as the Temporary Slavery
Commission in 1924–1926, the Committee of Experts on Slavery in 1932, and the
[33]
Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery in 1934–1939. By the time of the UN
Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery in 1950–1951, legal chattel slavery still existed only in
the Arabian Peninsula: in Oman, in Qatar, in Saudi Arabia, in the Trucial States and
[33]
in Yemen. Legal chattel slavery was finally abolished in the Arabian Peninsula in
the 1960s: Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1962, in Dubai in 1963, and Oman as the last
[33]
in 1970.

The last country to abolish slavery, Mauritania, did so in 1981. The 1981 ban on
slavery was not enforced in practice, as there were no legal mechanisms to
[7][34]
prosecute those who used slaves, these only came in 2007.

Bonded labour

Main article: Debt bondage

See also: Money marriage and Chukri system

Indenture, also known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour
in which a person works to pay off a debt by pledging himself or herself as collateral.
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
[35] [36]
pay off their progenitors' debt. It is the most widespread form of slavery today.
[35]
Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia. Money marriage refers to a
marriage where a girl, usually, is married off to a man to settle debts owed by her
[37]
parents. The Chukri system is a debt bondage system found in parts of Bengal
[38]
where a female can be coerced into prostitution in order to pay off debts.

Dependents

The word slavery has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to
[39][40]
somebody else. For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves
[41]
could be better than those of common citizens.

A Black family works a cotton plantation in Mississippi. The subtitle says "We'se done all dis's
morning".

Forced labour

Main article: Forced labour

See also: Human trafficking
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to describe an individual who is
forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment.
This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as
serfdom, conscription and penal labour. As slavery has been legally outlawed in all
countries, forced labour in the present day (frequently referred to as "modern
slavery") revolves around illegal control.

Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and
is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil
and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual
[42][43]
exploitation of children.

Child soldiers and child labour

Main article: Child slavery

See also: Child labour and Military use of children

In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as
[44][45]
soldiers in then-current conflicts. More girls under 16 work as domestic workers
than any other category of child labour, often sent to cities by parents living in rural
[46]
poverty as with the Haitian restaveks.

Forced marriage

See also: Marriage by abduction and Child marriage

Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery. Forced
marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia
[47][48][49][50]
and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West. Marriage by
abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a 2003 study finding a
[51]
national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction.

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. Some argue that military drafts and other forms of coerced
[52][53]
government labour constitute "state-operated slavery." Some libertarians and
[54]
anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.

"Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary

psychiatric patients, claiming there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness
and yet the psychiatric patient must follow the orders of the psychiatrist. They assert
that instead of chains to control the slave, the psychiatrist uses drugs to control the
 [55]
mind. Drapetomania was a pseudoscientific psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who
[56]
desired freedom; "symptoms" included laziness and the tendency to flee captivity.
[57]

Some proponents of animal rights have applied the term slavery to the condition of
some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of
[58]
human slaves.

The labour market, as institutionalized under contemporary capitalist systems, has

been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists, who utilise the
[59][60][61]
term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour.
Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery.
[62]
Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.

Characteristics
Economics

Economists have modeled the circumstances under which slavery (and variants
such as serfdom) appear and disappear. One theoretical model is that slavery
becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant, but labour is
scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If the
opposite holds true, then it is more costly for landowners to guard the slaves than to
employ paid workers who can demand only low wages because of the degree of
[63]
competition. Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe
as the population grew. They were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as
[64]
large areas of land with few inhabitants became available.

Slavery is more common when the tasks are relatively simple and thus easy to
supervise, such as large-scale monocrops such as sugarcane and cotton, in which
output depended on economies of scale. This enables systems of labour, such as
the gang system in the United States, to become prominent on large plantations
where field hands toiled with factory-like precision. Then, each work gang was based
on an internal division of labour that assigned every member of the gang to a task
and made each worker's performance dependent on the actions of the others. The
slaves chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excess
sprouts. Plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the plants and tossing it
[65]
back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line.

Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery hinders technological
advancement because the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple
tasks rather than upgrading their efficiency. For example, it is sometimes argued
that, because of this narrow focus, technology in Greece – and later in Rome – was
[66][67]
not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.

The work of the Mercedarians was in ransoming Christian slaves held in North Africa (1637).

Scottish economist Adam Smith stated that free labour was economically better than
slave labour, and that it was nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic,
or republican form of government since many of its legislators or political figures
were slave owners and would not punish themselves. He further stated that slaves
would be better able to gain their freedom under centralized government, or a central
[68][69]
authority like a king or church. Similar arguments appeared later in the works
of Auguste Comte, especially given 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
[70]
great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues..."

Sale and inspection of slaves

Even after slavery became a criminal offense, slave owners could get high returns.
According to researcher Siddharth Kara, the profits generated worldwide by all forms
of slavery in 2007 were $91.2 billion. That was second only to drug trafficking, in
terms of global criminal enterprises. At the time the weighted average global sales
price of a slave was estimated 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. The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in
2007 was $3,175, with a low of an average $950 for bonded labour and $29,210 for
a trafficked sex slave. Approximately 40% of slave profits each year were generated
by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of the world's 29 million
[71]
slaves.

Identification

Branding of a female slave

Barefooted slaves depicted in David Roberts' Egypt and Nubia, issued between 1845 and
1849
 Slave branding, c. 1853

A widespread practice was branding, either to explicitly mark slaves as property or

as punishment.

Legal aspects
Private versus state-owned slaves

Slaves have been owned privately by individuals but have also been under state
ownership. For example, the kisaeng were women from low castes in pre modern
Korea, who were owned by the state under government officials known as hojang
and were required to provide entertainment to the aristocracy. In the 2020s, in North
Korea, Kippumjo ("Pleasure Brigades") are made up of women selected from the
general population to serve as entertainers and as concubines to the rulers of North
[72][73]
Korea. "Tribute labor" is compulsory labor for the state and has been used in
various iterations such as corvée, mit'a and repartimiento. The internment camps of
totalitarian regimes such as the Nazis and the Soviet Union placed increasing
importance on the labor provided in those camps, leading to a growing tendency
[74]
among historians to designate such systems as slavery.

A combination of these include the encomienda where the Spanish Crown granted
private individuals the right to the free labour of a specified number of natives in a
[75]
given area. In the "Red Rubber System" of both the Congo Free State and French
[76]
ruled Ubangi-Shari, labour was demanded as taxation; private companies were
conceded areas within which they were allowed to use any measures to increase
[77]
rubber production. Convict leasing was common in the Southern United States
where the state would lease prisoners for their free labour to companies.

Legal rights

Depending upon the era and the country, slaves sometimes had a limited set of legal
rights. For example, in the Province of New York, people who deliberately killed
 [78]
slaves were punishable under a 1686 statute. And, as already mentioned, certain
legal rights attached to the nobi in Korea, to slaves in various African societies, and
to black female slaves in the French colony of Louisiana. Giving slaves legal rights
has sometimes been a matter of morality, but also sometimes a matter of self-
interest. For example, in ancient Athens, protecting slaves from mistreatment
simultaneously protected people who might be mistaken for slaves, and giving
slaves limited property rights incentivized slaves to work harder to get more property.
[79]
In the southern United States prior to the extirpation of slavery in 1865, a
proslavery legal treatise reported that slaves accused of crimes typically had a legal
right to counsel, freedom from double jeopardy, a right to trial by jury in graver cases,
and the right to grand jury indictment, but they lacked many other rights such as
[80]
white adults' ability to control their own lives.

History
Main article: History of slavery
See also: Slavery in antiquity

Corinthian black-figure terra-cotta votive tablet of slaves working in a mine, dated to the late
seventh century BC

[3]
Slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures. Slavery is rare
among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a
substantial population density. Thus, although it has existed among unusually
resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as the American Indian peoples of the salmon-
rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest coast, slavery became widespread only with the
[81]
invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.
[3]
Slavery was practiced in almost every ancient civilization. Such institutions
included debt bondage, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war,
[82]
child abandonment, and the enslavement of slaves' offspring.

Africa

See also: Slavery in Africa

Slavery was widespread in Africa, which pursued both internal and external slave
[83]
trade. In the Senegambia region, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of
the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sahel, including
[84]
Ghana, Mali, Segou, and Songhai, about a third of the population were enslaved.

In European courtly society, and European aristocracy, black African slaves and their
children became visible in the late 1300s and 1400s. Starting with Frederick II, Holy
Roman Emperor, black Africans were included in the retinue. In 1402 an Ethiopian
embassy reached Venice. In the 1470s black Africans were painted as court
attendants in wall paintings that were displayed in Mantua and Ferrara. In the 1490s
[85]
black Africans were included on the emblem of the Duke of Milan.

[86]
13th-century slave market in Yemen.

During the trans-Saharan slave trade, slaves from West Africa were transported
across the Sahara desert to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle
eastern civilizations. During the Red Sea slave trade, slaves were transported from
Africa across the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula. The Indian Ocean slave trade,
sometimes known as the east African slave trade, was multi-directional. Africans
were sent as slaves to the Arabian Peninsula, to Indian Ocean islands (including
Madagascar), to the Indian subcontinent, and later to the Americas. These traders
captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique
[87][88]
and Tanzania and brought them to the coast. There, the slaves gradually
[89]
assimilated in rural areas, particularly on Unguja and Pemba islands.

Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on
the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately
5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa
[90]
across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert between 1500 and 1900.
The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as
superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the
[89][91]
region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.
[92]
The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To
meet the demand for menial labour, Bantu slaves bought by east African slave
traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the
centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, European colonies
[93]
in the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands, Ethiopia and Somalia.

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 labour was extensive,
[94][95]
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 8 to 16
[96]
million.

Slave labour in East Africa was drawn from the Zanj, Bantu peoples that lived along
[88][97]
the East African coast. The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab
traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean during the Indian Ocean slave
trade. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers
and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab
enslavers during their slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion,
a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 near Basra (also known
as Basara), against the slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate situated in present-day Iraq,
is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the
[98]
African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa. It grew to
involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across the
[99]
Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq".

The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous
[100]
agricultural work. As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became
richer, agriculture and other manual labour work was thought to be demeaning. The
resulting labour shortage led to an increased slave market.

Slave market in Algiers, 1684

In Algiers, the capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into
[101]
slavery. In about 1650, there were as many as 35,000 Christian slaves in Algiers.
By one estimate, raids by Barbary slave traders on coastal villages and ships
extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25 million Europeans
[102][103][104]
between the 16th and 19th centuries. However, this estimate is the result
of an extrapolation which assumes that the number of European slaves captured by
Barbary pirates was constant for a 250-year period:

There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is
possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been
needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped,
were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500
new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers – about 850,000 captives
over the century from 1580 to 1680. By extension, for the 250 years between 1530
[105]
and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.

Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who
cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also
[105]
seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe. In addition, the number of
[clarification needed]
slaves traded was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying
on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia. Hence, there
were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given
slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent
records. Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based
[106]
on back-calculations from human observation. Such observations, across the
late 16th and early 17th century observers, account for around 35,000 European
Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli,
Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were
English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers.
However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly
[107]
Spain and Italy. This eventually led to the bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-
[108][109]
Dutch fleet in 1816.

Arab-Swahili slave traders and their captives on the Ruvuma River in East Africa, 19th
century

Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port, with as many
[110][111]
as 50,000 African slaves passing through every year during the 19th century.
Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the
[3][failed verification]
Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD.
[112]
Eduard Rüppell described the losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on
foot to Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba
mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment,
[113]
disease and desert travel barely 5,000 made it to Egypt." W.A. Veenhoven wrote:
"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
[114]
high as ten to one."

Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in
much of the ancient world. In many African societies where slavery was prevalent,
the slaves were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a
system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery
in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities,
where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to
[115]
increase the influence a person had and expand connections. This made slaves
a permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become
[116]
closely connected with the larger family ties. Children of slaves born into families
could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions
within society, even to the level of chief in some instances. However, stigma often
remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of
[115]
a kinship group and those related to the master. Slavery was practiced in many
different forms: debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and
[117]
criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa. Slavery for domestic
and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa.

A model showing a cross-section of a typical 1700s European slave ship on the Middle
Passage, National Museum of American History.

When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began
supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although the Atlantic
slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and
intensity. As Elikia M'bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique:

The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across
the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the
Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from
the ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red
Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as
many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty
[118]
million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.

The trans-Atlantic 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
[119] [120]
Empire (Yoruba), the Ashanti Empire, the kingdom of Dahomey, and the Aro
[121]
Confederacy. It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the
voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of
[122][123]
capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships.

Americas

Further information: Atlantic slave trade; Encomienda; Mita (Inca); Institute for
Trafficked, Exploited, and Missing Persons; Slavery in colonial Spanish America;
Slavery in Brazil; and Slavery in the United States

[124]
Slavery in Mexico can be traced back to the Aztecs. Other Amerindians, such as
the Inca of the Andes, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the Creek of Georgia, and the
[3]
Comanche of Texas, also practiced slavery.

[125]
Slavery in Canada was practiced by First Nations and by European settlers.
Slave-owning people of what became Canada were, for example, the fishing
societies, such as the Yurok, that lived along the Pacific coast from Alaska to
[126]
California, on what is sometimes described as the Pacific or Northern Northwest
Coast. Some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, such as the
Haida and Tlingit, were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders,
raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war
[127]
and their descendants were slaves. Some nations in British Columbia continued
[128]
to segregate and ostracize the descendants of slaves as late as the 1970s.
Diagrams of a slave ship and the alignment of captive slaves during the Atlantic slave trade.

Slavery in America remains a contentious issue and played a major role in the
history and evolution of some countries, triggering a revolution, a civil war, and
numerous rebellions.

The countries that controlled most of the transatlantic slave market in terms of
number of slaves shipped were the UK, Portugal and France.

Slaves embarked to America from 1450 until 1800 by country

In order to establish itself as an American empire, 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. The
Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on
[129]
islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola. It was argued by some contemporary
[130][131][132]
writers to be intrinsically immoral. 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. Also, the alarming decline in the native population had
spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population. The first African slaves
[133] [134]
arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. This era saw a growth in race-based slavery.
England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was
pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates, though English slave-trading would
not take off until the mid-17th century.

Many whites who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came
[135]
under contract as indentured servants. The transformation from indentured
servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal
documentation of such a shift was in 1640 where a black man, John Punch, was
sentenced to lifetime slavery, forcing him to serve his master, Hugh Gwyn, for the
remainder of his life, for attempting to run away. This case was significant because it
established the disparity between his sentence as a black man and that of the two
white indentured servants who escaped with him (one described as Dutch and one
as a Scotchman). It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime
servitude and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction
[136][137]
between black and white indentured servants.

After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and keep
their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the 1655 case Johnson v.
Parker, where the court ruled that a black man, Anthony Johnson of Virginia, was
granted ownership of another black man, John Casor, as the result of a civil case.
[138]
This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies
holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.
[139][140]

Spanish colonial America

[141]
In 1519, Hernán Cortés brought the first modern slave to Mexico. In the mid-16th
century, the Spanish New Laws, prohibited slavery of the indigenous people,
including the Aztecs. A labour shortage resulted. This led to the African slaves being
imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox. In exchange, many Africans
were afforded the opportunity to buy their freedom, while eventually others were
[141]
granted their freedom by their masters. In Jamaica, the Spanish enslaved many
of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork.
[142]
The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves.
Spain practically did not trade in slaves until 1810 after the rebellions and
independence of its American territories or viceroyalties. After the Napoleonic
invasions, Spain had lost its industry and its American territories, except in Cuba and
Puerto Rico, where the African slave trade to Cuba began on a massive scale from
1810 onwards. It was started by French planters exiled from the French lost colony
Saint Domingue (Haiti) who settled in the eastern part of Cuba.

In 1789, the Spanish Crown led an effort to reform slavery, as the demand for slave
labour in Cuba was growing. The Crown issued a decree, Código Negro Español
(Spanish Black Code), that specified food and clothing provisions, put limits on the
number of work hours, limited punishments, required religious instruction, and
protected marriages, forbidding the sale of young children away from their mothers.
The British made other changes to the institution of slavery in Cuba. However,
planters often flouted the laws and protested against them, considering them a threat
[143]
to their authority and an intrusion into their personal lives.

English and Dutch Caribbean

Planting the sugar cane, British West Indies, 1823

Statue of Bussa, who led the largest slave rebellion in Barbadian history.

In the early 17th century, the majority of the labour in Barbados was provided by
European indentured servants, mainly English, Irish and Scottish, with African and
native American slaves providing little of the workforce. The introduction of sugar
cane in 1640 completely transformed society and the economy. Barbados eventually
[144]
had one of the world's largest sugar industries. The workable sugar plantation
required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labour. At first, Dutch traders
supplied the equipment, financing, and African slaves, in addition to transporting
most of the sugar to Europe. In 1644, the population of Barbados was estimated at
30,000, of which about 800 were of African descent, with the remainder mainly of
English descent. By 1700, there were 15,000 free whites and 50,000 enslaved
Africans. In Jamaica, although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s
never exceeded 10,000, by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000. The increased
implementation of slave codes or black codes, which created differential treatment
between Africans and the white workers and ruling planter class. In response to
these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but
none succeeded.

Funeral at slave plantation, Dutch Suriname. 1840–1850.

The planters of the Dutch colony of Suriname relied heavily on African slaves to
cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and
[145]
cotton plantations. The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname in 1863.

Many slaves escaped the plantations. With the help of the native South Americans
living in the adjoining rain forests, these runaway slaves established a new and
unique culture in the interior that was highly successful in its own right. They were
known collectively in English as Maroons, in French as Nèg'Marrons (literally
meaning "brown negroes", that is "pale-skinned negroes"), and in Dutch as Marrons.
The Maroons gradually developed several independent tribes through a process of
ethnogenesis, as they were made up of slaves from different African ethnicities.
These tribes include the Saramaka, Paramaka, Ndyuka or Aukan, Kwinti, Aluku or
Boni, and Matawai. The Maroons often raided plantations to recruit new members
from the slaves and capture women, as well as to acquire weapons, food and
[146]
supplies. They sometimes killed planters and their families in the raids. The
colonists also mounted armed campaigns against the Maroons, who generally
escaped through the rain forest, which they knew much better than did the colonists.
To end hostilities, in the 18th century the European colonial authorities signed
several peace treaties with different tribes. They granted the Maroons sovereign
status and trade rights in their inland territories, giving them autonomy.

Brazil
 Public flogging of a slave in 19th-century Brazil, by Johann Moritz Rugendas

Slave punishment by Jacques Étienne Arago, 1839.

Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established
[147]
in 1532, as members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another.

Later, Portuguese colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labour during the
initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were
often captured by expeditions called bandeiras. The importation of African slaves
began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples
continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries.

During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any
other country. Nearly 5 million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the
[148]
period from 1501 to 1866. Until the early 1850s, most African slaves who arrived
on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially
in Luanda (in present-day Angola). Today, with the exception of Nigeria, the country
[149]
with the largest population of people of African descent is Brazil.
Slave labour was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil,
and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650. Gold and
diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in
the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market.
Transportation systems were developed for the mining infrastructure, and population
boomed from immigrants seeking to take part in gold and diamond mining. Demand
for African slaves did not wane after the decline of the mining industry in the second
half of the 18th century. Cattle ranching and foodstuff production proliferated after
the population growth, both of which relied heavily on slave labour. 1.7 million slaves
were imported to Brazil from Africa from 1700 to 1800, and the rise of coffee in the
1830s further enticed expansion of the slave trade.

Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery. Forty percent of
the total number of slaves brought to the Americas were sent to Brazil. For
reference, the United States received 10 percent. Despite being abolished, there are
still people working in slavery-like conditions in Brazil in the 21st century.

Haiti

Slavery in Haiti started with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in
[150]
1492. The practice was devastating to the native population. Following the
indigenous Taíno's near decimation from forced labour, disease and war, the
Spanish, under advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomé de las Casas, and with
the blessing of the Catholic church, who also wished to protect the indigenous
[clarification needed]
people, began engaging in earnest in the use of African slaves.
During the French colonial period beginning in 1625, the economy of Haiti (then
known as Saint-Domingue) was based on slavery, and the practice there was
regarded as the most brutal in the world.

Saint-Domingue slave revolt in 1791

 1804 Haiti massacre, carried out by Haitian soldiers, mostly former slaves, against the
remaining French population

Following the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Hispaniola was divided between France
and Spain. France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-
Domingue. To develop it into sugarcane plantations, the French imported thousands
of slaves from Africa. Sugar was a lucrative commodity crop throughout the 18th
century. By 1789, approximately 40,000 white colonists lived in Saint-Domingue. The
whites were vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of African slaves they had
imported to work on their plantations, which were primarily devoted to the production
of sugarcane. In the north of the island, slaves were able to retain many ties to
African cultures, religion and language; these ties were continually being renewed by
newly imported Africans. Blacks outnumbered whites by about ten to one.

The French-enacted Code Noir ("Black Code"), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert

and ratified by Louis XIV, had established rules on slave treatment and permissible
freedoms. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient
[151]
slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years.
[152]
Many slaves died from diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever. They had
birth rates around 3 percent, and there is evidence that some women aborted
fetuses, or committed infanticide, rather than allow their children to live within the
[153][154]
bonds of slavery.

As in its Louisiana colony, the French colonial government allowed some rights to
free people of color: the mixed-race descendants of white male colonists and black
female slaves (and later, mixed-race women). Over time, many were released from
slavery. They established a separate social class. White French Creole fathers
frequently sent their mixed-race sons to France for their education. Some men of
color were admitted into the military. More of the free people of color lived in the
south of the island, near Port-au-Prince, and many intermarried within their
community. They frequently worked as artisans and tradesmen, and began to own
some property. Some became slave holders. The free people of color petitioned the
colonial government to expand their rights.

Slaves that made it to Haiti from the trans-Atlantic journey and slaves born in Haiti
were first documented in Haiti's archives and transferred to France's Ministry of
Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As of 2015, these records are in The
National Archives of France. According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population
[155]
consisted of nearly 40,000 whites, 30,000 free coloureds and 450,000 slaves.

The Haitian Revolution of 1804, the only successful slave revolt in human history,
precipitated the end of slavery in all French colonies, which came in 1848.

United States

A coffle of slaves being driven on foot from Staunton, Virginia to Tennessee in 1850.

Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement,
primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of
America in the 18th and 19th centuries, after it gained independence from the British
and before the end of the American Civil War. Slavery had been practiced in British
America from early colonial days and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies, at the time
of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. By the time of the American Revolution,
the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with
[156]
African ancestry. The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery,
represented by the slave and free states divided by the Mason–Dixon line, which
separated free Pennsylvania from slave Maryland and Delaware.

Congress, during the Jefferson administration, prohibited the importation of slaves,

[157]
effective 1808, although smuggling (illegal importing) was not unusual. Domestic
slave trading, however, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labour demands from
the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. Those states attempted to
extend slavery into the new western territories to keep their share of political power
in the nation. Such laws proposed to Congress to continue the spread of slavery into
newly ratified states include the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions,
times, and places. The power relationships of slavery corrupted many whites who
had authority over slaves, with children showing their own cruelty. Masters and
overseers resorted to physical punishments to impose their wills. Slaves were
punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and
imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or
perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was carried out to re-assert the
[158]
dominance of the master or overseer of the slave. Treatment was usually
harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by overseers and owned by
absentee slaveholders.

William Wells Brown, who escaped to freedom, reported that on one plantation,
slave men were required to pick 80 pounds (36 kg) of cotton per day, while women
were required to pick 70 pounds (32 kg) per day; if any slave failed in their quota,
they were subject to whip lashes for each pound they were short. The whipping post
[159]
stood next to the cotton scales. A New York man who attended a slave auction in
the mid-19th century reported that at least three-quarters of the male slaves he saw
[160]
at sale had scars on their backs from whipping. By contrast, small slave-owning
families had closer relationships between the owners and slaves; this sometimes
[158]
resulted in a more humane environment but was not a given.

More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of
labour, and taken to the Deep South in a forced migration, splitting up many families.
New communities of African American culture were developed in the Deep South,
and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before
[161][162]
liberation. In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the
institution as a "necessary evil". White people of that time feared that emancipation
of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than
the continuation of slavery. The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in
Democracy in America (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its
effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was
untenable, as he believed that prejudice against black people increased as they
were granted more rights. Others, like James Henry Hammond argued that slavery
was a "positive good" stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have
that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement."

The Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of
slave and free states to maintain a political balance of power in Congress. The new
territories acquired from Britain, France, and Mexico were the subject of major
political compromises. By 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening
to secede from the Union, and tensions continued to rise. Many white Southern
Christians, including church ministers, attempted to justify their support for slavery as
[163]
modified by Christian paternalism. The largest denominations, the Baptist,
Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, split over the slavery issue into regional
organizations of the North and South.
 Slaves on a Virginia plantation (The Old Plantation, c. 1790).

When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion
of slavery, according to the 1860 U.S. census, roughly 400,000 individuals,
[164]
representing 8% of all U.S. families, owned nearly 4,000,000 slaves. One-third of
[165]
Southern families owned slaves. The South was heavily invested in slavery. As
such, upon Lincoln's election, seven states broke away to form the Confederate
States of America. The first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves
in the South. Shortly after, over the issue of slavery, the United States erupted into
an all-out Civil War, with slavery legally ceasing as an institution following the war in
December 1865.

In 1865, the United States ratified the 13th Amendment to the United States
Constitution, which banned slavery and involuntary servitude "except as punishment
for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," providing a legal basis
for forced labor to continue in the country. This led to the system of convict leasing,
which affected primarily African Americans. The Prison Policy Initiative, an American
criminal justice think tank, cites the 2020 US prison population as 2.3 million, and
nearly all able-bodied inmates work in some fashion. In Texas, Georgia, Alabama
and Arkansas, prisoners are not paid at all for their work. In other states, prisoners
are paid between $0.12 and $1.15 per hour. Federal Prison Industries paid inmates
an average of $0.90 per hour in 2017. Inmates who refuse to work may be
indefinitely remanded into solitary confinement or have family visitation revoked.
From 2010 to 2015 and again in 2016 and in 2018, some prisoners in the US refused
to work, protesting for better pay, better conditions, and for the end of forced labor.
Strike leaders were punished with indefinite solitary confinement. Forced prison labor
occurs in both government-run prisons and private prisons. CoreCivic and GEO
Group constitute half the market share of private prisons, and they made a combined
revenue of $3.5 billion in 2015. The value of all labor by inmates in the United States
is estimated to be in the billions. In California, 2,500 incarcerated workers fought
wildfires for only $1 per hour through the CDCR's Conservation Camp Program,
[166]
which saves the state as much as $100 million a year.

Asia-Pacific

See also: History of slavery in Asia

East Asia
 A contract from the Tang dynasty recording the purchase of a 15-year-old slave for six bolts
of plain silk and five coins.

See also: Slavery in China

[167]
Slavery existed in ancient China as early as the Shang dynasty. Slavery was
employed largely by governments as a means of maintaining a public labour force.
[168][169]
Until the Han dynasty, slaves were sometimes discriminated against but
their legal status was guaranteed. As can be seen from the some historical records
as "Duansheng, Marquis of Shouxiang, had his territory confiscated because he
killed a female slave" (Han dynasty records in DongGuan), "Wang Mang's son Wang
Huo murdered a slave, Wang Mang severely criticized him and forced him to commit
suicide" (Book of Han: Biography of Wang Mang), Murder against slaves was as
taboo as murder against free people, and perpetrators were always severely
punished. Han dynasty can be said to be very distinctive compared to other
countries of the same period(In most cases, lords were free to kill their slaves) in
terms of slaves human rights.

After the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Due to years of poor harvests, the influx
of foreign tribes, and the resulting wars, The number of slaves exploded. They
became a class and were called "jianmin [zh] (Chinese: 贱民)", The word literally
means "inferior person". As stated in The commentary of Tang Code: "Slaves
and inferior people are legally equivalent to livestock products", They always had a
low social status, and even if they were deliberately murdered, the perpetrators
received only a year in prison, and were punished even when they reported the
[170]
crimes of their lords. However, in the Later period of the dynasty, perhaps
because the increase in the number of slaves slowed down again, the penalties for
crimes against them became harsh again. For example, the famous contemporary
female poet Yu Xuanji, she was publicly executed for murdering her own slave.

Many Han Chinese were enslaved in the process of the Mongol invasion of China
[171]
proper. According to Japanese historians Sugiyama Masaaki (杉山正明) and
Funada Yoshiyuki (舩田善之), Mongolian slaves were owned by Han Chinese
 [172][173]
during the Yuan dynasty. Slavery has taken various forms throughout
China's history. It was reportedly abolished as a legally recognized institution,
[174][175] [176]
including in a 1909 law fully enacted in 1910, although the practice
[171]
continued until at least 1949. Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved
Koreans, Turks, Persians, Indonesians, and people from Inner Mongolia, central
[177][178]
Asia, and northern India. The greatest source of slaves came from southern
tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian,
Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians, and "black skinned"
peoples (who were either Austronesian Negritos of Southeast Asia and the Pacific
[179]
Islands, or Africans, or both) were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty.

In the 17th century Qing dynasty, there was a hereditarily servile people called Booi
Aha (Manchu: booi niyalma; Chinese transliteration: 包衣阿哈), which is a
Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes
rendered as "nucai." The Manchu was establishing close personal and paternalist
relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said, "The Master should
[180]
love the slaves and eat the same food as him". However, booi aha "did not
correspond exactly to the Chinese category of "bond-servant slave"
(Chinese:奴僕); instead, it was a relationship of personal dependency on a
master which in theory guaranteed close personal relationships and equal
treatment, even though many western scholars would directly translate
"booi" as "bond-servant" (some of the "booi" even had their own servant).
[171]
Chinese Muslim (Tungans) Sufis who were charged with practicing xiejiao
(heterodox religion), were punished by exile to Xinjiang and being sold as a slave to
[181]
other Muslims, such as the Sufi begs. Han Chinese who committed crimes such
as those dealing with opium became slaves to the begs, this practice was
[182]
administered by Qing law. Most Chinese in Altishahr were exile slaves to
[183]
Turkestani Begs. While free Chinese merchants generally did not engage in
relationships with East Turkestani women, some of the Chinese slaves belonging to
begs, along with Green Standard soldiers, Bannermen, and Manchus, engaged in
[184]
affairs with the East Turkestani women that were serious in nature.

Kisaeng, women from outcast or slave families who were trained to provide entertainment,
conversation, and sexual services to men of the upper class.
Slavery in Korea existed since before the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, in the
first