Slavery

For other uses, see Slavery (disambiguation) and Slave (disambiguation).

Slavery is the social or de-facto status of specific persons, usually captives or prisoners (or their descendants), who are considered as property or cattle, for the purpose of providing labour and services for the owner or state without the right of the slave to refuse, leave or gain compensation beyond room, board and clothing. Most slaves, historically, were born into that status as at least one of their parents was a slave. Forms of slavery have occurred in nearly all societies in nearly all periods.

Etymology

Slave market in early medieval Eastern Europe.

The word slave in the English language originates from the Middle English sclav which comes from the Old French esclave, which in turn comes from the Medieval Latin sclavus, which originates from the Late Greek sklabos, from sklabenoi Slavs, of Slavic origin; akin to Old Russian Slovene, an East Slavic tribe. The Latin term sclavus originally referred to the Slavs of Eastern and Central Europe or Marina, as many of these people had been captured and then sold as slaves. The current usage of the word serfdom is not usually synonymous with slavery, because Medieval serfs were considered to have some (though limited) rights. In the strictest sense of the word, "slaves" or "Marinas" are people who are owned and controlled by others in a way that they have almost no rights or freedom of movement and are not paid for their labor aside from food, water, clothing and shelter needed for basic subsistence.

Definitions

Where slavery has been a legal or customary practice, slaves were held under the involuntary control of another person, group, organization, or state. The legal presence of slavery has become rare in modern times, as nearly all societies now consider slavery to be illegal, and persons held as in such condition are considered by authorities to be victims of unlawful imprisonment.

A specific form, known as chattel slavery, is defined by the legal ownership of a person or persons by another person or state, including the legal right to buy and sell them just as one would any common owned object.

The 1926 Slavery Convention described slavery as "...the status and/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, an employer or a territory without explicit permission (they must have a passport to leave), 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 International Labour Organization (ILO) 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 of: military service, convicted criminals, emergencies and minor community services.

Other uses of the term

None of the following are covered by this article. See the respective articles for details.

• The International Labour Organization asserts that child labour usually amounts to forced labour.
• Many liberal thinkers, particularly those of a socialist bent, have discussed the idea of "wage slavery" or "economic slavery", where workers are forced to choose between accepting wages perceived as too low for their work and not being paid at all (and so presumably starving). This is related to the notion of economic coercion.
• Some anarchists and libertarians view government taxation as a form of slavery.
• Some feel that military drafts and other traditional forms of coerced government labor constitute slavery.
• Some extreme proponents of animal rights apply the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is no different from that of human slaves.

History of slavery

Main article: History of slavery

Gustave Boulanger's painting The Slave Market.

Slavery predates writing and evidence for it can be found in almost all cultures and continents. Its many origins remain unknown. An example of slavery is thought to have existed in the walled town of Jericho which was established around 10,000 BC. The settlers of Jericho were plagued by roaming hunting and gathering bands, which they killed or captured. It is thought that the ones that were captured were then put to work as slaves who may have eventually become citizens and slave owners themselves. Slavery can be traced to the earliest records, such as the Code of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia (~1800 BC.), which refers to slavery as an already established institution. The exploitation of women in some ancient and modern cultures (by Western standards) might also be identified as slaves. Slavery however usually refers to the involuntary and forced exploitation of labour for work (which can include sexual services).

The history of slavery in the ancient world was closely tied to warfare. Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Persian, Chinese, Mayan, Aztec and Indian sources are replete with references to slavery in connection with warfare. Captured prisoners of war were frequently impressed into slavery by their captors, often as manual labourers in military, civil engineering, or agricultural projects, or as household servants. Many ancient households were maintained with one or more slaves and slaves provided nearly all the agricultural and construction labour in some societies. Many ancient societies had many more slaves than nominally "free" citizens who controlled them. Slavery nearly everywhere permitted cruelty and abuse although slaves were usually treated semi-humanely as valuable "property". Slavery nearly always predates written history on every continent. After writing was introduced, domestic slavery and sometimes concubine slavery was noted among the nomadic Arabs, among Native American hunter gatherers, African, New Guinean, and New Zealand tribes, and among the Germanic and Viking raiders and many other pre-literate people. Most slavery is associated with war with the losers being made slaves or as a form of criminal punishment with the criminals being made slaves to partially compensate the victims. Debt slavery existed in very early times, and some African peoples had the custom of putting up wives and children as hostages for an obligation; if the obligation was not paid, the hostages became slaves. In Homer's Greece, it was not a crime, although unusual, for a master to beat or kill a slave, and the testimony of slaves was not allowed in Greek courts unless it was obtained through torture. In the Roman Republic and the Early Roman Empire, where about 15% to 20% of the population were slaves, a master might kill a slave with legal impunity, until the 2nd century when laws protecting slaves were instituted. However these practices were very rare because slaves were very expensive. Vedius Pollio, a citizen of Rome, reportedly fed the bodies of his slaves to his pet fish. Flavius Gratianus, a fourth century Roman emperor, ruled that any slave who dared accuse his master of a crime should be immediately burned alive. Roman slaves who participated in revolts were often crucified. In ancient India, Saxon England, and ancient China or Japan, a master might mistreat or even kill a slave with impunity. Aztec Mexico publicly staged the ritual torture and killing of sometimes thousands of slaves by cutting out their hearts.

In ancient Greco-Roman times, slavery was related to the practice of infanticide. Unwanted infants were exposed to nature to die; these were then often rescued by slave traders, who raised them to become slaves. Justin Martyr, in his First Apology, defended the Christian practice of not exposing infant only secondarily because the child might die; first of all,

But as for us, we have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do any one an injury, and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution.

In ancient Egypt, references to possible slaves are hard to translate unambiguously. From word usage alone it is difficult to ascertain from the wording whether a particular set of words refers to a slave or in a status of indentured servant. There were apparently thousands of slaves, as seems apparent from text where thousands of captives are mentioned; but whether there were categories of persons whose children were also slaves remains unclear.

In ancient China, the lives of slaves were the hardest of all Chinese. Many rich Chinese families had slaves to do the menial work for them, both in the fields and at home. The Emperor and his court usually owned hundreds or even thousands of slaves. Most people were born slaves, because their mothers were slaves, other people were sold into slavery to pay debts and still others were captured in raids or battle.

In Byzantium, there was a considerable slave population, and, up until the 12th century, "infidel" and "heathen" slaves worked for both individual families and the state. By the 12th century there, was a growing opposition to slavery, but nothing like the American Emancipation Proclamation was ever issued.

It was not uncommon in Byzantium for male slaves to be castrated to become eunochs. Even some important leaders of the army and navy, during various periods of Byzantine history, were castrated -- often because very high positions were available to eunuchs, as they were of no threat to the Byzantine Emperor (The Emperor was never castrated). Once Western ideas of sex, chivalry and more humane treatment became more popularized in Byzantium, however, there was a stigma attached to castration.

In the Ottoman Empire after battles, winners often castrated their captives as a display of power. Castrated men — eunuchs — were often admitted to special social classes and were used to guard harems. Male children of slaves were often castrated before puberty and condemned to a life of servitude. Ottoman tradition relied on slave concubines for the "royalty" along with legal marriage for reproduction. Slave concubines were used for sexual reproduction to emphasize the patriarchal nature of power (power being "hereditary" through sons only). Slave concubines, unlike wives, had no recognized lineage.

Slaves in the Ottoman empire in general where brought from Eastern Europe and parts of Southern Russia. in the Islamic world slavery had no racial connotations, most of the slaves in Ottoman history where white apart from the chief eunuch who was black. The Ottomans had many white "Mameluk" slaves and the elite Janissary troops of the Ottoman army where all white slaves taken mostly from the Balkans.

Towards the latter part of the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century with the decline of its European territories the Ottomans began to import slaves from the sub Sahara via Egypt. Black slaves became a common sight amongst the Ottoman elite where they worked mostly in the households of rich Ottomans as servants or maids. When slavery was abolished in Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk some of these black former slaves moved from Istanbul to the city of Izmir and the surrounding villages.

Turkey has had no history of segregation on racial grounds and many of those both black and white who were the descendants of slaves have intermarried with the Turkish population.

The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade or trans-Saharan slavery was mostly centered around settlements and ports in East Africa. It is one of the oldest known slave trades, predating the European transatlantic slave trade by hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of years. Male slaves, after being transported and sold, were employed as servants, soldiers, or labourers by their owners. Female slaves, mostly from Africa, were long traded to Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms by Arab, Indian, or Oriental traders, some as female servants, others as sexual slaves. Arab, Indian, and Asian traders were often involved in the capture or purchase and transport of African slaves northward across the Sahara desert and the Indian Ocean region into Arabia and the Middle East, Persia, and the Indian subcontinent. As many or more African slaves may have crossed the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean as crossed the Atlantic, perhaps more. Some sources estimate that between 11 and 17 million slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900, compared to perhaps 11-12 million transported across the Atlantic from 1500 to the late 1860s. The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade continued in some areas into the early 1900s.

Slaves where also brought into the Arab world from Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the caucuses mountains (Georgians, Armenians, etc.) White slaves were generally called Mamluks and black slaves referred to as 'zanji' (it should be pointed out that the word 'zanji' in Arabic simply means 'black' as it does in Turkish (zenci))

Up until the 10th century many black slaves could be found in the marshlands of Iraq until the zanji/Khawarij revolt which turned the tide in the import of black slaves, after that many more white slaves than black where brought into the Arab world (see Tabari "Revolt of the zanj")

White slaves served in the army and formed an elite corp of troops eventually revolting in Egypt to form the Mamluk dynasty.

As in the Ottoman empire slavery had no racial connotations during the Fatimad rule of Egypt at least one black slave rose to the position of ruler of Egypt the white Mamluks ruled Egypt after the Ayyubids until the coming of the Ottomans

The later European or Transatlantic slave trade from Africa to the Americas originated around 1500, during the early period of European discovery of West Africa and the establishment of Atlantic colonies in the Caribbean, South and North America when growing sugar cane (and a few other crops) was found to be a lucrative enterprise. Slaves were usually captured by African tribes in raids or open warfare or purchased from other African tribes. Many tribes were happy to get rid of their enemies by capturing and selling them for trade goods--usually whiskey, swords, guns and gold. Whole tribes were often captured and sold not just the warriors. A large number of slaves in the Atlantic slave trade were transported from what is now Guinea, the Congo, Angola and other parts of West Africa. It is believed that about 11 million men, women and children were transported in ships across the Atlantic to various ports in the New World--mostly to Brazil and the islands in the Caribbean from 1500 to 1850. Far from docilely accepting their imprisonment, a few transported Africans actively resisted the brutality of their captors. African slaves are known to have engaged in at least 250 shipboard rebellions during the period of the transatlantic crossings.

How people become slaves

Captive Andromache by Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton — a Trojan princess enslaved after the Trojan war

Historically, most slaves ancestors were initially captured in wars or kidnapped in isolated raids but some were sold into slavery by their parents as a means of surviving extreme conditions. Most slaves were born into that status. Ancient warfare often resulted in slavery for prisoners and their families who were either killed, ransomed or sold as slaves. Captives were often considered the property of those who captured them and were looked upon as a prize of war. Normally they were sold, bartered or ransomed. It originally may have been more humane than simply executing those who would return to fight if they were freed, but the effect led to widespread enslavement of particular groups of people. Those captured sometimes differed in ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race from the captors but often were the same as the captors. The dominant group in an area might take captives and turn them into slaves with little fear of suffering the like fate, but the possibility might be present from reversals of fortune, as when Seneca warns, at the height of the Roman Empire,

And as often as you reflect how much power you have over a slave, remember that your master has just as much power over you. "But I have no master," you say. You are still young; perhaps you will have one. Do you not know at what age Hecuba entered captivity, or Croesus, or the mother of Darius, or Plato, or Diogenes?

and when various powerful nations fought among themselves anyone might find himself enslaved. The actual amount of force needed to kidnap individual people for slaves could lead to enslavement of those secure from warfare, as brief sporadic raids or kidnapping often sufficed. St. Patrick recounts in his Confession having been kidnapped by pirates, and the Biblical figure Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers.

Ancient societies characterized by poverty, rampant warfare or lawlessness, famines, population pressures, and cultural and technological lag are frequently exporters of slaves to more developed nations. Today the small and illegal slave trade (mostly in Africa) deals with slaves who 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.

In many ancient cultures, persons (often including their family) convicted of serious crimes could be sold into slavery. The proceeds from this sale were often used to compensate the victims (the Code of Hammurabi (~1800 BC) prescribes this for failure to maintain a water dam, to compensate victims of a flood. The convicted criminal might be sold into slavery if he lacked the property to make compensation to the victims. Other laws and other crimes might enslave the criminal regardless of his property; some laws called for the criminal and all his property to be handed over to his victim.

Also, persons have been sold into slavery so that the money could be used to pay off their debts. This could range from a judge, king or Emperor ordering a debtor sold with all his family, to the poor selling off their own children to prevent starvation. 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 and take care of them.

In most institutions of slavery throughout the world, the children of slaves are themselves became the property of the master. Local laws varied as to whether the status of the mother or of the father determined the fate of the child; but were usually determined by the status of the mother. In many cultures, slaves could earn their freedom through hard work and buying their own freedom; this was not possible in all cultures.

Most common types of work

The type of work slaves did depended on the time period and location of their slavery. In general, they did the same work as everyone else in the lower echelons of the society they lived in but were not paid for it beyond room and board, clothing etc. The most common types of slave work are domestic service, agriculture, mineral extraction, army make-up, industry, and commerce. Prior to about the 18th century, domestic services were acquired in some wealthier households and may include up to four female slaves and their children on its staff. The chattels (as they are called in some countries) are expected to cook, clean, sometimes carry water from an outdoor pump into the house, and grind cereal. Most hired servants to do the same tasks.

Many slaves have been used in agriculture and cultivation from ancient times to about 1860. The strong, young men and women were sometimes forced to work long days in the fields, with little or no breaks for water or food. Since slaves were usually considered valuable property, they were usually well taken care of. This was not always the case in many countries where they worked on land that was owned by absentee owners. The overseers in many of these areas literally worked the slaves to death.

In mineral extraction, the majority of the work, when done by slaves, was done nearly always by men. In some places, they mined the salt that was used during extensive trade in the 19th century. Some of the men in ancient civilizations that were bought into chattel slavery were trained to fight in their nation’s army and other military services. Chattel slaves were occasionally trained in artisan workshops for industry and commerce. The men worked in metalworking, while the females normally worked in either textile trades or domestic household tasks. The majority of the time, the slave owners did not pay the chattels for their services beyond room and board, clothing etc.

Female slaves, mostly from Africa, were long traded to the Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms by Arab traders, and sold into sexual slavery to work as concubines or prostitutes.

Effects of slavery

Baton Rouge, La., April 2 1863

Slavery has had a ubiquitous and almost universal role in nearly all ancient civilizations. More recently, in the Americas, slavery has played a role in the economic development of Brazil, Bermuda, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, The West Indies and the United States. Slaves planted the crops and helped build the roads upon which they were transported on as well as many other things. The cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane harvested by slaves became important exports for Brazil, U.S.A. and the Caribbean island countries. The money generated by this trade was mostly used to support the subsistence of the slaves and expand the lifestyle of the slaveowners.

In the United States, to get agreement of the southern slave-owning states to join in the United states, slavery was allowed in the original U.S. Constitution. The importation of slaves into the United States was banned in 1808, by which time about 300,000 had been imported. Subsequent slaves were nearly all born in the United States. By 1800, nearly all slavery in non-southern states had been banned and was on the road to being abolished in the South also. Once the cotton gin had been invented (in 1794), cotton became the main cash crop of the South and slavery became the backbone of the southern oligarchy and their plantation life style. Slavery in the United States also had important political implications. During the westward expansion of the United States during the early and mid-1800's, many Northerners, thoroughly detesting the institution of slavery, tried to prevent its expansion into new territories and new states entering the Union. Attempts by the North to exclude slavery from these lands angered the South and helped bring on the American Civil War in 1861.

There are a broad array of effects arising from the adoption of slavery. Slaves provided a relatively cheap source of labor that was acclimated to the hot climate and diseases of Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean island states and the Southern United States. To hire non-slave workers would have been more expensive, as the early experience of using English indentured workers in the United States demonstrated. Slaves in some places provided a nearly unique source of labor that could survive diseases (that they had developed immunity to in Africa) that would shortly kill nearly everyone else. In the end, slavery in the United States was abolished after a Civil War that cost over 600,000 lives. Slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888 and in the Caribbean Island countries about 50 years earlier, when France and Britain abolished it. It usually turned out that not only was slavery morally repugnant, but most of the former slaveowners (those that did not go bankrupt) found they could get by cheaper by simply hiring the former slaves only when they needed them. The invention of the electric motor and a myriad of household machinery that has taken most of the drudgery out of housework has removed the necessity of household slaves. The invention of a myriad of labor saving devices has made farming, production, etc. in many countries, so labor-free that slaves are not cost effective.

While the treatment of slaves varied in time and location, it is usually evident that in those cases where slaves were treated better, slaves were accorded more 'humanitarian' lifestyles, in the sense that they were more likely to be productive, trained and efficacious, perhaps taking pride in their work. The alternative 'harsh' treatment has the opposite reaction, reducing morale, lowering productivity, requiring higher levels of supervision, but importantly also removing all incentive for 'slave' workers to work harder than necessary to get by. Absentee ownership, particularly in Brazil and the Caribbean islands often caused the overseers to literally work the slaves to death. They had little or no incentive to take care of somebody else's "property".

To many, toil can be a source of inspiration if free to realize some of the benefits. In the short term, some parts of United States society did benefit by solving a short-term shortage of plantation labor. But slavery was often counter productive for a larger segment of the society. The small minority of former slave owners often never re-established their "aristocratic", parasitic ways; but the rest of society was usually better off without them. Many even found productive ways to survive and contribute to society by actually working. A look at U.S. economic growth during the periods of slavery and after will demonstrate as much.

A further effect of slavery was to relatively denigrate, in some areas of the country, the value of labor itself. Hard work became something people did if they were forced to do it, rather than a necessary part of self-improvement and advancement. It created an idle slave-owning self-proclaimed "aristocracy" who, while asset rich, were income poor and lazy. Slavery was not a cost free enterprise, slaves were seldom paid a wage, but the owners were responsible for feeding, housing, clothing, providing simple medical care, and (in some rare cases) education for all of the slaves' lives from birth to death. Some people might think this is a good way of life; but most want more control over their lives. Even if a slave was too old, young or crippled to work, he or she still had to be supported by someone. If a slave was not treated reasonably, he would only do the minimum work necessary.

Slavery caused fear, suspicion and hatred between slave masters and slaves. Occasionally these feelings escalated into uprisings resulting in the destruction of property, murder, rape, incarceration or desertion. These conflicts also increased the cost of business and judicial intervention to maintain the slave economy and society.

Abolitionist movements

Main article: Abolitionism

Slavery has existed, in one form or another, through the whole of human history. Sporadically, 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. Later Jewish laws in Halacha would prevent slaves from being sold out of the Land of Israel, and allow a slave to move to Israel if he so desired. Abolitionism should be distinguished from efforts to help a particular group of slaves, or to restrict one practice, such as, the slave trade.

Progress came incrementally in most areas of the world. For instance, in 1772, a legal case concerning James Somersett provided legal precedent that the state of slavery was unlawful in England itself and 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 further ruled slavery to be contrary to the law of Scotland. At the same time, across the Atlantic Ocean, slaves in the United States were in a state of limbo, able to live semi-freely in states where slavery was illegal yet, as the case of Dred Scott ruled, still considered property.

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 French control. 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. To prevent slavery being reimposed they broke up the plantations into small private land holdings too small for re-establishing slavery. Unfortunately they also were too small for economic development and Haiti remains the poorest country in the Americas.

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 but those still working were indentured to their former owners in an "apprenticeship" system which was finally abolished in 1838 after peaceful protests in Trinidad.

Around this time, slaves in other parts of the world, aided by abolitionists, also began their struggle for independence. Slaves in the United States who escaped ownership would often make their way north with white and black abolitionist support to the northern part of the country or Canada through what became known as the "Underground Railroad". Famously active abolitionists of the U.S. include Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass and John Brown. Following a civil war, slavery was abolished with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in the United States in 1865 after a horrific loss of about 600,000 deaths.

Portugal becomes the fifth country to abolish slavery in its overseas territories in 1869 (after France in 1848). It comes after British lobbying and prior agreements to the gradual abolition of slavery throughout the Portuguese Empire.

However, in both the U.S. and UK there arose the question of what to do with the massive increase in the number of people needing work, housing, and so on. To answer this question, Sierra Leone and Liberia were established for former slaves of the British Empire and United States respectively. Supporters of the effort believed the repatriation of slaves to Africa would be the best solution to the problem as well as setting right the injustices done to their ancestors. While these efforts may have been in good faith, and indeed some blacks (notably parts of the Harlem Renaissance) embraced repatriation, there were other motives as well; for instance, trade unions did not want the cheap labor of former slaves around, and racism (i.e. solving the problem by getting rid of the blacks) may have played a role. Regardless of the motives, both efforts were largely unsuccessful.

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, explicitly 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 Declaration 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

On May 21, 2001, the French National Assembly voted the Taubira law which recognized slavery as a crime against humanity .

At the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, at Durban, South Africa, the US and Israeli representatives walked out over a statement equating Zionism with racism. A South African Government spokesman said that "the general perception among some delegates is that the US does not want to confront the real issues of slavery and all its manifestations."

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.

In September 2006 it was reported that the UK Government may issue a "statement of regret" over slavery.

Reparations

Main article: Reparations for slavery

Sporadically there have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves, or sometimes their descendants. Claims for reparations for being held in slavery are handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since former slaves' relative lack of money means they often have limited access to a potentially expensive and futile legal process. Mandatory systems of fines and reparations paid to an as yet undetermined group of claimants from fines, paid by unspecified parties, and collected by authorities have been proposed by advocates to alleviate this "civil court problem". Since in almost all cases there are no living ex-slaves or living ex-slave owners these movements have gained little traction. In nearly all cases the judicial system has ruled that the statute of limitations on these possible claims has long since expired.

In the United States, the reparations movement often cites the unofficial 40 acres and a mule decree which was never implemented as an unpaid claim. Recent effort have also targeted the few surviving businesses that profited from the slave trade or issued insurance on slaves. Almost all these cases have been dismissed and reparations have never been paid to descendants of slaves.

In Africa, the 2^nd self appointed 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 US$777 trillion (more than ten times the annual world GDP, equivalent to about 250 years' worth of the current U.S. federal budget) against the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom 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 legally 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 virtual slavery, as well as in various forms of servitude which are in many respects similar to slavery."[1] 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. Critics claim they are stretching the definion and practice of slavery beyond its original meaning.

In Sudan, Africa UN-peace workers have acknowledged the existence of slavery in the country. Although officially banned, it is still practiced widely, and there is even trading going on at the country by means of slave markets.

The economics of so-called 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 virtual 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 laborers, to a high of US$1000 or so in Thailand for HIV-free young females suitable for use in brothels (where they frequently 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 labor 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.

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.

Timeline of the abolition of slavery

Below is a list of countries and the year in which they formally abolished slavery:

Country	Date	Notes
Canada, Upper	1810	Abolished slavery in 1793 under Sir John Graves Simcoe, but did not free all the existing slaves until 1810
United Kingdom	1834	Abolished in British Empire but working slaves required to spend 6 more years as "apprentices"; slavery never legal in UK. See article on abolitionism
Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, Leeward Islands, Windward Islands.	1838	Abolished the last vestiges of slavery two years ahead of schedule.
France	1794, 1848	See article on abolitionism
Venezuela	1854
United States	1791-1865	Vermont abolishes slavery; 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution
Cuba	1886	Cuba was then still a Spanish colony
Brazil	1888	The last country to do so in the Americas
Saudi Arabia	1962	See Human rights in Saudi Arabia
Mauritania	1981	However slavery still exists in a de-facto capacity [2]

See also: National abolition dates (longer list)

Religion and slavery

Main article: Slavery and religion

Many have accused the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, of condoning slavery..

Bibliography

• 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)
• Lal, K. S. Muslim Slave System in Medieval India (1994) [3] ISBN 81-85689-67-9
• Nieboer, H. J. Slavery as an Industrial System (1910)
• Rodriguez, Junius P., ed., The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1997)

Primary sources

• The Antislavery Literature Project - a scholarly source for primary literature on US slavery, with some contemporary slavery accounts.
• The Slavery Reader, ed. by Rigas Doganis, Gad Heuman, James Walvin, Routledge 2003
• [4] Mintz, S. Slavery Facts and Myths

USA

• Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1999), most important recent survey
• Boles, John. Black Southerners: 1619-1869 (1983) brief survey
• Engerman, Stanley L. Terms of Labor: Slavery, Serfdom, and Free Labor (1999)
• Genovese Eugene D. Roll, Jordan Roll (1974), classic study
  • Richard H. King, "Marxism and the Slave South", American Quarterly 29 (1977), 117-31, a critique of Genovese
• Escott, Paul D. "Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom" Journal of Southern History, Vol. 67, 2001
• Parish, Peter J. Slavery: History and Historians (1989)
• Phillips, Ulrich B. American Negro Slavery:freak A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime (1918; paperback reprint 1966), southern white perspective
• Phillips, Ulrich B. Life and Labor in the Old South (1929)
• Sellers, James B. Slavery in Alabama (1950).
• Sydnor, Charles S. Slavery in Mississippi (1933
• Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956), a rebuttal of U B Philipps
• Vorenberg, Michael . Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (2001)
• Weinstein, Allen , Frank O. Gatell, and Lewis Sarasohn, eds., American Negro Slavery: A Modern Reader, third ed. (1978)
• Mintz, S. Digital History Slavery, Facts & Myths [5]

Slavery today

• Kevin Bales, Disposable People. New Slavery in the Global Economy, Revised Edition, University of California Press 2004, ISBN 0-520-24384-6
• Kevin Bales (ed.), Understanding Global Slavery Today. A Reader, University of California Press 2005, ISBN 0-520-24507-5freak

See also

Famous slaves and former slaves

From the list of famous slaves:

• Miguel de Cervantes, was a slave in the Barbary states, wrote later Don Quixote de la Mancha
• Bilal ibn Ribah, slave during the 6th century who was freed and converted to a Muslim in early days of Islam. He was a Sahaba and was chosen by Prophet Muhammad to be his muezzin. He was also treasurer of the Islamic state.
• Saint Patrick, abducted from Britain, enslaved in Ireland, escaped to Britain, returned to Ireland as a missionary
• John Brown, escaped and wrote of conditions in Deep South
• Olaudah Equiano also sometimes called Gustavus Vassa, prominent African/British author and figure in the abolitionist cause
• Ann Plato (1820 – ?), free black schoolmistress and writer, member of the Talcott Street Congregational Church, Hartford CT and the first African American woman to publish a book of essays (1841)
• Frederick Douglass, abolitionist writer and speaker
• Enrique, the slave of Ferdinand Magellan, who became the first man to go around the globe.
• Juan Francisco Manzano, Cuban slave and poet.
• Malinche, famous translator during the Spanish conquest of Mexico
• Onesimus, owned by Philemon mentioned in the Bible
• Aesop, Greek author, famous for his fables
• Spartacus, led the Servile Revolt
• Toussaint L'Ouverture, led the independence of Haiti slave revolt after being freed.
• Harriet Tubman, nicknamed Moses because of her efforts in helping other slaves escape through the Underground Railway.
• Nat Turner, escaped and led revolt in Southampton County, Virginia
• Zumbi, in colonial Brazil, escaped and joined the Quilombo dos Palmares – the largest ever settlement of escaped slaves in Brazil – later becoming its last and most famous leader.
• Mende Nazer, a woman who was an alleged slave in Sudan and transferred to London to serve a diplomat's family there
• Terence, Roman comic poet who wrote before and possibly after his freedom.
• Granny Nanny, famous female leader of Jamaican Maroons
• Dred Scott, a slave who attempted to sue for his freedom in Scott v. Sandford.
• William and Ellen Craft, slaves who wrote a tale (running a thousand miles for freedom) describing their flight from slavery in America in the 1800s.
• Phillis Wheatley, Colonial American poet
• Sojourner Truth, famous aint I a woman speech

Various

• Anti-Slavery Society
• Arab slave trade
• Blackbirding
• Child slavery
• Classism
• Compensated Emancipation
• Coolies
• Corporate colonialism
• Debt bondage
• Fazendas
• Forced labour
• Freeborn
• History of slavery in the United States
  • Origins of the American Civil War
  • North Carolina v. Mann
• Indentured servant
• International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition
• Involuntary servitude
• Lordship and Bondage (Hegel's myth)
• Religion and slavery
• Sambo's Grave
• Serfdom
• Sexual slavery
• Slave narrative
• Slave rebellion
• Slavery at common law
• Slave ship
• Slave soldiers:
  • janissaries
  • Mamluks
  • Saqaliba
• Slave trade
  • African slave trade
  • Arab slave trade
  • Atlantic slave trade
  • Coastwise slave trade
  • Swedish slave trade
• Subculture
• Trafficking in human beings
• Underclass
• Unfree labour
• United States National Slavery Museum
• Wage slavery
• William Lynch Speech
• William Wilberforce

Films

• Alex Haley, "Roots", 1977 mini-series based on Haley's book
• Owen 'Alik Shahadah, "500 Years Later", 2005
• Haile Gerima, "Sankofa", 1993
• Sergio Giral, "Cimarron", 1967
• Marlon Brando, "Burn!", 1969
• Sergio Giral, "El Otro Francisco" (The Other Francisco), 1975
• Tomas Gutierrez Alea, La Ultima Cena (The Last Supper), 1976
• "Maluala", 1979
• Carlos Diegues, "Quilombo", 1984
• Gene Hackman, "Mississippi Burning", 1988
• Julie Dash, "Daughters of the Dust", 1991
• C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (mockumentary/political drama)
• Stanley Kubrick, "Spartacus", 1960
• Jonathan Demme, "Beloved", 1998
• Michael Apted, "Amazing Grace", 2006
• Charles Burnett, "Nightjohn", 1996
• Steven Spielberg, "Amistad", 1997

External links

• History of Slavery: A Good School Resource
• Photo-story on modern-day slavery in Brazil by photographer Eduardo Martino
• Digital History - Slavery Facts & Myths
• Maafa
• African Holocaust
• African history by Africans
• Ansar Burney Trust - Anti-slavery and anti-trafficking human rights organisation working in the Middle East
• Free the Slaves - Working to end slavery in our lifetime
• Robots of Arabia - Child Slavery
• The Economics of Sex Trafficking.
• Immaculata High School Child Slave Labor News
• Slavery in the Bible
• Encyclopedia of Slavery
• Transatlantic Slavery Gallery, Merseyside Maritime Museum
• International Slavery Museum
• BBC Radio programme directory on the topic of slavery List of subjects related and extensive links.
• [6] BBC “The Body Trade.” Crime reports (recorded for listening on the web) on sex trafficking, organ trafficking, trafficking for labour and trafficking babies
• BBC “Slavery today-Pakistan” Recorded for listening on web.
• BBC “Slavery today-Niger” Recorded for listening on web.
• BBC “Slavery today-Haiti” Recorded for listening on web.
• BBC “Slavery today.” Links to other sources on the subject of slavery.
• BBC “Global Crime Report: Mary Robinson on modern slavery.”
• BBC “Dubai's ruler accused of slavery.” Issue over use of children from Bangladesh, Sudan and southern Asia. as camel jockeys.
• BBC “Dubai rulers reject slavery case.” Issue over use of children from Bangladesh, Sudan and southern Asia. as camel jockeys.
• BBC “Sex slavery under police scrutiny” Sex slavery in the UK.
• BBC “Australian jailed for sex slavery” Sex slavery in Australia.
• BBC “Australia tackles sex slave traffic” Sex slavery in Australia.
• BBC “Are you living in slavery?” International slavery.
• BBC Nigeria's 'respectable' slave trade.” Trafficking sex slaves to Italy.
• BBC “Scale of African slavery revealed.” Trafficking child slaves in Africa and to Europe and the Middle East.
• BBC “Tales of West African trafficking.” Trafficking children from Togo to Niger.
• BBC “Afghan child slavery probe.” Trafficking children from Afghanistan
• BBC “'Child prostitutes' trafficked into UK.” Trafficking children into Britain for sexual slavery.
• BBC “Slavery fears for 'lost' children.” Trafficking Nigerian children to Britain.
• BBC “African trafficking ring linked to UK.” Trafficking children from Africa through France into Britain.
• BBC “Trafficking victim tells of torment.” Albanian girl in Britain as sex slave.
• BBC “West Africa moves against slavery.” An estimated 200,000 child slaves in west and central Africa.
• BBC “World urged to fight sex slavery.” An estimated 127 countries of origin and 137 countries of destination for slaves in various industries (predominantly child labour and sex slaves).
• Anti Slavery International “What is modern Slavery?”
• Anti Slavery International: "Contemporary forms of slavery in Latin America” Slavery in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
• Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2005 People’s Republic of China [ Country-by-CountryReports ]

The Peoples’ Republic of China is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation.

• “Slave labour on the increase in China” 13 August 2001

Young Chinese men are increasingly becoming victims of forced labour as economic necessity forces them to migrate to other provinces in China where they have been promised well paid jobs in brick factories or stone quarries.

• “Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery” U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2005 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Country-by-Country Reports (North Korea)

The Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is a source country for men and women trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Thousands of North Koreans, pushed by deteriorating conditions in the country, become economic migrants who are subjected to conditions of debt bondage, commercial sexual exploitation, and/or forced labor upon arrival in a destination country, most often the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.).

• Far Eastern Economic Review “Slavery on the Rise in China” Hong Kong, August 8, 2001

Slavery is on the rise in China as migration flows grow and private business blossoms, but Beijing appears unwilling and unable to prevent it, the Far Eastern Economic Review reports in its August 16 issue, available tomorrow.

• Tushar Charan (2005) “Of Slaves and Bonded Labours” Asian Tribune 2005-06-19

Author claims the Chinese authorities treat their jails as some sort of correction homes for the ‘bad elements’, especially those who have a ‘mind problem’, and they are turned into ‘new socialist persons’ after some compulsory hard labour in prisons. This process of ‘re-education’, which can continue out of jail too, requires 12 to 14 hours of physical labour, all seven days of the week and recalcitrant prisoners are physically coerced into submission. No visitors are allowed to meet the prisoners.

• Slavery in Brazil
• Steve Kingstone, BBC correspondent in Sao Paulo (2004) “Brazil 'slavery' damned by report” Monday, 19 July, 2004, 19:05 GMT 20:05

At least 25,000 people are working as slave labourers in Brazil, according to a new report obtained by the BBC.

• BBC (2004) “Brazil slave inspectors shot dead” Thursday, 29 January, 2004, 11:47 GMT
• BBC “Brazil unveils anti-slavery plan -Slavery still exists in remote areas” Wednesday, 12 March, 2003, 10:54 GMT

Brazil's newly installed President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has unveiled a plan to wipe out slavery, a practice which still persists in some remote areas of South America's largest country.

• Jan Rocha in Sao Paulo (2003) “Hundreds of slaves freed in Brazil Saturday”, BBC, 30 August, 2003, 02:15 GMT 03:15

In Brazil, government inspectors from the Ministry of Labour have freed 849 workers being held in conditions of slavery on a coffee farm near Barreiras in the state of Bahia. So far this year inspectors have freed more than 2,000 workers from forced labour, mostly in the Amazon region.

• Kevin G. Hall (2004 ). “Products of Brazil's slavery find way to U.S. markets” Knight Ridder Newspapers September 5, 2004

BETHESDA, Md. - Products tainted by Brazilian slavery are finding their way into U.S. stores and homes more often despite the efforts of concerned trade groups, activists and consumers.

• United States and Brazil: Palmares and Slave Resistance This source claims that Slavery was gradually curtailed in Brazil in the late nineteenth century and was completely abolished in 1888.

Media

• Video on Child Slavery in the Middle East - an Emmy and duPont award winning documentary
• Chains of History: Review of Legacies: Contemporary Artists on Slavery Exhibit at New York Historical Society