Slavery |
Contemporary |
|
Types |
|
Historic |
|
By
country or region |
|
Religion |
|
Opposition and resistance |
|
Related
topics |
|
|
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as
property to be bought and sold, and are
forced to work.[1]
Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture,
purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to
work, or to demand
compensation. Historically, slavery was institutionally recognized
by many societies; in more recent times slavery has been outlawed in
most societies but continues through the practices of
debt bondage,
indentured servitude,
serfdom,
domestic servants kept in captivity, certain
adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves,
child soldiers, and
forced marriage.[2]
There are more slaves in the early 21st century than at any previous
time but opponents hope slavery can be eradicated within 30 years.[3]
Slavery predates written records and has existed in many
cultures.[4]
The number of slaves today remains as high as 12 million[5]
to 27 million.[6][7]
Most are
debt slaves, largely in
South Asia, who are under
debt bondage incurred by
lenders, sometimes even for generations.[8]
Human trafficking is primarily used for forcing women and children
into
sex industries.[9]
In pre-industrial societies, slaves and their labour were
economically extremely important. Slaves and serfs made up around
three-quarters of the world's population at the beginning of the 19th
century.[10]
In modern mechanised societies, there is less need for sheer massive
manpower;
Norbert Wiener wrote that "mechanical labor has most of the economic
properties of slave labor, though ... it does not involve the direct
demoralizing effects of human cruelty."[11]
Etymology
The English word slave comes from
Old
French sclave, from the
Medieval Latin sclavus, from the
Byzantine Greek σκλάβος.
The word σκλάβος, in turn, comes from the
ethnonym Slav, because in some wars in early mediaeval times
many Slavs were captured and enslaved.[12][13]
An older theory connected it to the Greek verb skyleúo 'to strip
a slain enemy'.[14]
Types
Photograph of a slave boy in
Zanzibar. 'An Arab master's punishment for a slight
offence. ' c. 1890.
Chattel slavery
Chattel slavery, so named because people are treated as the
personal property, chattels, of an owner and are bought and sold as
commodities, is the original form of slavery. When taking these chattels
across national borders it is referred to as
human trafficking especially when these slaves provide sexual
services.[8]
Bonded labor
Main article:
Bonded labor
Debt bondage or bonded labor occurs when a person pledges himself or
herself against a loan.[15]
The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be
undefined.[15]
Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with
children required to pay off their parents' debt.[15]
It is the most widespread form of slavery today.[8]
Forced labor
Main article:
Forced labor
Forced labor occurs when an individual is forced to work against his
or her will, under threat of violence or other punishment, with
restrictions on their freedom.[8]
It is also used to describe all types of slavery and may also include
institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as
serfdom,
conscription and
penal labor.
History
Slave market in early medieval Eastern Europe. Painting by
Sergei Ivanov.
Early history
Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many
cultures.[4]
Prehistoric graves from about 8000 BC in Lower Egypt suggest that a
Libyan people enslaved a
San-like
tribe.[16]
Slavery is rare among
hunter-gatherer populations, as it is a system of social
stratification. Mass slavery also requires economic surpluses and a high
population density to be viable. Due to these factors, the practice of
slavery would have only proliferated after the invention of agriculture
during the
Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.[17]
In the earliest known records slavery is treated as an established
institution. The
Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1760 BC), for example, prescribed death for
anyone who helped a slave to escape or who sheltered a fugitive.[18]
The Hebrew
Bible refers uncritically to slavery as an established institution.[4]
Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization, and society,
including
Sumer,
Ancient Egypt,
Ancient China, the
Akkadian Empire,
Assyria,
Ancient India,
Ancient Greece, the
Roman Empire, the
Islamic
Caliphate, the
Hebrews
in Palestine, and the
pre-Columbian civilizations of the
Americas.[4]
Such institutions included
debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of
prisoners of war,
child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.[19]
Classical
Antiquity
The work of the
Mercedarians was in ransoming Christians slaves held in
Muslim hands (1637).
Records of
slavery in Ancient Greece go as far back as
Mycenaean Greece. It is certain that
Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as
80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC;[20]
two to four-fifths of the population were slaves.[21]
As the
Roman Republic expanded outward,
entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from
all over Europe and the Mediterranean.
Greeks,
Illyrians,
Berbers,
Germans,
Britons,
Thracians,
Gauls,
Jews,
Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labour, but also
for amusement (e. g.
gladiators and
sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to
slave revolts (see
Roman Servile Wars); the
Third Servile War led by
Spartacus being the most famous and severe. By the late Republican
era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome,
as well as a very significant part of Roman society.[22]
At the least, some 25% of the population of
Ancient Rome was enslaved.[23]
According to some scholars, slaves represented 35% or more of
Italy's
population.[24]
In the city of
Rome alone, under the
Roman Empire, there were about 400,000 slaves.[25]
During the millennium from the emergence of the Roman Empire to its
eventual decline, at least 100 million people were captured or sold as
slaves throughout the Mediterranean and its hinterlands.[26]
Middle Ages
Medieval Europe
Large-scale trading in slaves was mainly confined to the South and
East of
early medieval Europe:[citation
needed] the
Byzantine Empire and the
Muslim world were the destinations, while
pagan
Central and
Eastern Europe (along with the
Caucasus and
Tartary)
were important sources.
Viking,
Arab,
Greek, and
Radhanite
Jewish merchants were all involved in the slave trade during the
Early Middle Ages.[27][28][29]
The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century
following the
Zanj rebellion which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab
world.[30][31]
Medieval Spain and
Portugal were the scene of almost constant
Muslim
invasion of the predominantly
Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from
Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back
booty and slaves. In raid against
Lisbon,
Portugal in 1189, for example, the
Almohad caliph
Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his
governor of
Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon
Silves, Portugal in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.[32]
From the 11th to the 19th century,
North African
Barbary Pirates engaged in
Razzias, raids on European coastal towns, to capture
Christian slaves to sell at
slave markets in places such as
Algeria
and
Morocco.[33][34]
Depiction of socage on the royal
demesne in
feudal England, ca. 1310. Socage is an aspect of
serfdom, not usually included under the term "slavery".
In Britain, slavery continued to be practiced following the fall of
Rome and sections of
Hywel the Good's
laws
dealt with slaves in
medieval Wales. The trade particularly picked up after the Viking
invasions, with major markets at
Chester[35]
and
Bristol[36]
supplied by Danish, Mercian, and Welsh raiding of one another's
borderlands. At the time of the
Domesday Book (1086), nearly 10% of the
English population were slaves.[37]
Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that
the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it — or at least the
export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at e.
g. the Council of Koblenz (922), the
Council of London (1102), and the Council of Armagh (1171).[38]
In 1452,
Pope Nicholas V issued the
papal bull
Dum Diversas, granting the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to
reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual
slavery, legitimizing the slave trade as a result of war.[39]
The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and
extended in his
Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. However,
Pope Paul III forbade enslavement of the
native Americans in 1537 in his papal bull
Sublimus Dei.[40]
Dominican friars who arrived at the Spanish settlement at
Santo Domingo strongly denounced the enslavement of the local native
Americans. Along with other priests, they opposed their treatment as
unjust and illegal in an audience with the Spanish king and in the
subsequent royal commission.[41]
The
Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the
Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of slaves into the
Islamic world.[42]
From the mid to late 14th, through early 18th centuries, the Ottoman
devşirme–janissary
system enslaved and forcibly converted to Islam an estimated 500,000 to
one million non–Muslim (primarily Balkan Christian) adolescent males.[43]
After the
Battle of Lepanto approximately 12,000 Christian galley slaves were
freed from the
Ottoman fleet.[44]
A few years later
Cervantes, who later wrote the famous book
Don Quixote, was captured by corsairs and enslaved in Algiers,
attempted to escape and was eventually
ransomed;
he wrote about the plight of Christian slaves in his fiction. Eastern
Europe suffered a series of
Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves
into jasyr. Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into
Poland–Lithuania between 1474 and 1569.[45]
There were more than 100,000 Russian captives in the
Kazan Khanate alone in 1551.[46]
Approximately 10–20% of the rural population of
Carolingian Europe consisted of slaves.[48]
In Western Europe slavery largely disappeared by the later
Middle Ages.[49]
The trade of slaves in
England
was made illegal in 1102,[50]
although England went on to become very active in the lucrative Atlantic
slave trade from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century.
Thralldom
in Scandinavia was finally abolished in the mid-14th century.[51]
Slavery persisted longer in
Eastern Europe. Slavery in
Poland
was forbidden in the 15th century; in
Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were
replaced by the second
serfdom.
In
Kievan Rus and
Muscovy, the slaves were usually classified as
kholops.
Islamic world
13th century slave market in
Yemen. Yemen officially abolished slavery in 1962.
[52]
In early
Islamic states of the western Sudan, including
Ghana (750–1076),
Mali (1235–1645),
Segou (1712–1861), and
Songhai (1275–1591), about a third of the population were enslaved.[53]
Ibn Battuta tells us several times that he was given or purchased
slaves.[54]
The great 14th-century scholar
Ibn Khaldun, wrote: "the Black nations are, as a rule, submissive to
slavery, because (Blacks) have little that is (essentially) human and
possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals".[55]
Slaves were purchased or captured on the frontiers of the
Islamic world and then imported to the major centers, where there
were slave markets from which they were widely distributed.[56][57][58]
In the 9th and 10th centuries, the black
Zanj slaves
may have constituted at least a half of the total population in lower
Iraq.[59]
At the same time, many tens of thousands of slaves in the region were
also imported from
Central Asia and the
Caucasus.[60]
Many slaves were taken in the wars with the Christian nations of
medieval
Europe.
In the
Thousand and One Nights there are mentions of white slaves.[61]
Modern history
Europe
David P. Forsythe wrote: "In 1649 up to three-quarters of Muscovy's
peasants, or 13 to 14 million people, were serfs whose material lives
were barely distinguishable from slaves. Perhaps another 1.5 million
were formally enslaved, with Russian slaves serving Russian masters. "[62]
Slavery remained a major institution in
Russia until 1723, when
Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs.
Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier
in 1679.[63]
Russia's more than 23 million privately held
serfs were freed from their lords by an edict of
Alexander II in 1861.[64]
State-owned serfs were
emancipated in 1866.[65]
During the
Second World War (1939–1945)
Nazi Germany effectively enslaved about 12 million people, both
those considered undesirable and citizens of countries they conquered.[66]
Africa
The main routes that were used to transport slaves across
medieval Africa.
Arab slave traders and their captives along the Ruvuma river
(in today's Tanzania and Mozambique).
In
Senegambia, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the
population was enslaved.[53][62]
In
Sierra Leone in the 19th century about half of the population
consisted of enslaved people.[53]
In the 19th century at least half the population was enslaved among
the
Duala of the
Cameroon, the
Igbo and other peoples of the lower
Niger, the
Kongo, and the Kasanje kingdom and
Chokwe of
Angola.
Among the
Ashanti and
Yoruba a third of the population consisted of enslaved people.[53]
The population of the
Kanem (1600–1800) was about a third-enslaved. It was perhaps 40% in
Bornu (1580–1890). Between 1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of
the entire population of the
Fulani War states consisted of slaves.[53]
In
Algiers, the capital of
Algeria
in
Northern Africa,
Christians and
Europeans
that were captured had been forced into slavery. This eventually led to
the
Bombardment of Algiers in 1816.[67][68]
The population of the
Sokoto
caliphate formed by
Fulanis and Hausas in northern
Nigeria
and Cameroon was half-slave in the 19th century. Between 65% to 90%
population of
Arab-Swahili
Zanzibar was enslaved.[53]
The Swahili-Arab slave trade reached its height about 150 years ago,
when, for example, approximately 20,000 slaves were considered to be
carried yearly from
Nkhotakota on Lake Malawi to Kilwa.[69]
Roughly half the population of
Madagascar was enslaved.[53][70]
According to the
Encyclopedia of African History, "It is estimated that by the
1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people,
was concentrated in the territories of the
Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labor was extensive, especially
in agriculture. "[71][72]
The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in
Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of
between 8 and 16 million.[73]
Hugh Clapperton in 1824 believed that half the population of
Kano were
enslaved people.[74]
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 high as ten to one. "[75]
Slave traders in
Gorée, Senegal, 18th century
One of the most famous slave traders on the East African coast was
Tippu
Tip, who was himself the grandson of an enslaved African. The
prazeros slave traders, descendants of Portuguese and Africans,
operated along the
Zambezi.
North of the Zambezi, the
waYao and
Makua people played a similar role as professional slave raiders and
traders. The
Nyamwezi slave traders operated further north under the leadership
of Msiri
and
Mirambo.[76]
Asia
In
Constantinople about one-fifth of the population consisted of
slaves.[77]
It has been estimated that some 200,000 slaves – mainly
Circassians – were imported into the
Ottoman Empire between 1800 and 1909.[78]
As late as 1908, women slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire.[79]
A slave market for captured
Russian
and
Persian slaves was centred in the
Central Asian khanate of
Khiva.[80]
In the early 1840s, the population of the Uzbek states of
Bukhara and Khiva included about 900,000 slaves.[78]
Darrel P. Kaiser wrote, "Kazakh-Kirghiz
tribesmen kidnapped 1573 settlers from colonies [German settlements in
Russia] in 1774 alone and only half were successfully ransomed. The rest
were killed or enslaved. "[81]
According to Sir
Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an
estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in
India in 1841. About 15% of the population of
Malabar were slaves. Slavery was abolished in
British India by the
Indian Slavery Act V. of 1843.[4][82]
In
East Asia, the
Imperial government formally abolished slavery in
China in
1906, and the law became effective in 1910.[83]
Slave rebellion in China at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the
18th century was so extensive that owners eventually converted the
institution into a female-dominated one.[84]
The
Nangzan in
Tibetan
history were, according to Chinese sources, hereditary household slaves.[85]
Indigenous slaves existed in
Korea.
Slavery was officially abolished with the
Gabo Reform of 1894 but continued in reality until 1930. During the
Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910) about 30% to 50% of the
Korean
population were slaves.[86]
In late 16th century
Japan
slavery as such was officially banned, but forms of contract and
indentured labor persisted alongside the period penal codes' forced
labor.[87]
In
Southeast Asia, a quarter to a third of seventeenth- to
twentieth-century populations in some areas of
Thailand and
Burma
were slaves.[4]
The
hill tribe people in
Indochina were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the
Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians. "[88]
A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British
observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large
scale".[89]
The census, taken in 1879, showed that 6% of the population in the
Malay sultanate of
Perak
were slaves.[78]
Enslaved people made up about two-thirds of the population in part of
North Borneo in the 1880s.[78]
Americas
Slavery in the Americas had a contentious history, and played a major
role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering at least
one revolution and
one civil war, as well as numerous rebellions. The
Aztecs had slaves.[90]
Other Amerindians, such as the
Inca of the Andes, the
Tupinambá of Brazil, the
Creek of Georgia, and the
Comanche of Texas, also owned slaves.[4]
Slavery was prominent in
Africa,
across the
Atlantic Ocean from the Americas, long before the beginnings of the
transatlantic slave trade.[77]
The maritime town of
Lagos, Portugal, Europe, was the first slave market created in
Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale
of imported African slaves – the Mercado de Escravos, opened in
1444.[91][92]
In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern
Mauritania.[92]
In 1519,
Mexico's first
Afro-Mexican slave was brought by
Hernán Cortés.
By 1552,
black African slaves made up 10% of the population of
Lisbon.[93][94]
In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly
on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted
from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies
in the Americas – in the case of Portugal, especially
Brazil.[92]
In the 15th century one-third of the slaves were resold to the African
market in exchange of gold.[95]
Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of
the
New World. The
Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included
using the Natives as forced labour, part of the wider
Atlantic slave trade. The
Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in
the New World on islands such as
Cuba and
Hispaniola.[96]
The public flogging of a slave in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. From Jean Baptiste Debret,
Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Bresil (1834–1839).
Bartolomé de Las Casas a 16th-century
Dominican
friar and
Spanish historian participated in campaigns in Cuba (at
Bayamo
and
Camagüey) and was present at the massacre of
Hatuey;
his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement
away from the use of natives as slaves and towards the importation of
African Blacks as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the
native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the
native population (Laws
of Burgos, 1512–1513).
The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.[97][dead
link] In 1518,
Charles I of Spain agreed to ship slaves directly from Africa.
England played a prominent role in the
Atlantic slave trade. The "slave
triangle" was pioneered by
Francis Drake and his associates. A black man named
Anthony Johnson of Virginia first introduced permanent black slavery
in the 1650s by becoming the first holder in America of permanent black
slaves.[98]
By 1750, slavery was a legal institution in all of the 13
American colonies,[99][100]
and the profits of the slave trade and of
West
Indian plantations amounted to 5% of the
British economy at the time of the
Industrial Revolution.
[101]
The Transatlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when
the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into
the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried
out by
African kingdoms, such as the
Oyo
empire (Yoruba),
the
Ashanti Empire,[102]
the kingdom of
Dahomey,[103]
and the
Aro Confederacy.[104]
Europeans rarely entered the interior of Africa, due to fierce African
resistance. The slaves were brought to coastal outposts where they were
traded for goods. A significant portion of
African Americans in North America are descended from
Mandinka people.[105]
Through a series of conflicts, primarily with the
Fulani Jihad States, about half of the Senegambian Mandinka were
converted to
Islam while as many as a third were sold into slavery to the
Americas through capture in conflict.[105]
An estimated 12 million Africans arrived in the
Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries.[106]
Of these, an estimated 645,000 were brought to what is now the
United States. The usual estimate is that about 15% of slaves died
during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa
itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples
to the ships. Approximately 6 million black Africans were killed by
others in tribal wars.[107]
The white citizens of Virginia decided to treat the first Africans in
Virginia as
indentured servants.[108]
Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th
and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants.[109]
In 1655,
John Casor, a black man, became the first legally recognized slave
in the present United States.[110]
According to the
1860 U. S. census, 393,975 individuals, representing 8% of all US
families, owned 3,950,528 slaves.[111]
One-third of Southern families owned slaves.[112]
Funeral at slave plantation, Suriname. Colored lithograph
printed circa 1840-1850, digitally restored.
The largest number of slaves were shipped to
Brazil.[113]
In the Spanish
viceroyalty of New Granada, corresponding mainly to modern
Panama,
Colombia, and
Venezuela, the free black population in 1789 was 420,000, whereas
African slaves numbered only 20,000. Free blacks also outnumbered slaves
in Brazil. By contrast, in
Cuba free
blacks made up only 15% in 1827; and in the French colony of
Saint-Domingue (present-day
Haiti) it
was a mere 5% in 1789.[114]
Some half-million slaves, most of them born in Africa, worked the
booming plantations of Saint-Domingue.[115]
Author Charles Rappleye argued that
In the West Indies in particular, but also in North and South
America, slavery was the engine that drove the mercantile
empires of Europe..It appeared, in the eighteenth century, as
universal and immutable as human nature.
[116]
Although the trans-Atlantic slave trade ended shortly after the
American Revolution, slavery remained a central economic institution in
the Southern states of the
United States, from where slavery expanded with the westward
movement of population.[117]
Historian Peter Kolchin wrote, "By breaking up existing families and
forcing slaves to relocate far from everyone and everything they knew"
this migration "replicated (if on a reduced level) many of [the]
horrors" of the Atlantic slave trade.[118]
Historian
Ira
Berlin called this forced migration the Second
Middle Passage. Characterizing it as the "central event" in the life
of a slave between the
American Revolution and the Civil War, Berlin wrote that whether
they were uprooted themselves or simply lived in fear that they or their
families would be involuntarily moved, "the massive deportation
traumatized black people, both slave and free. "[119]
By 1860, 500,000 slaves had grown to 4 million. As long as slavery
expanded, it remained profitable and powerful and was unlikely to
disappear. Although complete statistics are lacking, it is estimated
that 1,000,000 slaves moved west from the
Old
South between 1790 and 1860.[120]
Most of the slaves were moved from
Maryland,
Virginia, and the
Carolinas. Michael Tadman, in a 1989 book Speculators and Slaves:
Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South, indicates that 60–70%
of interregional migrations were the result of the sale of slaves. In
1820, a child in the Upper South had a 30% chance to be sold south by
1860.[120]
In
Puerto Rico,
African slavery was finally abolished on March 22, 1873.
Middle East
According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million
Europeans were captured by
Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in
North Africa and
Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries.[121][122]
There was also an extensive trade in Christian slaves in the Black Sea
region for several centuries until the
Crimean Khanate was destroyed by the
Russian Empire in 1783.[46]
In the 1570s close to 20,000 slaves a year were being sold in the
Crimean port of
Kaffa.[123]
The slaves were captured in southern Russia,
Poland-Lithuania,
Moldavia,
Wallachia, and
Circassia by
Tatar
horsemen in a trade known as the "harvesting of the steppe". In
Podolia
alone, about one-third of all the villages were destroyed or abandoned
between 1578 and 1583.[124]
Some researchers estimate that altogether more than 3 million people
were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate.[125][126]
It is estimated that up to 75% of the Crimean population consisted of
slaves or freedmen.[77]
British captain witnessing the miseries of the Christian
slaves in Algiers, 1815
The Arab enslavement of the
Dinka people.
The
Arab slave trade lasted more than a millennium.[127]
As recently as the early 1960s,
Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000.[128]
Along with Yemen, the Saudis abolished slavery only in 1962.[129]
Slaves in the
Arab World came from many different regions, including
Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly
Zanj),[55]
the
Caucasus (mainly
Circassians),[130]
Central Asia (mainly
Tartars),
and
Central and
Eastern Europe (mainly
Saqaliba).[131]
Under Omani
Arabs
Zanzibar became
East Africa's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 enslaved
Africans passing through every year during the 19th century.[132][133]
Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves
crossed the
Red Sea,
Indian Ocean, and
Sahara
Desert from 650 AD to 1900 AD.[4][134]
Eduard Rüppell described the heavy mortality of the enslaved
Sudanese before reaching Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign
in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured.
However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5000
made it to Egypt. "[135]
Central and Eastern European slaves were generally known as
Saqaliba (i. e., Slavs).[136]
The Moors,
starting in the 8th century, also raided coastal areas around the
Mediterranean and
Atlantic Ocean, and became known as the
Barbary pirates.[137]
It is estimated that they captured 1.25 million white slaves from
Western Europe and
North America between the 16th and 19th centuries.[138][139]
The mortality rate was very high. For instance, when plague broke out in
Algiers'
overcrowded slave pens in 1662, some said that it carried off
10,000–20,000 of the city's 30,000 captives.[121]
Present day
The number of slaves today remains as high as 12
million[5]
to 27 million,[6][7]
even though slavery is now outlawed in all countries. Several estimates
of the number of slaves in the world have been provided.[142]
According to a broad definition of slavery used by
Kevin Bales of
Free the Slaves (FTS), an advocacy group linked with
Anti-Slavery International, there were 27 million people in slavery
in 1999, spread all over the world.[6]
In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of
12.3 million forced labourers in the world.[143]
Siddharth Kara has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves
at the end of 2006 divided into the following three categories:
bonded labour/debt
bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked
slaves (2.7 million).[144]
Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the
world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009.
Examples of modern slavery are numerous. In 2008, the
Nepalese
government abolished the
Haliya
system of forced labour, freeing about 20,000 people.[145]
An estimated 40 million[146]
people in
India, most of them
Dalits or
"untouchables", are
bonded workers, working in slave-like conditions in order to pay off
debts.[147][148]
Though slavery was officially abolished in China in 1910,[149]
the practice continues unofficially in some regions of the country.[150][151][152]
In June and July 2007,
550 people who had been enslaved by brick manufacturers in
Shanxi
and Henan
were freed by the Chinese government.[153]
Among those rescued were 69 children.[154]
In response, the Chinese government assembled a force of 35,000 police
to check northern Chinese brick kilns for slaves, sent dozens of kiln
supervisors to prison, punished 95 officials in Shanxi province for
dereliction of duty, and sentenced one kiln foreman to death for killing
an enslaved worker.[153]
The
North Korean government[155]
operates six large
political prison camps,[156]
where political prisoners and their families (around 200,000 people)[157]
in lifelong detention[158]
are subjected to hard slave labor,[159]
torture and inhumane treatment.[160]
In Brazil
more than 5,000 slaves were rescued by authorities in 2008 as part of a
government initiative to eradicate slavery.[161]
Poverty has forced at least 225,000
Haitian
children to work as
restavecs (unpaid household servants); the United Nations considers
this to be a form of slavery.[162]
In
Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981),[163]
it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of
the population, are enslaved with many used as
bonded labour.[164][165][166]
Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007.[167]
The
Middle East Quarterly reports that slavery is still endemic in
Sudan.[168]
In Niger,
slavery is also a current phenomenon. A Nigerien study has found that
more than 800,000 people are enslaved, almost 8% of the population.[169][170][171]
Niger officially abolished slavery in 2003.[172]
Many
pygmies in the
Republic of Congo and
Democratic Republic of Congo belong from birth to
Bantus in a system of slavery.[173][174]
Some tribal sheiks in
Iraq still
keep
blacks, called Abd, which means servant or slave in Arabic,
as slaves.[175]
Child slavery has commonly been used in the production of
cash
crops and mining. According to the
US Department of State, more than 109,000 children were working on
cocoa farms alone in
Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in "the worst forms of
child labor" in 2002.[176]
Trafficking in human beings (also called human trafficking) is one
method of obtaining slaves.[177]
Victims are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a
false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale
by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction.
Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion,
deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt
bondage or even
force-feeding with
drugs of abuse to control their victims.[178]
"Annually, according to U. S. Government-sponsored research completed in
2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national
borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own
countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women
and girls and up to 50 percent are minors", reports the US Department of
State in a 2008 study.[179]
While the majority of trafficking victims are women, and sometimes
children, who are
forced into prostitution (in which case the practice is called sex
trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are
forced into
manual labour.[180]
Due to the illegal nature of human trafficking, its exact extent is
unknown. A US Government report published in 2005, estimates that
600,000 to 800,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each
year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.[180]
Another research effort revealed that between 1.5 million and 1.8
million individuals are trafficked either internally or internationally
each year, 500,000 to 600,000 of whom are sex trafficking victims.[144]
Abolitionism
Main article:
Abolitionism
The painting of the 1840
Anti-Slavery Society Convention at Exeter Hall. Move
your cursor to identify delegates or click the icon to
enlarge.
[181]
Slavery has existed, in one form or another, through the whole of
recorded
human history — as have, in various periods, movements to free large
or distinct groups of slaves.
The Greek
Stoics advocated the brotherhood of humanity and the natural
equality of all human beings, and consistently critiqued slavery as
against the law of nature.[182]
Emperor
Wang
Mang abolished slave trading (although not slavery) in
China in
9
CE.[183]
Toyotomi Hideyoshi banned slavery in Japan in 1590.[184]
The
Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the
right to enslave native Americans. A prominent critic of
slavery in the Spanish New World colonies was
Bartolomé de las Casas, who opposed the enslavement of Native
Americans, and later also of Africans in America.
One of the first protests against the enslavement of Africans came
from German and Dutch
Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1688. One of the most significant
milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world
occurred in
England
in 1772, with British judge
Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in
Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was
illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that
slavery contracted in other jurisdictions (such as the American
colonies) could not be enforced in England.[185]
In 1777,
Vermont became the first portion of what would become the United
States to abolish slavery (at the time Vermont was an independent
nation). In 1794, under the Jacobins,
Revolutionary France abolished slavery.[186]
There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of
the Abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work
of the British
Anti-Slavery Society.
William Wilberforce received much of the credit although the
groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by
Thomas Clarkson. Wilberforce was also urged by his close friend,
Prime Minister
William Pitt the Younger, to make the issue his own, and was also
given support by reformed Evangelical
John Newton. The
Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 25,
1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the
British Empire,[187]
Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British
Empire, which he lived to see in the
Slavery Abolition Act 1833. After the 1807 act abolishing the slave
trade was passed, these campaigners switched to encouraging other
countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies. In
1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization,
Anti-Slavery International, was formed in Britain by
Joseph Sturge, which campaigned to outlaw slavery in other
countries.[188]
Between 1808 and 1860, the British
West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and
freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.[189]
Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to
British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping
King of Lagos",
deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African
rulers.[190]
Three people in chains, probably somewhere in East-Africa.
By 1900, slaves comprised up to one-third of Ethiopia's
population.
[135]
Emperor
Haile Selassie officially abolished slavery in 1942.
In the
United States, abolitionist pressure produced a series of small
steps towards emancipation. After January 1, 1808, the importation of
slaves into the United States was prohibited,[191]
but not the
internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave
trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; and those slaves already in
the U. S. were
legally emancipated only in 1863. Many American abolitionists took
an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the
Underground Railroad. Violence soon erupted, with the anti-slavery
forces led by
John Brown, and
Bleeding Kansas, involving anti-slavery and pro-slavery settlers,
became a symbol for the nationwide clash over slavery. By 1860 the total
number of slaves reached almost four million, and the
American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in
the United States.[192]
In 1863 Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the
Confederate States; the
13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution (1865) prohibited slavery
throughout the country.
Photographed in 1863 – Peter, a man who was enslaved in
Mississippi. This famous photo was distributed by
abolitionists.
[193]
In the 1860s,
David Livingstone's reports of atrocities within the
Arab slave trade in Africa stirred up the interest of the British
public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy
throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern
trade", at
Zanzibar in particular. In 1905, the French abolished indigenous
slavery in most of
French West Africa.[194]
On December 10, 1948, the
United Nations General Assembly adopted the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declared freedom from
slavery is an internationally recognized
human right. Article 4 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the
slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
[195]
Groups such as the
American Anti-Slavery Group,
Anti-Slavery International,
Free the Slaves, the
Anti-Slavery Society, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society
continue to campaign to rid the world of slavery.
Legal actions
In November 2006, the
International Labour Organization announced it will be seeking "to
prosecute members of the ruling
Myanmar junta for crimes against humanity" over the continuous
unfree labour of its citizens by the military at the
International Court of Justice.[196][197]
According to the
International Labor Organization (ILO), an estimated 800,000 people
are subject to forced labour in
Myanmar.[198]
The
Ecowas Court of Justice is hearing the case of Hadijatou Mani in
late 2008, where Ms. Mani hopes to compel the government of
Niger to
end slavery in its jurisdiction. Cases brought by her in local courts
have failed so far.[199]
Economics
Economists have attempted to model the circumstances under which
slavery (and variants such as
serfdom)
appear and disappear. One observation 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 becomes more costly for landowners to
have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only
demand low wages due to the amount of competition.[200]
Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as
the population grew, but were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia
as large areas of new land with few people became available.[201]
In his books,
Time on the Cross and Without Consent or Contract: the Rise
and Fall of American Slavery,
Robert Fogel maintains that slavery was in fact a profitable method
of production, especially on bigger plantations growing cotton that
fetched high prices in the world market. It gave whites in the South
higher average incomes than those in the North, but most of the money
was spent on buying slaves and plantations.
Slave being whipped in
Brazil, during the heyday of gold exploration in
Minas Gerais (1770).
Slavery is more common when the labour done is relatively simple and
thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale growing of a single crop. It
is much more difficult and costly to check that slaves are doing their
best and with good quality when they are doing complex tasks. Therefore,
slavery was seen as the most efficient method of production for
large-scale crops like sugar and cotton, whose output was based on
economies of scale. This enabled a
gang system of labor to be prominent on large plantations where
field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision. Each
work gang was based on an internal division of labor that not only
assigned every member of the gang to a precise task but simultaneously
made his or her performance dependent on the actions of the others. The
hoe hands chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as
well as excessive sprouts. The plow gangs followed behind, stirring the
soil near the rows of cotton plants and tossing it back around the
plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an early version of the
assembly line later to be found in factories.[202]
Critics since the 18th century have argued that slavery tends to
retard technological advancement, since the focus is on increasing the
number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading the efficiency
of labour. Because of this, theoretical knowledge and learning in
Greece—and later in Rome—was not applied to ease physical labour or
improve manufacturing.[203]
Adam Smith made the argument that free labor was economically better
than slave labor, and argued further that slavery in Europe ended during
the Middle Ages, and then only after both the church and state were
separate, independent and strong institutions,[204]
that it is nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic and
republican forms of governments since many of its legislators or
political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves,
and that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom when there
was centralized government, or a central authority like a king or the
church.[205]
Similar arguments appear later in the works of
Auguste Comte, especially when it comes to Adam Smith's belief in
the
separation of powers or what Comte called the "separation of the
spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of
slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith
stated in the Lectures on Jurisprudence, "The great power of the clergy
thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it
was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the
clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery
still continues. "
The weighted average global sales price of a slave is calculated to
be approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked
sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves in part of
Asia and Africa.[144]
Worldwide slavery is a criminal offense but slave owners can get very
high returns for their risk.[206]
According to researcher
Siddharth Kara, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of
slavery in 2007 were $91.2 billion. That is second only to drug
trafficking in terms of global criminal enterprises. The weighted
average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $3,175, with a
low of an average $950 for bonded labor and $29,210 for a trafficked sex
slave.[144]
Approximately 40% of slave profits each year are generated by trafficked
sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of the world's 29 million
slaves.[144]
Robert E. Wright has developed a
model that helps to predict when
firms (individuals, companies) will be more likely to use slaves
rather than wage workers,
indentured servants, family members, or other types of
laborers.[207]
Apologies
On May 21, 2001, the
National Assembly of France passed the
Taubira law, recognizing slavery as a
crime against humanity. Apologies on behalf of African nations, for
their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, remain an open
issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first
Europeans arrived and the
Atlantic slave trade was performed with a high degree of involvement
of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by
well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African
societies and individuals.[208]
Indeed, as already mentioned in this article, slavery persists in
several areas of
West Africa until the present day.
There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African
control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as
the Calabar and other southern parts of Nigeria had economies
depended solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala
of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or
roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans
for Europeans.[209]
Several historians have made important contributions to the global
understanding of the African side of the
Atlantic slave trade. By arguing that African merchants determined
the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many
historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared
responsibility for the slave trade.[210]
In 1999, President
Mathieu Kerekou of
Benin
(formerly the Kingdom of
Dahomey)
issued a national apology for the central role Africans played in the
Atlantic slave trade.[211]
Luc Gnacadja, minister of environment and housing for Benin, later
said: "The slave trade is a shame, and we do repent for it."[212]
Researchers estimate that 3 million slaves were exported out of the
Slave Coast bordering the
Bight of Benin.[212]
President
Jerry Rawlings of
Ghana
also apologized for his country's involvement in the slave trade.[211]
The issue of an apology is linked to
reparations for slavery and is still being pursued by a number of
entities across the world. For example, the Jamaican Reparations
Movement approved its declaration and action Plan.
In September 2006, it was reported that the UK government might issue
a "statement of regret" over slavery.[213]
This was followed by a "public statement of sorrow" from
Tony Blair on November 27, 2006,[214]
and a formal apology on March 14, 2007.[215]
On February 25, 2007, the
Commonwealth of Virginia resolved to 'profoundly regret' and
apologize for its role in the institution of slavery. Unique and the
first of its kind in the U. S., the apology was unanimously passed in
both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding
of
Jamestown, where the first slaves were imported into North America
in 1619.[216]
Liverpool, which was a large slave trading port, apologized in 1999.
On August 24, 2007, Mayor
Ken Livingstone of
London,
United Kingdom apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial
slave trade. "You can look across there to see the institutions that
still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery, " he
said pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was
still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Specifically, London outfitted,
financed, and insured many of the ships, which helped fund the building
of London's docks.
Jesse Jackson praised Livingstone, and added that reparations should
be made, one of his common arguments.[217]
On July 30, 2008, the
United States House of Representatives passed a resolution
apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.[218]
In June 2009, the
US Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for
the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of
slavery".[219]
The news was welcomed by President
Barack Obama, the nation's first President of African descent.[220]
Some of President Obama's ancestors were slave owners.[221]
In 2010, Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi apologized for Arab involvement in the slave trade,
saying: "I regret the behavior of the Arabs… They brought African
children to North Africa, they made them slaves, they sold them like
animals, and they took them as slaves and traded them in a shameful
way."[222]
Reparations
There have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly
held as slaves, or sometimes their descendants. Claims for reparations
for being held in slavery are handled as a
civil 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.
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.
Movies
See also