cultures
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
,
nationalities
Nationality is a legal identification of a person in international law, establishing the person as a subject, a ''national'', of a sovereign state. It affords the state jurisdiction over the person and affords the person the protection of the ...
, and
religions
Religion is usually defined as a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, tran ...
from
ancient times
Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history cov ...
to the
present day
The present (or here'' and ''now) is the time that is associated with the events perceived directly and in the first time, not as a recollection (perceived more than once) or a speculation (predicted, hypothesis, uncertain). It is a period of ...
. Likewise, its victims have come from many different ethnicities and religious groups. The social,
economic
An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
, and legal positions of enslaved people have differed vastly in different systems of
slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
in different times and places.
Slavery has been found in some
hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
populations, particularly as hereditary slavery, but the conditions of agriculture with increasing social and economic complexity offer greater opportunity for mass
chattel slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
. Slavery was already institutionalized by the time the
first civilization
A cradle of civilization is a location and a culture where civilization was created by mankind independent of other civilizations in other locations. The formation of urban settlements (cities) is the primary characteristic of a society that c ...
s emerged (such as
Sumer
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...
in
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
, which dates back as far as 3500 BC). Slavery features in the
Mesopotamian
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
''
Code of Hammurabi
The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hamm ...
'' (c. 1750 BC), which refers to it as an established institution.
Slavery was widespread in the ancient world in Europe, Asia, Middle East, and Africa. It became less common throughout Europe during the
Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th or early 6th century to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Mi ...
, although it continued to be practised in some areas. Both
Christians
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
and
Muslims
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraha ...
captured and enslaved each other during centuries of warfare in the Mediterranean. Islamic slavery encompassed mainly Western and Central Asia, Northern and Eastern Africa,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, and
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
from the 7th to the 20th century.
Beginning in the 16th century, European merchants, starting with Portugal, initiated the
transatlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
, purchasing enslaved Africans from
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Maurit ...
n kingdoms and transporting them to Europe's colonies in the Americas. The transatlantic slave trade was eventually curtailed due to European and American governments passing legislation abolishing their nation's involvement in it.
Although slavery is no longer legal anywhere in the world,
human trafficking
Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extrac ...
remains an international problem. An estimated 25-40 million people were enslaved , the majority of these in
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
. During the 1983–2005
Second Sudanese Civil War
The Second Sudanese Civil War was a conflict from 1983 to 2005 between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army. It was largely a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War of 1955 to 1972. Although it originate ...
cacao plantation
''Theobroma cacao'', also called the cacao tree and the cocoa tree, is a small ( tall) evergreen tree in the family Malvaceae. Its seeds, cocoa beans, are used to make chocolate liquor, cocoa solids, cocoa butter and chocolate. The largest pro ...
s in West Africa.
Slavery in the 21st century
Contemporary slavery, also sometimes known as modern slavery or neo-slavery, refers to institutional slavery that continues to occur in present-day society. Estimates of the number of enslaved people today range from around 38 million to 46 mil ...
continues and generates $150 billion in annual profits. Populations in regions with
armed conflict
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular ...
are especially vulnerable, and modern transportation has made human trafficking easier. In 2019, there were an estimated 40 million people worldwide subject to some form of slavery - 25% were children. Sixty-one percent are used for
forced labor
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
, mostly in the
private sector
The private sector is the part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is owned by private groups, usually as a means of establishment for profit or non profit, rather than being owned by the government.
Employment
The ...
. Thirty-eight percent live in forced marriages. Other types of modern slavery are
child soldiers
Children (defined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child as people under the age of 18) have been recruited for participation in military operations and campaigns throughout history and in many cultures.
Children in the military, includ ...
,
sex trafficking
Sex trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. It has been called a form of modern slavery because of the way victims are forced into sexual acts non-consensually, in a form of sexual slavery. Perpetrators of the ...
, and
sexual slavery
Sexual slavery and sexual exploitation is an attachment of any ownership rights, right over one or more people with the intent of Coercion, coercing or otherwise forcing them to engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activities. This include ...
.
Prehistoric and ancient slavery
Evidence of slavery predates written records; the practice has existed in many cultures. and can be traced back 11,000 years ago due to the conditions created by the invention of agriculture during the
Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic Revolution, or the (First) Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an incre ...
. Economic surpluses and high population densities were conditions that made mass slavery viable.
Slavery occurred in civilizations including ancient Egypt,
ancient China
The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC), during the reign of king Wu Ding. Ancient historical texts such as the '' Book of Documents'' (early chapte ...
, the
Akkadian Empire
The Akkadian Empire () was the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia after the long-lived civilization of Sumer. It was centered in the city of Akkad (city), Akkad () and its surrounding region. The empire united Akkadian language, Akkadian and ...
,
Assyria
Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...
,
Babylonia
Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c. ...
,
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
,
ancient Israel
The history of ancient Israel and Judah begins in the Southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. "Israel" as a people or tribal confederation (see Israelites) appears for the first time in the Merneptah Stele, an inscripti ...
, J.M. Roberts, ''The New Penguin History of the World'', pp. 176–77, 223
ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...
,
ancient India
According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. Quote: "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by m ...
, the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...
, the
Arab
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
Islamic
Caliphate
A caliphate or khilāfah ( ar, خِلَافَة, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; ar, خَلِيفَة , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to th ...
and
Sultanate
This article includes a list of successive Islamic states and Muslim dynasties beginning with the time of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (570–632 CE) and the early Muslim conquests that spread Islam outside of the Arabian Peninsula, and continui ...
,
Nubia
Nubia () (Nobiin: Nobīn, ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile (just south of Aswan in southern Egypt) and the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), or ...
and the
pre-Columbian civilizations
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
,
child abandonment
Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring in an illegal way, with the intent of never resuming or reasserting guardianship. The phrase is typically used to describe the physical abandonment of a ...
, and children born to slaves.
File:Slave treaty tablet.jpg, C. 1480 BC, fugitive-slave treaty between Idrimi of Alakakh (now
Tell Atchana
Alalakh (''Tell Atchana''; Hittite: Alalaḫ) is an ancient archaeological site approximately northeast of Antakya (historic Antioch) in what is now Turkey's Hatay Province. It flourished, as an urban settlement, in the Middle and Late Bronze A ...
) and Pillia of
Kizzuwatna
Kizzuwatna (or Kizzuwadna; in Ancient Egyptian ''Kode'' or ''Qode''), was an ancient Anatolian kingdom in the 2nd millennium BC. It was situated in the highlands of southeastern Anatolia, near the Gulf of İskenderun, in modern-day Turkey. It enc ...
(now Cilicia).
File:Roman collared slaves - Ashmolean Museum.jpg, Slaves in chains during the period of Roman rule at Smyrna (present-day
İzmir
İzmir ( , ; ), also spelled Izmir, is a metropolitan city in the western extremity of Anatolia, capital of the province of the same name. It is the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara and the second largest urban agglo ...
), 200 AD.
File:Slaves Zadib Yemen 13th century BNF Paris.jpg, 13th century slave market in
Yemen
Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and ...
.
Africa
Writing in 1984, French historian
Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel (; 24 August 1902 – 27 November 1985) was a French historian and leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects: ''The Mediterranean'' (1923–49, then 1949–66), ''Civilization and Capitalism'' ...
noted that slavery had been endemic in Africa and part of the structure of everyday life throughout the 15th to the 18th century. "Slavery came in different guises in different societies: there were court slaves, slaves incorporated into princely armies, domestic and household slaves, slaves working on the land, in industry, as couriers and intermediaries, even as traders". During the 16th century, Europe began to outpace the
Arab world
The Arab world ( ar, اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ '), formally the Arab homeland ( '), also known as the Arab nation ( '), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, refers to a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western A ...
in the export traffic, with its trafficking of enslaved people from Africa to the Americas. The Dutch imported enslaved people from Asia into their colony at the Cape of Good Hope (now
Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...
) in the 17th century. In 1807 Britain (which already held a small coastal territory, intended for the resettlement of formerly enslaved people, in
Freetown
Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, educational and p ...
,
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra ...
) made the slave trade within its empire illegal with the
Slave Trade Act 1807
The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not abolish the practice of slavery, it ...
, and worked to extend the prohibition to other territory, as did the United States in 1808.
In
Senegambia
The Senegambia (other names: Senegambia region or Senegambian zone,Barry, Boubacar, ''Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade'', (Editors: David Anderson, Carolyn Brown; trans. Ayi Kwei Armah; contributors: David Anderson, American Council of Le ...
, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the
Western Sudan
Sudan is the geographical region to the south of the Sahara, stretching from Western Africa to Central and Eastern Africa. The name derives from the Arabic ' (), or "the lands of the Black people, Blacks", referring to West Africa and northern ...
, including
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
(750–1076),
Mali
Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali ...
(1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai (1275–1591), about a third of the population was enslaved. The earliest
Akan Akan may refer to:
People and languages
*Akan people, an ethnic group in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire
*Akan language, a language spoken by the Akan people
*Kwa languages, a language group which includes Akan
*Central Tano languages, a language group w ...
state of
Bonoman
Bono State (or Bonoman) was a trading state created by the Bono people, located in what is now southern Ghana. Bonoman was a medieval Akan kingdom in what is now Bono, Bono East and Ahafo region respectively named after the (Bono and Ahafo) a ...
which had third of its population being enslaved in the 17th century. In
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra ...
in the 19th century about half of the population consisted of enslaved people. In the 19th century at least half the population was enslaved among the Duala people, Duala of the
Cameroon
Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...
, the
Igbo
Igbo may refer to:
* Igbo people, an ethnic group of Nigeria
* Igbo language, their language
* anything related to Igboland, a cultural region in Nigeria
See also
* Ibo (disambiguation)
* Igbo mythology
* Igbo music
* Igbo art
*
* Igbo-Ukwu, a ...
and other peoples of the lower
Niger
)
, official_languages =
, languages_type = National languagesKongo
Congo or The Congo may refer to either of two countries that border the Congo River in central Africa:
* Democratic Republic of the Congo, the larger country to the southeast, capital Kinshasa, formerly known as Zaire, sometimes referred to a ...
Yoruba
The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
a third of the population consisted of enslaved people as well as
Bono
Paul David Hewson (born 10 May 1960), known by his stage name Bono (), is an Irish singer-songwriter, activist, and philanthropist. He is the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the rock band U2.
Born and raised in Dublin, he attended M ...
. The population of the Kanem was about one third enslaved. It was perhaps 40% in Bornu (1396–1893). Between 1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the
Fulani jihad
The Fulani War of 1804–1808, also known as the Fulani Jihad or Jihad of Usman dan Fodio, was a military conflict in present-day Nigeria and Cameroon. The war began when Usman Dan Fodiyo, a prominent Islamic scholar and teacher, was exiled ...
states consisted of enslaved people. The population of the
Sokoto
Sokoto is a major city located in extreme northwestern Nigeria, near the confluence of the Sokoto River and the Rima River. As of 2006 it has a population of over 427,760. Sokoto is the modern-day capital of Sokoto State and was previously the c ...
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
and Cameroon was half-slave in the 19th century. It is estimated that up to 90% of the population of
Arab
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
Zanzibar
Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands ...
was enslaved. Roughly half the population of
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
was enslaved.
Slavery in Ethiopia
Slavery in Ethiopia existed for centuries, going as far back as 1495 BC. There are also sources indicating the export of slaves from the Aksumite Kingdom (100–940 AD). The practice formed an integral part of Ethiopian society, Ethiopians from th ...
persisted until 1942. The Anti-Slavery Society estimated that there were 2,000,000 enslaved people in the early 1930s, out of an estimated population of between 8 and 16 million. It was finally abolished by order of emperor
Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie I ( gez, ቀዳማዊ ኀይለ ሥላሴ, Qädamawi Häylä Səllasé, ; born Tafari Makonnen; 23 July 189227 August 1975) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He rose to power as Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia (' ...
on 26 August 1942.
When British rule was first imposed on the
Sokoto Caliphate
The Sokoto Caliphate (), also known as the Fulani Empire or the Sultanate of Sokoto, was a Sunni Muslim caliphate in West Africa. It was founded by Usman dan Fodio in 1804 during the Fulani jihads after defeating the Hausa Kingdoms in the Ful ...
and the surrounding areas in
northern Nigeria
Northern Nigeria was an autonomous division within Nigeria, distinctly different from the southern part of the country, with independent customs, foreign relations and security structures. In 1962 it acquired the territory of the United Kingd ...
at the turn of the 20th century, approximately 2 million to 2.5 million people living there were enslaved. Slavery in northern Nigeria was finally outlawed in 1936.
Writing in 1998 about the extent of trade coming through and from Africa, the Congolese journalist Elikia M'bokolo wrote "The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the
Sahara
, photo = Sahara real color.jpg
, photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972
, map =
, map_image =
, location =
, country =
, country1 =
, ...
, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the
Muslim countries
The terms Muslim world and Islamic world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is practiced. I ...
(from the ninth to the nineteenth)." He continues: "Four million slaves exported via the
Red Sea
The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...
, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean"
Sub-Saharan Africa
Zanzibar
Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands ...
was once East Africa's main slave-trading port, during the
East African slave trade
The Indian Ocean slave trade, sometimes known as the East African slave trade or Arab slave trade, was multi-directional slave trade and has changed over time. Africans were sent as slaves to the Middle East, to Indian Ocean islands (including Ma ...
and under
Omani Arabs
Omanis ( ar, الشعب العماني) are the nationals of Sultanate of Oman, located in the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Omanis have inhabited the territory that is now Oman. In the eighteenth century, an alliance of traders ...
in the 19th century, as many as 50,000 enslaved people were passing through the city each year.
Prior to the 16th century, the bulk of enslaved people exported from Africa were shipped from East Africa to the
Arabian peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate ...
.
Zanzibar
Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands ...
became a leading port in this trade. Arab traders of enslaved people differed from European ones in that they would often conduct raiding expeditions themselves, sometimes penetrating deep into the continent. They also differed in that their market greatly preferred the purchase of enslaved females over male.
The increased presence of European rivals along the East coast led Arab traders to concentrate on the overland slave caravan routes across the
Sahara
, photo = Sahara real color.jpg
, photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972
, map =
, map_image =
, location =
, country =
, country1 =
, ...
from the
Sahel
The Sahel (; ar, ساحل ' , "coast, shore") is a region in North Africa. It is defined as the ecoclimatic and biogeographic realm of transition between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian savanna to the south. Having a hot semi-arid c ...
to North Africa. The German explorer
Gustav Nachtigal
Gustav Nachtigal (; born 23 February 1834 – 20 April 1885) was a German military surgeon and explorer of Central and West Africa. He is further known as the German Empire's consul-general for Tunisia and Commissioner for West Africa. His missio ...
reported seeing slave caravans departing from
Kukawa
Kukawa (previously Kuka) is a town and Local Government Area in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, close to Lake Chad.
The town was founded in 1814 as capital of the Kanem-Bornu Empire by the Muslim scholar and warlord Muhammad al-Amin al ...
Tripoli
Tripoli or Tripolis may refer to:
Cities and other geographic units Greece
*Tripoli, Greece, the capital of Arcadia, Greece
* Tripolis (region of Arcadia), a district in ancient Arcadia, Greece
* Tripolis (Larisaia), an ancient Greek city in ...
and
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
in 1870. The trade of enslaved people represented the major source of revenue for the state of Bornu as late as 1898. The eastern regions of the
Central African Republic
The Central African Republic (CAR; ; , RCA; , or , ) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the southeast, the DR Congo to the south, the Republic of th ...
have never recovered demographically from the impact of 19th-century raids from the
Sudan
Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
and still have a population density of less than 1 person/km2. During the 1870s, European initiatives against the trade of enslaved people caused an economic crisis in northern Sudan, precipitating the rise of Mahdist forces.
Mahdi
The Mahdi ( ar, ٱلْمَهْدِيّ, al-Mahdī, lit=the Guided) is a Messianism, messianic figure in Islamic eschatology who is believed to appear at the Eschatology, end of times to rid the world of evil and injustice. He is said to be a de ...
's victory created an
Islamic state
An Islamic state is a State (polity), state that has a form of government based on sharia, Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical Polity, polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a t ...
, one that quickly reinstituted slavery.
European involvement in the East African trade of enslaved people began when Portugal established
Estado da Índia
The State of India ( pt, Estado da Índia), also referred as the Portuguese State of India (''Estado Português da Índia'', EPI) or simply Portuguese India (), was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded six years after the discovery of a se ...
in the early 16th century. From then until the 1830s, c. 200 enslaved people were exported from
Portuguese Mozambique
Portuguese Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique) or Portuguese East Africa (''África Oriental Portuguesa'') were the common terms by which Mozambique was designated during the period in which it was a Portuguese Empire, Portuguese colony. Portuguese Moz ...
annually and similar figures has been estimated for enslaved people brought from Asia to the Philippines during the
Iberian Union
pt, União Ibérica
, conventional_long_name =Iberian Union
, common_name =
, year_start = 1580
, date_start = 25 August
, life_span = 1580–1640
, event_start = War of the Portuguese Succession
, event_end = Portuguese Restoration War
, ...
(1580–1640).
The
Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods (first ...
, the crossing of the
Atlantic
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...
to
the Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America, North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. ...
, endured by enslaved people laid out in rows in the holds of ships, was only one element of the well-known
triangular trade
Triangular trade or triangle trade is trade between three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. It has been used to offset t ...
engaged in by Portuguese, American, Dutch, Danish-Norwegians, French, British and others. Ships having landed with enslaved people in
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
ports would take on sugar, indigo, raw cotton, and later coffee, and make for
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
,
Nantes
Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...
, Lisbon or
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
. Ships leaving European ports for West Africa would carry printed cotton textiles, some originally from India, copper utensils and bangles, pewter plates and pots, iron bars more valued than gold, hats, trinkets, gunpowder and firearms and alcohol. Tropical
shipworm
The shipworms are marine bivalve molluscs in the family Teredinidae: a group of saltwater clams with long, soft, naked bodies. They are notorious for boring into (and commonly eventually destroying) wood that is immersed in sea water, including ...
s were eliminated in the cold Atlantic waters, and at each unloading, a profit was made.
The
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
peaked in the late 18th century when the largest number of people were captured and enslaved on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African states, such as the
Bono State
Bono State (or Bonoman) was a trading state created by the Bono people, located in what is now southern Ghana. Bonoman was a medieval Akan kingdom in what is now Bono, Bono East and Ahafo region respectively named after the (Bono and Ahafo) and ...
,
Oyo empire
The Oyo Empire was a powerful Yoruba empire of West Africa made up of parts of present-day eastern Benin and western Nigeria (including Southwest zone and the western half of Northcentral zone). It grew to become the largest Yoruba language, ...
(
Yoruba
The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
),
Kong Empire
The Kong Empire (1710–1898), also known as the Wattara Empire or Ouattara Empire for its founder, was a pre-colonial African Muslim state centered in northeastern Ivory Coast that also encompassed much of present-day Burkina Faso. It was fo ...
,
Kingdom of Benin
The Kingdom of Benin, also known as the Edo Kingdom, or the Benin Empire ( Bini: ') was a kingdom within what is now southern Nigeria. It has no historical relation to the modern republic of Benin, which was known as Dahomey from the 17th c ...
,
Imamate of Futa Jallon
The Imamate of Futa Jallon or Jalon ( ar, إمامة فوتة جالون; fuf, Fuuta Jaloo or ' ) was a West African theocratic state based in the Fouta Djallon highlands of modern Guinea. The state was founded around 1727 by a Fulani jihad ...
,
Imamate of Futa Toro
The Imamate of Futa Toro () (1776-1861) was a West African theocratic monarchy of the Fula-speaking people (''Fulɓe'' and Toucouleurs) in the middle valley of the Senegal River. The region is known as Futa Toro.
Origins
Futa Toro is a stri ...
Kingdom of Khasso Khasso or Xaaso was a West African kingdom of the 17th to 19th centuries, occupying territory in what is today Senegal and the Kayes Region of Mali. Over two thousand years ago, it was part of Serer territory. From the 17th to 19th centuries, its c ...
Fante Confederacy
The Fante Confederacy refers either to the alliance of the Fante states in existence at least since the sixteenth century, or it can also refer to the modern Confederation formed in 1868. The Confederation is seen as one of the first and most prom ...
Aro Confederacy
The Aro Confederacy (1690–1902) was a political union orchestrated by the Aro people, Igbo subgroup, centered in Arochukwu in present-day southeastern Nigeria. Their influence and presence was all over Eastern Nigeria, lower Middle Belt, an ...
and the kingdom of
Dahomey
The Kingdom of Dahomey () was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a region ...
. Europeans rarely entered the interior of Africa, due to fear of
disease
A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that a ...
and moreover fierce African resistance. The enslaved people were brought to coastal outposts where they were traded for goods. The people captured on these expeditions were shipped by European traders to the colonies of the
New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...
. It is estimated that over the centuries, twelve to twenty million enslaved people were shipped from Africa by European traders, of whom some 15 percent died during the terrible voyage, many during the arduous journey through the
Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods (first ...
. The great majority were shipped to the Americas, but some also went to Europe and Southern Africa.
While talking about the trade of enslaved people in
East Africa
East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territories make up Eastern Africa:
Due to the historical ...
in his journals,
David Livingstone
David Livingstone (; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of t ...
said
While travelling in the
African Great Lakes
The African Great Lakes ( sw, Maziwa Makuu; rw, Ibiyaga bigari) are a series of lakes constituting the part of the Rift Valley lakes in and around the East African Rift. They include Lake Victoria, the second-largest fresh water lake in the ...
Region in 1866, Livingstone described a trail of slaves:
19th June 1866 – We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead, the people of the country explained that she had been unable to keep up with the other slaves in a gang, and her master had determined that she should not become anyone's property if she recovered. 26th June. – ...We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path: a group of men stood about a hundred yards off on one side, and another of the women on the other side, looking on; they said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer.
27th June 1866 – To-day we came upon a man dead from starvation, as he was very thin. One of our men wandered and found many slaves with slave-sticks on, abandoned by their masters from want of food; they were too weak to be able to speak or say where they had come from; some were quite young.
African participation in the slave trade
African states played a key role in the trade of enslaved people, and slavery was a common practice among
Sub Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the African co ...
ns even before the involvement of the
Arabs
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Wester ...
,
Berbers
, image = File:Berber_flag.svg
, caption = The Berber ethnic flag
, population = 36 million
, region1 = Morocco
, pop1 = 14 million to 18 million
, region2 = Algeria
, pop2 ...
and
Europeans
Europeans are the focus of European ethnology, the field of anthropology related to the various ethnic groups that reside in the states of Europe. Groups may be defined by common genetic ancestry, common language, or both. Pan and Pfeil (2004) ...
. There were three types: those who were enslaved through conquest, in lieu of unpaid debts, or those whose parents gave them as property to tribal chiefs. Chieftains would barter their enslaved people to Arab, Berber, Ottoman or European buyers for rum, spices, cloth or other goods. Selling captives or prisoners was a common practice among Africans, Turks, Berbers and Arabs during that era. However, as the Atlantic trade of enslaved people increased its demand, local systems which primarily serviced indentured servitude expanded. European trading of enslaved people, as a result, was the most pivotal change in the social, economic, cultural, spiritual, religious, political dynamics of the concept of trading in enslaved people. It ultimately undermined local economies and political stability as villages' vital labour forces were shipped overseas as
slave raid
Slave raiding is a military raid for the purpose of capturing people and bringing them from the raid area to serve as slaves. Once seen as a normal part of warfare, it is nowadays widely considered a crime. Slave raiding has occurred since an ...
s and civil wars became commonplace. Crimes which were previously punishable by some other means became punishable by enslavement.
Slavery already existed in
Kingdom of Kongo
The Kingdom of Kongo ( kg, Kongo dya Ntotila or ''Wene wa Kongo;'' pt, Reino do Congo) was a kingdom located in central Africa in present-day northern Angola, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of the ...
prior to the arrival of the
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
. Because it had been established within his kingdom,
Afonso I of Kongo
Mvemba a Nzinga, Nzinga Mbemba, Funsu Nzinga Mvemba or Dom Alfonso. (c. 1456–1542 or 1543), also known as King Afonso I, was the sixth ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo from the Lukeni kanda dynasty and ruled in the first half of the 16th century ...
believed that the slave trade should be subject to Kongo law. When he suspected the Portuguese of receiving illegally enslaved persons to sell, he wrote letters to the King
João III
John III ( pt, João III ; 7 June 1502 – 11 June 1557), nicknamed The Pious ( Portuguese: ''o Piedoso''), was the King of Portugal and the Algarves from 1521 until his death in 1557. He was the son of King Manuel I and Maria of Aragon, the t ...
of Portugal in 1526 imploring him to put a stop to the practice.
The kings of
Dahomey
The Kingdom of Dahomey () was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a region ...
sold their war captives into transatlantic slavery, who otherwise may have been killed in a ceremony known as the Annual Customs. As one of West Africa's principal slave states, Dahomey became extremely unpopular with neighbouring peoples. Like the
Bambara Empire
The Bamana Empire (also Bambara Empire or Ségou Empire, bm, italics=no, ߓߊ߲ߓߊߙߊ߲߫ ߝߊ߯ߡߟߊ, Banbaran Fāmala) was a large West African state based at Ségou, now in Mali. This state was established after the fall of the Mali Emp ...
to the east, the Khasso kingdoms depended heavily on the
slave trade
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
for their economy. A family's status was indicated by the number of enslaved people it owned, leading to wars for the sole purpose of taking more captives. This trade led the Khasso into increasing contact with the European settlements of Africa's west coast, particularly the French.
Benin
Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north ...
grew increasingly rich during the 16th and 17th centuries on the trade of enslaved people with Europe; enslaved people from enemy states of the interior were sold, and carried to the Americas in
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
and
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
ships. The Bight of Benin's shore soon came to be known as the "Slave Coast".
In the 1840s, King Gezo of
Dahomey
The Kingdom of Dahomey () was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a region ...
said:
"The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth...the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery."
In 1807 the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
made the international trade of enslaved people illegal with the
Slave Trade Act
Slave Trade Act is a stock short title used for legislation in the United Kingdom and the United States that relates to the slave trade.
The "See also" section lists other Slave Acts, laws, and international conventions which developed the conce ...
. The
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
was deployed to prevent slavers from the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
,
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
,
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
,
Holland
Holland is a geographical regionG. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, ''Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel I'', Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1105 and former province on the western coast of the Netherlands. From the 10th to the 16th c ...
,
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Maurit ...
and
Arabia
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...
. The King of Bonny (now in
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
) allegedly became dissatisfied of the British intervention in stopping the trade of enslaved people:
"We think this trade must go on. That is the verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself."
Joseph Miller states that African buyers would prefer males, but in reality, women and children would be more easily captured as men fled. Those captured would be sold for various reasons such as food, debts, or servitude. Once captured, the journey to the coast killed many and weakened others. Disease engulfed many, and insufficient food damaged those who made it to the coasts.
Scurvy
Scurvy is a disease resulting from a lack of vitamin C (ascorbic acid). Early symptoms of deficiency include weakness, feeling tired and sore arms and legs. Without treatment, decreased red blood cells, gum disease, changes to hair, and bleeding ...
was so common that it was known as ''mal de Luanda'' (Luanda sickness).Miller, Joseph. "West Central Africa." The Way of Death. University of Wisconsin. 1988. pp. 380–87, 389–91, 398–405, 440–41. The assumption for those who died on the journey died from
malnutrition
Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues a ...
. As food was limited, water may have been just as bad.
Dysentery
Dysentery (UK pronunciation: , US: ), historically known as the bloody flux, is a type of gastroenteritis that results in bloody diarrhea. Other symptoms may include fever, abdominal pain, and a feeling of incomplete defecation. Complications ...
was widespread and poor sanitary conditions at ports did not help. Since supplies were poor, enslaved people were not equipped with the best clothing, meaning they were even more exposed to diseases.
On top of the fear of disease, people were afraid of why they were being captured. The popular assumption was that Europeans were
cannibals
Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, bo ...
. Stories and rumours spread that whites captured Africans to eat them.
Olaudah Equiano
Olaudah Equiano (; c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa (), was a writer and abolitionist from, according to his memoir, the Eboe (Igbo) region of the Kingdom of Benin (today southern Nigeria). Enslaved as ...
accounts his experience about the sorrow enslaved people encountered at the ports. He talks about his first moment on a
slave ship
Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast ...
and asked if he was going to be eaten. Yet, the worst for slaves has only begun, and the journey on the water proved to be more harrowing. For every 100 Africans captured, only 64 would reach the coast, and only about 50 would reach the New World.
Others believe that slavers had a vested interest in capturing rather than killing, and in keeping their captives alive; and that this coupled with the disproportionate removal of males and the introduction of new crops from the Americas (
cassava
''Manihot esculenta'', common name, commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively ...
, maize) would have limited general
population decline
A population decline (also sometimes called underpopulation, depopulation, or population collapse) in humans is a reduction in a human population size. Over the long term, stretching from prehistory to the present, Earth's total human population ...
to particular regions of western Africa around 1760–1810, and in
Mozambique
Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...
and neighbouring areas half a century later. There has also been speculation that within Africa, females were most often captured as brides, with their male protectors being a "bycatch" who would have been killed if there had not been an export market for them.
British explorer Mungo Park encountered a group of enslaved people when traveling through Mandinka country:
During the period from the late 19th century and early 20th century, demand for the labour-intensive harvesting of rubber drove frontier expansion and
forced labour
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
. The personal monarchy of Belgian
King Leopold II
* german: link=no, Leopold Ludwig Philipp Maria Viktor
, house = Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
, father = Leopold I of Belgium
, mother = Louise of Orléans
, birth_date =
, birth_place = Brussels, Belgium
, death_date = ...
in the
Congo Free State
''(Work and Progress)
, national_anthem = Vers l'avenir
, capital = Vivi Boma
, currency = Congo Free State franc
, religion = Catholicism (''de facto'')
, leader1 = Leopo ...
saw mass killings and slavery to extract rubber.
Africans on ships
Stephanie Smallwood in her book Saltwater Slavery uses Equiano's account on board ships to describe the general thoughts of most slaves:
"Then," said I, "how comes it in all our country we never heard of them?" They told me because they lived so very far off. I then asked where were their women? Had they any like themselves? I was told that they had. "And why," said I, "do we not see them?" They answered, because they were left behind. I asked how the vessel could go? They told me they could not tell; but that there was cloth put upon the masts by the help of the ropes I saw, and then the vessel went on; and the white men had some spell or magic they put in the water when they liked, in order to stop the vessel. I was exceedingly amazed at this account, and really thought they were spirits. I there-fore wished much to be from amongst them, for I expected they would sacrifice me; but my wishes were vain—for we were so quartered that it was impossible for any of us to make our escape.Smallwood, Stephanie E. ''Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora''. 1st Harvard University Press pbk. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008.
These accounts raised many questions as some slaves grew philosophical with their journey. Smallwood points out the challenges for slaves were physical and metaphysical. The physical would be obvious as the challenge to overcome capacity, lack of ship room, and food. The metaphysical was unique, as the open sea would challenge African slaves' vision of the ocean as habitable. The journey on the ocean would prove to be an African's biggest fear that would keep them in awe. Because of the lack of knowledge of the sea, Africans would experience feelings of extreme anxiety. Europeans were also fearful of the sea due to diseases, but not to the extent of Africans. Part of their fear came with the lack of a sense of time, as Africans used seasonal weather to predict time and days. The moon was a sense of time, but used like in other cultures and not very accurate. Africans used the moon to count their days on the sea, but this did not provide seasonal changes.
Surviving the voyage was the main struggle. Close quarters meant everyone was infected by any diseases that spread, including the crew. Death was so common that ships were called ''tumbeiros,'' or floating tombs. What shocked Africans the most was how death was handled in the ships. Smallwood says the traditions for an African death was delicate and community-based. On ships, bodies would be thrown into the sea. Because the sea represented bad omens, bodies in the sea represented a form of purgatory and the ship a form of hell. Any Africans who made the journey would have survived extreme disease and malnutrition, as well as trauma from being on the open ocean and the death of their friends.
North Africa
In
Algiers
Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...
during the time of the
Regency of Algiers
The Regency of Algiers ( ar, دولة الجزائر, translit=Dawlat al-Jaza'ir) was a state in North Africa lasting from 1516 to 1830, until it was conquered by the French. Situated between the regency of Tunis in the east, the Sultanate o ...
in North Africa in the 19th century, up to 1.5 million
Christians
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
and
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
ans were captured and forced into slavery. This eventually led to the Bombardment of Algiers in 1816 by the
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
and
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
, forcing the
Dey of Algiers
Dey (Arabic: داي), from the Turkish honorific title ''dayı'', literally meaning uncle, was the title given to the rulers of the Regency of Algiers (Algeria), Tripoli,Bertarelli (1929), p. 203. and Tunis under the Ottoman Empire from 1671 o ...
to free many slaves.
Modern times
The trading of children has been reported in modern
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
and
Benin
Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north ...
. In parts of
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
, a family may be punished for an offense by having to turn over a virgin female to serve as a sex slave within the offended family. In this instance, the woman does not gain the title or status of "wife". In parts of Ghana,
Togo
Togo (), officially the Togolese Republic (french: République togolaise), is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its c ...
, and
Benin
Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north ...
, shrine slavery persists, despite being illegal in Ghana since 1998. In this system of
ritual servitude
Ritual servitude is a practice in Ghana, Togo, and Benin where traditional religious shrines (popularly called fetish shrines in Ghana) take human beings, usually young virgin girls, in payment for services or in religious atonement for alleged m ...
, sometimes called ''trokosi'' (in Ghana) or ''voodoosi'' in Togo and Benin, young virgin girls are given as slaves to traditional shrines and are used sexually by the priests in addition to providing free labor for the shrine.
An article in the ''
Middle East Quarterly
The Middle East Forum (MEF) is an American conservative think tank founded in 1990 by Daniel Pipes, who serves as its president. MEF became an independent non-profit organization in 1994. It publishes a journal, the '' Middle East Quarterly''.
...
'' in 1999 reported that slavery is endemic in
Sudan
Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
. Estimates of abductions during the
Second Sudanese Civil War
The Second Sudanese Civil War was a conflict from 1983 to 2005 between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army. It was largely a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War of 1955 to 1972. Although it originate ...
range from 14,000 to 200,000 people.
During the
Second Sudanese Civil War
The Second Sudanese Civil War was a conflict from 1983 to 2005 between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army. It was largely a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War of 1955 to 1972. Although it originate ...
people were taken into slavery; estimates of abductions range from 14,000 to 200,000. Abduction of
Dinka
The Dinka people ( din, Jiɛ̈ɛ̈ŋ) are a Nilotes, Nilotic ethnic group native to South Sudan with a sizable diaspora population abroad. The Dinka mostly live along the Nile, from Jonglei to Renk, South Sudan, Renk, in the region of Bahr el Gh ...
women and children was common. In
Mauritania
Mauritania (; ar, موريتانيا, ', french: Mauritanie; Berber: ''Agawej'' or ''Cengit''; Pulaar: ''Moritani''; Wolof: ''Gànnaar''; Soninke:), officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania ( ar, الجمهورية الإسلامية ...
it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are currently enslaved, many of them used as
bonded labor
Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. Where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, the pe ...
.
Slavery in Mauritania
Slavery has been called "deeply rooted" in the structure of the northwestern African country of Mauritania, and "closely tied" to the ethnic composition of the country, despite the ending of slavery across other African countries and colonial owne ...
was criminalized in August 2007.
During the
Darfur conflict
The War in Darfur, also nicknamed the Land Cruiser War, is a major armed conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan that began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel groups be ...
that began in 2003, many people were kidnapped by
Janjaweed
The Janjaweed ( ar, جنجويد, Janjawīd, lit=mounted gunman; also transliterated ''Janjawid'') are a Sudanese Arab militia group that operate in Sudan, particularly Darfur, and eastern Chad. Using the United Nations definition, the Janjaweed ...
and sold into slavery as agricultural labor, domestic servants and sex slaves.
In
Niger
)
, official_languages =
, languages_type = National languagesECOWAS Community Court of Justice declared that the Republic of Niger failed to protect Hadijatou Mani Koraou from slavery, and awarded Mani CFA 10,000,000 (approximately ) in reparations.
Sexual slavery and
forced labor
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
are common in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Many
pygmies
In anthropology, pygmy peoples are ethnic groups whose average height is unusually short. The term pygmyism is used to describe the phenotype of endemic short stature (as opposed to disproportionate dwarfism occurring in isolated cases in a pop ...
in the
Republic of Congo
The Republic of the Congo (french: République du Congo, ln, Republíki ya Kongó), also known as Congo-Brazzaville, the Congo Republic or simply either Congo or the Congo, is a country located in the western coast of Central Africa to the w ...
and
Democratic Republic of Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
belong from birth to Bantus in a system of slavery.
Evidence emerged in the late 1990s of systematic slavery in
cacao plantation
''Theobroma cacao'', also called the cacao tree and the cocoa tree, is a small ( tall) evergreen tree in the family Malvaceae. Its seeds, cocoa beans, are used to make chocolate liquor, cocoa solids, cocoa butter and chocolate. The largest pro ...
s in West Africa; see the
chocolate and slavery
Ivory Coast and Ghana, together produce nearly 60% of the world's cocoa each year. During the 2018/19 cocoa-growing season, research commissioned by the U.S Department of Labor was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago in these two coun ...
article.
According to the U.S. State Department, more than 109,000 children were working on
cocoa
Cocoa may refer to:
Chocolate
* Chocolate
* ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree
* Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao''
* Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...
farms alone in
Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital is Yamoussoukro, in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is ...
in "the worst forms of
child labour
Child labour refers to the exploitation of children through any form of work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such e ...
Chibok
Chibok is a Local Government Area of Borno State, Nigeria, located in the south of the state. It has its headquarters in the town of Chibok.
Landscape
It has an area of 1,350 km²
Population
It has a population of 66,105 at the 2006 ...
, Nigeria. They broke into the school, pretending to be guards, telling the girls to get out and come with them. A large number of students were taken away in trucks, possibly into the
Konduga
Konduga is a community in Borno State, Nigeria and the center of a Local Government Area of the same name about 25 km to the southeast of Maiduguri, situated on the north bank of the Ngadda River. The population of the Konduga Local Governmen ...
area of the
Sambisa Forest
The Sambisa Forest is a forest in Borno State, northeast Nigeria. It is in the southwestern part of Chad Basin National Park, about 60km southeast of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. It has an area of 518 km².
Geography
The Sambisa fore ...
where
Boko Haram
Boko Haram, officially known as ''Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād'' ( ar, جماعة أهل السنة للدعوة والجهاد, lit=Group of the People of Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad), is an Islamic terrorist organization ...
were known to have fortified camps.Maclean, Ruth (17 April 2014 Nigerian schoolgirls still missing after military 'fabricated' rescue The Times, (may need a subscription to view online), Retrieved 10 May 2014 Houses in Chibok were also burned down in the incident. According to police, approximately 276 children were taken in the attack, of whom 53 had escaped as of 2 May. Other reports said that 329 girls were kidnapped, 53 had escaped and 276 were still missing. The students have been forced to
convert to Islam
Religious conversion is the adoption of a set of beliefs identified with one particular religious denomination to the exclusion of others. Thus "religious conversion" would describe the abandoning of adherence to one denomination and affiliatin ...
and into marriage with members of Boko Haram, with a reputed "
bride price
Bride price, bride-dowry (Mahr in Islam), bride-wealth, or bride token, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the woman or the family of the woman he will be married to or is just about to marry. Bride dow ...
" of
₦
The naira ( sign: ₦; code: NGN) is the currency of Nigeria. One naira is divided into 100 ''kobo''.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is the sole issuer of legal tender money throughout the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It controls the vol ...
2,000 each ( $12.50/ £7.50). Many of the students were taken to the neighbouring countries of
Chad
Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic ...
and
Cameroon
Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...
, with sightings reported of the students crossing borders with the militants, and sightings of the students by villagers living in the
Sambisa Forest
The Sambisa Forest is a forest in Borno State, northeast Nigeria. It is in the southwestern part of Chad Basin National Park, about 60km southeast of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. It has an area of 518 km².
Geography
The Sambisa fore ...
, which is considered a refuge for Boko Haram.
On 5 May 2014 a video in which
Boko Haram
Boko Haram, officially known as ''Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād'' ( ar, جماعة أهل السنة للدعوة والجهاد, lit=Group of the People of Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad), is an Islamic terrorist organization ...
leader
Abubakar Shekau
Abu Mohammed Abubakar al-Sheikawi (also known by the alias ''Darul Akeem wa Zamunda Tawheed'', or ''Darul Tawheed''; "the abode of monotheism"; born 1965, 1969 or 1975 – 19 May 2021) was a Kanuri man known as the leader of Boko Haram, a Niger ...
claimed responsibility for the kidnappings emerged. Shekau claimed that "Allah instructed me to sell them...I will carry out his instructions" and " avery is allowed in my religion">avery is allowed in my religion, and I shall capture people and make them
slaves
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
." He said the girls should not have been in school and instead should have been married since girls as young as nine are suitable for marriage.
Libyan slave trade
During the
Second Libyan Civil War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Second Libyan Civil War
, partof = the Arab Winter, Libyan Crisis (2011–present), Libyan Crisis, Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict, War on terror, and Qatar–Saudi Arabia diplomat ...
Sub-Saharan
Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the African co ...
African migrants trying to get to Europe through Libya and selling them on slave markets. Slaves are often ransomed to their families and in the meantime until
ransom
Ransom is the practice of holding a prisoner or item to extort money or property to secure their release, or the sum of money involved in such a practice.
When ransom means "payment", the word comes via Old French ''rançon'' from Latin ''red ...
can be paid, they may be tortured, forced to work, sometimes worked to death, and eventually they may be executed or left to starve if the payment has not been made after a period of time. Women are often raped and used as sex slaves and sold to
brothel
A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub par ...
s.
Many child migrants also suffer from abuse and
child rape
Child sexual abuse (CSA), also called child molestation, is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include engaging in sexual activities with a child (wheth ...
in Libya.
Americas
To participate in the slave trade in
Spanish America
Spanish America refers to the Spanish territories in the Americas during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The term "Spanish America" was specifically used during the territories' Spanish Empire, imperial era between 15th century, 15th ...
, bankers and trading companies had to pay the Spanish king for the license, called the Asiento de Negros, but an unknown amount of the trade was illegal. After 1670 when the
Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its prede ...
declined substantially they outsourced part of the slave trade to the Dutch (1685-1687), the Portuguese, the French (1698-1713) and the English (1713-1750), also providing organized depots in the Caribbean islands to the
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
,
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
and
French America
French America (), sometimes called Franco-America, in contrast to Anglo-America, is the French-speaking community of people and their diaspora, notably those tracing back origins to New France, the early French colonization of the Americas. Th ...
. As a result of the
War of the Spanish Succession
The War of the Spanish Succession was a European great power conflict that took place from 1701 to 1714. The death of childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700 led to a struggle for control of the Spanish Empire between his heirs, Phil ...
, the British government obtained the monopoly ('' asiento de negros'') of selling African slaves in
Spanish America
Spanish America refers to the Spanish territories in the Americas during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The term "Spanish America" was specifically used during the territories' Spanish Empire, imperial era between 15th century, 15th ...
, which was granted to the
South Sea Company
The South Sea Company (officially The Governor and Company of the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the South Seas and other parts of America, and for the encouragement of the Fishery) was a British joint-stock company founded in Ja ...
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
and debtors. People unable to pay back debts could be sentenced to work as slaves to the persons owed until the debts were worked off, as a form of
indentured servitude
Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, ...
. Warfare was important to
Maya society
Maya society concerns the social organization of the Pre-Hispanic Maya, its political structures, and social classes. The Maya people were indigenous to Mexico and Central America and the most dominant people groups of Central America up until the ...
, because raids on surrounding areas provided the victims required for human
sacrifice
Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly exi ...
, as well as slaves for the construction of temples. Most victims of
human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein ...
were prisoners of war or slaves. Slavery was not usually hereditary; children of slaves were born free. In the
Inca Empire
The Inca Empire (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, (Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts", "four parts together" ) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The admin ...
, workers were subject to a '' mita'' in lieu of taxes which they paid by working for the government. Each ''
ayllu
The ''ayllu'', a family clan, is the traditional form of a community in the Andes, especially among Quechuas and Aymaras. They are an indigenous local government model across the Andes region of South America, particularly in Bolivia and Peru.
...
'', or extended family, would decide which family member to send to do the work. It is unclear if this labor draft or
corvée
Corvée () is a form of unpaid, forced labour, that is intermittent in nature lasting for limited periods of time: typically for only a certain number of days' work each year.
Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state for the purposes of ...
counts as slavery. The
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
adopted this system, particularly for their silver mines in Bolivia.
Other slave-owning societies and tribes of the New World were, for example, the Tehuelche of Patagonia, the
Comanche
The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( com, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people") are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in La ...
of Texas, the
Caribs
“Carib” may refer to:
People and languages
*Kalina people, or Caribs, an indigenous people of South America
**Carib language, also known as Kalina, the language of the South American Caribs
*Kalinago people, or Island Caribs, an indigenous pe ...
of Dominica, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the fishing societies, such as the
Yurok
The Yurok (Karuk language: Yurúkvaarar / Yuru Kyara - "downriver Indian; i.e. Yurok Indian") are an Indigenous people from along the Klamath River and Pacific coast, whose homelands are located in present-day California stretching from Trinidad ...
, that lived along the
west coast of North America
The human history of the west coast of North America is believed to stretch back to the arrival of the earliest people over the Bering Strait, or alternately along a now-submerged coastal plain, through the development of significant pre-Columbi ...
from what is now Alaska to California, the
Pawnee Pawnee initially refers to a Native American people and its language:
* Pawnee people
* Pawnee language
Pawnee is also the name of several places in the United States:
* Pawnee, Illinois
* Pawnee, Kansas
* Pawnee, Missouri
* Pawnee City, Nebraska
* ...
and
Klamath Klamath may refer to:
Ethnic groups
*Klamath people, a Native American people of California and Oregon
**Klamath Tribes, a federally recognized group of tribes in Oregon
*Klamath language, spoken by the Klamath people
Places in the United States
* ...
. Many of the
indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast are composed of many nations and tribal affiliations, each with distinctive cultural and political identities. They share certain beliefs, traditions and prac ...
, such as the
Haida
Haida may refer to:
Places
* Haida, an old name for Nový Bor
* Haida Gwaii, meaning "Islands of the People", formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands
* Haida Islands, a different archipelago near Bella Bella, British Columbia
Ships
* , a 1 ...
and
Tlingit
The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ),
, were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
. Among some
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...
tribes about a quarter of the population was enslaved. One
slave narrative
The slave narrative is a type of literary genre involving the (written) autobiographical accounts of enslaved Africans, particularly in the Americas. Over six thousand such narratives are estimated to exist; about 150 narratives were published as s ...
was composed by an Englishman,
John R. Jewitt
John Rodgers Jewitt (21 May 1783 – 7 January 1821) was an English armourer who entered the historical record with his memoirs about the 28 months he spent as a captive of Maquinna of the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people on what is now the Britis ...
, who had been taken alive when his ship was captured in 1802; his memoir provides a detailed look at life as an enslaved person, and asserts that a large number were held.
mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...
and
sugarcane
Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with ...
production. 35.3% of all enslaved people from the Atlantic Slave trade went to
Colonial Brazil
Colonial Brazil ( pt, Brasil Colonial) comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to a kingdom in union with Portugal as the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Durin ...
. 4 million enslaved people were obtained by Brazil, 1.5 million more than any other country. Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade enslaved Africans to work the sugar plantations, once the native
Tupi people
A subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, the Tupi people were one of the largest groups of indigenous Brazilians before its colonization. Scholars believe that while they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, from about 2,900 ...
deteriorated. Although
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
Prime Minister
Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo Sebastião is Portuguese for ''Sebastian''.
This name may refer to:
People
* Sebastião (given name)
Sebastião is a Portuguese male given name, descending from the Latin Sebastianus and equivalent to the English name Sebastian.
Notable peop ...
Continental Portugal
Continental Portugal ( pt, Portugal continental, ) or mainland Portugal comprises the bulk of the Portuguese Republic, namely that part on the Iberian Peninsula and so in Continental Europe, having approximately 95% of the total population and ...
on 12 February 1761, slavery continued in her overseas colonies. Slavery was practiced among all classes. Enslaved people were owned by upper and middle classes, by the poor, and even by other enslaved people.
From
São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...
, the
Bandeirantes
The ''Bandeirantes'' (), literally "flag-carriers", were slavers, explorers, adventurers, and fortune hunters in early Colonial Brazil. They are largely responsible for Brazil's great expansion westward, far beyond the Tordesillas Line of 1494 ...
, adventurers mostly of mixed
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
and native ancestry, penetrated steadily westward in their search for Indians to enslave. Along the
Amazon river
The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile.
The headwaters of t ...
and its major tributaries, repeated slaving raids and punitive attacks left their mark. One French traveler in the 1740s described ''hundreds of miles of river banks with no sign of human life and once-thriving villages that were devastated and empty.'' In some areas of the
Amazon Basin
The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivi ...
southern Brazil
The South Region of Brazil (; ) is one of the five regions of Brazil. It includes the states of Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Catarina, and covers , being the smallest region of the country, occupying only about 6.76% of the territory ...
and
Paraguay
Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...
, the
Jesuits
The Society of Jesus ( la, Societas Iesu; abbreviation: SJ), also known as the Jesuits (; la, Iesuitæ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
along military lines to fight the slavers. In the mid-to-late 19th century, many Amerindians were enslaved to work on rubber plantations.
Resistance and abolition
Enslaved people that escaped formed Maroon (people), Maroon communities which played an important role in the histories of History of Brazil, Brazil and other countries such as History of Suriname, Suriname, History of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, History of Cuba, Cuba, and History of Jamaica, Jamaica. In Brazil, the Maroon villages were called Palenque (village), palenques or quilombos. Maroons survived by growing vegetables and hunting. They also raided Sugar plantations in the Caribbean, plantations. At these attacks, the maroons would burn crops, steal livestock and tools, kill slavemasters, and invite other enslaved people to join their communities.
Jean-Baptiste Debret, a French painter who was active in Brazil in the first decades of the 19th century, started out with painting portraits of members of the Brazilian Imperial family, but soon became concerned with the slavery of both blacks and indigenous inhabitants. His paintings on the subject (two appear on this page) helped bring attention to the subject in both Europe and Brazil itself.
The Clapham Sect, a group of Evangelism, evangelical reformers, campaigned during much of the 19th century for Britain to use its influence and power to stop the traffic of enslaved people to Brazil. Besides moral qualms, the low cost of slave-produced Brazilian sugar meant that the British West Indies were unable to match the market prices of Brazilian sugar, and each Briton was consuming 16 pounds (7 kg) of sugar a year by the 19th century. This combination led to intensive pressure from the British government for Brazil to end this practice, which it did by steps over several decades.
First, foreign trade of enslaved people was banned in 1850. Then, in 1871, the sons of the enslaved people were freed. In 1885, enslaved people aged over 60 years were freed. The Paraguayan War contributed to ending slavery as many enslaved people enlisted in exchange for freedom. In Colonial Brazil, slavery was more a social than a racial condition. Some of the greatest figures of the time, like the writer Machado de Assis and the engineer André Rebouças had black ancestry.
Brazil's 1877–78 Grande Seca (Great Drought) in the cotton-growing northeast led to major turmoil, starvation, poverty and internal migration. As wealthy plantation holders rushed to sell their enslaved people south, popular resistance and resentment grew, inspiring numerous emancipation societies. They succeeded in banning slavery altogether in the province of Ceará by 1884. Slavery was legally ended nationwide on 13 May by the ''Lei Áurea'' ("Golden Law") of 1888. It was an institution in decadence at these times, as since the 1880s the country had begun to use European immigrant labor instead. Brazil was the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery. The Republic of Ragusa became the first European country to ban the trade of enslaved people in 1416. In modern times Denmark-Norway abolished the trade in 1802.
British and French Caribbean
Slavery was commonly used in the parts of the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
controlled by France and the British Empire. The Lesser Antilles islands of History of Barbados, Barbados, History of Saint Kitts and Nevis, St. Kitts, History of Antigua and Barbuda, Antigua, History of Martinique, Martinique and History of Guadeloupe, Guadeloupe, which were the first important societies of enslaved people in the History of the Caribbean, Caribbean, began the widespread use of enslaved Africans by the end of the 17th century, as their economies converted from sugar production.
England had multiple English overseas possessions, sugar colonies in the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, Barbados, Nevis, and Antigua, which provided a steady flow of sugar sales; forced labor of enslaved people produced the sugar. By the 1700s, there were more enslaved persons in Barbados than in all the English colonies on the mainland combined. Since Barbados did not have many mountains, English planters were able to clear land for sugarcane. Indentured servants were initially sent to Barbados to work in the sugar fields. These indentured servants were treated so poorly that future indentured servants stopped going to Barbados, and there were not enough people to work the fields. This is when the British started bringing in enslaved Africans. For the English planters in Barbados, reliance on enslaved labor was necessary for them to be able to profit from production of cane-origin sugar for the growing market for sugar in Europe and other markets.
In the Peace of Utrecht, Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the
War of the Spanish Succession
The War of the Spanish Succession was a European great power conflict that took place from 1701 to 1714. The death of childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700 led to a struggle for control of the Spanish Empire between his heirs, Phil ...
(1702–1714), the various European powers negotiating the terms of the treaty also discussed colonial issues as well. Of special importance in the negotiations at Utrecht was the successful negotiation between the British and French delegations for Britain to obtain a thirty-year monopoly on the right to sell slaves in Spanish America, called the '' Asiento de Negros.'' Anne, Queen of Great Britain, Queen Anne also allowed her British North America, North American colonies like Virginia to make laws that promoted the importation of slaves. Anne had secretly negotiated with France to get its approval regarding the ''Asiento.'' In 1712, she delivered a speech which included a public announcement of her success in taking the ''Asiento'' away from France; many London merchants celebrated her economic coup. Most of the trade of enslaved people involved sales to Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, and to Mexico, as well as sales to European colonies in the Caribbean and in North America. Historian Vinita Ricks says the agreement allotted Queen Anne "22.5% (and Philip V of Spain, King Philip V, of Spain 28%) of all profits collected for the ''Asiento'' monopoly. Ricks concludes that the Queen's "connection to slave trade revenue meant that she was no longer a neutral observer. She had a vested interest in what happened on slave ships."
By 1778, the French were importing approximately 13,000 Africans for enslavement yearly to the French West Indies.
To regularise slavery, in 1685 Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV had enacted the ''Code Noir'', a slave code accorded certain human rights to enslaved people and responsibilities to the master, who was obliged to feed, clothe and provide for the general well-being of his human property. Free people of color owned one-third of the Sugar plantations in the Caribbean, plantation property and one-quarter of the enslaved people in Saint Domingue (later Haiti). Slavery in the First French Republic, First Republic was abolished on 4 February 1794. When it became clear that Napoleon I of France, Napoleon intended to re-establish slavery in Haiti, slavery in Saint-Domingue (Haiti), Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Pétion switched sides, in October 1802. On 1 January 1804, Dessalines, the new leader under the dictatorial 1801 constitution, declared Haiti a free republic. Thus Haiti became the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States, as a result of the only successful slave rebellion in world history.
Whitehall in England announced in 1833 that enslaved people in British colonies would be completely freed by 1838. In the meantime, the government told enslaved people they had to remain on their plantations and would have the status of "apprentices" for the next six years.
In Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, on 1 August 1834, an unarmed group of mainly elderly Negroes being addressed by the Governor at Government House about the new laws, began chanting: "Pas de six ans. Point de six ans" ("Not six years. No six years"), drowning out the voice of the Governor. Peaceful protests continued until a resolution to abolish apprenticeship was passed and ''de facto'' freedom was achieved. Full Abolitionism in the United Kingdom, emancipation for all was legally granted ahead of schedule on 1 August 1838, making Trinidad the first British colony with enslaved people to completely abolish slavery.
After Great Britain abolished slavery, it began to Blockade of Africa, pressure other nations to do the same. France, too, abolished slavery. By then Saint-Domingue had already won its independence and formed the independent Republic of Haiti (1820–1849), Republic of Haiti, though France still controlled Guadeloupe, Martinique and a few smaller islands.
Canada
Slavery in Canada was practised by First Nations in Canada, First Nations and continued during the European colonization of the Americas, European colonization of Canada. It is estimated that there were
4,200 enslaved people in the Canada (New France), French colony of Canada and later British North America between 1671 and 1831. Two-thirds of these were of indigenous ancestry
(typically called ''Panis (slaves of First Nation descent), panis'') whereas the other third were of African descent. They were house servants and farm workers. The number of enslaved people of color increased during History of Canada (1763–1867), British rule, especially with the arrival of United Empire Loyalists after 1783. A small portion of Black Canadians today are descended from these slaves.
The practice of slavery in the Canadas ended through case law; having died out in the early 19th century through judicial actions litigated on behalf of enslaved people seeking manumission. The courts, to varying degrees, rendered slavery unenforceable in both Lower Canada and Nova Scotia. In Lower Canada, for example, after court decisions in the late 1790s, the "slave could not be compelled to serve longer than he would, and ... might leave his master at will." Upper Canada passed the ''Act Against Slavery'' in 1793, one of the earliest anti-slavery acts in the world. The institution was formally banned throughout most of the British Empire, including the Canadas in 1834, after the passage of the ''Slavery Abolition Act 1833'' in the British parliament. These measures resulted in a number of Black people (free and slaves) from the United States moving to Canada after the American Revolution, known as the Black Loyalists; and again after the War of 1812, with a number of Black Refugees (War of 1812), Black Refugees settling in Canada. During the mid-19th century, British North America served as a terminus for the Underground Railroad, a network of routes used by Fugitive slaves in the United States, enslaved African-Americans to escape a Slave states and free states, slave state.
Latin America
During the period from the late 19th century and early 20th century, demand for the labor-intensive harvesting of rubber drove frontier expansion and slavery in Latin America and elsewhere. Indigenous peoples were enslaved as part of the rubber boom in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. In Central America, rubber tappers participated in the enslavement of the indigenous Maleku people, Guatuso-Maleku people for domestic service.
United States
Early events
In late August 1619, the frigate ''White Lion (ship), White Lion'', a privateer ship owned by Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, but flying a Dutch flag arrived at Point Comfort, Virginia (several miles downstream from the colony of Jamestown, Virginia) with the first recorded enslaved people from Africa to Virginia. The approximately 20 Africans were from the present-day
. They had been removed by the ''White Lions crew from a Portuguese cargo ship, the ''São João Bautista''.
Historians are undecided if the legal practice of slavery began in the colony because at least some of them had the status of Indentured servitude in British America, indentured servant. Alden T. Vaughn says most agree that both black slaves and indentured servants existed by 1640.
Only a small fraction of the enslaved Africans brought to the
New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...
came to British North America, perhaps as little as 5% of the total. The vast majority of enslaved people were sent to the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
sugar colonies, Brazil, or
Spanish America
Spanish America refers to the Spanish territories in the Americas during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The term "Spanish America" was specifically used during the territories' Spanish Empire, imperial era between 15th century, 15th ...
.
By the 1680s, with the consolidation of England's Royal African Company, enslaved Africans were arriving in English colonies in larger numbers, and the institution continued to be protected by the British government. Colonists now began purchasing slaves in larger numbers.
Slavery in American colonial law
* 1640: Colony of Virginia, Virginia courts sentence John Punch (slave), John Punch to lifetime slavery, marking the earliest legal sanctioning of slavery in English colonies.
* 1641: Massachusetts Bay Colony, Massachusetts legalizes Slavery in Massachusetts, slavery.
* 1650: Connecticut Colony, Connecticut legalizes History of slavery in Connecticut, slavery.
* 1652: Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Rhode Island bans the enslavement or forced servitude of any white or negro for more than ten years or beyond the age of 24.
* 1654: Virginia sanctions "the right of Negros to own slaves of their own race" after African Anthony Johnson (colonist), Anthony Johnson, former indentured servant, sued to have fellow African John Casor declared not an indentured servant but "slave for life."
* 1661: Virginia officially recognizes History of slavery in Virginia, slavery by statute.
* 1662: A Virginia statute declares that children born would have the same status as their mother.
* 1663: Province of Maryland, Maryland legalizes History of slavery in Maryland, slavery.
* 1664: Slavery is legalized in Province of New York, New York and Province of New Jersey, New Jersey.
* 1670: Province of Carolina, Carolina (later, Province of South Carolina, South Carolina and Province of North Carolina, North Carolina) is founded mainly by planters from the overpopulated British sugar island colony of Barbados, who brought relatively large numbers of African slaves from that island.
* 1676: Rhode Island bans the enslavement of Native Americans.
Development of slavery
The shift from indentured servants to enslaved African was prompted by a dwindling class of former servants who had worked through the terms of their indentures and thus became competitors to their former masters. These newly freed servants were rarely able to support themselves comfortably, and the tobacco industry was increasingly dominated by large planters. This caused domestic unrest culminating in Bacon's Rebellion. Eventually, chattel slavery became the norm in regions dominated by Plantation complexes in the Southern United States, plantations.
The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina established a model in which a rigid social hierarchy placed enslaved people under the absolute authority of their master. With the rise of a plantation economy in the Carolina Lowcountry based on rice cultivation, a society of enslaved people was created that later became the model for the King Cotton economy across the Deep South. The model created by South Carolina was driven by the emergence of a majority enslaved population that required repressive and often brutal force to control. Justification for such an enslaved society developed into a conceptual framework of white supremacy in the American colonies.
Several local slave rebellions took place during the 17th and 18th centuries: Gloucester County, Virginia Revolt (1663); New York Slave Revolt of 1712; Stono Rebellion (1739); and New York Slave Insurrection of 1741.
Early United States law
Within the British Empire, the Judiciary of Massachusetts, Massachusetts courts began to follow England when, in 1772, England became the first country in the world to outlaw the slave trade within its borders (see ''Somerset v Stewart'') followed by the ''Joseph Knight (slave), Knight v. Wedderburn'' decision in Scotland in 1778. Between 1764 and 1774, seventeen enslaved people appeared in Massachusetts courts to sue their owners for freedom. In 1766, John Adams' colleague Benjamin Kent won the first trial in the present-day United States to free an enslaved person (''Slew vs. Whipple'').
The Republic of Vermont banned slavery in its Constitution of Vermont (1777), constitution of 1777 and continued the ban when it entered the United States in 1791. Through the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 under the Congress of the Confederation, slavery was prohibited in the territories north west of the Ohio River. In 1794, Congress Slave Trade Act of 1794, banned American vessels from being used in the slave trade, and also banned the export of enslaved people from America to other countries. However, little effort was made to enforce this legislation. The
slave ship
Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast ...
owners of Rhode Island were able to continue in trade, and the USA's slaving fleet in 1806 was estimated to be nearly 75% as large as that of Britain, with dominance of the transportation of enslaved people into Cuba. By 1804, abolitionists succeeded in passing legislation that ended legal slavery in every Northern United States, northern state (with slaves above a certain age legally transformed to indentured servants). Congress passed an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves as of 1 January 1808; but not the Slavery in the United States#Internal slave trade, internal slave trade.
Despite the actions of abolitionists, free blacks were subject to Racial segregation in the United States#Issues in the North, racial segregation in the Northern states."Africans in America" – PBS Series – Part 4 (2007) While the United Kingdom did not ban slavery throughout most of the empire, including British North America till 1833, free blacks found refuge in the Canadas after the American Revolutionary War and again after the War of 1812. Refugees from slavery fled the South across the Ohio River to the North via the Underground Railroad. Midwestern state governments asserted States Rights arguments to refuse federal jurisdiction over fugitives. Some juries exercised their right of Jury nullification in the United States, jury nullification and refused to convict those indicted under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
After the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854, armed conflict broke out in Kansas Territory, where the question of whether it would be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state had been left to the inhabitants. The radical abolitionist John Brown (abolitionist), John Brown was active in the mayhem and killing in "Bleeding Kansas." The true turning point in public opinion is better fixed at the Lecompton Constitution fraud. Pro-slavery elements in Kansas had arrived first from Missouri and quickly organized a territorial government that excluded abolitionists. Through the machinery of the territory and violence, the pro-slavery faction attempted to force the unpopular pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution through the state. This infuriated Northern Democratic Party, Northern Democrats, who supported Popular sovereignty in the United States, popular sovereignty, and was exacerbated by the James Buchanan, Buchanan administration reneging on a promise to submit the constitution to a referendum—which would surely fail. Anti-slavery legislators took office under the banner of the newly formed History of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party. The Supreme Court of the United States, Supreme Court in the Dred Scott v. Sandford, ''Dred Scott'' decision of 1857 asserted that one could take one's property anywhere, even if one's property was Chattel slavery, chattel and one crossed into a free territory. It also asserted that African Americans could not be Citizenship of the United States, federal citizens. Outraged critics across the North denounced these episodes as the latest of the Slave Power (the politically organized slave owners) taking more control of the nation.
Civil War
The enslaved population in the United States stood at four million. Ninety-five percent of blacks lived in the South, comprising one third of the population there as opposed to 1% of the population of the North. The central issue in politics in the 1850s involved the extension of slavery into the Western United States, western territories, which settlers from the Northern states opposed. The Whig Party (United States), Whig Party split and collapsed on the slavery issue, to be replaced in the North by History of the United States Republican Party, the new Republican Party, which was dedicated to stopping the expansion of slavery. Republicans gained a majority in every northern state by Free Soil Party, absorbing a faction of anti-slavery Democrats, and warning that slavery was a backward system that undercut liberal democracy and economic modernization. Numerous compromise proposals were put forward, but they all collapsed. A majority of Northern voters were committed to stopping the expansion of slavery, which they believed would ultimately end slavery. Southern voters were overwhelmingly angry that they were being treated as second-class citizens. In the U.S. presidential election, 1860, election of 1860, the Republicans swept Abraham Lincoln into the President of the United States, Presidency and his party took control with legislators into the United States Congress. The states of the Deep South, convinced that the economic power of what they called "King Cotton" would overwhelm the North and win support from Europe voted to secede from the U.S. (the Union). They formed the Confederate States of America, based on the promise of maintaining slavery. War broke out in April 1861, as both sides sought wave after wave of enthusiasm among young men volunteering to form new regiments and new armies. In the North, the main goal was to preserve the union as an expression of American nationalism.
Rebel leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Nathan Bedford Forrest and others were slavers and slave-traders.
By 1862 most northern leaders realized that the mainstay of Southern secession, slavery, had to be attacked head-on. All the Border states (American Civil War), border states rejected President Lincoln's proposal for compensated emancipation. However, by 1865 all had begun the abolition of slavery, except Kentucky and Delaware. The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by Lincoln on 1 January 1863. In a single stroke, it changed the legal status, as recognized by the U.S. government, of 3 million enslaved people in designated areas of the Confederacy from "slave" to "free." It had the practical effect that as soon as an enslaved person escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away or through advances of the Union Army, the enslaved person became legally and actually free. Plantation owners, realizing that emancipation would destroy their economic system, sometimes moved their human property as far as possible out of reach of the Union Army. By June 1865, the Union Army controlled all of the Confederacy and liberated all of the designated enslaved people. The owners were never compensated. About 186,000 free blacks and newly freed people Military history of African Americans in the American Civil War, fought for the Union in the Army and Navy, thereby validating their claims to full citizenship.
The severe dislocations of war and Reconstruction had a severe negative impact on the black population, with a large amount of sickness and death. After liberation, many of the Freedmen remained on the same plantation. Others fled or crowded into refugee camps operated by the Freedmen's Bureau. The Bureau provided food, housing, clothing, medical care, church services, some schooling, legal support, and arranged for labor contracts. Fierce debates about the rights of the Freedmen, and of the defeated Confederates, often accompanied by killings of black leaders, marked the Reconstruction Era, 1863–77.
Slavery was never reestablished, but after President Ulysses S. Grant left the White House in 1877, White supremacy, white-supremacist "Redeemers, Redeemer" Southern Democrats took control of all the southern states, and blacks lost nearly all the political power they had achieved during Reconstruction. By 1900, they also Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era, lost the right to vote – they had become second class citizens. The great majority lived in the rural South in Poverty in the United States, poverty working as laborers, sharecroppers or tenant farmers; a small proportion owned their own land. The black churches, especially the Baptist Church, was the center of community activity and leadership.
Asia
Slavery has existed all throughout Asia, and forms of slavery still exist today. In the ancient Near East and Asia Minor slavery was common practice, dating back to the very earliest recorded civilisations in the world such as
Sumer
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...
, Elam, Ancient Egypt, Akkadian Empire, Akkad,
Assyria
Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...
, Ebla and
Babylonia
Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c. ...
, as well as amongst the Hattians, Hittites, Hurrians, Mycenaean Greece, Luwians, Canaanites, Israelites, Amorites, Phoenicians, Arameans, Ammonites, Edomites, Moabites, Byzantine Empire, Byzantines, Philistines, Medes, Phrygians, Lydians, Mitanni, Kassites, Parthian Empire, Parthians, Urartians, Colchians, Chaldeans and Armenians.
Slavery in the Middle East first developed out of the
slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
practices of the Ancient Near East,Lewis 1994 Ch.1 /ref> and these practices were radically different at times, depending on social-political factors such as the Muslim slave trade. Two rough estimates by scholars of the number of slaves held over twelve centuries in Muslim lands are 11.5 million
and 14 million.
Under Sharia (Islamic law),Brunschvig. 'Abd; ''Encyclopedia of Islam'' children of slaves or prisoners of war could become slaves but only non-Muslims. Manumission of a slave was encouraged as a way of expiating sins.Gordon 1987, p. 40. Many early converts to Islam, such as Bilal ibn Rabah al-Habashi, were poor and former slaves. In theory, slavery in Islamic law does not have a racial or color component, although this has not always been the case in practice.
Bernard Lewis writes: "In one of the sad paradoxes of human history, it was the humanitarian reforms brought by Islam that resulted in a vast development of the slave trade inside, and still more outside, the Islamic empire." He notes that the Islamic injunctions against the enslavement of Muslims led to massive importation of slaves from the outside. According to Patrick Manning, Islam by recognizing and codifying slavery seems to have done more to protect and expand slavery than the reverse.Manning (1990) p. 28
Slavery was a legal and important part of the economy of the Ottoman Empire and Social structure of the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman society until the slavery of peoples of the Caucasus, Caucasians was banned in the early 19th century, although slaves from other groups were allowed. In Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), the administrative and political center of the Empire, about a fifth of the population consisted of slaves in 1609. Even after several measures to ban slavery in the late 19th century, the practice continued largely unfazed into the early 20th century. As late as 1908, female slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire. Sexual slavery was a central part of the Ottoman slave system throughout the history of the institution.Madeline C. Zilfi ''Women and slavery in the late Ottoman Empire'' Cambridge University Press, 2010
A member of the Ottoman slave class, called a ''wikt:kul#Turkish, kul'' in Turkish language, Turkish, could achieve high status. Harem guards and janissaries are some of the better-known positions a slave could hold, but slaves were actually often at the forefront of Ottoman politics. The majority of officials in the Ottoman government were bought slaves, raised free, and integral to the success of the Ottoman Empire from the 14th century into the 19th. Many officials themselves owned a large number of slaves, although the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan himself owned by far the largest amount. By raising and specially training slaves as officials in palace schools such as Enderun, the Ottomans created administrators with intricate knowledge of government and fanatic loyalty.
Ottomans practiced ''devşirme'', a sort of "blood tax" or "child collection", young Christian boys from the Balkans and Anatolia were taken from their homes and families, brought up as Muslims, and enlisted into the most famous branch of the ''kapıkulu'', the Janissary, Janissaries, a special soldier class of the Military of the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman army that became a decisive faction in the Ottoman wars in Europe, Ottoman invasions of Europe.
During the various 18th and 19th century persecution of Christians, persecution campaigns against Christians as well as during the culminating Assyrian genocide, Assyrian, Armenian genocide, Armenian and Greek genocide, Greek genocides of World War I, many indigenous Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christian women and children were carried off as slaves by the Ottoman Turks and their Kurdish allies. Henry Morgenthau, Sr., U.S. Ambassador in Constantinople from 1913 to 1916, reports in his ''Ambassador Morgenthau's Story'' that there were gangs trading white slaves during his term in Constantinople. He also reports that Armenian girls were sold as slaves during the Armenian Genocide.
According to Ronald Segal, the male:female gender ratio in the
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
was 2:1, whereas in Islamic lands the ratio was 1:2. Another difference between the two was, he argues, that slavery in the west had a racial component, whereas the Qur'an explicitly condemned racism. This, in Segal's view, eased assimilation of freed slaves into society.Interview with Ronald Segal on the subject of his book ''Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora''. Suzy Hansen "Islam's black slaves," ''Salon (website), Salon'', 5 April 2001. Quote: "Here we get to a further dimension of the difference between the two trades. Slavery in the West...the concept of race developed and was popularized...The Koran very explicitly attacks [racism]...This is important for the assimilation aspect too, because once you were freed, there was no discrimination in law against you...I don't think that there's any disputing that slavery was a more benevolent institution in Islam than it was in the West." Men would often take their female slaves as Concubinage, concubines; in fact, most Ottoman sultans were sons of such concubines.
Ancient history
Ancient India
Scholars differ as to whether or not slaves and the institution of slavery existed in History of India, ancient India. These English words have no direct, universally accepted equivalent in Sanskrit or other Indian languages, but some scholars translate the word ''dasa'', mentioned in texts like ''Manu Smriti'',B. Stein, D. Arnold. ''A History of India'', p. 21 John Wiley and Sons, 2010, 444 pp. as slaves.A Sharma (September 2005), Journal American Acad Religion, vol 73, issue 3, pp. 843–70 Ancient historians who visited India offer the closest insights into the nature of Indian society and slavery in other ancient civilizations. For example, the Greek historian Arrian, who chronicled India about the time of Alexander the Great, wrote in his ''Indika'',
Ancient China
* Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) Men sentenced to castration became eunuch slaves of the Qin dynasty state and as a result they were made to do forced labor, on projects like the Terracotta Army. The Qin government confiscated the property and enslaved the families of those who received castration as a punishment for rape.
** Slaves were deprived of their rights and connections to their families.
* Society and culture of the Han dynasty, Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) One of Emperor Gaozu of Han, Emperor Gao's first acts was to set free from slavery agricultural workers who were enslaved during the Warring States period, although domestic servants retained their status.
** Men punished with castration during the Han dynasty were also used as slave labor.
** Deriving from earlier Legalism (Chinese philosophy), Legalist laws, the Han dynasty set in place rules that the property of and families of criminals doing three years of hard labor or sentenced to castration were to have their families seized and kept as property by the government.
During the millennium long Chinese domination of Vietnam, Vietnam was a great source of slave girls who were used as sex slaves in China. The slave girls of Viet were even eroticized in Tang dynasty poetry.
Postclassical history
Indian subcontinent
The Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent, Islamic invasions, starting in the 8th century, also resulted in hundreds of thousands of Indians being enslaved by the invading armies, one of the earliest being the armies of the Umayyad commander Muhammad bin Qasim.Muhammad Qasim Firishta, Tarikh-i-Firishta (Lucknow, 1864).Andre Wink, Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 2, The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest, 11th–13th centuries (Leiden, 1997)Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Utbi, Tarikh al-Yamini (Delhi, 1847), tr. by James Reynolds, The Kitab-i-Yamini (London, 1858), Qutb-ud-din Aybak, a Turkic slave of Muhammad Ghori rose to power following his master's death. For almost a century, his descendants ruled North-Central India in form of Mamluk dynasty (Delhi), Slave Dynasty. Several slaves were also brought to India by the Indian Ocean trades; for example, the Siddi are descendants of Bantu peoples, Bantu slaves brought to India by Arab and Portuguese merchants.
Andre Wink summarizes the slavery in 8th and 9th century India as follows,
In the early 11th century Tarikh al-Yamini, the Arab historian Al-Utbi recorded that in 1001 the armies of Mahmud of Ghazna conquered Peshawar and Waihand (capital of Gandhara) after Battle of Peshawar (1001), Battle of Peshawar (1001), "in the midst of the land of Hindustan", and captured some 100,000 youths. Later, following his twelfth expedition into India in 1018–19, Mahmud is reported to have returned with such a large number of slaves that their value was reduced to only two to ten dirhams each. This unusually low price made, according to Al-Utbi, "merchants [come] from distant cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Central Asia, Iraq and Khurasan were swelled with them, and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor, mingled in one common slavery". Elliot and Dowson refer to "five hundred thousand slaves, beautiful men and women.". Later, during the Delhi Sultanate period (1206–1555), references to the abundant availability of low-priced Indian slaves abound. Levi attributes this primarily to the vast human resources of India, compared to its neighbors to the north and west (India's Mughal Empire, Mughal population being approximately 12 to 20 times that of Turan and Iran at the end of the 16th century).
The Delhi sultanate obtained thousands of slaves and eunuch servants from the villages of Eastern Bengal (a widespread practice which Mughal emperor Jahangir later tried to stop). Wars, famines, pestilences drove many villagers to sell their children as slaves. The Muslim conquest of Gujarat in Western India had two main objectives. The conquerors demanded and more often forcibly wrested both land owned by Hindus and Hindu women. Enslavement of women invariably led to their conversion to Islam. In battles waged by Muslims against Hindus in Malwa and Deccan plateau, a large number of captives were taken. Muslim soldiers were permitted to retain and enslave POWs as plunder.
The first Bahmani sultan, Alauddin Bahman Shah is noted to have captured 1,000 singing and dancing girls from Hindu temples after he battled the northern Carnatic region, Carnatic chieftains. The later Bahmanis also enslaved civilian women and children in wars; many of them were converted to Islam in captivity. About the Mughal empire, W.H. Moreland observed, "it became a fashion to raid a village or group of villages without any obvious justification, and carry off the inhabitants as slaves."
During the rule of Shah Jahan, many peasants were compelled to sell their women and children into slavery to meet the land revenue demand. Slavery was officially abolished in British India by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843. However, in modern India, Pakistan and Nepal, there are millions of debt bondage, bonded laborers, who work as slaves to pay off debts.
China
The Tang dynasty purchased Western slaves from the Radhanite Jews. Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans, Turks, Persians, Indonesians, and people from Inner Mongolia, Central Asia, and northern India. The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians, and black Africans were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty. Slavery was prevalent until the late 19th century and early 20th century China. All forms of slavery have been illegal in China since 1910.
Modern history
Iran
Reginald Dyer, recalling operations against tribes in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iranian Baluchistan in 1916, stated in a 1921 memoir that the local Balochi tribes would regularly carry out raids against travellers and small towns. During these raids, women and children would often be abducted to become slaves, and would be sold for prices varying based on quality, age and looks. He stated that the average price for a young woman was 300 rupees, and the average price for a small child 25 rupees. The slaves, it was noted, were often half starved.
Japan
Slavery in Japan was, for most of its history, indigenous, since the export and import of slaves was restricted by Japan being a group of islands. In late-16th-century Japan, slavery was officially banned; but forms of contract and indentured labor persisted alongside the period penal codes' forced labor. During the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces used millions of civilians and
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
from several countries as forced laborers.
Korea
In Korea, slavery was officially abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894. During the Joseon period, in times of poor harvest and famine, many peasants voluntarily sold themselves into the slavery in Korea, nobi system in order to survive.
Southeast Asia
In Southeast Asia, there was a large slave class in Khmer Empire who built the enduring monuments in Angkor Wat and did most of the heavy work. Between the 17th and the early 20th centuries one-quarter to one-third of the population of some areas of Thailand and Burma were slaves. By the 19th century, Bhutan had developed a slave trade with Sikkim and Tibet, also enslaving British subjects and Brahmins. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), during the early 21st century an estimated 800,000
people are subject to forced labor in Myanmar.
Slavery in History of the Philippines (900–1521), pre-Spanish Philippines was practiced by the tribal Austronesian peoples who inhabited the Ethnic groups in the Philippines, culturally diverse islands. The neighbouring Muslim states conducted slave raids from the 1600s into the 1800s in coastal areas of the Gulf of Thailand and the Philippines, Philippine islands. Slaves in Toraja society in Indonesia were family property. People would become slaves when they incurred a debt. Slaves could also be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Torajan slaves were sold and shipped out to Java and Siam. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slavery was abolitionism, abolished in 1863 in all Dutch colonies.
ISIL slave trade
According to media reports from late 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was selling Yazidis, Yazidi and Christianity, Christian women as slaves. According to Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, after ISIL militants have captured an area "[t]hey usually take the older women to a makeshift slave market and try to sell them." In mid-October 2014, the UN estimated that 5,000 to 7,000 Yazidi women and children were abducted by ISIL and sold into slavery. In the digital magazine ''Dabiq (magazine), Dabiq'', ISIL claimed Islamic views on slavery, religious justification for enslaving Yazidi women whom they consider to be from a heretical sect. ISIL claimed that the Yazidi are idol worshipers and their enslavement is part of the old shariah practice of Ma malakat aymanukum, spoils of war. According to ''The Wall Street Journal'', ISIL appeals to Islamic eschatology, apocalyptic beliefs and claims "justification by a Hadith that they interpret as portraying the revival of slavery as a precursor to the end of the world".
ISIL announced the revival of slavery as an institution. In 2015 the official slave prices set by ISIL were following:
* Children aged 1 to 9 were sold for 200,000 dinars ($169).
* Women and children 10 to 20 years sold for 150,000 dinars ($127).
* Women 20 to 30 years old for 100,000 dinar ($85).
* Women 30 to 40 years old are 75,000 dinar ($63).
* Women 40 to 50 years old for 50,000 dinar ($42).
However some slaves have been sold for as little as a pack of cigarettes.
Sex slaves were sold to Saudi Arabia, other Persian Gulf states and Turkey.
Europe
Ancient history
Ancient Greece
Records of slavery in Ancient Greece go as far back as Mycenaean Greece. The origins are not known, but it appears that slavery became an important part of the economy and society only after the establishment of cities. Slavery was common practice and an integral component of
ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...
, as it was in other societies of the time. It is estimated that in Athens, the majority of polis, citizens owned at least one slave. Most ancient writers considered slavery not only natural but necessary, but some isolated debate began to appear, notably in Socratic dialogues. The Stoics produced the first condemnation of slavery recorded in history.
During the 8th and the 7th centuries BC, in the course of the two Messenian Wars (disambiguation), Messenian Wars, the Spartans reduced an entire population to a pseudo-slavery called ''helots, helotry''. According to Herodotus (IX, 28–29), helots were seven times as numerous as Spartans. Following several helot revolts around the year 600 BC, the Spartans restructured their city-state along authoritarian lines, for the leaders decided that only by turning their society into an armed camp could they hope to maintain control over the numerically dominant helot population. In some Ancient Greek city-states, about 30% of the population consisted of slaves, but paid and slave labor seem to have been equally important.
Rome
Romans inherited the institution of slavery from the Greeks and the Phoenicians. As the Roman Republic expanded outward, it enslaved entire populations, thus ensuring an ample supply of laborers to work in Farming in Ancient Rome, Rome's farms, quarries and households. The people subjected to Roman slavery came from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Slaves were used for labor, and also for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). In the late Republic, the widespread use of recently enslaved groups on plantations and ranches led to slave revolts on a large scale; the Third Servile War led by Spartacus was the most famous and most threatening to Rome.
Other European tribes
Various tribes of Europe are recorded by Roman sources as owning slaves. Strabo records slaves as an export commodity from Britannia, From Llyn Cerrig Bach in Anglesey, an iron gang chain dated to 100 BCE-50 CE was found, over 3 metres long with neck-rings for five captives.
Post-classical history
The chaos of invasion and frequent warfare also resulted in victorious parties taking slaves throughout Europe in the early Middle Ages. St. Patrick, himself captured and sold as a slave, protested against an attack that enslaved newly baptized Christians in his q:Saint Patrick#Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (c. 450), "Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus". As a commonly traded commodity, like cattle, slaves could become a form of internal or trans-border currency.
Slavery during the
Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th or early 6th century to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Mi ...
had several distinct sources.
The Vikings raided across Europe, but took the most slaves in raids on the British Isles and in Eastern Europe. While the Vikings kept some slaves as servants, known as ''thralls'', they sold most captives in the Byzantine or Islamic markets. In the West, their target populations were primarily English, Irish, and Scottish, while in the East they were mainly Slavs. The Viking slave-trade slowly ended in the 11th century, as the Vikings settled in the European territories they had once raided. They converted serfs to Christianity and themselves merged with the local populace.
In central Europe, specifically the Carolingian Empire, Frankish/German/Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne, raids and wars to the east generated a steady supply of slaves from the Slavic captives of these regions. Because of high demand for slaves in the wealthy Caliphate, Muslim empires of Northern Africa, Al-Andalus, Spain, and the Near East, especially for slaves of European descent, a market for these slaves rapidly emerged. So lucrative was this market that it spawned an economic boom in central and western Europe, today known as the Carolingian Renaissance. This boom period for slaves stretched from the early Muslim conquests to the High Middle Ages but declined in the later Middle Ages as the Islamic Golden Age waned.
Spain in the Middle Ages, Medieval Spain and History of Portugal, Portugal saw almost constant warfare between Muslims and Christians. Al-Andalus sent periodic raiding expeditions to loot the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back Looting, booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon, Portugal in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives. In a subsequent attack upon Silves Municipality, Portugal, Silves, Portugal in 1191, his governor of Córdoba, Spain, Córdoba took 3,000 Christian slaves.
The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe resulted in the taking of large numbers of Christian slaves and using or selling them in the Islam by country, Islamic world too. After the Battle of Lepanto (1571), battle of Lepanto the victors freed approximately 12,000 Christian galley slaves from the Ottoman fleet.
Similarly, Christians sold Islam by country, Muslim slaves captured in war. The Order of the Knights Hospitaller, Knights of Malta attacked pirates and Muslim shipping, and their base became a centre for slave trading, selling captured North Africans and Turkish people, Turks. Malta remained a slave market until well into the late 18th century. One thousand slaves were required to man the galleys (ships) of the Order.
Poland banned slavery in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; the institution was replaced by the second serfdom, enserfment. Slavery remained a minor 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. The escaped Serfdom in Russia, Russian serfs and kholops formed autonomous communities in the Wild Fields, southern steppes, where they became known as Cossacks (meaning "outlaws").
British Isles
Capture in war, voluntary servitude and debt slavery became common within the British Isles before 1066. The Bodmin manumissions show both that slavery existed in 9th and 10th Century Cornwall and that many Cornish slave owners did set their slaves free. Slaves were routinely bought and sold. Running away was also common and slavery was never a major economic factor in the British Isles during the Middle Ages. Ireland and Denmark provided markets for captured Anglo-Saxon and Celtic slaves. Pope Gregory I reputedly made the pun, ''Non Angli, sed Angeli'' ("Not Angles, but Angels"), after a response to his query regarding the identity of a group of fair-haired Angles, slave children whom he had observed in the marketplace. After the Norman Conquest, the law no longer supported chattel slavery and slaves became part of the larger body of serfs.
France
In the early Middle Ages, the city of Verdun was the centre of the thriving European slave trade in young boys who were sold to the Islamic emirates of Iberian Peninsula, Iberia where they were enslaved as Eunuch (court official), eunuchs. The Italian ambassador Liutprand of Cremona, as one example in the 10th century, presented a gift of four eunuchs to Emperor Constantine VII.
Barbary pirates and Maltese corsairs
Barbary pirates and Maltese corsairs both raided for slaves and purchased slaves from European merchants, often the Radhanites, one of the few groups who could easily move between the Christian and Islamic worlds.
Olivia Remie Constable (1996). Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula, 900–1500 '. Cambridge University Press. pp. 203–04.
Genoa and Venice
In the late Middle Ages, from 1100 to 1500, the European slave-trade continued, though with a shift from being centered among the Western Mediterranean Islamic nations to the Eastern Christian and Muslim states. The city-states of Venice and Genoa controlled the Eastern Mediterranean from the 12th century and the Black Sea from the 13th century. They sold both Slavic peoples, Slavic and Balts, Baltic slaves, as well as Georgians, Turkish people, Turks, and other ethnic groups of the Black Sea and Caucasus. The sale of European slaves by Europeans slowly ended as the Slavic and Baltic ethnic groups Christianized by the Late Middle Ages.
From the 1440s into the 18th century, Europeans from Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, and England were sold into slavery by North Africans. It has been suggested that "white slavery had been minimised or ignored because academics preferred to treat Europeans as evil colonialists rather than as victims." In 1575, the Crimean Tatars, Tatars captured over 35,000 Ukrainians; a 1676 raid took almost 40,000. About 60,000 Ukrainians were captured in 1688; some were ransomed, but most were sold into slavery. Some of the Romani people, Roma people were enslaved over five centuries in Romania until abolition in 1864 (see Slavery in Romania).
Mongols
The Mongol invasions and conquests in the 13th century also resulted in taking numerous captives into slavery. The Mongols enslaved skilled individuals, women and children and marched them to Karakorum or Sarai (city), Sarai, whence they were sold throughout Eurasia. Many of these slaves were shipped to the slave market in Novgorod Republic, Novgorod.
Slave commerce during the Late Middle Ages was mainly in the hands of Republic of Venice, Venetian and Republic of Genoa, Genoese merchants and cartels, who were involved in the slave trade with the Golden Horde. In 1382 the Golden Horde under Khan Tokhtamysh sacked Moscow, burning the city and carrying off thousands of inhabitants as slaves. Between 1414 and 1423, some 10,000 eastern European slaves were sold in Republic of Venice, Venice. Genoese merchants organized the slave trade from the Crimea to Mamluk#Mamluk power in Egypt, Mamluk Egypt. For years, the Khanate of Kazan, Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan Khanate, Astrakhan routinely made raids on Russian principalities for slaves and to plunder towns. Russian chronicles record about 40 raids by List of Kazan khans, Kazan Khans on the Russian territories in the first half of the 16th century.''The Full Collection of the Russian Annals'', vol. 13, SPb, 1904
In 1441 Haci I Giray declared independence from the Golden Horde and established the Crimean Khanate. For a long time, until the early 18th century, the khanate maintained an extensive slave-trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. In a process called the "harvesting of the steppe" they enslaved many Slavic peasants. Muscovy recorded about 30 major Tatar raids into Tsardom of Russia, Muscovite territories between 1558 and 1596.
Moscow was repeatedly a target. In 1521, the combined forces of Crimean Khan Mehmed I Giray, Mehmed Giray and his Kazan allies attacked the city and captured thousands of slaves. In 1571, the Crimean Tatars attacked and sacked Moscow, burning everything but the Kremlin and taking thousands of captives as slaves. In Crimea, about 75% of the population consisted of slaves.
The Vikings and Scandinavia
In the Viking era beginning circa 793, the Norsemen, Norse raiders often captured and enslaved militarily weaker peoples they encountered. The Nordic countries called their slaves ''thralls'' (Old Norse: ''Þræll''). The thralls were mostly from Western Europe, among them many Franks, Frisians, Anglo-Saxons, and both Irish people, Irish and Celtic Britons, Britonnic Celts. Many Irish slaves travelled in expeditions for the colonization of Iceland. The Norse also took German, Baltic, Slavic and Latin slaves. The slave trade was one of the pillars of Norse commerce during the 9th through 11th centuries. The 10th-century Persian traveller Ibn Rustah described how Swedish Vikings, the Varangians or Rus' Khaganate, Rus, terrorized and enslaved the East Slavs, Slavs taken in their raids along the Volga River. The thrall system was finally abolished in the mid-14th century in Scandinavia.
Early Modern history
Mediterranean powers frequently sentenced convicted criminals to row in the war-galleys of the state (initially only in time of war). After the Edict of Fontainebleau, revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and Camisard, Camisard rebellion, the French Crown filled its galleys with French Huguenots, Protestants condemned for resisting the state. Galley-slaves lived and worked in such harsh conditions that many did not survive their terms of sentence, even if they survived shipwreck and murder, slaughter or torture at the hands of enemies or of pirates. Naval warfare, Naval forces often turned 'infidel' prisoner of war, prisoners-of-war into galley-slaves. Several well-known historical figures served time as galley slaves after being captured by the enemy—the Ottoman corsair and admiral Turgut Reis and the Knights Hospitaller Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette among them.
Denmark-Norway was the first European country to ban the slave trade. This happened with a decree issued by King Christian VII of Denmark in 1792, to become fully effective by 1803. Slavery as an institution was not banned until 1848. At this time Iceland was a part of Denmark-Norway but slave trading had been abolished in Iceland in 1117 and had never been reestablished.
Slavery in the French Republic was abolished on 4 February 1794, including in its colonies. The lengthy Haitian Revolution by its slaves and free people of color established Haiti as a free republic in 1804 ruled by blacks, the first of its kind. At the time of the revolution, Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue and was a colony of France. Napoleon Bonaparte gave up on Haiti in 1803, but reestablished slavery in Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1804, at the request of plantation, planters of the Caribbean colonies. Slavery was permanently abolished in the French colonial empire, French empire during the French Revolution of 1848.
Portugal
The 15th-century
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
exploration of the African coast is commonly regarded as the harbinger of European colonialism. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery which legitimized slave trade under Catholic beliefs of that time. This approval of slavery was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. These papal bulls came to serve as a justification for the subsequent era of the slave trade and European colonialism, although for a short period as in 1462 Pius II declared slavery to be "a great crime". Unlike Portugal, Protestantism, Protestant nations did not use the papal bull as a justification for their involvement in the slave trade. The position of the church was to condemn the slavery of Christians, but slavery was regarded as an old established and necessary institution which supplied Europe with the necessary workforce. In the 16th century, African slaves had replaced almost all other ethnicities and religious enslaved groups in Europe.Klein, Herbert. ''The Atlantic Slave Trade''. Within the Portuguese territory of Brazil, and even beyond its original borders, the enslavement of Native Americans was carried out by the
Bandeirantes
The ''Bandeirantes'' (), literally "flag-carriers", were slavers, explorers, adventurers, and fortune hunters in early Colonial Brazil. They are largely responsible for Brazil's great expansion westward, far beyond the Tordesillas Line of 1494 ...
.
Among many other European slave markets, Genoa, and Venice were some well-known markets, their importance and demand growing after the Great Plague, great plague of the 14th century which decimated much of the European workforce.
The maritime town of Lagos, Portugal, was the first slave market created in Portugal for the sale of imported African slaves, the ''Mercado de Escravos'', which opened in 1444.Goodman, Joan E. (2001) A Long and Uncertain Journey: The 27,000 Mile Voyage of Vasco Da Gama Mikaya Press, .de Oliveira Marques, António Henrique R. (1972). ''History of Portugal''. Columbia University Press, , pp. 158–60, 362–70. In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern
Mauritania
Mauritania (; ar, موريتانيا, ', french: Mauritanie; Berber: ''Agawej'' or ''Cengit''; Pulaar: ''Moritani''; Wolof: ''Gànnaar''; Soninke:), officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania ( ar, الجمهورية الإسلامية ...
. Prince Henry the Navigator, major sponsor of the Portuguese African expeditions, as of any other merchandise, taxed one fifth of the selling price of the slaves imported to Portugal. By the year 1552 African slaves made up 10 percent of the population of Lisbon.
In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas—in the case of Portugal, especially Brazil. In the 15th century, one-third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.
Importation of black slaves was prohibited in mainland Portugal and Portuguese India in 1761, but slavery continued in Portuguese overseas colonies. At the same time, was stimulated the trade of black slaves ("the pieces", in the terms of that time) to Brazil and two companies were founded, with the support and direct involvement of the Marquis of Pombal - the ''Company of Grão-Pará and Maranhão'' and the ''General Company of Pernambuco and Paraíba'' - whose main activity was precisely the trafficking of slaves, mostly black Africans, to Brazilian lands.
Slavery was finally abolished in all Portuguese colonies in 1869.
Spain
The Slavery in the Spanish New World colonies, Spaniards were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the
New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...
on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola, due to a shortage of labor caused by the spread of diseases, and so the Spanish colonists gradually became involved in the
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501; by 1517, the natives had been "virtually annihilated" mostly to diseases.
The problem of the justness of Native American's slavery was a key issue for the Spanish Crown. It was Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V who gave a definite answer to this complicated and delicate matter. To that end, on 25 November 1542, the Emperor abolished slavery by decree in his New Laws, Leyes Nuevas. This bill was based on the arguments given by the best Spanish theologists and jurists who were unanimous in the condemnation of such slavery as unjust; they declared it illegitimate and outlawed it from America—not just the slavery of Spaniards over Natives—but also the type of slavery practiced among the Natives themselves Thus, Spain became the first country to officially abolish slavery.
However, in the Captaincy General of Cuba, Spanish colonies of Cuba and Captaincy General of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, where sugarcane production was highly profitable based on slave labor, African slavery persisted until 1873 in Puerto Rico "with provisions for periods of apprenticeship", and 1886 in Cuba.
Netherlands
Although slavery was illegal inside the History of the Netherlands, Netherlands it flourished throughout the Dutch Empire in the Americas, Africa, Ceylon and Indonesia. The Dutch Slave Coast (Dutch language, Dutch: ''Slavenkust'') referred to the trading posts of the Dutch West India Company on the Slave Coast of West Africa, Slave Coast, which lie in contemporary
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
,
Benin
Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north ...
,
Togo
Togo (), officially the Togolese Republic (french: République togolaise), is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its c ...
and
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
. Initially the Dutch shipped slaves to Dutch Brazil, and during the second half of the 17th century they had a controlling interest in the trade to the Spanish colonies. Today's Suriname and Guyana became prominent markets in the 18th century. Between 1612 and 1872, the Dutch operated from some 10 fortresses along the Gold Coast (now Ghana), from which slaves were shipped across the Atlantic. Dutch involvement on the Slave Coast increased with the establishment of a trading post in Offra in 1660. Willem Bosman writes in his ''Nauwkeurige beschrijving van de Guinese Goud- Tand- en Slavekust'' (1703) that Allada was also called Grand Ardra, being the larger cousin of Little Ardra, also known as Offra. From 1660 onward, Dutch presence in Allada and especially Offra became more permanent. A report from this year asserts Dutch trading posts, apart from Allada and Offra, in Benin City, Grand-Popo, and Savi.
The Offra trading post soon became the most important Dutch office on the Slave Coast. According to a 1670 report, annually 2,500 to 3,000 slaves were transported from Offra to the Americas. These numbers were only feasible in times of peace, however, and dwindled in time of conflict. From 1688 onward, the struggle between the Aja people, Aja king of Allada and the peoples on the coastal regions, impeded the supply of slaves. The Dutch West India Company chose the side of the Aja king, causing the Offra office to be destroyed by opposing forces in 1692. By 1650 the Dutch had the pre-eminent slave trade in Europe and South East Asia. Later, trade shifted to Ouidah. On the instigation of Governor-General of the Dutch Gold Coast Willem de la Palma, Jacob van den Broucke was sent in 1703 as "opperkommies" (head merchant) to the Dutch trading post at Ouidah, which according to sources was established around 1670., section 3.c.2. Political unrest caused the Dutch to abandon their trading post at Ouidah in 1725, and they then moved to Jaquim, at which place they built Fort Zeelandia (Benin), Fort Zeelandia. The head of the post, Hendrik Hertog, had a reputation for being a successful slave trader. In an attempt to extend his trading area, Hertog negotiated with local tribes and mingled in local political struggles. He sided with the wrong party, however, leading to a conflict with Director-General Jan Pranger and to his exile to the island of Appa in 1732. The Dutch trading post on this island was extended as the new centre of the slave trade. In 1733, Hertog returned to Jaquim, this time extending the trading post into Fort Zeelandia (Benin), Fort Zeelandia. The revival of the slave trade at Jaquim was only temporary, however, as his superiors at the Dutch West India Company noticed that Hertog's slaves were more expensive than at the Gold Coast. From 1735, Elmina became the preferred spot to trade slaves. As of 1778, it was estimated that the Dutch were shipping approximately 6,000 Africans for enslavement in the Dutch West Indies each year. Slavery also characterised the Dutch East Indies, Dutch possessions in Indonesia, Dutch Ceylon, Ceylon, and Dutch Cape Colony, South Africa, where Indonesians have made a significant contribution to the Cape Coloured population of that country. The Dutch part in the Atlantic slave trade is estimated at 5–7 percent, as they shipped about 550,000–600,000 African slaves across the Atlantic, about 75,000 of whom died on board before reaching their destinations. From 1596 to 1829, the Dutch traders sold 250,000 slaves in the Surinam (Dutch colony), Dutch Guianas, 142,000 in the Dutch Caribbean, and 28,000 in Dutch Brazil. In addition, tens of thousands of slaves, mostly from India and some from Africa, were carried to the Dutch East Indies. The Netherlands abolished slavery in 1863. Although the decision was made in 1848, it took many years for the law to be implemented. Furthermore, slaves in Suriname would be fully free only in 1873, since the law stipulated that there was to be a mandatory 10-year transition.
Barbary corsairs
Barbary Corsairs continued to trade in European slaves into the Modern time-period. Muslim pirates, primarily Algerians with the support of the Ottoman Empire, raided European coasts and shipping from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and took thousands of captives, whom they sold or enslaved. Many were held for ransom, and European communities raised funds such as Malta's Monte della Redenzione degli Schiavi to buy back their citizens. The raids gradually ended with the naval decline of the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th and 17th centuries, as well as the European conquest of North Africa throughout the 19th century. Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500–1800 '. Robert Davis (2004). p. 45. .
From 1609 to 1616, England lost 466 merchant ships to Barbary pirates. 160 English ships were captured by Algerians between 1677 and 1680.Rees Davies British Slaves on the Barbary Coast BBC, 1 July 2003 Many of the captured sailors were made into slaves and held for ransom. The corsairs were no strangers to the South West of England where raids were known in a number of coastal communities. In 1627 Barbary Pirates under command of the Dutch renegade Jan Janszoon (Murat Reis), operating from the Moroccan port of Salé, occupied the island of Lundy. During this time there were reports of captured slaves being sent to Algiers.
Ireland, despite its northern position, was not immune from attacks by the corsairs. In June 1631 Jan Janszoon, Janszoon, with pirates from
Algiers
Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...
and armed troops of the Ottoman Empire, stormed ashore at the little harbor village of Baltimore, County Cork. They Sack of Baltimore, captured almost all the villagers and took them away to a life of slavery in North Africa. The prisoners were destined for a variety of fates—some lived out their days chained to the oars as galley slaves, while others would spend long years in the scented seclusion of the harem or within the walls of the sultan's palace. Only two of them ever saw Ireland again.
The Congress of Vienna (1814–15), which ended the Napoleonic Wars, led to increased European consensus on the need to end Barbary Pirates, Barbary raiding. The sacking of Palma, Sardinia, Palma on the island of Sardinia by a Tunisian squadron, which carried off 158 inhabitants, roused widespread indignation. Britain had by this time banned the slave trade and was seeking to induce other countries to do likewise. States that were more vulnerable to the corsairs complained that Britain cared more for ending the trade in Atlantic slave trade, African slaves than stopping the enslavement of Europeans and Americans by the Barbary States.
In order to neutralise this objection and further the anti-slavery campaign, in 1816 Britain sent Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, Lord Exmouth to secure new concessions from Ottoman Tripolitania, Tripoli, Beylik of Tunis, Tunis, and Ottoman Algeria, Algiers, including a pledge to treat Christian captives in any future conflict as
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
rather than slaves. He imposed peace between Algiers and the kingdoms of Piedmont-Sardinia, Sardinia and Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Sicily. On his first visit, Lord Exmouth negotiated satisfactory treaties and sailed for home. While he was negotiating, a number of Sardinian fishermen who had settled at Annaba, Bona on the Tunisian coast were brutally treated without his knowledge. As Sardinians they were technically under British protection, and the government sent Exmouth back to secure reparation. On 17 August, in combination with a Dutch squadron under Admiral Van de Capellen, Exmouth Bombardment of Algiers (1816), bombarded Algiers. Both Algiers and Tunis made fresh concessions as a result.
The Barbary states had difficulty securing uniform compliance with a total prohibition of slave-raiding, as this had been traditionally of central importance to the North African economy. Slavers continued to take captives by preying on less well-protected peoples. Algiers subsequently renewed its slave-raiding, though on a smaller scale. Europeans at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818 discussed possible retaliation. In 1820 a British fleet under Admiral Sir Harry Neal bombarded Algiers. Corsair activity based in Algiers did not entirely cease until France French Algeria#French conquest of Algeria, conquered the state in 1830.
Crimean Khanate
The Crimeans frequently mounted raids into the Danubian principalities, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Poland-Lithuania, and Grand Duchy of Moscow, Muscovy to enslave people whom they could capture; for each captive, the khan received a fixed share (savğa) of 10% or 20%. These campaigns by Crimean forces were either ''sefers'' ("sojourns" – officially declared military operations led by the khans themselves), or ''çapuls'' ("despoiling" – raids undertaken by groups of noblemen, sometimes illegally because they contravened treaties concluded by the khans with neighbouring rulers).
For a long time, until the early 18th century, the Crimean Khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, exporting about 2 million slaves from Russia and Poland-Lithuania over the period 1500–1700. Caffa (modern Feodosia) became one of the best-known and significant trading ports and slave markets. In 1769 the last major Tatar raid saw the capture of 20,000 Russian and Ruthenian slaves.
Author and historian Brian Glyn Williams writes:
Early modern sources are full of descriptions of sufferings of Christian slaves captured by the Crimean Tatars in the course of their raids:
British slave trade
Britain played a prominent role in the
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
, especially after 1640, when sugar cane was introduced to the region. At first, most were white Britons, or Irish, enslaved as indentured labour – for a fixed period – in the West Indies. These people may have been criminals, political rebels, the poor with no prospects or others who were simply tricked or kidnapped. Slavery was a legal institution in all of the 13 Thirteen Colonies, American colonies and Canada (acquired by Britain in 1763). The profits of the slave trade and of West Indies, West Indian plantations amounted to under 5% of the Economic history of Britain, British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution.
A little-known incident in the career of Judge Jeffreys refers to an assize in Bristol in 1685 when he made the mayor of the city, then sitting fully robed beside him on the bench, go into the dock and be fined £1000 for being a "kidnapping knave"; some Bristol traders at the time were known to kidnap their own countrymen and ship them away as slaves.
Somersett's case in 1772 was generally taken at the time to have decided that the condition of slavery did not exist under English law in England. In 1785, English poet William Cowper wrote: "We have no slaves at home – Then why abroad? Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs receive our air, that moment they are free. They touch our country, and their shackles fall. That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud. And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then, And let it circulate through every vein." The decision proved to be a milestone in the British abolitionist movement, though slavery was not abolished in the British Empire until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. In 1807, following many years of lobbying by the Abolitionism in the United Kingdom, abolitionist movement, led primarily by William Wilberforce, the British Parliament voted to make the slave trade illegal anywhere in the Empire with the
Slave Trade Act 1807
The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not abolish the practice of slavery, it ...
. Thereafter Britain took a prominent role in combating the trade, and slavery itself was abolished in the British Empire (except for India) with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. Between 1808 and 1860, the West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade. Akitoye, the 11th Oba of Lagos, is famous for having used British involvement to regain his rule in return for suppressing slavery among the Yoruba people of Lagos in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers. In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (now Anti-Slavery International), was formed in Britain as by Joseph Sturge, which worked to outlaw slavery in other countries.
After 1833, the freed African slaves declined employment in the cane fields. This led to the importation of indentured labour again – mainly from India, and also China.
In 1811, Arthur William Hodge was executed for the murder of a slave in the British West Indies. He was not, however, as some have claimed, the first white person to have been capital punishment, lawfully executed for the murder of a slave.
Late Modern history
Germany
During World War II Nazi Germany operated several categories of ''Arbeitslager'' (Labor Camps) for different categories of inmates. The largest number of them held Poles, Polish gentiles and Jewish civilians forcibly abducted in occupied countries (see Łapanka) to provide labor in the German war industry, repair bombed railroads and bridges or work on farms. By 1944, 20% of all workers were foreigners, either civilians or
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
.
Allied powers
As agreed by the Allies at the Yalta conference, Germans were used as
forced labor
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
as part of the reparations to be extracted. By 1947, it is estimated that 400,000 Germans (both civilians and Prisoner of war, POWs) were being used as forced labor by the U.S., France, the UK and the Soviet Union. German prisoners were for example forced to clear minefields in France and the Low Countries. By December 1945, it was estimated by French authorities that 2,000 German prisoners were being killed or injured each month in accidents. In Norway the last available casualty record, from 29 August 1945, shows that by that time a total of 275 German soldiers died while clearing mines, while 392 had been injured.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union took over the already extensive katorga system and expanded it immensely, eventually organizing the Gulag to run the camps. In 1954, a year after Stalin's death, the new Soviet government of Nikita Khrushchev began to release political prisoners and close down the camps. By the end of the 1950s, virtually all "corrective labor camps" were reorganized, mostly into the system of corrective labor colony, corrective labor colonies. Officially, the Gulag was terminated by the MVD order 20 25 January 1960.
During the period of Stalinism, the Gulag labor camps in the Soviet Union were officially called "Corrective labor camps." The term "labor colony"; more exactly, "Corrective labor colony", (russian: исправительно-трудовая колония, abbr. ''ИТК''), was also in use, most notably the ones for underaged (16 years or younger) convicts and captured ''besprizorniki'' (street children, literally, "children without family care"). After the reformation of the camps into the Gulag, the term "corrective labor colony" essentially encompassed labor camps.
The Soviet Union had about 14 million people working in Gulags during its existence.
Oceania
In the first half of the 19th century, small-scale slave raids took place across Polynesia to supply labor and sex workers for the whaling and seal hunting, sealing trades, with examples from both the westerly and easterly extremes of the Polynesian triangle.
By the 1860s this had grown to a larger scale operation with Peruvian slave raids in the South Sea Islands to collect labor for the guano industry.
Hawaii
Ancient Hawaii was a caste, caste society. People were born into specific social classes. Kauwa were those of the outcast or slave class. They are believed to have been war captives or their descendants. Marriage between higher castes and the kauwa was strictly forbidden. The kauwa worked for the chiefs and were often used as human sacrifices at the ''luakini heiau''. (They were not the only sacrifices; law-breakers of all castes or defeated political opponents were also acceptable as victims.)
The Kapu (Hawaiian culture), kapu system was abolished during the ʻAi Noa in 1819, and with it the distinction between the kauwā slave class and the makaʻāinana (commoners). The 1852 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii officially made slavery illegal.
New Zealand
Before the arrival of Pākehā settlers, European settlers, each Māori people, Maori tribe (''iwi'') considered itself a separate entity equivalent to a nation. In the traditional Maori society of Aotearoa,
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
became ''taurekareka'', slaves – unless released, ransomed or eaten. With some exceptions, the child of a slave remained a slave.
As far as it is possible to tell, slavery seems to have increased in the early-19th century with increased numbers of prisoners being taken by Maori military leaders (such as Hongi Hika and Te Rauparaha) to satisfy the need for labor in the Musket Wars, to supply whalers and traders with food, flax and timber in return for western goods. The intertribal Musket Wars lasted from 1807 to 1843; northern tribes who had acquired muskets captured large numbers of slaves. About 20,000 Maori died in the wars. An unknown number of slaves were captured. Northern tribes used slaves (called ''mokai'') to grow large areas of potatoes for trade with visiting ships. Chiefs started an extensive sex trade in the Bay of Islands in the 1830s, using mainly slave girls. By 1835 about 70 to 80 ships per year called into the port. One French captain described the impossibility of getting rid of the girls who swarmed over his ship, outnumbering his crew of 70 by 3 to 1. All payments to the girls were stolen by the chief. By 1833 Christianity had become established in the north of New Zealand, and large numbers of slaves were freed.
Slavery was outlawed in 1840 via the Treaty of Waitangi, although it did not end completely until government was effectively extended over the whole of the country with the defeat of the Māori King Movement, King movement in the New Zealand Wars, Wars of the mid-1860s.
Chatham Islands
One group of Polynesians who migrated to the Chatham Islands became the Moriori people, Moriori who developed a largely pacifist culture. It was originally speculated that they settled the Chathams direct from Polynesia, but it is now widely believed they were disaffected Maori who emigrated from the South Island, South Island of New Zealand. Their pacifism left the Moriori unable to defend themselves when the islands were invaded by mainland Māori in the 1830s.
Two Taranaki tribes, Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga, displaced by the Musket Wars, carried out a carefully planned invasion of the Chatham Islands, 800 km east of Christchurch, in 1835. About 15% of the Polynesian Moriori natives who had migrated to the islands at about 1500 CE were killed, with many women being tortured to death. The remaining population was enslaved for the purpose of growing food, especially potatoes. The Moriori were treated in an inhumane and degrading manner for many years. Their culture was banned and they were forbidden to marry.''Moriori''. Michael King (historian), M. King. Penguin. 2003.
Some 300 Moriori men, women and children were massacred and the remaining 1,200 to 1,300 survivors were enslaved.
Some Maori took Moriori partners. The state of enslavement of Moriori lasted until the 1860s although it had been discouraged by CMS missionaries in northern New Zealand from the late 1820s. In 1870 Ngati Mutunga, one of the invading tribes, argued before the Native Land Court in New Zealand that their gross mistreatment of the Moriori was standard Maori practice or tikanga.
Rapa Nui / Easter Island
The isolated island of Rapa Nui/Easter Island was inhabited by the Rapanui, who suffered a series of slave raids from 1805 or earlier, culminating in a near genocide, genocidal experience in the 1860s. The 1805 raid was by American sealers and was one of a series that changed the attitude of the islanders to outside visitors, with reports in the 1820s and 1830s that all visitors received a hostile reception. In December 1862, Peruvian slave raiders took between 1,400 and 2,000 islanders back to Peru to work in the guano industry; this was about a third of the island's population and included much of the island's leadership, the last ''ariki-mau'' and possibly the last who could read Rongorongo. After intervention by the French ambassador in Lima, the last 15 survivors were returned to the island, but brought with them smallpox, which further devastated the island.
Abolitionist movements
Slavery has existed, in one form or another, throughout the whole of human history. So, too, have movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves. However, abolitionism should be distinguished from efforts to help a particular group of slaves, or to restrict one practice, such as the slave trade.
Drescher (2009) provides a model for the history of the abolition of slavery, emphasizing its origins in Western Europe. Around the year 1500, slavery had virtually died out in Western Europe, but was a normal phenomenon practically everywhere else. The imperial powers – the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Belgian Empire, Belgian empires, and a few others – built worldwide empires based primarily on plantation agriculture using slaves imported from Africa. However, the powers took care to minimize the presence of slavery in their homelands. In 1807 Britain and soon after, the United States also, both criminalized the international slave trade. The
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
was increasingly effective in Blockade of Africa, intercepting slave ships, freeing the captives and taking the crew for trial in courts.
Although there were numerous slave revolts in the Caribbean, the only successful uprising came in the French colony of Haiti in the 1790s, where the slaves rose up, killed the mulattoes and whites, and established the independent Republic of Haiti.
The continuing profitability of slave-based plantations and the threats of race war slowed the development of abolition movements during the first half of the 19th century. These movements were strongest in Britain, and after 1840 in the United States. The Northern states of the United States abolished slavery, partly in response to the United States Declaration of Independence, between 1777 and 1804. Britain ended slavery in its empire in the 1830s. However, the plantation economies of the southern United States, based on cotton, and those in Brazil and Cuba, based on sugar, expanded and grew even more profitable. The bloody American Civil War ended slavery in the United States in 1865. The system ended in Cuba and Brazil in the 1880s because it was no longer profitable for the owners. Slavery continued to exist in Africa, where Arab slave traders raided black areas for new captives to be sold in the system. European colonial rule and diplomatic pressure slowly put an end to the trade, and eventually to the practice of slavery itself.
Britain
In 1772, the Somersett's Case, Somersett Case (''R. v. Knowles, ex parte Somersett'') of the English Court of King's Bench (England), Court of King's Bench ruled that it was unlawful for a slave to be forcibly taken abroad. The case has since been misrepresented as finding that
slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
was unlawful in England (although not elsewhere in the British Empire). A similar case, that of Joseph Knight (slave), Joseph Knight, took place in Scotland five years later and ruled slavery to be contrary to the law of Scotland.
Following the work of campaigners in the United Kingdom, such as William Wilberforce, Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville and Thomas Clarkson, who founded the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (Abolition Society) in May 1787, the Slave Trade Act 1807, Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was passed by Parliament of the United Kingdom, Parliament on 25 March 1807, coming into effect the following year. The act imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. The intention was to outlaw entirely the
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
within the whole British Empire.
The significance of the abolition of the British slave trade lay in the number of people hitherto sold and carried by British slave vessels. Britain shipped 2,532,300 Africans across the Atlantic, equalling 41% of the total transport of 6,132,900 individuals. This made the British empire the biggest slave-trade contributor in the world due to the magnitude of the empire, which made the abolition act all the more damaging to the global trade of slaves. Britain used its diplomatic influence to press other nations into treaties to ban their slave trade and to give the Royal Navy the right to Blockade of Africa, interdict slave ships sailing under their national flag.
The Slavery Abolition Act, passed on 1 August 1833, outlawed slavery itself throughout the British Empire, with the exception of India. On 1 August 1834 slaves became indentured to their former owners in an apprenticeship system for six years. Full emancipation was granted ahead of schedule on 1 August 1838. Britain abolished slavery in both Hindu and Islam in India, Muslim India with the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.
The Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions (later London Anti-slavery Society ), was founded in 1823, and existed until 1838.
Domestic slavery practised by the educated African coastal elites (as well as interior traditional rulers) in
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra ...
was abolished in 1928. A study found practices of domestic slavery still widespread in rural areas in the 1970s.
The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, founded in 1839 and having gone several name changes since, still exists as Anti-Slavery International.
France
There were slaves in Metropolitan France (especially in trade ports such as
Nantes
Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...
or Bordeaux)., but the institution was never officially authorized there. The legal case of Jean Boucaux in 1739 clarified the unclear legal position of possible slaves in France, and was followed by laws that established registers for slaves in mainland France, who were limited to a three-year stay, for visits or learning a trade. Unregistered "slaves" in France were regarded as free. However, slavery was of vital importance to the economy of France's
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
possessions, especially Saint-Domingue.
Abolition
In 1793, influenced by the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of August 1789 and alarmed as the massive slave revolt of August 1791 that had become the Haitian Revolution threatened to ally itself with the British, the French First Republic, Revolutionary French commissioners Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel declared general emancipation to reconcile them with France. In Paris, on 4 February 1794, Abbé Grégoire and the Convention ratified this action by officially abolishing slavery in all French territories outside mainland France, freeing all the slaves both for moral and security reasons.
Napoleon restores slavery
Napoleon came to power in 1799 and soon had grandiose plans for the French sugar colonies; to achieve them he reintroduced slavery. Napoleon's major adventure into the Caribbean—sending 30,000 troops in 1802 to retake Saint Domingue (Haiti) from ex-slaves under Toussaint L'Ouverture who had revolted. Napoleon wanted to preserve France's financial benefits from the colony's sugar and coffee crops; he then planned to establish a major base at New Orleans. He therefore re-established slavery in Haiti and Guadeloupe, where it had been abolished after rebellions. Slaves and black freedmen fought the French for their freedom and independence. Revolutionary ideals played a central role in the fighting for it was the slaves and their allies who were fighting for the revolutionary ideals of freedom and equality, while the French troops under General Charles Leclerc (general, born 1772), Charles Leclerc fought to restore the order of the ''ancien régime''. The goal of re-establishing slavery explicitly contradicted the ideals of the French Revolution. The French soldiers were unable to cope with tropical diseases, and most died of yellow fever. Slavery was reimposed in Guadeloupe but not in Haiti, which became an independent black republic. Napoleon's vast colonial dreams for Egypt, India, the Caribbean, Louisiana, and even Australia were all doomed for lack of a fleet capable of matching Britain's Royal Navy. Realizing the fiasco Napoleon liquidated the Haiti project, brought home the survivors and Louisiana Purchase, sold off the huge Louisiana territory to the US in 1803.
Napoleon and slavery
In 1794 slavery was abolished in the French Empire. After seizing Lower Egypt in 1798, Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte issued a proclamation in Arabic, declaring all men to be free and equal. However, the French bought males as soldiers and females as concubines. Napoleon personally opposed the abolition and restored colonial slavery in 1802, a year after the capitulation of his troops in Egypt.
Napoleon decreed the abolition of the slave trade upon his returning from Elba in an attempt to appease Britain. His decision was confirmed by the Treaty of Paris (1815), Treaty of Paris on 20 November 1815 and by order of Louis XVIII of France, Louis XVIII on 8 January 1817. However, trafficking continued despite sanctions.
Victor Schœlcher and the 1848 abolition
Slavery in the French colonies was finally abolished in 1848, three months after the beginning of the French Revolution of 1848, revolution against the July Monarchy. It was in large part the result of the tireless 18-year campaign of Victor Schœlcher. On 3 March 1848, he had been appointed under-secretary of the navy, and caused a decree to be issued by the provisional government which acknowledged the principle of the enfranchisement of the slaves through the French possessions. He also wrote the decree of 27 April 1848 in which the French government announced that slavery was abolished in all of its colonies.
United States
In 1688, four German Quakers in Germantown, Philadelphia, PA, Germantown presented a The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery, protest against the institution of slavery to their local Quaker Meeting. It was ignored for 150 years but in 1844 it was rediscovered and was popularized by the Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist movement. The 1688 Petition was the first American public document of its kind to protest slavery, and in addition was one of the first public documents to define universal human rights.
The American Colonization Society, the primary vehicle for returning black Americans to greater freedom in Africa, established the colony of Liberia in 1821–23, on the premise that former American slaves would have greater freedom and equality there.
Various state colonization societies also had African colonies which were later merged with Liberia, including the Republic of Maryland, Mississippi-in-Africa, and Kentucky in Africa. These societies assisted in the movement of thousands of African Americans to Liberia, with ACS founder Henry Clay stating; "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off". Abraham Lincoln, an enthusiastic supporter of Clay, adopted his position on returning the blacks to their own land.
Slaves in the United States who escaped ownership would often make their way to Canada via the "Underground Railroad". The more famous of the African American Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionists include former slaves Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. Many more people who opposed slavery and worked for abolition were northern whites, such as William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown (abolitionist), John Brown. Slavery was legally abolished in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
While abolitionists agreed on the evils of slavery, there were differing opinions on what should happen after African Americans were freed. By the time of Emancipation, African-Americans were now native to the United States and did not want to leave. Most believed that their labor had made the land theirs as well as that of the whites.
Congress of Vienna
The ''Declaration of the Powers, on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, of 8 February 1815'' (Which also formed s:Final Act of the Congress of Vienna/Act XV, ACT, No. XV. of the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, Final Act of the Congress of Vienna of the same year) included in its first sentence the concept of the "principles of humanity and universal morality" as justification for ending a trade that was "odious in its continuance".
Twentieth century
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 4 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. However, illegal forced labour involves millions of people in the 21st century, 43% for sexual exploitation and 32% for economic exploitation.
In May 2004, the 22 members of the Arab League adopted the Arab Charter on Human Rights, which incorporated the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which states:
Currently, the Anti-trafficking Coordination Team Initiative (ACT Team Initiative), a coordinated effort between the United States Department of Justice, U.S. Departments of Justice, United States Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security, and United States Department of Labor, Labor, addresses human trafficking. The International Labour Organization estimates that there are 20.9 million victims of human trafficking globally, including 5.5 million children, of which 55% are women and girls.
Contemporary slavery
According to the Global Slavery Index, slavery continues into the 21st century. It claims that as of 2018, the countries with the most slaves were: India (8 million), China (3.86 million), Pakistan (3.19 million) and North Korea (2.64 million). The countries with highest prevalence of slavery were North Korea (10.5%) and Eritrea (9.3%).
Historiography
Historiography in the United States
The history of slavery originally was the history of the government's laws and policies toward slavery, and the political debates about it. Black history was promoted very largely at black colleges. The situation changed dramatically with the coming of the Civil rights movement, Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s. Attention shifted to the enslaved humans, the free blacks, and the struggles of the black community against adversity.
Peter Kolchin described the state of historiography in the early 20th century as follows:
Historians James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton described Phillips' mindset, methodology and influence:
The racist attitude concerning slaves carried over into the historiography of the Dunning School of Reconstruction era history, which dominated in the early 20th century. Writing in 2005, the historian Eric Foner states:
Beginning in the 1950s, historiography moved away from the tone of the Phillips era. Historians still emphasized the slave as an object. Whereas Phillips presented the slave as the object of benign attention by the owners, historians such as Kenneth Stampp emphasized the mistreatment and abuse of the slave.
In the portrayal of the slave as a victim, the historian Stanley M. Elkins in his 1959 work ''Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life'' compared the effects of United States slavery to that resulting from the brutality of the Nazi concentration camps. He stated the institution destroyed the will of the slave, creating an "emasculated, docile Sambo (racial term), Sambo" who identified totally with the owner. Elkins' thesis was challenged by historians. Gradually historians recognized that in addition to the effects of the owner-slave relationship, slaves did not live in a "totally closed environment but rather in one that permitted the emergence of enormous variety and allowed slaves to pursue important relationships with persons other than their master, including those to be found in their families, churches and communities."
Economic historians Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman in the 1970s, through their work ''Time on the Cross'', portrayed slaves as having internalized the Protestant work ethic of their owners. In portraying the more benign version of slavery, they also argue in their 1974 book that the material conditions under which the slaves lived and worked compared favorably to those of free workers in the agriculture and industry of the time. (This was also an argument of Southerners during the 19th century.)
In the 1970s and 1980s, historians made use of sources such as black music and statistical census data to create a more detailed and nuanced picture of slave life. Relying also on 19th-century autobiographies of ex-slaves (known as slave narratives) and the Works Progress Administration, WPA Slave Narrative Collection, a set of interviews conducted with former slaves in the 1930s by the Federal Writers' Project, historians described slavery as the slaves remembered it. Far from slaves' being strictly victims or content, historians showed slaves as both resilient and autonomous in many of their activities. Despite their exercise of autonomy and their efforts to make a life within slavery, current historians recognize the precariousness of the slave's situation. Slave children quickly learned that they were subject to the direction of both their parents and their owners. They saw their parents disciplined just as they came to realize that they also could be physically or verbally abused by their owners. Historians writing during this era include John Blassingame (''Slave Community''), Eugene Genovese (''Roll, Jordan, Roll''), Leslie Howard Owens (''This Species of Property''), and Herbert Gutman (''The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom'').
Important work on slavery has continued; for instance, in 2003 Steven Hahn published the Pulitzer Prize-winning account, ''A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration'', which examined how slaves built community and political understanding while enslaved, so they quickly began to form new associations and institutions when emancipated, including black churches separate from white control. In 2010, Robert E. Wright published a Conceptual model, model that explains why
slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
was more prevalent in some areas than others (e.g. southern than northern Delaware) and why some Company, firms (individuals, corporations, plantation owners) chose slave labor while others used wage, indentured, or family labor instead.Robert E. Wright, Fubarnomics (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2010), 83–116.
A national Marist Poll of Americans in 2015 asked, "Was slavery the main reason for the Civil War, or not?" 53% said yes and 41% said not. There were sharp cleavages along lines of region and party. In the South, 49% answered not. Nationwide 55 percent said students should be taught slavery was the reason for the Civil War.
In 2018, a conference at the University of Virginia studied the history of slavery and recent views on it.
Economics of slavery in the West Indies
One of the most controversial aspects of the British Empire is its role in first promoting and then ending slavery. In the 18th-century British merchant ships were the largest element in the "Middle Passage" which transported millions of slaves to the Western Hemisphere. Most of those who survived the journey wound up in the Caribbean, where the Empire had highly profitable sugar colonies, and the living conditions were bad (the plantation owners lived in Britain). Parliament ended the international transportation of slaves in 1807 and used the Royal Navy to enforce that ban. In 1833 it bought out the plantation owners and banned slavery. Historians before the 1940s argued that moralistic reformers such as William Wilberforce were primarily responsible.
Historical revisionism arrived when West Indian historian Eric Williams, a Marxist, in ''Capitalism and Slavery'' (1944), rejected this moral explanation and argued that abolition was now more profitable, for a century of sugarcane raising had exhausted the soil of the islands, and the plantations had become unprofitable. It was more profitable to sell the slaves to the government than to keep up operations. The 1807 prohibition of the international trade, Williams argued, prevented French expansion on other islands. Meanwhile, British investors turned to Asia, where labor was so plentiful that slavery was unnecessary. Williams went on to argue that slavery played a major role in making Britain prosperous. The high profits from the slave trade, he said, helped finance the Industrial Revolution. Britain enjoyed prosperity because of the capital gained from the unpaid work of slaves.
Since the 1970s numerous historians have challenged Williams from various angles and Gad Heuman has concluded, "More recent research has rejected this conclusion; it is now clear that the colonies of the British Caribbean profited considerably during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars." In his major attack on the Williams's thesis, Seymour Drescher argues that Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807 resulted not from the diminishing value of slavery for Britain but instead from the moral outrage of the British voting public. Critics have also argued that slavery remained profitable in the 1830s because of innovations in agriculture so the profit motive was not central to abolition. Richardson (1998) finds Williams's claims regarding the Industrial Revolution are exaggerated, for profits from the slave trade amounted to less than 1% of domestic investment in Britain. Richardson further challenges claims (by African scholars) that the slave trade caused widespread depopulation and economic distress in Africa—indeed that it caused the "underdevelopment" of Africa. Admitting the horrible suffering of slaves, he notes that many Africans benefited directly because the first stage of the trade was always firmly in the hands of Africans. European slave ships waited at ports to purchase cargoes of people who were captured in the hinterland by African dealers and tribal leaders. Richardson finds that the "terms of trade" (how much the ship owners paid for the slave cargo) moved heavily in favor of the Africans after about 1750. That is, indigenous elites inside West and Central Africa made large and growing profits from slavery, thus increasing their wealth and power.
Economic historian Stanley Engerman finds that even without subtracting the associated costs of the slave trade (e.g., shipping costs, slave mortality, mortality of British people in Africa, defense costs) or reinvestment of profits back into the slave trade, the total profits from the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to less than 5% of the Economic history of the United Kingdom, British economy during any year of the Industrial Revolution. Engerman's 5% figure gives as much as possible in terms of benefit of the doubt to the Williams argument, not solely because it does not take into account the associated costs of the slave trade to Britain, but also because it carries the full-employment assumption from economics and holds the gross value of slave trade profits as a direct contribution to Britain's national income. Historian Richard Pares, in an article written before Williams's book, dismisses the influence of wealth generated from the West Indian plantations upon the financing of the Industrial Revolution, stating that whatever substantial flow of investment from West Indian profits into industry there was occurred after emancipation, not before.
See also
;General
* Types of slavery:
** Child labour/Verdingkinder/Wiedergutmachungsinitiative
** Child slavery
** Coolies
** Debt slavery
** Forced labour
** Forced marriage
** Gulag
** Indentured servitude
** Sexual slavery
* Types of slave trade:
** African slave trade
*** Asiento
**
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
** Barbary slave trade
** Blackbirding
** Coastwise slave trade
**Indian Ocean slave trade
**Trans-Saharan slave trade
** Ottoman slave trade
** Swedish slave trade
** White slavery
* Present-day slavery:
** Human trafficking
** Slavery in modern Africa
**
Slavery in the 21st century
Contemporary slavery, also sometimes known as modern slavery or neo-slavery, refers to institutional slavery that continues to occur in present-day society. Estimates of the number of enslaved people today range from around 38 million to 46 mil ...
** Slavery in 21st century Islamism
;People
* List of slaves, List of famous slaves
* Types of slave soldiers:
** Janissary
** Mamluk
** Saqaliba
;Ideals and organizations
* Abolitionism:
** Compensated emancipation
** International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition
* Abolitionism in the United States
* Anti-Slavery International, founded as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839
* Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking
* Quakers – Religious Society of Friends
* Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1787–1807?)
* Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions, aka Anti-Slavery Society (1823–1838)
* United States National Slavery Museum
* Poems on Slavery by Longfellow
;Other
* Abolition of slavery timeline
* American slave court cases
* Fazenda
* History of Liverpool#Slave trade, privateering, History of Liverpool
* History of slavery in the Muslim world
* Slavery in the United States:
** ''North Carolina v. Mann''
** Origins of the American Civil War
** Slavery among Native Americans in the United States
** Slavery in the colonial United States
* Influx of disease in the Caribbean
* Pedro Blanco (slave trader)
* Sambo's Grave
* Sante Kimes
* Slave Trade Act
* Slavery and religion
* Slavery at common law
* William Lynch speech
* List of films featuring slavery
Notes
References
Bibliography
* David Brion Davis, Davis, David Brion. ''Slavery and Human Progress'' (1984).
* Davis, David Brion. ''The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture'' (1966)
* Davis, David Brion. ''Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World'' (2006)
* Drescher, Seymour. ''Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery'' (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
* Finkelman, Paul, ed. ''Slavery and Historiography'' (New York: Garland, 1989)
* Finkelman, Paul, and Joseph Miller, eds. ''Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery'' (2 vol 1998)
* Hinks, Peter, and John McKivigan, eds. ''Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition'' (2 vol. 2007) 795 pp;
* Linden, Marcel van der, ed. ''Humanitarian Intervention and Changing Labor Relations: The Long-Term Consequences of the Abolition of the Slave Trade'' (Brill Academic Publishers, 2011 online review * McGrath, Elizabeth and Massing, Jean Michel, ''The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem'' (London: The Warburg Institute, 2012.)
* Miller, Joseph C. ''The problem of slavery as history: a global approach'' (Yale University Press, 2012.)
* Parish, Peter J. ''Slavery: History and Historians'' (1989)
* Phillips, William D. ''Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Atlantic Slave Trade'' (1984)
* Junius P. Rodriguez, Rodriguez, Junius P. ed. ''The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery'' (2 vol. 1997)
* Rodriguez, Junius P. ed. ''Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion'' (2 vol. 2007)
Greece and Rome
* Bradley, Keith. ''Slavery and Society at Rome'' (1994)
* Cuffel, Victoria. "The Classical Greek Concept of Slavery," ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' Vol. 27, No. 3 (Jul–Sep 1966), pp. 323–42
* Finley, Moses, ed. ''Slavery in Classical Antiquity'' (1960)
* Westermann, William L. ''The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity'' (1955) 182 pp
Europe: Middle Ages
* Rio, Alice. ''Slavery After Rome, 500-1100'' (Oxford University Press, 2017 online review * Stark, Rodney. ''The victory of reason: How Christianity led to freedom, capitalism, and Western success'' (Random House, 2006).
* Verhulst, Adriaan. "The decline of slavery and the economic expansion of the Early Middle Ages." ''Past & Present'' No. 133 (Nov., 1991), pp. 195–20 online
Africa and Middle East
* Campbell, Gwyn. ''The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia'' (Frank Cass, 2004)
* Hershenzon, Daniel. "Towards a connected history of bondage in the Mediterranean: Recent trends in the field." ''History Compass'' 15.8 (2017). on Christian captives
* Lovejoy, Paul. ''Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa'' (Cambridge UP, 1983)
* Toledano, Ehud R. ''As If Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East'' (Yale University Press, 2007)
* Davis, Robert C., ''Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, The Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800'' (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2003)
Atlantic trade, Latin America and British Empire
* Blackburn, Robin. ''The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation, and Human Rights'' (Verso; 2011) 498 pp; on slavery and abolition in the Americas from the 16th to the late 19th centuries.
* Fradera, Josep M. and Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, eds. ''Slavery and Antislavery in Spain's Atlantic Empire'' (2013 online * Klein, Herbert S. ''African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean'' (Oxford University Press, 1988)
* Klein, Herbert. ''The Atlantic Slave Trade'' (1970)
* Klein, Herbert S. ''Slavery in Brazil'' (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
* Morgan, Kenneth. ''Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America'' (2008)
*
*
* Arthur Stinchcombe, Stinchcombe, Arthur L. ''Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment: The Political Economy of the Caribbean World'' (Princeton University Press, 1995)
* Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, Thomas, Hugh. ''The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440–1870'' (Simon & Schuster, 1997)
* Walvin, James. ''Black Ivory: Slavery in the British Empire'' (2nd ed. 2001)
* Ward, J.R. ''British West Indian Slavery, 1750–1834'' (Oxford U.P. 1988)
* Wright, Gavin. "Slavery and Anglo‐American capitalism revisited." ''Economic History'' Review 73.2 (2020): 353–383 online * Wyman‐McCarthy, Matthew. "British abolitionism and global empire in the late 18th century: A historiographic overview." History Compass 16.10 (2018): e12480. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12480
* Zeuske, Michael. "Historiography and Research Problems of Slavery and the Slave Trade in a Global-Historical Perspective." ''International Review of Social History'' 57#1 (2012): 87–111.
United States
*
*
*
* Miller, Randall M., and John David Smith, eds. ''Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery'' (1988)
*
*
* Wilson, Thomas D. ''The Ashley Cooper Plan: The Founding of Carolina and the Origins of Southern Political Culture''. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
Slavery Museum. Great Britain.
{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of Slavery
History of slavery,
Social history, Slavery
History of human rights, Slavery
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