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Slavery



 
 
Slavery is a form of forced labor
Forced Labor

#REDIRECT Unfree labour...
 where a person
Person

The term person in common usage means an individual human being. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term also has specialised context-specific meanings....
 is compelled to work for another (sometimes called "the master" or "slave owner"). Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation
Remuneration

Remuneration is pay or salary, typically a monetary payment for services rendered, as in an employment. Usage of the word is considered formal....
 (such as wages) in return for their labor.

Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed to varying extents, forms and periods in almost all culture
Culture

Culture is difficult to define. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions....
s and continent
Continent

A continent is one of several large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents ? they are : Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia ....
s.






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Timeline

4   The ''Lex Aelia Sentia'' regulates the manumission of slaves.

34   The original inhabitants of Dacia revolt against the Sarmatian tribe of Iazyges who had enslaved them.

694   Hispano-Visigothic king Egica accuses the Jews of aiding the Muslims, and sentences all Jews to slavery.

1089   Synod of Melfi under Pope Urban II imposes slavery on the wives of priests

1619   Slaves are first brought to the Americas.

1652   Rhode Island passes the first law in North America making slavery illegal.

1682   First black slaves arrive in Germany

1733   Right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves upheld at Quebec.

1787   The U.S. Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance establishing governing rules for the Northwest Territory. It also establishes procedures for the admission of new states and limits the expansion of slavery.

1790   Religious Society of Friends petitions Congress for the abolition of slavery.







Encyclopedia


Slavery is a form of forced labor
Forced Labor

#REDIRECT Unfree labour...
 where a person
Person

The term person in common usage means an individual human being. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term also has specialised context-specific meanings....
 is compelled to work for another (sometimes called "the master" or "slave owner"). Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation
Remuneration

Remuneration is pay or salary, typically a monetary payment for services rendered, as in an employment. Usage of the word is considered formal....
 (such as wages) in return for their labor.

Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed to varying extents, forms and periods in almost all culture
Culture

Culture is difficult to define. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions....
s and continent
Continent

A continent is one of several large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents ? they are : Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia ....
s. In some societies, slavery existed as a legal institution or socioeconomic system, but today it is formally outlawed in nearly all countries. Nevertheless, the practice continues in various forms around the world.

Freedom from slavery is an internationally recognised human right. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Guinness Book of Records describes the UDHR as the "Most Translated Document" in the world....
 states:
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.


According to one theory, the word slave, in Modern English
Modern English

Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern English, or more specifically, are referred to as using...
, originates from the Middle English
Middle English

Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman conquest of England of 1066 and about 1470, when the #Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William...
 sclave which first appears around 1290. The spelling was based on Old French
Old French

Old French was the Romance languages dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 1000 to 1300....
 esclave, from the Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin

Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration....
 sclavus and ultimately from the Byzantine Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 sklabos (from sklabenoi). The spelling of English slave, first appears in English in 1538. The term originally referred to various people from Central Europe
Central Europe

Central Europe is the region lying between the variously and vaguely defined areas of Eastern Europe and Western Europe Europe. In addition, Northern Europe, Southern Europe and Southeastern Europe may variously delimit or overlap into Central Europe....
.

Thralldom is an archaic synonym for slavery, and thrall
Thrall

A thrall was a slave in history of Scandinavia culture during the Viking Age. Unlike many of the forms of slavery throughout human history, the state of being a thrall could be entered into voluntarily, as well as involuntarily....
 a synonym for slave. This comes from Old English þræl (also rendered thr?l), from Old Norse
Old Norse

Old Norse is a North Germanic languages that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
 þræll (thræll).

Definitions

Kersnovskaya Entering Camp5 54
In its narrowest sense, the word "slave" refers to people who are treated as the property
Property

Property is any physical or virtual entity that is ownership by an individual or jointly by a group of individuals. An owner of property has the right to consumption, sell, Renting, mortgage, transfer and exchange his or her property....
 of another person, household, company, corporation or government. This is referred to as chattel slavery. The 1926 Slavery Convention
1926 Slavery Convention

The 1926 Slavery Convention or the Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery was an international treaty created under the auspices of the League of Nations and first signed on September 25, 1926....
 described slavery as "...the status and/or condition of a person over who any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised..." Slaves cannot leave an owner, an employer or a territory without explicit permission (they must have a passport
Passport

A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder....
 to leave), and they will be returned if they escape. Therefore a system of slavery—as opposed to the isolated instances found in any society—requires official, legal recognition of ownership, or widespread tacit arrangements with local authorities, by masters who have some influence because of their social and/or economic status and their lives.

The International Labour Organization
International Labour Organization

The International Labour Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that deals with labour issues. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland....
 (ILO) defines forced labour as "all work or service which is extracted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily", albeit with certain exceptions of: military service, convicted criminals, emergencies and minor community services.

The current usage of the word serfdom
Serfdom

Serfdom is the socio-economic status of unfree peasants under feudalism, and specifically relates to Manorialism. It was a condition of Debt bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe....
 is not usually synonymous with slavery, because medieval serfs were considered to have rights, as human beings, whereas slaves were considered “things”—property.

Other uses of the term

The word slavery is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity one finds unpleasant or distasteful. On the one hand, this means the word slavery is applied in situations where it does not technically fit the definition. On the other hand, it also means that it is often not applied in situations that do fit the definition, but where the speaker feels that everyone has a duty to perform the action. Examples of the latter might include jury duty or military conscription, where a person is compelled to perform a job and is paid much less than one would have sought for a similar job in a free market.

  • The International Labour Organization says that child labour usually amounts to forced labour.
  • Many anarchists
    Anarchism

    Anarchism is a political philosophy encompassing anarchist schools of thought which consider the state to be unnecessary, harmful, and/or undesirable....
    , socialists
    Socialism

    Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating public or state ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equality for all individuals, with a fair or Egalitarianism method of compensation....
    , and communists
    Communism

    Communism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarianism, classlessness, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general....
     have condemned "wage slavery
    Wage slavery

    Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person is dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, especially if the dependency is total and immediate....
    " or "economic slavery", where workers are forced to choose between selling their labour and facing starvation, poverty or social stigma and a lack of prosperity. This is related to the notion of economic coercion.
  • Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists
    Anarcho-capitalism

    Anarcho-capitalism , usually regarded to be an individualist anarchism political philosophy, advocates the elimination of the state and the elevation of the sovereign individual in a free market....
     view government taxation as a form of slavery.
  • Some progressives and feminists feel that anti-abortion laws and other government laws that force a woman to carry a pregnancy
    Pregnancy

    Pregnancy is the carrying of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, inside the uterus of a female. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or Multiple birth....
     to term is a form of slavery.
  • Some feel that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute slavery.
  • Some proponents of animal rights
    Animal rights

    Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings....
     apply the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is no different from that of human slaves.


Economics

Boulanger Gustave Clarence Rudolphe the Slave Market
Economists have attempted to model during which circumstances slavery (and milder variants such as serfdom
Serfdom

Serfdom is the socio-economic status of unfree peasants under feudalism, and specifically relates to Manorialism. It was a condition of Debt bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe....
) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for land owners when land is abundant but labour is not, so paid workers can demand high wages. If labour is abundant but land is scarce, then it becomes more costly for the land owners to have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only demand low wages due to the competition. Thus first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew. It was reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia (serfdom) as large new land areas with few people became available.

Another observation is slavery is more common when the labour done is relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large scale growing of a single crop. It is much more difficult and costly to check that slaves are doing their best and with good quality when they are doing complex tasks. Thus, slavery tends to decrease with technological advancements requiring more skilled people, even as they are able to demand high wages.

It has also been argued that slavery tends to retard technological advancement, since the focus is on increasing the number of slaves rather than improving the efficiency of labour. Because of this, theoretical knowledge and learning in Greece—and later in Rome—was largely separated from physical labour and manufacturing. Some Russian scholars have argued that the Soviet Union's technological development was hindered by Stalin's use of slave labour.

History of slavery and the slave trade

Ruslavery
Slavery traces back to the earliest records, such as the Bible
Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
 and the Code of Hammurabi
Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved ancient law code, created ca. 1760 BC in ancient Babylon. It was enacted by the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi....
 (ca. 1760 BC), which refers to it as an established institution. Slavery in ancient cultures was known to occur in civilizations as old as Sumer
Sumer

Sumer was a civilization and a historical region located in Southern Iraq , known as the Cradle of civilization. It lasted from the first settlement of Eridu in the Ubaid period through the Uruk period and the Dynastic periods until the rise of Babylon in the early 2nd millennium BC....
, and it was found in every civilization, including Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria
Assyria

Assyria was a political state centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history....
, Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
, Rome and parts of its empire
Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, and the Islam
Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
ic Caliphate
Caliphate

The caliphate represented the political leadership of the Muslim ummah in classical and medieval Islamic history and juristic theory. The head of state's position is based on the notion of a successor to the Prophets of Islam Muhammad's political authority....
. Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war
Prisoner of war

A prisoner of war is a combatant who is held in continuing custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict....
, child abandonment
Child abandonment

Child abandonment is the practice of abandonment offspring outside of legal adoption. Causes include many social and cultural factors as well as mental illness....
, and the birth of slave children to slaves. Records of slavery in Ancient Greece
Slavery in Ancient Greece

Slavery was common practice and an integral component of ancient Greece throughout its history, as it was in other societies of the time including ancient Israel and early Christian societies....
 go as far back as Mycenaean Greece
Mycenaean Greece

Mycenaean Greece is a cultural period of ancient Greece taking its name from the archaeological site of Mycenae in northeastern Argolis, in the Peloponnese of southern Greece....
. It is often said that the Greeks as well as philosophers such as Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
 accepted the theory of natural slavery i.e. that some men are slaves by nature.

As the Roman Republic
Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the phase of the Ancient Rome characterized by a republican form of government; a period which began with the overthrow of the Roman Roman Kingdom, c....
 expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply. The people subjected to Roman slavery
Slavery in antiquity

Slavery in the ancient world, specifically, in Mediterranean cultures, comprised a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery as a punishment for crime, and the enslavement of prisoner of war....
 came from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Greeks
Greeks

The Greeks , also known as Hellenes, are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions, who can also be found in Greek diaspora communities around the world....
, Berbers, Germans
Germanic peoples

File:Germanische-ratsversammlung 1-1250x715.jpgThe Germanic peoples are a historical Ethnolinguistics group, originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Indo-European languages Germanic languages which diversified out of Common Germanic in the course of the Pre-Roman Iron Age....
, Britons
Brython

Historically, the Britons were the P-Celtic indigenous peoples inhabiting the island of Great Britain south of the river Forth. They were speakers of the Brythonic languages and shared common cultural traditions; the surviving P-Celtic languages are Welsh language, Cornish language and Breton....
, Thracians
Thracians

The ancient Thracians were a group of Indo-European peoples who spoke the Thracian language - a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family....
, Gauls
Gauls

The Gauls were a Continental Celtic Celts people of Classical Antiquity, the inhabitants of Gaul , and speakers of the Gaulish language.Archaeologically, they were the bearers of the La T?ne culture ....
 (or Celts), Jews, Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labour, but also for amusement (e.g. gladiator
Gladiator

A Gladiator was a slave, criminal or professional fighter in ancient Rome. Gladiators fought other gladiators, wild animals and condemned criminals, sometimes to the death, for the entertainment of Spectator sport in cities and towns of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, from the 3rd century BCE to the 5th century CE....
s and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars
Roman Servile Wars

The Servile Wars were a series of three slave revolts in the late Roman Republic. See:* First Servile War: 135 BC ? 132 BC in Sicily, led by Eunus, a former slave claiming to be a prophet, and Cleon ...
); the Third Servile War
Third Servile War

The Third Servile War, also called the Gladiator War and The War of Spartacus by Plutarch, was the last of a series of unrelated and unsuccessful slave rebellions against the Roman Republic, known collectively as the Servile Wars....
 led by Spartacus
Spartacus

Spartacus , according to Roman historians, was a slave and gladiator who became the leader in the somewhat successful slave uprising against the Roman Republic known as the Third Servile War....
 was the most famous and severe. By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome.
Slaves Zadib Yemen 13th Century Bnf Paris
The early medieval
Middle age

Middle age is the period of life beyond Young adult hood but before the onset of old age. Various attempts have been made to define this age, which is around the third quarter of the average life span of human beings....
 slave trade was mainly to the East: the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
 and the Muslim world
Muslim world

.The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a Culture sense it refers to the worldwide community of Muslims, adherents of Islam. This community Islam by country, roughly one-fifth of the world population....
 were the destinations, pagan Central
Central Europe

Central Europe is the region lying between the variously and vaguely defined areas of Eastern Europe and Western Europe Europe. In addition, Northern Europe, Southern Europe and Southeastern Europe may variously delimit or overlap into Central Europe....
 and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the Europe. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today, parts of Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons, even though there i...
, along with the Caucasus
Caucasus

The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to Europe's highest mountain ....
 and Tartary
Tartary

Tartary or Great Tartary was a name used by Europeans from the Middle Ages until the twentieth century to designate a great tract of northern and central Asia stretching from the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean inhabited by Turkic peoples and Mongols peoples of the Mongol Empire who were generically referred...
, were important sources. Viking
Viking

A Viking is one of the Norsemen explorers, warriors, merchants, and Piracy who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe from the late eighth to the early eleventh century....
, Arab
Arab

An Arab is a person who Identity as such on linguistic or cultural grounds. The plural form, Arabs , refers to the Ethnocultural group at large....
, Greek
Greeks

The Greeks , also known as Hellenes, are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions, who can also be found in Greek diaspora communities around the world....
 and Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish merchants (known as Radhanites) were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages
Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
.

Medieval Spain
Spain in the Middle Ages

After the disorders of the passage of the Vandal#Iberia and Alans down the Mediterranean coast of Hispania from 408, the history of Medieval Spain begins with the Iberian kingdom of the Arianismist Visigoths , who were Christianization with their king Reccared in 587....
 and Portugal
History of Portugal

Portugal is a European nation whose origins go back to the Early Middle Ages. In the 15th and 16th centuries, it Portugal in the Age of Discovery to the status of a world power during Europe's "Age of Discovery" as it Portuguese Empire including possessions in South America, Africa, and Asia....
 were the scene of almost constant warfare
Warfare

Warfare refers to the conduct of conflict between opponents, and usually involves escalation of aggression from the proverbial "war of words" between politics and diplomacy to full-scale War, waged until one side accepts defeat or peace terms are agreed on....
 between Muslims and Christians. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to the parts of the Iberian Peninsula governed by Arab Muslims, at various times in the period between 711 and 1492....
 to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In raid against Lisbon
Lisbon

Lisbon is the Capital and largest city of Portugal. It is also the seat of the Lisbon and capital of the Lisbon region. Its municipalities of Portugal, which matches the city proper excluding the larger continuous conurbation, has a municipal population of 564,477 in , while the Lisbon Metropolitan Area in total has around 2.8 million inha...
, Portugal
Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country on the Iberian Peninsula. Located in southwestern Europe, Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east....
 in 1189, for example, the Almohad
Almohad

The Almohad Dynasty , was a Berber people, Muslim dynasty that was founded in the 12th century, and conquered all northern Africa as far as Libya, together with Al-Andalus ....
 caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba
Córdoba, Spain

viktor chucchuc he sucsuck my dick||-||-|File:Cordoba Water Wheel.jpg|}Cordova is a city in Andalusia, southern Spain, and the capital of the C?rdoba ....
, in a subsequent attack upon Silves
Silves

Silves is a town and a Municipalities of Portugal in the Algarve, southern Portugal. The city has a population of 10,800 inhabitants and the municipality reaches 33,830 ....
, Portugal in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.

Over 10% of England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
’s population entered in the Domesday Book
Domesday Book

The Domesday Book is the record of the great survey of England completed in 1086, executed for William I of England, or William the Conqueror....
 in 1086 were slaves. Slavery in early medieval Europe
Slavery in medieval Europe

Slavery in early medieval Europe was relatively common. It was widespread at the end of Slavery in antiquity. The etymology of the word slave comes from this period, the word sklabos meaning Slavic people....
 was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it—or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at, for example, the Council of Koblenz in 922, the Council of London (1102)
Council of London (1102)

The Council of London in 1102 was a Roman Catholic church council of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales convened by Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury to debate and pass decrees to reform the clergy....
, and the Council of Armagh (1171). However, the moral aspect was not considered binding by church representatives in regards to the enslavement of Africans. The 15th century Portuguese
Portuguese people

The Portuguese people are the ethnic group or nation native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian peninsula of Southern Europe-Western Europe Europe....
 exploration of the Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
n coast is commonly regarded as the harbinger of European colonialism.

In 1452, Pope Nicholas V
Pope Nicholas V

Pope Nicholas V , born Tommaso Parentucelli, was Pope from March 6, 1447 to his death in 1455....
 issued the papal bull
Papal bull

A Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a pope. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end to authenticate it....
 Dum Diversas
Dum Diversas

Dum Diversas is a papal bull issued on June 18, 1452 by Pope Nicholas V, that is credited by some with "ushering in the African slave trade." It authorized Afonso V of Portugal of Portugal to conquer Saracens and paganisms and consign them to indefinite slavery....
, granting Afonso V of Portugal
Afonso V of Portugal

Afonso V , or Affonso , the African , was the 12th Algarve#History .He was born in Sintra, the eldest son of King Edward of Portugal by his wife, Infanta Leonor of Aragon ....
 the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery which legitimized slave trade under catholic
Catholic

Catholic is an adjective derived from the Greek language adjective , meaning "whole" or "complete". In the context of Christianity ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages....
 beliefs of that time. This approval of slavery was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex
Romanus Pontifex

Romanus Pontifex is a Papal Bull written January 8 1455 by Pope Nicholas V to Afonso V of Portugal of Portugal. As a follow-up to the Dum Diversas, it confirmed to the Crown of Portugal dominion over all lands discovered or conquered during the Age of Discovery....
 bull of 1455. These papal bulls came to serve as a justification for the subsequent era of slave trade and European colonialism
Colonialism

Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over Territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler or exploitation colony in which Indigenous people populations are direct rule, Population transfers, or Genocide....
.

The Byzantine-Ottoman wars
Byzantine-Ottoman wars

The Byzantine-Ottoman Wars were a series of decisive conflicts between the Ottoman Turks and the Byzantine Greeks that led to the final destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Ottoman Empire....
 and the Ottoman wars in Europe
Ottoman wars in Europe

The wars of the Ottoman Empire in Europe are also sometimes referred to as the Ottoman Wars or as Turkish Wars, particularly in older, European texts....
 brought large numbers of Christian slaves into the Islamic world
Islam by country

Islam is the world's Major religious groups after Christianity with over 1.0-1.8 billion adherents, comprising 20-25% of the world population while most estimates figures that there are 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide....
 too. After the battle of Lepanto
Battle of Lepanto (1571)

The Battle of Lepanto took place on 7 October 1571 when a galley fleet of the Holy League , a coalition of the Republic of Venice, the Pope , Spain , the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, the Knights Hospitaller and others, decisively defeated the main fleet of Ottoman Empire war galleys....
 approximately 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed from the Ottoman Turks
History of the Turkish Navy

The Turkish Navy was once the largest sea power in the Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea, Red Sea, Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean; entering the history books of many countries in distant lands such as the British Isles, Scandinavia, Iceland, Labrador, Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Newfoundland and Virginia in the west, to India, Indonesia and Malays...
. Christians were also selling Muslim
Islam by country

Islam is the world's Major religious groups after Christianity with over 1.0-1.8 billion adherents, comprising 20-25% of the world population while most estimates figures that there are 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide....
 slaves captured in war. The Knights of Malta
Knights Hospitaller

The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta is a Roman Catholic Church order based in Rome, Italy....
 attacked pirates and Muslim shipping, and their base became a centre for slave trading, selling captured North Africans and Turks
Turkish people

The Turkish people , also known as "Turks" are defined mainly as citizens of the Republic of Turkey. An early history text provided the definition of being a Turk as "any individual within the Republic of Turkey, whatever his faith who speaks Turkish, grows up with Turkish culture and adopts the Turkish ideal is a Turk." This ideal...
.

Slavery was prominent presumably elsewhere in Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
 long before the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade. The maritime town of Lagos, Portugal
Lagos, Portugal

Lagos is a city and a municipality at the mouth of the river Bensafrim and along the Atlantic Ocean,in the region of Algarve, in Algarve`s Barlavento , Southern Portugal....
, was the first slave market created in Portugal for the sale of imported African slaves - the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444. In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania
Mauritania

Mauritania , officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a country in northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, by Senegal on the southwest, by Mali on the east and southeast, by Algeria on the northeast, and by the Morocco-controlled Western Sahara on the northwest....
. By the year 1552 black African slaves made up 10 percent of the population of Lisbon
Lisbon

Lisbon is the Capital and largest city of Portugal. It is also the seat of the Lisbon and capital of the Lisbon region. Its municipalities of Portugal, which matches the city proper excluding the larger continuous conurbation, has a municipal population of 564,477 in , while the Lisbon Metropolitan Area in total has around 2.8 million inha...
. 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
Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is a country in South America. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, occupying nearly half of South America, the List of countries by population country, and the fourth most populous democracy in the world....
. In the 15th century one third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold. Spain had to fight against relatively powerful civilizations of the New World
New World

The New World is one of the names used for the non-Eurasian/non-African parts of the Earth, specifically the Americas and Australasia. When the term originated in the late 15th century, the Americas were new to the Europeans, who previously thought of the world as consisting only of Europe, Asia, and Africa ....
. However, the Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas was also facilitated by the spread of diseases (e.g. smallpox
Smallpox

Smallpox is an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning spotted, or varus, meaning "pimple"....
) due to lack of biological immunity. (although the natives retaliated by spreading diseases like syphilis
Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero....
 among the Europeans.) Natives were used as forced labour (the Spanish
Spanish people

Spanish people or Spaniards are a nation or ethnic group native to Spain, in the Iberian Peninsula of southwestern Europe. They are often considered an amalgam of different ethnic groups, rather than an ethnic group by itself....
 employed the pre-Columbian draft system called the mita
Mita (Inca)

Mita was mandatory public service in the society of the Inca. It was effectively a form of tribute to the Inca government, in the form of labor, i.e....
), but the diseases caused a labour shortage and so the Spanish colonists were gradually involved in the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of primarily African people supplied to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean....
. The first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World were the Spaniards who labourers on islands such as Cuba
Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is a country in the Caribbean. It consists of the island of Cuba , the island of Isla de la Juventud, and several adjacent small islands....
 and Hispaniola
Hispaniola

Hispaniola is the second-largest and most populous island of the Antilles, lying between the islands of Cuba to the west, and Puerto Rico to the east....
, where the alarming decline in the native
Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples....
 population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population (Laws of Burgos, 1512-1513). The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of primarily African people supplied to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean....
. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake
Francis Drake

Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral , was an England sea captain, privateer, navigation, slaver, and politics of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581....
 and his associates. Slavery was a legal institution in all of the 13 American colonies, and the profits of the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to 5% of the British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, production, and transportation had a profound effect on the socioeconomics and cultural conditions in United Kingdom....
.

According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere
Henry Bartle Frere

Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere, 1st Baronet, Order of the Bath, Order of the Star of India, was a British colonial administrator....
 (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 million or 9 million slaves in India
Indian subcontinent

The Indian subcontinent is a large section of the Asian continent consisting of the land lying substantially on the Indian Plate. The subcontinent includes parts of various countries in South Asia, including those on the continental crust , an Island#Continental islands country on the continental shelf , and an Island#Oceanic islands countr...
 in 1841. In Malabar
Malabar

Malabar is a region of southern India, lying between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea.The name is thought to be derived from the Malayalam word Mala and Iranian language word Bar or from the Turkic words Mal and Bar ....
, about 15% of the population were slaves. Slavery was abolished in both Hindu and Muslim India
Islam in India

Islam in India is the second-most practiced religion after Hinduism. There are approximately Islam by country in India's population as of 2008 , i.e., 13.4% of the population....
 by the Indian Slavery Act V. of 1843. The Imperial
Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty , also known as the Manchu Dynasty, followed the Ming Dynasty in History of China, and was the last ruling Chinese Dynasties of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 ....
 government formally abolished slavery in China
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
 in 1906, and the law became effective in 1910. Indigenous slaves existed in Korea
Korea

Korea is a geographic area composed of two sovereign countries, a civilization, and a former state situated on the Korean Peninsula in East Asia....
. Slavery was officially abolished with the Gabo Reform
Gabo Reform

The Gabo Reform describes a series of sweeping reforms introduced in Korea beginning in 1894 and ending in 1896, during the reign of Emperor Gojong of Korea, in response to the Donghak Rebellion....
 of 1894 but remained extant in reality until 1930. During the Joseon Dynasty
Joseon Dynasty

Joseon , was a sovereign state founded by Taejo Taejo of Joseon, and lasted for approximately five centuries. It was founded in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Goryeo Kingdom at what is today the city of Kaesong....
 (1392–1910) about 30% to 50% of the Korean population were slaves.

Historians say the Arab slave trade
Arab slave trade

The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in Southwest Asia, North Africa, East Africa, and certain parts of Europe during their period of domination by Arab leaders....
 lasted more than a millennium. Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta

Ibn Battuta was a Muslim Berber, scholar and traveller who is known for the account of his travels and excursions called the Rihla. His journeys lasted for a period of nearly thirty years and covered almost the entirety of the known Muslim world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in t...
 tells us several times that he was given or purchased slaves. Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million black African slaves crossed the Red Sea
Red Sea

The Red Sea is a salt water inlet of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb sound and the Gulf of Aden....
, Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering about 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by Asia ; on the west by Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean ....
, and Sahara
Sahara

The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert. At over 9,000,000 square kilometers , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as the United States or the continent of Europe....
 Desert from 650 AD to 1900 AD, and more than the 9.4 to 12 million Africans were brought to the Americas. According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million European
European ethnic groups

The European peoples are the various nations and ethnic groups of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....
s were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa
North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories:...
 and Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299?1923. It was Treaty of Lausanne by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923....
 between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Abolitionist movements

Slaves in Chains (grayscale)
Cicatrices De Flagellation Sur Un Esclave
Slavery has existed, in one form or another, through the whole of recorded human history — as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves. According to the Biblical
Torah

The term "Torah" , or Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch, refers to the entirety of Judaism's founding Halakha and ethical religious texts....
 Book of Exodus, Moses
Moses

Moses is a Hebrew Bible Hebrews religious leader, lawgiver, prophet, to whom the Mosaic authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed. Also called Moshe Rabbeinu in Hebrew , he is the most important prophet in Judaism, and also an important prophet of Christianity, Islam, the Bah?'? Faith, Rastafari movement, Chrislam and many ot...
 led Israelite
Israelite

According to the Tanakh, the Israelites were the descendants of the Biblical patriarch Jacob. They were divided into twelve tribes, each descended from one of twelve sons or grandsons of Jacob....
 slaves out of ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
 — possibly the first written account of a movement to free slaves. Later Jewish laws (known as Halacha) prevented slaves from being sold out of the Land of Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area....
, and allowed a slave to move to Israel if he so desired. The Cyrus Cylinder
Cyrus cylinder

The Cyrus cylinder, also known as the Cyrus the Great cylinder, is a document issued by the Achaemenid emperor Cyrus the Great in the form of a clay cylinder inscribed in Akkadian language cuneiform script....
, inscribed about 539 BC by the order of Cyrus the Great
Cyrus the Great

Cyrus the Great , , also known as Cyrus II of Persia and Cyrus the Elder, was a Persian people Shah . He was the founder of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid dynasty, an empire, perhaps the most wealthy and magnificent in history....
 of Persia, abolished slavery and allowed Jews and other nationalities who had been enslaved under Babylonia
Babylonia

Babylonia was a state in Lower Mesopotamia , Babylon as its franklin. Babylonia emerged when Hammurabi created an empire out of the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad....
n rule to return to their native lands. Abolitionism
Abolitionism

File:BLAKE10.JPGAbolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and emancipate slaves in western Europe and the Americas. The slave system aroused little protest until the 18th century, when rationalist thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment criticized it for violating the rights of man, and Quaker and other evangelical religious groups con...
 should be distinguished from efforts to help a particular group of slaves, or to restrict one practice, such as the slave trade.

There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work of the British Anti-Slavery Society
Anti-Slavery Society

The Anti-Slavery Society or ASS was the everyday name of two different United Kingdom organizations.The first was founded in 1823 and was committed to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire....
. William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce was a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the Atlantic slave trade....
 received much of the credit although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Thomas Clarkson
Thomas Clarkson

Thomas Clarkson , abolitionism, was born at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England, and became a leading campaigner against the Atlantic slave trade in the British Empire....
. Wilberforce was also urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt
William Pitt the Younger

William Pitt, the Younger was a Kingdom of Great Britain politician of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. He became the youngest Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1783 at the age of 24....
, to make the issue his own. After the abolition act was passed these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies.

Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron
West Africa Squadron

The West Africa Squadron, established in 1808 after the passing of the Slave Trade Act 1807 in 1807, was a unit of the Royal Navy that was involved in the suppression of the slavery in West Africa....
 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, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos
Lagos

Lagos is the most populous conurbation in Nigeria with 7,937,932 inhabitants at the 2006 census. It is currently the second most Largest cities in africa, and currently estimated to be the second fastest growing city in Africa , immediately following Bamako....
", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.

Abolitionist pressure in the United States produced a series of small steps forward. After January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited, but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; and those slaves already in the U.S. would not be legally emancipated for another 60 years. The American Civil War
American Civil War

The American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several Naming the American Civil War, was a civil war in the United States....
, beginning in 1861, led to the end of chattel slavery in the United States.

On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly
United Nations General Assembly

The United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal United Nations System and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation....
 of the United Nations
United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, Social change, human rights and achieving world peace....
 adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Guinness Book of Records describes the UDHR as the "Most Translated Document" in the world....
. Article 4 states:
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.


Apologies

On May 21, 2001, the National Assembly of France passed the Taubira
Christiane Taubira

Christiane Taubira is a France politician. President of her party Walwari, she has served as a French deputy at the French National Assembly since 1993, and was re-elected in 1997....
 law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity
Crime against humanity

Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings....
. At the same time the British
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
, Spanish
Spain

Spain or the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in Southern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though Espa?a , Estado espa?ol and Naci?n espa?ola are used interchangeably....
, Dutch
Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
 and Portuguese
Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country on the Iberian Peninsula. Located in southwestern Europe, Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east....
 delegations declined to give an apology for the slave trade and limited to give a "regret." This is probably due to the legal implications of such a statement. It is worth to mention that it is uncertain whether the apology of these four nations are for "slave trade" or "slavery". Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, also remain an open issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first Europeans arrived and the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of primarily African people supplied to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean....
 was performed with a high degree of involvement of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African societies and individuals. Indeed, as already mentioned in this article, slavery persists in several areas of West Africa until the present day.

"There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Ashanti
Ashanti

Ashanti, or Asante, are a major ethnic group of Ashanti Region in Ghana. The Ashanti speak Twi, an Akan languages similar to Fante language....
 of Ghana
Ghana

The Republic of Ghana is a country in West Africa. It borders C?te d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south....
 and the Yoruba
Yoruba

Yoruba may refer to:* Yoruba people, a West African ethnic group* Yoruba language, the language spoken by the Yoruba people* Yoruba religion, the traditional religion of the Yoruba people...
 of Nigeria
Nigeria

Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federation constitutional republic comprising States of Nigeria and one Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria....
 had economies depended solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala
Imbangala

The Imbangala or Mbangala were 17th century groups of Angolan warriors and marauders who founded the kingdom of Kasanje....
 of Angola
Angola

Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordering Namibia to the south, Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, and Zambia to the east, and with a west coast along the Atlantic Ocean....
 and the Nyamwezi
Nyamwezi

The Nyamwezi are the second-largest of over 120 ethnic groups in Tanzania. They live in the northwest central area of the country, between Lake Victoria and Lake Rukwa....
 of Tanzania
Tanzania

Tanzania , officially the United Republic of Tanzania , is a country in East Africa that is bordered by Kenya and Uganda on the north, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the west, and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique on the south....
 would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans."

Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of primarily African people supplied to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean....
. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.

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

In September, 2006, it was reported that the UK Government may issue a "statement of regret" over slavery, an act that was followed through by a "public statement of sorrow" from Tony Blair on November 27, 2006.

On February 25, 2007 the state of Virginia resolved to 'profoundly regret' and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery. Unique and the first of its kind in the U.S., the apology was unanimously passed in both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown
Jamestown Settlement

The Jamestown Settlement was the first permanent England settlement in North America. Named for King James I of England, Jamestown was founded in the Virginia Colony on May 14, 1610....
, where the first slaves were imported into North America in 1619.

On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone
Ken Livingstone

Kenneth Robert Livingstone, is a United Kingdom politician. He has twice held the List of heads of London government in London local government: firstly as leader of the Greater London Council from 1981 until the council was abolished in 1986 by the government of Margaret Thatcher, and secondly as the first Mayor of London, a post he held fr...
 of London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial slave trade. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery," he said pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson

Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an American civil rights activism and Baptist Minister of religion. He was a candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as "shadow senator" for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997....
 praised Mayor Livingstone, and added that reparations should be made.

Reparations


Sporadically there have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves, or sometimes their descendants. Claims for reparations for being held in slavery are handled as a civil law
Private law

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

Nonetheless, from time to time misinformation is circulated (often through e-mail) to United States residents describing a $5000 "slavery tax credit", supposedly passed into law under President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton served as the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He was the fifteenth Democrat elected to that office....
's administration during the 1990s, but never announced to the public. No such credit exists, and persons attempting to promote or take advantage of the alleged credit are subject to prosecution. (See Slavery reparations scam for further information.) A similar scam involves a "tax credit" available to Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii....
.

Religion and slavery

Some argue that the Bible
Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
 condones slavery in Ancient Israelite society by failing to condemn the widespread existing practice present in other cultures. It also explicitly states that under certain circumstances, slavery is morally acceptable. The Bible emphasises often however, that slaves are to be treated fairly by their masters.[NKJV Bible, Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 3:22-4:1] In Islam
Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
, according to Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, Order of the Garter, Order of Merit, Order of the Companions of Honour, Territorial Decoration, Fellow of the Royal Society, Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, Queen's Privy Council for Canada was a Politics of the United Kingdom known chiefly for his leadership of the United King...
 Islamic law involves slavery: "The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property; either as a child, a wife, or a concubine; must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men."

Contemporary slavery

Since 1945, debate about the link between economic growth and different relational forms (most notably unfree social relations of production in Third World agriculture) occupied many contributing to discussions in the development decade (the 1960s). This continued to be the case in the mode of production debate (mainly about agrarian transition in India) that spilled over into the 1970s, important aspects of which continue into the present (see the monograph by Brass, 1999, and the 600 page volume edited by Brass and van der Linden, 1997). Central to these discussions was the link between capitalist development and modern forms of unfree labour (peonage, debt bondage
Debt bondage

Debt bondage, debt slavery, bonded labor or peonage are all terms used to describe an institution where workers are held as unfree labour....
, indenture
Indenture

An Indenture is a legal contract between two parties, particularly for Indentured servant or a term of apprenticeship but also for certain real estate transactions....
, chattel slavery). Within the domain of political economy it is a debate that has a very long historical lineage, and - accurately presented - never actually went away. Unlike advocacy groups, for which the number of the currently unfree is paramount, those political economists who participated in the earlier debates sought to establish who, precisely, was (or was not) to be included under the rubric of a worker whose subordination constituted a modern form of unfreedom. This element of definition was regarded as an epistemologically necessary precondition to any calculations of how many were to be categorized as relationally unfree.

Three types of slavery exist in contemporary society: wage slaves, contract slaves, and slaves in the traditional sense:

  • Wage slavery
    Wage slavery

    Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person is dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, especially if the dependency is total and immediate....
     occurs when a person is employed at a wage level which does not allow the worker an opportunity to leave their employer. Some groups, however, use the term more broadly to refer to a situation in which a person must sell his or her labour power, submitting to the authority of an employer in order to prosper or merely to subsist; creating a hierarchical social condition in which a person chooses a job but only within a coerced set of choices (e.g. work for a boss or starve) which usually excludes democratic worker's control of the workplace and the economy as a whole and unconditional access to a fair share of the basic necessities of life.


  • Contract slavery occurs when people are tricked or compelled into signing contracts requiring them to work under conditions that amount to slavery.


  • Slavery in the traditional sense still exists, though it now operates underground. Actual slavery still operates using much the same methods as in the past, with people (often women and children) being abducted or lured by work offers, transported to another country where they are "sold" - with the men and male children sold for labour, while the women and girls are sometimes destined for domestic work or to work in prostitution, primarily in Asia and the West.


A combination of wage and contract slavery is found in Sarawak
Sarawak

Sarawak is one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Known as Bumi Kenyalang , it is situated on the north-west of the island. It is the largest state in Malaysia; the second largest, Sabah, lies to the northeast....
 mining towns among Indonesia
Indonesia

The Republic of Indonesia , is a transcontinental country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Comprising Islands of Indonesia, it is the world's largest Archipelago state....
n Dayak
Dayak

Dayak may refer to:* Dayak people, an ethnic group native to the interior of Borneo island.* Dayak languages* Troy Dayak, an American former soccer player....
 immigrants. They are required to buy the tools they need to work with. However, as they often do not have the required money, they need to buy them on a loan. Then they discover that local food is so expensive that all their wages are spent on that, so they can't pay off the loan and are forced by law to keep working for no gain.

Though slavery was officially abolished in China in 1910, the practice continues unofficially in some regions.

Slavery also exists in other countries across the world. Groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Group
American Anti-Slavery Group

The American Anti-Slavery Group is a non profit coalition of abolitionist organizations that engages in political activism to abolish slavery in the world today....
, Anti-Slavery International
Anti-Slavery International

Anti-Slavery International is a International nongovernmental organizations, Charitable organization and a lobby group, based in the United Kingdom....
, Free the Slaves
Free the Slaves

Free the Slaves is an international non-governmental organization and lobby group, established to campaign against the modern practice of slavery around the world....
, the Anti-Slavery Society
Anti-Slavery Society

The Anti-Slavery Society or ASS was the everyday name of two different United Kingdom organizations.The first was founded in 1823 and was committed to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire....
, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society continue to campaign to rid the world of slavery.

One example of the contemporary fight against slavery worldwide, is against that which is especially pervasive in agriculture, apparel and the sex industry.

Current situation

Although outlawed in nearly all countries, forms of slavery still exist in some parts of the world. According to a broad definition of slavery used by Kevin Bales
Kevin Bales

Dr. Kevin Bales is an expert on modern slavery and President of Free the Slaves, the USA Sister organization of Anti-Slavery International . He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Roehampton University in London, Visiting Professor at the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of Hull, as well as serving...
 of Free the Slaves
Free the Slaves

Free the Slaves is an international non-governmental organization and lobby group, established to campaign against the modern practice of slavery around the world....
 (FTS), an advocacy group linked with Anti-Slavery International
Anti-Slavery International

Anti-Slavery International is a International nongovernmental organizations, Charitable organization and a lobby group, based in the United Kingdom....
, there were 27 million people (although some put the number as high as 200 million) who worked in virtual slavery in 2007, spread all over the world. According to FTS, these slaves represent the largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history and the smallest percentage of the total human population that has ever been enslaved at once.

FTS claims that present-day slaves have been sold for US$40, in Mali
Mali

Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked nation in West Africa. Mali is the seventh largest country in Africa, bordering Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the C?te d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west....
, for young adult male labourers, or as much as US$1,000 in Thailand
Thailand

The Kingdom of Thailand is an independent country that lies in the heart of Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Laos and Myanmar, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and Myanmar....
 for HIV
HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that can lead to AIDS , a condition in humans in which the immune system begins to fail, leading to life-threatening opportunistic infections....
-free, young females, suitable for work in brothel
Brothel

A brothel, also known as a bordello, cathouse or whorehouse, is an establishment specifically dedicated to prostitution, providing the prostitutes a place to meet and to have sex with clients....
s. The lower limit represents the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave: the price of a comparable male slave in 1850 in the United States would have been about US$ in present-day terms (US$1,000 in 1850). That difference, even allowing for differences in purchasing power
Purchasing power

Purchasing power is the number of goods/services that can be purchased with a unit of currency. For example, if you had taken one dollar to a store in the 1950s, you would have been able to buy a greater number of items than you would today, indicating that you would have had a greater purchasing power in the 1950s....
, is significant. As a result of the lower price, the economic advantages of present-day slavery are clear.

Enslavement is also taking place in parts of Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
, the Middle East
Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
, and South Asia
South Asia

South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east....
. The Middle East Quarterly
Middle East Quarterly

Middle East Quarterly is a quarterly peer reviewed journal devoted to subjects relating to the Middle East. A publication of the Middle East Forum founded by Daniel Pipes, the journal was launched in 1994....
 reports that slavery is still endemic in Sudan
Sudan

Sudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest in the African continent and the Arab World, and List of countries and outlying territories by total area by area....
. In June and July 2007, 570 people who had been enslaved by brick manufacturers
2007 Chinese slave scandal

The 2007 Chinese slave scandal was a series of forced labour cases in Shanxi, China. Thousands of Chinese people including children had been forced to work as slaves in illegal brickyards, and tortured by the owners of the brickyards....
 in Shanxi
Shanxi

is a political divisions of China in the North China of the People's Republic of China. Its one-character abbreviation is Jin , after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period....
 and Henan
Henan

Henan , is a Province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-Chinese character abbreviation is ? , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty province that included parts of Henan....
 were freed by the Chinese government. Among those rescued were 69 children. In response, the Chinese government assembled a force of 35,000 police to check northern Chinese brick kilns for slaves, sent dozens of kiln supervisors to prison, punished 95 officials in Shanxi province for dereliction of duty, and sentenced one kiln foreman to death for killing an enslaved worker.

In Mauritania
Slavery in Mauritania

Slavery in Mauritania is an entrenched phenomenon the national government has repeatedly tried to abolish, banning the practice in 1905, 1981, and August 2007....
 alone, it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved, many of them used as bonded labour. Slavery in Mauritania
Slavery in modern Africa

Slavery in Africa continues today. Slavery existed in Africa before the arrival of Europeans - as did a African slave trade that exported millions of sub-Saharan Africans to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf....
 was criminalized in August 2007. In Niger
Niger

Niger , officially the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east....
, slavery is also a current phenomenon. A Nigerian study has found that more than 800,000 people are enslaved, almost 8% of the population. Pygmies, the people of Central Africa
Central Africa

Central Africa is a core region of the African continent often considered to include Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda....
's rain forest, live in servitude to the Bantus. Some tribal sheiks in Iraq
Iraq

Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros Mountains, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
 still keep blacks
Afro-Arab

Afro-Arab refers to people who possess both black African and Arab ancestry.It may in addition refer to Arabs who are not descended from recent African ancestry but who live on the African continent....
, called Abd, which means servant or slave in Arabic, as slaves. Child slavery
Child slavery

Child slavery generally to involuntary servitude, specifically slavery, performed by minor s....
 has commonly been used in the production of cash crops and mining. According to the U.S. Department of State, more than 109,000 children were working on cocoa
Cocoa

Cocoa is the dried and fully fermented fatty seed of the cacao from which chocolate is made. "Cocoa" can often also refer to the drink commonly known as hot chocolate; Cocoa solids, the dry powder made by grinding cocoa seeds and removing the cocoa butter from the dark, bitter cocoa solids; or it may refer to the combination of both cocoa p...
 farms alone in Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire

, formerly Ivory Coast, officially the , is a country in West Africa. The government officially discourages the use of the name Ivory Coast in English, preferring the French name to be used in all languages ....
 (Ivory Coast) in 'the worst forms of child labor
Child labor

Child labour, or child labor, is the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many countries and international organizations....
' in 2002.

In November 2006, the International Labour Organization
International Labour Organization

The International Labour Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that deals with labour issues. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland....
 announced it will be seeking "to prosecute members of the ruling Myanmar junta
State Peace and Development Council

The State Peace and Development Council is the official name of the military regime of Burma ,which seized power in 1988.The SDPC was originally known as State Law and Order Restoration Council ....
 for crimes against humanity" over the continuous forced labour of its citizens by the military at the International Court of Justice
International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands....
. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), an estimated 800,000 people are subject to forced labour in Myanmar
Myanmar

Burma, officially the Union of Myanmar, is the largest country by geographical area in mainland Southeast Asia, or Indochina. The country is bordered by the People's Republic of China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, and the Bay of Bengal to the southwest with...
.

The Ecowas Court of Justice is hearing the case of Hadijatou Mani in late 2008, where Ms. Mani hopes to compel the government of Niger to end slavery in its jurisdiction. Cases brought by her in local courts have failed so far.

Human trafficking

Trafficking in human beings (also called human trafficking) is sometimes referred to as a form of slavery. The opponents of the practice point out that victims are tricked, lured by false promises, or forced into a "debt slavery" situation by the use against them of coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat and use of physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs of abuse to control their victims. “Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors,” reports the US Department of State in a 2008 study.

Whilst the majority of victims are women, and sometimes children, who are forced into prostitution (in which case the practice is called sex trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are forced into manual labour. Due to the illegal nature of human trafficking, its exact extent is unknown. A US Government report published in 2005, estimates that 600,000-800,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.

See also

Various
  • List of known slaves
    List of known slaves

    Slavery is a social-economic system under which certain persons ? known as slaves ? are deprived of personal freedom and compelled to perform labour or services....
  • Bandeirantes
    Bandeirantes

    The Bandeirantes or "followers of the banner" were members of the 16th-18th century Portuguese slave-hunting expeditions, called Bandeiras, which took place in the New World....
  • Blackbirding
    Blackbirding

    Blackbirding refers to the recruitment of people through trickery and kidnappings to work on plantations, particularly the sugar cane plantations of Queensland and Fiji....
  • Classism
    Classism

    Classism is prejudice and/or discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic class. Like all forms of prejudice and discrimination it goes both ways....
  • Coolies
  • Corporate colonialism
  • Debt bondage
    Debt bondage

    Debt bondage, debt slavery, bonded labor or peonage are all terms used to describe an institution where workers are held as unfree labour....
  • Fazendas
  • Freeborn
    Freeborn

    Freeborn is a prefix associated with John Lilburne , a member of the Levellers, a 17th century England political party. As a word, freeborn means to be born free, rather than to be born in slavery or debt bondage or vassalage....
  • Impressment
    Impressment

    Impressment is the act of compelling people to serve in the military, usually by force and without notice. Unlike "shanghaiing", impressment is carried out by law, or under color #Color of law, and forces the impressed person into military rather than commercial sea service....
  • Indentured servant
    Indentured servant

    An indentured servant is a form of debt bondage worker. The laborer is under contract of an employer for usually three to seven years, in exchange for their transportation, food, drink, clothing, lodging and other necessities....
  • Involuntary servitude
    Involuntary servitude

    Involuntary servitude is a United States law and constitutional term for a person laboring against that person's will to benefit another, under some form of coercion....
  • Master-slave dialectic
    Master-slave dialectic

    The Master-Slave dialectic is a famous passage of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. It is widely considered a key element in Hegel's philosophy system, and has heavily influenced many subsequent philosophers....
  • Sambo's Grave
    Sambo's Grave

    File:Sambo's Grave, from stile.jpgSambo's Grave is the burial site of a young dark skinned cabin boy or slavery, on Consecration in a field near the small village of Sunderland Point, England, near Heysham and Overton, Lancashire, Lancashire....
  • Serfdom
    Serfdom

    Serfdom is the socio-economic status of unfree peasants under feudalism, and specifically relates to Manorialism. It was a condition of Debt bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe....
  • Sexual slavery
    Sexual slavery

    Sexual slavery refers to the organized coercion of unwilling people into different sexual practices. Sexual slavery may include single-owner sexual slavery, ritual slavery sometimes associated with traditional religious practices, slavery for primarily non-sexual purposes where sex is common, or forced prostitution....
  • Slavery at common law
    Slavery at common law

    Slavery at common law refers to the legal status of slavery and the slave trade under the system of law used in England and adopted by its former colonies....
  • Slave ship
    Slave ship

    Slave ships were cargo ships specially converted for the purpose of transporting Slavery, especially newly purchased African slaves.The most important routes of the slave ships led from the northern and middle coasts of Africa to South America and the south coast of what is today the Caribbean and the USA....
  • Subculture
    Subculture

    In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong....
  • Taxation as slavery
    Taxation as slavery

    Taxation as slavery is the belief that taxation results in an unfree society in which individuals are forced to work to enrich the government and the recipients of largesse, rather than for their own benefit....
  • Trafficking in human beings
  • Underclass
    Underclass

    The contemporary concept of the underclass is a sanitized term for what was known in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the undeserving poor, and may have been coined by American sociologist and anthropologist Oscar Lewis in 1961....
  • Unfree labour
    Unfree labour

    Unfree labour is a generic or collective term for those work relations, especially in modern history or Early Modern period history, in which people are employed against their will by the threat of destitution, detention, violence , or other extreme hardship to themselves, or to members of their families....
  • Wage slavery
    Wage slavery

    Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person is dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, especially if the dependency is total and immediate....
  • William Lynch Speech
    William Lynch Speech

    The William Lynch Speech is an address purportedly delivered by William Lynch to an audience on the bank of the James River in Virginia in 1712 regarding control of slavery within the colony....
  • Workhouse
    Workhouse

    A workhouse, was a place where people who were unable to support themselves could go to live and work. The Oxford Dictionary's earliest reference to a workhouse dates to 1652 in Exeter....


Slavery by region
  • Slavery in Brazil
    Slavery in Brazil

    Slavery in Brazil shaped the country's social structure and ethnical landscape. During the Colonialism and for over six decades after the Independence of Brazil, slavery was a mainstay of the Economic history of Brazil, especially in mining and sugar cane production....
    • Quilombo
      Quilombo

      A quilombo is a Brazilian hinterland town founded by people of Afro-Brazilian, Quilombolas, or Maroon . Most of the inhabitants of quilombos were escaped former slaves and, in some cases, a minority of marginalised Portugal, Indigenous peoples in Brazil, Jews and Arabs, and/or other non-black, non-slave Brazilians that faced oppressi...
  • Slavery in Canada
    Slavery in Canada

    Slavery in Canada was practiced for millennia by First Nations, who routinely captured slavery from neighbouring tribes.Chattel Slavery, also a form of hereditary slavery was established by European colonization and settlement of Canada during the 17th century....
  • Slavery in Japan
    Slavery in Japan

    During most of the history of the country, the practice of slavery in Japan involved only indigenous Japanese, as the export and import of slaves was significantly restricted by isolation of the group of islands from other areas of Asia....
  • Slavery in Mauritania
    Slavery in Mauritania

    Slavery in Mauritania is an entrenched phenomenon the national government has repeatedly tried to abolish, banning the practice in 1905, 1981, and August 2007....
  • Slavery in Sudan
    Slavery in Sudan

    Since 1995, international rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and CASMAS have reported that slavery in Sudan is a common fate of captives in the Second Sudanese Civil War....
  • Arab slave trade
    Arab slave trade

    The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in Southwest Asia, North Africa, East Africa, and certain parts of Europe during their period of domination by Arab leaders....
  • Aztec slavery
    Aztec slavery

    In the structure of the Aztec society, Slaves or tlacotin also constituted an important class.This slavery was very different from what Europeans of the same period were to establish in their colonies, although it had much in common with the Slavery#Slavery in Rome and Greece....
  • Barbary pirate
  • Slavery in Bermuda
    History of Bermuda

    This is the history in Bermuda. See also the History of Virginia, history of the Americas, History of the Turks and Caicos Islands, English colonization of the Americas, History of North America, history of the Caribbean and History of present-day nations and states....
  • Slavery in Nazi Germany
    Nazi concentration camps

    Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazism concentration camps were greatly expanded in Germany after the Reichstag fire in 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime....
  • Forced labor in Germany during World War II
    Forced labor in Germany during World War II

    Use of forced labor in Nazi Germany during World War II occurred on a large scale. It was an important part of the Economics of fascism#Political economy of Nazi Germany of conquered territories; it also contributed to the extermination of populations of German?occupied Europe....
  • Slavery in Soviet Union
    Gulag

    The Gulag was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. Gulag is the Russian acronym for The Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies of the NKVD....
  • Thrall
    Thrall

    A thrall was a slave in history of Scandinavia culture during the Viking Age. Unlike many of the forms of slavery throughout human history, the state of being a thrall could be entered into voluntarily, as well as involuntarily....
    s (slaves of the viking
    Viking

    A Viking is one of the Norsemen explorers, warriors, merchants, and Piracy who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe from the late eighth to the early eleventh century....
    s)
  • Swedish slave trade
    Swedish slave trade

    Swedish slave trade occurred in the early history of Sweden and resurfaced during the 17th century, around the time Swedish overseas colonies were established in North America and in Africa ....
  • Slavery in modern Africa
    Slavery in modern Africa

    Slavery in Africa continues today. Slavery existed in Africa before the arrival of Europeans - as did a African slave trade that exported millions of sub-Saharan Africans to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf....
  • African slave trade
    African slave trade

    The slave trade in Africa existed for thousands of years. The first main route passed through the Sahara, tying in to the Arab slave trade. After the European Age of Exploration, African slaves became part of the Atlantic slave trade, from which comes the modern, Western conception of slavery as an institution of African-descended slaves and...
  • Atlantic slave trade
    Atlantic slave trade

    The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of primarily African people supplied to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean....
    • Royal African Company
      Royal African Company

      The Royal African Company was a slavery company set up by the House of Stuart family and City of London merchants once the former retook the England throne in the English Restoration of 1660....
  • Slavery in Asia
    History of slavery

    The history of slavery covers many different forms of human exploitation across many cultures throughout history. Slavery, generally defined, refers to a situation where one human being is considered to be the property of another, and is therefore obligated to perform tasks for their owner without any choice involved....
  • Slavery in seventeen -century China
  • Coastwise slave trade
    Coastwise slave trade

    The coastwise slave trade existed along the eastern coastal areas of North America. Shiploads and boatloads of slaverys were transported from place to place on the waterways that exist there....
  • Kholop
    Kholop

    Kholops were feudally dependent people in Russia between the 10th and early 18th centuries. Their legal status was close to that of slavery.The word kholop was first mentioned in a chronicle for the year of 986....
    s (semi-slaves in Russia
    Russia

    Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
    )
  • Slavery in the United States
    • Origins of the American Civil War
      Origins of the American Civil War

      The main explanation for the origins of the American Civil War is Slavery in the United States, especially the issue of the expansion of slavery into the Territories of the United States....
    • North Carolina v. Mann
      North Carolina v. Mann

      North Carolina v. Mann, Case citation , is a decision in which the Supreme Court of North Carolina ruled that slavery had absolute authority over their slaves and could not be found guilty of committing violence against them....
    • George Washington#Washington and slavery
      George Washington

      George Washington was the leader of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and served as the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States of the United States of Americas ....
    • Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream
      Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream

      Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream is a book by the African American scholar and historian, Lerone Bennett, Jr., published in 2000....
    • United States National Slavery Museum
      United States National Slavery Museum

      The United States National Slavery Museum is a non-profit organization based in Fredericksburg, Virginia, that is fundraising and campaigning to establish a national museum on slavery in United States....


Slavery by religion and era
  • Christianity and slavery
    Christianity and slavery

    The issue of Christianity and slavery is one that has seen intense conflict. While Christian abolitionists were a principal force in the abolition of slavery, the Bible sanctioned the use of regulated slavery in the Old Testament, while the New Testament does not explicitly condemn slavery in all its forms....
  • History of slavery
    History of slavery

    The history of slavery covers many different forms of human exploitation across many cultures throughout history. Slavery, generally defined, refers to a situation where one human being is considered to be the property of another, and is therefore obligated to perform tasks for their owner without any choice involved....
  • Islam and slavery
    Islam and Slavery

    Historically, the Madh'hab traditionally accepted the institution of slavery. Muhammad and many of Sahaba bought, sold, freed, and captured slaves. Slaves benefited from Islamic dispensations which improved their situation relative to that in pre-Islamic society....
  • Judaism and slavery
    Judaism and slavery

    Judaism has been influenced by the experience of slavery of the Hebrews in the land of Ancient Egypt, as narrated in the biblical story of the Exodus and their emancipation by the hand of God and under the leadership of Moses and Aaron....
  • Slavery in ancient Greece
    Slavery in Ancient Greece

    Slavery was common practice and an integral component of ancient Greece throughout its history, as it was in other societies of the time including ancient Israel and early Christian societies....
  • Slavery in ancient Rome
    Slavery in ancient Rome

    The institution of slavery in ancient Rome reduced those held to a condition of less than persons under Roman law. Stripped of many rights, including the ability to marry, slaves were the property of their owners....
  • Slavery in antiquity
    Slavery in antiquity

    Slavery in the ancient world, specifically, in Mediterranean cultures, comprised a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery as a punishment for crime, and the enslavement of prisoner of war....
  • Slavery in medieval Europe
    Slavery in medieval Europe

    Slavery in early medieval Europe was relatively common. It was widespread at the end of Slavery in antiquity. The etymology of the word slave comes from this period, the word sklabos meaning Slavic people....
  • The Bible and slavery
    The Bible and slavery

    The Bible contains several references to slavery.The Hebrew Bible does not promote slavery, but neither does it condemn it. Slavery was customary in Ancient history and taken for granted, as part of the economy and society of the time....
  • Papal bulls on slavery
    • Dum diversas
      Dum Diversas

      Dum Diversas is a papal bull issued on June 18, 1452 by Pope Nicholas V, that is credited by some with "ushering in the African slave trade." It authorized Afonso V of Portugal of Portugal to conquer Saracens and paganisms and consign them to indefinite slavery....
       (1452)
    • Romanus Pontifex
      Romanus Pontifex

      Romanus Pontifex is a Papal Bull written January 8 1455 by Pope Nicholas V to Afonso V of Portugal of Portugal. As a follow-up to the Dum Diversas, it confirmed to the Crown of Portugal dominion over all lands discovered or conquered during the Age of Discovery....
      (1455)
    • Sublimus Dei
      Sublimus Dei

      Sublimus Dei is a papal bull promulgated by Pope Paul III on May 29, 1537, which forbids the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and all other people....
       (1537)


Opposition and resistance
  • Abolition of slavery timeline
    Abolition of slavery timeline

    Abolition of slavery occurred as abolition in specific countries, abolition of the trade in slaves and abolition throughout empires. Each of these steps was usually the result of a separate law or action....
  • Compensated emancipation
    Compensated Emancipation

    Compensated emancipation was a method of ending slavery in countries where slavery was legal. This involved the person who was recognized as the owner of a slave being paid for releasing the slave....
  • First Servile War
    First Servile War

    The First Servile War of 135 BC?132 BC was an unsuccessful slave uprising against the Roman Republic on the island of Sicily, in Enna. It was led by Eunus, a former slave claiming to be a prophet, and a Cilician "Cleon", his military general....
  • International Year
    International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition

    The United Nations General Assembly declared 2004 as the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition .The United Nations General Assembly resolution in its entirety was voted against by the Israel, Palau and the United States, with Australia and Canada abtaining....
  • List of notable opponents of slavery
  • Slave rebellion
    Slave rebellion

    A slave rebellion is an armed uprising by Slavery. Slave rebellions have occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery, and are amongst the most feared events for slaveholders....
  • Slave narrative
    Slave narrative

    The slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the experience of enslaved Africans in United Kingdom and British Empire. Some six thousand former slaves from North America gave an account of their lives during the 18th and 19th centuries, with about 150 published as separate books or pamphlets....


Films
  • Stanley Kubrick
    Stanley Kubrick

    Stanley Kubrick was an influential American-British filmmaker, screenwriter, Film producer and photographer. He directed a number of highly acclaimed and often controversial films....
    , Spartacus
    Spartacus

    Spartacus , according to Roman historians, was a slave and gladiator who became the leader in the somewhat successful slave uprising against the Roman Republic known as the Third Servile War....
    , 1960
  • Sergio Giral
    Sergio Giral

    Sergio Giral is a Cuban-American filmmaker. He left Cuba for the United States of America in 1991....
    , Cimarron, 1967
  • Marlon Brando
    Marlon Brando

    Marlon Brando, Jr. was an Academy Award-winning American actor whose body of work spanned over half a century. He is widely considered one of the greatest actors of all time, and was named the fourth AFI's 100 Years......
    , Burn!
    Burn!

    Burn! is a 1969 film directed by Gillo Pontecorvo; starring Marlon Brando. The plot is loosely based on events in the history of Guadeloupe....
    , 1969
  • Sergio Giral
    Sergio Giral

    Sergio Giral is a Cuban-American filmmaker. He left Cuba for the United States of America in 1991....
    , El Otro Francisco (The Other Francisco), 1975
  • Tomas Gutierrez Alea
    Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

    Tom?s Guti?rrez Alea was an influential Cuban filmmaker. He wrote and directed more than 20 features, documentaries, and short films, known for his sharp insight into post-Revolutionary Cuba, and a delicate balance between dedication to the revolution and criticism of the social, economic, and political conditions of the country....
    , La Ultima Cena (The Last Supper), 1976
  • Alex Haley
    Alex Haley

    Alexander Murray Palmer Haley was an United States writer. He is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and The Autobiography of Malcolm X ....
    , Roots
    Roots (TV miniseries)

    Roots is a 1977 in television American television miniseries based on Alex Haley's work Roots: The Saga of an American Family.Roots received 37 Emmy Award nominations....
    , 1977 mini-series based on Haley's book


  • Carlos Diegues
    Carlos Diegues

    Carlos Diegues, also known as Cac? Diegues, is a Brazilian film director. He is best known as a member of the Cinema Novo movement....
    , Quilombo, 1984
  • Julie Dash
    Julie Dash

    Julie Dash is a United States filmmaker. Her Daughters of the Dust in 1991 was the first full-length film with general theatrical release in the United States by an African American woman....
    , Daughters of the Dust, 1991
  • Haile Gerima
    Haile Gerima

    Haile Gerima born Gondar, Ethiopia, March 4, 1946 is an Ethiopian filmmaker who immigrated to the United States in 1968. At UCLA he, along with award-winning filmmakers Charles Burnett ...
    , Sankofa, 1993
  • Charles Burnett
    Charles Burnett (director)

    Charles Burnett is a MacArthur Award-winning American filmmaker. Like many black families, his parents decided to leave Mississippi for California in the Great Migration, in search of jobs in the booming defense industry and better living conditions, including the chance to vote....
    , Nightjohn, 1996
  • Steven Spielberg
    Steven Spielberg

    Steven Allan Spielberg, KBE is an American film director, screenwriter and film producer. Forbes magazine places Spielberg's net worth at $3.1 billion....
    , Amistad
    Amistad (1997 film)

    Amistad is a 1997 in film Steven Spielberg film based on the true story of a slave mutiny that took place aboard a La Amistad in 1839, and the Amistad that followed....
    , 1997


  • Jonathan Demme
    Jonathan Demme

    Robert Jonathan Demme is an Academy Award for Directing-winning United States film director, film producer and writer....
    , Beloved, 1998
  • Kevin Willmott
    Kevin Willmott

    Kevin Willmott is a professor of film at the University of Kansas and a movie director.A black man, his best known work focuses on black issues including writing and directing Ninth Street, C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America and Bunker Hill ....
    , C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America
    C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

    C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America is a 2004 mockumentary directed by Kevin Willmott. It is a fictional tongue in cheek account of an alternate history in which the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War....
    , 2004 (mockumentary/political drama)
  • Owen 'Alik Shahadah
    Owen 'Alik Shahadah

    Owen 'Alik Shahadah is a film director, African people writer, theorist, photographer and music producer. He is best known for authoring works, which deal with African history, social justice, environmental issues, education and world peace....
    , 500 Years Later
    500 Years Later

    500 Years Later is the title of an independent documentary film directed by Owen 'Alik Shahadah, written by M.K. Asante, Jr. released in 2005....
    , 2005
  • Michael Apted
    Michael Apted

    Michael David Apted, Order of St Michael and St George is an England Film director, Film producer, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the most prolific British film directors of his generation but is best known for his work on the Up series of documentaries....
    , Amazing Grace, 2006
  • Marco Kreuzpainter, Trade
    Trade (film)

    Trade is a 2007 in film German cinema produced by Roland Emmerich and Rosilyn Heller, directed by Marco Kreuzpaintner and starring Kevin Kline....
    , 2007




Bibliography

  • Fernand Braudel
    Fernand Braudel

    Fernand Braudel , was the foremost French historian of the postwar era, and a leader of the Annales School. He organized his scholarship around three great projects, each worth several decades of intense study: "The Mediterranean" , "Civilization and Capitalism" , and the unfinished, "Identity of France" ....
    , Civilization and Capitalism, vol. III: The Perspective of the World (1984, originally published in French, 1979.)
  • Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (1999)
  • Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
    The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture

    The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture written by David Brion Davis and published by Cornell University Press in 1966 won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1967....
     (1988)
  • Finkelman, Paul. Encyclopedia of Slavery (1999)
  • Lal, K. S. (1994) ISBN 81-85689-67-9
  • Gordon, M. Slavery in the Arab World (1989)
  • E. Wyn James, ‘Welsh Ballads and American Slavery’, Welsh Journal of Religious History, 2 (2007), pp.59-86. ISSN 0967-3938.
  • Jacqueline Dembar Greene, Slavery in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, (2001), ISBN 0531165388
  • Nieboer, H. J.
  • Postma, Johannes. The Atlantic Slave Trade, (2003)
  • Rodriguez, Junius P., ed., The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1997)
  • Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia (2007)
  • Shell, Robert Carl-Heinz
    Robert Carl-Heinz Shell

    Robert Carl-Heinz Shell is a renowned South African author and professor of African Studies. He was born in the Cape Province of South Africa....
     Children Of Bondage: A Social History Of The Slave Society At The Cape Of Good Hope, 1652-1813 (1994)
  • William Linn Westermann, The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity (1955), ISBN 0871690403


Uncited sources

  • Hogendorn, Jan and Johnson Marion: The Shell Money of the Slave Trade. African Studies Series 49, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986.
  • The Slavery Reader, ed. by Rigas Doganis, Gad Heuman, James Walvin, Routledge 2003
  • Mintz, S.


United States

  • Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1999), most important recent survey
  • Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II Doubleday (March 23, 2008), ISBN 0385-50625-2 ISBN 978-0385-50625-0
  • Boles, John. Black Southerners: 1619-1869 (1983) brief survey
  • Genovese Eugene D.
    Eugene D. Genovese

    Eugene Dominic Genovese is an award-winning and noted historian of the American South and American slavery. He has been noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and slaves in the South....
     Roll, Jordan Roll (1974), classic study
    • Richard H. King, "Marxism and the Slave South", American Quarterly 29 (1977), 117-31, a critique of Genovese
  • Phillips, Ulrich B. American Negro Slavery:A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime (1918; paperback reprint 1966), southern white perspective
  • Phillips, Ulrich B. Life and Labor in the Old South (1929)
  • Sellers, James B. Slavery in Alabama (1950).
  • Sydnor, Charles S. Slavery in Mississippi (1933
  • Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956), a rebuttal of U B Philipps
  • Weinstein, Allen , Frank O. Gatell, and Lewis Sarasohn, eds., American Negro Slavery: A Modern Reader, third ed. (1978)
  • Mintz, S. , Digital History


Slavery in the modern era

  • Jesse Sage and Liora Kasten, Enslaved: True Stories of Modern Day Slavery, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008 ISBN 9781403974938
  • Tom Brass, Marcel van der Linden, and Jan Lucassen, Free and Unfree Labour. Amsterdam: International Institute for Social History, 1993
  • Tom Brass, Towards a Comparative Political Economy of Unfree Labour: Case Studies and Debates, London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999. 400 pages.
  • Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues, Bern: Peter Lang AG, 1997. 600 pages. A volume containing contributions by all the most important writers on modern forms of unfree labour.
  • Kevin Bales, Disposable People. New Slavery in the Global Economy, Revised Edition, University of California Press 2004, ISBN 0-520-24384-6
  • Kevin Bales (ed.), Understanding Global Slavery Today. A Reader, University of California Press 2005, ISBN 0-520-24507-5freak
  • Kevin Bales, Ending Slavery: How We Free Today's Slaves, University of California Press 2007, ISBN 978-0-520-25470-1.
  • Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis, Slave: My True Story, ISBN 1-58648-212-2. Mende is a Nuba
    Nuba

    Nuba is a collective term used here for the peoples who inhabit the Nuba Mountains, in Kordofan province, Sudan, Africa. Although the term is used to describe them as if they composed a single group, the Nuba are multiple distinct strains and use different forms of speech....
    , captured at 12 years old. She was granted political asylum by the British government in 2003.
  • Gary Craig, Aline Gaus, Mick Wilkinson, Klara Skrivankova and Aidan McQuade: , Joseph Rowntree Foundation
    Rowntree trusts

    The four Rowntree Trusts are funded from the legacies of the Religious Society of Friends chocolate entrepreneurs and social reformers Joseph Rowntree and...
    , 26 Feb 2007, ISBN 978 1 85935 57


External links

Historical
  • , Digital History
  • (DjVu
    DjVu

    DjVu is a computer file format designed primarily to store , especially those containing combination of text, line drawings and photographs. It uses technologies such as image layer separation of text and background/images, progressive loading, arithmetic coding, and lossy compression for bitonal images....
    ) and (a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries)