Chattel slavery

Chattel slavery was the type of slavery practiced in the Americas

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

 during the time of the Atlantic slave trade

Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...

.
Slaves were used as workers for Americans.

Pawnship

Pawnship or debt bondage slavery involves the use of people as collateral

Collateral (finance)

In lending agreements, collateral is a borrower's pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan.The collateral serves as protection for a lender against a borrower's default - that is, any borrower failing to pay the principal and interest under the terms of a loan obligation...

 for debt

Debt

A debt is an obligation owed by one party to a second party, the creditor; usually this refers to assets granted by the creditor to the debtor, but the term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral obligations and other interactions not based on economic value.A debt is created when a...

. Slave labor is performed by the debtor, or a relative

Kinship

Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. And descent groups, lineages, etc. are treated in their own subsections....

 of the debtor

Debtor

A debtor is an entity that owes a debt to someone else. The entity may be an individual, a firm, a government, a company or other legal person. The counterparty is called a creditor...

 (usually a child). Typically, a child, used as collateral in pawnship, married into the creditor's

Creditor

A creditor is a party that has a claim to the services of a second party. It is a person or institution to whom money is owed. The first party, in general, has provided some property or service to the second party under the assumption that the second party will return an equivalent property or...

 family causing the debt to be forgiven.

Origins

Slavery existed in Africa well before the Atlantic slave trade and even before Islamic slave trade. Slavery in Africa more than likely originated from wartime

Wartime

The term wartime could refer to:* Wartime, Saskatchewan, a small community in Saskatchewan, Canada.* Wartime Station, Saskatchewan, a small community in Saskatchewan, Canada.* A formal state of war, as opposed to peacetime...

. When a kingdom

Monarchy

A monarchy is a form of government in which the office of head of state is usually held until death or abdication and is often hereditary and includes a royal house. In some cases, the monarch is elected...

 won a war or battle, opponents were taken captive and used as slaves. Another reason for slavery was to increase ownership of land by increasing the amount of laborers available to work the land. It is for this reason that slave raids became common on neighboring villages.

Abolition

Slavery in Africa decreased immensely due to the effects of the Atlantic, Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Trans-Saharan slave trades. Complete legal abolition of slavery did not cease in Africa until the 21st Century, with Mauretania outlawing the practice only in 2007; however, according to the UN slavery still exists in much of North Africa.