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| '''Slavery''' is a labor system in which owners have a high degree of control over workers, and can buy and sell them. The child of a slave mother becomes a slave. Slaves lead a marginal life with little personal freedom but did have their own culture, religion, traditions and norms, and even some property. Slave revolts were a constant threat to the owners, who devised police or military controls to deal with it. It flourishes where land is cheap and labor scarce, and nearly all societies had slavery at one time. Usually the slaves and masters are of the same race, but slavery in the Western Hemisphere involved European masters and African slaves and in the 16-19th centuries Arabs captured Europeans and held them as slaves. People became slaves by being captured in warfare, or being born into the status. In Russia, starving serfs might sell themselves into temporary slavery. Belief that slavery is immoral emerged in the late 18th century, led by Quakers and other Protestant reformers in Britain and America calling themselves "abolitionists." The first large-scale emancipations came in the U.S. (in the northern states only, 1776-1805), in Haiti in 1793. and in the British Empire in 1833. In other cases slavery became unprofitable and died out.
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| Slavery has a long history in the human world. It was practiced in many ancient civilizations such as [[Egypt]], [[Greece]] and [[Rome]]. In modern times, the best-known example of slavery in history involves the use of slaves from black Africa to work on export-oriented plantations in the Caribbean, North America and Brazil. Slavery was a major cause of the [[American Civil War]], which ended slavery there in 1865 and made the Freedmen citizens in 1866 and voters in 1867. In the rest of the Western Hemisphere it ended violently in Haiti (1793-1803)<ref> After a successful slave revolt; see [http://scholar.library.miami.edu/slaves/san_domingo_revolution/individual_essay/david.html]</ref> and elsewhere peacefully from 1830s to the 1880s. The international slave trade was illegal after about 1815, enforced by the British Royal Navy. However, overland slave trading continued into the 20th century with black Africans shipped to the Arab world as slaves s late as the 1950s. Demands for reparations and apologies for American slavery waxed and waned from the 1880s to the present. | | '''Slavery''' is a social system that grants individuals legal rights in property ownership over others. Sometimes this system involves perpetual slavery mandating that the children of a slave woman became slaves. It flourishes only where land is cheap, labor is scarce and the laws explicitly protect the institution. Historically, nearly all societies have had slavery at one time. |
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| "Slavery" is also a rhetorical term in politics used to protest unwanted restrictions on people. For example the American patriots of 1775 denounced British policy as imposing "slavery" on them. American [[Taft-Hartley Act]] of 1947, which allowed the president to stop certain strikes and force the workers back to work, was denounced by labor unions and the economist [[Murray Rothbard]] as slavery;<ref> As Rothbard wrote in the "anti-strike laws" section [http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp For a New Liberty]. </ref> it remains in effect in the U.S.<ref> http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhartley.htm </ref> The term "slavery" is also used to denounce coercive holding of prostitutes.
| | Slavery has a long history in the human world. It was practiced in many ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Israel, Greece and Rome. In Europe, remnants of slavery left over from the Roman Empire died out in the Middle Ages. In modern times, the best-known example of slavery in history involves the use of slaves from southern and western Africa to work on export-oriented plantations in the Caribbean, America and Brazil. Slavery was a major cause of the [[American Civil War]], which ended slavery there in 1865; [[Reconstruction]] made the Freedmen citizens in 1866 and voters in 1867. Demands for reparations and apologies for American slavery waxed and waned from the 1880s to the present. |
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| ==Slavery in Greece and Rome== | | "Slavery" is often used as a metaphor for total political domination by outsiders, or for forced labor under harsh conditions without legal protection, and with no buying and selling. In that sense it has not, however, disappeared from the modern world, although it can take many forms. Various insurgent groups, such as the [[Lord's Resistance Army]] in [[Uganda]], have made a practice of impressing child soldiers, who effectively are slaves. There are international <ref name=UNDodson>{{citation |
| | | title = Slavery in the Twenty-First Century |
| | | first = Howard | last = Dodson |
| | | journal = UN Chronicle Online |
| | |url =http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2005/issue3/0305p28.html}}</ref><ref name=UNbkm>{{citation |
| | | id = Secretary-General SG/SM/10895 HQ/653 |
| | | publisher = United NationsDepartment of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York |
| | | title = World should be inspired by triumph over slavery, remember millions today |
| | | url = http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/sgsm10895.doc.htm | author = Ban Ki-Moon |
| | | date = 2 March 2007 |
| | }}</ref> and [[CIA transnational anti-crime and anti-drug activities#Slavery|national]] anti-slavery activities. |
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| The ancient Greek civilization had practiced slavery, but in different degrees depending on different states ([[city-state]]s). The epics authored by Homer have mentions of slavery. The city-state of [[Sparta]] uses slaves, called helots, most extensively. | | The term "Slavery" is derived from "Slav", referring to people of Slavic origin who were at one time the [[Vikings]] main source of slaves. |
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| Slave labor was vital in the development of the Roman civilization. Rome had acquired massive amount of slaves from military conquests. Around 1 AD, 300,000-350,000 out 900,000 Roman residents were enslaved.<ref>[http://www.unrv.com/culture/roman-slavery.php Roman slavery] </ref>
| | ==Becoming a slave== |
| | People became slaves by being captured during warfare, or being born into it. Sometimes, people might actually sell themselves, as starving serfs did in Russia. In Africa from 1500 to 1800, tribes would war on other tribes to capture slaves, then sell them to traders along the seacoast (usually Arabs), who in turn sold them to slaveships (operated by Europeans) who took them to the Caribbean, South America, and North America. About 12,000,000 slaves were transported; many died in passage or on arrival in the new disease environment. About 3% were brought to the American colonies. |
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| ==Slavery in black Africa==
| | Slaves lead a marginal life, with little personal freedom, but can maintain and develop their own culture, religion, traditions and norms, and in some cases even own property. Often, the slaves and masters are of the same [[race]], but slavery in the western hemisphere generally<ref>A few freed slaves ended up owning their own.</ref> involved European masters and African slaves, and between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries Arab slavers held Europeans as slaves. |
| ==Slavery in Arab world==
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| ==Slavery in Europe==
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| ==Slavery in South America==
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| ==Slavery in the United States and Canada==
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| ==References== | | ==Emancipation== |
| <references/>
| | ===Voluntary emancipation=== |
| | Some slaves might be freed by their masters, especially if they were the children of masters. |
| | ===Natural death of slavery=== |
| | Slavery is an economic system and ends when it is no longer profitable to purchase slaves (rather than use free labor, including serfs or hired workers). When no one was buying, no one could sell. Slavery died out in the Roman Empire, medieval Europe, and in countries such as Brazil and Cuba when the economic turning point was reached. Typically just turned their slaves loose one day, letting them fend for themselves. Some slaves, especially household workers, were luxury goods and were kept even if uneconomical. This sort of slavery persisted among wealthy families in the northern U.S. until 1800. |
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| ==Bibliography== | | ===Slave revolts=== |
| ===Surveys=== | | Many slaves ran away but were usually recaptured. Slave revolts were a constant threat to the owners, who devised police or military controls to deal with it. Every slave society created a system of police patrols and passes that could identify and return runaways. In the western hemisphere, slavery ended violently in Haiti (1793-1803),<ref>After a successful slave revolt; see [http://scholar.library.miami.edu/slaves/san_domingo_revolution/individual_essay/david.html].</ref> Haiti was the main case in history of a successful slave rebellion. |
| * Drescher, Seymour, ed. ''Encyclopedia of Slavery'' (1999)
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| * Finkelman, Paul, and Joseph Miller eds. ''MacMillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery'' (1998)
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| * Patterson, Orlando. ''Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study'' 1982
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| * Phillips, William D. ''Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Atlantic Slave Trade'' 1984
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| * Rodriguez, Junius P. ed. ''The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery'' (1997)
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| ===Topics=== | | ===Government emancipation=== |
| * Campbell, Gwyn. ''The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia'' Frank Cass, 2004; [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=108531907 online edition]
| | In 18th century Europe new values regarding liberty rejected slavery. Abolitionists emerged from the Quaker and other Protestant communities to demand the end of slavery on moral grounds. The first large-scale emancipations came in the United States of America after the Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776. All the northern states abolished slavery by a gradual plan, with New York (1799) and New Jersey (1805) the last ones. SOuth of the Mason-Dixon line (the line separating Pennsylvania and Maryland), all the states kept slavery and became known as the "slave states." The international slave trade was illegal after about 1815, enforced by the British Royal Navy. However, overland slave trading continued into the twentieth century, with Africans shipped to the Arab world as slaves as late as the 1950s. |
| * Davis, David Brion. ''Slavery and Human Progress'' (1984).
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| * Davis, David Brion. ''The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture'' 1966, intellectual history of anti-slavery
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| * Eldredge, Elizabeth A., and Fred Morton; ''Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labor on the Dutch Frontier'' Westview Press, 1994 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100843393 online edition]
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| * Engerman, Stanley L. ''Terms of Labor: Slavery, Serfdom, and Free Labor.'' Stanford University Press. 1999. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=25779117 online edition]
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| * Lovejoy, Paul. ''Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa'' Cambridge UP, 1983
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| * Miers, Suzanne, and Igor Kopytoff, eds., ''Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives'' 1977
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| * Toledano, Ehud R. ''Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East'' U. of Washington Press, 1998 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=35405102 online edition]
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| * Wiedemann, Thomas. ''Greek and Roman Slavery'' 1981
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| ===Slavery in Latin America=== | | ==Metaphor== |
| * Davis, David Brion. ''Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World'' (2006)
| | 'Slavery' is also a rhetorical term in politics used to protest unwanted restrictions on people. For example, the American patriots of 1775 denounced British policy as imposing "slavery" on them. The U.S. [[Taft-Hartley Act]] of 1947, which allows the president to stop certain strikes and force the workers back to work, was denounced by labor unions as a "slave labor law"; it is still in effect. The term 'slavery' (or 'sexual slavery') has been used since 1900 to denounce the holding of prostitutes through coercion and human trafficking. |
| * Eltis, David. "Europeans and the Rise and Fall of African Slavery in the Americas: An Interpretation," ''American Historical Review'' 98 (Dec. 1993): 1399-1423. in JSTOR
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| * Green, William A. ''British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830-1865'' Oxford UP, 1976
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| * Klein, Herbert S. ''African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean'' Oxford University Press, 1988 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=24138434 online edition]
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| * Stinchcombe, Arthur L. ''Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment: The Political Economy of the Caribbean World'' Princeton University Press, 1995 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102884931 online edition]
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| * Walvin, James. ''Black Ivory: Slavery in the British Empire'' (2nd ed 2001)
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| * Ward, J. R. ''British West Indian Slavery, 1750-1834'' Oxford UP 1988
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| ===Slavery in U.S.=== | | ==Slavery in Greece and Rome== |
| | The Ancient Greek civilization had practiced slavery, but in different degrees depending on different states (city-states). [[Sparta]] used slaves, called ''helots'', most extensively. |
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| ===Primary Sources===
| | Slave labor was vital in the development of the Roman civilization. Rome had acquired a massive number of slaves from military conquests. Around 1 AD, 300,000-350,000 out 900,000 Roman residents were enslaved.<ref>[http://www.unrv.com/culture/roman-slavery.php Roman slavery].</ref> |
| * Berlin, Ira, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowlands, eds. ''Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867'' 5 vol Cambridge University Press, 1982. primary sources
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| * Blassingame, John W., ed. ''Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies''.Louisiana State University Press, 1977.
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| * Rawick, George P., ed. ''The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography'' . 19 vols. Greenwood Publishing Company, 1972.
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| ===U.S. === | | ==Slavery in southern and western Africa== |
| * Baptist, Edward E. and Camp, Stephanie M. H., eds. ''New Studies in the History of American Slavery.'' U. of Georgia Press, 2006. 306 pp.
| | ==Slavery in Arab world== |
| *Ira Berlin. ''Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America.'' Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. general survey
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| * Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds. ''Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution'' University Press of Virginia, 1983. essays by scholars
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| * Fogel, Robert W. ''Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery'' W.W. Norton, 1989.
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| * Genovese, Eugene D. ''Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made'' Pantheon Books, 1974. one of the most influential studies
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| * Genovese, Eugene D. ''The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South'' (1967)
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| * Genovese, Eugene D. and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, ''Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism'' (1983)
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| * Higginbotham, Jr., A. Leon ''In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period.'' Oxford University Press, 1978.
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| * Horton, James Oliver and Horton, Lois. ''Slavery and the Making of America.'' Oxford U. Press, 2005. 254 pp.
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| * Kolchin, Peter. ''American Slavery, 1619-1877'' Hill and Wang, 1993. short survey
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| * Morgan, Edmund S. ''American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia '' W.W. Norton, 1975.
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| * Morgan, Kenneth, ed. ''Slavery in America: A Reader and Guide.'' U. of Georgia Press, 2005. 456 pp.
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| * Morris, Thomas D. ''Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860'' U. of North Carolina Press, 1996. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=27950021 online edition]
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| * Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. ''American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime'' (1918), the first major study; criticized as too friendly toward the owners. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=0IO-TT3bz6qhYwOb1ZStgF3&id=SDQOAAAAIAAJ&printsec=toc&dq=Phillips,+Ulrich+Bonnell.+%27%27American+Negro+Slavery:&sig=Puzo6jUjhhEsf7ecJqFKY0fukVM online edition]
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| * Ransom, Roger L., and Richard Sutch. ''One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation'' Cambridge University Press, 1977.
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| * Robinson, Armstead L. ''Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The Demise of Slavery and the Collapse of the Confederacy, 1861-1865.'' U. Press of Virginia, 2005. 326 pp.
| |
| * Stampp, Kenneth M. ''The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South'' (1956),
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| * Tadman, Michael. ''Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South'' University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
| |
| *Jenny B. Wahl. "Slavery in the United States" in ''EH.NET'' (2004) [http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/wahl.slavery.us online]
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| * White, Shane and White, Graham. ''The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons, and Speech. '' Beacon, 2005. 241 pp.
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| * Wood, Betty. ''Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776.'' Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. 131 pp.
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| ==State and local studies==
| | The Arabs were long-standing slave traders southwards through eastern Africa. In the 19th century, the wish to stop this trade was one of the ostensible reasons for building the [[Uganda Railway]]. |
| * Berlin, Ira and Harris, Leslie M., ed. ''Slavery in New York.'' New Press, 2005. 403 pp.
| |
| * Campbell, Randolph B. ''An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas 1821-1865'' Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
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| * Fields, Barbara J. ''Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century'' Yale University Press, 1985.
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| * Follett, Richard. ''The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820-1860.'' Louisiana State U. Press, 2005. 290 pp.
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| * Hurt, R. Douglas. ''Agriculture and Slavery in Missouri's Little Dixie'' University of Missouri Press, 1992
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| * Jewett, Clayton E. and John O. Allen; ''Slavery in the South: A State-By-State History'' Greenwood Press, 2004 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=107029273 online edition]
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| * Kennedy, Cynthia M. ''Braided Relations, Entwined Lives: The Women of Charleston's Urban Slave Society.'' Indiana U. Press, 2005. 311 pp.
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| * Kulikoff, Alan. ''Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800'' University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
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| * Minges, Patrick N. ''Slavery in the Cherokee Nation: The Keetoowah Society and the Defining of a People, 1855-1867'' 2003 deals with Indian slave owners [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105582251 online edition]
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| * Mohr, Clarence L. ''On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia'' University of Georgia Press, 1986.
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| * Mooney, Chase C. ''Slavery in Tennessee'' Indiana University Press, 1957.
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| * Olwell, Robert. ''Masters, Slaves, & Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740-1790'' Cornell University Press, 1998.
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| * Reidy, Joseph P. ''From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South, Central Georgia, 1800-1880'' University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
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| * Ripley, C. Peter. ''Slaves and Freemen in Civil War Louisiana'' Louisiana State University Press, 1976.
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| * Rivers, Larry Eugene. ''Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation'' University Press of Florida, 2000.
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| * Schwalm, Leslie. ''A Hard Fight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina'' University of Chicago Press, 1997.
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| * Sellers, James Benson, ''Slavery in Alabama'' University of Alabama Press, 1950 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=59328919 online edition]
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| * Sydnor, Charles S. ''Slavery in Mississippi''. 1933
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| * Takagi, Midori. ''Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond, Virginia, 1782-1865'' University Press of Virginia, 1999.
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| * Taylor, Joe Gray. ''Negro Slavery in Louisiana''. Baton Rouge: Louisiana Historical Society, 1963.
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| * Wood, Peter H. ''Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion'' 1974.
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| ===Anti-slavery and political debates===
| | [[Saudi Arabia]] officially abolished slavery in 1962. Former slaves of the Royal Family remained in senior government positions; these people were highly respected and quite influential both before and after their emancipation. |
| * Fehrenbacher, Don E. ''Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective'' Oxford University Press, 1981 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=62639532 online edition]
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| * Filler, Louis. ''The Crusade Against Slavery: 1830-1860'' . 1960.
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| * Morrison, Michael A. ''Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War.'' U. of North Carolina Press, 1997. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=54440370 online edition]
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| * Striner, Richard. ''Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery.'' Oxford U. Press, 2006. 295 pp.
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| ==Historiography== | | ==Slavery in Europe== |
| * Boles, John B. and Evelyn T. Nolen, eds., ''Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham'' (1987).
| | ==Slavery in the Caribbean and South America== |
| * Elkins, Stanley. ''Slavery : A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. ISBN 0226204774
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| * Horton, James Oliver and Horton, Lois E., eds. ''Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory.'' New Press, 2006. 272 pp.
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| * Richard H. King, "Marxism and the Slave South", ''American Quarterly'' 29 (1977), 117-31. focus on Genovese
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| * Peter Kolchin, "American Historians and Antebellum Southern Slavery, 1959-1984", in William J. Cooper, Michael F. Holt, and John McCardell , eds., ''A Master's Due: Essays in Honor of David Herbert Donald'' (1985), 87-111
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| * James M. McPherson et al., ''Blacks in America: Bibliographical Essays'' (1971).
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| * Peter J. Parish; ''Slavery: History and Historians'' Westview Press. 1989 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6641514 online edition]
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| ===Historical fiction===
| | Much of the development of agriculture, especially sugar, in the Caribbean involved slaves. |
| * Edward P. Jones. ''The Known World'' New York: Amistad, 2003. ISBN 0060557559 2003 winner of the [http://www.bookcritics.org/PastWinners.htm National Book Critic Circle] for fiction and 2004 winner of the [http://www.pulitzer.org/index.html Pulitzer Prize] for fiction.
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| == External links == | | ==Slavery in the United States and Canada== |
| *[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html Born in Slavery]: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
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| * [http://antislavery.eserver.org/ The Antislavery Literature Project] major academic center for primary sources
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| *[http://www.sonofthesouth.net/Slavery_Pictures_.htm Images of slavery] drawn by [[Thomas Nast]] (has background music)
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| *[http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_overview.htm History of Slavery in America] a historical overview By Ronald L. F. Davis, Ph. D.
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| *[http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/fi/00000075.htm Map of 1820] showing free and slave territories.
| | See [[U.S. slavery era]] |
| * [http://www.dinsdoc.com/slavery-2.htm Classics on American Slavery] collection of old scholarly articles available on-line through Dinsmore Documentation
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| * [http://www.yale.edu/glc/ The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition] documents and teaching guides
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| [[Category: CZ Live]]
| | ==Abolition== |
| [[Category: History Workgroup]]
| | ==References== |
| [[Category: Anthropology Workgroup]]
| | <references/>[[Category:Suggestion Bot Tag]] |
| [[Category: Sociology Workgroup]] | |
Slavery is a social system that grants individuals legal rights in property ownership over others. Sometimes this system involves perpetual slavery mandating that the children of a slave woman became slaves. It flourishes only where land is cheap, labor is scarce and the laws explicitly protect the institution. Historically, nearly all societies have had slavery at one time.
Slavery has a long history in the human world. It was practiced in many ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Israel, Greece and Rome. In Europe, remnants of slavery left over from the Roman Empire died out in the Middle Ages. In modern times, the best-known example of slavery in history involves the use of slaves from southern and western Africa to work on export-oriented plantations in the Caribbean, America and Brazil. Slavery was a major cause of the American Civil War, which ended slavery there in 1865; Reconstruction made the Freedmen citizens in 1866 and voters in 1867. Demands for reparations and apologies for American slavery waxed and waned from the 1880s to the present.
"Slavery" is often used as a metaphor for total political domination by outsiders, or for forced labor under harsh conditions without legal protection, and with no buying and selling. In that sense it has not, however, disappeared from the modern world, although it can take many forms. Various insurgent groups, such as the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, have made a practice of impressing child soldiers, who effectively are slaves. There are international [1][2] and national anti-slavery activities.
The term "Slavery" is derived from "Slav", referring to people of Slavic origin who were at one time the Vikings main source of slaves.
Becoming a slave
People became slaves by being captured during warfare, or being born into it. Sometimes, people might actually sell themselves, as starving serfs did in Russia. In Africa from 1500 to 1800, tribes would war on other tribes to capture slaves, then sell them to traders along the seacoast (usually Arabs), who in turn sold them to slaveships (operated by Europeans) who took them to the Caribbean, South America, and North America. About 12,000,000 slaves were transported; many died in passage or on arrival in the new disease environment. About 3% were brought to the American colonies.
Slaves lead a marginal life, with little personal freedom, but can maintain and develop their own culture, religion, traditions and norms, and in some cases even own property. Often, the slaves and masters are of the same race, but slavery in the western hemisphere generally[3] involved European masters and African slaves, and between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries Arab slavers held Europeans as slaves.
Emancipation
Voluntary emancipation
Some slaves might be freed by their masters, especially if they were the children of masters.
Natural death of slavery
Slavery is an economic system and ends when it is no longer profitable to purchase slaves (rather than use free labor, including serfs or hired workers). When no one was buying, no one could sell. Slavery died out in the Roman Empire, medieval Europe, and in countries such as Brazil and Cuba when the economic turning point was reached. Typically just turned their slaves loose one day, letting them fend for themselves. Some slaves, especially household workers, were luxury goods and were kept even if uneconomical. This sort of slavery persisted among wealthy families in the northern U.S. until 1800.
Slave revolts
Many slaves ran away but were usually recaptured. Slave revolts were a constant threat to the owners, who devised police or military controls to deal with it. Every slave society created a system of police patrols and passes that could identify and return runaways. In the western hemisphere, slavery ended violently in Haiti (1793-1803),[4] Haiti was the main case in history of a successful slave rebellion.
Government emancipation
In 18th century Europe new values regarding liberty rejected slavery. Abolitionists emerged from the Quaker and other Protestant communities to demand the end of slavery on moral grounds. The first large-scale emancipations came in the United States of America after the Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776. All the northern states abolished slavery by a gradual plan, with New York (1799) and New Jersey (1805) the last ones. SOuth of the Mason-Dixon line (the line separating Pennsylvania and Maryland), all the states kept slavery and became known as the "slave states." The international slave trade was illegal after about 1815, enforced by the British Royal Navy. However, overland slave trading continued into the twentieth century, with Africans shipped to the Arab world as slaves as late as the 1950s.
Metaphor
'Slavery' is also a rhetorical term in politics used to protest unwanted restrictions on people. For example, the American patriots of 1775 denounced British policy as imposing "slavery" on them. The U.S. Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which allows the president to stop certain strikes and force the workers back to work, was denounced by labor unions as a "slave labor law"; it is still in effect. The term 'slavery' (or 'sexual slavery') has been used since 1900 to denounce the holding of prostitutes through coercion and human trafficking.
Slavery in Greece and Rome
The Ancient Greek civilization had practiced slavery, but in different degrees depending on different states (city-states). Sparta used slaves, called helots, most extensively.
Slave labor was vital in the development of the Roman civilization. Rome had acquired a massive number of slaves from military conquests. Around 1 AD, 300,000-350,000 out 900,000 Roman residents were enslaved.[5]
Slavery in southern and western Africa
Slavery in Arab world
The Arabs were long-standing slave traders southwards through eastern Africa. In the 19th century, the wish to stop this trade was one of the ostensible reasons for building the Uganda Railway.
Saudi Arabia officially abolished slavery in 1962. Former slaves of the Royal Family remained in senior government positions; these people were highly respected and quite influential both before and after their emancipation.
Slavery in Europe
Slavery in the Caribbean and South America
Much of the development of agriculture, especially sugar, in the Caribbean involved slaves.
Slavery in the United States and Canada
See U.S. slavery era
Abolition
References
