Slavery is the systematic exploitation of labour. As a social-economic system, slavery is a legal or informal institution under which a person (called "a slave") is compelled to work for another (sometimes called "the master" or "slave owner").^[1] Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed to varying extents, forms and periods in almost all cultures and continents.^[2] 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 (such as wages) in return for their labour. As such, slavery is one form of unfree labor. Today, slavery is formally outlawed in nearly all countries, but the phenomenon continues to exist in various forms around the world.^[3][4]

Today freedom from slavery is an internationally recognised human right. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.^[5]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Etymology

Prior to the 10th century, words other than "slave" were used for all kinds of unfree labourers. For instance, the old Latin word servus was used for both serfs and chattel slaves.

The word slave, in Modern English, originates from the Middle English sclave which first appeares around 1290. The spelling was based on Old French esclave, from the Medieval Latin sclavus and ultimately from the Byzantine Greek sklabos (from sklabenoi) meaning "Slavic people" which appears around 580AD. Sklavos approximates the Slavs' own name for themselves, the Slověnci. The spelling of English slave, closer to its original Slavic form, first appears in English in 1538.^[6][7][8] The term originally referred to various peoples from Eastern and Central Europe, as many Slavic and other people from these areas were captured and sold as slaves by the Vikings, and later a Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I (912–973), and his successors.

Thralldom is an archaic synonym for slavery, and thrall a synonym for slave. This comes from Old English þræl (also rendered thrǣl), from Old Norse þræll (thræll).^[9][10]

Definitions

Entering Gulag,^[11] Soviet forced-labour camp (a leaf from Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya's notebook)^[12]

In its narrowest sense, the word "slave" refers to people who are treated as the property of another person, household, company, corporation or government. This is referred to as chattel slavery.^[13] 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 (such as wages) in return for their labour.^{[citation needed]} The 1926 Slavery Convention described slavery as "...the status and/or condition of a person over whom 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 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 (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.^[14]

The current usage of the word serfdom is not usually synonymous with slavery, because medieval serfs were considered to have rights, as human beings, whereas slaves were considered “things”—property.^[15]

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.^{[citation needed]}

• The International Labour Organization says that child labour usually amounts to forced labour.^{[citation needed]}
• Many anarchists, socialists, and communists have condemned "wage slavery" or "economic slavery", where workers are forced to choose between selling their labour to a boss and facing starvation, poverty or a lack of prosperity. This is related to the notion of economic coercion.^{[citation needed]}
• Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.^[16]
• Some feel that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute slavery.^{[17][18][19][20]} Gladiators, for example, were often slaves, with Spartacus being a famous example.
• Some proponents of animal rights 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.^[21]
• Some feel that child support orders amount to slavery .^{[22][23][24][25]} (Labour is compelled in typical court orders, and loss of employment often results in jail time for nonsupport.)

Economics

Gustave Boulanger's painting The Slave Market.

Economists have attempted to model during which circumstances slavery (and milder variants such as serfdom) 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 become available.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[26]

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.^[27] Some Russian scholars have argued that the Soviet Union's technological development was hindered by Stalin's use of slave labour.^{[citation needed]}

History of slavery and the slave trade

Main article: History of slavery

Slave market in early medieval Eastern Europe. Painting by Sergei Ivanov

Slavery traces back to the earliest records, such as the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1760 BC), which refers to it as an established institution.^[28] Slavery in ancient cultures was known to occur in civilizations as old as Sumer, and it was found in every civilization, including Ancient Egypt, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient Greece, Ancient Persia,^[29] Rome and parts of its empire, and the Islamic Caliphate. Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.^[30] Records of slavery in Ancient Greece go as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is often said that the Greeks as well as philosophers such as Aristotle accepted the theory of natural slavery i.e. that some men are slaves by nature.^[31][32]

As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply. The people subjected to Roman slavery came from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Greeks, Berbers, Germans, Britons, Thracians, Gauls (or Celts), Jews, Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labour, but also for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War led by Spartacus was the most famous and severe. By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome.^[33]

13th century slave market in Yemen

The early medieval slave trade was mainly to the East: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, pagan Central and Eastern Europe, along with the Caucasus and Tartary, were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek and Jewish merchants (known as Radhanites) were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.^[34][35][36]

Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant warfare between Muslims and Christians. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In raid against Lisbon, Portugal in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.^[37]

Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it—or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at, for example, the Council of Koblenz in 922, the Council of London (1102), and the Council of Armagh (1171).^[38] However, the moral aspect was not considered binding by church representatives in regards to the enslavement of Africans. The 15th century Portuguese exploration of the African coast is commonly regarded as the harbinger of European colonialism.

In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery which legitimized slave trade under catholic beliefs of that time. This approval of slavery was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. These papal bulls came to serve as a justification for the subsequent era of slave trade and European colonialism.^[39]

The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of Christian slaves into the Islamic world too.^[40] After the battle of Lepanto approximately 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed from the Ottoman Turks.^[41] Christians were also selling Muslim slaves captured in war. The Knights of Malta attacked pirates and Muslim shipping, and their base became a centre for slave trading, selling captured North Africans and Turks.

The maritime town of Lagos, Portugal, was the first slave market created in Portugal for the sale of imported African slaves - the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444.^[42][43] In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania.^[43] By the year 1552 black African slaves made up 10 percent of the population of Lisbon.^[44][45] 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.^[43] In the 15th century one third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.^[46] Spain had to fight against relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. However, the Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas was also facilitated by the spread of diseases (e.g. smallpox) due to lack of biological immunity.^[47] (although the natives retaliated by spreading diseases like syphilis among the Europeans.) Natives were used as forced labour (the Spanish employed the pre-Columbian draft system called the mita),^[48] but the diseases caused a labour shortage and so the Spanish colonists were gradually involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World were the Spaniards who labourers on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola, where the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population (Laws of Burgos, 1512-1513). The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.^[49] England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake 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.^[50]

Historians say the Arab slave trade lasted more than millennium.^[51] Ibn Battuta tells us several times that he was given or purchased slaves.^[52] Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million black African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 AD to 1900 AD,^[53][54][55] or more than the 9.4 to 12 million Africans brought to the Americas.^[56] According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries.^[57]

Abolitionist movements

Main article: Abolitionism

Three Abyssinian slaves in chains. Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s, out of an estimated population of between 8 and 16 million.^[58]

From the title page of abolitionist Anthony Benezet's book Some Historical Account of Guinea, London, 1788

Photographed in 1863 – Slave endured harsh treatment. The scars are a result of a whipping by his overseer, who was subsequently removed by the master.

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 Book of Exodus, Moses led Israelite slaves out of ancient 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, and allowed a slave to move to Israel if he so desired. The Cyrus Cylinder, inscribed about 539 BC by the order of Cyrus the Great of Persia, abolished slavery and allowed Jews and other nationalities who had been enslaved under Babylonian rule to return to their native lands. Abolitionism 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. William Wilberforce received much of the credit although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Thomas Clarkson. Wilberforce was also urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt, 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 seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.^[59] Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.^[60]

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,^[61] 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, beginning in 1861, led to the end of chattel slavery in the United States.

On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 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 law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. At the same time the British, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese 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".^{[citation needed]} 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 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.^[62] 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 of Ghana and the Yoruba of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans."^[63]

Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.^[64]

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^[65] 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.^[66]

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, where the first slaves were imported into North America in 1619.^[67]