Slavery

From New World Encyclopedia
Revision as of 00:08, 4 December 2006 by AdminBot (talk | contribs) (Robot: Remove date links)


Slavery is the social and legal designation of specific persons as property, for the purpose of providing labor and services for the owner without the right to refuse work or receive payment.

Definitions

Where slavery is a legal practice, slaves may be held under the control of another person, group, organization, or state. The legal designation of slavery is rare, as most societies consider slavery illegal, and authorities consider persons held in such conditions to be victims of unlawful imprisonment.

The 1926 Slavery Convention described slavery as "the status or/and condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised." Therefore, 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 social and/or economic influence.

The word slave comes from the Latin term sclavus. The current usage of the word serfdom is not usually synonymous with slavery because serfs are considered to have some rights. In the strictest sense of the word, "slaves" are people who are not only owned but who have no rights and are not paid monetarily.

The International Labour Organization defines "forced labor" 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: military service, prison sentences, emergencies, and minor community services.[1] The ILO asserts that child labor amounts to forced labor in which the child's work is exacted from the family as a whole.

In some historical contexts, compulsory labor to repay debts by adults (such as indentured servitude) has been regarded as slavery, depending upon the rights held by such individuals.

Mandatory military service (conscription, colloquially called a "draft" in some places) in liberal democracies is a controversial subject occasionally equated with slavery by those on the political left. [2] By extension, acceptance of conscription is seen as a sign of chauvinist, ultra-nationalist, and/or fascist ideologies, justified by philosophies such as the Hegelian notion of nations having rights which supercede those of individuals.

Chattel slavery

Chattel slavery is a type of slavery defined as the absolute legal ownership of a person or persons by another person or state, including the legal right to buy and sell them just as one would any common object. They are forced to live life as they are instructed to by their owners. They are not held responsible for their actions; however, the product of the slaves' labor is the legal property of their owner as well. Such definitions have caused contradictions at times, as with the "three-fifths compromise" in the United States, which counted southerners' slaves as three-fifths of a human for the sake of population count (thus guaranteeing white slaveholders more votes in congressional and presidential elections) yet not as people—rather, property—for legal purposes.

Chattel slaves were considered movable property in most countries at one point or another, although the practice has been banned in most places (enforcement of such bans may be another matter). Although those in more developed countries tend to believe that this form of slavery is nonexistent, in actuality, chattel slavery appears to be thriving in other countries.[3] Most of today's slaves are present in Africa, Asia, and to a lesser extent Latin America.

In some parts of North Africa, a person can become the property of another person for life, bought and sold for as little as $15.[4] The price can raise significantly for female slaves.[5] Once sold, the slaves are branded on their backs or arms as a form of identification for their owners. They can also be inherited from family to family, passed down from one generation to the next, like an heirloom. Children are also candidates for chattel slavery. The children whose parents are bought or traded into slavery receive the same treatment as the adults. They are sold into a different family than their parents and work in less than adequate conditions. They stay in damp pits, alone and away from their families. Most of the time, days can go by without a single meal. Some owners believe that if they keep their slaves hungry, it will keep them awake to work longer days.[citation needed]

Other uses of the term

Many progressive thinkers have discussed the idea of "wage slavery" or "economic slavery" to describe conditions where people are forced into a workforce that cannot sustain their minimal needs. Investigative journalists such as Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America) have described the plight of low-wage workers, much in the fashion of George Orwell's social commentary:

I think one should start by saying that a plongeur is one of the slaves of the modern world. Not that there is any need to whine over him, for he is better off than many manual workers, but still, he is no freer than if he were bought and sold. His work is servile and without art; he is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only holiday is the sack. He is cut off from marriage, or, if he marries, his wife must work too. Except by a lucky chance, he has no escape from this life, save into prison. At this moment there are men with university degrees scrubbing dishes in Paris for ten or fifteen hours a day. One cannot say that it is mere idleness on their part, for an idle man cannot be a plongeur; they have simply been trapped by a routine which makes thought impossible.[6]

In some political philosophies such as anarcho-capitalism (also known as free market anarchism), government taxation of citizens is considered a form of slavery.[7]

Some proponents of animal rights apply the term "slavery" to the condition of some or all non-human animals.[8]

Certain feminists might consider marriage a form of slavery. Additionally, some international activists label forced or arranged marriage as slavery because it often requires women to be "sold" for a dowry.[9]

History of Slavery

Gustave Boulanger's painting The Slave Market.

No clear or formal timeline delineates the formation of slavery. The earliest records show evidence of slavery, such as the Code of Hammurabi, which refers to slavery as an already established institution. By modern standards, the exploitation of women in some ancient cultures might also be identified as slavery. Slavery, in this case, refers to the systematic exploitation of labor for work (which can include sexual services).

Slavery in the ancient world was closely tied to warfare; Greek and Roman sources are replete with references thereof. Captors frequently forced their prisoners of war into slavery, often as manual laborers in military, civil engineering, or agricultural projects, or sometimes as household servants.

In ancient Greco-Roman times, slavery was related to the practice of infanticide. Unwanted infants were exposed to nature to die; slave traders often found abandoned infants and brought them up in an atmosphere of slavery and prostitution. In his First Apology, Justin Martyr condemned the abandonment of infants because the child might die and, most importantly, he might fall into the wrong hands:

But as for us, we have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do any one an injury, and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution.

In Africa, slaves were often taken by other Africans by means of capture in warfare. The captors frequently assigned their slaves to manual labor or traded them for goods or services from other African kingdoms.

The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade is thought to have originated with trans-Saharan slavery, though it soon became centered around settlements and ports in East Africa. It is one of the oldest slave trades, predating the European transatlantic slave trade by hundreds of years. Male slaves were employed as servants, soldiers, or laborers by their owners. Arab, Indian, and Oriental traders sent female slaves - mostly from Africa - to Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms to work as female servants or as sexual slaves. Slave traders captured and transported slaves northward across the Sahara desert and the Indian Ocean region into Arabia and the Middle East, Persia, and the Indian subcontinent. African slaves may have crossed the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean in as large of numbers as crossed the Atlantic, perhaps more; some sources estimate that between 11 and 17 million slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900, compared to 11.6 million across the Atlantic from 1500 to the late 1860s. The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade continued into the early 1900s.[10]

The European or Transatlantic slave trade originated around 1500, during the early period of European discovery and settlement in West Africa and the Atlantic. Slaves were often captured in raids or purchased outright from other African kingdoms. Many slaves were originally captured as prisoners of war.[11] A large number of slaves were transported from what is now Guinea, the Congo, and Angola. Over 11 million men and women were transported in ships across the Atlantic to various ports in the New World. Far from accepting their imprisonment, many transported Africans actively resisted the brutality of their captors. African slaves engaged in at least 250 shipboard rebellions during the period of the translantic crossings.[12]

How people became slaves

Captive Andromache by Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton — a Trojan princess enslaved after the Trojan war

Historically, people entered slavery through capture. Warfare often resulted in slavery for prisoners who could not pay ransom. Slavery originally may have been a more humane replacement of execution, but its increased use in warfare led to widespread enslavement of those of other groups; these sometimes differed in ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race but often were the same. The dominant group in an area might have taken slaves with little fear of suffering the same fate, but the possibility might have been present from reversals of fortune as when, at the height of the Roman Empire, Seneca warned:

And as often as you reflect how much power you have over a slave, remember that your master has just as much power over you. "But I have no master," you say. You are still young; perhaps you will have one. Do you not know at what age Hecuba entered captivity, or Croesus, or the mother of Darius, or Plato, or Diogenes?

When various powerful nations fought among themselves, as with the Atlantic slave trade, anyone might have found himself enslaved. Brief raids or kidnapping could lead to the enslavement of those secure from warfare. St. Patrick recounted being kidnapped by pirates in his Confession, and the Biblical figure Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers.

Organized slavery has 2 elements:

Purpose of slavery
Prior to the development of agriculture 10,000 years ago, retaining captive slaves held no advantage. Agriculture lifted humans out of subsistence living, delivering higher rates of productivity.
Justification of slavery
Farming provided the master with an opportunity to put his prisoners of war (POWs) to work for him. Whether this constitutes slavery remains questionable since the POWs might, in fact, have initiated the war. Other slaves were criminals or people who could not pay their debts.

The more popular notion of slavery originates from the collectivist identity that employs arbitrary measures such as skin color or ethnicity to label a certain race of people as inferior. [citation needed] This collectivist identity (even in the more individualistic cultures) explains why even after U.S. slavery was abolished, the indentured serfs and their descendants still suffered from discrimination and the misconception that they were intellectually "less human." [citation needed] A popular rationalization was that God provided black people as a source of slave labor.[citation needed]

The origin of slavery was considered by the philosopher Hegel, to be an important stage in the development of self-consiouness, see master slave dialectic. In this sense neither a master nor a slave is fully self-conscious.

Societies characterized by poverty, population pressures, and cultural and technological lag are frequently exporters of slaves to more developed nations. Today most slaves are rural people forced to move to cities, or those purchased in rural areas and sold into slavery in cities. These moves take place due to loss of subsistence agriculture, thefts of land, and population increases.

In many cultures, persons convicted of serious crimes could be sold into slavery. The proceeds from this sale were often used to compensate the victims (the Code of Hammurabi prescribes this for failure to maintain a dam, to compensate victims of the flood), and as a consequence, the criminal might be sold only if he lacked the property to make the compensation. Other laws and other crimes might enslave the criminal regardless of his property; some called for the criminal and all his property to be handed over to his victim.

Also, persons have been sold into slavery so that the money could be used to pay off debts. This could range from a king ordering a debtor sold with all his family, to the poor selling off their own children. In times of dire need such as famine, people have offered themselves into slavery not for a purchase price, but merely so that their new master would feed them.

In most institutions of slavery, the children of slaves are themselves the property of the master. Laws varied as to whether the status of the mother or of the father determined the fate of the child.

Abolitionist movements

Main article: Abolitionism

Slavery has existed, in one form or another, through the whole of human history; so, too, have movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves. However, Abolitionism should be distinguished from efforts to restrict one practice of slavery, such as the slave trade. According to the Biblical Book of Exodus, Moses led Israelite slaves from ancient Egypt. Later, Jewish laws in Halacha prevented slaves from being sold out of the Land of Israel and allowed a slave to move to Israel if he so desired.

Progress came incrementally in most areas of the world. For instance, in 1772, a legal case concerning James Somersett made it illegal to remove a slave from England against his will. A similar case, that of Joseph Knight, took place in Scotland five years later and further ruled slavery to be contrary to national law. At the same time, across the Atlantic Ocean, slaves in the United States were in a state of limbo, able to live semi-freely in states where slavery was illegal; however, as the case of Dred Scott ruled, many slaves in this category were still considered property and, therefore, could be re-enslaved.

Proclamation of the abolition of slavery by Victor Hughes in the Guadeloupe, the 1st November 1794

There were slaves in mainland France, but the institution was never fully authorized there. However, slavery was vitally important in France's Caribbean possessions, especially Saint-Domingue. In 1793, unable to repress the massive slave revolt of August 1791 that had become the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolutionary commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel declared general emancipation. In Paris, on February 4, 1794, Abbé Grégoire and the Convention ratified this action by officially abolishing slavery in all French territories. Napoleon sent troops to the Caribbean in 1802 to try to reestablish slavery. They succeeded in Guadeloupe, but the ex-slaves of Saint-Domingue defeated the French army and declared independence. The colony became Haiti, the first black republic, on January 1, 1804.

Following the work of campaigners in the United Kingdom, the Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act on March 25, 1807. The act imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. The intention was to entirely outlaw the slave trade within the whole British Empire. The Slavery Abolition Act, passed on August 23, 1833, outlawed slavery itself in the British colonies. On August 1, 1834, all slaves in the British Empire were emancipated but were still indentured to their former owners in an apprenticeship system which was finally abolished in 1838.

Around this time, slaves in other parts of the world, aided by abolitionists, also began their struggle for independence. Slaves in the United States who escaped ownership would often make their way to the northern part of the country or Canada through what became known as the "Underground Railroad". Former slaves and abolitionists assisted in this northward movement to freedom. Famous abolitionists of the U.S. include Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown. Following the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery in the United States in 1865.

In the U.S. and UK the question arose of what to do with the massive increase in the number of people needing work, housing, etc. To answer this question, Sierra Leone and Liberia were established for former slaves of the British Empire and United States respectively. Supporters of the effort believed the repatriation of slaves to Africa would be the best solution to the problem as well as setting right the injustices done to their ancestors. While these efforts may have been in good faith, and indeed some black people (notably throughout parts of the Harlem Renaissance) embraced repatriation, other motives existed; for instance, trade unions did not want the cheap labor of former slaves around, and racism (i.e. solving the problem by getting rid of black people) also played a role. Regardless of the motives, both efforts failed as sanctuaries for former slaves.

The 1926 Slavery Convention, an initiative of the League of Nations, was a turning point in banning global slavery. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the UN General Assembly, explicitly banned slavery. The United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery convened to outlaw and ban slavery worldwide, including child slavery. In December 1966, the UN General Assembly adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was developed from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 8 of this international treaty bans slavery. The treaty came into force in March 1976 after it had been ratified by 35 nations. As of November 2003, 104 nations had ratified the treaty.

Most common types of work

The most common types of slave work are domestic service, agriculture, mineral extraction, army make-up, industry, and commerce.[13] In the 21st century, domestic services are required in a wealthier household and may include up to four female slaves and their children on its staff. The chattels (as they are called in some countries) are expected to cook, clean, sometimes carry water from an outdoor pump into the house, and grind cereal.

Many slaves have been used in agriculture and cultivation. The strong, young men are forced to work long days in the fields, with little or no breaks for rehydration or food. There have been efforts by developed countries to discourage trade with countries where such servitude is legal, however.

In mineral extraction, the majority of the work is done by the men. They provide the salt that is used during extensive trade, not as much in this day and time, but this was especially true in the 19th century.[14] Many of the men that are bought into chattel slavery are trained to fight in their nation’s army and other military services. This is where a great deal of slave trading amongst wealthy officers takes place. Different military leaders can see the strength of a young slave, and make trades to get the young chattel on his side. Chattel slaves are trained in artisan workshops for industry and commerce.[15] The men are in metalworking, while the females are in the textile ones. They are sometimes employed as agents and assistants in commerce, even though they go without benefits or breaks. The majority of the time, the slave owners do not pay the chattels for their services.

Female slaves, mostly from Africa, were long traded to the Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms by Arab traders, and sold into sexual slavery.

Effects of slavery

Baton Rouge, La., April 21863, slave named Peter

Slavery has had a role in the economic development of the United States. Slaves helped build the roads upon which they were transported. The cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane harvested by slaves became important exports for the USA and the Caribbean countries.

Slavery in the United States had important political implications. During the westward expansion of slavery during the early and mid-1800's, many Northerners feared that the South would gain control of Congress if the Western territories entered the Union as slave states. Attempts by the North to exclude slavery from these territories angered the South and helped bring on the American Civil War in 1861.

There is a pragmatic tendency to consider the effects of slavery in purely monetary terms, and even then the context is often dropped. There are a broad array of effects arising from the adoption of slavery. In terms of the economics of slavery, slaves provide a cheap source of labor. The reason that slave labor was cheap was because there was much agricultural work to be done, and to hire non-slave workers would have been more expensive. As European managers came to understand the vulnerability of workers in the tropics, they gave more attention to the diets of their slave laborers to reduce the death rate from scurvy, malaria, typhoid and yellow fever, etc. Still in many ways slavery was first and foremost financially based in nature; if agricultural machines had been invented and could have been had at less cost than the equivalent number of slaves per work area, than slavery would have quickly become a thing of the past in the Americas because of the bottom-line economics of the situation. In the end, slavery was abolished not only because it was morally repugnant but because European growers no longer needed cheap slave labor.

The basis of slavery is a slave master and the serf. Whilst the treatment of slaves varied, its evident that in those cases where slaves were treated better, slaves were accorded more 'humanitarian' lifestyles, in the sense that they were more likely to be productive, trained and efficacious, perhaps taking pride in their work. The alternative 'harsh' treatment has the opposite reaction, reducing morale, lowering productivity, requiring higher levels of supervision, but importantly also removing all incentive for 'slave' workers to find a more productive way of accomplishing the task. Toil is the source of inspiration if you are free to realize the benefits. By implication, slavery was undermining innovation in a second way. For these reasons, America did benefit from slavery in the short term by solving a short term shortage of plantation labor, but in the long term it only undermined the productivity incentive, and thus a nation's capacity to produce wealth. A look at US economic growth during the periods of slavery and after will demonstrate as much.

A further effect of slavery was to relatively denigrate the value of manual labor itself. Hard work became something people did if they were forced to do it, rather than for self-improvement. It created an idle slave owning aristocracy who, while asset rich, were income poor. Although they didn't pay their slaves a wage, they were still responsible for feeding, housing, providing simple medical care, and (in some cases) education for all of the slaves' lives from birth to death. Even if a slave was too old, young or crippled to work, he still had to be supported by someone. If a slave wasn't treated reasonably, he would only do the minimum work necessary.

Slavery caused fear, suspicion and hatred between slave masters and serfs. Often these feelings escalated into uprisings resulting in the destruction of property, murder, rape, incarceration or desertion. These conflicts also increased the cost of business and judicial intervention.

Apologies

In June 1997, Tony Hall, a Democratic representative for Dayton, Ohio proposed a national apology by the U.S. government for slavery.

On May 21, 2001, the French National Assembly voted the Taubira law which recognized slavery as a crime against humanity.[16]

At the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, at Durban, South Africa, the US representatives walked out, on the instructions of Colin Powell. A South African Government spokesman claimed that "the general perception among all delegates is that the US does not want to confront the real issues of slavery and all its manifestations." However, the US delegates stated that they left over the resolution that equated Zionism with racism.

At the same time the British, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese delegations blocked an EU apology for slavery.

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

Reparations

As noted above, there have been movements to achieve reparations for those held in involuntary servitude, or sometimes their descendants. There is a growing modern movement to donate funds achieved in reparations efforts not to the descendants of those held as slaves in prior generations, but instead to donate them to those freed from slavery in this generation, in other countries and circumstances.

In general, reparation for being held in slavery is handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since slaves are exactly those people who have no access to the legal process. Systems of fines and reparations paid from fines collected by authorities, rather than in civil courts, have been proposed to alleviate this in some nations.

In the United States, the reparations movement often cites the 40 acres and a mule decree. Recent effort have also targeted businesses that profited from the slave trade and issuing insurance on slaves.

In Africa, the 2nd World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission was convened in Ghana in 2000. Its deliberations concluded with a Petition being served in the International Court at the Hague for US$777 trillion against the United States, Canada, and European Union members for "unlawful removal and destruction of Petitioners' mineral and human resources from the African continent" between 1503 up to the end of the colonialism era in the late 1950s and 1960s.[citation needed]

The contemporary status of slavery

According to the Anti-Slavery Society, "Although there is no longer any state which recognizes, or which will enforce, a claim by a person to a right of property over another, the abolition of slavery does not mean that it ceased to exist. There are millions of people throughout the world — mainly children — in conditions of slavery, as well as in various forms of servitude which are in many respects similar to slavery."[2] It further notes that slavery, particularly child slavery, was on the rise in 2003. It points out that there are countless others in other forms of servitude (such as pawnage, bonded labor and servile concubinage) which are not slavery in the narrow legal sense.

In Sudan UN-peace workers have acknowledged the existence of slavery in the country. Although officially banned, it is still practiced widely, and there is even trading going on at the country by means of slave markets.

In the United States, offenses against the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution were being prosecuted as late as 1947[17]

The economics of contemporary slavery

According to a broader definition used by Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves, another advocacy group linked with Anti-Slavery International, there are 27 million people (though some put the number as high as 200 million) in slavery today, spread all over the world (Kevin Bales, Disposable People). This is, also according to that group:

  • The largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history.
  • The smallest percentage of the total human population that has ever been enslaved at once.
  • Reducing the price of slaves to as low as US$40 in Mali for young adult male laborers, to a high of US$1000 or so in Thailand for HIV-free young females suitable for use in brothels (where they frequently contract HIV). This represents the price paid to the person, or parents.
  • This represents the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave in raw labor terms—while the price of a comparable male slave in 1850 America would have been about US$1000 in the currency of the time, that represents US$38,000 in today's dollars, thus slaves, at least of that category, now cost only one one-thousandth (0.1%) of their price 150 years ago.

As a result, the economics of slavery is stark: the yield of profit per year for those buying and controlling a slave is over 800% on average, as opposed to the 5% per year that would have been the expected payback for buying a slave in colonial times. This combines with the high potential to lose a slave (have them stolen, escape, or freed by unfriendly authorities) to yield what are called disposable people—those who can be exploited intensely for a short time and then discarded, such as the prostitutes thrown out on city streets to die once they contract HIV, or those forced to work in mines.

For more on modern Asian unfair labor practices, see the article on sweatshops.

Human trafficking

Main article: Human trafficking

Trafficking in human beings, sometimes called human trafficking, or sex trafficking (as the majority of victims are women or children forced into prostitution) is not the same as people smuggling. A smuggler will facilitate illegal entry into a country for a fee, but on arrival at their destination, the smuggled person is free; the trafficking victim is enslaved. Victims do not agree to be trafficked: they are tricked, lured by false promises, or forced into it. Traffickers use coercive tactics including deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat and use of physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs of abuse to control their victims. While the majority of victims are women, and sometimes children, forced into prostitution, other victims include men, women, and children forced into manual labor.

Due to the illegal nature of trafficking, the extent to which it occurs remains unknown. A U.S. Government report published in 2003 estimates that 800,000-900,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.

Potential for total abolition

Those 27 million people produce a gross economic product of US $13 billion annually. This is also a smaller percentage of the world economy than slavery has produced at any prior point in human history. That, plus the universal criminal status of slavery, the lack of moral arguments for it in modern discourse, and the many conventions and agreements to abolish it worldwide, make it likely that it can be eliminated in this generation, according to Free The Slaves. There are no nations whose economies would be substantially affected by the true abolition of slavery.

A first step towards this objective is the Cocoa Protocol, by which the entire cocoa industry worldwide has accepted full moral and legal responsibility for the entire comprehensive outcome of their production processes. Negotiations for this protocol were initiated for cotton, sugar and other commodity items in the 19th century—taking about 140 years to complete. Thus it seems that this is also a turning point in history, where all commodity markets can slowly lever licensing and other requirements to ensure that slavery is eliminated from production, one industry at a time, as a sectoral simultaneous policy that does not cause disadvantages for any one market player.

Timeline of the abolition of slavery

Below is a list of countries (in alphabetical order) and the year in which they formally abolished slavery:

Country Date Notes
Upper Canada 1793 Abolished slavery in 1793 under Sir John Graves Simcoe, but did not free all the existing slaves until 1810
Trinidad & Tobago 1838 Abolished the last vestiges of slavery two years ahead of schedule through nonviolent protests
France 1794, 1848 See article on abolitionism
United Kingdom 1834 See section above and article on abolitionism
United States 1791, 1865 Vermont abolishes slavery; 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution
Cuba 1886 Cuba was then still a Spanish colony
Brazil 1888 The last country to do so in the Americas
Saudi Arabia 1962 See Human rights in Saudi Arabia
Mauritania 1981 Slavery still exists in a de facto capacity [3]

Famous slaves and former slaves

  • Bilal ibn Ribah, slave during the 6th century who was freed and converted to Islam in early days of the religion. He was a Sahaba and was chosen by Prophet Muhammad to be his muezzin.
  • Saint Patrick, abducted from Britain, enslaved in Ireland, escaped to Britain, returned to Ireland as a missionary
  • John Brown, escaped and wrote of conditions in Deep South (not to be confused with the abolitionist of the same name)
  • Olaudah Equiano, sometimes called Gustavus Vassa, purchased his own freedom, prominent African/British author and figure in the abolitionist cause
  • Ann Plato (1820–?), free black schoolmistress and writer, member of the Talcott Street Congregational Church, Hartford CT and the first African American woman to publish a book of essays (1841)
  • Frederick Douglass, abolitionist writer and speaker
  • Enrique, the slave of Ferdinand Magellan, who became the first man to go around the globe
  • Juan Francisco Manzano, Cuban slave and poet.
  • Malinche, famous translator during the Spanish conquest of Mexico
  • Onesimus, owned by Philemon, mentioned in the Bible
  • Aesop, Greek author, famous for his fables
  • Spartacus, led the Servile Revolt
  • Toussaint L'Ouverture, led the independence of Haiti slave revolt after being freed.
  • Harriet Tubman, nicknamed Moses because of her efforts in helping other slaves escape through the Underground Railroad
  • Nat Turner, escaped and led a revolt in Southampton County, Virginia
  • Zumbi, in colonial Brazil, escaped and joined the Quilombo dos Palmares – the largest settlement of escaped slaves in the history of Brazil – later becoming its last and most famous leader
  • Mende Nazer, a woman who was an alleged slave in Sudan and transferred to London to serve a diplomat's family there
  • Terence, Roman comic poet who wrote before and possibly after his freedom
  • Granny Nanny, famous female leader of Jamaican Maroons
  • Dred Scott, a slave who attempted to sue for his freedom in Scott v. Sandford
  • William and Ellen Craft, slaves who wrote a tale (Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom) describing their flight from slavery in America in the 1800s

Bibliography

  • Fernand Braudel, 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 (1988)
  • Finkelman, Paul. Encyclopedia of Slavery (1999)
  • Lal, K. S. Muslim Slave System in Medieval India (1994) [4] ISBN 81-85689-67-9
  • Nieboer, H. J. Slavery as an Industrial System (1910)
  • Rodriguez, Junius P., ed., The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1997)

Primary sources

USA

Modern slavery

  • 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 0-520-24507-5

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  1. ILO
  2. The Most Important Argument Against the Draft
  3. Bought and Sold by Charles Jacobs and Mohamed Athie
  4. Aikman, 53
  5. [1]
  6. Orwell, George. Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
  7. Rothbard, Murray. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto
  8. Spiegel, Marjorie. The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery, New York: Mirror Books, 1996.
  9. World: Slavery Survives, Despite Universal Abolition
  10. Mintz, S. Digital History Slavery, Facts & Myths
  11. Mintz, S. Digital History Slavery, Facts & Myths
  12. Mintz, S. Digital History Slavery, Facts & Myths
  13. These are just a few jobs listed in the article titled "Archaeology and Slavery" in World Archaeology Magazine
  14. (Alexander, 50)
  15. Alexander, 49)
  16. Assemblée Nationale
  17. United States v. Rowe, 73 Federal Supplement 76, as cited by Traver, Robert (1967). The Jealous Mistress. Boston: Little, Brown. 


Films

  • C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (mockumentary/political drama)
  • Haile Gerima, "Sankofa", 1993
  • Owen 'Alik Shahadah, "500 Years Later" , 2005 500 years later
  • Alex Haley, " Roots", 1977 miniseries based on the book by Alex Haley
  • Marlon Brando, "Burn!", 1969
  • Stanley Kubrick, "Spartacus", 1960
  • Tomas Gutierrez Alea, La ?ltima cena - "The Last Supper", 1976
  • Charles Burnett, "Nightjohn", 1996
  • Julie Dash, "Daughters of the Dust", 1991
  • Jonathan Demme, "Beloved", 1998
  • Carlos Diegues, "Quilombo", 1984
  • Sergio Giral,
    • El Otro Francisco (The Other Francisco), 1975
    • "Cimarron," 1967
  • "Maluala", 1979
  • Gene Hackman, "Mississippi Burning", 1988
  • Steven Spielberg, "Amistad", 1997

External links

Media


Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.