Slavery

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Slavery is a social institution in which some group of human beings is treated as the property of another group of human beings, usually for the purposes of the "economic enrichment" of the owners through the forced labor of the enslaved. The term slavery may also be more generally applied to any situation in which someone is forced to work against their will. This is also often referred to as "forced labor".

Slavery has a long and ignoble history, predating written records; said to be rare in hunter-gatherer societies, slavery is thought to have first become feasible 11,000 years ago during the neolithic revolution due to the invention of agriculture and food-surplus storage.^[3] The growth of warfare raised the issue of what to do with captive enemies — and enslavement in such cases may seem morally and economically preferable to a massacre.^[4] David Forsythe writes that by the time Denmark–Norway became the first nation to ban slavery (1792/1803),^{[note 1]} "at the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom".^[5] Unfortunately, widespread abolitionism has not entirely eliminated slavery. According to the Global Slavery Index, as of 2016, about 40.3 million people are still held in slavery, 71% female, and 15.4 million people are held in forced marriage arrangements.^[6]

History[edit]

Beating a slave in Ancient Egypt.

Early slavery[edit]

Evidence indicates that slavery existed worldwide, even before the advent of writing.^[8] Slavery existed in China as early as the Shang dynasty (18^th–12^th century BCE), in India as early as the 1^st century BCE, among Amerindians such as Inca and the Creek, in the early Middle East as recorded by Hammurabi's Code in 1750 BCE, in Ancient Egypt, and in Africa for almost all of its known history.^[8] Slavery tended not to happen in hunter-gatherer societies due to their mobility and low populations.^[3] The advent of agriculture allowed slavery to flourish due to increased populations and the need for labor. The English word slave comes from "Slav", as medieval Europeans frequently enslaved and traded Slavic people.

In the Bible[edit]

Jewish slaves in Egypt during the events of the Book of Exodus. According to the scriptures, it was only bad because it happened to the protagonists.

Slavery is an excellent example of a social institution that the Bible treats as normal and acceptable but which 21st-century humans regard as an abomination. In fact, slavery was an essential part of the economy in Biblical times, and the scriptures treated it as such. Exodus 21:7-11 shows that Hebrew women could be sold into slavery by their fathers with fewer limitations than men would face. Exodus 21:2-5 shows that Hebrew men could sell themselves into slavery to deal with excessive debt. According to Leviticus 25:44, non-Hebrews could become chattel slaves. The Hebrews also practiced hereditary slavery: Exodus 21:4 states that children born to slaves and women married to slaves were themselves slaves. Hebrews could even beat their slaves and kill them, so long as the slave didn't die instantly (Exodus 21:20-21).

There appears to be some disagreement among Christian Dominionists about whether their theocracy would re-institute slavery.^[9]

Some interesting examples of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic moral relativism, eh?

Atlantic slave trade[edit]

Branding a slave in the Caribbean.

The most infamous^{[citation needed]} incarnation of slavery was the Atlantic slave trade, in which Africans sold other Africans (often people captured in war or stuck in debt peonage) to Europeans, who transported said people to work plantations in the Americas. The Atlantic Slave Trade era was unique within humanity's history of slavery for three reasons:^[11]

• Its duration of approximately four centuries (as opposed to much longer in the Middle East)
• Slaves were chosen due to their race. Or due to availability. Or to capacity for work.
• White civilizations enthusiastically adopted racism and racialism as a post hoc justification for African slavery.

Colonization of the New World made slavery increasingly "necessary" for European colonial entrepreneurs. Spain's colonies in the Caribbean enslaved the indigenous populations to harvest sugarcane, and when those indigenous workers were exterminated through harsh treatment, Spain and Portugal turned to Africa in search of more slaves.^[12] Haiti is a good example of this phenomenon. The Spanish drove Hispaniola's native Taino population into extinction in 25 years (!) and imported enslaved Africans; Haiti's population, to this day, is 95% "black".^[13]

Africa was known as "The White Man's Graveyard" for a good reason, with malaria alone preventing any possibility of European conquest until the discovery of Quinine.^[14] Instead, Portugal formed the first relationship with Africa to define Europe's way of obtaining slaves. In 1483 Portugal converted the African Kingdom of the Kongo to Catholicism and then, in 1512, struck an agreement granting the Portuguese access to Kongo's prisoners to be sold as slaves.^[15] Initially, the local kingdoms sold excess slaves that had been captured in wars or convicted of petty crimes, which made those kingdoms fabulously wealthy... for a time. But the wealth from selling slaves was fleeting, and so Kongo began raiding other neighboring kingdoms for more slaves to sell. From then on, African empires such as Kongo, Dahomey, Yoruba, Benin, and Ashanti entered a death spiral. They raced to capture more prisoners to sell as slaves to the Europeans, but the more they stole from each other, the weaker and poorer they became. Kingdoms that participated in the slave trade used European weapons and became unrelentingly militaristic to conquer their neighbors and sell more and more captives into the lucrative markets run by Europeans.^[16][17] Kingdoms stagnated or collapsed, and eventually, Europeans would figure out that "Quinine" thing and devour those African Kingdoms, but that's another story.

The slaves became part of what's known as the "Triangle Trade", where slaves would flow to the New World, raw goods would flow to Europe, and finished goods would flow to Africa. Contrary to popular belief, the ships generally did not travel to all three destinations but rather between just two of the three. Some estimates count about 17 million people who became human cargo, though most estimates put this closer to 12.5 million, of which nearly 2 million died en route.^[18] Spain and England combined transported more than half of these people,^[19] though France, the Netherlands, the US, and Denmark all participated in the Triangle Trade. The 13 colonies/USA imported just under 400,000 slaves; surprisingly, a slight majority were imported from the Caribbean rather than directly from Africa. This makes sense if you aren't Ameri-centric; the real wealth of New World colonialism was found in the Caribbean, with Haiti at one point being the richest polity on Earth,^[20] and the 13 colonies were mostly an afterthought.

Thomas Jefferson banned the importation of slaves in 1807,^[21] just a few weeks before the British did the same, and while the practice of slavery tapered out across the Americas over the next several decades, smuggling was an endemic problem until slavery itself was abolished. The Empire of Brazil became the last country in the Western Hemisphere to emancipate its slaves - in 1888. The last country to officially abolish slavery was Mauritania, which de jure abolished it in 1981, but as no laws were created to enforce the ban, only de facto abolished it in 2007. Despite this, up to 18% of the country's population remains enslaved.^[22] One of the advantages of capitalism is that it encourages the participation of free (non-slave) labor. In 1945 the Trinidadian historian Eric Williams argued that the European abolition of slavery in the 19th century was undertaken not in the name of compassion for the enslaved but to meet the demands of new capitalist economies.^[23]

Ottoman slavery[edit]

The Ottoman Empire and its satellites practiced equal-opportunity slavery,^[24] while the entrepreneurs of the Barbary Coast often raided for slaves across a vast area that stretched from the Mediterranean to as far afield as Iceland.^[25] In addition, Crimean Nogays would also mount frequent slave-gathering expeditions into the territory of what is now Ukraine and Russia. Other merchants utilized human resources from Africa, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. Some of these slaves could rise to high office in the Janissaries,^[26] the imperial harem, or the Ottoman Empire's administration. Slavery among the Ottomans persisted until the 20th century,^[27] but apparently without engendering much of the ensuing bitterness and resentment in some former Ottoman states other than Turkey.^{[citation needed]}

Indian Ocean slave trade[edit]

Slave punishment in Zanzibar, 1890.

Although it's usually called the Arab slave trade, this is a historical misnomer: myriad ethnic groups were involved in trade relations.^[28]

Slavery in the Arab world was a natural outgrowth of the vital role slavery had played in Mediterranean economies since antiquity, and Arab slave traders tapped into existing slave-trade networks established by warring ethnic groups such as the Yao, Makua, and Marava.^[29] Africans sold into slavery in the Middle East became field workers, administrative servants, or even harem guards.^[29] This latter role is why the castration of enslaved African was so common.^{[citation needed]} Islamic religious law, however, forbade the sale of African Muslims into slavery.^[29]

The Indian Ocean slave trade accelerated between 1600 and 1800, peaking during the 19^th century.^[30] This acceleration happened in response to the establishment of clove plantations in Zanzibar, Brazil's need to find a new source of slaves after the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and the world's increasing demand for ivory.^[31] Trade in slaves wasn't abolished in Zanzibar (the Indian Ocean slave trade's main hub) until 1876, under strong British pressure, and slavery remained legal until 1897.^[32]

In the United States[edit]

Plantation slaves in South Carolina.

Slavery in the present-day United States started with indentured servants, primarily of Irish descent.^[35] As crop yields increased, so did the demand for labor. Anthony Johnson, a former indentured servant of African descent, filed a lawsuit to keep his indentured servant for the remainder of the servant's life, officially legalizing slavery in the Virginia Colony in 1665. Soon, many Europeans bought and sold Africans across the Atlantic to keep up with demand. Although the then non-Christian religion of the (African) slaves enabled their permanent and official enslavement through kidnapping as opposed to temporary de facto enslavement ("indentured servitude") through becoming indebted or criminals, their treatment was little different until Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, 1676. Afterward, sharply divergent treatment of British and African forced laborers was employed by enterprising slave-owners so that the former could police and repress the latter, and both groups would be less likely to unite in rebellion in the future. Virginian society transformed from a two-tiered class hierarchy to a three-tiered class-race one.^[36]

The three-fifths clause in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3) related to congressional representation - legally, black slaves were regarded as having 0% rights, not even 60%. Southern states initially advocated that their slaves be counted as full persons so that the South would have more representation in Congress, while the North did not want slaves to count at all, as they were not legal citizens and could not vote. So the Thirteen Colonies could settle their differences and form a nation, the North suggested that slaves could count as half a person - while the South wanted them to be worth 3/4ths; they settled on 3/5ths.^[37]

Areas in the United States where slavery was most common have extreme levels of race-based economic disparity, implying a direct heritage of modern economic problems among American Blacks due to slavery.^[38]

Ultimately, the issue became so divisive that eleven states started a rebellion to preserve slavery in their territories. Fortunately, they lost, and with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery was finally eliminated in the United States... at least, that's what the history textbooks will tell you. Unfortunately, the system of debt peonage still existed throughout the South and allowed whites to still own black people via the use of debt contracts, which many blacks (who were mostly illiterate) were tricked into signing.^[39] Additionally, there were laws known as black codes, which, while race-neutral on the surface, basically existed to have black people thrown in prison for nonviolent offenses like "trespassing" and "breaking contracts". This led to convict leasing, where the prisons would sell cheap labor to private companies, resulting in black people working difficult jobs like coal mining without pay.^[40] Ultimately, these forms of slavery would only end in 1942, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, not wanting to give Japan anything to be propagandistic about as the U.S. entered World War II, had his administration crack down on these forms of neo-slavery. Ultimately, 800,000 blacks suffered under slavery after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.^[41]

The slave overseers and slave managers, unemployed in the reconstituted United States from 1865 after the formal abolition of slavery there, generalized their experience and found a new niche in promoting, teaching, and practicing the new-fangled field of management.^[42]

In Brazil[edit]

Beating a slave in Brazil.

Slavery in Brazil lasted some 300 years, and the region imported about 4 million slaves.^[43] Brazil thus imported more slaves than any other country.^[44] (Compare estimates for Ottoman Turkey: 2.5 million from the Black Sea area in just 250 years,^[45]plus millions more from Africa and elsewhere.^[46]) Africans who died during the passage across the Atlantic were carried to trash dumps where their corpses would be piled alongside household refuse.^[47] As in the Spanish colonies, the Portuguese had treated native populations in Brazil so harshly that they were exterminated.^[48] This trend continued in Brazil, and it's estimated that Brazilian slave-owners treated their African slaves so horrendously that they only survived an average of seven years after arriving in Brazil.^[49] Infant mortality rates were also staggering. This is why Brazil ended up importing so many slaves; they died more than elsewhere.

Brazil used slaves to harvest and process sugarcane and in mines discovering gold (1690s) and diamonds.^[50] Urban demand for slaves also existed, and they were used for household tasks. Slavery was so widespread in Brazil that the country failed to develop an abolitionist movement even while the US struggled to limit slavery and the European powers outlawed it.^[51] Abolitionism did not become a serious movement until after the American Civil War of 1861-1865, and it only started in law schools and colleges. Even then, most of the public didn't get behind it until industrialization made it increasingly clear that slaves were economically non-competitive in the increasingly capitalist world.^[49] Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last Western country to do so.

In Nazi Germany[edit]

Liberated women, still with their Nazi slave badges.

Nazi Germany relied heavily on slave labor during World War Two (1939-1945). After the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the commencement of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the Germans abducted millions of people from (for example) occupied Poland and the Soviet Union to serve as slaves for German industry.^[52] By 1944 the Germans were enslaving people as young as 16.^[53] People worked under the threat of death in horrific conditions, often with beatings and hunger as companions.

Slavery was not limited to factory work and camps. Despite the Nazi ideals of racial purity, Aryan super-men weren't above raping slave women or forcing hundreds of thousands of them into prostitution.^[54] So many pregnancies occurred due to rape that Germany had to set up "birthing centers" to dispose of the unwanted children, in which about 90% of the handled infants died due to neglect.^[55] Women also served as nannies, of all things, to encourage German women to have more children. Slave nannies worked closely with German families and in German households, so the Nazi government required that they be suitable for "Germanization".^[56] In a manner reminiscent of the US Antebellum South, Nazi farms also used slaves for harvests; the government ordered farmers to treat such workers as subhuman.^[57]

Private firms in Germany also heavily utilized slave labor, and they even built their own slave camps to house them.^[58] The famous Reimann family, which has stakes in brands worldwide, recently admitted that it profited from wartime slavery and allowed women to be beaten and sexually abused in its facilities.^[59] Hundreds of German firms are known to have committed similar acts, although many of them subsequently became voluntary members of Germany's slave labor compensation fund.^[60]

Few slave laborers survived the war; many were the cadavers exposed at Allied liberation of labor camps. The main Nuremberg Trial found the Nazi politician Fritz Sauckel guilty for his role in procuring slaves from occupied countries and sentenced him to death by hanging.^[61]

Slavery today[edit]

Contemporary slavery is largely concentrated in South Asia, Africa and the former Soviet Union.

It is estimated that upwards of 27 million people are enslaved today.^[62] This number is higher than any previous time in history, but abolitionists hope the practice can be wiped out in 30 years.^[63] This depends on the definition of slave, as some often count sex workers as slaves, mainly if they are immigrants forced into the work to pay off debts to their contacts that helped them move country. In contrast to Rome or the US pre-13th Amendment, slavery today is less about ownership than about being able to control people and force them to work, whether by physical restraint or other forms of coercion (threats, debt bondage, society viewing certain forms of servitude as normal). It may be done by criminals and against the law, with state involvement, or in areas where the state has little or no power and weak rule of law. Related practices such as child marriage and child soldiers can also be considered slavery.^[64]

In the 21st Century, Quasi-State Legalised Slavery has returned in DAESH-held territory, where female captives, all non-Muslim minorities who have refused to convert to Islam, have been sold and distributed as sexual slaves.^[65] For the DAESH-aligned group Boko Haram, things are quite literally being done by the same book — the repeated kidnapping of women for use as sex slaves counts among their many noble deeds.^[66]

In the US, penal labor has been commonly used as forced labor.^[67] This has been allowed due to a loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment, which allows forced labor to be used as a punishment for prisoners. Many Southern states turned many minor crimes into felonies to arrest African Americans and use them as a form of cheap labor.^[68] Modern corporations have greatly benefited from prisoners being used as low-cost labor.^[69]

Child laborers in Nepal.

Involuntary servitude has usually been seen as a form of slavery, but this belief has commonly been abused by cranks. In 1916, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Butler v. Perry that involuntary servitude could be permitted if it is a service to the state (like jury duty or military service);^[70] this case, though, dealt with a Florida law that forced citizens, many of them African Americans, to be forced to build roadways and likely went against the intent of the Thirteenth Amendment.^[71] Many anti-war activists and civil libertarians have contended that conscription is a form of involuntary servitude and forces someone to kill, violating that person's rights of conscience. Various libertarians, conservatives, and moonbatty liberals have stated that compulsory schooling is a form of involuntary servitude and would prefer homeschooling or unschooling. Anti-vaxxers believe mandatory vaccination violates their rights and forces them to vaccinate their children, which is against their beliefs. Tax protesters have called the income tax a form of slavery.

It is commonly claimed by those on the far right that Islam is mainly responsible for modern slavery and that Islam is a particularly pro-slavery religion.^[72][73] As discussed in this article, no religion or ethnic group has a monopoly on slavery. Some majority-Muslim countries certainly have a problem with modern slavery, including Qatar, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Mauritania, Sudan, and Bangladesh, but so do majority-Christian countries like Haiti, DR Congo, and the Central African Republic, as well as India, Cambodia, China, North Korea, and others.^[74][75]

Countries that formerly participated in the transatlantic slave trade, primarily those in the west, have apologized for said participation, although nations like Nigeria and Ghana have also apologized. From the Nigerian Civil Rights Congress: "We cannot continue to blame the white men, as Africans, particularly the traditional rulers, are not blameless. In view of the fact that the Americans and Europe have accepted the cruelty of their roles and have forcefully apologized, it would be logical, reasonable and humbling if African traditional rulers ... [can] accept blame and formally apologize to the descendants of the victims of their collaborative and exploitative slave trade."^[76]

In nature[edit]

Slave-making ants practice a form of brood parasitism, abducting the young of other ants during raids to increase the worker force of their own colony. It has been suggested the term be changed to pirate ants, which attempts to suggest impressment is somehow not just a specific type of slavery limited to the enslavement of sailors to serve on an enemy vessel.

In BDSM and psychology[edit]

Master/slave relationships are common in consensual BDSM, though this terminology can be quite offensive and be seen as trivializing or glorifying slavery. The practice of race play is also controversial and can cross over into detailed historical reenactment of punishments inflicted on slaves within a certain society that leaves more accurate injuries than modern-day civil war reenactments.^[77]

Apologism and pseudohistory[edit]

As slavery is a historical fact and widely considered a crime against humanity, various parties generate a large amount of woo as a post hoc justification to push their agendas. This includes rightwing cranks, religious apologetics, extreme nationalists, and 'cultural relativists' attempting to defend it, as well as various historical revisionists downplaying its horribleness, or downplaying or even occasionally - on the left-wing side - overplaying its role in history.

Of the religious form, the Bible and Qur'an both allow for slavery. So how are these books "Good" when they clearly allow for something "Bad"? Well, obviously, the version in the book wasn't actually "slavery" at all, of course! Of course, the King James version doesn't mention slaves, only "servants"...never mind that that's one of many euphemisms that translation used when it touched on anything potentially sensitive.

An example of the historical revision form of woo is Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization, which argues that Saint Patrick was the first abolitionist and that as a result of his Christian mission Ireland became the first country on Earth to abolish slavery. In reality, scholars are very skeptical that St. Patrick ever existed and even more skeptical that he ended slavery, given the numerous references to slaves in medieval Gaelic Irish law.

The left-wing historian Edward E. Baptist has claimed that slavery was essential to the industrial revolution, which feeds into the wider narrative in some parts of the left that America would not be so rich today if it were not for slavery. However, Baptist's research has come under severe criticism from multiple people. For example, Baptist's research didn't even get the basic economic concept of GDP right.^[78]

The claim that "Africans sold other Africans into slavery!" is often used as whataboutism to whitewash slavery in the United States. However, slavery in Africa was rather different from that of the US since 1) it was not race-based but rather based on tribal affiliation, 2) it was more akin to indentured servitude, where individuals were enslaved to pay off debts, atone for crimes, or in cases of POWs from rival tribes, work for their release 3) unlike chattel slavery in the US, slaves in Africa generally had rights and agency, and many could even work in government positions.^[79]

See also[edit]

• Debt slavery
• Irish slaves
• Sweatshops
• Human trafficking
• Slavery in the Bible
• Lost Cause of the South
• American Civil War
• Magdalene laundry

External links[edit]

• Anti-slavery International, the oldest humanitarian organization which concentrates on freeing slaves across the globe.

Notes[edit]

References[edit]