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The history of slavery happens over many cultures, nationalities, and religions. Slavery has happened from ancient times to the present day. Its victims have come from many different ethnicities and religious groups. People's social, economic, and legal beliefs about slaves have changed throughout history.[1]
Slavery was used very little in some hunter-gatherer populations.[2][3] When people used agriculture, there were more times to use chattel slavery.[4] Slavery was an institution in the first civilizations. For example, slavery happened in Sumer in Mesopotamia.[5] Slavery was mentioned in the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BC). This Code calls slavery and institution that was in place.[6] In the ancient world, slavery became common in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.[7][8][4]
It became less common in Europe during the Early Middle Ages. Both Christians and Muslims enslaved each other in times of war in the Mediterranean and Europe.[9] Islamic slavery happened in Western and Central Asia, Northern and Eastern Africa, India, and Europe from the 600s to 1900s. Islamic law allowed enslavement of non-Muslims. Slaves here were usually trafficked from non-Muslim places: the Balkan slave trade, the Crimean slave trade, the Bukhara slave trade; the Andalusian slave trade, the Trans-Saharan slave trade, the Red Sea slave trade, and the Indian Ocean slave trade.
Starting in the 16th century, the transatlantic slave trade begin. This trade was started by merchants from Portugal. They mostly bought imprisoned Africans for gold and ivory from West African kingdoms. They took the slaves to Europe's colonies in the Americas. The merchants sold slaves for popular goods, such as gun, gunpowder, copper manillas, and cloth. This trade had high demand. The slave trade started many wars and larger enslavement of Africans.[10] In India and the New World, slaves were apart of the workforce. The transatlantic slave trade eventually stopped after governments abolished slavery. There were many efforts to stop slavery in practice. For example, the British Preventative Squadron, and the American African Slave Trade Patrol were used to stop slavery.
Recently, human trafficking is an international problem. It is thought that about 25–40 million people were enslaved in 2013. Many of these slaves were in Asia.[11] During the 1983–2005 Second Sudanese Civil War, many people were taken into slavery.[12] In the late 1990s, there was evidence of child slavery and trafficking on cacao plantations in West Africa.[13]
Slavery in the 21st century continues and creates about $150 billion in profit every year.[14] Regions with armed conflict are more likely to have slavery. Modern transportation has made human trafficking easier.[15] In 2019, there were almost 40 million people in slavery. 25% of these were children.[14] 61% are used for forced labor. 38% live in forced marriages.[14] Other types of modern slavery are prison labor, sex trafficking, and sexual slavery.
Somewhat more convincing are statistical surveys of large numbers of societies that show that slavery is rare among hunter-gatherers, is sometimes present in incipient agricultural societies, and then becomes common among societies with more advanced agriculture. Up to this point slavery seems to increase with increasing social and economic complexity.
Summary characteristics of hunter-gatherer societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCSS). [...] Social stratification [: ...] Hereditary slavery 24% [...].
Slavery was a widespread institution in the ancient world (1200 BCE – 900 CE). Slaves could be found in simpler societies, but more important and better known was the existence of slavery in most advanced states. Indeed, it is hard to find any ancient civilizations in which some slavery did not exist. Slave use was sometimes extensive.
In Sumer, as in most ancient societies, the institution of slavery existed as an integral part of the social and economic structure. Sumer was not, however, a slavery based economy.
e.g. Prologue, "the shepherd of the oppressed and of the slaves" Code of Laws No. 307, "If any one buy from the son or the slave of another man".
For most Africans between 10000 BCE to 500 CE, the use of slaves was not an optimal political or economic strategy. But in some places, Africans came to see the value of slavery. In the large parts of the continent where Africans lived in relatively decentralized and small-scale communities, some big men used slavery to grab power to get around broader governing ideas about reciprocity and kinship, but were still bound by those ideas to some degree. In other parts of the continent early political centralization and commercialization led to expanded use use of slaves as soldiers, officials, and workers.
It is to the Neolithic period of Ghana's history that one must look for the earliest evidence of slavery. Technological advancement and dependence on agriculture created a need for labor. The available evidence indicates that around the 1st century AD farming was done by individual households consisting of blood relations, pawns, and slaves. The earliest evidence of slavery is, therefore, likely to be found in the field of agriculture." and "The retention of captives taken in battle was a recognized practice among every people before the beginning of written history. The ancient records of the Assyrians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Persians, Indians and Chinese are all full of references to slaves and types of labor for which they were usually employed. With the Greeks and the Romans, the institution of slavery reached new heights.
Between the Renaissance and the French Revolution, hundreds of thousands of Muslim men and women from the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean were forcibly transported to Western Europe.
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