Slavery
Slavery is involuntary servitude, enforced by
violence
or by other methods. It is sometimes an expectation associated with other
relationships, such as
marriage
and other
family
relations, military service, or
debt
relationships. See
debt
slavery.
Unfree labour is a generic term which includes all forms of slavery and
similar labour systems.
The article on
abolitionism deals in detail with the
19th
century advocacy to abolish formal slavery, in first
Britain and
the
British Empire and later the
United States.
Definition
The
1926 Slavery Convention describes slavery as "...the status or condition
of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of
ownership are exercised..."
The modern conception of slavery is simply that of an individual whose
movements (and usually most of their activities) are under the total control
of another. The slave is the one who cannot leave without explicit permission,
and who will be returned to the 'owner' or 'master' or overseer or controller
if they stray or escape. Typically this is today accomplished through tacit
arrangements with local police and other authorities - by masters with some
hold over them, or status as landowners or other
wealth.
Slavery is in all countries considered to be a criminal activity, outlawed
by
UN conventions.
However some states such as
Myanmar and
Sudan do
facilitate the institution of slavery, according to anti-slavery groups such
as
Free the Slaves.
In chattel slavery, the most common conception of slavery,
one person is treated as the
property
of another person, providing slave labour from birth to
death. This is not the most common relation in modern slavery. Capture of
modern slaves is normally accomplished by deception or
fraud - usually
of the young, who are taken from
family by
slavers who offer them money and some promise or story that this represents
advances on wages in some respectable job, or, simply kidnap the children. The
slaves are usually not worked to death, but at some point usually escape or
are released, often because they are of no further use. For instance, in
Thailand,
slave prostitutes are thrown onto the street as soon as they test positive for
HIV - usually about
three years after they are bought at the age of 13 or 14. Thus modern slaves
are often called disposable people (see also economics of
slavery section below).
It is quite common for a slave to be told that they are working off a debt,
but to have no access to an
accounting for that debt, and no right to take any lower-paying or less
supervised
employment. These people may be considered slaves if they are under the
impression that challenging these conditions, or leaving in protest of them,
would lead to serious
bodily
harm. This is a difficult legal line; almost all
soldiers
and many professional sports players are contracted for a period of years, but
they are not contracted until a debt is paid, and are most definitely
not "sold" into that status by parents or others.
Who becomes a slave
Historically, slaves were often those of a different
ethnicity,
nationality,
religion,
or
race (Animal
rights and
Great Ape personhood advocates would also include
species)
from those who enslaved them, but in general such slaveries were short. It has
been relatively rare in history for an entire ethnic group to be held as
slaves for more than a couple of generations. In most such cases
intermarriage, granting of liberty, right to buy one's own freedom, have
caused slave and slave-owning populations to merge.
Societies characterized by
poverty,
population pressures, and cultural and technological backwardness are
frequently exporters of slaves to more developed nations. Today most slaves
are rural people forced to move to cities, or 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.
Slavery is almost always a matter of
economics
- in effect, those with poor birthright or bad luck in any society have
sometimes been forced to throw themselves on the mercy of those with better
birthright and luck, or simply been forced to provide service to those who had
power and were willing to use it to subordinate others.
Historical examples include the
Slavs and various
African
societies, such as the Ibo of
Nigeria
(see below for details). These were sometimes what we would today consider
prisoners of war.
Individuals could also find themselves condemned to slavery as a result of
being convicted of crimes or in fulfillment of religious requirements.
Origin of the term
For centuries, the Slavic people of Eastern
Europe were
the primary source of slaves for Europe and the
Near East. Because of this, the word for slave in numerous European
languages is derived from the word for Slavs—the
English word being a clear example.
The etymology of the word slave comes from comes the Byzantine Greek
‘sklabos’ meaning
Slav.
History of slavery
Slavery in the Mediterranean world
Slavery in the ancient
Mediterranean cultures was a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery as a
punishment for crime, and the enslavement of
prisoners of war.
Undoubtedly a majority of slaves were condemned to agricultural or
industrial labour and lived hard lives. In some of the city-states of
Greece and in
the
Roman Empire, slaves were a very large part of the economy, and the Roman
Empire built a large part of its wealth on slaves acquired through conquest.
Slaves could be freed by their masters and often rose to positions of
power.
Slavery in the Bible
See
Sabbatical year,
Onesimus
in addition to the details of the
Book of Exodus.
Slavery in Rome and Greece
Some of the greatest
philosophers of
antiquity
vindicated slavery as a natural and necessary institution; and
Aristotle
declared all
barbarians
to be slaves by birth, fit for nothing but obedience. According to the Roman
law, "slaves had no head in the State, no name, no title, no register; they
had no rights of matrimony, and no protection against adultery; they could be
bought and sold, or given away, as personal property; they might be tortured
for evidence, or even put to death, at the discretion of their master.
Cato the Elder expelled his old and sick slaves out of house and home.
Hadrian, one of the most humane of the emperors, wilfully destroyed the eye of
one of his slaves with a
stylus. Roman
ladies punished their maids with sharp iron instruments for the most trifling
offences. A proverb prevailed in the Roman empire: "As many slaves, so many
enemies." Hence the constant danger of servile insurrections, which more than
once brought the republic to the brink of ruin, and seemed to justify the
severest measures in self-defence.
Greek and
Roman
urban slaves, as opposed to agricultural slaves, seem to have had some chance
at
manumission. In Rome, slaves were organised as a
social class, and some authors found in their condition the earliest
concept of
proletariat, given that the only property they were allowed to own was the
gift of reproduction. Slaves lived then within this class with very little
hope of a better life, and they were owned and exchanged, just like goods, by
free men. They had a price as "human instruments"; their life had not, and
their patron could freely even kill them. There was however a sort of class of
freedmen and freedwomen, called liberati, in Roman society at all
periods. Their symbol was the
Phrygian cap. These people were not numerous, but Rome needed to
demonstrate at times the great frank spirit of this "civitas", so the freed
slaves were made famous, as hopeful examples. Freed people suffered some minor
legal disabilities that show in fact how otherwise open the society was to
them—they could not hold certain high offices and they could not marry into
the
senatorial classes. Their children, however, had no prohibitions.
Much of the wealth of classical
Athens came
from its
silver
mines, which
were worked by slave labor under extremely inhumane conditions.
Most of the
gladiators
were slaves. One of them,
Spartacus,
formed an army of slaves that battled the Roman armies in the
Servile War for several years.
The Latin poet
Horace, son of a freedman, served as a military officer in the army of
Brutus and seemed headed for a political career before the defeat of
Brutus by
Octavian and
Antony.
Though Horace may have been an exceptional case, freedmen were an important
part of Roman administrative functions. Freedmen of the Imperial families
often were the main functionaries in the Imperial administration.
Several
Classical comedies feature enterprising home slaves, who must use their
wits to profit from their masters or to provide them their requests.
The beginnings of
Christianity did not seriously change slavery. Though the Christian
leaders often called for good treatment for slaves and condemned the
enslavement of Christians, the institution itself was not questioned. The
shift from chattel slavery to
serfdom in
medieval
Europe is otherwise an economic rather than a moral issue.
The institution of slavery pre-existed
Islam in the
Arab world, and
was permitted under the laws of Islam. Manumission was encouraged, though not
required; however, it was forbidden to free slaves against their will, to
prevent them being turned out to starve in hard times or when they were sick
or old. Usually, only prisoners of war or the children of slaves could be
slaves; however, there were exceptions from time to time, one of the most
notable being the practice of devsirme, by which people were accepted
as payment of taxes. As there was usually an exploitable peasant population to
perform agricultural work, the demand for slaves usually was more for
specialised forms of service—eunuchs,
artisans,
concubines,
janissaries
etc. This often led wealthy people to have their children trained in valuable
skills like carpet making or gardening, in case ill fortune ever made them
captives; without that value of their own, if they could not be ransomed they
would simply have been killed. In
Al-Andalus, Slavic slaves (saqaliba)
were trained in the public administration. Some of them even ruled the
taifa of
Denia.
Race had no
impact on slavery in
Arabia under
Islam.
Islam as a political movement was often a liberating force for those held
in racial slavery. However, like other ancient cultures, Islamic rulers made a
custom of enslaving those defeated in war. Mere conversion to Islam did not
automatically result in manumission, either. As those peoples—notably the
Turks—became
Muslims,
their use as slaves did not end immediately. The Islamic world bought and
captured slaves from Europe and Africa on a large scale for roughly a thousand
years.
Slavery in medieval Europe
Slaves (especially from
Slavic countries) were traded, mainly in
Prague. Sold
by Christians, transported by
Jews and then
bought in the
Middle
East.
The institution of
serfdom in
medieval Europe was weaker than chattel slavery; serfs were obligated to
serve or work the land for their master, but were not chattel property.
Serfdom was reintroduced in
Eastern Europe in 16th and 17th century and persisted until the mid-19th
century. It was abolished by the
Kingdom of Prussia in 1811/1823,
Austria in
1848 and in
Russia in
1861/1864.
See also
feudalism
and
guild.
