History of Global Slavery! !
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from Discovery Education: Understanding Slavery
PLEASE DO NOT WRITE ON THIS PACKET SO OTHER STUDENTS MAY USE IT!!
The institution of slavery is as old as civilization. Many nations and
empires were built by the muscles of slaves.
But what kinds of people were enslaved, and why? In ancient
civilizations, slaves were usually war captives. The victors in battle
might enslave the losers rather than killing them. Over time, people
have found other reasons to justify slavery. Slaves were usually
considered somehow different than their owners. They might belong
to a different race, religion, nationality, or ethnic background. By
focusing on such differences, slave owners felt they could deny basic
human rights to their slaves.
And despite many efforts to end slavery, it still exists today. Some 27
million people worldwide are enslaved or work as forced laborers.
That's more people than at any other point in the history of the
world.
Who was enslaved? What rights did slaves have? How could slaves
gain their freedom? The answers are different for every society with
slaves. Click on any of the highlighted areas of the map to explore a
few of the many slave-based societies in history.
Who were the first slave owners in North America? Not Europeans,
but several Native American tribes. The Klamath, Pawnee, Yurok,
Creek, Mandan, and Comanche all had small numbers of slaves. The
Shoshone woman Sacajawea—now famous for guiding the Lewis and
Clark Expedition—had been captured as a slave and sold to the
Mandan.
But white European-Americans created the institution of slavery that
we are familiar with. Many people from northern states profited from
the slave trade by shipping thousands of Africans to the Americas as
slaves. Over time, most of these enslaved Africans went to the
plantations of the American South. By 1860, there were nearly four
million slaves in the country.
Why Africans? Europeans began enslaving Africans in the 1400s. For
nearly a century, African slaves and European indentured servants
lived similar lives of drudgery. But servants earned their freedom in
exchange for several years of work. Slaves were forced into a lifetime
of servitude.
Gradually, slaves lost their rights until they became mere property.
The law gave masters total power over slaves, including the right to
kill their slaves. Also, white slave owners thought they were superior
to black people, which increased the gap between slave and free.
The American Civil War was fought, in part, over slavery. During the
war, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation, which freed all slaves in rebel states. The North's
victory in 1865 brought the end of slavery throughout the United
States.
In the 1500s, a Catholic monk in Spanish America stopped the
slaughter of enslaved Native Americans. This merciful act had some
terrible consequences, for it doomed Africans to centuries of slavery.
How could this have happened?
Spain's colonies in Latin America had an enormous need for labor.
Their gold and silver mines needed miners. Their plantations and
cattle ranches needed field hands. The Spanish first enslaved Native
Americans, but the Indians suffered terribly from European diseases
and miserable working conditions. A Spanish monk named Bartolome
de las Casas exposed that situation. He brought about gentler
treatment of the Indians.
With Native Americans off-limits, the Spanish had to look elsewhere
for farm and mine workers. So they began importing Africans, who
were immune to many tropical diseases. The Spanish imported
millions of Africans—more than the British and Americans brought to
the United States.
Over time, many of these slaves were freed. By the 1700s, there
were more free blacks than slaves in Spanish America.
Portuguese colonists in Brazil needed slaves for their sugar
plantations and gold and silver mines. At first, they enslaved the
Indians of Brazil. The Indians suffered greatly under the miserable
conditions and were often too ill to work. So the Portuguese soon
turned to Africans.
By the 19th century, Brazil had some 2 million slaves—half of the
country's entire population. Brazil had become one of the greatest
slaveholding nations in the New World.
Many Brazilian plantation owners lived in distant cities and left
overseers in charge of the plantations. Overseers had no financial
reason to keep slaves healthy, and often treated them brutally. The
average life span for a slave in Brazil was just seven years.
The Catholic Church improved some aspects of slaves' lives. The
Church encouraged proper church marriages among slaves. It also
opposed the separation of families. However, the Brazilian slave trade
did not end until the 1850s and the slaves were not freed until 1888.
Why would someone work a slave to death? French and British sugar
planters in the Caribbean craved wealth deeply—so deeply that they
didn't mind working slaves to death if it meant greater profits.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Caribbean sugar plantations satisfied
Europe's skyrocketing hunger for sugar. Cultivating sugar in the heat
and humidity of the tropics was hard, miserable work. Europeans
refused to do it. So planters brought Africans to the islands instead.
Working conditions were terrible. Field slaves worked from dawn to
dusk six days a week, with a brief break at midday. They ate very
little—just flour, salt herring, or peas. These conditions drove up the
death rate. About one third of Africans died within three years of
arrival in the West Indies.
To maintain the slave population, more Africans were imported. By
the mid-1700s, over 100,000 were imported every year. This meant
that slaves often outnumbered Europeans 10 times over. Rebellions
were not unusual, but harsh discipline crushed most of them. Only
the revolt on French St. Domingue in the 1790s succeeded. It was
led by the ex-slave Toussaint l'Ouverture. His army defeated the
French and established the republic of Haiti—the world's first black
republic.
Britain dominated the slave trade for over 100 years. Only when the
British public turned against slavery did Britain try to end, or abolish,
it in Europe and the Americas.
During the 1700s and 1800s, the British public supported the
institution of slavery. British slave traders shipped huge numbers of
Africans to English, French and Spanish colonies in the Americas.
They made enormous profits, and much of this wealth later helped
finance the Industrial Revolution.
Some people in Britain began protesting slavery in the late 1700s.
Lord Mansfield declared, "The air of England has long been too pure
for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it." Many still
defended slavery, saying that abolition would ruin the British
economy. Efforts to abolish slavery failed in Parliament until
abolitionists exposed the horrors of the slave trade. These reports
fueled public distaste for the institution.
Slavery within England was outlawed in 1772. In 1807, the Abolition
Act ended the British slave trade. And in 1833, the Emancipation Act
abolished slavery in all British colonies.
Nazi Germany enslaved millions of people in the 1940s. They sent
people from many different groups to concentration camps:
communists, socialists, Jews, Gypsies, gays, prostitutes, Soviet
prisoners of war, and other foreigners. Forced labor—slavery—began
in 1942. Prisoners were worked to death in chemical and rocket
factories. Those too weak to work were killed.
By the last months of World War II, over 700,000 people were
enslaved. These slave camps were part of a larger Nazi extermination
effort in which millions of Jews and other people were methodically
killed.
Roman Republic
In Rome's early years, most Romans worked their own small farms.
The Punic Wars changed Roman society dramatically, as Romans
began enslaving enemy captives. These slaves were put to work,
making large plantations possible—and profitable. These changes
made the Roman Republic a slave-based society.
Roman Empire
How important was slavery to the Roman Empire? The empire could
not have been built without the muscles of slaves. Ironically, slavery
may also have helped cause its downfall.
Millions of people were enslaved throughout Rome's territory. Most
were war captives or kidnapped in lootings. At times, slaves
outnumbered freemen three times over. Roman law treated slaves
brutally. Slaves could not possess property, enter into contracts, or
marry. If a slave owner died violently within his own house, his slaves
could be executed because they had not prevented his death.
However, a slave was permitted to buy his freedom and become a
Roman citizen.
Such brutal treatment infuriated the slaves. Since slaves usually
greatly outnumbered their owners, they often revolted. The most
famous slave revolt was led by Spartacus. His army of 90,000
defeated two Roman armies before he was killed in battle and
thousands of his soldiers captured and crucified.
Over time, Roman slaves shouldered more responsibilities in
agriculture, home life and government. Free Romans assumed that
any service could be accomplished by slaves, excusing them from
practical concerns—and the need to learn practical skills. Some
historians believe that this attitude led to the fall of Rome.
The Greeks enslaved others even as they founded the world's first
democracies. Some Greek philosophers questioned the institution of
slavery, but none called for abolition. Slaves were made of war
captives, victims of piracy, and the unfortunate family members of
those deep in debt. They worked throughout Greek society, from
wealthy households and sacred temples to farms and mines.
The life of a slave varied greatly. Slaves in the mines suffered
through hard work and terrible conditions, while urban slaves were
treated more humanely.
Greek law gave slave owners almost complete power over their
slaves, allowing any type of punishment except death. Slaves had no
rights in courts of law. A slave could buy his own freedom or receive
it as a gift for outstanding service, but an ex-slave could almost
never become a Greek citizen. One exception was a slave named
Pasion. He spent many years as a trusted slave for a banking firm.
Upon his owner's death, he acquired his freedom, his citizenship, and
the right to run the bank.
The ancient Egyptians enslaved Hebrews, Babylonians, and other war
captives. Slaves worked in the Pharaoh's palace and the houses of
nobility. A few rose to high office in service of the Pharaoh—such as
Joseph, also famous for his colorful coat. Many years after Joseph,
Moses led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt into freedom.
In 1250 A.D., slaves rose to rule Egypt. These slaves, the Mamluks,
were Turks brought to Egypt as slaves in the early 1200s. Egyptians
gave them military training and positions of power in the army and
government. After seizing power, the Mamluks conquered several
nearby countries. They lost power just 67 years later, when Turkey
invaded Egypt.
African slavery arose long before Europeans came to the region in
search of slaves. But West African slavery was quite different than
what developed in Europe and the Americas. In many West African
societies, land was owned by communities, not individuals. Social
status and class could not be based on land ownership. Instead, they
were based on one's place in the social environment. Slaves were
thus part of the family as well as private property. And slavery was
not a lifetime status—someone might be born free, made a slave for
a few years, and then be free again for the rest of their life.
Slaves typically had many rights. They could marry, own property,
and inherit substantial goods from their owner. They could even own
slaves themselves. Their children were generally born into freedom,
not servitude. Some owners even adopted their slaves as family.
A regional slave trade developed. It followed ancient caravan routes
across the Sahara to the Mediterranean and Arab world. When
Europeans turned to West Africa as a source of slaves in the 15th
century, they tapped into this existing trade network. Some African
rulers took advantage of this opportunity. They earned great profits
by controlling the regional slave trade.
Typically, slaves were made of war captives, criminals, and people in
debt. But the great demand for slaves in America required new ways
to enslave Africans. Soon slave traders turned to outright kidnapping
and armed raids. These methods provided steady supply of Africans
to the slave market in the Americas.
The African rulers of Zanzibar relied on slave labor just as white
plantation owners of the American South did. During the 19th
century, African slaves composed up to 90 percent of the island's
population. Slaves worked on the island's clove plantations, where
conditions were harsh and many slaves became ill and died. This
fueled the demand for new slaves, driving a vigorous slave trade that
brought Africans from East and Central Africa.
Growing British influence in the 1860s and 1870s led to the end of
slavery in Zanzibar.
Slavery has existed in south and southeast Asia for thousands of
years. In some Asian countries, slavery has never been abolished. It
continues even today.
Slavery existed in ancient India as early as 100 B.C. By 1841, India
had about 8 million slaves. In the same period some 25% to 33% of
the population of Thailand and Burma were slaves.
Slavery continues in some forms today. In some Asian countries,
children are sold into bondage or forced to work against their will. In
some Asian nations, young men and women are forced into
prostitution. They have no personal rights at all. Organizations such
as Anti-Slavery International are working to end all these forms of
slavery forever.
As one of the world's oldest civilizations, China has a long history of
slavery. Slaves were made of war captives and kidnapping victims.
People also sold themselves into slavery to satisfy debts. Some sold
their wives and children instead.
Slaves worked as household servants, in agriculture and
construction, and as government bureaucrats. Some families adopted
their slaves. In some cases, slaves even inherited wealth from their
masters.
The ruler Wang Mang abolished slavery in China in 17 A.D., but it was
restored when he lost power six years later. Slavery was not officially
abolished until 1910, and there continue to be problems. In the
1920s and 1930s, young girls (mui tsai) were traded and enslaved as
prostitutes. After the communist revolution, the government
established concentration camps called laogai. Most of the people
imprisoned there are political prisoners. Survivors of the camps say
they were forced to work as slave laborers.