Slavery

For other uses, see Slavery (disambiguation).

Slavery is a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be, or treated as, the property of others. Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation (such as wages). More recent use of the terms "slavery" and "slaves" can include metaphorical and analogous uses which may be applied to lesser forms of forced labor.

Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed to varying extents, forms and periods in almost all cultures and continents. In some societies, slavery existed as a legal institution or socio-economic system, but today it is formally outlawed in nearly all countries. Nevertheless, the practice continues in various forms around the world.

Freedom from slavery is an internationally recognised human right. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

The English word slave derives - through Old French and Medieval Latin - from the medieval word for Slavic, a people of Central and Eastern Europe, many of whom were sold in slavery after conquest by the Holy Roman Empire.

History of slavery and the slave trade

Main article: History of slavery

Slave market in early medieval Eastern Europe. Painting by Sergei Ivanov

Slavery traces back to the earliest records, such as the Bible and the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1760 BC), which refers to it as an established institution. Slavery in ancient cultures was known to occur in civilizations as old as Sumer, and it was found in every civilization, including Ancient Egypt, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient Greece, Rome and parts of its empire, and the Islamic Caliphate. Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves. Records of slavery in Ancient Greece go as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is often said that the Greeks as well as philosophers such as Aristotle accepted the theory of natural slavery i.e. that some men are slaves by nature.

As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply. The people subjected to Roman slavery came from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Greeks, Berbers, Germans, Britons, Thracians, Gauls (or Celts), Jews, Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labour, but also for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War led by Spartacus was the most famous and severe. By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome. It is estimated that over 25% of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved.

13th century slave market in Yemen

The early medieval slave trade was mainly to the East: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, pagan Central and Eastern Europe, along with the Caucasus and Tartary, were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek and Jewish merchants (known as Radhanites) were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.

Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant warfare between Muslims and Christians. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In raid against Lisbon, Portugal in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.

Over 10% of England’s population entered in the Domesday Book in 1086 were slaves. Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it—or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at, for example, the Council of Koblenz in 922, the Council of London (1102), and the Council of Armagh (1171). In contrast the Catholic Church encouraged European enslavement of non-Christian African peoples, beginning from the middle of the 15th century.

In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery which legitimized slave trade under Catholic beliefs of that time. This approval of slavery was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. These papal bulls came to serve as a justification for the subsequent era of slave trade and European colonialism.

The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of Christian slaves into the Islamic world too. After the Battle of Lepanto approximately 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed from the Ottoman Turks. Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into jasyr. There were more than 100,000 Russian captives in the Kazan Khanate alone in 1551. Some researchers estimate that altogether more than 3 million people were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate.

The transatlantic slave trade

Slavery was prominent presumably elsewhere in Africa long before the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade. The maritime town of Lagos, Portugal, was the first slave market created in Portugal for the sale of imported African slaves - the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444. In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania. By the year 1552 black African slaves made up 10 percent of the population of Lisbon. In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas - in the case of Portugal, especially Brazil. In the 15th century one third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold. bhbhjbjbjhvjvj

Hamoud bin Mohammed, Sultan of Zanzibar from 1896 to 1902. He complied with British demands that slavery be banned in Zanzibar and that all the slaves be freed. Zanzibar was once East Africa's main slave-trading port, and under Omani Arabs in the 19th century as many as 50,000 slaves were passing through the city each year.

Spain had to fight against relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. However, the Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas was also facilitated by the spread of diseases (e.g. smallpox) due to lack of biological immunity. (although diseases such as syphilis were spread to the Europeans from first nations origins.) Natives were used as forced labour (the Spanish employed the pre-Columbian draft system called the mita), but the diseases caused a labour shortage and so the Spanish colonists were gradually involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World were the Spaniards who labourers on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola, where the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population (Laws of Burgos, 1512-1513). The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates. Slavery was a legal institution in all of the 13 American colonies, and the profits of the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to 5% of the British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution.

According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 million or 9 million slaves in India in 1841. In Malabar, about 15% of the population were slaves. Slavery was abolished in both Hindu and Muslim India by the Indian Slavery Act V. of 1843. The Imperial government formally abolished slavery in China in 1906, and the law became effective in 1910. Indigenous slaves existed in Korea. Slavery was officially abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894 but remained extant in reality until 1930. During the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910) about 30% to 50% of the Korean population were slaves.

Historians say the Arab slave trade lasted more than a millennium. Ibn Battuta tells us several times that he was given or purchased slaves. Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million black African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 AD to 1900 AD, and more than the 9.4 to 12 million Africans were brought to the Americas. According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Abolitionist movements

Main article: Abolitionism

File:Slaves in chains (grayscale).png

Three Abyssinian slaves in chains. Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s, out of an estimated population of between 8 and 16 million.

From the title page of abolitionist Anthony Benezet's book Some Historical Account of Guinea, London, 1788

Photographed in 1863 – The scars are a result of a whipping by his overseer, who was subsequently removed by his owner.

Slavery has existed, in one form or another, through the whole of recorded human history — as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves. According to the Biblical Book of Exodus, Moses led Israelite slaves out of ancient Egypt — possibly the first written account of a movement to free slaves. Later Jewish laws (known as Halacha) prevented slaves from being sold out of the Land of Israel, and allowed a slave to move to Israel if he so desired. The Cyrus Cylinder, inscribed about 539 BC by the order of Cyrus the Great of Persia, abolished slavery and allowed Jews and other nationalities who had been enslaved under Babylonian rule to return to their native lands. Abolitionism should be distinguished from efforts to help a particular group of slaves, or to restrict one practice, such as the slave trade.

There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work of the British Anti-Slavery Society. William Wilberforce received much of the credit although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Thomas Clarkson. Wilberforce was also urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt, to make the issue his own. After the abolition act was passed these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies.

Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.

Abolitionist pressure in the United States produced a series of small steps forward. After January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited, but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; and those slaves already in the U.S. would not be legally emancipated for another 60 years. The American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of chattel slavery in the United States.

On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 4 states:

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Contemporary slavery

Since 1945, debate about the link between economic growth and different relational forms (most notably unfree social relations of production in Third World agriculture) occupied many contributing to discussions in the development decade (the 1960s). This continued to be the case in the mode of production debate (mainly about agrarian transition in India) that spilled over into the 1970s, important aspects of which continue into the present (see the monograph by Brass, 1999, and the 600 page volume edited by Brass and van der Linden, 1997). Central to these discussions was the link between capitalist development and modern forms of unfree labour (peonage, debt bondage, indenture, chattel slavery). Within the domain of political economy it is a debate that has a very long historical lineage, and - accurately presented - never actually went away. Unlike advocacy groups, for which the number of the currently unfree is paramount, those political economists who participated in the earlier debates sought to establish who, precisely, was (or was not) to be included under the rubric of a worker whose subordination constituted a modern form of unfreedom. This element of definition was regarded as an epistemologically necessary precondition to any calculations of how many were to be categorized as relationally unfree.

Though slavery was officially abolished in China in 1910, the practice continues unofficially in some regions.

Slavery also exists in other countries across the world. Groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Group, Anti-Slavery International, Free the Slaves, the Anti-Slavery Society, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society continue to campaign to rid the world of slavery.

One example of the contemporary fight against slavery worldwide, is against that which is especially pervasive in agriculture, apparel and the sex industry.

Human trafficking

Main article: Human trafficking

File:Monument to slaves in Zanzibar .jpg

Monument to the slaves in Zanzibar

Trafficking in human beings (also called human trafficking) is sometimes referred to as a form of slavery. Opponents of the practice point out that victims are tricked, lured by false promises, or forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs of abuse to control their victims. “Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors,” reports the US Department of State in a 2008 study.

Whilst the majority of victims are women, and sometimes children, who are forced into prostitution (in which case the practice is called sex trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are forced into manual labour. Due to the illegal nature of human trafficking, its exact extent is unknown. A US Government report published in 2005, estimates that 600,000-800,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.

Current situation

File:FrancisBok.jpg

Francis Bok, former Sudanese slave. It is estimated that as many as 200,000 people had been taken into slavery during the Second Sudanese Civil War. The slaves are mostly Dinka people.

Although outlawed in nearly all countries, forms of slavery still exist in some parts of the world. According to a broad definition of slavery used by Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves (FTS), an advocacy group linked with Anti-Slavery International, there were 27 million people (although some put the number as high as 200 million) who worked in virtual slavery in 2007, spread all over the world. According to FTS, these slaves represent the largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history and the smallest percentage of the total human population that has ever been enslaved at once.

FTS claims that present-day slaves have been sold for US$40, in Mali, for young adult male labourers, or as much as US$1,000 in Thailand for HIV-free, young females, suitable for work in brothels. The lower limit represents the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave: the price of a comparable male slave in 1850 in the United States would have been about US$36,624 in present-day terms (US$1,000 in 1850). That difference, even allowing for differences in purchasing power, is significant. As a result of the lower price, the economic advantages of present-day slavery are clear.

Enslavement is also taking place in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The Middle East Quarterly reports that slavery is still endemic in Sudan. In June and July 2007, 570 people who had been enslaved by brick manufacturers in Shanxi and Henan were freed by the Chinese government. Among those rescued were 69 children. In response, the Chinese government assembled a force of 35,000 police to check northern Chinese brick kilns for slaves, sent dozens of kiln supervisors to prison, punished 95 officials in Shanxi province for dereliction of duty, and sentenced one kiln foreman to death for killing an enslaved worker.

In Mauritania alone, it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved with many used as bonded labour. Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007. In Niger, slavery is also a current phenomenon. A Nigerien study has found that more than 800,000 people are enslaved, almost 8% of the population. Pygmies, the people of Central Africa's rain forest, live in servitude to the Bantus. Some tribal sheiks in Iraq still keep blacks, called Abd, which means servant or slave in Arabic, as slaves. Around 95% of the population of the Emirate of Dubai consists of slaves. Child slavery has commonly been used in the production of cash crops and mining. According to the U.S. Department of State, more than 109,000 children were working on cocoa farms alone in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in 'the worst forms of child labor' in 2002.

In November 2006, the International Labour Organization announced it will be seeking "to prosecute members of the ruling Myanmar junta for crimes against humanity" over the continuous forced labour of its citizens by the military at the International Court of Justice. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), an estimated 800,000 people are subject to forced labour in Myanmar.

The Ecowas Court of Justice is hearing the case of Hadijatou Mani in late 2008, where Ms. Mani hopes to compel the government of Niger to end slavery in its jurisdiction. Cases brought by her in local courts have failed so far.

Apologies

On May 21, 2001, the National Assembly of France passed the Taubira law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. At the same time the British, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese delegations declined to give an apology for the slave trade and limited to give a "regret." Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, also remain an open issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first Europeans arrived and the Atlantic slave trade was performed with a high degree of involvement of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African societies and individuals. Indeed, as already mentioned in this article, slavery persists in several areas of West Africa until the present day.

"There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Ashanti of Ghana and the Yoruba of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans."

Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.

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

In September, 2006, it was reported that the UK Government may issue a "statement of regret" over slavery, an act that was followed through by a "public statement of sorrow" from Tony Blair on November 27, 2006.

On February 25, 2007 the state of Virginia resolved to 'profoundly regret' and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery. Unique and the first of its kind in the U.S., the apology was unanimously passed in both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, where the first slaves were imported into North America in 1619.

On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone of London, United Kingdom apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial slave trade. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery," he said pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Jesse Jackson praised Mayor Livingstone, and added that reparations should be made.

Reparations

Main article: Reparations for slavery

Sporadically there have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves, or sometimes their descendants. Claims for reparations for being held in slavery are handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since former slaves' relative lack of money means they often have limited access to a potentially expensive and futile legal process. Mandatory systems of fines and reparations paid to an as yet undetermined group of claimants from fines, paid by unspecified parties, and collected by authorities have been proposed by advocates to alleviate this "civil court problem." Since in almost all cases there are no living ex-slaves or living ex-slave owners these movements have gained little traction. In nearly all cases the judicial system has ruled that the statute of limitations on these possible claims has long since expired.

Nonetheless, from time to time misinformation is circulated (often through e-mail) to United States residents describing a $5000 "slavery tax credit," supposedly passed into law under President Bill Clinton's administration during the 1990s, but never announced to the public. No such credit exists, and persons attempting to promote or take advantage of the alleged credit are subject to prosecution. (See Slavery reparations scam for further information.) A similar scam involves a "tax credit" available to Native Americans.

Economics

Gustave Boulanger's painting The Slave Market

Economists have attempted to model during which circumstances slavery (and milder variants such as serfdom) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for land owners when land is abundant but labour is not, so paid workers can demand high wages. If labour is abundant but land is scarce, then it becomes more costly for the land owners to have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only demand low wages due to the competition. Thus first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew. It was reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia (serfdom) as large new land areas with few people became available.

Another observation is slavery is more common when the labour done is relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large scale growing of a single crop. It is much more difficult and costly to check that slaves are doing their best and with good quality when they are doing complex tasks. Therefore, slavery was seen as the most efficient method of production for large scale crops like sugar and cotton, whose output was based on economies of scale. This enabled a gang system of labor to be prominent on large plantations where field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision. Thus, slavery tends to decrease with technological advancements requiring more skilled people, even as they are able to demand high wages.

It has also been argued that slavery tends to retard technological advancement, since the focus is on increasing the number of slaves rather than improving the efficiency of labour. Because of this, theoretical knowledge and learning in Greece—and later in Rome—was largely separated from physical labour and manufacturing. Some Russian scholars have argued that the Soviet Union's technological development was hindered by Stalin's use of slave labour.

Religion and slavery

Main article: Slavery and religion

Galations 3:28 says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." The Bible emphasises often however, that slaves are to be treated fairly by their masters.[NKJV Bible, Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 3:22-4:1] According to Winston Churchill Islamic law involves slavery. He once said: "The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property; either as a child, a wife, or a concubine; must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men."

Other uses of the term

File:Kersnovskaya Entering Camp5 54.jpg

Entering Gulag, Soviet forced-labour camp (a leaf from Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya's notebook). Millions of people worked in the Gulag as slave labour.

The word slavery is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity one finds unpleasant or distasteful. On the one hand, this means the word slavery is applied in situations where it does not technically fit the definition. On the other hand, it also means that it is often not applied in situations that do fit the definition, but where the speaker feels that everyone has a duty to perform the action. Examples of the latter might include jury duty or military conscription, where a person is compelled to perform a job and is paid much less than one would have sought for a similar job in a free market.

• Many anarchists, socialists, and communists have condemned "wage slavery" or "economic slavery", where workers are forced to choose between selling their labour and facing starvation, poverty or social stigma and a lack of prosperity. This is related to the notion of economic coercion.
• Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.
• Some progressives and feminists feel that anti-abortion laws and other government laws that force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term is a form of slavery.
• Some feel that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute state-operated slavery.
• Some proponents of animal rights apply the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves.

See also

Various

• List of known slaves
• Bandeirantes
• Blackbirding
• Classism
• Coolies
• Corporate colonialism
• Debt bondage
• Fazendas

• Freeborn
• Impressment
• Indentured servant
• Involuntary servitude
• Master-slave dialectic
• Sambo's Grave
• Serfdom
• Sexual slavery
• Slavery at common law

• Slave ship
• Subculture
• Taxation as slavery
• Trafficking in human beings
• Underclass
• Unfree labour
• Wage slavery
• William Lynch Speech
• Workhouse

Slavery by region

• Slavery in Brazil
  • Quilombo
• Slavery in Canada
• Slavery in Japan
• Slavery in Mauritania
• Slavery in Sudan
• Arab slave trade
• Aztec slavery
• Barbary pirate
• Slavery in Bermuda
• Slavery in Nazi Germany
• Forced labor in Germany during World War II

• Slavery in Soviet Union
• Thralls (slaves of the vikings)
• Swedish slave trade
• Slavery in modern Africa
• African slave trade
• Atlantic slave trade
  • Royal African Company
• Slavery in Asia
• Slavery in seventeen-century China
• Coastwise slave trade
• Kholops (semi-slaves in Russia)

• Slavery in the United States
  • Origins of the American Civil War
  • North Carolina v. Mann
  • George Washington#Washington and slavery
  • Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream
  • United States National Slavery Museum

Slavery by religion and era

• Christianity and slavery
• History of slavery
• Islam and slavery
• Judaism and slavery
• Slavery in ancient Greece

• Slavery in ancient Rome
• Slavery in antiquity
• Slavery in medieval Europe
• The Bible and slavery

• Papal bulls on slavery
  • Dum diversas (1452)
  • Romanus Pontifex(1455)
  • Sublimus Dei (1537)

Opposition and resistance

• Abolition of slavery timeline
• Compensated emancipation
• First Servile War

• International Year
• List of notable opponents of slavery
• Slave rebellion

• Slave narrative

Films

• Stanley Kubrick, Spartacus, 1960
• Sergio Giral, Cimarron, 1967
• Marlon Brando, Burn!, 1969
• Sergio Giral, El Otro Francisco (The Other Francisco), 1975
• Tomas Gutierrez Alea, La Ultima Cena (The Last Supper), 1976
• Alex Haley, Roots, 1977 mini-series based on Haley's book

• Carlos Diegues, Quilombo, 1984
• Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust, 1991
• Haile Gerima, Sankofa, 1993
• Charles Burnett, Nightjohn, 1996
• Steven Spielberg, Amistad, 1997

• Jonathan Demme, Beloved, 1998
• Kevin Willmott, C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, 2004 (mockumentary/political drama)
• Owen 'Alik Shahadah, 500 Years Later, 2005
• Michael Apted, Amazing Grace, 2006
• Marco Kreuzpainter, Trade, 2007

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) ISBN 81-85689-67-9
• Gordon, M. Slavery in the Arab World (1989)
• E. Wyn James, ‘Welsh Ballads and American Slavery’, Welsh Journal of Religious History, 2 (2007), pp.59–86. ISSN 0967-3938.
• Jacqueline Dembar Greene, Slavery in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, (2001), ISBN 0531165388
• Nieboer, H. J. Slavery as an Industrial System (1910)
• Postma, Johannes. The Atlantic Slave Trade, (2003)
• Rodriguez, Junius P., ed., The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1997)
• Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia (2007)
• Shell, Robert Carl-Heinz Children Of Bondage: A Social History Of The Slave Society At The Cape Of Good Hope, 1652-1813 (1994)
• William Linn Westermann, The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity (1955), ISBN 0871690403

Uncited sources

• Hogendorn, Jan and Johnson Marion: The Shell Money of the Slave Trade. African Studies Series 49, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986.
• The Slavery Reader, ed. by Rigas Doganis, Gad Heuman, James Walvin, Routledge 2003
• Mintz, S. Facts and Myths

United States

• Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1999), most important recent survey
• Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II Doubleday (March 23, 2008), ISBN 0385-50625-2 ISBN 978-0385-50625-0
• Boles, John. Black Southerners: 1619-1869 (1983) brief survey
• Engerman, Stanley L. Terms of Labor: Slavery, Serfdom, and Free Labor (1999)
• Genovese Eugene D. Roll, Jordan Roll (1974), classic study
  • Richard H. King, "Marxism and the Slave South", American Quarterly 29 (1977), 117-31, a critique of Genovese
• Escott, Paul D. "Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom" Journal of Southern History, Vol. 67, 2001
• Parish, Peter J. Slavery: History and Historians (1989)
• Phillips, Ulrich B. American Negro Slavery:A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime (1918; paperback reprint 1966), southern white perspective
• Phillips, Ulrich B. Life and Labor in the Old South (1929)
• Sellers, James B. Slavery in Alabama (1950).
• Sydnor, Charles S. Slavery in Mississippi (1933
• Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956), a rebuttal of U B Philipps
• Vorenberg, Michael . Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (2001)
• Weinstein, Allen , Frank O. Gatell, and Lewis Sarasohn, eds., American Negro Slavery: A Modern Reader, third ed. (1978)
• Mintz, S. Slavery Facts & Myths, Digital History

Slavery in the modern era

• Jesse Sage and Liora Kasten, Enslaved: True Stories of Modern Day Slavery, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008 ISBN 9781403974938
• Tom Brass, Marcel van der Linden, and Jan Lucassen, Free and Unfree Labour. Amsterdam: International Institute for Social History, 1993
• Tom Brass, Towards a Comparative Political Economy of Unfree Labour: Case Studies and Debates, London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999. 400 pages.
• Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues, Bern: Peter Lang AG, 1997. 600 pages. A volume containing contributions by all the most important writers on modern forms of unfree labour.
• 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 0-520-24507-5freak
• Kevin Bales, Ending Slavery: How We Free Today's Slaves, University of California Press 2007, ISBN 978-0-520-25470-1.
• Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis, Slave: My True Story, ISBN 1-58648-212-2. Mende is a Nuba, captured at 12 years old. She was granted political asylum by the British government in 2003.
• Gary Craig, Aline Gaus, Mick Wilkinson, Klara Skrivankova and Aidan McQuade: Contemporary slavery in the UK: Overview and key issues, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 26 Feb 2007, ISBN 978 1 85935 57
• Somaly Mam Foundation

External links

Historical

• Comité de Liaison et d'Application des Sources Historiques (archives & history of slavery in Saint-Barthélemy)
• Slavery Resource Guide, from the Library of Congress
• Parliament & The British Slave Trade 1600 - 1807
• Slavery Fact Sheets, Digital History
• The West African Squadron and slave trade
• British documents on slave holding and the slave trade, 1788-1793 (DjVu) and Template:PDFlink (a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries)
• Slavery - PBS
• Understanding Slavery