Slave Book Signed By Slave Kentucky 1854 Vintage Plantation Biography Amazing

$34,112.37 Buy It Now, FREE Shipping, 30-Day Returns, eBay Money Back Guarantee
Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (808) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US, Item: 176277815929 SLAVE BOOK SIGNED BY SLAVE KENTUCKY 1854 VINTAGE PLANTATION BIOGRAPHY AMAZING. AN EXCEEDINGLY RARE BOOK SIGNED BY SLAVE AUTHOR LEWIS CLARK , FORMER SLAVE. BOOK IS SIGNED AND INSCRIBED IN 1856. BOOK IS IN FAIR SHAPE WITH FOXING Clarke, John Milton and Lewis Garrard The Clarke brothers, John Milton (1820-1902) and Lewis (1818-1897), were born in Madison County, KY. Their father was a white weaver from Scotland. Their mother, Letitia Campbell, was the daughter of plantation owner Samuel Campbell. John and Lewis were at times seen as white slaves. The brothers escaped in 1842, Lewis to Dawn, Ontario (he later returned to Oberlin); and John to Cambridge, where he became the first African American elected to a public office on the Cambridge Common Council. The character George Harris in Uncle Tom's Cabin was based on Lewis Clarke. Lewis Clarke was born in Madison County, Kentucky, seven miles from Richmond, in 1812. Depending on the source, Clarke's birth year is listed as 1812 or 1815. He is best known for his slave narrative, Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke, During a Captivity of More Than Twenty-Five Years, Among the Algerines of Kentucky, One of the So Called Christian States of North America, dictated by himself. In the beginning of his narrative, Clarke expounds upon his slave and plantation-owning grandfather, Samuel Campbell. Campbell raped a female slave named Mary who, according to Clarke, was half white. They had one daughter, Letitia Campbell before Campbell married. Clarke's father, Daniel Clarke, was a Scottish weaver who came to America for the American Revolution. He had married once before but his wife died and left him two sons. He fought as a Minuteman at the Battle of Bunker Hill and remained active until the end of the war effort. Campbell promised Clarke's father that Letitia would be free in his will, and with this promise, Clarke's father married her around 1800. According to The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe talked with Clarke about his experiences as a slave before and during the composition of her novel. Although she spells his name wrong there, she also cites him as one of the sources for George Harris' character. Lewis Clarke's Narrative was first published by itself, in 1845.ng the Slaveholders of Kentucky, One of the So Called Christian States of North America. Dictated by Themselves. (Boston: Published by Bela Marsh, 1846)
When I was a child, my mother passed on stories to me and my siblings about Lewis G. Clarke, her paternal grandfather, a slave who escaped from bondage in the early 1840s.  She often read from a book, The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which told of Clarke’s experiences as a slave and verified that the character “George Harris” of her book was based upon Clarke’s early life. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was first published in 1852, became one of the most popular novels ever written. It was a best seller in the United States (second only to the Bible) and just five years after its publication it was translated into twenty languages. Stowe published The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin one year later to explain and defend how she came to write the now widely popular novel.  The lines from The Key that I remember most vividly were “Lewis Clarke is an acquaintance of the writer. Soon after his escape from slavery he was received into the family of a sister- in-law of the author and there educated.” At the time I did not appreciate the significance of Lewis Clarke’s life nor his relationship with Harriet Beecher Stowe. I considered it interesting family history, but no more than that. Additionally, whatever luster he had as a figure in history was dulled by the comments my mother said her father made about him, declaring “He was a rolling stone” and was not committed to raising his family because of his travels across the country “making speeches.” Many years later I realized that his travels were the result of his being a famous man. His fame resulted, however, not only by being depicted as “George Harris,” the husband of Eliza, the runaway slave who is one of the central characters in the Stowe novel. My great grandfather was also a prominent leader in the abolitionist movement in the 1840s and 1850s as well as a spokesman for freed people after the Civil War. By the time of his death in Lexington, Kentucky in 1897, Clarke had developed an international reputation.  His passing was noted in newspapers throughout the world, with full page eulogies printed in major newspapers across the United States. William O’Connell Bradley, the Governor of Kentucky, ordered Clarke’s body to lie in state at the Lexington City Auditorium, the first time in the history of the Commonwealth that such an honor was accorded a black man. Yet after his death Clarke disappeared from newspapers and other major print media. His retreat into obscurity came because of a variety of reasons.  One was the increasingly negative reaction to the book four decades after the Civil War.  By the earlier twentieth century historians and literary critics began to reappraise the novel, critiquing it because of its racist stereotypes and images.  Over time Stowe’s main character, Uncle Tom, was transformed in hundreds of plays and early film depictions from a noble Christian, willing to suffer rather than renounce his faith, into a cowardly, subservient slave eager to please white people rather than defend himself or other slaves.  “George Harris,” i.e. Lewis Clarke, was in turn deemed irrelevant because of his guilt by association with the novel. Clarke’s disappearance from the annals of history also came from the actions of Harriet Beecher Stowe and her family. They adamantly declared to the nation when she was near death that her spiritually guided mind was the sole source for the writing of the book. Few Americans of the period dared challenge the account of an author who had been practically deified by millions of people in the United States and around the world during the last fifty years of the 19th century. Clarke’s legacy was also hurt by twentieth century historians who downplayed the novel as the major catalyst for the Civil War and abolition of slavery.  They did this despite comments from leaders of that time, such as Abraham Lincoln who was quoted as saying after he first met Stowe in 1862, “So you are the little lady who started this Great War.” Additionally, Massachusetts Republican U.S. Senator Charles Sumner claimed Lincoln would never have been elected President if not for the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Clarke’s own family also played a role in his later obscurity.  Many of Clarke’s relatives intermarried with whites and were embarrassed by their black heritage. They made concerted efforts, beginning in the early twentieth century, to hide their black bloodlines. Fear of legal action initiated by Lewis Clarke’s brother Milton regarding this matter may have made relatives hesitant to promote Clarke publicly or publish information about him as a former slave. For all of these reasons Lewis Clarke’s story has been virtually hidden from public view for the past century.  The 2012 release of his autobiography, Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke: During Captivity of More than Twenty-Five Years Among the Algerines of Kentucky, One of the So Called Christian States of North America, Dictated by Himself, by the University of Washington Press, is an effort to introduce him to a new generation of historians and readers of history. Lewis Clarke’s early life is reflected in his Narrative which was originally published in 1845, the same year as Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.  Clarke’s autobiography begins with his birth in 1815 in Kentucky and continues through the early 1840s when he was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Narrative described what he endured as the child of a Scottish father and a quadroon mother who was a slave on his Madison County, Kentucky plantation. He tells of particularly horrendous experiences after having been sold to cruel plantation owners at an early age. After a second sale to a more compassionate owner, he soon feared a rumor indicating that he was to be sold to a plantation in Louisiana. It was at this point that Clarke decided to escape from bondage and seek refuge in Canada where he assumed his brother Milton had escaped months earlier. He returned to the United States after learning that his brother settled instead in Oberlin, Ohio. Lewis connected with Milton in Oberlin, but soon decided to bring his youngest brother, Cyrus, out of slavery in Lexington, Kentucky. His Narrative also describes how he and his brother Milton were nearly captured by slave hunters in Oberlin before they escaped to Massachusetts. Clarke’s exploits as an escaped slave were also described in newspaper articles in Ohio as well as word of mouth by anti-slavery abolitionists throughout the state. Abolitionist leaders in the Northeast became aware of him and as a result he was enticed to come to Cambridge, Massachusetts with plans to bolster the abolitionist movement in that state. While in Cambridge he lived several years in the home of Mary Jackson Safford, the sister-in-law of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Stowe met Clarke, interviewed him on many occasions, and took detailed notes regarding his experiences as a slave. Clarke’s many lectures and the publication of his Narrative made him a popular figure in the Northeast. He shared speaking platforms with the leading abolitionists of the era including his relative by marriage, Frederick Douglass, as well as Lydia Marie Childs, Lewis Tappan, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Bibb, Martin Delaney, and the maligned and quixotic martyr of Harpers Ferry, John Brown.  By the late 1840s he moved to the Underground Railroad town of Busti in southwestern New York State. While there he became the vigilante protector of escaped slaves from the South. He also became President of the Radical Abolitionists, a wing of the abolitionist movement whose members armed themselves to protect escaped slaves and if need be, go into battle against the institution of slavery. While in Busti he continued his lectures across the Northern United States as well as Canada.  By the mid-1850s Clarke was held in such high esteem that he was invited to deliver one of the keynote addresses at the founding convention of the Republican Party in Jackson, Michigan in July 1854. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 allowed slave owners and their surrogates to seek out and capture escaped slaves anywhere in the United States. The new law gave Clarke’s “owners” in Kentucky greater incentive to capture him. He narrowly escaped slave catchers who came to Busti seeking him out in the early 1850s. The close call made him decide to move to Ontario, Canada. Subsequently he married Emily R. Walker, originally from Lexington, Kentucky, and had nine children with his new wife.  Clarke also became a successful farmer and not surprisingly, his property became a haven for escaped slaves from the United States. In 1874, nine years after the end of the Civil War, Clarke and his family returned to the United States and settled in Oberlin, Ohio. Clarke continued on the lecture circuit which now included the South as well as the North, speaking on his experiences as a slave and reminding the crowds that “George Harris” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was based upon his life. He also became a labor broker between Southern planters who needed labor and former slaves in Canada who sought work in the post-Civil War South. In the mid-1890s a controversy arose between Clarke and Harriet Beecher Stowe regarding his role as one of the models for Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Clarke continued to claim that he was a long time acquaintance of Mrs. Stowe and that she would not have been able to write her book without the information she had received from him. As her life ebbed away, however, she and her family representatives denied any knowledge of him. Her denial came a year before she died and six years into her severe case of dementia. We will never know why Stowe renounced her connection with Clarke toward the end of her life although events surrounding the publication of her classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin provide some interesting speculations.  Be that as it may, it is important that Clarke’s legacy be defined by more than his relationship with Harriet Beecher Stowe. His contributions to the abolitionist movement, his unrivaled personal commitment to freeing slaves, and his lifelong dedication to human rights, deserve to be celebrated and praised by all Americans. Lewis Garrard Clarke was an ex-slave who published his experiences in his work, Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke. Life Lewis Clarke was born in Madison County, Kentucky, seven miles from Richmond, in 1812. Depending on the source, Clarke's birth year is listed as 1812 or 1815. He is best known for his slave narrative, Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke, During a Captivity of More Than Twenty-Five Years, Among the Algerines of Kentucky, One of the So Called Christian States of North America, dictated by himself. In the beginning of his narrative, Clarke expounds upon his slave and plantation-owning grandfather, Samuel Campbell. Campbell raped a female slave named Mary who, according to Clarke, was half white. They had one daughter, Letitia Campbell before Campbell married. Clarke's father, Daniel Clarke, was a Scottish weaver who came to America for the American Revolution. He had married once before but his wife died and left him two sons. He fought as a Minuteman at the Battle of Bunker Hill and remained active until the end of the war effort. Campbell promised Clarke's father that Letitia would be free in his will, and with this promise, Clarke's father married her around 1800.[1] Clarke's father died when Clarke was either 10 or 12 years old after receiving a devastating wound leaving him disabled, possibly paralyzed. Even when promised freedom, Letitia did not receive it and stayed enslaved as Clarke claims Campbell's heirs destroyed the will. During this time, Clarke fell into the hands of his grandfather's children, being the property of William and Betsy Benson, who treated him brutally. After Clarke learned he would be sold in New Orleans, Clarke fled to Ohio and across Lake Erie into Canada in 1841.[2] On arriving in Canada: When I stepped ashore here, I said, sure enough I am free. Good heaven! what a sensation, when it first visits the bosom of a full grown man - one, born to bondage - one, who had been taught from early infancy, that this was his inevitable lot for life. He published Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke in 1845, and an extended edition which included the experiences of his brother Milton, in 1846. He also traveled about giving lectures on his experiences as a slave. It was during one of these trips that he met Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was so impressed by Clarke and his story that she would base the character George Harris in her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin on Clarke.[citation needed] While Clarke was not traveling, he lived in Warren County, Pennsylvania, before moving over the New York border to the town of Busti, New York, in 1850, where he worked as a farm hand on the farm of David Storum, the father-in-law of African-American abolitionist Jermain Wesley Loguen.[3] After the end of the Civil War, he returned South and died on December 16, 1897 in Louisville, Kentucky. His body lay in state at the Kentucky State Capitol on order of Governor William Bradley, and he was subsequently buried in Westwood Cemetery in Oberlin, Ohio. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. BY LEWIS CLARKE.   The following questions are often asked me, when I meet the people in public, and I have thought it would be well to put down the answers here.   How many holidays in a year do the slaves in Kentucky have?—They usually have six days at Christmas, and two or three others in the course of the year. Public opinion generally seems to require this much of slaveholders; a few give more, some less; some none, not a day nor an hour.   How did slaves spend the Sabbath?—Every way the master pleases. There are certain kinds of work which are respectable for Sabbath day. Slaves are often sent out to salt the cattle, collect and count the pigs and sheep, mend fences, drive the stock from one pasture to another. Breaking young horses and mules, to send them to market, yoking young oxen, and training them, is proper Sabbath work; piling and burning brush, on the back part of the lot, grubbing brier patches that are out of the way, and where they will not be seen. Sometimes corn must be shelled in the corn-crib; hemp is baled in the 104 hemp-house. The still-house must be attended on the Sabbath. In these, and various other such like employments, the more avaricious slaveholders keep their slaves busy a good part of every Sabbath. It is a great day for visiting and eating, and the house servants often have more to do on that than on any other day.   What if strangers come along, and see you at work ?—We must quit shelling corn, and go to play with the cobs; or else we must be clearing land, on our own account. We must cover up master's sins as much as possible, and take it all to ourselves. It is hardly fair; for he ought rather to account for our sins, than we for his.   Why did you not learn to read?—I did not dare to learn. I attempted to spell some words when a child. One of the children of Mrs. Banton went in, and told her that she heard Lewis spelling. Mrs. B. jumped up as though she had been shot. "Let me ever know you to spell another word, I'll take your heart right out of you.” I had a strong desire to learn. But it would not do to have slaves learn to read and write. They could read the guideboards. They could write passes for each other. They cannot leave the plantation on the Sabbath without a written pass.   What proportion of slaves attend church on the Sabbath?—In the country, not more, than one in ten on an average.   How many slaves have you ever known that could read?—I never saw more than three or four that 105 could properly read at all. I never saw but one that could write.   What do slaves know about the Bible?—They generally believe there is somewhere a real Bible, that came from God; but they frequently say the Bible now used is master's Bible; most that they hear from it being, "Servants, obey your masters."   Are families often separated? How many such cases have you personally known?—I never knew a whole family to live together till all were grown up, in my life. There is almost always, in every family, some one or more keen and bright, or else sullen and stubborn slave, whose influence they are afraid of on the rest of the family, and such a one must take a walking ticket to the south.   There are other causes of separation. The death of a large owner is the occasion usually of many families being broken up. Bankruptcy is another cause of separation, and the hard-heartedness of a majority of slaveholders another and a more fruitful cause than either or all the rest. Generally there is but little more scruple about separating families than there is with a man who keeps sheep in selling off the lambs in the fall. On one plantation where I lived, there was an old slave named Paris. He was from fifty to sixty years old, and a very honest and apparently pious slave. A slave-trader came along one day, gathering hands for the south. The old master ordered the waiter or coachman to take Paris into the back room, pluck out all his gray hairs, rub his face with a greasy towel, and then had him 106 brought forward and sold for a young man. His wife consented to go with him, upon a promise from the trader that they should be sold together, with their youngest child, which she carried in her arms. They left two behind them, who were only from four to six or eight years of age. The speculator collected his drove, started for the market, and, before he left the state, he sold that infant child to pay one of his tavern bills, and took the balance in cash. This was the news which came back to us, and was never disputed.   I saw one slave mother, named Lucy, with seven children, put up by an administrator for sale. At first the mother and three small children were put up together. The purchasers objected: one says, "I want the woman and the babe, but not the other children;" another says, "I want that little girl;" and another, "I want the boy." "Well," says the administrator, "I must let you have them to the best advantage." So the children were taken away; the mother and infant were first sold, then child after child—the mother looking on in perfect agony; and as one child after another came down from the auction block, they would run and cling, weeping, to her clothes. The poor mother stood, till nature gave way; she fainted and fell, with her child in her arms. The only sympathy she received from most of the hard-hearted monsters, who had riven her heart-strings asunder, was, "She is a d—d deceitful bitch; I wish she was mine; I would teach her better than to cut up such shines as that here." When she came to, she moaned 107 wofully, and prayed that she might die, to be relieved from her sufferings.   I knew another slave, named Nathan, who had a slave woman for a wife. She was killed by hard usage. Nathan then declared he would never have another slave wife. He selected a free woman for a companion. His master opposed it violently. But Nathan persevered in his choice, and in consequence was sold to go down south. He returned once to see his wife, and she soon after died of grief and disappointment. On his return south, he leaped from the boat, and attempted to swim ashore; his master, on board the boat, took a gun and deliberately shot him, and he drifted down the current of the river.   On this subject of separation of families, I must plant one more rose in the garland that I have already tied upon the brow of the sweet Mrs. Banton. The reader cannot have forgotten her; and in the delectable business of tearing families asunder, she, of course, would have a band. A slave by the name of Susan was taken by Mrs. Banton on mortgage. She had been well treated where she was brought up, had a husband, and they were very happy together. Susan mourned in bitterness over her separation, and pined away under the cruel hand of Mrs. Banton. At length she ran away, and hid herself in the neighborhood of her husband. When this came to the knowledge of Mrs. B., she charged her husband to go for "Suke," and never let her see his face unless she was with him. "No," said she, "if you are offered a double price, don't you take it. 108 I want my satisfaction out of her, and then you may sell her as soon as you please." Susan was brought back in fetters, and Mr. and Mrs. B. both took their satisfaction; they beat and tortured poor Susan till her premature offspring perished, and she almost sank beneath their merciless hands, and then they sold her to be carried a hundred miles farther away from her husband. Ah! slavery is like running the dissecting knife around the heart, among all the tender fibres of our being.   A man by the name of Bill Myers, in Kentucky, went to a large number of auctions, and purchased women about forty years old, with their youngest children in their arms. As they are about to cease bearing at that age, they are sold cheap. The children he took and shut up in a log pen, and set some old worn-out slave women to make broth and feed them. The mothers be gathered in a large drove, and carried them south and sold them. He was detained there for months longer than he expected; and, winter coming on, and no proper provision having been made for the children, many of them perished with cold and hunger, some were frostbitten, and all were emaciated to skeletons. This was the only attempt that I ever knew for gathering young children together, like a litter of pigs, to be raised for the market. The success was not such as to warrant a repetition on the part of Myers.   Jockey Billy Barnett had a slave-prison, where he gathered his droves of husbands, fathers, and wives, separated from their friends: and he tried to keep 109 up their spirits by employing one or two fiddlers to play for them, while they danced over and upon the torn-off fibres of their hearts. Several women were known to have died in that worse than Calcutta Black Hole of grief. They mourned for their children, and would not be comforted, because they were not.   How are the slave cabins usually built?—They are made of small logs, about from ten to twenty feet square. The roof is covered with splits, and dirt is thrown in to raise the bottom, and then it is beat down hard for a floor. The chimneys are made of cut sticks and clay. In the corners, or at the sides, there are pens made, filled with straw, for sleeping. Very commonly, two or three families are huddled together in one cabin, and in cold weather they sleep together promiscuously, old and young. Some few families are indulged in the privilege of having a few hens or ducks around them; but this is not very common.   What amount of food do slaves have in Kentucky?—They are not put on allowance; they generally have enough of corn bread; and meat and soup are dealt to them occasionally.   What is the clothing of a slave for a year?—For summer, he has usually a pair of tow and linen pants, and two shirts of the same material. He has a pair of shoes, a pair of woolsey pants, and a round jacket for winter.   The account current of a slave with his master stands about thus:— 110   ICHABOD LIVE-WITHOUT-WORK, in account with JOHN WORK-WITHOUT-PAY. Dr. To one man's work, one year, . . . . . . . . . . $100 00 Contra, Cr.    By 13 bushels of corn meal, at 10 cents, . . . . . . . $1 30 " 100 lbs. mean bacon and pork, at 1 1/2 cents, . . 1 50 " Chickens, pigs, &c., taken without leave, say, . . 1 50 " 9 yds. of tow and linen, for shirts and pants, at 12 and 1/2 cents, . . . 1 12 1/2 " 1 pair of shoes, . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 50 " Cloth for jacket and winter pants, 5 1/2 yds., at 2 shillings, . . . 1 84 " Making clothes, . . . . . . . . 1 00 " 1 Blanket, . . . . . . . . . . . 1 00 " 2 Hats or caps, . . . . . . . . . . 75 ————$11 51 1/2 "Balance due the slave every year, . . . . . . . . . $88 48 1/2   The account stands unbalanced thus till the great day of reckoning comes.   Now, allow that one half of the slaves are capable of labor; that they can earn, on an average, one half the sum above named; that would give us $50 a year for 1,500,000 slaves, which would be seventy-five millions as the sum robbed from the slaves every year!! "Woe unto him that useth his neighbor's service without wages!" Woe unto him that buildeth his house by iniquity, "for the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall an- 111 swer it!" "Behold, the hire of the laborers, who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabbath. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter."   Have you ever known a slave mother to kill her own children?—There was a slave mother near where I lived, who took her child into the cellar and killed it. She did it to prevent being separated from her child. Another slave mother took her three children and threw them into a well, and then jumped in with them, and they were all drowned. Other instances I have frequently heard of. At the death of many and many a slave child, I have seen the two feelings struggling in the bosom of a mother—joy, that it was beyond the reach of the slave monsters, and the natural grief of a mother over her child. In the presence of the master, grief seems to predominate; when away from them, they rejoice that there is one whom the slave-driver will never torment.   How is it that masters KILL their slaves, when they are worth so much money?—They do it to gratify passion; this must be done, cost what it may. Some say a man will not kill a horse worth a hundred dollars, much less a slave worth several hundred dollars. A horse has no such will of his own, as the slave has; he does not provoke the man, as a slave does. The master knows there is contrivance with the slave to outwit him; the horse has no such con- 112 trivance. This conflict of the two WILLS is what makes the master so much more passionate with his slave than with a horse. A slaveholder must be master on the plantation, or he knows the example would destroy all authority.   What do they do with old slaves, who are past labor?— Contrive all ways to keep them at work till the last hour of life. Make them shell corn and pack tobacco. They hunt and drive them as long as there is any life in them. Sometimes they turn them out to do the best they can, or die. One man, on moving to Missouri, sold an old slave for one dollar, to a man not worth a cent. The old slave was turned out to do the best he could; he fought with age and starvation a while, but was soon found, one morning, starved to death, out of doors, and half eaten up by animals. I have known several cases where slaves were left to starve to death in old age. Generally, they sell them south, and let them die there; send them, I mean, before they get very old.   What makes them wash slaves in salt and water after they whip them?— For two reasons; one is to make them smart, and another to prevent mortification in the lacerated flesh. I have seen men and women both washed after they had been cruelly beaten. I have done it with my own hands. It was the hardest work I ever did. The flesh would crawl, and creep, and quiver, under my hands. This slave's name was Tom. He had not started his team Sunday morning early enough. The neighbors saw that Mr. Banton had work done on the Sabbath. Dalton, the overseer, attempted to whip him. Tom knocked 113 him down and trod on him, and then ran away. The patrols caught him, and he was whipped—three hundred lashes. Such a back I never saw; such work I pray that I may never do again.   Do not slaves often say that they love their masters very much?— Say so? yes, certainly. And this loving master and mistress is the hardest work that slaves have to do. When any stranger is present, we have to love them very much. When master is sick, we are in great trouble. Every night the slaves gather around the house, and send up one or two to see how master does. They creep up to the bed, and with a very soft voice, inquire, "How is dear massa? O massa, how we want to hear your voice out in the field again!" Well, this is what they say up in the sick room. They come down to their anxious companions. "How is the old man?" "Will he die?" "Yes, yes; he sure to go, this time; he never whip the slave no more." "Are you sure? Will he die?" "O yes! surely gone for it, now." Then they all look glad, and go to the cabin with a merry heart.   Two slaves were sent out to dig a grave for old master. They dug it very deep. As I passed by, I asked Jess and Bob what in the world they dug it so deep for. It was down six or seven feet. I told them there would be a fuss about it, and they had better fill it up some. Jess said it suited him exactly. Bob said he would not fill it up; he wanted to get the old man as near home as possible. When we got a stone to put on his grave, we hauled the largest we could find, so as to fasten him down as strong as possible.   Another story illustrates the feeling of the slaves 114 on taking leave of their masters. I will not vouch for the truth of it; but it is a story slaves delight to tell each other. The master called the slave to his sick bed." Good-by, Jack; I have a long journey to go; farewell." "Farewell, massa! pleasant journey: you soon be dere, massa—all de way down hill!"   Who are the patrols?—They are men appointed by the county courts to look after all slaves without a pass. They have almost unlimited power over the slaves. They are the sons of run-down families. The greatest scoundrel is always captain of the band of patrols. They are the offscouring of all things; the refuse, the fag end, the ears and tails of slavery; the scales and fins of fish; the tooth and tongues of serpents. They are the very fool's cap of baboons, the echo of parrots, the wallet and satchel of polecats, the scum of stagnant pools, the exuvial, the worn-out skins of slaveholders; they dress in their old clothes. They are, emphatically, the servants of servants, and slaves of the devil; they are the meanest, and lowest, and worst of all creation. Like starved wharf rats, they are out nights, creeping into slave cabins, to see if they have an old bone there; drive out husbands from their own beds, and then take their places. They get up all sorts of pretences, false as their lying tongues can make them, and then whip the slaves and carry a gory lash to the master, for a piece of bread.   The rascals run me with their dogs six miles, one night, and I was never nearer dead than when I reached home that night. I only escaped being half torn to pieces by the dogs, by turning their attention 115 to some calves that were in the road. The dogs are so trained that they will seize a man as quick as any thing else. The dogs come very near being as mean as their masters.   Cyrus often suffered very much from these wretches. He was hired with a man named Baird. This man was reputed to be very good to his slaves. The patrols, therefore, had a special spite toward his slaves. They would seek for an opportunity to abuse ' them. Mr. Baird would generally give his slaves a pass to go to the neighbors, once or twice a week, if requested. He had been very good to Cyrus in this respect, and therefore Cyrus was unwilling to ask too often. Once he went out without his pass. The patrols found him and some other slaves on another plantation without any passes. The other slaves belonged to a plantation where they were often whipped; so they gave them a moderate punishment and sent them home. Cyrus, they said, they would take to the woods, and have a regular whipping spree. It was a cold winter night, the moon shining brightly. When they had got into the woods, they ordered him to take off his outside coat, then his jacket; then he said he had a new vest on; he did not want that whipped all to pieces. There were seven men standing in a ring around him. He looked for an opening, and started at full speed. They took after him, but be was too spry for them. He came to the cabin where I slept, and I lent him a hat and a pair of shoes. He was very much excited; said they were all around him, but couldn't whip him. He went over to Mr. Baird, and the patrols 116 had got there before him, and had brought his clothes and told their story. It was now eight or nine o'clock in the evening. Mr. Baird, when a young man, had lived on the plantation of Mr. Logan, and had been treated very kindly by mother. He remembered this kindness to her children. When Cyrus came in, Mr. Baird took his clothes and handed them to him, and told him, "Well, boy, they came pretty near catching you." Cyrus put on his clothes, went into the room where the patrols were, and said, "Good evening, gentlemen. Why, I did not think the patrols would be out to-night. I was thinking of going over to Mr. Reed's; if I had, I should have gone without a pass. They would have caught me, sure enough. Mr. Baird, I wish you would be good enough to give me a pass, and then I won't be afraid of these fellows." Mr. Baird enjoyed the fun right well, and sat down and wrote him a pass; and the patrols started, and had to find the money for their peach brandy somewhere else.   There were several other times when he had but a hair-breadth escape for his skin. He was generally a little too shrewd for them. After he had outwitted them several times, they offered a premium to any one who would whip him.   How do slaves get information of what is doing in the free states?—In different ways. They get something from the waiters, that come out into the free states and then return with their masters. Persons from the free states tell them many things; the free blacks get something; and slaves learn most of all from hearing their masters talk. 117   Don't slaves that run away return sometimes?—Yes; there was one returned from Canada, very sorry he had run away. His master was delighted with him; thought he had him sure for life, and made much of him. He was sent round to tell how bad Canada was. He had a sermon for the public,—the ear of the masters,—and another for the slaves. How many he enlightened about the best way to get there, I don't know. His master, at last, was so sure of him, that he let him take his wife and children and go over to Ohio, to a camp-meeting, all fitted out in good style, with horse and wagon. They never stopped to hear any preaching, till they heard the waves of the lakes lift up their cheerful voices between them and the oppressor. George then wrote an affectionate note to his master, inviting him to take tea with him in Canada, beyond the waters, the barrier of freedom. Whether the old people ever went up to Canada, to see their affectionate children, I have not learned. I have heard of several instances very much like the above.   If the slaves were set free, would they cut the throats of their masters?—They are far more likely to kill them, if they don't set them free. Nothing but the hope of emancipation, and the fear they might not succeed, keeps them from rising to assert their rights. They are restrained, also, from affection for the children of those who so cruelly oppress them. If none would suffer but the masters themselves, the slaves would make many more efforts for freedom. And, sooner or later, unless the slaves are given free, they will take freedom, at all hazards. There are 118 multitudes that chafe under the yoke, sorely enough. They could run away themselves, but they would hate to leave their families.   Did the slaves in Kentucky hear of the emancipation in the West Indies?— They did, in a very short time after it took place. It was the occasion of great joy. They expected they would be free next. This event has done much to keep up the hopes of the slave to the present hour.   What do slaves think of the PIETY of their masters?—They have very little confidence in them about any thing. As a specimen of their feelings on this subject, I will tell an anecdote of a slave.   A slave, named George, was the property of a man of high standing in the church. The old gentleman was taken sick, and the doctor told him he would die. He called George, and told him if he would wait upon him attentively, and do every thing for him possible, he would remember him in his will: he would do something handsome for him.   George was very much excited to know what it might be; hoped it might be in the heart of his master to give him his freedom. At last, the will was made. George was still more excited. The master noticed it, and asked what the matter was. "Massa, you promise do something for me in your will. Poor nigger! what massa done for George?" "O George, don't be concerned; I have done a very handsome thing for you—such as any slave would be proud to have done for him." This did not satisfy George. He was still very eager to know what it was. At length the master saw it necessary to tell 119 George, to keep him quiet, and make him attend to his duty. "Well, George, I have made provision that, when you die, you shall have a good coffin, and be put into the same vault with me. Will not that satisfy you, George?" "Well, massa, one way I am satisfied, and one way I am not." "What, what," said the old master, "what is the matter with that?" "Why," says George, "I like to have good coffin when I die." "Well, don't you like to be in the same vault with me and other rich masters?" "Why, yes, massa, one way I like it, and one way I don't." "Well, what don't you like?" "Why, I fraid, massa, when de debbil come take you body, he make mistake, and get mine."   The slaves uniformly prefer to be buried at the greatest possible distance away from master. They are superstitious, and fear that the slave-driver, having whipped so much when alive, will, somehow, be beating them when dead. I was actually as much afraid of my old master when dead, as I was when he was alive. I often dreamed of him, too, after he was dead, and thought he had actually come back again, to torment me more.   Do slaves have conscientious scruples about taking things from their masters?—They think it wrong to take from a neighbor, but not from their masters. The only question with them is, "Can we keep it from master?" If they can keep their backs safe, conscience is quiet enough on this point. But a slave that will steal from a slave, is called mean as master. This is the lowest comparison slaves know how to use: "just as mean as white folks." No 120 right for to complain of white folks, who steal us all de days of our life; nigger dat what steal from nigger, he meaner nor all."   There is no standard of morality in the slave states. The master stands before the slave a robber and oppressor. His words count nothing with the slaves. The slaves are disrobed of the attributes of men, so that they cannot hold up the right standard, and there is none. The slaves frequently have discussions upon moral questions. Sol and Tom went, one night, to steal the chickens of a neighbor. Tom went up, to hand them down to Sol. While engaged in this operation, he paused a minute. "Sol, you tink dis right, to steal dese chicken from here?" "What dat you say, Tom?" "I say, you tink him right to steal dese chicken, Sol?" "What you come talk dat way, now, for? Dat quession you ought settle 'fore you come here." "Me did tink about it, but want to hear what you say, Sol. Don't you tink it kind of wrong to take dese here chicken?" "I tell you, Sol, no time for 'scuss dat now. Dat is de great moral question. Make haste; hand me down anudder one; let us git away from here 'fore de daylight come."   Do you think it was right for you to run away, and not pay any thing for yourself?— I would be willing to pay, if I knew who to pay it to. But when 1 think it over, I can't find any body that has any better right to me than myself. 1 can't pay father and mother, for they are dead. I don't owe Mrs. Banton any thing for bringing me up the way she did. I worked five or six years, and earned more 121 than one hundred dollars a year, for Mr. K. and family, and received about a dozen dollars a year in clothing. Who do I owe, then, in Kentucky? If I catch one of the administrators on here, I intend to sue him for wages, and interest, for six years' hard work. There will be a small bill of damages for abuse; old Kentucky is not rich enough to pay me for that.   Soon after you came into Ohio, did you let yourself to work?— I did.— Was there any difference in your feelings while laboring there, and as a slave in Kentucky?- -I made a bargain to work for a man in Ohio. I took a job of digging a cellar. Before I began, the people told me he was bad pay ; they would not do it for him. I told them I had agreed to do it. So at it I went, worked hard, and got it off as soon as possible, although I did not expect to get a cent for it; and yet I worked more readily, and with a better mind, than I ever did in Kentucky. If I worked for nothing then, I knew I had made my own bargain; and working with that thought made it easier than any day's work I ever did for a master in Kentucky. That thought was worth more than any pay I ever got in slavery. However, I was more fortunate than many thought I should be; through the exertions of a good friend, I got my pay soon after the work was done.   Why do slaves dread so bad to go to the south to Mississippi or Louisiana?—Because they know that slaves are driven very hard there, and worked to death in a few years.   Are those who have GOOD masters afraid of being sold south?—They all suffer very much for fear 122 master's circumstances will change, and that he may be compelled to sell them to the "SOUL-DRIVERS," a name given to the dealers by the slaves.   What is the highest price you ever knew a slave to sell for?—I have known a man sold for $1465. He was a waiter-man, very intelligent, very humble, and a good house servant. A good blacksmith, as I was told, was once sold in Kentucky for $3000. I have heard of handsome girls being sold in New Orleans for from $2000 to $3000. The common price of females is about from $500 to $700, when sold for plantation hands, for house hands, or for breeders.   Why is a black slave-driver worse than a white one?— He must be very strict and severe, or else he will be turned out. The master selects the hardest-hearted and most unprincipled slave upon the plantation. The overseers are usually a part of the patrols. Which is the worst of the two characters, or officers, is hard to tell.   Are the masters afraid of insurrection?—They live in constant and great fear upon this subject. The least unusual noise at night alarms them greatly. They cry out, "What is that?" "Are the boys all in?"   What is the worst thing you ever saw in Kentucky?—The worst thing I ever saw was a woman, stripped all naked, hung up by her hands, and then whipped till the blood ran down her back. Sometimes this is done by a young master, or mistress, to an aged mother, or even a grandmother. Nothing the slaves abhor as they do this. 123   Which is the worst, a master or a mistress?—A mistress is far worse. She is forever and ever tormenting. When the master whips it is done with; but a mistress will blackguard, scold, and tease, and whip the life out of a slave.   How soon do the children begin to exercise their authority?— From the very breast of the mother. I have seen a child, before he could talk a word, have a stick put into his hand, and he was permitted to whip a slave, in order to quiet him. And from the time they are born till they die, they live by whipping and abusing the slave.   Do you suffer from cold in Kentucky?—Many people think it so warm there that we are safe on this score. They are much mistaken. The weather is far too cold for our thin clothing; and in winter, from rain, sleet, and snow, to which we are exposed, we suffer very severely. Such a thing as a greatcoat the slave very seldom has.   What do they raise in Kentucky?—Corn and hemp, tobacco, oats, some wheat and rye; SLAVES, mules, hogs, and horses, for the southern market.   Do the masters drink a great deal?—They are nearly all hard drinkers — many of them drunkards; and you must not exclude mistress from the honor of drinking, as she is often drunk, too.   Are you not afraid they will send up and catch you, and carry you back to Kentucky?—They may make the attempt; but I made up my mind, when I left slavery, never to go back there and continue alive. I fancy I should be a load for one or two of them to carry back, any how. Besides, they well 124 know that they could not take me out of any state this side of Pennsylvania. There are very few in New England that would sell themselves to help a slaveholder; and if they should, they would have to run their country. They would be hooted at as they walked the streets.   Now, in conclusion, I just want to say, that all the abuses which I have here related are necessary, if slavery must continue to exist. It is impossible to cut off these abuses and keep slavery alive. Now, if you do not approve of these horrid sufferings, I entreat you to lift up your voice and your hand against the whole system, and, with one united effort, overturn the abominations of centuries, and restore scattered families to each other; pour light upon millions of dark minds, and make a thousand, yea, ten times ten thousand, abodes of wretchedness and woe to hail and bless you as angels of mercy sent for their deliverance. In my last blog entry, A Tale of Two Abolitionist Towns, I mentioned an Oberlin resident named Lewis Clarke (sometimes spelled Clark), who was born into slavery but eventually escaped, made his way north, and became an outspoken abolitionist. When he died in 1897, the Governor of his native state, Kentucky, ordered that his body lay in state in the Lexington City Auditorium. His remains were then brought to Oberlin and interred at Westwood Cemetery, with a tombstone that reads: “Lewis Clarke – The original George Harris of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Although there has been some controversy about whether Mr. Clarke was indeed the inspiration for this character in Mrs. Stowe’s epic novel, he nonetheless led a fascinating life in his own right. I thought I’d take this opportunity to tell his story, and at the same time examine the George Harris controversy. Lewis Clarke Lewis G. Clarke (courtesy Oberlin College archives) Lewis Clarke was born a slave in Kentucky in 1815, the son of a white father and an enslaved mulatto mother. He had 9 brothers and sisters, but was separated from his entire family at just 7 years of age when he was given away to another family. This family treated him very cruelly. Years later, Clarke would write a narrative describing his experiences as a slave and his escape to freedom. He would say of this time in his life: “All my severe labor, bitter and cruel punishments for these ten years of captivity with this *** family, all these were as nothing to the sufferings experienced by being separated from my mother, brothers and sisters; the same things, with them near to sympathize with me, to hear my story of sorrow, would have been comparatively tolerable… My thoughts continually by day and my dreams by night were of mother and home, and the horror experienced in the morning, when I awoke and beheld it was a dream, is beyond the power of language to describe.” At the age of 16, Clarke was sold to another cruel master, who used severe beatings along with deprivation of food and water to enforce discipline. Finally, in his early 20s, Clarke decided he was ready to attempt an escape. He explained: “I had long thought and dreamed of LIBERTY; I was now determined to make an effort to gain it. No tongue can tell the doubt, the perplexities, the anxiety which a slave feels, when making up his mind upon this subject. If he makes an effort and is not successful, he must be laughed at by his fellows; he will be beaten unmercifully by the master, and be watched and used the harder for it all his life. And then if he gets away, who, what will he find? He is ignorant of the world. All the white part of mankind, that he has ever seen, are enemies to him and all his kindred. How can he venture where none but white faces shall greet him?” But he took the risk anyway and set out on horseback. At the end of the first day of travel he was near the Ohio River, but decided crossing at night would create too much suspicion. So instead he checked into a local tavern. Seeing familiar faces inside, he first bought a pair of eyeglasses to help disguise him. The next morning he made it across the river to Aberdeen, Ohio. From there he traveled to Cincinnati, then back to Portsmouth, from where he traveled the Ohio-Erie canal to Cleveland. At Cleveland he found passage across Lake Erie to Canada. As he would later say: “When I stepped ashore here, I said, sure enough, I AM FREE. Good heaven! what a sensation, when it first visits the bosom of a full grown man – one, born to bondage – one, who had been taught from early infancy, that this was his inevitable lot for life. Not till then did I dare to cherish for a moment the feeling that one of the limbs of my body was my own.” He was in Canada about six weeks when he learned that his younger brother, Milton, had also escaped slavery and was now living in a place called Oberlin, Ohio. So after working a while and saving up some money, he recrossed Lake Erie and took the stagecoach to Oberlin. On the coach he met several abolitionists from Oberlin, of whom he said: “To be thus surrounded at once with friends, in a land of strangers, was something quite new to me. The impression made by the kindness of these strangers upon my heart, will never be effaced. I thought there must be some new principle at work here, such as I had not seen much of in Kentucky. That evening I arrived at Oberlin, and found Milton boarding at a Mrs. Cole’s. Finding here so many friends, my first impression was that all the abolitionists in the country must live right there together.” Lewis stayed and worked in Oberlin for a year, then decided on a bold and dangerous plan. He would return to Kentucky and help his youngest brother, Cyrus, escape from slavery. So in July, 1842, he made his way back into the “den of lions”. He found his brother near Lexington, then accompanied him on a harrowing journey by foot back towards the Ohio River. At one point he said: “in traveling through the rain and mud this afternoon, we suffered beyond all power of description. Sometimes we found ourselves just ready to stand fast asleep in the middle of the road. Our feet were blistered all over. When Cyrus would get almost discouraged, I urged him on, saying we were walking for freedom now. Yes, he would say, ‘Freedom is good, Lewis, but this is a hard, h-a-r-d way to get it.’ This he would say half asleep. We were so weak before night, that several times fell upon our knees in the road. We had crackers with us, but we had no appetite to eat – fears were behind us, hope before – and we were driven and drawn as hard as ever men were.” But when they finally reached Ohio, Cyrus was beside himself with joy. They made their way to Ripley, Ohio, where they “went Up to the house of a good friend of the slave.” The lady of the house was so kind that Cyrus became suspicious, but “when the young men came home, he soon got acquainted, and felt sure they were his friends.” (Anyone who read my previous blog will probably have a good guess of whose house he’s talking about here!) From there they were sent on “by the friends, from place to place”, until they finally reached Oberlin, five weeks after Lewis had left there. However Cyrus didn’t feel safe in the United States, so after several days in Oberlin he continued on to Canada, while Lewis and Milton remained in Oberlin. Then one day, Cyrus’ fears were justified, when Lewis and Milton were staying in Madison, Ohio, where Lewis had been asked to lecture about slavery. Slavecatchers had learned of their presence and were able to abduct Milton. But fortunately the residents of Lake and Ashtabula counties rallied, rescued Milton, and arrested the slavecatchers, who they eventually sent packing back to Kentucky, angry and empty-handed.[1] After this, Lewis and Milton moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and stayed in the home of Aaron and Mary Safford. While here, Mary introduced Lewis to her sister-in-law, Harriet Beecher Stowe.[2] Lewis also wrote his ‘slave narrative’, which was widely circulated and which I’ve been quoting above. He also became a speaker on the abolitionist circuit and toured the country telling of his experiences as a slave. In fact he was one of the keynote speakers at the founding convention of the Republican Party in Michigan in 1854. But his fame put the slavecatchers on his trail again, and Clarke was forced to leave the United States and return to Canada, where he stayed until 1874. Then he returned to Oberlin and continued to lecture, also helping former slaves return from Canada and find work in the United States. In his final years he returned to Kentucky, where he suffered from physical ailments and financial difficulties. He died in 1897 at the age of 82. In addition to being laid in state in the Lexington City Auditorium, he was eulogized by newspapers around the country. Lewis Clarke tombstone So is the inscription on Mr. Clarke’s tombstone correct? Although Clarke had claimed to be the George Harris character ever since Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published, a daughter of Mrs. Stowe disputed the claim near the end of his life. Let’s take a look at the evidence. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1852, 7 years after Clarke’s narrative. In 1854, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote another book, called A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (referred to hereafter as “the Key”). In this non-fiction book she sought to set the record straight for those who claimed that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was unrealistic, by revealing the sources that inspired the characters and events in her novel, as well as other supportive sources. One of the first topics she addresses is the George Harris character, of whom she says: “With regard to the incidents of George Harris’s life, that he may not be supposed a purely exceptional case, we propose to offer some parallel facts from the lives of slaves of our personal acquaintance. Lewis Clark is an acquaintance of the writer. Soon after his escape from slavery, he was received into the family of a sister-in-law of the author, and there educated. His conduct during this time was such as to win for him uncommon affection and respect, and the author has frequently heard him spoken of in the highest terms by all who knew him. The gentleman in whose family he so long resided, says of him, in a recent letter to the writer, ‘I would trust him, as the saying is, with untold gold’ … The reader is now desired to compare the following incidents of his life, part of which he related personally to the author, with the incidents of the life of George Harris… ” [3] She then goes on and recounts several pages of material from Clarke’s own narrative. Much of the material she cites was not included in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but some of it was and became part of the George Harris character: George Harris was born into slavery in Kentucky to a white father and mulatto mother and a large family. Like Lewis Clarke, he had a “handsome” older sister, “a pious, good girl – a member of the Baptist Church”, who was abused by her master before being sold down to New Orleans. George Harris was separated from his family at a young age, of which he says: “when I was a little fellow, and lay awake whole nights and cried, it wasn’t the hunger, it wasn’t the whipping, I cried for. No, sir, it was for my mother and my sisters – it was because I hadn’t a friend to love me on earth.” He made his escape when he was a young man, through Ohio and across Lake Erie to Canada. One other similarity that Mrs. Stowe doesn’t mention in the Key, but is quite apparent, is that George Harris also spent the night prior to crossing the Ohio River in a tavern, which he entered in disguise, and where he recognized some of the clientele. But just like there are many parts of Clarke’s story that aren’t shared by George Harris, there are also parts of George Harris’ story that weren’t shared by Clarke. As Mrs. Stowe explains, the George Harris character, like other characters in the novel, is a “mosaic” of her own imagination and several real-life people, including the renowned abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. But all this was called into question in 1895, when a newspaper article appeared in Boston, telling about Lewis Clarke and claiming that he was the inspiration for George Harris. This prompted a firm and prompt denunciation from Mrs. Stowe’s daughter, who wrote a letter to the editor claiming that her mother “never saw the man, or even heard of him, until two years ago” and that his claims were “entirely untrue from beginning to end, so far as it had any connection with my mother or her writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”[4]  But nowhere in the letter does the younger Miss Stowe explain the contradiction of what her mother wrote in the Key forty years earlier, nor does she even acknowledge that those words were ever written. So what to believe then, the Key, or the letter? Well, the Key was written by Mrs. Stowe herself, 9 years after she would have first met Lewis Clarke and 2 years after she published Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The purpose of the key was to validate the claims in her novel, as explained above. The contradicting letter was written by Mrs. Stowe’s daughter, 50 years after Mrs. Stowe would have first met Lewis Clarke, and 43 years after the publication of her novel. By this time, Harriet Beecher Stowe herself was 84 years old and had “drifted into dementia and was often found wandering through the gardens and greenhouses of her neighbors.“[5] I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide for yourself which story to believe, but in my mind there is no question: Lewis Clarke was indeed a major inspiration (but not the only one) for the George Harris character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But more importantly, he was a real-life, flesh and blood, American hero in his own right. Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave,[1][2] who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person (a slaver), while treated as property.[3] Slavery typically involves the enslaved person being made to perform some form of work while also having their location dictated by the slaver. Historically, when people were enslaved, it was often because they were indebted, or broke the law, or suffered a military defeat, and the duration of their enslavement was either for life or for a fixed period of time after which freedom was granted.[4] Individuals, then, usually became slaves involuntarily, due to force or coercion, although there was also voluntary slavery to pay a debt or obtain money for some purpose. In the course of human history, slavery was a typical feature of civilization,[5] and legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed in all countries of the world, except as punishment for crime.[6][7] In chattel slavery, the enslaved person is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the slave owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes the conditions of unfree labour and forced labour that most slaves endure.[8] In 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26 percent were children, were enslaved throughout the world despite it being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50 percent of enslaved people provide forced labour, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy.[9] In the industrialised countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery; in the non-industrialised countries, enslavement by debt bondage is a common form of enslaving a person,[8] such as captive domestic servants, forced marriage, and child soldiers.[10] Contents 1 Terminology 1.1 Chattel slavery 1.2 Bonded labour 1.3 Dependents 1.4 Forced labour 1.5 Forced marriage 1.6 Other uses of the term 2 Characteristics 2.1 Economics 2.2 Identification 2.3 Legal rights 3 History 3.1 Early history 3.2 Classical antiquity 3.3 Middle Ages 3.4 Early modern period 3.5 Late modern period 4 Contemporary slavery 4.1 Distribution 4.2 Economics 4.3 Trafficking 5 Abolitionism 5.1 In antiquity 5.2 Americas 5.3 Europe 5.4 Worldwide 6 Apologies 6.1 Reparations 7 Media 8 See also 9 References 10 Bibliography 10.1 Surveys and reference 11 Further reading 12 External links 12.1 Historical 12.2 Modern Terminology The word slave arrived in English via the Old French sclave. In Medieval Latin the word was sclavus and in Byzantine Greek σκλάβος.[11] Use of the word arose during the Early Medieval Period, when Slavs from Central and Eastern Europe (Saqaliba) were frequently enslaved by Moors from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.[12][13][14] There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer" or "enslaved person", rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were". Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with person implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow.[15] Chattel slavery As a social institution, chattel slavery (traditional slavery) denies the human agency of people, by legally dehumanising them into chattels (personal property) owned by the slaver; therefore slaves give birth to slaves; the children of slaves are born enslaved, under legal doctrines, such as partus sequitur ventrem ("That which is brought forth follows the belly").[16] They also may be bought and sold at will.[17] Although chattel slavery was the usual form of enslavement in most societies that practiced slavery throughout human history, since the 19th century, this form of slavery was formally abolished.[18] Examples of sexual slavery, often in military contexts, include detention in "rape camps" or "comfort stations," "comfort women", forced "marriages" to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women or men as chattel and, as such, violations of the peremptory norm prohibiting slavery.[19][20][21][22] Bonded labour Main article: Debt bondage See also: Money marriage and Chukri System Indenture, otherwise known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour under which a person pledges himself or herself against a loan. The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt.[23] It is the most widespread form of slavery today.[24] Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia.[23] Money marriage refers to a marriage where a girl, usually, is married off to a man to settle debts owed by her parents.[25] The Chukri System is a debt bondage system found parts of Bengal where a female can be coerced into prostitution in order to pay off debts.[26] Dependents The word "slavery" has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else.[27][28] For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens.[29] Forced labour Flogging a slave fastened to the ground, illustration in an 1853 anti-slavery pamphlet A poster for a slave auction in Georgia, U.S., 1860 Portrait of an older woman in New Orleans with her enslaved servant girl in the mid-19th century Main article: Unfree labour See also: Human trafficking Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to describe an individual who is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term unfree labour is also used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will, and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person.[citation needed] This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, de jure legal or traditional rights, they also have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work and are frequently subject to forms of coercion, violence, and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work.[citation needed] Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children.[30][31] Child soldiers and child labor Main article: Child slavery See also: Child labour and Military use of children In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts.[32] More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labour, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty[33] such as in restaveks in Haiti. Forced marriage See also: Marriage by abduction and Child marriage Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery.[citation needed] Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West.[34][35][36][37] Sacred prostitution is where girls and women are pledged to priests or those of higher castes, such as the practice of Devadasi in South Asia or fetish slaves in West Africa.[citation needed] Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a 2003 study finding a national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction.[38] Other uses of the term The word slavery is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing. Some argue that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute "state-operated slavery."[39][40] Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.[41] "Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary psychiatric patients, claiming there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness and yet the psychiatric patient must follow the orders of the psychiatrist. They assert that instead of chains to control the slave, the psychiatrist uses drugs to control the mind.[42] Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who did not want to be a slave.[43][44] Some proponents of animal rights have applied the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves.[45] The labour market, as institutionalized under today's market economic systems, has been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists, who utilise the term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour.[46][47][48] Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.[49] Characteristics Economics Gustave Boulanger's painting The Slave Market Economists have modeled the circumstances under which slavery (and variants such as serfdom) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant but labour is scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If the opposite holds true, then it is more costly for landowners to guard the slaves than to employ paid workers who can demand only low wages because of the degree of competition.[50] Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew. They were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as large areas of land with few inhabitants became available.[51] Slavery is more common when the tasks are relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale monocrops such as sugarcane and cotton, in which output depended on economies of scale. This enables systems of labour, such as the gang system in the United States, to become prominent on large plantations where field hands toiled with factory-like precision. Then, each work gang was based on an internal division of labour that assigned every member of the gang to a task and made each worker's performance dependent on the actions of the others. The enslaved chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excess sprouts. Plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line.[52] Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery retards technological advancement because the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading their efficiency. For example, it is sometimes argued that, because of this narrow focus, technology in Greece – and later in Rome – was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.[53] The work of the Mercedarians was in ransoming Christian slaves held in North Africa (1637). Scottish economist Adam Smith stated that free labour was economically better than slave labour, and that it was nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic, or republican form of government since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves. He further stated that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom under centralized government, or a central authority like a king or church.[54][55] Similar arguments appeared later in the works of Auguste Comte, especially given Smith's belief in the separation of powers, or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith stated in the Lectures on Jurisprudence, "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues..."[56] Sale and inspection of slaves Even after slavery became a criminal offense, slave owners could get high returns. According to researcher Siddharth Kara, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $91.2 billion. That was second only to drug trafficking, in terms of global criminal enterprises. At the time the weighted average global sales price of a slave was estimated to be approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa. The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $3,175, with a low of an average $950 for bonded labour and $29,210 for a trafficked sex slave. Approximately 40% of slave profits each year were generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of the world's 29 million slaves.[57] Identification Branding of a female slave Barefooted slaves depicted in David Roberts' Egypt and Nubia, issued between 1845 and 1849 Slave branding, c. 1853 Throughout history, slaves were clothed in a distinctive fashion, particularly with respect to the frequent lack of footwear, as they were rather commonly forced to go barefoot. This was partly for economic reasons, but also served as a distinguishing feature, especially in South Africa and South America. For example, the Cape Town slave code stated that "Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes."[58] It also puts slaves at a physical disadvantage because of the lack of protection against environmental conditions and in confrontations, thereby making it more difficult to escape or to rebel against their owners. This was the case in the majority of states. Most images from the respective historical period suggest that slaves were barefoot.[59] Brother Riemer stated, "[the slaves] are, even in their most beautiful suit, obliged to go barefoot. Slaves were forbidden to wear shoes. This was a prime mark of distinction between the free and the bonded and no exceptions were permitted."[60] According to the Bible, shoes have been considered badges of freedom since antiquity: "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put [it] on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on [his] feet" (Luke 15:22). This aspect can be viewed as an informal law in areas where slavery existed as any person sighted barefoot in public was assumed to be a slave. In certain societies this rule continues. The Tuareg still unofficially practice slavery and force their slaves to remain barefoot.[61] Another widespread practice was branding, either to explicitly mark them as property or as punishment. Legal rights Depending upon the era and the country, slaves sometimes had a limited set of legal rights. For example, in the Province of New York, people who deliberately killed slaves were punishable under a 1686 statute.[62] And, as already mentioned, certain legal rights attached to the nobi in Korea, to enslaved people in various African societies, and to black female slaves in the French colony of Louisiana. Giving slaves legal rights has sometimes been a matter of morality, but also sometimes a matter of self-interest. For example, in ancient Athens, protecting slaves from mistreatment simultaneously protected people who might be mistaken for slaves, and giving slaves limited property rights incentivized slaves to work harder to get more property.[63] In the southern United States prior to the extirpation of slavery in 1865, a proslavery legal treatise reported that slaves accused of crimes typically had a legal right to counsel, freedom from double jeopardy, a right to trial by jury in graver cases, and the right to grand jury indictment, but they lacked many other rights such as white adults’ ability to control their own lives.[64] History Some scholars differentiate ancient forms of slavery from the largely race-based slavery. The first type of slavery, sometimes called "just title servitude", was inflicted on prisoners of war, debtors, and other vulnerable people. Race-based slavery grew to immense proportions starting in the 14th century.[65] It was argued even by some contemporary writers to be intrinsically immoral.[66][67][68] Early history Main article: History of slavery Corinthian black-figure terra-cotta votive tablet of slaves working in a mine, dated to the late seventh century BC Slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures.[5] Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a substantial population density. Thus, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as the American Indian peoples of the salmon-rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.[69] In the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive.[70] The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution.[5] Slavery was practiced in almost every ancient civilization.[5] Such institutions included debt bondage, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the enslavement of slaves' offspring.[71] Classical antiquity Main article: Slavery in antiquity Africa Main article: Slavery in ancient Egypt Slavery existed in Pharaonic Egypt, but studying it is complicated by terminology used by the Egyptians to refer to different classes of servitude over the course of history. Interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone.[72][73] The three apparent types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labour, and forced labour.[74][75][76] Asia Slavery existed in ancient China as early as the Shang dynasty.[77] Slavery was employed largely by governments as a means of maintaining a public labour force.[78][79] Europe Ancient Greece and Rome Main article: Slavery in ancient Rome Ishmaelites Purchase Joseph, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860 Records of slavery in Ancient Greece date begin with Mycenaean Greece. Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.[80] As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, across Europe and the Mediterranean. Slaves were used for labour, as well as 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 was led by Spartacus. Slave Market in Ancient Rome, by Jean-Léon Gérôme By the late Republican era, slavery had become an economic pillar of Roman wealth, as well as Roman society.[81] It is estimated that 25% or more of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved, although the actual percentage is debated by scholars and varied from region to region.[82][83] Slaves represented 15–25% of Italy's population,[84] mostly war captives,[84] especially from Gaul[85] and Epirus. Estimates of the number of slaves in the Roman Empire suggest that the majority were scattered throughout the provinces outside of Italy.[84] Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians.[86] Foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy were estimated to have peaked at 5% of the total in the capital, where their number was largest. Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent. Jewish slaves never fully assimilated into Roman society, remaining an identifiable minority. These slaves (especially the foreigners) had higher death rates and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes subjected to mass expulsions.[87] The average recorded age at death for the slaves in Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).[88] Middle Ages Africa See also: Slavery in Africa Slavery was widespread in Africa, which pursued both internal and external slave trade.[89] In the Senegambia region, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sahel, including Ghana, Mali, Segou, and Songhai, about a third of the population were enslaved.[90] 13th-century slave market in Yemen.[91] During the trans-Saharan slave trade, slaves from West Africa were transported across the Sahara desert to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle eastern civilizations. The Indian Ocean slave trade, sometimes known as the east African slave trade, was multi-directional. Africans were sent as slaves to the Arabian Peninsula, to Indian Ocean islands (including Madagascar), to the Indian subcontinent, and later to the Americas. These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast.[92][93] There, the slaves gradually assimilated in rural areas, particularly on Unguja and Pemba islands.[94] Americas Slavery in Mexico can be traced back to the Aztecs.[95] Other Amerindians, such as the Inca of the Andes, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the Creek of Georgia, and the Comanche of Texas, also practiced slavery.[5] Slavery in Canada was practiced by First Nations and by European settlers.[96] Slave-owning people of what became Canada were, for example, the fishing societies, such as the Yurok, that lived along the Pacific coast from Alaska to California,[97] on what is sometimes described as the Pacific or Northern Northwest Coast. Some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, such as the Haida and Tlingit, were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war and their descendants were slaves.[98] Some nations in British Columbia continued to segregate and ostracize the descendants of slaves as late as the 1970s.[99] Asia Slavery also existed in India, Japan and Vietnam. China See also: Slavery in China Many Han Chinese were enslaved in the process of the Mongol invasion of China proper.[100] According to Japanese historians Sugiyama Masaaki (杉山正明) and Funada Yoshiyuki (舩田善之), Mongolian slaves were owned by Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty.[101][102] Korea Slavery in Korea existed since before the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, c. 0.[103] Slavery has been described as "very important in medieval Korea, probably more important than in any other East Asian country, but by the 16th century, population growth was making [it] unnecessary".[104] Slavery went into decline around the 10th century but came back in the late Goryeo period when Korea also experienced multiple slave rebellions.[103] In the Joseon period of Korea, members of the slave class were known as nobi. The nobi were socially indistinct from freemen (i.e., the middle and common classes) other than the ruling yangban class, and some possessed property rights, and legal and civil rights. Hence, some scholars argue that it is inappropriate to call them "slaves",[105] while some scholars describe them as serfs.[106][107] The nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the total, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[103] In 1801, the majority of government nobi were emancipated,[108] and by 1858, the nobi population stood at about 1.5 percent of the Korean population.[109] Europe Main articles: Barbary slave trade and Slavery in the Byzantine Empire Adalbert of Prague pleads with Boleslaus II for the release of slaves Large-scale trading in slaves was mainly confined to the South and East of early medieval Europe: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, while pagan Central and Eastern Europe (along with the Caucasus and Tartary) were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek, and Radhanite Jewish merchants were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.[110][111][112] The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj Rebellion which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world.[113][114] Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it, or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands, as for example at the Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102) (which aimed mainly at the sale of English slaves to Ireland)[115] and the Council of Armagh (1171). Serfdom, on the contrary, was widely accepted. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims), pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, legitimizing the slave trade as a result of war.[116] The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. Britain In Britain, slavery continued to be practiced following the fall of Rome, and sections of Hywel the Good's laws dealt with slaves in medieval Wales. The trade particularly picked up after the Viking invasions, with major markets at Chester[117] and Bristol[118] supplied by Danish, Mercian, and Welsh raiding of one another's borderlands. At the time of the Domesday Book, nearly 10% of the English population were slaves.[119] William the Conqueror introduced a law preventing the sale of slaves overseas.[120] According to historian John Gillingham, by 1200 slavery in the British Isles was non-existent.[121] Slavery had never been authorized by statute within England and Wales, and in 1772, in the case Somerset v Stewart, Lord Mansfield declared that it was also unsupported within England by the common law. The slave trade was abolished by the Slave Trade Act 1807, although slavery remained legal in possessions outside Europe until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[122] However, when England began to have colonies in the Americas, and particularly from the 1640s, African slaves began to make their appearance in England and remained a presence until the eighteenth century. In Scotland, slaves continued to be sold as chattels until late in the eighteenth century (on the 2nd May, 1722, an advertisement appeared in the "Edinburgh Evening Courant", announcing that a stolen slave had been found, who would be sold to pay expenses, unless claimed within two weeks).[123] For nearly two hundred years in the history of coal mining in Scotland, miners were bonded to their "maisters" by a 1606 Act "Anent Coalyers and Salters". The Colliers and Salters (Scotland) Act 1775 stated that "many colliers and salters are in a state of slavery and bondage" and announced emancipation; those starting work after 1 July 1775 would not become slaves, while those already in a state of slavery could, after 7 or 10 years depending on their age, apply for a decree of the Sheriff's Court granting their freedom. Few could afford this, until a further law in 1799 established their freedom and made this slavery and bondage illegal.[123][124] Ottoman Empire British captain witnessing the miseries of slaves in Ottoman Algeria, 1815 The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world.[125] To staff its bureaucracy, the Ottoman Empire established a janissary system which seized hundreds of thousands of Christian boys through the devşirme system. They were well cared for[citation needed] but were legally slaves owned by the government and were not allowed to marry. They were never bought or sold. The empire gave them significant administrative and military roles. The system began about 1365; there were 135,000 janissaries in 1826, when the system ended.[126] After the Battle of Lepanto, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were recaptured and freed from the Ottoman fleet.[127] Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into jasyr.[128] Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into Poland–Lithuania between 1474 and 1569.[129] Poland Slavery in Poland was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom. Spain and Portugal Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant Muslim invasion of the predominantly Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon 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.[130] From the 11th to the 19th century, North African Barbary Pirates engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco.[131][132] The maritime town of Lagos was the first slave market created in Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale of imported African slaves – the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444.[133][134] In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania.[134] By 1552, black African slaves made up 10% of the population of Lisbon.[135][136] 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 – especially Brazil.[134] In the 15th century one-third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.[137] Russia Crimean Tatar raiders enslaved more than 1 million Eastern Europeans.[138] See also: Slavery in Russia In Kievan Rus and Muscovy, slaves were usually classified as kholops. According to David P. Forsythe, "In 1649 up to three-quarters of Muscovy's peasants, or 13 to 14 million people, were serfs whose material lives were barely distinguishable from slaves. Perhaps another 1.5 million were formally enslaved, with Russian slaves serving Russian masters."[139] Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679.[140] Scandinavia In Scandinavia, thralldom was abolished in the mid-14th century.[141] Early modern period Africa Main articles: Slavery in contemporary Africa and Devshirme 19th-century engraving depicting an Arab slave-trading caravan transporting black African slaves across the Sahara. As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000.[142] Along with Yemen, the Saudis abolished slavery in 1962.[143] Historically, slaves in the Arab World came from many different regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Zanj),[144] the Caucasus (mainly Circassians),[145] Central Asia (mainly Tartars), and Central and Eastern Europe (mainly Slavs [Saqaliba]).[146] Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900.[147] The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.[94][148][149] The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labour, Bantu slaves bought by east African slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, European colonies in the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands, Ethiopia and Somalia.[150] According to the Encyclopedia of African History, "It is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labour was extensive, especially in agriculture."[151][152] The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of 8 to 16 million.[153] Slave labour in East Africa was drawn from the Zanj, Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast.[93][154] The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion, a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 near Basra (also known as Basara), situated in present-day Iraq, is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa.[155] It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq".[156] The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work.[157] As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labour work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labour shortage led to an increased slave market. Slave market in Algiers, 1684 In Algiers, the capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into slavery. In about 1650, there were as many as 35,000 Christian slaves in Algiers.[158] By one estimate, raids by Barbary pirates on coastal villages and ships extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25 million Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries.[159][160][161] However, to this estimate is extrapolated by assuming the number of European, slaves captured by Barbary pirates, was constant for 250 years period: There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers – about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680. By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.[162] Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe.[162] In addition, the number of slaves traded was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia. Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records. Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation.[163] Such observations, across the late 16th and early 17th century observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers. However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy.[164] This eventually led to the bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816.[165][166] Arab-Swahili slave traders and their captives on the Ruvuma River in East Africa, 19th century Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 enslaved Africans passing through every year during the 19th century.[167][168] Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD.[5][failed verification][169] Eduard Rüppell described the losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on foot to Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5,000 made it to Egypt.."[170] W.A. Veenhoven wrote: "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way ... Keltie (The Partition of Africa, London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone puts the figure as high as ten to one."[171] Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities, where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to increase the influence a person had and expand connections.[172] This made slaves a permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become closely connected with the larger family ties.[173] Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances. However, stigma often remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of a kinship group and those related to the master.[172] Slavery was practiced in many different forms: debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa.[174] Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa. A model showing a typical 1700s European slave ship on the Middle Passage, National Museum of American History. When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique: The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.[175] The trans-Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms, such as the Oyo Empire (Yoruba), the Ashanti Empire,[176] the kingdom of Dahomey,[177] and the Aro Confederacy.[178] It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships.[179][180] Americas Further information: Atlantic slave trade, Encomienda, Mita (Inca), Slavery in Brazil, and Slavery in the United States Diagrams of a slave ship and the alignment of captive slaves during the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery in America remains a contentious issue and played a major role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering a revolution, a civil war, and numerous rebellions. In order to establish itself as an American empire, Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. The Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour. The Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola.[181] Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th-century Dominican friar and Spanish historian, participated in campaigns in Cuba (at Bayamo and Camagüey) and was present at the massacre of Hatuey; his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement away from the use of natives as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.[182] England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates. Many whites who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came under contract as indentured servants.[183] The transformation from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640 where a negro, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery, forcing him to serve his master, Hugh Gwyn, for the remainder of his life, for attempting to run away. This case was significant because it established the disparity between his sentence as a black man and that of the two white indentured servants who escaped with him (one described as Dutch and one as a Scotchman). It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime servitude and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants.[184][185][186][187] After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and keep their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the 1655 case Johnson v. Parker, where the court ruled that a black man, Anthony Johnson of Virginia, was granted ownership of another black man, John Casor, as the result of a civil case.[188] This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.[189][190][191][192][193][194][195] Barbados Statue of Bussa, who led the largest slave rebellion in Barbadian history. In the early 17th century, the majority of the labour in Barbados was provided by European indentured servants, mainly English, Irish and Scottish, with enslaved Africans and enslaved Amerindians providing little of the workforce. The introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil in 1640 completely transformed society and the economy. Barbados eventually had one of the world's largest sugar industries.[196] As the effects of the new crop increased, so did the shift in the ethnic composition of Barbados and surrounding islands. The workable sugar plantation required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labour. At first, Dutch traders supplied the equipment, financing, and enslaved Africans, in addition to transporting most of the sugar to Europe. In 1644, the population of Barbados was estimated at 30,000, of which about 800 were of African descent, with the remainder mainly of English descent. These English smallholders were eventually bought out, and the island filled up with large sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. By 1660, there was near parity with 27,000 blacks and 26,000 whites. By 1666, at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island. Many of the remaining whites were increasingly poor. By 1680, there were 17 slaves for every indentured servant. By 1700, there were 15,000 free whites and 50,000 enslaved Africans. Because of the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white workers and ruling planter class, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded. Nevertheless, poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so. Planters expanded their importation of enslaved Africans to cultivate sugar cane. Brazil Public flogging of a slave in 19th-century Brazil, by Johann Moritz Rugendas Slave punishment by Jacques Étienne Arago, 1839. Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established in 1532, as members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another.[197] Later, Portuguese colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labour during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions called bandeiras. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries. During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country. Nearly 5 million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.[198] Until the early 1850s, most enslaved Africans who arrived on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially in Luanda (present-day Angola). Today, with the exception of Nigeria, the largest population of people of African descent is in Brazil.[199] Slave labour was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market. Transportation systems were developed for the mining infrastructure, and population boomed from immigrants seeking to take part in gold and diamond mining. Demand for African slaves did not wane after the decline of the mining industry in the second half of the 18th century. Cattle ranching and foodstuff production proliferated after the population growth, both of which relied heavily on slave labour. 1.7 million slaves were imported to Brazil from Africa from 1700 to 1800, and the rise of coffee in the 1830s further enticed expansion of the slave trade. Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery. Forty percent of the total number of slaves brought to the Americas were sent to Brazil. For reference, the United States received 10 percent. Despite being abolished, there are still people working in slavery-like conditions in Brazil in the 21st century. Cuba In 1789 the Spanish Crown led an effort to reform slavery, as the demand for slave labour in Cuba was growing. The Crown issued a decree, Código Negro Español (Spanish Black Codex), that specified food and clothing provisions, put limits on the number of work hours, limited punishments, required religious instruction, and protected marriages, forbidding the sale of young children away from their mothers. The British made other changes to the institution of slavery in Cuba. But planters often flouted the laws and protested against them, considering them a threat to their authority and an intrusion into their personal lives.[200] The slaveowners did not protest against all the measures of the codex, many of which they argued were already common practices. They objected to efforts to set limits on their ability to apply physical punishment. For instance, the Black Codex limited whippings to 25 and required the whippings "not to cause serious bruises or bleeding". The slave-owners thought that the slaves would interpret these limits as weaknesses, ultimately leading to resistance. Another contested issue was the work hours that were restricted "from sunrise to sunset"; plantation owners responded by explaining that cutting and processing of cane needed 20-hour days during the harvest season.[200] Those slaves who worked on sugar plantations and in sugar mills were often subject to the harshest of conditions. The field work was rigorous manual labour which the slaves began at an early age. The work days lasted close to 20 hours during harvest and processing, including cultivating and cutting the crops, hauling wagons, and processing sugarcane with dangerous machinery. The slaves were forced to reside in barracoons, where they were crammed in and locked in by a padlock at night, getting about three to four hours of sleep. The conditions of the barracoons were harsh; they were highly unsanitary and extremely hot. Typically there was no ventilation; the only window was a small barred hole in the wall.[201] Slaves in Cuba unloading ice from Maine, 1832 Cuba's slavery system was gendered in a way that some duties were performed only by male slaves, some only by female slaves. Female slaves in Havana from the 16th century onwards performed duties such as operating the town taverns, eating houses, and lodges, as well as being laundresses and domestic labourers and servants. Female slaves also served as the town prostitutes. Some Cuban women could gain freedom by having children with white men. As in other Latin cultures, there were looser borders with the mulatto or mixed-race population. Sometimes men who took slaves as wives or concubines freed both them and their children. As in New Orleans and Saint-Domingue, mulattos began to be classified as a third group between the European colonists and African slaves. Freedmen, generally of mixed race, came to represent 20% of the total Cuban population and 41% of the non-white Cuban population.[202] Planters encouraged Afro-Cuban slaves to have children in order to reproduce their work force. The masters wanted to pair strong and large-built black men with healthy black women. They were placed in the barracoons and forced to have sex and create offspring of “breed stock” children, who would sell for around 500 pesos. The planters needed children to be born to replace slaves who died under the harsh regime. Sometimes if the overseers did not like the quality of children, they separate the parents and sent the mother back to working in the fields.[203] Both women and men were subject to the punishments of violence and humiliating abuse. Slaves who misbehaved or disobeyed their masters were often placed in stocks in the depths of the boiler houses where they were abandoned for days at a time, and oftentimes two to three months. These wooden stocks were made in two types: lying-down or stand-up types. women were punished, even when pregnant. They were subjected to whippings: they had to lie "face down over a scooped-out piece of round [earth] to protect their bellies."[204] Some masters reportedly whipped pregnant women in the belly, often causing miscarriages. The wounds were treated with “compresses of tobacco leaves, urine and salt."[205] Haiti Slavery in Haiti started with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in 1492. The practice was devastating to the native population.[206] Following the indigenous Taíno's near decimation from forced labour, disease and war, the Spanish, under advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomeu de las Casas, and with the blessing of the Catholic church began engaging in earnest in the kidnapped and forced labour of enslaved Africans. During the French colonial period beginning in 1625, the economy of Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) was based on slavery, and the practice there was regarded as the most brutal in the world. Following the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Hispaniola was divided between France and Spain. France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue. To develop it into sugarcane plantations, the French imported thousands of slaves from Africa. Sugar was a lucrative commodity crop throughout the 18th century. By 1789, approximately 40,000 white colonists lived in Saint-Domingue. The whites were vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of African slaves they had imported to work on their plantations, which were primarily devoted to the production of sugarcane. In the north of the island, slaves were able to retain many ties to African cultures, religion and language; these ties were continually being renewed by newly imported Africans. Blacks outnumbered whites by about ten to one. Saint-Domingue slave revolt in 1791 The French-enacted Code Noir ("Black Code"), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, had established rules on slave treatment and permissible freedoms. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years.[207] Many slaves died from diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever.[208] They had birth rates around 3 percent, and there is evidence that some women aborted fetuses, or committed infanticide, rather allow their children to live within the bonds of slavery.[209][210] As in its Louisiana colony, the French colonial government allowed some rights to free people of color: the mixed-race descendants of white male colonists and black female slaves (and later, mixed-race women). Over time, many were released from slavery. They established a separate social class. White French Creole fathers frequently sent their mixed-race sons to France for their education. Some men of color were admitted into the military. More of the free people of color lived in the south of the island, near Port-au-Prince, and many intermarried within their community. They frequently worked as artisans and tradesmen, and began to own some property. Some became slave holders. The free people of color petitioned the colonial government to expand their rights. Slaves that made it to Haiti from the trans-Atlantic journey and slaves born in Haiti were first documented in Haiti's archives and transferred to France's Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As of 2015, these records are in The National Archives of France. According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 40,000 whites, 30,000 free coloureds and 450,000 slaves.[211] The Haitian Revolution of 1804, the only successful slave revolt in human history, precipitated the end of slavery in all French colonies. Jamaica Planting the sugar cane, British West Indies, 1823 Jamaica was colonized by the Taino tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. The Spanish enslaved many of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork. The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves.[212] The Spanish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Taíno women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children.[213] Sexual violence with the Taíno women by the Spanish was also common.[214][215] Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000. Mexico In 1519, Hernán Cortés brought the first modern slave to the area.[216] In the mid-16th century, the second viceroy to Mexico, Luis de Velasco, prohibited slavery of the Aztecs. A labour shortage resulted as the Aztecs were either killed or died from disease. This led to the African slaves being imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox. In exchange, many Africans were afforded the opportunity to buy their freedom, while eventually others were granted their freedom by their masters.[216] Puerto Rico When Ponce de León and the Spaniards arrived on the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico), they enslaved Taíno tribes on the island, forcing them to work in the gold mines and in the construction of forts. Many Taíno died, particularly from smallpox, of which they had no immunity. Other Taínos committed suicide or left the island after the failed Taíno revolt of 1511.[217] The Spanish colonists, fearing the loss of their labour force, complained the courts that they needed manpower. As an alternative, Las Casas suggested the importation and use of African slaves. In 1517, the Spanish Crown permitted its subjects to import twelve slaves each, thereby beginning the slave trade on the colonies.[218] African slaves were legally branded with a hot iron on the forehead, prevented their "theft" or lawsuits that challenged their captivity.[219] The colonists continued this branding practice for more than 250 years.[220] They were sent to work in the gold mines, or in the island's ginger and sugar fields. They were allowed to live with their families in a hut on the master's land, and given a patch of land where they could farm, but otherwise were subjected to harsh treatment; including sexual abuse as the majority of colonists had arrived without women; many of them intermarried with the Africans or Taínos. Their mixed-race descendants formed the first generations of the early Puerto Rican population.[219] On March 22, 1873, Spain abolished slavery in Puerto Rico. The owners were compensated. The slaves faced heavy discrimination and had no opportunity for advancement, though they were educated by their masters. The Spaniards considered the Africans superior to the Taíno, since the latter were unwilling to assimilate. The slaves, in contrast, had little choice but to adapt. Many converted to Christianity and were given their masters' surnames.[219] By 1570, the colonists found that the gold mines were depleted, relegating the island to a garrison for passing ships. The cultivation of crops such as tobacco, cotton, cocoa, and ginger became the cornerstone of the economy.[221] With rising demand for sugar on the international market, major planters increased their labour-intensive cultivation and processing of sugar cane. Sugar plantations supplanted mining as Puerto Rico's main industry and kept demand high for African slavery.[221] After 1784, Spain provided five ways by which slaves could obtain freedom.[220] Five years later, the Spanish Crown issued the "Royal Decree of Graces of 1789", which set new rules related to the slave trade and added restrictions to the granting of freedman status. The decree granted its subjects the right to purchase slaves and to participate in the flourishing slave trade in the Caribbean. Later that year a new slave code, also known as El Código Negro (The Black Code), was introduced.[222] Under "El Código Negro", a slave could buy his freedom, in the event that his master was willing to sell, by paying the price sought in installments. Slaves were allowed to earn money during their spare time by working as shoemakers, cleaning clothes, or selling the produce they grew on their own plots of land. For the freedom of their newborn child, not yet baptized, they paid at half the going price for a baptized child.[222] Many of these freedmen started settlements in the areas which became known as Cangrejos (Santurce), Carolina, Canóvanas, Loíza, and Luquillo. Some became slave owners themselves.[219] Despite these paths to freedom, from 1790 onwards, the number of slaves more than doubled in Puerto Rico as a result of the dramatic expansion of the sugar industry in the island.[221] On March 22, 1873, slavery was legally abolished in Puerto Rico. However, slaves were not emancipated but rather had to buy their own freedom, at whatever price was set by their last masters. They were also required to work for another three years for their former masters, for other colonists interested in their services, or for the state in order to pay some compensation.[223] Between 1527 and 1873, slaves in Puerto Rico had carried out more than twenty revolts.[224][225] Suriname Funeral at slave plantation, Dutch Suriname. 1840–1850. The planters of the Dutch colony relied heavily on African slaves to cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and cotton plantations along the rivers. Planters' treatment of the slaves was notoriously bad.[226] Historian C. R. Boxer wrote that "man's inhumanity to man just about reached its limits in Surinam."[227] Many slaves escaped the plantations. With the help of the native South Americans living in the adjoining rain forests, these runaway slaves established a new and unique culture in the interior that was highly successful in its own right. They were known collectively in English as Maroons, in French as Nèg'Marrons (literally meaning "brown negroes", that is "pale-skinned negroes"), and in Dutch as Marrons. The Maroons gradually developed several independent tribes through a process of ethnogenesis, as they were made up of slaves from different African ethnicities. These tribes include the Saramaka, Paramaka, Ndyuka or Aukan, Kwinti, Aluku or Boni, and Matawai. The Maroons often raided plantations to recruit new members from the slaves and capture women, as well as to acquire weapons, food and supplies. They sometimes killed planters and their families in the raids.[228] The colonists also mounted armed campaigns against the Maroons, who generally escaped through the rain forest, which they knew much better than did the coloniss. To end hostilities, in the 18th century the European colonial authorities signed several peace treaties with different tribes. They granted the Maroons sovereign status and trade rights in their inland territories, giving them autonomy. In 1861–63, President Abraham Lincoln of the United States and his administration looked abroad for places to relocate freed slaves who wanted to leave the United States. It opened negotiations with the Dutch government regarding African-American emigration to and colonization of the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America. Nothing came of it and after 1864, the proposal was dropped.[229] The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname, in 1863, under a gradual process that required slaves to work on plantations for 10 transition years for minimal pay, which was considered as partial compensation for their masters. After 1873, most freedmen largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favor of the capital city, Paramaribo. United States A coffle of slaves being driven on foot from Staunton, Virginia to Tennessee in 1850. Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries, after it gained independence from the British and before the end of the American Civil War. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies, at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. By the time of the American Revolution, the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry.[230] The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, represented by the slave and free states divided by the Mason–Dixon line, which separated free Pennsylvania from slave Maryland and Delaware. Congress, during the Jefferson administration prohibited the importation of slaves, effective 1808, although smuggling (illegal importing) was not unusual.[231] Domestic slave trading, however, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labour demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation. Such laws proposed to Congress to continue the spread of slavery into newly ratified states include the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, times, and places. The power relationships of slavery corrupted many whites who had authority over slaves, with children showing their own cruelty. Masters and overseers resorted to physical punishments to impose their wills. Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was carried out to re-assert the dominance of the master or overseer of the slave.[232] Treatment was usually harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by overseers and owned by absentee slaveholders. Whipping keloid scars of escaped slave, Gordon, Baton Rouge, Louisiana (1863). This famous photo was distributed by abolitionists.[233] William Wells Brown, who escaped to freedom, reported that on one plantation, slave men were required to pick 80 pounds of cotton per day, while women were required to pick 70 pounds per day; if any slave failed in their quota, they were subject to whip lashes for each pound they were short. The whipping post stood next to the cotton scales.[234] A New York man who attended a slave auction in the mid-19th century reported that at least three-quarters of the male slaves he saw at sale had scars on their backs from whipping.[235] By contrast, small slave-owning families had closer relationships between the owners and slaves; this sometimes resulted in a more humane environment but was not a given.[232] More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of labour, and taken to the Deep South in a forced migration, splitting up many families. New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before liberation.[236][237] In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". White people of that time feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery. The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against black people increased as they were granted more rights. Others, like James Henry Hammond argued that slavery was a "positive good" stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement." The Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states to maintain a political balance of power in Congress. The new territories acquired from Britain, France, and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises. By 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union, and tensions continued to rise. Many white Southern Christians, including church ministers, attempted to justify their support for slavery as modified by Christian paternalism.[238] The largest denominations, the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South. Slaves on a Virginia plantation (The Old Plantation, c. 1790). When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, according to the 1860 U.S. census, roughly 400,000 individuals, representing 8% of all U.S. families, owned nearly 4,000,000 slaves.[239] One-third of Southern families owned slaves.[240] The South was heavily invested in slavery. As such, upon Lincoln's election, seven states broke away to form the Confederate States of America. The first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves in the South. Shortly after, over the issue of slavery, the United States erupted into an all out Civil War, with slavery legally ceasing as an institution following the war in December 1865. In 2018, the Orlando Sentinel reported some private Christian schools in Florida as teaching students a creationist curriculum which includes assertions such as, “most black and white southerners had long lived together in harmony” and that “power-hungry individuals stirred up the people” leading to the Civil Rights Movement.[241] Asia See also: History of slavery in Asia Slavery has existed all throughout Asia, and forms of slavery still exist today. China A contract from the Tang dynasty recording the purchase of a 15-year-old slave for six bolts of plain silk and five coins. Slavery has taken various forms throughout China's history. It was reportedly abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law[242][243] fully enacted in 1910,[244] although the practice continued until at least 1949.[100] The Tang dynasty purchased Western slaves from the Radhanite Jews.[245] Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans, Turks, Persians, Indonesians, and people from Inner Mongolia, central Asia, and northern India.[246][247][248][249] The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians, and "black skinned" peoples (who were either Austronesian Negritos of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, or Africans, or both) were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty.[250] In the 17th century Qing Dynasty, there was a hereditarily servile people called Booi Aha (Manchu:booi niyalma; Chinese transliteration: 包衣阿哈), which is a Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes rendered as "nucai." The Manchu was establishing close personal and paternalist relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said, "The Master should love the slaves and eat the same food as him".[251] However, booi aha "did not correspond exactly to the Chinese category of "bond-servant slave" (Chinese:奴僕); instead, it was a relationship of personal dependency on a master which in theory guaranteed close personal relationships and equal treatment, even though many western scholars would directly translate "booi" as "bond-servant" (some of the "booi" even had their own servant).[100] Chinese Muslim (Tungans) Sufis who were charged with practicing xiejiao (heterodox religion), were punished by exile to Xinjiang and being sold as a slave to other Muslims, such as the Sufi begs.[252] Han Chinese who committed crimes such as those dealing with opium became slaves to the begs, this practice was administered by Qing law.[253] Most Chinese in Altishahr were exile slaves to Turkestani Begs.[254] While free Chinese merchants generally did not engage in relationships with East Turkestani women, some of the Chinese slaves belonging to begs, along with Green Standard soldiers, Bannermen, and Manchus, engaged in affairs with the East Turkestani women that were serious in nature.[255] India Slavery in India was widespread by the 6th century BC, and perhaps even as far back as the Vedic period.[256] Slavery intensified during the Muslim domination of northern India after the 11th-century.[257] Slavery existed in Portuguese India after the 16th century. The Dutch, too, largely dealt in Abyssian slaves, known in India as Habshis or Sheedes.[258] Arakan/Bengal, Malabar, and Coromandel remained the largest sources of forced labour until the 1660s. Between 1626 and 1662, the Dutch exported on an average 150–400 slaves annually from the Arakan-Bengal coast. During the first 30 years of Batavia's existence, Indian and Arakanese slaves provided the main labour force of the Dutch East India Company, Asian headquarters. An increase in Coromandel slaves occurred during a famine following the revolt of the Nayaka Indian rulers of South India (Tanjavur, Senji, and Madurai) against Bijapur overlordship (1645) and the subsequent devastation of the Tanjavur countryside by the Bijapur army. Reportedly, more than 150,000 people were taken by the invading Deccani Muslim armies to Bijapur and Golconda. In 1646, 2,118 slaves were exported to Batavia, the overwhelming majority from southern Coromandel. Some slaves were also acquired further south at Tondi, Adirampatnam, and Kayalpatnam. Another increase in slaving took place between 1659 and 1661 from Tanjavur as a result of a series of successive Bijapuri raids. At Nagapatnam, Pulicat, and elsewhere, the company purchased 8,000–10,000 slaves, the bulk of whom were sent to Ceylon, while a small portion were exported to Batavia and Malacca. Finally, following a long drought in Madurai and southern Coromandel, in 1673, which intensified the prolonged Madurai-Maratha struggle over Tanjavur and punitive fiscal practices, thousands of people from Tanjavur, mostly children, were sold into slavery and exported by Asian traders from Nagapattinam to Aceh, Johor, and other slave markets. In September 1687, 665 slaves were exported by the English from Fort St. George, Madras. And, in 1694–96, when warfare once more ravaged South India, a total of 3,859 slaves were imported from Coromandel by private individuals into Ceylon.[259][260][261][262][263][264][265][266][267][268][269] The volume of the total Dutch Indian Ocean slave trade has been estimated to be about 15–30% of the Atlantic slave trade, slightly smaller than the trans-Saharan slave trade, and one-and-a-half to three times the size of the Swahili and Red Sea coast and the Dutch West India Company slave trades.[270] According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in India in 1841. About 15% of the population of Malabar were slaves. Slavery was legally abolished in the possessions of the East India Company by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[5] Indochina The hill tribe people in Indochina were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians".[271] A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large scale".[271] The census, taken in 1879, showed that 6% of the population in the Malay sultanate of Perak were slaves.[272] Enslaved people made up about two-thirds of the population in part of North Borneo in the 1880s.[272] Japan After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.[273][274] Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church[275] in 1555. Japanese slave women were even sold as concubines to Asian lascar and African crew members, along with their European counterparts serving on Portuguese ships trading in Japan, mentioned by Luis Cerqueira, a Portuguese Jesuit, in a 1598 document.[276] Japanese slaves were brought by the Portuguese to Macau, where they were enslaved to Portuguese or became slaves to other slaves.[277][278] Some Korean slaves were bought by the Portuguese and brought back to Portugal from Japan, where they had been among the tens of thousands of Korean prisoners of war transported to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98).[279][280] Historians pointed out that at the same time Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan.[281][282] Fillippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were black.[283][284][285][286][287] The Portuguese "highly regarded" Asian slaves from the East much more "than slaves from sub-Saharan Africa".[288] The Portuguese attributed qualities like intelligence and industriousness to Chinese and Japanese slaves.[289][290][285][286] King Sebastian of Portugal feared rampant slavery was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.[291] Hideyoshi was so disgusted that his own Japanese people were being sold en masse into slavery on Kyushu, that he wrote a letter to Jesuit Vice-Provincial Gaspar Coelho on July 24, 1587, to demand the Portuguese, Siamese (Thai), and Cambodians stop purchasing and enslaving Japanese and return Japanese slaves who ended up as far as India.[292][293][294] Hideyoshi blamed the Portuguese and Jesuits for this slave trade and banned Christian proselytizing as a result.[295][self-published source][296] In 1595, a law was passed by Portugal banning the selling and buying of Chinese and Japanese slaves.[297] Korea Kisaeng, women from outcast or slave families who were trained to provide entertainment, conversation, and sexual services to men of the upper class. During the Joseon period, the nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[103] The nobi system declined beginning in the 18th century.[298] Since the outset of the Joseon dynasty and especially beginning in the 17th century, there was harsh criticism among prominent thinkers in Korea about the nobi system. Even within the Joseon government, there were indications of a shift in attitude toward the nobi.[299] King Yeongjo implemented a policy of gradual emancipation in 1775,[104] and he and his successor King Jeongjo made many proposals and developments that lessened the burden on nobi, which led to the emancipation of the vast majority of government nobi in 1801.[299] In addition, population growth,[104] numerous escaped slaves,[103] growing commercialization of agriculture, and the rise of the independent small farmer class contributed to the decline in the number of nobi to about 1.5% of the total population by 1858.[109] The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 1886–87,[103][109] and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894.[103][300] However, slavery did not completely disappear in Korea until 1930, during Imperial Japanese rule. During the Imperial Japanese occupation of Korea around World War II, some Koreans were used in forced labour by the Imperial Japanese, in conditions which have been compared to slavery.[103][301] These included women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II, known as "comfort women".[103][301] Oceania Slaves (he mōkai) had a recognised social role in traditional Māori society in New Zealand.[302] Blackbirding occurred in the Pacific, especially in the 19th century. Ottoman Empire and Black Sea See also: Crimean-Nogai raids into East Slavic lands Above: Ottoman wars saw Europeans dragged to that empire In Constantinople, about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves.[69] The city was a major centre of the slave trade in the 15th and later centuries. Slaves were provided by Tatar raids on Slavic villages[303] but also by conquest and the suppression of rebellions, in the aftermath of which entire populations were sometimes enslaved and sold across the Empire, reducing the risk of future rebellion. The Ottomans also purchased slaves from traders who brought slaves into the Empire from Europe and Africa. It has been estimated that some 200,000 slaves – mainly Circassians – were imported into the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and 1909.[272] As late as 1908, women slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire.[304] Until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate (a Muslim Tatar state) maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.[128] The slaves were captured in southern Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Circassia by Tatar horsemen[305] and sold in the Crimean port of Kaffa.[306] About 2 million mostly Christian slaves were exported over the 16th and 17th centuries[307] until the Crimean Khanate was destroyed by the Russian Empire in 1783.[308] Persian slave in the Khanate of Khiva, 19th century A slave market for captured Russian and Persian slaves was centred in the Central Asian khanate of Khiva.[309] In the early 1840s, the population of the Uzbek states of Bukhara and Khiva included about 900,000 slaves.[272] Darrel P. Kaiser wrote, "Kazakh-Kirghiz tribesmen kidnapped 1573 settlers from colonies [German settlements in Russia] in 1774 alone and only half were successfully ransomed. The rest were killed or enslaved."[310] Late modern period Main article: Slavery in the 21st century § Prison labor Soviet Union Main article: Gulag Workers being forced to haul rocks up a hill in a Gulag Between 1930 and 1960, the Soviet Union created a system of, according to Anne Applebaum and the "perspective of the Kremlin", slave labor camps called the Gulag (Russian: ГУЛаг, romanized: GULag).[311] Prisoners in these camps were worked to death by a combination of extreme production quotas, physical and psychological brutality, hunger, lack of medical care, and the harsh environment. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who survived eight years of Gulag incarceration, provided first hand testimony about the camps with the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.[312][313] Fatality rate was as high as 80% during the first months in many camps. Hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, died as a direct result of forced labour under the Soviets.[314] Golfo Alexopoulos draws a comparison equating labor in the Gulag and "other forms of slave labor" and the "violence of human exploitation" Gulag slavery entailed in Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag,[315] Stalin's Gulag was, in many ways, less a concentration camp than a forced labor camp and less a prison system than a system of slavery. The image of the slave appears often in Gulag memoir literature. As Varlam Shalamov wrote: "Hungry and exhausted, we leaned into a horse collar, raising blood blisters on our chests and pulling a stone-filled cart up the slanted mine floor. The collar was the same device used long ago by the ancient Egyptians." Thoughtful and rigorous historical comparisons of Soviet forced labor and other forms of slave labor would be worthy of scholarly attention, in my view. For as in the case of global slavery, the Gulag found legitimacy in an elaborate narrative of difference that involved the presumption of dangerousness and guilt. This ideology of difference and the violence of human exploitation have left lasting legacies in contemporary Russia. Historian Anne Applebaum writes in the introduction of her book that the word GULAG has come to represent "the system of Soviet slave labor itself, in all its forms and varieties":[316] The word "GULAG" is an acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, or Main Camp Administration, the institution which ran the Soviet camps. But over time, the word has also come to signify the system of Soviet slave labor itself, in all its forms and varieties: labor camps, punishment camps, criminal and political camps, women's camps, children's camps, transit camps. Even more broadly, “Gulag” has come to mean the Soviet repressive system itself, the set of procedures that Alexander Solzhenitsyn once called “our meat grinder”: the arrests, the interrogations, the transport in unheated cattle cars, the forced labor, the destruction of families, the years spent in exile, the early and unnecessary deaths. Applebaum's introduction has been criticized by Gulag researcher Wilson Bell,[317] stating that her book "is, aside from the introduction, a well-done overview of the Gulag, but it did not offer an interpretative framework much beyond Solzhenitsyn's paradigms".[318] Nazi Germany Main article: Forced labour under German rule during World War II Forced slave labourers in a Buchenwald concentration camp during World War II During the Second World War, Nazi Germany effectively enslaved about 12 million people, both those considered undesirable and citizens of conquered countries, with the avowed intention of treating these Untermenschen (sub-humans) as a permanent slave-class of inferior beings who could be worked until they died, and who possessed neither the rights nor the legal status of members of the Aryan race.[319] Besides Jews, the harshest deportation and forced labour policies were applied to the populations of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. By the end of the war, half of Belarus' population had been killed or deported.[320][321] Contemporary slavery See also: Contemporary slavery, Slavery in contemporary Africa, Child slavery, Trafficking of children, Illegal immigration § Slavery, and Slavery in the 21st century Modern incidence of slavery, as a percentage of the population, by country. Even though slavery is now outlawed in every country, the number of slaves today is estimated as between 12 million and 29.8 million.[322][323][324] According to a broad definition of slavery, there were 27 million people in slavery in 1999, spread all over the world.[325] In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of 12.3 million forced labourers.[326] Siddharth Kara has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million).[57] Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009. Tuareg society is traditionally feudal, ranging from nobles, through vassals, to dark-skinned slaves.[327] According to a 2003 report by Human Rights Watch, an estimated 15 million children in debt bondage in India work in slavery-like conditions to pay off their family's debts.[328][329] Slavoj Žižek asserts that new forms of contemporary slavery have been created in the post-Cold War era of global capitalism, including migrant workers deprived of basic civil rights on the Arabian Peninsula, the total control of workers in Asian sweatshops and the use of forced labor in the exploitation of natural resources in Central Africa.[330] Distribution A report by the Walk Free Foundation in 2013,[331] found India had the highest number of slaves, nearly 14 million, followed by China (2.9 million), Pakistan (2.1 million), Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh; while the countries with the highest proportions of slaves were Mauritania, Haiti, Pakistan, India and Nepal.[332] In June 2013, U.S. State Department released a report on slavery. It placed Russia, China, and Uzbekistan in the worst offenders category. Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe were at the lowest level. The list also included Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait among a total of 21 countries.[333][334] In Kuwait, there are more than 600,000 migrant domestic workers who are vulnerable to forced labor and legally tied to their employers, who often illegally take their passports.[335] In 2019, online slave markets on apps such as Instagram were uncovered.[336] In the preparations for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, thousands of Nepalese, the largest group of labourers, faced slavery in the form of denial of wages, confiscation of documents, and inability to leave the workplace.[337] In 2016, the United Nations gave Qatar 12 months to end migrant worker slavery or face investigation.[338] The Walk Free Foundation reported in 2018 that slavery in wealthy Western societies is much more prevalent than previously known, in particular the United States and Great Britain, which have 403,000 (one in 800) and 136,000 slaves respectively. Andrew Forrest, founder of the organization, said that "The United States is one of the most advanced countries in the world yet has more than 400,000 modern slaves working under forced labour conditions."[339] An estimated 40.3 million are enslaved globally, with North Korea having the most slaves at 2.6 million (one in 10). The foundation defines contemporary slavery as "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power, or deception."[340] China See also: Xinjiang internment camps The Chinese government has a history of imprisoning citizens for political reasons. Article 73 of China's Criminal Procedure Law was adopted in 2012 and allow the authorities to detain people for reasons of "state security" or "terrorism". In this regard, detainees can be held for as long as six months in "designated locations" such as secret prisons.[341] In March 2020, the Chinese government was found to be using the Uyghur minority for forced labour, inside sweat shops. According to a report published then by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), no fewer than around 80,000 Uyghurs were forcibly removed from the region of Xinjiang and used for forced labour in at least twenty-seven corporate factories.[342] According to the Business and Human Rights resource center, corporations such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Amazon, Apple, BMW, Fila, Gap, H&M, Inditex, Marks & Spencer, Nike, North Face, Puma, PVH, Samsung, and UNIQLO each have each sourced products from these factories prior to the publication of the ASPI report.[343] Libya During the Second Libyan Civil War, Libyans started capturing Sub-Saharan African migrants trying to get to Europe through Libya and selling them on slave markets or holding them hostage for ransom[344] Women are often raped, used as sex slaves, or sold to brothels.[345][346][347] Child migrants suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya.[348][349] Mauritania In Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981), it is estimated that 20% of its 3 million population, are enslaved as bonded labourers.[350][351][352] Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007.[353] However, although slavery, as a practice, was legally banned in 1981, it was not a crime to own a slave until 2007.[354] Although many slaves have escaped or have been freed since 2007, as of 2012, only one slave owner had been sentenced to serve time in prison.[355] North Korea See also: Human rights in North Korea North Korea's human rights record is often considered to be the worst in the world and has been globally condemned, with the United Nations, the European Union and groups such as Human Rights Watch all critical of the country's record. With forms torture, forced labour and abuses all being widespread. Most international human rights organizations consider North Korea to have no contemporary parallel[356] with respect to violations of liberty.[357][358][359][360] Economics While American slaves in 1809 were sold for around $40,000 (in inflation adjusted dollars), a slave nowadays can be bought for just $90, making replacement more economical than providing long-term care.[361] Slavery is a multibillion-dollar industry with estimates of up to $35 billion generated annually.[362] Trafficking A world map showing countries by prevalence of female trafficking Victims of human trafficking are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction. Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs to control their victims.[363] "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% of transnational victims are women and girls, and up to 50% are minors, reports the U.S. State Department in a 2008 study.[364] While the majority of trafficking victims are women 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.[365] Because of the illegal nature of human trafficking, its extent is unknown. A U.S. government report, published in 2005, estimates that about 700,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.[365] Another research effort revealed that roughly 1.5 million individuals are trafficked either internally or internationally each year, of which about 500,000 are sex trafficking victims.[57] Abolitionism Main article: Abolitionism See also: Abolition of slavery timeline vte Slave Trade suppression The painting of the 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention at Exeter Hall.[366] Slavery has existed, in one form or another, throughout recorded human history – as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves. In antiquity Chinese Emperor Wang Mang abolished slavery in 17 CE but the ban was overturned after his assassination. Ashoka, who ruled the Maurya Empire in the Indian subcontinent from 269–232 BCE, abolished the slave trade but not slavery.[367] The Qin dynasty, which ruled China from 221 to 206 BC, abolished slavery and discouraged serfdom. However, many of its laws were overturned when the dynasty was overthrown.[368] Slavery was again abolished by Wang Mang in China in 17 CE but was reinstituted after his assassination.[369] Americas The Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the right to enslave Native Americans. A prominent critic of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies was the Spanish missionary and bishop, Bartolomé de las Casas, who was "the first to expose the oppression of indigenous peoples by Europeans in the Americas and to call for the abolition of slavery there."[370] One of the first protests against slavery came from German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1688.[371] In 1777, Vermont, at the time an independent nation, became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery.[371] In the United States, all of the northern states had abolished slavery by 1804, with New Jersey being the last to act.[372] Abolitionist pressure produced a series of small steps towards emancipation. After the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited,[373] but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted outside the northern states; most of those slaves already in the U.S. were legally emancipated only in 1863. Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad. Violent clashes between anti-slavery and pro-slavery Americans included Bleeding Kansas, a series of political and armed disputes in 1854–1861 as to whether Kansas would join the United States as a slave or free state. By 1860, the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States.[374] In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution prohibited most forms of slavery throughout the country. Many of the freed slaves became sharecroppers and indentured servants. In this manner, some became tied to the very parcel of land into which they had been born a slave having little freedom or economic opportunity because of Jim Crow laws which perpetuated discrimination, limited education, promoted persecution without due process and resulted in continued poverty. Fear of reprisals such as unjust incarcerations and lynchings deterred upward mobility further. Olaudah Equiano, His autobiography, published in 1789, helped in the creation of the Slave Trade Act 1807 which ended the African slave trade for Britain and its colonies. Joseph Jenkins Roberts, born in Virginia, was the first president of Liberia, which was founded in 1822 for freed American slaves. Europe France abolished slavery in 1794.[371] One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England in 1772, with British Judge Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England.[375] Sons of Africa was a late 18th-century British group that campaigned to end slavery. Its members were Africans in London, freed slaves who included Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community. It was closely connected to the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a non-denominational group founded in 1787, whose members included Thomas Clarkson. British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce led the anti-slavery movement in the United Kingdom, although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Clarkson. Wilberforce was urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, to make the issue his own and was also given support by reformed Evangelical John Newton. The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 25, 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire,[376] Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. After the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade 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.[377] 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.[378] Worldwide In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, Anti-Slavery International, was formed in Britain by Joseph Sturge, which campaigned to outlaw slavery in other countries.[379] 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. In the 1860s, David Livingstone's reports of atrocities within the Arab slave trade in Africa stirred up the interest of the British public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern trade", at Zanzibar in particular. In 1905, the French abolished indigenous slavery in most of French West Africa.[380] On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declared freedom from slavery is an internationally recognized 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.[381] In 2014, for the first time in history, major leaders of many religions, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim met to sign a shared commitment against modern-day slavery; the declaration they signed calls for the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by 2020.[382] The signatories were: Pope Francis, Mātā Amṛtānandamayī, Bhikkhuni Thich Nu Chân Không (representing Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh), Datuk K Sri Dhammaratana, Chief High Priest of Malaysia, Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rabbi David Rosen, Abbas Abdalla Abbas Soliman, Undersecretary of State of Al Azhar Alsharif (representing Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar), Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi, Sheikh Naziyah Razzaq Jaafar, Special advisor of Grand Ayatollah (representing Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Hussain al Najafi), Sheikh Omar Abboud, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Metropolitan Emmanuel of France (representing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.)[382] 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 eliminate slavery. Apologies refer to caption Monument to slaves in Zanzibar On May 21, 2001, the National Assembly of France passed the Taubira law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, 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.[383] There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Calabar and other southern parts 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.[384] 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.[385] In 1999, President Mathieu Kérékou of Benin issued a national apology for the central role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade.[176] Luc Gnacadja, minister of environment and housing for Benin, later said: "The slave trade is a shame, and we do repent for it."[386] Researchers estimate that 3 million slaves were exported out of the Slave Coast bordering the Bight of Benin.[386] President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana also apologized for his country's involvement in the slave trade.[176] The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery and is still being pursued by entities across the world. For example, the Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action plan. In 2007, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a formal apology for Great Britain's involvement in slavery.[387] On February 25, 2007, the Commonwealth 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.[388] On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone of London 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. Specifically, London outfitted, financed, and insured many of the ships, which helped fund the building of London's docks.[389] Officials in Liverpool, which was a large slave trading port, apologized in 1999.[390] On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.[391] In June 2009, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery". The news was welcomed by President Barack Obama, the nation's first president of African descent.[392] Some of President Obama's ancestors may have been slave owners.[393] In 2010, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi apologized for Arab involvement in the slave trade, saying: "I regret the behavior of the Arabs… They brought African children to North Africa, they made them slaves, they sold them like animals, and they took them as slaves and traded them in a shameful way."[citation needed] Reparations Main article: Reparations for slavery There have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves or for 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' relatives 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. Media Further information: List of films featuring slavery Poster for Spartacus Film has been the most influential medium in the presentation of the history of slavery to the general public around the world.[394] The American film industry has had a complex relationship with slavery and until recent decades often avoided the topic. Films such as The Birth of a Nation (1915)[395] and Gone with the Wind (1939) became controversial because they gave a favourable depiction. In 1940 The Santa Fe Trail gave a liberal but ambiguous interpretation of John Brown's attacks on slavery.[396] Song of the South gave a favorable outlook on slavery in the United States in 1946. The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s made defiant slaves into heroes.[397] The question of slavery in American memory necessarily involves its depictions in feature films.[398] Most Hollywood films used American settings, although Spartacus (1960), dealt with an actual revolt in the Roman Empire known as the Third Servile War. The revolt failed, and all the rebels were executed, but their spirit lived on according to the film.[399] Spartacus stays surprisingly close to the historical record.[400] The Last Supper (La última cena in Spanish) was a 1976 film directed by Cuban Tomás Gutiérrez Alea about the teaching of Christianity to slaves in Cuba, and emphasizes the role of ritual and revolt. Burn! takes place on the imaginary Portuguese island of Queimada (where the locals speak Spanish) and it merges historical events that took place in Brazil, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and elsewhere. Historians agree that films have largely shaped historical memories, but they debate issues of accuracy, plausibility, moralism, sensationalism, how facts are stretched in search of broader truths, and suitability for the classroom.[401][399] Berlin argues that critics complain if the treatment emphasizes historical brutality, or if it glosses over the harshness to highlight the emotional impact of slavery.[402]
  • Topic: Historical
  • Subject: Biography & Autobiography

PicClick Insights - Slave Book Signed By Slave Kentucky 1854 Vintage Plantation Biography Amazing PicClick Exclusive

  •  Popularity - 3 watchers, 0.2 new watchers per day, 20 days for sale on eBay. High amount watching. 0 sold, 1 available.
  •  Best Price -
  •  Seller - 808+ items sold. 0% negative feedback. Great seller with very good positive feedback and over 50 ratings.

People Also Loved PicClick Exclusive