A Brief History of Slavery

Since before recorded history, human slavery has been almost prominent in every society across the earth. Once humans stopped foraging and developed agriculture, the need for cheap laborer became a necessity. Alleviating oneself from menial chores in the fields and in cities paved the way for creativity and the arts and freed up time for more pleasurable pastimes. In ancient Mesopotamia, Slave labor was quite common and is even governed by the Code of Hammurabi dating from 1790 B.C.E. Most slaves were prisoners of war, debtors or criminals. Children were also born into slavery, often taking their mothers’ status’ because in many instances, the father of the child may not have been a slave but a slave master or other nobleman. A famous American example of this is the story of Sally Hemings. She was thought to be the youngest half sister of Thomas Jefferson’s wife Martha through her father and one of his slaves, Elizabeth Hemings. Upon his death, all of the Hemings family became the property of Martha and Thomas Jefferson. In 1784 Jefferson was appointed as an American envoy in Paris and three years later, sent for his young daughter, Polly. Jefferson requested that a companion be sent with the child and since the preferred companion, Isabel had recently given birth, Sally Hemings was to be her substitute. At some point during her two year stay in France, Sally Hemings became pregnant by Jefferson and under new French law could have petitioned for her freedom and stayed in France instead of returning with Jefferson to the United States and a continued life of servitude for her and her unborn child. The story goes that she refused to return with Jefferson unless he would agree to free her children. Jefferson agreed and they returned to the States where two of Sally’s children were “given their time” and five more were freed upon Jefferson’s death. For a widower such as Thomas Jefferson, the taking of a slave for companionship was a fairly common practice, at least in the southern states of America during the 1600, 1700 and 1800’s.
Slavery provided labor for only the cost of food and board. This was a small price to pay in return for the reward of being able to grow and store surplus food, build structures, tend to domesticated animals and reap cash crops. If one slave died, another could be readily purchased to replace the lost. Slaves could also be sold for a fee and could benefit their owners that way. Additionally, owning slaves was a status symbol in some societies.
The Greeks owned slaves, so did the Romans, the Byzantines, the Babylonians and the Egyptians to name a few. In Athens, slaves made up about a third of the population and the vast majority, were women. Men were usually put to death upon capture or jailed. Greek slaves were typically not Greek, but, rather foreigners considered by the Greeks to be by far inferior. Slaves in ancient Greece actually earned a modest living for their laborious tasks and occasionally were able to pay off their debts and buy their freedom. Slaves worked in fields, collected garbage, swept streets, and performed domestic chores and construction labor. Slaves in Egypt, ordered by Ramses to glorify his kingdom, were utilized to build pyramids and other monumental structures like temples and statues dedicated to Egyptian gods. Egyptian slaves, as far as we can currently deduce from written records, were not always wholly at the mercy of their owner. Some Egyptian slaves it would seem were appurtenant to estates and sometimes land. These slaves have sometimes been compared to medieval serfs and one can beg the question rather or not some of them were free to leave at any time. In ancient Egypt, some sold themselves into slavery. These people did not always lose their civil rights and could improve their social status in the long run by giving up some societal freedoms upfront.
Debt slaves and some prisoners of war, there is evidence, were sometimes even set free after serving their debt. Slaves had different rights or the lack there of and were dealt with in different ways across the different cultures and empires. Most all slaves were considered chattel. In some societies including ancient Greece, slaves could be beaten brutally for insubordination or laziness but could not be killed. Slaves were viewed as lesser beings in most all cultures who kept them. In some cases, slaves revolted against such harsh treatment. Spartacus, a Roman Gladiator, led a revolution in 73 B.C.E. that included more than 70,000 slaves and lasted two years, defeating legions of roman soldiers. In the end, Spartacus was killed and thousands of rebel followers were put to death. In China, the Shang Dynasty employed slaves to work as servants to nobility and royalty as well as forced laborers to construct walls, roadways and other structures. In England, about 10% of people entered into The Doomsday Book were slaves. Chattel slavery ended by the time William of Normandy conquered England around 1086 C.E. By the year 1102 C.E, England had outlawed the practice of owning slaves altogether.
In more recent memory, we have the ugly skeleton in America’s closet of slavery and the slave trade of the sixteen, seventeen and eighteen hundreds. In 1607, Virginia was the first colonization to adopt the practice of slavery. Many of the slaves on US soil were of African descent, rounded up, collected and shipped here by their own countrymen. Conditions on slave ships were horrid and many enslaved people did not survive the trip to the United States. The Middle Passage, the trade route from Africa to the Americas and including the Caribbean, claimed the lives of a speculated one-third of the human cargo who died from disease or malnourishment, chained together in the bellies of ships, living for weeks or months at a time in their own excrement with disease ridden rodents. Once in the U.S., slaves were scrutinized and purchased by often mercurial tempered plantation owners and put to work in the cotton and tobacco fields of the South. African-American slaves were treated very harshly in many cases and some were literally worked to death. Many female slaves died in childbirth due to lack of medical attention and treatment. Many more were beaten to death and murdered in the fields. By 1860 owning slaves was such a common practice that an estimated 4 million slaves were held by a total population of just over 12 million people according to a U.S. Census Bureau report. What soon followed was an abomination and a contributing factor in the inevitable American Civil War. Abolition of slavery was granted by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States’ Constitution in 1865.




Slavery today is against the law in almost every country across the globe. In 1948, a document was enacted by the United Nations to protect the basic human rights and freedoms of all people. Articles 4, 5 and 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights state; “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude slavery and the Slave Trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. “ No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment.” “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” However, we see much evidence of slavery and indentured servitude across the globe, still, to this day. For Countries like Sudan, Mexico and Thailand, slavery is still a major problem. Even in the United States, slavery didn’t end with Abraham Lincoln. According to Iabolish.org, the CIA estimates that 14,000-17,000 victims each year are trafficked into the U.S. Sex trafficking, debt bondage and forced agricultural labor are amongst a few reasons for this recurring trend. Slavery around the world is still an extremely lucrative business. Human traffickers line their pockets with an estimated $6 Billion per year just in trafficking of women for commercial sex purposes.
Even though it is a practice almost as old as humanity itself from Ancient Babylon to modern day, enslaving another human being and oppressing basic human freedoms is, in a word, wrong. Many groups including Amnesty International and Iabolish.org work globally to end such an abominable practice and restore basic human rights to the myriad of victims across the world. Nothing good can come out of it but for the greedy few with no regard for human life. The practice of slavery has given America an indelible “black eye’ and divided a nation of people for almost 400 years. We need to work together as a people to stop this horrible life stealing practice and eradicate black market human trafficking.