Slavery

See also Abolition

Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labor.^[1] Slavery typically involves compulsory work with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavement is the placement of a person into slavery.

Many historical cases of enslavement occurred as a result of breaking the law, becoming indebted, suffering a military defeat, or exploitation for cheaper labor; other forms of slavery were instituted along demographic lines such as race or sex. Slaves may be kept in bondage for life, or for a fixed period of time after which they would be granted freedom.^[2]

Although slavery is usually involuntary and involves coercion, there are also cases where people voluntarily enter into slavery to pay a debt or earn money due to poverty. In the course of human history, slavery was a typical feature of civilization,^[3] and was legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed in most countries of the world, except as a punishment for a crime.^[4][5]

In chattel slavery, the slave 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.^[6]

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania was the last country in the world to officially ban slavery, in 1981,^[7] with legal prosecution of slaveholders established in 2007.^[8] However, in 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26% were children, were still enslaved throughout the world despite slavery being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50% of slaves provide forced labour, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy.^[9] In industrialised countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery; in non-industrialised countries, enslavement by debt bondage is a common form of enslaving a person,^[6] such as captive domestic servants, people in forced marriages, and child soldiers.^[10]

Terminology

The word slave arrived in modern English from Middle English sclave, from Old French esclave, from Late Middle High German sklave, from Medieval Latin sclāvus, from Late Latin Sclāvus, from Byzantine Greek Σκλάβος [Sklábos], Έσκλαβήνος [Ésklabḗnos].

According to the widespread view, which has been known since the 18th century, Byzantine Σκλάβινοι [Sklábinoi], Έσκλαβηνοί [Ésklabēnoí], borrowed from Slavic gen self-name *Slověninŭ turned into Σκλάβος, Έσκλαβήνος (Late Latin Sclāvus) in the meaning 'prisoner of war Slave', 'slave' in 8th/9th century, because they often became captured and enslaved.^{[11][12][13][14}] However this version has been disputed since the 19th century.^[15][16]

An alternative contemporary hypothesis states that Medieval Latin sclāvus via *scylāvus derives from Byzantine σκυλάω [skūláō, skyláō], σκυλεύω [skūleúō, skyleúō] – "to strip the enemy (killed in a battle)", "to make booty / extract spoils of war".^{[17][18][19][20}] This version is criticized as well.^[21]

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" (see also People-first language). 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.^[22]

Chattel slavery

Flogging a slave fastened to the ground, illustration in an 1853 anti-slavery pamphletA poster for a slave auction in Georgia, U.S., 1860Portrait of an older woman in New Orleans with her enslaved servant girl in the mid-19th century

As a social institution, chattel slavery classes slaves as chattels (personal property) owned by the enslaver; like livestock, they can be bought and sold at will.^[23] Chattel slavery was practiced in places such as the Roman Empire and classical Greece, where it was considered a keystone of society.^[24][25][26] Other places where it was extensively practiced include Brazil, United States and parts of the Caribbean such as Cuba and Haiti.^[27][28]

Beginning in the 18th century, a series of abolitionist movements saw slavery as a violation of the slaves' rights as people ("all men are created equal"), and sought to abolish it. Abolitionism encountered extreme resistance but was eventually successful; in the United States it was abolished in 1865 and in Cuba in 1886. The last country in the Americas to abolish slavery was Brazil, in 1888.^[29] The last country to abolish slavery, Mauritania, did so in 1981. The 1981 ban on slavery was not effectively enforced in practice, as there were no legal mechanisms to prosecute those who used slaves. This only came in 2007.

Bonded labour

Main article: Debt bondage

See also: Money marriage and Chukri system

Indenture, also known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour in which a person works to pay off a debt by pledging himself or herself as collateral. 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.^[30] It is the most widespread form of slavery today.^[31] Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia.^[30] Money marriage refers to a marriage where a girl, usually, is married off to a man to settle debts owed by her parents.^[32] The Chukri system is a debt bondage system found in parts of Bengal where a female can be coerced into prostitution in order to pay off debts.^[33]....

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