A Short history of Slavery
A Short History of Slavery
There is of course no such thing as a short history of slavery. Slavery is an institution that has always existed, from the beginning of recorded history until now, so what I will attempt instead is a condensed overview, with an emphasis on that period of the European expansion when white slavers took African slaves across the Atlantic to live, work and die in the Americas, for it is through the prism of that experience that our western society perceives and interprets slavery. Slavery has been endemic within human culture, indeed it could be called one of the pillars of human society such is its prevalence. Here are just a few examples of where, when and how it has been practiced:
China
The earliest records of slavery in China date from the Shang dynasty in the second millennium BC, when it is estimated 5% of the population were enslaved. Every subsequent period of Chinese history used slaves in one form or another, for labour, for sex and for sacrifice. For a period of about 1000 years the main source of slaves was the land now known as Vietnam, where raiding and wars provided a plentiful supply. Slavery was officially abolished in 1910 but continues in one form or another until the current day. It is estimated there are 3 – 4 million slaves in China today, either working in official penal establishments or trafficked as sex workers. The demand for sex workers in modern China is very high due to the gender imbalance caused by the One Child policy and the abortion of many unborn girl first children.
Ancient Rome
Ancient Roman society was dependent upon slaves for its wealth with the great landowners working their estates with chain-gang slave labour, though many others were also used in domestic settings and in mines. The slave had no legal personhood and was the property of the owner. Slavery was hereditary and slaves could be subject to corporal punishment, torture and even crucifixion. At various times and places the estimated numbers of slaves varied between 10% and 40% of the population and every city of the empire had its slave market. The main source of slaves during the expansion of the empire was through conquest, anecdotally Julius Caesar sold 53,000 Gallic slaves in one day and at its height the Roman Empire required 400,00 new slaves per year. These new slaves came from a variety of sources; children born to a slave mother, punishment for crime, the selling of children, war, slave hunting / raiding and trade beyond the imperial borders. As the empire aged the treatment of slaves improved gradually but a new class of tied labour emerged alongside, peasant farmers who were not allowed to leave the land they worked for the landowner – serfs.
Aztec Empire, pre-colonial South America
In Aztec society the poor would frequently sell themselves or their children into slavery, or slavery could be a punishment for debt or criminal activity. Slavery was not however hereditary so the children of slaves were free. Captives of war were enslaved, could be traded and were often used in sacrificial and cannibalistic ceremonies.
Pre-colonial North America
Slavery was endemic among the tribes of north America with slaves being captured in wars and raids and traded. Slavery was hereditary and it is estimated that in the Pacific North West region one quarter of the population was enslaved. Slaves were used for human sacrifice as well as labour. With the arrival of European settlers some coastal tribes enslaved other native Americans for sale to the colonies and even became owners of black African slaves themselves.
The Vikings
For 300 years, 750 – 1050AD, the Vikings were a dominant military and cultural force expanding from Scandinavia east, west and south and slavery was one of the driving forces for their raiding, for trading with the Byzantine and Muslim empires and for labour in their own economy. Britain and Ireland, the coastal areas of the Atlantic seaboard and central Europe were the major sources of their slaves. Dublin in Ireland became a major slaving hub for the Vikings but such was their ravaging among the Slavic peoples of central Europe that their victims gave their name to the status – slaves. Women were enslaved in disproportionate numbers for use in industries such as weaving as well as for domestic service and sex. Two-thirds of modern Scandinavian women have Gaelic ancestry in their DNA. Arab sources tell of Viking slaving raids across the breadth of the Mediterranean for sale in the huge slave markets of the Islamic world. Archaeological evidence points to abuse, physical torture, decapitation and human sacrifice of slaves as being common.
Arab and Islamic empire
Islamic society inherited the institution of slavery from the societies that preceded it, with the injunction that Muslims could not enslave other Muslims. In consequence Islamic slave traders had to look outside the Muslim lands for their slaves, predominantly the Horn of Africa, Europe and central Asia. Large areas of southern continental Europe were the subject of frequent slaving raids and the infamous ‘Barbary Corsairs’ raided as far north as the English Channel and the Irish Sea, even landing in Ireland and south-west England to take captives, well into the1500s. However, the majority of slaves were those taken from Africa, it is estimated as many as were taken by the Europeans from West Africa were taken by the Islamic countries and the trade continued until pressure from European powers suppressed it in the nineteenth century. In some major Muslim states, such as the Ottoman Empire (1453 -1924) and the Sokoto Caliphate, the prevalence of slavery was such that they should be deemed ‘slave states’, the acquisition of slaves being so important to their function. As well as the common uses for labour and sex, unusually the Ottomans also used slaves as soldiers, conversely slaves were also granted certain rights and found it easier to assimilate into society than in other places. Provision for slavery is made within Sharia law and the example of Muhammed himself being a slave owner makes the institution less vulnerable to criticism within Muslim countries, though it is now widely prohibited by secular law.
The Euro-Afro-American Slave Trade
The first records of modern Europeans trading for black slaves were of Portugese in the early 15th century and the first slave ship carrying slaves to the Americas was a Portugese vessel sailing to Brazil in 1526. The trade continued until its suppression by the British in the mid to late 1800s. The period of British involvement in the slave trade ran from 1619 to 1807, with slavery being abolished throughout the British Empire on 1833. Portugal, Spain, France and predominantly Britain were the major European nations involved in the slave trade. During this 300 year period it is estimated some 12.5 million people were transported from West Africa, across the Atlantic, to south and north America to work on plantations, mines, construction and other heavy or dangerous labour. The slave trade was part of a triangular economic system known as the Slave Triangle; manufactured goods were taken from Europe to Africa where they were traded with local (i.e. native African) slavers for slaves. The slaves were transported across the Atlantic to mainland America or the islands of the Caribbean where they were sold on. Goods such as molasses, rum, tobacco and cotton were then purchased and loaded for the third leg back to the home port in Europe. The high demand for labour to exploit the huge new resources available in the ‘New World’ was a driving force of the trade. Conditions upon the slave ships were appalling with an estimated 10% of captives dying during the crossing. Upon arrival and purchase at port further significant travel awaited many as they were taken inland to their eventual place of labour. Conditions were harsh, punishments severe, rations often inadequate, slavery hereditary and the slave was the private property of the owner. The institutionalisation of slavery based upon race, combined with Darwinian theories of racial superiority, entrenched racial division within American society. In Britain itself the owning of slaves was discouraged and relatively few were kept captive even prior to abolition.
African slavery
Although best known as a source of slaves, African societies had institutionalised slavery of varying degrees from ancient times. Captives of war, criminals and debtors were all forced into slavery and traded within and beyond the continent. The Arab slave trade became established in the 7th century and the Atlantic slave trade from the 16th century, both drawing upon established slaving systems. At its most benign slavery was little more than indentured labour and at the other end it was the systematic subjugation of people groups for sale, plantation labour and human sacrifice. African states that were particularly active ins slaving were the Kingdom of Dahomey, the Yoruba Empire of Oyo, (West African states that plundered the interior lands for their own purposes and for sale to the Europeans); the Kingdom of Dahomey held regular festivals where 500 or more slaves would be sacrificed. The Ghana, Mali and Ashanti empires were other major African states where slavery was practiced. The island of Zanzibar was a major centre for the eastern slave trade with as many as 50,000 passing through it annually. Despite many countries abolishing slavery in the 1900s and onwards under pressure from European powers, slavery is still a major problem in Africa, it is estimated that even today as much as 8% of the population of Mali is enslaved and new slave markets have appeared in countries such as Libya, preying on the economic migrants being trafficked north to Europe.
One could go on, with accounts of slavery in India, Russia or the great Hellenistic and Persian empires but it must be concluded that slavery is endemic among human cultures; nations, empires and civilisations were built and maintained on the backs of slaves. Without the labour of slaves there was no human progress.
What then is exceptional about the period of black African enslavement in the ’New World?’ Nothing in particular, except perhaps in the distance the slaves were transported by sea. At 300 years it was not exceptional by length, because of their value they were not deliberately worked to death, as were the Jews in Nazi Germany or the toilers in Roman mines, they were not sacrificial victims such as those held by Aztecs, Chinese or Vikings, nor were the conditions especially harsh by the standards of slavery. Though their treatment was inhuman and appalling it was not exceptional. What was exceptional was that the system was brought to an end, voluntarily by some and forcefully upon others. This was the first time that a ruling society had turned wholeheartedly against slavery as an institution and it required the convergence of two revolutionary processes for it to happen. The centuries leading up to the Abolition of the slave trade within the British empire had seen first an English Agricultural revolution that had hugely increased agricultural productivity within the country and stimulated a huge exodus of surplus labour from the countryside into the towns, just at the time when the Industrial Revolution was beginning and labour was needed in the new factories and workshops that were springing up around the country. For the first time in history wealth was not best created by harnessing mass human labour but by machine labour. A machine was far more productive than a man and amassing machines was far more profitable than amassing slaves. It has been argued frequently that Britain grew rich on the back of slave labour but it is equally valid to argue that it was the greater wealth Britain accrued from industrialising that enabled the slaves to be freed. The elite of society no longer needed to rely on agriculture to create wealth. The second revolutionary process that occurred to produce the social conditions for Abolition and other social reforms was the religious and moral movement now known as The Great Awakening, a series of evangelical christian revivals starting in the 1730s and active on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain its best known leader is John Wesley, in America, Jonathan Edwards. From this revived christian spirituality came the understanding that all races are created by God and are equal before Him, and all people are sinners and in equal need of divine grace. It is no accident that among the leading Abolitionists are evangelical christians such as William Wilberforce. This movement for spiritual and moral reform within British society, that started in the 1730s and continued throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, carried abolition at the heart of its flood. The call for abolition fell on the hearts and minds of people softened and willing to hear its message, within a century the most powerful and extensive empire in the world had not only abolished the slave trade and slavery within its own borders but was actively suppressing slave trading and slavery wherever it was able. If there is any silver lining or redemptive purpose to the sufferings of the African slaves in the America and the Caribbean it is this, that it paved the way for the overturning of the multi-millennial old mindset and practice of slavery.
And what of slavery today? It is still rife. Estimates place the number of people held as slaves at between 30 and 40 million. The practice may now have a different face but the victims – political prisoners held in labour camps or trafficked migrants for example – are still held captive, forced to labour and subject to harsh punishment or even death for disobedience. That is today’s problem.
To purchase the book Building Jerusalem
