Slavery

Slavery is a social-economic system under which certain persons — known as slaves — are deprived of personal freedom and compelled to work. The politically correct media typically focuses overwhelmingly on the transatlantic slave trade from Africa to the Americas and the following slavery in the Americas, especially the United States. Also slavery in Ancient Rome is often depicted. However, slavery has existed in numerous other cultures and was very common globally until White countries prohibited slavery and enforced this globally.

The traditional form of slavery where people can be bought and sold is referred to as chattel slavery. Serfdom, bonded labor, forced labor, and forced marriage are often argued to be other forms of slavery, although these forms have typically given the affected groups some rights and protections that are not present in chattel slavery. In particular such forms of slavery still exist today and in particular in non-White countries.

Christian prisoners are sold as slaves on a square in Algiers (the capital of Ottoman Algeria, North Africa) by Jan Luyken (1684); Research suggests white slavery was much more common than previously believed. The Roman Empire had slaves of all colours, from Africa to Germania. Galley slaves were well known throughout ancient history. Many different types of white people were enslaved, especially by West Asians and North Africans (for example during the crusades). Under Muslim rule, the slave trade of the Ottoman Empire included European captives (mainly Slavic people) and was often fueled by raids into European territories. Children were kidnapped as a "blood tax" from the families of citizens of conquered territories to serve the empire for a variety of functions. Young white girls were often raped and forced to bear children. In the mid-19th century, the term "white slavery" was used to describe the Christian slaves that were sold into the Barbary slave trade.

Term

The term "slave" (German: Sklave) comes from "slavs". The slavs, who inhabited a large part of Eastern Europe, were taken as slaves by the Muslims of Spain during the ninth century AD. Not to mention that Arabs and Africans have been enslaving each other for thousands of years.

From Middle English, from Old French sclave, from Medieval Latin sclāvus (“slave”), from Late Latin Sclāvus (“Slav”), because Slavs were often forced into slavery in the Middle Ages. The Latin word is from Byzantine Greek Σκλάβος (Sklábos), see that entry and Slav for more. [...] The derivation of the word slave encapsulates a bit of European history and explains why the two words slave and Slav are so similar; they are, in fact, historically identical. The word slave first appears in English around 1290, spelled sclave. The spelling is based on Old French esclave from Medieval Latin sclavus, "Slav, slave," first recorded around 800. Sclavus comes from Byzantine Greek sklabos (pronounced sklä′vōs) "Slav," which appears around 580. Sklavos approximates the Slavs' own name for themselves, the Slověnci, surviving in English Slovene and Slovenian. The spelling of English slave, closer to its original Slavic form, first appears in English in the 1500s. Slavs became slaves around the beginning of the ninth century when the Holy Roman Empire tried to stabilize a German-Slav frontier. By the 1100s, stabilization had given way to wars of expansion and extermination that did not end until 1410, when the Poles crushed the knights of the Teutonic Order at Grunwald in north-central Poland.

Ignorance of the history of slavery

Surveys given by a professor to United States college students at the beginning of the school year found that students overwhelmingly believed that slavery was invented in the United States and was almost exclusively a United States phenomenon. This likely due to their politically correct education about slavery being confined only to slavery in the United States.

Slavery by non-White populations

• China: Slavery existed as early as the Shang dynasty (18th–12th century BC) in China. In Han China (206 BC–25 AD) approximately 5% of the population were slaves. Slavery continued to exist into the 20th century.

• Korea: 33-50% of the population were slaves during the Middle Ages and as late as the mid-18th century.

• India: Slavery existed early and is described in the Laws of Manu of the 1st century BC. A more detailed study was first made in the 19th century when the British wanted to abolish slavery. There were approximately 8-9 million slaves. Malabar in the south of India had the largest proportion of slaves (15%).

• Other non-Muslim areas in Asia: Slavery existed early and until relatively recently in Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Nepal and among Central Asiatic peoples such as the Mongols. 25-33% of the population in certain areas in Thailand and Burma were slaves during periods between the 17th and the early 20th centuries.

• Americas: Slavery existed in many different Amerindian populations. In some cases, slaves were sacrificed in massive numbers and some the sacrifices may have been eaten by social elites.
• The Middle East and Muslim societies: Slavery is described in the earliest historical writings. In the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi of about 750 BC, it was a prominent institution. In ancient Egypt, slaves could be killed in order to serve their masters in the next life. Slaves are mentioned prominently in the Bible among the Hebrews in Palestine and their neighbors. All Muslim societies had slaves. Slavery persisted in the Arabian Peninsula into the 1960s. In Mauritania, ownership of a person was outlawed in 2007. See the section "Slavery in the Modern World" below. The large scale slave trade and race mixing has caused many of the populations to have some degree of Sub-Saharan African ancestry. The polygamy practiced in Islamic societies may have contributed to importation of female slaves.

• Sub-Saharan Africa: Slavery has existed in Sub-Saharan Africa throughout recorded history. Slavery was common also before Islam. Examples of African societies with a high proportion slaves include Zanzibar (65-90% slaves), Madagascar (50% slaves), peoples in the Sahara and the Sahel (15-75% slaves), and a large number of states in Sub-Saharan West Africa (33-66% slaves). A very large slave trade occurred from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Islamic world during the 650-1905 period. According to some estimates, it may have been twice as large as the transatlantic slave trade. Furthermore, African slave societies were primarily interested in women and children as slaves while the men were killed unless they could be exported as slaves. It has therefore been argued that the transatlantic slave trade (which primarily was interested in male slaves as laborers in the colonies) in practice saved the life of many male slaves.

• The Arab slave trade included castration of many of the male black slaves and some of the white male slaves. Castration had a high mortality, especially if the penis is removed, as was typically the case for black slaves. Other stated criticisms have included racist views against blacks, mixed-race children with black slave mothers often being killed at birth, reports of extremely brutal torture methods, and four out of five black slaves dying during forced marches through the Sahara desert.

Slavery by Jews

For example, the black professor Tony Martin has stated a large role of Jews in slavery and stated in 2002:

"In fact Jews had been involved not only in the African slave trade, but also, and for a very long period of time, in a variety of other slave trades as well. Apparently, they had actually dominated slavery and the slave trade in medieval times. […] a functionary of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In his dissertation, which details Black-Jewish relations from ancient times up to 1900, he actually acknowledges the fact that Jews were the principal slave traders in the world for several hundred years […] Jews were the major slave traders in the world, trading slaves everywhere from Russia to western Europe, to India, to China -- but he says that they dominated the world trade only for a few hundred years -- only. [laughter] […] I discovered also that the Jews were very instrumental in the ideological underpinning for the African slave trade -- the notorious Hamitic myth -- which more than anything else has provided a sort of ideological underpinning or rationale for the slave trade. This comes out of the Talmud. […] The Biblical story was racially neutral, but the Talmud apparently put a very awful racist spin on this story. […] One of the things that interested me, too, was that the Jewish element was apparently also a major element in what came to be known in the 19th century as the white slave trade. The white slave trade was a major multinational, international trading in women for immoral sexual purposes, as prostitutes, and so on. And I found, too, that Jewish entrepreneurs in Europe apparently were also major figures in that so-called slave trade. […] Jews were some of the important financiers […] many of the traders in colonial times who brought slaves across the Atlantic to this country were in fact Jewish ship-owners and slave traders. […] Jews owned many of the ancillary corporations that sort of fed into the slave trade. […] they were inordinately represented among the slave owners. […] I also discovered that Jews, despite their involvement in the slave trade, were very few and far between in the abolitionist movement. They were much, much less likely than other groups to be involved in this movement."

He also described argued attempts to suppress knowledge of the role of Jews in the slave trade and stated:

"Then there was the American Historical Association. Three Jewish historians actually went to the American Historical Association and got it to decree – that’s the only term I can use – to decree, by executive fiat, that the Jews were not involved in the slave trade. [Laughter] I’ve never ever heard of any such thing. This is totally antithetical to the way that academia operates. Who’s ever heard of such a thing: historical fact being determined by presidential decree from the American Historical Association. “We decree…” [mocking]. It’s like a Papal Bull in the Middle Ages… “We decree: The Jews were not involved in the slave trade.” [Laughter] It is absolutely amazing, but they actually succeeded in having this done."

One explanation for differing opinions on the scale of Jewish involvement in the slave trade has been argued to be differing degree of involvement during different time periods and in different geographic areas. See also Jewish influence: Antiquity, Confederate revisionism: Jewish aspects, and the "External links" section in this article.

White slaves

Muslim invaders in Spain and their lust for white Christian women (Germanic and Celtic), in: Defenders of the West – The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam by Raymond Ibrahim (2022)

White slaves are usually not depicted or mentioned in the mass media except in connection with slavery in the distant past in ancient Rome. This gives the impression that Whites have selectively enslaved blacks due to racism and that Whites have not suffered due to slavery.

Slavery existed during Antiquity in societies such as ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Slavery existed in Scandinavia both before and after Viking era and a major object of the Viking raids was to capture slaves. In England in 1080, approximately 10% of the population were registered as slaves in the Domesday Book. In most part of Europe, slavery existed well into the late Middle Ages and even later and only gradually died out. Slavic slaves were plentiful, for example, in the Italian city-states as late as the 14th century. In Russia, slavery was an important institution until the 1720s and serfdom was abolished in 1861. It has been argued that the Soviet Union reinstituted a form of state slavery in the Gulag camps.

In the American colonies, there was large-scale indentured servitude, sometimes involuntary, often associated with harsh treatment, which has been seen as a form of slavery. Examples included forcibly deported poor children and the many Irish who were forcibly deported as indentured servants in association with the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.

A large part of the free population of the Muslim Crimean Khanate in southern Russia was engaged either in the gathering of slaves or in the selling of them. The slaves were captured by raiding the neighboring Slavic and Caucasian societies and the captives were sold in the slave markets of Eurasia. For every slave the Crimeans sold in the market, they killed outright several other people during their raids, and a couple more died on the way to the slave market. The slave trade continued until Russia conquered the Khanate in 1783. Crimean Tatars gave older men of little value to Tatar youths, who killed them for sport. One result was the widespread depopulation of much of Ukraine and southern Russia before the slave raids were stopped.

1.5 million Eastern Europeans have been estimated to have been enslaved between 1500 and 1650.

In addition, one million or more Western Europeans have been estimated to have been enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780. Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in North Africa – cities such as Tunis and Algiers – would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic as far as Iceland, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children. The fishermen and coastal dwellers of 17th-century Britain lived in terror of being kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery in North Africa. The destruction and depopulation of these attacks were devastating – long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. In general, these White slaves were not treated better than the black slaves in the Americas. Research even estimates that only about half the slaves survived the first five years of enslavement. Despite this death rate, one quarter of the population of Algiers were slaves during this period. The entire existence of the city was based on piracy and slave running. In Tunis and Tripoli, 10 to 20% of inhabitants were slaves.

After the expulsion of Jews from Spain, some Jews became pirates in the Mediterranean under the protection of Muslim rivals to Spain and other became pirates in the Caribbean under the protection of European rivals to Spain. The motivation in part included a desire for revenge on Spain.

A characteristic of White slave trade by non-Whites has been the strong value placed on White women. According to The Islamic Trade in European Slaves by Emmet Scott, the most conservative estimate is 15 million White slaves. No one has yet apologized for the millions of European slaves taken by non-Europeans.

The transatlantic slave trade and black slaves in the Americas

The politically correct media often describes the transatlantic slave trade and the following slavery in the Americas as simply being Whites enslaving and exploiting blacks. In reality, blacks were usually the persons capturing the slaves in Africa and blacks could be slave traders and slave owners also outside of Africa. Jews played a prominent role in the slave trade. See also the section above regarding White slaves.

Transatlantic slave trade

90% of the blacks transported to the New World were enslaved by Africans. The capture and sale of Africans was one of the main sources of foreign exchange for several African kingdoms for a very long time. The black elite in Africa was not unaware of the situation on the slave ships and in the New World for the black slaves they sold. Many elite Africans visited Europe in that era, and they did so on slave ships following the prevailing winds through the New World. African monarchs also sent their children along these same slave routes to be educated in Europe.

"The Middle Passage was horrific, but ocean voyages were dangerous for everyone. Comparable percentages of slaves and white crewmembers died during the trip." As slaves were expensive, it would have been in the interest of slave traders that as many slaves as possible survived.

Share of the population who were slaveowners in slaveholding states in the United States

Most Southerners were not slave owners. According to the 1860 census, 4.8% of the free population in the slaveholding states were slave owners (and with this including free blacks who owned slaves). A somewhat more politically correct figure is that 26% of the free "families" in the slaveholding states included one or more slave owners. However, the term "family" as used in the census is arguably misleading, with a "family" being defined as

"one or more persons living together and provided for in common. A single person, living alone in a distinct part of a house, may constitute a family; while, on the other hand, all the inmates of a boarding house or a hotel will constitute but a single family, though there may be among them many husbands with wives and children. Under whatever circumstances, and in whatever numbers, people live together under one roof, and are provided for at a common table, there is a family in the meaning of the law."

Thus, for example, all the free servants and farmhands who lived at a plantation would likely be counted as supposedly being members of a slave owning "family".

Free blacks and black slaveowners in the United States

Originally, the British colonies in North America only recognized indentured servants, but not slaves. The first slave owner was a negro, Anthony Johnson from Angola. In 1651, he held 250 acres and five black indentured servants. In 1654, it was time for Anthony to release John Casor, a black indentured servant, but he fought in court to change Casor from indentured servant to slave. He convinced the court to allow blacks to use their own race as slaves. Whites still could not own blacks as slaves until several decades later. In 1699, due to an effort to repatriate free blacks back to Africa, many blacks sold themselves as slaves to avoid being sent back. In 1830, there were 3,775 black families living in the South who owned black slaves. In 1860, in New Orleans alone, there were about 3,000 slaves owned by black households.

In the 1700s, free blacks could own White indentured servants as slaves. They also owned slaves in the Northern states. Free blacks owned slaves in Boston by 1724 and in Connecticut by 1783. In 1790, 48 blacks in Maryland owned 143 slaves. One famous black Maryland farmer, Nat Butler, regularly purchased and sold blacks for the Southern trade. In 1830, about 13.7 percent (319,599) of the black population was free. In some cases, blacks purchased black slaves for reasons such as protecting family members, but in other cases they were purchased in order to gain a profit from their labor. Black slave-holders fought to keep their slaves in the American Civil War.

Black slavemasters are an embarrassment to the orthodox, and have generally been justified by means of “the Woodson thesis.” In 1924, historian Carter G. Woodson hypothesized that blacks were “benevolent” owners who bought spouses and relatives for the purpose of freeing them. Mr. Koger’s analysis refutes this claim. He has discovered that 65 percent of purchases of slaves by blacks in the city of Charleston were clearly motivated by profit and only eight percent could be called “benevolent.” He could not determine the motive for the remaining 27 percent. [...] black slaveowners took an entirely business-like attitude towards their property. They went to court to fight for their ownership interests, and appear to have been no more likely than whites to free slaves in their wills.

"There were several routes to freedom for black slaves, and the 1860 census counted 224,963 free blacks living in the South (6 percent of all Southern blacks). Why didn’t they move to the North, where there were also communities of free blacks? Presumably, because free blacks could live comfortably in the Antebellum South."

Free blacks could also have migrated to Haiti or Liberia, independent countries ruled by blacks, but most did not, and many of those who did migrated back, as discussed in the articles on these countries. Free mulattoes have been argued to often have seen themselves as a distinct group, to often have self-segregated from more dark-skinned free blacks, and to have been over-represented as slaveowners.

Amerindian slaveowners in the United States

"In the South, Indians bought and sold large numbers of slaves, and many took their human property with them when they marched West over the “trail of tears.”"

Conditions for slaves in the United States

Black African slaves working a field in the USA

Regarding the conditions for the slaves, anecdotes or even fiction may be cited as evidence for poor treatment and used as propaganda material in school teaching. Actual systematic research has stated that white farmers were probably less food secure than black slaves and that slaves worked less than free whites.

Slaves were considered valuable possessions, predominantly well-fed and well-clothed. There is no systematic research on the use of corporal punishment apart from the quantitative research on the records from one particular plantation.

When we consider the lives of American slaves, we must compare them with contemporary historical standards, not current ideals. In 1842, a German visitor to Manchester, England, noted that he had seen so many people missing limbs from industrial accidents that it was like, “living in the midst of the army just returned from a campaign.” In the industrializing American Northeast in 1820, children aged 15 and under made up 23 percent of the largely white labor force. They frequently worked 12 to 14 hours a day. Over 50 percent worked in what we would consider hazardous conditions, and both boys and girls in factories were subject to beatings and other cruel treatment. The horrors in mines were notorious.

"One indication of the value placed on the lives of slaves was a practice that Olmstead noted in his travels: Irish navvies were invariably hired to drain swamps and dig irrigation ditches. Malaria and intestinal disease made this some of the most dangerous work in the South. When Olmstead asked why the Irish were hired for it, he was told, “It’s dangerous work and a negro’s life is too valuable to be risked at it. If a negro dies it is a considerable loss you know.”"

The book Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery states:

"The belief that slave breeding, sexual exploitation, and promiscuity destroyed the black family is a myth. The family was the basic unit of social organization under slavery. It was to the economic interests of planters to encourage the stability of slave families and most of them did so. Most slave sales were either of whole families or of individuals who were at an age when it would have been normal for them to have left the family. [...] The material (not psychological) conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers. This is not to say they were good by modern standards. It merely emphasizes the hard lot of all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the nineteenth century. [...] Slaves were exploited in the sense that part of the income which they produced was expropriated by their owners. However, the rate of expropriation was much lower than has generally been presumed. Over the course of his lifetime, the typical slave field hand received about 90 percent of the income he produced."

The book also states that the life expectancy of US slaves was longer than that of several White populations and much longer than that of the inhabitants of cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in 1830. Regarding housing,

"the “typical” slave cabin of the late antebellum era probably contained more sleeping space per person than was available to most of New York City’s workers half a century later." In 1850, there was little difference in infant morality among Southern slaves and Southern Whites. Slaves were far less likely to commit suicide than Northern workers.

A review of the book Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World states:

"18th century slavery was often paternalistic, with close relations between slaves and masters. Owners encouraged slave marriage and tried to keep families together. In some areas, slaves were on the “task system,” where-by masters allotted work that energetic slaves could finish by early afternoon so as to devote the rest of the day to private plots. Masters often bought this produce from slaves, who accumulated property they could pass on to their children. [...]

Prof. Davis admits grudgingly that it was in the interests of slave owners to keep their property healthy and happy. He also writes that travelers in the South often reported that masters wanted to be “popular” among their slaves, an ambition probably lacking among Brazilian or Caribbean masters. He also concedes that since 72 percent of masters had fewer than 10 slaves, they knew them well, and probably had reasonably good relations. At the same time, many masters took pains to encourage Christianity in the slave quarters because the Bible enjoins servants to obey masters. Likewise, many masters took pride in what they considered their decent, Christian treatment of their property.

It is embarrassing to contemporary historians that there were not more slave mutinies in the South. Prof. Davis notes that plantations with 50 slaves or more had an average of only 1.5 white men on the premises, so blacks could have easily overpowered them. Insurrection was more common in Brazil and in the Caribbean, but this is not surprising. All-male gang slaves, who knew they were going to be worked to death, and had no hope of having children or grandchildren had little to lose. In the South, even during the war, when white men were at the front, there were hardly any slave revolts to speak of.

At one time it was common to speculate that American slaves did not revolt because they were brutalized into a state of paralysis, but the most obvious explanation is surely correct: Many slaves may have wanted freedom but did not find their lives so intolerable that they were prepared to commit violence and risk death for it. In the 1930s, elderly ex-slaves gave interviews as part of a Depression-era government project. Scholars rarely mention this today because so many of them spoke fondly of slavery and of their departed masters (see “Forgotten Black Voices,” AR, Sept-Oct. 1993)."

See also the article on Confederate revisionism.

Slavery in Brazil

The Bandeira were slave-hunting expedition into the Brazilian interior in the 17th century. The members of such expeditions, bandeirantes, were usually of mixed Amerindian and Portuguese ancestry. Often, they would ally themselves with one Amerindian tribe against another, but when the tribes were weakened enslave both. The bandeirantes also often raided Amerindian villages established by Jesuits who became the bandeirantes main opponents.

A major slave trader was Francisco Félix de Sousa, likely of partial Amerindian and/or black ancestry. The Portuguese Wikipedia states that was the son of Portuguese slave trader and an Amerindian woman and that he was himself freed at age 17. De Sousa continued to market slaves after the trade was abolished in most jurisdictions.

In the Minas Gerais state, more than 30% of slaves owners were former slaves or descendants of slaves.

Abolition of slavery

In some cases, slavery has diminished in a society simply due to it becoming more difficult to acquire slaves. However, it was Whites who for humanitarian reasons started to argue against slavery and finally fought to end slavery throughout the whole world.

The abolition of slavery in Europe in the Middle Ages was a gradual process (often involving slavery first being converted to serfdom) and happened later in Eastern Europe. In Russia, serfdom was abolished in 1861. Slavery also persisted longer in European colonies and the United States (prohibition of importation of new slaves often being an intermediary step towards abolition) and the longest in the areas not conquered by Europeans.

In the British Caribbean, slavery was abolished in 1834. England influenced the abolition in many other Latin American countries. Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery in 1888.

The European colonization movement of the second half of the 19th century put an end to slavery in many parts of Africa, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. In 1861, the British made holding a slave in India a crime. Russia also abolished slavery as it expanded its territory.

China effectively abolished slavery in 1906 and Korea in 1930. Some parts of Africa and much of the Islamic world retained slavery at the end of World War I. The League of Nations and later the United Nations took the final extinction of slavery to be one of their obligations. The league had considerable success in Africa, with the assistance of the European colonial powers, and by the late 1930s slavery was abolished in Liberia and Ethiopia that were not European colonies.

Slavery was abolished in most Islamic countries after the Second World War (Europeans had stopped the importation of slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa long before this), although it persisted in Saudi Arabia into the 1960s. It finally was made illegal in the Arabian Peninsula in 1962. As noted below, it persisted as legal institution beyond this in Mauritania.

Argued failure of certain optimistic expectations of early abolitionists

Early abolitionists have been argued to have had certain optimistic expectations that failed to occur as expected.

"For a time, abolitionists believed black-run Haiti would be a shining example of what emancipation would achieve. They predicted lush prosperity, with Haitian merchantmen cruising the world’s seas. This only proves how far back white naïveté goes. In the 1820s, as Haiti sunk into misery, President Jean-Pierre Boyer invited free blacks from America to come help build the country. At least 6,000 arrived from the Philadelphia area, but thousands returned disillusioned. Better to live in a slave-holding society run by whites than in black-run chaos."

Similarly, it has been argued regarding the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833:

"Twenty years later, it was clear that abolition had been an economic disaster. Free blacks refused to work for wages, and became loafers and subsistence farmers. Caribbean plantation land plummeted in value and exports dried up. In 1843, the British made a formal offer to the United States to pay the ocean passage for free blacks willing to go the West Indies and work under contract. When that failed, the islands imported hundreds of thousands of East Indians or “hill coolies” to work in the fields."

Long-lasting economic effects of slave trade on Africa

The African slave trade (not just the transatlantic) has sometimes been argued to have caused long-lasting negative effects for Africa, which also today (150+ years later) would explain why Africa is underdeveloped. This has been criticized, for reasons such as other regions with earlier large scale slave trade not today being underdeveloped or being much more developed than Africa. One argued mechanism through which the slave trade could cause long-lasting negative effects is through creating high ethnic fractionalization, which has a well-established negative association with economic growth (see ethnic heterogeneity).

This has been criticized, since ethnic variation, language variation, and species variation generally are larger close to the equator, which is argued to support that the cause of the high African ethnic fractionalization is ecological factor(s). Also, instead of the slave trade causing high African ethnic fractionalization, it could instead be an already existing high African ethnic fractionalization that contributed to the development of the slave trade in Africa.

Long-lasting negative effects for areas using slaves

More generally, the historical use of slaves from other areas is sometimes used as an explanation for why certain parts of the world are more developed than other areas.

This is dubious, since the association between use of slaves and economic development is likely negative and not positive. Use of slaves within Africa has been extensive, with extremely high percentages of the population being slaves in some areas (see the section "Slavery by non-White populations" above). Yet Africa is the most underdeveloped part of the world.

Use of slaves has often been argued to cause slower technological development and absence of industrialization, which replaces human labor with machines. This may be an important explanation for why ancient Greece and ancient Rome, despite often very impressive scientific and mathematical achievements, had relatively slow technological development and never industrialized. Another example is the low degree of industrialization in the American South at the time of the American Civil War.

"Eugene Genovese, a Marxist historian of slavery who certainly has little sympathy for slaveholders, writes that the slave system retarded the development of the South. He argues that since slaves could not be taught to handle livestock carefully, the South did not develop a cattle industry. Modern agricultural equipment could not be introduced on plantations because slaves were sure to break it. The only farm implements that survived were simple, crude, and heavy. The “nigger hoe,” for example, weighed three times as much as the more effective “English hoe,” which slaves habitually broke. Slave labor in factories was virtually out of the question because slaves could not be trusted with machinery. The slave was said to be the laziest, most untrustworthy servant on earth and had constantly to be watched. [...] Other than in the cotton fields, there is some doubt as to whether slavery was even profitable. Frederick Law Olmstead (1822-1903), the landscape architect who designed Central Park in New York City, made a study of slavery when he toured the antebellum South. He estimated that on many plantations slaves worked one third as much as a hired hand on a New England farm. He was convinced that free blacks could be hired for considerably less than the cost of keeping slaves. Although some slaves were driven for long hours, northern anti-slavery tracts abounded with accounts of how the excessive leisure of slavery would be ended under strict, Northern employment practices. They promised that abolition would produce a decisive rise in the nation’s productivity. [...] Slaves were provided for as children and maintained in sickness and in old age. Northern wage earners, who had no sick leave, children’s allowances, or retirement benefits, often wondered if they were not worse off than slaves."

Countries such as Portugal and Spain went into long-term economic declines, despite large-scale use of slavery in the colonies. On the other hand, for example Canada, Australia, and many White countries without colonies or slavery, developed more or less in parallel with the United States, despite not using massive slave labor.

Another negative effect of slavery is competing with and replacing free workers. In ancient Rome, a greatly increased use of slaves in agriculture caused the class of free small farmers to largely disappear. This class had been important parts of the Roman military and the Roman political system. Its disappearance has been argued to be an important cause of the fall of the Roman republic and the creation of a professional army, with an over time increasingly larger share of foreigners. Slavery (such as importation of female slaves from low IQ areas) has also been argued to be an important cause of dysgenics and the fall of civilizations.

Reparation demands

Demands for reparation for slavery are sometimes made, often only making such demands on Whites. Stated arguments against this include:

• In effect being a collective punishment, of a whole group for what some ancestors of some individuals in the group did a very long time ago, and only against some of the ancestors of some of the individuals in another group.

• Even if specific individuals can be identified, such as the now living relatives of a specific slaveowner and the now living relatives of the slaves this slaveowner owned, then inherited guilt is still not a legal concept in justice systems. Murder is worse than slavery, and yet a murder victim’s son has no claim of any kind on the son of a man who killed his father.

• Slavery was legal at the time and it is a general legal principle that retroactive punishments for what later became illegal (so-called ex post facto laws) are not valid. If such retroactive punishments are allowed, especially against descendants due to inherited guilt, then they could be applied to many other areas than slavery, such as against the distant descendants of those who in the distant past used child laborers, extremely common in many cultures.

• Ignoring large-scale slavery by non-Whites, including, for example, blacks enslaving other Blacks.

• In Africa, male captives from tribal wars were often killed if they could not be sold as slaves.

• Black descendants of slaves in the United States on average having a much higher living standard than Blacks in Africa.

• The (economic) costs of, for example, high Black crime, high Black imprisonment, and high Black welfare use.

• See also sections such as "Long-lasting negative effects for areas using slaves".

Slavery in the Modern World

A 2013 estimate was that there was 30 million slaves globally. Slavery was generally more common in non-Western countries.

Slavery is a multi-billion dollar industry, with estimates of up to $35 billion generated annually. The UN estimates that roughly 27 to 30 million individuals are currently caught in the slave trade industry.

An 2004 estimate was that there were 6.8 million people in the Chinese labor camp system ("Lagoi"). See the article on Haiti on "restavecs", a form of child slavery.

Mauritania was the last nation to officially abolish slavery in 1981, but it only became illegal to own a person in 2007. In 2012, only one person had been convicted of this. An estimated 10% to 20% of the population were enslaved. The typical pattern is North Africans owning Sub-Saharan Africans. African Pygmies are often enslaved by black Bantus.

In 2003, a leading Saudi government cleric and author of the country's religious curriculum stated that slavery was part of Islam. Other Islamists have more recently advocated or implemented slavery. Also critics of Islam have argued that slavery has a strong support in Islamic writings.

Sex Slavery

“In the past decade, approximately 25,000 women, nearly all from the Former Soviet Union, were smuggled into Israel over the Egyptian border to be brutalized as sex slaves. Once in Israel, victims are repeatedly sold and resold to pimps and brothel owners. They are forced to work in slave-like conditions, ruthlessly abused and exploited, suffering severe beatings, rape and often starvation.” Israel has finally started cracking down for fear of losing American aid.

See the article on White demographics and the sections "Eastern Europe" and "Russia" on very large numbers of women from Eastern Europe and Russia being sex slaves in non-white countries. See Race and crime: Culture regarding organized and racially/ethnically based large scale rapes and sex trafficking in Rotherham and other places in England and elsewhere. See also the article on Operation Cross Country regarding an FBI operation against child prostitution, allegedly often involving blacks gangs kidnapping White girls.

See also

• Colonialism
• Curse of Ham
• Human Trafficking in Israel
• White guilt

Further reading

• Andrew Guild: White Slaves, African Slave Traders, and the Hidden History of Slavery, 2004

External links

White slaves

• The other slave trade
• When Europeans Where Slaves: Research Suggests White Slavery Much More Common Than Previously Believed
• Capturing of White European Slaves by the Barbary Corsairs
• Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters
• The Untold Story of White Slavery

Jews and slavery

• The Jewish Religion’s Position on the Slave Trade and Sexual Abuse: The Shocking Truth!
• Jewish Role in African Slave Trade Admitted by Rabbi in New Jewish Book
• Jewish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade a “canard?”
• Tactics of Organized Jewry in Suppressing Free Speech
• Jew Watch: Slave Trade
• Jewish Dominance And Control of Trans-Atlantic African Slave Trade
• Who Brought the Slaves to America? Slavery and the Jews (1968)

Slavery in the Americas

• Slavery in the United States
  • Slaves in America Would’ve Been Slaves in Africa Anyway
  • Whites Did Not Benefit from Slavery (Not Even at the Time)
• Myths About Slavery and Lynching