Slavery

History

Records show the existence of slavery in such ancient civilizations as Assyria, the Nile Valley, Greece, and the Roman Empire. In their expanding realm, the Roman conquerors resorted to enslaving large groups in the vanquished territories, and the slave trade became commonplace in the empire. The Romans' captured territories included land that is now known as England, Wales, and Scotland. When Roman Emperor Septimius Severus (ruled 193–211 CE), a North African, governed Britain, he once remarked that the British made “bad slaves.”

Due to the conflict between the Byzantine Empire and the rising Islamic Empire of the Arabs from the seventh century onward, the Arabs also acquired slaves and conducted slave trading. Much of the Iberian Peninsula became part of the Arab Muslim world from 711 until 1492, against the background of tensions between Islam and Christianity. It became a common practice to enslave men, women, and children of a different religion. Over time, slave ownership became an accepted measure of the status of an aristocrat, prince, or king.

At the same time, a capable slave in the employ of a prince or king could rise through the ranks, become a free person, and be appointed a commander. In rare cases, someone born a slave ended [Page 1553]up as a king. For instance, in 13th-century North India, ruled by the Afghan Muslim tribes, Qutbuddin Aibak, a slave in the royal household, rose to succeed his heirless master, Muhammad Ghor. He founded the Slave Dynasty in 1206; it lasted 84 years. Zheng He (1371–1433), a native of the Muslim-majority Yunnan province of China, was captured by the army of the Ming Dynasty when he was 10. He was castrated and given the job of an enslaved orderly in the court. He managed to climb the hierarchical ladder to become a preeminent explorer, diplomat, and admiral.

The capture of slaves and slave trading thrived in the Christian world, where the pope had authority in religious and moral affairs. After taking an equivocal position on slavery and slave trading, the pope in the mid-15th century allowed the Portuguese ruler to make slaves of pagans and other nonbelievers. Because the Portuguese, known for their maritime skills, had been exploring West Africa since 1415, the papal clearance opened the gate for taking West Africans first as servants and then as slaves. In 1444, the port of Lagos in southern Portugal saw the establishment of the first slave market for Africans in Europe. In a little over a century, 1 out of 10 residents of the capital, Lisbon, was an African slave.

When, in the latter half of the 16th century, the Iberian kings ended their slave-trading monopoly, private slave traders transported slaves to the Iberian colonies in the Western Hemisphere, where there were vast plantations producing labor-intensive products, such as cotton, sugar cane, and tobacco, for export to Europe. The pace of development depended on the availability of labor, consisting of Native American tribes, poor Whites, and African slaves. As the supply of American Indians and poor Whites dwindled, the Iberian plantation owners began to lean more heavily on the expediency of securing slave labor from Africa.

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