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Slavery.

Slavery.

By: Popular Culture and Religion.
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Summary

 Slavery.
Slavery is a socioeconomic institution in which individuals are treated as property, deprived of personal liberty, and compelled to provide unpaid labor or services to owners under coercion, often involving violence or the threat thereof, with the legal right to buy, sell, inherit, or punish the enslaved. This practice, rooted in the exercise of power over war captives, debtors, or conquered peoples, has manifested across diverse forms—from chattel systems denying all autonomy to debt bondage retaining nominal freedoms—but consistently entails the owner's absolute control over the slave's body, labor, and reproduction.
Historically, slavery underpinned economies and societies in nearly every major civilization, from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt through classical Greece and Rome—where slaves comprised 20-30% of urban populations and drove mining, agriculture, and domestic work—to medieval Islamic empires, sub-Saharan African kingdoms, Indian caste systems, and Ottoman domains. In Africa, internal enslavement of war prisoners and criminals predated external trades, with slaves integrated into households, farms, or as status symbols in societies like those of the Ashanti and Dahomey, often fueling exports to Arab and later European markets. In terms of the scale, empirical data reveal the transatlantic trade's shipment of about 12 million Africans to the Americas from 1500 to 1866, alongside roughly 6 million via trans-Saharan, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean routes to the Islamic world over centuries, highlighting slavery's global, multi-directional causality rather than confinement to any single region or ideology. These trades, sustained by African elites capturing and selling rivals alongside foreign demand, generated vast wealth but entrenched cycles of violence, depopulation, and underdevelopment in source areas.
Abolition emerged unevenly from the late 18th century, propelled by Enlightenment critiques of absolutism, evangelical moralism, and industrial shifts reducing reliance on coerced labor, culminating in legal bans by Western powers—Britain in 1833, the U.S. in 1865—though enforcement lagged and modern variants like forced labor and trafficking persist, affecting an estimated 50 million people today amid uneven global progress. Controversies endure over slavery's legacies, including economic disparities traceable to trade intensities and debates on reparative justice, yet causal analysis underscores its roots in universal human incentives for domination and resource extraction, not unique cultural pathologies.Copyright Popular Culture and Religion. Social Sciences True Crime World
Episodes
  • 50 - Abolitionism.

    50 - Abolitionism.
    May 19 2026
    Abolitionism. Slavery has existed, in one form or another, throughout recorded human history – as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves. In antiquity. Emperor Ashoka, who ruled the Maurya Empire in the Indian subcontinent from 269 to 232 BCE, abolished the slave trade but not slavery. The Qin dynasty, which ruled China from 221 to 206 BCE, abolished slavery and discouraged serfdom. However, many of its laws were overturned when the dynasty was overthrown. Slavery was again abolished by Wang Mang in China in 17 CE but was reinstituted after his assassination. Americas. The Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the right to enslave Native Americans. A prominent critic of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies was the Spanish missionary and bishop, Bartolomé de las Casas, who was the first to document the European maltreatment of and cruelty towards American natives. In the United States, all of the northern states had abolished slavery by 1804, with New Jersey being the last to act. Abolitionist pressure produced a series of small steps towards emancipation. After the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited, but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted outside the northern states, but abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad, and violent clashes between anti-slavery and pro-slavery Americans occurred, including in Bleeding Kansas, a series of political and armed disputes in 1854–1858 as to whether Kansas would join the United States as a slave or free state. By 1860, the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States. Slaves in areas controlled by the Confederacy were legally emancipated in 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and slavery was banned nationwide, except as punishment for a crime, in 1865, with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Many of the freed slaves became sharecroppers and indentured servants. In this manner, some became tied to the very parcel of land into which they had been born a slave having little freedom or economic opportunity because of Jim Crow laws which perpetuated discrimination, limited education, promoted persecution without due process and resulted in continued poverty. Fear of reprisals such as unjust incarcerations and lynchings deterred upward mobility further. Europe. France abolished slavery in 1794 during the Revolution, but it was restored in 1802 under Napoleon. It has been asserted that, before the Revolution, slavery was illegal in metropolitan France (as opposed to its colonies), but this has been refuted. One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England in 1772, with British Judge Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England. The last person to be deemed a slave in a British court was Bell (Belinda) who was transported to the Americas in 1772 as a "slave for life" by a Perth court. Sons of Africa was a late 18th-century British group that campaigned to end slavery. Its members were Africans in London, freed slaves who included Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community. It was closely connected to the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a non-denominational group founded in 1787, whose members included Thomas Clarkson. British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce led the anti-slavery movement in the United Kingdom, although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Clarkson. Wilberforce was urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, to make the issue his own and was also given support by reformed Evangelical John Newton. The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 25, 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire, Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. After the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade was passed, these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of...
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    13 mins
  • 49 - History, Contemporary slavery.

    49 - History, Contemporary slavery.
    May 18 2026
    History, Contemporary slavery. China. In March 2020, the Chinese government was found to be using the Uyghur minority for forced labour, inside sweat shops. According to a report published then by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), no fewer than around 80,000 Uyghurs were forcibly removed from the region of Xinjiang and used for forced labour in at least twenty-seven corporate factories. According to the Business and Human Rights resource center, corporations such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Amazon, Apple, BMW, Fila, Gap, H&M, Inditex, Marks & Spencer, Nike, North Face, Puma, PVH, Samsung, and UNIQLO have each sourced products from these factories prior to the publication of the ASPI report. Libya. During the Second Libyan Civil War, Libyans started capturing Sub-Saharan African migrants trying to get to Europe through Libya and selling them on slave markets or holding them hostage for ransom. Women are often raped, used as sex slaves, or sold to brothels. Child migrants suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya. Mauritania. Mauritania, was the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981), it is estimated that 20% of its population of 3 million people are enslaved as bonded labourers, with black Haratin being slaves and Berbers and Arabs the owners. Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007. However, although slavery, as a practice, was legally banned in 1981, it was not a crime to own a slave until 2007. Although many slaves have escaped or have been freed since 2007, as of 2012, only one slave owner had been sentenced to serve time in prison. North Korea. North Korea's human rights record is often considered to be the worst in the world and has been globally condemned, with the United Nations, the European Union and groups such as Human Rights Watch all critical of the country's record. Forms of torture, forced labour, and abuses are all widespread. Most international human rights organizations consider North Korea to have no contemporary parallel with respect to violations of liberty. Taiwan. Taiwan's migrant worker population—estimated in 2018 to be up to 660,000 in number—have reportedly faced slavery-like conditions involving sexual abuse in the domestic work sector and forced labor in fishing sectors. Taiwan is among a minority of places in the world that legally allows labor brokers to charge migrant workers for services which elsewhere are covered by employers as human resource costs. A few Taiwanese universities have reportedly tricked students from Eswatini, Uganda and Sri Lanka into forced labour at factories as payment for the university programs. Some charity groups in 2007 also insisted that foreign women—mostly from China and Southeast Asia—were being forced into prostitution, although local police in Taiwan disagreed and said they deliberately came to Taiwan "to sell sex". Yemen. Despite being formally abolished in the 1960s, slavery in Yemen remains a significant issue exacerbated by ongoing conflict and socio-economic instability. An estimated 85,000 people remaining enslaved as of 2022. The Iran-backed Houthi militias have been accused of reinstating traditional slavery systems. Reports indicate that over 1,800 Yemenis have been forced into servitude by prominent Houthi leaders, with the Houthis dividing society into hierarchical classes of masters and slaves. This modern slavery encompasses various forms, such as forced labor, sexual exploitation, human trafficking, and child recruitment. Vulnerable populations include the Al Muhamashīn community, Ethiopian migrants, and children who are subjected to severe discrimination and exploitation. Despite legal prohibitions against slavery in Yemen, enforcement is weak due to political instability and ongoing civil war. International organizations have documented these abuses, highlighting the need for stronger interventions to combat slavery and human trafficking in the region. Economics. While American slaves in 1809 were sold for around $40,000 (in inflation adjusted dollars), a slave nowadays can be bought for just $90, making replacement more economical than providing long-term care. Slavery is a multibillion-dollar industry with estimates of up to $35 billion generated annually. Trafficking. Victims of human trafficking are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction. Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs to control their victims. "Annually, according to U.S. government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80% of ...
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    7 mins
  • 48 - History, Contemporary slavery.

    48 - History, Contemporary slavery.
    May 18 2026
    History, Contemporary slavery.
    Even though slavery is now outlawed in nearly every country, with the sole exception of Afghanistan, the number of slaves today is estimated as between 12 million and 29.8 million. According to a broad definition of slavery, there were 27 million people in slavery in 1999, spread all over the world. In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of 12.3 million forced labourers. Siddharth Kara has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million). Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009.
    According to a 2003 report by Human Rights Watch, an estimated 15 million children in debt bondage in India work in slavery-like conditions to pay off their family's debts.
    Slavoj Žižek asserts that new forms of contemporary slavery have been created in the post-Cold War era of global capitalism, including migrant workers deprived of basic civil rights on the Arabian Peninsula, the total control of workers in Asian sweatshops and the use of forced labor in the exploitation of natural resources in Central Africa.

    Distribution.
    In June 2013, U.S. State Department released a report on slavery. It placed Russia, China, and Uzbekistan in the worst offenders category. Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe were at the lowest level. The list also included Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait among a total of 21 countries.
    In Kuwait, there are more than 600,000 migrant domestic workers who are vulnerable to forced labor and legally tied to their employers, who often illegally take their passports. In 2019, online slave markets on apps such as Instagram were uncovered.
    In the preparations for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, thousands of Nepalese, the largest group of labourers, faced slavery in the form of denial of wages, confiscation of documents, and inability to leave the workplace. In 2016, the United Nations gave Qatar 12 months to end migrant worker slavery or face investigation.
    The Walk Free Foundation reported in 2018 that slavery in wealthy Western societies is much more prevalent than previously known, in particular the United States and Great Britain, which have 403,000 (one in 800) and 136,000 slaves respectively. Andrew Forrest, founder of the organization, said that "The United States is one of the most advanced countries in the world yet has more than 400,000 modern slaves working under forced labour conditions." An estimated 40.3 million are enslaved globally, with North Korea having the most slaves at 2.6 million (one in 10). Of the estimated 40.3 million people in contemporary slavery, 71% are women and 29% are men. The report found of the 40.3 million in modern slavery, 15.4 million are in forced marriages and 24.9 million are in forced labor. The foundation defines contemporary slavery as "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power, or deception."


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