After occupying the Americas, these conquerors set up their own civilization, which included a robust program of slavery, as historian Matt Walsh writes:
The institution goes back 10,000 years or more to the Neolithic Revolution. As long as human society has had agriculture, it has had slaves to do the work. The soil on every continent on Earth, save Antarctica, has been tilled by slaves. Slavery was a common and almost unquestioned practice everywhere, all over the world, among nearly all people, for many thousands of years.
Although the word ‘slavery’ is often used, it is still worth pausing to define it. The first element of this definition points to unremunerated labor: slaves work and do not get paid for working, or do not have the right to demand payment, even if they are paid.
A second element of the definition indicates that slaves are treated as property. The property rights which owners can normally exercise over possessions like land and houses are, in conditions of slavery, exercised over human beings.
Although there are variations and differences between, e.g., slavery as practiced by Aztec as compared to the Benin Empire, or as practiced by the Maya as compared to the Kongo, the points of the definition constitute a common thread among regional variations. ‘Kongo’ is the ancient predecessor of the modern Congo. Matt Walsh notes:
Slaves were traded as commodities as far back as Ancient Egypt.
Slavery in any form is dehumanizing. To buy and sell human beings, and to claim the right to treat them in any arbitrary way, even to kill them, — and to claim that right based on their status as property — is why many people find slavery to be a moral monstrosity.
The first recorded effort to undermine the institution of slavery is found in the Mosaic laws. In his legislation, Moses codified temporal limits to slavery — that it would not be a lifelong condition, but rather that slaves would be set free. He also decreed that slaves could not be treated with arbitrary harshness.
While incremental, the laws of Moses were the first significant effort to erode slavery. The effects were slow. Slavery would persist for a few more centuries his own society, and for a few more millennia in other societies.
The foundation of slavery, the reason for its institution and persistence, is primarily economic, as Matt Walsh points out:
Arab traders would conduct their own raids in Africa, capturing African villagers and shipping them back to the Arabian peninsula for sale.
At various times and various places, slavery has been a big business. Certain regional economies have not only allowed slavery, but rather depended on it. This was the case in the southern United States between 1790 and 1865; it was even more the case on other continents, as historian Matt Walsh notes:
In the Sub-Saharan slave trade, established about 1,000 years before the United States came into being, young boys were routinely castrated and then sold into forced labor in Asia, the Middle East, or within Africa. It’s worth noting that slavery was not fully abolished in Africa until 1981.
Slavery was practiced at some point in time or another in almost every part of the world. Europe was the first large region to eradicate slavery. The long-term ripple effects of the Mosaic innovation drove the Europeans to abolish slavery. The anti-slavery movements in North America, typified in individuals like Roger Williams, who led the movement which abolished slavery in Rhode Island in the 1650s, was a direct outgrowth of European culture, which was in turn an extension of Mosiac legal and ethical logic.
Although the forms and goals of slavery changed when European settlers arrived in the Americas, its basic nature did not. Because slavery de-humanizes and objectifies the slave, the slave is perceived as an “other” — the natives of the Americas, before the arrival of Europeans, treated people who were not of their own tribe as “other” and often enslaved them, as Matt Walsh explains:
Slavery was commonplace in the Americas well before European settlers showed up. Native American tribes enslaved each other, often by conquest and capture.
The civilizations of the Americas routinely practiced human sacrifice before the arrival of Europeans. The connection between slavery and the pre-religious superstitious phase of human sacrifice is clear: The slave would have no choice about being a vicitim of these rituals.
In Mesoamerica, a slave would often have his period of servitude ended when he was ritualistically butchered as a human sacrifice, which was a widespread practice in the region for hundreds of years.
Slavery has not been entirely eradicate from the world. It persists, even in places where it is technically illegal. There are still markets where human beings are bought and sold like animals.
While slavery persists in some remote areas, most modern nations have succeeded in erasing it from their societies, and most cultures have solidified an anti-slavery ethic among their people.
China had slavery for 3,000 years and only officially abolished it in the 20th century, though unofficially it still exists today.
Slavery existed in ancient times in nearly every part of the world. It came to the Americas many centuries prior to the first European settlers. The social and cultural forces which led to the end of slavery made themselves first felt in the Ancient Near East, next in Europe, and then in the Americas.
When the United States ended slavery between 1863 and 1865, other nations followed the example: Brazil ended its slavery sytem in 1888, Cuba in 1886, and Madegascar in 1896. Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, China, and Thailand followed suit in the twentieth century.
