The International Day for Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition serves as a platform to highlight the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade, its lasting impact, and the ongoing efforts to prevent modern-day slavery.
A person is considered to be owned by another person in a situation known as slavery. Slaves were denied most of the rights usually afforded to individuals who were free, as they were legally considered to be chattel or property.
Slavery has been practiced historically in a variety of forms, including chattel, bond, forced labor, and sexual slavery. The main idea around slavery, as is commonly acknowledged includes the loss of personal freedom and legal rights. A number of factors led to the development of slavery in the ancient world, including economic necessity, particularly in societies and agricultural economies where greater labor forces were required.
Another reason for slavery was dominance because it led to the production of slaves, who gradually evolved into a kind of status symbol, in addition to other wartime treasures like gold. The Mesopotamian and Sumerian civilisations, which flourished between 6000 and 2000 BCE in the Iran/Iraq region, are the earliest known societies with slaves.
Ancient Greece, whose slave labor accounted for the lion’s share of the economy, was the world’s first real “slave society.” With the richer classes, slaves formed up a third of the total population. However, slaves were given the option to buy their freedom or were released at the master’s discretion in the form of manumission in ancient Greece. The majority of them were nevertheless had to perform some obligations for their old masters, so it wasn’t complete freedom. In addition, they were never legally permitted to become full citizens.
Five Myths About Slavery
On this day of remembrance, author of Slave Wales and Atlantic Slavery 1660-1850, Professor Chris Evans from the University of South Wales unpacks five myths about slavery.
1. “Africans enslaved their ‘own’ people.”
They didn’t. Africans didn’t know they were African. The concept is a European importation. In Africa, individuals often identified with specific ethnic, linguistic, or religious groups, while those they captured and enslaved were typically foreigners, often captured as prisoners during warfare. Those they enslaved were outsiders, usually prisoners taken in war.
2. “Africans were helpless victims of enslavement.”
No, they weren’t. Resistance to slavery started in Africa itself (and continued in the Americas).
Communities that were vulnerable to slave raiders often relocated to places that were more easily
defended. They armed themselves. They rebelled against local elites who traded in slaves. They
repeatedly fought back.
3. “Slaves were cheap labour.”
Not true. Enslaved Africans were expensive to acquire. Europeans had to purchase them with costly
trade goods (Indian cottons, brass articles from Germany, French brandy, glassware from Bohemia,
etc.). Africans were enslaved because European labourers would not freely migrate to the
Caribbean, where plantation work was murderously gruelling. Enslaved Africans had no choice in the
matter.
4. “The British were the first to abolish the slave trade.”
They were not. The Danes abolished their slave trade in 1792, well before British abolition in 1807.
What’s more, in 1806 the Westminster parliament passed the Foreign Slave Trade Act, which
prohibited Britons from participating in the Guinea trade of other countries. Since British captains
were the foremost traffickers of that time, the British effectively abolished everyone else’s slave
trade before they abolished their own.
5. “The British were the first to abolish slavery.”
Completely untrue. The first nation to outlaw black slavery was Haiti in 1804. Thirty years would pass
before the British did the same. By then, a variety of Latin American countries had joined Haiti in
