| Abstrakt: |
This article focuses on the history of slave trade. Slave trades began with the onset of agricultural societies. As hunter-gatherers also became farmers, they settled down at least temporarily, defending their lands from both nomads and other farmers. The ensuing wars yielded prisoners, who then became convenient forced labor for the victors. For example, in Sumeria in southern Mesopotamia this labor was used to perform the constant maintenance of irrigation canals as well as to build ziggurat temples. Egypt and Harappa had far fewer slaves until outsiders attacked, and their societies became more warlike than before in response. China and India had fewer slaves than Mesopotamia and Greece. Strong central governments that reserved slavery largely to themselves and that were blessed with more peasant farmers than they needed condemned fewer individuals to being outright chattel in eastern Asia. Empires transmitted both slavery and slave trades. The Mediterranean world witnessed upsurges in the number of people in bondage with the imperial expansion of Athens, of Alexander of Macedon, and then of Rome. Prisoners whose families could not afford or arrange a ransom were quickly sold and resold. Slave trades came to Gaul, in what is now western Europe, and Britain. |
