Slavery in the ancient and modern world, from the Aztecs to robots — features, essence, causes

Slavery is a system of social relations in which a person (a slave) is permitted to be the property of another person (a master, slave-owner, owner, lord) or of the state. In the past, captives, criminals and debtors were turned into slaves, and later civilians as well, who were forced to work for their owner. Slavery in this form was widespread until the 20th century, and in some Arab and African countries it still exists today.

In the modern world slavery is condemned in most countries as a crime and is prohibited by the laws of those countries. The essence of slavery as a crime lies in depriving slaves of their future, wholly or in part.

Slavery has existed since prehistoric times in various civilisations, in most cases taking one institutional form or another. For a long time in European historiography, especially Marxist historiography, slave labour was considered characteristic of ancient states, and the slave-owning order was identified as a separate socio-economic formation. At present most researchers hold that slave labour never constituted the basis of production and was not a specific feature of the states of the Ancient World. Today slavery is prohibited in all countries (the last to abolish slavery was Mauritania in 1981, although de facto the ban is not enforced).

At present there also exist phenomena indistinguishable from slavery or similar to it. These may include: serfdom, debt bondage, the confinement of domestic servants, child soldiers, human trafficking, the transfer of children and adolescents for the purposes of exploitation, and forced marriage. On this approach, between 20 and 36 million people, by various estimates, are in a condition of slavery in the modern world.

In the conditions of the 21st century this is a social phenomenon characterised by the total restriction of the human rights of a person (an individual or a group of individuals), of their freedom, personal inviolability, by coercion into involuntary labour, into performing work that is unlimited in time or indeterminate in character, into sexual unfreedom, as well as by the exploitation of a person as an object of property rights (through sale, hire and other means).

This table shows the evolution of slavery and the differences in the status of slaves in different societies. Modern forms of slavery are prohibited, but in fact persist in the form of forced labour and human trafficking.

Table 1: the rights and characteristics of slaves in different countries and periods

The Russian word «рабство» ("slavery") derives from «раб» ("slave"), which is a borrowing from Church Slavonic рабъ. The original Russian form was *робъ. According to Zachary Goryushkin, in the 18th–19th centuries it was believed in the Russian Empire that «рабство» derived from the word «работа» ("work"). He distinguished temporary slavery, that is, contractual work for a master for payment, and "eternal" slavery, in which the slave was legally obliged "to serve the master hereditarily".

According to one version, which gained currency from the 18th century onwards, in the Romance, Germanic and certain other languages (for example Arabic — "saqaliba", Welsh, and the constructed languages Esperanto and Volapük) the words "slave" and "slavery" derive from the word "Slav": these words, via Late Latin Sclāvus, are derivatives of Middle Greek Σκλάβος [Sklábos], Σκλάβινοι [Sklábinoi], originally denoting the tribal name of the Slavs (Proto-Slavic *Slověninŭ), but in the 8th–9th centuries shifting in meaning to "captive slave", "slave", since Slavic captives became a frequent object of the slave trade. Some authors, beginning in the 19th century, considered this version disputable. One contemporary academic version traces the origin of the Byzantine Σκλάβος to the verb σκυλάω [skūláō, skyláō], σκυλεύω [skūleúō, skyleúō], meaning "to strip (a slain) enemy", "to take spoils of war". This hypothesis is also subject to criticism.

In Justinian's Digest (Corpus iuris civilis), slavery is defined as "an institution of the law of nations by which a person is subjected, contrary to nature, to the dominion of another" (Digest. 1.5.4.1).

The Slavery Convention adopted by the League of Nations in 1926 introduced the following definitions of a slave and of the slave trade into international usage:

1. Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.
2. The slave trade includes all acts involved in the capture, acquisition or disposal of a person with intent to reduce him to slavery; all acts involved in the acquisition of a slave with a view to selling or exchanging him; all acts of disposal by sale or exchange of a person acquired with a view to being sold or exchanged, and, in general, every act of trade or transport in slaves.

— Cited from UN, 2002, Article 1

Slavery was condemned by a League of Nations treaty in 1926 and in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, as well as in all other principal human rights instruments. In 1956 the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery was adopted.

Article 4 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

— The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. // The United Nations.

In Europe, slavery is prohibited by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Christian slaves in Algiers, 1815

The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines the indicators that a person has in effect been reduced to slavery as follows: violation of labour rights, restricted freedom, inability to resign, the presence of overseers and guards at the workplace, violence applied to workers, and so on .

In Russian scholarship there was a tradition of equating serfs with slaves; however, despite a whole range of similar features, slavery and serfdom have many differences, connected first and foremost with the societies in which they are embedded (for example, serfs owned property and formally the master had no right to dispose of their lives, whereas a slave normally cannot own property, is himself the property of the slaveholder, and the latter has the right to take his life). It should be assumed that for certain historical periods, especially before the mid-17th century, slavery and serfdom in Russia cannot be fully equated. International law classifies serfdom among practices and institutions similar to slavery .

The division of labour is vital for achieving efficiency in production. In organizing such a division, heavy (above all physical) labour is the least attractive. At a certain stage of society's development (when technological progress enabled a worker to produce a greater volume of output than he himself needed to sustain life), prisoners of war, who had previously been killed, began to be deprived of freedom and compelled to perform heavy labour for a master. People deprived of freedom and turned into the property of a master became slaves.

In the earliest stages of development the sole source of slaves among all peoples, and later a very substantial one, was war, accompanied by the capture of the enemy's warriors and the abduction of people living in his territory. The institution of slavery arose among various peoples simultaneously with the development of class society, that is, in step with the transition from gathering and hunting to agriculture and stock-raising (see the Neolithic Revolution). Hunter-gatherers did not take the defeated captive, since there was no economic sense in doing so.

First came patriarchal slavery, in which slavery was not the basis of production and was intended to satisfy the needs of the patriarchal family. Under this type of slavery, slaves usually lived in the same house as their masters, and women could be the master's concubines.

From the point of view of the philosopher Varro, the slave is merely a "speaking tool", animate property, a beast of burden (in the language of Roman law — res, that is, a thing). Slaves are normally used as a labour force in agricultural and other production, as servants, or to satisfy other needs of the master. The slave's character as a thing is expressed above all in the fact that all the products of slave labour become the property of the owner; but in return the care of feeding the slaves and providing for their other needs falls on the master. The slave has no property of his own; he may dispose only of what the master chooses to give him. The slave may not enter into a lawful marriage without the master's permission; the duration of the marital bond — if it is permitted — depends on the arbitrary will of the slaveholder, to whom the slave's children also belong. Like any component part of an estate, a slave may become the object of all manner of commercial transactions.

Slavery in Ancient Rome

The slave's living conditions are determined only by the humanity or the self-interest of the slaveholder. The former was and remains a rarity; the latter dictates different courses of action depending on how difficult it is to obtain new slaves. The process of raising slaves from childhood is slow and expensive and requires a fairly large contingent of "breeding" slaves, so that even an utterly inhumane slaveholder is compelled to provide his slaves with a standard of living sufficient to maintain their capacity for work and general health; but in places where adult and healthy slaves are easy to obtain, their lives are not valued and they are worked to exhaustion.

The slave is not a subject of law as a person. Neither in relation to his master nor in relation to third parties does the slave enjoy any legal protection as an independent person. The master may treat his slaves as he sees fit. The killing of a slave by his master is the latter's lawful right, while a killing committed by anyone else is regarded as an encroachment on the master's property rather than as a crime against a person. In many cases the slave's owner also bears liability for damage caused by the slave to the interests of third parties. Only in the late stages of the existence of slaveholding society did slaves acquire certain rights, but very insignificant ones.

"Trading in the land of the Eastern Slavs", a painting by Sergei Ivanov

John William Waterhouse. "The Slave Girl" (1873)

The slave trade reached its greatest scale in Africa, which from the 16th century onwards became the main supplier of labour for the plantation economy of the New World. Slave traders bought slaves from local rulers who waged regular wars for this purpose. Mass seizure of black slaves was also practised by the Arab rulers of the north-western part of the African continent. The number of black slaves exported is estimated at at least 10 million people.

The Barbary slave trade in the Mediterranean was also of great scale, based on piracy and raids by Arab slave traders on coastal territories. According to data from Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli alone, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were carried off into slavery in North Africa from the beginning of the 16th century to the mid-18th (these figures do not include Europeans who were enslaved by Moroccan and other raiders and traders of the Mediterranean coast)^[30]. The slave market went into decline after Sweden and the United States, and then the Anglo-Dutch fleet, defeated the Barbary states in the Barbary Wars (1800–1815).

In addition, customs statistics of the 16th and 17th centuries indicate that the export of slaves from the Black Sea to Istanbul amounted to about 2.5 million between 1450 and 1700 .

In England (Great Britain)

In the Middle Ages the slave trade was prohibited in England (in 1102) . At the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era (in 1698) the English Parliament once again permitted private persons to engage in the slave trade . However, after the Somerset case in England (1772), the French Revolution and the start of the war with Napoleon, in 1807 the British Parliament seized the moment to first prohibit ships from delivering slaves to the French colonies. Then the abolitionists Wilberforce and Grenville secured the extension of this prohibition to other countries as well; in the same year the Royal Navy began combating the slave trade off the coast of West Africa, which halted the shipment of human cargo across the ocean too. The Slavery Abolition Act was passed in Great Britain in 1833 and did not extend to India, where slavery was recognized as part of the "national culture".

Every elite in every historical era has a stereotyped justification of slavery: the slave is a simple, naive person who at any given moment may be subjected by a self-interested, aggressive, domineering individual to humiliations, which may take the form of dominating (often coercive) unnatural demands made by one person on another, with the requirement of unquestioning submission to any demand of the one making it.

On the whole, slavery is economically inefficient in the long run. However, the historian and economist Stanley Engerman, in the book "Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery", co-authored with the Nobel laureate in economics Robert Fogel, argues that the slave economy of the American South not only failed to stagnate but even flourished; the rate of return on the slave plantations of the South was no lower than that of the owners of northern industrial enterprises, and moreover the slaveholders introduced labour-saving technologies and modernized production. Some researchers of the ancient Roman economy have reached the same conclusions: with proper organization of the estate, the return on a slave's labour was no less than the income from the labour of a tenant or a hired worker.

Over the last 5,000 years slavery has existed almost everywhere. Among the best-known slaveholding states are Ancient Greece and Rome. Slavery in the Ancient East had many distinctive features. In Ancient China the concept of xi, equivalent to slavery, has been known since the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. In modern times slavery existed in the United States and Brazil, and to an insignificant degree in Europe.

The first sources date from the period of the seizure of Sumer by Semitic tribes. Here we encounter the subjugation of a captured people and its subordination to a master. The earliest indications of the existence of slaveholding states in the territory of Mesopotamia date to the beginning of the third millennium BC. In biblical sources slavery is described after the Flood (Gen. 9:25). The ancient patriarchs had many slaves (Gen. 12:5, 14:14).

A slave woman hands a child to its mother. Image on an ancient Greek lekythos, 5th century BC.

Slavery emerged and spread in societies that had made the transition to agricultural production. The use of slave labour became economically justified and, naturally, became widespread. Within this system slaves constituted a distinct class, from which a category of personal, or household, slaves was usually distinguished. The condition of the other slaves, personally little known to their master, often differed hardly at all from that of domestic animals, and was sometimes even worse. As the culture and education of society advanced, yet another privileged class emerged among household slaves — slaves whose value was determined by their knowledge and their aptitude for the sciences and the arts.

The condition of slaves gradually changed for the better. The change in attitudes towards slaves was reflected first in religious prescriptions and customs, and later in written law as well (the law first took domestic animals under its protection, and only afterwards slaves). Rules appeared regulating the manumission of a slave, the status of a female slave who had become pregnant by her master, and the status of her child; in some cases custom or law gave a slave the right to change his master.

Only a fundamental change in economic conditions could destroy the institution of slaveholding, and slaveholding itself contributed to this by acting in a progressive direction upon social organisation. Inevitably a moment arrived when, under slave labour, output ceased to grow, while the cost of maintaining a slave rose steadily. All of this undermined the institution of slavery. The scale on which slave labour was used narrowed, and the class of agricultural slaves disappeared.

A Persian slave. Khanate of Khiva, 19th century

The economy of southern Iraq rested on the slave labour of Africans right up to the Zanj Rebellion. The high concentration of East African slaves and the harsh conditions of their existence enabled the Kharijites to turn the Zanj into the strike force of the rebellion they organised, known as the Zanj Rebellion (869—883). As a result of the uprising the Zanj managed to establish their control over the whole of Lower Iraq. At the cost of an enormous effort the Abbasid caliphs nevertheless succeeded in suppressing this rebellion^[36].

Slave labour and the slave trade were an important part of the extensive economy of the medieval Asian states created by nomads, such as the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate and early Ottoman Turkey (see raiding economy). The mameluke guard of the Abbasid and Ayyubid dynasties was replenished with slaves exported from the Black Sea region. The Crimean Khanate, which succeeded the Mongol-Tatars in the northern Black Sea region, was likewise actively engaged in the slave trade. The total number of slaves who passed through the Crimean markets is estimated at three million people^[37].

The Arab slave trade, East Africa, 19th century

The stowage of slaves aboard a slave ship

In the Islamic states of North Africa slavery existed right up to the colonisation of these lands by Europeans in the 19th century; the main sources of slaves were both Africans and captured Europeans. In Mauritania, which Europeans colonised comparatively late, slavery continued to exist both during the colonial period and even after independence was gained.

Slavery, which had almost everywhere in Europe been replaced by serfdom, was restored in the New World in the 16th century, after the beginning of the Age of Discovery. In the course of the exploration of Africa by white Europeans, it became apparent that a practically unlimited number of workers could be obtained fairly easily by capturing and enslaving the indigenous Africans.

On 27 December 1512 the Spanish government prohibited the use of American Indians as slaves in the colonies, but at the same time permitted the importation of slaves from Africa into the New World. The use of African slaves was highly profitable for planters. First, African Americans were on average better adapted to gruelling physical labour in a hot climate than white Europeans or Indians; second, having been taken far from the lands inhabited by their own tribes and having no notion of how to return home, they were less inclined to flee.

Thus began the mass transatlantic slave trade, which flourished right up to the 19th century. Africans were seized in their native lands (as a rule, by Africans themselves), loaded onto ships and sent to America. The principal carriers of African slaves were British slave traders. The largest home ports for their vessels were Liverpool and Bristol. Over the course of 400 years more than 17 million slaves were brought into America (not counting those who died in transit)

In Asia African slaves were little used, since in that region it was far more profitable to employ the numerous local population in the work ("coolie labourers").

The Lima-Peruvian treaty on slavery of 13 October 1794

The profits from cotton and sugar-cane plantations and the rising price of slaves in the Southern states of the USA prompted every possible measure to be taken to safeguard the institution of slavery and to keep slaves in a subordinate position.

In Canada, where the climate was colder and there was no need for a mass labour force on plantations, slavery was adopted by Europeans from the local Indian tribes. The number of slaves in Canada was never high; captive Indians predominated among them (panis ), taken by other tribes and sold to European colonists, but there was also a small number of black slaves. Since the Catholic Church actively encouraged the conversion of slaves to Christianity and their reception into the community, slavery in Canada in fact went into decline even before its formal prohibition by British law.

The wretched lot of African American slaves began as early as the 18th century to provoke protests from the more advanced part of society. In Great Britain a movement for the abolition of slavery (abolitionism) arose. In 1765 the London physician Granville Sharp saved the life of a black slave brought by his owner from Barbados, beaten half to death and abandoned in the street. When two years later the owner encountered his former slave and confined him in his house, Sharp secured his patient's release through the courts, arguing that slavery was immoral and contrary to English law^[39].

At the end of the 18th century several sensational trials took place in Great Britain that shook notions of the lawfulness of slavery and served as a precedent for the abolitionists' subsequent struggle in the judicial bodies^[40]. Thus, in 1772 a certain Charles Stewart attempted to seize his runaway slave named James Somerset and deport him to Jamaica to work on the sugar plantations. While in London, Somerset had been baptised, and his godparents challenged the slaveowner's decision in court, demanding compliance with the British law of Habeas Corpus. Judge Murray declared in his ruling of 22 June 1772:

The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is at present impossible to justify it in court on the basis of simple common sense or general considerations of nature or policy; it must have legal grounds; …no master was ever here permitted to take a slave by force and sell him abroad because he evades the performance of his duties or for any other reasons; we cannot say that this is permitted or justified by any law of this kingdom, and therefore this man must be set free.

— Quoted from a publication in the newspaper General Evening Post of 21-23 June 1772

In 1801 slavery was abolished in Saint-Domingue as a result of the Haitian Revolution — the only successful slave uprising in history.

In the USA the mounting tension between the free Northern states and the slaveholding Southern states led to the secession of the southern states and to the Civil War, in the course of which millions of slaves were freed. In the first period after the war, under the influence of mistrust towards the southerners, the government of the United States called African Americans to active participation in elections and in administration. But it soon turned out that an administration composed of less cultured elements led to the southern states being burdened with debts and to abuses of various kinds. With the ending of martial law in the South and the restoration of full rights to whites in the pacified states, they gained the opportunity for a fuller exercise of self-government, which they used above all to exclude African Americans from participation in legislative, judicial and administrative activity (see the Jim Crow laws).

African American slaves were freed last of all in Brazil, where African Americans had mixed most extensively with the Portuguese and the Indians. According to the census of 1872 there were here 3,787 thousand whites, 1,954 thousand African Americans, 3,802 thousand people of mixed race and 387 thousand Indians; of the African Americans about 1.5 million were slaves. The first step towards the abolition of slavery was the prohibition of the importation of slaves in 1850. In 1866 the slaves of monasteries and of certain institutions were freed; in 1871 all children born in Brazil were declared free, all state-owned and imperial slaves were freed, and a special fund was established for the annual manumission of a set number of slaves. In 1885 all slaves over the age of 60 were freed. Only in 1888 did the complete emancipation of the remaining slaves follow. This measure was one of the causes of the military coup that resulted in the abolition of the monarchy in the person of Emperor Dom Pedro II and the establishment of a presidential republic headed by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca.

In the 18th century slavery began to be condemned by figures of the Enlightenment movement. By the beginning of the 19th century most European governments had recognised the need to abolish slaveholding. In 1807—1808 the importation of African slaves into the USA and the British colonies was prohibited. By 1833 slaveholding had been completely prohibited in the British Empire. In the USA slavery was abolished only in 1865 (see the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The last state to officially ratify this amendment was Mississippi in 2013). In the journalistic literature of the time this list often also includes the abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861. Slavery in Brazil was abolished in 1888, and in China in 1910. In 1948 slavery was declared illegal in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In Saudi Arabia slaveholding became illegal from 1962. The last country in which slavery was abolished was Mauritania, in 1981.

The main causes of the abolition of slavery varied depending on the historical context and the country, but among the principal ones the following may be singled out:

1. Economic changes: With the development of industrialisation and the transition to a capitalist economy, slavery became less efficient, especially in countries with a developing industrial sector, where the labour of free workers was more profitable.

2. Moral and ethical considerations: In the 18th-19th centuries the human rights movement gained strength, which led to slavery being condemned as a morally unacceptable institution. Abolitionists (those who advocated the abolition of slavery) fought actively for the rights of slaves, arguing that all people have equal rights to freedom.

3. Political and social changes: In some countries, such as Great Britain and the USA, the abolition of slavery became part of political reforms aimed at improving social justice and the rights of citizens. These changes were also supported by growing democratic movements.

4. Military conflicts: In the USA, for example, the Civil War played a key role in the abolition of slavery. After the war the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted, which prohibited slavery.

5. International pressure: In the 19th century the international community began to condemn slavery. Great Britain and other European countries adopted measures aimed at eliminating slavery in their colonies and in other countries.

6. Rising labour productivity: Workers who receive a wage are motivated to work more efficiently, since their income depends on their productivity. Unlike slaves, who had no economic incentives to raise productivity, free workers could labour more diligently, which led to an increase in the overall level of output.

7. Taxation: Wage-earning workers are subject to tax accounting, and the state can levy taxes on their incomes, which becomes a sustainable source of government revenue. The work of slaves, by contrast, brought the state no direct tax receipts.

8. Social stability: Workers who receive a wage are usually more socially engaged and interested in the stability of their lives. Whereas slavery sustained social inequality and potentially led to revolts and protests, broader wage employment fosters the strengthening of social cohesion.

9. Economic development: With the transition to a more diversified and industrial economy, the system of free labour began to promote the growth of the consumer market and the development of domestic markets for goods and services. Slavery, on the other hand, constrained this process, since slaves had no means to consume the goods they produced.

Every country has its own particular features in the history of the abolition of slavery, but all these factors played an important role in the process.

Studying the Bible, one may conclude that slavery is presented in it not only as an element of the social order, but also as a form of survival under conditions of an undeveloped economy. In times of famine or natural disaster, in unfavourable agricultural years, free people not infrequently gave themselves into slavery to wealthier members of their own people or to neighbouring peoples in order to have a chance of survival. The Jewish people, according to the biblical account, were led by Moses out of slavery in Egypt . In some of the commandments given through Moses, the Jews were told how to treat slaves. The Bible prescribes buying from other peoples, and such people become property that may be handed down as an inheritance and is retained by the master in perpetuity.

Noah cursed his grandson Canaan, saying that he would be a slave of slaves to his brothers, because Ham (Noah's son and Canaan's father) came upon his drunken, naked father, saw his nakedness and told his brothers about it, thereby showing disrespect towards his father.

Abraham, the biblical righteous man, according to the Old Testament had many slaves, including those he acquired when he gave his wife to the Pharaoh of Egypt . While recovering his nephew Lot from King Chedorlaomer, along with property, women and people, Abraham armed 318 of his slaves.

Slaves and livestock are to rest together with the master on the seventh day of rest. Slaves are also provided for in festive rejoicing along with the master and all his household. The punishment of a female slave betrothed to a free man who has slept with another is mitigated by the fact that she is not free, and in this case both escape the death penalty. For killing his own slave a punishment was prescribed for the master (in the case where the slave died immediately; but if he lived another day or two, the punishment was cancelled, since the slave is the master's property). For inflicting physical injury on a slave, the master must set his slave free.

A slave's life was valued at thirty shekels of silver: that is the amount that must be paid to his master if a slave is gored to death by an ox.

Following the apostles, the Church Fathers permitted slavery. The New Testament says that if it is possible for a person to become free, it is better to take that opportunity. This was a centuries-old component of the life and economy of the ancient world, which had existed for many centuries, and they knew of no other alternative. The canons of the Orthodox Church forbid admitting a slave into the clergy or into monasticism without the master's consent, and forbid slaves to evade service to their masters and to marry without the master's will.

In an extended treatise of 1859 on the Christian understanding of slavery and freedom, St Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes that "both the Word of God and the Church, both the Universal and the Russian, in the person of the holy Fathers, never said anything about the abolition of civil slavery", yet "the freeing of slaves was always recognised by the Church as a good deed, a deed of mercy, a deed of brotherly Christian love".

The Roman popes condemned slavery and, in particular, forbade the enslavement of Indians (Pius II declared slavery a "great crime" in 1462). In 1537 Paul III, in 1639 Urban VIII, and in 1741 Benedict XIV repeated this prohibition with regard to Indians. At the same time, some popes (Nicholas V and Paul III) allowed the enslavement of prisoners of war captured in the course of a "just war" who refused to accept Christianity.

Islam permits the existence of slavery and regards the freeing of a slave as one of the deeds pleasing to God. Under Islamic law, all Muslims are free from the outset. It is impossible to enslave a Muslim within Muslim domains, including for debts. From the life of the Prophet Muhammad it is known that he had in all up to two dozen slaves known by name, whom he freed at various times.

In Islam it is forbidden to make slaves of co-religionists, but this prohibition does not extend to people professing other faiths or to atheists. For this reason slavery in one form or another still exists in many Islamic societies, although it was officially prohibited during the 20th century in all Islamic countries. In particular, in some Islamic countries the forcing of women into sexual slavery is still widespread, while in Mauritania, despite the official prohibition of slaveholding, it exists in a concealed form, as serfdom: the inhabitants are attached to the land, and its owner may, in particular, sell the land together with the inhabitants .

In the "Islamic State" slavery exists openly in the 21st century.

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Часть 1 Slavery in the ancient and modern world, from the Aztecs to robots — features, essence,
Часть 2 Slavery in the 21st century - Slavery in the ancient