History of slavery The history of slavery traces the history of the slave trade from ancient times to the present. Slavery was a legally recognized system in which people were legally considered the property or chattel of another.[1] A slave had few rights and could be bought or sold and made to work for the owner without any choice or pay. As Drescher (2009) argues, The most crucial and frequently utilised aspect of the condition is a communally recognised right by some individuals to possess, buy, sell, discipline, transport, liberate, or otherwise dispose of the bodies and behaviour of other individuals. Slavery can be traced back to the earliest records, such as the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), which refers to it as an established institution.[5] Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations, as it is developed as a system of social stratification. Netherlands Although slavery was illegal inside the Netherlands it flourished in the Dutch Empire, and helped support the economy.[93] By 1650 the Dutch had the pre-eminent slave trade in Europe.[94] They were overtaken by Britain around 1700.[citation needed] As of 1778, it was estimated that the Dutch were shipping approximately 6,000 Africans for enslavement in the Dutch West Indies each year.[95] The Dutch shipped about 550,000 African slaves across the Atlantic, about 75,000 of whom died on board before reaching their destinations. From 1596 to 1829, the Dutch traders sold 250,000 slaves in the Dutch Guianas, 142,000 in the Dutch Caribbean islands, and 28,000 in Dutch Brazil.[96] In addition, tens of thousands of slaves, mostly from India and some from Africa, were carried to the Dutch East Indies. Modern Europe During World War II (The Holocaust), the Germans used slave labor from across occupied Europe to support their war effort, and numbering perhaps 6 million people.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 08:43:27 +0000