Slavery facts for kids

Chains such as these were used to stop slaves from escaping

Slavery is an economic system. In it, some people must work for no pay. It is also a system of ownership. Some people from countries around the world used to own slaves. Some of these include the ancient Greeks, Romans, Aztecs and Incas.

There is evidence that even before there was writing, there was slavery. There have been different types of slavery, and they have been in almost all cultures and continents. Some societies had laws about slavery, or they had an economy that was built on it. Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome had many slaves.

In modern times, the best-known example of slavery in history involves the use of slaves from southern and western Africa to work on export-oriented plantations in the Caribbean, America and Brazil. Slavery was a major cause of the American Civil War, which ended slavery there in 1865. The Reconstruction of the United States made the Freedmen citizens in 1866 and voters in 1867.

During the 20th century almost all countries made laws forbidding slavery. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that slavery is wrong. Slavery is now banned by international law Nevertheless, there are still different forms of slavery in some countries.

The English word "slave" comes from the medieval word for the Slavic peoples of Central Europe and Eastern Europe, because these were the last ethnic group to be captured and enslaved in Central Europe. Slave-holders used to buy slaves at slave auctions. In many cases slaves are not allowed rights.

Famous people who were slaves

• Aesop circa 6th century BC
• Spartacus (died 71 BC)
• Epictetus (about AD 55 - AD 125)

Harriet Tubman, c1885

• Pope Callixtus I (died AD 222)
• Saint Patrick (circa AD 387-461)
• Olaudah Equiano (circa 1745-1790)
• George John Scipio Africanus (1763-1834)
• Denmark Vesey (circa 1767-1822)
• Sojourner Truth (circa 1797-1883)
• Dred Scott (circa 1799-1845)
• Nat Turner (1800-1831)
• Frederick Douglass (circa 1812-1895)
• Harriet Tubman (1820-1913)
• Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
• Solomon Northup

Related pages

• Debt bondage
• Unfree labour
• Slave trade
• American Civil War
• Haiti

Images for kids

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  Relief depicting slaves in chains in the Roman Empire, at Smyrna, 200 CE

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  A poster for a slave auction in Georgia, U.S., 1860

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  Portrait of an older woman in New Orleans with her enslaved servant girl in the mid-19th century

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  The work of the Mercedarians was in ransoming Christian slaves held in North Africa (1637).

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  Sale and inspection of slaves

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  Barefooted slaves depicted in David Roberts' Egypt and Nubia, issued between 1845 and 1849

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  Ishmaelites purchase Joseph, by Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860

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  13th-century slave market in Yemen.

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  Adalbert of Prague pleads with Boleslaus II, Duke of Bohemia for the release of slaves

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  A British captain witnessing the miseries of slaves in Ottoman Algeria, 1815

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  Slavic and African slaves in Córdoba, illustration from Cantigas de Santa Maria, 13th Century

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  Crimean Tatar raiders enslaved more than 1 million Eastern Europeans.

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  19th-century engraving depicting an Arab slave-trading caravan transporting black African slaves across the Sahara Desert.

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  Slave market in Algiers, 1684

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  Arab-Swahili slave traders and their captives on the Ruvuma River in East Africa, 19th century

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  A model showing a cross-section of a typical 1700s European slave ship on the Middle Passage, National Museum of American History.

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  Statue of Bussa, who led the largest slave rebellion in Barbadian history.

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  Slave punishment by Jacques Étienne Arago, 1839.

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  Slaves in Cuba unloading ice from Maine, 1832

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  Saint-Domingue slave revolt in 1791

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  Planting the sugar cane, British West Indies, 1823

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  Funeral at slave plantation, Dutch Suriname. 1840–1850.

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  A coffle of slaves being driven on foot from Staunton, Virginia to Tennessee in 1850.

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  Slaves on a Virginia plantation (The Old Plantation, c. 1790).

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  A contract from the Tang dynasty recording the purchase of a 15-year-old slave for six bolts of plain silk and five coins.

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  Persian slave in the Khanate of Khiva, 19th century

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  Workers being forced to haul rocks up a hill in a Gulag

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  Modern incidence of slavery, as a percentage of the population, by country.

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  Tuareg society is traditionally feudal, ranging from nobles, through vassals, to dark-skinned slaves.

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  A world map showing countries by prevalence of female trafficking

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  Olaudah Equiano, His autobiography, published in 1789, helped in the creation of the Slave Trade Act 1807 which ended the African slave trade for Britain and its colonies.

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  Joseph Jenkins Roberts, born in Virginia, was the first president of Liberia, which was founded in 1822 for freed American slaves.

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  Poster for Spartacus

See also

In Spanish: Esclavitud para niños