Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labor.[1] Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the enslaver. Enslavement is the placement of a person into slavery.

Many historical cases of enslavement occurred as a result of breaking the law, becoming indebted, suffering a military defeat, or exploitation for cheaper labor; other forms of slavery were instituted along demographic lines such as race or sex. Slaves may be kept in bondage for life, or for a fixed period of time after which they would be granted freedom.[2] Although slavery is usually involuntary and involves coercion, there are also cases where people voluntarily enter into slavery to pay a debt or earn money due to poverty. In the course of human history, slavery was a typical feature of civilization,[3] and was legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed in most countries of the world, except as a punishment for a crime.[4][5]

In chattel slavery, the slave is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the slave owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes the conditions of unfree labour and forced labour that most slaves endure.[6]

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania was the last country in the world to officially ban slavery.[7] In 2007, "under international pressure", its government passed a law allowing slaveholders to be prosecuted.[8] However, in 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26% were children, were still enslaved throughout the world despite slavery being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50% of slaves provide forced labour, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy.[9] In industrialised countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery; in non-industrialised countries, enslavement by debt bondage is a common form of enslaving a person,[6] such as captive domestic servants, forced marriage, and child soldiers.[10]

Terminology
The word slave arrived in modern English from Middle English sclave, from Old French esclave, from Late Middle High German sklave, from Medieval Latin sclāvus, from Late Latin Sclāvus, from Byzantine Greek Σκλάβος [Sklábos], Έσκλαβήνος [Ésklabḗnos].

According to the widespread view, which has been known since the 18th century, Byzantine Σκλάβινοι [Sklábinoi], Έσκλαβηνοί [Ésklabēnoí], borrowed from Slavic gen self-name *Slověninŭ turned into Σκλάβος, Έσκλαβήνος (Late Latin Sclāvus) in the meaning 'prisoner of war Slave', 'slave' in 8th/9th century, because they often became captured and enslaved.[11][12][13][14] However this version has been disputed since the 19th century.[15][16]

An alternative contemporary hypothesis states that Medieval Latin sclāvus via *scylāvus derives from Byzantine σκυλάω [skūláō, skyláō], σκυλεύω [skūleúō, skyleúō] - "to strip the enemy (killed in a battle)", "to make booty / extract spoils of war".[17][18][19][20] This version is criticized as well.[21]

There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer" or "enslaved person", rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were" (see also People-first language). Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with person implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow.[22]

Chattel slavery

Flogging a slave fastened to the ground, illustration in an 1853 anti-slavery pamphlet

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

Portrait of an older woman in New Orleans with her enslaved servant girl in the mid-19th century
As a social institution, chattel slavery classes slaves as chattels (personal property) owned by the enslaver; like livestock, they can be bought and sold at will.[23] While it was not present at all times and places in the classical world, chattel slavery did exist in ancient times and was practiced in places such as the Roman Empire.[24] Chattel slavery reached its modern extreme in the Americas during European colonization.[25] Beginning in the 18th century, a series of abolitionist movements saw slavery as a violation of the slaves' rights as people ("all men are created equal"), and sought to abolish it. Abolitionism encountered extreme resistance but was eventually successful; the last Western country to abolish slavery was Brazil, in 1888.[26] The last country to abolish slavery, Mauritania, did so in 1981.[27]

Bonded labour
Main article: Debt bondage
See also: Money marriage and Chukri system
Indenture, also known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour in which a person works to pay off a debt by pledging himself or herself as collateral. The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt.[28] It is the most widespread form of slavery today.[29] Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia.[28] Money marriage refers to a marriage where a girl, usually, is married off to a man to settle debts owed by her parents.[30] The Chukri system is a debt bondage system found in parts of Bengal where a female can be coerced into prostitution in order to pay off debts.[31]

Dependents
The word "slavery" has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else.[32][33] For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens.[34]

Forced labour
Main article: Unfree labour
See also: Human trafficking
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to describe an individual who is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term "unfree labour" is also used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will, and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person.[citation needed] This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, de jure legal or traditional rights, they also have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work and are frequently subject to forms of coercion, violence, and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work.[citation needed]

Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children.[35][36]

Child soldiers and child labor
Main article: Child slavery
See also: Child labour and Military use of children
In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in then-current conflicts.[37] More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labour, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty[38] as with the Haitian restaveks.