Slavery

Slavery describes a set of practices involving some or all of the following elements:

It is an economic phenomenon and its history resides in economic history. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavement is the placement of a person into slavery, and the person is called a slave or an enslaved person (see § Terminology).

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 would be kept in bondage for life, or for a fixed period of time after which they would be granted freedom. 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, and existed in most societies throughout history, but it is now outlawed in most countries of the world, except as a punishment for a crime. In general there were two types of slavery throughout human history: domestic and productive.

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. 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. In industrialised countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery; in non-industrialised countries, people in debt bondage are common, others include captive domestic servants, people in forced marriages, and child soldiers.

The word slave was borrowed into Middle English through the Old French esclave which ultimately derives from Byzantine Greek σκλάβος (sklábos) or εσκλαβήνος (ésklabḗnos).

According to the widespread view, which has been known since the 18th century, the Byzantine Σκλάβινοι (Sklábinoi), Έσκλαβηνοί (Ésklabēnoí), borrowed from a Slavic tribe self-name *Slověne, turned into σκλάβος, εσκλαβήνος (Late Latin sclāvus) in the meaning 'prisoner of war slave', 'slave' in the 8th/9th century, because they often became captured and enslaved. However this version has been disputed since the 19th century.

An alternative contemporary hypothesis suggests that Medieval Latin sclāvus via *scylāvus derives from Byzantine σκυλάω (skūláō, skyláō) or σκυλεύω (skūleúō, skyleúō) with the meaning "to strip the enemy (killed in a battle)" or "to make booty / extract spoils of war". This version has been criticized as well.

There is no consensus 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.