We explain what slavery is, its history and other characteristics. Also, when was it abolished and the agreements that prohibit it.
What is slavery?
Slavery is a legal situation in which an individual (the slave) becomes property of another (the master), and loses all kinds of rights over himself, being able to be treated as an object: it can be sold, bought, exchanged, donated, etc.
This type of situation took place in numerous moments of the history human. In fact they were the basis of the slave production model (or slavery) that reigned in the Antiquity.
The word slave comes from Latin sclavus and this one from the Byzantine Greek sklavós. Both terms are derived from the way the peoples of Europe from the northeast, that is, the Slavic peoples.
Although the practice of slavery dates from the most remote antiquity, this word was created during the medieval, Since the feudalism converted the ancients served Romans (slaves used in the cultivation of the land) into serfs, that is, free peasants subject to the will and protection of the feudal lords.
Slavery is considered today an illegal and unworthy act, which violates fundamental rights and inalienable of human being, and therefore it is considered a crime lesa humanity. Although it has not yet completely ceased to exist, it is formally persecuted and those responsible for enslaving another, which always happens by force, are considered criminals.
These provisions on slavery are contained in the 1926 Slavery Convention, signed in Geneva, Switzerland, by the so-called League of Nations, predecessor of the United Nations Organization (UN).
To commemorate this event and pay tribute to the millions of victims of slavery that existed, every August 23 the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is celebrated.
History of slavery
In primitive society, the slave was non-existent, since there were no Productive processes. However, with the agricultural revolution the cultivation of the land allowed the obtaining of food enough to release part of the population from work population, who was then able to indulge in other more pleasant or intellectual activities.
For this reason, the slaves were during all antiquity the economic support of the Empires. However, each ancient civilization He could think of slavery in different ways.
It was common to subject the families of those defeated in battle to slavery, but slavery could also be accessed as a mechanism for the payment of an insurmountable debt. In other cases, traffickers captured people in regions set aside to sell as workforce.
Already in the Code of Hammurabi, in Ancient Babylon (18th century BC) the laws that govern the lives of slaves. Later, during the classical Greco-Roman era, slaves were a daily part of the society.
During the Roman Empire, slaves were common, taken from regions that succumbed to the Roman legions. However, the crisis of the third century led to a transformation in the model of slavery, allowing the emergence of a species of settlers from distant lands, that is, slave peasants who were allowed a certain margin of freedom. autonomy and of benefit on what they produced.
The slaves were later freed and constituted the free serfs of the Middle Ages. During that time, slaves came from eastern Europe, and were also common in the Muslim caliphates, where Christians defeated in battle were often reduced to this legal status.
However, slavery was only abolished as an institution at the end of the 19th century, after the first universal declaration of the human rights and the fall of the so-called Old Regime. With it also fell a business very lucrative for certain European sectors, specialized in the capture and sale of African settlers from the most remote regions.
The Portuguese, in that sense, were important slave traders. In fact, the slavery of the African peoples was fundamental in the construction of society colonial Latin American.
On the one hand, indigenous peoples had been decimated by the bloody war of conquest, the diseases brought to America with her, or the mistreatment received by the conquerors. On the other hand, they were viewed with greater regard by the Catholic Church than Africans (a soul was attributed to them, at least).
That is why the import to the new continent of African slaves was massive, to force them to work in the cocoa, coffee, tobacco or cotton plantations of the Caribbean. These former slaves provided an important cultural and racial heritage to the contemporary Latin American population.
Characteristics of slavery
Slavery is both a legal and social situation, and an economic system, characterized by:
- The existence of individuals stripped of all their rights and treated as merchandise, who work as unpaid labor (that is, they receive absolutely nothing of what they produce, except what is necessary to guarantee their survival). Such individuals are the slaves.
- Slaves are part of the heritage of their masters, and therefore can be sold, transferred, traded or physically punished. In some cases, the condition of slavery was temporary, until the amount of work had covered the payment of some debt; in others, however, it was for life, as happened to enemy civilians captured during wars.
- Slaves were valuable only as property, or perhaps as much work as they could still be forced to do. Thus, a young slave was more valuable than an old one, and a healthy one than a sick one. There were slaves for all kinds of jobs, even for sexual pleasures.
- Commonly, the children of slaves were also slaves from birth, although this could vary according to the model of slavery that was practiced. In any case, the trafficking and sale of slaves was a lucrative business that lasted until the 19th century.
Abolition of slavery
Slavery was abolished at different times, depending on the region let us consider, although the first abolitionist movements arose in the eighteenth century, the fruit of the revolutions in secular thought that had arisen from the Illustration and the Humanism. In fact, the first major blow against slavery was the declaration of fundamental human rights during the French Revolution.
However, slavery was inherent to the European colonial model, which is why many independence wars, such as those in Latin America, were fought at the hands of former slaves, who were promised free citizenship in their lives. nations host. The first American country to abolish slavery was Haiti, in 1803.