Slavery Slavery was common in many
ancient societies, including
ancient Egypt,
Babylon,
Persia,
ancient Greece,
Rome,
ancient China,
the pre-modern Muslim world, as well as many societies in
Africa and
the Americas. Being sold into slavery was a common fate of populations that were conquered in wars.
Chattel Slavery is an extreme form of unfree labour in which people are legally regarded as property for life and are subject to being bought, sold, or transferred by their owners, and typically receive no personal benefit from their work. One of the most widespread and systematized forms of chattel slavery occurred during the transatlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries. During this period, it is estimated that between 10 million and 12 million
Black Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. Many were taken through the
Middle Passage to Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. In these systems, slavery was typically hereditary, with the legal status of enslavement passed from parent to child. Smaller numbers of enslaved Africans were brought to Europe, and others were also trafficked through the
trans-Saharan and
Indian Ocean slave trades. These systems varied significantly in structure, scale, and legal status and were not always chattel in form. The term "slavery" is often applied to situations which do not meet the above definitions, but which are other, closely related forms of unfree labour, such as
debt slavery or debt-bondage (although not all repayment of debts through labour constitutes unfree labour). were often
slaves In late 16th century Japan, "unfree labour" or
slavery was officially banned; but forms of contract and indentured labour persisted alongside the period's penal codes' forced labour. Somewhat later, the
Edo period's penal laws prescribed "non-free labour" for the immediate families of executed criminals in Article 17 of the (Tokugawa House Laws), but the practice never became common. The 1711 was compiled from over 600 statutes that were promulgated between 1597 and 1696. According to
Kevin Bales in
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (1999), there are now an estimated 27 million slaves in the world. s'' from
Kyiv Oblast depart to Nazi Germany to serve as labor force, 1942
Serfdom Serfdom bonds labourers to the land they farm, typically in a
feudal society. Serfs typically have no legal right to leave, change employers, or seek paid work, though depending on economic conditions many did so anyway. Unlike chattel slaves, they typically cannot be sold separately from the land, and have rights such as the military protection of the lord.
Truck system A truck system, in the specific sense in which the term is used by
labour historians, refers to an unpopular or even exploitative form of payment associated with small, isolated and/or rural communities, in which workers or
self-employed small producers are paid in either: goods, a form of payment known as
truck wages, or tokens,
private currency ("scrip") or direct credit, to be used at a
company store, owned by their employers. A specific kind of truck system, in which credit advances are made against future work, is known in the U.S. as
debt bondage. Many scholars have suggested that employers use such systems to exploit workers and/or indebt them. This could occur, for example, if employers were able to pay workers with goods which had a market value below the level of
subsistence, or by selling items to workers at inflated prices. Others argue that truck wages were a convenient way for isolated communities, such as during the early colonial settlement of North America, to operate when official currency was scarce. By the early 20th century, truck systems were widely seen, in
industrialised countries, as exploitative; perhaps the most well-known example of this view was a 1947 U.S. hit song "
Sixteen Tons". Many countries have
Truck Act legislation that outlaws truck systems and requires payment in cash.
Mandatory services due to social status Corvée (miniature from the
Queen Mary Psalter, ).
British Library, London Though most closely associated with
Medieval Europe, governments throughout human history have imposed regular short stints of unpaid labour upon lower social classes. These might be annual obligations of a few weeks or something similarly regular that lasted for the labourer's entire working life. As the system developed in the Philippines and elsewhere, the labourer could pay an appropriate fee and be exempted from the obligation.
Vetti-chakiri A form of forced labour in which peasants and members of lower castes were required to work for free existed in India before independence. This form of labour was known by several names, including
veth,
vethi, and .
Penal labour Labour camps , German-occupied Belarus, July 1941. s eating lunch in a
Gulag camp, 1955. Another historically significant example of forced labour was that of
political prisoners, people from conquered or occupied countries, members of persecuted minorities, and
prisoners of war, especially during the 20th century. The best-known example of this are the
concentration camp system run by
Nazi Germany in Europe during World War II, the
Gulag camps run by the
Soviet Union, and the forced labour used by the military of the
Empire of Japan, especially during the
Pacific War (such as the
Burma Railway). Roughly 4,000,000 German POWs were used as "reparations labour" by the
Allies for several years after the German surrender; this was permitted under the Third Geneva Convention provided they were accorded proper treatment. China's ("labour reform") system and
North Korea's camps are current examples. About 12 million forced labourers, most of whom were Poles and
Soviet citizens () were employed in the German war economy inside Nazi Germany. More than 2000 German companies profited from slave labour during the Nazi era, including
Daimler,
Deutsche Bank,
Siemens,
Volkswagen,
Hoechst,
Dresdner Bank,
Krupp,
Allianz,
BASF,
Bayer,
BMW, and
Degussa. In particular, Germany's Jewish population was subject to slave labour prior to their extermination. In Asia, according to a joint study of historians featuring Zhifen Ju,
Mark Peattie, Toru Kubo, and Mitsuyoshi Himeta, more than 10 million Chinese were mobilised by the Japanese army and
enslaved by the
Kōa-in for
slave labour in
Manchukuo and north China. The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in
Java, between 4 and 10 million (
Japanese: "manual labourer") were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%. Also, 6.87 million Koreans were forcefully put into slave labour from 1939 to 1945 in both Japan and Japanese-occupied Korea.
Kerja rodi (Heerendiensten), was the term for forced labour in
Indonesia under
Dutch colonial rule. The
Khmer Rouge attempted to turn Cambodia into a
classless society by depopulating cities and forcing the urban population ("New People") into agricultural
communes. The entire population was forced to become farmers in
labour camps.
Prison labour " labourers, 2006. Notice the shackles on the feet of the prisoners.
Convict or prison labour is another classic form of unfree labour. The forced labour of convicts has often been regarded with lack of sympathy, because of the
social stigma attached to people regarded as common criminals. Three
British colonies in Australia –
New South Wales,
Van Diemen's Land and
Western Australia – are examples of the state use of convict labour. Australia received thousands of convict labourers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who were given sentences for crimes ranging from those now considered to be minor misdemeanours to such serious offences as murder, rape and incest. A considerable number of Irish convicts were sentenced to transportation for
treason while fighting against
British rule in Ireland. More than 165,000 convicts were transported to Australian colonies from 1788 to 1868. Most British or Irish convicts who were sentenced to transportation, however, completed their sentences in British jails and were not transported at all. It is estimated that in the last 50 years more than 50 million people have been sent to Chinese camps.
Indentured and bonded labour A more common form in modern society is indenture, or
bonded labour, under which workers sign contracts to work for a specific period of time, for which they are paid only with accommodation and sustenance, or these essentials in addition to limited benefits such as cancellation of a debt, or transportation to a desired country.
Contemporary illegal forced labour While historically unfree labour was frequently sanctioned by law, in the present day most unfree labour now revolves around illegal control rather than legal ownership, as all countries have made slavery illegal. == Permitted exceptions of unfree labour ==