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the coercive element there. Strictly speaking, serfdom is also a form of unfree labour, but usually applied to pre-industrial, feudal societies. In the sphere of political economy, this debate on who among the labourers is or is not unfree is going on for long and has actually not been resolved so far. The Latin American peon, the Indian bonded labour, the indentured Fijian-Indian, etc. were past examples of unfree labour. Advocacy groups apart (who place the numbers worldwide between 27 to 200 million), a section of political economists contend that the number of the unfree in capitalist forms of production is considerable.

Then there are the disposable people, exemplified by the victims of the holocaust over half a century ago. The Nazis in Germany during 1933-45 created labour camps for the Jews to work while keeping them in starvation, and sent them to gas chambers when they could not work anymore. Before that, labour camps were established in Russia in 1930 which continued upto the late 50s (according to some, the camps or gulags were set up earlier still by Lenin). Compared to the holocaust, the social history of which has been studied exhaustively, not much is available on the social history of the gulags. There also unreachable production targets, little food and harsh living conditions finished off nearly eighty percent of the inmates, who were found disposable not because what they had done but because who they were. Their present-day counterparts are the AIDS-affected prostitutes (though not on the same scale) left to die when they could earn no more as also people working under hazardous conditions in mines.

Evolution  of  slavery

Humans had been keeping slaves even before they learned to write, to say nothing of the practice of  forcing captive women into sexual services. Generally, slaves were captured in wars  by the winners or spirited away in isolated raids. Also, there were occassions when parents sold their children to slavery due to extreme poverty or such other compulsion. It would appear that in ancient times quite a lot of slaves were born of slave parents. The parents were in turn captives from some past war. Such wars resulted in slavery for prisoners and their families who were either killed, exchanged for money or sold as slaves. They were considered as rewards of the war and as properties of their captors. Thus, as a commodity of trade, slaves were sold or bartered in exchange for other goods. Apparently, it was a kind act to let them live instead of killing them outright, but the consequence was that particularly weak and vulnerable groups became more and more enslaved. People taken into slavery in this manner sometimes differed from their captors by race, religion, nationality or ethnic origins, but quite often they were the same as their enslavers in these respects. It was quite likely for a dominant group in an area to take captives and turn them into slaves with little fear of suffering the same fate; but such a possibility was always there in time to come due to reversals of fortune. Seneca the Younger pointed out this to the Romans when their empire was at the peak of its glory and added that when various powerful nations fight amongst themselves anyone might find himself enslaved. It was so because all that was needed to kidnap an individual (otherwise secure from warfare) was a forceful raid of short duration. In his Confession, Saint Patrick narrated how he was kidnapped by pirates, and the Hebrew Bible says that Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers along with the cautionary passage :

“And as often as you reflect how much power you have over a slave, remember that your master has just as much power over you. “But I have no master,” you say. You are still young; perhaps you will have one. Do you not know at what age Hecuba entered captivity, or Croesus, or Plato, or Diogenes?

The causes due to which the population of ancient societies ended up as slaves were mainly incessant wars and the resulting lawlessness. Conditions for the development of such situations were overpopulation leading to widespread famines. Then, such societies were normally underdeveloped in a cultural and technological sense, and were easily conquered by those who were superior to them in this regard.  The proces is still going on in Africa, where the illegal slave trade turns into slaves rural people after forcing them to move to cities, or purchase them  in rural areas and sell them into slavery in cities. It happens due to population increases, thefts of land and loss of even the subsistence level agriculture the people were carrying out earlier.     

A feature of the legal systems of ancient societies was that persons (often including their family) convicted of serious crimes could be sold into slavery, and the proceeds from such transactions  were generally handed over to the victims as compensation. King Hammurabi (~ 1800 BCE)proclaimed in his Codes of Law that if someone looking after a dam failed to do his job properly, the cost of the property damaged due to the resulting flood should be recovered from him. If  his property was not enough for the damage done, then he should be sold as a slave to makeup the shortfall. For other crimes the laws pescribed enslavement of the perpetrator, and               some laws even required that the criminal and all his property be handed over to his victim. There was also the system of selling a person as a slave so as to pay off the debts he incurred, and if the loaned amount was large his family was included to square the deal. It was not uncommon for parents to sell their children into slavery during famine; not for the price, but to save the kids from death by starvation. Generally, in institutionalised slavery,  children born to slave parents were considered property of their owners. In some cultures, the status of the mother or father was the defining element for the child, but mostly the status of the mother was considered important. It was possible in some cultures for a slave to earn his freedom by hard work and good behaviour, a reward denied in others

Tasks  set  for  the  slaves

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Work done by the slaves depended on the historical time period and the geographical position of the place of their slavery. Usually, they were assigned work similar to that carried out by the supporting members (lower rungs) of the society which held them as slaves.  They, however, received no wages for their labour excepting the bare necessities like food, shelter snd clothing. Normally, they were employed as domestic helps, agricultural labourers, mine workers, army recruits, and commercial and industrial workers. Around the middle ages, it was customary for the rich people in Europe to keep four-five female slaves and their children for household work.                         In some places such chattels (as they were commonly known) were required cook, clean, as also to draw water from wells or outside water sources. Grinding corns was also a part of their work, in which along with other works they were assisted by outside hired helps. Slaves, however, were mostly engaged in agricultural work or cultivation from antiquity to the middle of the nineteenth century when slavery was supposedly abolished. They were required to work for long hours in the fields, with hardly any recess for rest, water or food. As they were regarded as valuable property, slave-owners usually ensured that they were not worked beyond endurance and gave them food, shelter and clothing to keep them in reasonable good health.

Thanks to the otherwise tiring work regime, they were generally of robust health except for the seasonal afflictions or the unforeseen epidemics. In plantations or estates with absentee landlords, the overseers were not so well disposed to the slaves and often worked them to death. Most of the slave mineworkers were males. They worked in the salt mines to extract salt, a predominant commodity of trade in the 19th century. In ancient times, chattel slaves were trained to fight in their nation’s army and other military services. Such slaves were also trained as artisans in workshops for commercial and industrial purposes.  Generally, the men worked as metalworkers while the females were engaged in textile trades or did household work. Very rarely did the owners paid the chattels for their work excepting free board, room and clothing. 

It was a long established practice of Arab traders to abduct women slaves from Africa, and to sell them into prostitution or concubinage in Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms. Normally, women slaves were sold at a price lower tha the males. The exceptions were Irish women captured by the Vikings during their raids in the north and sold in the Middle East during 800-1200 CE.

Slavery  in  the  distant  past

Slavery was practiced in the Sumerian civilization, one of the most ancient cultures. It was also prevalent in ancient Egypt, Akkadia, Assyria, Greece, Roman Empire and the following Islamic Caliphate. Slavery in its usual sense was not practiced in ancient Egypt. Prisoners of war, people under debt or convicted criminals were turned into slaves. Actually, some of the slaves lived better than free men, a reason for which impoverished people sold themselves to slavery ostensibly to pay off debts. Regarded as property, slaves could be sold, inherited or bequeathed as gifts: but there was no bar on them from getting educated, achieving greater social rank, purchasing property or negotiating other contracts. There is a papyrus from the New Kingdom recording masters being testified against by slave witnesses. Another document from the 18th dynasty limiting the use of slave children for strenuous work

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