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some areas of Amazon basin, notably among the Guranis of  southern Brazil and Paraguay, formed corps of fighters along military lines. Even then, numerous Amerindians were taken as slaves between mid and late nineteenth century to work in the rubber plantations.  Slaves naturally tried to escape and often succeeded. They came to be known as Maroon people, and played important roles in social formartion of Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Suriname and Jamaica. The Maroon villages in Brazil were known as Quilombos, and the villagers lived by agriculture and hunting. They also attacked the plantations, burning crops, killing the slaveowners and inviting the slaves there to join them. The French painter Jean Baptiste Debret, commissioned to portray the Brazilian Royal family, depicted the harsh conditions of the slaves vividly in his works evoking concern in Europe and Brazil itself. There was concern in England as well because Brazilian sugar sold at a lesser price (slave labour was cheap) than that produced in the British colonies in the West Indies. Besides, the evangelical group known as Clapham Sect exerted pressure on the British government to persuade Brazil to end this practice. It took several years to do so, the first step for which was to ban foreign slave trade in 1850. Children of slaves were freed in 1871, and slaves aged over 60 in 1885. During the Paraguyan war, more slaves earned freedom by joining the military. There was a drought in 1877-78 when plantation owners tried to sell of their slaves, and in the ensuing starvation and turmoil many emancipation groups were formed leading to a ban on slavery in Ceara province in 1884 to be followed by the Golden Law of 1888 ending slavery all over Brazil. Slavery in colonial Brazil, the last nation in western hemisphere to end this practice, was not exactly a racial conditoin. It was more like a social condition with respected public figures like the writer Machado de Assis and engineer Andre Reboucas descending from black ancestors.

United  States

The colonization of North Carolina attempted by Lucas Vasquez de Aylon in 1526 may be regarded as the first instance of Europeans making use of slaves. It, however, ended in failure: the slaves ran away in the forests and took shelter with the Cofitachiqui Creek people. In 1528, a Moroccan slave Estevanico was taken as a guide for the Narvaez expedition, which found Quivira and CAbola in 1539. Eighty years later (1619), a Dutch soldier sold twenty Africans as indentured servants in Jamestown, Virginia. The first reference to slavery was in a Virginia law of 1661 meant for Caucasian servants who ran away with a black servant. The African- Americans were branded as slaves with the Slave Codes of 1705, a fate they suffered for the next 160 years. It continued until the end of the American Civil War when the 13th Amendment of the Constitution was ratified in December 1865.  Slave trade in North America, however, was slow to expand. It was completely abolished in Mexico around 1810. Following the Slave Trade Act of 1807, Canada as a British colony was subject to this legislation and slave ownership was banned there in 1833. Slavery in the territories north of the Ohio River (in the United States) was banned in 1787, and importation of slaves into the country in January 1808.  There was, however, no restriction on internal slave trade nor participation in it elsewhere in the world. Consequently, there was a massive political, cultural and economic divide between the slave-free states in the north and the states in the south where slavery continued. In 1860, nearly 25% of the families in the south held one or more slaves. Since ninety percent of the slaves lived in the south, emancipation was more a concern there than in the north. Abolitionist public figures formed the Republican Party in 1860, and made Lincoln the president by the election held that year. The southern states did not vote for him, his name was not in the ballot papers in most of them. They lost control in the centre after decades in power, and separated from the union to form the Confederate States of America.  The northern states did not like a new state dominating the Mississipi River and regions south of it, and civil war broke out. Contrary to the common belief, the civil war was not on the issue of abolition of slavery.  Actually, Lincoln’s declaration of freeing the slaves in 1863 in the confederacy was a reluctant gesture. It did not liberate the slaves in the rest of the union , nor in the strategically situated border states. Anyway, after the declaration, abolition of slavery became the war goal and slaves were liberated as the union took over the confederate states. Many of them just walked out of their bondage to work as labourers or to fight as soldiers. Officially, slavery was  outlawed by the 13th Amendment of 1865 but blacks were treated generally as second class citizens until the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 60s.

Asia  –  the  Indian  Subcontinent

In his book Indica, the Greek historian Arrian stated:

“This also is remarkable in India, that all Indians are free, and no Indian at all is a slave. In this the Indians agree with the Lacedaemonians. Yet the Lacedaemonians have Helot for slaves, who perform the duties of slaves; but the Indians have no slaves at all, much less is any Indian a slave.”

There was no slave trade (as commonly understood) in the region but there was in different forms unfree labour for centuries in the Medieval ages. Debt bondage was quite common during the Mughal period, and money lenders made slaves of peasants who failed to repay loans. This became hereditary in practice and sons were liable for the loans taken by fathers. Slaves from Africa were sold in western India by Arab traders since the first century CE. The Delhi Sultanate, ruling over parts of central and north India was founded by Qutubuddin Aibak, a slave of the Turkish warrior Muhammad Ghori who conquered and subjugated the area. For nearly hundred years (1206 – 90) Aibak’s descendants, commonly known as the slave dynasty, continued to rule. A member of the viceroy’s council said that there were eight to nine million slaves in India in 1841, mostly in the Malabar region. The Indian Slavery Act of 1843 banned slavery in the subcontinent to be followed by the Indian Penal Code of 1861 making enslavement of people a criminal offence.

Korea,  Japan  and  China

There were indigenous slaves in Korea during the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) and nearly forty  percent of the population were slaves. People were taken into slavery as a punishment, which continued for generations. Peasants during times of famine volunteered to become slaves so as to survive. There were privately- and state-owned slaves. Slaves belonging to the state were at times assigned to upper class people. The Gabo Act of 1894 officially abolished slavery in Korea.

Slavery in Japan was also indigenous, and slaves were called seiko in Japanese meaning “living mouth”. There is a third century Chinese document recording the export of a slave from Japan but the nature of the trade is not known. A series of laws on slavery were passed in the 8th century and one out of every  hundred people in the modern Ibaraki province was a slave. In western parts of the country the proportion was still higher. Slavery became out of fashion during the Sengoku period (1467-1615) and slave trade was abolished by Hideoshi Toyotomi in 1588. Japan abolished slavery in the countries  it conquered during the 19th century but forced the prisoners of war it captured in the second world war to work under harsh conditions. 

In China , the practice of slavery was sporadic. There was no dearth of cheap labour due to its large population, still there was a kind of serfdom. During the rule of the Han dynasty (ca 206 BCE to 220 CE) nearly five percent of the people were slaves. The practice of keeping serfs (or slaves) continued till 1910, when it was abolished finally.

Other  Regions  of  Asia

In the Khmer empire (modern Cambodia) slaves were engaged to do the hard labour in the construction of monuments and temples in Angkor Vat. Generally, they were people captured during raids on mountain tribes. Debtors unable to pay back were also used as slaves. In Burma and Thailand, about a third of the population in some areas were slaves during the period between 17th and early 20th centuries. The Toraja tribe of Indonesia kept chattel slaves. It was also the practice among Torajans to opt for slavery to pay off a debt. Prisoners of war were regarded as slaves and were sold in Java and Siam or Thailand. Slaves were not permitted to wear gold or silver, nor to decorate their residences. The Dutch colonial government banned slavery in Indonesia in 1909.  Around 1870, Russians invaded the central Asian Islamic khanates of Khiva, Samarkand and Bukhara and ended slavery there.  The infamous slave market in Khiva opened in 17th century was closed and Russians and Persians held in captivity by Turkoman raiders were liberated.

Polynesia  and  New Zealand

The whaling fleet operating in the Pacific Ocean started raiding Polynesian islands for slaves to work as labourers in early 19th century. Then Peruvians began to raid South Sea islands to get slave labour for their guano industry. The Maoris of New Zealand traditionally held their prisoners of war in slavery and continued to do so till the annexation of New Zealand  by Britain in 1840. When administration was extended to the entire country in !860, slavery finally came to an end.         

Efforts  to  Abolish 

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