PODCAST · history

Slavery.

by Popular Culture and Religion.

Slavery.  Slavery is a socioeconomic institution in which individuals are treated as property, deprived of personal liberty, and compelled to provide unpaid labor or services to owners under coercion, often involving violence or the threat thereof, with the legal right to buy, sell, inherit, or punish the enslaved. This practice, rooted in the exercise of power over war captives, debtors, or conquered peoples, has manifested across diverse forms—from chattel systems denying all autonomy to debt bondage retaining nominal freedoms—but consistently entails the owner's absolute control over the slave's body, labor, and reproduction.  Historically, slavery underpinned economies and societies in nearly every major civilization, from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt through classical Greece and Rome—where slaves comprised 20-30% of urban populations and drove mining, agriculture, and domestic work—to medieval Islamic empires, sub-Saharan African kingdoms, Indian caste systems, and Ot