The essay on slavery through the history depicts as to how this cruel act existed from the ancient ages and is still prevalent to some extent in the contemporary world. Though various movements by countries and the tireless work of abolitionists were carried out, slavery has still not been eradicated. Slaves were treated badly and made to work in conditions which were so appalling, that many of them died. The Transatlantic movement and the Middle Passage show how the slaves had to take journey in unmentionable conditions. Some had to work voluntarily for reasons like paying off their debts as they were in poverty and in many cases they were forced to do so. Hence, all this depicts the fact that this form of cruelty has to be abolished very soon.
The term slavery is used when an individual becomes the property of another who extracts work from him. The slave had no right to freedom and was considered as a movable or immovable property. He was not supposed to have a family and was considered an “outsider” or a “socially dead person” and was procured by various methods, either he was captured in a war, or was kidnapped during piracy missions. For some, it was a family tradition, for others they were sold into slavery or held for a crime as punishment. Children, who were disowned by their parents, were inducted into slavery. At times, a person of his own forced himself into slavery to get freed from poverty (Hellie, R. 2020). The Bible and Ancient Greek and Roman history mention the existence of slavery from many years. The moment the New World was discovered, Trans-Atlantic trade began due to the available of free land. Since labor was required for working on this land, Africans were transported from their country under terrible conditions. The White Lion was the name of the Dutch ship which seized 20 Africans as slaves and made them work as indentured labor for the Colonials. From the year 1618-1623, The Great Migration took place where slaves were transported to work as laborers (Open Computing Facility at UC Berkeley. n.d.).
The shortage of labor and free lands was a necessity to maintain slaves. There were two types of slavery, domestic and productive. The former was when the slaves used to work in lands helping in harvesting or serving their masters in their home or profession. These slaves sometimes became one of the families. Productive slavery was prevalent in Greece, Rome and the Caribbean as well as in Iraq, Northwest America and Africa. Apart from slavery there were other forms of labor like serfdom, indentured labor and peonage. Serfdom meant that the slave had no control over the land he owned and had to work for his master, who used to usurp all the produce. Indentured labor was when the slave had to work to pay off the debts that he had borrowed from the person who was now his master. The slaves were treated so badly that sometimes they died. They worked on a contract and had to be paid some money or a plot of land or given a partner for marriage. Peons were the slaves who as well worked to pay off their debts (Hellie, R. 2020).
In the year 1862, President Lincoln made a proclamation that slaves, who did not return to the
