Slavery in ancient times

I recall reading that 9/10ths of the people in ancient Greece (or just Athens?) were slaves.  I don't know if that number is accurate.  I have also vaguely heard that it was slave labor that built the pyramids of Egypt…hardly an inviting task!  Also, recall that Spartacus led a slave revolt in Rome.  Would people who were just in the lower classes do such a thing?  Perhaps, but I think that those whose fundamental rights are denied are more likely to run the risk of death by revolting.  I think it's interesting that there weren't more major slave revolts in the ancient world. 

Wish I could take credit for this but it comes from one of my former student teachers… I still use it; you'll see why. (Sorry to put it all here but I've lost the key to uploading files to this site.) "Slavery has existed in one form or another for thousands of years. After man gave up hunting and gathering and started building cities, slaves were needed to grow crops, serve in homes as cooks, cleaners, and child minders, to make crafts like pottery and leather goods. Some slaves in classical times (ancient Greece) even worked as government officials. After the decline of the Roman Empire in the 6th century, slavery became less common and was replaced by serfdom. Serfs worked for lords and nobles in exchange for protection against invading armies and famine.Slavery still existed, but in smaller numbers. Slaves could be Christian crusaders captured by Muslims, or Muslims captured by crusaders, and people captured in Viking raids. But the biggest source of slaves were purchased by Italian merchants along the northern coast of the Black Sea. These were the Slavic people, and they were so commonly used as slaves that the word slave comes from the word Slav. Very few of the slaves at this time were from Africa. At this time there was no association between skin color and slavery. Slaves came from a lot of different places and could be of any color.Slaves were also common in Africa, but there were several different types of slavery. Chattel slavery is the type that we are most familiar with. A chattel slave is completely owned by his or her master. They lived and worked under more or less constant supervision, and they could be sold or traded by their master at will. The children of chattel slaves were also owned by their masters, and could be sold away from their parents and often were. Chattel slaves had no rights, and their owners could treat them as violently as they wished.In Africa chattel slavery also existed, but it did not last for the life of the slave. Most often people were captured in wars against neighboring communities and made slaves. But, as the years went by and the slaves learned the language and customs of their owners, the became part of the community and even junior members of the family of the owner. While they may still have remained in some sort of service to the original owner throughout their lives, the were able to marry and raise there own families, and their children were born free.Two other types of slavery were clientship, in which a person would sell himself to someone in exchange for protection during hard times or in case of poverty. Client slaves could work to pay off their debt and gain their freedom. Pawn slaves were people, most often children, who were exchanged by their families for money, livestock, or seed. The children could be reclaimed later on and in the meantime worked as a way of paying interest on the loan.Using African slaves in the New World came about through a series of events. First Portuguese sailors discovered a way to travel to Africa and back to Europe. The ships they sailed in depended on wind and currents to take them to their destinations. In the Atlantic Ocean, the wind and currents moved south towards the equator. Once a ship got to Africa it could not get back so travel there was very limited. In 1434 Gil Eannes found that you could sail out into the Atlantic away from the African coast and pick up winds that would carry the ship northward. It was this discovery that allowed Columbus to discover the Americas. And it also made it easier for ships to go to Africa and then sail to Europe or the New World with slaves.Secondly, the Turks took over control of the Mediterranean Sea by conquering the city of Constantinople. This cut off access to the Slavs who were the world?s main source of slaves.Thirdly, a crop was discovered that quickly became hugely popular in Europe and elsewhere. This crop was sugar. Sugar is so common now that we take it for granted. What do we use sugar for today? But, it has only been in common everyday use for the last 200 years. Before that it was so rare that people would even leave it to loved ones in their wills. Sugar needs a warm wet climate to grow. It is also very labor intensive. It was first grown in New Guinea and then traveled to India and then was introduced to the middle east by Muslim explorers. Europeans were introduced to it by Christian crusaders who first tasted it on their trips to the Holy Land. When the crusades ended, these men started their own sugar plantations on the islands of Malta and Cyprus and exported it to Europe. The demand for sugar could not keep up with the supply, however, so new lands were sought that would be suitable to grow sugar on.Sugar is made from the juice of sugar cane. It must be turned into sugar right away or it quickly loses its sugar content. This means that sugar plantations also have to have manufacturing facilities in place. Growing and processing sugar is hard and dangerous work. Deaths and injuries were a common occurrence on sugar plantations. At first serfs were used but it became more and more difficult to get them to do this kind of hard labor. The option of paying them wages was not available because wage labor was virtually unknown at this time in history and did not become common until hundreds of years later. Therefore, the sugar plantation owners used Slavic slaves to grow and process sugar, but when this supply was cut off they began to look for other sources of slaves.In 1500 the Portuguese sailor Pedro Cabral discovered Brazil. This new land was ideal to grow sugar on because it was warm and wet. By 1575, Brazil produced the majority of the world?s supply of sugar. From Brazil, the sugar industry spread to the Caribbean and the West Indies.Why African slaves? At first sugar plantation owners enslaved Native Americans to grow and process sugar. This seemed to make sense because the Native Americans already lived where the plantations were. However, they did not make profitable slaves. They died in huge numbers from diseases contracted from Europeans. Indians had never been exposed to diseases like small pox, measles, whopping cough and many others, and therefore had no resistance to them. Millions of Indians died from these diseases and their life expectancy on sugar plantations was less than one year. Indians were also unfamiliar with growing sugar and by the time they were trained, they usually died, making it non cost effective for the plantation owners. In addition, Indians who escaped could hide and be protected by other Indians making it difficult to be found and forced back to work.Sugar growers also tried to use Europeans as slaves. European prisoners, Jews, Gypsies, and indentured servants were sent to work on sugar plantations. Europeans did not make good slaves because they were unfamiliar with the soils and crops of the New World. They could also escape and hide in the ever growing population of free Europeans. But disease was the main reason they were not profitable as slaves. Although they had resistance to measles and whooping cough, they did not have resistance against tropical disease such as malaria and yellow fever. European laborers on plantations also had a life expectancy of less than one year.Africans however, had resistance to both tropical and infectious diseases. They were used to living in tropical climates and were familiar with both the soils and the crops grown on plantations. They also knew how to mine gold and raise livestock. In fact, Africans many times had more knowledge of these things than their European slave masters did. Additionally, when African slaves escaped they were too far from home to go back, and their dark skin made them stand out among the local populations making them easy to recapture. Their skills and disease resistance made them ideal and extremely profitable slaves. African slaves still only had a life expectancy of seven years though, and there were few women slaves to produce children, so more and more slaves were needed to replace the ones that died.European ships began making voyages to Africa in search of slaves. They did not take slaves by force however. Africans had military forces that could have easily killed any Europeans who tried to enslave them. Europeans had to enter into trading relationships with powerful African rulers who exchanged people captured in wars for goods like cloth and grain. They also used the European ships to take other trade goods like gold to sell or exchange to neighboring African cities. These African rulers got rich by helping Europeans get rich through the slave trade.Trading in slaves became extremely profitable and created the first global trading system. It made good monetary sense to own slaves, and even freed former black slaves bought their own slaves if they could afford to. The slave trade did not end until it became unprofitable. One of the main reasons slavery became unprofitable in Brazil and the West Indies was because of slave revolts. Slaves rose up and killed their captors more and more often until for this and other reasons, the British decided that it was not profitable to use them any more and abolished the slave trade in the 1750?s.African slaves were introduced to America in large numbers to grow rice in the colony of South Carolina. Africans from the West Coast of Africa knew how to grow rice, because it was one of the many crops they grew in Africa. Slaves were also used to grow cotton, tobacco, and many other crops in America. Eventually, the entire economy of southern colonies and later states became dependent on slave labor to work growing these crops. Even after slavery was abolished by Great Britain, slaves were still used in America, and their numbers continued to grow. This was possible because in American female slaves were brought in in almost equal numbers to male slaves. The children of slaves under this chattel form of slavery became the property of their parent?s masters. Also, although slaves in America suffered under brutal conditions, their life expectancy was much longer than the slaves of the West Indies and Brazil. Eventually, slaves even came to out number whites in many southern states including South Carolina. Because white southerners were so dependent on slaves for their wealth, they refused to vote in favor of the Constitution after the Revolutionary War unless slavery was allowed to continue in America. Although only five percent of all slaves taken from Africa were brought to America, slavery became one of the biggest problems facing the new United States government, and almost caused the end of the American Experiment."Wally