I.

Introduction

Slavery, social institution defined by law and custom as the most absolute involuntary form of human servitude. The definitive characteristics of slaves are as follows: their labour or services are obtained through force; their physical beings are regarded as the property of another person, their owner; and they are entirely subject to their owner's will. Since earliest times slaves have been legally defined as things; therefore, they could, among other possibilities, be bought, sold, traded, given as gifts, or pledged for a debt by their owner, usually without any recourse to personal or legal objection or restraint. There are often ethnic differences between slave-holders and slaves, and the fact of slavery is often founded upon a strong racially prejudiced belief that the ethnic group to which the slave-holder belongs is “superior” to that of the slaves. Enslavement of members of the owner's own ethnic group is very rare, with 17th-and 18th-century Russia being one of the few exceptions.

The practice of slavery dates to prehistoric times, although its institutionalization probably first occurred when agricultural advances first made possible more highly organized societies. Slaves were needed for various specialized functions in these societies and were obtained either through raids or conquests of other peoples, or within the society itself, when some people sold themselves or their family members to pay debts or were enslaved as punishment for crimes.