WAR MAKES SLAVERY A BIG BUSINESS

Warfare proved to be the easiest way for nations to acquire slaves. Egyptian King Thutmose III is said to have brought back 90,000 prisoners after one military campaign in Canaan. The Egyptians put them to work as slaves in mining, building temples, and cutting canals.

Under the Roman Empire, wars also provided slaves in abundance, and the demand for slaves sometimes led to war. It is estimated that by the first century, slaves constituted nearly half the population of Rome. Many Egyptian and Roman slaves were harshly exploited. The life expectancy of slaves in Roman mines, for example, was only about 30 years.

As time went on, slavery did not get kinder. From the 16th century to the 19th century, the slave trade between Africa and the Americas was one of the most lucrative businesses on earth. ‘It is estimated that between 25 million and 30 million men, women, and children were abducted and sold,’ says a UNESCO report. Hundreds of thousands are said to have died during the Atlantic crossing. Olaudah Equiano, a slave who survived, reported: “The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.”

ESCAPE TO FREEDOM

Brutal treatment has led many slaves to fight for freedom. In the first century B.C.E., the gladiator Spartacus and some 100,000 slaves staged an unsuccessful rebellion against Rome. In the 18th century, slaves on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola rose up against their masters. The appalling treatment the slaves had suffered on the sugar plantations sparked a 13-year-long civil war that finally led to the formation of the independent nation of Haiti in 1804.