Editing Slavery (section)

== History stuff ==
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The oldest surviving codex of laws yet discovered in the world, the "Code of Ur-Nammu" dating back to at least 2050 BCE, has multiple references to slaves, so slavery has been with humanity for a ''very'' long time. Slavery was practiced in virtually every culture at some point throughout their history; as soon as a people progressed from a hunter-gathering and nomadic culture to an agrarian one it became more convenient to look for ways to increase productivity and lower expenses. Before the advent of modern machinery, often the best way was some flavor of slave workforce since you generally had to spend fewer resources on a slave than you would on your fellow clan member. That said, it was unusual for a society to have more than 10% of it's population as slaves.

Prisoners of war were taken as slaves and made to ply their trade for their conquerors, or were sold abroad for goods. Since civilizations would wax and wane from time to time, the enslavers of one generation might end up enslaved in the next. The Ancient Egyptians made use of slaves in various ways, though even then, there was something of a hierarchy among slaves. That being said, contrary to popular belief, the pyramids weren't built by slaves but by free people (paid in fresh crops grown on the most fertile and irrigated lands in Egypt owned directly by the pharaoh and worked by said pharaoh's personal slaves, as well as good amounts of meat). The Greeks made heavier-than-usual use of slaves, and the Romans even more so. The Persians did not use slavery themselves and tried to limit it, but slavery did exist in their Empire among their conquered vassals. Slaves worked in every field from miners to farmers, craftsmen, entertainers, teachers and doctors (particularly Greeks who could buy their freedom in a year, or even less if skilled) and even up to high ranking government officials.  The notorious examples are the [[Grimdark]] ones like those worked to death sex slaves or fodder for human sacrifice (the latter being something the Aztecs were notorious for, to the point that local tribes Aztecs took captives from to sacrifice '''allied with the Spanish Conquistadors to overthrow the Aztecs'''). Ancient Romans used to grumble about all these slaves coming in stealing people's jobs (this sentence is not a joke).

Slavery existed in [[Medieval Stasis|Medieval Europe]], but declined after the year 1000 CE in a lot of places, especially the north. The Domesday Book (a census carried out by William the Conqueror in 1086) stipulated that about 10% of the population of England was slaves. In fact, the basis for the modern English word slave gets its roots from the fact that the Slavic races were so often put upon that [[Grimdark|the ordeal was named after them]], also providing the first example of race-based slavery. The Vikings practiced slavery, acquiring them primarily on expeditions or raids in Eastern Europe and the British Isles. They could also obtain Viking slaves at home (as crimes like murder and thievery were punished with slavery) or through doing business with the Arab world, which also had a prominent slave trade.  The Vikings' treatment of slaves was all over the spectrum. When Arabs, and later the Europeans, discovered the continent of Africa, there was much contact between local tribes and foreigners on this subject.  Many nations would take slaves from the peoples of Africa abetted at times by local slavery systems among African people themselves (see below).  [[Grimdark|In Brazil and most of the Caribbean between 1600 and 1800, the slave population never was able to achieve natural replacement rates due to a high death rate from overwork and abuse by their masters]].  The American system of slavery (aka "the peculiar institution") would arguably require an entire article of its own, but since we'd rather not try to poke that hornet's nest, suffice to say it was little different from the Caribbean experience and was only abolished by President Abraham Lincoln as a result of the American Civil War (and was one of the reasons Lincoln was assassinated). In Europe, society eventually transition from using slaves to serfs where they were tied to the land (which is owned and under the protection of a landowner) instead of being tied directly to owners under the feudal system. The said system hung on until the Black Death but held out in Eastern Europe right until the eve of World War I.

During this aforementioned time, the idea of racial slavery was raised.  In the Classical World (for example, Ancient Rome), slaves were basically from everywhere in the Empire and many places beyond and the children of freed slaves (Libertus) in Rome became more Romans, and Rome being Rome, they even had the manumission (freeing) of slaves as a religious/bureaucratic ritual onto itself.  While if Slavic people are considered a race, they were the first case of racial slavery due to being popular choices of slaves.  Ideas raised in attempts to justify the idea arose between the Arab Slave Trade and the Atlantic Slave Trade.  Slavery is not a nice thing even at the best of times, but racial slavery adds to it the conception that an enslaved race is inherently inferior, doomed to servitude forever, and that people from it are unfit for anything else. Those caught up in it had little hope of ever elevating themselves from a state of being a form of livestock with the hands for manual labor. Slave ships sailed from Europe to Africa loaded with manufactured goods, textiles and weapons which they traded for prisoners of war, criminals and existing slaves.  They were packed in like sardines to be shipped to the new world, collecting sugar, rum, coffee and other goods produced by slave labor to sell them in the mother countries.

Africa has had slavery between its various tribes and kingdoms for millennia, even to the present day.  Between this and many foreign civilizations making extensive use of African slaves, the history of slavery in Africa is complicated and violent. In Africa, even prior to the Arab slave trade or the Atlantic/European slave trade, slavery happened in all forms from ancient times. This was enacted between many of the various tribes and nations of Africa; however, in many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and had certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. When the Arab slave trade - and centuries later, the Atlantic slave trade - began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa.  They also supplied local criminals and captives from rival tribes or nations to the Arab, European or American slave trades.  This means African slave traders short-sightedly helped fan the flames of the issue of racial slavery, unaware of the dehumanization these buyers would subject them to - and that's before the Scramble for Africa caused many of them to become slaves themselves. 

While black Africans were shipped to the Americas as slaves in huge numbers, they weren't the only victims of slavery there. Many Native Americans were enslaved by colonial powers, especially the Spanish and Portuguese. That said, the influence of humanitarian-minded Catholic clergy eventually led to positive reforms in the treatment of these indigenous peoples, though these improvements weren't always enforced properly. Native Americans were also known to practice slavery themselves, either on their own initiative or due to influence from colonialists. One famous example of the former are the Haida of the Pacific Northwest, who frequently engaged in maritime slave raids against other tribes, almost like Native American Vikings. When it comes to the latter, the Five Civilized Tribes adopted the practice of owning black slaves. Some members of these tribes fought for the Confederacy, frequently because they wanted to keep their slaves.

North African corsairs were notorious for their frequent slave raids against merchant ships and coastal settlements. They struck as far north as Iceland and as far south as the Congo. Foreign nations were expected to pay tribute to avoid having their vessels and towns attacked. Such raids began in the 16th century and didn't end until the French conquest of the Algerian coast in the 1830s.

In the Ottoman Empire, whose system can ''arguably'' be seen as similar to the Eastern Roman Empire (better known as the Byzantine Empire) it supplanted, the system was more or less the same, but with a small possibility of moving up if you were a Christian (or claiming to be one) because Christians and Jews are considered "people of the Book", meaning the worthiest of non-Muslim people according to Islam. It had three sources of slaves: The first was Africa, with the usual [[Grimdark]] fate for blacks brought by the thousands, many castrated and dying during transport, females ending up as house slaves and non-castrated males working agriculture in Egypt and Anatolia as ''fellahin'' (though the descendants of said slaves could and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmet_Ali_%C3%87elikten did] have success stories). The second was the slave-port of Caffa, the most underreported and forgotten white slavery port which took ''millions'' of white slaves from Ukraine, males killed and women sold as sex slaves ([[SJW|you don't get to hear much about it because they are not black]]). ''Devshirmeh'' is the name for the system of taking one boy out of 40 houses from the population of Christian vassals in the Ottoman Empire; this mostly meant Balkan Christians, with the inclusion of Bosniak Muslims while Armenians, Romani and Jews were explicitly excluded. The taken boys were converted to Islam one way or another, then made into elite monastic troops called Janissaries (new soldiers) in Anatolia or the Mamluks in Egypt.  If they proved intelligent, they were sent to the Imperial Academy in Enderun to become bureaucrats.  Being slaves, they had no ''habeas corpus'' and could be executed at any time - in theory.  In practice, while the threat hanging over their heads was very real, they could also push back against this by working their way into military ranks, marrying Ottoman princesses, engineering palace coups to kill off sultans who didn't pay them enough, or even investing back in their native countries such as Bosnia (the reason Bosniaks mourned the fall of the Janissary institution while EVERYONE ELSE celebrated it).  The dangers of the ''devshirmeh'' system didn't stop some families from actively sending their kids there in desperation, often to the point of bribing the Janissary Aghas. A similar situation exists in Egypt with the Mamluks; who were typically taken as children from the local Christian Copts by their Arab rulers. 

Female slaves in the Ottoman Empire didn't get as many opportunities, with the "best" option allowed to them being to end up as palace concubines.  But this contained more backstabbing than a Tzeentchian party, and few died peacefully.  Ironically, many concubines who ended up marrying Viziers or military officers ended up in better positions than concubines who were gunning for the top spot (The Sultan rewarded success with concubines he didn't use- talk about sloppy seconds. Or VERY rarely, [[Loli|one of his daughters]].).  With the advent of nationalism, the French Revolution, Russia conquering Ukraine and destroying the Muslim-Tatar slavery business ([[Alignment#Lawful_Evil|If only to preserve their white serf population]]) and the growing need for military reforms bitterly opposed by the Janissaries, the system's flaws burst like rotting cysts, and Ottoman-style slavery went the way of the Dodo in 1847 thanks to [[Noblebright|Abdulmajid's reforms]].  The harem was numerous enough by then, and the freed whites went on with their lives while the black population [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Turks settled in Western Turkey as free farmers]. Slavery didn't ''completely'' end until [[Sebastian Thor|Atatürk]] did the [[Noblebright|final house-cleaning]] around the 1930's.

Eurasia, particularly Ukraine, was the hotbed of slavery for the Ottoman Empire, with the port city of Caffa being the continent's major slave ports. The Russians liberated it from the Crimean Khanate, whose major income was thousands of taken women and children from villages, supplying the Ottoman Empire's need for European/white women.  Evliya Çelebi even wrote about the despair and cries of women separated from their children and then sold separately. 

But the problem was particularly acute in Russia.  Tzar Alexander II officially ended serfdom in Russia via two edicts in 1861 and 1866, liberating roughly 33 million people (23 million private serfs and at least 9 million state serfs) from obligations.  But this was achieved by simply taxing all of them and paying the tax to their former lords.  While this tax was intended to expire, ultimately the hardship this caused, combined with the Great War and other factors, would lead to the Russian Revolution, where the Tzar abdicated and the Bolsheviks rose to power.

In contrast to the above, slavery is virtually never mentioned in [[Oriental Adventures|east Asian-inspired]] settings. This has some basis in history in certain areas: The [[Mongols]]' nomadic lifestyle was not conductive to widespread slavery, though they did take some captives as slaves ([[Genghis motherfucking Khan|Genghis Khan]] himself was briefly a slave in his youth), and during the Mongol Empire's runs on conquering China people were often little better than slaves anyway.  The Chinese themselves went through several periods of loosening and then making stricter laws surrounding slavery, usually rallying around who was in charge following their frequent wars to unify, only to break apart once more.  The question of working conditions in China and comparisons to slavery  along with "prison camps" came up during and after Mao Zedong's rise to power, but rather than poke that hornet's nest suffice to say these stories have more than a grain of truth to them (there's a reason for the stereotype of the Chinese sweatshop worker).  The inhabitants of the Ryukyu islands "would die over" slavery rather than participate. Slavery in Asia was probably most prolific on the Korean peninsula, who had a caste system, but population growth, a few slave revolts and modernization eventually rendered it less than palatable.

The earliest European reports of [[Japan]] mention that, though it existed there, slavery was rare and primarily inflicted on debtors and prisoners of war. The main recorded examples are the maids/concubines of the rich, and those brought by Europeans themselves. One European held slave's physical stature impressed Oda Nobunaga so much that he purchased him, freed him and elevated him to samurai status (making him potentially the first and only non-Japanese Samuraï). This man would be known as Yasuke, [[Anime|the only black samurai]]. During the Sengoku a not-insignificant of Japanese prisoners of war were sold to the Europeans for foreign trade until 1587/1595, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi banned it.  HOWEVER... the Japanese were one of the last countries to give up serfdom; the feudal land system disappeared along with the Samurai who oversaw it during the Meiji Restoration.