Why do you think? The answer is under the cut. So are other curious facts about slavery. For example, about slavery in Russia and Russia.
A slave was worth a lot of money, and the slave owner had to make sure he was healthy and would not infect the rest of the slaves in transit.
According to one version, it was determined by the taste of the slave's sweat whether he was suffering from tropical fever.
According to another version (the book "Freekommyslie"), the salinity of sweat was used to determine the ability of a slave's body to endure thirst - most slaves died on the way from dehydration.
On September 22, 1862, US President Abraham Lincoln announced that all slaves "will now and forever be free." Long-awaited freedom was preceded by centuries of oppression.
Noah, the most righteous of all the antediluvian people, made his grandson Canaan a slave because Ham (the son of Noah and the father of Canaan) went to a drunken naked father, saw his nakedness and told his brothers about it, thus showing disrespect for his father.
Abraham, the biblical righteous man, according to the Old Testament, had many slaves, most of them he acquired after he gave his wife to the Pharaoh of Egypt.
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In ancient Greece, slavery was very developed. Most of the restrained laborers were oppressed in Sparta. Moreover, the slaves here were not Negroes and strangers, but the same Hellenic Greeks, but defeated by the Spartans. However, not a single Spartan himself could own a slave. All helots were the property of the state, and it transferred slaves to individuals "for use." The Spartans often forced the helots to get drunk, sing obscene songs and dance obscene dances. On this example, the "free citizens" of Sparta were taught how to behave. Only Spartans had the right to sing patriotic songs.
The most magnificent holiday in ancient Rome was the festival in honor of the god of agriculture, Saturn. On this day, slaves received many freedoms. They cooked their own food, but dined at the festive table with the hosts. According to some reports, the owners even set the table for them. Also, on this holiday, slaves had the right to freely criticize the owners without fear of punishment.
The word "teacher" comes from ancient Greece and literally means "leading child." But this was not the name of the teacher, but the slave who took the child to school and brought him back. Usually slaves were chosen as teachers, unsuitable for any other work, but distinguished by their loyalty to the house.
The ancient Romans ate with their hands. Wealthy citizens had special slaves, on whose hair they wiped their hands after eating.
The Roman emperor Nero married his slave Skorus in a public ceremony.
From his expedition to America, Christopher Columbus brought tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, gold, slaves, and … syphilis to Europe.
The famous ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinop was also a slave. He was heading to his students by sea, his ship was captured by pirates and brought everyone to the slave market in Crete. When Diogenes saw a wealthy man (Xenias) among the buyers, he managed to persuade him to buy it. When he asked what he knows how to do, Diogenes replied: "I can make good people." Upon learning that he was to raise the master's three sons, he demanded that Xeniades obey him in everything: “If you buy yourself a helmsman who will lead your ship so that he does not collide with reefs and run aground, are you listening to him? And you will obey the doctor. And I will lead you and your sons through the reefs and shoals of life, and I will heal the soul."
Young beautiful girls were obviously not sold to work on the plantation. The virgin stood naked and any potential buyer could spank her on the buttocks. At the same time, the whole body of the “quality product” should have fluttered. This indicated that the girl was not engaged in heavy physical work, was pampered and prepared for the satisfaction of the owner. A similar episode is described in the novel "All the King's Men".
The Aztecs had an interesting system of slavery. Children of slaves were not automatically enslaved, and slaves were allowed to possess anything - even their own slaves. If a slave got into the temple, they were freed, and they were also freed if they managed to escape from their master and step on human excrement. If a slave tried to escape, only his master or his relatives could chase him. Slaves could even redeem their freedom. The sale of their children by the poor Aztecs was not considered unusual in their society. Moreover, the poor sometimes sold themselves into slavery.
In the 18th century, St. Dominic (Haiti) was the richest colony of the French Empire, it was called the "Pearl of the Antilles." Haiti got rich mainly by exporting slaves. In 1801, the former slave of Toussaint Louverture, led by half a million Haitian slaves, revolted against the French colonialists. After the betrayal, Louverture died in a French prison. After the death of the leader of the revolution, his assistant, General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, proclaimed himself the First Emperor of Haiti of Haiti and ordered the murder of most of the whites on the island.
Today slavery is prohibited in all countries of the world, but there is an illegal market for human trafficking. Now there are about 30 million people in slavery, which is more than at any other time in history. According to the UN, 700 thousand people are enslaved annually. The majority of the victims of this practice are women and children. Approximately 75-80% of victims of the slave trade are used in the sex industry. According to a 2009 Washington Times article, the Taliban are buying children as young as seven to be used as suicide bombers. The price of death row children ranges from $ 7,000 to $ 14,000.
Among the countries, the largest sources of people trafficked into slavery are Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania, China, Thailand and Nigeria. Belgium, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Thailand, Turkey and the United States are the leaders among the countries that host the largest number of trafficked people.
The plot of Lady Gaga's video Bad Romance is dedicated to human trafficking, men drink Russian vodka and ask the price of the singer as a sex slave.
“Now there are about 30 million people in slavery, which is more than ever before in history. According to the UN, 700 thousand people are enslaved annually. This is because now there are a lot of people, because the number of slaves is even greater. And the percentage of slaves is only 4 tenths of a percent. And judging by the shares of free and slaves, now, perhaps, they are the least. When the oil runs out, there may be more of them again.
For the past century and a half, the slave trade has been a criminal offense. But in the past, most people in our country, as in the whole world, had their own clearly defined market price. How much did a Russian person cost when he was a human being?
The ancient Slavs, like all peoples on the eve of the formation of statehood, had patriarchal slavery. The Byzantine chronicles of the 5th-7th centuries contain a lot of information about the payment of large sums to the Slavic tribes for the ransom of the subjects of the Eastern Roman Empire taken into slavery after the successful raids of the Slavic neighbors. So the emperor Anastasius Dikor (430-518 years), the first ruler of Byzantium, who in the VI century began large-scale wars with the Slavs, after one of the raids that ruined northern Greece, was forced to pay the Slavic leaders "a thousand pounds of gold to ransom the prisoners" (that is 327 kilograms of gold).
But the first message that has come down to us about the individual value of the Slavic slave appears only at the very beginning of the 10th century. In 906, the thirteen-year-old King Louis, the monarch of the East Frankish kingdom located in the lands of modern Germany and Austria, approved the so-called Raffelstetten customs charter, which regulated the collection of trade duties on the Danube River.
One of the articles of this statute read: “The Slavs, who go to trade from the rugs or bohemians, if they settle down for trade anywhere on the banks of the Danube and wish to sell slaves or horses, then for each slave they pay one tremiss, the same amount for a stallion, for a slave - one saiga, the same amount for a mare."
We have all heard about the era of Western slavery, when for several centuries the European civilization in a barbaric way built its well-being on the bones of free slave power. In Russia there were completely different orders, and the cruelty that prevailed from England to Poland never happened.
Well, in our country, since ancient times, there have been forced people - slaves. Prisoners of war, unpaid debtors, convicted criminals fell into this category. There were “purchases” that received a certain amount of money and entered the service until they worked it out. There were "ryadovichi" who served on the basis of the concluded contract. The owner had the right to punish the negligent, to find the fugitives. But, unlike European countries, he did not have power over the life of even the most last of the slaves. In Kievan Rus, appanage and grand dukes had the right to the death penalty. In Muscovite Russia - the sovereign himself with the boyar duma.
In 1557 - 1558, at the same time when tens of thousands of peasants driven from the land were enslaved in England, Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible issued a number of decrees limiting servitude. He pressed the usurers, forcibly lowered the interest on loans to 10% per annum. Forbidden to enslave service people for debts (nobles, children of boyars, archers, service Cossacks). Their children, who became slaves for the debts of their parents, were released immediately, and adults could file claims for returning to a free state. The sovereign also protected his subjects from forced enslavement. From now on, a person could be considered a slave only on the basis of "bondage", a special document drawn up in a zemstvo institution. The king limited bondage even for prisoners. They also had to issue bondage in the established order. The children of the "polonyanik" were considered free,and he himself was released after the death of the owner, was not inherited.
But let us note that it would be incorrect to identify the terms “slave” and “slave” as a whole. Serfs were not only workers, but also key keepers - managers of the princely, boyar, royal estate. There were military servants who made up the personal squads of boyars and princes. They took the oath to the owner and served him, but at the same time they lost their legal independence. That is, this term defined a person's personal dependence.
By the way, in appeals to the tsar, not all people called themselves "slaves", but only servicemen - from an ordinary archer to a boyar. The priests wrote to the king "we, your pilgrims." And the common people, peasants and townspeople - "we, your orphans." The designation "servant" was not self-deprecation, it expressed the real relationship between the monarch and this social group. Those who were in the service really did not act free in relation to the sovereign: he could send them there today, here tomorrow, give some order. From the form of the appeal of the clergy, it is clear that the tsar is obliged to help them: they also support the sovereign with their prayers. And the address of the "orphan" indicates that the monarch stands "instead of the father" to the common people, who is obliged to take care of his children.
But the share of slaves in the Russian population and in the economy was extremely insignificant. Usually they were used only in the household. And serfdom did not exist in our country for a long time. The peasants were free. If you don’t like it, they could leave the landowner for another place, paying “elderly” (a certain fee for using a hut, inventory, a piece of land - depending on the area and period of residence). Grand Duke Ivan III determined a single period for such transitions - a week before St. George's Day and a week after St. George's Day (from November 19 to December 3).
It was only at the end of the 16th century that Boris Godunov changed the situation. He was by nature a "Westerner", tried to copy foreign orders and in 1593 pushed Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich to accept a decree abolishing St. George's Day. And in 1597 Boris issued a law establishing a 5-year search for fugitive peasants. Moreover, according to this law, any person who served for hire for six months became, along with his family, lifelong and hereditary slaves of the owner. This hit the urban poor, small artisans, gave rise to a lot of abuse and became one of the reasons for the outbreak of the Troubles.
Boris's law on servitude was soon abolished, but serfdom remained after the Troubles, and was confirmed by the Cathedral Code of Alexei Mikhailovich in 1649. The search for the fugitives was established not at the age of 5, but indefinitely. But it is worth emphasizing that the very principle of serfdom in Russia was very different from that in the West. A certain status was possessed not by man, but by the earth! There were "black-sow" volosts. The peasants living here were considered free and paid taxes to the state. There were boyar or church estates. And there were estates. They were given to the nobles not for good, but for service, instead of payment. Every 2–3 years, the estates were overturned, they could go to another owner.
Accordingly, the peasants provided for the landowner, patrimonial land, or worked for the church. They were "attached" to the ground. But at the same time they could completely dispose of their own economy. They could bequeath it by inheritance, give it, sell it. And then the new owner, together with the farm, acquired "tax" for the payment of taxes to the state or the maintenance of the landowner. And the former was exempt from the "tax", could go anywhere. Moreover, even if a person ran away, but managed to make a household or get married, Russian laws protected his rights, categorically forbade him to be separated from his family and deprived of his property.
In the 17th century, no more than half of the peasants were enslaved in Russia. All Siberia, the North, significant areas in the south were considered "sovereign estates", there was no serfdom there. Tsars Mikhail Fedorovich and Alexei Mikhailovich recognized the self-government of the Cossack regions, the law "there is no extradition from the Don." Any fugitive who got there was automatically free. The rights of serfs and slaves were defended by the rural community, the Church, they could find protection from the king himself. In the palace there was a "petition window" for filing complaints personally to the sovereign. For example, the serfs of Prince Obolensky complained that the owner forced them to work on Sunday and "barked abusively." For this Alexei Mikhailovich put Obolensky in prison, and took away the village.
In Europe, by the way, the relationship between the strata of society was much different, because of this there were misunderstandings. It seemed to the Danish high-born ambassadors returning from Moscow that the Russian peasants were taking them slowly, they began to kick them on. The coachmen were sincerely surprised at this treatment, they unharnessed the horses near Nakhabino and said: they were going to complain to the king. The Danes had to ask for forgiveness, to appease the Russians with money and vodka. And the wife of an English general who entered the service in Moscow, hated the servant, decided to brutally deal with her. She did not consider herself to be guilty - you never know, a noble lady tried to kill her servant! But in Russia this was not allowed. The tsar's verdict read: given that the victim was still alive, the offender "just" cut off her hand, ripped out her nostrils and sent to Siberia.
The position of the serfs began to deteriorate under Peter I. The redistribution of estates between the nobles ceased, they turned into permanent property. And instead of "household" taxation was introduced "capitation". Moreover, each landowner began to pay taxes for his serfs. Accordingly, he acted as the owner of these "souls". True, it was Peter who was one of the first in Europe, in 1723, to ban slavery in Russia. But his decree did not touch the serfs. Moreover, Peter began to ascribe entire villages to factories, and factory serfs had a much harder time than landowners.
The trouble came during the reign of Anna Ioannovna and Biron, when laws on serfs from Courland spread in Russia - the same ones where peasants were equated with slaves. It was then that the infamous peasant retail trade began.
What was, what was. The atrocities of Daria Saltykova are also known. It was no longer the times of Alexei Mikhailovich, and the lady for 7 years managed to hide the crimes. However, something else can be noted: after all, two serfs managed to file a complaint with Catherine II, an investigation began, and the maniac was sentenced to life imprisonment in the "penitential" cell of the Ivanovsky monastery. Quite an adequate measure for the mentally abnormal.