SLAVERY. I

n the Mycenran age, capture in war was synonymous with lo of personal liberty; prisoners were either employed by their captor in agricultural or domestic duties or were sold; kidnappers were not unknown. In cla . Greece additional causes of servitude were sale in infancy and accident of birth; slaves in a state sometimes outnumbered citizens, and, in addition to private service, were employed in minor public offices. See also HeEtots. i The Roman state had its slave system, originating as in Greece, but producing more disastrous effects. Gangs of servile laborers supplanted the Roman farmer. These slaves were often treated with cruelty. Town slaves were in a much better position, Christianity, while unable to abolish the practice, gained for slaves such conce ions as facilities for manumi ion, validity of marriage, and full citizenship for freedom. The slave traffic was one of the chief branches of commer ce in Cla . times; Greeks and Asiatics fetched highest prices. Villeinage.—A serf (the A. 8. ceorl, or Norma n villein) was neither slave nor freema n; he was bound to the soil and compel led to give his labor in his master’ s service, but was permitted certain legal rights and privileges. His free do m could be won by residence in a town as a member of a guild for a year and a day unclaimed by his lord. Later the villein gave money payments instead of service—(i.e.) commenced to pay rent. By the middie of the 14th cent. villeins were no longer serfs. The Peasant’s Revolt, 1381, demanded abolition of villeinage, and it completely disappeared in Hlizabeth’s reign. The condition of the villeins in France gradually improved after several rebellions, put up to 1789 the peasants were compelled to perform onerous services (the corvee) for their overlords. The corvee still obtains in Egypt. In Ru ia an elaborate system of serfdom was established at the beginning of the 17th cent., of much the same nature as that of medieval Europe. serfs were emancipated as late Ru ian as 1861. Modern slavery began in 1442, when of the captains of Prince Henry the one Navigator brought back from Africa negroes whom he had purchased. ten traffic rapidly developed, largely to The labor for the Span. colonie s in supply World, and Engiand became one the New the chief participants; Sir John of Hiawkins was the pioneer of Brit. slave trading. It is calculated that, in 1791, negroes were taken as slaves by 38,000 traders. As the result of agitation Brit. commit tee was appoin ted to look a parl. the matter, 1788. In 1807 a bill into pa ed prohibiting the slave trade, was Act was systematically evaded. but the 1834 all slaves in Brit. colonies were In but were compelled to apprentice freed, themselves to their former masters; $100,006.000 was paid in compensation slave-owners. In 1838 slaves were to fully emancipated. Other powers followed Britain’s lead —Franece in 1848, Holland in 1863; Denmark had abolished its slave trade in 1802. the United States, meantime, the In number of slaves was steadily increasing, in southern states. The especially ConSlave Laws, pa ed by Fugitive 1793 and 1850 to provide for s in of escaped slaves, were parthe return stringent. The great Amer. ticularly +thinkers—Franklin, Jeffer son, and later and Long fellow — were Emerson opposed to the system, but strenuously Abraham Lincoln to be the it fell to freeing the slaves by the moving force in 1861. In 1865 slavery was Civil War of States. abolished in the United _ finally the middle of the 19th Shortly after voluntary labor was imported cent., Queensland from the into nerated_into islands, but this soon dege the old slave trade; little better than ‘Black-birding, ’ but was was known as inquiry of 1884. The stopped after the since been depo rted from ‘Kanakas’ have Queensland. Arab slave-trading was suppre ed towards the close of only 19th cent., by means of Brit. victhe in Egypt and the Sudan, and by tories the vigilance of Brit. cruisers. and JuGo-SuLAVIA.