Slavery/Human Trafficking dates back all the way to the Romans. From Mesopotamia to China to Egypt to India, all of our greatest cultures embraced slavery as "fact of life." Slavery was very common in the Americas and in the sub-Saharan Africa. The natives of the Americas often enslaved other natives that were capture during war. Even though some Greek philosophers defended against slavery, other great thinkers nor the bible took a position against slavery. But in the 17th and 18th centuries a bigger amount of people started to question slavery.
Human Trafficking/Slavery became very profitable in ancient Greece and Rome. In the cities of Athens and Sparta about half of the residents were slaves. Even common people could afford and had one to two slaves. Two great Romans, Pliny the Younger and Cicero wanted the masters to their slave with kindness and urged them to have conversations with the slaves. It was very common for the slaves to be freed after many years of service and slaves even became physicians and poets in the Roman Empire. Some became politicians, powerful generals and even managed estates.
Though there was peaceful ways for the slaves in the 1st and 2nd centuries slave revolts were suppressed and slaves were maintained by crulty and violence with wipping and crucifixion. In the 5th century slavery was not ended with the new order of the Catholic Church. It actually made it worse the slaves became serfs and peasants couldn't leave without permission of the masters. Because slavery/human trafficking have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years who knows if it will ever stop, but we still have to try.
Masci, David. "Human Trafficking and Slavery." The CQ Researcher (2004): 275-92.
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3 comments:
Interesting historical perspective and pretty clearly organized as well.
You have one sentence that really confused me that maybe you could clarify-- "Even though some Greek philosophers defended slavery, other great thinks nor the bible didn't take positions against slavery." Do you mean to say that none of these groups were against slavery? Be careful with the "nor" and "didn't" double negative thing as well.
I do still need your sources cited in MLA format in order to grade this.
Thanks!
The info you have is really good, but the way you worded some things didn't make very much sense.
Also, the way you organized facts was a little weird. In the middle paragraph, you were saying how bad it was, then jumped to pretty much saying, but the slavery was OK because they were freed and then had successful lives.
Do you think that because the bible did not oppose slavery that is why many people thought it was ok to enslave people.
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