Importance Of Slavery In Ancient Civilizations

Slavery is a condition in which humans became a property of other people in terms of being owned, bought and sold by others and forced to work without any payment. The history of slavery holds to the hunter and gatherer societies. There was infrequent slavery in Pre-Agrarian societies and the main slavery growth occurred in Neolithic Revolution which is the period of invention of agriculture, about 11.000 years ago because of the requirements in high population density and economic surplus. Slavery also had an important position in early ancient civilizations such as Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Akkadian Empire, Babylonia, Ancient China, the Arab Islamic Caliphate and the Roman Empire because slaves were used in many areas like laborers,

It emerged due to the discovery of New World because with the New World, wide economic opportunities occurred but there was no enough laborer to take an advantage of these opportunities. Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade involved many regions such as America, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. In addition, it was in the first examples of globalization. By the 15th century, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade began with Portuguese’s exploration of the coast of the West Africa to reach the reserves of gold. Initially, a small amount of African people were captured to become a slave but after the developments of the agriculture in the Caribbean colonies and American mainland, captured Africans begin to grow. During the 16th through 19th century, most European colonies in America required enslaved African labor to survive and develop their economy because European laborers did not suitable for climate and they dealt with tropic diseases, even some of them died from diseases which came from Europe. However, African laborers were suitable for conditions in terms of being used to tropical climate and resistant to diseases and having experience of