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Can You Become A Slave?

© Sharon K. West

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 2004 as the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and Its Abolition. The purpose of the commemoration is to emphasize the consequences of slavery, to recognize the struggle for liberation from slavery, and to prevent new forms of slavery around the world. I present this article in honor of those people, past and present, who have been caught in the misery and hopelessness of slavery.

Can you become a slave? Slavery developed as one of human nature's ultimate acts of control. In turn, it has been known as "the scourge of mankind," and "man's greatest inhumanity to man."

At its core, human nature appears strange. It instinctively interprets power as the ability to control and manipulate. This seed manifests itself even in the cradle when a child wraps a parent around its little finger. When a child remains untrained and undisciplined, this seed grows into an adult's selfish quest. Slavery-as an unbridled quest for power-turned some men into the infamous despots of history. Slave labor was the oil that greased many a king's empire.

Slavery existed even in prehistoric times, appearing on every continent. During the many millennia since, its rises and falls if plotted on a graph would demonstrate its ebb and flow. One peak, in ancient times, would parallel slavery's rampant rise in concert with the growing Grecian States and Roman Empire. Another peak would show slavery's comparative pattern in the United States from 1619 through 1865. Would it astound you to know another peak is developing, right now, in the world today?

In this modern world, most of us find it hard to imagine being owned by another human being. Yet slavery still exists and remains a potential threat. Think about it: No rights. No freedom of decision. No freedom of movement. And worse.

Though the armies of the civilized world no longer include the taking of slaves in their strategies of war, they do take prisoners of war. Still, this imprisonment compares not at all with the sad lot of those captured during the violent days when the taking of slaves, both male and female, remained a primary focus of conquering enemies. The classic scenario, then, meant killing the men and enslaving the women and children.

Historians calculate that, by 1502, European slave traders shipped approximately 11 to 16 million slaves to the Americas, including 500,000 to the United States. Prior to that time, American Indians comprised the majority of slaves in the U.S. By 1700, slavery existed in every territory colonized by Europeans.