When we think about the slave trade, we may conjure up an image of sailing ships taking slaves from West Africa to the cotton plantations of the West Indies and the southern states of the USA, and returning with a cargo of sugar, cotton, rum and tobacco. But slavery has been around ever since humans left a written history, and no doubt long before that. In the earliest known records, The Code of Hammurabi (c.1760 BC), slavery is treated as a long-established institution. So it’s really no surprise that slavery is mentioned, in an entirely uncritical way, in both the Bible and Koran. The only criticism is aimed at slaves who fail to obey their masters. In fact, the biblical mandate for slavery was used by plantation owners of the southern states, in an attempt to give legitimacy to the buying and selling of human beings (and is, even now, one of the reasons why evangelical Christians feel able, with an apparently clear conscience, to vote for a racist president).
We also like to think that slavery was abolished during the early years of the 19th century, thanks to fair-minded men like William Wilberforce, whose house in Hull I walked past yesterday. However, according to Wikipedia, there are currently more than 40 million people worldwide subject to some form of slavery. If we want to find people who are working under duress, with little or no personal autonomy, we need look no further than the nearest nail bar (for women) and car-wash (for men). And sexual slavery - or trafficking, as we usually call it now - is endemic throughout the world.
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