What is chattel slavery?

Chattel slavery is the most common form of slavery known to Americans. This system, which allowed people — considered legal property — to be bought, sold and owned forever, was lawful and supported by the United States and European powers from the 16th – 18th centuries.


What is an example of chattel slavery?

Countries with the most chattel slavery include the East African countries of Mauritania and Sudan. Within these countries, people can experience being bought and sold as if they were a commodity. The enslaved are often captured during raids of villages, with girls as young as ten often seen as easy targets.

What's the difference between slavery and chattel slavery?

A chattel slave is a piece of property, with no rights. Slavery within Africa was different. A slave might be enslaved in order to pay off a debt or pay for a crime. Slaves in Africa lost the protection of their family and their place in society through enslavement.


What are the 3 types of slavery?

Historically, there are many different types of slavery including chattel, bonded, forced labour and sexual slavery.

What are the 4 types of slavery?

Types of slavery today
  • Human trafficking. ...
  • Forced labour. ...
  • Debt bondage/bonded labour. ...
  • Descent–based slavery (where people are born into slavery). ...
  • Child slavery. ...
  • Forced and early marriage. ...
  • Domestic servitude.


What is chattel slavery?



What is the oldest form of slavery?

In perusing the FreeTheSlaves website, the first fact that emerges is it was nearly 9,000 years ago that slavery first appeared, in Mesopotamia (6800 B.C.). Enemies captured in war were commonly kept by the conquering country as slaves.

Where is chattel slavery today?

Shamefully, this exact kind of slavery still exists today, mostly in the East African countries of Mauritania and Sudan. While this practice is probably the least prevalent of the contemporary forms of slavery, still many thousands of people are so enslaved. Chattel slavery in Mauritania and Sudan is quite gruesome.

What countries still allow slavery?

Other countries with significantly high slave populations are Russia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Egypt, Myanmar, Iran, Turkey, and Sudan. On a continental level, Asia has not only the highest overall population but also the highest total number of slaves.


What was slavery called in Africa?

Chattel slavery is a specific servitude relationship where the slave is treated as the property of the owner. As such, the owner is free to sell, trade, or treat the slave as he would other pieces of property, and the children of the slave often are retained as the property of the master.

Why is it called chattel?

The word 'chattel' is akin to the word 'cattle' and in fact both words share a common origin in Medieval Latin and Old French. The word capital comes from the same root. Chattel slavery means that one person has total ownership of another.

What is another name for chattel slavery?

Ans.: Chattel slavery, serfdom, or feudal slavery and wage slavery.


What are the 5 types of slavery?

  • Child Sex Trafficking. ...
  • Bonded Labor or Debt Bondage. ...
  • Domestic Servitude. ...
  • Forced Child Labor. ...
  • Unlawful Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers.


Where did chattel slavery come from?

Chattel Slavery Origin

Most notably in ancient Egypt, soldiers were captured in war or became slaves after committing serious crimes. These slaves were seen as a resource of the pharaoh, but they typically held jobs similar to those of free people.

What is considered a chattel?

Chattel is a catch-all category of property associated with movable goods. At common law, chattel included all property other than real property. Examples include leases, animals, and money. In modern usage, chattel usually only refers to tangible movable personal property.


What are some examples of chattel?

Chattels on the other hand are defined as items that are moveable and not permanently attached to land or the property. Common examples of chattels are appliances, furniture, area carpets (not tied down), paintings, and curtains/drapes.

Does slavery still exist in USA?

The practices of slavery and human trafficking are still prevalent in modern America with estimated 17,500 foreign nationals and 400,000 Americans being trafficked into and within the United States every year with 80% of those being women and children.

How many slaves are in America today?

Mass incarceration, and the criminalization of poverty, has created a modern-day abomination—nearly two million incarcerated people in the United States have no protection from legal slavery.


Do any states still have slavery?

Slavery as people usually think of it ended with the Civil War, right? But there are still states that allow slavery and indentured servitude as punishments for a crime. Five states asked voters to close that loophole this week. The ballot measures passed in Alabama, Tennessee, Vermont and Oregon.

Who bought the first African slaves to America?

On August 20, 1619, “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrive in the British colony of Virginia and are then bought by English colonists. The arrival of the enslaved Africans in the New World marks a beginning of two and a half centuries of slavery in North America.

How were slaves caught in Africa?

The capture and sale of enslaved Africans

Most of the Africans who were enslaved were captured in battles or were kidnapped, though some were sold into slavery for debt or as punishment. The captives were marched to the coast, often enduring long journeys of weeks or even months, shackled to one another.


Where did most of the slaves from Africa go?

Well over 90 percent of enslaved Africans were sent to the Caribbean and South America. Only about 6 percent of African captives were sent directly to British North America. Yet by 1825, the US population included about one-quarter of the people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere.

Does slavery still exist in Africa?

Slavery in the Sahel states of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan in particular, continues a centuries-old pattern of hereditary servitude. Other forms of traditional slavery exist in parts of Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria.

How many slaves are still alive today?

GENEVA (ILO News) – Fifty million people were living in modern slavery in 2021, according to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery . Of these people, 28 million were in forced labour and 22 million were trapped in forced marriage.


Is human trafficking chattel slavery?

All forms of slavery (including chattel slavery) would fit the definition of human trafficking, but not all forms of human trafficking fit the definition of slavery.