Slavery is one of the oldest continuously practiced human institutions. The earliest written legal code, the Code of Ur-Nammu of Sumer, dated to approximately 2100 BC, contains regulations for the ownership and sale of slaves. The most recent United Nations estimate, published in 2023, identifies approximately 50 million people currently held in conditions of forced labour, debt bondage, or hereditary servitude. Between those two dates lies a history of approximately four thousand one hundred years.

This episode walks through the institution's long worldwide shape rather than focusing on the Atlantic trade alone. The Atlantic slave trade, which carried approximately 12.5 million people from Africa to the Americas between 1502 and 1888, is one chapter in twenty-three. The other twenty-two cover periods, regions, and forms of bondage that receive less mainstream attention but together account for the great majority of the institution's six thousand years: Sumer debt bondage, Athenian silver mining, Roman latifundia, the Quranic regulations, the Saqaliba slave trade, the Vikings, the Zanj rebellion of 869 to 883, the Mamluk military caste, the trans-Saharan trade, the Barbary corsairs, the Ottoman devshirme, the Indian Ocean trade, the Korean nobi system, the Atlantic plantation, the American South, Brazil, the late survivals into the twentieth century, and the modern 50-million figure.

The episode is presented in plain documentary voice. There is no music, no jump cuts, no second-person address. Just the long historical record, told slowly, with concrete dates, concrete numbers, and concrete sources.

Episode runtime: roughly two hours and ten minutes.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Opening
05:30 The Code of Hammurabi
11:00 Ancient Egypt
17:00 Sparta and the Helots
22:30 Athens and the Silver Mines
28:00 The Roman System
36:00 The Quranic Regulations
42:00 The Saqaliba
48:00 The Vikings
54:00 The Zanj Rebellion
1:00:00 The Mamluks
1:07:00 The Trans-Saharan Trade
1:14:00 The Barbary Corsairs
1:20:00 The Devshirme
1:26:00 The Indian Ocean Trade
1:32:00 The Korean Nobi
1:38:00 The Atlantic Trade
1:46:00 The Plantation
1:52:00 The American South
1:58:00 Brazil
2:03:00 The Late Survivals
2:07:00 The Twentieth Century
2:10:00 Modern Slavery


Sources used in the writing of this episode:
- David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford UP, 2006)
- David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Cornell UP, 1966)
- Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Harvard UP, 1982)
- David Eltis & Stanley Engerman (eds.), The Cambridge World History of Slavery (4 vols, Cambridge UP, 2011-2017)
- Keith R. Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge UP, 1994)
- Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (Oxford UP, 1990)
- Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World (New Amsterdam, 1989)
- Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)
- Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge UP, 3rd ed. 2011)
- Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870 (Simon & Schuster, 1997)
- David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge UP, 2000)
- John K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World 1400-1800 (Cambridge UP, 2nd ed. 1998)
- Ehud R. Toledano, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (U Washington Press, 1998)
- Alexandre Popovic, The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd/9th Century (Markus Wiener, 1999) — Zanj rebellion
- David Ayalon, Outsiders in the Lands of Islam: Mamluks, Mongols, and Eunuchs (Variorum, 1988)
- Speros Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor (U California Press, 1971) — devshirme
- Bok-rae Kim, "Nobi: A Korean System of Slavery" (Slavery & Abolition 24, 2004)
- Ralph A. Austen, Trans-Saharan Africa in World History (Oxford UP, 2010)
- Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge UP, 2009)
- Kevin Bales, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (U California Press, 3rd ed. 2012)
- Primary sources: Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100 BC); Code of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BC, ed. Martha Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor); Aristotle, Politics; Justinian, Digest; Quran with classical commentary
- Datasets: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (slavevoyages.org); ILO Global Estimates of Modern Slavery 2022 (published 2023); Walk Free Global Slavery Index

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