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Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...
n
slavery Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
shows it has existed in all regions of
Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...
throughout its history. Although slavery is now illegal in every Asian country, some forms of it still exist today.


Afghanistan

Slavery was present in the post-Classical
history of Afghanistan The history of Afghanistan covers the development of Afghanistan from ancient times to the establishment of the Emirate of Afghanistan in 1822 and Afghanistan in modern times. This history is largely shared with that of Central Asia, Iran, and ...
, continued during the
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
, and persisted into the early 20th century. After the
Islamic conquest of Persia As part of the early Muslim conquests, which were initiated by Muhammad in 622, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the Sasanian Empire between 632 and 654. This event led to the decline of Zoroastrianism, which had been the official religion of ...
, regions of both Persia and Afghanistan that had not converted to Islam were considered infidel regions, and as a result, they were considered legitimate targets of slave raids that were launched from regions whose populations had converted to Islam: for example Daylam in northwestern Iran and the mountainous region of Ḡūr in central Afghanistan were both exposed to slave raids which were launched from Muslim regions. It was considered legitimate to enslave war captives; during the Afghan occupation of Persia (1722–1730), for example, thousands of people were enslaved, and the Baluch made regular incursions into Southeastern Iran to capture people and turn them into slaves. BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI iv. From the Mongols to the abolition of slavery. https://iranicaonline.org/articles/barda-iv The slave traffic in Afghanistan was particularly active in the northwest, where 400 to 500 were sold annually. In Southern Iran, poor parents sold their children into slavery, and as late as , slave raids were conducted by chieftains in south Iran. The markets for these captives were often in Arabia and Afghanistan; "most of the slave girls employed as domestics in the houses of the gentry at Kandahar were brought from the outlying districts of Ghayn". The rulers of Afghanistan customarily had a harem of four official wives as well as a large number of unofficial wives for the sake of tribal
marriage Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children (if any), and b ...
diplomacy, in addition to enslaved harem women known as ''kaniz'' ("slave girl"
The History Of Afghanistan Fayż Muḥammad Kātib Hazārah's Sirāj Al Tawārīkh By R. D. Mcchesney, M. M. Khorrami (trans.,ann.)
'
) and ''surati'' or ''surriyat'' ("mistress" or concubine)), guarded by the ''ghulam bacha'' (
eunuch A eunuch ( , ) is a male who has been castration, castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function. The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2 ...
s).Emadi, Hafizullah, Repression, resistance, and women in Afghanistan, Praeger, Westport, Conn., 2002 Most slaves were employed as agricultural laborers, domestic slaves and sexual slaves. In contrast, other slaves served in administrative positions. Slaves in Afghanistan possessed some social mobility, especially those slaves who were owned by the government. Slavery was more common in towns and cities because some Afghan tribal communities did not readily engage in the slave trade; according to some sources, the decentralized nature of Afghan tribes forced more urbanized areas to import slaves to fill labor shortages. Most slaves in Afghanistan had been imported from Persia and Central Asia.Hopkins, B. D. "Race, Sex and Slavery: 'Forced Labour' in Central Asia and Afghanistan in the Early 19th Century." ''Modern Asian Studies'' 42, no. 4 (2008): 629-71. Accessed January 12, 2021. . pp. 629, 652, 653 According to a report of an expedition to Afghanistan published in London in 1871:
Amanullah Khan Ghazi (warrior), Ghazi Amanullah Khan (Pashto/Dari: ; 1 June 1892 – 26 April 1960) was the head of state, sovereign of Afghanistan from 1919, first as Emirate of Afghanistan, Emir and after 1926 as Kingdom of Afghanistan, King, until his abdic ...
banned slavery in
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
in the 1923 Constitution, but the practice carried on unofficially for many more years. The Swede Aurora Nilsson, who lived in Kabul from 1926 to 1927, described the occurrence of slavery in Kabul in her memoirs,Rora Asim Khan (Aurora Nilsson): Anders Forsberg and Peter Hjukström: ''Flykten från harem'', Nykopia, Stockholm 1998. . as well as how a German woman, the widow of an Afridi man named Abdullah Khan, who had fled to the city with her children from her late husband's successor, was sold at public auction and obtained her freedom by being bought by the German embassy for 7,000 marks.


Central Asia and the Caucasus

Slavery is integral to the social, economic, and political history of
Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...
. Polities of different sizes and structures such as nomadic confederations, agrarian city-states, and empires all engaged in and at various times promoted the enslavement and trade of people and the exploitation of their labor. While societies across
Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...
independently developed their localized practice of slavery, they also integrated their slave selling network to the development of the Silk Road, which linked dispersed markets throughout Eurasia. Alongside silk, spices, and other commodities of the Silk Road, merchants traded and transported people across Central Asia. As an area with diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious demographic, the people who were enslaved and traded in Central Asia came from a variety of backgrounds and spoke many different languages. In eastern Eurasia, slave selling contracts demonstrate that slave sales were conducted in Chinese, Uyghur, Tibetan, Sogdian,
Prakrit Prakrit ( ) is a group of vernacular classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 5th century BCE to the 12th century CE. The term Prakrit is usually applied to the middle period of Middle Ind ...
, Khotanese, and Tocharian. Political conquests, economic competition, and religious conversion all mattered in determining who had control over the slave trade, which demographic slave traders targeted, and whose demand slave traders catered to.


Mechanisms for enslavement

Warfare, slave raids, legal punishments, self-sales, or sales by relatives, and inheritance of slave status from birth were the common ways individuals become a slave in Central Asia. Linguistic analysis of the vocabulary used for slavery in early Central Asian societies suggests a strong connection between military actions and slavery. Third-century Sassanian inscriptions attest to the usage of the word ''wardag'' as meaning both "slave" and "captive". Similarly, the 8th-century Turkic
Orkhon inscriptions The Orkhon inscriptions are bilingual texts in Middle Chinese and Old Turkic, the latter written in the Old Turkic alphabet, carved into two memorial steles erected in the early 8th century by the Göktürks in the Orkhon Valley in what is modern- ...
indicate prisoners of war have often designated the status of slavery. Inscriptions found in the
First Turkic Khaganate The First Turkic Khaganate, also referred to as the First Turkic Empire, the Turkic Khaganate or the Göktürk Khaganate, was a Turkic khaganate established by the Ashina clan of the Göktürks in medieval Inner Asia under the leadership of Bu ...
also imply that terms denoting slavery or other forms of subordinate status, such as ''qul'' (male slave) and ''küng'' (female slave or handmaiden), are frequently applied to a population of defeated political entities. During the early modern era (16th–18th centuries), Khiva and Bukhara imported large numbers of Europeans slaves kidnapped by the Crimean Tatars. The Crimean slave trade was eradicated in the late 18th century. However Russian captives were still provided via the Kazakh Khanate slave trade. In 1717, 3,000 Russian slaves consisting of men, women, and children were sold in
Khiva Khiva ( uz-Latn-Cyrl, Xiva, Хива, ; other names) is a district-level city of approximately 93,000 people in Khorazm Region, Uzbekistan. According to archaeological data, the city was established around 2,500 years ago. In 1997, Khiva celebr ...
by Kazakh and Kyrgyz tribesmen. Raids among nomadic tribes and against sedentary societies to loot people were also prevalent practices conducted by polities across Eurasia. After many Central Asian states converted to Islam, they frequently conducted slave raids into non-Muslim territories. Areas where polytheism were practiced were frequently targets of these slave raids. For example, Daylam, the northwestern regions of Iran, Gur in central Afghanistan, the
Eurasian steppe The Eurasian Steppe, also called the Great Steppe or The Steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Siberia, Europea ...
, and India had long been targeted by Muslim polities for slave raids. The
Samanids People Samanid Samanid Samanid The Samanid Empire () was a Persianate society, Persianate Sunni Islam, Sunni Muslim empire, ruled by a dynasty of Iranian peoples, Iranian ''dehqan'' origin. The empire was centred in Greater Khorasan, Khorasan an ...
in Khorasan and Transoxania, and their successor, the
Ghaznavids The Ghaznavid dynasty ( ''Ġaznaviyān'') was a Persianate Muslim dynasty of Turkic peoples, Turkic ''mamluk'' origin. It ruled the Ghaznavid Empire or the Empire of Ghazni from 977 to 1186, which at its greatest extent, extended from the Oxus ...
, and later the Saljuqs in Iran. Violent encounters are not the only mechanism through which an individual was enslaved. Iranian and Chinese sources attest to the practice of self-enslavement or self-selling. In the Pahlavi Book of a Thousand Judgements, the word tan (body), designates a person who loans oneself or one's relative for a specific period of time to a debtor or creditor as security for a debt. In China, legal code historically prohibited individuals from selling children or other relatives into slavery. However, sale contracts indicate that poverty, famine, and other unfortunate circumstances often compelled individuals to sell or loan themselves, their children, and other relatives. This is not to say that slave sales were prohibited in China, however. Tang legal codes regulated the sale of people who were already designated slave status by requiring individuals to provide certificates that demonstrate the individuals were lawfully enslaved. In one recorded case, a man sold his daughter and son in order to raise funds to pay for his father's funeral. A notorious slave market for captured
Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...
and Persian slaves was the Khivan slave trade, centered in the
Khanate of Khiva The Khanate of Khiva (, , uz-Latn-Cyrl, Xiva xonligi, Хива хонлиги, , ) was a Central Asian polity that existed in the historical region of Khwarazm, Khorezm from 1511 to 1920, except for a period of Afsharid Iran, Afsharid occupat ...
from the 17th to the 19th century. During the first half of the 19th century alone, some one million Persians, as well as an unknown number of Russians, were enslaved and transported to Central Asian khanates. When the Russian troops took Khiva in 1898 there were 29,300 Persian slaves, captured by Turkoman raiders. According to Josef Wolff (Report of 1843–1845) the population of the Khanate of Bukhara was 1,200,000, of whom 200,000 were Persian slaves. There were Russian and Swedish slaves, including Brigitta Scherzenfeldt, in the
Dzungar Khanate The Dzungar Khanate ( Mongolian: ), also known as the Zunghar Khanate or Junggar Khanate, was an Inner Asian khanate of Oirat Mongol origin. At its greatest extent, it covered an area from southern Siberia in the north to present-day Kyrgyz ...
in Central Asia in the 18th century. At the beginning of the 21st century Chechens and Ingush kept Russian captives as slaves or in slave-like conditions in the mountains of the northern
Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...
.


Function of slavery in Central Asian societies

The slave trade was also an essential aspect of the economy of Central Asian societies. Due to the high demand for slaves in neighboring sedentary empires, Central Asian Turkic nomads supplied the majority of slaves to the Islamic caliphate to the west and the Chinese dynasties to the east. In the Abbasid empire, the establishment of the
Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...
institution created the preference and demand for young, Turkic male slaves due to their supposedly superior military strength. As a result of these demands, the economy of Central Asian states flourished as they dominated the slave trade. The Khazar Qaghanate, the Samanids, and later the Ghaznavids, were some of the main suppliers of Turkic military slaves, Circassian slaves, and Russian slaves to Baghdad.


Modern slavery

Slavery gradually disappeared from the Caucasus owing to reduced demand for Circassian slaves from the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, Russian imperial policy that used the issue of slaves to infringe upon Ottoman sovereignty, and the actions of the slaves themselves. In Central Asia, informal slavery continued into the Soviet period and some forms of slavery continue to exist today. The tradition of slavery exists today in Russia.


China

Slavery existed in ancient China as early as the
Shang dynasty The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty that ruled in the Yellow River valley during the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Western Zhou d ...
. Slavery was employed largely by governments as a means of maintaining a public labour force. Until the
Han dynasty The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...
, slaves were sometimes discriminated against but their legal status was guaranteed. As can be seen from the some historical records as “Duansheng,
Marquis A marquess (; ) is a nobleman of high hereditary rank in various European peerages and in those of some of their former colonies. The German-language equivalent is Markgraf (margrave). A woman with the rank of a marquess or the wife (or wido ...
of Shouxiang, had his
territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, belonging or connected to a particular country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually a geographic area which has not been granted the powers of self-government, ...
confiscated because he killed a female slave”('' Han dynasty records of DongGuan''), “
Wang Mang Wang Mang (45 BCE6 October 23 CE), courtesy name Jujun, officially known as the Shijianguo Emperor (), was the founder and the only emperor of the short-lived Chinese Xin dynasty. He was originally an official and consort kin of the ...
's son Wang Huo murdered a slave, Wang Mang severely criticized him and forced him to commit suicide”(''
Book of Han The ''Book of Han'' is a history of China finished in 111 CE, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. The work was composed by Ban Gu (32–92 CE), ...
: Biography of Wang Mang''). Murder against slaves was as taboo as murder against free people, and perpetrators were always severely punished. Han dynasty can be said to be very distinctive compared to other countries of the same period(In most cases, lords were free to kill their slaves) in terms of slaves
human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...
. After the Southern and Northern Dynasties, due to years of poor harvests, the influx of foreign tribes, and the resulting wars, the number of slaves exploded. They became a class and were called " jianmin ( Chinese: 贱民)", which in literal terms means "inferior person". As stated in ''The commentary of Tang Code'': “Slaves and inferior people are legally equivalent to
livestock Livestock are the Domestication, domesticated animals that are raised in an Agriculture, agricultural setting to provide labour and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, Egg as food, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The t ...
products”. They always had a low social status, and even if they were deliberately murdered, the perpetrators received only a year in prison, and were punished even when they reported the crimes of their lords. However, in the later stages of the dynasty, perhaps because the increase in the number of slaves slowed down again, the penalties for crimes against them became harsh again. For example, the famous contemporary female poet Yu Xuanji was publicly executed for murdering her own slave.


Middle Ages

The
Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...
purchased Western slaves from the Radanite Jews. Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans (until Emperor Muzong of Tang prohibited the import of Korean slaves), Turks, Persians and Indonesians traded into Canton, and people from Inner Mongolia, central Asia, and northern India. Tang era slaves could be either prisoners of war or families of Chinese rebels executed for treason. The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians,
Negritos The term ''Negrito'' (; ) refers to several diverse ethnic groups who inhabit isolated parts of Southeast Asia and the Andaman Islands. Populations often described as Negrito include: the Andamanese peoples (including the Great Andamanese, th ...
, and black Africans were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty during the exchange of the
Silk Road The Silk Road was a network of Asian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over , it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the ...
. Although various officials such as Kong Kui, the
Jiedushi The ''jiedushi'' (, Old Turkic: Tarduş) or jiedu, was a regional military governor in China; the title was established in the Tang dynasty and abolished in the Yuan dynasty. The post of ''jiedushi'' has been translated as "military commissi ...
of
Lingnan Lingnan (; ) is a geographic area referring to the lands in the south of the Nanling Mountains. The region covers the modern China, Chinese subdivisions of Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hong Kong & Macau and Northern Vietnam. Background The ar ...
, banned the slave trade, the trade continued. Many
Han Chinese The Han Chinese, alternatively the Han people, are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Greater China. With a global population of over 1.4 billion, the Han Chinese are the list of contemporary ethnic groups, world's la ...
were enslaved in the process of the Mongol invasion of
China proper China proper, also called Inner China, are terms used primarily in the West in reference to the traditional "core" regions of China centered in the southeast. The term was first used by Westerners during the Manchu people, Manchu-led Qing dyn ...
. According to Japanese historians Sugiyama Masaaki (杉山正明) and Funada Yoshiyuki (舩田善之), there were also certain numbers of Mongolian slaves owned by Han Chinese during the
Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty ( ; zh, c=元朝, p=Yuáncháo), officially the Great Yuan (; Mongolian language, Mongolian: , , literally 'Great Yuan State'), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after Div ...
. Moreover, there is no evidence that the Han Chinese, who were considered to rank at the bottom of Yuan society by some research, were subjected to particularly cruel abuse.


Qing Dynasty

In the 17th century
Qing Dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...
, there was a hereditarily servile people called ''Booi Aha'' (Manchu:booi niyalma; Chinese transliteration: 包衣阿哈), which is a Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes rendered as " nucai". In his book ''China Marches West'', Peter C. Perdue stated: "In 1624(After Nurhachi's invasion of
Liaodong The Liaodong or Liaotung Peninsula ( zh, s=辽东半岛, t=遼東半島, p=Liáodōng Bàndǎo) is a peninsula in southern Liaoning province in Northeast China, and makes up the southwestern coastal half of the Liaodong region. It is located ...
) "Chinese households....while those with less were made into slaves." The Manchu was establishing a close personal and paternalist relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said, "The Master should love the slaves and eat the same food as him". Perdue further pointed out that booi aha "did not correspond exactly to the Chinese category of "bond-servant slave" (Chinese:奴僕); instead, it was a relationship of personal dependency on a master which in theory guaranteed close personal relationships and equal treatment, even though many western scholars would directly translate "booi" as "bond-servant" (some of the "booi" even had their own servant). ;Various classes of Booi # ''booi niru'' a Manchu word (Chinese:包衣佐領 or 大内总管), meaning Neiwufu Upper Three Banner's platoon leader of about 300 men. # ''Booi guanlin'' a Manchu word (Chinese:包衣管領), meaning the manager of ''booi'' doing all the domestic duties of Neiwufu. # ''Booi amban'' is also a Manchu word, meaning high official (Chinese:包衣大臣). # ''Estate bannerman'' (Chinese: 庄头旗人) are those renegade Chinese who joined the Jurchen, or original civilians-soldiers working in the fields. These people were all turned into ''booi aha'', or field slaves. Chinese Muslim (Tungans) Sufis who were charged with practicing xiejiao (heterodox religion), were punished by exile to Xinjiang and being sold as a slave to other Muslims, such as the Sufi begs.
Han Chinese The Han Chinese, alternatively the Han people, are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Greater China. With a global population of over 1.4 billion, the Han Chinese are the list of contemporary ethnic groups, world's la ...
who committed crimes such as those dealing with opium became slaves to the begs, this practice was administered by Qing law. Most Chinese in
Altishahr Altishahr (, , ; romanized: ''Altä-şähär'' or ''Alti-şähär''), also known as Kashgaria, or Yettishar is a historical name for the Tarim Basin region used in the 18th and 19th centuries. The term means "Seven Cities" in Turkic languages, ref ...
were exiled slaves to Turkestani Begs. Ironically, while free Chinese merchants generally did not engage in relationships with East Turkestani women, some of the Chinese slaves belonging to begs, along with Green Standard soldiers, Bannermen, and Manchus, engaged in affairs with the East Turkestani women that were serious in nature. The Qing dynasty procured 420 women and girl slaves, all of them Mongol, to service Oirat Mongol bannermen stationed in Xinjiang in 1764. Many
Torghut The Torghut ( Mongolian: Торгууд, , Torguud, "Guardsman", ) are one of the four major subgroups of the Four Oirats. The Torghut nobles traced their descent to the Mongol Keraite ruler Toghrul, and many Torghuts descended from the Keraites. ...
Mongol boys and girls were sold to Central Asian markets or on the local Xinjiang market to native Turkestanis. Here are two accounts of slavery given by two Westerners in the late 19th century and early 20th century:
"In the houses of wealthy citizens, it is not unusual to find twenty to thirty slaves attending upon a family. Even citizens in the humbler walks of life deem it necessary to have each a slave or two. The price of a slave varies, of course, according to age, health, strength, and general appearance. The average price is from fifty to one hundred dollars, but in time of war, or revolution, poor parents, on the verge of starvation, offer their sons and daughters for sale at remarkably low prices. I remember instances of parents, rendered destitute by the marauding bands who invested the two southern ''Kwangs'' in 1854–55, offering to sell their daughters in Canton for five dollars apiece. ... The slavery to which these unfortunate persons are subject, is perpetual and hereditary, and they have no parental authority over their offspring. The great-grandsons of slaves, however, can, if they have sufficient means, purchase their freedom. ... Masters seem to have the same uncontrolled power over their slaves that parents have over their children. Thus a master is not called to account for the death of a slave, although it is the result of punishment inflicted by him."
"In former times slaves were slain and offered in sacrifice to the spirit of the owner when dead, or by him to his ancestors: sometimes given as a substitute to suffer the death penalty incurred by his owner or in fulfilment of a vow. It used to be customary in Kuei-chou (and Szü-chuan too, I believe) to inter living slaves with their dead owners; the slaves were to keep a lamp burning in the tomb.... "Slavery exists in China, especially in Canton and Peking.... It is a common thing for well-to-do people to present a couple of slave girls to a daughter as part of her marriage dowery ic Nearly all prostitutes are slaves. It is, however, customary with respectable people to release their slave girls when marriageable. Some people sell their slave girls to men wanting a wife for themselves or for a son of theirs. "I have bought three different girls: two in Szü-chuan for a few taels each, less than fifteen dollars. One I released in Tientsin, another died in Hongkong; the other I gave in marriage to a faithful servant of mine. Some are worth much money at Shanghai."
In addition to sending Han exiles convicted of crimes to Xinjiang to be slaves of Banner garrisons there, the Qing also practiced reversing exile, exiling Inner Asian (Mongol, Russian and Muslim criminals from Mongolia and Inner Asia) to
China proper China proper, also called Inner China, are terms used primarily in the West in reference to the traditional "core" regions of China centered in the southeast. The term was first used by Westerners during the Manchu people, Manchu-led Qing dyn ...
where they would serve as slaves in Han Banner garrisons in Guangzhou. Russian, Oirats and Muslims (Oros. Ulet. Hoise jergi weilengge niyalma) such as Yakov and Dmitri were exiled to the Han banner garrison in Guangzhou. In the 1780s after the Muslim rebellion in Gansu started by Zhang Wenqing 張文慶 was defeated, Muslims like Ma Jinlu 馬進祿 were exiled to the Han Banner garrison in Guangzhou to become slaves to Han Banner officers. The Qing code regulating Mongols in Mongolia sentenced Mongol criminals to exile and to become slaves to Han bannermen in Han Banner garrisons in China proper.


Modern times

Although slavery has been abolished in China since 1910, in 2018, the Global Slavery Index estimated that there are approximately 3.8 million people enslaved in China. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s the
Yi people The Yi or Nuosu people (Nuosu language, Nuosu: , ; see also #Names and subgroups, § Names and subgroups) are an ethnic group in South China, southern China. Numbering nine million people, they are the seventh largest of the 55 Ethnic minorit ...
(also known as Nuosu) of China terrorized Sichuan to rob and enslave non-Nuosu including Han people. The descendants of the Han Chinese slaves are the White Yi (白彝) and they outnumber the Black Yi (黑彝) aristocracy by ten to one. As many as tens of thousands of Han slaves were incorporated into Nuosu society every year. The Han slaves and their offspring were used for manual labor. There is a saying that goes like this: "the worst insult to a Nuosu is to call him a "Han" the implication being that "your ancestors were slaves")".


Indian subcontinent

The earliest surviving South Asian epigraphy, the mid 3rd Century BCE,
Edicts of Ashoka The Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of more than thirty inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, attributed to Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from 268 BCE to 2 ...
, in Greek and Aramaic, independently identify obligations to slaves (Greek: , Aramaic: עבד) and hired workers (Greek: ), later prohibiting the trading of slaves within the Empire.Scott C. Levi (2002)
Hindus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 12, 3, pages 277-288
The early Arab invaders of Sind in the 8th century, the armies of the Umayyad commander
Muhammad bin Qasim Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim al-Thaqafī (; –) was an Arabs, Arab military commander in service of the Umayyad Caliphate who led the Muslim conquest of Sindh (and Punjab, part of ancient Sindh), inaugurating the Umayyad campaigns in India. His m ...
, are reported to have enslaved tens of thousands of Indian prisoners, including both soldiers and civilians. In the early 11th-century ''
Tarikh Yamini The Tarikh i Yamini, or Kitab i Yamini, written in Arabic in an embellished, flowery rhetorical rhymed prose, is a history of the reigns of Sebuktigin and Mahmud. Written by the historian Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al Jabbaru-l 'Utbi (or ''a ...
'', the Arab historian Al-Utbi recorded that in 1001 the armies of Mahmud of Ghazna conquered
Peshawar Peshawar is the capital and List of cities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by population, largest city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is the sixth most populous city of Pakistan, with a district p ...
and Waihand (capital of Gandhara) after Battle of Peshawar (1001), "in the midst of the land of
Hindustan ''Hindūstān'' ( English: /ˈhɪndustæn/ or /ˈhɪndustɑn/, ; ) was a historical region, polity, and a name for India, historically used simultaneously for northern Indian subcontinent and the entire subcontinent, used in the modern day ...
", and captured some 100,000 youths. Later, following his twelfth expedition into India in 1018–1019, Mahmud is reported to have returned with such a large number of slaves that their value was reduced to only two to ten dirhams each. This unusually low price made, according to Al-Utbi, "merchants omefrom distant cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Central Asia, Iraq and Khurasan were swelled with them, and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor, mingled in one common slavery". Elliot and Dowson refer to "five hundred thousand slaves, beautiful men and women." Later, during the
Delhi Sultanate The Delhi Sultanate or the Sultanate of Delhi was a Medieval India, late medieval empire primarily based in Delhi that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for more than three centuries.
period (1206–1555), references to the abundant availability of low-priced Indian slaves abound. Levi attributes this primarily to the vast human resources of India, compared to its neighbors to the north and west (India's Mughal population being approximately 12 to 20 times that of
Turan Turan (; ; , , ) is a historical region in Central Asia. The term is of Iranian origin and may refer to a particular prehistoric human settlement, a historic geographical region, or a culture. The original Turanians were an Iranian tribe of th ...
and
Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
at the end of the 16th century). The
Siddi The Siddi (), also known as the Sheedi, Sidi, or Siddhi, are an ethno-religious group living mostly in Pakistan. Some Siddis also live in India. They are primarily descended from the Bantu peoples of the Zanj coast in Southeast Africa, most ...
are an ethnic group inhabiting
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
and
Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
. Members are descended from
Bantu peoples The Bantu peoples are an Indigenous peoples of Africa, indigenous ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct native Demographics of Africa, African List of ethnic groups of Africa, ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages. The language ...
from Southeast Africa that were brought to the
Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographic region of Asia below the Himalayas which projects into the Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal to the east and the Arabian Sea to the west. It is now divided between Bangladesh, India, and Pakista ...
as slaves by
Arab Arabs (,  , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...
and Portuguese slave traders. Similar to the Siddies, in
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...
there are Kaffirs, who were brought to the country as slaves mostly during the Sinhalese-Portuguese war. The Delhi was ruled by the Mamluks from 1206 to 1290: Qutb-ud-din Aybak, a slave of Muhammad Ghori rose to power following his master's death. For almost a century, his descendants ruled presiding over the introduction of Tankas and the building of Qutub Minar. According to Sir Henry Frere, there were an estimated 8 or 9 million enslaved persons in India in 1841. In Malabar, about 15% of the population were slaves. Slavery was officially abolished two years later in India by the Indian Slavery Act of 1843. Provisions of the
Indian Penal Code The Indian Penal Code (IPC) was the official criminal code of the Republic of India, inherited from British India after independence. It remained in force until it was repealed and replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) in December 2023 ...
of 1861 effectively abolished slavery in India by making the enslavement of human beings a criminal offense.


Modern times

There are an estimated five million bonded workers in
Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
, even though the government has passed laws and set up funds to eradicate the practice and rehabilitate the laborers. As many as 200,000
Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...
i girls, many under 14, have been sold into
sex slavery Sexual slavery and sexual exploitation is an attachment of any ownership right over one or more people with the intent of coercing or otherwise forcing them to engage in sexual activities. This includes forced labor that results in sexual ...
in India. Nepalese women and girls, especially virgins, are favored in India because of their fair skin and young looks. In 1997, a human rights agency reported that 40,000 Nepalese workers are subject to slavery and 200,000 kept in bonded labor. Nepal's
Maoist Maoism, officially Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic o ...
-led government has abolished the slavery-like Haliya system in 2008. This is the reason why casteism, xenophobia, ethnicity and unfair discrimination have given birth to slavery in Pakistan.


Japan

Slavery in Japan was, for most of its history, indigenous, since the export and import of slaves was restricted by Japan being a group of islands. The export of a slave from Japan is recorded in a 3rd-century Chinese document, although the system involved is unclear. These people were called , lit. "living mouth". "Seiko" from historical theories are thought to be as prisoner, slave, a person who has technical skill and also students studying abroad to China. In the 8th century, a slave was called and a series of laws on slavery was issued. In an area of present-day
Ibaraki Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Ibaraki Prefecture has a population of 2,828,086 (1 July 2023) and has a geographic area of . Ibaraki Prefecture borders Fukushima Prefecture to the north, ...
, out of a population of 190,000, around 2,000 were slaves; the proportion is believed to have been even higher in western Japan. Slavery persisted into the
Sengoku period The was the period in History of Japan, Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Kyōtoku incident (1454), Ōnin War (1467), or (1493) are generally chosen as th ...
(1467–1615), but the attitude that slavery was anachronistic had become widespread.
Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods. He was the and regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. He is sometimes referred as the "Demon Daimyō" and "Demo ...
is said to have had an African slave or former-slave in his retinue. Korean prisoners of war were shipped to Japan as slaves during the Japanese invasions of Korea in the 16th century. In 1595, Portugal passed a law banning the selling and buying of Chinese and Japanese slaves, but forms of contract and indentured labor persisted alongside the period penal codes' forced labor. Somewhat later, the Edo period penal laws prescribed "non-free labor" for the immediate family of executed criminals in Article 17 of the ''Gotōke reijō'' (Tokugawa House Laws), but the practice never became common. The 1711 ''Gotōke reijō'' was compiled from over 600 statutes promulgated between 1597 and 1696.
Karayuki-san Karayuki-san (唐行きさん) was the name given to Japanese girls and women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who were trafficked from poverty-stricken agricultural prefectures in Japan to destinations in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Sibe ...
, literally meaning "Ms. Gone Abroad", were Japanese women who traveled to or were trafficked to
East Asia East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...
,
Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...
,
Manchuria Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda (Khabarovsk Krai), Uda River and the Tukuringra-Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact ...
,
Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...
and as far as
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century to work as prostitutes, courtesans and
geisha {{Culture of Japan, Traditions, Geisha {{nihongo, Geisha{{efn, {{IPAc-en, lang, ˈ, ɡ, eɪ, ., ʃ, ə, {{IPA, ja, ɡei.ɕa, ɡeː-, lang{{cite book, script-title=ja:NHK日本語発音アクセント新辞典, publisher=NHK Publishing, editor= ...
. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a network of Japanese prostitutes being trafficked across Asia, in countries such as China, Japan,
Korea Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically Division of Korea, divided at or near the 38th parallel north, 3 ...
,
Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...
and
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
, in what was then known as the 'Yellow Slave Traffic'.


World War II

As the
Empire of Japan The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From Japan–Kor ...
annexed Asian countries, from the late 19th century onwards, archaic institutions including slavery were abolished in those countries. However, during the
Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...
and the
Pacific War The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War or the Pacific Theatre, was the Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II fought between the Empire of Japan and the Allies of World War II, Allies in East Asia, East and Southeast As ...
, the Japanese military used millions of civilians and
prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...
as forced labor, on projects such as the Burma Railway. According to a joint study by historians including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the '' Kōa-in'' (Japanese Asia Development Board) for forced labour. According to the Japanese military's own record, nearly 25% of 140,000 Allied
POWs A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...
died while interned in Japanese prison camps where they were forced to work (U.S. POWs died at a rate of 37%). More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway. The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in
Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
, between 4 and 10 million '' romusha'' (Japanese: "manual laborer"), were forced to work by the Japanese military. Approximately 5,400,000
Koreans Koreans are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Korean Peninsula. The majority of Koreans live in the two Korean sovereign states of North and South Korea, which are collectively referred to as Korea. As of 2021, an estimated 7.3 m ...
were conscripted into slavery from 1944 to 1945 by the National Mobilization Law. About 670,000 of them were brought to Japan, where about 60,000 died between 1939 and 1945 due mostly to exhaustion or poor working conditions. Many of those taken to
Karafuto Prefecture , was established by the Empire of Japan in 1907 to govern the southern part of Sakhalin. This territory became part of the Empire of Japan in 1905 after the Russo-Japanese War, when the portion of Sakhalin south of 50°N was ceded by the R ...
(modern-day
Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...
) were trapped there at the end of the war, stripped of their nationality and denied repatriation by Japan; they became known as the
Sakhalin Koreans Sakhalin Koreans (; ) are Russian citizens and residents of Korean descent living on Sakhalin Island, who can trace their roots to the immigrants from the Gyeongsang Province, Gyeongsang and Jeolla Province, Jeolla provinces of Korea during th ...
. The total deaths of Korean forced laborers in Korea and
Manchuria Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda (Khabarovsk Krai), Uda River and the Tukuringra-Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact ...
for those years is estimated to be between 270,000 and 810,000.


Korea

The
Joseon Joseon ( ; ; also romanized as ''Chosun''), officially Great Joseon (), was a dynastic kingdom of Korea that existed for 505 years. It was founded by Taejo of Joseon in July 1392 and replaced by the Korean Empire in October 1897. The kingdom w ...
dynasty of Korea was a hierarchical society that consisted of social classes. Cheonmin, the lowest class, included occupations such as butchers, shamans, prostitutes, entertainers, and also members of the slave class known as ''nobi''. Low status was hereditary, but members of higher classes could be reduced to cheonmin as a form of legal punishment. During poor harvests and
famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food caused by several possible factors, including, but not limited to war, natural disasters, crop failure, widespread poverty, an Financial crisis, economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenom ...
, many peasants voluntarily sold themselves into the nobi class in order to survive. The nobi were socially indistinct from freemen other than the ruling
yangban The ''yangban'' () were part of the traditional ruling class or gentry of dynastic Korea during the Joseon period. The ''yangban'' were mainly composed of highly educated civil officials and military officers—landed or unlanded aristocrats wh ...
class, and some possessed property rights, legal entities and civil rights. Hence, some scholars argue that it's inappropriate to call them "slaves", while some scholars describe them as
serfs Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery. It developed dur ...
. The nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population. In 1801, the vast majority of government nobi were emancipated, and by 1858 the nobi population stood at about 1.5 percent of the total population of Korea. The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 1886–87 and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the
Gabo Reform The Kabo Reform () describes a series of sweeping reforms suggested to the government of Korea, beginning in 1894 and ending in 1896 during the reign of Gojong of Korea in response to the Donghak Peasant Revolution. Historians debate the degre ...
of 1894, but traces remained until 1930.


Southeast Asia


Indochina

During the millennium long
Chinese domination of Vietnam Vietnam under Chinese rule or ''Bắc thuộc'' (北屬, lit. "belonging to the north") (111 BCE–939 CE, 1407–1428 CE) refers to four historical periods when several portions of modern-day Northern Vietnam was under the rule of various Chine ...
, Vietnam was a large source of slave girls who were used as sex slaves in China. The slave girls of Viet were even eroticized in Tang dynasty poetry. There was a large slave class in
Khmer Empire The Khmer Empire was an empire in Southeast Asia, centered on Hydraulic empire, hydraulic cities in what is now northern Cambodia. Known as Kambuja (; ) by its inhabitants, it grew out of the former civilization of Chenla and lasted from 802 t ...
who built the enduring monuments in
Angkor Angkor ( , 'capital city'), also known as Yasodharapura (; ),Headly, Robert K.; Chhor, Kylin; Lim, Lam Kheng; Kheang, Lim Hak; Chun, Chen. 1977. ''Cambodian-English Dictionary''. Bureau of Special Research in Modern Languages. The Catholic Uni ...
and did most of the heavy work. Slaves had been taken captive from the mountain tribes. People unable to pay back a
debt Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money Loan, borrowed or otherwise withheld from another party, the creditor. Debt may be owed by a sovereign state or country, local government, company, or an individual. Co ...
to the upper ruling class could be sentenced to work as a slave too. In
Siam Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...
(Thailand), war captives became the property of the king. During the reign of Rama III (1824–1851), there were an estimated 46,000 war slaves. Slaves from independent hill populations were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese, the Anamites, and the Cambodians" (Colquhoun 1885:53). Slavery was not abolished in Siam until 1905.
Yi people The Yi or Nuosu people (Nuosu language, Nuosu: , ; see also #Names and subgroups, § Names and subgroups) are an ethnic group in South China, southern China. Numbering nine million people, they are the seventh largest of the 55 Ethnic minorit ...
in Yunnan practiced a complicated form of slavery. People were split into the Black Yi (nobles, 7% of the population), White Yi (commoners), Ajia (33% of the Yi population) and Xiaxi (10%). Ajia and Xiaxi were slave castes. The White Yi were not slaves but had no freedom of movement. The Black Yi were famous for their slave-raids on
Han Chinese The Han Chinese, alternatively the Han people, are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Greater China. With a global population of over 1.4 billion, the Han Chinese are the list of contemporary ethnic groups, world's la ...
communities. After 1959 some 700,000 slaves were freed.


Maritime Southeast Asia

Slaves in
Toraja The Torajan are an ethnic group indigenous people, indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the List of regencies and cities of Indonesia, regency of T ...
society in
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Torajan slaves were sold and shipped out to
Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
and
Siam Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...
. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women—a crime punishable by death. Slavery was abolished in 1863 in all Dutch colonies. Slavery was practiced by the tribal
Austronesian peoples The Austronesian people, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples who have settled in Taiwan, maritime Southeast Asia, parts of mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melan ...
in pre-Spanish Philippines. Slaves were part of the lowest caste ('' alipin'') in ancient Filipino societies. A caste which also included commoners. However, the characterization of ''alipin'' as "slaves" is not entirely accurate. Modern scholars in Philippine history prefer to use more accurate terms like "
serf Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery. It developed du ...
s" or " bondsmen" instead. Slavery in Southeast Asia reached its peak in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when fleets of '' lanong'' and '' garay'' warships of the
Iranun The Iranun are an Austronesian ethnic group native to southwestern Mindanao, Philippines. They are ethnically and culturally closely related to the Maranao, and Maguindanaon, all three groups being denoted as speaking Danao languages and giv ...
and Banguingui people started engaging in piracy and coastal raids for slave and plunder throughout Southeast Asia from their territories within the
Sultanate of Sulu The Sultanate of Sulu (; ; ) is a Sunni Muslim subnational monarchy in the Philippines, Republic of the Philippines that includes the Sulu Archipelago, coastal areas of Zamboanga City and certain portions of Palawan in today's Philippines. H ...
and
Maguindanao Maguindanao (; Maguindanaon: ''Dairat nu Magindanaw''; Iranun: ''Perobinsia a Magindanao''; ) was a province of the Philippines located in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). From 2014 to 2022, its provincial capital ...
. It is estimated that from 1770 to 1870, 200,000 to 300,000 people were enslaved by Iranun and Banguingui slavers. They came from ships and settlements as far as the
Malacca Strait The Strait of Malacca is a narrow stretch of water, long and from wide, between the Malay Peninsula to the northeast and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the southwest, connecting the Andaman Sea (Indian Ocean) and the South China Sea (Pa ...
,
Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
, the southern coast of
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
and the islands beyond the
Makassar Strait Makassar Strait () is a strait between the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi in Indonesia. To the north it joins the Celebes Sea, while to the south it meets the Java Sea. To the northeast, it forms the Sangkulirang Bay south of the Mangkalihat P ...
. The scale was so massive that the word for "pirate" in Malay became ''Lanun'', an
exonym An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
of the Iranun people. Male captives of the Iranun and the Banguingui were treated brutally, even fellow Muslim captives were not spared. They were usually forced serve as
galley slave A galley slave was a slave rowing in a galley, either a Convict, convicted criminal sentenced to work at the oar (''French language, French'': galérien), or a kind of human chattel, sometimes a prisoner of war, assigned to the duty of rowing. ...
s on the ships of their captors. Female captives, however, were usually treated better. There were no recorded accounts of rapes, though some were starved for discipline. Most of the slaves were
Tagalogs The Tagalog people are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the Philippines, particularly the Metro Manila and Calabarzon regions and Marinduque province of southern Luzon, and comprise the majority in the provinces of Bulacan, Bataan, N ...
,
Visayans Visayans ( Cebuano: ''mga Bisayà'' ) are a Philippine ethnolinguistic family group or metaethnicity native to the Visayas, to the southernmost islands south of Luzon, and to a significant portion of Mindanao. They are composed of numerous d ...
, and "Malays" (including
Bugis The Bugis people, also known as Buginese, are an Austronesian ethnic groupthe most numerous of the three major linguistic and ethnic groups of South Sulawesi (the others being Makassarese and Torajan), in the south-western province of Sula ...
, Mandarese, Iban, and
Makassar Makassar ( ), formerly Ujung Pandang ( ), is the capital of the Indonesian Provinces of Indonesia, province of South Sulawesi. It is the largest city in the region of Eastern Indonesia and the country's fifth-largest urban center after Jakarta, ...
). There were also occasional European and Chinese captives who were usually ransomed off through Tausug intermediaries of the Sulu Sultanate. There was also a slave trade that occurred in
Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...
which involved people from
Flores Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Administratively, it forms the largest island in the East Nusa Tenggara Province. The area is 14,250 km2. Including Komodo and Rinca islands ...
and
Sulawesi Sulawesi ( ), also known as Celebes ( ), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the List of islands by area, world's 11th-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Min ...
by Bugis slavers and Minangkabau, Siak and
Pekanbaru Pekanbaru is the capital city of the Indonesian province of Riau, and a major economic center on the eastern side of Sumatra, Sumatra Island with its name derived from the Malay language, Malay (Indonesian language, Indonesian) word for 'new mar ...
slaves obtained by Malay slavers documented in person by Abdullah Abdul Kadir in his autobiography. European powers finally succeeded in the mid-1800s in cutting off these raids through use of steam-powered warships.Thomas H. McKenna, ''Muslim Rulers and Rebels'', University of California Press, 1998James Francis Warren,
The Port of Jolo and the Sulu Zone Slave Trade
, ''The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies No. 25'', 2007


Modern times

The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborer") were forced to work by the Japanese military in
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%. Within the Asia-Pacific region, there were as of 2015 an estimated 11.7 million trafficked people; within the Asia Pacific, the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), which includes
Cambodia Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...
,
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
,
Laos Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and ...
,
Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...
(Myanmar),
Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...
and
Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...
, "features some of the most extensive flows of migration and human trafficking."Why Southeast Asia struggles to tackle modern-day slavery
Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave"), commonly shortened to DW (), is a German state-funded television network, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the Federal Government of Germany. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite tele ...
(9 April 2015).
Industries with major problems with human trafficking and forced labor in Southeast Asia include
fisheries Fishery can mean either the enterprise of raising or harvesting fish and other aquatic life or, more commonly, the site where such enterprise takes place ( a.k.a., fishing grounds). Commercial fisheries include wild fisheries and fish farm ...
, agriculture, manufacturing, construction and
domestic work A domestic worker is a person who works within a residence and performs a variety of household services for an individual, from providing cleaning and household maintenance, or cooking, laundry and ironing, or care for children and elderly ...
. The child sex trade has also plagued southeast Asia, where " st sources agree that far more than 1 million underage children are 'effectively enslaved as of 2006. Thai women are frequently lured and sold to brothels where they are forced to work off their price. Burmese are commonly trafficked into Thailand for work in factories, as domestics, for street begging directed by organized gangs. According to the
International Labour Organization The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is one of the firs ...
(ILO), an estimated 800,000 people are subject to forced labor in
Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...
. In November 2006, the International Labour Organization announced it will be seeking "to prosecute members of the ruling Myanmar junta for crimes against humanity" over the continuous forced labor of its citizens by the military at the
International Court of Justice The International Court of Justice (ICJ; , CIJ), or colloquially the World Court, is the only international court that Adjudication, adjudicates general disputes between nations, and gives advisory opinions on International law, internation ...
. As of end-2015,
Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...
has acceded to international standards of prosecuting and convicting
human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...
traffickers under the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (also referred to as the Trafficking Protocol or UN TIP Protocol) is a Protocol (diplomacy), protocol to the United Nations Convention Against Tran ...
.


Further reading

*Gwyn Campbell (2004), ''The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia''. Abingdon: Routledge. *Titas Chakraborty and Matthias van Rossum. "Slave Trade and Slavery in Asia-- New Perspectives", ''Journal of Social History'' 54:1, pp. 1–14. *Chatterjee, Indrani (2006). ''Slavery and South Asian History''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. *Jeff Eden (2018), ''Slavery and Empire in Central Asia''. New York: Cambridge University Press. *Scott C. Levi (2002), "Hindus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade", ''Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society'', 12:3, pp. 277-288. * *Lal, K. S. (1994). ''The Muslim Slave System in Medieval India''. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. *Salim Kidwai (1985). "Sultans, Eunuchs and Domestics: New Forms of Bondage in Medieval India", in Utsa Patnaik and Manjari Dingwaney (eds), ''Chains of Servitude: bondage and slavery in India.'' Madras: Orient Longman. *Major, Andrea (2014). ''Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772–1843.'' Liverpool University Press. *R.C. Majumdar, ''The History and Culture of the Indian People.'' Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. *Samonova, Elena (2019). ''Modern Slavery and Bonded Labor in South Asia: A Human Rights-Based Approach''. Abingdon: Routledge. *Andre Wink (1991). ''Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World.'' Leiden: Brill Academic,


See also

* Slavery in the Mongol Empire *
Slavery in the Ottoman Empire Chattel slavery was a major institution and a significant part of the Ottoman Empire's economy and traditional society. The main sources of slaves were wars and politically organized enslavement expeditions in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, S ...
* '' That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500''


References


External links


Mémoire St Barth : Saint-Barthelemy's history (slave trade, slavery, abolitions)

UN.GIFT
– Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking

*
Parliament and the British Slave Trade
at UK Parliament.
Digital History – "Slavery Fact Sheets"
*
Muslim Slave System in Medieval India
by K.S. Lal at Voice of Dharma.
"Scotland and the Abolition of the Slave Trade"
at Education Scotland.


Teaching resources about Slavery and Abolition on blackhistory4schools.com

"What really ended slavery?"
Robin Blackburn, author of a two-volume history of the slave trade, interviewed by ''
International Socialism ''International Socialism'' is a British-based quarterly journal established in 1960 and published in London by the Socialist Workers Party which discusses socialist theory. It is currently edited by Joseph Choonara who replaced Alex Callini ...
'' *
David Brion Davis David Brion Davis (February 16, 1927 – April 14, 2019) was an American intellectual and cultural historian, and a leading authority on slavery and abolition in the Western world. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, ...

"American and British Slave Trade Abolition in Perspective"
''Southern Spaces'', 4 February 2009.
The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today
– video report by ''
Democracy Now! ''Democracy Now!'' is an hour-long TV, radio, and Internet news program based in Manhattan and hosted by journalists Amy Goodman (who also acts as the show's executive producer), Juan González, and Nermeen Shaikh. The show, which airs live ...
''
Archives on slavery at the University of London

Slavery Museum, Great Britain
{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of Slavery
Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...
Slavery in Asia
Slavery Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
ja:奴隷貿易 zh:奴隸貿易