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→Racial Slavery
Slavery as a form of war booty or bondage for being in debt largely continued in many societies even after ancient periods and into the Medieval period. Slavery did vary across societies, where sometimes slaves were treated as part of the family. Slaves also had high positions of power and even sometimes became the ruling class, such as the Mamluks in Egypt. The Mamluks, meaning property, were brought in as slaves in Egypt and began to serve in the army. Over time, they became influential and took the reigns of power directly.<ref>For more on the history of the Mamluks, see: Winter, M., & Levanoni, A. (Eds.). (2004). The Mamluks in Egyptian and Syrian politics and society. Leiden ; Boston, MA: Brill.</ref>
However, racial-based slavery emerged as a new strand of slavery by the early Medieval period. Initially, Arab slave traders began to raid and establish slave colonies in Africa. The slaves, or called <i>zanj</i>, began to originate from Sub-Saharan Africa, which took advantage of other slave trade existing within Africa. Colonies soon developed, such as Zanzibar, that began as important ports for slave traders connecting the Arab Middle East and Africa. As many of these slaves were black, slavery over time began to be associated with racial aspects. No longer were slaves racially indistinguishable from others in society based on their skin color. Slavery and being black began to be associated together during the Medieval period.<ref>For more on the history of the early Arab slave trade, see: Curtis, V. S., Stewart, S., London Middle East Institute, & British Museum (Eds.). (2009). <i>The rise Rise of Islam</i>. London ; New York : New York: I. B. Tauris in association with The London Middle East Institute at SOAS and The British Museum : Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan, pg. 61.</ref> Slavery, nevertheless, did continue to be applied to people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. White Europeans, for instance, were sometimes enslaved by Arab traders and others, such as Viking raiders.
Nevertheless, the beginning of associating slavery with race in Europe began near the time of the discovery of the New World. The key change was the collapse of the Silk Road as a leading trade route in the Old World and the rise of transatlantic trade. The origin of Western race-based slavery began slightly earlier in the 15th century, with the Portuguese engaging more with Africa. From the beginning, slaves were often captured by other Africans in their inter-tribal wars. However, the New World presented itself as a vast area that needed a lot of labor and this substantially pushed the slave trade to new levels. For much of the African slave trade's history, European slave traders simply traded with Africans for slaves, where the slaves were then shipped to the New World as it became a major economic and political focus. The trade of slaves to the New World became associated with high intensity agricultural labor, such as the production of coffee and sugar cane, which were two emerging products in Europe in the 15-16th centuries (Figure 2).
It was the impetus of the slave trade that motivated European explorers to expand their exploration of Africa and the New World even more. In the 16th century, the profitability of agriculture in the New World and slaves became so great that it led to Portugal to directly take control of parts of Africa, specifically in Angola. This began the period of colonization by Europe in Africa that only ended in the 20th century. However, the trade was not completely one-way, as African states and tribes began to also exact tribute from European traders for access to the slave trade and to pay shipping fees as they moved slaves from the African coast.<ref>For more on the history of the African slave trade, see: Worger, W. H., Clark, N. L., & Alpers, E. A. (2010). <i>Africa and the West: a documentary history A Documentary History</i> (2nd ed). Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.</ref> However, over time the trade became more skewed in favor of Europeans.
By the 16th and 17th centuries, the Caribbean had emerged as a major destination for British, French, and Dutch interests. Slaves began to be moved to these areas in greater numbers. As British naval power expanded in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, they soon became the largest exporters of slaves as well as the Dutch. Europeans still mostly avoided going into interior regions of Africa, mostly depending on Africans to capture or bring them slaves. The difference between the European and African systems of slavery was the European system began to associated slavery as a racial-based enterprise, given that slaves were all black, while African slavery was based on warfare and was not even seen as inheritable to the children of slaves.<ref>For more on the African system of slavery and rise of the Caribbean slave trade, see: Klein, H. S., & Vinson, B. (2007). <i>African slavery Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean </i> (2nd ed). Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.</ref>
==Modern Day Slavery==
