Global Neo-slavery: A Consideration of the
Contemporary Relevance of
Slave Narratives (1)
• The emancipation process in the British Caribbean during
1833-1838 witnessed the release of approximately 720,000 slaves.
• The US Civil War released approximately 2.5 million slaves.
• The liberation of African slaves in Cuba in 1872 and Brazil in
1888 released several million more slaves. Peonage and extra-legal enslavement of indigenous populations continued
throughout central and southern American countries until well into the 20th century.
• Between 1892-1908, King Leopold II’s colonial government of the
Congo enslaved millions on agricultural plantations and killed
an estimated two million Congolese in the ‘Belgian
clearances.’
• In the mid-20th century, tens of millions of
forced-labor slaves spent years working in Europe
and Japan during World War II.
Reparations are still being paid to former slaves. Tens of thousands of Korean, Chinese and
Indonesian women were forced into sexual slavery as ‘comfort women.’ The survivors have received no
reparations.
• By 1951, however, a United Nations report on slavery concluded
that slavery was a disappearing institution, limited to a few
Arabian Gulf nations. This view was
the product of a restrictive legal definition of slavery. It rendered slavery an ‘exotic’ feature of backward
societies. The nature of slavery was
changing; most was now ‘invisible slavery.’
• Centers of global slavery now include Brazil, Pakistan, India
(the dalit class), Thailand, Mauritania,
and Sudan. The International Labor
Organization estimates that 8.4 million children are slaves today, a
larger number than the total of slaves freed in the Americas in the
nineteenth century.