While some form of slavery was common throughout human history, the specific notion of chattel slavery reached its modern extreme in the Americas during European colonization. Chattel slaveryĪs a social institution, chattel slavery classes slaves as chattels ( personal property) owned by the enslaver like livestock, they can be bought and sold at will. Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with person implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of 'carry them forward as people, not the property that they were'. There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as ' unfree labourer' or ' enslaved person', rather than 'slave', should be used when describing the victims of slavery. Īlternative contemporary hypothesis states that Medieval Latin sclāvus via * scylāvus derives from Byzantine σκυλάω, σκυλεύω - 'to strip the enemy (killed in a battle)', 'to make booty / extract spoils of war'. However this version is disputed since 19th century. Īccording to the widespread view, which is known since 18th century, Byzantine Σκλάβινοι, Έσκλαβηνοί, borrowed from Slavic gen self-name * Slověninŭ turned into Σκλάβος, Έσκλαβήνος ( Late Latin Sclāvus) in the meaning 'prisoner of war Slave', 'slave' in 8th/9th century, because they often became captured and enslaved. The word slave arrived in modern English from Middle English sclave, from Old French esclave, from Late Middle High German sklave, from Medieval Latin sclāvus, from Late Latin Sclāvus, from Byzantine Greek Σκλάβος, Έσκλαβήνος. In industrialised countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery in non-industrialised countries, enslavement by debt bondage is a common form of enslaving a person, such as captive domestic servants, forced marriage, and child soldiers. In the modern world, more than 50 percent of enslaved people provide forced labour, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy. In 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26 percent were children, were enslaved throughout the world despite it being illegal. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes the conditions of unfree labour and forced labour that most slaves endure. In chattel slavery, the enslaved person is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the slave owner. In the course of human history, slavery was a typical feature of civilization, legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed in most countries of the world, except as a punishment for a crime. Although most forms of slavery are explicitly involuntary and involve the coercion of the enslaved, there also exists voluntary slavery, entered into by the enslaved to pay a debt or obtain money. The duration of a person's enslavement might be for life, or for a fixed period of time, after which freedom would be granted. Many historical cases of enslavement occurred when the enslaved broke the law, became indebted, or suffered a military defeat other forms of slavery were instituted along demographic lines such as race. Slavery typically involves the enslaved person being made to perform some form of work while also having their location or residence dictated by the enslaver.

Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave, who is someone forbidden to quit their service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as their property.

Banded abduction