The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. Likewise, its victims have come from many different ethnicities and religious groups. The social, economic, and legal positions of slaves have differed vastly in different systems of slavery in different times and places.[1] Slavery has been found in some hunter-gatherer populations, particularly as hereditary slavery,[2][3] but the conditions of agriculture with increasing social and economic complexity offer greater opportunity for mass chattel slavery.[4] Slavery was institutionalized by the time the first civilizations emerged (such as Sumer in Mesopotamia,[5] which dates back as far as 3500 BC). Slavery features in the MesopotamianCode of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BC), which refers to it as an established institution.[6] Slavery was widespread in the ancient world in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.[7][8][4]
Slavery became less common throughout Europe during the Early Middle Ages but continued to be practiced in some areas. Both Christians and Muslims captured and enslaved each other during centuries of warfare in the Mediterranean and Europe.[9]Islamic slavery encompassed mainly Western and Central Asia, Northern and Eastern Africa, India, and Europe from the 7th to the 20th century. Islamic law approved of enslavement of non-Muslims, and slaves were trafficked from non-Muslim lands: from the North via the Balkan slave trade and the Crimean slave trade; from the East via the Bukhara slave trade; from the West via Andalusian slave trade; and from the South via the Trans-Saharan slave trade, the Red Sea slave trade and the Indian Ocean slave trade.
Beginning in the 16th century, European merchants, starting mainly with merchants from Portugal, initiated the transatlantic slave trade. Few traders ventured far inland, attempting to avoid tropical diseases and violence. They mostly purchased imprisoned Africans (and exported commodities including gold and ivory) from West African kingdoms, transporting them to Europe's colonies in the Americas. The merchants were sources of desired goods including guns, gunpowder, copper manillas, and cloth, and this demand for imported goods drove local wars and other means to the enslavement of Africans in ever greater numbers.[10] In India and throughout the New World, people were forced into slavery to create the local workforce. The transatlantic slave trade was eventually curtailed after European and American governments passed legislation abolishing their nations' involvement in it. Practical efforts to enforce the abolition of slavery included the British Preventative Squadron and the American African Slave Trade Patrol, the abolition of slavery in the Americas, and the widespread imposition of European political control in Africa.
In modern times, human trafficking remains an international problem. Slavery in the 21st century continues and generates an estimated $150 billion in annual profits.[11] Populations in regions with armed conflict are especially vulnerable, and modern transportation has made human trafficking easier.[12] In 2019, there were an estimated 40.3 million people worldwide subject to some form of slavery, and 25% were children.[11] 24.9 million are used for forced labor, mostly in the private sector; 15.4 million live in forced marriages.[11] Forms of slavery include domestic labour, forced labour in manufacturing, fishing, mining and construction, and sexual slavery.[11]
Main article: Slavery in antiquity
Evidence of slavery predates written records; the practice has existed in many cultures[13][8] and can be traced back 11,000 years ago due to the conditions created by the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution.[14][8][7][dubious – discuss] Economic surpluses and high population densities were conditions that made mass slavery viable.[15][16]
Slavery occurred in civilizations including ancient Egypt, ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, ancient Israel,[17][18][19]ancient Greece, ancient India, the Roman Empire, the Arab Islamic Caliphates and Sultanates, Nubia, the pre-colonial empires of Sub-Saharan Africa, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.[20] Ancient slavery consists of a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, prisoners of war, child abandonment, and children born to slaves.[21]
Main articles: Slavery in Africa, Trans-Saharan slave trade, Red Sea slave trade, Indian Ocean slave trade, and Atlantic slave trade
Further information: Slave Coast of West Africa, Swahili coast, and Barbary coast
Writing in 1984, French historian Fernand Braudel noted that slavery had been endemic in Africa and part of the structure of everyday life throughout the 15th to the 18th century. "Slavery came in different guises in different societies: there were court slaves, slaves incorporated into princely armies, domestic and household slaves, slaves working on the land, in industry, as couriers and intermediaries, even as traders".[23] During the 16th century, Europe began to outpace the Arab world in the export traffic, with its trafficking of slaves from Africa to the Americas.[24] The Dutch imported slaves from Asia into their colony at the Cape of Good Hope (now Cape Town) in the 17th century.[25] In 1807 Britain (which already held a small coastal territory, intended for the resettlement of former slaves, in Freetown, Sierra Leone) made the slave trade within its empire illegal with the Slave Trade Act 1807, and worked to extend the prohibition to other territory,[26]: 42 as did the United States in 1808.[27]
In Senegambia, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the Western Sudan, including Ghana (750–1076), Mali (1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai (1275–1591), about a third of the population was enslaved. The earliest Akan state of Bonoman which had third of its population being enslaved in the 17th century. In Sierra Leone in the 19th century about half of the population consisted of slaves. In the 19th century at least half the population was enslaved among the Duala of the Cameroon, the Igbo and other peoples of the lower Niger, the Kongo, and the Kasanje kingdom and Chokwe of Angola. Among the Ashanti and Yoruba a third of the population consisted of slaves as well as Bono.[28] The population of the Kanem was about one third enslaved. It was perhaps 40% in Bornu (1396–1893). Between 1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the Fulani jihad states consisted of slaves. The population of the Sokoto caliphate formed by Hausas in northern Nigeria and Cameroon was half-slave in the 19th century. It is estimated that up to 90% of the population of Arab-SwahiliZanzibar was enslaved. Roughly half the population of Madagascar was enslaved.[29][30][page needed][31][32][33]
Slavery in Ethiopia persisted until 1942. The Anti-Slavery Society estimated that there were 2,000,000 slaves in the early 1930s, out of an estimated population of between 8 and 16 million.[34] It was finally abolished by order of emperor Haile Selassie on 26 August 1942.[35]
When British rule was first imposed on the Sokoto Caliphate and the surrounding areas in northern Nigeria at the turn of the 20th century, approximately 2 million to 2.5 million people living there were enslaved.[36] Slavery in northern Nigeria was finally outlawed in 1936.[37]
Writing in 1998 about the extent of trade coming through and from Africa, the Congolese journalist Elikia M'bokolo wrote "The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth)." He continues: "Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean"[38]
Main articles: Slavery in Africa, Red Sea slave trade, Indian Ocean slave trade, and Trans-Saharan slave trade
Zanzibar was once East Africa's main slave-trading port, during the Indian Ocean slave trade and under Omani Arabs in the 19th century, with as many as 50,000 slaves passing through the city each year.[40]
Prior to the 16th century, the bulk of slaves exported from Africa were shipped from East Africa to the Arabian peninsula. Zanzibar became a leading port in this trade.[41] Arab traders of slaves differed from European ones in that they would often conduct raiding expeditions themselves, sometimes penetrating deep into the continent. They also differed in that their market greatly preferred the purchase of enslaved females over male.[42]
The increased presence of European rivals along the East coast led Arab traders to concentrate on the overland slave caravan routes across the Sahara from the Sahel to North Africa. The German explorer Gustav Nachtigal reported seeing slave caravans departing from Kukawa in Bornu bound for Tripoli and Egypt in 1870. The trade of slaves represented the major source of revenue for the state of Bornu as late as 1898. The eastern regions of the Central African Republic have never recovered demographically from the impact of 19th-century raids from the Sudan and still have a population density of less than 1 person/km2.[43] During the 1870s, European initiatives against the trade of slaves caused an economic crisis in northern Sudan, precipitating the rise of Mahdist forces. Mahdi's victory created an Islamic state, one that quickly reinstituted slavery.[44][45]
European involvement in the East African trade of enslaved people began when Portugal established Estado da Índia in the early 16th century. From then until the 1830s, c. 200 enslaved people were exported from Portuguese Mozambique annually and similar figures has been estimated for enslaved people brought from Asia to the Philippines during the Iberian Union (1580–1640).[46][47][citation needed]
The Middle Passage, the crossing of the Atlantic to the Americas, endured by slaves laid out in rows in the holds of ships, was only one element of the well-known triangular trade engaged in by Portuguese, American, Dutch, Danish-Norwegians,[48] French, British and others. Ships having landed with slaves in Caribbean ports would take on sugar, indigo, raw cotton, and later coffee, and make for Liverpool, Nantes, Lisbon or Amsterdam. Ships leaving European ports for West Africa would carry printed cotton textiles, some originally from India, copper utensils and bangles, pewter plates and pots, iron bars more valued than gold, hats, trinkets, gunpowder and firearms and alcohol. Tropical shipworms were eliminated in the cold Atlantic waters, and at each unloading, a profit was made.[citation needed]
The Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century when the largest number of people were captured and enslaved on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African states, such as the Bono State, Oyo empire (Yoruba), Kong Empire, Kingdom of Benin, Imamate of Futa Jallon, Imamate of Futa Toro, Kingdom of Koya, Kingdom of Khasso, Kingdom of Kaabu, Fante Confederacy, Ashanti Confederacy, Aro Confederacy and the kingdom of Dahomey.[49][50] Europeans rarely entered the interior of Africa, due to fear of disease and moreover fierce African resistance. The slaves were brought to coastal outposts where they were traded for goods. The people captured on these expeditions were shipped by European traders to the colonies of the New World. It is estimated that over the centuries, twelve to twenty million slaves were shipped from Africa by European traders, of whom some 15 percent died during the terrible voyage, many during the arduous journey through the Middle Passage. The great majority were shipped to the Americas, but some also went to Europe and Southern Africa. [citation needed]
While talking about the trade of slaves in East Africa in his journals, David Livingstone said
To overdraw its evil is a simple impossibility.[51]
While travelling in the African Great Lakes Region in 1866, Livingstone described a trail of slaves:
19th June 1866 – We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead, the people of the country explained that she had been unable to keep up with the other slaves in a gang, and her master had determined that she should not become anyone's property if she recovered.
26th June. – ...We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path: a group of men stood about a hundred yards off on one side, and another of the women on the other side, looking on; they said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer.
27th June 1866 – To-day we came upon a man dead from starvation, as he was very thin. One of our men wandered and found many slaves with slave-sticks on, abandoned by their masters from want of food; they were too weak to be able to speak or say where they had come from; some were quite young.[52]
The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be broken-heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves... Twenty one were unchained, as now safe; however all ran away at once; but eight with many others still in chains, died in three days after the crossing. They described their only pain in the heart, and placed the hand correctly on the spot, though many think the organ stands high up in the breast-bone.[53]
See also: Atlantic slave trade and Sara Forbes Bonetta
African states played a key role in the trade of slaves, and slavery was a common practice among Sub Saharan Africans even before the involvement of the Arabs, Berbers and Europeans. There were three types: those who were enslaved through conquest, instead of unpaid debts, or those whose parents gave them as property to tribal chiefs. Chieftains would barter their slaves to Arab, Berber, Ottoman or European buyers for rum, spices, cloth or other goods.[54] Selling captives or prisoners was a common practice among Africans, Turks, Berbers and Arabs during that era. However, as the Atlantic trade of slaves increased its demand, local systems which primarily serviced indentured servitude expanded. European trading of slaves, as a result, was the most pivotal change in the social, economic, cultural, spiritual, religious, political dynamics of the concept of trading in slaves. It ultimately undermined local economies and political stability as villages' vital labour forces were shipped overseas as slave raids and civil wars became commonplace. Crimes which were previously punishable by some other means became punishable by enslavement.[55]
Slavery already existed in Kingdom of Kongo prior to the arrival of the Portuguese. Because it had been established within his kingdom, Afonso I of Kongo believed that the slave trade should be subject to Kongo law. When he suspected the Portuguese of receiving illegally slaves to sell, he wrote letters to the King João III of Portugal in 1526 imploring him to put a stop to the practice.[56]
The kings of Dahomey sold their war captives into transatlantic slavery, who otherwise may have been killed in a ceremony known as the Annual Customs. As one of West Africa's principal slave states, Dahomey became extremely unpopular with neighbouring peoples.[57][58][59] Like the Bambara Empire to the east, the Khasso kingdoms depended heavily on the slave trade for their economy. A family's status was indicated by the number of slaves it owned, leading to wars for the sole purpose of taking more captives. This trade led the Khasso into increasing contact with the European settlements of Africa's west coast, particularly the French.[60]Benin grew increasingly rich during the 16th and 17th centuries on the trade of slaves with Europe; slaves from enemy states of the interior were sold, and carried to the Americas in Dutch and Portuguese ships. The Bight of Benin's shore soon came to be known as the "Slave Coast".[61]
In the 1840s, King Gezo of Dahomey said:[62][63]
"The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth...the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery."
In 1807 the United Kingdom made the international trade of slaves illegal with the Slave Trade Act. The Royal Navy was deployed to prevent slavers from the United States, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, West Africa and Arabia. The King of Bonny (now in Nigeria) allegedly became dissatisfied of the British intervention in stopping the trade of slaves:[64]
"We think this trade must go on. That is the verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself."
Joseph Miller states that African buyers would prefer males, but in reality, women and children would be more easily captured as men fled. Those captured would be sold for various reasons such as food, debts, or servitude. Once captured, the journey to the coast killed many and weakened others. Disease engulfed many, and insufficient food damaged those who made it to the coasts. Scurvy was common, and was often referred to as mal de Luanda ("Luanda sickness," after the port in Angola).[65] The assumption for those who died on the journey died from malnutrition. As food was limited, water may have been just as bad. Dysentery was widespread and poor sanitary conditions at ports did not help. Since supplies were poor, slaves were not equipped with the best clothing, meaning they were even more exposed to diseases.[65]
On top of the fear of disease, people were afraid of why they were being captured. The popular assumption was that Europeans were cannibals. Stories and rumours spread that whites captured Africans to eat them.[65]Olaudah Equiano accounts his experience about the sorrow slaves encountered at the ports. He talks about his first moment on a slave ship and asked if he was going to be eaten.[66] Yet, the worst for slaves has only begun, and the journey on the water proved to be more harrowing. For every 100 Africans captured, only 64 would reach the coast, and only about 50 would reach the New World.[65]
Others believe that slavers had a vested interest in capturing rather than killing, and in keeping their captives alive; and that this coupled with the disproportionate removal of males and the introduction of new crops from the Americas (cassava, maize) would have limited general population decline to particular regions of western Africa around 1760–1810, and in Mozambique and neighbouring areas half a century later. There has also been speculation that within Africa, females were most often captured as brides, with their male protectors being a "bycatch" who would have been killed if there had not been an export market for them.
British explorer Mungo Park encountered a group of slaves when traveling through Mandinka country:
They were all very inquisitive, but they viewed me at first with looks of horror, and repeatedly asked if my countrymen were cannibals. They were very desirous to know what became of the slaves after they had crossed the salt water. I told them that they were employed in cultivation the land; but they would not believe me ... A deeply-rooted idea that the whites purchase negroes for the purpose of devouring them, or of selling them to others that they may be devoured hereafter, naturally makes the slaves contemplate a journey towards the coast with great terror, insomuch that the slatees are forced to keep them constantly in irons, and watch them very closely, to prevent their escape.[67]
During the period from the late 19th century and early 20th century, demand for the labour-intensive harvesting of rubber drove frontier expansion and forced labour. The personal monarchy of Belgian King Leopold II in the Congo Free State saw mass killings and slavery to extract rubber.[68]
See also: Atlantic slave trade
Surviving the voyage was the main struggle. Close quarters meant everyone was infected by any diseases that spread, including the crew. Death was so common that ships were called tumbeiros, or floating tombs.[69] What shocked Africans the most was how death was handled in the ships. Smallwood says the traditions for an African death were delicate and community-based. On ships, bodies would be thrown into the sea. Because the sea represented bad omens, bodies in the sea represented a form of purgatory and the ship a form of hell. Any Africans who made the journey would have survived extreme disease and malnutrition, as well as trauma from being on the open ocean and the death of their friends.[69]
Main articles: Barbary slave trade, Slavery in Morocco, Slavery in Algeria, Slavery in Tunisia, and Slavery in Libya
In Algiers during the time of the Regency of Algiers in North Africa in the 19th century, up to 1.5 million Christians and Europeans were captured and forced into slavery.[70] This eventually led to the Bombardment of Algiers in 1816 by the British and Dutch, forcing the Dey of Algiers to free many slaves.[71]
See also: Slavery in the 21st century, Slavery in contemporary Africa, and Slavery in 21st-century jihadism
The trading of children has been reported in modern Nigeria and Benin. In parts of Ghana, a family may be punished for an offense by having to turn over a virgin female to serve as a sex slave within the offended family. In this instance, the woman does not gain the title or status of "wife". In parts of Ghana, Togo, and Benin, shrine slavery persists, despite being illegal in Ghana since 1998. In this system of ritual servitude, sometimes called trokosi (in Ghana) or voodoosi in Togo and Benin, young virgin girls are given as slaves to traditional shrines and are used sexually by the priests in addition to providing free labor for the shrine.[citation needed]
An article in the Middle East Quarterly in 1999 reported that slavery is endemic in Sudan.[72] Estimates of abductions during the Second Sudanese Civil War range from 14,000 to 200,000 people.[73]
During the Second Sudanese Civil War people were taken into slavery; estimates of abductions range from 14,000 to 200,000. Abduction of Dinka women and children was common.[74] In Mauritania it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are currently enslaved, many of them used as bonded labor.[75]Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007.[76]
During the Darfur conflict that began in 2003, many people were kidnapped by Janjaweed and sold into slavery as agricultural labor, domestic servants and sex slaves.[77][78][79]
In Niger, slavery is also a current phenomenon. A Nigerien study has found that more than 800,000 people are enslaved, almost 8% of the population.[80][81][82] Niger installed an anti-slavery provision in 2003.[83][84] In a landmark ruling in 2008, the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice declared that the Republic of Niger failed to protect Hadijatou Mani Koraou from slavery, and awarded Mani CFA 10,000,000 (approximately US$20,000) in reparations.[85]
Sexual slavery and forced labor are common in the Democratic Republic of Congo.[86][87][88]
Many pygmies in the Republic of Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo belong from birth to Bantus in a system of slavery.[89][90]
Evidence emerged in the late 1990s of systematic slavery in cacao plantations in West Africa; see the chocolate and slavery article.[62]
According to the U.S. State Department, more than 109,000 children were working on cocoa farms alone in Ivory Coast in "the worst forms of child labour" in 2002.[91]
On the night of 14–15 April 2014, a group of militants attacked the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Nigeria. They broke into the school, pretending to be guards,[92] telling the girls to get out and come with them.[93] A large number of students were taken away in trucks, possibly into the Konduga area of the Sambisa Forest where Boko Haram were known to have fortified camps.[93] Houses in Chibok were also burned down in the incident.[94] According to police, approximately 276 children were taken in the attack, of whom 53 had escaped as of 2 May.[95] Other reports said that 329 girls were kidnapped, 53 had escaped and 276 were still missing.[96][97][98] The students have been forced to convert to Islam[99] and into marriage with members of Boko Haram, with a reputed "bride price" of ₦2,000 each ($12.50/£7.50).[100][101] Many of the students were taken to the neighbouring countries of Chad and Cameroon, with sightings reported of the students crossing borders with the militants, and sightings of the students by villagers living in the Sambisa Forest, which is considered a refuge for Boko Haram.[101][102]
On 5 May 2014 a video in which Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the kidnappings emerged. Shekau claimed that "Allah instructed me to sell them...I will carry out his instructions"[103] and "[s]lavery is allowed in my religion, and I shall capture people and make them slaves."[104] He said the girls should not have been in school and instead should have been married since girls as young as nine are suitable for marriage.[103][104]
See also: Slavery in Libya
During the Second Libyan Civil War Libyans started capturing[105] some of the Sub-Saharan African migrants trying to get to Europe through Libya and selling them on slave markets.[106][107] Slaves are often ransomed to their families and in the meantime until ransom can be paid, they may be tortured, forced to work, sometimes worked to death, and eventually they may be executed or left to starve if the payment has not been made after a period of time. Women are often raped and used as sex slaves and sold to brothels.[108][109][110][111]
Many child migrants also suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya.[112][113]
To participate in the slave trade in Spanish America, bankers and trading companies had to pay the Spanish king for the license, called the Asiento de Negros, but an unknown amount of the trade was illegal. After 1670 when the Spanish Empire declined substantially they outsourced part of the slave trade to the Dutch (1685–1687), the Portuguese, the French (1698–1713) and the English (1713–1750), also providing organized depots in the Caribbean islands to the Dutch, British and French America. As a result of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), the British government obtained the monopoly (asiento de negros) of selling African slaves in Spanish America, which was granted to the South Sea Company. Meanwhile, slave trading became a core business for privately owned enterprises in the Americas.
Main articles: Slavery in the Aztec Empire and Slavery in Pre-Columbian America
In Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica the most common forms of slavery were those of prisoners of war and debtors. People unable to pay back debts could be sentenced to work as slaves to the people owed until the debts were worked off, as a form of indentured servitude. Warfare was important to Maya society, because raids on surrounding areas provided the victims required for human sacrifice, as well as slaves for the construction of temples.[114] Most victims of human sacrifice were prisoners of war or slaves.[115] Slavery was not usually hereditary; children of slaves were born free. In the Inca Empire, workers were subject to a mita instead of taxes which they paid by working for the government. Each ayllu, or extended family, would decide which family member to send to do the work. It is unclear if this labor draft or corvée counts as slavery. The Spanish adopted this system, particularly for their silver mines in Bolivia.[116]
Other slave-owning societies and tribes of the New World were, for example, the Tehuelche of Patagonia, the Comanche of Texas, the Caribs of Dominica, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the fishing societies, such as the Yurok, that lived along the west coast of North America from what is now Alaska to California, the Pawnee and Klamath.[117] Many of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, such as the Haida and Tlingit, were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war.[clarification needed] Among some Pacific Northwest tribes, about a quarter of the population was enslaved.[118][119] One slave narrative was composed by an Englishman, John R. Jewitt, who had been taken alive when his ship was captured in 1802; his memoir provides a detailed look at life as a slave, and asserts that a large number were held.
Main article: Slavery in Brazil
See also: Bandeirantes
Slavery was a mainstay of the Brazilian colonial economy, especially in mining and sugarcane production.[120] 35.3% of all slaves from the Atlantic Slave trade went to Colonial Brazil. 4 million slaves were obtained by Brazil, 1.5 million more than any other country.[121] Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade enslaved Africans to work the sugar plantations, once the native Tupi people deteriorated. Although Portuguese Prime Minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal prohibited the importation of slaves into Continental Portugal on 12 February 1761, slavery continued in her overseas colonies. Slavery was practiced among all classes. slaves were owned by upper and middle classes, by the poor, and even by other slaves.[122]
From São Paulo, the Bandeirantes, adventurers mostly of mixed Portuguese and native ancestry, penetrated steadily westward in their search for Indians to enslave. Along the Amazon River and its major tributaries, repeated slaving raids and punitive attacks left their mark. One French traveler in the 1740s described hundreds of miles of river banks with no sign of human life and once-thriving villages that were devastated and empty. In some areas of the Amazon Basin, and particularly among the Guarani of southern Brazil and Paraguay, the Jesuits had organized their Jesuit Reductions along military lines to fight the slavers. In the mid-to-late 19th century, many Amerindians were enslaved to work on rubber plantations.[123][124][125]
Slaves that escaped formed Maroon communities which played an important role in the histories of Brazil and other countries such as Suriname, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica. In Brazil, the Maroon villages were called palenques or quilombos. Maroons survived by growing vegetables and hunting. They also raided plantations