Modern Day Slavery

Slaves were bought and sold in many places, mostly for laboring farm land. In the Atlantic world during the 1500's and 1600’s there were many causes and effects to African slave trade. Many Europeans needed slaves to labor on their lands.

Slaves were often crammed and stacked into ships where many of them died of disease. Slave traders didn’t care much for these slaves because they were very easily replaceable. Many slaves were sent to work on sugar

Today, slavery is not something you see in modern day society. For the most part, people are treated fairly while working, are given benefits such as holidays and the option to take a sick day when feeling ill, and are paid a good wage for their services as an employee. But unfortunately this was not the case back in the 1800s where slavery was popular among the southern parts of the United States.

Slavery has been continueing for centruies and forces humans to work under bad conditions. Each year, thousands of people are trafficked across borders or internally, and exploited for cheap labor or sexual services. People are forced to work in factories, domestic work, agriculture. Children are taken away from their school life, education and used for child soldiers, child marriage and child domestic slavery. Even as a child, they are forced to work or any kind of thing that come to our mind. There are 10 millions children appointed, and more that we have not reached yet. Women are forced into prostitution, marriage, to work under hard conditions. There are estimated 40.3 million people in modern slavery all around the world.It is “modern-day slavery” with more slaves at work today than there has ever been at any point in history.

Researchers found that more than ten thousand people are in forced labor across 90 US cities. These people are forced to work in sweatshops, clean homes, work on farms, or work as prostitutes or strippers. Many of these cases are accumulated in areas with large immigrant populations, like California, New York, and Florida. Most of the victims of forced labor are “imported” from 38 different countries. China, Mexico, and Vietnam top this list of countries (Gilmore 1).

In the United States, slavery had an overwhelming impact on their political, social, and economical. Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, the first African slaves were brought into the United States. Reasons were because the tobacco, sugar, rice, and coffee fields were expanding which led to increasing the demand for labor. The Atlantic slave trade was an inhuman systematic importation of slaves between the African traders, American planters, and the European merchants bargaining over human lives which led to the Middle Passage. 1675-1775, the slaves were the backbone of monoculture labor and so it was put into law to keep the Africans as slaves. “So prevalent was this Italian-operated slave trade that the word “slave” was derived from the word “Slav,” name for people from Slavic countries” (Williams 3). In both seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation.

The transatlantic slave trade began in the 15th century, after the Portuguese started exploring the coast of West Africa. This had a long term effect on Africa because even though it started out benefiting the upper class in Africa, the long term effect was devastating. When Europeans started to enter Africa, they enjoyed “the triple advantage of guns and other technology, widespread literacy, and the political organization necessary to sustain expensive programs of exploration and conquest”(Doc 4). Africa’s relations with Europe depended on common interests, which Europe did not share. Europe’s contact with Africa, involving economic exchanges and political relationships, was not mutually beneficial.

With the European discovery of the New World, African slave trade began to grow. Slaves were traded and bought and then shipped to some other place and then sold. Europeans would trade things for slaves then bring them to places like the West Indies and sell them. They would then buy goods and bring the goods back to Europe. This was the triangular trade system. Slaves played a vital role in trade all over the world, old and new. Although African slavery had already existed, there were many reasons as to why it was needed during the Atlantic World and there were many effects of this.

During the mid-fifteenth century, the transatlantic slave trade occurred throughout the world and lasted well over four hundred years. Oversea trade between Africa and the Portuguese, along with other European kingdoms, formed, which began what is known as the transatlantic slave trade. Along with a variety of goods, copious amounts of slaves, roughly twenty-five million, were traded between the continents of Europe and Africa. Driving the trade were politics, economics, religion, business, and a desire for profit. Along with the majority of the African population being traded elsewhere in the world, the overwhelming amount of deaths and low fertility rate among the indigenous people neared the African culture to distinction. Among the documents provided, all can be grouped into two main groups: attitudes and impact. During the years 1450 to 1800, the Europeans showed a large amount of varied opinions towards the Transatlantic Trade slave and the impact of the trade towards the included civilizations.

It is sad but today people are being bought, sold, and smuggled like modern-day slavery plus it's happening not only in third world countries, but also in the United States. In the U.S Constitution the 13th Amendment states,“‘Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”’ (A+E Networks,2015), which means the 13th amendment made slavery and involuntary servitude illegal everywhere in the United States. Human Trafficking can be limited by parental awareness to educate their own children to be safe. Human Trafficking also be limited by the government having stricter country and international

It is believed that the main reason Atlantic slave trade started to develop is that sugar in the Caribbean was a cash crop that needed mass production, and the only way to do that was to have laborers. Sugar was grown on large plantations and required huge amounts of labor, making forced labor

Human trafficking is something that has gone on for a very long time, beginning as early as the 1400s with slaves being used and traded. As stated by Jones, Hillard, and Diaz (2007), “human trafficking is both a global problem and a domestic problem” (p.108-109), meaning human trafficking affects and takes place all over the world. Overpopulation, poverty, and so forth, are examples of domestic problems; they also increasing the chances of human trafficking taking place. Immigrants are usually the ones exploited for human trafficking with promises of great pay, jobs, living, and comfort. Trafficking, unlike smuggling, is correlated with deception to ultimately achieve exploitation. Since they don’t have rights as citizens, and are technically illegally here, immigrants comply with the orders they are given (Jonas et al., 2007).

In 1865 slavery was abolished in the United States. At least that it was most Americans believe but that is not the case. In today’s society we have an issue that is just a horrific as slavery back in the day. It is the trafficking of women and children. The online Oxford Dictionary defines human trafficking as, “ the illegal movement of people, typically for the purposes of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation.” Therefore, this is modern day slavery. Women and children are being tortured, abused, and scared physically and mentally for the rest of their lives. Also, once in the sex-trade business it is very unlikely that the victim will come out alive. About 30,000 women and children are found dead each year due to them being

The nature of human trafficking consists of men, women, and children being bought and sold for purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Human trafficking is synonymous with slavery and deprives the victim of basic human rights. It is a process that begins with an individual seeking an opportunity to improve their life through work or immigration, and ends with the person being exploited and enslaved. The United Nations International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that over 20.9 million adults and children are enslaved at any given time. Human trafficking is becoming increasingly prevalent in developing countries despite being illegal in every nation on Earth. The path towards reducing human trafficking begins with educating the public on the severity of the issue and ends with legislation that will protect the victims of human trafficking while allowing perpetrators to be prosecuted successfully (MTV Exit 2013).

From the seventeenth century on slaves became the focus of trade between Europe and Africa. Europe’s conquest and colonization of North and South America and the Caribbean islands from the fifteenth century onward created an insatiable demand for African laborers, who were deemed more fit to work in the tropical conditions of the New World. The amount of slaves took across the Atlantic Ocean slowly grew, from around 5,000 slaves a year in the sixteenth century to more than 100,000 slaves a year by the eighteenth century.