What are slave dealers?

Answer 1

Dealers in the slave trade have existed for thousands of years. The Bible mentions slavery and how Hebrews who owned slaves, even Hebrew slaves, were to be treated. The Bible indicates that slaves should be treated fairly and eventually given their freedom.

Well over 3-4,000 years ago the Egyptians had slaves. They also had the peoples of Judea in slavery. The technicalities of the slave trade are not very well known in distant ancient history, however, there is enough evidence that soldiers captured in battle were often sold into slavery. If a city was sacked, then often times, the men women & children were sold into slavery.

The slave trading business is more documented in the histories of ancient Greece & Rome. Here are some examples:

A. Slave traders often followed Roman legions, and by trade acquired conquered peoples into slavery. Strong men were sometimes sold to owners of gladiator schools to train as such for the Roman Games.

B. ancient Rome often had Greek tutors who were slaves in their households to teach Roman children about the arts, literature, and history.

Moving the clock forward a few thousand years we see "modern" civilizations using slave labor. In the period of the 1600's to 1865, slave traders would exchange gold & silver with Tribal Chiefs in Black Africa in exchange for men & women under their control to the slave traders. These traders in turn sold their "slaves" to British held colonies to work on plantations in the West Indies.

Sometimes the slave traders simply captured slaves from Africa. Kidnapping at its worst.

There was a huge slave trade market in New Orleans, in North America. The city was founded by the French and the market for slaves was intense & large. Buyers could be large cotton plantation owners in the southeastern part of North America. Later it became a British trading market. Later a United States trading market.

By the early 1800's slavery was outlawed by most of the Western European powers.

More often than not, slave owners were compensated by governments so that slave owners would be paid for letting their slaves go free. The British, as example, had such a program in the British West Indies.

The problem that the Europeans overlooked was that their colonial empires enslaved entire nations. France, Britain, Spain and even Portugal & Belgium "owned" colonies world wide.

In the USA, slavery ended with the Civil War, and the USA changed its Constitution to outlaw slavery.

European colonialism did not end until well after the 2nd World War. Taking France as one example, only after years of bloody fighting did France give up its "colony" in Algeria. This was 1962.

Now, even today, there are reports of slavery deep in the Amazon, where rain forest trees are harvested for their timber. Reportedly people drawn there to work have found themselves to be used as "forced" labor.

Speaking of "forced" labor, a French company, with the cooperation of Egyptian leaders built the Suez Canal with forced labor in the late 1860's.

Also there is a slave trade in prostitutes. I have seen TV documentaries where poor women are offered " exotic" jobs in places such as Turkey. When the women arrive, they soon find themselves working as "sex slaves".

The business of dealing in human flesh is thousands of years old and is still practiced in Turkey.