Slaves and Slavery, History of

Slavery has existed for millennia. It is both a status - an inferior person with no rights in a society - and a condition, a kind of humanity which was accorded fewer rights than other forms of humanity. A slave was the quintessential outsider. Most societies had slaves but only some societies - ancient Greece and Rome and the plantation colonies of European powers in the Americas - were slave societies in which slavery was essential to the economy and politically sensitive. In modern times, slavery has been strongly connected with race, especially the forced removal of Africans to the Americas to labor in the production of tropical goods