Cover photo: “A Rest in the Desert” by the Czech-Swiss painter Otto Pilny (28 June 1866 – 22 July 1936) who specialized in Orientalist genre scenes.

Accusations of slavery and the slave trade often focus on Europe in the modern “guilt-driven” Western historiography, to the point where a significant percentage of people believe that slavery was invented or practiced exclusively by Europeans. However, the truth is that the history of slavery outside the West was a much more common and often more brutal practice.

Perhaps the most populous was the Arab slave trade, with numbers in the Sub-Saharan region alone estimated between 6 and 10 million. This trade emerged in the 7th century, a full 10 centuries before the Atlantic slave trade. Arabs sold Africans in the Middle East for various tasks, such as domestic work, porters, laborers, or harem guards. The castration of male slaves was a common practice, with little concern for their well-being, resulting in more than half of them bleeding to death. It is estimated that three-quarters of the captured slaves died before even reaching the slave markets for sale.

The Arabs also established a large network for slave trading in Europe. It is estimated that up to 1.25 million Europeans were enslaved by Berber pirates, who raided villages in coastal Mediterranean countries such as Italy and France, the territories of the Eastern Roman Empire, and Atlantic countries like England and Ireland, transporting them to North Africa for sale. In some cases, entire villages were captured, such as the Irish seaside village of Baltimore, which was raided in 1631.

Of course, the slave trade was not an Arab invention either. On the contrary, the enslavement of conquered tribes was already a common practice in Central Africa. The West African Songhai Empire relied heavily on captured slaves at all levels of society, including soldiers, making it one of the most important sources of revenue. Africans themselves also played a significant role in facilitating the transatlantic slave trade centuries later. African tribes conducted raids on rival groups to provide slaves for sale, and African middlemen facilitated the trade between European merchants (a large percentage of whom were Jewish in origin during the 17th century) and African suppliers.

Additionally, many slaves captured by Berber pirates were sold eastward to the Ottoman Empire. These slaves came from Africa, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and Southeast Europe. A large portion of them were “employed” in sexual slavery, which was a significant part of Ottoman society. Slavic women were highly preferred as slaves, and Köçeks became a popular source of entertainment in the 19th century—these were young boys, usually of European origin, who were circumcised and trained as dancers.

Moreover, hereditary slavery is documented in China dating back to the Xia dynasty around 2100 B.C. There were even Africans who were bought along the Silk Road and used as a symbol of wealth. Naturally, the owner had unlimited power over them and could resell or kill them if they were deemed no longer useful. Additionally, Chinese law began to treat women as property around 1000 A.D., and it became common practice to sell daughters and sisters as slaves. During the Han dynasty (206 B.C. – 220 A.D.), laws were issued to limit the ownership of slaves: each king or duke was allowed a maximum of 200 slaves, an imperial princess could have up to 100 slaves, and other officials were limited to 30 slaves each. Vietnam became a major source of slaves, particularly for sexual purposes, during its over thousand-year occupation by Chinese dynasties (111 B.C. – 939 A.D.).

Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of slaves from various ethnic backgrounds (Turks, Persians, Koreans, etc.) were used in monasteries, which grew increasingly wealthy and acquired more land. During the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), the widespread castration of thousands of men from the Miao tribe, including children, resulted in a large percentage of deaths. During the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), although reforms were introduced for the gradual abolition of slavery, it was still a fact that the number of slaves reached 2,000,000 (!).

In Siam (Thailand), during the reign of Rama III (1824–1851), it is estimated that there were at least 46,000 war slaves in addition to others. Slaves from independent populations were “relentlessly hunted and transported as slaves by the men of Siam and Cambodia.” In Southeast Asia, it is estimated that from 1770 to 1870, 200,000 to 300,000 people were enslaved by the tribes of what are now the Philippines, Iranun, and Banggai. The slaves were taken from settlements as far as the Strait of Malacca, Java, the southern coast of China, and the islands beyond the Makassar Strait. The scale of piracy and enslavement was so vast that the word for “pirate” in Malay became “Lanun,” synonymous with the Iranun people.

Further west, during the Afghan occupation of Persia (1722-1730), thousands of people were enslaved, and the Baluchis conducted regular raids into southeastern Iran to capture more people and turn them into slaves. Most slaves were employed as farmers, domestic servants, and, of course, for sexual exploitation. Additionally, societies throughout Central Asia independently developed their local practice of slavery and integrated the slave trade network into the development of the Silk Road, which connected scattered markets across Eurasia. Finally, slavery was prevalent in every corner of Asia, from Japan and Korea to the mosaic of nomadic tribes across the vast steppes and the remote mountains of the Caucasus.

Far away, at the American continent, before European contact, slavery among Native American tribes was a common practice, often rooted in warfare, debt, or punishment. Enslaved individuals, usually captured during conflicts, were used for labor, adoption into tribes, or as sacrifices in religious ceremonies. Some tribes, such as the Comanche, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), and Aztecs¹, practiced more severe forms of slavery, including torture and ritual killings.

In conclusion, slavery was a widespread and brutal practice across many cultures, not limited to Europeans. The Arab, African, and Asian slave trades challenge the misconception that slavery was primarily a Western phenomenon and expose the global prevalence of this exploitation.