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A fact from this article was featured on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the On this day section on May 13, 2004, August 23, 2004, and May 13, 2005.

Text and/or other creative content from African slave trade was copied or moved into Slavery with this edit on 10:03, 6 May 2009. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

A Mention of Zoroastrianism and its relationship with slavery be included under the section "Abolitionism in Antiquity"

The Zoroastrian faith for the most part specifically forbade slavery, and while Iranian kings were known to relocate captured people, they never enslaved them. I lack the necessary writing skills to add a section, but perhaps someone with better skills could. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.104.120.216 (talk) 21:00, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Statements about slavery sentiment in US should be reworded

According to the current text "In 2018, the Orlando Sentinel reported some private Christian schools in Florida as teaching students a creationist curriculum which includes assertions such as, “most black and white southerners had long lived together in harmony” and that “power-hungry individuals stirred up the people” leading to the Civil Rights Movement."

It seems unnecessary to label this as "creationist" curriculum. Creationist theory at the core does not advocate slavery, however this statement suggests that there is a relationship between the two. The existence of flawed rhetoric in curriculum practiced by a group claiming to be creationist does not indicate any agreement with others following creationist thought. That word and subsequent hyperlink should be removed.

Furthermore, it is questionable whether this news report has any bearing in this context. The existence of a report exposing flawed educational materials in one locality does not demonstrate any further information about the progress of slavery in the generalized context of the United States. The citation itself provides little information to enable the reader to interpret what that information means in this context. It does not provide a balanced or expanded perspective of the US on the whole and therefore seems out of place in a section regarding the generalized United States. Regardless of how egregious, ridiculous or inaccurate such a curriculum might be, it does not serve the text of this Misplaced Pages article to mention this fact and this fact alone.

Lead sentence

This edit deleted part of the lead sentence that said a slave “is someone forbidden to quit their service to another person and is treated like property.” The new language says a slave is someone who is “coerced into performing a work function by another person, a slaver, who also controls their location.” The edit summary by User:RickyBennison said this: “Replaced overly specific chattel slavery definition (which follows shortly afterwards) with one which typically applies to a breadth of slavery definitions.” I disagree that the deleted language was a chattel slavery definition, given that it only said a slave is treated *like* property, instead of saying a slave *is* property. Moreover, I don’t understand the difference between *a work function* and *work* and *service* (it’s usually better to use one word than three). Additionally, the new language is potentially confusing because it’s not immediately clear whether the language “by another person” says who performs the work function or instead says who does the coercing. Finally, it’s unclear to me how a slaver could coerce a person to do work without controlling that person’s location. For these many reasons, I will revert to the previous version. Incidentally, an editor wisely said above that, “Going back to at least 2014, this article's definition has been that slavery = ownership of people. I think that is still correct, and any change should be with clear consensus supported by scholarly sources.” But replacing the equals sign with an approximately equals sign is a good compromise. Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:37, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I believe that Misplaced Pages would be richer if this were its biggest page.--EKantarovich (talk) 12:26, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Soviet Union

This section is about the inclusion of the GULAG without any citation to it being a slave camp. There's also no mention of «slave» on that article. @Vallee01:, post the sources here. --BunnyyHop () 05:40, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

BunnyyHop Sources and citations are already present. Des Vallee (talk) 05:48, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Vallee01:, that's not providing sources. «Present» where? BunnyyHop () 05:54, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

BunnyyHop Two things, first that ping of an old username doesn't work, Des Vallee does. Secondly the information was widely clear however:

See Gulag: Between 1930 and 1960, the Soviet regime created many Lagerey (labour camps) in Siberia. Prisoners in Soviet labor camps were worked to death on extreme production quotas, brutality, hunger and harsh elements. Fatality rate was as high as 80% during the first months in many camps. Hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, died as a direct result of forced labor under the Soviets.

References

1. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Lester/publication/5510937_Suicide_in_the_Soviet_Gulag_Camps/links/5bc77ab192851cae21a9c5ae/Suicide-in-the-Soviet-Gulag-Camps.pdf
2. https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/catoj5&div=18&id=&page= "This is the fact that the forced labor system of the Gulag is an example of slavery in the absence of well-defined and enforced property rights in slaves."
3. https://scholar.dominican.edu/cynthia-stokes-brown-books-personal-research/141/ "Slavery from its origins in prehistoric hunting societies; through the boom in slave trading that reached its peak in the United States with a pre-Civil War slave population of 4,000,000; through the forced labor under the Nazi regime and in the Soviet gulags;
4. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=289925 "The life testimonies of those who endured incarceration and slavery in Gulag camps, dealing particularly with illness narratives in which people 'complain not only of the painfulness of past.'"
5. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0144039X.2011.568235 "his penultimate chapter, for instance, he discusses at length the 'reversion' of slavery in Europe in the twentieth century in the shape of the Soviet Gulag and racial slavery in Nazi Germany."

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Des Vallee (talk • contribs) 05:57, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Labor camp is not exactly equal to Slavery, that's why there's a different article for it. Encyclopædia Britannica, for example, also doesn't describe them as such. See this. To describe your citations: The first one mentions it as forced labor, the second one is an ] academic journal 1, the third also describes them as forced labor, the fourth is from the Center for Independent Sociological Research. The point of this discussion is - should Forced labour be in the article, or not? BunnyyHop () 05:54, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

BunnyyHop The point is all citations refer to it as slavery. It's fits all definitions of Slavery and scholarly there is asoulte consensus of it as slavery. Moreover the link you provide to Britincia is considered a stub. You are bringing up your own position into this, not even going into the citations as they all are reliable. It is described as slavery because yes the definition of slavery. You are not even addressing the citations as you can't find any position to dispute them. You are bringing up your own person definition. Des Vallee (talk) 06:17, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Des Vallee Not quite, only two of them refer to it as slavery, the other refer to them as labour camps. Furthermore, the one of the Austrian School says «Gulag is an example of slavery in the absence of well-defined and enforced property rights in slaves. Inmates in Soviet forced labor camps are not slaves in the strict sense because they do not represent private property (...)». It's easy to find sources referring to them as labour camps:

1. https://books.google.com.br/books?lr=&id=tt2xCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=%22gulag%22+%22labour%22+&ots=QKJenBf9Zp&sig=ykj6ASyGQ7aAkSAJc7HWuI3e_sQ#v=onepage&q=%22gulag%22%20%22labour%22&f=false
2. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668138108411338?journalCode=ceas19
3. https://www.jstor.org/stable/131659?seq=1
4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2501047?seq=1

--BunnyyHop () 06:30, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

BunnyyHop It seems you specifically cherry picked information to find this, I mean you literally went to Google Books and typed "Forced Labour" and "Gulag" here it can be seen you specifically are trying to cherry pick information. You clearly didn't check the citations as some of the citations you provide even either as most the citations you provide also has sections that describes the Gulag system as slavery that has to be embarrassing. So either you didn't go over the citations or you just ignored them, both which is not allowed. Des Vallee (talk) 06:46, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, of course I did. We already have articles about forced labour, labour camps, unfree labour, and so on. The scope of this article doesn't include these, otherwise they wouldn't exist. Why is there an exception to this labour camp? BunnyyHop () 07:42, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

3O Response: The article lead and first H2 section mention forced labour as a form of slavery, so I feel that practices of forced labour camps (where of notable scale and historical importance) are within the scope of the article, regardless of whether sources call them "slavery" (calling them "forced labour" is just being more specific). I feel that GULAGs and Nazi forced labour are worthy of inclusion. It might not be bad to have the U.S. in there as well, as the country with the largest population in prisons, where involuntary servitude (another form of slavery) is constitutionally legal. Keep in mind that this article is a bit sprawling and 40% over the maximum recommended article size, so try to keep the summary brief when the subject has a main article. (There's nothing wrong with mentioning these things here; though they have separate articles, they are part of this broader subject and I feel this article would be incomplete without some mention.) This is a non-binding third opinion, but I hope it helps! –  Reidgreg (talk) 16:01, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: thanks for answering. I do agree that those two should be included, and replaced the source-less Soviet Union category with properly sourced and accurate information (as shown in the next diff), and also attached a section about forced labour in the US below it. This however prompted an editor to include cases of Human rights violations in China and North Korea, which is not in the scope of this article. Can you give me your opinion on this diff? This edit has been reverted twice for not «mention the Gulag system, this is whitewashing something you have a long history of» (sic!) and «For a section about Slavery you don't appear to ever discuss it as slavery». Thank you. --BunnyyHop () 04:42, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

I feel that edit was an improvement. The text could possibly be made more concise, perhaps not mentioning all of those figures and/or examples. I might have focused on forced labour (rather than underpaid labour/sweatshop conditions) in US prisons. The main article for North Korea is human rights, bundling related issues together, but the section here mentions widespread forced labour and keeps the summary fairly tight. At some point, when there is consensus on scope and content, you might want to request a copy edit at WP:GOCE to make it a little more concise and bring the article size down. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:54, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

• I think latest version by Des Vallee is shorter and much better. Here is new version suggested by BunnyyHop. It has an obvious problem: it tells about Gulag, but it does not tell anything about Gulag as a variety of slave labor. That aspect needs to be emphasized in the version by Des Valle as well. There are many sources, such as "Notes on the Soviet slave labor reform" , this, etc. My very best wishes (talk) 18:42, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Reidgreg and My very best wishes, thanks for commenting. I completely agree with your points, what made the slave labour in the Gulag distinct from others must be emphasized. I'll try to make a synthesis out of the two materials and we might have just the right amount of everything. I, however, am finding trouble to understand this revert. The first paragraph is not directly related to unfree labour but to the laws of incarceration in China. The second one states what is described in the source as «In March 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) published a report Uyghurs for sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang, which identified 83 foreign and Chinese companies as allegedly directly or indirectly benefiting from the use of Uyghur workers outside Xinjiang through potentially abusive labour transfer programs. » as a fact. I copied from the original article since it's neutrally written and does proper attribution (hence not violating WP:NPOV), but our colleague seems to think that this feeds into a conspiracy theory. What are do you think about this? --BunnyyHop () 21:11, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Reidgreg, I agree that "t might not be bad to have the U.S. in there as well, as the country with the largest population in prisons, where involuntary servitude (another form of slavery) is constitutionally legal." However, My very best wishes reverted here, stating "hat one I think can be removed per talk because cited sources do not say 'slavery'. Welcome to revert my edit if such RS exist and can be provided." But it does mention "slavery." "In September 2016, large, coordinated prison strikes took place in 11 states, with inmates saying they are subjected to poor sanitary conditions, jobs that amount to forced labour, and that the system is a form of modern day slavery." What are your thoughts? Are there better sources that explicitly refer to it as "slavery"? Or was that text fine already? Davide King (talk) 23:15, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Forced Labour

There has been the addition of 4 countries in the topic History . These are countries which have made use of Penal labour in Labour camps. I argue this is out of scope, and this is problematic especially since the article is 244.141KB wide, while the WP:TOOBIG maximum size is 100KB. Definitions of Forced labour:

«Forced labour, also called Slave Labour, labour performed involuntarily and under duress, usually by relatively large groups of people. Forced labour differs from slavery in that it involves not the ownership of one person by another but rather merely the forced exploitation of that person’s labour.»

Encyclopaedia Britannica

«This report uses a broader definition of ‘forced labour’ than the standard international definition discussed in the next chapter. We include work brought about by physical, psychological or economic coercion and recognise that, despite lacking the alternatives needed to defend against such coercion, workers’ frequently retain and exhibit agency when entering into coercive labour relations.»

Confronting root causes: forced labour in global supply chains by Genevieve LeBaron, Neil Howard, Cameron Thibos and Penelope Kyritsis; p. 5

«Forced labour is defined in international law as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”. The guardian of this definition, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), has further elaborated that the threat of penalty “can take various forms, whether physical, psychological, financial or other”.»

Idem, Ibidem; p. 9 Furthermore, forced labour is already mentioned in a summary style topic here. I suggest we move the United States, the Soviet Union, China and North Korea to this part of the article as examples of forced labour. --BunnyyHop () 20:37, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

• I think we just need sources that explicitly say it was "slavery". Simply saying about large prison population (for example) is not enough. For example, Irving Howe did argue that Gulag was a form of slavery (the camp's administration even occasionally barter prisoners with special skills). Solzenitsyn claimed the same. just as a lot of other people who studied Gulag. My very best wishes (talk) 20:59, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

• Solzhenitsyn's work on the gulag is literature, it's a memoir, it's a testimony. His works are not exact recollections of events and, in any case, Solzhenitsyn often fell out with collaborators or ex-inmates over his interpretations. But this is part and parcel of primary accounts of anything. Overall, his experience of the brutality of the Gulag is certainly authentic, but Misplaced Pages is mostly guided by WP:SECONDARY sources. «Slavery» is a category, with its own definition of social relations, and we need academic sources that draw this connection between definition of slavery and the social relations of the Gulag. I couldn't find any. For example, the definition of slavery in Britannica is «condition in which one human being was owned by another. A slave was considered by law as property, or chattel, and was deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons». «There is no consensus on what a slave was or on how the institution of slavery should be defined. Nevertheless, there is general agreement among historians, anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and others who study slavery that most of the following characteristics should be present in order to term a person a slave. The slave was a species of property; thus, he belonged to someone else». This is the definition used by the article to present its history. --BunnyyHop () 00:13, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Look, we are not experts here. Solzhenitsyn is an expert and a Nobel Prize winner. Irving Howe is an expert. They say that was slavery. You need more ref? Fine, I can bring more. Note that EB say "Forced labour, also called Slave Labour..." My very best wishes (talk) 03:25, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

In «New directions in Gulag studies: a roundtable discussion», which gathers 5 scholars, it's only referred to as a «system of forced labour» and «soviet forced labour», and Steven Maddox even states «Studies which explore and analyze cultural events and programs in the camps show that the Gulag was not simply a system of forced labour that aimed to annihilate the prison population through back-breaking work, as Solzhenitsyn and others have argued». In «The Soviet Gulag: Evidence, Interpretation, and Comparison», the GULAG is defined as «an acronym for the Soviet state bureaucracy that administered Stalin’s corrective labor camps, colonies, and special settlements in the years between 1929 and 1953.» There wouldn't be a need of a Forced labour article if those were synonymous terms, but they are not, so there's no need to conflate them. This article is specially about slavery, the best we can do to keep things in scope is to briefly mention it at the forced labour section as examples of penal labour. BunnyyHop () 12:16, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

• In cases like that one should check reliable tertiary sources because they summarize consensus on the subject in other sources. Here is a printed encyclopedia "Slavery in the Modern World" and it lists Gulag as an example , starting from page 292. As about your source, yes, sure, one of these guys seriously believes that the "inmates played competitive and recreational soccer, volleyball, and other outdoor sports when not at work" (this is like saying that Jews enjoyed playing soccer in Auschwitz, total bull...). Such is the legacy of Soviet propaganda. But actual Stalin's legacy is different, e.g. Stalin's legacy lives on in city that slaves built. My very best wishes (talk) 17:21, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

• I think a RfC is better warranted here, because to me it seems like there's a mistake on your part about what's considered a reliable source or not, leading to the disregard of academics based on your personal opinion. See WP:NEWSORG and WP:SCHOLARSHIP. This is the biography of the academic «soviet propagand» (be aware of the other four scholars). The biography of the writer of that Guardian article is this. The book lists gulag as a «From the early 1920s, the Russians were using political and other prisoners as forced labor in gulags», «This was followed by the negotiation by the ILO of the Abolition of Forced Labor Convention of 1957, which outlawed forced labor for economic advantage, political repression, and labor discipline—a clear attack on the gulags», «Among its other duties, it ran the gulag (Main Administration of Camps) with its expansive network of correc-tive labor camps, corrective labor colonies, and special settlements». So your source refutes your own point. My proposal is to move those paragraphs to Labour camps and mention the Gulag in the Forced labour section. @Reidgreg:, I'm pinging because I'm curious about your opinion on this matter. --BunnyyHop () 05:48, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Your first source () simply does not say anything about slavery and therefore can not be used on this page. "The slave was a species of property; thus, he belonged to someone else." Yes, sure, but the "ownership" can be by the law (like in the old USA or serfs in Russia) or de facto. This is the reason human trafficking and forced labor appear on this page. As about Gulag, the camp administration occasionally trade (bartered) prisoners with specific skills, usually theater actors, but not only them. Should the subjects of forced labor and human trafficking be described a lot on this page? No, becaese we have separate pages. They should be only mentioned and briefly summarized here, and that is what this page does. My very best wishes (talk) 16:00, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

My very best wishes, exactly, it does not mention it as slavery, but as forced labour. Forced labour is another form of servitude (as said by the book you sent), but it's not slavery, hence why there's only a small paragraph on forced labour. The "History" section is about slavery, not servitude, hence why Labour Camps are out of scope. The page does not summarise this, it has a paragraph describing it, something you'd see at Labour camps. The way to summarize it would be to mention it at the forced labour paragraph in this page. So far, none of those academic sources describe it as a slave system, but as forced labour camps. BunnyyHop () 08:56, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh, no. As our page Unfree labor correctly tells, Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery, penal labour and the corresponding institutions, such as debt slavery, serfdom, corvée and labour camps. I agree that some forms of forced labor are not slavery, but some others have been described in multiple RS as a form of slavery, and this is one of such cases (for example, Forced labour under German rule during World War II was indeed described in many sources as a form of slavery, and there was a good reason for the article "Gulag" in the encyclopedia on modern slavery ). A source saying that it was forced labor (yes, it was!) does not disprove other sources saying it was also a form of slavery. My very best wishes (talk) 16:46, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

That book describes the Gulag, along with other forms of penal labour, as another form of "servitude emerged", not slavery. These terms don't mean the same thing, there's no need to conflate the two. --BunnyyHop () 20:17, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Post discussion

To sum up: is there any academic citation referring to what is within the «Soviet Union», «China» and «North Korea» sections as slavery? If not, they shouldn't be included. We may do a RfC to sort this out. --BunnyyHop () 22:48, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh no, there are sources, such as this or

My very best wishes These are not reliable sources. So far, out of all academic works I (and you in "Slavery in the Modern World") brought here about the Gulag define it as a system of penal labour. I'm asking for reliable sources (not opinion pieces) who link it to slavery because then it would have a reason to be in this article. If it's not a very fringe view, it will be possible to find reliable sources that inform us what the academic consensus is. --BunnyyHop () 00:06, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• @BunnyyHop. I think your suggestion to remove this whole section is unacceptable. Not only sources are good, but you could easily find a lot more if you wanted. Consider this one, for example, by Marc Buggeln who authored Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps. Want more? Check this, check references on page The Business of Genocide, check sources here. See this. My very best wishes (talk) 04:22, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• More semantic word games and POV pushing. Plenty of sources, actually those sections need expansion. 02:13, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

For the inclusion of those countries? If there's no academic works saying these were slave systems, it shouldn't be here. Simple as that. --BunnyyHop () 04:23, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

My very best wishes, great find. Now the text can be replaced with; «Historian Marc Buggeln argues that forced labour in the Gulag can be considered slavery, "ith the exception of the legal definition, all the definitions thus far put forward would, in my opinion, indicate that concentration camp and gulag prisoners could be called slaves"». This could be contrasted with the last link you sent, which contrasts the definition of the gulag with slavery, «Valery Lazarev argues that "n particular, the Gulag had no notion of capital markets that would have allowed for the cynical but accurate valuation of inmate-capital in the same way as slaves"» --BunnyyHop () 04:37, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

It should be noted that the to include the Gulag here is not to explain the Gulag, we already have an article for that, but to show why some scholars think it's to slavery, or not. This being said, the other ones still have no reason to exist. --BunnyyHop () 04:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Note that the Penal labour article describes the usage of prision labour in various countries. --BunnyyHop () 23:33, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

BunnyyHop You are currently posting fringe theories on the Gulag system something you have done multiple times, you know you are breaking Misplaced Pages policies by doing so, so stop. Your complete waffle of sources and POV sections aren't allowed. Des Vallee (talk) 00:40, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm just using My very best wishes' sources. If you think these are fringe sources, then the Gulag section should be removed altogether, which I disagree - I don't think the sources My very best wishes presented are fringe - although I might say the second one got me a little worried due to it being posted in a think tank. Any way, the onus is on you to prove these sources are fringe. --BunnyyHop () 00:45, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Des Vallee, it's funny you mention this, because out of all penal labour camps you decided to add those from socialist countries, which coincides with what I can only perceive as an anticommunist crusade. So far, you have not addressed anything, all these «whitewashing» justifications are no other than excuses for removing what you don't like, going as far as labeling MVBW's sources to justify the inclusion of the GULAG as fringe just because they put in question what I can only deduce as a dogmatic attitude that your opinion (i.e. that the Gulag were slave camps) is supreme. If the opinion of those academics are indeed fringe, then the GULAG section should be removed altogether. --BunnyyHop () 01:46, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

'slave' vs 'enslaved person'

I am glad this article contains a section on the debate on which term should be used. However going by the various articles I have looked at, wikipedia itself already seems to have taken a stance on this, that 'enslaved person' is the correct term. I wonder if this can be justified; it seems to me the term 'slave' is far more common and well understood, while 'enslaved person' has only become more popular recently and only amongst certain people. It also implies that a slave was someone that at some point was actively enslaved, rather than say, being born into it or selling oneself into slavery, neither which requires any 'enslaving' action. Should we also use 'imprisoned person' rather than 'prisoner' and 'enserfed person' rather than 'serf'? Furthermore if the term slave is problematic, we should not really use it in composite terms, for example 'slave labour', which suggests the labour is done by 'slaves'. Instead we should use 'enslaved person labour'. Similarly we should talk of 'enslaved person plantation', 'enslaved person rebellion', 'George Washington was an enslaved person owner', etc. LastDodo (talk) 13:35, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

The reduction to absurdity is not useful. A person who is "born into slavery" is enslaved by their "owner" from birth; "enslavement" is both active (refers to the act of a creating a slave) and passive (refers to the status of enslavement). So the answer to your question is, "no." --jpgordon 18:18, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Mathieu Kerekou

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

change ((Mathieu Kerekou)) to ((Mathieu Kérékou)) 2601:541:4580:8500:2146:7265:20BD:DE4C (talk) 20:03, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

 Done, and thank you very much! P.I. Ellsworth  ed.  20:23, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

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