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April 10, 2026
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"Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death."
"It was long and narrow, a typical trading-ship of the southern coasts, high of poop and stern, with cabins at either extremity. Conan looked down into the open waist, whence wafted that sickening abominable odor. He knew it of old. It was the body-scent of the oarsmen, chained to their benches. They were all negroes, forty men to each side, each confined by a chain locked about his waist, with the other end welded to a heavy ring set deep in the solid runway beam that ran between the benches from stem to stern. The life of a slave aboard an Argossean galley was a hell unfathomable. Most of these were Kushites, but some thirty of the blacks who now rested on their idle oars and stared up at the stranger with dull curiosity were from the far southern isles, the homelands of the corsairs. Conan recognized them by their straighter features and hair, their rangier, cleaner-limbed build. And he saw among them men who had followed him of old."
"We went to visit the Galleys, being about twenty-five; the Captain of the Galley Royal gave us most courteous entertainment in his cabin, the slaves in the interim playing both loud and soft music very rarely. Then he showed us how he commanded their motions with a nod and his whistle, making them row out. The spectacle was to me new and strange, to see so many hundreds of miserably naked persons, having their heads shaven close and having only high red bonnets, a pair of coarse canvas drawers, their whole backs and legs naked, doubly chained about their middle and legs, in couples, and made fast to their seats, and all commanded in a trice by an imperious and cruel seaman. One Turk he much favoured, who waited on him in his cabin, but with no other dress than the rest, and a chain locked about his leg but not coupled. This galley was richly carved and gilded, and most of the rest were very beautiful. After bestowing something on the slaves, the captain sent a band of them to give us music at dinner where we lodged. I was amazed to contemplate how these miserable catiffs lie in their galley crowded together, yet there was hardly one but had some occupation by which, as leisure and calms permitted, they get some little money, insomuch as some of them have, after many years of cruel servitude, been able to purchase their liberty. Their rising forward and falling back at their oar is a miserable spectacle, and the noise of their chains with the roaring of the beaten waters has something of strange and fearful to one unaccustomed to it. They are ruled and chastised by strokes on their backs and soles of their feet on the least disorder, and without the least humanity; yet are they cheerful and full of knavery."
"They do not know how the proud beauty burns With love, and yearns For one fair, golden-headed galley slave, Doomed by the Emperor on the coming day To be the tigerâs prey, And whom by prayer or plea she cannot save!"
"My Master and the Neighbours all Make game of me and Sally; And (but for her) Iâd better be A Slave and row a Galley:"
"Then to make up the breach, all your strength you must rally, And labour and sweat like a slave at the galley."
"And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs, And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs, Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines. They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young. They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on Before the high Kingsâ horses in the granite of Babylon. And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell, And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a signâ (But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)"
"To the south of the Nile [Niger] there is a Negro people called Lamlam. They are unbelievers. They brand themselves on the face and temples. The people of Ghana and Takrur invade their country, capture them, and sell them to merchants who transport them to the Maghrib. There, they constitute the ordinary mass of slaves. Beyond them to the south, there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings."
"Therefore, the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated."
"[S]ince undesired pregnancy creates an involuntary servitude, the state must provide to those who desire it the means to terminate such servitude."
"[A] requirement that abortions be performed in hospitals may âforce women to travel to find available facilities, resulting in both financial expense and additional health risk,â and thereby may âsignificantly limit a womanâs ability to obtain an abortionâ by âimpos[ing] heavy, and unnecessary, burden on womenâs access to a relatively inexpensive, otherwise accessible, and safe abortion procedure.â As a consequence, some women will be unable to get abortions at all. What the state cannot do to all women, it cannot do to poor women. If government may not increase the cost of abortion directly, it may not do so indirectly-not, at least, without compensating those whom its action would otherwise render unable to afford abortions."
"When women are compelled to carry and bear children, they are subjected to âinvoluntary servitudeâ in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment. Abortion prohibitions violate the amendmentâs guarantee of personal liberty, because forced pregnancy and childbirth, by compelling the woman to serve the fetus, created âthat control by which the personal service of one man [sic] is disposed of or coerced for another's benefit which is the essence of involuntary servitude.â Such laws violate the amendmentâs guarantee of equality, because forcing women to be mothers makes them into a servant caste, a group which, by virtue of status of birth, is held subject to a special duty to serve others and not themselves."
"If forced to carry pregnancies to term, many women would have no choice but to sacrifice playing their sportâa sacrifice not required of their male counterparts, despite their equal role in engendering a pregnancy. Absent the right to access safe and legal abortion care, womenâs ability to participate and excel in athletics would inevitably decline and the movement toward gender equality in sports would reverse course."
"Thus defined, it should be apparent that "involuntary servitude" includes coerced pregnancy. The pregnant woman may not serve at the fetusâ âcommandâ-it is the state that, by outlawing abortion, supplies the element of coercion-but she is serving involuntarily for the fetusâ "benefit", and this is what the Court has said that the amendment forbids. If citizens may not be forced to surrender control of their persons and services, then womenâs persons may not be invaded and their services may not be coerced for the benefit of fetuses. It is as simple as that. The injury inflicted on women by forced motherhood is lesser in degree than that inflicted on blacks by antebellum slavery, since it is temporary and involves less than total control over the body, but it the same âkindâ of injury. When abortion is outlawed, a woman who does not want to carry her pregnancy to term must serve the fetus, and that servitude is involuntary. Some of those to whom I have made this argument have responded less with skepticism than with horror. They consider it a libel on motherhood, which, far from being like slavery, is an exhilarating, awe-inspiring, and joyous experience. It may not be out of place, therefore, to address this concern at the outset. The objection gathers whatever force it has by focusing on the experience of women who âwantâ to be mothers. The thirteenth amendment, however, does not apply to them. The servitude it prohibits is âinvoluntaryâ. The distinction between wanted and unwanted pregnancy is like the difference between wanted and unwanted sex. Can rape be defended on the grounds that sex is an exhilarating, awe-inspiring, joyous experience? Do arguments that focus on the degrading and violative aspects of rape constitute a libel of sex? Plantation slavery obviously cannot be justified on the grounds that many people find gardening deeply satisfying, but this objection is really no better than that."
"Athletics âhave become part of the fabric of America.â Natâl Collegiate Athletic Assân v. Alston, 141 S. Ct. 2141, 2168 (2021) (Kavanagh, J., concurring). Womenâs ability to âparticipate equally in the economic and social life of the Nationââincluding through high school, collegiate, and professional sportsââhas been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.â Casey, 505 U.S. at 856 (plurality opinion). Absent the right to access safe and legal abortion care, and the ability of âthe woman to retain the ultimate control over her destiny and her body,â id. at 869, womenâs sports would not be the enormous success they are today. Among other reasons, womenâs ability to participate and excel in athletics would decline, severely impairing the vitality of sports in the United States. Further, women and girls would be deprived of the multitude of collateral benefits that result from athletic participation, including greater educational success, career advancement, enhanced self-esteem, and improved health. Athletic prowess depends on bodily integrity. The physical body is a critical tool for athletes, and its condition determines elite athletesâ futures and livelihoods. High school and collegiate athletes use their bodies not only to compete, but also to secure higher education through recruiting opportunities and athletic scholarships that may be otherwise unobtainable. Professional athletes use their bodies for their livelihoods, including to access lucrative sponsorships and advertising opportunities. Amici depend on the right to control their bodies and reproductive lives in order to reach their athletic potential. Indeed, Amici are united in their belief that the physical tolls of forced pregnancy and childbirth would undermine athletesâ ability to actualize their full human potential."
"The Constitution provides a guarantee of liberty. The Court has interpreted that liberty to include the ability to make decisions related to child â childbearing, marriage, and family. Women have an equal right to liberty under the Constitution, Your Honor, and if they're not able to make this decision, if states can take control of women's bodies and force them to endure months of pregnancy and childbirth, then they will never have equal status under the Constitution."
"All athletesâmen and womenâhave a narrow window of time to achieve their greatest athletic potential. This reality is magnified for women athletes for whom childbearing age coincides with their competitive peak in athletics. If the State compelled women athletes to carry pregnancies to term and give birth, it could derail womenâs athletic careers, academic futures, and economic livelihoods at a large scale. Such a fundamental restriction on bodily integrity and human autonomy would never be imposed on a male athlete, though he would be equally responsible for a pregnancy."
"We fought a civil war to end slavery, and made its abolition the supreme law of the land. The central evil of slavery, as Justice Harlan observed, was that it placed one âclass of human beings in practical subjection to another class.â That is precisely what a law that compels women to be mothers does. A law outlawing abortion therefore would betray one of the fundamental principles by which the American polity defines itself."
"Black womenâs sexual subordination and forced pregnancies were foundational to slavery. If cotton was euphemistically king, Black womenâs wealth-maximizing forced reproduction was queen. Ending the forced sexual and reproductive servitude of Black girls and women was a critical part of the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments. The overturning of Roe v. Wade reveals the Supreme Courtâs neglectful reading of the amendments that abolished slavery and guaranteed all people equal protection under the law. It means the erasure of Black women from the Constitution. Mandated, forced or compulsory pregnancy contravenes enumerated rights in the Constitution, namely the 13th Amendmentâs prohibition against involuntary servitude and protection of bodily autonomy, as well as the 14th Amendmentâs defense of privacy and freedom. This Supreme Court demonstrates a selective and opportunistic interpretation of the Constitution and legal history, which ignores the intent of the 13th and 14th Amendments, especially as related to Black womenâs bodily autonomy, liberty and privacy which extended beyond freeing them from labor in cotton fields to shielding them from rape and forced reproduction. The horrors inflicted on Black women during slavery, especially sexual violations and forced pregnancies, have been all but wiped from cultural and legal memory. Ultimately, this failure disserves all women."
"The women who bear children and the medical experts who assist them testify that pregnancy and childbearing are indeed labor. The fact that many women enter into such labor voluntarily and joyfully does not alter the fact that other women, under other circumstances, find childbearing too arduous, become pregnant through no choice of their own, and are then forced to complete the pregnancy to term by compulsion of state laws prohibiting voluntary abortion. It is the purpose of the Thirteenth Amendment to prohibit a relationship in which one person or entity limits the freedom of another person. In the absence of a compelling state interest or due conviction for a crime, the stateâs forcing the pregnant woman through unwanted pregnancy to full term is a denial of her Thirteenth Amendment right to be free from âa condition of enforced compulsory service of one to another.â This is the very essence of involuntary servitude in which the personal service of one person is âdisposed of or coerced for anotherâs benefit.â"
"The fall out is also reaching the children of the kidnapped brides. The Duke University study found that ethnic babies in Kyrgyzstan are smaller than average. Smaller birth weights have been linked to a higher risk of disease. It was unclear why these babies were smaller, but it was likely due to the psychological trauma suffered by the mother from being in a forced marriage, said economics professor Charles Becker, who co-authored the Duke University study."
"[F]orced pregnancy is a deprivation of individual liberty (and this is what the privacy argument stresses), but that deprivation is selectively imposed on âwomenâ-and women are a group that has traditionally been regarded as a servant caste, whose powers (unlike those of men) are properly directed to the benefit of others rather than themselves. Compulsory motherhood deprives women of both liberty and equality."
"Were fetuses to be given the full legal protection accorded to born persons, the resemblance between forced pregnancy and slavery might eventually become more apparent. In recent decades, medical science has found that a broad range of activities by pregnant women can have a negative effect of the fetus, âincluding failing to eat properly, using prescription, nonprescription and illegal drugs, smoking, drinking alcohol, exposing herself to infectious disease or to workplace hazards, engaging in immoderate exercise or sexual intercourse, residing at high altitudes for prolonged periods, or using a general anesthetic or drugs to induce rapid labor during delivery.â Note, âThe Creation of Fetal Rights: conflicts with Womenâs Constitutional Rights to Liberty, Privacy, and equal Protection, 95 Yale L..H. 599, 606-07 (1986) (footnotes omitted). There are two ways of using this information: by communicating it to women and trusting them to use it appropriately, or by regulating pregnant womenâs behavior directly. The former approach only makes sense if pregnant women can be presumed to care about the welfare of their fetuses, and this presumption will be implausible if one and a half million women a year (that is, between quarter and a third of pregnant women) are pregnant against their wills. See Tierze, Forrest & Henshaw, supra note 130, at 475-76. The latter approach has already, in some cases,been carried to its logical conclusion of imprisoning the woman for the duration of her pregnancy. See e.g., 1989 Minn. Sess. Law Serv. P 290, Part. 5 (West) (statute authorizing involuntary civil commitment of women who abuse drugs during pregnancy). Recognition of fetal personhood might entail internment of pregnant women on a much larger scale."
"The right to bodily integrity and decisional autonomy is of heightened concern for women athletes who become pregnant from sexual violence. If forced to carry their rapistâs child to term, these women would not only be forced to make the same physical, emotional, and athletic sacrifices that would be required of all athletes who would have to endure compelled pregnancies, but they also would be re-traumatized by the repeated deprivation of control over their bodiesânot only by their assailant, but also by the government. This intrusion can be acutely devastating for an athlete, given that control over her body is inextricably linked to her identity, career, and educational pursuits. The prospect of forced childbearing is particularly poignant for collegiate athletes, given that nearly one in five women are sexually assaulted during their time in college."
"The decision to become pregnant, thereby risking long-term health and career consequences, involves âthe most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy.â Casey, 505 U.S. at 851. The decision belongs to the individual to make. Forcing athletes to bear the unknowable risk of when and whether their bodies will recover from pregnancy and childbirth would violate their most fundamental liberties."
"The demands of athletics and pregnancy are physically and emotionally intense. If women were to lose the agency to make individual, personal choices as to if, when, and how to balance these competing demands, many will be forced to sacrifice their athletic aspirations and pursuits. Compelled pregnancies would allow the State to âconscript[] womenâs bodies into its service, forc[e] women to continue their pregnancies, suffer the pains of childbirth, and in most instances, provide years of maternal care.â Casey, 505 U.S. at 928 (Blackmun, J., concurring). Often this will be at the expense of womenâs athletic careers, as well as their educational goals and professional livelihoods. Such âgovernmental intrusionâ is âunique to the [womanâs] condition,â id. at 851â52, as only womenâs bodies are essential for both athletic participation and pregnancy and childbirth. Depriving women of the opportunity to make autonomous choices about how to use their bodiesâa matter âof the highest privacy and the most personal nature,â id. at 915 (Stevens, J., concurring)âwould gravely harm equality in athletics, and elsewhere."
"[F]orced pregnancy is different form the degrading, ill-paid jobs that the poor must do, because they are at least able to change employers. The pregnant woman, on the other hand, cannot exchange her burden for any other. Moreover, the Court has held that a state may not impose costs that make poverty an absolute barrier to the exercise of a constitutional right. Boddie v. Connecticut invalidated state rules that barred access to divorce for those who could not afford to pay filing fees. â[M]arriage involves interests of basic importance in our society,â the Court observed. Because â[t]he requirement that these appellants resort to the judicial process is entirely a state-created matter,â the Court concluded that âa State may not, consistent with the obligations imposed on it by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, preempt the right to dissolve this legal relationship without affording all citizens access to the means it has prescribed for doing so.â Since a tax on abortions would equally be âentirely a state-created matter,â a state could not demand such a tax of a woman who is too poor to pay it."
"Committing rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, as defined in article 7, paragraph 2 (f), enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence also constituting a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions;"
"Laws that prevent people from making their own decisions about whether to continue a pregnancy or have an abortion amount to forced pregnancy. Outright abortion bans arenât the only way to force a pregnancy â even when Roe v. Wade was still technically intact, laws pushed abortion out of reach across the country. Long-term consequences include: * Long-lasting health consequences as well as life-threatening complications like eclampsia (which can lead to seizures or comas) and postpartum hemorrhage * Increased levels of poverty for people turned away from the abortion care they need and an inability to cover basic needs like food, housing, and transportation * Ongoing contact with and violence from an abusive partner Policies that force people to remain pregnant and give birth are unconscionable, cruel, and dangerous. Lives and futures are at stake."
"Kyrgyzstan has the highest maternal mortality rate in Central Asia â the large number of underage girls giving birth following forced marriage is one factor in this."
"The baby is a gift, given by life itself. But to be a gift a thing must be freely given and freely received. A gift can also be rejected. A gift that cannot be rejected is not a gift, but a symptom of tyranny."
"Enforced childbirth is slavery[.]"
"Our fight will continue until we can put an end to laws that force people to carry pregnancies against their will and deny them the fundamental right to control their own bodies."
"In 1993 the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights (replaced in 2006 by the UN Human Rights Council) declared systematic rape and military sexual slavery to be crimes against humanity punishable as violations of womenâs human rights. In 1995 the UNâs Fourth World Conference on Women specified that rape by armed groups during wartime is a war crime. The jurisdiction of the international tribunals established to prosecute crimes committed in the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda both included rape, making these tribunals among the first international bodies to prosecute sexual violence as a war crime. In a landmark case in 1998, the Rwandan tribunal ruled that ârape and sexual violence constitute genocide.â The International Criminal Court, established in 1998, subsequently was granted jurisdiction over a range of womenâs issues, including rape and forced pregnancy. In a resolution adopted in 2008 the UN Security Council affirmed that ârape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide.â"
"Forced pregnancy is defined as when a woman or girl becomes pregnant without having sought or desired it, and abortion is denied, hindered, delayed or made difficult. Some of these pregnancies are caused by a lack of sexual education, access to contraception, or mistake, but many of them, especially among young girls, are caused by sexual violence, often perpetrated by relatives or acquaintances. When abortion is illegal or inaccessible, often young girlsâ lives are at risk through clandestine abortions or having to give birth. Being so young, most are neither physically nor emotionally mature enough to carry a pregnancy to full term, give birth, or become mothers. And yet, without access to safe and legal abortion, they are forced to do so, compounding the harm from the sexual violence theyâve already suffered."
"The Commission on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women Committee and the Committee on the Rights of the Child has cataloged forced pregnancy as a harmful practice that gravely affects the rights of girls. The U.N. Human Rights Council has recognized that denial of abortion in cases of rape inflicts such psychological and physical trauma that it can amount to torture under international law."
"I am heartbroken that we may now be destined to learn the painful lessons of the time before Roe was made law of the land â a time when women risked losing their lives getting illegal abortions. A time when the government denied women control over their reproductive functions, forced them to move forward with pregnancies they didnât want, and then abandoned them once their babies were born."
"Allowing a state to take control of a woman's body and force her to undergo the physical demands, risks, and life-altering consequences of pregnancy is a fundamental deprivation of her liberty. And, once the Court recognizes that that liberty interest deserves heightened protection, it does need to draw a workable line, and viability is a line that logically balances the interests at stake."
""Forced pregnancy" means the unlawful confinement of a woman forcibly made pregnant, with the intent of affecting the ethnic composition of any population or carrying out other grave violations of international law. This definition shall not in any way be interpreted as affecting national laws relating to pregnancy;"
"From early on in the history of Islam, South Asian slaves were plentiful in Central Asia and Persia. The conquest of Sind in 712â13 yielded 60,000, and the Ghaznavids of eleventh-century Afghanistan drove home hundreds of thousands from India. The servile population of West Turkistan included many South Asians from at least 1326, and Indian slaves were routinely exchanged for inner Asian horses. In the late fourteenth century, the Samarkand- based Timur the Lame killed 100,000 Indians captured before reaching Delhi, but still brought thousands back to West Turkistan. As many as 200,000 Indian rebels were supposedly taken in 1619â20, for sale in Iran., [âŚ] By the sixteenth century the southern neighbours of the Eurasian heartland became âgunpowder empiresâ, stabilizing Islamic power. Their armies or those of their projecting allies, the Turkmens, Tatars and Maghreb corsair states extracted infidel captives on a grand scale from India to South-east Asia. ⌠The Mughals expanded further into southern India than any previous Muslim power, inundating Central Asia with Hindu captives. Nevertheless, these advances obscured structural flaws: newly conquered Christians and Hindus often refused to convert."
"Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Muslims enslaved Hindus and Animists, and even fellow Muslims, from the thirteenth-century. Bali exported around 100,000 Hindu slaves from 1620 to 1830, and South Sulawesi exported another 100,000 between 1660 and 1810, mainly Muslims. Quite a few were acquired by Europeans and Chinese. Supplies of Animists from Nias Island to Aceh from 1790 to 1900 may have amounted to around 50,000, while some 12,000 Toraja Animists were obtained in South Sulawesi from 1880 to 1905. There are no figures for similar local trades from Animist uplands to Muslim lowlands, notably in Sumatra, Malaya, and Borneo. The proportion of slaves in nineteenth-century Muslim societies varied widely. Rare in Java in the 1810s, they accounted for 6 per cent in an 1879 census of the Malay sultanate of Perak, about a third in villages on the eastern edge of West Sumatra in the 1860s, 30 per cent in the Muslim zone of North Sulawesi, and two thirds or more in part of North Borneo in the 1880s."
"The archbishop of Manila claimed in 1637 that Moro raiders from the south had seized an average of 10,000 Catholic Filipinos a year over the previous 30 years. Descriptive materials indicate fairly steady raiding, which might thus have yielded a total booty of some two million slaves in the first two centuries of Spanish rule after 1565. A shipping capacity calculation suggests that between 200,000 and 300,000 captives entered the Sulu sultanate from 1770-1870, lower than contemporary European estimates. However, Spanish and Dutch naval patrols became more effective from the 1840s, leading Moros to seize unquantified numbers of Animists in inland Mindanao."
"There are no statistics on the overall number of slaves imported into Jolo in the period under consideration, except the estimates of European observers. These range from 750 to as high as 4,000 captives a year for the Philippines alone from 1775 to 1848. .... Slave imports to the Sulu Sultanate during the first sixty-five years probably averaged between 2,000 and 3,000 a year. The steepest rise in the number of slaves annually brought to Sulu, between 3,000 and 4,000, occurred in the period 1836-48, during which foreign trade was most intense at Sulu. The trade reached its apex in 1848 and slackened considerably in the next two decades, with imports ranging between 1,200 and 2,000 slaves a year until it collapsed in the 1870s.' The figures appear to show that between 200,000 and 300,000 slaves were moved in Iranun and Samal vessels to the Sulu Sultanate in the period 1770-1870."
"There was no free wage labour to be had, except occasionally among either Chinese or other foreigners temporarily in port. Indigenous labour could only be rented from the owners, who evidently charged heavily for it. "It is their custom to rent slaves. They pay the slave a sum of money, which he gives to his master, and then they use the slave that day for whatever work they wish". The Undang-undang Melaka contains many provisions for what happens when people "hire" (mengupah) or "borrow" (ineminjam} slaves, but none for wage contracts. Even the offer of high wages did not attract "freemen" to do the job because manual labour was associated with servitude. "You will not find a native Malay, however poor he be, who will lift on his own back his own things or those of another, however much he be paid for it. All their work is done by slaves"."
"At Achim [Aceh] every one is for selling himself. Some of the chief lords have not less than a thousand slaves, all principal merchants, who have a great number of slaves themselves. âŚThis is the true and rational origin of that mild law of slavery which obtains in some countries: and mild it ought to be, as founded on the free choice a man makes of a master, for his own benefit; which forms a mutual convention between the two parties."
"Although indigenous conceptions of bondage did not include a sharp antithesis between the categories of slave and free, the conditions of the age of commerce may have encouraged movement in that direction.... The constant influx of new captives and imports created a market situation which needed to be regulated. Moreover, many members of the slave-owning merchant class had strong roots in the Islamic world, which had a clear body of law on slaves as property. The legal codes drawn up in Southeast Asian cities therefore paid considerable attention to slaves. Malay codes of law typically devoted about a quarter of their total attention to questions of slavery."
"The island of Bali in the East Indies (Indonesia) was a source of Hindu slaves for the Muslim world... India was also a source of slaves, for example with girls taken to Afghanistan and the Middle East and, from the mid-seventeenth century, forced labour moved to plantations in the Dutch-ruled coastlands of Sri Lanka."
"One Chinese reported that the people of Melaka "say that it is better to have slaves than to have land, because slaves are a protection to their masters""
"âŚthe Kremlin leader may have convinced himself that the use of North Korean slave labor is one of the best ways he can defend [the Russian Far East] from the neo-imperialism of China whose government also is quite prepared to make use of this modern form of slavery."
"Similarly, the Malay population of the coastal low- lands of Malaya, Sumatra, and Borneo gradually absorbed animist hill peoples during the five centuries before 1900, by a mixture of raiding, tribute, and purchase, especially of children... . Around 1500 Java was the largest single exporter of slaves, perhaps as a result of the divisive wars of Islamization. Through the still Hindu ports of Sunda Kelapa and Balambangan, Java supplied much of the urban working class of the Malay cities. Islamization created a major change in the nature of slave trading, since the shari'a law forbade the sale or enslavement of fellow Muslims. Once Islam completed its conquest of Java in the sixteenth century, that island ceased to export its people. The major Muslim cities were thenceforth supplied with slaves from beyond the frontier of Islam. Aceh obtained its servile labour from Nias, southern India, and Arakan; Banten and Makassar from the Moluccas and Lesser Sunda Islands; Patani from Cambodia, Champa, and Borneo. Certain small sultanates, notably Sulu, Buton, and Tidore, began to make a profitable business of raiding for slaves in eastern Indonesia or the Philippines and marketing the human victims to the wealthy cities-or to the expanding seventeenth-century pepper estates of southern Borneo."