50 Fun Facts About History of Slavery

The English word 'slave' comes from the name of which European people, often captured and sold in medieval times?

Slavs were sold into bondage in such numbers that the Medieval Latin word Sclavus, which first meant a member of that people, came to mean anyone held as property.

Which patron saint, born in Roman Britain, was kidnapped by pirates at sixteen and enslaved as a herder for six years?

Saint Patrick escaped, trained as a cleric and then chose to go back as a missionary to Ireland, the island where he had been held captive.

Which great writer spent five years as a captive in Algiers after Barbary pirates seized his ship off Spain in 1575?

Miguel de Cervantes tried to escape four times before a religious order that specialised in ransoming Christian captives bought his freedom. Don Quixote came 25 years later.

Which famous New York thoroughfare held the city's first official slave market, opened at its East River end in 1711?

Wall Street is named after a defensive wall that enslaved Africans helped to build for the Dutch colony. The market, a roofed wooden shed, traded people there until 1762.

Which US state's vote to ratify the constitutional ban on slavery, cast only in 1995, was not certified until 2013?

Mississippi had rejected the measure in December 1865 and let it stand for 130 years. Its late vote in favour then stayed uncertified for another 18 years.

Which Caribbean nation, free since 1804, is the only country to gain independence through a successful slave rebellion?

Haiti was then made to pay France an indemnity of 150 million francs for the property its former masters had lost, a debt whose last payments were not cleared until 1947.

Which West African country became the last in the world to abolish slavery, by presidential decree in 1981?

Mauritania attached no punishment to the decree, so holding a person in bondage carried no penalty there until a law of 2007 finally allowed owners to be prosecuted.

How did Henry Brown travel from Richmond to Philadelphia in 1849 to escape slavery?

Mailed in a wooden crate labelled dry goods, he went by wagon, railroad, steamboat and ferry. He took the name Henry 'Box' Brown and later toured England as a stage magician.

Which Thracian gladiator led an army of escaped slaves against the Roman Republic in the Third Servile War?

Spartacus saw his band of runaways grow to some 120,000 men, women and children within two years. After his defeat, Crassus had 6,000 of the survivors crucified.

Which country was the last in the Americas to abolish slavery, when Princess Isabel signed the Golden Law in 1888?

Brazil's slave owners were so angered by the law that they helped topple the monarchy the following year, and the country became a republic in 1889.

Which US federal holiday marks the day in 1865 when a Union general proclaimed freedom for the enslaved in Texas?

Juneteenth blends the words June and nineteenth, a name Black Texans were using by the 1890s. It became a federal holiday only in 2021.

Which amendment to the US Constitution abolished slavery in 1865, except as a punishment for crime?

The Thirteenth Amendment left forced labour legal for convicts, and Southern programmes soon let plantations rent prisoners cheaply.

Which woman fled slavery in Maryland in 1849, then went back on some 13 missions to lead about 70 people north?

Harriet Tubman went on to serve the Union Army as an armed scout and spy, guiding a river raid that freed more than 700 people.

Which abolitionist fled Baltimore dressed as a sailor in 1838 and became the most photographed American of his century?

Frederick Douglass sat for portrait after portrait on purpose, consciously using the young art of photography to advance his political views.

Which 1852 novel, serialised in an abolitionist paper, outsold every book in 19th-century America but the Bible?

Uncle Tom's Cabin ran for 40 weeks in The National Era before it appeared as a book, which then sold 300,000 copies in the United States in its first year.

Which 1793 invention by Eli Whitney made a Southern crop so profitable that demand for enslaved workers soared?

The cotton gin was built to save labour by stripping seeds from the fibre, yet planters answered by enlarging their fields and buying more people to pick them.

What name is given to the Atlantic crossing on which about two million captive Africans died aboard slave ships?

The Middle Passage was the second leg of a triangular trade: goods went out to Africa, captives to the Americas, and plantation produce back to Europe.

Which European nation's ships carried the most enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, ahead of Britain's?

Portugal also started the trade: its ships had been bringing captives from West Africa since 1441, half a century before Columbus crossed the ocean.

Which 1977 TV miniseries, based on an Alex Haley novel, follows Kunta Kinte from The Gambia into American slavery?

Roots earned 37 Emmy nominations and won nine, and its finale drew some of the highest ratings American television had ever recorded.

What were the enslaved farm workers of ancient Sparta called, who heavily outnumbered the citizens they fed?

Helots were so feared that Sparta formally declared war on them every autumn, which let its secret patrols kill them without any religious guilt.

Which caste of freed slave soldiers ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517 and beat a Mongol army at Ain Jalut?

Mamluks took their name from an Arabic word meaning 'one who is owned', yet as armed professionals they ranked far above ordinary slaves, who could not carry weapons.

What were the slaves of Viking Age Scandinavia called, many of them captives seized in raids across Europe?

Thralls live on in the English verb 'enthrall', to hold someone spellbound. Taking captives to sell became one of the main purposes of Viking voyages.

Which survey ordered by William the Conqueror recorded that about one in ten people in England in 1086 were slaves?

Domesday Book listed about 28,000 slaves, fewer than in 1066. Under the Normans they were gradually absorbed into the unfree peasantry instead of being freed.

During which December festival did Roman masters wait at table on their own slaves, overturning the usual social order?

Saturnalia recalled a mythical golden age under King Saturn, when Romans believed that nobody had been a slave and all goods were held in common.

Which Stoic philosopher was born into slavery, served a secretary of Emperor Nero, and later influenced Marcus Aurelius?

Epictetus began to teach once he was freed, but he never published a word. His pupil Arrian wrote the lectures down as the Discourses and the Enchiridion.

Which Greek philosopher's claim that some people are slaves by nature was later used to defend conquest in the Americas?

Aristotle set out the idea in his Politics. In 1550 a Spanish scholar cited it in a formal debate to argue that Native Americans could rightly be enslaved.

Which book of the Bible tells how Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, an escape remembered at Passover?

Exodus inspired the spiritual Go Down Moses, in which the Israelites' release from bondage stood for the freedom of runaway slaves in America.

What is the formal term for an owner freeing a slave, an act that Romans marked with a soft felt cap?

Manumission in Rome came with the pileus, a hat that slaves were forbidden to wear, which is why a felt cap became an emblem of liberty.

In which present-day country did enslaved East Africans draining salt marshes near Basra begin a long revolt in 869?

Iraq was the heartland of the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Zanj Rebellion defied its armies for fourteen years, from 869 until 883.

Which formerly enslaved general led the revolution in Saint-Domingue but died in a French mountain prison in 1803?

Toussaint Louverture was arrested at a meeting he had been invited to as a parley, then deported, so he never saw the final victory his army went on to win.

Which French ruler reinstated slavery in France's colonies in 1802, eight years after the Revolution had abolished it?

Napoleon's decree reversed the abolition law of 1794, which in practice had been enforced in only three of France's overseas territories.

What name was given to Africans who escaped slavery in Jamaica and built free communities in the island's mountains?

Maroons fought the British to a standstill, and treaties signed by 1740 granted them land and autonomy in exchange for peace.

Which Spanish schooner, later the subject of a Steven Spielberg film, was seized by its captives off Cuba in 1839?

La Amistad was stopped off Long Island, and in 1841 the US Supreme Court ruled that its captives had acted as free men in fighting their kidnappers.

What did the owners of the British slave ship Zong claim after its crew threw more than 130 captives overboard in 1781?

An insurance payout was first granted by a jury, as the law counted the drowned as lost cargo. No one was tried for murder, but the scandal fed the campaign to end the trade.

Which Yorkshire MP led the 20-year campaign in Parliament that ended Britain's slave trade with an act of 1807?

William Wilberforce died in 1833, just three days after hearing that the act freeing enslaved people across the empire was sure to pass.

Whose West Africa Squadron spent decades chasing slave ships and freed about 150,000 captive Africans?

Royal Navy sailors dreaded the posting because tropical disease killed so many of them, and the patrols caught only about 6% of the ships making the crossing.

Which West African capital was founded in 1792 by about 1,200 Black Loyalists who sailed from Nova Scotia?

Freetown's founders had tired of the harsh weather and racial discrimination they met in Canada. The city later took in Africans rescued from captured slave ships.

Which modern country holds Cape Coast and Elmina castles, whose dungeons held captives bound for the Americas?

Ghana, known to Europeans as the Gold Coast, has about forty of these large trading forts, put up by rival merchants from across Europe.

In which English port city did protesters topple a statue of slave trader Edward Colston into the harbour in 2020?

Bristol's council fished the bronze out four days later. Still daubed with graffiti, it went on permanent display in a city museum in 2024.

Under the 1787 US Constitution, what fraction of a state's enslaved population counted toward its seats in the House?

Three-fifths was a compromise that handed slaveholding states extra seats for people who could not vote, tilting the House of Representatives toward the South.

Which US president's will ordered that the 123 people he enslaved be freed, no later than his wife's death?

George Washington could do nothing for the other enslaved people at Mount Vernon, who belonged to his wife's family estate. His own went free a year after he died.

General Sherman's 1865 order gave freed families plots of up to forty acres; which animal did the army later lend them?

A mule rounded off a promise that barely outlived the war: under President Andrew Johnson, almost all of the land was handed back to its pre-war white owners.

Which free Black violinist from New York was kidnapped in 1841 and held in bondage in Louisiana for twelve years?

Solomon Northup was freed after a Canadian labourer got word to his home state. The 2013 film of his memoir won the Oscar for Best Picture.

Which enslaved pilot sailed a Confederate transport out of Charleston Harbor in 1862 and gave it to the Union fleet?

Robert Smalls freed himself, his crew and their families in a single morning. After the war he was elected to the US House of Representatives.

Which West African kingdom, known for its all-female regiment, became a major supplier of captives to European slavers?

Dahomey conquered the coastal city of Whydah to gain direct access to the Atlantic trade. Its women warriors are the subject of the 2022 film The Woman King.

Which East African island's slave markets were closed in 1873 after Britain threatened its sultan with a naval blockade?

Zanzibar's largest market made way for an Anglican cathedral, built to celebrate the end of the trade. Its altar is said to stand where the whipping post was.

Which English judge ruled in the Somerset case of 1772 that a slave could not be forcibly shipped out of England?

Lord Mansfield and his wife were at the time raising his great-niece Dido Belle, whose mother had been enslaved, as a free gentlewoman at Kenwood House.

Which crop, harvested by enslaved Africans on Caribbean plantations, met 80 to 90 percent of Western Europe's demand?

Sugar from the islands was later undercut by beet grown in Europe itself, and after abolition planters brought in indentured workers from India and China.

In which English colony did a privateer land 'twenty and odd' captive Africans at Point Comfort in August 1619?

Virginia's governor bought the captives from the White Lion, whose crew had plundered them from a slave ship carrying more than three hundred people toward Mexico.

In which US state was the wreck of the Clotilda, the last known ship to land African captives in America, found?

Alabama's Mobile River hid the schooner for 159 years. Its owners had burned and sunk it after the voyage in an attempt to destroy the evidence.