This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2010)

Saudia (Arabic: السعودية‎ as-Saʿūdiyyah ) is the flag carrier airline of Saudi Arabia, based in Jeddah. It was known as Saudi Arabian Airlines(الخطوط الجوية العربية) prior to May 29th, 2012. The name was changed to celebrate the company's entry into the SkyTeam airline alliance on that day, and as part of a larger rebranding initiative.^[1] It operates domestic and international scheduled flights to over 90 destinations in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Domestic and international charter flights are operated, mostly during Ramadan and the Hajj season.

The airline's main operational base is at Jeddah-King Abdulaziz International Airport (JED). Other major hubs are Riyadh-King Khalid International Airport (RUH), and Dammam-King Fahd International Airport (DMM). The new Dammam airport was opened for commercial use on 28 November 1999. Dhahran International Airport in use until then, has reverted to being used as a military base.

Saudia is a member of the Arab Air Carriers Organization. The airline joined the SkyTeam airline alliance on May 29, 2012. The airline used to be the largest carrier in the region, but because of the growth of other airports and airlines has become the third largest in 2006, behind Emirates and Etihad Airways.^{[citation needed]}

History[link]

A Convair 340 of the airline at Dhahran Airport in 1959.

When U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented a Douglas DC-3 as a gift to King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud in 1945, the event marked the Kingdom's gradual development of civil aviation. The nation's flag carrier Saudi Arabian Airlines was founded in September 1946 as a fully owned government agency under the control of the Ministry of Defense, with TWA running the airline under a management contract.

From the beginning, Jeddah-Kandara airport—very near the town centre—served as the flag carrier's main base. Among the airline's early operations was a special flight from Lydda in Palestine (today Lod in Israel, site of Ben-Gurion International Airport), a British Mandate at that time, to carry Hajj pilgrims to Jeddah. The airline used five DC-3 aircraft to launch scheduled operations on the Jeddah-Riyadh-Hofuf-Dhahran route in March 1947, followed by its first international service between Jeddah and Cairo also in that same month. Service to Damascus and Beirut followed in early 1948. The following year saw the first of five Bristol 170s being received. These aircraft offered the airline the flexibility of carrying both passengers and cargo.

The slow but steady growth continued during the 1950s and services were inaugurated to Istanbul, Karachi, Amman, Kuwait City, Asmara, and Port Sudan. The fleet also saw a small growth during the 1950s, with five DC-4s and ten Convair 340s, the first pressurized aircraft for the airline. In 1959, the airline's first maintenance center was inaugurated in Jeddah. Also during this decade, the very important air link between Jeddah and Riyadh saw improvement.

In 1962, the airline took delivery of two Boeing 720s, becoming the third Middle Eastern airline to fly jet aircraft, after Cyprus Airways with the de Havilland Comet in 1960 and El Al with the Boeing 707 in 1961.^[2] On 19 February 1963, the airline became a registered company, with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia signing the papers that declared Saudi Arabian a fully independent company. DC-6s and Boeing 707s were later bought, and the airline joined the AACO, the Arab Air Carriers Organization. Services were started to Sharjah, Tehran, Khartoum, Bombay, Tripoli, Tunis, Rabat, Geneva, Frankfurt, and London.

In the 1970s, a new livery was introduced. The carrier's name was changed to Saudia on 1 April 1972. Boeing 737 and Fokker F-28 equipment was bought, with the 737s replacing the Douglas DC-9. The first all-cargo flights between Saudi Arabia and Europe were started, and Lockheed L-1011s and Fairchild FH-27s were introduced. New services, including the Arabian Express 'no reservation shuttle flights' between Jeddah and Riyadh. The Special Flight Services (SFS) was set up as a special unit of Saudia, and operates special flights for the Royal family and government agencies. Service was also started to Rome, Paris, Muscat, Kano, and Stockholm. The Pan Am / Saudia joint service between Dhahran and New York City started on 3 February 1979.

Some services opened during the 1980s for the airline, such as Saudia Catering. Flights were started to Athens, Bangkok, Dhaka, Mogadishu, Nairobi, New York City, Madrid, Singapore, Manila, Delhi, Islamabad, Seoul, Baghdad, Amsterdam, Colombo, Nice, Lahore, Brussels, Dakar, Kuala Lumpur and Taipei. Horizon Class, a business class service, was established to offer enhanced service to passengers. Cargo hubs were built at Brussels and Taipei. Airbus A300s, Boeing 747s, and Cessna Citations were also added to the fleet, the Citations for the SFS service. To conclude the decade, services were introduced in 1989 to Larnaca and Addis Ababa.

Saudi Arabian Airlines aircraft at Prince Mohammad Bin Abdulaziz International Airport, Saudi Arabia.

In the 1990s, services were introduced to Orlando, Chennai, Asmara, Washington, D.C., Johannesburg, Alexandria, Milan, Málaga (seasonal), and Sanaa (resumption). Boeing 777s, MD-90s and MD-11s were introduced. New female flight attendant uniforms designed by Adnan Akbar were introduced. A new corporate identity was launched on 16 July 1996, featuring a sand coloured fuselage with contrasting dark blue tailfin, the centre of which featured a stylised representation of the House of Saud crest. The Saudia name was dropped in the identity revamp, with Saudi Arabian Airlines name used.

On 8 October 2000, Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the Saudi Minister of Defence & Aviation, signed a contract to conduct studies for the privatisation of Saudi Arabian Airlines. In preparation for this, the airline was restructured to allow non-core units—including Saudia catering, ground handling services and maintenance as well as the Prince Sultan Flight Academy in Jeddah—to be transformed into commercial units and profit centres. In April 2005, the Saudi government indicated that the airline may also lose its monopoly on domestic services.^[3]

Profits[link]

Passengers and recorded a 14% rise in profits. In April the following year the airline ordered 15 Embraer E-170LR aircraft in a deal worth $400 million.

Privatization[link]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Prince Sultan and the Air Aviation Commissions

In 2006 Saudi Airlines began the process of dividing itself into Strategic Business Units (SBU); the catering unit was the first to be privatized.^[4] In August 2007, Saudi Arabia's Council of Ministers approved the conversion of strategic units into companies. It is planned that ground services, technical services, air cargo and the Prince Sultan Aviation Academy, as well as the catering unit, will become subsidiaries of a holding company.^[5]

Destinations[link]

A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747–368 taxiing at Singapore Changi Airport, Singapore. (2007)

Codeshare and Alliance[link]

Saudi Arabian Airlines has codeshare agreements with the following airlines (as of November 2010):

• Air France (SkyTeam)
• Ethiopian Airlines (Star Alliance)
• Etihad Airways
• Gulf Air
• Kuwait Airways
• MEA-Middle East Airlines (future SkyTeam member)
• South African Airways (Star Alliance)
• SriLankan Airlines
• Yemenia

Saudia joined SkyTeam on 29th of May 2012, but has not yet announced any new codeshare agreements with any of the members other than those stated above. ^[6][7]

Fleet[link]

A Saudi Arabian Airlines Airbus A320 landing at Frankfurt International Airport, Germany. (2010)

A Saudi Arabian Airlines McDonnell-Douglas MD-90 landing at Geneva Cointrin Airport, Switzerland

A Saudi Arabian Boeing 777-200ER landing in Zurich-Kloten Airport, Switzerland

A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747-412 during takeoff from Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, Pakistan

A Saudi Arabian Cargo McDonnell-Douglas MD-11 at Amsterdam-Schiphol Airport, Netherlands

Saudi Arabian Airlines operates the following aircraft (as of April 2012):^{[8][9][10][11][12][13][14]}

On its new introduced Boeing 777-300ER (designation — 773) Saudi Arabian is planning to have 7-abreast (2-3-2) business class and 10-abreast (3-4-3) economy class,^[16] using these planes on medium-haul routes.^[16]

Introduction of new aircraft[link]

Saudi Arabian Airlines received 40 new Airbus airplanes by the end of 2011. The airline so far has 65 A320-200s, and 25 A330-300s.^[17]

Other aircraft[link]

A Saudi Arabian Airlines Gulfstream IV at Edinburgh Airport, Scotland. (2009)

Saudi Arabian Airlines Special Flight Services, VIP flights, and Private Aviation operate the following, a number of which sport the airlines livery^{[citation needed]}

• 6 Beechcraft Bonanza (training)
• 2 Dassault Falcon 900 (government use)
• 2 Dassault Falcon 7X (charter)
• 6 Gulfstream IV (government use)
• 6 Hawker 400XP (government use)

Some military C-130s are also painted with the Saudi Arabian Airlines colors and are flown by Royal Saudi Air Force crews to support Saudi official activities in the region and Europe.

In-flight services[link]

The in-flight magazine of Saudi Arabian Airlines is called Ahlan Wasahlan (Arabic: أهلاً وسهلاً‎ "Hello and Welcome"). No alcoholic beverages or pork are served on board in accordance with Islamic dietary laws.

Incidents and accidents[link]

• On 25 September 1959, a Saudi Arabian Airlines Douglas DC-4 HZ-AAF crashed shortly after take-off from Jeddah. The cause of the accident was pilot error followed by a stall. All 67 passengers and 5 crew survived.^[18]

• On 9 February 1968, Douglas C-47 HZ-AAE was damaged beyond economic repair at an unknown location.^[19]

• On 10 November 1970, a Douglas DC-3 on a flight from Amman Civil Airport, Jordan to King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was hijacked and diverted to Damascus Airport, Syria.^[20]

• On 11 July 1972, Douglas C-47B HZ-AAK was damaged beyond economic repair in an accident at Tabuk Airport.^[21]

• On 19 August 1980, Saudia Flight 163 a Lockheed L-1011-200 TriStar, operating Karachi-Riyadh-Jeddah, was completely destroyed by fire at Riyadh airport with the loss of all people on board.

• On 23 December 1980, Saudia Flight 162 a Lockheed L-1011-200 TriStar, operating Dhahran to Karachi, experienced an explosive decompression, penetrating the passenger cabin. The hole sucked out two passengers and depressurized the cabin.^[22]

• On 12 November 1996 Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision, Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 763 (SVA 763), a Boeing 747-168B en route from New Delhi, India, to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, collided in mid-air with Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907 (KZA 1907), an Ilyushin Il-76 en route from Shymkent, Kazakhstan to New Delhi, over the village of Charkhi Dadri, Haryana, India. All 349 people on board both flights were killed, making it the deadliest mid-air collision in history.

• In 23 August 2001, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia,^[23] a Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747–368 aircraft (Registration HZ-AIO) suffered nose damage as it entered a monsoon drainage ditch while it was being taxied by Maintenance staff from the hangar to the gate before a return flight to Saudi Arabia. None of the six crew members on board at the time were injured.

• On 8 September 2005, a Saudi Arabian Boeing 747 traveling from Colombo to Jeddah, carrying mostly Sri Lankan nationals to take up employment in the Kingdom, received a false alarm claiming that a bomb had been planted on board. The aircraft returned to Colombo and, during the evacuation, there was a passenger stampede in the wake of which one Sri Lankan woman died, 62 were injured, and 17 were hospitalized. The aircraft had taken on a load of 420 passengers in Colombo.^[24]

• On 25 May 2008, a leased aircraft operating as Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight SV806 from Prince Mohammad Bin Abdulaziz Airport, Medina made an uneventful landing in Zia International Airport. During the roll the tower controller reported that he saw a fire on the right hand wing. Upon exiting runway 14 the crew received a fire indication for engine number three. The fire extinguisher was activated and all engines were shut down. The Boeing 747-357, which was damaged beyond repair, was successfully evacuated.^[25] Only minor injuries had been incurred.^[26] Investigation determined a fuel leak where the fuel enters the front spar for engine number three.^[25]

• On 21 January 2010, a Saudi Arabian Cargo MD-11F was involved in a taxiway excursion at Malta International Airport. As the aircraft was taxiing to Park 9 via taxiway E, the right main landing gear overstepped the taxiway onto the grass where it became stuck in the soft soil. No injuries were reported and the aircraft was pulled out the following morning.^[27]

See also[link]

Aviation portal

	Saudi Arabia portal
	Aviation portal
	Companies portal

• Prince Sultan Aviation Academy
• AeroMobile
• SkyTeam

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Saudi Arabian Airlines

• Saudia official website
• Ahlan Wasahlan inflight magazine
• Saudi Arabian Airlines: The Jewel of the Middle East, Boeing
• SkyTeam official website

v t e Airlines of Saudi Arabia ASACO Al Anwa Aviation Dallah Avco Mid East Jet Nas Air (Saudi Arabia) Sama Airlines Saudia SNAS Aviation Al Wafeer Air

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work.^[1] Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation. Historically, slavery was institutionally recognized by many societies; in more recent times slavery has been outlawed in most societies but continues through the practices of debt bondage, indentured servitude, serfdom, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, and forced marriage.^[2]

Slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures.^[3] The number of slaves today is higher than at any point in history,^[4] remaining as high as 12 million^[5] to 27 million,^[6][7] Most are debt slaves, largely in South Asia, who are under debt bondage incurred by lenders, sometimes even for generations.^[8] Human trafficking is primarily used for forcing women and children into sex industries.^[9]

In pre-industrial societies, slaves and their labour were economically extremely important. In modern mechanised societies, there is less need for sheer massive manpower; Norbert Wiener wrote that "mechanical labor has most of the economic properties of slave labor, though... it does not involve the direct demoralizing effects of human cruelty."^[10]

Etymology[link]

The English word slave comes from Old French sclave, from the Medieval Latin sclavus, from the Byzantine Greek σκλάβος.

The word σκλάβος, in turn, comes from the ethnonym 'Slav', because in some wars in early mediaeval times many Slavs were captured and enslaved.^[11][12] An older theory connected it to the Greek verb skyleúo 'to strip a slain enemy'.^[13]

Types[link]

Photograph of a slave boy in Zanzibar. 'An Arab master's punishment for a slight offence.' c. 1890.

Chattel slavery[link]

Chattel slavery, so named because people are treated as the personal property, chattels, of an owner and are bought and sold as commodities, is the original form of slavery. When taking these chattels across national borders it is referred to as Human Trafficking especially when these slaves provide sexual services.^[8]

Bonded labor[link]

Debt bondage or bonded labor occurs when a person pledges himself or herself against a loan.^[14] The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined.^[14] Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their parents' debt.^[14] It is the most widespread form of slavery today.^[8]

Forced labor[link]

Forced labor is when an individual is forced to work against his or her will, under threat of violence or other punishment, with restrictions on their freedom.^[8] It is also used to describe all types of slavery and may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labor.

History[link]

Slave market in early medieval Eastern Europe. Painting by Sergei Ivanov.

Early history[link]

Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many cultures.^[3] Prehistoric graves from about 8000 BC in Lower Egypt suggest that a Libyan people enslaved a San-like tribe.^[15] Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations, as slavery is a system of social stratification. Mass slavery also requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Due to these factors, the practice of slavery would have only proliferated after the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.^[16]

In the earliest known records slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1760 BC), for example, stated that death was prescribed for anyone who helped a slave to escape, as well as for anyone who sheltered a fugitive.^[17] The Hebrew Bible refers uncritically to slavery as an established institution.^[3]

Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization, and society, including Sumer, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient India, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Islamic Caliphate, the Hebrews in Palestine, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.^[3] Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.^[18]

Classical Antiquity[link]

The work of the Mercedarians was in ransoming Christians slaves held in Muslim hands (1637).

Records of slavery in Ancient Greece go as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is certain that Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC;^[19] two to four fifths of the population were slaves.^[20] As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Greeks, Illyrians, Berbers, Germans, Britons, Thracians, Gauls, Jews, Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labour, but also for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War led by Spartacus being the most famous and severe. By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society.^[21] At the least, some 25% of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved.^[22] According to some scholars, slaves represented 35% or more of Italy's population.^[23] In the city of Rome alone, under the Roman Empire, there were about 400,000 slaves.^[24] During the millennium from the emergence of the Roman Empire to its eventual decline, at least 100 million people were captured or sold as slaves throughout the Mediterranean and its hinterlands.^[25]

Middle Ages[link]

Medieval Europe[link]

The early medieval slave trade was mainly confined to the South and East: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, pagan Central and Eastern Europe, along with the Caucasus and Tartary, were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek and Jewish merchants (known as Radhanites) were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.^[26][27][28] The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj rebellion which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world.^[29][30]

Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant Muslim invasion of the predominantly Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In raid against Lisbon, Portugal in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.^[31] From the 11th to the 19th century, North African Barbary Pirates engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco.^[32][33]

Depiction of socage on the royal demesne in feudal England (miniature from Queen Mary's Psalter, ca. 1310). Socage is an aspect of serfdom, not usually included under the term "slavery".

At the time of the Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, nearly 10% of the English population were slaves.^[34] Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it — or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at e.g. the Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102), and the Council of Armagh (1171).^[35] In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, legitimizing the slave trade as a result of war.^[36] The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. However, Pope Paul III forbade enslavement of the native Americans in 1537 in his papal bull Sublimus Dei.^[37] Dominican friars who arrived at the Spanish settlement at Santo Domingo strongly denounced the enslavement of the local native Americans. Along with other priests, they opposed their treatment as unjust and illegal in an audience with the Spanish king and in the subsequent royal commission.^[38]

The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world.^[39] From the mid to late 14th, through early 18th centuries, the Ottoman devşirme–janissary system enslaved and forcibly converted to Islam an estimated 500,000 to one million non–Muslim (primarily Balkan Christian) adolescent males.^[40] After the Battle of Lepanto approximately 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed from the Ottoman fleet.^[41] A few years later Cervantes, who later wrote the famous book Don Quixote, was captured by corsairs and enslaved in Algiers, attempted to escape and was eventually ransomed; he wrote about the plight of Christian slaves in his fiction. Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into jasyr. Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into Poland–Lithuania between 1474–1569.^[42] There were more than 100,000 Russian captives in the Kazan Khanate alone in 1551.^[43]

Crimean Tatar raiders enslaved more than 1 million Eastern Europeans.^[44]

Approximately 10–20% of the rural population of Carolingian Europe consisted of slaves.^[45] In Western Europe slavery largely disappeared by the later Middle Ages.^[46] The trade of slaves in England was made illegal in 1102,^[47] although England went on to become very active in the lucrative Atlantic slave trade from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Thralldom in Scandinavia was finally abolished in the mid-14th century.^[48] Slavery persisted longer in Eastern Europe. Slavery in Poland was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom. In Kievan Rus and Muscovy, the slaves were usually classified as kholops.

Islamic world[link]

13th century slave market in Yemen. Yemen officially abolished slavery in 1962.^[49]

In early Islamic states of the western Sudan, including Ghana (750–1076), Mali (1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai (1275–1591), about a third of the population were enslaved.^[50]

Ibn Battuta tells us several times that he was given or purchased slaves.^[51] The great 14th-century scholar Ibn Khaldun, wrote: "the Black nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Blacks) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals".^[52] Slaves were purchased or captured on the frontiers of the Islamic world and then imported to the major centers, where there were slave markets from which they were widely distributed.^[53][54][55] In the 9th and 10th centuries, the black Zanj slaves may have constituted at least a half of the total population in lower Iraq.^[56] At the same time, many tens of thousands of slaves in the region were also imported from Central Asia and the Caucasus.^[57] Many slaves were taken in the wars with the Christian nations of medieval Europe.

Modern history[link]

Europe[link]

An 1852 Wallachian poster advertising an auction of Roma slaves in Bucharest.

Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679.^[58] Russia's more than 23 million privately-held serfs were freed from their lords by an edict of Alexander II in 1861.^[59] State-owned serfs were emancipated in 1866.^[60]

During the Second World War (1939–1945) Nazi Germany effectively enslaved many people, both those considered undesirable and citizens of countries they conquered.

Africa[link]

13th century Africa – simplified map of the main states, kingdoms and empires

Arab slave traders and their captives along the Ruvuma river (in today's Tanzania and Mozambique).

In Senegambia, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved^{[dubious – discuss]}. In Sierra Leone in the 19th century about half of the population consisted of enslaved people.^[50]

In the 19th century at least half the population was enslaved among the Duala of the Cameroon, the Igbo and other peoples of the lower Niger, the Kongo, and the Kasanje kingdom and Chokwe of Angola. Among the Ashanti and Yoruba a third of the population consisted of enslaved people.^[50]

The population of the Kanem (1600–1800) was about a third-enslaved. It was perhaps 40% in Bornu (1580–1890). Between 1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the Fulani jihad states consisted of slaves.^[50]

The population of the Sokoto caliphate formed by Fulanis and Hausas in northern Nigeria and Cameroon was half-slave in the 19th century. Between 65% to 90% population of Arab-Swahili Zanzibar was enslaved.^[50] The Swahili-Arab slave trade reached its height about 150 years ago, when, for example, approximately 20,000 slaves were considered to be carried yearly from Nkhotakota on Lake Malawi to Kilwa.^[61] Roughly half the population of Madagascar was enslaved.^[50][62]

According to the Encyclopedia of African History, "It is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labor was extensive, especially in agriculture."^[63][64] The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of between 8 and 16 million.^[65]

Hugh Clapperton in 1824 believed that half the population of Kano were enslaved people.^[66] According to W. A. Veenhoven, "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way... Keltie (The Partition of Africa, London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone puts the figure as high as ten to one."^[67]

Slave traders in Gorée, Senegal, 18th century

One of the most famous slave traders on the East African coast was Tippu Tip, who was himself the grandson of an enslaved African. The prazeros slave traders, descendants of Portuguese and Africans, operated along the Zambezi. North of the Zambezi, the waYao and Makua people played a similar role as professional slave raiders and traders. The Nyamwezi slave traders operated further north under the leadership of Msiri and Mirambo.^[68]

Asia[link]

As late as 1908, women slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire.^[69] A slave market for captured Russian and Persian slaves was centred in the Central Asian khanate of Khiva.^[70] Darrel P. Kaiser wrote, "Kazakh-Kirghiz tribesmen kidnapped 1573 settlers from colonies [German settlements in Russia] in 1774 alone and only half were successfully ransomed. The rest were killed or enslaved."^[71] According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in India in 1841. About 15% of the population of Malabar were slaves. Slavery was abolished in British India by the Indian Slavery Act V. of 1843.^[3][72] In Istanbul about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves.^[73]

In East Asia, the Imperial government formally abolished slavery in China in 1906, and the law became effective in 1910.^[74] Slave rebellion in China at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century was so extensive that owners eventually converted the institution into a female-dominated one.^[75] The Nangzan in Tibetan history were, according to Chinese sources, hereditary household slaves.^[76]

Indigenous slaves existed in Korea. Slavery was officially abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894 but continued in reality until 1930. During the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910) about 30% to 50% of the Korean population were slaves.^[77] In late 16th century Japan slavery as such was officially banned, but forms of contract and indentured labor persisted alongside the period penal codes' forced labor.^[78]

In Southeast Asia, a quarter to a third of seventeenth- to twentieth-century populations in some areas of Thailand and Burma were slaves.^[3] The hill tribe people in Indochina were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians."^[79] A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large scale".^[80]

Americas[link]

The Brazilian slave-hunter, 1823, by Johann Moritz Rugendas.