Knowra Chattel slavery Chattel slavery Chattel slavery is a system in which enslaved people are treated as property and their status is generally inherited. Enslavers claim legal control over their labor, movement, and family lives.
Slave codes : Laws that defined enslaved status, restricted enslaved people’s rights, and protected enslavers’ control. These laws converted ownership claims into enforceable restrictions on movement, testimony, family life, and labor.
Roman slavery : A system of slavery in ancient Rome, in which enslaved people could be acquired through war, birth, or trade. Roman law offers a major ancient example of people treated as property, with practices distinct from Atlantic slavery.
Olaudah Equiano : An African-born writer and abolitionist whose autobiography recounted enslavement and life in the Atlantic world. His published account challenged defenses of the slave trade with a first-person narrative.
Abolitionism : A movement to end slavery and the slave trade. Organized opposition turned slavery into a political and moral conflict across societies.
Serfdom : A system in which peasants were bound to land and owed labor or dues to a landholder. Serfs were unfree, but were generally not legally owned as movable property in the same way.
Partus sequitur ventrem : A legal doctrine making a child’s status follow the status of the mother. This rule made enslaved status hereditary through maternal descent in several colonial legal systems.
Portuguese colonization of the Americas : The conquest and settlement of parts of the Americas by Portugal, especially Brazil. Portuguese colonial expansion built plantation economies dependent on enslaved African labor.
Frederick Douglass : An American abolitionist, writer, and speaker who escaped slavery and campaigned against it. His speeches and autobiography exposed the violence and contradictions of American slavery.
Emancipation Proclamation : An 1863 United States order declaring enslaved people free in areas still rebelling against the Union. It made emancipation a stated Union war aim, though it did not immediately free everyone enslaved.
Indentured servitude : A labor arrangement in which a person contracts to work for a set period, often to repay passage or debt. Its stated term distinguishes it from hereditary ownership, although conditions could be brutal.
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