For most of the history of civilization, the practice of slavery was the rule rather than the exception. It was upheld in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, and was justified by Plato and Aristotle as a natural institution that was essential to civilized society. So-called democratic Athens in the time of Pericles enslaved 35 percent of its population, as did the Roman Republic. Slaves have always been a major booty in wartime, and stateless people of all races were vulnerable to capture. The word slave comes from Slav, because, as the dictionary informs us, "Slavic peoples were widely captured and enslaved during the Middle Ages." States and armed forces, when they were not used as enslaving devices, were used as enslavement-prevention devices, as we are reminded by the lyric "Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves. Britons never, never, never shall be slaves." Well before Africans were enslaved by Europeans, they were enslaved by other Africans, as well as by Islamic states in North Africa and the Middle East. Some of those states did not abolish legal slavery until recently: Qatar in 1952. Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1962; Mauritania in 1980.

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