ABSTRACT
Although the historian cannot perceive a common and immutable formula that would explain the existence of slavery in human society in the past five millennia, it seems clear that the economic factor has been a primum mobile of this all-important institution in all the cases so far known to history. This economic and social institution, it can be fairly hazarded, has developed most prominently in settled communities possessing the following economic characteristics-an agrarian economy, a limited and unsophisticated material taste, a rudimentary-if any-mechanized transportation and communication system, a cumbersome currency, a sort of handicraft industry, and very little, if any, technological know-how.
