ABSTRACT
Ancient slavery developed gradually through a spontaneous process that historians therefore consider normal. Roman expansionism, with its policy of subjugating and enslaving barbarian peoples, also manifested conscious and coherent decisions. Another deceiving appearance is the presumed continuity from the form of slavery that continued to exist in the Middle Ages and modern colonial slavery – one thesis regarding this continuity is present in Jose Antonio Saco and was recently developed based on the studies by Charles Verlinden. There is no doubt that slavery did not disappear entirely in the European Middle Ages and that its presence was particularly evident in some places. The explanations that attempt to relate the origin of slavery in Brazil to either the abundance or scarcity of certain factors of production are unilateral and superficial. Specifically, the abundance of land and the scarcity of the labor force.
