ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of various forms of human bondage, touching upon several important characteristics of slavery and slave trading present throughout documented history, from the ancient period to the early twentieth century. It highlights the common attributes of the institution of slavery across cultures, and describes the contexts in which the enslavement and trafficking of men, women, and children has persisted over the centuries. Slavery has existed in many places and in multiple forms for thousands of years and is one of most extreme forms of human domination. As a long-standing worldwide phenomenon, the institution of slavery has impacted millions of lives, and the pervasiveness of slavery throughout human history makes it difficult to generalize about the experience of bondage for individual. Slavery existed in ancient Rome from its earliest stage of development, and as the Roman Republic expanded into a vast empire over a period of several centuries, it became the largest slave society in ancient world.
