One of our most important challenges is why slavery returns throughout history.

Does our overpopulation biology explain why slavery returns?

Darwin concluded that "More individuals of every species are born than can possibly survive." The result? "Frequently recurring struggle(s) for existence." Darwin documented  struggles driven by growth in numbers among surviving animals and plants.

Why? Because all momentarily-successful life tends to reproduce beyond available life support.

Imagine a species losing overpopulation as one of its universal characteristics of life. That defect, that loss means an existing generation's numbers will shrink in the following generation. Each succeeding generation will be smaller still. This yields rinse-and-repeat extinction.

Life forms simply cannot persist, cannot regenerate without that one universal quality of all momentarily-successful life, the ability to overpopulate.  Without the ability to grow in numbers beyond all available life-support resources, yes to the point where marginal species members will suffer mortally, no species will last.

Can human intelligence counter why slavery returns?

We humans seem theoretically capable of the very careful, deliberate, intentional management of our own numbers necessary to survive without imposing suffering on our own marginalized neighbors. And to maintain what's left of paradise, creation, Eden, at such time as we achieved such sustainable utopia. History records attempts.

Golden-rules are foundations of legitimacy for existing religions, philosophies, and other human belief-systems. Do all such rules call for faithful to end overpopulation threats to our survival? Some faithful may think that their omnicient, all-powerful god isn't capable of building life guided by universal rules of overpopulation? Do all faithful realize that with dedication, commitment, and imagination we could choose to follow god-given golden rules and restrain our overwhelming drive to overpopulate?

Does human violence better explain why slavery returns?

Human history more obviously bleeds with adversarial violence. Do humans find it convenient to blame others whenever shortages are caused by too many?

How does underpopulation differ from overpopulation?

By one definition, underpopulation describes those good times when all enjoy resources like "milk and honey" described in Judeo Christian Islamic  writings. Underpopulation is when life support is so bountiful that every extra pair of hands makes all of us more comfortable!

In contrast, overpopulation captures times there are people enough that some start thinking we'd be better off without "others."

Why would some people start thinking we'd be better off without all those competing "others?" Surely, shortages of "milk and honey" we can blame on "others" could motivate angry thoughts. Surely, "frequently recurring struggle(s) for existence" would support such thoughts.

Surely our deeply dangerous human "us-or-them" psychologies that drives possessiveness, hatred, and worse, provide rafts of reasons.

"If it comes down to feeding my children or "others" feeding their children..." Fill in the blanks, anyone?

Overpopulation's "struggles for existence" explain why slavery returns.

As humans outrun life support babies are born faster than jobs. Joblessness translates into shortages of water, food, shelter, other supports and joys of life. Overpopulation poverty spreads. Conceptions beyond support can worsen stress.

Overpopulation emigration begins as frustrated, hungry people seeking "lands of milk and honey" try to escape from overpopulating, overpopulation-ruined lands of their birth. Such dear people all hope for something better. Who can blame desperate migrants. Whose fault was it they were born in a world where "too-many people" explains why slavery returns?"

Since overpopulation is a universal quality of all momentarily-successful life, our human expression of psychological needs and greeds continues to make human competition deadly, fierce, and brutal.

Why slavery returns among prisoners of war.

Prisoners of war are typically first into slavery as people compete violently. "Others" who threaten us by needing what we also must have, must be countered. So, competing people, individuals, families, tribes, nations having the capability, arm themselves. Whether in defense or offense prisoners of war are taken. Because POWs very existence threatens captors, captors face an immediate hard choice. Execute their POWS so you won't have to fight them again? Or enslave those enslaveable to achieve some benefit from them.

Harvard's Orlando Patterson identifies slavery's "social death" as complete repudiation, dishonor, and stripping of meaningful social status from persons targeted. Where is social death found among civilizations today? Prisoners of war (POWs) are obvious examples of the "social dead."

Toss a dart hard at a good history book and the point will likely touch another example of humans acting violently out of fear of "others."

Why slavery returns among prisoners of crime.

Slavery often returns among prisoners of crimes and prisoners by debt.

Criminal felons are imprisoned as a matter of course. Capital punishment subjects prisoners to likely execution. As societies suffer shortages, does logic strengthen toward forcing inmate labor to pay costs of penalties earned by crime? As pressures rise, does logic strengthen toward using forced labor to benefit numbers-tortured societies as a whole? Does this explain inmates striving in factories connected with their penal institutions?

Why slavery returns among prisoners by debt.

Can't pay owed debts? Can't manage money? Can't prioritize competitively in increasingly stressed cultures? Having debtors "work it off" as resource challenges worsen might seem to make sense. Might initially parent-like figures morph into slave ownership?

During relatively good times in some momentarily wealthy nations, debtor's prisons have been legally repudiated. As we'll see, examples of all forms of enslavement reappear with tragic regularity in modern settings around the globe today.

The word "momentarily" is used in the paragraph above because laws, events, and circumstances change with time. Ah, another dividend of our universal tendency to overpopulate available resources.

Why slavery returns among targetted others.

As fears rise during times of overpopulation-driven tensions, us-versus-them political messages become more pursuasive. If circumstances are increasing risks to my family, surely who ever is to blame should be dealt with. Political themes sacrificing smaller groups for the sake of a prevailing political power base become pursuasive. Human consequences such as the destruction of "expendable subgroups" are cruel and morally obscene.

Why slavery returns, original causes in modern times.

"There are more slaves today than at any other time in human history. Oversupply makes slaves cheap. Very cheap. While in the 1850s, a slave cost the equivalent of $35,000-$50,000, a human life today averages $90. This not only makes them a small investment, it makes them...not worth the effort to maintain. Modern slaves are disposable because they have become replaceable."

Why?

Should disposable slaves be our new normal?

Should offshored slavery be allowed to hide from those of us who benefit remain blissfully unaware?

Why don't we better understand why slavery returns?

During relatively prosperous times haven't slaves been emancipated in some momentarily wealthy nations?

Oceans of thanks to so many heroic, caring, thoughtful pathfinders, many well-remembered martyrs.

Western post-1865 anti-slavery work focused on despicable experiences of slaverytypically in contexts of American chattel slavery.  To understand original causes of slavery must we look back further into history?

"Slavery has existed all over the planet for thousands of years, with black, white, yellow and other races being both slaves and enslavers,"  Stanford's Thomas Sowell taught.

"One of the most remarkable features of Western civilization is the critical role of slavery at almost all the high points of its development, from ancient Greece to the rise of industrial capitalism," Orlando Patterson reports in his premise.

Dahomey's King corrects an important oversight. Yes, many North Americans today view slavery as solved by emancipation! Many blame Southern state "others." But United States' nightmares with slavery are part of a far larger human tragedy.

Harvard and PBS' Henry Louis Gates, Jr., reminds that an estimated 12.5 million African people were sold into global slavery between 1525 and 1866. Travel-suffering killed 1.8 million leaving 10.7 million enslaved. "How many of the 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000."

North American slavery is part of a far larger human tragedy.

Lets look closely at re-occuring predicaments that nudge, trigger, and move societies, often, from initial sustainable paradise to the full blown institutionalization of any of many forms of slavery. We must do this work, together. Until we know why slavery returns again and again, past emancipation-ended-slavery gains will never be safe.

Why slavery returns: African Slave Coast prisoners of war

As numbers grow, grass may seem greener on "their" side of the valley. If neighbors are nomadic or colonizing people they may hail from distant regions where languages spoken are different. Then, we cannot understand "them."

As resource pressures grew along thousands of miles of Africa, we increasingly hungered for lands and resources free of others." Likely, "they" felt the same about us.

Violent takings of lands and resources locked up prisoners of war.

POWs typically become captives in the act of destroying lives, loved ones, cultures, gods, and everyone and everything else captors value. POWs quickly become despised and feared mortal enemies.

Between the 1500's and 1866 as many as 20% of black slaves sold into the global slave trade came from Dahomey, Africa. In the 1840's, Dahomeh's King Ghezo denied British efforts to abolish slavery with these words.  "[T]he mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery…  The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth."

Along African slave coasts, empires burdened by their own growing numbers recruited powerful, hungry armies. Resources and boundaries were desperately fought over. POWs, dangerous, combat-ready veterans were locked up awaiting execution. POWs couldn't be freed where they would strengthen enemies and return to killing more of us.  Captors regarded POWs as socially dead, rendered by overpopulation as dangerous outsiders.

Long before 1492, enslavement in Black African societes had become a way to extract some usefulness from POWs willing to make themselves worth the trouble. Enslavement, enforced by the ever-present alternative of execution.

After 1492, Europeans wished to benefit from "new world" lands and resources taken from natives. Native indian-blooded slaves tended to die of European diseases. So, Black empires were offered cannons, muskets, money, and other weaponry for POWs, criminals and bankrupts who local Kings would otherwise have enslaved, executed, or sacrificed. Global slave markets expanded.

Join Harvard's Henry Louis Gates Jr. is footnoted in the image-plate above. In Gates' powerful Youtube video linked below, Gates understandably found his visit with the modern King of Dahomey "unsettling." Generations before, predecessors of Dahomey's modern King Agoli-Agbo had sold Dr. Gates' ancestral family into slavery.

By the time Gates visited the King's Court surrounded by the Kings' servants, supporters, petitioners, and others, the British Slavery Abolition Act 1833 had become law. Still, Dr. Gates' taped personal reactions help us imagine earlier times when the likes of King Ghezo and slave-seller Francisco Felix de Souza dealt with the most pressing reality of their time. What can you do with so many prisoners of war. Judge for yourself.

Captors quickly claimed moral high ground. "Unstead of killing POW's we let them live! As slaves we send these dangerous enemies away where they'll be forced to do useful work. They won't kill more of us. Selling enemies gets us better weapons for defending ourselves and our lands and resources from antagonistic "others." And those better weapons help us take their lands and resources as we grow our own families per our passions and gods! After all, our enemies only threaten us because it is they who cannot learn to live within their means!"

Gates' shines light on the life of Brazilian/Dahoman Don Francisco de Sousa. After supporting Dahomey King Ghezo's successful coup against the Ghezo's brother, Ghezo appointed Don Francisco  as the King's Viceroy of Ouidah. Don Francisco would negotiate the King's massive slave trade sales. Henry Louis Gates' filmed interview of a senior member of Don Francisco's extended family exposed such claims of moral high ground by slave-traders.

Staggering enrichment of all involved in the slave trade -- other than those enslaved -- goes without saying.

As numbers rise among competing empires, Emperor wannabees have often asked, "What can we do with all our hungry surplus people?" Many face the exact same issues because of our human inability to control our own biology.

Organize militarily to defend our life supports against predator - neighbors? Plunder resources from "alien foreigners?" Enslave foreign overpopulation to benefit our people? Enslave foreign overpopulation to support aggression against alien foreigners? Enslave subgroups within our own people who we can define as "others" stripping them of wealth and resources to incur support among power groups needed to stay in power?

Among African Coast victims' "frequently occuring struggles for existence" among overpopulating people often determined who would be enslaved, who would enslave, who would continue to survive. As elsewhere around the world overpopulation sets the stage for competition. Competition sets the stage for slavery.

The phrase "overpopulation slavery" would be redundant if it did not capture reality at the root of human slavery. Is there any slavery other than overpopulation slavery?

Why slavery returns: Roman prisoners of war

"It is estimated that more than 100 million people were enslaved" in the millennium during which the Roman Empire rose and fell."  Exact numbers will never be known. Every single digit had to be of the utmost important to every dear person enslaved.

How were Roman slaves enslaved?

From many possible examples lets consider The Cimrian-Roman war between 115 - 101 BCE. Cimbri, Teutones, and other Germanic tribes were "facing overpopulation partly due to climate change and flooding".  At outset their home territory had been coastal lands in what is now known as Northern Denmark. Harsh storms are thought to have salted farm fields rendering production impossible. Cimbri and Teutones began to watch their families starve. Likely, growing numbers contributed to violence within their home groups. Records are sparce.

Unable to feed themselves tens of thousands would leave, criss-crossing Europe in giant, lumbering wagons with families and farm animals looking for unoccupied land. For the next 14 years they would find Europe "full settled." Some victims who survived their desperate pillaging and looting joined in their fruitless search for underpopulated lands capable of sustaining growing families. 150,000 people? Guestimates ponder.

Eventually Cimbrians approached Rome from the North. Romans quickly concluded they would be better off without these dangerous "others." Legions were sent to stop them.

Cimbrians thought they'd be better off without those Roman "others" sent to block them. In 113 BCE Cimbrians destroyed 20,000 soldiers of Consul Carbo at the battle of Noreia likely in modern Alpine Austria. Their Roman experience caused Cimbrians to change direction toward Gaul (southern France) to wander fruitlessly for almost a decade.

Approaching Rome's northern border in 105 BCE, another 80,000 Roman soldiers were killed at the Battle of Arausio in 105 BCE. Cimbri-Teutones' needed land to survive. They had no need for more mouths to feed, for slaves. In those times their typical use for POW-slaves was as sacrifices to gods to stop punishing them. Again Cimbrians and Teutones chose non-Roman directions for another three years.

In 102, Teutones had separated from the Cimbri to attack Rome from the West as Cimbrians worked their way through the Alps to attack from the Northeast. Consul Gaius Marius, outnumbered in 102 BCE, had developed new strategies, military reforms and weapons in the intervening years. Attacking the Teutone tribes first he eliminated the threat offered by those unwanted "others." After battle he followed Roman practice of enslaving all "others" remaining alive including the Teutones leader, Teutobod.

Marius was aware that the Cimbri faction would be arriving by 101 BCE through the eastern Alps. Emissaries met Marius in hopes that Rome could find Cimbri "and their brethren" useful land.

According to historical accounts, Marius asked, "Who are your brethren?"

Cimbris replied, "The Teutones."

Marius laughed and replied with biting irony, "Do not trouble yourselves about your brethren, for they have land, and they will have it forever; they received it as a gift from us."

He then brought out chained leader Teutobod to demoralize the Cimbri.

Once dust settled over the Battles of Vercellae, Rome had butchered there way out of their "competing others" problem, Cimbri overpopulation. Remaining Cimbri, having come close to their dream of eliminating too many Roman "others" were instead enslaved.

Julius Caesar's described similar enslavements in 57 BCE. His Commentaries on the Gallic War of his enslavements of the Atuatuci (near Belgium's city of Tongeren) put it bluntly. "About 4,000 of the men (Atuatuci soldiers) having been slain...Caeser...sold the whole spoil (people) of that town. The number of 53,000 persons was reported to him by those who had bought them."

Overpopulation is a driver of human violence and slavery. As humans outnumber sustainability, shortfalls spark some to think we'd be better off without adversarial "others." Our psychology even encourages our inventing categories of "others" whose deaths will make more room for, or yield plunder for us, or whose slave labor can be used to make our lives easier.

Why slavery returns: Axis prisoners of war

Axis forces are estimated to have enslaved 20 million people during WWII years. Germany, Japan, and Italy supported war efforts with extractive forms of extinction-by-slavery. Nazi depopulation for lebensraum cleared land even as Third Reich maternal Iron Cross awards encouraged so-called "master-race" births to grow Nazi armies faster than competitors. Population-aggression became front and center.

Aly's famous Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State fills in details. German working class economics were bootstrapped by enslaving others, Jews, political enemies, foreign countries, always in pursuit of lands and life support resources at the expense of "others."

Among latter day abolitionists, can there be any greater, more important value than sustainability against overpopulation?

Why slavery returns: Ukranian prisoners of war

"For centuries, Ukraine has been known as 'the breadbasket of Europe.' This title is entirely accurate given that Ukraine is home to around a quarter of the world’s super-fertile 'chernozem' or 'black soil.'

"The untapped potential of Ukraine’s agricultural sector is staggering. The country boasts around 42 million hectares of agricultural land. At present, 32 million hectares are cultivated annually, representing an area larger than Italy. Given the size and fertility of the country’s farmland, together with the vast scope for increased harvests and greater efficiency through ongoing modernization, it is no exaggeration to state that Ukraine can feed the world."

No wonder Russia is enslaving Ukrainians at gunpoint to dig front-line trenches for Russian soldiers. No wonder, despite anti-slavery writings including those overwhelmingly important goals of Geneva Conventions, Russia works hard to hide their rebirth of slavery on the Eastern Front.

Why slavery returns: Electronic devices

Under consruction.

Why slavery returns: Spouse sales

Under construction.

Why slavery returns around the world

Has any lasting group of human animals ever achieved sustainability capable of supporting all people forever? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Have many formerly wealthy nations ultimately failed at supporting their own rising numbers?

Could Uncle Sam do better than admire China's "later-longer-fewer" population policies? Might Washington D.C. make Lady Liberty happy by encouraging numbers sustainable for all time?

Name a place in the world. Absent sustainability is there any basis for imagining that overpopulation slavery cannot be reborn there?

To end slavery for all time we must understand why slavery returns.

Most North Americans, many friends believe wistfully that slavery has been ended for all time. The Emancipation Proclamation shouted an affluent young democracy's admirable goal of ending domination of one man by another. We thank you, Abraham Lincoln, MLK, along with so many other beloved people who gave so much. Thanks to you, we today have our opportunity today to make even freedoms sustainable!

But laws written in the wake of that great Emancipation Proclamation will last only as long as underpopulation affluence is sustained.

A good start was abandoned decade after 1970. Not even the National Security Study Memorandum 200 could make headway half a century ago.

Violence remains a human way of deal with overpopulation-scarcity. Too bad, because we have nuclear, biological, chemical, and other suicidally-intelligent weapons now.

How should love be for us to make our human world sustainable now?

Buzzie, our buzzard friend, might still take the bright side. "The longer some Humies think there are too many "others," the better for us buzzards!"

Buzzie, our buzzard friend feels good 'cause buzzard futures look good!