History
In the past, many children have been sold into slavery in order for their family to repay debts or crimes or earn some money if the family were short of cash. Sometimes this is also to give the children a better life than what they had with their family or because the family did not want the child to live with them any more. Child slavery refers to the slavery of children at a young age.
In most institutions of slavery throughout the world, the children of slaves became the property of the owner. This was the case with, for example, thralls and American slaves. In other cases, children were enslaved as if they were adults. Usually the status of the mother determined if the child was a slave, but some local laws varied the decision to the father. In many cultures, slaves could earn their freedom through hard work and buying their own freedom. The infamous Children's Crusade is believed to have led to the enslavement of many young pilgrims.
Read more about this topic: Child Slavery
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)