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:
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)