This subject will chart the social and economic histories of evolving regimes of slavery, forced labour and human trafficking in the making of the modern world. Beginning in the 1400s students will be asked to evaluate the philosophical underpinnings that justified the mass enslavement of human beings, and the thinking that allowed people to be bought, sold and traded as commodities. The sorts of questions students will be asked to explore include what were the social and economic factors that shaped attitudes that promoted or accepted slavery? What were the conditions of enslavement, resistance, and accommodation that have shaped the histories of bonded workers? And how did the forced mobility, or diaspora, of human trafficking impact the modern world? We will also consider the practical and social function of slavery and forced labour regimes in the United State' pre-Civil War, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific as well as World War II Germany and other more contemporary cases.

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