New page on www.humantruth.info/slavery.html . By 1786 over 12 million slaves had been extracted from Africa and sent to colonial labour camps. The abolition of the slave trade was a long and slow process. The first abolitionists were always the slaves themselves. Their protests and rebellions caused the industry to become too expensive to continue. The end came when enlightenment-era thinkers of France encouraged moral and ethical thinking including the declaration of the inherent value of human life and human dignity, a message so strong that it eliminated public support for slavery until the industries and churches that supported it had no choice but to back down.
'Modern slavery' includes forced labour (often of the under-age), debt bondage (especially generational), sexual slavery, chattel slavery and other forms of abuse, some of which can be surprisingly difficult to detect. The Walk Free Foundation, say that in 2016, 40.3 million people were living in modern slavery.