Template:FixBunching

Part of a series on
Forced labour and Slavery
Contemporary Child labour Child soldiers Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Child marriage Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Peonage Penal labour Contemporary Africa 21st-century jihadism Sexual slavery Wage slavery
Historical Antiquity Egypt Babylonia Greece Rome Medieval Europe Ancillae Black Sea slave trade Byzantine Empire Kholop Prague slave trade Serfs History In Russia Emancipation Thrall Venetian slave trade Balkan slave trade Muslim world Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate Slavery in Al-Andalus ‎ Baqt Contract of manumission Bukhara slave trade Crimean slave trade Khazar slave trade Khivan slave trade Ottoman Empire Avret Esir Pazarları Barbary Coast slave trade pirates Sack of Baltimore Slave raid of Suðuroy Turkish Abductions Concubinage history Ma malakat aymanukum Avret Esir Pazarları Harem Abbasid harem Ottoman Imperial Harem Safavid harem Qajar harem Jarya/Cariye Odalisque Qiyan Umm walad Circassian slave trade Saqaliba Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate Slavery in Volga Bulgaria 21st century Atlantic slave trade Bristol Brazil Database Dutch Middle Passage Nantes New France Panyarring Spanish Empire Slave Coast Thirteen colonies Topics and practice Conscription Ghilman Mamluk Devshirme Blackbirding Coolie Corvée labor Field slaves in the United States Treatment House slaves Saqaliba Slave market Slave raiding Child soldiers White slavery Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship
By country or region Sub-Saharan Africa Contemporary Africa Trans-Saharan slave trade Red Sea slave trade Indian Ocean slave trade Zanzibar slave trade Angola Chad Comoros Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Seychelles Somalia Somali slave trade South Africa Sudan Zanzibar North and South America Pre-Columbian America Aztec Americas indigenous U.S. Natives United States Field slaves female Contemporary maps partus prison labor Slave codes Treatment interregional Human trafficking The Bahamas Canada Caribbean Barbados British Virgin Islands Trinidad Code Noir Latin America Brazil Lei Áurea Colombia Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek (Encomienda) Puerto Rico East, Southeast, and South Asia Human trafficking in Southeast Asia Bhutan China Booi Aha Laogai penal system India Debt bondage Chukri System Japan comfort women Korea Kwalliso Malaysia Maldives Slavery in the Mongol Empire Thailand Yankee princess Vietnam Australia and Oceania Australia Human trafficking Blackbirding Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe and North Asia Sex trafficking in Europe Britain Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Malta Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain Sweden North Africa and West Asia Afghanistan Algeria Bahrain Egypt Human trafficking in the Middle East Iran Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Palestine Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Qatar Yemen United Arab Emirates
Religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Mormonism Islam Judaism Baháʼí Faith
Opposition and resistance 1926 Slavery Convention Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Abolitionists Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Colonization Liberia Sierra Leone Compensated emancipation Freedman manumission Freedom suit Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law Third Servile War 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]
Related Common law Indentured servitude Unfree labour Fugitive slaves laws Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of slaves owners last survivors of American slavery Marriage of enslaved people (United States) Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project breeding court cases Washington Jefferson J.Q. Adams Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation 40 acres Freedmen's Bureau Iron bit Emancipation Day
v t e

Template:FixBunching Slavery in Canada was practiced for millennia by aboriginal nations, who routinely captured slaves from neighbouring tribes. However, chattel slavery (that form of hereditary slavery in which humans are regarded as the private property of an individual) started with the European settlement of Canada, appearing soon after the colonies were founded in the early 1600s. Most of the slaves were used as domestic house servants, although some performed agricultural labour. Some were of African descent, while others were aboriginal (typically called "panis", likely a corruption of Pawnee).

Under indigenous rule

Slave-owning tribes of what became Canada were, for example, the fishing societies, such as the Yurok, that lived along the coast from what is now Alaska to California.^[1] Many of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, such as the Haida and Tlingit, were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war. Among some Pacific Northwest tribes about a quarter of the population were slaves.^[2][3] One slave narrative was composed by an Englishman, John R. Jewitt, who had been taken alive when his ship was captured in 1802; his memoir provides a detailed look at life as a slave, and asserts that a large number were held.

Under French rule

The first recorded slave purchase occurred in 1628 in New France, in the province known today as Quebec. The purchase was of a young boy from Madagascar, who was given the name Olivier Le Jeune.

The citizens of New France received slaves as gifts from their allies among native peoples. Many of these slaves were prisoners taken in raids against the villages of the Fox nation, a tribe that was an ancient rival of the Miami people and their Algonquian allies.^[4]

By the early 1700s, Africans began arriving in greater numbers in New France, mainly as slaves of the French aristocracy. At the time of the British conquest, there were more than 1,000 slaves born in Africa living in Quebec.

Native ("pani") slaves were easier to obtain and thus more numerous than African slaves in New France, but were less valued. The average native slave died at 18, and the average African slave died at 25.^[5]

Under British rule

Slavery continued in Canada after the British conquest of 1760 much as before, though there was no formal slave trade since there was no need for a large labour force given the localized (fur and fisheries based) economies of the northern colonies. By the time of the conquest there were approximately 3,604 slaves in New France. Most of these were located around Montreal, where the economy was most dependent on labour.

The 1763 Treaty of Paris made no reference to slavery, nor does the Quebec Act of 1774 -- either to ban it or to permit it -- and while the 1783 Treaty of Paris refers to slavery, it does so only to prevent British troops from "carrying away any Negroes or other property of the American inhabitants", which is a clause put into the treaty by the United States to protect their property following the war of independence.

The war also resulted in roughly 3,500 free blacks immigrating to Canada, mostly persons who had won their freedom by supporting the British by taking up arms during the U.S. war of independence. There is also evidence that some Loyalists brought back slaves when they fled the United States.

Historian Marcel Trudel has recorded 4,092 slaves throughout Canadian history, of which 2,692 were aboriginal people, owned mostly by the French, and 1400 blacks owned mostly by the British, together owned by approximately 1400 masters.

The region of Montreal dominated with 2,077 slaves, compared to 1,059 for Quebec City overall and 114 for Trois-Rivières. Several marriages took place between French colonists and slaves: 31 unions with aboriginal slaves and 8 with black slaves.

Many Loyalists from the United States brought their slaves with them to Canada after the American Revolution. An imperial law in 1790 assured prospective immigrants that their slaves would remain their property. However some black Loyalists were free and they arrived too. In March 1793, Peter Martin, black slave owned by Colonel John Butler, appeared before the first meeting of Upper Canada's Executive Council to denounce the abuses going on. Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe was strongly opposed to slavery. Simcoe's Attorney General John White, introduced a bill in June 1793 to provide for the abolition of slavery but it was not well received. The elected members, many of whom were merchants or farmers who depended on slave labour, saw no need for emancipation. White later wrote that there was "much opposition but little argument" to his measure. Finally the Assembly passed the Act Against Slavery that legislated the gradual abolition of slavery: no slaves could be imported; slaves already in the province would remain enslaved until death, no new slaves could be brought into Upper Canada, and children born to female slaves would be freed at age 25. To discourage manumission, the Act required the master to provide security that the former slave would not become a public charge. The cpmpromise Slave Act of 1793 stands as the only attempt by any Canadian legislature to act against slavery. ^[6]

This legal rule ensured the eventual end of slavery in Upper Canada, although as it diminished the sale value of slaves within the province it also resulted in slaves being sold to the United States. Some slaves in Upper Canada also ran away south to the free states, thus gaining their liberty.

By 1797, courts began to rule in favour of slaves who complained of poor treatment from their owners.^[5] These developments were resisted in Lower Canada until 1803, when Chief Justice William Osgoode ruled that slavery was not compatible with British law.

This historic judgment, while it did not abolish slavery, set free 300 slaves and resulted in the rapid decline of the practice of slavery. However, slavery remained in Upper and Lower Canada until 1834 when the British Parliament's Slavery Abolition Act finally abolished slavery in all parts of the British Empire.

Most of the emancipated slaves of African descent in Canada were then sent to settle Freetown in Sierra Leone and those that remained primarily ended up in segregated communities such as Africville outside Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Today there are four remaining slave cemeteries in Canada: in St.-Armand, Quebec, Shelburne, Nova Scotia and Priceville and Dresden in Ontario.

Around the time of the Emancipation, the Underground Railroad network was established in the United States, particularly Ohio, where slaves would cross into the Northern States over the Ohio River en route to various settlements and towns in Upper Canada (known as Canada West from 1841 to 1867).