There were almost 700 thousand slaves in the U.S. in 1790, which equated to approximately 18 percent of the total population, or roughly one in six people. By 1860, the final census taken before the American Civil War, there were four million slaves in the South, compared with less than 500,000 free Black Americans in all of the U.S.. Of the 4.4 million Blacks in the U.S. before the war, almost four million of these people were held as slaves; meaning that for all African Americans living in the US in 1860, there was an 89 percent* chance that they lived in slavery. A brief history Trans-Atlantic slavery began in the early 16th century, when the Portuguese and Spanish forcefully brought enslaved Africans to the New World. The British Empire introduced slavery to North America on a large scale, and the economy of the British colonies there depended on slave labor, particularly regarding cotton, sugar, and tobacco output. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century the number of slaves being brought to the Americas increased exponentially, and at the time of American independence it was legal in all thirteen colonies. Although slavery became increasingly prohibited in the north, the number of slaves remained high during this time as they were simply relocated or sold from the north to the south. It is also important to remember that the children of slaves were also viewed as property, and were overwhelmingly born into a life of slavery. Abolition and the American Civil War In the years that followed independence, the Northern States gradually prohibited slavery, it was officially abolished there by 1805, and the importation of slave labor was prohibited nationwide from 1808 (although both still existed in practice after this). Business owners in the Southern States however depended on slave labor in order to meet the demand of their rapidly expanding industries, and the issue of slavery continued to polarize American society in the decades to come. This culminated in the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, who promised to prohibit slavery in the newly acquired territories to the west, leading to the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Although the Confederacy (south) took the upper hand in much of the early stages of the war, the strength in numbers of the northern states including many free, Black men, eventually resulted in a victory for the Union (north), and the nationwide abolishment of slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Legacy In total, an estimated twelve to thirteen million Africans were transported to the Americas as slaves, and this does not include the high number who did not survive the journey (which was as high as 23 percent in some years). In the 150 years since the abolition of slavery in the US, the African-American community have continuously campaigned for equal rights and opportunities that were not afforded to them along with freedom. The most prominent themes have been the Civil Rights Movement, voter suppression, mass incarceration, and the relationship between the police and the African-American community.

From the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, Portuguese and Brazilian traders were responsible for transporting the highest volume of slaves during the transatlantic slave trade. It is estimated that, of the 12.5 million African slaves captured during this time, more than 5.8 million were transported in ships that sailed under the Portuguese and, later, Brazilian flags. British traders transported the second-highest volume of slaves across the Atlantic, totaling at almost 3.3 million; over 2.5 million of these were transported in the 18th century, which was the highest volume of slaves transported by one nation in one century.

Norway and Switzerland were the two countries in the world with the lowest prevalence of modern slavery. In the two European countries, only *** people per 1,000 inhabitants were living in modern slavery. Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden followed with ***. On the other hand, North Korea had the highest prevalence at ***** per 1,000 population.

Cambodia is in the midst of a construction boom. The building of office blocks, factories, condominiums, housing estates, hotels, and shopping malls is pushing its capital city upwards. But this vertical drive into the skies, and the country’s status as one of Asia’s fastest growing economies, hides a darker side to Phnom Penh’s ascent. Building projects demand bricks in large quantities, and there is a profitable domestic brick production industry supplying them. This industry relies upon a multi generational workforce of adults and children trapped in debt bondage – one of the most prevalent forms of modern slavery in the world. Tens of thousands of debt-bonded families in Cambodia extract, mould, and fire clay in hazardous conditions to meet Phnom Penh’s insatiable appetite for bricks. Our research on blood bricks reveals more than just the vertical aspirations of a business elite built on modern slavery; rather it also foregrounds stories of climate change. Phnom Penh is being built not only on the foundation of blood bricks, but also climate change as a key driver of debt and entry into modern slavery in brick kilns. Moving from the city, to the brick kiln, and finally back to the rural villages once called home, our study traces how urban ‘development’ is built on unsustainable levels of debt taken on by rural families struggling to farm in one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. Our original qualitative and quantitative research newly evidences connections between issues that are too often considered separate from each other in policy and planning debates.'Climate change and slavery: the perfect storm?' - this was the prescient headline of The Guardian (2013) which called for more international conversation on the links between these urgent threats to environmental and human security. This study forwards this call by examining the inter-linkages between climate change, different axes of structural inequality (e.g. gender, age), and vulnerability to trafficking into modern slavery. The project asks who is most at the 'receiving end' of climate change, is most likely to enter into modern slavery, and who has fewer capabilities and resources than others to adapt to climate change in alternative ways? The research is based in Cambodia, the world's second most climate vulnerable country in 2014. This status derives not only from the heightened climate risks its faces in the form of floods and droughts, but also the lack of capacity to adapt and respond. Eighty percent of the population lives in rural areas with limited knowledge, infrastructure and opportunities; and more than 70 percent rely on agriculture that is heavily sensitive to climate change (UNDP 2014). In 2016, Cambodia also recorded the third highest proportion of modern slaves per capita in the world. Under these compelling set of circumstances then, the project focuses on the Cambodian construction industry as a means to examine how climate change facilitates trafficking into modern slavery and ongoing livelihoods within it. UK and Cambodian scholars will undertake challenging research that aims to combine qualitative interviews with construction industry informants and victims of modern slavery working in brick-kilns and construction sites; agro-ecological profiling, a quantitative household survey, and interviews in brick-kiln sender villages; and analysis of longitudinal secondary data (Cambodia Socio-Economic Study 2014). Findings will improve understanding of the 'deadly dance' of environmental destruction and modern slavery. Qualitative data is taken from brick kilns located in the suburbs of Phnom Penh and in neighbouring district towns. Quantitative surveys are undertaken in three villages identified to have high levels of out-migration to brick kilns, located in rural Cambodia. A total of 308 quantitative surveys were conducted in three sender villages. In each village, all households with members working in the brick industry, and a randomised sample of those without, were surveyed on livelihoods, assets, and their experience of the changing environment. In total, 130 brick worker households were surveyed against 178 non-brick worker households. We undertook 60 interviews with respondents from 3 villages, 80 interviews with respondents from kilns and 4 interviews with respondents from garment dump sites.