Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom

During classical antiquity, several prominent societies in Europe and the ancient Near East regulated enslavement for debt and the related but distinct practice of debt bondage (in which a creditor could extract compulsory labor from a debtor in repayment of their debt, but the debtor was not formally enslaved and was not subject to all the conditions of chattel slavery, such as being perpetually owned, sellable on the open market, or stripped of kinship).

Reforms listed below such as the laws of Solon in Athens, the Lex Poetelia Papiria in Republican Rome, or rules set forth in the Hebrew Bible in the Book of Deuteronomy generally regulated the supply of slaves and debt-servants by forbidding or regulating the bondage of certain privileged groups (thus, the Roman reforms protected Roman citizens, the Athenian reforms protected Athenian citizens, and the rules in Deuteronomy guaranteed freedom to a Hebrew after a fixed duration of servitude), but none abolished slavery, and even what protections were instituted did not apply to foreigners or noncitizen subjects.

Date	Jurisdiction	Description
Early sixth century BC	Polis of Athens	The Athenian lawgiver Solon abolishes debt slavery of Athenian citizens and frees all Athenian citizens who had formerly been enslaved.[2][3] Athenian chattel slavery continued to be practiced, and the loss of debt-bondage as a competing source of compulsory labor may even have spurred slavery to become more important in the Athenian economy henceforth.[4]
3rd century BC	Maurya Empire	Indian emperor Ashoka abolishes the slave trade.[5]
326 BC	Roman Republic	Lex Poetelia Papiria abolishes Nexum contracts, a form of pledging the debt bondage of poor Roman citizens to wealthy creditors as security for loans. Chattel slavery was not abolished, and Roman slavery would continue to flourish for centuries.
9–12 AD	Xin dynasty	Wang Mang, first and only emperor of the Xin dynasty, usurped the Chinese throne and instituted a series of sweeping reforms, including the abolition of slavery and radical land reform from 9–12 A.D.[6][7] However, this and other reforms turned popular and elite sentiment against Wang Mang, and slavery was reinstituted after he was killed by an angry mob in 23 A.D.

N.B.: Many of the listed reforms were reversed over succeeding centuries.

Date	Jurisdiction	Description
590–604	Rome	Pope Gregory I bans Jews from owning Christian slaves.[8]
7th century	Francia	Queen Balthild, a former slave, and the Council of Chalon-sur-Saône (644–655) condemn the enslavement of Christians. Balthild purchases slaves, mostly Saxon, and manumits (frees) them.[9]
741–752	Rome	Pope Zachary bans the sale of Christian slaves to Muslims, purchases all slaves acquired in the city by Venetian slave traders, and sets them free.
840	Carolingian Empire  Venice	Pactum Lotharii: Venice pledges to neither buy Christian slaves in the Empire, nor sell them to Muslims. Venetian slave traders switch to trading Slavs from the East (Balkan slave trade).
873	Christendom	Pope John VIII declares the enslavement of fellow Christians a sin and commands their release.[10]
~900	Byzantine Empire	Emperor Leo VI the Wise prohibits voluntary self-enslavement and commands that such contracts shall be null and void and punishable by flagellation for both parties to the contract.[11]
956	Goryeo Dynasty (Korea)	Slaves were freed on a large scale in 956 by the Goryeo dynasty.[12] Gwangjong of Goryeo proclaimed the Slave and Land Act (노비안검법, 奴婢按檢法), an act that "deprived nobles of much of their manpower in the form of slaves and purged the old nobility, the meritorious subjects and their offspring and military lineages in great numbers".[13]
960	Venice	Slave trade banned in the city under the rule of Doge Pietro IV Candiano.
1080	Norman England	William the Conqueror prohibits the sale of any person to "heathens" (non-Christians) as slaves.
1100	Normandy	Serfdom no longer present.[14]
1102	Norman England	The Council of London bans the slave trade: "Let no one dare hereafter to engage in the infamous business, prevalent in England, of selling men like animals."[15][16]
c. 1160	Norway	The Gulating bans the sale of house slaves out of the country.[citation needed]
1171	Ireland	All English slaves in the island freed by the Council of Armagh.[16]
1198	France	Trinitarian Order founded with the purpose of redeeming war captives.
1214	Korčula	The Statute of the Town abolishes slavery.[17][18][better source needed]
1218	Aragon	Mercedarians founded in Barcelona with the purpose of ransoming poor Christians enslaved by Muslims.
~1220	Holy Roman Empire	The Sachsenspiegel, the most influential German code of law from the Middle Ages, condemns slavery as a violation of man's likeness to God.[19]
1245	Aragon	James I bans Jews from owning Christian slaves, but allows them to own Muslims and Pagans.[20]
1256	Bologna	Liber Paradisus promulgated. Slavery and serfdom abolished, all serfs in the commune are released.
1315	France	Louis X publishes a decree abolishing slavery and proclaiming that "France signifies freedom", that any slave setting foot on French ground should be freed.[21] However some limited cases of slavery continued until the 17th century in some of France's Mediterranean harbours in Provence, as well as until the 18th century in some of France's overseas territories.[22] Most aspects of serfdom are also eliminated de facto between 1315 and 1318.[23]
1318	France	King Philip V abolishes serfdom in his domain.[24]
1335	Sweden	Slavery abolished (including Sweden's territory in Finland). However, slaves are not banned entry into the country until 1813.[25] Between 1784 and 1847, slavery was practiced in the Swedish-ruled Caribbean island of Saint Barthélemy. Sweden never practiced serfdom, except in a few territories it later acquired which were ruled under a local legal code.
1347	Poland	The Statutes of Casimir the Great issued in Wiślica emancipate all non-free people.[26]
1368	Ming Dynasty	Emperor Hongwu abolished most forms of slavery,[6] limiting even the highest ranks of household to less than 20 household slaves. Later in the dynasty saw a resurgence of debt servitude, primarily in the south, as a result of population growth against the dearth of arable lands, often taking euphemisms like "adoption" to circumvent its still outlawed status.[27]
1416	Ragusa	Slavery and slave trade abolished.
1423	Poland	King orders to free all Christian slaves.[28]
1435	Canary Islands	Pope Eugene IV's Sicut Dudum bans enslavement of baptised Christians, "or those freely seeking baptism" in the Canary Islands on pain of excommunication.[29]
1477	Castile	Isabella I bans slavery in newly conquered territories.[30]
1480	Galicia	Remnant serfdom abolished by the Catholic Monarchs.[31]
1486	Aragon	Ferdinand II promulgates the Sentence of Guadalupe, abolishing Carolingian-remnant serfdom (remença) in Old Catalonia.
1490	Castile	After a long court case, the Catholic Monarchs order that all La Gomera natives enslaved in the aftermath of the 1488 rebellion must be freed and returned to the island at Conquistador Pedro de Vera's expense. De Vera is also relieved from his post as Governor of Gran Canaria in 1491.[32]
1493		Queen Isabella bans the enslavement of Native Americans unless they are hostile or cannibalistic.[30] Native Americans are ruled to be subjects of the Crown. Columbus is preempted from selling Indian captives in Seville and those already sold are tracked, purchased from their buyers and released.

• Abolitionism
• History of slavery
• List of abolitionist forerunners (by Thomas Clarkson)
• Reparations for slavery
• Slave Trade Acts
• Sexual slavery
• Slavery at common law
• Slavery in modern Africa
• Slavery in the 21st century
• Timeline of the civil rights movement

• Campbell, Gwyn. The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (Frank Cass, 2004)
• Davis, David Brion. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (2008) excerpt
• Drescher, Seymour. Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
• Drescher, Seymour. Pathways from slavery: British and colonial mobilizations in global perspective (Routledge, 2018).
• Drescher, Seymour. "Civil Society and Paths to Abolition." Journal of Global Slavery 1.1 (2016): 44–71.
• Finkelman, Paul, and Joseph Miller, eds. Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery (2 vol 1998)
• Finkelman, Paul, and Seymour Drescher. "The eternal problem of slavery in international law: Killing the vampire of human culture." Michigan State Law Review (2017): 755+ online Archived 24 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine.
• Gordon, M. Slavery in the Arab World (1989)
• Grindal, Peter. Opposing the Slavers; The Royal Navy's Campaign against the Atlantic Slave Trade (L.B. Tauris 2016) ISBN 978-1-78831-286-8
• Hinks, Peter, and John McKivigan, eds. Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition (2 vol. 2007) 795pp; ISBN 978-0-313-33142-8
• Lovejoy, Paul. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge UP, 1983)
• Mathews, Nathaniel. "The 'Fused Horizon' of Abolitionism and Islam: Historicism, the Quran and the Global History of Abolition." Journal of global slavery 4.2 (2019): 226–265.
• Morgan, Kenneth. Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America (2008)
• Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1997)
• Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World (2007)
• Sinha, Manisha. "The Problem of Abolition in the Age of Capitalism The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823, by David Brion Davis." American Historical Review 124.1 (2019): 144–163.

• Timeline – What happened before 1807? The Royal Naval Museum
• Timeline – What happened after 1807? The Royal Naval Museum
• Slavery and Abolition The National Archives
• American Abolitionists and Antislavery Activists, comprehensive list of abolitionist and anti-slavery activists and organizations in the United States, including US and international anti-slavery timelines.