Servitus est systema oeconomicum et sociale, in quo homines captivi, scelesti aut aere alieno demersi in mercimonii loco habentur et ad laborem compelluntur.[1]Servus, ut primum captus aut emptus aut natus est, non solum contra voluntatem suam teneri, sed etiam iure discedendi, laborem recusandi et remunerationem poscendi privari potest. Servitus per saecula in institutionibus multarum societatum agnita est; recentioribus autem temporibus servitus in plurimis societatibus interdicitur, sed per moresservitutis in aere alieno, servitutis per pactum, servitus feudalis, operis domestici captorum custoditorum, certarum adoptionum (quibus pueri laborare ut servi compelluntur), militum puerorum, et matrimonii compulsi persistit.[2]
Vocabula classica sunt servitus et servitium, et aliud vocabulum linguae recentioris est servitudo; tria varias significationes translatas habent (vide paginam discretivam). Homo servitute subiectus est servus, cuius synonymum mediaevale, ex saeculo IX, est sclavus, propter servitutem variarum gentium Slavorum illo tempore in servitium reductarum. Haec est radix vocabulorum in pluribus linguis Europaeis (Italiceschiavo, Francogalliceesclave, TheodisceSklave, etc.).
David P. Forsythe, Encyclopedia of Human Rights, volume 1 (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 399, ISBN 0195334027.—"At the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom."
Generalia
Bales, Kevin. 1999. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy.
Campbell, Gwyn, Suzanne Miers, et Joseph C. Miller, eds. 2007. Women and Slavery. Vol. 1: Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval Atlantic; Women and Slavery. Vol. 2: The Modern Atlantic.
Davis, David Brion. 1999. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823.
Davis, David Brion. 1988. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture.
Doganis, Rigas, Gad Heuman, et James Walvin, eds. 2003. The Slavery Reader. Routledge.
Drescher, Seymour. 2009. Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery.
Finkelman, Paul, ed. 1999. Encyclopedia of Slavery.
Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. 1997. The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery.
Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. 2007. Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia.
Shell, Robert Carl-Heinz. 1994. Children Of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1813.
Westermann, William Linn. 1955. The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity.ISBN 0871690403.
Civitates Foederatae
Berlin, Ira. 1999. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America.
Blackmon, Douglas A. 2008. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Doubleday. ISBN 0385506252, ISBN 9780385506250.
Phillips, Ulrich B. 1918, 1966. American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime.
Phillips, Ulrich B. 1928. Life and Labor in the Old South.
Bales, Kevin. 2004. Disposable People. New Slavery in the Global Economy. Ed. retractata. University of California Press. ISBN 0520243846.
Bales, Kevin, ed. 2005. Understanding Global Slavery Today: A Reader. University of California Press. ISBN 0520245075.
Bales, Kevin. 2007. Ending Slavery: How We Free Today's Slaves. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520254701.
Brass, Tom. 1999. Towards a Comparative Political Economy of Unfree Labour: Case Studies and Debates. Londinii et Portlandiae Oregoniae: Frank Cass Publishers.
Brass, Tom, et Marcel van der Linden, eds. 1997. Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues. Bernae: Peter Lang AG.
Brass, Tom, Marcel van der Linden, et Jan Lucassen. 1993. Free and Unfree Labour. Amstelodami: International Institute for Social History.