AHC: modern day slavery

Here's the challenge. With a single PoD, as close to the present day as possible, have at least a single major country/a significant part of the world, have legal actual chattel slavery. To clarify, chattel slavery means that individuals are reduced to the status of private property and can be owned by people, so just having forced labour doesn't count, so indentured labour and Gulags don't count. Also you can't just have the Nazis win and then decide to bring back slavery. Whilst I don't doubt that they would have been up for it, it's just too easy. Same goes for having Daesh/ISIS miraculously win.
 
Here's the challenge. With a single PoD, as close to the present day as possible, have at least a single major country/a significant part of the world, have legal actual chattel slavery. To clarify, chattel slavery means that individuals are reduced to the status of private property and can be owned by people, so just having forced labour doesn't count, so indentured labour and Gulags don't count. Also you can't just have the Nazis win and then decide to bring back slavery. Whilst I don't doubt that they would have been up for it, it's just too easy. Same goes for having Daesh/ISIS miraculously win.
Pretty sure OTL Mauretania qualifies.
 
Would it count if armies enslaved enemy soldiers/civilians in times of war? I could see that happening. "Well, we can't leave all these enemy citizens behind our lines where they might sabotage and spy on us, and it would be cruel to kill them, I know, let's move them somehwere else and put them to work doing something that will be useful to us."
 
Would it count if armies enslaved enemy soldiers/civilians in times of war? I could see that happening. "Well, we can't leave all these enemy citizens behind our lines where they might sabotage and spy on us, and it would be cruel to kill them, I know, let's move them somehwere else and put them to work doing something that will be useful to us."

I'm fairly sure that comes under the "forced labour" category.

I think you would need a POD quite far back, where the anti-slavery movement doesn't gain much traction.
 
One of the things about chattel slavery was that the slaves had no rights, they were legally the same as livestock. Their owners could treat them as they wished - basically the same as if the only protections they had were from the equivalent of the ASPCA.
 
Oh, you mean Mauritania? Which no, did not outlaw slavery, they outlawed the buying of slaves, not the ownership thereof, as though one could own a man to begin with. The barbarians.
 
Doesn't ISIS count right now?

Here's the challenge. With a single PoD, as close to the present day as possible, have at least a single major country/a significant part of the world, have legal actual chattel slavery. To clarify, chattel slavery means that individuals are reduced to the status of private property and can be owned by people, so just having forced labour doesn't count, so indentured labour and Gulags don't count. Also you can't just have the Nazis win and then decide to bring back slavery. Whilst I don't doubt that they would have been up for it, it's just too easy. Same goes for having Daesh/ISIS miraculously win.
 

missouribob

Banned
OK but I didn't say that ISIS won. They have been a state for a few years now and have chattel slavery. Idk what more you want your thread has been answered with a real life and current example.
 
This can't happen in a major country. As the anti-slavery movement grows worldwide, international sanctions on countries that maintain slavery will grow exponentially and would quickly become crippling. No major country could keep slavery later than 1900. Potentially some insular backwater country like North Korea or Lopez's Paraguay might.
 
What about Brazil?

Brazil had a serious abolitionist movement in the late 19th century. Ever since the Paraguay War, the Army itself gave less support to slavery. The monarchy was opposed to it, and in fact it was deposed not in the least for Princess Isabel's abolition law. I find it hard to conceive that slavery would survive until 20th century without any other big western country doing the same. And this changes the premise entirely, as someone said above: you need the whole anti-slavery movement to be butterflied away as a success.
 
This can't happen in a major country. As the anti-slavery movement grows worldwide, international sanctions on countries that maintain slavery will grow exponentially and would quickly become crippling. No major country could keep slavery later than 1900. Potentially some insular backwater country like North Korea or Lopez's Paraguay might.

North Korea effectively has slavery now in the form of gulag labour, but even if it was chattel slavery or something like traditional Korean slavery they'd have to call it something different because of the influences of Marxism in their Juche ideology. And I don't see North Korea introducing chattel slavery anytime soon, since the slavery they have already works well.

Traditional African slavery like in Mauritania is the only form of slavery that can survive.
 
this is actually simple have the USA ratify the Corwin amendments which would made ending slavery impossible.
 
this is actually simple have the USA ratify the Corwin amendments which would made ending slavery impossible.

Because constitutions definitely cannot be replaced in their entirety when they've outlived their utility. The Articles of Confederation and the French Third and Fourth Republics say hi.
 
Technically they abolished slavery in 2007, so not modern day. Also, whilst I don't want to sell Mauretania short, they aren't exactly what I would call a major country or a significant part of the world.

They actually legally abolished it in 1987, but did not enforce it and did not make it a criminal offense to practice slavery, just a broad declaration. Then in 2007, they made it a criminal charge to practice slavery but it's actually enforcement is... iffy. Just over 1% of the population of Mauritania is enslaved.

And no, I would not consider them a major country.

this is actually simple have the USA ratify the Corwin amendments which would made ending slavery impossible.

Can't they just abolish the amendment that doesn't allow them to abolish slavery? That's what I also found weird about the anti-gay marriage amendment proposals. Can't they just abolish the thing that doesn't allow them to do something? We repealed the 18th Amendment, I think we could repeal the Corwin one too.
 
Can't they just abolish the amendment that doesn't allow them to abolish slavery? That's what I also found weird about the anti-gay marriage amendment proposals. Can't they just abolish the thing that doesn't allow them to do something? We repealed the 18th Amendment, I think we could repeal the Corwin one too.

Yup. That's the thing with all of those amendment-which cannot-be amended ideas. They sound great but are completely meaningless as anything other than a political statement because if you ever wanted to repeal it, you just pass an additional amendment which states that all previous provisions are amendable, thereby overruling the "unamendable" clause and off you go on your merry way.
 
Yup. That's the thing with all of those amendment-which cannot-be amended ideas. They sound great but are completely meaningless as anything other than a political statement because if you ever wanted to repeal it, you just pass an additional amendment which states that all previous provisions are amendable, thereby overruling the "unamendable" clause and off you go on your merry way.

I think the only consequence is that it makes the amendments look a little silly and indecisive.
 
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