Slavery

Slavery was an institutionalized practice where sentient individuals were considered property who could be traded and held by other beings. Enslaved individuals were often called slaves and forced to perform labor for their enslavers, who were also known as "owners" or "masters" and included those who captured other people in order to "sell" as slaves. The Old Republic Judicial Forces worked alongside the Jedi to dismantle the Zygerrian slave trade, but although slavery was outlawed in the democratic Republic, gangsters such as the Hutt Clan continued practicing slavery beyond the Republic's reach on Outer Rim planets such as Tatooine. While the Alliance to Restore the Republic wrote in their Declaration of Rebellion that the beings of the galaxy were "born free under the auspices of nature," the authoritarian Galactic Empire targeted non-human species such as the Wookiees to be secretly enslaved as unwilling laborers. The Empire also worked with criminal syndicates such as the Pykes at the spice mines of Kessel, where enslaved organics were chained and enslaved droids had restraining bolts installed, forced to risk their own lives to harvest for the dangerous spice trade. The Rebellion successfully built the New Republic, and though its reach did not extend to criminal underworld havens such as Kijimi City by the time of the First Order conquest, even the anarchic city's criminals did not welcome enslavers, who were afforded no safe quarter.

Indentured servitude was a nominally distinct practice in which sentient individuals performed labor for a fixed time period or until a specific amount of debt was paid off; after which point, they would be freed. However, in practice, indentured servitude typically amounted to slavery. Beings working in indentured servitude were called indentured servants, though that term was often a euphemism for "slave." Another euphemism for "slave" was the term "sentient property," which the Czerka Corporation used in official documents to grant a veneer of legitimacy to their practice of slavery.

Text and facts from the “Slavery” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.