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Abstract
This article surveys several problems related to the links between slavery and racism, and the frequency of both racism without slavery and slavery without racism. Slavery clearly existed prior to the emergence of racism, scientific or otherwis, and unlike in recent centuries, the enslaved were not always peoples of different color. The linking of race and slavery, with race as the defining characteristic of the enslaved, came mainly after the settlement of the Americas with the transatlantic slave trade from Africa. Indeed, the debate continues on whether racism led to slavery (as argued for colonial America) or whether slavery gave rise to a coherent racism to justify enslavement of others. Racism may be used to justify the harsh treatment of others, or it may simply reflect mainly a belief that some differences among groups exist and race provides the interpretation of why such differences exist. Presumably then, awareness of perceived or argued for racial differences could exist without the imposition of differential treatments, despite the role racial beliefs might play in social organization.

In this lecture, read at the 7th Graduate Meeting of Economic History, held atUniversidade Federal Fluminense, in 2014, Stanley Engerman examines 30 topics concerning academic studies about the social institution of slavery. He analysis since the first studies, which emphasized moral aspects of the compulsory and the free labor in Modern world, to studies of the working of slave systems in the Americas, as well as he dedicates special attention to the recent developments in this field of the historical knowledge. About this last topic, Engerman delves into the economic and demographic implications of the slave systems, seen in comparative perspective.

The problem of forced labor has been at the center of much recent historical literature. If anything, the debate has shown that not all coercion has the same social, political, and economic effects upon the coerced laborer and his (or her) employer. Central to this debate is the question why coerced labor is needed, and why certain forms of coerced labor are chosen under certain circumstances. Why do the specific forms of coerced labor change over time and differ across space, and why, even in a given area at a given time, do differing forms of coerced labor exist?