Slave raiding

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Slave raiding" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article is missing information about the history of slave raiding. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page. (February 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Slave raiding is a military raid for the purpose of capturing people and bringing them from the raid area to serve as slaves. Once seen as a normal part of warfare, it is nowadays widely considered a war crime.^{[citation needed]} Slave raiding has occurred since antiquity. Some of the earliest surviving written records of slave raiding come from Sumer (in present-day Iraq). Kidnapping and prisoners of war were the most common sources of African slaves, although indentured servitude or punishment also resulted in slavery.^[1][2]

The many alternative methods of obtaining human beings to work in indentured or other involuntary conditions, as well as technological and cultural changes, have made slave raiding rarer.^{[citation needed]}