A forgotten history of Europe’s First People and their cultural tragedy
When most people today hear the word “slave”, they immediately associate it with the transatlantic slave trade — the image of white Europeans buying and selling African people. This has shaped the modern imagination of slavery as primarily a black-and-white story.
Yet history reveals something far more complex, and perhaps more ironic. Long before Africans were forced into slavery in the Americas, it was the white Slavic people of Eastern Europe who were enslaved on a massive scale. For centuries, Slavic men, women, and children were captured, sold, and transported across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. In fact, the very word slave comes from Slav — a reminder of how deeply their tragedy was etched into European history.
This is not just a story about political domination. It is about the suppression of a people’s culture, faith, and very identity. The story of the Slavs mirrors the experiences of many Indigenous or First People across the world — where conquest and conversion destroyed native traditions and turned entire populations into subjects of empire.
Who Were the Slavic People?
The Slavs were one of the largest ethno-linguistic groups in Europe, emerging in the first millennium CE. They spread across vast regions — from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Balkans in the south, and from Central Europe to the edges of the Russian steppe.
They were not originally united under a single nation or kingdom. Instead, the Slavs lived in tribal communities, organized around extended families, village councils, and local chieftains. Their identity was deeply rooted in communal living, farming, and seasonal rhythms of nature.
The very word Slav originally meant “glorious” or “famous” (from the Proto-Slavic root slava). To be a Slav was to be a person of dignity and honor — a name tied to pride, not to bondage.
Culture and Belief System
Before Christianity spread into Eastern Europe, Slavic people followed a rich system of pagan beliefs. Their worldview revolved around nature, ancestors, and cycles of life and death.
- Deities: They worshipped gods like Perun (god of thunder and war), Veles (god of the underworld and cattle), and Mokosh (goddess of fertility and women).
- Rituals: Fire rituals, seasonal festivals, and ancestor veneration were central. They lit bonfires during solstices, sang folk songs, and offered food to spirits.
- Sacred Landscapes: Rivers, forests, and mountains were seen as holy. Slavic religion had no single holy book, but its spirituality lived through oral traditions, songs, and myths.
In this sense, the Slavs were much like other First Peoples — their spiritual life was organic, decentralized, and inseparable from the land they lived on.
Christianization of the Slavs
By the 9th and 10th centuries, powerful kingdoms like the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire began to expand into Slavic lands. Missionaries arrived, determined to replace local traditions with Christianity.
- The brothers Cyril and Methodius created the Glagolitic alphabet (the ancestor of Cyrillic) to translate the Bible into Slavic languages.
- Local chieftains were often converted first, sometimes by persuasion, but often by political pressure or military force.
- Pagan temples were destroyed, idols were burned, and rituals were labeled as “heathen” or “demonic.”
Christianization was not just about religion — it was a process of cultural erasure. Ancient songs, myths, and deities were systematically suppressed, and Slavic people were gradually drawn into the orbit of Christian empires.
From “Slavic” to “Slave”
While conversion changed their spiritual world, another tragedy reshaped their material existence: mass enslavement.
From the early Middle Ages through the Renaissance, Slavic people were among the most traded slaves in the world. Arab merchants, Ottoman rulers, and Western European traders all participated in this system.
- Islamic Slave Trade: Slavs were captured in Eastern Europe and sold in Muslim markets of Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East. In Arabic, “Saqaliba” (derived from Slav) became a common word for slaves.
- European Markets: In Venice and Genoa, Slavic slaves were sold to serve as laborers, soldiers, and even concubines.
- The Ottoman Empire: Millions of Slavs, especially from the Balkans, were taken through raids and the infamous devshirme system, where Christian boys were converted to Islam and trained as Janissaries.
The result was devastating. Over centuries, the identity of an entire people was twisted in global consciousness: Slav became synonymous with slave.
The Historical Irony
Here lies one of history’s cruelest ironies.
The word Slav came from slava, meaning glory. Yet repeated conquest, religious suppression, and slave raids erased this meaning. Instead, in languages like English, French, and Spanish, the word “slave” survives as a painful reminder of how a people of glory were reduced to symbols of bondage.
Slavs as “First People” of Europe
If we step back, the story of the Slavs feels strikingly familiar. Across continents, First Peoples — whether in the Americas, Africa, Asia, or Oceania — faced a similar fate:
- Conquest by powerful empires
- Suppression of traditional belief systems
- Conversion into dominant religions
- Exploitation as labor or slaves
- Erasure of identity in historical memory
The Slavs, too, were Europe’s First People in many ways: deeply rooted in land-based traditions, living with communal values, and yet crushed under the twin forces of empire and religion.
The story of the Slavs is not only about the past. It is a reminder that words themselves carry memory. When we use the word “slave,” we unknowingly echo centuries of suffering endured by a people whose very name once meant glory.
This forgotten history also connects the Slavs to other Indigenous peoples worldwide, whose cultures were demonized, whose lands were stolen, and whose children were enslaved or converted.
In remembering the Slavs, we are not just reconstructing European history — we are acknowledging a universal tragedy of humanity, where conquest rewrites glory into slavery.
footnotes
- Peter Heather, Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe (Oxford University Press, 2012).
→ Early accounts of Slavic migrations and settlement in Eastern Europe. - Florin Curta, The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500–700 (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
→ Archaeological and cultural background of early Slavic people. - Paul Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900–1204 (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
→ Christianization of Slavic peoples and Byzantine influence. - David Nicolle, The Armies of Islam 7th–11th Centuries (Osprey Publishing, 1982).
→ References to Arab and Islamic slave raids on Slavic populations. - Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950–1350 (Princeton University Press, 1993).
→ Forced conversions and integration of Slavs into Christian Europe. - Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Slav” and “Slave” entries.
→ Etymology of “Slav” and how it became associated with “slave” in European languages. - Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (New York University Press, 1996).
→ Role of Ottoman Empire in enslaving Slavic populations from the Balkans.
