Last Countries to Abolish Slavery

Name every country to abolish slavery later than 1900.
Some of these countries no longer exist.
Quiz by kalbahamut
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Last updated: October 15, 2018
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First submittedJuly 1, 2013
Times taken2,880
Average score47.6%
Rating4.25
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Year
Answer
1902
Ethiopian Empire
1904
Ngazidja (Comoros)
1906
China
1912
Siam (Thailand)
1921
Nepal
1922
Morocco
1923
Afghanistan
1924
Iraq
1928
Iran
1928
Sierra Leone
1936
Northern Nigeria
1945
Germany
1945
Japan
1952
Qatar
1959
Tibet
1960
Niger
1962
Saudi Arabia
1962
Yemen
1963
United Arab Emirates
1970
Oman
1981
Mauritania
+2
Level 86
Dec 2, 2013
This was more challenging than I thought it would be.
+5
Level 82
Dec 3, 2013
I think it helps to try and think of every place that was not colonized by Europeans from the 17th-19th centuries- which was pretty much the entire world. Because in the 19th century it became trendy amongst European powers to ban the practice, including in their overseas territories. and then slowly the rest of the world caught up, sometimes begrudgingly, usually under European or American pressure. I know here in Saudi Arabia many people feel that banning slavery is un-Islamic and that they should still be practicing it (and practically speaking, they do, they just call it by a different name or do so in secret), but to help appease their important trading partners the USA, slavery was officially banned in 1962. If not for outside influence I'm sure that it would still officially be legal here.
+1
Level 20
Feb 17, 2014
You scored 15/21 = 71%.

This beats or equals 95.0% of test takers.

Not bad, but how come there so many middle eastern countries on the list?

+1
Level 82
Feb 19, 2014
Because they were among the last to abolish slavery.

As mentioned above, this is mostly a list of countries that were not colonized by Europe prior to 1900. The Arabian peninsula fit that bill because, prior to the discovery of oil there in the 1930s, nobody gave a crap about the Arabian peninsula. It's mostly useless desert. Slavery was allowed to persist in Arabia, an important facet of Arab culture enshrined in and supported by Islam, independent of emancipation movements in the Western world, because of this fact. Once Westerners began trading with these countries they started to put pressure on them to abolish slavery.

+2
Level 52
May 23, 2015
Mauritania doesn't act like she abolished slavery though.
+5
Level 82
May 23, 2015
Many of these places still practice slavery, either through institutions or work programs that amount to basically the same thing (similar to how Slavery persisted in a way in the American South in the form of sharecropping and various Jim Crow laws), or else underground and in secret. But the dates above are when slavery was officially made illegal. Enforcement and culture often lag behind legal reforms.
+1
Level 55
Nov 5, 2017
no Union of South Africa, wew
+1
Level 57
Nov 19, 2017
You should not include Niger in this list. It became indipendent in 1960.
+3
Level 82
Nov 20, 2017
yeah... and it abolished slavery that same year.
+1
Level 82
Nov 20, 2017
It's a little bit complicated. As a French dependency there was a policy by the French at the colonial/imperial level that slavery should be abolished, but it was up to the local administrators to implement this policy and most of them did not. Many said it was impossible and didn't try. Others looked the other way while claiming to do something. The French even accepted slaves from Niger as soldiers during WW1. At best French governance did some work toward stamping out slave trafficking in the country.

Following independence slavery was officially abolished throughout Niger. But there was a similar problem with many administrators looking the other way and allowing it to continue in practice. It wasn't until 2003 that slavery was specifically criminalized.

+1
Level 72
Sep 23, 2018
I deleted my quiz. I didn't realize they were so similar. I did not intend to step on anyone's toes.
+2
Level 82
Sep 23, 2018
It's not a big deal. But there are so many user quizzes now it's worth trying to search before authoring a new one.
+1
Level 71
Dec 20, 2019
Can you explain Tibet? As I understand, Tibet ceded sovereignty to China in 1951 and had an anti-government rebellion in 1959. Would it still have been considered an independent nation in 1959?
+4
Level 82
Jan 14, 2020
To be honest I'm not sure. The source page on Wikipedia has changed a lot since I made this quiz. It no longer lists anything for Tibet in 1959, and in 1906 says slavery was set to be abolished in the Qing dynasty by 1910. Tibet was invaded by China in 1950 but maintained autonomous rule. I think that the original entry said something about the Dalai Lama fleeing Tibet in 1959 after the uprising there, after which point Tibet lost its autonomy and when Chinese laws were implemented in the territory it effectively banned slavery at the same time. I would have to research it more to give a better answer.
+1
Level 26
Dec 30, 2021
Interesting quiz, but also very tragic to think about. I was able to get most of these by guessing Middle Eastern and Axis Countries. Would you consider accepting Persia for Iran?
+2
Level 89
Oct 25, 2022
It would be interesting to see when the Southern states of the U.S. would've banned slavery had they successfully seceded in the 1860s.

Despite revisionist idiots who argue what the Confederacy fought for, their Constitution was a near word-for-word copy of the U.S. Constitution, albeit with clauses stating that no amendment nor law could EVER ban slavery.

+1
Level 82
Oct 25, 2022
Would have. The ironic thing was that in many places in the South, thanks to the course of events of the war, Slavery was effectively done anyway. By 1865 the Southerners were fighting for independence more than anything (and maybe pride or just to be stubborn). If history had played out exactly the same except that in early 1865 Lee defeated Grant instead of the other way around, or Lincoln lost his bid at a 2nd term and the Union lost the will the fight so the South won the war... then... I think in that scenario we would have seen an independent Confederacy that on its own freed its slaves by the end of the decade in some places and probably by the end of the century throughout.

At the onset of the war that certainly wasn't the case, though, so it would also be interesting to see what would have happened had the Union not ever declared war at all. I doubt they would have held on to Slavery much longer than the early 1900s regardless of what their constitutions said, but ??

+2
Level 82
Oct 25, 2022
I think in either case what would have most likely resulted would have been something like South Africa - a state that, by the 20th Century had given up Slavery per se, but maintained a rigidly enforced system of racial hierarchy and segregation (and exploitative labor system) that would have lasted through at least the latter half of the 1900s when international pressure may have finally been enough to force them to adopt some kind of equal rights amendment. But... hard to say.... a united USA didn't even adopt the Civil Rights Act until 1964. And if we're playing the What If? game... what if the Confederacy had decided to side with Germany in the World Wars, keeping the Union out of the European theater, and Nazism because the international norm rather than tolerance and equity? A lot of things we take for granted or as historically inevitable are really just a historical accident.