Chapter 3 establishes that the Dutch had economic incentives to continue holding slaves. Slavery in Dutch New York was not just a cultural choice, but was reinforced by economic considerations. From archival sources and published secondary sources, I have compiled a unique dataset of prices for over 3,350 slaves bought, sold, assessed for value, or advertised for sale in New York and New Jersey. This data has been coded by sex, age, county, price, and type of record, among other categories. It is as far as I know the only slave price database for slaves in the Northern states yet assembled. Regression analysis allows us to compute the average price of Northern slaves over time, the relative price difference between male and female slaves, the price trend relative to known prices in the American South, and other variables such as the price differential between New York City slaves and slaves in other counties in the state. Slave prices in New York and New Jersey appear relatively stable over time, but declined in the nineteenth century. The analysis shows that slaveholders in Dutch New York were motivated by profit, and they sought strength and youth in purchasing slaves.

Translated texts preserved on stone, papyrus, leather, and ostraca (pieces of broken pot) in Egyptian and Aramaic illustrate dependence and slavery from the Late Period of pharaonic Egypt, which included over a century of Persian rule. Despite army garrisons and immigrant officials, many earlier Egyptian practices continued. At the same time, under the Persians immigrants brought in practices of slavery from their homeland and, alongside their purchase and sale, the marking of slaves with their owners’ names became well-documented. The terminology of slavery and dependence in both Egyptian and Aramaic texts, new sources for the acquisition of slaves, the relationship of names to ethnicity, and ways in which slaves could gain their freedom are all topics raised in this chapter, as finally is the difficult question of discerning the experience of being a slave.