Slavery existed in ancient societies such as Rome and Greece and Arabian countries, but was it racially based? Is race-based slavery a fairly recent concept?
In a manner of speaking, yes and no. Ancient cultures did sometimes dehumanize the cultures they subjugated it, but british/american slavery is something of an exceptional example, in that it was occuring within a culture that had effectively ended slavery (which had basically never happened before) so the racial aspects were used as justification for why it was suddenly ok to enslave people, because these people werent really "people"