As an American, I think I've got a pretty good understanding of slavery in the USA, probably. But when I read about other times and places, and slavery happens to come up, it seems to be a really different thing, and it's confusing. Like, one video says Vikings were slave traders, when another book says slavery died out in the Middle Ages. Or like, slaves in the Muslim world that were powerful ministers, generals, and even sultans; or slavery in the ancient world (thru to the Roman empire) where it seems connected to either debt or war captives; or slavery in Central Africa, where pre-existing slave merchants sold "their own people" to European buyers. In all of these examples, it seems like slavery fundamentally worked differently than it did in the American context I'm used to. (like, it's not in any way connected to race, and only sometimes connected to agriculture.) But there's never a lot of detail on it in the stuff I read. So I fill in the definition of "slave" that I have, and it doesn't seem to make sense.
and i mean, i don't want to be super interested in slavery, but it doesn't make sense and I want to understand.
Thing is, all of these contexts are also ripe for "white slavery" narratives and other racist arguments that seek to minimize the African American experience. So I don't know how to find plain old information on this. Can you recommend any books or scholars? Any region, any time is fine. Thank you.
This a source I only know about second-hand (sorry mods!) but it's definitely relevant: The Cambridge World History of Slavery, ed. David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, Seymour Drescher, and David Richardson. 4 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011-2017. It's a long series of collected chapters that goes through much of world chronologically, and sounds like what you are looking for.
Similarly: Linda Colley. Captives. Britain, Empire and the World, 1600-1850. London: Pimlico, 2003.
Also, much more confidently, I can recommend two more:
Stefan Brink, "Slavery in the Viking Age." in The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink. London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
Þorsteinn Helgason, The Corsairs' Longest Voyage: The Turkish Raid in Iceland 1627. trans. Anna Yates and Jóna Pétursdóttir. Boston: Brill, 2018. This one is less directly relevant, but it does include testimony of Icelanders who were captured and sold as slaves in Sale, Morocco before being ransomed by Denmark, so it may have some useful information for you. (I also raided its bibliography for the first two sources, full disclosure.)