question: Amazing Grace is a 2006 British-American biographical drama film directed by Michael Apted, about the campaign against slave trade in the British Empire, which term means the history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day?
answer: history of slavery
context: Title: Censer
  Passage: A censer, incense burner or perfume burner (these may be hyphenated) is a vessel made for burning incense or perfume in some solid form.  These vessels vary greatly in size, form, and material of construction, and have been in use since ancient times in many cultures, in both secular and religious contexts.  They may consist of simple earthenware bowls or fire pots to intricately carved silver or gold vessels, small table top objects a few centimetres tall to as many as several metres high.  Many designs use openwork to allow a flow of air.  In many cultures, burning incense has spiritual and religious connotations, and this influences the design and decoration of the censer.
  Title: Slave Trade Act 1807
  Passage: The Slave Trade Act 1807 or the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed on 25 March 1807, with the title of "An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade".  The original act is in the Parliamentary Archives.  The act abolished the slave trade in the British Empire, in particular the Atlantic slave trade, and also encouraged British action to press other European states to abolish their slave trades, but it did not abolish slavery itself.  Many of the Bill's supporters thought the Act would lead to the death of slavery, but it was not until 26 years later that slavery itself was actually abolished.  Slavery on English soil was unsupported in English law and that position was confirmed in "Somersett's Case" in 1772, but it remained legal in most of the British Empire until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
  Title: Freedom Festival, Hull
  Passage: The Freedom Festival is an annual music and performance arts festival held in the city of Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England.  It is named in honour of the slave trade abolitionist, MP and son of Hull, William Wilberforce.  The festival was established in 2007 to mark the 200th anniversary of Wilberforce's law, the Slave Trade Act 1807, to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire.
  Title: History of slavery
  Passage: The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day.  However the social, economic, and legal positions of slaves were vastly different in different systems of slavery in different times and places.
  Title: Slavery at common law
  Passage: Slavery at common law in former colonies of the British Empire developed slowly over centuries, and was characterised by inconsistent decisions and varying rationales for the treatment of slavery, the slave trade, and the rights of slaves and slave owners.  Within Britain, until 1807, except for statutes facilitating and taxing the international slave trade, there was virtually no legislative intervention in relation to slaves as property, and accordingly the common law had something of a "free hand" to develop, untrammeled by the "paralysing hand of the Parliamentary draftsmen".
  Title: Catholic Church and slavery
  Passage: The issue of slavery was one that was historically treated with concern by the Catholic Church.  Throughout most of human history, slavery has been practised and accepted by many cultures and religions around the world.  Certain passages in the Old Testament sanctioned forms of slavery and the New Testament taught slaves to obey their masters.  After the legalisation of Christianity under the Roman empire, there was a growing sentiment that many kinds of slavery were not compatible with Christian conceptions of charity and justice; some argued against all forms of slavery while others, including the influential Thomas Aquinas, argued the case for slavery subject to certain restrictions.  The Christian west did succeed in almost entirely enforcing that a free Christian could not be enslaved, for example when a captive in war, but this itself was subject to continual improvement and was not consistently applied throughout history.  The Middle Ages also witnessed the emergence of orders of monks such as the Mercedarians who were founded for the purpose of ransoming Christian slaves.  By the end of the Medieval period, enslavement of Christians had been largely abolished throughout Europe although enslavement of non-Christians remained permissible, and had seen a revival in Spain and Portugal.
  Title: Amazing Grace (2006 film)
  Passage: Amazing Grace is a 2006 British-American biographical drama film directed by Michael Apted, about the campaign against slave trade in the British Empire, led by William Wilberforce, who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament.  The title is a reference to the hymn "Amazing Grace".  The film also recounts the experiences of John Newton as a crewman on a slave ship and subsequent religious conversion, which inspired his writing of the poem later used in the hymn.  Newton is portrayed as a major influence on Wilberforce and the abolition movement.
  Title: Slavery in Niger
  Passage: Slavery in Niger involves a number of different practices which have been practiced in the Sahel region for many centuries and which persist to this day.  The Bornu Empire in the eastern part of Niger was an active part of the trans-Saharan slave trade for hundreds of years.  Other ethnic groups in the country similarly had a history of slavery, although this varied and in some places slavery was largely limited to the political and economic elite.  When the French took control of the area they largely ignored the problem and only actively banned the trade in slaves but not the practices of slavery.  Following independence, many of the major slave holders became prominent political leaders in both the multiparty democracy period and the military dictatorship (1974 until 1991), and so the problem of slavery was largely ignored.  In 2003, with pressure from the anti-slavery organization Timidria, Niger passed the first law in Western Africa that criminalized slavery as a specific crime.  Despite this, slavery persists throughout the different ethnic groups in the country, women are particularly vulnerable, and a 2002 census confirmed the existence of 43,000 slaves and estimated that the total population could be over 870,000 people.  The landmark "Mani v. Niger" case was one of the first instances where a person won a judgement against the government of Niger in an international court for sanctioning her slave status in official decisions.
  Title: Maafa
  Passage: Maafa (or African Holocaust, Holocaust of Enslavement, or Black holocaust as alternatives) are political neologisms (popularized from 1998 onwards) used to describe the history and ongoing effects of atrocities inflicted on African people, particularly when committed by non-Africans, specifically in the context of the history of slavery, including the Arab Slave Trade and Atlantic Slave Trade, and argued as "continued to the present day" through imperialism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression.  For example, Maulana Karenga (2001) puts slavery in the broader context of the "Maafa", suggesting that its effects exceed mere physical persecution and legal disenfranchisement: the "destruction of human possibility involved redefining African humanity to the world, poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thus damaging the truly human relations among peoples."
  Title: Thomas Clarkson
  Passage: Thomas Clarkson (28 March 1760 – 26 September 1846) was an English abolitionist, and a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire.  He helped found The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade) and helped achieve passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which ended British trade in slaves.
citations: Amazing Grace (2006 film) History of slavery