Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World

Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World PDF

Author: Youval Rotman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780674036116

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Looking at the Byzantine concept of slavery within the context of law, the labour market, medieval politics, and religion, the author illustrates how these contexts both reshaped and sustained the slave market.

Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters

Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters PDF

Author: R. Davis

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2003-09-16

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781403945518

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This is a study that digs deeply into this 'other' slavery, the bondage of Europeans by North-African Muslims that flourished during the same centuries as the heyday of the trans-Atlantic trade from sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas. Here are explored the actual extent of Barbary Coast slavery, the dynamic relationship between master and slave, and the effects of this slaving on Italy, one of the slave takers' primary targets and victims.

That Most Precious Merchandise

That Most Precious Merchandise PDF

Author: Hannah Barker

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2019-09-27

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 0812296486

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The history of the Black Sea as a source of Mediterranean slaves stretches from ancient Greek colonies to human trafficking networks in the present day. At its height during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Black Sea slave trade was not the sole source of Mediterranean slaves; Genoese, Venetian, and Egyptian merchants bought captives taken in conflicts throughout the region, from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, and the Aegean Sea. Yet the trade in Black Sea slaves provided merchants with profit and prestige; states with military recruits, tax revenue, and diplomatic influence; and households with the service of women, men, and children. Even though Genoa, Venice, and the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and Greater Syria were the three most important strands in the web of the Black Sea slave trade, they have rarely been studied together. Examining Latin and Arabic sources in tandem, Hannah Barker shows that Christian and Muslim inhabitants of the Mediterranean shared a set of assumptions and practices that amounted to a common culture of slavery. Indeed, the Genoese, Venetian, and Mamluk slave trades were thoroughly entangled, with wide-ranging effects. Genoese and Venetian disruption of the Mamluk trade led to reprisals against Italian merchants living in Mamluk cities, while their participation in the trade led to scathing criticism by supporters of the crusade movement who demanded commercial powers use their leverage to weaken the force of Islam. Reading notarial registers, tax records, law, merchants' accounts, travelers' tales and letters, sermons, slave-buying manuals, and literary works as well as treaties governing the slave trade and crusade propaganda, Barker gives a rich picture of the context in which merchants traded and enslaved people met their fate.

Debt and Slavery in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds

Debt and Slavery in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds PDF

Author: Alessandro Stanziani

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-10-06

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 131732014X

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Filling a significant gap in the historiography, the essays in this volume show that debt slavery has played a crucial role in the economic history of numerous societies which continues even today.

Greek and Roman Slaveries

Greek and Roman Slaveries PDF

Author: Eftychia Bathrellou

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2022-04-20

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 1118969332

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Greek and Roman Slaveries Slavery was foundational to Greek and Roman societies, affecting nearly all of their economic, social, political, and cultural practices. Greek and Roman Slaveries offers a rich collection of literary, epigraphic, papyrological, and archaeological sources, including many unfamiliar ones. This sourcebook ranges chronologically from the archaic period to late antiquity, covering the whole of the Mediterranean, the Near East, and temperate Europe. Readers will find an interactive and user-friendly engagement with past scholarship and new research agendas that focuses particularly on the agency of ancient slaves, the processes in which slavery was inscribed, the changing history of slavery in antiquity, and the comparative study of ancient slaveries. Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students taking courses on ancient slavery, as well as courses on slavery more generally, this sourcebook’s questions, cross-references, and bibliographies encourage an analytical and interactive approach to the various economic, social, and political processes and contexts in which slavery was employed while acknowledging the agency of enslaved persons.

Mediterranean Slavery and World Literature

Mediterranean Slavery and World Literature PDF

Author: Mario Klarer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-01

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1351967576

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Mediterranean Slavery and World Literature is a collection of selected essays about the transformations of captivity experiences in major early modern texts of world literature and popular media, including works by Cervantes, de Vega, Defoe, Rousseau, and Mozart. Where most studies of Mediterranean slavery, until now, have been limited to historical and autobiographical accounts, this volume looks specifically at literary adaptations from a multicultural perspective.

Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context, c.800-146 BC

Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context, c.800-146 BC PDF

Author: David M. Lewis

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-07-12

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 0191082619

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The orthodox view of ancient Mediterranean slavery holds that Greece and Rome were the only 'genuine slave societies' of the ancient world, that is, societies in which slave labour contributed significantly to the economy and underpinned the wealth of elites. Other societies, labelled 'societies with slaves', have been thought to have made little use of slave labour and therefore have been largely ignored in recent scholarship. This volume presents a radically different view of the ancient world of the Eastern Mediterranean, portraying it as a patchwork of regional slave systems. Although slavery was indeed particularly highly developed in Greece and Rome, it was also entrenched in Carthage and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, and played a not insignificant role in the affairs of elites in Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia. In Greece, diversity was the rule: from the early archaic period onwards, differing historical trajectories in various regions shaped the institution of slavery in manifold ways, producing very different slave systems in regions such as Sparta, Crete, and Attica. However, in the wider Eastern Mediterranean world, we find a similar level of diversity: slavery was exploited to differing degrees across all of these regions, and was the outcome of a complex interplay between cultural, economic, political, geographic, and demographic variables. In seeking to contextualize slaving practices across the Greek world through detailed soundings of the slaving practices of the Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Carthaginians, this volume not only provides new insights into these ancient cultures, but also allows for a nuanced exploration of the economic underpinnings of Greek elite culture that sets its reliance on slavery within a broader context and sheds light on the complex circumstances from which it emerged.

That Most Precious Merchandise

That Most Precious Merchandise PDF

Author: Hannah Barker

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2019-10-25

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0812251547

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The history of the Black Sea as a source of Mediterranean slaves stretches from ancient Greek colonies to human trafficking networks in the present day. At its height during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Black Sea slave trade was not the sole source of Mediterranean slaves; Genoese, Venetian, and Egyptian merchants bought captives taken in conflicts throughout the region, from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, and the Aegean Sea. Yet the trade in Black Sea slaves provided merchants with profit and prestige; states with military recruits, tax revenue, and diplomatic influence; and households with the service of women, men, and children. Even though Genoa, Venice, and the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and Greater Syria were the three most important strands in the web of the Black Sea slave trade, they have rarely been studied together. Examining Latin and Arabic sources in tandem, Hannah Barker shows that Christian and Muslim inhabitants of the Mediterranean shared a set of assumptions and practices that amounted to a common culture of slavery. Indeed, the Genoese, Venetian, and Mamluk slave trades were thoroughly entangled, with wide-ranging effects. Genoese and Venetian disruption of the Mamluk trade led to reprisals against Italian merchants living in Mamluk cities, while their participation in the trade led to scathing criticism by supporters of the crusade movement who demanded commercial powers use their leverage to weaken the force of Islam. Reading notarial registers, tax records, law, merchants' accounts, travelers' tales and letters, sermons, slave-buying manuals, and literary works as well as treaties governing the slave trade and crusade propaganda, Barker gives a rich picture of the context in which merchants traded and enslaved people met their fate.

Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000-1500 CE)

Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000-1500 CE) PDF

Author: Reuven Amitai

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9782503570198

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"Slavery has played a significant role in the history of human society, not the least in the greater Mediterranean region, since ancient times. Long neglected by mainstream historians, the medieval history of slavery has received an increasing amount of attention by scholars, since the pioneering work of Charles Verlinden (1907-1996). Today historians have generally laid to rest the nineteenth-century preoccupation with whether slavery was a significant 'mode of production' in the post-classical period, to concentrate on the changing face of the institution over time by looking at legal norms, linguistic representations and social practice. This volume presents a multi-faceted and interdisciplinary approach to slavery and the slave trade in the Eastern Mediterranean region in the pre-modern period, placing these into a larger historical and cultural context. It surveys the significance of slavery in the three monotheistic traditions, the involvement of Eastern and Western merchants and other agents in the slave trade, and offers new interpretations concerning the nature of this commerce."--

Captives and Corsairs

Captives and Corsairs PDF

Author: Gillian Weiss

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2011-03-11

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0804777845

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Captives and Corsairs uncovers a forgotten story in the history of relations between the West and Islam: three centuries of Muslim corsair raids on French ships and shores and the resulting captivity of tens of thousands of French subjects and citizens in North Africa. Through an analysis of archival materials, writings, and images produced by contemporaries, the book fundamentally revises our picture of France's emergence as a nation and a colonial power, presenting the Mediterranean as an essential vantage point for studying the rise of France. It reveals how efforts to liberate slaves from North Africa shaped France's perceptions of the Muslim world and of their own "Frenchness". From around 1550 to 1830, freeing these captives evolved from an expression of Christian charity to a method of state building and, eventually, to a rationale for imperial expansion. Captives and Corsairs thus advances new arguments about the fluid nature of slavery and firmly links captive redemption to state formation—and in turn to the still vital ideology of liberatory conquest.