Slavery In Medieval And Early Modern Iberia

Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia provides a sweeping survey of the many forms of bound labor in Iberia from ancient times to the decline of slavery in the eighteenth century.

This volume is the first comprehensive study of the material imprint of slavery in early medieval Europe. While written sources attest to the ubiquity of slavery and slave trade in early medieval British Isles, Scandinavia and Slavic lands, it is still difficult to find material traces of this reality, other than the hundreds of thousands of Islamic coins paid in exchange for the northern European slaves. This volume offers the first structured reflection on how to bridge this gap. It reviews the types of material evidence that can be associated with the institution of slavery and the slave trade in early medieval northern Europe, from individual objects (such as e.g. shackles) to more comprehensive landscape approaches. The book is divided into four sections. The first presents the analytical tools developed in Africa and prehistoric Europe to identify and describe social phenomena associated with slavery and the slave trade. The following three section review the three main cultural zones of early medieval northern Europe: the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Slavic central Europe. The contributions offer methodological reflections on the concept of the archaeology of slavery. They emphasize that the material record, by its nature, admits multiple interpretations. More broadly, this book comes at a time when the history of slavery is being integrated into academic syllabi in most western countries. The collection of studies contributes to a more nuanced perspective on this important and controversial topic. This volume appeals to multiple audiences interested in comparative and global studies of slavery, and will constitute the point of reference for future debates.

People in the Middle Ages and the early modern age more often suffered from imprisonment and enslavement than we might have assumed. Incarceration and Slavery in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age approaches these topics from a wide variety of perspectives and demonstrates collectively the great relevance of the issues involved. Both incarceration and slavery were (and continue to be) most painful experiences, and no one was guaranteed exemption from it. High-ranking nobles and royalties were often the victims of imprisonment and, at times, had to wait many years until their ransom was paid. Similarly, slavery existed throughout Christian Europe and in the Arab world. However, while imprisonment occasionally proved to be the catalyst for major writings and creativity, slaves in the Ottoman empire and in Egypt succeeded in rising to the highest position in society (Janissaries, Mamluks, and others).

A panoramic cultural and legal history that traces the roots of antisemitism and racism to early Christian theology Since the earliest days of Christianity, theologians expressed pervasive anxiety about Jews as equal members of society, and, with European expansion in the early modern period, that anxiety extended to people of color. This troubling legacy still haunts us today. Christian Supremacy demonstrates how theological and legal frameworks created by the church centuries ago laid the seeds of antisemitism and anti-Black racism and reveals why Christian identity lies at the heart of the world’s violent white supremacy movements. In a powerful historical narrative spanning nearly two millennia, Magda Teter describes how Christian theology of late antiquity cast Jews as “children born to slavery,” and how the supposed theological inferiority of Jews became inscribed into law, creating tangible structures that reinforced a sense of Christian domination and superiority. With the dawn of European colonialism, a distinct brand of European Christian supremacy found expression in the legally sanctioned enslavement and exploitation of people of color, later taking the form of white Christian supremacy in the New World. Drawing on a wealth of primary evidence ranging from the theological and legal to the philosophical and artistic, Christian Supremacy is a profound reckoning with history that traces the roots of the modern rejection of Jewish and Black equality to an enduring Christian heritage of exclusion, intolerance, and persecution.

Through engagement with the ‘Slaving Zones' theory, our authors elucidate new and complimentary ways in which identity, law, custom, political organization, and definitions of ‘self’ and ‘other’ have impacted the course of global slavery from ancient times through the present

What happened to slavery in Europe in the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire? This work spans the whole of early medieval Western Europe and addresses issues of slave-taking and slave-trading; people who became slaves as a result of a debt or a crime; even people who chose to become slaves

The African slave trade brought African languages into contact with Spanish and Portuguese beginning in the fifteenth century, and resulted in the Africans' gradual acquisition of these languages. John Lipski describes the major forms of Afro-Hispanic language found in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America over the last 500 years. Separating legitimate forms of Afro-Hispanic expression from those that result from racist stereotyping, he shows how contact with the African diaspora has had a permanent impact on Spanish today.

A prominent Mediterranean port located near Islamic territories, the city of Valencia in the late fifteenth century boasted a slave population of pronounced religious and ethnic diversity: captive Moors and penally enslaved Mudejars, Greeks, Tartars, Russians, Circassians, and a growing population of black Africans. By the end of the fifteenth century, black Africans comprised as much as 40 percent of the slave population of Valencia. Whereas previous historians of medieval slavery have focused their efforts on defining the legal status of slaves, documenting the vagaries of the Mediterranean slave trade, or examining slavery within the context of Muslim-Christian relations, Debra Blumenthal explores the social and human dimensions of slavery in this religiously and ethnically pluralistic society. Enemies and Familiars traces the varied experiences of Muslim, Eastern, and black African slaves from capture to freedom. After describing how men, women, and children were enslaved and brought to the Valencian marketplace, this book examines the substance of slaves' daily lives: how they were sold and who bought them; the positions ascribed to them within the household hierarchy; the sorts of labor they performed; and the ways in which some reclaimed their freedom. Scrutinizing a wide array of archival sources (including wills, contracts, as well as hundreds of civil and criminal court cases), Blumenthal investigates what it meant to be a slave and what it meant to be a master at a critical moment of transition. Arguing that the dynamics of the master-slave relationship both reflected and determined contemporary opinions regarding religious, ethnic, and gender differences, Blumenthal's close study of the day-to-day interactions between masters and their slaves not only reveals that slavery played a central role in identity formation in late medieval Iberia but also offers clues to the development of "racialized" slavery in the early modern Atlantic world.