Slaves, Slavery in the Renaissance

Abstract

Three major features characterize slavery in Renaissance Europe: First, slaves were not a distinctive social stratum or class within European societies but formed part of a larger group of bonded people. Although slaves’ status, unlike others, was at least formally marked by their market price and the fact that they could be (re)sold at any point to anyone else, their services and effective social agency were often comparable to the situation of serfs, household servants, or other bonded workers in town or countryside. Slaves clearly belonged to the most vulnerable groups of society (Patterson, Slavery and social death. A comparative study. Cambridge, MA, 1982), but their individual situations could vary widely, and they were not always in the most powerless position (Heers, Esclaves et domestiques au Moyen Âge dans le monde méditerranéen. Paris, 1981; Cavaciocchi, Schiavitù e servaggio nell’economia europea secc. XI–XVIII/Serdom and Slavery in the European Economy 11^th–18^th Centuries. Firenze, 2014; Hanß and Schiel, Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500–1800)/Neue Perspektiven auf mediterrane Sklaverei (500–1800). Zürich, 2014).

Secondly, scholarly discourses on slavery existed side by side with different “practices of slaving” (Miller, The problem of slavery as history. A global approach. New Haven/London, 2012) in Renaissance Europe. Although almost everybody agreed that Christians were not allowed to enslave or sell fellow Christians and that the enslavement of foreign people had to follow certain rules of warfare and international law, slaving practices could sometimes significantly differ from those norms without great need for dissimulation or justification. Slaving practices were an unquestioned element of Renaissance Europe even though they were not always termed or perceived as such (Epstein, Speaking of slavery. Color, ethnicity, and human bondage in Italy. Ithaca, 2001).

Thirdly, slaving practices in the Renaissance had their focus – even though not exclusively – in the Mediterranean and were characterized by reciprocity between Christian and Muslim actors, in terms of quantity and quality (Bono, Corsari nel Mediterraneo. Cristiani e musulmani fra Guerra, schiavitù e commercio. Milano, 2001; Botte and Stella, Couleurs de l’esclavage sur les deux rives de la Méditerranée. Moyen Âge–XXe siècle. Paris, 2012; Guillén and Trabelsi, Les esclavages en Méditerranée. Espaces et dynamiques économiques. Madrid, 2012). The master narrative on Europe’s path to modernity, however, still continues to disguise this part of the story of Renaissance Europe by contrasting the Muslim slave trade and corsair activities with a “humanistic,” “enlightened” “West” (Sala-Molins, Dark side of the light. Slavery and the French Enlightenment. Minneapolis, 2006; Buck-Morss 2000).