In the specific form it took during the medieval period, penal enslavement therefore amounts to a strikingly new phenomenon. How did such a system come about, and what functions did it serve?
Genoa: The cog in the new medieval economy
August 18, 2015 By
Journalist and author Nicholas Walton writes about medieval Genoa’s economy, trade and role in the Black Death. Walton recently published a book on Genoese history entitled, “Genoa: La Superba”
The Scale of Slave Raiding and the Slave Trade in Northumbria and Ireland, 7th-11th Centuries
August 16, 2015 By
Slave raiding and the slave trade in early medieval Northumbria and Ireland were transcultural and inter-regional processes, involving the enslavement and transportation of people across permeable borders.
BOOK REVIEW: Genoa ‘La Superba’: The Rise and Fall of a Merchant Pirate Superpower by Nicholas Walton
August 9, 2015 By
While most books about Italy have been dedicated to tourist hubs like Milan, Florence, Rome, Sicily and Venice, Genoa with its rich history, rugged landscape, and tenacious residents, has been given only a passing mention.
Crusading Warfare, Chivalry, and the Enslavement of Women and Children
April 11, 2015 By
The subject of the treatment of prisoners taken in crusading warfare, long neglected, has attracted considerable interest in the last fifteen years, but more can still be said, particularly on the ways in which crusaders dealt with their enemies’ women and children, the archetypal non-combatants.
Unexpected Evidence concerning Gold Mining in Early Byzantium
November 9, 2014 By
One of the consequences of the decline of Roman imperial might was the shortage of slaves at state-run mines. Consequently, criminals were often sentenced to damnatio ad metallum. The need for gold especially soared when the gold solidus was introduced at the beginning of the fourth century.
Domestic Slavery in Renaissance Italy
October 5, 2014 By
The ways merchants in Italy differentiated along ethnic and religious lines among the slaves they dealt in sheds light more on how the people of Italy made distinctions among themselves than on the origins and religion of their captives.
Slaves, Money Lenders, and Prisoner Guards: The Jews and the Trade in Slaves and Captives in the Crimean Khanate
August 20, 2014 By
Trade in slaves and captives was one of the most important (if not the most important) sources of income of the Crimean Khanate in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
The Daily Life of Slavery and the Global Reach of Slavery in Medieval Egypt, 969-1250 CE
May 1, 2014 By
This dissertation examines the geography of the slave trade, the role of slavery in the household, and the lives of domestic slave women in the Egyptian Jewish community under the rule of the Fatimid caliphate and Ayyubid sultanate
Why did Medieval Slave Traders go to Finland?
April 17, 2014 By
The demand for blonde girls and boys was so lucrative that slave traders would hunt for these people as far away as northern Finland, a recent study finds.
Greek in Marriage, Latin in Giving: The Greek Community of Fourteenth-century Palermo and the Deceptive Will of Bonannus de Geronimo
April 12, 2014 By
This article discusses the pitfalls that can occur in the study of ethnicity in the me- dieval period in the context of the potential existence of two separate Greek minori- ties—one indigenous and one immigrant—in fourteenth-century Latin-dominated Palermo, Italy.
St. Patrick’s Irish Pride
March 17, 2014 By
In honour of the day, it seems fitting to throw out some interesting facts about St. Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint.
The Crimean Tatars and their Russian-Captive Slaves
March 4, 2014 By
The Russian population on the southern border with the Crimean Tatars was continuously exposed to the dangers of Crimean raider bands, which were usually formed to attack Russian permanent settlements, capture people and sell them to slave-traders, or to give them back to Russia for ransom monies.
Christian warriors and the enslavement of fellow Christians
January 8, 2014 By
In this paper I shall argue that this most striking innovation was fundamental to the emergence of an effective notion of non-combatant immunity, itself widely regarded as the key norm in modern discussions of ius in bello.
The English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
December 8, 2013 By
Life for the revolutionary peasants was structured by feudal ties and obligations. The villein was tied to the soil until he could buy his freedom. He lived in a wattle and daub hut with his family and animals on a floor of mud. Work began at dawn on his few (often separated) strips of land; he was obligated to work on his lord’s land three days a week, tend and shear his sheep, feed his swine, and sow and reap his crops.
Vikings raided monasteries to feed demand for eunuchs in the east, historian finds
July 31, 2013 By
In Byzantium and the Abbasid Caliphate there was great demand for eunuchs – a new study suggests this demand was being met by the Vikings raiding monasteries in northwestern Europe.
The European Reconquest of North Africa
April 14, 2013 By
The chief structural features of Africa Minor are simple. The territory consists of a long strip of land bounded on the north by the Mediterranean,on the south by the Sahara, on the east by the Gulf of Tripoli and the Libyan Desert, on the west by the Atlantic.
The Slave Trade of Dublin: Ninth to Twelfth Centuries
March 17, 2013 By
It is however, often assumed that taking of slaves reached it peak in the ninth and tenth centuries and that the advent of Christianity made the institution of slavery morally unacceptable.
Dark Age Migrations and Subjective Ethnicity: The Example of the Lombards
December 5, 2012 By
This study is an attempt to clarify the functions and structure of the Volker- wanderungen. Peoples or warrior-bands? The basic problem is that small warrior bands as well as big migrations of peoples are characterized in the same way by the classical and early medieval writers: they used tribal names.
Singing Slave Girls (qiyan) of the Abbasid Court in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries
November 25, 2012 By
The category of slave in the Middle East encompassed a number of different duties and positions: eunuch, chattel, domestic servant, sexual subject, infantryman, concubine, entertainer, laborer, and sometimes a trusted and valued member of the household.
The Church and Slavery in Anglo-Saxon England
October 11, 2012 By
Slaves and slavery were an accepted part of everyday Anglo-Saxon life. This paper examines a range of original sources that reveal the ways in which the teachings and practices of Christianity and Christians were part of that acceptance.
Slavery and Identíty in Mozarabic Toledo: 1201-1320
October 7, 2012 By
Román Iberia became thoroughly Romanized early in its existenec. Spain adopted the law, the language, the culture, and eventually the religión of clas- sicat Rome. Moreover, Hispania produced some truly stellar figures in the arena of Latin scholarship, including Séneca, Lucían, Quintilian, Columella, and Prudentius.
The Implications of Slave Women’s Sexual Service in Late Medieval Italy
October 4, 2012 By
The focus on black slaves in the Christian Mediterranean provides a connection between slavery’s more remote past and its more recent, better understood past.
King João II of Portugal “O Príncipe Perfeito” and the Jews (1481-1495)
September 24, 2012 By
King João II of Portugal, who reigned over the Portuguese from 1481 un- til 1495, has enjoyed a rather positive posthumous reputation in Portugal and in Portuguese historiography…In Jewish historiography, however, the ruthlessness of King João II has earned him considerable infamy.
Slave girls under the early Abbasids
September 6, 2012 By
Every one in Abbasid society who could compose poetry, good or bad, composed about slave-girls or at least made mention of them.
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