history of slavery - History Lab

Slavery in the Mesopotamian and ancient world

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:10 +0000

Probably began with the sedentarization of man, and therefore with the birth of agriculture. Slavery was present in the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations of the Assyrians, Sumerians and Babylonians, in the Near Eastern civilizations of the Hittites and Jews, and in Egypt, India and China. In fact, slavery requires large lands to be exploited, economic surpluses and a high population density. It is because of these factors that it started in the Neolithic period, and in particular around 11,000 years ago.

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Ancient Rome and slavery

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:10 +0000

Pompeii. Found the “slave room” in the luxurious suburban villa of Civita Giuliana, sacked by grave robbers. The exceptional new discovery follows that of the stable with three horses and the ceremonial chariot. The environment, which housed a family, is perfectly preserved and will allow for the acquisition of new interesting data on the housing and living conditions of the slaves in Pompeii and in the Roman world.

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From antiquity to the Middle Ages

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:10 +0000

Conference held at the Egyptian Museum entitled: “Slaves and servants from ancient Egypt to medieval Europe: a history of misunderstandings”. Since the birth of the first hierarchical and classed societies, the forms of exploitation of the work of others have been manifold. Yet some terms used to describe dependency relationships, such as “servant”, “slave” and “corvée”, have found wide applicability to very different and distant societies. In this conference a medievalist, Professor Giuseppe Sergi (professor of Medieval History at the University of Turin) and an Egyptologist, Doctor Federico Poole (Curator of the Egyptian Museum) face the challenge of measuring together differences and similarities between the societies from respectively studied, and the possibility of a common language to talk about social phenomena. At the same time, they deconstruct some clichés regarding the societies they study, for example regarding serfdom as the main form of enslavement in the Middle Ages, or the opposite clichés, one popular, the other academic, that slavery would have been predominant. or, conversely, substantially absent in Pharaonic Egypt.

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Middle passage and native enslavement in colonial America

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:10 +0000

Slavery had been practiced by Native Americans long before the arrival of Europeans in the region. Individuals from one tribe might be captured by another for a variety of reasons, but whatever the outcome or the reason for their status was, it was culturally assumed that the enslaved had failed at something to deserve it – such as the ‘having recklessly exposed himself to a risk, thus paying for the gamble or in some way allowing himself to be captured.

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The travels of Ólafur Egilsson

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:10 +0000

The travels of Reverend Olafur Egilsson, translated by Karl Smari Hreinsson and Adam Nichols.

The combination of Reverend Olafur’s narrative, the letters, and the material in the Appendices provides a first-hand, in-depth view of early seventeenth-century Europe and the Maghreb equaled by few other works dealing with the period.

We are pleased to offer it to the wider audience that an English edition allows. From the book to the video

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History of Arab Slave Trade

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:10 +0000

In 1842, the British Consul General in Morocco wrote a letter to the Sultan to ask him if he had taken any measures to stop slavery or at least, slave trade. The sultan replied that he will not do anything about it because it has been the norm since the time of the sons of Adam and no sects of Islam are against it. Hence, he will not permit anything the Qur’an forbids and will not make unlawful anything that the Qur’an has allowed. In the Sultan’s reply, we see the simplest justification or at least, excuse, for almost 1300 years of slavery in the Islamic world.

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How the autobiography of a Muslim slave is challenging an American narrative

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:10 +0000

Omar Ibn Said was 37 years old when he was taken from his West African home and transported to Charleston, South Carolina, as a slave in the 1800s. Now, his one-of-a-kind autobiographical manuscript has been translated from its original Arabic and housed at the Library of Congress, where it “annihilates” the conventional narrative of African slaves as uneducated and uncultured. Amna Nawaz reports.

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Ancient materials of Francophonie

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:03 +0000

Digital library of the Department of Languages of the University of Parma that contains the digitization of rare microfilmed materials of Francophone culture not otherwise available online. There are two thematic strands: the series treated on the history of slavery (1700-1800) and the series of travel reports (1600-1800).

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