Author Description

Slavery has become one of the most booming research topics. The well-known transatlantic context of slavery has recently been enriched by numerous studies which take other regions into account and create new representations of servility. It is the pre-modern Mediterraneum which has proven especially fruitful for an extended approach to forms of slavery. This volume collects papers which reconsider the Mediterranean from various disciplinary perspectives and examine semantics and practices of servility in Western and Eastern Europe, North Africa as well as in the Byzantine and Ottoman Empire. The results from microhistorical case studies and transcultural comparative analyses are put into comparison and various forms of interlinkage are discussed. This volume is thus marked by a combination of cultural studies and approaches from microhistorical and praxeological perspectives which forms part of a New Social History. By doing so, slavery is conceived and problematized as a context specific social relation.--