Slavery after Rome, 500-1100 / Alice Rio.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rio, Alice, author.

Series:

Oxford studies in medieval European history

Oxford Studies in Medieval European History

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slavery--Europe, Western--History--To 1500.

Slavery.

Serfdom--Europe, Western--History--To 1500.

Serfdom.

History.

Western Europe.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 285 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Slavery After Rome, 500-1100' offers a substantially new interpretation of what happened to slavery in Western Europe in the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. The periods at either end of the early middle ages are associated with iconic forms of unfreedom: Roman slavery at one end; at the other, the serfdom of the twelfth century and beyond, together with, in Southern Europe, a revitalised urban chattel slavery dealing chiefly in non-Christians. How and why this major change took place in the intervening period has been a long-standing puzzle. This study picks up the various threads linking this transformation across the centuries, and situates them within the full context of what slavery and unfreedom were being used for in the early middle ages. This volume adopts a broad comparative perspective, covering different regions of Western Europe over six centuries, to try to answer the following questions: who might become enslaved and why? What did this mean for them, and for their lords? 0What made people opt for certain ways of exploiting unfree labour over others in different times and places, and is it possible, underneath all this diversity, to identify some coherent trajectories of historical change?

Contents:

Slave raiding and slave trading

Self-sale, debt slavery, and penal enslavement

Freedmen and Manumission

Household slavery and service

Unfree status in estate communities

Rights and duties

Conclusion

ISBN:

9780198704058

0198704054

OCLC:

961212468