15th Century
Primary Sources On This Website
- A Consilium on Slavery from Genoa (Europe)
- Criminal Trials of Slaves in Venice (Europe)
- Demandes de Libertat: Enslaved Mothers Suing for Freedom in Late Medieval Iberia (Europe)
- Dom Pedro de Sousa and the BaKongo People Meet Portugal (Africa)
- Felix Fabri’s Wanderings in the Holy Land (Europe, Middle East and North Africa)
- A Former Slave Deceives Ibn Khalīl (Africa, Europe, Middle East and North Africa)
- Hans Schiltberger’s Slave Narrative (Europe)
- Medieval Greek Captives’ Ransom-Raising Testimonials (Byzantium and the Aegean)
- Mibiki and Slavery in Medieval Japan (East Asia)
- The Miracle of the Relic of the True Cross on the Rialto Bridge: Enslaved Africans in Renaissance Venice (Europe)
- Misdeeds of Catalan Corsairs (Europe, Middle East and North Africa)
- Recruitment of Mamluks (Europe, Middle East and North Africa)
- Slave Raiding in Circassia (Russia and Central Asia)
- Slave Sale Contracts from Genoa (Europe)
- A Slave Sale Contract from Venice (Europe)
- The Slave Women of al-Manṣūr Ḥajjī (Middle East and North Africa)
- The Training of Mamluks (Middle East and North Africa)
Primary Sources Elsewhere
- Barker, Hannah. “The Risk of Birth: Life Insurance for Enslaved Pregnant Women in Fifteenth-Century Genoa.” Journal of Global Slavery 6.2 (2021): 1-31.
- Brucker, Gene, ed. The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971. See especially doc. 109 (The Tribulations of a Slave Girl, p.224-228).
- Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. Edited by Nehemia Levtzion and J.F.P. Hopkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
- Ethiopian Itineraries circa 1400-1524, Including Those Collected by Alessandro Zorzi at Venice in the Years 1519-1524. Edited by O.G.S. Crawford. Hakluyt Society, Second Series, no. 109. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
- Haile, Getatchew. “From The Markets of Damot to that of Bärara: A Note on Slavery in Medieval Ethiopia.” Paideuma 27 (1981): 173–180.
- Lewis, Bernard, ed. Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. See especially 2:251-256 (Al-Abshihi, On Slaves, Slave-Girls, and Servants).
- Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim and Jewish Sources, ed. Olivia Remie Constable. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. See especially doc. 83 (“Muslims and Christians in Valencia,” p.491-495).
- Mihailović, Konstantin. Memoirs of a Janissary. Edited by Svat Soucek, translated by Benjamin Stolz. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2011.
- Motomasa, Kanze. Sumida-Gawa. This is a noh play.
- Rodriguez, Jarbel. Muslim and Christian Contact in the Middle Ages: A Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. See especially doc. 47 (Truce Between the Turks and the Genoese Safeguarding the Rights of Merchants, p.236-237), 88 (Konstantin Mihailovic, On the Janissaries, p.431-433), 89 (Andres Bernaldez, The Taking and Freeing of Captives in Iberia, p.433-434).
- Schiltberger, Johann. The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, A Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1396-1427. Translated by J. Buchan Telfer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Reprint of the 1879 edition.
- Tafur, Pero. Travels and Adventures, 1435-1439. Translated by Malcolm Letts. London: Routledge, 1926.
Selected Bibliography
- Ali, Shanti Sadiq. African Dispersal in the Deccan. New Delhi: Sangam, 1996.
- Amitai, Reuven, and Christoph Cluse, eds. Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000-1500 CE). Turnhout: Brepols, 2017.
- Anderson, Arthur J. O. “The Institution of Slave-Bathing.” Gedenkschrift Walter Lehmann 7, no. 2 (1982): 81-92.
- Barker, Hannah. That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
- Barton, Simon. Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
- Bennett, Herman. African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
- Blumenthal, Debra. Enemies & Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.
- Bouanga, Ayda. “Gold, Slaves, and Trading Routes in Southern Blue Nile (Abbay) Societies, Ethiopia, 13th–16th Centuries.” Northeast African Studies 17.2 (2017): 31–60.
- Chatterjee, Indrani, and Richard Eaton, eds. Slavery and South Asian History. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006.
- Clendinnen, Inga. “The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society.” Past and Present 107 (1985): 44-89.
- Dincer, Aysu. “Enslaving Christians: Greek Slaves in Late Medieval Cyprus.” Mediterranean Historical Review 31, no. 1 (2016): 1-19.
- Epstein, Steven A. Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity and Human Bondage in Italy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
- Green, Toby. “Building Slavery in the Atlantic World: Atlantic Connections and the Changing Institution of Slavery in Cabo Verde, Fifteenth-Sixteenth Centuries.” Slavery & Abolition 32.2 (2011): 227-245.
- Haour, Anne. “The Early Medieval Slave Trade of the Central Sahel: Archaeological and Historical Considerations.” In Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory, edited by Paul J. Lane and Kevin C. MacDonald, 61-78. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
- Hassig, Ross. “The Famine of One Rabbit: Ecological Causes and Social Consequences of a Pre-Columbian Calamity.” Journal of Anthropological Research 37 (1981): 172-182.
- Hellie, Richard. Slavery in Russia, 1450-1725. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
- Herder, Michelle. “Serving in the Cloister: Slaves, Servants, and Discipline in Late Medieval Nunneries,” in Boundaries in the Medieval and Wider World: Essays in Honour of Paul Freedman, edited by Thomas Barton, Susan McDonough, Sara McDougall, and Matthew Wranovix, 137-52. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017.
- Heywood, Linda M. “Slavery and Its Transformation in the Kingdom of Kongo: 1491-1800.” The Journal of African History 50, no. 1 (2009): 1–22.
- Junker, Laura L. “The Impact of Captured Women on Cultural Transmission in Contact-Period Philippine Slave-Raiding Chiefdoms.” In Invisible Citizens: Captives and Their Consequences, edited by Catherine M. Cameron, 110-37. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008.
- Kim, Sun Joo. “My Own Flesh and Blood: Stratified Parental Compassion and Law in Korean Slavery.” Social History 44, no. 1 (2019): 1-25.
- Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. “Women Servants in Florence during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, edited by Barbara Hanawalt, 56-80. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
- Korpela, Jukka Jari. Slaves from the North: Finns and Karelians in the East European Slave Trade, 900–1600. Studies in Global Slavery 5. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
- Lovejoy, Paul E. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. See especially chapters 1 and 2, p. 1-45.
- Lowe, Kate. “The Lives of African Slaves and People of African Descent in Renaissance Europe,” in Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, edited by Joaneath Spicer, 13-34. Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, 2012.
- Marmon, Shaun. “Black Slaves in Mamlūk Narratives: Representations of Transgression.” Al-Qanṭara: Revista de Estudios Árabes 28, no. 2 (2007): 435–64.
- Marmon, Shaun. “Domestic Slavery in the Mamluk Empire: A Preliminary Sketch.” In Slavery in the Islamic Middle East, edited by Shaun Marmon, 1–23. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 1999.
- Marmon, Shaun. Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
- McKee, Sally. “Domestic Slavery in Renaissance Italy.” Slavery & Abolition 29 (2008): 305-326.
- McKee, Sally. “Inherited Status and Slavery in Renaissance Italy and Venetian Crete.” Past and Present, no. 182 (February 2004): 31-54.
- Melichar, Petra. “God, Slave and a Nun: A Case from Late Medieval Cyprus.” Byzantion 79 (January 2009): 280-91.
- Meyerson, Mark. “Slavery and the Social Order: Mudejars and Christians in the Kingdom of Valencia.” Medieval Encounters 1, no. 1 (1995): 144-73.
- Millerhauser, John. “Debt as a Double-Edged Risk: A Historical Case from Nahua (Aztec) Mexico.” Economic Anthropology 4 (2017): 263-275.
- Nelson, Thomas. “Slavery in Medieval Japan.” Monumenta Nipponica 59 (2004): 463-492.
- Offner, Jerome. “The Future of Aztec Law.” In Legal Encounters on the Medieval Globe, edited by Elizabeth Lambourn, 1-32. Kalamazoo: Arc Humanities Press, 2017.
- Pankhurst, Richard. The Ethiopian Borderlands: Essays in Regional History from Ancient Times to the End of the 18th Century. Lawrence, KS: Red Sea Press, 1997.
- Park, Hyun Suk. “Temporarily for Your Majesty: Debates on Abolishing Courtesan Slavery in Chosŏn Korea.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 81, no. 1-2 (2021): 203-226.
- Petry, Carl F. The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society. Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2012. See especially “Murder by Domestic Slaves,” p. 224-237.
- Prieto, Gabriel, John W. Verano, Nicolas Goepfert, Douglas Kennett, Jeffrey Quilter, Steven LeBlanc, and Lars Fehren-Schmitz, et al. “A mass sacrifice of children and camelids at the Huanchaquito-Las Llamas site, Moche Valley, Peru.” PLoS ONE 14, no. 3 (2019).
- Rapoport, Yosef. “Women and Gender in Mamluk Society: An Overview.” Mamluk Studies Review 11 (2007): 1–45.
- Salicrú i Lluch, Roser. “Luck and Contingency? Piracy, Human Booty and Human-Trafficking in the Late Medieval Western Mediterranean.” In Seeraub im Mittelmeerraum Piraterie, Korsarentum und maritime Gewalt von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit, edited by Nikolas Jausbert, vol. 3, 347–362. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2013.
- Schiel, Juliane. “‘Slaves’ Religious Choice in Renaissance Venice: Applying Insights from Missionary Narratives to Slave Baptism Records.” Archivio veneto 146 (2015): 23-45.
- Shadow, Robert D., and María J. Rodríguez V. “Historical Panorama of Anthropological Perspectives on Aztec Slavery.” In Arqueología del norte y del occidente de México: Homenaje al Doctor J. Charles Kelley, edited by Barbro Dahlgren de Jordán and María de los Dolores Soto de Arechavaleta, 299-323. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1995.
- Stuard, Susan Mosher. “Ancillary Evidence for the Decline of Medieval Slavery.” Past and Present 149 (1995): 3-28.
- Winer, Rebecca. “Jews, Slave-Holding, and Gender in the Crown of Aragon circa 1250-1492.” In Cautivas y esclavas: el tráfico humano en el Mediterráneo, edited by Aurelia Martín Casares and María Cristina Delaigue Séris, 43-60. Granada: University of Granada, 2017.
- Witzenrath, Christoph. Eurasian Slavery, Ransom and Abolition in World History, 1200-1860. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.
- Wyatt, Don J. The Blacks of Premodern China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
- Zavala, Silvio. Los esclavos indios en Nueva España. México: Colegio Nacional, 1967.
Contributors
Timothy Allen, Hannah Barker, Debra Blumenthal, Catherine Cameron, Matthew Delvaux, Richard Eaton, Alasdair Grant, Kathryn Greenberg, Francis Hisgen, Kim Bok-rae, Jai Pranav Konuru, Paul Lane, Rena Lauer, Liam Nelson, Tatiana Seijas, Valentin Skald, Michael Smith, John Verano, Kevin Wang, Rebecca Winer, Don Wyatt
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