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Palgrave Macmillan

The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History

  • Book
  • Open Access
  • © 2023

You have full access to this open access Book

Overview

  • Presents concise introductions to slavery in different settings, appealing to all interested in the history of slavery
  • Encourages comparison between slave systems across the world, an increasing trend in the study of slavery
  • Highlights issues that affected slave systems during certain time periods through thematic ‘injections’
  • This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access.

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Table of contents (39 chapters)

  1. Ancient Societies (to 500 C.E.)

  2. Medieval Societies (500–1500 C.E.)

  3. Early Modern Societies (1500–1800 C.E.)

Keywords

About this book

This open access handbook takes a comparative and global approach to analyse the practice of slavery throughout history. To understand slavery - why it developed, and how it functioned in various societies – is to understand an important and widespread practice in world civilisations. With research traditionally being dominated by the Atlantic world, this collection aims to illuminate slavery that existed in not only the Americas but also ancient, medieval, North and sub-Saharan African, Near Eastern, and Asian societies. Connecting civilisations through migration, warfare, trade routes and economic expansion, the practice of slavery integrated countries and regions through power-based relationships, whilst simultaneously dividing societies by class, race, ethnicity and cultural group. Uncovering slavery as a globalising phenomenon, the authors highlight the slave-trading routes that crisscrossed Africa, helped integrate the Mediterranean world, connected Indian Ocean societies andfused the Atlantic world. Split into five parts, the handbook portrays the evolution of slavery from antiquity to the contemporary era and encourages readers to realise similarities and differences between various manifestations of slavery throughout history. Providing a truly global coverage of slavery, and including thematic injections within each chronological part, this handbook is a comprehensive and transnational resource for all researchers interested in slavery, the history of labour, and anthropology.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Institute for History, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Damian A. Pargas

  • Institute for Economic and Social History, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Juliane Schiel

About the editors

Damian A. Pargas is Professor of North American History and Culture at Leiden University as well as Director of the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies in The Netherlands.

Juliane Schiel is Associate Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna in Austria.   


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