This book is divided into three parts. The first two chapters provide an introduction to the historical problem of early medieval slavery and a short history of Bavaria to provide background information. The next six chapters deal with a series of topics, which provide a complete historical overview of the institutions and conditions of slavery. This historical analysis is based upon an extensive collection of primary documents, each referenced in the text as it occurs in the discussion. These documents are then provided in English translation in the final three chapters of the volume.
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 revitalized 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? What made people opt for certain ways of exploiting unfree labor over others in different times and places, and is it possible, underneath all this diversity, to identify some coherent trajectories of historical change?
The Roman empire tends to be seen as a whole whereas the early middle ages tends to be seen as a collection of regional histories, roughly corresponding to the land-areas of modern nation states. As a result, early medieval history is much more fragmented, and there have been few convincing syntheses of socio-economic change in the post-Roman world since the 1930s. In recent decades, the rise of early medieval archaeology has also transformed our source-base, but this has not been adequately integrated into analyses of documentary history in almost any country. In Framing the Early Middle Ages Chris Wickham combines documentary and archaeological evidence to create a comparative history of the period 400-800. His analysis embraces each of the regions of the late Roman and immediately post-Roman world, from Denmark to Egypt. The book concentrates on classic socio-economic themes, state finance, the wealth and identity of the aristocracy, estate management, peasant society, rural settlement, cities, and exchange. These give only a partial picture of the period, but they frame and explain other developments. Earlier syntheses have taken the development of a single region as 'typical', with divergent developments presented as exceptions. This book takes all different developments as typical, and aims to construct a synthesis based on a better understanding of difference and the reasons for it.
This volume is the first comprehensive study of the material imprint of slavery in early medieval Europe. While written sources attest to the ubiquity of slavery and slave trade in early medieval British Isles, Scandinavia and Slavic lands, it is still difficult to find material traces of this reality, other than the hundreds of thousands of Islamic coins paid in exchange for the northern European slaves. This volume offers the first structured reflection on how to bridge this gap. It reviews the types of material evidence that can be associated with the institution of slavery and the slave trade in early medieval northern Europe, from individual objects (such as e.g. shackles) to more comprehensive landscape approaches. The book is divided into four sections. The first presents the analytical tools developed in Africa and prehistoric Europe to identify and describe social phenomena associated with slavery and the slave trade. The following three section review the three main cultural zones of early medieval northern Europe: the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Slavic central Europe. The contributions offer methodological reflections on the concept of the archaeology of slavery. They emphasize that the material record, by its nature, admits multiple interpretations. More broadly, this book comes at a time when the history of slavery is being integrated into academic syllabi in most western countries. The collection of studies contributes to a more nuanced perspective on this important and controversial topic. This volume appeals to multiple audiences interested in comparative and global studies of slavery, and will constitute the point of reference for future debates.
Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history within a global context, covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianisation, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial economy, the growth of cities, the Crusades, the effects of plague and the intellectual and cultural dynamism of the Middle Ages. The book explores the driving forces behind the formation of medieval society and the directions in which it developed and changed. In doing this, the authors cover a wide geographic expanse, including Western interactions with the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic World, North Africa and Asia. This fourth edition has been fully updated to reflect moves toward teaching the Middle Ages in a global context and contains a wealth of new features and topics that help to bring this fascinating era to life, including: West Europe’s catching up through intensive exchange with the Mediterranean Islamic world growth of autonomous cities and civic liberties emergence of an empirical and rational worldview climate change and intercontinental pandemics European exchange with Africa and Asia chapter introductions to support students’ understanding of the topics a fully updated glossary to give modern students the confidence and language to discuss medieval history Clear and stimulating, the fourth edition of Introduction to Medieval Europe is the ideal companion to studying the entirety of medieval history at undergraduate level.
This important book [...] is a helpful guide to thinking with things and teaching with things. Each entry challenges the reader to approach objects as historical actors that can speak to the changes and continuities of life in the late antique and early medieval world.― Early Medieval Europe Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, Fifty Early Medieval Things demonstrates how to read objects in ways that make the distant past understandable and approachable. Fifty Early Medieval Things introduces readers to the material culture of late antique and early medieval Europe, north Africa, and western Asia. Ranging from Iran to Ireland and from Sweden to Tunisia, Deborah Deliyannis, Hendrik Dey, and Paolo Squatriti present fifty objects—artifacts, structures, and archaeological features—created between the fourth and eleventh centuries, an ostensibly "Dark Age" whose cultural richness and complexity is often underappreciated. Each thing introduces important themes in the social, political, cultural, religious, and economic history of the postclassical era. Some of the things, like a simple ard (plow) unearthed in Germany, illustrate changing cultural and technological horizons in the immediate aftermath of Rome's collapse; others, like the Arabic coin found in a Viking burial mound, indicate the interconnectedness of cultures in this period. Objects such as the Book of Kells and the palace-city of Anjar in present-day Jordan represent significant artistic and cultural achievements; more quotidian items (a bone comb, an oil lamp, a handful of chestnuts) belong to the material culture of everyday life. In their thing-by-thing descriptions, the authors connect each object to both specific local conditions and to the broader influences that shaped the first millennium AD, and also explore their use in modern scholarly interpretations, with suggestions for further reading.
The practice of slavery has been common across a variety of cultures around the globe and throughout history. Despite the multiplicity of slavery's manifestations, many scholars have used a simple binary to categorize slave-holding groups as either 'genuine slave societies' or 'societies with slaves'. This dichotomy, as originally proposed by ancient historian Moses Finley, assumes that there were just five 'genuine slave societies' in all of human history: ancient Greece and Rome, and the colonial Caribbean, Brazil, and the American South. This book interrogates this bedrock of comparative slave studies and tests its worth. Assembling contributions from top specialists, it demonstrates that the catalogue of five must be expanded and that the model may need to be replaced with a more flexible system that emphasizes the notion of intensification. The issue is approached as a question, allowing for debate between the seventeen contributors about how best to conceptualize the comparative study of human bondage.
Essays illuminate a wide range of topics from the Middle Ages, from the seals of an empress to priests' wives and the undead.This volume of the Haskins Society Journal demonstrates the Society's continued engagement with historical and interdisciplinary research from the early to the central Middle Ages on a broad range of topics including militarism, piety, the miraculous and the monstrous. Chapters explore material culture through a mythic eleventh-century papal banner and the seals and coins of the Empress Matilda; offer new insights into Carolingian hagiography and into the undead in the Historia rerum Anglicarum. Further chapters feature new evidence on the role of priests' wives, the tensions of multiple lordships, shifting identities in the Irish Sea world, and the didactic use of royal anger. A fresh examination of Aelred of Rievaulx's Relatio de Standaro and a re-assessment of Flemish documentary practice continue the Haskins Society's commitment to primary source analysis. Two essays on the thirteenth century, including links between Crusade spirituality and lay penitential strategies and an investigation into the economic costs of waging war, round out the volume.Contributors: DAN ARMSTRONG, DAVID S. BACHRACH, DANIEL M. BACHRACH, JILLIAN M. BJERKE, HANNAH BOSTON, MARIAH COOPER, FIONA J. GRIFFITHS, JESSE M. HARRINGTON, JEAN-FRANÇOIS NIEUS, ALICE RIO, CHARITY URBANSKI, PATRICK WADDEN, MEGHAN WOOLLEY, LU ZUOth century, including links between Crusade spirituality and lay penitential strategies and an investigation into the economic costs of waging war, round out the volume.Contributors: DAN ARMSTRONG, DAVID S. BACHRACH, DANIEL M. BACHRACH, JILLIAN M. BJERKE, HANNAH BOSTON, MARIAH COOPER, FIONA J. GRIFFITHS, JESSE M. HARRINGTON, JEAN-FRANÇOIS NIEUS, ALICE RIO, CHARITY URBANSKI, PATRICK WADDEN, MEGHAN WOOLLEY, LU ZUOth century, including links between Crusade spirituality and lay penitential strategies and an investigation into the economic costs of waging war, round out the volume.Contributors: DAN ARMSTRONG, DAVID S. BACHRACH, DANIEL M. BACHRACH, JILLIAN M. BJERKE, HANNAH BOSTON, MARIAH COOPER, FIONA J. GRIFFITHS, JESSE M. HARRINGTON, JEAN-FRANÇOIS NIEUS, ALICE RIO, CHARITY URBANSKI, PATRICK WADDEN, MEGHAN WOOLLEY, LU ZUOth century, including links between Crusade spirituality and lay penitential strategies and an investigation into the economic costs of waging war, round out the volume.Contributors: DAN ARMSTRONG, DAVID S. BACHRACH, DANIEL M. BACHRACH, JILLIAN M. BJERKE, HANNAH BOSTON, MARIAH COOPER, FIONA J. GRIFFITHS, JESSE M. HARRINGTON, JEAN-FRANÇOIS NIEUS, ALICE RIO, CHARITY URBANSKI, PATRICK WADDEN, MEGHAN WOOLLEY, LU ZUO
Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia provides a sweeping survey of the many forms of bound labor in Iberia from ancient times to the decline of slavery in the eighteenth century.
