Dependency and Slavery Studies

This study examines the long-overlooked institution of slavery in Korea, challenging its erasure from historical narratives and reassessing its role within the country's socio-political structure. It explores how slavery, deeply embedded in a lineage-based aristocracy, functioned not only as an economic driver but also as a hereditary status system that reinforced elite dominance and self-preservation. Using the concept of “servile society” (a society in which strong asymmetrical dependency is linked to hereditary social status in law and custom), the book examines how hereditary dependency shaped elite power, governance, and social hierarchies over centuries. The study combines political and legal history, social structures, and ideological frameworks to present the latest research on slavery in ancient Korea. It examines how slaves were constructed as a “special species” in the Korean Middle Ages, analyzes the role of slavery in the yangban-dominated society of the early modern period based on political-intellectual discourses and statistical data, and tracks the expansion of slavery discourses in Japanese and Western reception after c. 1800 based on texts and photographs; and examines the aftermath of slavery in the present.

In the context of the global cultural heritage boom, community-based and national identity projects in the Caribbean intersect with the interest in cultural tourism to the region, including sites commemorating enslavement. In former plantation slavery societies, in which descendants of enslavers and descendants of enslaved Africans live together, power and property relations are still marked by the slavery past. Calls for reparations made on European states and local descendants of enslavers for the enslavement of African people are a source of political and social conflicts. This volume, appearing at the beginning of the Second International Decade for People of African Descent, refers to the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of enslavement and its long-term consequences in the Caribbean and Circum-Caribbean, such as Anti-Black racism and racialized social inequality. It treats sites of commemoration and of denial, the representation of enslavement and of African cultures in museums, and dominant discourses on national history as well as in counter-narratives of the descendants of the enslaved and Maroons. Chapters on Jamaica, Martinique, French Guiana/Suriname, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Colombia reflect the diversity of collective memories and public history approaches towards material and immaterial vestiges of slavery. The book is intended for scholars, students, teachers and the wider public.

This volume interrogates the environmental humanities through the lens of asymmetrical dependencies: it is interested in investigating the relationship between the environment and asymmetrical power dynamics, an approach that sheds light on how historical and contemporary inequalities have shaped and still shape our social, political and cultural realities as they intersect with their respective ecosystems. In an attempt to bridge disciplines, the volume synthesizes diverse perspectives from the humanities and social sciences – anthropology, art history, cultural studies, archaeology, religious studies, political science, and literary studies –, attending to the tangled and often thorny relationships that form human and more-than-human existence. By incorporating ecological viewpoints and recognizing the agency of non-human actors, the book aims to amplify the often-overlooked voices of the marginalized, including those beyond the human realm. Understanding the intersections of power dynamics and human history requires acknowledging our deeply interconnected existence within a broader planetary context and this edited volume’s contributions offer a lens through which to rethink enduring questions of difference and dependency. These considerations are framed not as abstract or theoretical exercises but as deeply grounded in material realities shaped by histories of asymmetry, inequality and exploitation, thus challenging us to critically reframe notions of ecological inter/dependencies beyond the universalizing narratives of the Anthropocene.

This book delves into the past and examines the origins of activism against child labour. It addresses a hitherto under-examined question: how and why did child labour develop into a key concern between the 1880s and 1930s? Who were the protagonists who first raised the issue of child labour as a global concern? The study aims to provide the first account of the history of diverse and locally grounded – but nationally and frequently globally connected – child labour opponents in the Americas, their motivations and campaigns, at the turn of the 20th century. I argue that, for the period between 1888 and 1938, one can identify similar protagonists, a joint goal, a broadly similar timing, common platforms, comparable campaigning mechanisms and many types of connections or entanglements across regions. Nevertheless, in contrast to the global anti-slavery movement, child labour opponents formed a loosely institutionalised network which lacked an international organisation that focused specifically on child labour. A global history approach to child labour opponents helps reveal large-scale patterns across societies and highlight similarities and differences between cases. 

Focusing on Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Malaysia, this study provides an in-depth analysis of the contribution of historical legacies of exclusion, along with contemporary practices of marginalisation and otherisation to the transcendence of the precarity landscape. In light of the 2017 displacement of over a million Rohingya from Myanmar’s Rakhine state to neighbouring Bangladesh, the book offers a nuanced and empirically driven analysis of precarity across a wide spectrum at discrete and overlapping scales, shaped by statelessness, vulnerability, uncertainty, onward migration and everyday practices of exclusion. Bringing together the diverse manifestation along the lines of identity, status, space, mobility, gender and labour, the study proposes a comprehensive understanding of precarity, conceptualised as the ‘interconnected geographies of precarity’. Elucidating the intricate web of structural constraints that predate (in Myanmar) and are continually reconstructed and actualised (in exile), the book examines the continuum of precarity in extended transnational spaces – a phenomenon that is complex, non-linear, transitional and multi-faceted.

Historically, Latin American political entities were structured by different forms of slave-labor that until the 19th century depended on transatlantic slave trade from Africa to the Americas. In this volume, scholars from Brazil, Germany, and Africa characterize different forms of serfdom in colonial times, picture slavery-based societies and explore aspects of dependency relations that emerged in the aftermath of abolition in Brazil and Africa.

The phenomena of slavery and asymmetrical dependencies in the writings of ancient Israel cannot be adequately addressed without also looking at the discourses on divine and human justice. Only then does the position of the slaves in their uniqueness become clear, because they are almost completely left out of the moral demand for justice that otherwise applies to the poor, widows, orphans and strangers. Their status as property, which only in exceptional cases allowed them to be considered as subjects with personal rights, dominates the discourse. On a theological level, the phenomenon of slavery also influenced the Old Testament image of God, as YHWH himself became the owner of his people. Liberation from slavery in Egypt lead not to freedom, but to permanent dependency on the liberating God. However, radical dependency on YHWH also means that the divine master must protect the righteous. Otherwise, YHWH would degenerate into an arbitrary tyrant. The demand for justice binds the divine sovereign. If one examines the discourses of justice in the Hebrew Bible about the position of slaves, their deficits become particularly visible. This should urge caution in declaring the biblical writings to be the forerunners of human rights.

Late antique and early medieval normative sources frequently employ Roman legal terminology to denote a person’s legal inferiority, and thus suggest the continued relevance of the concepts associated with these terms. However, it is far from clear to what extent the use of identical terminology actually indicates the similarity of social phenomena. There is ample evidence of important changes regarding the rights and duties of enslaved persons and the development or emergence of other, new, forms of asymmetrical dependency. This raises the question to what extent consistency in terminology and legal practice is actually an indicator of the stability of social structures. Against this background, a group of scholars of legal, ecclesiastical, and social history were invited to a conference at the BCDSS in March 2022 to scrutinise different law codes and legal sources for their evidence of dependency. The result are these ten papers that truly enhance our understanding of slavery and other dependency relations in late antique and early medieval societies from c. 100 to c. 900 CE.

Why did the Jainas in Karnataka plunge from a position of supremacy into one of severe dependency?

After a steep and steady rise throughout the region from about the fifth century CE, Jaina influence waned dramatically from the late eleventh or early twelfth centuries onwards. In this publication, specialists in Indian history, religious studies and anthropology, as well as historians of art and architecture, discuss various expressions of this sudden and detrimental decline and explore the reasons for it, focusing in particular on the relations of the Jainas with Vīraśaivas and Muslims.

The evidence provided by the five international scholars, who offer insights from different disciplinal backgrounds, indicates that the reasons for the Jainas’ loss of authority in the region were manifold. Certain internal triggers, such as changes in Jaina social structure and religious practices, adversely affected their position over time. In particular, however, the withdrawal of royal patronage, the success of the Vīraśaivas as traders, and the emergence in the area at this time of a number of competing religious groups caused the Jainas to slip into a position of strong asymmetrical dependency.

“Transforming Spirit Bodies” is an edited volume that focuses on the bodies and embodiments of spirits, their (im-)materialities, and their bodily transformations. The anthropological, sociological and archaeological contributions draw attention to the embodied experiences of asymmetrical dependencies among humans and spirits and how experiences of (inter-)dependence are negotiated in their interactions. Suggesting that more-than-human entities significantly contribute to agency in social interactions and power negotiations, the volume further highlights the ambivalent yet undeniable relationship between spirits and materiality. During the processes of materialization and dematerialization, in which spirit bodies transform and are transformed, more-than-human entities may share substances and agency with humans. Not only having material but also social dimensions, these dynamics are influenced by relations of power and dependency. Following posthumanist approaches, this volume therefore challenges the anthropocentric views that continue to dominate scholarly analysis of power relations, dependency, and coercion.

Scholars from the humanities and social sciences have repeatedly faced the challenge of writing history beyond the constraints and frameworks set by grand narratives and established historiographies. This book addresses the intentional invisibilization and concealment of people, knowledge, and ideas in historiography – both by historians and by the historical actors themselves – as an object of study. It does so through the lens of Asian bondage and dependency in modern and contemporary history. This collective work focuses on ‘concealment’, ‘self-concealment’ and ‘invisibility’ to analyze the asymmetrical agency involved in the act of hiding someone or something from being ‘inscribed’ in the record, and the social marginalization involved in this process. With studies ranging from imperial, colonial, and postcolonial history, language and translation studies, as well as digital archival sciences, the authors in this book examine ways in which concealment serves as a strategic tool for exercising power and shaping the flow of information. Consequently, this volume urges a fresh awareness of narrative construction, encouraging humanities researchers to think creatively and to historicize independently of dominant narratives.

Das Buch untersucht in einem globalhistorischen und komparativen Ansatz die Produktion und den Einsatz von Elitekörpern. Der Begriff Elitesklaverei bezeichnet die Verschleppung, jahrelange Ausbildung und Disziplinierung von Kindern, die dann in hohen und höchsten Positionen eingesetzt wurden und teils große Reichtümer besitzen konnten. Mit diesem Begriff werden die (elitären) asymmetrischen Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse von Palasteunuchen, Konkubinen, Militärsklaven und anderen beschrieben. Auf der Basis einer Arbeitsdefinition widmet sich die Arbeit potenziell neuen Formen von Elitesklaverei. Mittels eines dispositiv-analytischen Vorgehens wurden daher die asymmetrischen Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse des Elitesports, speziell des Fußballs, untersucht und mit den identifizierten Merkmalen von Elitesklaverei verglichen, um Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten sichtbar zu machen. Das Ergebnis der Studie ist auch eine Aufforderung zu einer kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit den Auswirkungen auf Körper und Lebensläufe von Kindern heute.

This volume is based on a lecture series that was held during the academic year 2021–2022 at the University of Bonn. Its contributors explore the role of religion in overcoming and creating structures of dependency from different disciplines and academic backgrounds.

The question of the role of religion in justifying, perpetuating, modifying, and abolishing slavery and other forms of strong asymmetrical dependency is still a much-debated topic within historical and social sciences. The equality of all human beings before God, gods, or the divine is deeply rooted in religious thought. Conversion to one or another religion has, therefore, often led to critique, transformation, and even abolition of existing social structures, institutions, and their corresponding dependencies.

Yet religious discourse has also been used to justify the subjection of individuals and whole peoples. In addition, throughout history, religious institutions themselves have often mirrored the social hierarchies and inequalities of the surrounding societies. Concomitantly, practitioners of these religious traditions have created systems of dependency within their own institutional, social, legal, and spiritual structures. This volume makes clear that not even the metaphysical world is free of dependencies: influential strands of almost all major religious traditions envisage hierarchies of gods, angels, demons, and other metaphysical beings.

In the past, most studies on Pre-Roman societies in Italy (1^st millennium BCE) focused on the elites, their representation and cultural contacts. The aim of this volume is to look at dependent and marginalized social groups, which are less visible and often even difficult to define (slaves, servants, freedmen, captives, ‚foreigners‘, athletes, women, children etc.). The methodological challenges connected to the study of such heterogeneous and scattered sources are addressed. Is the evidence representative enough for defining different forms of dependencies? Can we rely on written and pictorial sources or do they only reflect Greek and Roman views and iconographic conventions? Which social groups can’t be traced in the literary and archaeological record? For the investigation of this topic, we combined historical and epigraphical studies (Greek and Roman literary sources, Etruscan inscriptions) with material culture studies (images, sanctuaries, necropoleis) including anthropological and bioarchaeological methods. These new insights open a new chapter in the study of dependency and social inequality in the societies of Pre-Roman Italy.

[…]: iure civili, si quis se maior viginti annis ad pretium participandum venire passus est. – D. 1,5,5,1 (Marc. 1 inst.)

Nicht nur wer als Sklave geboren oder im Krieg versklavt wurde, konnte statusrechtlich zum Sklaven werden. Die klassischen Rechtsquellen kennen vereinzelt weitere Fälle, in denen zumindest die Berufung auf die Freiheit im Statusprozess verwehrt wurde. Zum Beispiel zählt Marcian noch denjenigen auf, der sich in einem Alter von über zwanzig Jahren in die Sklaverei verkaufen ließ, um am Kaufpreis zu partizipieren. Aber konnten sich freie Personen auf diese Weise auch selbst versklaven? Und warum sollte sich jemand freiwillig in die Sklaverei begeben?
Der Band analysiert im ersten Teil klassische Rechtsquellen, insbesondere zum Fall des Verkaufs, um am Kaufpreis zu partizipieren (ad pretium participandum), und zum Fall des Verkaufs, um Geschäftsführer zu werden (ad actum gerendum). Im zweiten Teil werden nichtjuristische Quellen in den Blick genommen. Auf der Basis der gesamten Quellenlage wird im dritten Teil das Phänomen der Selbstversklavung teils unter juristischem, teils unter sozialhistorischem Blickwinkel untersucht.

Given that strong asymmetrical dependencies have shaped human societies throughout history, this kind of social relation has also left its traces in many types of texts. Using written and oral narratives in attempts to reconstruct the history of asymmetrical dependency comes along with various methodological challenges, as the 15 articles in this interdisciplinary volume illustrate. They focus on a wide range of different (factual and fictional) text types, including inscriptions from Egyptian tombs, biblical stories, novels from antiquity, the Middle High German Rolandslied, Ottoman court records, captivity narratives, travelogues, the American gift book The Liberty Bell, and oral narratives by Caribbean Hindu women. Most of the texts discussed in this volume have so far received comparatively little attention in slavery and dependency studies. The volume thus also seeks to broaden the archive of texts that are deemed relevant in research on the histories of asymmetrical dependencies, bringing together perspectives from disciplines such as Egyptology, theology, literary studies, history, and anthropology.

In the recent cultural heritage boom, community-based and national identity projects are intertwined with interest in cultural tourism and sites of the memory of enslavement. Questions of historical guilt and present responsibility have become a source of social conflict, particularly in multicultural societies with an enslaving past. This became apparent in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, when statues of enslavers and colonizers were toppled, controversial debates about streets and places named after them re-ignited, and the European Union apologized for slavery after the racist murder of George Floyd. Related debates focus on museums, on artworks acquired unjustly in societies under colonial rule, the question of whether and how museums should narrate the hidden past of enslavement and colonialism, including their own colonial origins with respect to narratives about presumed European supremacy, and the need to establish new monuments for the enslaved, their resistance, and abolitionists of African descent.

In this volume, we address this dissonant cultural heritage in Europe, with a strong focus on the tangible remains of enslavement in the Atlantic space in the continent. This may concern, for instance, the residences of royal, noble, and bourgeois enslavers; charitable and cultural institutions, universities, banks, and insurance companies, financed by the traders and owners of enslaved Africans; merchants who dealt in sugar, coffee, and cotton; and the owners of factories who profited from exports to the African and Caribbean markets related to Atlantic slavery.

The study of enslavement has become urgent over the last two decades. Social scientists, legal scholars, human rights activists, and historians, who study forms of enslavement in both modern and historical societies, have sought – and often achieved – common conceptual grounds, thus forging a new perspective that comprises historical and contemporary forms of slavery. What could certainly be termed a turn in the study of slavery has also intensified awareness of enslavement as a global phenomenon, inviting a comparative, trans-regional approach across time-space divides. Though different aspects of enslavement in different societies and eras are discussed, each of the volume’s three parts contributes to, and has benefitted from, a global perspective of enslavement. The chapters in Part One propose to structure the global examination of the theoretical, ideological, and methodological aspects of the "global," "local," and "glocal." Part Two, "Regional and Trans-regional Perspectives of the Global," presents, through analyses of historical case studies, the link between connectivity and mobility as a fundamental aspect of the globalization of enslavement. Finally, Part Three deals with personal points of view regarding the global, local, and glocal. Grosso modo, the contributors do not only present their case studies, but attempt to demonstrate what insights and added-value explanations they gain from positioning their work vis-à-vis a broader "big picture."

An examination of the terms used in specific historical contexts to refer to those people in a society who can be categorized as being in a position of ‘strong asymmetrical dependency’ (including slavery) provides insights into the social categories and distinctions that informed asymmetrical social interactions. In a similar vein, an analysis of historical narratives that either justify or challenge dependency is conducive to revealing how dependency may be embedded in (historical) discourses and ways of thinking. The eleven contributions in the volume approach these issues from various disciplinary vantage points, including theology, global history, Ottoman history, literary studies, and legal history. The authors address a wide range of different textual sources and historical contexts – from medieval Scandinavia and the Fatimid Empire to the history of abolition in Martinique and human rights violations in contemporary society. While the authors contribute innovative insights to ongoing discussions within their disciplines, the articles were also written with a view to the endeavor of furthering Dependency Studies as a transdisciplinary approach to the study of human societies past and present.

African slaves were brought into Brazil as early as 1530, with abolition in 1888. During those three centuries, Brazil received 4,000,000 Africans, over four times as many as any other American destination. Comparatively speaking, Brazil received 40% of the total number of Africans brought to the Americas, while the US received approximately 10%. Due to this huge influx of Africans, today Brazil’s African-descended population is larger than the population of most African countries. Therefore, it is no surprise that Slavery Studies are one of the most consolidated fields in Brazilian historiography. In the last decades, a number of discussions have flourished on issues such as slave agency, slavery and law, slavery and capitalism, slave families, demography of slavery, transatlantic slave trade, abolition etc. In addition to these more consolidated fields, current research has focused on illegal enslavement, global perspectives on slavery and the slave trade, slavery and gender, the engagement of different social groups in the abolitionist movement or Atlantic connections. Taking into consideration these new trends of Brazilian slavery studies, this volume of collected articles gives leading scholars the chance to present their research to a broader academic community. Thus, the interested reader get to know in more detail these current trends in Brazilian historiography on slavery.

Slaves were property of their dominus, objects rather than persons, without rights: These are some components of our basic knowledge about Roman slavery. But Roman slavery was more diverse than we might assume from the standard wording about servile legal status. Numerous inscriptions as well as literary and legal sources reveal clear differences in the social structure of Roman slavery. There were numerous groups and professions who shared the status of being unfree while inhabiting very different worlds.

The papers in this volume pose the question of whether and how legal texts reflected such social differences within the Roman servile community. Did the legal system reinscribe social differences, and if so, in what shape? Were exceptions created only in individual cases, or did the legal system generate privileges for particular groups of slaves? Did it reinforce and even promote social differentiation? All papers probe neuralgic points that are apt to challenge the homogeneous image of Roman slave law. They show that this law was a good deal more colourful than historical research has so far assumed. The authors’ primary concern is to make this legal diversity accessible to historical scholarship.

Have you ever thought about dependencies in Asian art and architecture?

Most people would probably assume that the arts are free and that creativity and ingenuity function outside of such reliances. However, the 13 chapters provided by specialists in the fields of Asian art and architecture in this volume show, that those active in the visual arts and the built environment operate in an area of strict relations of often extreme dependences. Material artefacts and edifices are dependent on the climate in which they have been created, on the availability of resources for their production, on social and religious traditions, which may be oral or written down and on donors, patrons and the art market. Furthermore, gender and labour dependencies play a role in the creation of the arts as well. Despite these strong and in most instances asymmetrical dependencies, artists have at all times found freedoms in expressing their own imagination, vision and originality.

　

This shows that dependencies and freedoms are not necessarily strictly separated binary opposites but that, at least in the area of the history of art and architecture in Asia, the two are interconnected in what are often complex and multifaceted layers.

The monograph realigns political culture and countermeasures against slave raids, which increased during the breakup of the Golden Horde. By physical defense of the open steppe border and by embracing the New Israel symbolism in which the exodus from slavery in Egypt prefigures the exodus of Russian captives from Tatar captivity, Muscovites found a defensive model to expand empire. Recent scholarly debates on slaving are innovatively applied to Russian and imperial history, challenging entrenched perceptions of Muscovy.

The study of slavery and coerced labour is increasingly conducted from a global perspective, and yet a dual Eurocentric bias remains: slavery primarily brings to mind the images of Atlantic chattel slavery, and most studies continue to be based – either outright or implicitly – on a model of northern European wage labour. This book constitutes an attempt to re-centre that story to Asia.

With studies spanning the western Indian Ocean and the steppes of Central Asia to the islands of South East Asia and Japan, and ranging from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, this book tracks coercion in diverse forms, tracing both similarities and differences – as well as connections – between systems of coercion, from early sales regulations to post-abolition labour contracts.

Deep empirical case studies, as well as comparisons between the chapters, all show that while coercion was entrenched in a number of societies, it was so in different and shifting ways. This book thus not only shows the history of slavery and coercion in Asia as a connected story, but also lays the groundwork for global studies of a phenomenon as varying, manifold and contested as coercion.

Der Hauptfokus des Buches sind die im Titel genannten Räume in Bezug auf das System der Atlantic slavery. Ich verstehe unter Atlantic slavery bzw. Atlantic slaveries sowohl die Sklaverei-Regimes an Land in Afrika und in Amerika, inclusive Inseln, wie auch Versklavung und Transport zu Land und zu Wasser sowie den Sklavenhandel auf dem Atlantik. Die drei territorialen Hauptelemente, vulgo Kontinente und Ozean, bilden das System Afrika-Atlantik-Amerikas (AAA). Europa spielte auch eine Rolle. Das Wesentliche war aber die Süd-Süd-Komponente, die vor allem unter iberischer Kontrolle stand (ca. 7 Millionen Versklavte aus Afrika von insgesamt rund 11 Millionen in die Amerikas Verschleppter). Das ist das strukturell-anthropologische Hauptproblem; das qualitative, aber auch chronologisch-historische, Hauptproblem ist die Bedeutung von AAA für die Geschichte der Moderne und des Kapitalismus.

In this volume, we approach the phenomenon of slavery and other types of strong asymmetrical dependencies from two methodologically and theoretically distinct perspectives: semantics and lexical fields.

Detailed analyses of key terms that are associated with the conceptualization of strong asymmetrical dependencies promise to provide new insights into the self-concept and knowledge of pre-modern societies. The majority of these key terms have not been studied from a semantic or terminological perspective so far.

Our understanding of lexical fields is based on an onomasiological approach – which linguistic items are used to refer to a concept? Which words are used to express a concept? This means that the concept is a semantic unit which is not directly accessible but may be manifested in different ways on the linguistic level. We are interested in single concepts such as ‘wisdom’ or ‘fear’, but also in more complex semantic units like ‘strong asymmetrical dependencies’.

In our volume, we bring together and compare case studies from very different social orders and normative perspectives. Our examples range from Ancient China and Egypt over Greek and Maya societies to Early Modern Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Islamic and Roman law.