A Companion to Mediterranean History, First Edition. Edited by Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
chapter seventeen
Historiographic premisesSlavery has existed throughout history in different parts of the world and in different
civilizations. Its exact definition is a matter of debate, as is the question of whether the
entire range of historical and contemporary phenomena known as slavery can be nar-
rowed down to a single definition. What is accepted, however, is the fact that through-
out history civilizations have institutionalized the possession and ownership of human
beings within juridical, social, economic and cultural frameworks. This chapter
explores the function of slavery in the Mediterranean world. It does not intend to
summarize the different phases of the historical development of Mediterranean slav-
ery, but to examine the question of whether a concept of Mediterranean slavery
existed. The evolution of slavery in the Mediterranean was subject to the historical
processes that this region underwent, which differentiated it from non-Mediterranean
slaveries. By using the plural form I pose the premise that different types and defini-
tions of slavery, like other historical and human phenomena, should be distinguished
and studied in the light of the social mechanisms within which they operate. This is
particularly useful when approaching the problem of periodization in relation to the
history of slavery in the Mediterranean.
Historians began to be interested in the history of slavery in Mediterranean civili-
zations in the nineteenth century. Following a clear political agenda, they saw and
defined slavery according to the model of slavery in the colonial world in which slav-
ery was not only legal, but also had a major economic role. This prism later created
the concept of a “slave-owning society” or simply “slave society,” in which slaves form
a large part and are the predominant force of labor, and a clear-cut economic defini-
tion divides slaves from free persons.
Defining slavery exclusively through an economic prism borrowed from modern
Atlantic slavery and perceiving slaves as a distinct socio-economic class led genera-
tions of historians to analyze other cases of slavery, including Mediterranean slavery,
through the same prism. Thus, in order to decide whether a given society is “a slave
Forms of Slavery
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