Urban domestic slavery in medieval Ragusa

Abstract

Medieval slavery and the slave trade are by now well established facts. This study of medieval Ragusa (Dubrovnik) attempts to answer the question: how were slaves employed, in place of free wage laborers, in urban environments? Ragusa is a well documented instance in which slaves, largely female slaves, were employed in the household. They provided non-specialized labor to the household and to commercial endeavors. This method of utilizing unskilled rural workers was cheap but required a cohesive social order and co-ordinated communal efforts. The thirteenth-century slave system was replaced in the fourteenth century by reliance upon contract labor. This study argues that it was competition for trained, domestic slaves from foreign purchasers which priced rural Balkan slaves out of the market for local inhabitants. Contract laborers from rural areas offered a cheap alternative and through adroit communal action came to inhabit a condition closely resembling chattel slavery. Over the long term this cheap labor supply, combined with the domestic and civil tranquility at Ragusa, gave the city-state a competitive edge as a carrying power in the commercial economy. Concomitantly the word sclavi pejorated in meaning.