Slave Research Articles

LIABILITY FOR THE USE OF SLAVE LABOR (ART. 127.2 OF THE CRIMINAL CODE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION): PROBLEMS OF THEORY AND PRACTICE OF APPLICATION

The article examines problematic aspects of the application of the rule on criminal liability for the use of slave labor. It is emphasized that, according to current legislation, the use of slave labor as a crime means exclusively the use of human labor in the position of a slave; the use of slave labor presupposes the establishment and ensuring the permanence of the victim’s slave status. The need to prevent these crimes using the norms and mechanisms of the criminal legal order, which act as a central link in the comprehensive provision of the rights of the victim, is outlined. It is noted that when committing the crime in question, the perpetrators use the labor of persons who are in a difficult life situation and do not have a permanent source of income, contrary to their will and desire, with the exercise in relation to these persons of the powers inherent in the right of ownership. Conclusions are drawn about the relationship between such acts as kidnapping, human trafficking and the use of slave labor, which act as links in one chain of homotraffic, as one of the most dangerous types of the criminal market for goods and services. It is indicated that these criminal attacks are characterized by the use of violence (physical and mental), as well as the use of a deliberately helpless or dependent state, which generally raises the issue of their victimological prevention.

Al-Asrūshanī’s Jāmiʿ aḥkām al-ṣighār as a Source for the History of Childhood in Muslim Societies

A comprehensive compilation of legal rulings about children, one of particular historical utility and yet largely overlooked, is Muḥammad al-Asrūshanī’s Jāmiʿ aḥkām al-ṣighār. It offers a rather holistic view of the legal status of Muslim children and, more importantly, insight into common concepts of childhood and attitudes to children in premodern Muslim societies. Moreover, although drawing on the written heritage of middle-class urban scholars, the normative yet multilayered text of Jāmiʿ provides many precise details on children’s lives and their social environment. This article introduces al-Asrūshanī’s unique work—its structure, contents, and sources—and offers, as a case study, an analysis of the chapter the author dedicates to enslaved children. While al-Asrūshanī intended some, or even the majority, of instances discussed in this chapter to address theoretical legal debates, others, particularly those drawn from fatwas, mirror the real experiences of enslaved minors, concubines, and enslavers. Together they provide a picture of a moderate form of domestic slavery in the Islamic world, particularly in Central Asia of the Mongol period.

An economic rationale for the different methods of feeding enslaved people in the antebellum South and British West Indies

This article focuses on two different systems of feeding enslaved people. In the first system, primarily associated with the cotton, tobacco, and rice plantations of antebellum South and the early sugar plantations of the British West Indies, the obligation to feed enslaved people was executed by the plantation. In contrast, under a second system known as provisioning associated with the later British West Indian colonies, the master allocated land to enslaved people on which they would grow their own food. Over time, this land was understood, in the wider community of both those enslaved and the planters, to be the “property” of the enslaved person. This article offers potential explanations both for why provisioning was adopted in the West Indies, and why provisioning did not take hold in southern U.S. plantations. Following Ronald Coase’s Nature of the Firm, we should expect to see provisioning when doing so economizes on transaction and agency costs. As it became more difficult to purchase imported food, plantations had to provide their own food. Provisioning sacrificed the plantations’ claims to surplus food, but in the West Indies such decentralized production could enhance incentives for enslaved people to produce their own food while economizing on the need for supervision.

Refugees, Welfare Organizations and Compulsory Labour in Postwar Austria

During the Second World War, Germany employed 13.5 million men, women and children as forced and slave labourers throughout Europe, including on Austrian territory. Compulsory labour in Austria did not end with the Allied occupation. Despite the aspiration to adopt the values of a liberal democracy, the Austrian federal government enacted a statute on compulsory labour (the Arbeitspflichtgesetz) in 1946. This legislation required everyone residing in the country on a permanent or temporary basis to perform mainly manual work. At the time, one in every five individuals in Austria was displaced from her or his country of origin. They included foreigners who refused to be repatriated and over 200,000 Jews who sought to rebuild their lives far from Europe. Strict quotas in the countries where they wished to settle thwarted their plans. Jewish and non-Jewish refugees found themselves trapped in Austria for months and years, subject to the authority of the occupying military forces and UNRRA. To what extent did the compulsory labour requirement apply to them? An examination of this issue provides an insight into the very gradual transition of Austria from authoritarianism to democracy and the shaping of refugee policies by both the Austrian government and relief organizations.

“Lost in Flowers & Foolery”: A Gendered Reading of the 9th Earl of Devon’s Flower Watercolors

William Courtenay, 3rd Viscount Courtenay and 9th Earl of Devon (1768–1835), has been most remembered for his romantic relationship with author and slave owner, William Beckford (1760–1844), which scandalized London society in 1784. However, the 9th Earl’s life after this event has received little attention despite his artistic contributions to the built environment of his ancestral home of Powderham Castle in Devon. In the 1790s, he created a series of flower watercolors on paper and cabinets under the supervision of his drawing master, William Marshall Craig (c.1765–1827). These artworks complicate ideas about gendered expectations of amateur artistic subjects, with flower painting being largely understood as a feminine accomplishment. This article explores the Earl’s watercolors in the context of the spaces at Powderham to argue they are evidence of his effeminate behavior and participation in female activities alongside his thirteen sisters. The association of these objects with a man attracted to those of his own sex contribute to studies of queerness, amateur art, and the country house in the late eighteenth century.

Middle Passages: The Multiple Forced Migrations of Enslaved Africans

ABSTRACT This article proposes a linguistic shift for scholars of trans-Atlantic slavery regarding the quintessential term ‘the Middle Passage' to the plural ‘Middle Passages'. As a singular noun, ‘the Middle Passage' conforms with the ‘triangular trade' which represented the three-way relationship between Europe, Africa and the Americas. The term almost exclusively encompasses the North Atlantic, failing to explore South Atlantic trading routes. By changing our language, we can look deeper into the multiple forced journeys of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic world. Through application of plurality, we can better study people's multiple ‘Middle Passages' from the ancient silk roads to the slave castles and forts along the African littoral in a system of movement that does not belittle the horrors of the Atlantic oceanic passages. Indeed, multiple ‘Middle Passages' as a concept exacerbates the experiences of enslaved persons through continual uprooting and journeys. ‘The Middle Passage' is evocative of a peregrination preceded with a beginning and succeeded with an ending; while the pluralistic ‘Middle Passages’ forces us to recognize the multiple complex facets of journeys. For many enslaved persons, there existed no end to continual relocations on arrival in the Americas and people were in a constant state of flux.

Transforming ghosts into ancestors: A call to action

AbstractThe psychological case for reparations offers a framework for understanding the emotional complexity inherent in the centuries‐long resistance to granting reparations to African Americans for its three hundred years of chattel slavery and its legacies—Jim Crow, redlining, mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings, and voter suppression. A central component of the resistance is moral injury, which Bryan Nichols and I maintain is the primary reason why the concept of reparations is so emotionally charged. The disavowal of the collective trauma for both the formerly enslaved and former slave owners creates moral wounds which show up as metaphorical ghosts that haunt US culture. Behavioral scientists who understand the complexity of both individual and large group dynamics are called upon to acknowledge and repair the intergenerational moral wounds of chattel slavery and assume leadership in the reparative process—to “transform ghosts into ancestors.”

Sam Sharpe: The Scriptures that Motivated Him and their Implications for Today

ABSTRACT Sam Sharpe, an enslaved person and initiator of the rebellion of enslaved peoples in Jamaica, 1831–2, was a Baptist deacon who knew the Bible well. While biographies and accounts of the rebellion cite a number of texts that the writers believe motivated Sam Sharpe in his actions, we only have undisputed evidence for his appeal to four specific texts (Matthew 5:33–37, Matthew 6:24 // Luke 16:13, 1 Corinthians 7:20–21, Philippians 2:12); our knowledge of his use of these is to be gleaned from the records of his trial, together with the reports of two missionaries who visited him in prison. This article shows that it is nevertheless possible from these accounts to deduce significant insights into his interpretation of scripture and its effect on his extraordinary leadership in the events of the time. Correspondingly, this hermeneutic can offer guidance for modern movements for peace, justice and freedom.

The Origins and Destinations of Captives from the Bight of Biafra, 1807–1843: New Evidence from the Identification of African Names and Languages

ABSTRACT Between 1807 and 1843, British naval officers liberated more than thirty thousand Africans from slave vessels that embarked enslaved people along the Bight of Biafra. Large ledger books display these Liberated Africans’ names, sexes, ages, and other characteristics. The names, many of which are easily recognizable today, provide clues about individuals pulled into the transatlantic trade and reveal a range of experiences that shaped the lives of Africans in the nineteenth century. Connecting the names to ethnolinguistic homelands helps establish a rough place of origin for more than twelve thousand of the individuals. The data underscore the centrality of Igbo-speakers – the major language in the Bight of Biafra hinterland – to the region’s slave trade. Given the representative nature of the ethnolinguistic makeup of the individuals to the broader slave trade from the Bight of Biafra, we use the intended destinations of the captured vessels as a basis for projecting the size and direction of the transatlantic diaspora of Igbo-speakers. Despite their limited cultural impact on African and African-descended regions in the Americas, large numbers of captives from Igbo-speaking communities were sent to almost every plantation society in the New World in the nineteenth century.

An Abolitionist Vicious Circle: Slaving, Antislavery, and Violence on the Shores of Lake Tanganyika at the Onset of Colonial Occupation

ABSTRACT In the late nineteenth century, abolitionists felt entitled to use all possible means to save the African victims of the slave trade. As European imperialism rose, abolitionism legitimized interventionism. This article explores how a major humanitarian movement could sanction colonial occupation and the violence that accompanied it. It also examines the position of African slaveholders who resisted the entrenchment of European rule and defended an order in which slavery was common. It focuses on two main actors: French Captain Leopold Joubert, Catholic royalist and former pontifical Zouave who supported Cardinal Lavigerie's Missionaries of Africa and Belgian King Leopold II's allegedly abolitionist endeavours; and Tippu Tip, a trader and slaver who, like Joubert, worked for self-styled abolitionists such as Leopold II and the Sultan of Zanzibar. The connected microhistories of these men show how the international problematization of African slavery fuelled both European imperialism and anti-colonial resistance, while also creating circumstances in which enslaved persons emancipated themselves. The article investigates the moral perceptions of individuals whose sense of self was predicated upon values embodied by Europe's monarchies, the papacy of Rome, and the sultanate of Zanzibar. Faced with what they perceived as existential threats to these institutions, they responded with rising radicalism.

Hidden from Family History: The Ethics of Remembering

This article draws on case studies or ‘microhistories’ from the author’s own research to explore the ethical responsibility of family historians to represent the experiences of those whose lives have been ‘hidden from history’, and in particular the lives of one’s female ancestors, as a way of correcting the omissions and erasures of official histories. It also discusses the ethical dilemmas posed by the discovery that one’s ancestors were involved in activities that are now regarded as morally suspect, such as profiting from the ownership of slaves. Finally, the article debates ethical arguments about respecting the rights of the dead to privacy.

Liberating the Colonized Body and Mind

AbstractThe interstitial space at the intersection of race and disability is primed for a decolonial analysis. By examining the colonial history of Indigenous people and Black chattel slaves in North America, this paper will show how the contemporary definitions of race and disability are inherited social constructs created for the colonizer's utility to control the bodies and minds of those occupying and working the land the colonizer seeks to control for the private accumulation of imperial wealth. I will give examples of how socio‐cultural institutions like the church have inherited the logic of colonialism, creating ideologies of domination that must be challenged by a robust decolonial theology. Racism and ableism are the direct end product of a colonial view of the world that sees land and people as exploitable and expendable. A theology of liberation must grapple with the demands of decolonization to produce a just and equitable society.

Trafficking Captives in South America’s Southern Cone

Trafficking Captives in South America’s Southern Cone

Bilateral synchronization control of networked teleoperation robot system

AbstractBilateral synchronization control for Network Teleoperation Robot System (NTRS) in discrete domain is discussed in this paper, where time delay, data loss and disorder, and quantization error coexist. Firstly, it is assumed that time delay and data loss are asymmetric and randomly vary in the master–slave channel and slave–master channel according to different Markov jump change rules. By introducing the virtual variables, a clever normalization method is proposed for time delay or data loss. It not only uniforms time delay and data loss into a same framework, but also effectively handles the problem of data disorder. And then, a logarithmic quantizer is designed to dispose quantization error. Meanwhile, utilize the sector bound method to describe the quantization error and transform the quantization feedback control problem into a robust control problem, so the familiar robust control methods can be adopted to solve quantization problem. In addition, human and environmental forces are treated as external disturbances and processed using neural network techniques. Subsequently, stochastic stability and synchronization control property are guaranteed by the designed analogous PD controller that consists of proportion, derivative, and uncertainty estimation items. Finally, validity of the proposed method is certified by some simulation examples.

Servitude in a Princely Establishment: Bhopal, Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century

Bhopal, one of the ‘princely states’ and vassals of the British Empire, enjoyed special favour with its sovereign. Throughout a century, it was ruled by women who gained themselves, in India and outside, the glory of enlightened and progressive monarchs. Archival documents and memoirs allow glancing at the hitherto hidden world of domestic servants, who not only ensured the comfortable and luxurious life of the princely family, but also its high status and prestige. Among the numerous servants employed by the Bhopal rulers, freely hired local residents prevailed. However, the natives of some other countries, quite far from India, were present as well. Some of them came to Bhopal by force: The reputation of ‘progressive’ was no obstacle for the Bhopal queens for using slave labour, getting in response mild admonition from their British superiors.

The Wolf, the island and the sea: truancy and escaping slavery in Curacao (1837–1863)

ABSTRACT Between 1837–1863, the government on the Dutch colony of Curacao registered the escape attempts from all enslaved persons on the island. By combining the structured information of the ‘register of runaway slaves’ with other sources, it becomes clear that running away during slavery was a multi-faceted phenomenon. The 1,613 registered escape attempts included not only escapees, trying to flee the island, but also a majority of truants who fled temporarily but stayed on the island. Escapees were mostly young men, who normally worked in groups and had to prepare their attempts well, in order to have a chance to escape the island. An analysis of the profiles of truants show that they were a wide range of persons, from pregnant women to elderly people, fleeing alone or in groups. All these people not only needed an opportunity to flee, but also a place to go to. Together, they created a ‘maroon landscape’, a mental map of opportunities available to enslaved people. Their mental landscape did include locations, people and circumstances on Curacao, but also the sea surrounding it. Moreover, seasonal effects like harvest time and changes abroad altered the ‘maroon landscape’ continuously and lead to an adjustment of behavior, which is most obvious after the abolition of slavery in nearby Venezuela in 1854.

’Whither do you now wish to go?’: slavery, flight and longing in and around Manado (Indonesia) in the age of abolition

ABSTRACT The history of slavery in the age of abolition is full of contradictions. The fate of enslaved persons depended on coincidences, on bad luck and good fortune. To understand what this meant in practice, this article focuses on questions of flight and longing. It zooms in on the colonial enclave Manado, North Sulawesi (Indonesia), where slavery was both an indigenous-regional and a local-colonial phenomenon, two worlds that were never fully separated. This exploration centers around two sets of archives: a slave register and a series of interviews with runaways. These fascinating documents were produced at the same time and in the same space, but provides us markedly different perspectives. What do they tell us about motives and experiences of people who escaped slavery? To what extend can we reconstruct life in and out of slavery when we combine these two sets of sources? The critical exploration that this article presents is meant as a step towards a fuller comprehension of the history of slavery in colonial Indonesia.

Multiethnic Slavery and the African Diaspora in Macau: The Search for the Geographic Limits of Vast Early America

Abstract: The geographic limits of early American history are continuously being debated. Recently, this has culminated in the popular adoption of the expression "vast early America," which looks beyond the previously dominant Atlantic paradigm to embrace hemispheric perspectives while underlining the need to delve more into continental Africa, the Mediterranean, Eurasia, and the Pacific and Indian Ocean worlds. But what are the limits of this widening historical panorama in the case of the history of slavery? A hitherto-unstudied set of mid-eighteenth-century baptismal records from the Portuguese enclave of Macau, which noted the birth, ethnicity, and parentage of dozens of African and other enslaved people, offers evidence that the transatlantic slave trade was part of a larger trade in people of African descent (and others) that was geographically uneven and regionally segmented but global in extent, reaching as far as China. Placing this unique new dataset within the context of other contemporary Portuguese- and Chinese-language sources reveals that the presence of "Black slaves" (黑 奴, heinu ) in this port city was shaped by many of the same imperial and missionary projects as in the Atlantic, as well as racialized in ways highly reminiscent of the Western Hemisphere by both European and Chinese observers. The increasingly racialized slave trade of vast early America was thus horrifyingly "vast."

The holy city of holidays: Seven theses on the touristification of Spain

This paper analyses the notion of the ‘city of holidays’ in Spain by means of seven theses. Analysed as a transhistorical construction, valid to narrate the cultural history of modern tourism, the ‘city of vacations’ represents the symbiosis of a constructive model, a nationalist and religious imaginary, and an urban device of patrimonial origin. This construction defines the Spanish tourist paradigm, seen in the long-term, as it constitutes a recurrent- and mutant- fantasy that accompanies the economic and social Modernity associated with tourist development. Although the triumph of the Francoist Spanish vacation model is celebrated in the sixties, it has a much earlier genealogy, which takes us back to the foundational imaginaries of national-Catholicism and its ceremonial places. Born from the romantic discourses of the Restoration, linked to the neo-Catholic sanctuaries, the ‘city of vacations’ reemerges after the Civil War as a central part of the patrimonial discourse of the new Regime. There, the accumulation of capital at the base of the so-called ‘tourist miracle’ comes directly from the violence of Franco’s repression, including slave labour. At the same time, this model responds to the new economic logics of the Cold War framework, where the ecological and environmental cost of this urban model of development, based on itinerancy and mass-circulation, is dissolved. The celebration of the contemporary identity of today’s Spain as a global tourist power is carried out at the expense of this violent genealogy, even though such an identity is probably unsustainable in the eco-energetic and social horizon to which we are collectively heading.

Who Wrote the Replies to al-Īsī? Islamization in the Sahel and Trans-Saharan Slavery in Early Modern Mālikī Fatāwā

Abstract This article analyzes how the currently known West African fatāwā up to the 11th/17th-century, namely the rulings by Maḥmud b. ʿUmar b. Muḥammad Aqīt, Maḫlūf al-Balbālī and Aḥmad Bābā al-Tinbutkī, portray the sale of free Muslims (bīʿ al-aḥrār) in the premodern Sahel. It argues that the strong contradictions between Aḥmad Bābā al-Tinbuktī’s Miʿrāǧ al-ṣuʿūd and his previous legal replies to Yūsuf al-Īsī may justify to affirm that these Aǧwiba were not authored by the Timbuktu scholar, and suggests that the reasons for their elaboration and their attribution to him may be related to the interests of traders from the Maghreb, where the manuscripts of the Aǧwiba were found and the Replies supposedly emitted. This study brings forward the hypothesis that the aim of the text may have been to reduce the impact that the extraordinary measure of accepting the enslaved person’s qawl when declaring to have been illicitly captured at times and places where the sale of unenslaveable persons is attested, found in the Sahelian rulings but also in preceding Andalusi and Maghrebian rulings, could have probably caused in putting the indiscriminate sale of West African captives into question. This would also imply the existence of voices against their sale, probably because the adherence to Islam of the enslaved persons must have been clearly manifest.