Servility and slavery in historical perspective: new ways of seeing

Project Description

This project provides a new perspective on the growth of the historical institution we define as slavery, and on the process that led ultimately to its prohibition in international law. Significantly, in terms of the Folger’s interests, it identifies the late sixteenth century, and the development of the language of slavery in this period, as critical to that process. The project employs a highly novel approach, connecting the use of the language of slavery - the ‘slave’ and associated terms - to a new social category. It argues that the language of slavery describes a specific form of unjust subjection found in English texts only from the late medieval period that should not be used in translating references to institutional forms of subjection before that time; these forms are more accurately defined by the term ‘servility’. While societies regulated, restricted and amended the number of routes of entry into servile status over the long durée, they also recognised and challenged illegitimate routes. It is in the relationship between the language of slavery and illegitimate forms of servility that we can see the growth of anti-slavery sentiment in the English-speaking world. A central claim of this project is that the language of slavery as it developed in the late sixteenth century created a new concept of illegitimate subjection that from the late seventeenth century was applied to those caught up in the transatlantic slave trade, and from this to those enslaved in the Americas.