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Debra Blumenthal - Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia - 9780801445026 - V9780801445026
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Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia

€ 82.22
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Description for Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia Hardback. Series: Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past. Num Pages: 328 pages, 5, 3 maps, 2 black & white halftones. BIC Classification: 1DSE; 3H; HBJD; HBLC; HBTS. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 176 x 239 x 28. Weight in Grams: 732.

A prominent Mediterranean port located near Islamic territories, the city of Valencia in the late fifteenth century boasted a slave population of pronounced religious and ethnic diversity: captive Moors and penally enslaved Mudejars, Greeks, Tartars, Russians, Circassians, and a growing population of black Africans. By the end of the fifteenth century, black Africans comprised as much as 40 percent of the slave population of Valencia.

Whereas previous historians of medieval slavery have focused their efforts on defining the legal status of slaves, documenting the vagaries of the Mediterranean slave trade, or examining slavery within the context of Muslim-Christian relations, Debra Blumenthal explores the social and human dimensions of slavery in this religiously and ethnically pluralistic society. Enemies and Familiars traces the varied experiences of Muslim, Eastern, and black African slaves from capture to freedom. After describing how men, women, and children were enslaved and brought to the Valencian marketplace, this book examines the substance of slaves' daily lives: how they were sold and who bought them; the positions ascribed to them within the household hierarchy; the sorts of labor they performed; and the ways in which some reclaimed their freedom. Scrutinizing a wide array of archival sources (including wills, contracts, as well as hundreds of civil and criminal court cases), Blumenthal investigates what it meant to be a slave and what it meant to be a master at a critical moment of transition.

Arguing that the dynamics of the master-slave relationship both reflected and determined contemporary opinions regarding religious, ethnic, and gender differences, Blumenthal's close study of the day-to-day interactions between masters and their slaves not only reveals that slavery played a central role in identity formation in late medieval Iberia but also offers clues to the development of "racialized" slavery in the early modern Atlantic world.

Product Details

Format
Hardback
Publication date
2009
Publisher
Cornell University Press
Number of pages
328
Condition
New
Series
Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past
Number of Pages
328
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9780801445026
SKU
V9780801445026
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1

About Debra Blumenthal
Debra Blumenthal is Associate Professor of History at The University of California at Santa Barbara.

Reviews for Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia
Blumenthal offer a highly detailed reconstruction of slave experience at a crucial time and place: fifteenth-century Valencia.... This clearly organized and well-written book opens with a close look at how persons became enslaved.... The bulk of the book is devoted to the social and economic dimensions of slave life: the sorts of work sales engaged in, their activities and roles with their masters' households—including the sexual exploitation of women—and the limited but very real means by which they could hope to obtain and retain their freedom.... [It is] a singularly vivid reconstruction of the rhythms of everyday life at the lower levels of a late medieval city.
James S. Amelang
American Historical Review

Goodreads reviews for Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia


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