Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2014
Systems of slavery have
been present since the beginning of recorded history. In the Iberian Peninsula,
slavery was prominent and maintained under Muslim rule as well as under the
governance of medieval Christian kingdoms and continued to be a structural
component of Mediterranean society up until its eventual decline in the 19th
century. Slavery, as a practice, traces its roots back to Greco-Roman societies
where captives of war were turned into slaves and would eventually evolve into
complex systems of social stratification, which would encompass not only
social, but also economic and political implications as well. In this book,
Phillips explores the history of slavery in Iberia by creating a synthesis of
available surveys on the topic and referencing both archival records as well as
contemporary scholarly literature. Historians attribute the noted “boom period”
of a flourishing production of material on the study of Iberian slavery,
spanning from the 1980s to the beginning of the 21st century, to the
rise of the number of students pursuing advance degrees as well as the
increased availability of production avenues. Phillips himself has written on
the topic before in the 1980s and has now chosen to approach the subject with
more focus on Spain and the Iberian Peninsula utilizing the vast amount of
available research.
In
early Spain, three major avenues were commonplace in terms of one becoming a
slave. Slaves were either captives of war, enemies of the ruling faith, or born
into servitude by enslaved mothers. Cultural and societal variations existed;
however, these methods would be the guidelines for the institution throughout
its history. In some cases, slavery could be a punitive sentence for guilty
offenders as was the case in the Visogothic kingdom where violent and public
offenses carried mandatory enslavement sentences with the possibility of
enslavement to the royal treasury or kingship. In the early modern period,
convicts were subjected to enslavement fulfilling the roles of society too
difficult to attract cheap or free labor such as the roles of galley slaves,
miners, and menial public works. Evidence
of the social and legal attitudes towards slavery can be shown through records
of legal codes such as the Siete Partidas. The Siete Partidas, or “Seven Part
Code” describes a Castilian legal code first established during the reign of
Alfonso the Great that lays out a list of laws for the state. From this list of
codes, historians have learned more about the life of a slave; “Every slave
is…obliged to obey…Not only is a slave under obligations…to his master, but
also to the wife and children of the latter (79).” This is also where the
practice of slavery by birth, captivity and treason is derived. It has also
been observed that slavery in Spain and the surrounding states has always been
a female dominant system.
In all accounts from records stemming from Visogothic, Muslim or
Christian society, women have always been the preferred gender for slaves.
Women would also hold higher monetary value than their male counterparts
primarily serving in domestic roles as well as being used as assistants in
artisan shops and markets. With slave owners being in total control of their
servants, it was often commonplace for female slaves to be coerced into
concubinage or forced sexual relations. Although male slaves would also have
been subjected to the sex trade, female slaves endured the most perilous of
consequences such as unwanted pregnancies and unsupervised child bearing.
Records of Spain under Muslim rule show the prevalence of concubinage on a
mass, commonplace scale. Islamic tradition allowed free Muslim men to have up
to four wives legally along with as many slave mistresses as he pleased. There
were cases of Muslim men marrying slaves, whom they would have to have set free
ceremoniously or by paying or being granted the permission of that slave’s
master, and would keep them confined to an isolated section of their homes,
away from society. As for familial relations among slaves, permission to marry
would have to be granted by one’s owner. These instances of marriage among
slaves were not very prominent as slaves lost their market value after
marriage.
In regards to attaining freedom, many slaves would resort to
flight; either to their homelands or to carry out their lives in the underworld
of their captive land. In Medieval Christian Spain, flight from enslavement or
even the attempt to flee, was a punishable crime and labeled as “theft of one’s
own person (123).” Slaves who were caught attempted to flee would oftentimes be
publically dragged through streets and hanged. Laws also existed in regards to
those who aided a fleeing slave to have his ears cut off. These laws were
barbaric, even for the time, especially in Christian Spain and are
retroactively looked at by historians as a means to use fear to deter captives
from attempting escape as well as freemen to assist them. The prevalence of
escapees was so great, owners would often purchase a form of insurance on his
slaves in the event of “losing” them and, as was the case in Barcelona in 1400
by a prominent slave owner Fransec Muntornes, agents would be hired to reclaim
slaves who had fled captivity (124). Slaves from sub-Saharan Africa were
obviously at a geographical loss when it came to the option of escaping to
their homelands. There are also records of slaves who fled from ships and lived
in hiding in the vast wilderness of the Americas.
By the 15th century, the ethnic diversity of slaves
in Spain over the ancient and Medieval periods would decline as sub-Saharan
Africans became the dominant group of people involved in not only the slave
trade in Iberia, but the rest of Europe as well. Estimated numbers of around
156,000 sub-Saharan Africans were imported into Europe and the Peninsula by the
early 16th century, but the mass demand for slaves existed in the
New World, The Americas. It was in the colonial Americas where more than 10
million Africans were transported to via the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Both
the Spaniards and the Portuguese would shift to a forced labor population of
Black Africans in the Americas and Brazil respectively. Labor in the newly
acquired colonies was far too great and intensive to be done by the Europeans
themselves and native populations of the indigenous people were withering away
either to disease or by the initial attacks by the Europeans. Sub-Saharan
slaves often came from civilizations that flourished in intensive agricultural
practices and hard labor. The slave system would evolve, taking customs from
Old World codes and adapt to commercialization of free labor that existed
throughout the Western World. Demands for slaves would rise as demands for
certain commodities such as sugar or textiles would rise. This economic system
led to what historians overall agree an even harsher system of slavery where
the servants were firs and foremost objects and commodities. This institution
of slavery would continue in Spain and its vast colonies for centuries until
gradual abolishment of the practice was attained in the 19th
century.
Phillips’ approach to this topic is done in the most effective
way possible. He chose to delve into as much available literature on the
subject as he could, while taking into account historical perspective and
hindsight. He also recognizes that there is no black and white narrative in
regards to slavery or the meaning of enslavement or freedom, nor can the multiple
variations of slave systems be looked at as monolithic practices. The author
gives examples of various societies and their practices in order to establish a
background for their legal doctrines as well as their socio-economic traditions.
“The study of slavery is complicated and involves much more than a simple
dichotomy between slave and free or slavery and freedom (5)”. The author is
conscious of different cultures and various elements of society, but still
manages to create a chronological account for Spanish slavery as a legal system
and as a cultural element in a way that this book is fit for scholarly readers
to utilize.
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