The Sons of Canaan, slavery in the Middle Ages.
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 21680 |
| Format | 14.5 x 20 |
| Détails | 211 p., paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2019 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782363583208 |
The slave, as we generally imagine him, is sometimes the cattle-man of Antiquity, bending the knee under the whips of the pharaohs, sometimes the machine-man of the contemporary era, chains on his feet in the North American cotton plantations... As for the Middle Ages, it was long believed to be reserved for another type of subordination, that of the serf, attached to the land and the lord. However, contrary to these preconceived ideas, the fall of the Roman Empire is far from having marked the end of slavery. On the contrary, the numerous conflicts of the time, from Mongol intrusions to Viking raids, ensured the perpetuation of this enslavement of man by man: from the Mediterranean basin to the northern borders via the Byzantine lands, slavery was a very widespread phenomenon during the thousand years that lasted the medieval period. Slaves transiting to southern lands, populations of black Africa sold by Iberian traders, Christians in Islamic lands, Muslims in Christian lands, slaves are everywhere, both in towns and in the countryside, assigned to domestic, artisanal and industrial tasks, in a diversity of situations and statuses that has long dissuaded historians from considering the phenomenon as a whole – this is precisely the challenge that this pioneering work takes up today.
The slave, as we generally imagine him, is sometimes the cattle-man of Antiquity, bending the knee under the whips of the pharaohs, sometimes the machine-man of the contemporary era, chains on his feet in the North American cotton plantations... As for the Middle Ages, it was long believed to be reserved for another type of subordination, that of the serf, attached to the land and the lord. However, contrary to these preconceived ideas, the fall of the Roman Empire is far from having marked the end of slavery. On the contrary, the numerous conflicts of the time, from Mongol intrusions to Viking raids, ensured the perpetuation of this enslavement of man by man: from the Mediterranean basin to the northern borders via the Byzantine lands, slavery was a very widespread phenomenon during the thousand years that lasted the medieval period. Slaves transiting to southern lands, populations of black Africa sold by Iberian traders, Christians in Islamic lands, Muslims in Christian lands, slaves are everywhere, both in towns and in the countryside, assigned to domestic, artisanal and industrial tasks, in a diversity of situations and statuses that has long dissuaded historians from considering the phenomenon as a whole – this is precisely the challenge that this pioneering work takes up today.