The Business of Slavery

An interdisciplinary conference co-hosted by the Centre for Economic and Business History and the Institute for the Study of Slavery, University of Nottingham, UK.

Enslaved persons and others forced to provide their labour have always made, and continue to make, an invaluable contribution to the economies of various societies; whether that be collectively through their labour efforts in a slave society, through the state, merchants, and others buying and selling their bodies, through contributions to households or small businesses, or through their independent efforts to sell their labour with the aim of freeing themselves.

This interdisciplinary conference will be co-hosted by the Centre for Economic and Business History and the Institute for the Study of Slavery. It aims to bring together assessments of the contributions of enslaved people to the economy of different eras and societies and from various perspectives, including the wider economy, the slave traders, the slave holders and the slaves themselves. It will compare these assessments over chronological eras and in societies around the globe. Papers are invited which discuss themes as diverse  as (but which are not restricted to); slave trading (including foreign and indigenous trades, legal and illegal trades), the economies of slave societies, the economies of the slaves themselves, (including hiring out), the use of slaves by freedmen and freedwomen, serfdom, debt bondage, prostitution, forced (including child) labour,  and from chronological periods as diverse as Ancient Greece and Rome, Medieval Europe, the early-modern Barbary States, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and the modern world.

Dr Sheryllynne Haggerty, at [email protected]