IMC 2022: Sessions
Session 737: Borders of Unfreedom and Dependency in Medieval Europe, I: The Imposition of Unfreedom
Tuesday 5 July 2022, 14.15-15.45
| Organiser: | Niall Ó Súilleabháin, Department of History, Trinity College Dublin |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Stuart Pracy, Department of History, University of Manchester |
| Paper 737-a | Mundium: Between Guardianship and Unfreedom (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Social History, Women's Studies |
| Paper 737-b | Prague and the 10th-Century Slave Trade (Language: English) Index terms: Economics - Trade, Economics - Urban, Social History |
| Paper 737-c | Negotiating and Negotiated Slaves?: Facets of Being a Slave in the Datini Household, Tuscany, 14th-15th Centuries (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Social History |
| Abstract | The lines between personal liberty and coercive dependence are never clear and navigating the multiple forms of unfreedom in medieval Europe is especially difficult. This series of sessions will explore the often-fuzzy borders of unfreedom and dependency in a comparative framework, with the first panel focusing broadly on ways in which unfreedom was imposed upon medieval people. Shachar Orlinski will explore the notion of mundium as a social custom in the post-Roman Germanic kingdoms, and what it may reveal concerning the socio-economic aspects of freedom and unfreedom; Janel Fontaine will reassess Prague's role in slave trading by exploring not only the logistics of how its market was supplied and the trade networks it facilitated, but also its importance for the development of a Přemyslid state in Bohemia; and Corinna Peres will argue that the institutionally defined 'borders' between 'unfree' slaves and 'free' servants were occasionally crossed in the everyday life of the late medieval Tuscan households, problematizing the semantically vague dichotomy of freedom and unfreedom. |