Dr. Marco Ali Spadaccini
Heinz Heinen Fellow (Junior Postdoctoral)
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
October 2026–September 2027
Title of current research project: "Muslim Diasporas in a Papal Port: Muslim Merchants, Slaves, and Converts in Ancona (ca. 1500–1600)"
Academic Profile
Muslim Diasporas in a Papal Port: Muslim Merchants, Slaves, and Converts in Ancona (ca. 1500–1600)
Though lacking the large groups of dock-working enslaved Muslims found in Livorno, Naples, or Marseille, Ancona nonetheless hosted a significant presence of Muslim-born converts and unconverted domestic slaves. Simultaneously, Ancona stood out for being one of the few Christian-majority ports of the Mediterranean to accommodate free Muslim merchants in the early modern period. This research investigates how the presence of free Muslim merchants affected the lives of Muslim-born individuals, whose status legally relegated them to a position of dependency in a Christian-majority port.
By mobilizing the framework of Strong Asymmetrical Dependency (SAD), this research moves beyond the traditional slavery–freedom binary to analyze dependency as a relational continuum. Within this continuum, dependent individuals navigated their constrained status through strategic negotiations: for example, Turkish-speaking converts could leverage their linguistic skills to broker transactions for Anatolian merchants, while Italian-speaking Muslims facilitated the ransom of enslaved Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Methodologically, the project addresses the archival erasure of these lives by cross-referencing serial notarial contracts with inquisitorial, baptismal, and Ottoman court records. Ultimately, this multi-archival approach reveals how dependent actors navigated overlapping regimes of coercion and negotiation across early modern imperial and confessional boundaries.
2025–2026
Postdoctoral Scholar for the Ottoman Demographic, Social & Family History Research Group, Binghamton University
2025
PhD in History, Binghamton University
2018
MA in History, Binghamton University
2015
MA in Middle Eastern Studies, Leiden University
2013
MA in International Relations, University of Bologna
2009
BA in Political Science, University of Bologna
- 2025. "The Political Economy of the Ottoman Adriatic in the Long Sixteenth Century (1453–1580s)." In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, edited by David Ludden. New York: Oxford University Press.
- 2023. "La navigazione adriatica secondo la pace veneto-turca del 1503." [Navigation in the Adriatic according to the Venetian-Ottoman peace of 1503] Studi Veneziani 87–88: 189–210.
- 2021. "Pratichare e Merchantare nel levante ottomano: le capitolazioni anconetane del ‘500 con un focus sui privilegi per il commercio di Murad III (1587)." [Practicing and trading in the Ottoman Levant: The Anconitan capitulations of the 16th century with a focus on Murad III’s privileges of 1587] Quaderni dell’Archivio di Stato di Ancona 2: 87–104.