Events Archive

How have African Atlantic artists transformed our understanding of slavery’s legacy? Drawing on Rice’s three decades of experience as an academic and curator, including work with the Whitworth Art Gallery, Lancaster Maritime Museum, and the International Slavery Museum, this lecture explores how artists from the 1950s to the 2020s, such as Althea McNish, Lubaina Himid, Ellen Gallagher, Jade de Montserrat, and Lela Harris, have used their art to interrogate slavery’s history and its aftermath. Alan Rice will show how their radical interventions and acts of guerrilla memorialisation have reshaped museums, challenged dominant narratives, and redefined the field of the Black Atlantic.

Before transatlantic slavery, European colonial powers used contract workers. After Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807/08, they sought new markets, especially in Latin America, and needed a wage-earning population. By the 1820s–30s, the idea of wage slavery emerged. In 1834, the British introduced the apprenticeship system in their colonies, a compromise with slave owners, until it collapsed in 1838 due to resistance. Still, it inspired the Indentured Labour System, bringing hundreds of thousands of Asian, African, and European contract workers to Caribbean plantations between 1833–1873. This lecture explores how brutal labor systems shaped global market development, focusing on Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Curaçao.

The passage of the International Labour Organization’s Forced Labour Convention (No. 29) in 1930 was a momentous event in global labor history, signaling an ideological, if not practical, transition away from coercive labor practices like private sector forced labor and slavery. The presentation will explore how it shaped labor practices in British East Africa—accelerating the progression toward the abolition in some ways while leaving loopholes for coercion under the guise of "tradition" and Indirect Rule.

This lecture uses a range of printed materials and analytical methods to address the vocabulary of slavery in England during the long seventeenth century and traces what was an important process of vernacularisation. Moreover, it aims at identifying the kinds of socio-economic, gendered relations and tensions, that the language of slavery was used to characterise, as well as the semantic stability (or not) of the vocabulary over time. In so doing, the lecture also begins to assess the impact of colonial developments on vernacular discussions of the social order: not least the institutionalisation of indentured service and racist chattel slavery in the Caribbean and American seaboard.

How did issues of intimacy, like sexuality, pregnancy, coercion, and family, shaped enslaved women’s decisions to resist during slave rebellions in the Caribbean and U.S. South? This lecture explores how reproductive autonomy, kinship, and sacred knowledge influenced enslaved women’s resistance, often overlooked in historical archives and scholarship. From ending pregnancies to escaping with children or forming maroon communities, women resisted both bondage and the exploitation of their bodies. This work-in-progress highlights how family and intimacy were central, not peripheral, to the politics of rebellion and the fight to undermine the capitalist logic of Atlantic slavery.

What if enslaved and formerly enslaved literary workers played a crucial role in the composition of the Synoptic Gospels? This lecture challenges assumptions in New Testament scholarship’s “Synoptic Problem,” which explores the literary relationships between Matthew, Mark, and Luke. By uncovering the invisible labor of these uncredited collaborators, this article reimagines gospel writing and expands the boundaries of New Testament studies.

How did marginalized groups in rigid societies find paths to economic and social mobility? In the Roman Empire, lower-class individuals navigated established systems and forged their own routes to upward mobility, often through local professional and voluntary associations that linked them to the elite. This talk will examine epigraphic texts and Roman naming practices to explore how enslaved and freed individuals—excluded from traditional networks—leveraged their official organization, the familia publica, to engage in civic life, public events, and socioeconomic structures. This case study sheds light on asymmetrical dependency in Roman society and speaks to modern debates about the lasting impact of enslavement.

How did racism come to be? Just as race is not a biological reality, racism is not inherent to human nature. It was invented and sustained through historical encounters, economies, and religious traditions—especially in North-South interactions. This presentation compares the history of racism in the U.S. to current developments, highlighting not just divide-and-conquer tactics but also "unite-and-conquer" strategies that reveal deeper complexities and potential solutions.

What do we do with the wounds of a people and a nation? Like the doubting disciple who longed to touch Jesus's side, we must confront wounds, understanding their stories and the healing they signal. How does Black theology help us interpret the legacy of the Middle Passage, the GI Bill benefits denied to Black veterans, or the plight of shackled Black women inmates giving birth? Through Black theology and a womanist lens, this lecture explores why memory is crucial for healing and justice.

How did jailing function in Ming China? This talk, based on Ying Zhan's book, rethinks the patrimonial bureaucratic system through the lens of vulnerability and dependence. It explores how bureaucrats experiences of jailing revealed the state's reliance on the patriarchal family, their complex relationships with lower classes, and how women used these crises to assert agency. By integrating comparative prison studies and family history, she will examine the social impact of jailing and the role of patriarchy in the Chinese bureaucratic empire.

Over the course of millennia Indigenous and European cultures profoundly diverged in how they organized their relationships with other animals. Sixteenth-century European authorities understood these differences in terms of cultural evolution and diabolism: they framed animal husbandry as a mark of civilizational advancement, and, relatedly, viewed many forms of animal subjectivity as potentially demonic. These discourses have seeped into modern scholarship and distorted or even erased the myriad ways Indigenous people interacted with and thought about other-than-human creatures. In particular, scholars have ignored or misunderstood practices of familiarization – the taming of wild animals undertaken for affective, spiritual, and political reasons. In this talk I will explore the entanglement of colonial discourses of domestication and diabolism, and familiarization practices among Nahua, Zapotec, and Mixtec communities before and after Spanish colonization.

How has Western morality reshaped Indian ideas of the body and performance? This research explores how colonial and postcolonial ideologies impacted Indian expressions of gender and sexuality, especially through dance and performance. Focusing on gay Indian dancer Ram Gopal, my recent book (2024) traces how he navigated cultural tensions in mid-20th-century Europe. Colonial rule and later nationalism imposed Victorian ideals, marginalizing traditions like devadāsīs, hijras, and folk performers, creating a "double dependency" on both colonial and postcolonial norms. Today, artists are reclaiming these forms through performance, film, and cross-disciplinary work, drawing on mythological figures like ardhanārīśvara and Bahuchara Mata. This lecture examines these efforts and the enduring power dynamics shaping memory, identity, and cultural expression.

The historiography of the Kingdom of Kongo has long emphasized the profound political transformations following the Kongolese Civil War, marked by fragmentation, factional violence, and the expansion of enslavement in response to Atlantic demands. Central to this narrative is the rise of a class of oligarchs, or “entrepreneurial nobles,” who mobilized political titles and discourses of ancestry to assert their influence as local power brokers and intermediaries in the trans-Atlantic trade of goods and enslaved persons. In this presentation, I discuss how Kongolese oligarchs reshaped the vocabulary of slavery, actively participating in the renewal of Atlantic slavery in the late 18th and 19th centuries. This linguistic transformation underpinned a discourse that increasingly divorced the practice of enslavement from its previous moral constraints, embedding these strategies within the broader political and economic contexts that drove the intensification of slavery in the S.A.

How did political shifts in southern Babylonia during the third millennium BCE impact land and social status? For most of this period, independent city-states coexisted, sometimes clashing with each other or with Kish in the north. Eventually, the region unified under the Sargonic dynasty and then the Third Dynasty of Ur. Despite these changes, the land-tenure system stayed stable due to environmental needs, particularly large-scale irrigation. Most arable land was controlled by rulers, governors, and temples, with individual land rights depending on one’s freedom and social status. Society had three main groups: free citizens, who owned land and were conscripted part-time; serflike individuals, who were free but conscripted full-time and rarely had land; and enslaved people, who were unfree and did not possess land. This presentation will explore the continuity and shifts in land ownership and liberty across the Early Dynastic, Sargonic, and Ur III periods.

What impact did the First Plague Pandemic have on mobilizations of military and civil labor? At our next JCMM Lecture, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, will examine this interplay in mid-eighth century CE western Afroeurasia.

Prof. Larissa Rosa Corrêa, of Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro, examines the development of labor laws in Brazil from the 1930s. When the Brazilian labor code was established in 1941. it did not include rural and domestic workers. They were left vulnerable to human rights violations and various forms of precarious work and serfdom. Prof. Corrêa will look into how these two groups learned to use the language of labor rights and developed repertoires of action that allowed them to strive for their rights and equal conditions compared to urban and industrial workers. These struggles were fundamental for citizenship and the formation of social classes in Brazil.

Dr. Nitin Varma will unwrap biographies of servitude, drawing upon a range of legal and ego documents from nineteenth-century northern India. Based on a “microhistorical” methodological approach, he will reconstruct the life trajectories of individuals who worked as domestic servants in Anglo-Indian households.

This talk seeks to advance critical dialogue about historians’ choices of topic, sources, and methods, asking what kinds of silences become systematic in our accounts of post-emancipation labor migration, and why. As an evidentiary base for raising these questions, the paper draws on judicial records from late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Greater Caribbean migratory destinations including Venezuela, Panama, and Costa Rica.

Latin American dictatorships in the mid-twentieth century: How connected were they with the economic, social and labor struggle? This lecture will mainly analyze the case of Argentina, and the repression carried out by military forces in conjunction with business sectors against labor in the last dictatorship, from 1976 to 1983.

New perspectives on the past slave trade activities and its impacts in Mozambique: Understanding this process through archaeological (terrestrial and maritime), historical and anthropological research that is bringing to light a complex body of knowledge about slavery in this section of southern East Africa

Forced migration and compulsory foreign labour in the rise of Egypt as a regional great power and cultural powerhouse? Connecting with research on contemporary uneven geographical development, this talk problematizes ancient Egyptian foreign policy and labour policies about their neighbouring societies.

What did a life under the circumstances of enslavement and strong asymmetrical dependency do to children? What were the effects and how are they to be traced and understood? This lecture discusses the interconnectedness of Slavery and Dependency Studies when considered from children’s perspectives, following the approach of Trauma Studies, a branch largely ignored by historians of premodernity

What kind of agency did women inmates have in the forced labor camps in the Soviet Union, and how did they experience it? Based on lesser-known memoirs of women inmates, our upcoming Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture will examine the constrained agency that they still retained.

What was the gender structure of war and violence during the Napatan and Meroitic periods? Our upcoming Lecture focuses on the gender background of war, including the lists of spoils of war, the representation of women and children as prisoners of war, the feminization of enemies in royal texts, and the participation of royal women in conflicts.

What are the challenges of accurately measuring import and export prices in West and Central Africa from the 15th century to the First World War? Our next Lecture will discuss what must be considered to address larger questions about economic exchanges in Africa and the important role of Gulf of Guinea.

What was the role of the intersections of race, class/ethnicity and gender in different lawsuits initiated by women who worked in retail stores against their employers in different legal contexts throughout the nineteenth century in Rio de Janeiro?

The Roma's enslavement in Romania for over 500 years has often been overlooked in discussions about the legacies of slavery and racial discrimination. The Orthodox Church and the Ottoman Empire played significant roles in this form of enslavement and racialization. By studying these lesser-known actors and adopting a global perspective, we can connect the histories of various European enslavements and understand their ongoing effects. Unfortunately, Europe's recognition of racism and slavery tends to be limited to the Holocaust and the transatlantic slave trade, disregarding the Roma's experiences. This omission can be attributed to an Occidentalist mindset that associates Europeanness with whiteness and marginalizes non-white populations and their histories.

In 2008, Joseph C. Miller explored the historical process of slaving, aiming to understand why people repeatedly engaged in this strategy throughout history. He criticized Orlando Patterson's definition of slavery as it limited slaves to rebelling against their masters. Instead, Miller believed historians should recognize the vitality and humanity of slaves. Building on Miller's approach, this lecture examines imprisonment as a historical process, focusing on ancient Mesopotamia. It seeks to understand who imprisoned, for what reasons, and in what contexts. Just like slaving, imprisonment took various forms throughout history. The lecture emphasizes the importance of considering personhood when studying prisons and prisoners by examining early historical records related to imprisonment.

What were the connections between the large-scale slave trade spanning Europe and the changing profiles of slavery during the eighth to tenth centuries AD? This lecture explores the interregional slave trade that connected Ireland to Bukhara and traversed the Mediterranean, Baltic, and Europe. Recent research has revised earlier estimates, highlighting the quantitative significance of this trade. Additionally, the lecture examines the evolving nature of slavery and slave labor within the regions affected by the trade, emphasizing the link between these two phenomena.

How did Bolivian Amazonia's integration into the international economy in the mid-nineteenth century lead to exploitative labor practices? This lecture explores the recruitment of workers, particularly indigenous populations, and reveals the various methods employed, ranging from voluntary recruitment to forced labor and debt peonage. These practices often resembled a form of "slavery" characterized by varying degrees of arbitrariness and violence. Despite initial legislation aimed at protecting workers, it didn't take long for the interests of economic agents to influence the implementation of labor contracting laws. Consequently, a convergence of public and private interests emerged, enabling the abuse and exploitation of different ethnic groups. This lecture also examines how the erratic enforcement of labor laws and the dominance of Creole society contributed to this exploitation, ultimately leading to labor practices that persisted well into the twentieth century.

How did the violent process of defining national territories and borders in the Amazon during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries contribute to the expansion of commodity frontiers like rubber, gold, and oil? This lecture focuses on the intersection of racial and labor relations during the rubber frontier's expansion in southwest Amazonia in the early twentieth century. It examines labor coercion and enslavement in the Guaporé Valley, Brazil-Bolivia border, using firsthand accounts and indigenous perspectives. By considering the spatial and temporal dimensions of labor commodification, this talk aims to contribute to discussions on labor relations during the rubber boom and the persistence of coerced labor in post-abolition Brazil's capitalist development in the Amazon.

How did labor relations evolve in colonial Hispanic America, and what factors contributed to the increased coercion in the seventeenth century? Hypothesizing that the scarcity of labor, caused by a demographic debacle, the disintegration of indigenous society, and the diversification of the colonial economy, led to a rise in coercion in labor relations during the seventeenth century. To investigate this, The lecture will focus on the transformation of old forms of organization and the emergence of new coercive configurations, particularly the "servicio personal" (personal service) and its variations in the Viceroyalty of Peru (present-day Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, and Ecuador).

The lecture has been postponed to a future date! We apologise for any inconvenience! What was the Bracero Program and how did it impact labor relations in North America from 1942 to 1964? This lecture analyzes the term "bracero" and its use, exploring various perspectives from workers, growers, unions, public opinion, and government representatives. Primary sources from the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City and the Bracero History Archive will be utilized to assess the program's dependency relationships and its legacy.

How important is the little-known return of severely ill ex-inmates from Stalinist penitentiaries (1930-1953) compared to the widely known transfers within the Soviet GULAG system? Examining the mass deaths of released prisoners during their journeys back from the camps reveals a new facet of human suffering often overlooked in official statistics. Considering these overlooked victims improves our understanding of the true human cost of the GULAG system.

In his presentation, Jay Geller will attend to the ascription (and manufacture) of animality that enacted the subordination or marginalization of “the Jew” and the dominance of the Gentile and similarly functioned with regard to a racially-identified group, people of predominantly sub-Saharan African descent (blacks), and the corresponding race-identifying group, people of predominantly European descent (whites). Trigger warning for attending audiences and students: We would like to disclose that some audiences may find the verbal and visual content of this presentation triggering or offensive as it draws on antisemitic and racist representations. The material includes content that touches on: animal cruelty or animal death, violence and trauma connected to antisemitism, racism and racial conflict, antisemitic and racial slurs. We ask attending audiences who may feel triggered, overwhelmed or panicked by the content to take the necessary steps for their emotional safety.

What are the historical and socioeconomic factors that have contributed to the emergence and perpetuation of human trafficking and the commercial sex industry, and how do these factors connect to the late-medieval world and modern society? Today, poverty and corruption are frequently cited as major underlying causes of modern slavery and human trafficking. However, these issues are not exclusive to modern society; they have deep historical roots transcending borders, cultures, and economic systems. Human trafficking networks thrived in the late-medieval world, using tactics like kidnapping, abduction, familial pressure, and predatory employment to exploit vulnerable women and girls in various industries, including food service, textiles, and domestic work

How did ancient gender discourse shape the roles and agency of women and men in mobility, and what factors influenced their ability to shape their own mobility and that of others during late antiquity? This lecture explores how gender has historically led to disparities and inequalities, particularly in the context of mobility studies. Traditionally, mobile women were often seen as mere companions, not decision-makers. Through late antique letters, we examine the gender discourse's impact on travel and mobility, shedding light on who held influence in these journeys and whether gender was the sole determinant of agency. These mobility stories provide valuable insights into gendered mobility in late antiquity.

How did Mary Astell question the apparent contradiction between the freedom of all men and the perceived enslavement of all women? This lecture reexamines women's economic status in early modern Europe, probing the link between their economic position and personal freedom. It highlights gender inequalities in work tasks, employment forms, and pay levels, presenting new evidence from England and comparing it to research on Sweden and Germany. The lecture critiques two theoretical frameworks—economic choice and feminist patriarchy—arguing their insufficiency. Instead, it explores the concept of women's freedom/unfreedom, drawing on ideas from the history of slavery, Carole Pateman, and Amartya Sen for a deeper understanding of economic gender inequality roots.

How did enslaved individuals in the Americas navigate the path to freedom? Focusing on Trujillo, Peru, this lecture contends that legal manumission alone did not guarantee freedom. Instead, it argues that enslaved individuals, particularly in 17th-century Trujillo, strategically combined debt and manumission agreements. Analyzing notarial records, the study shows how these individuals, following the examples of scholars like Kathryn Burns and others, used the public recording of debt to assert financial autonomy and reputational responsibility. Enslaved men positioned themselves as providers in patriarchal roles, while women used debt agreements to claim municipal subjectivity and honorable casta identities. This dual strategy was a conscious step toward freedom in a gendered context.

How does Augustine's Confessions reveal the often-overlooked lives of women, children, and the enslaved in fourth-century Roman Africa, shedding light on their agency amid societal constraints?