La esclavitud en Valencia durante la Baja Edad Media (1375-1425)

Abstract

The present Dissertation focuses on both sociological and economic aspects of slavery in the city of Valencia towards the end of the Middle Ages, specifically during the years 1375-1425. It draws on a large number of documents, most of them found in Valencias archives, as well as the existing bibliography not only about slavery, but also about the history of medieval Valencia. The Dissertation treats five questions about slavery in Valencia. The first centers on the supply of slaves, in which we can clearly see the huge importance of the slaves sellers and the various types of pirates and privateers activities. The second concerns the slaves as a human group and the composition of this group, which consisted of men and women with a wide variety of origins and personal situations. The third question is about economic aspects of slaves, such as their type of work, the property of slaves, the price of slaves, the slave market, and the selling of Valencian slaves to other markets. The fourth question is related to the social consequences of all of the above factors, particularly the position of the slave in the whole society and, of course, the relationships between slaves and the free people. The fifth and last question is about the ways to freedom, with a special focus on the ways the slaves of Valencia became freedman and how they recovered their freedom and their destinies. Because most of the slaves held a variety of jobs, the conclusion of the dissertation underscores the working character of slavery. In Valencia we find slavery with many relationships because the contacts between slaves and free people were inevitable, although these contacts were made on an unequal plane. Thus, we clearly see in Valencia a slavery characterized by its diversity (in its supplies, type of slaves, and labor) and by its vast increase: in fact, the slavery phenomenon was even more important in 1425 than in 1375, even though, in general terms, slavery in Valencia was not large enough, especially if we make the comparison between Valencia and other Mediterranean cities, or between this period, 1375-1425, ans several years after in the Early Modern Age.