News and Events
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.
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.
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.
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.
This week, Stephan Conermann is looking forward to a lively general discussion of labor-related asymmetrical dependencies and mobility. Research Area D explores workers’ practices for coping with dependency, for reducing the degree of coercion and for expanding their own autonomy. By looking at (a) individual and collective everyday practices, (b) organizations, (c) relationships with institutions (e.g. the use of laws and norms), and (d) anti-systemic practices, Research Area D will make it possible to map dependency on an alternative scale, between autonomy and coercion, and to increase the awareness of the dependents’ scope of action and their options for social mobility. Against this backdrop, the two attached texts will be discussed.
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.
In this Friday Seminar, Heinz Heinen Kolleg Fellow John Agbonifo will speak on his research project “Neither Slave nor Free Labour? Understanding Labour Relations between Monarchy and the Bronze Guild in Ancient Benin Empire”. More information tba.
For this week's Friday Seminar, Heinrich Heinen Kolleg Fellow Hillary Taylor discusses her project “Violence at Work in Early Modern Britain and its Overseas Territories”. This presentation will consider violence and labour discipline in Britain and the British Atlantic, c. 1550-1800. Among other topics, it will examine ‘employers’ commentaries on the relative utility of using violence to manage and discipline workers; how various categories of workers responded to such violence; and how the legal system mediated these aspects of labour relations.
This time, PhD Guest Researcher (University of California, Berkeley) Sara Eriksson will present her research project "The Average Person – Looking for Enslaved Labor at Hellenistic Kalaureia".
Competing Memories: The Politics of Remembering Enslavement, Emancipation and Indentureship in the Caribbean
This week, Christian Laes is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on his presentation “Writing the histories of slavery in Antiquity. How to go forward?” After a brief overview of the study of slavery in the ancient world, he will point out possible paths for the future: renewed attention to Late Antiquity and the transition period between Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the promising topic of agency.
Join us for the book launch of Prof. Dr. Christoph Witzenrath's latest publication "The Russian Empire, Slaving and Liberation, 1480-1725", followed by a discussion with Prof. Dr. Martin Aust regarding the book's content. The De Gruyter book series of the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies holds publications that examine different phenomena of slavery and other forms of strong asymmetrical dependencies in societies. The series follows the BCDSS research agenda in going beyond the dichotomy of slavery versus freedom. It proposes a new key concept, strong asymmetrical dependency, which covers all forms of bondage across time and space. This includes debt bondage, convict labor, tributary labor, servitude, serfdom, and domestic work, as well as forms of wage labor and various types of patronage. To register, please send a mail to events@dependency.uni-bonn.de.
On February 13, 2023, Dr. Viola Müller will represent the BCDSS at the Kinderuni, where she will give a lecture on the History of Sugar. Abstract: Sugar is in chocolate, cola, gummy bears, and adults use it to sweeten their coffee. It also hides in yogurt, tomato sauce, and chips. Sugar is everywhere. But has it always been around? Where does it come from? Did it always look the same? Who made it in the past, and who is making it today? Dive into the history of sugar!
Prof. Dr. Julia Hillner's latest book, "Helena Augusta: Mother of the Empire" will be presented, including a reading, followed by a discussion and a reception.
One of the largest libraries on ancient slavery in the world with its rich holdings has moved from the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature to the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature has a long standing tradition of research on slavery in the ancient Mediterranean. More than forty volumes were published on numerous facets of the subject. In addition, a comprehensive encyclopaedia on ancient slavery was compiled by researchers from all over the world. Over the course of sixty years, the prolific research output at the Mainz Academy had led to the formation of this special and comprehensive library. It can be considered one of the largest libraries on ancient slavery in the world. To celebrate the opening of the library, we are inviting you to join our LIBRARY LAUNCH on Wednesday, 18 January, 2023, from 16:15-19:00 CET at Heussallee 16-19, 53111 Bonn. The event will be held in German. All welcome!
What are the connections between unfree labour and recent changes in Brazilian politics? Our first lecture of the year discusses why it is important to talk about the integration of the Brazilian region into global capitalism and power relations to understand the unfree labour system
When and why did ‘slave societies’ first emerge in Greece? How can we explain the wide variation in types of slavery attested? Could the spread of slavery and its detrimental impact on free hired labour have been the main cause of the social crises that erupted across Greece in the decades around 600 BC? Join our next Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture on "Slave and free labour in early Greece (750-450 BC)" with Prof. Hans Van Wees.
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
The lecture will discuss the still emerging field of global legal history and provides an approach to legal history that draws on the history of knowledge and summarizes some of the reflections on how to analyze asymmetrical dependencies from a legal historical perspective.
European colonialism in sub-Saharan Africa relied (at least before the end of the Second World War) upon mechanisms of labour exploitation through forced labour. The Portuguese colonial empire was a notorious part of these experiences. African colonial subjects were by no means passive victims of these practices: especially, running away from labour obligations was very common, and sometimes whole groups and villages were fleeing into remote regions or beyond colonial borders. This was a mighty form of response (or resistance), but it also presented many problems: flight destabilised rural societies, and those who stayed were at risk to suffer punishment. Moreover, little has been said on what runaways and refugees encountered in their new environments.
The major question will be how enfranchised slaves, the so called freedmen, could acquire the Roman citizenship. In order to understand the dynamics and different phases of the Roman citizenship an important introduction to the general rules of citizenship will be put at the beginning of the lecture. In this context a major attention must be paid to the status of the Latini and the legal rules regulating their status from the Republic to the Principate. Important legislative measures under Augustus (Lex Aelia Sentia) and Tiberius (Lex Iunia Norbana) created a new category of Latins, the Latini Aeliani and the Latini Iuniani. The lecture will explain their legal position and show in which way and under which circumstances they were able to become Roman citizens.
The movie engages with varying forms of asymmetrical relationships that are forced primarily upon children and women. They are pushed to megacity by various factors but mainly by poverty. Here, the city is not just a place of arrival, it becomes a dreamscape. People initially conceive it as a place of hope; hence the allure of (push towards) the city. However, soon after their arrival, they end up bound in extreme forms of asymmetrical relationships such as in brothels or slums where their lives further unravel. As a social formation, like villages, the city has its underlying logic of patriarchy and casteism which deeply structure people’s lives. The movie clearly portrays how people are forced into extreme forms of asymmetrical dependencies. Money, men, and power are inextricably connected to the lives of the socially destitute and deprivations flourish, while those on the streets become interchangeable. by Jahfar Shareef Pokkanali (PhD researcher at the BCDSS)
The event will include speeches by Prof. Dr. Marion Gymnich, Co-Speaker and Principal Investigator at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS), and Prof. Dr. Béla Bodó, BCDSS Investigator and Associate Professor for Eastern European History, Bonn University. Visitors will get a tour of the exhibition by Prof. Dr. Judith Szapor, curator of the exhibition; Associate Professor of the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University, Montreal; as well as talks with Kata Steinberger-Herskó, daughter of Anna Herskó, the first female camera person in Hungary, presented in the exhibition.
Join us on Monday, November 7, 2022, at 18:15 CET for a reading and discussion evening with playwright NATASSA SIDERI. Her award-winning play GEFESSELT ('BOUND') addresses the problem of debt bondage in our present-day society.
The town of Castro Marim in Portugal was a legal haven and later the site of internal exile for several thousand minor sinners and convicts from the Middle Ages until the first decades of the nineteenth century. Later, courts of the Inquisition and the state sent those convicted of minor offences to reside in the town, typically for periods of two to four years. Faced with the punishment of long-term obligatory residence, these newcomers had little choice but to engage in the economic activities around them: chiefly in salt extraction, fishing, boat building, agriculture, and smuggling. As a result, this use of exile to Castro Marim is more than a micro-history of a small town. It is a vivid example of social control as practiced by courts of the Church and state. It is also an example of the limitations of early modern royal authority.