News and Events

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.

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.

Workshop Series and Study Group “Anthropological Perspectives on Embodied Dependencies” Screening & Discussion of the documentary (58 minutes) In this session we will discuss the ways that music-making reflects the intertwined legacies of slavery and indentureship in Trinidad & Tobago. While historical animosities between Indian- and African-Trinidadians continue to fuel political and social divisions in the country, analysis of Trinbagonian music contrarily suggests that Indian- and African-Trinidadians have long exchanged musical ideas such that musics often considered solely “Indian” or “African” are in fact characterized by marked fusions of various styles. In this way, music-making can be read like an archive of colonial and postcolonial intimacies. We will watch the documentary “Sweet Tassa: Music of the Indian Caribbean Diaspora” and discuss it with its director Chris Ballengee, who is an ethnomusicologist based in Poland and scholar of Indo-Caribbean culture.

Join us for this year’s Wissenschaftsfestival, the University of Bonn's Science Festival! With a diverse program for all ages, the university's vice-rectorates, six transdisciplinary research areas, and excellence clusters will showcase their work. All students, university members, and citizens of the region are invited to come together and enjoy this day while experiencing science up close! In addition to an exciting stage program, there will be a family science rally, and many exciting hands-on activities for all age groups. The BCDSS will offer a “pop-up lesson” on child labor, its history and engaging activities like weaving against the clock. We look forward to seeing you, your families, and friends!

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.

Karolyne M. Moreira, “Incarnated spirits: ’sorcery’, mutual dependencies and normative production in southern Mozambique (1890–1940)”: In this talk, Karolyne focuses on presenting the normativity of sorcery as a language of power. She seeks to demonstrate how Portuguese colonial policies around ‘sorcery’ and local social discourses around belief in spells both resulted in the establishment of mutual, yet deeply asymmetrical, dependencies. Mauro Manhanguele, “Language, power and mutual dependencies: Interpreters and justice administration in Colonial Mozambique, 1895-1974”: This study seeks to understand the role played by African interpreters in the colonial administration and justice system. By focusing on the case of Mozambique, it assumes that these agents not only participated in the creation of colonial law but also produced it.

This week, our guests Emma Christopher (University of New South Wales, Australia) and Bryce Beemer (Duke Kunshan University, China) are looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on their respective projects. (1) Emma Christopher, “’The Territory is Life’: Slavery, Freedom and the Fight for Survival in the Río Yurumanguí, Colombia”: This paper explores a community that has fought for its territory for 400 years through slavery and into legal freedom, eventually gaining collective land rights in May 2000, but remains in an often deadly fight over it. (2) Bryce Beemer, “Creolization Theory and Southeast Asia: Slavery and Cultural Exchange in Precolonial Burma, c. 1750-1850”: Creolization theory beneficially illuminates the agentive power of the enslaved in processes of culture building and community reinvention. This discussion will engage the potential benefits and pitfalls of adapting creolization theory to the Southeast Asian context.

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.

Throughout modern history, Black writers and activists – George Padmore, Shirley Graham Du Bois, and May Ayim – have pursued radical projects pointing out the lack of basic human rights of marginalized communities. In this talk, Tiffany N. Florvil argues that these individuals and others have drawn upon their cross-cultural experiences to highlight how the intersecting oppressions of racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism have persisted throughout the twentieth century. Traversing geographical and aesthetic boundaries, these activists and intellectuals advocated for civil, social, and political change in their respective countries and beyond, advancing a cosmopolitan ethos that allowed them to offer new forms of knowledge and instigate change.

This week, Roberto Hofmeister Pich (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil) is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on his talk “Restitution of What? Characterizing Discourses on Abolition of Black Slavery, Guilt, and Reparation in Latin American History”. The lecture focuses on philosophical and theological literature, by Iberian and Latin American authors, from the 17th to the 19th century, that provide normative evaluations of transatlantic slave trade and slavery in colonial societies. The main idea is to characterize the initial perception of guilt and the need of reparation towards enslaved Africans in 17th-century literature on the subject and how in 19th-century discourses on abolition, especially in Brazil, an articulated account of "restitution" is basically a missing item.

This week, BCDSS fellow Rafaël Thiébaut is looking forward to a lively discussion and feedback on his project “Unfree Labour in the Southwest Indian Ocean (17th-19th Centuries).” This talk analyses different forms of bondage labor through the case study of the Southwestern Indian Ocean: Madagascar with Comoros & Mascarenes. Thanks to the use of quantitative and qualitative archival material, Rafaël will place the micro-histories of the individual slave in the larger context of the developments in the Modern Age, especially in relation to a European interference over time and space. This will pave the way to a better understanding of the phenomenon and make it possible to place it in a larger global context.

"Global Voyages, Local Sites: The Long Shadow of Atlantic Slavery in the Anglo-American and German Pacific" workshop brings together renowned scholars working in the fields of Slavery Studies, Labor Studies, Colonialism and Museum Studies. It explores the legacies of Atlantic slavery through the British Empire’s movement of people, money, and expertise from the Caribbean to Queensland, the American movement west to the islands of Samoa, and how these processes interacted with German colonial endeavors in the Pacific. It intends to form a framework with which to expand the disciplinary boundaries of slavery studies and rethink the legacies and impacts of U.S. and Caribbean practices of slaving and processes of racialization that emerged in the context of imperial endeavors in the Pacific. In addition to historians’ approaches, we would also like to address how the topics and discourses outlined above impact contemporary attempts of decolonizing museums and collections.

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?

A comparative conference, organized by Heinz Heinen Fellow Christian Laes, that will enable the audience to pay attention to voices often unheard, in language traditions often unknown, and therefore underexplored. Drawing on the expertise of scholars in ‘less studied languages’ (Armenian, Coptic, Ge’ez, Georgian, Turkish, Syriac) for the period concerned.

This week, Mònica Ginés-Blasi, Marie Sklodowska Curie Action Fellow at the Institut d’Asie Orientale of the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon (2022-24) and former BCDSS Fellow, will discuss her project “Trading Chinese Migrants: Networks of Human Trafficking in Treaty Port China (1830-1930s).” This presentation will suggest a comprehensive view of the so-called “coolie trade”, which was an international imperial enterprise central to the Western incursion in China, and it involved strong and peripheral Western nations alike, becoming the single most transversal item of interest of Western imperial colonialism in the nineteenth century. To support this wide understanding of the coolie trade, Mònica will focus on four case studies to challenge the established views in the historiography which situate the trade mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, within a defined chronology – from 1847 to 1874 – and which portray “coolies” as mostly male and adult, as well as generically Chinese.

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.

In this Friday Seminar session, Marçal de Menezes Paredes, Associate Professor at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil, is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on his project “From Supporters to Cooperants: regarding the Canadian Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa (TCLSAC) in its relationship with FRELIMO in Mozambique in the 1970s.” The presentation will present a historical overview of this transnational activity that connected the Global North and South and fostered commitment among comrades and cooperants. For a more detailed description, please see the abstract attached. To register, please drop an email entitled "Friday Fellows Seminar" with your name and the date of the seminar to Laura Hartmann.

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.

The institution of slavery lasted more than three centuries in Brazil, the last country to abolish black slavery in the Americas in 1888. This event aims to bring together some of the central debates on the cultural heritage of Afro-descendant slavery in Brazil, and a critical novelty is to propose the analysis of the intersections with the cultural heritage of indigenous slavery. The Brazilian academy is just beginning to explore these possible connections, and the event can be an essential contribution to the debate on the cultural heritage of slavery at the international level by bringing new perspectives. In this sense, the Conference brings together researchers and activists to debate topics on the intersections in the cultural heritage of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian slavery at parties, in the discussion of the last Constitution, in teaching, in filmic narratives, in museums and the politics of Repair.

The International Workshop on Romani Asymmetrical Dependencies is dedicated to exploring asymmetrical relations and understanding co-dependencies between Romani populations and host societies within European socio-political context, in the long period between the 14th century and present day. In utilizing the formula ‘Romani Asymmetrical Dependencies’, the workshop intends to examine (in)effective mechanisms of social incorporation of the Roma, with a special interest and attention to the assessment and interpretation of their influence in local cultures as well as their role in the formation of collective identities (social, religious, political, national). Key topics of this event concern the societal, occupational and symbolic circumstances which have shaped the experiences of one of the oldest transnational minorities in the continent.

In our panel discussion “Diversity in German Academia - A Reflective Look at the Current State”, scholars and activists will take stock of how German universities and research institutions currently attend to the matter of equal opportunities and diversity. The panel discussion is designed to provide a space for the exchange of experience and knowledge: panelists will critically consider measures and processes of change within institutions and reflect on how to further strengthen diversity awareness. The discussion will also be opened up to address questions from the audience. The panel is organized by the Equal Opportunity and Diversity Unit and the BCDSS; it is part of this year’s Germany-wide Diversity Days (23-24 May 2023) at Bonn University, organized for the second time by the Pro-Rectorate for Equal Opportunities and Diversity.

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.

This week, Raquel R. Sirotti, BCDSS research group leader and postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt, Germany, discusses her project "Mutual Dependencies and Normative Production in Africa." The presentation will approach the concept of mutual dependencies and argue that it can be a useful tool for understanding the production of law in colonial contexts. Using as examples the case studies developed in the junior research group Mutual Dependencies and Normative Production in Africa, I will suggest that the interaction, recognition, and even creation of local intermediaries by colonial agents implied mutual transformations of traditional and state authorities. The actions of these individuals not only contributed to the construction of hybrid models of colonial rule in Africa, but also shaped the regulation of indigenous labour exploitation and the mechanisms of punishment and social control of local populations.

In this week’s seminar, Stephan Conermann will throw some light on the question “How and Where to Apply for Funding?” and talk about the German funding systems and opportunities.

This week, Carolina González is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on her presentation, "’With her personal service’: Domestic work, manumission and judicial records. Enslaved and freed women in colonial Chile". This presentation describes the uses of justice by enslaved people in colonial Chile and focuses on the relationship between the so-called “domestic work- affective labor” and the forms of self manumission of enslaved-freed women, especially in Santiago city between 1770-1823.

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

This week, Julie Miller is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on her presentation, “A History of the Person in America.” Her book-in-progress explores expressions of the idea of a "person" in American politics from the drafting of the U.S. Constitution to the Civil War. This presentation will offer a brief introduction to the project while lingering a bit on the questions, historiographies, and sources that inspired it. Event registration via email (s. below)

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.

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