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.
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 18-24, 53111 Bonn. The event will be held in German. All welcome!
To REGISTER, please email: events@dependency.uni-bonn.de
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.
At the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, researchers can use this library for further research on ancient slavery. The library is unique because it contains numerous publications on ancient slavery and the slave trade in the territory of present-day Ukraine and Crimea. Many research papers written in Russian and Ukrainian have been translated into German as part of the Academy project. These translations, still done on typewriters, are unique specimens, important archival documents that have now been placed in the care of the BCDSS. Scholars from Germany and abroad can now draw on these resources, even if they have no knowledge of the Russian or Ukrainian language.
For Russian scholars, ancient slavery has long been a central research topic. Against the background of Russian serfdom, the first books on the subject were written as early as the 19th century. In the 20th century, Russian research on slavery was appropriated by Soviet state doctrine, which led to a turning away from the topic after 1990. The state-pressured approach had proved to be a dead end. However, slavery and human trafficking remain an important aspect of the history of Greek colonies on the southern coast of what is now Ukraine and Crimea. Scholars can now continue this history and that of ancient slavery as a whole, based on numerous publications and archival materials now accessible to the public.