Periodic Reporting for period 4 - GermanSlavery (The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and its Slaves)
Berichtszeitraum: 2020-02-01 bis 2022-01-31
In this project, we explore the involvement of German individuals in slavery and the slave trade as well as the presence of trafficked people in the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) and its successor states during the long eighteenth century. While slavery was long considered only in the context of the colonial plantation economies outside Europe, research on enslavement practices in early modern Europe has been booming for the past two decades. Quantitatively, the number of trafficked persons in Europe came nowhere near the more than 12 million people who were abducted as part of the transatlantic slave trade. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that Europe was not only economically involved in this trade, but also directly through the presence of enslaved people on the continent. While there has been extensive research on Western Europe and the Mediterranean, research on the countries of the HRE is still sparse, as early modern Germany had only a short-lived slave trading society and very limited and ephemeral colonial possessions. Nonetheless, German merchants, shipowners, and bankers, as well as sailors, soldiers, and physicians, were involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Most often, they participated via and in other European nation’s colonies and slave trading companies. Thus, enslaved persons were also brought to the Old Empire. At the core of the project is the legal and social situation of the trafficked people as well as the impact of their presence on German society. Researching these histories is also an important step toward acknowledging the victims of human trafficking.
In four case studies, we have been able to uncover different aspects of German involvement in slavery and the slave trade: The project on the Protestant mission of the Moravians shows how enslavement practices intersected with other forms of bondage and dependency (serfdom, servant status, non-Christians to be converted) and thus seemingly dissolved, although property claims over individuals were enforced in cases of conflict (Josef Köstlbauer 2020, 2021 and forthcoming). Such cases of conflict were the starting point for research on the legal situation of trafficked persons in the Old Empire: Rebekka von Mallinckrodt was able to demonstrate that with the reception of Roman law, an entire legal tradition legitimized slavery in early modern Germany and was also used to enforce property claims (Mallinckrodt 2021a and b, 2022a, b and c). At the same time, interconnections with the contemporary controversy over serfdom, which still existed in some regions of the Old Empire, as well as traces of abolitionist networks reaching into German cities and territories became apparent (Mallinckrodt 2016 and 2017). Children and adolescents were particularly often affected by abduction because their docility met the needs of the enslavers, they were poorly able to defend themselves, and they fell under guardianship (Mallinckrodt 2019a and b). In contrast, the project on Hamburg reveals the mobility and thus, in part, agency of free, freed, and enslaved people in the city, many of whom commuted between the colonies and mainland Europe (Annika Bärwald 2021 and forthcoming). Thus, German cities and territories were far more similar to colonial powers than previously assumed, as a fourth case study on the Netherlands also makes clear (Julia Holzmann, PhD Bremen University 2021). This similarity between European colonial powers and European states without colonies is also evidenced by a first-of-its-kind collection of over 200 portraits of people of African descent in early modern Germany (Mallinckrodt/ Walther 2022). These findings relativize the categorical distinction between colonial powers and states without colonies as well as that between "slaveholding societies" and "societies with slaves," i.e. Europe and its colonies, and rather show how much Europe itself was affected by slavery and the slave trade (see also Mallinckrodt/ Köstlbauer/ Lentz 2021 as well as Mallinckrodt 2022).
Until recently, the presence of trafficked people in early modern Germany was perceived as an exception and a rather incidental side effect of the transatlantic slave trade. Research assumed that a person's slave status ended either at the border of the Holy Roman Empire or with baptism, or that slave status tacitly transformed into other forms of dependency such as serfdom or servitude. In this project, we can not only prove the legal existence of slavery in the Old Empire, but also document that Germans were systematically involved in the global slave trade through participation in the slave trading societies and colonies of other European nations. Our findings thus connect research on enslavement practices in the Old Empire with research on slavery in Europe and the world. They show Germany as part of early modern globalization with all its promises and abysses.