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).
