The Darker Shades of Black. The Value of Skin Colour in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Slave and Labour Markets, 1750-1886

Project Information

Shades of Black

Grant agreement ID: 887152

DOI

10.3030/887152

Project terminated on 31 August 2023

EC signature date 26 February 2020

Start date 1 October 2020

End date 30 September 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 269 002,56

EU contribution

€ 269 002,56

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Shades of Black (The Darker Shades of Black. The Value of Skin Colour in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Slave and Labour Markets, 1750-1886)

Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2023-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

At the beginning, the objective of my project was to examine how the skin colour (as described by the sources) of captives, slaves and people under other forms of serfdom affected their value in economic transactions before and after the legal abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century. In particular, I have analysed slaves, captives, serfs and workers on galleys in the period 1750–1886. The value of captives and slaves in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic changed according to the qualities they were attributed to. My initial hypothesis was that skin colour and shades thereof were a major factor in influencing both the slaves’ exchange value (monetary or barter) and the salary level of free workers. Thanks to the sources consulted, the initial hypothesis must be specified to the effect that not only skin colour but also age, gender, health condition, physical qualities, working skills and ethnicity are fundamental to understand not only the price of an enslaved person and the salary of a free one, but also the general working and living conditions of people of colour.
Specific objectives (SO)
SO1) The links between buyers’ expectations of the economic worth of a slave as a worker (as determined by age, strength, gender, ethnicity etc.) and his or her skin colour: I could achieve this SO thanks to many archival sources on slaves’ qualities and skin colour, see the article published in open access for the journal Slaveries & Post-Slaveries.
SO2) How skin colour affected the price of slaves and the salary of free workers: Given the documentation, this SO partly changed in favour of a comparison between slaves’ prices in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean, and between forms of remuneration of slaves and free workers of colour.
SO3) Categorisation of the types of work and working conditions assigned to slaves based on skin colour: This objective has been achieved, and extended beyond skin colour to include other slaves’ qualities (working skills, gender, age, health condition); see the article published for the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi).
SO4) Understanding the role of phenotype in sources, determining if a taxonomy of colour can be established: This objective has been achieved, as I have gathered enough archival material to expound this point in my future book.
SO5) How the colour black and its shades are attributed to groups of people: This objective has been achieved, as I have gathered enough archival material to answer the question and extend it to how ethnicity was attributed to groups of people of colour (and not just colour) in my future book.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

I have done archival research on two case studies for each geographical space (Martinique, France, Italy, Spain): Saint- Pierre, Fort-Royal, Marseille, Toulon, Leghorn, Genoa, Cádiz, Cartagena.
Archives départementales, Fort-de-France; Archivio dei Cappuccini, Genoa; Archivio di Stato of Leghorn; Archivio di Stato and Archivio Ginori Lisci of Florence; ANOM, Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence; Archives de la Bourse and Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseille; Archives municipaux and service historique de la Défense (Toulon) and archives départementales du Var, Draguignan; Municipal archives and Provincial Library of Cádiz; Archivo Naval de Cartagena (Cartagena); Archivo General de Simancas (Simancas), Palma de Maiorca-Arxiu del Regne de Mallorca.
Dissemination of the results:
Publications
1) Bonazza, G. (2022), “Enslaved Labour and Im/Mobility in the Mediterranean: The Italian Case (1752-1885)”, Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 56 (1): 61-78.
2) Bonazza, G. (2023), “Collective and Individual Experiences of Slaves in Leghorn, Pisa and Florence, 1702-1826”, Esclavages & Post-esclavages, 8 | 2023, Online since 10 May 2023, connection on 30 September 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/slaveries/8676; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/slaveries.8676.
3) Bonazza, G. (2023), “Slavery in the Mediterranean”. In: Pargas, D.A. Schiel, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13260-5_13.
4) Book proposal, submission in October 2023.
Conferences and seminars
• Project presentation The Darker Shades of Black. Il valore del colore della pelle nei mercati di schiavi e lavoratori non liberi tra Mediterraneo e Atlantico (1750-1886) in Caffè Storici (Ca’ Foscari University), 15 December 2020.
• Paper presentation titled Slaves, Conversion and Skin Colour in Rome (18th-19th centuries) in the seminar Stigma, Discrimination, Birth. Racism and their dis/connection with the Christian experience, 7th-8th June 2021, Bologna.
• EU Booster conference, Hidden Histories of the Early Modern Caribbean and Mediterranean, free online webinar, 28 September 2021. Skin Colour and Labour Market in Italian States and Martinique, 1750-1890.
• Paper presentation and discussion titled Skin Colour, Market and Im/Mobility in the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic (1750-1889) on the ongoing project in the International History Seminar (Columbia University), 16 February 2022.
• Project presentation The Darker Shades of Black in the seminar Comparative Slavery, Department of History, University of Florida, 10 January 2022.
• Paper presentation titled Slavery and the Black presence in Italian cities from the Atlantic colonies in the second half of the 18th century, Atlantic Italies conference project, University of Zurich, 1-3 September 2022.
• Paper presentation on Eu project, Abbaye de Royaumont, Policing Black Presence in Europe in the Long Eighteenth Century (25-28 June 2023), project funded by Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, CNRS and the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery.
• Paper titled Les esclaves du roi: coercion and worksites in Martinique (first half of the 19th century), Cost Action Worck conference “Historicising Coercive Social Processes”, Prague 5-7 September 2023.
• Paper titled Slaves, Gender, and Ethnicity during the Decline of Mediterranean Slavery, conference “Gender and Enslavement in Mediterranean Europe, 1250-1800”, 10-13 September 2023, Israel Institute for Advanced Studies.
Public dissemination:
• Article for a larger public in the catalogue of the exposition La voce delle ombre. Presenze africane nell’arte dell’Italia settentrionale (XVI-XIX secolo). Title "Lo schiavismo nel Nord Italia tra il XVI e il XIX secolo". I was also in the scientific committee of the exposition Presenze Africane (MUDEC, Museo delle culture, Milan, 13 May-18 September 2022).
• Public lesson in the high school Liceo A. Cevolani at Cento, 5 November 2022.
• The collaboration with the Cost Action Worck and the article in open access “Slavery in the Mediterranean” on the Handbook of Global Slavery.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

I have participated to the European booster ConnecCaribbean 823846 for the dissemination of the results of the project and I have created a website of the Marie Curie project: https://shadesofblack.altervista.org/
Potential users of my project results are academic historians of slavery and scholars of race studies as well as schoolteachers and high school and university students. The collaboration with MUDEC (Museo delle culture of Milan) also reached a larger audience, in particular EU citizens who went to see the exposition on people of colour in Northern Italy; the collaboration with the Cost Action Worck and the article on the Handbook of Global Slavery will also reach a wide audience.

Alessandro Longhi da Pietro Longhi, Il giocoliere, 1750-1760, Providence, Risd Museum