Project description
Slavery transformation in the Ottoman medieval Balkans
Research into slavery during the Ottoman era has concentrated on sources that post-date this period, using mainly military contexts. As such, it has failed to address the significance of the South Slavic perspective and the roots of this institution. Under the framework of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, the RANSOM project is intended to investigate the history of ransom slavery in the Western Balkans during the late medieval period, concentrating on the change from women to men in terms of slaves’ value. The main goal is to understand how the ransom system, gender disparities and diplomacy were involved in the development of European slavery.
Objective
This project investigates the development and functioning of ransom slavery on the Ottoman frontier in the Western Balkans in the late medieval period. It will analyze how the Ottoman advance introduced a ransom-based model of bondage that redefined a slave’s worth, shifting from the female body, commodified for domestic servitude and sexual exploitation, to the social and political capital of men. The study will provide a new analytical framework for studying premodern captivity by foregrounding the interplay of gender, politics, and commerce.
Existing scholarship on Ottoman-era captivity has largely overlooked this formative period, focusing on later-period sources and military frameworks, thereby creating a significant historiographical gap concerning the South Slavic experience and the system’s origins.
Focusing on the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) as the principal intermediary, this study employs a multi-faceted approach. It combines a comparative analysis of Christian and Islamic legal doctrines with a geopolitical synthesis of diplomatic and commercial networks. Methodologically, the project moves beyond traditional qualitative analysis by integrating Digital Humanities tools. A comprehensive database of raids, captives, and ransom cases will be developed to enable systematic geospatial and network analysis, mapping the full ecosystem that sustained the ransom economy.
This research will demonstrate that the ransom economy structurally deepened gendered inequalities in the valuation of human life. It will reveal that the ransom system was not merely an incidental outcome of frontier violence but depended on intermediary structures that embedded raiding into wider systems of diplomacy and trade for political and commercial gain. By analyzing the system’s genesis and the crucial role of intermediaries, the project will reframe scholarly and public understanding of the transformation in European slavery practices during the late medieval period.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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CB2 1TN CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom
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