Slaves of the Black Sea Region in Istanbul: Spatial and Social Mobility in the 17th Century

Veruschka Wagner
 
The institution of slavery was an integral part of Ottoman society and continued to exist into the 20th century. The Ottoman system was characterized by its openness, which allowed slaves access to economic and social development. The research project will focus on this point and analyse on the basis of Court registers the spatial and social mobility of slaves originating from the Black Sea region in 17th-century Istanbul. The enslaved peoples’ places of origin as well as the period have hardly been taken into account in research on slavery in the Ottoman Empire, compared to other places and periods and especially in the here-intended combination. The increasing accessibility of sources simplifies analysis and enables examination of the period of a whole century. In contrast to perceptions of slavery as complete passive dependency of persons as Patterson’s image of social death evokes, the project will demonstrate that the enslaved possessed self-determined spaces of action and mobility that were linked to their (trans)cultural, economic, and personal relations. The project will give information about the legal status of slaves, their integration into a particular community, and their role in that community. The social and economic networks slaves were involved in and their exchange relationships within and between these networks are of particular importance. Central questions the project discusses are: What kind of mobility dynamics are shown by these flows? Were manumitted slaves really released into structures that allowed them to improve their legal and social positions? Was there a connection between the slaves’ careers and their regions of origin?