The Business of Slavery

On September 17-19, 2014, the Centre for Economic and Business History and the Institute for the Study of Slavery at the University of Nottingham will co-host a conference on “The Business of Slavery.”

The conference aims to bring together assessments of the contributions of enslaved people to the economy of different eras and societies and from various perspectives, including the wider economy, the slave traders, the slave holders and the slaves themselves. It will compare these assessments over chronological eras and in societies around the globe. Papers are invited which discuss themes as diverse as (but which are not restricted to); slave trading (including foreign and indigenous trades, legal and illegal trades), the economies of slave societies, the economies of the slaves themselves, (including hiring out), the use of slaves by freedmen and freedwomen, serfdom, debt bondage, prostitution, forced (including child) labour, and from chronological periods as diverse as Ancient Greece and Rome, Medieval Europe, the early-modern Barbary States, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and the modern world.