Edited by Christian G.

De Vito
and Anne Gerritsen

MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF

GLOBAL
LABOUR
Micro-Spatial Histories of Global Labour
Christian G. De Vito · Anne Gerritsen
Editors

Micro-Spatial
Histories of Global
Labour
Editors
Christian G. De Vito Anne Gerritsen
School of History Department of History
University of Leicester University of Warwick
Leicester, UK Coventry, UK

ISBN 978-3-319-58489-8 ISBN 978-3-319-58490-4 (eBook)

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 Preface

In May 2015, the Institute of World History of the Chinese Academy of

Social Sciences in Beijing invited the historian Hans Medick to give a lec-
ture, drawing on his work on the remote Swabian village of Laichingen,
located in the mountainous region of Württemberg in southern
Germany.1 Medick’s 1996 masterpiece features the daily struggle for
survival of the weavers and farmers of Laichingen, and forms part of an
approach known as Alltagsgeschichte or the history of the everyday. But
Medick’s approach is also explicitly a micro-historical one: he reads the
history of Laichingen through a micro-historical lens to reveal a view on
the past as a whole, or general history (allgemeine Geschichte).2 The lec-
ture in Beijing was well-received, as Medick describes in a recent publica-
tion.3 There were questions that connected the proto-industrial labour
practices of Laichingen to the pattern of development in the Yangtze
delta between Nanjing and Shanghai, and an observation by Institute
Director Zhang Shunhong that ‘world-history exists in micro-histories
and what happens in a village might be of a global meaning’.4 Zhang’s
comment and Medick’s reflections in a recent volume of Historische
Anthropologie point in the same direction this edited volume seeks to
travel, namely, to draw on the methodologies of micro-historical studies
in combination with the broad spatial approaches of global and world
history.
We will explain in more detail below what we understand micro- and
global historical approaches to mean, but first it may be worth expanding
briefly on why this direction of combining the two seems prudent at this

v
vi Preface

particular moment in time. Whether we take the field of global history

to have started with the writings of Thucydides (460–395 BCE) in the
ancient Greek world and Sima Qian (c. 145 or 135–86 BCE) of the Han
dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE) in China, or with Kenneth Pomeranz’
2000 publication of The Great Divergence, there can be little doubt that
in the last two decades, the field of history has been inundated with pub-
lications that espouse a global approach.5 Appearing more or less in tan-
dem with the first publications in this field were critical voices: those who
felt a history could only be called ‘global’ if it covered the entirety of
the globe;6 those who felt global history was by necessity so general that
it failed to deliver anything concrete or new;7 those who thought the
study of the global could never do justice to any primary sources, and
thus did not merit the term ‘history’;8 those who feel that the agency
of human entities is left out of a story ruled by macro-level structures
and institutions, etcetera.9 Of course, micro-historians have also received
their fair share of critiques, from those who claimed the micro-level
of analysis rendered the results irrelevant for anything other than the
micro-unit it purported to study, from those who felt the scarcity of the
sources invited too much historical imagination, or from those who felt
approaches like thick description and close observation should be left to
the anthropologists.10
In recent years, perhaps since 2010, the idea of combining the two
approaches, micro and global, has started to attract attention. Scholars
like Francesca Trivellato, Lara Putnam, John-Paul Ghobrial, Tonio
Andrade, Filippo de Vivo, Sebouh Aslanian, and Cao Yin, amongst oth-
ers, have begun to explore ways in which the two approaches can be
brought together.11 They have experimented with a number of different
terms—Ghobrial, Andrade, and Cao Yin describe their work as ‘global
microhistories’, fewer have used the term ‘micro-global history’—but
the intent of combining both is clear.12 Within the same period, sev-
eral of the gatherings of the professional associations in the field of his-
tory addressed this combination, including the European Social Science
History Conference and the congresses of the European Network in
Universal and Global History and the American Historical Association.13
Most recently, Maxine Berg (University of Warwick) and John-Paul
Ghobrial (University of Oxford) organised a conference in Venice in
February 2016, entitled ‘The Space Between: Connecting Microhistory
and Global History’.14
 Preface vii

It is in the same context that the scholars brought together here

embarked upon a series of conversations that eventually led to this pub-
lication. Christian G. De Vito organised a panel at the 2014 European
Social Science History Conference in Vienna, followed by several presen-
tations at a conference in Salvador, Brazil, in the spring of 2015 and the
Cosmopolis seminar in Leiden. And last but not least, in January 2016,
the Global History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick
hosted all the authors at a writing workshop, where the ideas presented
here started to take their final form. We are grateful for the numerous
funders and organisations that supported these events and our participa-
tion financially, especially the working group ‘Mundos do Trabalho’ in
Brazil, the University of Padua-FIRB 2012 Mediterranean Borders, and
the Global History and Culture Centre.
This volume, then, seeks to participate in the conversations about
global and micro-history, and make a contribution to their combina-
tion as a way forward for historical research. As editors, we offer one
particular model in our introductory chapter, which sets out our vision
for a new way of practicing the craft of global history, but we also pre-
sent a variety of different approaches in the empirical chapters offered
by the contributors to this volume. We have not imposed our editorial
authority to emphasize a singular approach; instead, we have encouraged
a diversity of visions so as to facilitate the debates and discussions that
will undoubtedly follow. In practice, what this means is that in the intro-
duction, we set out our understanding of what we call ‘micro-spatial his-
tory’: an approach that seeks to avoid the ever so common conflation of
the analytical level of the analysis, macro or micro, with its spatial level
(global or local), proposing to combine the tools of micro-analysis with
a spatial approach. We suggest that a mere reduction of scales, which
starts with the necessarily generalised units, standards and measures of
the macro-level and ends with the smallest discernible historical unit,
goes directly against the appeal of micro-historians, which seeks to use
the particular and the exceptional as tools to enhance our understanding
of the unexceptional.
The individual chapters reveal the wide variety of ways in which this
combination of different tools from the micro-historical kit can be put to
use in the historical landscapes of the post-spatial turn. For Canepari, the
connections identified between different historical sites add up to a coher-
ent trans-local vision; for De Vito, the key point lies in the simultaneity
of singularity and connectedness of individual places; for D’Angelo, the
viii Preface

historical landscape can be visualised as a carpet, where the pattern reveals

both the structuring elements of society in the warp of the carpet, and
the varied and multi-coloured stories of individual agency that make up
the weft. Atabaki looks at the consequences of a global event such as the
First World War from the perspective of short- and long-distance labour
recruitment across the Persian region; Gerritsen reverses the perspec-
tive, and focuses on a single locality where the manufacture of a prod-
uct was undertaken for both regional and world markets; in Pizzolato’s
chapter, the focus lies on how a located event was differently appropriated
and acted upon by historical actors and institutions in distinct sites. Of
course, a multitude of other methodologies, conceptualisations and theo-
ries feature in these studies: biography, to tell the story of global lives and
foreground the connected histories of distinct sites (Marcocci); prosopog-
raphy, to reveal the details of social groups where full biographical details
are absent (Tarruell); commodity chains, to follow the traces of com-
modities and the workers who handle them (Caracausi); network analy-
sis to show how people are connected across long distances (Mitsiou and
Preiser-Kapeller); and border studies, to examine short- and long-distance
migrations (Rolla and Di Fiore), to name but a few.
These methodological and theoretical insights are embedded in
research extensively based on primary sources. Ordered chronologically,
the chapters invite the reader to take an ideal voyage from the late medi-
eval Eastern Mediterranean to present-day Sierra Leone, through early
modern China and Italy, eighteenth-century Cuba and the Malvinas/
Falklands, the journeys of a missionary between India and Brazil and
those of Christian captives across the Ottoman Empire and Spain.
Labour is the trait d’union, analysed under multiple perspectives: its
management and recruitment; its voluntary and coerced spatial mobility;
its political perception and representation; and the workers’ own agency
and social networks.15 We very much hope that this volume, and the vari-
ety of approaches on offer in this collection, will be part of continuing
and new conversations about the encounters between local and global
historians, between labour historians and area specialists, and between
medievalists, early modernists and historians of more recent times

Leicester, UK Christian G. De Vito

Coventry, UK Anne Gerritsen
October 2016
 Preface ix

Notes
1. Hans Medick, Weben und Überleben in Laichingen 1650–1900:
Lokalgeschichte als allgemeine Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1996).
2. These methodological reflections can be found especially in the introduc-
tion of the book: Ibid., 13–37.
3. Hans Medick, ‘Turning Global? Microhistory in Extension’, Historische
Anthropologie 24, no. 2 (2016): 243–44.
4. Ibid., 244.
5. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner, Rev. ed, The
Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972); Sima Qian, Records
of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty, trans. Burton Watson, Rev. ed. (Hong
Kong: Research Centre for Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong;
New York, 1993); Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe,
and the Making of the Modern World Economy, The Princeton Economic
History of the Western World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
2000).
6. Simon Szreter, ‘Labor and World Development through the Lens of
Cotton: A Review Essay’, Population and Development Review 42, no. 2
(2016): 359–67.
7. Douglas Northrop, ‘Introduction: The Challenge of World History’,
in A Companion to World History, ed. Douglas Northrop (Chichester:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 1.
8. T. E. Vadney, ‘World History as an Advanced Academic Field’, Journal of
World History 1, no. 2 (1990): 212–13.
9. Roland Robertson, ‘Globalisation or Glocalisation?’, The Journal of
International Communication 18, no. 2 (2012): 191–208.
10. See the discussion of critiques in Sigurður G. Magnússon and István
Szíjártó, What Is Microhistory?: Theory and Practice (London; New York:
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013), 40–41; See also Robert Finlay,
‘The Refashioning of Martin Guerre’, American Historical Review 93, no.
3 (June 1988): 553–71; Steven Bednarski, A Poisoned Past: the Life and
Times of Margarida de Portu, a Fourteenth-century Accused Poisoner, 2014,
12–13.
11. Francesca Trivellato, ‘Un Nouveau Combat Pour L’histoire Au XXIe
Siècle?’ Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 70, no. 2 (April 2015): 333–
43; Lara Putnam, ‘To Study the Fragments/Whole: Microhistory and
the Atlantic World’, Journal of Social History, 39, no. 3 (Spring, 2006):
615–630; John-Paul A. Ghobrial, ‘The Secret Life of Elias of Babylon
and the Uses of Global Microhistory’, Past & Present 222, no. 1 (2014):
51–93; Tonio Andrade, ‘A Chinese Farmer, Two African Boys, and a
x Preface

Warlord: Toward a Global Microhistory’, Journal of World History 21,

no. 4 (2010): 573–91; F. de Vivo, ‘Prospect or Refuge? Microhistory,
History on the Large Scale: A Response’, Cultural and Social History 7,
no. 3 (2010): 387–97; Sebouh David Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean
to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants
from New Julfa, The California World History Library 17 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2011); Cao Yin, ‘The Journey of Isser
Singh: A Global Microhistory of a Sikh Policeman’, Journal of Punjab
Studies 21, no. 2 (2014): 325–53.
12. Martin Dusinberre referred to the term “micro-global history” in the
abstract of his paper for the annual conference of the European Social
Science History Conference, held in April 2016. For the programme, see
https://esshc.socialhistory.org/esshc-user/programme [consulted on 22
September 2016].
13. In 2015, the European Network in Universal and Global History held
its biannual conference in Paris, and featured sessions addressing the
issue; the International Institute of Social History, which organises the
European Social Science History Conference, devoted several pan-
els to the topic at its conference in 2016; and the American Historical
Association is using ‘Historical Scale: Linking Levels of Experience’ as the
theme for its 2017 conference in Denver.
14. For details of the conference, and a brief report, see http://www2.war-
wick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/thespaceinbetween [consulted on 22
September 2016].
15. For an example of a fruitful expansion of the labour history of Japan into
a global debate: Martin Dusinberre, ‘Circulations of Labor, Bodies of
Work. A Japanese Migrant in Meiji Hawai‘i’, Historische Anthropologie,
24, no. 2 (2016), 194–217.
 Contents

1 Micro-Spatial Histories of Labour: Towards a New

Global History 1
Christian G. De Vito and Anne Gerritsen

2 Moving Hands: Types and Scales of Labour Mobility in

the Late Medieval Eastern Mediterranean (1200–1500
CE) 29
Ekaterini Mitsiou and Johannes Preiser-Kapeller

3 Catholic Missions and Native Subaltern Workers:

Connected Micro-Histories of Labour from India and
Brazil, ca. 1545–1560 69
Giuseppe Marcocci

4 Prisoners of War, Captives or Slaves? The Christian

Prisoners of Tunis and La Goleta in 1574 95
Cecilia Tarruell

5 Making the Place Work: Managing Labour in Early

Modern China 123
Anne Gerritsen

xi
xii Contents

6 Woollen Manufacturing in the Early Modern

Mediterranean (1550–1630): Changing Labour Relations
in a Commodity Chain 147
Andrea Caracausi

7 Connected Singularities: Convict Labour in Late Colonial

Spanish America (1760s–1800) 171
Christian G. De Vito

8 Keeping in Touch: Migrant Workers’ Trans-Local Ties in

Early Modern Italy 203
Eleonora Canepari

9 Spatiality and the Mobility of Labour in Pre-Unification

Italy (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries) 229
Laura Di Fiore and Nicoletta Rolla

10 Oil and Labour: The Pivotal Position of Persian Oil in

the First World War and the Question of Transnational
Labour Dependency 261
Touraj Atabaki

11 ‘On the Unwary and the Weak’: Fighting Peonage in

Wartime United States: Connections, Categories,
Scales 291
Nicola Pizzolato

12 From Traces to Carpets: Unravelling Labour Practices in

the Mines of Sierra Leone 313
Lorenzo D’Angelo

Index 343
 Editors and Contributors

About the editors

Christian G. De Vito is Research Associate at the University of

Leicester. His current research addresses convict labour and convict
circulation in late-colonial and post-independence Latin America (ca.
1760s to 1898). He has published extensively on global labour history,
social history, and the history of punishment and psychiatry. De Vito is
co-chair of the Labour Network of the European Social Science History
Conference (ESSHC) and co-coordinator of the ‘Free and Unfree
Labour’ working group of the European Labour History Network
(ELHN); he is Vice-President of the International Social History
Association (ISHA) and co-editor of the ‘Work in Global and Historical
Perspective’ series at De Gruyter.

Anne Gerritsen is Professor of History at the University of Warwick,

UK, where she directs the Global History and Culture Centre. She has
published on global material culture, the history of design, and Chinese
history, especially the history of porcelain manufacturing, but also local
religion and gender.

xiii
xiv Editors and Contributors

Contributors

Touraj Atabaki is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the International

Institute of Social History. Atabaki studied first theoretical physics and
then history, and worked at Utrecht University, University of Amsterdam
and Leiden University. In the last two universities he held the Chair of
Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia. As Guest Researcher
and Professor, Atabaki has been visiting a number of universities and
research institutes in the United States, Europe and Asia. Atabaki’s
earlier research interest encompassed historiography, ethnic studies
and the practice of authoritarianism in Iran and the Ottoman Empire-
Turkey, and everyday Stalinism in Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus.
However, in the last ten years, his research interest has focused more on
labour history and the history of work and published books and articles
in this field. His latest publication covers the hundred years’ social his-
tory of labour in the Iranian oil industry. For the selected and entire list
of Atabaki’s publication, see:https://socialhistory.org/en/staff/touraj-
atabaki and www.atabaki.nl. At present, Atabaki is the President of the
International Society of Iranian Studies.

Eleonora Canepari obtained her Ph.D. in History at the University of

Turin (2006) and at the EHESS (Paris, 2012). Her research focuses on
urban mobility during the seventeenth century. She has been a Marie
Curie postdoctoral fellow at the CMH (CNRS, Paris), Gerda Henkel fel-
low at the University of Oxford, and member of the CRRS (University
of Toronto). At present she holds a ‘Rising Star’ packaged chair from
the Fondation A*Midex (Aix-Marseille Université—TELEMME UMR
7303), and is PI of the project Settling in motion. Mobility and the mak-
ing of the urban space (16th–18th c). Her most recent publication is
Mobilhommes, with B. Mésini and S. Mourlane, 2016.

Andrea Caracausi is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at the

University of Padua. He received a BA in History (University of Padua)
and a Ph.D. in Economic and Social History (Bocconi University). He
was Adjunct Professor in Business History and Economic History at
the University of Trieste, Venice and Verona and at Bocconi University.
His field of research is the social and economic history of Italy and the
Mediterranean world, with a focus on the labour market, guilds, insti-
tutions and legal proceedings in the early modern period. Recent
 Editors and Contributors xv

publications include ‘Information asymmetries and craft guilds in pre-

modern markets: evidence from Italian proto-industry’, The Economic
History Review, and ‘Beaten Children and Women’s Work in Early
Modern Italy’, Past & Present 222, 1 (2014): 95–128.

Lorenzo D’Angelo received his Ph.D. in Human Sciences–

Anthropology of the Contemporary at the University of Milano-Bicocca
in 2011. Since 2007, he has been conducting historical and ethnographic
research on the economic, cultural and religious aspects of artisanal min-
ing in Sierra Leone. In exploring these issues, his study raises key ques-
tions concerning the anthropology of work. For this reason, in 2012 he
became a member of the newly formed Italian Society of Labour History
(SISLav). His areas of interest include also anthropology of mining,
global commodity chains analysis, colonial history of West Africa, ethno-
graphic theory, and political ecology.

Laura Di Fiore is Research Fellow at the University of Bologna. Her

research interests include the making of borders in Europe, global his-
tory, police history and identification practices in British imperial history
(nineteenth and twentieth centuries). She is author of two monographs:
L’Islam e l’Impero. Il Medio Oriente di Toynbee all’indomani della Grande
Guerra (Rome 2015) and Alla frontiera. Confini e documenti d’identità
nel Mezzogiorno continentale preunitario (Soveria Mannelli 2013). With
Marco Meriggi, she published World History. Le nuove rotte della sto-
ria (Rome-Bari 2011) and edited Movimenti e confini. Spazi mobili
nell’Italia preunitaria (Rome 2013).

Giuseppe Marcocci is Associate Professor in Iberian History (European

and Extra-European, 1450–1800) at the University of Oxford and a
Fellow at Exeter College. He was visiting professor at the University of
Lisbon (2009), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
(2013) and the European University Institute, Florence (2016). His
research focuses on the Iberian world and Renaissance historiography.
His most recent book is Indios, cinesi, falsari: Le storie del mondo nel
Rinascimento (2016).

Ekaterini Mitsiou (Ph.D. in 2006 in Byzantine History) is currently

a postdoctoral researcher for the Wittgenstein-Prize Project ‘Mobility,
xvi Editors and Contributors

Microstructures and Personal Agency in Byzantium’ at the Institute

for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Vienna
(headed by Prof. Claudia Rapp, Vienna: http://rapp.univie.ac.at/).
Her research interests include economic, social and ecclesiastic history
of Byzantium, (female) monasticism, gender studies, social network
analysis, spatial analysis, GIS, and mobility. Recent publications include
‘Die Netzwerke einer kulturellen Begegnung: byzantinische und latein-
ische Klöster in Konstantinopel im 13. und 14. Jh’ (ed., 2015) and
‘Monastischer Raum und Raumordnung in der byzantinischen Kirche’
(ed., 2016).

Nicola Pizzolato is the author of Challenging Global Capitalism: Labor

Migration, Radical Struggle and Urban Change in Detroit and Turin
(Palgrave, 2013) and of numerous articles that focus on the interplay
between race and ethnic relations, working-class self-activity and political
campaigns. His most recent work is on unfree and precarious labour in
the twentieth-century United States. He is Senior Lecturer at Middlesex
University and Honorary Research Fellow at the School of History of
Queen Mary, University of London.

Johannes Preiser-Kapeller is a Senior Research Associate in the

Division for Byzantine Research at the Institute for Medieval Research
in the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Lecturer at the Institute for
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Vienna. He
uses social and spatial network analysis and complexity theory to map
social, religious, economic and political connections within the medieval
world. Recent publications include ‘Harbours and Maritime Networks
as Complex Adaptive Systems’ (ed., 2015) and ‘Proceedings of the 3rd
HistoInformatics Workshop on Computational History’ (ed., 2016).

Nicoletta Rolla is Senior Research Fellow at the École des Hautes

Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris, Teaching Assistant in Early Modern
History at University of Milan-Bicocca and Research Fellow at Gerda
Henkel Stiftung of Düsseldorf. Her research interests include labour his-
tory, history of construction sites, history of migrations, judicial practices
in civil and criminal courts, consumer credit (seventeenth and eighteenth
century). She is author of the monograph La piazza e il palazzo. I mer-
cati e il vicariato di Torino nel Settecento (Pisa 2010), and of several arti-
cles and essays.
 Editors and Contributors xvii

Cecilia Tarruell is a Newton International Fellow at the University of

Oxford. Her research focuses on the Spanish Empire and the analysis of
Christian-Islamic interactions in the Mediterranean area during the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. She is particularly interested in the
processes of (re)integration and assimilation in Europe—and beyond—of
individuals and social groups with extensive experiences both in Christian
and Islamic lands. Prior to her current post, Tarruell was a Max Weber
Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence (2015–2016).
She received a joint doctorate in early modern history from the École
des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the Universidad
Autónoma de Madrid in 2015.
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 The ‘space of possible shapes’ of labour mobility

(graph: Mitsiou and Preiser-Kapeller) 38
Fig. 2.2 The ‘space of options’ of individual agency
(graph: Mitsiou and Preiser-Kapeller) 39
Fig. 2.3 The connections between the port of Tana/Azow and
localities of origin of merchants active there in 1359/1360
(graph: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Before European Hegemony) 43
Fig. 2.4 Places of origin of oarsmen serving on the ship sailing
from Venice to Jaffa in 1414 (sites scaled according to the
number of oarsmen coming from there; graph:
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Civitas Thauris) 47
Fig. 2.5 The route of the ship sailing from Venice to Jaffa in 1414
and the places of origin of the oarsmen (graph: Johannes
Preiser-Kapeller, Civitas Thauris) 48
Fig. 2.6 The network between localities emerging because of the
mobility of the oarsmen and of the ship sailing from
Venice to Jaffa in 1414 (graph: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller,
Civitas Thauris) 49
Fig. 2.7 The ‘ego-network’ of the ‘Turkish’ slave Ali from Kayseri,
sold by Gandulfus de Staeria (from Genoa) to Palmerio de
Florenzola (from Florence) in Famagusta on Cyprus,
27 July 1301 (graph: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller,
Civitas Thauris) 53
Fig. 2.8 Connections between Famagusta and the Mediterranean
world on the basis of links to the places or origin of merchants
who came there to trade with slaves in 1300/1301

xix
xx List of Figures

(links weighted according to the number of merchants active in

Famagusta from that city; graph: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller,
Civitas Thauris) 54
Fig. 4.1 Duration of detention 106
Fig. 4.2 Areas of detention 107
Fig. 5.1 Blue-and-white glazed moon-shaped porcelain waterjug,
made in Jingdezhen, ca. 1475–ca. 1525. H 15,5 cm x L 21 cm.
Rijksmuseum, AK-RAK-1982-2 124
Fig. 5.2 Porcelain fishbowl‚ decorated in wucai style with
underglaze cobalt blue and overglaze enamels. H 37,8 cm,
D 55,2 cm, weight: 32.3 kg. Jingdezhen, 1567–1572. Inv. no.
PDF.778. © Sir Percival David collection, the Trustees
of the British Museum 133
Fig. 6.1 The Padua-based wool commodity chain, 1550–1630 154
Fig. 8.1 Foreigners’ relatives in the birthplace and elsewhere 212
Fig. 8.2 Percentages of relatives living in Rome, the birthplace
or elsewhere, related to the number of years the migrants
had spent in Rome (tot. 128) 213
Fig. 8.3 Percentages of relatives living in Rome, the birthplace
or elsewhere, related to age at migration (tot. 127) 213
Fig. 8.4 Possession of property at home and years spent in Rome
(tot. 19) 217
Fig. 8.5 Places of origin of the migrants included in the wills sample
(tot. 173) 219
 List of Tables

Table 4.1 Duration of detention 105

Table 6.1 Places of residence of the bobbin spinners, 1530–1669 155
Table 6.2 Places of residence of the wheel spinners, 1530–1669 155
Table 6.3 Survey of the trades of the spinning women’s husbands,
sixteenth century 156
Table 6.4 Places of residence of the weavers, 1530–1669 157
Table 7.1 Composition of the workforce in the construction
sites of Havana, 1763–1777 175
Table 7.2 Population of Puerto de la Soledad, Malvinas, 1767–1785 179
Table 10.1 Employment in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company,
1914–1921 275

xxi
 List of Maps

Map 7.1 Connected Havana: Origins of the convicts, 1760s–1800s 183

Map 7.2 Connected Malvinas: Flows of penal transportation,
late-eighteenth century 186
Map 7.3 Connected Malvinas: New settlements, late-eighteenth
century 188
Map 9.1 Origin of entrepreneurs and construction workers active
in Turin in the eighteenth century 235
Map 9.2 “Carta generale del Regno delle Due Sicilie”, Gabriello
De Sanctis, 1840 238

xxiii
 CHAPTER 1

Micro-Spatial Histories of Labour: Towards

a New Global History

Christian G. De Vito and Anne Gerritsen

Introduction
At first glance, global history and micro-history appear irreconcil-
ably disjunctive in their concerns, scope, and methodology. Is it possi-
ble to bring global and micro-history into a productive engagement? If

Draft versions of this article were discussed during the session on ‘Translocal-
and micro-histories of global labour’ at the European Social Science History
Conference 2014 (Vienna, 25 April 2014), at the Cosmopolis seminar
(Leiden, 13 October 2014) and at the writing workshop held at Warwick on
23–24 January 2015. For their insightful feedback, we would like to thank all
participants, together with the following colleagues (in random order): Simona
Cerutti, Juliane Schiel, István M. Szijártó, Andrea Caracausi, Lara Putnam,
Franco Ramella, Jos Gommans, Tom Cunningham, Valentina Favaró, Henrique
Espada Lima, Evelien de Hoop, Eloisa Betti, Sigurđur Gylfi Magnússon, Piero
Brunello, Jesús Agua de la Roza, Michele Nani, Lorenzo D’Angelo. Many thanks
to Emma Battell Lowman for her excellent work as copy-editor.

C.G. De Vito (*)

University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Gerritsen
University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 1

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_1
2 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

so, which streams in these sub-disciplines might be relevant or open to

such an interaction? What might be the theoretical and methodological
implications of such an engagement? These questions present the central
concern of this essay: to identify the significant opportunities that arise
from combining the global historical perspective with micro-analysis. We
would argue that it is possible to overcome the binary division between
global and local by combining micro-analysis with a spatially aware
approach. We propose to use the term ‘micro-spatial history’ to refer to
this combination.
This essay begins by (re)defining ‘global’ and ‘micro’ from the per-
spective of their interaction. It then moves to an exploration of how the
perspective of micro-spatial history relates to periodisation and concep-
tualisations of time. The final section addresses the potential of micro-
spatial history for labour studies in particular. We close by framing this
approach as an alternative perspective on global history.

The ‘Global’ and the ‘Spatial’

The move away from Euro-centrism and nation-based histories, which
defines the field of global and world history as a whole, has produced a
fundamental reorientation of historiography and of the historian’s craft
during recent decades.1 However, as the field expanded and became
institutionalised, new conceptualisations and practices of global history
have been included in the discipline, while the debate on its epistemol-
ogy has lagged behind. Scholars have recently highlighted the conflict-
ing nature of some of the approaches within the field.2 Lynn Hunt, for
example, has contrasted the ‘top-down’ approach of macro-analytical and
economics-driven global history with the ‘bottom-up’ perspective that
defines globalisation as ‘a series of transnational processes in which the
histories of diverse places become connected and interdependent’.3 From
a different angle, Angelika Epple has insisted on the distinction between
global histories that stand in the tradition of universal history and seek
to cover the whole world, and those which are influenced by the spatial
turn and conceive space as ‘socially constructed and not as a geographi-
cal fact’.4 Partly overlapping with these interpretations, we contend here
that the most important divide within the field of global history exists
between the interpretation that conflates the concept of ‘the global’ with
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 3

a macro-analytical perspective, and the view of the global as a spatially

aware mindset and methodology. In other words, there are those who
mean ‘analysis on the macro level’ when they say ‘global’, and those who
mean ‘connections that stretch across cultural boundaries’. We argue
that these are not complementary but mutually exclusive alternatives.
Consequently, after a brief exploration of the limitations of the macro-
analytical version of global history, we provide an epistemological basis
for our alternative vision.
For the purposes of this essay, we define the macro-analytical approach
as the perspective by which the researcher predetermines the catego-
ries, spatial units, and periodisations that shape the topic of research, as
opposed to seeing these as emerging from within specific historical pro-
cesses and as the products of the agency of historical actors. For exam-
ple, the macro-analytical approach might imply fitting the heterogeneous
datasets and practices yielded by the sources into standardised taxono-
mies, prioritising continuities across space, and establishing teleological
connections between events across time. Within the field of global his-
tory, this approach is usually, though not exclusively, combined with a
spatial focus that covers the whole planet. Some global historians build
databases that span the globe, as in the case of the Collaborative for
Historical Information and Analysis (CHIA), which brings together a
broad number of databases organised around predetermined variables
concerning population and migration, commodities, government systems
and actions, climate and health.5 Other global historians seek to reach
across the globe by comparing large spatial units and civilisations—most
typically within Eurasia. In both cases, generalisations are made on the
basis of qualitatively diverse phenomena, brought together through spa-
tial units and conceptual categories constructed by the researchers them-
selves, with scarce attention to contextual differentiations and to the
agents’ own multiple perceptions and representations. For the same rea-
sons, discontinuities and other connections and interpretations are often
underplayed, elided, or omitted.
The focus on comparisons and relationships between macro-regions
has helped to overcome traditional geographical divisions that domi-
nate national historiographies and area studies, and revise (or ‘provin-
cialise’) Europe’s role in history.6 Key works in the field illustrate the
impact of this approach: Janet Abu-Lughod’s study on the formation of
4 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

a world-system between 1250 and 1350, i.e. ‘before European hegem-

ony’; the new visibility acquired by Central Asia, both in relation to the
decisive formation of the Mongol Empire, and regarding the vast region
away from any polity control that Willem van Schendel and then James
C. Scott namedZomia; Andre Gunder Frank’s study on the historical
centrality of Asia, and especially China; and Kenneth Pomeranz’ ‘great
divergence’ between Chinese and European history.7 However, the
exclusive focus on the big scale also produces fundamental distortions.
To begin with, it accentuates economic and political-institutional issues
at the expense of social and cultural aspects, leaving little room for the
study of historical agency and rendering differentiations around space,
class, ethnicity, and gender barely visible. Moreover, from a spatial per-
spective, this approach tends to create a hierarchy between ‘centre’ and
‘periphery’, relegating ‘the local’ to the ranks of case studies that merely
serve to illustrate the interaction of predefined factors. Therefore, the
macro-historical approach also tends towards an ethnocentric perspec-
tive, albeit one that substitutes Euro-centrism with Eurasia-centrism. The
exclusive focus on the global scope also usually implies the juxtaposition
of contradictory insights from the secondary literature, and a move away
from in-depth study of primary sources.
An alternative approach might take ‘the global’ to mean a spatially
sensitive mindset. This makes the historian aware of the role of spatial
dimensions in the construction of history, the ways in which multiple
connections among places and temporalities construct spatiality, and the
need for methodologies that overcome the local/global divide. We con-
sider that three research strands belong to this approach, which we refer
to collectively as spatial history.8 The first strand includes studies that
have sought to deconstruct the idea of the nation state as a homoge-
neous and ‘natural’ object, either by historicising its formation and ide-
ologies—focusing on cross-border economic and cultural exchanges—or
by exploring the tension between centralising projects of territorial state-
building and sub-national spatial units.9 The second strand, the ‘new
imperial histories’, have focused on the intra- and inter-imperial circula-
tion of individuals, objects, ideas, and imaginaries, and have questioned
the centre/periphery model by showing the limits of imperial govern-
mentality, the impact of colonies on the metropole, and independent
connections among the colonies themselves.10 The third strand includes
studies that have explicitly addressed the connection between ‘the local’
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 5

and ‘the global’, and in some cases have revealed the need to overcome
the very local/global divide.11
Such approaches, in connection with the growing awareness of the
role of spatiality in history referred to as the ‘spatial turn’, characterise
the majority of publications in the field of global history.12 However,
they are largely under-represented in surveys of the discipline, perhaps
because their fragmented nature and lack of strong epistemological foun-
dations make their contributions to broader historiographical issues less
visible.13 Indeed, most of this literature pays scant attention to analytical
issues such as the relationship between individuals and structures, power
inequalities, representativeness/generalisation, the structure of archives,
and the historian’s craft. We argue that micro-history can offer precisely
this epistemological basis, while benefiting from the methodological
insights offered by spatial history.

Micro
Pourquoi faire simple si on peut faire compliqué?14 It seems to us that the
anti-reductionist approach of micro-history, captured above by Jacques
Revel, can provide spatial history with a solid epistemological basis. It is
not our intention to write the complete history of the vast and complex
field of micro-history.15 We draw here mostly on the Italian microstoria,
since this field has foregrounded some issues that are especially relevant for
the establishment of micro-spatial history.16 In particular, microstoria has
highlighted the need to define categories, spatial units, and periodisations
by the perspectives and actions of historical subjects themselves.17 Hence,
Italian micro-historians have on the one hand pointed to the importance
of the intensive study of primary sources and the attention to apparently
meaningless ‘traces’ within them, and on the other hand stressed the exist-
ence of multiple temporalities across various geographical and social con-
figurations, and refused teleological interpretations of history.
Building on these bases, particularly Maurizio Gribaudi has insisted
that differences and changes in social practices are ‘the natural dimension
of historicity’, and that the fabric of history can be described as ‘a con-
figuration of moving points, organised according to specific local forms.’
According to this perspective, each context is unique, and its unique-
ness is constructed at the intersection of infinite and ever-mobile con-
nections, to which, in turn, each context contributes. This view of the
6 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

past as a series of locally configured connected points calls for overcom-

ing both the global–local and the structure–agency divides. Indeed, as
Carlo Ginzburg has written, ‘any social structure is the result of inter-
action and of numerous individual strategies’18: structures and agency
intersect at all scales, rather than being conflated with, respectively, the
global and the local scales.19 By ‘following the traces’ of distinct groups
of people, objects, and ideas across the spaces and times they relate to,
we can address broad historical questions.
It is this epistemology of difference and connectedness wherein lies
the most important contribution of micro-history to spatial history.
Yet, in turn, spatial history can be beneficial to micro-history, particu-
larly with regard to methodological concerns. Indeed, micro-historians
have traditionally focused on individuals and communities within specific
places or relatively small regions, and have postulated the need to ‘reduce
the scale’ in order to maintain complexity. In so doing, they have fallen
into the same logical problem as their macro-analytical colleagues: just
as some global historians equate macro approach and global scope, they
conflate the micro level of analysis and the local spatial scale.20 However,
it is not the case that a micro-analytical approach can only be applied
to single and/or small spatial units. In fact, neither the intensity of the
archival research per se nor the awareness that ‘all phases through which
research unfolds are constructed and not given’ necessarily imply a focus
on one place or a single archive.21 Rather, they point to the need for a
high level of reflexivity on the part of the researcher, who should have
the latitude to make multiple choices and be aware of each.
Micro-historians’ conflation of the micro and the local reveals a lim-
ited conceptualisation of space, and of the connections between different
contexts. It implies that ‘the local’ is a close and inward-looking unit,
and prioritises the social relations that take place within certain locali-
ties as represented in records held exclusively in locally based archives.
Conversely, a spatial history centred on specific contexts could benefit
from a micro-analytical approach, provided that it is based on a dynamic
conceptualisation of spatiality. As Doreen Massey already noted: ‘the spa-
tial’ is ‘constructed out of the multiplicity of social relations across all
scales’, and ‘the local’ can be understood as an open space, whose speci-
ficity stems from the unfinished process of the construction of interre-
lations across spaces rather than through bounded and self-referential
‘identities’.22 This perspective has three major consequences for our
micro-spatial research.
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 7

First, circulations can be addressed that exist behind the scene of

even apparently static localities, and in relation to individuals who have
not themselves travelled. In fact, from this perspective, each place can
be seen as a contact zone, no matter whether it is Denys Lombard’s
‘Javanese crossroads’,23 Mulich’s ‘inter-imperial microregion’, a world
city like Massey’s present-day London or Kapil Raj’s eighteenth-century
Calcutta,24 or a small village in a remote borderland.25 No individual
ever lives in totally isolated contexts: even if a whole life is spent in a
single place, objects, ideas, and people around him/her come from and/
or deal with other places. Each person is also part of multiple networks
of power extending into space, constantly interacting with all of these.
Moreover, each individual develops his or her own perceptions and rep-
resentations of space, of ‘otherness’ and of the world. Finally, all these
configurations of material and symbolic spatialities inevitably change
across time, and each person does not simply react to these changes, but
also shapes them.
Second, because places are hubs of multiple networks and intersec-
tions of multiple areas of influence by individual and institutional power,
the ways in which places are connected with one another require atten-
tion. To quote the insightful metaphor recently proposed by Kirwin
Shaffer, ‘the lines’ (the circulations) and ‘the dots’ (the contexts) should
be kept together in historical writing.26 The concept of trans-locality,
used in several disciplines, seems especially appropriate for this task for it
draws attention to the fact that connections, before linking large regions
and polities, put specific sites in contact with each other.27 Therefore,
trans-locality highlights the need for an integrated study of short-,
medium-, and long-distance connections within and across political,
administrative, linguistic, and cultural borders; and it enhances the ques-
tioning of the global/local divide through detailed analysis of the entan-
glements among sites, on the nature of connections, and on the reasons
and relevance of disconnections. Migration studies are one of the areas
for which the refreshing potential of trans-locality can best be glimpsed.
Historical studies on the topic still tend to be framed in macro-analyt-
ical and (at most) trans-national perspectives, by the idea of ‘sending’
and ‘receiving’ countries, and the exclusive focus on top-down exclu-
sion/integration dualism.28 Conversely, a trans-local insight demands
analysis of specific places and contexts implicated in migration, includ-
ing consideration of sources and destinations of actual and other places
that prove relevant in the migrant’s extended networks and imaginary.
8 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

This also directs attention to the power relationships of which each

migrant is part, and with the multiple identities imbricated in the pro-
cess. Finally, because of this deep insight into the spatiality of migrations,
the relevance of traditional distinctions such as ‘internal’ and ‘interna-
tional’ migrations is not taken for granted, but addressed from a con-
text-bound perspective and from the standpoint of the migrants’ own
strategies.
Besides addressing the circulations in apparently static localities and
lives and paying attention to trans-local connections, a third consequence
stems from an open conceptualisation of place. It is possible to envis-
age a more dynamic comparative history, one that addresses distinctive
processes of ‘production of locality’ through the connections and con-
flicts that operate within and beyond each place.29 In this perspective,
the units to be compared are no longer taken for granted, and no prede-
termined ‘factor’ is being compared; rather, the key issues and the ever-
changing configurations are selected according to historical questions
and through the intensive study of primary sources. For instance, regard-
ing what they have termed ‘second slavery’, Dale Tomich and Michael
Zeuske have conceptualised ‘comparative microhistories’.30 They envis-
aged ‘a different method than the comparison of apparently independ-
ent and commensurate (national) units’ and therefore chose an Atlantic
plantation zone as the unit of observation; they sought to examine the
‘formation of relations in particular local time-place settings and theoret-
ically [to reconstruct] the complex and multiform processes that produce
the difference between them’; and explored ‘the conditions, possibilities,
and limits of agency’ at the cross-roads of ‘social relations that are spa-
tially and temporally complex and diverse’.
Comparisons then become possible in and across spatial units spe-
cifically related to the topic under research, or suggested by the histori-
cal sources. They might involve places that have not been in contact
through space, or belonged to different historical periods. Moreover,
as the borders of each place become porous under the action of mul-
tiple exchanges, direct and indirect entanglements between the units
that are being compared are taken into consideration. Some research
strategies are, therefore, particularly relevant. Examples include Sanjay
Subrahmanyam’s ‘connected histories’, because they foreground how
multiple local and regional interactions across different sites in the
world gave rise to historical phenomena;31 Sandra Curtis Comstock’s
‘incorporating comparisons’, so far as they incorporate the awareness
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 9

of the fluid and historically defined nature of categories and borders;32

and Ann Laura Stoler’s and Clare Anderson’s focus on ‘the politics of
comparison’, that is, those comparisons among places and phenomena
that were made by the historical actors themselves.33 Taken as a whole,
these approaches allow for a rethinking of comparison as the analysis of
the dialectics between specificity and connectivity of each site, and as the
ethnographical study of the impact of multiple connections on specific
localities.

Micro-Spatiality
The key feature of the micro-spatial perspective lies in the focus on the
simultaneity of different and interconnected spaces. However, we may
ask ourselves how this epistemological approach can be operationalised
in empirical research. It is our contention that a research strategy is pos-
sible that exceeds the local boundaries by closely ‘following the traces’,
connecting multiple contexts by exploring the circulation of individuals,
objects, and ideas.34 In at least two areas—‘global lives’ and the circu-
lation of objects—some research in the past decade has dealt with the
need to overcome the local/global divide and even explicitly addressed
the relations between micro-history and global history.
In an important article, Francesca Trivellato has considered the study
of the biographies of individuals who travelled across the globe of stra-
tegic importance to ‘global microhistories’ (or ‘global history on a small
scale’35). Trivellato’s own study about the Sephardim of Livorno repre-
sents a model for this kind of global biography at once sensitive to con-
text and cross-cultural encounters and geared to address fundamental
historical issues. The author cites Emma Rothschild’s The Inner Life of
Empires as another example, directly inspired by the ‘manifesto of micro-
history’ written by Carlo Poni and Ginzburg in 1979 in its effort to con-
nect ‘micro- and macro-histories by the histories of the individuals’ own
connections’.36 Interestingly, that very manifesto indicated the possibility
of a ‘micro-nominative’ research strategy regarding ‘individuals belong-
ing to those social strata characterised by greater geographical mobility’.
Other examples of this approach include Natalie Zemon Davies’ study of
Leo Africanus,37 Edoardo Grendi’s study of the trans-local connections
of the Genoese family Balbi, and Ginzburg’s ‘experiment in micro-his-
tory’ on the life of the seventeenth- to eighteenth-century corporal Jean-
Pierre Purry in Neuchatel, Amsterdam, Capetown, and Batavia.38
10 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

As these works show, the life experiences of diverse individuals and

social groups can be dealt with through a micro-spatial approach. These
studies all address transcontinental circulations, but suggest a way for
dealing with much smaller, even local circulations: by following the indi-
viduals’ own connections, and acknowledging the same complexity in
cultural exchanges and in the individuals’ own spatial representations.
This is a field that some Italian micro-historians have explored during
recent decades, centring their analysis on jurisdictional contentions and
social networks of non-elite migrants across the borders of various pre-
unification ‘Italian’ states, and surrounding territories.39
‘Micro-global’ connections have also been addressed in the context
of the circulation of objects. Studies in commodity chains, for example,
seek to trace the social and labour relations involved in the processes of
designing, producing, transporting, trading, and consuming a certain
commodity. These studies often foreground the cultural aspects of these
processes, unpacking the various representations they involve.40 Similarly,
this is the case for the interdisciplinary field of material culture research,
which, as Glenn Adamson and Giorgio Riello explain, ‘begins with a
piece of evidence (the thing itself), and slowly but surely teases questions
out of it’.41 They identify three ways by which ‘an artefact can fit into a
narrative of global history: objects that demonstrate cultural connection;
objects that synthesise global difference within themselves; and objects
that image the global’. As for commodity chain studies, the potential of
this approach lies in its capacity to bring together material and symbolic
connections, and circulations at various spatial scopes.
Of course, not only things have ‘global lives’, but also knowledge and
information.42 The expanding literature on the transnational circulation
of ideas promises to foster the spatial-sensitive perspective in areas of
research that are traditionally framed within the national borders, such as
the history of the prison, psychiatry, and criminology.43 Finally, the field
of digital humanities should be mentioned, for digitised accessibility of
primary sources, text searchability, data mining, and portals expand the
possibility to trace the transfers of individuals, objects, and ideas across
space and time.44 Although tools such as GIS were originally conceived
for macro-analytical purposes, there is a considerable range of techniques
that brings together large sets of hard data to facilitate the analysis of
the complexity and intricacy of the data.45 Spatial analysis based on such
tools might challenge existing explanations, helping us to think about
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 11

‘what impact location and space have on all aspects of human behaviour’,
‘establishing how different places behave differently’.46

Time in Micro-Spatial History

The integration of the micro-analytical perspective and spatial method-
ologies has several implications for the conceptualisation of time, in par-
ticular for periodisation and synchronic-diachronic integrations. Because
the micro-spatial approach views ‘the global’ as a mindset that does not
necessarily imply the study of world-scale phenomena, the chronological
scope can be extended back to periods when the interlocking of various
regional systems did not extend to the globe as a whole.47 Different from
macro-analytical global history, which takes the formation of world-sys-
tems as its main object, the micro-spatial approach allows for a broader
range of research questions concerning the contemporary perceptions of
time and space of historical actors. Several recent studies have shown the
ways in which such questions can be fruitfully asked of antiquity and the
‘pre-modern’ more generally, especially by focusing on migrations, trans-
port, and communication systems, and the historical actors’ own repre-
sentations and perceptions of the world.48 Against this background of
chronological expansion, new historical questions emerge. For instance,
we might ask what the implications were of the birth of an integrated
world-system for the quality and quantity of the connections and circula-
tions of people, goods, and ideas. Were the exchanges and connections
in the late-medieval, multi-polar world-system qualitatively different from
those of the age of European colonisation? Micro-spatial historians are
also particularly well-placed to explore the kind of spatialities that were
constructed by bottom-up circulations, and their entanglements or dis-
junctures with those planned and created by the economic and political
elites. Furthermore, we may ask how economic and cultural exchanges
were experienced and represented by individuals and collectives, and what
transformations they brought about in the everyday of different places.49
The micro-spatial approach questions the very concepts of moderni-
sation and modernity. From this perspective, it is not enough to point
to the existence of multiple modernities, and to refuse the equation of
modernity with the Western standard.50 Differentiation and disconti-
nuity in social practices across the globe create ‘unpredicted sequences
of different configuration states’, which call into question any kind of
12 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

evolutional and teleological perspectives.51 Consequently, a more radical

rethinking of periodisation is needed. The traditional division of history
into prehistorical, ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern periods
represents one of the most visible legacies of the Eurocentric approach
that micro-spatial history seeks to overcome. Only once we move beyond
this periodisation can alternative chronologies emerge, and the conti-
nuities and discontinuities that stem from empirical research on specific
issues become visible. Periodisations ought to be built on the basis of the
researcher’s questions and of the historical actors’ own connections and
representations, as Jerry Bentley sought to do in his 1996 comments on
periodisation and global connections.52 We, as researchers, will have to
acknowledge the existence of multiple and alternative periodisations.
Synchronicity characterises micro-history, which often leads to cri-
tiques of an absence of theoretical explanations for historical transforma-
tions.53 Hans Medick’s study of the German town of Laichingen is one of
the few exceptions.54 By covering the period 1650–1900, Medick shows
the potential for a longue-durée micro-history centred on a specific place,
addressing the fundamental issue of ‘proto-industrialisation’. We suggest
that from a micro-spatial historical perspective, the possibility exists to
integrate synchronic and diachronic approaches, by following the traces of
individuals, objects, ideas, and representations both across space and time.

Micro-Spatial History of Labour

Labour history lends itself especially well to illustrate how our approach
of micro-spatial history might look in practice. On the one hand, it has
gone through several changes since the emergence of global history;
on the other hand, within the field of global labour history, macro and
micro approaches can be mutually contrasted with particular clarity.55
As is the case for other global historians, the proponents of the broad
and heterogeneous scholarly network of global labour history have in
common the opposition to Eurocentric and methodologically national-
ist approaches. By challenging the traditional conflation of labour history
with the history of wage labour, this approach has led to a re-concep-
tualisation of the working class.56 Global labour historians have ques-
tioned the validity of connecting the advent of capitalism to the process
of proletarianisation and stigmatising all labour relations that are dif-
ferent from wage labour as ‘peripheral’ or ‘backward’. In contrast, they
have shown that no exclusive connection exists between wage labour
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 13

and the commodification of labour, and that multiple labour relations

have concurred to the latter. Starting from this premise, the traditional
‘free’/‘unfree’ labour divide has been questioned, as has the alleged lin-
ear shift from early modern ‘unfree’ to modern ‘free’ labour relations;
conversely, a continuous process of replacement of one mixed configu-
ration of different labour relations with another has been envisaged.57
Finally, the focus on the process of labour commodification and mul-
tiple labour relations allows for a long-term approach that significantly
resonates with the point we made in the previous section: the (for ‘old’
and ‘new’ labour history alike) seemingly impassable watershed of the
Industrial Revolution may now be overtaken, and the centuries before it
can be fully addressed in their own right.
The thematic and geographical expansion of research interests, there-
fore, has produced a qualitative change in the conceptualisation of key
issues in labour history. However, the impact of this change on the
ways in which space and connections are understood is limited to date.
In global labour history, even more markedly than in global history as
a whole, there is a tendency to conflate ‘the global’ with the world, to
marginalise ‘the local’ to the rank of ‘case study’, and to address the
connections within global space mostly through comparisons among
structural patterns in predefined spatial units. Leo Lucassen’s ‘new direc-
tions in global labour history’, exclusively based on a macro-analytical
approach, accentuate these limitations, which are already visible in empir-
ical research.58 Indeed, in major quantitative projects like the Global
Collaboratory and Clio-infra, data are aggregated on a national basis
even for periods prior to the existence of such political units; moreover,
they are categorised according to a predefined taxonomy59 that leaves lit-
tle or no space for fundamental qualitative insights such as those regard-
ing contextualisation and the actors’ own representations. Similarly, the
‘collective research model’ applied to various projects involving dock and
textile workers, shipbuilding labour, and prostitutes, by aiming to ‘cover
the world’, is striking for its essentialisation of the national frame and the
rigidity of its comparative approach.60
These trends reflect and accentuate the limited debate on spatiality
that has taken place among global labour historians so far. In an article
published in the French journal Le Mouvement Social, arguably the single
most influential scholar in this area, Marcel van der Linden, has explicitly
addressed this issue.61 He has affirmed that ‘global history…should not
necessarily deal with the big-scale; it can include micro-history as well’
14 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

and has consequently pointed to the strategy of ‘following the traces we

are interested in, whatever the direction they lead us to: beyond political,
geographical and disciplinary borders, temporal frames and territories’.
‘Other methodologies used by global labour historians in their individ-
ual research also proceed in the same direction: the focus on household’
strategies; the study of commodity chains; the tracing of ‘teleconnec-
tions’ between events that have taken place within various spatial con-
texts; and the reference to trans-locality.62
This more dynamic approach resonates with our proposed micro-spa-
tial historical approach. Some Brazilian global labour historians have also
shown a consistent interest in the micro- and global historical perspec-
tives.63 For example, Paulo Fontes has written a history of the migra-
tion of workers from the north-east of Brazil to an area of São Paulo
in the first two decades after the second world war: by using oral and
archival sources intensively he was able to grasp the process of construc-
tion of multiple identities, the experiences and representations of work,
and the power relationships embedded in these. As in the case of other
micro-historians, legal sources have also revealed their potential: Sidney
Chalhoub has Immersed himself into the records of ‘amazing trials, cen-
tred upon dense and fascinating individuals, who compelled me to tell
their stories’, in order to address ‘slave visions of slavery’ and view the
abolition of slavery as an open and unpredictable process rather than a
linear transition; and Henrique Espada Lima has discussed the relation-
ship between ‘little things and global labour history’ by thinking about
the inventory of the belongings of Augusto, an africano livre who
drowned at sea in 1861 while working as a mariner. Perhaps unsurpris-
ingly, Chalhoub’s work explicitly refers to Ginzburg’s ‘index paradigm’,
and Espada Lima is the author of arguably the most informative and
insightful history of Italian micro-history. The other chapters in this vol-
ume each shed light on the value of this micro-spatial approach for the
study of global labour without presupposing a link to the emergence of
capitalism or dismissing studies of non-wage labour as peripheral.

Conclusion
The move away from Eurocentrism and methodological national-
ism, which defines the field of global (and world) history as a whole,
has produced a fundamental reorientation of historiography and of the
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 15

historian’s craft during recent decades. However, with the expansion

and institutionalisation of the field, potentially conflicting conceptualisa-
tions and practices of global history have become part of the discipline,
while the debate on its epistemology has lagged behind. This article has
intended to contribute to this discussion by highlighting potential prob-
lems within macro-analytical approaches to global history, and by lay-
ing out the epistemological and methodological bases for a micro-spatial
global history.
The prevailing approach to global history, it seems to us, conflates the
planetary scale with the macro-analytical approach. Consequently, it pro-
duces major distortions, especially regarding the ways in which concepts,
units of reference, and periodisations are predetermined. Meanwhile,
alternative ways of framing ‘the global’ in historiography have remained
under-conceptualised. In recent years, critical voices have emerged both
within and outside the field of global history, questioning the ways in
which global historians produce and use basic concepts like circulation,
exchange, and flows. We propose to overcome the global–local divide
with a spatially aware approach to the study of history (‘spatial history’).
We have argued that spatial insights and micro-analytical perspectives can
interact— ‘micro-spatial history’—, provided that we avoid the confla-
tion of the level of analysis (micro/macro) and its spatial scope (local/
global). Micro-history can offer the epistemological foundations of this
field, through its sensitivity to contextualisation and historical distinctive-
ness through time and space. At the same time, spatial history can help
micro-history to overcome its tendency to remain confined in geographi-
cally limited spaces and to conceptualise localities as self-sufficient units.
In conclusion, we argue that this approach potentially has major
implications for the ways in which global history has been practiced to
date. We propose that a micro-spatial approach allows us to expand the
chronological scope to the ancient, medieval, and early modern period,
when the interlocking of various regional systems was not co-extensive
with the globe, and to offer new ways of thinking about the process of
modernisation and the concept of modernity in general, which in itself
has significant implications for historical periodisation. Finally, we pro-
pose that micro-spatial history implies collaboration and co-operation.
We need multi-sited, cross-cultural, and cross-linguistic studies of his-
tory.64 We see collaboration not only as a technical response to prag-
matic problems, but as a genuine way forward for academic research
on a global scale: challenging existing boundaries created by linguistic,
16 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

environmental, geo-political, and hierarchical differences. Only then can

we hope to aim for a new global history.

Notes
1. The terms global history and world history have been defined in different
ways in the literature. However, since the issues addressed in this paper
cut across both field of research, the term ‘global history’ will be used
here to include ‘world history’ as well.
2. Besides the two works mentioned in the text, see also the panel on
‘Global processes: Reflections on the language of global history’ at
the ENIUGH conference, Paris, 4–7 September 2014: http://www.
uni-leipzig.de/~eniugh/congress/programme/event/?tx_seminars_
pi1%5BshowUid%5D=251 (consulted 18 September 2014).
3. Lynn Hunt, Writing History in the Global Era (New York and London,
2014), esp. pp. 59–68. Citation on p. 59.
4. Angelika Epple, ‘Globale Mikrogeschichte. Auf dem Weg zu einer
Geschichte der Relationen’, in Im Kleinen das Groβe suchen.
Mikrogeschichte in Theorie und Praxis, eds. Ewald Hiebl and Ernst
Langthaler (Innsbruck, 2012), pp. 37–47. Citation on p. 40.
5. Patrick Manning, Big Data in History: A World-Historical Archive
(London, 2013).
6. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincialing Europe: Post-Colonial Thought and
Historical Difference (Princeton, 2007). On the relationship between area
studies and global history see especially Birgit Schäbler, ed., Area Studies
und die Welt. Weltregionen und neue Globalgeschichte (Wien, 2007).
7. For some examples, including the essays and issues mentioned in the text:
Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D.
1250–1350 (New York and Oxford, 1991); Jerry H. Bentley, Old World
Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times
(New York, 1993); André Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the
Asian Age (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1998); David Christian,
A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia (Oxford, 1998), vol. 1;
Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making
of the Modern World Economy (Princeton and Oxford, 2000); Jerry H.
Bentley and Herbert F. Ziegler, Traditions and Encounters. A Global
Perspective on the Past (Boston, 2000); John R. McNeill, The Human Web:
A Bird’s-Eye View of World History (New York, 2003); Serge Gruzinski,
Les quatre parties du monde. Histoire d’une mondialisation (Paris,
2004); David Christian, Maps of Time. An Introduction to Big History
(Berkeley, 2004); Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410
(Harlow and London, 2005); Charles H. Parker, Global Interactions in
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 17

the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 2010); Peter N. Stearns,

Globalization in World History (London and New York, 2010); David
Christian, ‘The Return of Universal History’, History and Theory, 49,
4 (2010), 6–27; James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An
Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, 2010); Jean-
Michel Sallmann, Le grand désenclavement du monde 1200–1600 (Paris,
2011); Jürgen Osterhammel and Patric Camiller, The Transformation of
the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 2014).
8. The term ‘spatial history’ has already been in use among historians since
the 1990s: Felix Driver and Raphael Samuel, ‘Spatial History: Re-thinking
the Idea of Place’, History Workshop Journal, 39 (1995), v–vii. Presently it
is being employed by scholars participating in the Spatial History Project
at Stanford University: http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/
cgi-bin/site/index.php (consulted 18 September 2014). For a ‘manifesto’
related to this project: Richard White, ‘What is Spatial History?’, Stanford
University Spatial History Lab, 1 February 2010.
9. See for instance: Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson, Borders:
Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State (Oxford and New York, 1999);
Stefan Berger, Writing the Nation. A Global Perspective (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007); Anssi Paasi, ‘Border Studies Reanimated: Going
Beyond the Territorial/Relational Divide’, Environment and Planning
A, 44, 10 (2012), 2303–2309; Laura Di Fiore and Marco Meriggi, eds.,
Movimenti e confini. Spazi mobili nell’Italia preunitaria (Rome, 2013).
10. On the New Imperial Histories see esp. Alan Lester, ‘Imperial Circuits
and Networks: Geographies of the British Empire’, History Compass,
4, 1 (2006); Stephen Howe, ed., The New Imperial Histories Reader
(London, 2009). See also: Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The
Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History
of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000); Clare Anderson, Convicts
in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South Asia to Mauritius, 1815–
53 (London, 2000); Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire: Forced Migration
in the Dutch East India Company (Cambridge, 2008).
11. On the debate about the relations between global and local within global
history see for instance: Jürgen Schlumbohm, ed., Mikrogeschichte
Makrogeschichte complementär oder inkommensurabel? (Göttingen,
1998); Antony G. Hopkins, ed., Global History: Interactions Between the
Universal and the Local (London, 2006); Patrick Manning, ed., World
History: Global and Local Interactions (Princeton, 2006); Bartolomé
Yun Casalilla, ‘“Localism”, Global History and Transnational History:
A Reflection from the Historian of Early Modern Europe’, Historisk
Tidskrift, 127, 4 (2007), 659–678; Anne Gerritsen, ‘Scales of a Local:
18 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

The Place of Locality in a Globalizing World’, in A Companion to World

History, ed. Douglas Northrop (Chichester, 2012), pp. 213–226.
12. See esp.: Barney Warf, Santa Arias, The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives (Abingdon, 2009); Matthias Middell and Katja Naumann,
‘Global History and the Spatial Turn: From the Impact of Area Studies
to the Study of Critical Junctures of Globalization’, Journal of Global
History, 5 (2010), 149–170; Jo Guidi, The Spatial Turn in History—
http://spatial.scholarslab.org/spatial-turn/the-spatial-turn-in-history/
index.html (last consulted on 27 October 2016).
13. For some surveys of the different tendencies within Global History
and World History see: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, special
issue edited by Étienne Anheim, Romain Bertrand, Antoine Lilti and
Stephen W. Sawyer on ‘Une histoire à l’échelle globale’, 56, 1 (2001);
Patrick Manning, Navigating World History. Historians Create a Global
Past (New York, 2003); Gunilla Budde, Sebastian Conrad, Oliver
Janz, eds., Transnationale Geschichte. Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien
(Göttingen, 2006); María Teresa Ortega López, ed. Historia global. El
debate historiográfico en los ultimos tiempos (Granada, 2007); Laurent
Testot, ed., Histoire globale: un autre regard sur le monde (Paris, 2008);
Georg G. Iggers and Edward Q. Wang, A Global History of Modern
Historiography (Pearson, 2008), esp. pp. 387–400; Laura Di Fiore and
Marco Meriggi, World History. Le nuove rotte della storia (Roma, 2011);
Dominic Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and
Approaches in a Connected World (Cambridge, 2011); Chloé Maurel,
ed., Essai d’histoire globale (Paris, 2013); Maxine Berg, ed., Writing the
History of the Global: Challenges for the Twenty-First Century (Oxford,
2013).
14. ‘Why make things simple when we can make them complex?’. Quotation
from Jacques Revel, ‘L’histoire au ras du sol’, in Giovanni Levi, Le pou-
voir au village. Histoire d’un exorciste dans le Piémont du XVIIe siècle
(Paris, 1989), p. xxiv.
15. For the most complete essays on the history of micro-history: Henrique
Espada Lima, A micro-história italiana. Escalas, indícios e singulari-
dades (Rio de Janeiro, 2006); Sigurđur Gylfi Magnússon and István M.
Szijártó, What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice (Abingdon, 2013),
esp. part one. Insights on the origins and evolution of micro-histories can
be obtained also from the publications quoted in footnote 17.
16. Whereas Italian micro-historians have especially insisted on the epistemo-
logical originality of their approach, almost without exception scholars
in the anglophone world have merely equated micro-history with reduc-
tion of scale and with a narrative strategy. See for example Edward Muir
and Guido Ruggiero, eds., Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 19

(Baltimore, 1991), esp. Edward Muir, ‘Introduction: Observing Trifles’,

pp. vii–xviii. For some fundamental distinctions within Italian microstoria:
Christian G. De Vito, ‘Verso una microstoria translocale (micro-spatial
history)’, Quaderni Storici, 150, 3 (2015), 855–868.
17. Among the most important retrospective interpretations provided
by Italian micro-historians: Giovanni Levi, ‘Il piccolo, il grande e
il piccolo’, Meridiana, 10 (1990), 211–234; Giovanni Levi, ‘On
Microhistory’, in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke
(University Park, 1992), pp. 93–113; Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Microhistory:
Two or Three Things That I know about It’, Critical Inquiry, 10, 1
(1993), 10–35; Edoardo Grendi, ‘Ripensare la microstoria?’, Quaderni
storici, 86 (1994), 539–549; Giovanni Levi, ‘The Origins of the
Modern State and the Microhistorical Perspective’, in Mikrogeschichte
Macrogeschichte, pp. 53–82; Maurizio Gribaudi, ‘Des micro-méchanis-
mes aux configurations globales: Causalité et temporalité historiques
dans les forms d’évolution et de l’administration française au XIX siè-
cle’, in Mikrogeschichte Macrogeschichte, pp. 83–128; Simona Cerutti,
‘Microhistory: social relations versus cultural models? Some reflections
on stereotypes and historical practices’, in Between Sociology and History.
Essays on Microhistory, Collective Action, and Nation-Building, eds. Anna-
Maija Castrén, Markku Lonkila and Matti Peltonen, (Helsinki, 2004),
pp. 17–40; Jacques Revel, ed., Giochi di scala. La microstoria alla prova
dell’esperienza, Rome: Viella, 2006, extended and reviewed edition of the
original French edition: Jacques Revel, ed., Jeux d’échelles. La micro-ana-
lyse à l’expérience (Paris, 1996)—see esp. the contributions by Gribaudi,
Cerutti, Loriga, Grendi, Ago, Palumbo and Torre; Paola Lanaro, ed.,
Microstoria. A venticinque anni da L’ereditá immateriale. Saggi in onore
di Giovanni Levi (Milano, 2011). For some insightful interpretations
on micro-history: Justo Serna and Anaclet Pons, ‘El ojo de la aguja. ¿De
qué hablamos cuando hablamos de microhistoria?’, La Historiografia, 12
(1993), 93–133; Giovanni Busino, ‘La microhistoire de Carlo Ginzburg’,
Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 61, 3 (1999), 763–778; Matti
Peltonen, ‘Clues, Margins, and Monads: The Micro-Macro Link in
Historical Research’, History and Theory, 40, 3 (2001), 347–359.
18. Ginzburg, Microhistory, p. 33. The author explicitly refers to: Giovanni
Levi, L’eredita’ immateriale: carriera di un esorcista nel Piemonte del
Seicento (Turin, 1985) (English trans. Inheriting Power: The Story of an
Exorcist, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Simona Cerutti,
La Ville et les métiers: Naissance d’un language corporative (Turin, 17e–18e
siècles) (Turin, 1992).
19. Indeed, the very idea of the existence of different scales of reality hold-
ing intrinsically different characteristics is highly problematic, for it
20 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

reproduces the idea of a separation, and even a hierarchy, between the

global and the local. Accordingly, Revel’s idea of the need of jeux
d’èchelles also appears biased, as it fundamentally conflates ‘the macro’
with ‘the global’ and ‘the structural’, and ‘the micro’ with ‘the local’
and ‘the individual’. We embrace here Gribaudi’s position expressed in
Gribaudi, Scala, pertinenza, configurazione, p. 121–122. For an empiri-
cal research making the same point, see Juliane Schiel, ‘Zwischen
Panoramablick und Nahaufnahme. Wie viel Mikroanalyse braucht die
Globalgeschichte?’, in Europa in der Welt des Mittelalters. Ein Colloquium
für und mit Michael Borgolte, eds. Tillman Lohse and Benjamin Scheller
(Berlin and Boston, 2014), pp. 119–140. For Revel’s point of view, see
Jacques Revel, ‘Microanalisi e costruzione sociale’, in Revel, Giochi di
scala, pp. 19–44. It shall be noted that other micro-historians have shown
ambiguity on this issue, most of them postulating different characteris-
tics of macro- and micro-scales, and then either focusing on the second
as a better perspective to grasp social relations (Ginzburg, Microhistory,
p. 33) or ‘constructing the ‘macro’ through the ‘micro’’ (Paul-André
Rosental, ‘Costruire il ‘macro’ attraverso il ‘micro’: Fredrik Barth e la
microstoria’, in Revel, Giochi di scala, pp. 147–170). For a recent debate
among historians, see AHR Conversation: How Size Matters: The Question
of Scale in History, Participants: Sebouh David Aslanian, Joyce E.
Chaplin, Ann McGrath, and Kristin Mann, American Historical Review,
118, 3 (2013), pp. 1431–1472. For geographical insight on scale: Neil
Brenner, ‘The Limits to Scale? Methodological Reflections on Scalar
Structuration’, Progress in Human Geography, 25 (2001), 591–614; Anssi
Paasi, ‘Place and Region: Looking Through the Prism of Scale’, Progress
in Human Geography, 28, 4 (2004), 536–546.
20. The conflation of ‘micro’ and ‘local’ is especially evident in the Anglo-
Saxon academic landscape, as noted in Magnússon and Szijártó, What
is Microhistory, pp. 39–61. See esp.: James F. Brooks, Christopher R.N.
DeCorse, John Walton, eds., Small Worlds: Method, Meaning, and
Narrative in Microhistory (Santa Fe, 2008). For an implicit acknowl-
edgement of the potential of micro-history to go beyond ‘the local’, see
Filippo de Vivo, ‘Prospect of Refuge? Microhistory, History on the Large
Scale’, Cultural and Social History, 7, 3 (2010), 387–397. On p. 392
the author notices: ‘Microhistory seems tied to the local, but the way
in which it investigate the connections between individual and context,
between the regional, national and even the global, resonates meaning-
fully with current research’.
21. Ginzburg, ‘Microhistory’, p. 32. As Ginzburg continues, this involves
‘the identification of the object and its importance; the elaboration of the
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 21

categories through which it is analysed; the criteria of proof; the stylistic

and narrative forms by which the results are transmitted to the reader’.
22. See esp. the following volumes by Doreen Massey: Spatial Divisions of
Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of Production (Basingstoke,
1984); Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis, 1994), quotation p. 4;
For Space (Los Angeles, London and New Delhi, 2005). For other geo-
graphical insights on space, place and ‘local’: Edward W. Soja, Postmodern
Geographies. The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London
and New York, 1989); Henri Lefebvre, La production de l’espace (Paris,
2000); David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
2000); David Harvey, Spaces of Capital. Towards a Critical Geography
(Edinburgh, 2001); Arturo Escobar, ‘Culture sits in places: reflections
on globalism and subaltern strategies of localization’, Political Geography,
20 (2001), 139–174; Anssi Paasi, ‘Region and Place: Regional Identity
in Question’, Progress in Human Geography, 27, 4 (2003), 475–485;
Anssi Paasi, ‘Geography, Space and the Re-Emergence of Topological
Thinking’, Dialogues in Human Geography, 1 (2011), 299–303.
23. Denys Lombard, Le Carrefour javanais. Essai d’histoire globale (Paris,
2004), 3 volls.
24. Doreen Massey, World City (Cambridge, 2007); Kapil Raj, ‘The Historical
Anatomy of a Contact Zone. Calcutta in the Eighteenth Century’,
Indian Economic Social History Review, 48, 1 (2011), 55–82.
25. Jeppe Mulich, ‘Microregionalism and Intercolonial Relations: The Case
of the Danish West Indies, 1730–1830’, Journal of Global History,
8, 1 (2013), 72–94. See also Donald R. Wright, The World and a Very
Small Place in Africa: A History of Globalization in Niumi, the Gambia
(Armonk, 2004).
26. See Kirwin R. Shaffer, ‘Latin Lines and Dots: Transnational Anarchism,
Regional Networks, and Italian Libertarians in Latin America’, Zapruder
World, 1, 1 (2014), http://www.zapruderworld.org/content/kirwin-r-
shaffer-latin-lines-and-dots-transnational-anarchism-regional-networks-
and-italian (consulted on 27 October 2016).
27. The concept of ‘translocality’ has been used in historical studies in
Ulrike Freitag and Achim von Oppen, eds., Translocality: The Study
of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective (Leiden and Boston,
2010). Whereas the editors have stressed a ‘special’ importance of trans-
locality for non-Western areas, we argue for a broader use of the con-
cept. Human geographers have also used the concept: Katherine Brickell
and Ayona Datta, eds., Translocal Geographies. Spaces, Places, Connections
(Farnham, 2009). Ethnographers have referred to the concept of ‘multi-
sitedness’, which presents some similarities: Marcus, ‘Ethnography in/
of the World System’; Mark-Anthony Falzon, Multi-sited Ethnography:
22 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

Theory, Praxis and Locality in Contemporary Research (Farnham, 2009);

Simon Coleman and Pauline von Helleran, eds., Multi-Sited Ethnography:
Problems and Possibilities in the Translocation of Research Methods (New
York, 2011). Similar debates have taken place in the field of historical
archaeology: see esp. Martin Hall, Stephen W. Sillimann, eds., Historical
Archaeology (Oxford, 2006).
28. See for instance the Global Migration History program based at the
International Institute of Social History: http://socialhistory.org/nl/
projects/global-migration-history-programme (consulted 27 October
2016). For an alternative approach, see for example: Beverly Lozano,
‘The Andalucia-Hawaii-California Migration: A Study in Macrostructure
and Microhistory’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26, 2
(1984), 305–324; Mark-Anthony Falzon, Cosmopolitan Connections.
The Sindhi Diaspora, 1860–2000 (Leiden and Boston, 2004); Donna R.
Gabaccia and Dirk Hoerder, eds., Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean
Rims. Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations
from the 1830s to the 1930s (Leiden and Boston, 2011). For a focus on
the migrants’ own strategies, see: Franco Ramella: ‘Reti sociali, famiglie
e strategie migratorie’, in Storia dell’emigrazione italiana, eds. Piero
Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi and Emilio Franzina (Roma, 2001),
vol. 1, pp. 143–160.
29. See esp. the following publications by Angelo Torre: Luoghi. La pro-
duzione di localitá in etá moderna e contemporanea (Roma, 2011);
‘Comunitá e localitá’, esp. pp. 45–54, where Massey’s work is also explic-
itly mentioned. For an interesting collection of historical essays on the
‘production of space’, see Antonella Romano, Sabina Brevaglieri, eds.,
‘Produzione di saperi, costruzione di spazi’, special issue of the journal
Quaderni Storici, 1 (2013).
30. Dale Tomich, Michael Zeuske, ‘Introduction: The Second Slavery. Mass
Slavery, World-Economy, and Comparative Microhistories’, Review
(Fernand Braudel Centre), 31, 2, Part I (2008), 91–100. Quotes
respectively on pp. 95, 96, and 97. However, the authors conflate the
analytical and the spatial levels when they talk about the necessity of the
juxtaposition of macro-history (i.e. global scope) and microhistory (i.e.
micro-analysis).
31. On connected history see esp. Sanjay Subrahmanyan, ‘Connected
Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’,
Modern Asian Studies, 31, 3 (1997), 735–762; Sanjay Subrahmanyan,
Explorations in Connected Histories. From the Tagus to the Ganges
(Oxford, 2005); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Beyond Incommensurability:
Understanding Inter-Imperial Dynamics’, Department of Sociology
UCLA, Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis, Paper 32,
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 23

2005: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/soc237/papers/sanjay.pdf (con-

sulted on 27 October 2016).
32. Sandra Curtis Comstock: ‘Incorporating Comparison’, in The Handbook
of World-System Analysis: Theory and Research, eds. Christopher Chase-
Dunn and Salvatore Babones (Routledge, 2011); ‘Incorporating
Comparisons in the Rift. Making Use of Cross-Place Events and Histories
in Moments of World Historical Change’, in Beyond Methodological
Nationalism: Social Science Research Methodologies in Transition, eds.
Anna Amelina, Devrimsel D. Negriz, Thomas Faist and Nina Glick
Schiller (Routledge, 2012), pp. 176–197.
33. Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison
in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies’, The Journal
of American History, 88, 3 (2001), 829–865; Clare Anderson, ‘After
Emancipation: Empires and Imperial Formations’, in Emancipation and
the Remaking of the British Imperial World, eds. Catherine Hall, Nicholas
Draper, Keith McClelland (Manchester, 2014), pp. 113–127.
34. The expression ‘following the traces’ has been recently used by Marcel
van der Linden in ‘Historia do trabalho: o Velho, o Novo e o Global’,
Revista Mundos do trabalho, 1 (2009), 11–26 and in ‘Éditorial. Enjeux
pour une histoire mondiale du travail’, Le Mouvement Social, special issue
on ‘Travail et mondialisations’, 241, 4 (2012), p. 16. A similar strategy
had been previously suggested by George E. Marcus in: ‘Ethnography
in/of the world system: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography’,
Annual Review of Anthropology, 24 (1995), 95–117, esp. pp. 105–110.
Besides the traces regarding individuals, groups and objects, the author
mention the possibility to ‘follow the metaphor’, by tracing ‘the circula-
tion of signs, symbols, and metaphors’, and to ‘follow the plot, story or
allegory’, e.g. by tracing alternative social memories.
35. Francesca Trivellato, ‘Is There a Future for Italian Microhistory in
the Age of Global History?’, California Italian Studies, 2, 1 (2011)—
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0z94n9hq (consulted on 27 October
2016). See also: Francesca Trivellato, ‘Microstoria, storia del mondo
e storia globale’, in Lanaro, Microstoria, pp. 119–132. A biographical
approach to ‘global microhistory’ is also in John-Paul A. Ghobrial, ‘The
secret life of Elias of Babylon and the uses of global microhistory’, Past
and Present, 222, 1 (2014), 51–93. For the micro-historical approach
to biography: Jill Lepore, ‘Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections
on Microhistory and Biography’, The Journal of American History, 88,
1 (2001), 129–144; Sabrina Loriga, Petit x: De la biographie á l’histoire
(Paris, 2010).
36. Rothschild, The Inner Life of Empires, p. 7 (quoted in Trivellato, ‘Is There
a Future’, p. 15). For the manifesto, see Carlo Ginzburg and Carlo
24 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

Poni, ‘Il nome e il come: scambio ineguale e mercato storiografico’,

Quaderni storici, 40 (1979), 1–10 (published in English as: ‘The Name
and the Game: Unequal Exchange and the Historical Marketplace’, in
Microhistory and the Lost Peoples, pp. 1–10, quotation on pp. 6–7).
37. Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-century Muslim
between Worlds (Basingstoke, 2006).
38. Poni and Ginzburg, ‘The Name and the Game’, pp. 6–7; Edoardo
Grendi, I Balbi. Una famiglia genovese fra Spagna e Impero (Torino,
1997); Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Latitude, Slaves, and Bible: An Experiment in
Microhistory’, Critical Inquiry, 31 (2005), 665–683. Although the
examples provided by the authors in the first article concern mobility
among Bologna, Venice and Florence, their implications for multi-sited
archival research are similar than for broader geographical contexts.
For an example, see Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of
Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790–1920 (Cambridge, 2012).
39. See esp. the above mentioned works of Angelo Torre, Paola Lanaro,
Franco Ramella and Simona Cerutti. See also: Angelo Torre: ed., Per
vie di terra. Movimenti di uomini e di cose nelle societá di antico regime
(Milano, 2007); Piero Brunello, Storia di anarchici e di spie. Polizia e
politica nell’Italia liberale (Roma, 2009); Laura Di Fiore and Marco
Meriggi, eds., Movimenti e confini. Spazi mobili nell’Italia preunitaria
(Roma, 2013); Laura Di Fiore, Alla frontiera. Confini e documenti di
identitá nel Mezzogiorno continentale preunitario (Soveria Mannelli,
2013).
40. On commodity chains: Sydney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place
of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985); Steven C. Topik and
Allen Wells, ‘Commodity Chains in a Global Economy’, in A World
Connecting. 1870–1945, ed. Emily S. Rosenberg (Cambridge, Ma., and
London, 2012), pp.593–812; Karin Hofmeester, ‘Le diamants, de la
mine à la bague: pour une histoire globale du travail au moyen d’un arti-
cle de luxe’, Le Mouvement Social, special issue on ‘Travail et mondialisa-
tions’, 241, 4 (2012), 85–108.
41. Glenn Adamson and Giorgio Riello, ‘Global Objects: Contention and
Entanglement’, in Writing the History of the Global, pp. 177–194 (quotes
on pp. 177 and 179). See also Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello,
eds., The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections
in the Early Modern World (Routledge, 2015). For trans-disciplinary
perspectives on material culture: Janet Hoskins, Biographical Objects:
How Things Tell the Stories of People’s Lives (New York and London,
1998); Daniel Miller, ed., Materiality (Durham and London, 2005);
Carl Knappett, Lambros Malafouris, eds., Material Agency: Towards a
Non-Anthropocentric Approach (New York, 2008); Carl Knappett, An
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 25

Archaeology of Interaction: Network Perspectives on Material Culture and

Society (Oxford, 2011). For a theoretical essay on entanglements between
things and humans, consult Ian Hodder, Entangled: An Archaeology of
the Relationships between Humans and Things (Oxford, 2012). For excel-
lent examples of historical archaeology of object-based colonial connec-
tions: Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture,
and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA., and London, 1991);
Gil J. Stein, ed., The Archaeology of Colonial Encounters: Comparative
Perspectives (Santa Fe, 2005).
42. Gerritsen and Riello, The Global Lives of Things; Arndt Brandecke, Imperio
e información. Funciones del saber en el dominio colonial español (Madrid,
2012).
43. For two examples of the potential of this approach: Christian G. De Vito,
‘Liminoids, Hegemony and Transfers in the Liminal Experiences in
Italian Psychiatry, 1960s–1980 s’, in Ausnahmezustände. Entgrenzungen
und Regulierungen in Europa während des Kalten Krieges, eds.
Cornelia Rauh and Dirk Schumann (Göttingen, 2015), pp. 236–252;
Clare Anderson, Carrie M. Crockett, Christian G. De Vito, Takashi
Miyamoto, Kellie Moss, Katherine Roscoe and Minako Sakata, ‘Locating
Penal Transportation: Punishment, Space and Place c. 1750–1900’, in
Historical Geographies of Prisons: Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past, eds.
Dominique Moran e Karen Morin (New York, 2015).
44. See esp. Lara E. Putnam, ‘The Transnational and the Text-Searchable:
Digitized Sources and the Shadow They Cast’, American Historical
Review 121, 2 (2016), 377–402.
45. For example, Multimedia GIS, ‘deep mapping’ and cartograms. See:
David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan and Trevor M. Harris, eds., The
Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship
(Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2010). See esp. John Corrigan,
‘Qualitative GIS and Emergent Semantics’, pp. 76–88. See also: David
O’Sullivan and David Unwin, Geographical Information Analysis
(Hoboken, 2003); Anne K. Knowles, ed., Placing History: How Maps,
Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship (Redlands,
2008).
46. Ian N. Gregory and Paul S. Ell, Historical GIS. Technologies, Methodologies
and Scholarship (Cambridge, 2007): quotations respectively from pp. 18
and 161. See also the contributions of the two authors in Bodenhamer,
Corrigan and Harris, eds., The Spatial Humanities, respectively on pp.
58–75 and 143–166.
47. One of the authors of this introduction has previously made a similar
point in: Christian G. De Vito, ‘New Perspectives on Global Labour
History’, Workers of the World, 3 (2013, special issue on ‘Global labour
26 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

history’), esp. pp. 22–28. This issue has been stressed, for instance, dur-
ing recent conferences and workshops at the Global History and Culture
Centre at the University of Warwick and at the Oxford Centre for Global
History at Oxford University. See: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/
arts/history/ghcc/ and http://global.history.ox.ac.uk/?page_id=663
(both consulted on 27 October 2016). For a similar point on the Middle
Ages: Robin W. Winks and Teofilo F. Ruiz, Medieval Europe and the
World: From Late Antiquity to Modernity (Oxford, 2005).
48. Richard J.A. Talbert and Kai Brodersen, Space in the Roman World: Its
Perception and Presentation (Münster, 2004); Øystein S. Labianca, and
Sandra Arnold Scham, eds., Connectivity in Antiquity: Globalization
as a Long-Term Historical Process (London and Oakville, 2006); Kurt
A. Raaflaub and Richard J.A. Talbert, Geography and Ethnography:
Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies (Bognor Regis, 2010);
Susan E. Alcock, John Bodel and Richard J.A. Talbert, eds., Highways,
Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World (Bognor Regis,
2012); Klaus Geus and Michael Rathmann, eds., Vermessung der
Oikumene (Berlin and Boston, 2013); Michael Scott, Space and Society in
the Greek and Roman Worlds (Cambridge, 2013); Victor Cojocaru, Altay
Coşkun, Mădălina Dana, eds., Interconnectivity in the Mediterranean and
Pontic World during the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Cluj-Napoca,
2014); Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys, eds., Globalisation and
the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture
(Cambridge, 2015).
49. For an important example, see Romain Bertrand, L’histoire á parts
égales (Paris, 2011). See also Stefan Hanß and Juliane Schiel, eds.,
Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500–1800) Neue Perspektiven auf medi-
terrane Sklaverei (500–1800) (Zürich, 2014).
50. For this perspective, see for example: Irene Silverblatt, Modern
Inquisitions. Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized World
(Durham and London, 2004). For a similar critique: Gurminder K.
Bhambra, Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonial and the Sociological
Imagination (Basingstoke, 2007).
51. Gribaudi, ‘Scala, pertinenza, configurazione’, pp. 141–143.
52. Jerry H. Bentley, ‘Cross-Cultural Interaction and Periodization in World
History’, The American Historical Review 101, 3 (1996), 749–770.
53. See for instance: Sidney Chalhoub, Visões da liberdade. Uma história das
últimas décadas da escravidão na Corte (São Paulo, 1990), pp. 18–19;
Trivellato, ‘Is There a Future’. See also Don Handelman, ‘Microhistorical
Anthropology. Toward a Prospective Perspective’, in Critical Junctions.
Anthropology and History Beyond the Cultural Turn, eds. Don Kalb and
Herman Tak (New York and Oxford, 2005), pp. 29–52.
 1 MICRO-SPATIAL HISTORIES OF LABOUR … 27

54. Hans Medick, Weben und Überleben in Laichingen 1650–1900.

Lokalgeschichte als Allgemeine Geschichte (Göttingen, 1996). Another per-
spective is that of addressing a single ‘great historical question’ through
multiple micro-historical studies. For a recent example spanning more
than two millennia: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 68, 4 (2013), spe-
cial issue on ‘Statuts sociaux’.
55. For a more detailed description of the formation, evolution and scope of
global labour history, see De Vito, ‘New Perspectives’, pp. 7–14. In the
same article, the argument for a more dynamic conceptualization of spati-
ality in global labour history is presented on pp. 15–22.
56. An open debate goes on within global labour history, concerning the way
to conceptualize the new social subject that includes all carriers of com-
modified labour. Among the competing concepts that have been pre-
sented: ‘subaltern workers’ (Marcel van der Linden), ‘subaltern’ (Willem
van Schendel) and ‘labouring poor’ (Sabyasachi Bhattacharya).
57. This point has been explicitly made in R.J. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free
Labour: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and
Culture, 1350–1870 (Chapel Hill and London, 1991), p. 9. The idea of
‘one mix of kinds of freedom and unfreedom for laboring people replac-
ing another set of historical practices with a different mix of kinds of
freedom and unfreedom’ resonates with the configurational metaphor of
micro-history.
58. Leo Lucassen, ‘Working Together: New Directions in Global Labour
History’, Journal of Global History, 11 (2016), 1, pp. 66–87.
59. It must be added, however, that in the Global Collaboratory the taxonomy
is the product of a long-term debate among the scholars involved in the
research.
60. For a detailed description of the Collective Research Model consult E.
van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘Covering the World: Textile Workers and
Globalization, 1650–2000: Experiences and Results of a Collective
Research Project’, in Labour History Beyond Borders: Concepts and
Explorations, eds. Marcel van der Linden and Eva Himmelstoss (ITH,
2009), pp. 111–138. A variation of this methodology is used by Jan
Lucassen in some of his diachronical comparative studies. See for
instance: J. Lucassen, ‘Brickmakers in Western Europe (1700–1900)
and Northern India (1800–2000): Some Comparisons’, in Jan Lucassen,
Global Labour History: A State of the Art (Bern, 2006), pp. 513–572.
61. All quotation in the text are taken from Van der Linden, Éditorial, p.16.
62. The term ‘teleconnections’ is used in Marcel van der Linden, Workers of
the World (Leiden and Boston, 2008), pp. 372–378.
63. P. Fontes, Um Nordeste em São Paulo. Trabalhadores migrantes em São
Miguel Paulista (1945–1966) (Rio de Janeiro, 2008); Chalhoub, Visões
28 C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen

da liberdade (quotes respectively on pp. 21, 29 e 20); Henrique Espada

Lima, ‘What can we find in Augusto’s trunk? About little things and
Global labour history’, Workers of the World, 3 (April 2013): 139–157—
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/wotw/3/ (consulted on 27
October 2016).
64. See for instance Berg, ‘Global history’, p. 13, and John Darwin, ‘Globe
and Empire’, in Writing the History of the Global, p. 199.
 CHAPTER 2

Moving Hands: Types and Scales of Labour

Mobility in the Late Medieval Eastern
Mediterranean (1200–1500 CE)

Ekaterini Mitsiou and Johannes Preiser-Kapeller

Why the Late Medieval Eastern Mediterranean?

The Eastern Mediterranean in the late Middle Ages constitutes an ‘ideal’
area of research to reflect on questions related to micro-historical and
trans-local perspectives of global labour, since during this period, ‘no
other region of Europe or the Mediterranean became a cynosure of so
many ethnicities in such a small place’.1 Due to a peculiar combination
of political fragmentation and economic integration, especially within

The final version of this paper was written within the framework of the
Wittgenstein-Prize Project ‘Mobility, Microstructures and Personal Agency in
Byzantium’ (headed by Prof. Claudia Rapp, Vienna: http://rapp.univie.ac.at/).

E. Mitsiou (*)
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Preiser-Kapeller
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 29

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_2
30 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

the former imperial sphere of the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia and the
Balkans, there emerged a multitude of overlapping zones of power and
commerce, of various religious, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. With
the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, the (anew)
advance of the Seljuks towards the Anatolian coast, the increasing pres-
ence of Italian merchants in the harbours of the Aegean, the Black Sea
and the Levant and finally the Mongol expansion from the 1220s
onwards, the Eastern Mediterranean became a zone of intensive con-
tact between Mongols (the realms of the Golden Horde in Russia and
the Ilkhans in Iran, Iraq, the Southern Caucasus and parts of Anatolia),
Byzantines (after 1204 in the competing exile realms of Nicaea, Epirus
and Trebizond), Armenians (in the Kingdom of Cilicia), Turks, Persians
and Arabs (in the Sultanate of Konya), Slavonic-, Albanian- and Vlach-
speaking people (in the realms of Serbia and Bulgaria as well as in the
Kingdom of Croatia united with the Crown of Hungary), ‘Latins’,
respectively, ‘Franks’ and a large number of further ethnicities (members
of which were, of course, also mobile across political borders2), thus also
between Orthodox, Oriental and Western Churches as well as Islam (in its
various denominations) and (within the Mongol Sphere) also Buddhism.
With the fragmentation of Seljuk central power after the defeat against
the Mongols in 1243 into various Emirates and their expansion especially
into Western Asia Minor towards the Aegean and the establishment of
Italian colonies (including ‘Catholic’ bishoprics) in coastal towns and off-
shore islands (e.g. the Genoese on Chios and in Phokaia/Foça) and of the
Knights Hospitallers on Rhodes, the number of zones of interaction, but
also conflict, increased in Anatolia, as they did in the Balkans in a dynamic
interplay between centralisations and fragmentations of political power in
Byzantium, Bulgaria and Serbia. At the same time, Venetians and Genoese
integrated all these locations and regions as hubs and nodes into their
commercial networks and into the Mediterranean subsystem of the late
medieval ‘World System’, as Janet Abu-Lughod has called it.3 With the
Ottoman Expansion from 1300 onwards, these territories gradually were
absorbed into one imperial framework once more (as it has existed under
Byzantine rule until the eleventh century), which finally also included the
remaining western colonies.
Beyond traditional over-regional contacts of members of medieval
religious elites and nobilities, which always had crossed borders within
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 31

and beyond cultural-religious frontiers,4 the increase in the number of

contact zones, especially on the basis of commerce, opened paths to
border-crossing also for other, non-aristocratic members of society.
Commercial interests contributed to the establishment of a ‘middle
ground’ (for this issue, see below) beyond religious or ethnic antago-
nisms. As Kate Fleet stated in her study of Genoese and Ottoman trade:
‘money largely formed the basis of the relationship between the Genoese
and the Turks and this, rather than any religious scruple, dictated rela-
tions.’5 One illustrative aspect of these relations also pertaining to labour
and labour mobility is the use of eastern-style textiles in Europe and of
western-style textiles in the Islamic world. This ‘cultural cross-dressing’
has found considerable scholarly attention recently and certainly deserves
further study; ‘adopted, adapted, and appropriated by medieval elites,
these kinds of artefacts produced networks of affinity not bounded by
religious, ethnic, or linguistic identity but by possession, consumption,
and display’.6 Similar ‘networks of affinities’ also emerged based on pro-
fession and know-how, for instance. One most impressive result of entan-
gled phenomena in this regard is the emergence of the Lingua franca of
Mediterranean seafaring in the late medieval and early modern period.7
Within this framework, there emerged various phenomena of ‘labour
mobility’, both deliberate (by ‘economically informed actors’ from
elite and non-elite-strata of societies) and forced ones, across spatial
and temporal scales and especially also across political, religious or cul-
tural frontiers. Even more, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black
Sea constituted the most important transfer zone between the Euro-
Mediterranean sphere and the Mongol-Islamic world of the thirteenth to
fifteenth century, from which (again both deliberate and forced) mobility
of labour was effected across Eurasia—epitomised in the notorious figure
of Marco Polo, a labour migrant from Venice who between 1273 and
1291 joined the administrative service of the Great Khan in Yuan China
as did many other individuals from the Western regions and peripheries
of the Mongolian sphere.8 A survey of ‘moving hands’ across the late
medieval Eastern Mediterranean, therefore, very much illustrates the
‘global’ dimension of labour mobility before 1500 and its ‘trans-local’
character.
32 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

Concepts and Methods: Mobilities, Networks

and Identities

‘Mobility’ has been identified as a central aspect of socio-economic and-

political, cultural and religious developments in historical and social
research in recent years; some scholars even speak about a ‘mobility turn’
which ‘connects the analysis of different forms of travel, transport and
communications with the multiple ways in which economic and social
life is performed and organized through time and across various spaces.’9
This ‘turn’, of course, resorts to earlier theoretical frameworks of mobil-
ity as they have been developed especially for phenomena of migration.

Typologies of Mobility
Already in the 1880s and 1890s, E.G. Ravenstein classified mobile indi-
viduals by distance and time into local migrants, short-journey migrants,
long-journey migrants, migrants by stages and temporary migrants. His
‘Laws of Migration’ identified economic factors as main causes of migra-
tion within a framework of ‘push and pull’, where socio-economic or
political conditions in places of origin motivate mobility while the char-
acter of these conditions in places of destination attracts mobility. This
framework, of course, underwent several modifications since then, but
core concepts are still valid especially within economic theories of mobil-
ity. Their relevance can also be demonstrated for our period.10
A ‘global perspective’ on mobility was developed based on the
‘World-System Theory’ as established by Immanuel Wallerstein and as
adapted by Abu Lughod also for the ‘late medieval World System’, as we
have seen. A ‘world system’ is characterised by a differentiation between
highly developed core areas, less developed peripheries and semi-
peripheries in between, connected via ‘labour supply systems’, within
which mobility takes place. Especially for ‘core centres’ such as Venice,
attracting manpower from nearby and far away ‘peripheries’ across the
Eastern Mediterranean, the value of such an approach can also be illus-
trated for the late medieval period (see below the example of maritime
workforce).11
Such a macro-perspective pays little attention to the agency of indi-
viduals, while recent research on migration has very much focused on
the interplay between ‘structure’ and ‘agency’; this approach has been
summed up by McLeman as follows: ‘The terms structure and agency are
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 33

inherently linked, but their precise definitions can vary according to the
context in which they are used. In simplest terms, agency refers to the
degree of freedom an individual has in choosing his or her actions, while
structure refers to the societal norms, obligations, and institutions that
shape and set limits on the individual’s actions’.12 Structure and agency
are also core concepts within a ‘system approach’ towards migration
phenomena as developed recently.13 It focuses on the interplay between
socio-economic, political and spatial structures both in the ‘society of
departure’14 and in the ‘receiving societies’,15 which very much defined
the scope of action, and the actual agency of individuals and groups.
Equally, it highlights the significance of social networks established and/
or used by individuals to effect mobility as well as integration within the
socio-economic framework in the places of destination.16 Also, Charles
Tilly analysed the relevance of ‘solidarity networks’, for instance, which
‘provide a setting for life at the destination, a basis for solidarity and
mutual aid as well as for division and conflict’ for the mobility of individ-
uals. But he also emphasised the potentially constraining effects of such
networks via which ‘members of immigrant groups often exploited one
another as they would not have dared to exploit the native-born’; he also
made clear that ‘every inclusion also constitutes an exclusion’.17

Networks, Mobility and Frontiers

The conceptualisation and analysis of social (and other) networks in
general has attracted increasing attention in social and historical studies
beyond mobility and migration studies. Tools of network analysis ena-
ble us to integrate information on the interactions, communications and
affiliations of individuals into ‘social topographies’, which make visible
the actual complexity of these entanglements beyond selective or serial
depictions of data. Researchers and other observers are able to detect
patterns of social interaction—sometimes previously unnoticed within
the mass of information. But network analysis claims ‘not only that
ties matter, but that they are organized in a significant way that this or
that individual has an interesting position in terms of his or her ties.’18
Furthermore, network analysis can be combined with tools of historical
geographical information systems (HGIS), thus establishing the connec-
tion between ‘social’ and ‘geographical topography’, whose correlation
can also be inspected.19
34 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

At the same time, network analysis is only one aspect of the theoreti-
cal framework of relational analysis. In addition to quantitative analysis,
the field of ‘relational sociology’ has highlighted the more ‘qualitative’
aspects of social networks with regard to their relevance for the embed-
ding and even construction of identities and relationships.20 The rela-
tional approach views nodes and their identities as well as relations and
their interpretations as ‘mutually generative’. In a meshwork of structure
and culture, identities are created at the crossing points of relations and
networks emerge: ties create nodes create ties.21 The best-known theo-
retician of relational sociology is Harrison C. White; for him, ‘networks
are phenomenological realities as well as measurement constructs’—and
‘persons’ are constructs of communication; they only emerge in the pro-
cess of communication and gain profile by their embedding in the web of
communications.22
The usefulness of such a relational and flexible approach to the mobil-
ity of individuals and objects as well as to the fluid character of identities
has been demonstrated also recently for the medieval ‘Hindu-Muslim’
frontier zone in India by Finbarr B. Flood; he cites James Clifford:
‘Yet what if identity is conceived not as [a] boundary to be maintained
but as a nexus of relations and transactions actively engaging a subject?
The story or stories of interactions must then be more complex, less
linear and teleological.’23 The survey and mapping of the embedding
of individuals or localities in multiplex networks across allegedly fixed
boundaries and their modification through mobility thus in itself makes
visible the potentials for the modification—be it affirmation or accom-
modation—of identities. But we have to take into account that also in
late medieval Eastern Mediterranean, we do not encounter ‘precise lin-
ear divisions’ of boundaries, but ‘frontiers’, which ‘connotes more zonal
qualities, and a broader, social context’; and ‘rather than bounded (or
bordered) space, therefore, we are dealing with cultural and politi-
cal spheres of authority that intersected at their margins to form ‘zone
boundaries’ or ‘transfrontiers’ where limits of cultural and political
authority overlapped and were continuously negotiated, whether by bel-
ligerent ruler or itinerant merchants, pilgrims, and travellers’ (see also
below the examples of peasant mobility).24 Such frontier zones give
room for the emergence of what Richard White has famously called ‘the
Middle Ground’, ‘a place in between’, where ‘diverse peoples adjust
their difference through what amounts to a process of creative, and
often expedient, misunderstandings. (…) They often misinterpret and
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 35

distort both the values and practices of those they deal with, but from
these misunderstandings arise new meanings and through them new
practices—the shared meanings and practices of the middle ground.’25
Labour mobility within such a politically fragmented, religiously, ethni-
cally and linguistically diverse environment as the late medieval Eastern
Mediterranean thus very much demands a combination of perspectives of
history of labour and economy with that of cultural and religious history;
the high density of border zones as spheres of contact and exchange as
well as conflict and exclusion very quickly connected any act of spatial
mobility with the necessity for ‘cultural mobility’.26

Types and Institutional Frameworks of Mobility in the Late Medieval

Eastern Mediterranean
In the late medieval Eastern Mediterranean, we encounter similar
types of mobile individuals, as Dirk Hoerder has identified them in his
‘Cultures in Contact’, especially for Western Europe (also a region of
origin of many of those mobile in the East), many of which can be con-
nected with phenomena of ‘labour mobility’: ‘cosmopolitan nobles and
their households’, ‘itinerant administrators’ and ‘warfaring mercenar-
ies’; ‘rural people, labourers and servants’; merchants and traders, ‘jour-
neymen artisans’ and ‘out of town maids’ as well as masons and miners;
and pilgrims and clerics. Hoerder has also highlighted the considerable
degree of agency (see above) of individuals also within non-elite strata
of societies, identifying, for instance, also itinerant peasants and artisans
as ‘economically informed actors’.27 But even more than in the ‘Latin/
Catholic Occident’, actors also had to take into account parameters for
mobility based on differentiations, especially of religion—especially since
institutional frameworks from the side of state authorities very much
operated along these lines.
Since the tenth century, the existence of a walled enclosure as quarters
for (Western) Christian individuals (especially merchants) (funduq/fun-
dacio) was a common and traditional solution for their presence in cities
under Muslim (and also Byzantine) rule and the most important clause
of the frequently renewed agreements between European merchant com-
munities and local rulers, be they Byzantines or Muslims.28 This was in
the interest of both sides; local authorities were able (up to a certain
degree) to control and limit the movement of strangers and their inter-
action with endogenous population, especially during times of religious
36 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

significance such as the Friday prayer, but also for the purpose of taxa-
tion.29 Western travellers, in turn, could establish a secured area for living
and storage, which also allowed for the practice of their faith (includ-
ing church buildings) and a certain autonomy under their own consul,
who also represented the community towards the local authorities.30 At
the same time, as also recent comprehensive studies have highlighted,
there existed many occasion for interactions and commerce between
Europeans and Muslims beyond the borders of the funduq, establishing
partnerships and common commercial ventures.31 Thus, while commu-
nities already existing within such frameworks very much facilitated the
mobility of further individuals from regions of origin, these regulations
did not necessarily totally limit the potential of interaction with indig-
enous communities.
At the same time, there existed various voices against contacts, com-
mercial or otherwise, across the frontier, especially from the side of
representatives of religious authorities such as the Catholic orders also
active in the East. We observe deep suspicions toward the ‘results’ of
such ‘inappropriate’ exchanges, such as individuals of (religiously, ethni-
cally) ‘mixed’ origins; a crusading treatise of the earlier fourteenth cen-
tury, the Directorum ad passagium faciendum contains detailed chapter
on the spiritual and personal deficits of these groups and why one has
to be wary of them. For the Gasmouloi (descendants of ‘Latin-Greek’
unions), who in the Byzantine Empire played a special role as mariners
and marines (thus also one of several cases in which professional attri-
bution accompanied the ethnic one), the author provides an interesting
description of a what we would call today ‘transcultural’ identity: ‘When
they are with Greeks, they show themselves as Greeks, and when with
Latins, as Latins.’32
Similar differentiations were also made with regard to forced mobil-
ity. Slaves were a special ‘commodity’ in various regards; and while own-
ers and slaves could be of the same religious or ethnic background (see
also below), there existed certain reservations towards delivering co-reli-
gionists to ‘infidels’. Guillelmus Ada (d. 1338/9, temporarily Bishop of
Smyrna and later Archbishop of Sultaniyya in Iran), for instance, wrote
about the spiritual danger of selling (Orthodox) Christians to Muslims:
‘The miserable Greeks are sold and become slaves of every nation, that
is, of the Saracens, the Tartars, and the Jews, and each of them follows
the sect professed by his master.’33 This issue became even more critical
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 37

when slaves had become mobile on their own and had escaped across the
frontier to an area under control of fellow Christians or Muslims. In such
cases, the payment of a compensation was agreed upon in the treaties
of Venetian Crete with the Turkish Emirates of Menteshe and Aydın in
Western Asia Minor, for instance, while the restitution of an enslaved co-
religionist to the ‘infidels’ was neither expected by the Christian nor the
Muslim partner. Also, Ottomans and Genoese followed the same princi-
ples in an agreement in 1387.34
At the same time, too strong a presence of slaves of ‘inimical’ back-
ground was also considered a threat to security; in 1341, the Venetian
Senate decreed that Turkish slaves should not be present on Crete for
more than six months and should then only be transported further on to
the West. In 1363, we learn about measures against merchants declaring
Turkish slaves as ‘Greeks’ (who were—due to the weakness of Byzantine
power—more or less ‘harmless’) to circumvent such restrictions.35 A
statute of the Hospitallers on Rhodes regulated in 1357 that no slave of
Turkish origin should be in the service of any knight of the Order living
within the fortified town of Rhodes for security reasons.36
As in many cases, we observe the friction between the utilisation of
the potential of contacts and of manpower across the frontier and the
necessity for control. Propagandists for a new crusade such as Guillelmus
Ade or Mario Sanudo Torsello (d. 1338, a Venetian statesman travel-
ling widely in the East) even argued for a total embargo against Muslim
powers as precondition for a successful re-conquest of the Holy Land,
denouncing also by name those among the Italian merchants doing
intensive business with the ‘enemy’ as bad Christians and ‘ministers of
hell’.37 Any instruments of control, of course, would have been of lim-
ited effectiveness under pre-modern conditions, and almost ineffective
in the face of extreme situations: when the armies of Timur devastated
Anatolia after the Ottoman defeat at Ankara in 1402, both ‘Latins’ from
Ayasoluk and Turci innumerabiles fled from the mainland to islands such
as Samos.38

An Analytical Framework Across Scales

Integrating historical conditions as well as various typologies of mobility
discussed above, we propose an analytical framework flexible enough to
capture the complexity of labour mobility across scales and beyond rigid
38 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

Fig. 2.1 The ‘space of possible shapes’ of labour mobility (graph: Mitsiou and
Preiser-Kapeller)

categorisations. We understand the parameters of space, time and scale

(in term of numbers) as an axis of a three-dimensional ‘space of possible
shapes’ of these phenomena (Fig. 2.1).
Within this space, localities, due to a bundle of various socio-eco-
nomic and cultural factors, may have acted as attractors which created
‘pull effects’ on specific combinations of parameters (short-distance sea-
sonal labour mobility at a large scale, long-distance permanent mobility
at a small scale) or also across scales. Also, individual life stories could
move across this space (from permanent, long-distance migration to
occupational, seasonal migration, for instance; see also examples below),
connecting various local attractors at a different scale. A cumulative map-
ping of such trajectories (micro-histories making up macro-history) may
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 39

Fig. 2.2 The ‘space of options’ of individual agency (graph: Mitsiou and
Preiser-Kapeller)

help to identify the power of attractors, but also patterns of divergence.

Similarly, we draw a ‘space of options’ for individual agency limited by
axes of individual ‘socio-economic status’, of ‘socio-economic condi-
tions’ and of ‘strength and range of social networks’ (Fig. 2.2).
Again, specific localities may provide specific parametric ‘boxes’ for
individual agencies—and individuals may open larger spaces of options
through mobility. In both cases, rigid typologies are replaced by a diver-
sity of combinations across scales and attributions of status.
In the following, we are, of course, not able to survey the entirety of
this multiplexity;39 instead, we will focus on two sample groups which
seem at the opposite ends of this ‘space of options’: groups for which
mobility was an integral part of their occupation; and groups which
became objects of forced mobility.
40 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

Mobility as an Integral Part of Occupation

Itinerant Members of the Secular and Religious Elites: Samples

and Connections
As already mentioned above, Dirk Hoerder for the Middle Ages listed
several types of mobile individuals, for whom mobility was not a tem-
porary, but integral part of their occupation such as ‘cosmopolitan
nobles’, ‘itinerant administrators’ and ‘warfaring mercenaries’. One fig-
ure combining all these attributes as well as connecting the Western and
Eastern Mediterranean was the French nobleman Philippe de Mézières
(ca. 1327–1405), who served rulers in Lombardy, Naples, Cyprus
and France, fought in Crusading expeditions in Smyrna (İzmir) and
Alexandria in Egypt as well as in the Hundred Years War and travelled
as diplomat and propagator of a crusade to the Papal Court in Avignon,
Venice, France, Spain and Germany. While his itinerary may suggest the
image of a free knight errant, his ‘space of options’ was also often limited
by factors beyond his influence, such as the death of royal patrons (King
Peter I of Cyprus in 1369, King Charles V of France in 1380), who
had supported his mobility in attempts to mobilise forces for another
crusade.40
In total, warfare also supported the mobility of individuals across
the frontiers in the Eastern Mediterranean in various forms, and also in
the case of prisoners sold as slaves across the sea (see below) or via the
recruitment of mercenaries from various backgrounds; even the ‘crusad-
ing’ King Peter I of Cyprus employed Turkish mercenaries in his gar-
risons along the Pamphylian coast in the 1360s.41 In general, ‘war is
not, therefore, always inimical to the promotion of cosmopolitan iden-
tities. On the contrary, it can unite men of different ethnicities and
faiths (often against their coreligionists) and engender new patterns of
circulation.’42
A most impressive example of a combination of both integra-
tion into recipient society and maintenance of connections to core ele-
ments of identity in the society of origin over long distances is a group
of (Orthodox) Christians in Mongol service recruited mainly among
the ethnicity of the Alans in the Northwestern Caucasus, but also
neighbouring ethnicities, who already took part in the conquest of the
Chinese Song Empire between 1265 and 1279. This is not only men-
tioned by Marco Polo, but also described in detail in the Annals of the
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 41

Mongol Yuan Dynasty, who ruled over all of China from 1279 to 1368.
In biographical outlines, the careers of several members of the Asud (as
the Alans are called in the Chinese texts) regiments, which in 1309/11
comprised not less than 33,000 men and were stationed mostly in and
around the Yuan capital of Khanbaliq (Beijing), are described; they not
only included ‘Alans’, but also Russians. Unfortunately, the Chinese
sources, now accessible due to the book of Agustí Alemany, are inter-
ested only in their military deeds and not in their religious affiliation.43
But the activities of Latin missionaries provide invaluable additional infor-
mation; in 1307, the Papacy ordained the Franciscan John of Monte
Corvino as Archbishop of Khanbaliq, where he served until his death in
1328. According to a Latin description, his flock also encompassed ‘some
good Christians, called Alans, 30,000 of whom are in the Great King’s
pay; these people and their families turn to Friar John and he comforts
them and preaches to them’.44 This information seems reliable, since the
indication of the strength of Alan troops also accords with the one from
Chinese sources. Even more, after the death of John of Monte Corvino,
in July 1336, Emperor Toghon Temür (1333–1368) and five Christian
Alan princes from his guard sent an embassy under the leadership of
Thogay, Alanus de Cathayo to the Pope; it arrived in Avignon at the
court of Pope Benedict XII in May 1338. The correspondence between
Beijing and Avignon is transmitted to us in Latin and conveys the names
of these Alan leaders, which, in turn, can be identified with individuals
from Chinese sources and allow us to reconstruct the lineage of several
Christian ‘Alan’ families in Mongol service in China from the 1240s up
to the 1330s. One of the addressees of the Pope was a certain Kathiten,
in Chinese Xiang Shan, who served in the Asud guards in the fourth
generation as had done his father Dimidier (Demetrios), his grandfather
Kouerji (Georgios, he died in 1311) and his great grandfather Fudelaici
(Fjodor?, Theodoros?).45 The same was true for Jemmega, in Chinese
Zheyan Buhua, the son of Jiaohua (1328), son of Atachi (under Kubilai,
1260–1294), son of Niegula (Nikolaos), who had entered the service of
Möngke Khan in 1251/59.46 Especially the usage of typically ‘Orthodox’
Christian names, also after the first generation, provides a hint of the
‘original’ denominational background of these families. In their letter to
the Pope, the Alan leaders demanded the dispatch of a new bishop, since
the flock was without a pastor after the death of John of Monte Corvino
in 1328.47 This may also have been the motivation for the Alans to accept
the pastoral care of the Latin missionaries and hierarchs in China in the
42 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

first place; this strategy also allowed them to maintain their Christian
faith until the end of the Mongol Dynasty. Also, beyond the route to
China, Alans became subjects and objects of deliberate and forced mobil-
ity, especially as mercenaries of the Golden Horde and later Byzantium,
as military slaves (Mamluks) in Egypt (thereby joining the leading stra-
tum of society there) and as slaves traded from the Black Sea in the entire
Eastern Mediterranean as far as Italy.48
The evidence for the Christian Asud in China also highlights the
far-reaching occupational mobility of clergymen. The Western Church,
especially since the thirteenth century, tried to expand its influence to
the East under the banner of mission, especially through the monks of
the Mendicant orders. For their activities (and communication with the
ecclesiastical centre in Rome respectively Avignon), Dominicans and
Franciscans also relied on the networks of trade and founded their con-
vents and stations in mercantile nodes, where merchants from the West
supported them and became part of their flock besides (desired) converts
among the endogenous population. Archbishop John of Sulṭāniyya (in
Persia) wrote in retrospective at the beginning of the fifteenth century:
‘About the year of our Lord 1310, when there was no mention in the
regions of the east of the Church of Rome and of its ceremonies, some
of the Dominican Brothers went with merchants in these regions (…),
and from that time they began to preach the Catholic faith’.49 Over
time, Dominicans and Franciscans established convents which, in turn,
became bases for the founding of archbishoprics and bishoprics, such as
in China (Khanbaliq—Beijing) in 1307 (see also above) or in Sultaniyya
(Iran) in 1318.50 The continuous presence of clergymen or even bish-
ops depended on the acceptance by the respective Muslim ruler; also in
this regard, the trading posts of European merchants provided important
support, since, as we have seen, agreements between merchants and local
authorities also included the maintenance of a church within the fonda-
cio. Guillelmus Ade praised those ‘Tartars and Saracens, who allow the
friars to come to them to preach the word of God to them and to live
peacefully and quietly among them.’51 Yet, the success of missions was
limited, and bishoprics thus remain dependent on the ups and downs of
trade cycles and Latin presence. The collapse of the Mongol Ilkhanate
after 1336 (with the partial withdrawal of Italian merchants from Inner
Anatolia) and the Black Death after 1347 and especially ‘the absence
of any association between the mission and political power’ very much
limited the chances for a sustainable or even growing ecclesiastical life in
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 43

many of the new foundations, although many sees existed as titular bish-
oprics until the fifteenth century.52

Occupational Mobility and Shipboard Societies

As already mentioned, the networks of Catholic clergymen in the East
at all scales (from local to regional to long distance between China and
Europe) very much overlapped with those of merchants, another group
of occupational mobility. The famous ‘Handbook of Trade’ of Francesco
Pegolotti from the 1330s, for instance, provides not only an overview of
the most important ports and cities of Europe and the Mediterranean
as well as the commodities one could buy there, but also descriptions
of the inland route from Laiazzo (the harbour of Ayas at the Cilician
Coast) to Tabriz, the capital of the Ilkhans in Iran, as well as of the much
longer way from Tana/Azow on the Black Sea through Central Asia to
Khanbaliq in China.53

Fig. 2.3 The connections between the port of Tana/Azow and localities of ori-
gin of merchants active there in 1359/1360 (graph: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller,
Before European Hegemony)
44 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

Tana/Azow at the mouth of the river Don was the most important
trading post of the Venetians in the Northern Black Sea and a city of
many religious and ethnic groups, as the notarial records of Benedetto
Bianco for the period September 1359 to August 136054 allow us
to reconstruct.55 Under the sovereignty of the Golden Horde, Tana
attracted in this period many merchants from Venice and its Italian
hinterland as well as its colonies in the Adriatic and Aegean Sea, but
also many other Italians, even from Venice’s main rival Genoa, as
well as Catalans from the far west of the Mediterranean. But, in addi-
tion, we also find ‘Byzantine’ or ‘Greek’ traders from Constantinople
and Trebizond in the city, other orthodox Christians from Russia and
Alania (in the north-western Caucasus, see also above), Armenians from
diaspora communities in the Black Sea region as well as from Armenia
proper, Jewish merchants and Muslim merchants, some of them subjects
of the Golden Horde (‘Tatars’), others from Eastern Anatolia and Tabriz
(Fig. 2.3).
Tana therefore functioned as attractor of mobility across several spatial
scales.56 This mosaic becomes even more multifaceted if we look at the
places of origin of the most important commodity traded in Tana: slaves
(see below).
Central hubs of communication thus were once more the ports, con-
nected by a network of maritime routes; for their usage, merchants and
all other travellers had to rely on the knowledge accumulated in the
workforces of navigators, mariners and shipbuilders. Gilles Deleuze has
defined the sea as the ‘realm of the unbound, unconstructed, and free’,
where possibilities for the control of mobility of individuals and objects
were much more limited.57 Christer Westerdahl has described the emer-
gence of peculiar ‘maritime communities’ in ‘maritime cultural land-
scapes’, ‘the people who in their daily practice engage with the sea in
roles such a fishermen, coastal traders, seafarers, and shipbuilder’ and
construct their identities often in deliberate differentiation from the
‘landsmen’.58 A most interesting example for the transfer of maritime
know-how within networks based on kinship and ethnic affiliation has
been recently analysed by Ruthy Gertwagen in her article on ‘Byzantine
Shipbuilding in Fifteenth-century Venetian Crete: War Galleys and the
Link to the Arsenal in Venice’; she demonstrates how even the arsenal of
the Serenissima in the first half of the fifteenth century, for the building
of a specific type of light galleys, depended on the knowledge of a Greek
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 45

master from Rhodes (Theodoro Baxon, d. 1408) and later his nephew
(Nicolò Palopano) and his son-in-law (Leo Miconditi, who was also
active on the Venetian island of Crete), to whom Baxon had transmitted
his skills.59
Other research has called for the study ‘of communities of mariners
aboard ships, or shipboard societies’, also integrating Michel Foucault’s
notion of the ‘ship as the heterotopia par excellence’, meaning a ‘real
place in which society is simultaneously represented, contested, and
inverted’, capable ‘of juxtaposing different places that are in themselves
incompatible in a single real place’.60 As a matter of fact, we observe
that ships, regardless of the flag under which they were sailing, served as
mobile contact zones of individuals of different religious or ethnic back-
ground.61 Besides temporary passengers, ship crews permanently con-
sisted of individuals from many areas along the Mediterranean shores;
the manpower necessary to man a ship, especially a large galley with 200
oarsmen, could only be found by attracting hands from a lot of places.62
A special issue of the journal ‘Medieval Encounters’ in 2007 was devoted
to ‘Cross-Cultural Encounters on the High Seas’; contributions illustrate
the poly-religious and poly-ethnic composition of crews on board ships
of Latin, Byzantine and Muslim fleets during the Middle Ages.63 For the
late medieval Eastern Mediterranean, Bernard Doumerc has illustrated
the ‘Cosmopolitanism on Board Venetian Ships’ and Theresa M. Vann
has done so for Rhodes in the time between 1453 and 1480.64
Rhodes was also the place of origin of one of the best-documented
sailors of our period, Michael of Rhodes, who in the 1430s and 1440s
wrote a fascinating book (in Venetian Italian, while Greek was his mother
tongue, which he most probably was not able to write) summing up his
maritime and commercial know-how accumulated in 30 years of service
in the fleets of Venice across the entire Mediterranean and beyond. The
book ‘provides a fascinating window into the technological and practi-
cal knowledge of an ordinary, non-elite—but certainly exceptional—
Venetian mariner’.65 Michael started his career (maybe at the age of 16)
signing in as a simple oarsman on board of a galley of the Venetian guard
fleet in 1401 in Manfredonia in Apulia; he provides information on his
annual travels (commanders of ship and fleets, his own rank, places of
destination, purpose of the journey) until 1443. Michael worked his way
up to the rank of an ‘armiraio’, the highest position a non-noble could
achieve in a Venetian fleet. This was a remarkable career for a Greek
46 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

coming from Rhodes, an island which itself since 1309 was under the
‘Latin’ rule of the Knight Hospitallers, who allowed the practice of the
Orthodox rite up to a certain degree.66 Unfortunately, Michael’s manu-
script does not provide any clear information on his own religious affilia-
tion beyond being Christian; but considering the relatively strict politics
of Venetian authorities regarding the practice of the Orthodox faith in
this period and the generally existing barriers for integration into the
citizenship of Venice, one may assume that in light of his continuous
advancement, Michael adopted Catholicism, at least to the exterior. Also,
his possible marriage to a Venetian woman (which would have made him
a Venetian citizen de intus in 1407) points in that direction.67 One high-
light of his career may have been the convoys of 1437 and 1439, which
brought the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos and his retinue
from Constantinople to Italy for the Council of Ferrara/Florence (with
the purpose of negotiations on a union of churches, which also brought
some eases for Orthodox Christians in Venice) and back.68 Michael
retired after a last journey to London in 1443 and may have died shortly
after 1445, maybe at the age of 60.69
Michael’s life (which certainly deserves further study) is a most
illustrative example for a combination of permanent migration and
occupational mobility; at the same time, it is representative for many
micro-histories summing up into a macro-perspective of labour mobility
centred on the core hub of Venice in this period. In a Venetian account
book, we possess the list of names and places of origin of many of the
oarsmen working on a ship which sailed from Venice to Jaffa and back
also along the Southern Anatolian coast between 9 May and 15 August
1414, under the command of Francesco Querini.70 If we combine this
data into a network model, we can visualise how the ship connects the
places of origin of its crew with the localities on its route from Venice to
the East. This data also allows us to visualise the relative significance of
localities on the basis of the respective number of oarsmen coming from
each of them. The largest numbers came from Venetian possessions and
other sites in Dalmatia and Albania as well as from further inland of the
Western Balkans, but also from the Italian hinterland of Venice, Hungary
and Germany, and from the Eastern and Western Mediterranean
(Fig. 2.4).71
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 47

Fig. 2.4 Places of origin of oarsmen serving on the ship sailing from Venice
to Jaffa in 1414 (sites scaled according to the number of oarsmen coming from
there; graph: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Civitas Thauris)

This social network of the ship of 1414 is, of course, a mobile one
(Fig. 2.5), so that this assemblage of people and their places of ori-
gin connects to all ports on its route from Venice to Jaffa, establish-
ing a complex web of individual entanglements across the entire
Mediterranean. The ship thus emerges as a ‘heterotopia’, capable ‘of jux-
taposing different places that are in themselves incompatible in a single
real place’ (Fig. 2.6).72
This mobile poly-ethnic and poly-religious network, in turn, inter-
acted and overlapped with the trans-frontier networks in the various
ports and maritime contact zones, adding to their diversity and struc-
tural complexity. At the same time, this sample provides an impression
of the possible number of life stories of labour mobility similar to that of
48 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

Fig. 2.5 The route of the ship sailing from Venice to Jaffa in 1414 and the
places of origin of the oarsmen (graph: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Civitas
Thauris)

Michael of Rhodes we have to take into account for this period without
possessing comparable documentation.

Forced Mobilities

Forced, Attracted and Restricted Mobilities

Besides those who deliberately set out for the purpose of commerce,
work, diplomacy, pilgrimage or travel and thereby entangled themselves
in the manifold networks across frontiers, there were also hundreds
and thousands who were replaced from their original background and
exposed different ones against their will. Yet, also within the framework
of forced mobility, the parameters setting the space of options could very
much vary. When the Seljuk Sultan of Konya ʿIzz ad-Dīn Kaykāwūs, after
his conquest of the port of Sinop at the Black Sea in 1214, intended to
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 49

Fig. 2.6 The network between localities emerging because of the mobil-
ity of the oarsmen and of the ship sailing from Venice to Jaffa in 1414 (graph:
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Civitas Thauris)

stimulate the commercial activity there, he, according to the historian

Ibn Bibi, ordered ‘to select a well-funded merchant from every city and
to send him to Sinop. His movable and immovable property should be
bought by the privy purse with his consent and the full price should be
handed over to him. In accordance with this order, respected merchants
were sent to Sinop from the surrounding areas’. In such a case, authori-
ties were, of course, interested to preserve both the financial and the
human capital as well as the willingness to cooperate of those relocated
to another place.73
Less cautious authorities may have acted towards peasants or even vil-
leins (which was the status of the majority of the rural workforce both
in areas under Latin and Byzantine rule)74; their mobility was a priori
very much constricted if not executed with the approval or on the order
of their landlords. But as Hoerder has illustrated for Western Europe
(see above), the agency of this group as ‘economically informed actors’
50 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

should also not be underestimated.75 Not only a rural workforce could

actively seek more beneficial conditions of labour; both landlords and
state authorities were actively attracting much-needed manpower by
promoting such more beneficial conditions, especially in periods of
demographic downturn due to epidemics, war or other calamities—
and especially if such a movement of workforce was to the detriment
of a direct neighbour and competitor. Under Emperor Theodore II
Laskaris (1254–1258), the Byzantine exile state of Nicaea welcomed
peasants migrating from the (then Latin-controlled) island of Samos to
the region of nearby Ephesus and provided them with land and utilities
as well as the status of free peasants (‘eleutheroi’).76 On the other side,
Theodore’s father John III Vatatzes (1221–1254) ordered the return
of paroikoi (villeins), who had fled from villages near Smyrna (İzmir)
in 1244 to nearby regions because of mistreatment by their landlords,
whose interests as military personnel outweighed those of the peas-
ants.77 David Jacoby has observed similar tensions between desired and
unwelcome mobility of rural workforces, especially for territories on the
island of Euboia (Negroponte) and in the southwest of the Peloponnese
(Methone and Korone). Both were areas of often overlapping and com-
peting zones of authority (Venice, local Latin landlords, Byzantium),
which provided ample opportunities for (in their majority, Greek) peas-
ants to cross (nearby) borders in the search of or already attracted by
promises of more beneficial conditions of service. Sometimes, the vari-
ous polities negotiated a return of such groups, but in many cases, such
agreements remained without effect or were deliberately ignored by local
authorities. One ‘solution’ from the side of landlords on either side of a
border was the establishment of ‘partitioned villages’ as in the region of
Corinth in the thirteenth century, where the revenues of such villages
would be shared by the local Frankish landlord and his Byzantine peer
right beyond the border, who then both would have an interest in the
stability of the peasants at their current place of residence—thereby lim-
iting their ‘space of options’ considerably.78 Yet, to cite David Jacoby:
‘The flight of villeins was a constant concern of individual landlords,
landholders, and the Venetian government. The shortage in rural man-
power and growing competition between lords striving to acquire it
generated a growing mobility and instability of the peasantry from the
1340s onward, both in continental Greece and in Euboea. The villeins
were clearly aware that once they crossed political boundaries separat-
ing Venetian, Frankish and Byzantine territories, their return required
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 51

complex diplomatic negotiations between political entities with contrast-

ing interests. They took advantage of these factors to obtain concessions
from their lords or to promote their chances to evade a forcible return to
their former residence. It follows that territorial fragmentation generated
an intensification of peasant mobility in the Peloponnesus and between
the mainland and Euboea.’79 Future research may produce similar results
on this interplay between socio-political structures and individual agen-
cies for other regions of the politically fragmented late medieval Eastern
Mediterranean.

Slavery and Mobility: The ‘Zero Point’ of Agency?

The same political fragmentation constituted the framework of an inten-
sive slave trade which can be observed on the coasts of Asia Minor as
well as in the Aegean and also especially in the Black Sea.80 The main
sources of slaves were prisoners of the wars frequently fought among the
many polities of the respective populations of conquered or raided areas
sold by their captors.81 Slavery also implied the (from the perspective
of the slave, unintended and often painful) establishment of new social
connections and a modification and relocation of social networks, first
via the exposure to the invading captors, then through those involved in
the sale and transport of the slaves and (not necessarily) finally through
the owners and their households (which could include also slaves from
other or similar backgrounds), respectively, the entire society at the place
of destination. Slaves of course could be resold, but also ransomed by
kinsmen or fellow countrymen and (if possible) ‘repatriated’. Integrating
slaves of (sometimes, but not necessarily) very different religious, linguis-
tic or ethnic backgrounds, of course, also affected the social environment
of their owners;82 slave trade thus produced a series of recombinations
of social networks across frontiers due to the (forced) mobility of indi-
viduals, which, coming from Asia Minor, the Balkans or the Black Sea,
could end up in regions very near to their homeland, in the Latin colo-
nies on the islands and in mainland Greece, but also in the centres of
European commerce in Italy, in Ilkhan Persia or in Mamluk Egypt. The
last destination, of course, provided peculiar conditions for the ‘space of
options’ of slaves, since the ruling elite of the country since 1250 until
the Ottoman conquest in 1517 recruited from the ranks of slave sol-
diers, originating especially from the coasts of the Black Sea. Individual
trajectories of life stories could therefore lead from the ‘zero point’ of
52 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

individual agency to ruling one of the most powerful polities of the

region in that period.83
For many slaves, in contrast, enslavement was connected with a high
degree of mobility, both from a spatial and cultural point of view, with-
out such an enlargement of the ‘space of options’. Sources allow us to
partly reconstruct the recombination of social networks inherent into
this process for the port of Famagusta on Cyprus. For 1300/1, Ahmet
Usta has systematically analysed the documents dealing with the trade of
slaves in the acts of the Genoese notary Lamberto di Sambuceto, active
in Famagusta between 1296 and 1307, at that time dominated by traders
from his hometown. The documents, in most cases, register the ethnic/
religious background of the slaves (at least as attributed to them by their
sellers) and also of their sellers and buyers as well as the place(s) from or
via which they came to Cyprus.84 We used this data on the one hand to
capture the ethnic/religious composition of the 37 slaves and of the 50
sellers and buyers as well as the gender composition of the slaves and
then to create network models of slaves, owners and localities in order
to survey and visualise the manifold entanglements emerging from the
capture, relocation and sale of slaves. One ‘Turkish’ slave was Ali, who
stemmed from Kayseri in Cappadocia and was transported to Famagusta,
where he was sold by Gandulfus de Staeria (from Genoa) to Palmerio de
Florenzola (from Florence) on 27 July 1301 (Fig. 2.7).
As his name indicates, Ali was (still) a Muslim—in contrast to other
‘Turkish’ slaves, who had been given a (literally) ‘Christian’ name and
also may have been baptised already. We do not know if his new owner
transported Ali to another locality within the Eastern Mediterranean or
to his home city of Florence. Although the number of slaves from the
East brought to Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth century was not
insubstantial, the number of ‘Turk’ slaves sold in Italy seems to have
been relatively small, at least later in this period.85 In any case, the docu-
ment for the sale of Ali illustrates connections between inland Anatolia to
Mediterranean commerce near (Cyprus) and far away (Genoa, Florence)
from its coast. An even more impressive geographical range emerges if
we visualise all connections between Famagusta and the Mediterranean
world on the basis of links to the places or origin of merchants who came
there to trade with slaves in 1300/1 (Fig. 2.8).
As expected, Genoa and cities in Northern Italy are predominant,
but we also encounter traders from Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt as
well as from the Crimea, Sicily, Libya, Southern France and the Iberian
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 53

Fig. 2.7 The ‘ego-network’ of the ‘Turkish’ slave Ali from Kayseri, sold by
Gandulfus de Staeria (from Genoa) to Palmerio de Florenzola (from Florence)
in Famagusta on Cyprus, 27 July 1301 (graph: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Civitas
Thauris)

Peninsula. Not less far ranging is the (forced) mobility of the slaves if
we map the connections between Famagusta and the Mediterranean
on the basis of links to the places from or via where slaves came who
were traded in Famagusta: besides ‘nearby’ and ‘common’ markets
such as Anatolia, the Black Sea, the Aegean, slaves from Dalmatia (via
Italy) and from the Maghreb (via Spain) found their way from the West
to the East.86 All this adds up to a ‘multi-coloured’ web of connections
between slaves and traders in the market of Famagusta in 1300/1: we
find a Jewish merchant Raffael de Palermo from Sicily, ransoming five
54 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

Fig. 2.8 Connections between Famagusta and the Mediterranean world on

the basis of links to the places or origin of merchants who came there to trade
with slaves in 1300/1301 (links weighted according to the number of merchants
active in Famagusta from that city; graph: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Civitas
Thauris)

Jewish slaves displaced from Candia on Crete from a Genoese trader (on
the condition that they would repay Raffael’s expenses). An Ugolinus
from Messina sells an (unnamed) Muslim ‘Moor’ from the Maghreb,
who came to Cyprus via Spain, to Iohannes de Pando from the same
city, who also buys a ‘Saracen’ named Abraam from a Jewish merchant
named Mossa from Tripolis in North Africa, who had bought Abraam
in Alexandria in Egypt. We do not know what Iohannes de Pando did
with his two slaves, but this example illustrates a ‘recombination’ also
of individuals of very diverse Islamic backgrounds, not to speak of the
general multiplicity of religious/ethnic/linguistic identities forced to
reconnect and to modify within this framework.87 Similar observations,
both from an overall macro-perspective and for individual micro-his-
tories of forced labour mobility (at which we only get a glimpse, albeit
on maybe the most central episode within individual trajectories) could
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 55

be made by combining the background of traders and slaves for Tana

at the Black Sea (see above). Most of the slaves (especially young girls)
sold there originated from the immediate hinterland of the city (Tatars,
Circassians, Alans), but we also encounter Russian, Greek, Armenian
and Jewish slaves as well as one Chinese girl in 1359/60.88 A compara-
ble case study was also undertaken by us for the slave market of Candia
on Crete for the years 1305/6.89 In any case, it becomes evident that
enslavement in the Eastern Mediterranean—similar to other forms of
labour mobility—not only enforced a considerable degree of spatial, but
also of cultural mobility on its victims. At the same time, other studies
have highlighted the remarkable degree of adaptability, but also of resist-
ance slaves were able to demonstrate within this framework.90 Also,
Stephen Greenblatt has called our attention to such phenomena: ‘mobil-
ity studies should account in new ways for the tension between individ-
ual agency and structural constraint. This tension cannot be resolved in
any abstract theoretical way, for in given historical circumstances struc-
tures of power seek to mobilize some individuals and immobilize others.
And it is important to note that moments in which individuals feel most
completely in control may, under careful scrutiny, prove to be moments
of the most intense structural determination, while moments in which
the social structure applies the fiercest pressure on the individual may in
fact be precisely those moments in which individuals are exercising the
most stubborn will to autonomous movement. Mobility studies should
be interested, among other things, in the way in which seemingly fixed
migration paths are disrupted by the strategic acts of individual agents
and by unexpected, unplanned, entirely contingent encounters between
different cultures.’91 These observations, of course, pertain to several
phenomena of labour mobility discussed in our paper—and open up per-
spectives for further in-depth analyses of micro-stories and macro-trends
embedded in our sources.

Conclusion
As our case studies have highlighted, a flexible approach towards a sur-
vey of types, ranges, scales and especially networks of labour mobility
in the pre-modern period has the potential to map both the entangle-
ments emerging from micro-histories of individuals and to accumulate
these individual trajectories into complex networks across spatial and
temporal scales up to the ‘systemic macro approach’. At the same time,
56 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

it becomes evident that these two perspectives require each other: micro-
history provides us with an in-depth perspective of the interplay between
individual agency and structural constraints as well as opportunities and
their specific dynamics in each case. Within the sum of these interactions
and entanglements emerge the actual structural forces and socio-cultural
phenomena we observe from a macro-historical point of view, showing
also emergent properties not dependent on the agency (or design) of
any individual, but on the complexity of the entirety of a system—phe-
nomena such as the lingua franca of Medieval seafaring, for instance.92
The interplay between structure and culture93 also entails the entan-
glement between labour mobility and cultural mobility highlighted in
almost all cases we have inspected in this paper; therefore, an integration
of concepts such as those developed by Stephen Greenblatt (see above)
is equally necessary. Along these lines, the value of micro-historical and
trans-local perspectives on the global history of labour in the period
before 1500 becomes visible.

Notes
1. Steven A. Epstein, Purity Lost: Transgressing Boundaries in the Eastern
Mediterranean, 1000–1400 (Baltimore, 2007), pp. 110–111, especially
reflecting on the Aegean in the fourteenth century, a ‘period of maximum
complexity’.
2. For some examples see the contributions in Michel Balard and Alain
Ducellier, eds., Migrations et diasporas méditerranéennes (Xe–XVIe siècles)
(Paris, 2002), and Élisabeth Malamut and Mohamed Ouerfelli, eds., Les
échanges en Méditerranée médiévale (Aix-en-Provence, 2012).
3. Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D.
1250–1350 (New York and Oxford, 1989); Kate Fleet, European and
Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State: The Merchants of Genoa and
Turkey (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 1–12; Dirk Hoerder, Cultures in Contact:
World Migrations in the Second Millenium (Durham and London, 2002),
pp. 28–30. See also Philip D. Curtin, Cross-cultural Trade in World his-
tory (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 115–119, esp. on the notion of ‘trade
diasporas’. For the far-reaching connections through the mobility of
individuals across Eurasia after the Mongol conquest, see esp. Thomas T.
Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge, 2001).
4. See Niklas Luhmann, ‘Interaktion in Oberschichten: Zur Transformation
ihrer Semantik im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, in Gesellschaftsstruktur
und Semantik. Studien zur Wissenssoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft,
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 57

ed. Niklas Luhmann (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), vol. 1, pp. 72–161;

Hoerder, Cultures in Contact, pp. 60–62; Johannes Preiser-Kapeller,
Webs of Conversion: An Analysis of Social Networks of Converts Across
Islamic-Christian Borders in Anatolia, South-Eastern Europe and the
Black Sea from the 13th to the 15th Centuries, Working paper for the
International Workshop: ‘Cross-Cultural Life-Worlds in Pre-Modern
Islamic Societies: Actors, Evidences And Strategies’, University of
Bamberg (Germany), 22–24 June 2012; Johannes Preiser-Kapeller,
‘Networks of Border Zones: Multiplex Relations of Power, Religion
and Economy in South-Eastern Europe, 1250–1453 AD’, in Revive the
Past. Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology
(CAA). Proceedings of the 39th International Conference, Beijing, April
12–16, eds. Mingquan Zhou, Iza Romanowska, Zhongke Wu, Pengfei
Xu and Philip Verhagen (Amsterdam, 2012), pp. 381–393, and for the
example of the Seljuk-Byzantine border in Anatolia: Sara Nur Yildiz,
‘Reconceptualizing the Seljuk-Cilician Frontier: Armenians, Latin, and
Turks in Conflict and Alliance during the Early Thirteenth Century’, in
Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis. Frontiers in Late Antiquity and the
Middle Ages, ed. Florin Curta (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 91–120 and Sara
Nur Yıldız, ‘Manuel Komnenos Mavrozomes and His Descendants at
the Seljuk Court: The Formation of a Christian Seljuk-Komnenian Elite’,
in Crossroads between Latin Europe and the Near East: Corollaries of the
Frankish Presence in the Eastern Mediterranean (12th–14th centuries), ed.
Stefan Leder (Würzburg, 2011).
5. Fleet, European and Islamic Trade, p. 141.
6. Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of Translation. Material Culture and Medieval
“Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton and Oxford, 2009), p. 11 and
pp. 61–85; Anne E. Wardwell, ‘Panni Tartarici: Eastern Islamic Silks
Woven with Gold and Silver (13th and 14th Centuries)’, Islamic Art, 3
(1988/9), 95–173; David Jacoby, ‘Silk Economics and Cross-Cultural
Artistic Interaction: Byzantium, the Muslim World, and the Christian
West’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 58 (2004), 197–240; E. Jane Burns,
Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women´s Work in Medieval French
Literature (Philadelphia, 2009).
7. Henry Kahane, Renée Kahane and Andreas Tietze, The Lingua Franca
of the Levant: Turkish Nautical Terms of Italian and Greek Origin
(Urbana, Illinois, 1958); Georgios Makris, Studien zur spätbyzantinischen
Schiffahrt (Genoa, 1988), pp. 112–117.
8. For the far reaching connections through the mobility of individuals
across Eurasia after the Mongol conquest, see esp. Allsen, Culture and
Conquest.
9. John Urry, Mobilities (Cambridge, 2007), p. 6.
58 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

10. See Sylvia Hahn, Historische Migrationsforschung (Frankfurt and New

York, 2012), p. 27 and pp. 30–32, with further references.
11. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony; Hoerder, Cultures in Contact,
pp. 28–30.
12. Robert A. McLeman, Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences,
Future Challenges (Cambridge, 2013).
13. Christiane Harzig and Dirk Hoerder, with Donna Gabbacia, What is
Migration History? (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 78–114; Hoerder, Cultures
in Contact, pp. 15–21; Hahn, Historische Migrationsforschung, pp.
21–36.
14. Harzig and Hoerder, What is Migration History, pp. 92–98.
15. Ibid., pp. 102–10.
16. Ibid., pp. 78–80.
17. Charles Tilly, ‘Transplanted Networks’, in Immigration Reconsidered:
History, Sociology and Politics, eds. Virginia Yans and McLaughlin (New
York and Oxford, 1990), pp. 79–95, 90 and 92; Hahn, Historische
Migrationsforschung, p. 29.
18. Claire Lemercier, ‘Formale Methoden der Netzwerkanalyse in
den Geschichtswissenschaften: Warum und Wie?’ in Historische
Netzwerkanalysen, eds. Albert Müller and Wolfgang Neurath (Innsbruck,
Vienna and Bozen, 2012), pp. 16–41, at p. 22. See also Bonnie H.
Erickson, ‘Social Networks and History: A Review Essay’, Historical
Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 30,
3 (1997), 149–157, and Lothar Krempel, Visualisierung komplexer
Strukturen. Grundlagen der Darstellung mehrdimensionaler Netzwerke
(Frankfurt and New York, 2005) (for the value of network visualisation).
For an overview on tools of quantitative (historical) network analysis, see
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, ‘Letters and Network Analysis’, in Companion
to Byzantine Epistolography, ed. Alexander Riehle (Leiden, New York and
Cologne) (forthcoming). For samples see also Academia: http://oeaw.
academia.edu/TopographiesofEntanglements (consulted on 27 October
2016).
19. Daniel Dorling, The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure (Chichester,
2012); Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, ‘Civitas Thauris. The significance
of Tabrīz in the spatial frameworks of Christian merchants and ecclesi-
astics in the thirteenth and fourteenth century’, in Beyond the Abbasid
Caliphate: Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th–
15th Century Tabriz, ed. Judith Pfeiffer (Leiden, 2014), pp. 251–300.
20. See Jan Fuhse and Sophie Mützel, Relationale Soziologie. Zur kulturellen
Wende der Netzwerkforschung (Wiesbaden, 2010).
21. See also Betina Hollstein and Florian Straus, Qualitative Netzwerkanalyse.
Konzepte, Methoden, Anwendungen (Wiesbaden, 2006).
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 59

22. Harrison C. White, Identity and Control: How Social Formations emerge

(Princeton and Oxford, 2008); Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, ‘Luhmann
in Byzantium: A systems theory approach for historical network analy-
sis’, Working Paper for the International Conference ‘The Connected
Past: people, networks and complexity in archaeology and history’,
Southampton, 24–25 April 2012 (online: http://oeaw.academia.edu/J.
PreiserKapeller/Papers/—consulted on 27 October 2016).
23. Flood, Objects of Translation, p. 3; see also Hoerder, Cultures in Contact,
pp. 15–21, and Harzig and Hoerder, What is Migration History, pp.
79–82, for a network approach to migration history.
24. Flood, Objects of Translation, p. 24.
25. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the
Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. IX–XV. See also
Epstein, Purity Lost, p. 135, using this term for our period and region.
26. On this issue, see Stephen Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto
(Cambridge, 2009). See also Ekaterini Mitsiou and Johannes Preiser-
Kapeller, ‘Übertritte zur byzantinisch-orthodoxen Kirche in den
Urkunden des Patriarchatsregisters von Konstantinopel (mit 10 Tafeln)’,
in Sylloge Diplomatico–Palaeographica I, ed. Christian Gastgeber and
Otto Kresten (Vienna, 2010), pp. 233–288. For another phenom-
enon of spatial and cultural mobility across the Latin-Byzantine fron-
tier; see also: Rustam Shukurov, ‘The Byzantine Turks: An Approach
to the Study of Late Byzantine Demography’, in: L´Europa dopo la
caduta di Costantinopoli: 29 maggio 1453 (Spoleto, 2008), pp. 73–108;
Rustam Shukurov, ‘The Oriental Margins of the Byzantine World: A
Prosopographical Perspective’, in Identities and Allegiances in the Eastern
Mediterranean after 1204, ed. Judith Herrin and Guillaume Saint-
Guillain (Farnham, 2011), pp. 167–196 and Johannes Preiser-Kapeller,
‘Conversion, Collaboration and Confrontation: Islam in the Register of
the Patriarchate of Constantinople (14th Century)’, International Review
of Turkish Studies, 1, 4 (2011), pp. 62–79, for Christian-Muslim frontiers.
27. Hoerder, Cultures in Contact, pp. 59–91.
28. See Olivia Remie Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean:
World. Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
(Cambridge, 2003) (in general and in detail on this phenomenon), and
Epstein, Purity Lost, pp. 102–103, as well as Elizabeth A. Zachariadou,
Trade and Crusade: Venetian Crete and the Emirates of Menteshe and
Aydin (1300–1415) (Venice, 1983), pp. 125–31; Andreas Külzer,
‘Ephesos in byzantinischer Zeit: ein historischer Überblick’, in Byzanz –
das Römerreich im Mittelalter, Part 2,2: Schauplätze, ed. Falko Daim and
Jörg Drauschke (Mainz, 2010), pp. 521–539, at pp. 529–30, for samples
from our region and period.
60 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

29. See Constable, Housing the Stranger, pp. 265–269, and pp. 115–116,
also for a fourteenth-century fatwa from the Egyptian jurist al-Subkī (d.
1355) on the legitimacy of the presence of foreign Christian merchants
in Muslim lands, regarding their legal protection under the conditions
of a safe-conduct (aman) or treaty as weaker than that of endogenous
Christians possessing the status of ahl al-dhimma; see also Dominique
Valérian, ‘Les marchands latins dans les ports musulmans méditerranéens:
une minorité confinée dans des espaces communautaires?’ Revue des
mondes musulmans et la Méditerranée 107–110 (2005), pp. 437–458.
See also Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, pp. 134–136 and pp. 153–158
for restrictions and taxation of trade by Muslim authorities. And see also
David Jacoby, ‘Western Merchants, Pilgrims, and Travelers in Alexandria
in the Time of Philippe de Mézières (ca. 1327–1405)’, in Philippe de
Mézières and His Age: Piety and Politics in the Fourteenth Century, eds.
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Kiril Petkov (Leiden and Boston,
2012), pp. 403–425 for conditions and the growing number of fondacios
of various polities in Alexandria in Egypt in the fourteenth century.
30. Constable, Housing the Stranger, pp. 112–126, pp. 133–147 and pp.
281–290 (on consuls and the administration of Christian fondacios in
Muslim cities), pp. 275–276 (‘access to their own law, religion, and food-
ways while in a Muslim city’); Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, pp. 125–
131, pp. 137–139 (also on the Venetian consuls in Balat and the Genoese
ones in Ayasoluk); Kate Fleet, ‘The Turkish economy, 1071–1453’, in
The Cambridge History of Turkey, Vol. I: Byzantium to Turkey 1071–1453,
ed. Kate Fleet (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 227–265, pp. 262–263. For a
magisterial study on Venetian consuls in Alexandria in Egypt in the fif-
teenth century see Georg Christ, Trading Conflicts. A Venetian Consul in
Mamlûk Alexandria at the Beginning of the 15th Century (Leiden, 2012),
and also now Jacoby, Western Merchants.
31. See Constable, Housing the Stranger, pp. 112–126, for examples from
various regions of the Islamic Mediterranean, esp. pp. 280–281, pp.
287–288, as well as Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond, Medieval
Trade in the Mediterranean World: Illustrative Documents (New York,
2001), pp. 170–171 (no. 79); see also Dominique Valérian, Les march-
ands latins and Dominique Valérian, ‘Le recours à l´écrit dans les pra-
tiques marchandes en context intercultural: les contrats de commerce
entre chrétiens et musulmans en Méditerranée’, in L´autorité de l´écrit
au Moyen Âge (Orient-Occident). XXXIXe Congrès de la SHMESP (Le
Caire, 30 avril–5 mai 2008) (Paris, 2009), pp. 59–72, and for our region
in particular many examples in Fleet, European and Islamic Trade, pp.
22–121, esp. p. 109 on one case of collaboration between a Muslim
and an ‘infidel’ to circumvent the paying of customs on the import of
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 61

cloth by Non-Muslims. For an interesting comparison with the strategies

of ‘Ottoman’ merchants when entering the ‘Venetian’ sea of the Adria
from the fifteenth century onwards, see Maria Pia Pedani, ‘Ottoman
Merchants in the Adriatic: Trade and Smuggling’, Acta Historiae 16, 1–2
(2008), pp. 155–172. But see also Jacoby, Western Merchants, for indica-
tions of a stricter regime in Alexandria.
32. Directorum ad passagium faciendum, in Recueil des Historiens des
Croisades, publié par les soins de lʼAcadémie des Inscriptions et Belles-
Lettres. Documents Arméniens, 2 Vols (Paris, 1869 and 1906), here vol.
2, pp. 490–495. See also Marino Sanudo Torsello, The Book of the Secrets
of the Faithful of the Cross. Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis, transl.
Peter Lock (Farnham, 2011), vol. 3, 8, 2, pp. 289–290; Epstein, Purity
Lost, pp. 6, 14–15, 39 and 109–110. On the actual, also demographic
significance of such groups on Venetian Crete, where children fathered
by a free Latin man with a female slave automatically became free them-
selves, see for instance Sally McKee, ‘Inherited Status and Slavery in Late
Medieval Italy and Venetian Crete’, Past and Present 182 (2004), 31–53,
here pp. 33–44. For the image of Eastern Christianity in Western sources
of the time see: Anna-Dorothée von den Brincken, Die ‘Nationes chris-
tianorum orientalium’ im Verständnis der lateinischen Historiographie.
Von der Mitte des 12. bis in die zweite Hälfte des 14. Jahrhunderts
(Cologne and Vienna, 1973). On ‘transcultural identities’ see: Ekaterini
Mitsiou, ‘Feinde, Freunde, Konkurrenten. Die Interaktion zwischen
Byzantinern und “Lateinern” im Spätmittelalter’, Historicum. Zeitschrift
für Geschichte (Sommer/Herbst 2011) (published 2012), pp. 48–55.
33. Guillelmus Ade, Tractatus quomodo sarracenos extirpandi, ed. and transl.
Giles Constable (Washington, D. C., 2012) (older edition in Recueil des
Historiens des Croisades, II, pp. 521–555), here at pp. 78–79 (chapter
IV); on pp. 28–29 (chapter I), he denounces the sale of ‘Greeks, Bulgars,
Ruthenians, Alans, and Hungarians from lesser Hungary, who all rejoice
in the Christian name’ by Genoese and other merchants to Muslims, esp.
the Mamluks of Egypt. The large scale enslavement of Greek Orthodoxs
by Latins was also cause for a complaint of the Byzantine delegate
Barlaam before the Pope in Avignon in 1339, see. Zachariadou, Trade
and Crusade, p. 160.
34. Fleet, European and Islamic Trade, pp. 56–57; Epstein, Purity Lost, p.
114. See also Constable, Housing the Stranger, p. 284, for Mamluk pro-
tests in 1420 against Venetians capturing Muslims and selling them as
slaves to the Duke of Naxos.
35. Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, p. 163, no. 683 (with sources); Fleet,
European and Islamic Trade, p. 44.
62 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

36. Anthony Luttrell, ‘Slavery at Rhodes: 1306–1440’, Bulletin de l´Institute

historique belge de Rome, 46–47 (1976/77), 81–100, at pp. 86–87; Fleet,
European and Islamic Trade, p. 43.
37. Guillelmus Ade, transl. Constanble, pp. 2–3, 5–6, 26–35 (ch. I), 48–49
(ch. IV). See also Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, pp. 8–9; Johannes
Koder, Aigaion Pelagos (Die nördliche Ägäis) (Tabula Imperii Byzantini
10) (Vienna, 1998), pp. 144–145; Epstein, Purity Lost, pp. 67–70;
Michael Carr, Motivations and Response to Crusades in the Aegean:
c. 1300–1350, PhD thesis (Royal Holloway, University of London,
2011), pp. 86–103. See also: Charles Kohler, ‘Documents relatifs a
Guillaume Adam archevêque de Sultanieh, puis dʼAntivari, et a son
entourage (1318–1346)’, Revue de lʼOrient latin 10 (1903/4), 16–56.
On Ade: Marino Sanudo Torsello II, 4, 13, esp. p. 117 (of the transla-
tion); Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, p. 13; Hansgerd Hellenkemper
and Friedrich Hild, Lykien und Pamphylien (Tabula Imperii Byzantini)
(Vienna, 2004), p. 588. On this issue see also Angeliki Laiou, ‘Marino
Sanudo Torsello, Byzantium and the Turks: The Background to the
Anti-Turkish League of 1332–1334’, Speculum 45 (1970), pp. 374–
392; Evelyn Edson, ‘Reviving the Crusade: Sanudoʼs Schemes and
Vesconteʼs Maps’, in Eastward bound. Travel and Travellers 1050–1550,
ed. Rosamund Allen (Manchester and New York, 2004), pp. 131–155;
Epstein, Purity Lost, pp. 162–166, and Carr, Motivations and Response,
pp. 10–12, on ‘the interplay between religious and commercial
motivations’.
38. Anthony Luttrell and Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, Sources for Turkish
History in the Hospitallers´ Rhodian Archive 1389–1422 (Athens, 2008),
pp. 100–101 (no. 13).
39. On multiplexity see. Preiser-Kapeller, ‘Networks of border zones’, pp.
381–393.
40. See Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Petkov, Philippe de Mézières. For another
illustrative example: Damien Coulon, ‘Lluis Sirvent, home d´affaires et
ambassadeur barcelonais (vers 1385–1444)’, in Malamut and Ouerfelli,
Les échanges, pp. 215–239.
41. Hellenkemper and Hild, Lykien und Pamphylien, p. 313.
42. Flood, Objects of Translation, p. 4.
43. Agustí Alemany, Sources on the Alans: A Critical Compilation (Leiden,
2000), esp. pp. 403–434.
44. Ibid, pp. 163–166, with further references.
45. Alemany, Sources on the Alans, pp. 416–418.
46. Ibid, pp. 434.
47. Ibid, pp. 163–166, with further references.
48. Alemany, Sources on the Alans.
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 63

49. Libellus de Notitia Orbis 12, l. 5–9, ed. Anton Kern, ‘Der “Libellus de
Notitia Orbis” Iohannesʼ III. (de Galonifontibus?) O. P. Erzbischofs
von Sulthanyeh’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 8 (1938), pp.
82–123, at p. 114; Conrad Eubel, ‘Die während des 14. Jahrhunderts
im Missionsgebiet der Dominikaner und Franziskaner errichteten
Bisthümer’, in Festschrift zum elfhundertjährigen Jubiliäum des Deutschen
Campo Santo in Rom, ed. Stephan Ehses (Freiburg, 1897), pp. 171–
194, here p. 173; Girolamo Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografica
della Terra Sancta e dell‘Oriente francescano, vols. 1–2 (Quaracchi,
1906–1913), here vol. 1, p. 304; Raymond Loenertz, La société des frères
pérégrinants. Étude sur lʼOrient dominicain (Rome, 1937), pp. 151
and 178 (also on merchants as companions of the missionaries travel-
ling to India); Jean Richard, La Papauté et les missions d’Orient au moyen
age (XIIIe–XVe siècles) (Rome, 1977), p. 141; Marshall W. Baldwin,
‘Mission to the East in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in A
History of the Crusades, Vol. V: The Impact of the Crusades on the Near
East, ed. Norman P. Zacour and Harry W. Hazard (Madison, Wisconsin,
1985), pp. 452–518, here at 453, 482, 515; Jean Richard, ‘Die römis-
che Kirche und die Nichtchristen außerhalb der Christenheit: Kreuzzüge
und Missionierung’, in Die Geschichte des Christentums. Vol. 6: Die Zeit
der Zerreißproben (1274–1449), eds. Michel Mollat du Jourdin, André
Vauchez and Bernhard Schimmelpfennig (Freiburg, 1991), pp. 871–887,
here at p. 884; Roxann Prazniak, ‘Siena on the Silk Roads: Ambrogio
Lorenzetti and the Mongol Global Century, 1250–1350’, Journal of
World History 21, 2 (2010), pp. 184–185.
50. See also Preiser-Kapeller, Civitas Thauris.
51. Guillelmus Ade, ed. and transl. Constable, pp. 94–95 (chapter IV).
52. Eubel, Dominikaner und Franziskaner, pp. 184–185; Loenertz, Frères
pérégrinants, pp. 154–60, 163, 172–173; Richard, La Papauté, p. 177;
Richard, Die römische Kirche, p. 883; Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the
West, 1221–1410 (Harlow and London, 2005), p. 268.
53. Francesco Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura. Book of Descriptions of
Countries and Measures of Merchandise, ed. Allan Evans (Cambridge,
MA, 1936), pp. 21–23 and pp. 26–31 (and pp. 389–391 for a localiza-
tion of the toponyms). See also Kurt Weissen, ‘Dove il Papa va, sem-
pre è caro di danari. The Commercial Site Analysis in Italian Merchant
Handbooks and Notebooks from the 14th and 15th Centuries’,
in Kaufmannsbücher und Handelspraktiken vom Spätmittelalter bis
zum beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert. Merchant´s Books and Mercantile
Practices from the Late Middle Ages to the Beginning of the 20th Century,
eds. Markus A. Denzel, Jean Claude Hocquet, and Harald Witthöft
(Stuttgart, 2002), pp. 63–74. On mercantile networks see also Jérôme
64 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

Hayez, ‘Les correspondances Datini: un apport à l´étude des résaux

marchands toscans vers 1400’, in Malamut and Ouerfelli, Les échanges,
pp. 155–199.
54. Sergej P. Karpov, ‘Tana – Une grande zone réceptrice de lʼémigration
aus Moyen Age’, in Migrations et diasporas, eds. Balard and Ducellier,
pp. 77–89; Sergej P. Karpov, ‘Les Occidentaus dans les villes de la péri-
phérie byzantine: la mer Noire “vénitienne” aux XIVe–XVe siècles’, in
Byzance et le monde extérieur. Contacts, relations, échanges, eds. Michel
Balard, Élisabeth Malamut and Jean-Michel Spieser (Paris, 2005), pp.
67–76; see also Ievgen Khvalkov, ‘Ethnic and Religious Composition of
the Population of Venetian Tana in the 1430s’, in Union in Separation.
Diasporic Groups and Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean (1100-
1800), ed. Georg Christ et al. (Rome, 2015), pp. 311–328.
55. See also Epstein, Purity Lost, pp. 118–130.
56. For similar findings for a less prominent, yet still considerable port, the
city of Clarentza on the Peloponnese, see Angéliki Tzavara, Clarenza.
Une ville de la Morée latine XIIIe–XVe siècles (Venice, 2008), esp. pp.
208–240.
57. Cited after Robert Van de Noort, North Sea Archaeologies: a Maritime
Biography, 10,000 BC to AD 1500 (Oxford, 2011), p. 1.
58. Christer Westerdahl, ‘The Maritime Cultural Landscape’, The
International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 21, 1 (1992), pp. 5–14;
citation from Van de Noort, North Sea Archaeologies, p. 25.
59. Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean. Studies
in Honour of John Pryor, ed. Ruthy Gertwagen and Elizabeth Jeffreys
(Farnham, 2012), pp. 115–127.
60. Van de Noort, North Sea Archaeologies, pp. 33–35.
61. See also Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, ‘Liquid Frontiers. A Relational
Analysis of maritime Asia Minor as religious contact zone in the thir-
teenth–fifteenth centuries’, in Islam and Christianity in Medieval
Anatolia, eds. Andrew Peacock, Bruno De Nicola and Sara Nur Yıldız
(Aldershot, 2015), pp. 117–146. The present paper contains some mate-
rial from this article, especially several parts which have not be included
into the final printed version for lack of space in the volume.
62. Bernard Doumerc, ‘Cosmopolitanism on Board Venetian Ships
(Fourteenth–Fifteenth Centuries)’, Medieval Encounters 13 (2007), pp.
78–95. See also Diana Gilliland Wright, ‘Vade, Sta, Ambula. Freeing
Slaves in Fourteenth-century Crete’, Medieval Encounters 7, 2 (2001),
197–237, here p. 208. On regulations and their breaking on board of
such ships see also Sergei Karpov, ‘Les vices et la criminalité des marins
vénitiens à bord des navires voyageant vers la Mer Noire, XIVe–XVe
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 65

siècles’, in Gertwagen and Jeffreys, Shipping, Trade and Crusade, pp.

105–114.
63. Medieval Encounters 13 (2007), ed. Kathryn Louise Reyerson.
64. Doumerc, ‘Cosmopolitanism’; Theresa M. Vann, ‘Christian, Muslim, and
Jewish Mariners in the Port of Rhodes, 1453–1480’, Medieval Encounters
13 (2007), 158–173, esp. pp. 159–160.
65. The Book of Michael of Rhodes. A Fifteenth-Century Maritime Manuscript.
Volume 3: Studies, ed. Pamela O. Long (Cambridge, MA and London,
2009), esp. pp. 2–3, and esp. Alan M. Stahl, ‘Michael of Rhodes: Mariner
in Service to Venice’, in The Book of Michael of Rhodes, pp. 35–98, with
the list of Michael´s voyages pp. 47–48.
66. Stahl, Michael of Rhodes.
67. Benjamin Ravid, ‘Venice and its minorities’, in A Companion to Venetian
History, 1400–1797, ed. Eric R. Dursteler (Leiden and Boston, 2013),
pp. 449–485, esp. pp. 451–452 (on the citizenship de intus) and pp.
462–466; Stahl, Michael of Rhodes, esp. pp. 57–59.
68. The Book of Michael of Rhodes, pp. 15–20.
69. Stahl, ‘Michael of Rhodes’, pp. 97–98.
70. Ibid., pp. 42–43.
71. For this geographical distribution see also Doumerc, ‘Cosmopolitanism’;
Stahl, ‘Michael of Rhodes’ and Ravid, ‘Venice and its minorities’. For
Greek sailors on Italian and on Turkish ships see also Makris, Schiffahrt,
pp. 118–127.
72. Van de Noort, North Sea Archaeologies, pp. 33–34. On the common route
from Venice to Cilicia, Cyprus or Syria, see also Doris Stöckly, Le système
de lʼIncanto des gales du marché à Venise (fin XIIIe–milieu XVe siècle)
(Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1995), pp. 119–130.
73. Herbert W. Duda, Die Seltschukengeschichte des Ibn Bibi (Copenhagen,
1959), p. 68; Ekaterini Mitsiou, Untersuchungen zu Wirtschaft und
Ideologie im ‘Nizänischen Reich’, Unpublished Dissertation (Vienna,
2006), pp. 127–128.
74. David Jacoby, ‘Peasant Mobility across the Venetian, Frankish and
Byzantine Borders in Latin Romania, Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries’,
in I Greci durante la venetocrazia: uomini, spazio, idee (13.–18. sec.): atti
del Convegno internazionale di studi, Venezia, 3–7 dicembre 2007, ed.
Despina Vlassi, Chryssa Maltezou and Angeliki Tzavara (Venice, 2009),
pp. 525–539, here pp. 524–525; Mitsiou, Untersuchungen, pp. 98–100.
75. See also John Mundy, ‘Village, Town, and City in the Region of
Toulouse’, in Pathways to medieval Peasants, ed. James Ambrose Raftis
(Toronto, 1981), pp. 141–190.
76. Mitsiou, Untersuchungen, pp. 68–69 (with sources) and p. 88.
77. Mitsiou, Untersuchungen, p. 104 (with sources).
66 E. Mitsiou and J. Preiser-Kapeller

78. David Jacoby, ‘New Evidence on the Greek Peasantry in Latin Romania’,

in Porphyrogenita: essays on the history and literature of Byzantium and
the Latin East in honour of Julian Chrysostomides, ed. Charalambos
Dendrinos (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 239–256; David Jacoby, ‘The
Demographic Evolution of Euboea under Latin Rule, 1205–1470’,
in The Greek Islands and the Sea, ed. Julian Chrysostomides et al.
(Camberley, Surrey, 2004), pp. 131–179 and Jacoby, ‘Peasant Mobility’,
esp. pp. 532–533 on the ‘partitioned villages’.
79. Jacoby, ‘Peasant Mobility’, p. 537.
80. For an overview of the significance of Kaffa and the Black Sea in slave
trade see Epstein, Purity Lost, pp. 55–67; Nicola Di Cosmo, ‘Mongols
and Merchants on the Black Sea Frontier in the Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Centuries: Convergences and Conflicts’, in Mongols, Turks
and others. Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World, eds. Reuven
Amitai and Michal Biran (Leiden, 2005), pp. 391–424 (also for the rela-
tions between the Western merchants and the Mongol/Muslim over-
lords) and Annika Stello, ‘La traite d’esclaves en Mer Noire au début du
XVe siècle’, published online in 2009 in Medieval Mediterranean Slavery:
Comparative Studies on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Muslim, Christian,
and Jewish Societies (8th–15th Centuries), http://med-slavery.uni-trier.
de:9080/minev/MedSlavery/publications/TraiteEsclavesMerNoire.pdf
(consulted on 27 October 2016), for slave trade at the coasts of Anatolia
esp. Fleet, European and Islamic Trade, pp. 37–58.
81. See also Makris, Schiffahrt, pp. 195–210.
82. See also Wright, ‘Freeing slaves’, p. 212, and Epstein, Purity Lost, pp.
81–82, on this issue.
83. See also Luttrell, ‘Slavery at Rhodes’. See also the very useful website of
the ‘Medieval Mediterranean Slavery’-project at the University of Trier:
http://med-slavery.uni-trier.de/minev/MedSlavery (consulted on 27
October 2016). For an overview on the Mamluks see Ulrich Haarmann,
‘Das Herrschaftssystem der Mamluken’, in Geschichte der arabischen
Welt, eds. Heinz Halm and Ulrich Haarmann (Munich, 2004), esp. pp.
217–230.
84. Ahmet Usta, Evidence of the Nature, Impact and Diversity of Slavery
in 14th Century Famagusta as Seen through the Genoese Notarial Acts
of Lamberto di Sambuceto and Giovanni da Rocha and the Venetian
Notarial Acts of Nicola de Boateriis. MA-Thesis, Eastern Mediterranean
University, Gazimağusa, North Cyprus, 2011, esp. pp. 114–119
(Table 1). For Cyprus in this period, see also Epstein, Purity Lost, pp.
80–93.
85. Sally McKee has done a statistical analysis for the slaves traded in Genoa
between 1390 and 1500 and found a total of 46 ‘Turkish’ slaves, which
 2 MOVING HANDS: TYPES AND SCALES OF LABOUR MOBILITY … 67

amounted to between 3 and 16% of all slaves sold (and registered by

McKee) over these decades, see Sally McKee, ‘Domestic Slavery in
Renaissance Italy’, Slavery and Abolition 29, 3 (2008), pp. 305–326. See
also Luttrell, Slavery at Rhodes, pp. 83–84, about slaves traded in Rhodes
ending up in the Western Mediterranean.
86. See also Epstein, Purity Lost, pp. 81–83.
87. See also Ibid., pp. 82–3 and p. 90, on the various sales documented in by
Sambuceto.
88. Karpov, ‘Tana’ and Karpov, ‘Les Occidentaus’.
89. Preiser-Kapeller, ‘Liquid frontiers’.
90. See for instance Suraiya Faroqhi, Travel and Artisans in the Ottoman
Empire. Employment and Mobility in the Early Modern Era (London and
New York, 2014), pp. 129–142, on the mobility of slaves documented
in the sixteenth-century registers of the Kadi of Üsküdar, a town on the
Asian site of the Bosporus opposite of Constantinople.
91. Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility, pp. 250–253 (See also http://www.fas.
harvard.edu/~cardenio/mobility.html – consulted on 27 October 2016).
92. See esp. Rudi Keller, Sprachwandel: Von der unsichtbaren Hand in der
Sprache (3rd edn. Stuttgart, 2003), on the application of complex systems
theory on linguistic phenomena.
93. See also Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, ‘From Quantitative to Qualitative
and Back Again. The Interplay Between Structure and Culture and the
Analysis of Networks in Pre-Modern Societies, in Multiplying Middle
Ages. New methods and approaches for the study of the multiplicity of
the Middle Ages in a global perspective (3rd–16th CE), eds. Ekaterini
Mitsiou, Mihailo Popović and Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Vienna 2018
(forthcoming).
 CHAPTER 3

Catholic Missions and Native Subaltern

Workers: Connected Micro-Histories
of Labour from India and Brazil,
ca. 1545–1560

Giuseppe Marcocci

Introduction
Pre-modern empires were political configurations in which both global
and local interactions took place.1 We should understand these interac-
tions as the range of concrete connections that linked a specific place to a
multiplicity of other places at a variable distance. This is why the attempts
to identify the origin of impulses that had synchronic effects in seem-
ingly separated localities prove extremely difficult, while only a study of
the intersections that provided the ground for manifestations of simulta-
neity can disclose the real global nature of an empire. In particular, this

I would like to thank Andrea Caracausi and Roquinaldo Ferreira, as well as

the editors of this volume, Christian G. De Vito and Anne Gerritsen, for their
remarks and suggestions.

G. Marcocci (*)
Exeter College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 69

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_3
70 G. Marcocci

chapter aims to show to what extent a micro-spatial approach to labour

history allows us to disentangle a number of global connections that
both framed and built imperial dynamics.
The transformation of the social and economic order in the territo-
ries affected by the presence of the Iberian overseas empires from 1500
onwards is still an open field of research. Although the new colonial
rule involved domination and exploitation, a variety of reactions from
the natives ensued, and the Portuguese and Spanish settlers constantly
negotiated with the many different local contexts in which they acted.2
Sometimes, Europeans simply tried to exploit pre-existing conditions,
but more often they had to come to terms with local structures and
resistance to change from the natives. The general picture emerging from
the Spanish conquest of America, with the collapse of complex social
organizations, the rapid demographic decrease of native populations, and
the massive importation of slaves from West Africa, cannot be taken as
representative of what happened elsewhere. This is particularly evident
if we focus on labour relations. Historians have discussed the fact that
the encomienda system, giving the holder (encomendero) the right to col-
lect a tribute in money, goods or labour services from native Americans
in return for protecting them and instructing them in the Catholic reli-
gion, had a basis in pre-colonial institutions like the cuatequil in Mexico
or the mita in Peru.3 Surely the Iberian empires gave a remarkable con-
tribution to the increasing conversion of the majority of labour relations
on a world scale from reciprocal and tributary regimes to commodified
ones, which characterized the early modern period.4 However, this gen-
eral tendency depended on different factors originating from a num-
ber of places. Therefore, we need to focus on dissimilar but connected
cases in order to properly understand the global character and the work-
ing of this non-linear, composite shift, which intersected the distinction
between free and unfree labour as well.5
In this chapter I will focus on the development of labour relations in
the context of the Portuguese overseas empire. Generally, scholars have
taken specific regions into account separately, among which the case of
slavery in Brazil is by far the best known.6 A book on forced and state-
sponsored settlers examined the role of convicts and orphans in the mak-
ing of the empire, but we still lack an overview of work conditions in
the early modern Portuguese world.7 The purpose of this chapter is to
counter this fragmentary picture and to highlight some trans-continental
connections that linked India and Brazil in the mid-sixteenth century,
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 71

when colonial settlements were still at an early stage and their patterns
were unstable and unpredictable. By following the traces of a church-
man’s global life, a micro-spatial analysis of four radically different con-
texts—Goa and Chorão in India, Salvador de Bahia and Piratininga in
Brazil—should allow us to look at concrete interactions between settlers
and natives. The micro-spatial approach places stress on the importance
of considering together localities at distance and the connections exist-
ing among them in order to understand the very nature of their inter-
nal transformations. We need to include in the picture also the constant
presence of missionaries and their active role in organizing subaltern
workers, as we can define those natives who were obliged to carry out
the most menial tasks under a colonial order.8 All this shows to what
extent global patterns emerged from a multiplicity of specific and variable
factors and contexts.

‘Workers in the Vineyards’: Catholic Missions

and Global Labour History

Recent historiography has extensively investigated early modern Catholic

missions, with special regard to the Jesuits.9 Going beyond traditional
approaches to church history, during the past two decades, scholars have
studied many aspects of this particular overseas mobility: for instance,
missionaries as go-betweens and cultural brokers, or the contribution
of their networks, as well as the circulation of the knowledge they pro-
moted, to early modern global exchanges.10 The reshaping of this field
of research has involved macro-economic analysis, such as Dauril Alden’s
systemic study of the Society of Jesus as an ‘enterprise’.11
Labour is one of the few issues which this historiographical trend has
overlooked.12 This can be explained as a consequence of the highly spir-
itualized concept of the clergy that the Council of Trent affirmed in the
mid-sixteenth century, since it tended to remove the material dimension
of the ecclesiastical life, as well as the fact that serving the church was
also a way of earning a living. Historians seem to have ignored to what
extent the tripartition of pre-modern European society into ‘prayers’
(oratores), ‘warriors’ (bellatores) and ‘workers’ (laboratores) was signifi-
cantly complicated by the reality of daily life.13 In fact, missionaries were
involved in the redefinition of labour relations within the Portuguese
Empire and can be considered not only as prayers, but also as workers,
72 G. Marcocci

although they chose their occupation as a ‘vocation’ and, at least if they

belonged to regular orders, did not earn any wage. Therefore, I suggest
rethinking some missionary sources in the light of the analytical chal-
lenge of global labour history.14
Missionaries acted in the context of a pyramid structure, were obliged
to obey superiors, and their activities were carefully regulated and stand-
ardized. Their exceptional spatial mobility was not a free choice, but
depended on the assessment of what may be called the professional
skills of each missionary. Especially in the case of the members of regular
orders, we should consider missionaries as an evolution of the monastic
clergy, in which the second part of the famous sentence ‘pray and work’
(ora et labora) moved from farm work into the cloister to evangelization
around the world: the most recurring biblical metaphor used to describe
missionaries was that of the ‘workers in the vineyard’ (Matthew: 20,
1–6), and they termed their activities among non-Christians and neo-
phytes as ‘labour’ (trabalho in the Portuguese sources). Of course, the
missionary rhetoric emphasized the ‘vineyard’, the fruit of missionary
work, which was conversion. This conventional language portrayed the
capability of a population of gaining salvation or not, by labelling them
as ‘sterile’ or ‘fertile’ soil. There is convincing evidence that these rural
adjectives had an immediate meaning for religious men.15 They were part
of the missionary code of communication and reflected a particular work
ethic.16
The self-representation of missionaries as ‘workers’ is telling in itself
and shows the hybrid character of this ecclesiastical personnel. However,
when we try to say what kind of workers missionaries were, things
become more difficult. While ‘missionary church’ is an expression group-
ing together different types of figures and activities in the context of
overseas empires and beyond, the distinction between regular ecclesias-
tics, who had made a vow of poverty, and secular priests, who earned a
wage, also depended on specific conditions on the ground.
Jesuit missionaries belonged to a hierarchical institution. A general
appointed for life led the Society of Jesus, which was organized into
administrative units (assistancies) and subunits (provinces). Periodically,
provincials, rectors, and other superiors took part in meetings and con-
gregations, while a permanent circulation of correspondence allowed a
widespread network of internal communication. Some authors look at
the Society of Jesus as a military organization, as its internal discipline
and several metaphors (‘military service for God’, ‘under the command
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 73

of the Vicar of Christ’) would confirm. Others point to its patrimony of

lands and commercial and economic activities, which included lending
and borrowing, considering it as a prototype of modern multi-national
corporations. More appropriately, it can be seen as a multi-level enter-
prise, which is hard to characterize as a single organism, given its malle-
able nature adapting to different cultural and material circumstances.17
The spiritual labour of Jesuits (confessing, preaching, disputing, vis-
iting, etc.) required a continuous basis of work by lay coadjutors and
financial support that, in the context of the Portuguese Empire, the
crown and other benefactors guaranteed, at least during the first decades
of the Society of Jesus’ existence. However variable the material state
of the overseas colleges and houses, labour relations inside them repro-
duced the pattern of the reciprocal regime: the relationship between the
Jesuit missionaries, ordained priests, and those who were lay coadjutors
was conceived as a ‘spiritual household’, with the former called ‘fathers’
and the latter ‘brothers’, while the economic aim of Jesuit residences
was self-sufficiency; in this framework, the fathers could be equated with
leading household producers, although they abstained from manual
work, and the brothers with household kin producers; they also counted
on household servants and slaves, who contributed to the maintenance
of self-sufficient residences.18
Such a description does not apply to the other main component of
the missionary personnel in the Portuguese Empire: the secular priests.
In spite of significant differences among them, they were all wage earn-
ers employed by a typical non-market institution: the church. They did
not have to face a comparable selection and preparation process as the
Jesuits. Moreover, it was much more common for secular clergy to admit
natives and mestizos, who played a special role in the interaction with
their former coreligionists among the local population. This was not the
case, however, of those who occupied higher positions in the hierarchy,
such as bishops, vicar-generals, and their close collaborators, who led
complex structures with priests charged with special activities and doz-
ens of time-rate wage earners employed in multiple tasks, from finance
administration and justice to domestic work.19
This chapter assumes not only that missionaries were workers, but
that they also made a decisive contribution to the formation of new colo-
nial societies arising from the European overseas empires, whose politi-
cal authority those missionaries recognized and served. Be it sincere or
not, conversion had a heavy impact on the legal order of pre-colonial
74 G. Marcocci

societies: it was a formal prerequisite for the natives to become full sub-
jects of the new power.20 Even more, all this aimed at radically altering
former relations and hierarchies, by making a strict distinction between
converts and non-converts, and supporting the social advancement of
the former with respect to the latter: in this case, social mobility often
depended on a new occupation that was made possible only by baptism.
It is no accident that this prospect became a very persuasive tool, which
reinforced the arguments used by missionaries in their preaching to local
populations. More broadly, missionary ‘ethnographic’ observation of
natives, including their work skills, was the basis for every disciplinary
project regarding the natives’ position in new colonial societies, includ-
ing forced labour and migration.21 Therefore, the importance of the tra-
ditional condemnation of work as God’s punishment against mankind
for the sin of Adam and Eve, or the model of Christ’s passion, should
not be emphasized in relation to the missionary discourse about native
subalternworkers.22 If preachers sometimes evoked it to encourage slaves
to accept a heavy workload in return for the possibility of gaining eter-
nal salvation, it was much more usual to establish a direct link between
labour and conversion. According to the famous Jesuit father José de
Acosta, who wrote from Peru in the mid-1570s, especially in the case of
Amerindians and black Africans, there was a clear connection between
commitment to labour and chance of becoming good Christians.
Therefore, he recommended, ‘they must be trained […] so that by
means of a healthy load of continuous work they will abandon their idle-
ness and passions and, restrained by an induced fear, just carry out their
duty’.23 As the evidence provided in the previous lines show, it is difficult
to overestimate the effect of the missionary enterprise in the reshaping of
labour relations in the early modern Iberian empires.

Labour and Religious Segregation: Pêro Fernandes

Sardinha in Goa
The main hypothesis of this chapter is that, at least in the case of the
Portuguese Empire, the history of missions is intertwined with global
labour history in two connected ways: on the one hand, missionaries
can be seen as a very peculiar typology of early modern global workers
engaged in the spiritual transformation of the world; on the other hand,
their consequential active presence at the settlers’ side contributed to
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 75

profound modifications in the labour relations among natives in the new

colonial societies, which also affected the economic organization of the
overseas Jesuit colleges and houses. The four micro-historical case studies
I am going to discuss here below confirm this double connotation of a
global history of missionary labour.
The Portuguese overseas empire encompassed a variety of processes
of conversion and social transformation, including massive employment
of native subaltern workers and forced labour, from the very begin-
ning of the Atlantic slave trade.24 This led to the emergence of different
labour strategies across the empire. I will use the trans-local mobility of
the little-known figure of Pêro Fernandes Sardinha, a secular priest who
experienced both India and Brazil in the mid-sixteenth century, in order
to connect different labour strategies existing in very dissimilar locali-
ties. Sardinha’s global life led him to face multiple societies and remote
regions, making significant comparisons among them and their inhab-
itants. His case allows us to consider together two distant areas of the
Portuguese Empire, focusing on the circulation of people, patterns and
ideas, as well as on the simultaneous effects of the Catholic missions on
native subaltern labour.25 It also shows the early emergence of connected
histories of subjected or enslaved workers from three continents (Asia,
America and Africa) in the Portuguese imperial space.
Born in Évora, Portugal, around 1495, Sardinha studied humani-
ties and theology in Paris during the 1520–1530s, being in contact
with highly important future Jesuits like Ignatius of Loyola and the
Portuguese Simão Rodrigues, who would later become the first provin-
cial of the Society of Jesus in Portugal.26 It was a premonitory relation-
ship. After spending a period at the court of King John III of Portugal as
royal chaplain and preacher, in 1545 Sardinha continued his ecclesiastical
career overseas, joining the missionary personnel as vicar-general of Goa,
the capital of the Portuguese Empire in Asia.27 His arrival in the city fol-
lowed that of the first Jesuits, headed by father Francis Xavier, a mission-
ary from Navarre who was among the founders of the Society of Jesus,
in 1542. Sardinha found an atmosphere still marked by the destruction
of the Hindu temples, recently ordered by the Portuguese authorities.28
Moreover, factionary conflicts divided the imperial elites, and suspicion
of poisoning, either by local Brahmans or by no less than the bishop of
Goa, the Franciscan Juan Alfonso de Albuquerque, surrounded the death
of Sardinha’s predecessor, Miguel Vaz Coutinho.29 At the time, Goa was
76 G. Marcocci

a large merchant city, inhabited by a majority of non-Christian natives,

mainly Muslims and Hindus, and in whose streets it was usual to meet
people from all over South Asia.30
In this context, the new vicar-general wielded power peremptorily
and developed his own view on the local population and the ways to
make them good Catholics and good subjects of the Portuguese crown.
Thus, he took up a position in the vibrant debate, rekindled by the Jesuit
fathers, about the most effective method to convert Konkani Indians
and other local inhabitants. In Sardinha’s opinion, conversion went
hand in hand with labour: the natives’ entry into service of the empire
was a decisive part of his proselytizing strategy. The main purpose of
the Portuguese presence in Asia was trading.31 Consequently, they did
not aim to substitute the whole pre-colonial social order with a com-
pletely new one, but to reconstruct it so far as was necessary to control
the exchange of the most lucrative goods, so as to make the ‘business of
India’ (negócio da Índia) profitable for the crown and the settlers (casa-
dos). In the case of an urban space like Goa, the missionary project to
convert all its inhabitants was associated with the imposition of a new
political order and the recruitment of commercial and cultural brokers.32
Persuaded of the full intellectual capabilities of Konkani Indians,
Sardinha sided with thoseJesuits who opposed mass baptisms and
demanded an adequate period of instruction before conversion, so that
they might become sincere, committed Catholics.33 However, his mis-
sionary ideas collided with the strategy of Portuguese officials, who
needed to maintain order in the city by alternating campaigns of pros-
elytism with guarantees of some toleration towards non-Christian inhab-
itants. By contrast, Sardinha relied on the transformation of the major
urban centres into citadels of Catholicism. Therefore, he proposed the
creation of houses of catechumens in Goa, Cranganore and Bassein,
and supported the separation of neophytes from their former coreli-
gionists, including blood relatives, even suggesting the expulsion of all
Brahmans and the segregation of other Hindus within the islands of
Divar and Chorão, next to Goa. At the same time, his ideal of a gen-
eral conversion, understood as a ‘a great way to make all those liv-
ing in the other fortresses convert’, rested on the enthusiastic approval
of the imperial law issued in 1542 that, when possible, excluded non-
Christian Indians from public offices to the advantage of neophytes.34
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 77

Thus, in such a cross-cultural milieu, in which the support of natives’

linguistic and administrative skills was fundamental to the Portuguese in
order to exert their authority over a mixed population of tens of thou-
sands of inhabitants, conversion emerged as an opportunity of social
redemption through new labour relations for Indian converts. Sardinha
was well aware of the consequence of this social mobility when declar-
ing to King John III that ‘since the majority of neophytes (christãaos)
here are poor, it is advisable to give them all public offices, as Your
Highness often ordered, and not to ask them for money their acts of
appointment’.35
The promotion of the ‘Christians of the land’ (cristãos da terra) to
public activities in the framework of the Portuguese Empire consisted
of their transformation into interpreters, clerks and, if literate, scribes
employed in the services intended for natives. If we take into account the
wage earned working for non-market institutions, we can consider the
inclusion of natives in the imperial administrative structure as a further
step in the global move towards commodified labour relations. It is note-
worthy, however, that Sardinha’s stress on favouring converted workers
involved strict control over their religious and moral behaviour. In his
opinion, rectitude and discipline had to characterize every good Catholic
official or serviceman, whether Indian or European: if in his preaching
he censured those native soldiers of multiple ethnic origins, called las-
cars (lascarins), who, instead of serving the Portuguese Empire at war,
‘wandered about the streets of Goa […] getting lost with single women
or provoking and dishonouring the married ones’, in his letters he rec-
ommended King John III that ‘none of the captains, soldiers or other
officers of Your Highness receive a wage, or money, without first exhibit-
ing a certificate attesting that every year he goes to confession and takes
the holy communion, because there are men who serve in India living
for 10 or 12 years a life of vice, without considering their conscience’.36
Sardinha’s plan was not fulfilled during his stay in Goa, but, in spite of
his intention, it ended up contributing to setting the conditions for the
policy of mass conversion that developed from the late 1550s onwards.
In the urban space of the capital of the Portuguese Empire in Asia, reli-
gious concerns contributed to shaping the transformation of labour
relations by allowing indigent natives access to commodified jobs in
exchange for converting to Catholicism.
78 G. Marcocci

De-Structuring Social Order: Jesuits and Labour

Relations in Chorão
Missionary strategies also affected the island of Chorão, but in an oppo-
site way than Sardinha expected.37 He believed that ‘the son will not pre-
vail in his faith in Christ, if he keeps talking with his gentile and idolater
father, therefore the gentiles of Goa should live segregated in the island
of Divar or in that of Chorão’.38 There were two villages in the latter,
one called Chorão with about 6000 inhabitants, the other Caraim. These
villages differed from each other in their internal configurations, political
relationship and economic dynamics. The activities of the members of a
significant part of the families residing there, however, revolved around
agriculture and the marketing of its produce. This was a sedentary popu-
lation living in a regime of reciprocal labour, in which community-based
redistributive workers performed different tasks for the local community
in exchange for communally provided remuneration of many kinds. Such
a system had proved capable of adapting to changing political authorities
in the course of time, by means of taxation, tribute or military service.
But this was not so under Portuguese rule, because after the Jesuit mis-
sionaries began their activities in Chorão, instead of becoming a place of
segregation of Hindus exiled from Tiswadi, as Sardinha had hoped, the
island went through a process of conversion. This de-structured the tra-
ditional social order, which was complex and stratified. Among the own-
ers and keepers of the better lands, including palm trees and rice fields,
there were ganvkars (descendants of the founders of the community,
who claimed to be of Brahmanical lineage and sat in the village assem-
bly), but also kulacari (literally ‘rent-payers’, who had a fixed status but
had to provide free services to ganvkars), officials of the temples and
artisans. Among the work activities, fishing was important. However, for
the economy of the island, the most important labour was that of the
chaudarins, those who collected coconuts from palms or extracted their
sap. This group was not homogeneous. It included supervisors on site
and peasants.
To sum up, these rural villages reproduced a typical labour division
among those who controlled the lands and those who cultivated them.
This social order, however, was based on a complex system of norms
for which the Portuguese for the first time used the word ‘caste’.39 Of
course, they were unable to describe it in all its complexity, but under-
stood its effect on social mobility. According to the chronicler João de
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 79

Barros, in India, ‘the peasant is distinct from the fisherman, the weaver
from the carpenter etc., so that the occupations created among these
people a kind of lineage according to which they cannot marry one
another, nor exchange many things. And the carpenter’s son cannot
be a tailor, since as it were a religion everyone must follow his father in
his life and occupation’.40 Of course, the subversion of this system had
great importance in the process of conversion in Chorão. As the Jesuit
visitor Alessandro Valignano wrote in 1574, ‘they do not take their con-
version as a supernatural thing with a sincere desire to save their souls,
but as a human one, as if it were no more than to change caste and life-
style by leaving the caste of the gentiles and passing to the caste of the
Christians’.41
Since the arrival of the first Portuguese in the island, there had been
cases of land expropriation and, later on, this tendency had been ratified
by legal contracts signed by ganvkars in exchange for the guarantee that
they would conserve their properties. During the 1550s, the pressure of
proselytism increased and things changed rapidly. While rich Portuguese
started to build their own leisure farms on the island, including palm
tree fields and other economic activities, a growing number of native
peasants, especially chaudarins who lived in extreme poverty, converted
to Catholicism. By doing so, they abandoned their social universe and
the strict correspondence between family origin and occupation that it
implied. Natives were attracted by the prospects that the full legal inclu-
sion in the Portuguese imperial order offered them. Thus, they finally
experienced a sought-after social mobility, which was associated with a
transformation of labour relations: being now ‘Christians of the land’,
these peasants were in a good position to aspire to receiving the fields
expropriated from those who did not convert, or to take advantage of
them as employees of the new churches built in place of Hindu temples;
moreover, converts could also obtain public offices that had previously
been held by coreligionist neighbours.
During the 1550s, a new area for the residence of Indian converts was
realized in Chorão. Even for those who did not significantly improve
their material conditions thanks to the new occupation, at least the tran-
sition to the protection of the Jesuits meant a daily ration of food—for
this reason, in the Portuguese sources, they are sometimes called ‘rice-
Christians’ (cristãos de arroz).42 At the end of the decade, the Hindu
population of Chorão went through a mass conversion, whose dynamics
confirm to what extent the missionary project was connected to labour
80 G. Marcocci

relations. In 1557, the chaudarins were the first to become Catholics.

Their choice caused serious problems to the ganvkars and the kulacari
since they ended up with no peasants farming their fields, and no right
to ask people from lower castes to take on tributary services like cleaning
the houses of the Brahmans or the streets of the village. A year later, in
1558, the Hindu elites of Chorão also succumbed to the Jesuits and con-
verted en masse.
An exclusively local focus on the cases of Goa and Chorão as discussed
above would make us conclude that the transformations in the regime
of labour relations they went through had just a regional character in
the context of the Portuguese Empire. However, moving from India
to Brazil and focusing on the connections that existed among specific
places, we can recover the global nature of these transformations, with-
out giving up the peculiarity of their local manifestations.

Enslaving Natives: Pêro Fernades Sardinha in Salvador

Da Bahia
By the time Chorão and its inhabitants were experiencing such a deep
religious and social transformation, with serious consequences on native
labour relations, Sardinha was on the other side of the southern hem-
isphere. He had gone back to Portugal in 1549, after spending about
four years in Goa, a significant junction of the trade networks in the
Indian Ocean, facing chronic difficulties in earning a wage (ordenado).
He had coped with different situations and a variety of peoples and cul-
tures, while taking part in an imperial project, which included religious
conversion and social reorganization. Labour had a special role in this
project for three reasons: (a) it was a means of legal distinction between
converts and non-converts; (b) it allowed social promotion of neophytes,
who were considered impure by their former coreligionists because of
the adoption of a lifestyle that contrasted with the traditional system of
norms and customs; (c) natives could be employed in the service of the
empire, entrusted with public offices and activities that the Portuguese
were unable to assume, due to their ignorance of local languages, rules
and etiquette in India.
In 1551, Sardinha was appointed first bishop of Salvador da Bahia, the
capital city of the Portuguese Empire in Brazil. He was one of the first
exponents of a new class of missionaries and imperial agents who spent
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 81

their life serving in multiple places and continents within the Portuguese
world, with the possibility of contacting and comparing Konkani Indians,
Tupi people and Africans from the sub-Saharan coast and the Gulf of
Guinea.43 His appointment was justified by his former experience as
vicar-general in Goa. Thus, his biography followed a trans-local itiner-
ary connecting the so-called East and West Indies. Strictly speaking,
Sardinha might not have been a worker, but despite the title, his new
position was not prestigious or sought-after, given the harshness of the
colonization of Brazil, which was then at its outset, and the relative lack
of means of the local church.44
Sardinha’s initial approach to America was probably influenced by
some of the factors that had led the Portuguese to develop a uniform
perception of the natives from India to Brazil, described both as ‘gentiles’
(gentios) and ‘black’ (negros).45 Many of these people were on the move,
due to the impact of conquest, commerce and conversion, on their own
lands and societies, which had sometimes turned them into chattel slaves.
The classic example is the forced migration of the Africans involved in
theAtlantic slave trade, a brute reality Sardinha came in touch with dur-
ing his journey to Brazil, when he stopped in the Cape Verde islands,
labelled as a ‘land richer in money than in virtue’.46
Contrary to his expectations, in spring 1552, when Sardinha arrived in
Brazil, he found a situation quite distinct from that of Goa.47 Salvador da
Bahia was a city under construction. A few years before, it had become
the seat of the first central government of the Portuguese in America.
Meanwhile, facing institutional confusion and material difficulties,
Portuguese settlers (moradores) had started to subject local natives with
very different methods to those used in India, that is, by massive, undis-
criminating enslavement.48 Of course, they found a number of pretexts
to justify their actions. However, after the arrival of the first Jesuits in
1549, things became much more complex both from a moral and practi-
cal point of view. Some missionaries tried to limit the raiding (resgate)
but in vain. The voice of father Manuel da Nóbrega, however, caused
some stir at court in Lisbon, following the more effective protestation of
the Dominican father Bartolomé de las Casas against the encomienda sys-
tem, which had persuaded Emperor Charles V to forbid the enslavement
of native Americans in the Spanish Empire. Perhaps influenced by Las
Casas’ arguments, soon thereafter father Nóbrega began to denounce
the illicit methods of Portuguese settlers, as well as the prejudice against
conversion caused by the wild conditions of forced labour and the
82 G. Marcocci

excessive workload they imposed on enslaved natives, some of whom

were already stricken with disease. But Portuguese settlers, who soon
developed a new sense of their social position, to the point that they
considered themselves as ‘nobles’, were too attracted by the wealth they
hoped to obtain from natives’ labour in the fields, the first sugar plan-
tations and the mines discovered in the south. Their economic interest
was stronger than any religious and moral admonition from missionaries,
most of whom approved of slave raiding and the cavilling justifications
the settlers advanced.49
In line with the idea of a substantial continuity between East and
West Indies, the first reaction of Bishop Sardinha to the situation
of Salvador—a ‘flaming Babylon’, in the words of a contemporary
Jesuit50—was to associate it with Goa, calling for more rigorous cat-
echization: ‘in this land I want to follow the same method as I did in
India’, he told father Nóbrega, adding that ‘since in this land I am as
a speculator of souls and I have great experience of India, [Jesuit mis-
sionaries] cannot do anything without my advice’.51 The equivalence
Sardinha made between India and Brazil led him to oppose one particu-
lar catechistic method, which was based on preaching in Tupi languages
(through an interpreter), the use of Tupi dances and rituals, and the cre-
ation of villages (aldeias) of neophytes under Jesuit custody.
Within a few months, Sardinha developed new ideas about the natives,
particularly as regards slavery. His opposition to Nóbrega’s method led
him, once more, to impose a harsher separation between converts and
non-converts, forbidding the latter to enter the church during the Mass.
He not only took converted slaves away from the Jesuits’ catechiza-
tion, but he also ended up siding with the settlers in favour of enslaving
the Tupi.52 In so doing, he became a strong supporter of a project of
colonial society, shared by settlers and the majority of Jesuits, but not
by Nóbrega and a few imperial high officials. His negative view of Tupi
people rested on the prejudice that they were inconstant by nature. This
view produced an association that gave rise to an enduring representa-
tion of a supposed ‘American character’: as the conversion of Tupi peo-
ple was difficult and uncertain, due to their natural inclination to both
embrace and abandon a new faith, just as they showed little propensity to
labour and extraordinary indolence.53
The reverse side of this portrayal of Tupi people was the idea that
by means of labour and discipline they might become good Catholics.
Jesuits too shared this view, but not all of them believed that it should be
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 83

stretched to the point of approving enslavement as a way to conversion,

as in the case of the Wolofs in West Africa.54 Here again, as in the case
of Goa, we can see a direct link between change of religion and transfor-
mation of labour relations, though any impulse to social promotion was
absent in the case of Salvador da Bahia.

African Slaves and Tupi Workers: Jesuits and Labour

Relations in Piratininga
The massive enslavement of Tupi people provoked a violent reaction,
particularly from the tribes of Caeté and Tamoio, which gave rise to
serious attacks against the first farms (fazendas) Portuguese settlers had
organized outside urban centres.55 The latter were aware that there were
many different and conflicting groups among Tupi people. They also
knew that commodified work, as we can define the labour relation these
slaves entered being sold in the market and being forced to work the
land for the market, was something absolutely new in a region inhabited
by semi-nomadic people, who did not reside for more than a few years in
the same place and lived by subsistence agriculture and fishing on com-
munity property. Despite their enormous distance from the Konkani
Indians living in rural villages, their pre-colonial organization, too, can
be subsumed in the category of reciprocal labour, as community-based
redistributive workers.
Initially, Nóbrega’s opposition to the enslavement of native Brazilians
resulted in the freeing of those assaulted (negros salteados), especially if
they had already converted to Catholicism before capture, as in the case
of the Carijó people. Moreover, in a letter addressed to King John III
in July 1552, he claimed provocatively that, as Brazil was a poor land,
it was expedient ‘that Your Highness sends settlers who farm and grow
fond of the land, and calls back so many officials who receive so much
money and do not expect anything else than finishing their period here
and earning their wage’.56 What happened, however, was quite differ-
ent. Before the resistance of Tupi people, settlers opted for an alterna-
tive forced labour that already characterized the Portuguese Atlantic
world. In a letter written from Salvador da Bahia in 1556, local inhab-
itants asked the crown to allow a peculiar slave trade: sending Tupi
to the archipelagos of São Tomé and of Cape Verde in exchange for
black Africans ‘from Guinea’ (da Guiné). The settlers inaugurated an
84 G. Marcocci

ethnographic comparison grounded on practical considerations, by argu-

ing in particular that Wolofs were much more useful and reliable than
native Brazilians (naturais), because, while the latter were ‘very incon-
stant’ (muito imcertos), the former tolerated a much heavier workload
and provided significant assistance in military defence against rebel
Tupi.57
Whatever the king’s answer, while a huge number of African slaves
were forcibly transported to the Americas, some Tupi and mestizos from
Brazil actually ended up working as slaves in West Africa and its Atlantic
islands.58 The beginning of this long-distance and bidirectional migra-
tion of forced labour was a result of the social project Sardinha helped
formulate. The increase in the Atlantic slave trade and the massive use
of Africans as chattel slaves that marked colonial Brazil so heavily were
still to come, but the first steps of the introduction of African slaves in
Brazil reproduced what was going on in Spanish America, where even
Bartolomé de las Casas suggested using them in place of freed natives to
carry on forced labour in the encomienda system. The main difference
was that the enslavement of Tupi people in Brazil was not completely
prohibited before the eighteenth century, and the first royal legislation
regulating it dated only to 1570.59
Nóbrega and the Jesuits who shared his position were not against the
arrival of enslaved Wolofs either.60 As early as 1551, they sent an explicit
request for ‘some slaves from Guinea’ to be used in a house to be built in
Bahia for the catechization of native young boys (meninos), ‘because the
land is so fertile that many children will be easily supported and dressed,
if they will have some slaves who plant field with food and cotton (roças
de mantimentos e algodais)’.61 Nóbrega, however, also showed appre-
ciation for Tupi slaves, on condition that their capture had been lawful
and they were non-converts. In a letter sent from Salvador in 1552, he
announced that he had purchased some Brazilian slaves for the house
of native young boys. His description of their labour organization casts
light on both gender relations and the indirect involvement of religious
men in managing this contingent of reciprocal household slaves: ‘A few
slaves of those I ordered to buy for the house are women, and I made
them marry the (enslaved) men. They live secluded in the fields (roças),
with their own houses, and I found a layman who takes care of, rules and
governs all of them, while we do not look after them and we interact
with the layman and he did so with them. We had to get women because
otherwise it is not possible to have fields in this land, since they make
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 85

flour and do all the service and work, while the men just clean land, go
fishing and hunting, and little more’.62
This experience influenced the organization of the Jesuit house of
native young boys in Piratininga, the future São Paulo, established in
the following years by Nóbrega and his fellows.63 The material subsist-
ence of the house was entrusted to the Jesuit brother Mateus Nogueira,
a blacksmith (ferreiro) who ‘supports these young boys with his labour,
because he crafts some objects thanks to which they buy some food’.
‘This land’, Nóbrega remarked in a letter to a Jesuit father in Portugal,
‘is very poor and it is not possible to relate to the local gentile (este gen-
tio) without hooks and knifes that make it easier to attract them’.64 In a
difficult and isolated context like that of Piratininga, labour and barter
were a fundamental part of the missionary strategy in order to guarantee
self-sufficiency to Jesuit residences, as well as to come into contact with
the local population and, if possible, convert them. A few years later,
while supporting new patterns of settlement for local natives, allowing
them to be reunited in bigger villages with better conditions to farm and
fish, Nóbrega also argued for intense use of African slaves in the house
of Piratininga, ‘without our looking after them, because we all confess
that we cannot live without someone who gathers the wood, brings the
water, cooks the bread that we eat and does other services that, being
just a few, the brothers cannot do’.65

Conclusion: The Spectre of Pêro Fernandes Sardinha

The second half of the 1550s and the 1560s saw a wild period of unlim-
ited enslavement of Tupi people, especially from the Caeté tribe, until
the first law concerning native slavery in Brazil (1570) distinguished
between those living in villages under Jesuit custody (índios aldeados)
and those wandering in the inland (sertão), called ‘rogue gentiles’ (gen-
tios bravos), who were out of the control of the Portuguese Empire,
but could be enslaved in the case of just war.66 In the previous years,
Nóbrega had contributed to this legal agreement, which, however, the
settlers contested. He had disputed publicly against the reasons by which
the assaults and captures against Tupi people were justified. For a long
time, Nóbrega had criticized the use of native slaves (escravos da terra),
however they had been captured, in Jesuit colleges and houses, but the
brute spectacle of the mass enslavement of Caeté people in the area of
Bahia led him to question openly the whole legitimacy of this action.67
86 G. Marcocci

In this circumstance, however, Nóbrega had first considered the possibil-

ity of importing the encomienda system from Spanish America, as some
settlers also asked the general governor of Brazil. Finally, he rejected it
for he was sure that Portuguese encomenderos would not take care of the
catechization and conversion of natives. He ended up by feeling the con-
crete realization of this model of tributary labour as the opposite of his
project to gather neophytes in separated villages under Jesuit custody:
‘now that they [i.e., the Brazilian converts] live together with churches
to indoctrinate them, they [i.e., the settlers] want to distribute them (os
querem repartidos). Thus, there is no lack of those who go kidnapping
our Indians, whom we gathered with a lot of labour (trabalho) and take
them to live in their fields’.68
Nóbrega’s defence hid the fact that the material conditions of the
neophytes living in the Jesuit villages, while certainly better than the
Spanish encomiendas or the settlers’ plantations in Brazil, were not those
of community members working in a regime of reciprocal labour rela-
tions, but rather of a kind of spiritualized tributary system that was to
draw harsh criticism not only from settlers, but also from royal coun-
cils.69 Actually, Nóbrega was still dealing with the spectre of Sardinha
and the legacy of his missionary ideas, which included the rejection of
Jesuit villages. The bishop was also unintentionally responsible for the
atmosphere of a ‘native-hunt’, in which Nóbrega fought his battle
against the settlers and those missionaries who supported the legitimacy
of the mass enslavement of Caeté. The decree issued in 1562 by the
general governor of Brazil that allowed the capture of everyone belong-
ing to this tribe in the area of Bahia followed the circumstance in which
Sardinha was said to have died. According to a report, after his depar-
ture to Portugal, ‘the ship on which he was travelling was wrecked along
the coast of Brazil and the Indians killed and ate all those who were
on board, with the exception of the few who spread the news (of the
accident)’.70
Rumours of acts of cannibalism may appear as psychological sugges-
tion, partly due to the violence the bishop had permitted against Tupi
people during his stay in Salvador. Be that as it may, this story must be
seen as a successful attempt to exploit Sardinha’s passing to improve his
own view of a new colonial society, based on the alternative for natives
between conversion and segregation on the one hand and forced labour
on the other. As the connected micro-histories of labour discussed in this
chapter show, spatial differences matter and there was a great distance
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 87

between the social project Sardinha had developed for West India and
the one he supported for Brazil. In life and death, however, he was a
true example of the multiple intersections between Catholic missions and
native subaltern workers in a globalizing world.

Notes
1. For an introduction to this approach see Jane Burbank and Frederick
Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference
(Princeton, 2010).
2. See for the Americas Jack P. Green, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in
Colonial Political and Constitutional History (Charlottesville, 1994);
Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, eds., Negotiated Empires:
Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820 (New York and
London, 2002).
3. There is an abundant bibliography on this topic. See Silvio Arturo Zavala,
La encomienda indiana, 2nd ed. (México, 1973); Lesley Byrd Simpson,
The Encomienda in New Spain: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico, revised
ed. (Berkeley, 1982); José de la Puente Brunke, Encomienda y enco-
menderos en el Perú: Estudio social y político de una institución colonial
(Sevilla, 1992); Julián B. Ruiz Rivera and Horst Pietschmann, eds.,
Encomiendas, indios y españoles (Münster, 1996). For a recent analysis see
Raquel Gil Montero, ‘Free and Unfree Labour in the Colonial Andes in
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’ International Review of Social
History, 56, 19 (2011), pp. 297–318.
4. I follow here the terminology presented in Karin Hofmeester and
Christine Moll-Murata, ‘The Joy and Pain of Work: Global Attitudes and
Valuations, 1500–1650: Introduction,’ International Review of Social
History, 56, 19 (2011), pp. 1–23.
5. Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Free and Unfree Labour:
The Debates Continues (Bern 1997). For the Atlantic world see Colin A.
Palmer, ed., The Worlds of Unfree Labour: From Indentured Servitude to
Slavery (Aldershot and Brookfield, VT, 1998). Examples from Asia and
Africa are discussed in David Northrup, ed., ‘Free and Unfree Labor
Migration, 1600–1900,’ Journal of World History, 14 (2003), pp.
125–241.
6. Douglas Cole Libby and Júnia Ferreira Furtado, eds., Trabalho livre, tra-
balho escravo: Brasil e Europa, séculos XVII e XIX (São Paulo, 2006).
7. Timothy J. Coates, Convicts and Orphans: Forced and State-Sponsored
Colonizers in the Portuguese Empire, 1550–1755 (Stanford, 2001). A
recent overview relating to the western empires can be found in Clare
88 G. Marcocci

Anderson and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, ‘Convict Labour and the

Western Empires, 1415–1954,’ in The Routledge History of Western
Empires, eds. Robert Aldrich and Kirsten McKenzie, (Abingdon and New
York, 2014), pp. 102–117.
8. Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian
Ocean World, 1790–1920 (Cambridge, 2012).
9. Pierre-Antoine Fabre and Bernard Vincent, eds., Missions religieuses mod-
ernes: Notre lieu est le monde (Rome, 2007).
10. Alida C. Metcalf, ‘Disillusioned Go-Betweens: The Politics of Mediation
and the Transformation of the Jesuits Missionary Enterprise in Sixteenth-
Century Brazil,’ Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 77, 154 (2008),
282–320; Luke Clossey, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit
Missions (New York and Cambridge, 2008); Charlotte de Castelnau-
L’Estoile, Marie-Lucie Copete, Aliocha Maldavsky and Ines G. Zupanov,
eds., Missions d’évangelisation et circulation des savoirs, XVIe-XVIIIe siè-
cles (Madrid, 2011).
11. Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal,
Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750 (Stanford, 1996).
12. Isolated pioneering studies are Robert Archibald, ‘Indian Labor at the
California Missions: Slavery or Salvation,’ Journal of San Diego History,
24, 2 (1978), 172–183; Janet M. Charnela, ‘Missionary Activity
and Indian Labor in the Upper Rio Negro of Brazil, 1680–1980: A
Historical-Ecological Approach,’ in Advances in Historical Ecology, ed.
William Balée (New York, 1998), pp. 313–333.
13. The classic study of the tripartite model of oratores, bellatores and labora-
tores is Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans.
Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1980).
14. Marcel van der Linden, ‘Introduction,’ in idem, Workers of the World:
Essays toward a Global Labour History (Leiden and Boston, 2008), pp.
1–14.
15. See Charlotte de Castelnau-L’Estoile, Les ouvriers d’une vigne stérile: Les
jésuites et la conversion des Indiens au Brésil, 1580–1620 (Lisbon, 2000).
16. Marcel van der Linden, ‘Studying Attitudes to Work Worldwide, 1500–
1650: Concepts, Sources, and Problems of Interpretation,’ International
Review of Social History, 56, S 19 (2011), pp. 25–43.
17. I follow here the discussion provided by Alden, The Making of an
Enterprise, 8–10, and his analysis of the financial administration and eco-
nomic activities of the Society of Jesus, at pp. 321–429, 528–570.
18. Alden, The Making of an Enterprise, pp. 11–13, 502–527.
19. Charles R. Boxer, Militant Church and Iberian Expansion, 1440–1770
(Baltimore, 1978).
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 89

20. This point is presented for the Portuguese empire in Asia in Ângela

Barreto Xavier, ‘Conversos and Novamente Convertidos: Law, Religion,
and Identity in the Portuguese Kingdom and Empire,’ Journal of Early
Modern History, 15, 3 (2011), 255–287.
21. On the importance of Iberian missions for the development of pre-mod-
ern ethnographic observation, with special regard to native Americans,
see Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian
and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology, 2nd ed. (Cambridge and New
York, 1986). A fundamental collection of essays on migration of forced
workers in the early modern world is: Patrick Manning, ed., Slave Trades,
1500–1800: Globalization of Forced Labour (Aldershot and Brookfield,
VT, 1996).
22. Alfredo Bosi, Dialética da colonização (São Paulo, 1992), pp. 142–147.
23. José de Acosta, De Procuranda Indorum Salute, ed. Luciano Pereña et al.
(Madrid, 1984), vol. 1, p. 146 (original in Latin).
24. Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, O trato dos viventes: Formação do Brasil no
Atlântico Sul, séculos XVI e XVII (São Paulo, 2000).
25. Anthony J. R. Russell-Wood has gathered the missionary personnel under
the label ‘servants of Christ’, including their mobility among the factors
of cohesiveness of the Portuguese world, but he has not put in relation
their service to the ways in which native labour was reorganized. See
Anthony J. R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415–1808: A World
on the Move, 2nd ed. (Baltimore, 1998), pp. 87–94.
26. Serafim Leite, ‘Introdução geral,’ in Monumenta Brasiliae, ed. Serafim
Leite, (Rome, 1956–), vol. 1, pp. 46–52.
27. King John III of Portugal to the governor of India, João de Castro,
Évora, 13 February 1545, published in Documentação para a história
das missões do padroado português do Oriente: Índia, ed. António da Silva
Rego (Lisbon, 1991–2000), vol. 3, doc. 45 (original in Portuguese). The
ecclesiastical career of Sardinha is summarized in José Pedro Paiva, Os bis-
pos de Portugal e do Império, 1495–1777 (Coimbra, 2006), p. 328.
28. Délio de Mendonça, Conversions and Citizenry: Goa under Portugal,
1510–1610 (New Delhi, 2002), pp. 255–266.
29. Cosme Anes to King John III of Portugal, Bassein, 30 November 1547,
published in Documenta Indica, ed. Josef Wicki and John Gomes (Rome,
1948–1988), vol. 1, doc. 32 (original in Portuguese).
30. Teotónio de Souza, Medieval Goa: A Socio-Economic History (New Delhi,
1979).
31. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–1700: A
Political and Economic History, 2nd ed. (Chichester and Malden, MA,
2012), pp. 78–85.
90 G. Marcocci

32. Catarina Madeira Santos, Goa é a chave de toda a Índia: Perfil político da

capital do Estado da Índia, 1505–1570 (Lisbon, 1999).
33. For an overview see Mendonça, Conversions and Citizenry, pp. 122–60.
The disputations about instruction and baptism are discussed by Ângela
Barreto Xavier, A invenção de Goa: Poder imperial e conversões culturais
nos séculos XVI e XVII (Lisbon, 2008), pp. 145–269.
34. The text of the law, extended to the whole of Asia in 1571, is published
in Arquivo Portuguez Oriental, ed. Joaquim Heliodoro da Cunha Rivara
(New Delhi, 1992), vol. 2, doc. 30. In my opinion, the application of this
law was slow and not automatic.
35. Pêro Fernandes Sardinha to King John III of Portugal, c. 1548–1549,
published in Documentação para a história das missões, vol. 4, doc. 101
(original in Portuguese).
36. The passage about the lascars is quoted from the letter of Pêro Fernandes
Sardinha to the governor of India, João de Castro, Goa, 14 February
1547, published ibid., vol. 3, doc. 99 (original in Portuguese), while that
about the Portuguese officials and soldiers is from the letter quoted in
the previous footnote.
37. This section relies on the reconstruction provided by Xavier, A invenção
de Goa, pp. 271–296.
38. See the document quoted in footnote 35.
39. Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth
Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 25–63.
40. João de Barros, Ásia… Dos feitos que os portugueses fizeram no descobri-
mento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente, ed. Hernâni Cidade
and Manuel Múrias (Lisbon, 1945–1946), dec. 1, bk. 9, 3 (original in
Portuguese). The importance of the contact with the Iberian racial cat-
egories, due to the Portuguese penetration in India, is highlighted by
Sumit Guha, Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and
Present (Leiden and Boston, 2013), pp. 19–25.
41. Alessandro Valignano to General Everardo Mercuriano, Goa, 25
December 1574, in Documenta Indica, vol. 9, doc. 99 (original in
Italian).
42. Charles R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825 (London,
1969), pp. 65–66.
43. In this perspective see Ananya Chakravarti, ‘In the Language of the Land:
Native Conversion in Jesuit Public Letters from Brazil and India,’ Journal
of Early Modern History, 17 (2013), pp. 505–524.
44. Jorge Couto, A construção do Brasil: Ameríndios, Portugueses e Africanos
do início do povoamento a finais de Quinhentos (Lisbon, 1997).
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 91

45. See now Giuseppe Marcocci, ‘Blackness and Heathenism: Color,

Theology, and Race in the Portuguese World, c. 1450–1600,’ Anuario
Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, 43, 2 (2016), 33–57.
46. Pêro Fernandes Sardinha to King John III of Portugal, Santiago of Cape
Verde, 11 April 1551, in Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisbon),
Corpo Cronológico, pt. 1, maço 86, doc. 45 (original in Portuguese).
47. The case of Brazil has a special place in the comparative analysis pro-
vided by Anthony J. R. Russell-Wood, ‘Patterns of Settlements in the
Portuguese Empire, 1400–1800,’ in Portuguese Oceanic Expansion,
1400–1800, eds. Francisco Bethencourt and Diogo Ramada Curto (New
York, 1998), pp. 161–196.
48. More than in Spanish America, in Brazil ‘the Indians were widely con-
sidered an expendable commodity of no redeeming value save as brute
laborers,’ Dauril Alden, ‘Indian versus Black Slavery in the State of
Maranhão during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,’ in Iberian
Colonies, New World Societiers: Essays in Memory of Charles Gibson, eds.
Richard L. Farner and William B. Taylor (University Park, PA, 1986), pp.
71–102, quotation at p. 100.
49. Carlos Alberto de Moura Ribeiro Zeron, Ligne de foi: La Compagnie de
Jésus et l’esclavage dans le processus de formation de la société coloniale en
Amérique portugaise, XVIe-XVIIe siècles (Paris, 2009).
50. João Gonçalves to the fathers and brothers in Coimbra, Salvador, 12 June
1555, published in Monumenta Brasiliae, vol. 2, doc. 38 (original in
Spanish).
51. Pêro Fernandes Sardinha to Provincial Simão Rodrigues, Salvador, July
1552, published ibid., doc. 49 (original in Spanish).
52. Manuel da Nóbrega to Provincial Simão Rodrigues, Salvador, August
1552, published ibid., doc. 54 (original in Portuguese).
53. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, A inconstância da alma selvagem e outros
ensaios de antropologia (São Paulo, 2002), p. 186.
54. Giuseppe Marcocci, A consciência de um império: Portugal e o seu mundo,
sécs. XV a XVII (Coimbra, 2012), pp. 41–71.
55. A famous episode is analysed in Rolando Vainfas, A heresia dos índios:
Catolicismo e rebeldia no Brasil colonial (São Paulo, 1995) and Alida
C. Metcalf, ‘Millenarian Slaves? The Santidade de Jaguaripe and Slave
Resistance in the Americas,’ American Historical Review, 104 (1999),
1531–1559. For a general discussion see John M. Monteiro, ‘Rethinking
Amerindian Resistance and Persistence in Colonial Portuguese America,’
in New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico, eds. John Gledhill
and Patience A. Schell (Notre Dame, 2012), pp. 25–43.
56. Published in Monumenta Brasiliae, vol. 1, doc. 47.
92 G. Marcocci

57. Letter of the municipality and inhabitants of Salvador, 18 September

1556, published in António da Silva Rego, ed., As Gavetas da Torre do
Tombo, (Lisbon, 1960–1977), vol. 10, pp. 433–437.
58. Alberto da Costa e Silva, ‘Africa-Brazil-Africa during the Era of Slave
Trade,’ in Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and
Brazil during the Era of Slavery, eds. José C. Curto and Paul E. Lovejoy
(Amherst, NY, 2004), pp. 21–28.
59. From the mid-1570s on, the number of African slaves began to exceed
that of Indian ones in the sugar plantations. See Stuart B. Schwartz,
Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835
(Cambridge, 1985), pp. 65–72.
60. For a valuable discussion of the Jesuits’ position in this context see Alida
C. Metcalf, Go-Betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500–1600
(Austin, 2005) pp. 157–193.
61. Manuel da Nóbrega to King John III of Portugal, Olinda, 14 September
1551, published in Monumenta Brasiliae, vol. 1, doc. 37.
62. Letter quoted in footnote 49.
63. Vitorino Nemésio, O campo de São Paulo: A Companhia de Jesus e o plano
português do Brasil (Lisbon, 1954).
64. Manuel da Nóbrega to Luís Gonçalves da Câmara, São Vicente, 15 June
1555, published in Monumenta Brasiliae, vol. 1, doc. 69 (original in
Spanish). Interestingly, Nogueira is one of the two speakers of Nóbrega’s
Diálogo sobre a conversão do gentio (1556), published in Manuel da
Nóbrega, Cartas do Brasil e mais escritos, ed. Serafim Leite (Coimbra,
1955), doc. 27. On Indian slavery and the development of São Paulo see
John M. Monteiro, Negros da terra: Índios e bandeirantes nas origens de
São Paulo (São Paulo, 1994).
65. Manuel da Nóbrega to Miguel de Torres, Salvador, 2 September
1557, published in Monumenta Brasiliae, vol. 2, doc. 61 (original in
Portuguese).
66. Beatriz Perrone-Moisés, ‘Índios livres e índios escravos: Os princípios
da legislação indigenista do período colonial (séculos XVI a XVIII),’ in
História dos índios no Brasil, ed. Manuela Carneiro da Cunha (São Paulo,
2000), pp. 115–132.
67. The reference is to the disputation with the Jesuit Quirício Caxa, which
took place in Salvador in the second half of 1560s. The sources are pub-
lished in Nóbrega, Cartas do Brasil, doc. 41.
68. Letter of Manuel da Nóbrega to the governor of Brazil, Tomé de Sousa,
Salvador, 5 July 1559, published in Monumenta Brasiliae, vol. 3, doc. 13
(original in Portuguese).
69. I disagree with scholars who maintain that natives lived in a recipro-
cal labour relation within Jesuit communities, like Tarcísio R. Botelho,
 3 CATHOLIC MISSIONS AND NATIVE SUBALTERN WORKERS … 93

‘Labour Ideologies and Labour Relations in Colonial Portuguese

America, 1500–1700’, International Review of Social History, 56, 19
(2011), pp. 275–296. The Mesa da Consciência claimed that those resid-
ing in these villages were ‘true slaves, who laboured as such not only in
the colleges but on the so-called Indian lands, which in the end became
the estates and sugar mills of the Jesuit fathers’. Quoted in Benjamin
Keen and Keith Haynes, eds., A History of Latin America (Boston,
2009), vol. 1, p. 125.
70. Luís da Grã to Ignatius of Loyola, Piratininga, 7 April 1557, published in
Monumenta Brasiliae, vol. 2, doc. 55 (original in Spanish).
 CHAPTER 4

Prisoners of War, Captives or Slaves?

The Christian Prisoners of Tunis
and La Goleta in 1574

Cecilia Tarruell

Introduction
The study of early modern Mediterranean bondage, understood here as
the various forms of dependence and coerced labour experienced by indi-
viduals in this area, stretching from captivity to slavery, has an extremely
long tradition.1 The burgeoning number of articles and books published
every year reflect the vitality of this field of research.2 Over the past dec-
ades, scholars have sought to complexify our understanding of these phe-
nomena. However, the depiction of Mediterranean bondage as an ordeal
suffered exclusively by Christians, who became victims of the Barbary
corsairs, still remains a prevailing notion in a certain number of studies.3
Two aspects of this representation are especially worth pointing out:
first, the presumed existence of a unilateral phenomenon and, secondly,
the fact that it was a consequence of low-intensity warfare driven by pri-
vateers from North Africa. In reality, as many studies have convincingly
shown, the dynamics that defined the early modern Mediterranean were

C. Tarruell (*)
Oxford University, Oxford, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 95

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_4
96 C. Tarruell

reciprocal, albeit frequently asymmetrical.4 Captures related to warfare

were no exception. Therefore, bondage affected Christians seized by
Muslims as well as Muslims and Jews captured by Christians.5
With regard to the importance of corsairing, the picture is consid-
erably more complicated. In the past decades, a strand of the schol-
arly debate has emphasized the role of Christian privateers in the
Mediterranean, especially since the beginning of the seventeenth
century.6 In parallel, some of the most interesting recent works on
Mediterranean bondage have focused on the development of an econ-
omy of ransoming.7 At this stage, there is no doubt that low-intensity
warfare was not the monopoly of corsairs from the Maghreb. Yet the
prevalent role of corsairing as the main cause for the capture of Christian
populations has frequently been presented as a certainty.
Were all Christian detainees indeed seized during actions carried
out by corsairs? The aim of this essay is to call into question this histo-
riographical trope. To this end, the following pages discuss the case of
prisoners of war in the Mediterranean during the second half of the six-
teenth century. In so doing, the purpose is not to dismiss the importance
of corsairing, but to show that there were other complementary circum-
stances in which people were deprived of their freedom.
At the same time, this chapter explores the different status that detain-
ees could experience during detention. Scholars such as Michel Fontenay
have emphasized the need to distinguish between the categories of cap-
tive and slave.8 Yet these terms are frequently used as synonymous in
studies revolving around early modern Mediterranean bondage. As such,
some scholars have preferred to maintain the apparent similar meaning
that contemporaries conferred on various situations of lack of freedom.
However, this choice implies mixing very different realities and labour
relations between owners and detainees. This essay aims to clarify these
distinctions and to show the diverse fates prisoners of war lived through
depending on whether they were held as captives or slaves. Moreover,
this chapter aspires to stress the existence of a continuum between life
before, during and after detention, and a gradation of situations of
dependence experienced by detainees and former detainees.
In focusing on a phenomenon—imprisonment on the battlefield—
that was neither specific to the early modern Mediterranean nor to
confrontations between Muslim and Christian powers, this research is
motivated by three main concerns. First, the need to set Mediterranean
bondage within a broader frame of analysis, namely the existence of
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 97

shared cultures of dependence and the treatment of defeated p ­ opulations

following the codes of warfare. From this perspective, the second con-
cern is to analyse what made the Mediterranean case different from sim-
ilar situations encountered in other geographic areas. Finally, based on
the conception of bondage as a process with a beginning and, hopefully,
an end leading to detainees’ liberation, this essay studies the shifting con-
ditions that individuals might experience over the course of their lives
and the uncertain limits between free and unfree labour.
In its methodology, this chapter proposes to tackle these issues using
a prosopographical approach and, specifically, through the analysis of
the fate of prisoners of war of one single event: the loss of Tunis and
La Goleta by the Spaniards in 1574. This episode was one of many in
which the military forces of the Spanish Monarchy opposed those of the
Ottoman Empire. The outcome was a crushing defeat of the Christian
forces: between late August and mid-September, the North-African
presidio of La Goleta, conquered by Charles V in 1535, and the city
of Tunis, recently incorporated into the Spanish Monarchy in October
1573, became definitively part of the Ottoman Empire.9
The choice to select only one case study has the advantage of combin-
ing a micro-historical study of the fate of a group captured in a specific
place at a given time—i.e. Tunis and La Goleta in 1574—with an analy-
sis of their subsequent careers, which were characterized by an intense
geographical mobility, both during and after their period of detention.
Contrary to some works dealing with ‘global lives’, I do not focus on
the trajectory of an exceptional individual or a small set of individuals.10
Instead, I seek to reconstruct the trajectories of the largest possible num-
ber of actors who were seized by the Ottomans in Tunis and La Goleta
in 1574.11
In order to do this, the following pages are rooted in an in-depth
analysis of primary sources. Scholars have traditionally relied on two
kinds of archival materials in studying Christian bondage in Islamic
lands: the records of the religious orders dedicated to redeeming cap-
tives (Mercedarians and Trinitarians), and the Inquisitorial trials, when
detention was followed by a religious conversion to Islam. Instead, my
research is based on a study of the so-called informaciones de méritos y
servicios. These ‘reports of merits and services’ were petitions sent by
individuals to the king in order to request a reward for their services to
the Crown. They were routinely sent along with a cache of supporting
documents supplied to buttress their claims, which offer historians rich
98 C. Tarruell

materials with autobiographical content, overlooked until now by schol-

ars interested in Mediterranean bondage.12 These sources provide a win-
dow into many human experiences that would otherwise be difficult to
access, since the majority of petitioners were not elite actors and left very
few other traces.
In particular, my reconstruction of the trajectories of prisoners of
Tunis and La Goleta is based on a systematic investigation of petitions
sent by former prisoners—and their families—which were processed by
the councils of State, of War and of Italy between 1574 and 1609. These
petitions have been read alongside subsequent administrative docu-
mentation generated by these petitions. In addition, I have carried out
selective surveys of documentation from the Chamber of Castile, the
councils of Castile, of Aragon and of the Indies and, occasionally, from
the Council of Finance during the same period.13 This has allowed me
to reconstruct 328 life trajectories related to the events. Of these 328
individuals, 267 were captured during the loss of Tunis and La Goleta,
51 were the relatives of prisoners and 10 were killed during the sieges.
Whereas the total number of Christian survivors is estimated at 770, this
sample covers a significant percentage of the prisoners taken after the
Spanish defeat.14

The Loss of Tunis and La Goleta in 1574 and its

Significance in Mediterranean Warfare
From the late fifteenth century onwards, the Mediterranean became
a scene of imperial and confessional competition between the Spanish
Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire.15 This rivalry inevitably forced the
remaining powers in the area, and those that gradually came to play a
role in it, to take sides in the on-going conflict.16 The result was a sit-
uation of permanent and multifaceted warfare which certainly adopted
the form of clashes between regular armies. Examples such as the bat-
tle of Preveza (1538) or the battle of Lepanto (1571) are paradig-
matic of this form of war. However, in a more durable way, warfare in
the Mediterranean was an irregular and privatised war driven both
by Muslim and Christian corsairs—termed the ‘little war’ by Fernand
Braudel, which attained its ‘Golden Age’ precisely during this period.17
Importantly enough, these hostilities occurred in an area with a long
tradition of interactions between Christian Europe and North Africa,
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 99

and between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. Contrary to the

Americas—and other parts of the globe—there was no discovery of the
‘Other’. Instead, tensions arose between enemies who were also neigh-
bours and who had long experience of implementing mechanisms for
coexistence and for the regulation of daily violence.18
In these circumstances, the loss of Tunis and La Goleta in 1574 has
traditionally been considered one of the highlights of the histoire événe-
mentielle of the Mediterranean front during the second half of the six-
teenth century. It was preceded by other military defeats of the Hispanic
forces in North Africa—such as the loss of Bugia (1555), the expedition
to Mostaganem (1558) and the disaster of Djerba (1560)—and would be
followed by the famous battle of Alcazar (1578), during which the two
Moroccan contenders, Muhammad al-Mutawakkil and ‘Abd al-Malik, as
well as the Portuguese king, dom Sebastião, died. The loss of Tunis and
La Goleta was also the event that closed the victorious cycle of Lepanto
(1571) and don John of Austria’s activities in the Mediterranean.
Nevertheless, this episode did not represent a mere military setback,
but an event with long-standing consequences. The Spaniards lost a stra-
tegic position in the central Maghreb which had been vital in ensuring
the defence of the South of Italy, the control of trade and the isolation
of focal points of Barbary privateering. Traditionally, the historiographi-
cal interpretation has considered 1580 to be the conclusive date for the
changing rhythms and dynamics on the Mediterranean front. Hence,
1580 would have been the turning point that signalled the transition
from the open conflict between the forces of the Spanish Monarchy and
the Ottoman Empire to a form of warfare driven by corsairs and priva-
teers, in which a large number of powers, including English and Dutch
vessels, participated.19 In reality, the signing of the truce between the
Catholic king and the Ottoman sultan only consolidated the status quo
that had been established in 1574.20 From September 1574 onwards,
the central Maghreb conclusively swung to the Ottoman side. With this
conquest, and the Portuguese defeat of Alcazar four years later, the sul-
tans considered their Mediterranean objectives achieved.21 Henceforth,
there were no significant territorial gains by either of the two hegemonic
Mediterranean powers. Their naval strength gradually declined and their
strategic priorities changed: the Spanish Monarchy shifted to the Atlantic
while the Ottoman Empire turned its attention to the wars against the
Safavids.22
100 C. Tarruell

As for the human consequences of the events of 1574, both Christian

and Muslim sources highlight the bloody nature of the sieges. The
Ottoman and Barbary forces suffered heavy losses, while most of the
besieged population died during the assaults or shortly after as a result
of their injuries.23 The majority of the few survivors were professional
soldiers; there were also some sailors who had probably arrived during
the summer of 1574, coming from the galley squadrons of Naples and
Sicily.24 In addition, at the moment of the attacks, there were a consid-
erable number of civilians living in the city of La Goleta and, to a lesser
extent, in Tunis. We should remember that La Goleta was not only a mil-
itary post but a real city, where soldiers’ families had lived—in some cases
for more than a generation25—and where all kinds of activities, besides
the military, took place. Therefore, there were many women and children
among the prisoners, as well as different categories of workers, medical
personnel, some ecclesiastics and several merchants.26

Prisoners of War, Captives or Slaves?

Human bondage resulting from warfare was a common practice in the
early modern Mediterranean (and beyond). Obviously, it coexisted with
other forms of bondage: bondage by birth, the African slave trade—before
it became primarily oriented towards the American territories—as well as
slavery resulting from raids in Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover, it is
important to underline the fact that early modern Mediterranean bondage
did not represent a qualitative break with medieval times, even if it reached
an unprecedented scale from a quantitative point of view.27
In order to distinguish Mediterranean bondage from other forms of
enslavement—in particular, from the Atlantic chattel slavery—Giovanna
Fiume has characterized its main features in the following way. First,
it was a reciprocal—albeit not necessarily symmetrical—phenomenon
that affected Christians captured by Muslims as well as Muslims and
Jews imprisoned by Christians. Its duration was generally limited, since
detainees had the chance of being redeemed or exchanged with other
prisoners. Besides this reversibility, bondage had an iterative nature. In
other words, there was a real chance of becoming captive several times
over a lifetime. Finally, this phenomenon gave rise to the creation of
dense financial networks of merchants, redeemers and all sorts of inter-
mediaries who were sometimes more interested in speculating on the
amount of ransoms than in liberating the detainees.28
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 101

In general, contemporary accounts and propaganda from the six-

teenth and seventeenth centuries, alongside most of the scholarly works
on Christian Mediterranean bondage, have focused on the victims of
the Barbary corsairs. This emphasis has tended to obscure the fact that
a considerable percentage of detainees held in the Ottoman Empire and
Morocco were actually prisoners of war captured on the battlefield.29 In
reality, the figure of the prisoner of war is as old as warfare itself. The
payment of ransoms and exchange of prisoners were part of the codes
and practices of war.30 Moreover, the expectation of taking booty, as
much material as human booty, was one of the main motivations for
soldiers who participated in military campaigns and was also a primary
source of remuneration.31 Surprisingly, the analysis of the treatment and
fate of the prisoners of war is a field of research overlooked by early mod-
ern historians. Unlike the fate of their twentieth-century counterparts,
this topic has scarcely attracted scholars’ attention.32 In most cases, the
interest in early modern prisoners of war has been placed in longue durée
collective endeavours, from antiquity to contemporary times, which has
targeted to explain, explicitly or implicitly, the background of the experi-
ence of the two world wars.33 Yet, there are certainly numerous examples
of early modern prisoners of war, with some famous cases such as the
king of France Francis I, captured at the battle of Pavia (1525).34
From a global perspective, it becomes apparent that the capture of
prisoners was a common procedure throughout time and space. Bondage
related to warfare was neither an exclusively early modern phenomenon
nor specific to Mediterranean (or to Christian-Islamic) conflicts. It is
from this approach, which challenges the assumed ‘exceptionalism’ that
sometimes arises from works on early modern Mediterranean bondage—
especially those dealing with Christian captivity in Islamic lands—that
we should understand the experience of the prisoners of Tunis and La
Goleta.
The question remains, however, of how to explain the essential differ-
ences that we can observe between the fate of the prisoners of war held
in intra-European conflicts and those who were captured during clashes
involving extra-European powers in contexts of cross-confessional dif-
ference, namely, for the purposes of this essay, in conflicts between the
Spanish Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire. While prisoners in intra-
European conflicts were generally held for short periods of time and
their liberation was granted, at the latest, during the peace agreements
between contenders, this was not necessarily the case for the servants of
102 C. Tarruell

the Spanish Monarchy seized by the Ottomans. The treatment of these

two categories of prisoners thus differed widely.
In order to understand the reasons for such differences, it is crucial
to take into account the prisoners’ legal status, i.e. whether their legal
status was that of captive or slave. Both in Christian and Islamic law, the
enslavement of prisoners of war was permitted when there was a reli-
gious difference between contenders.35 Related to this, we have to keep
in mind the distinctions between captivity and slavery. Michel Fontenay
has proposed a differentiation between these two categories of analysis
based on the exchange value and use value of detainees, to which we
should also add different temporalities. Hence, captives were held until
the payment of a ransom and were assessed according to their exchange
value. On the contrary, slaves were estimated by their use value and so
were kept by their owners until they fulfilled their duties.36 In addi-
tion, captives were not expected—at least in theory—to work, whereas
slaves were owned in prospect of their capacity to work, whether that
work was physical, intellectual or sexual. Nonetheless, these two concep-
tual realities were not immutable, since a captive could easily become a
slave when his prospects for redemption faded away.37 Moreover, these
taxonomies should be verified empirically since there could be a broad
spectrum in these situations of dependence in addition to the theoretical
differences that were contingent on distinct legal status.
Concerning the prisoners of war seized during military conflicts
between the Ottomans and Spaniards, many elements could intervene
in order to determine whether they would become captives or slaves.
Nevertheless, a considerable number of prisoners were directly held as
slaves. As stated previously, the cross-confessional setting legally allowed
this outcome. In such circumstances, it is easy to understand why the fate
of those prisoners was so different from their counterparts in Europe.
However, the religious difference was not the only element that
explained these differences. The nature of the diplomatic relations
between contenders also played a crucial role, probably even more deci-
sive than the former. The instrumentalisation of prisoners was a common
fact; they could become an important part of negotiations, often used
as bargaining chips to free respective prisoners.38 Normally, most of the
prisoners were not destined to permanently remain in this situation; they
were held for the duration of the conflict that had caused their impris-
onment. Yet, the total absence of official relations could prevent any
kind of agreement for mutual exchange of prisoners, which is precisely
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 103

what happened to the subjects and servants of the Spanish Habsburgs

who were captured by the Ottomans. In addition, elements such as who
was the owner, the place of detention, the social status of prisoners, their
symbolic value, etc., could also influence the fate of the prisoners of war
seized in fights against the Ottomans.

The Prisoners’ Fate During Detention

In the aftermath of the assaults of Tunis and La Goleta, the over 770
survivors were divided up between the winning forces. This was the nor-
mal process on these occasions. The most significant and valuable prison-
ers were handed over to the sultan and the main figures of the besieging
armies. The majority of the prominent prisoners were held as captives
in the prospect of getting a ransom for them. The rest of the prison-
ers, sometimes heavily injured—to the extent of not knowing whether
they would survive or die in the following days—were distributed among
the remaining participants. Some were taken as captives, others directly
as slaves.
Algiers and Istanbul were the main destinations of the prisoners.
However, some remained in Tunis and the neighbouring areas, or were
sent to other Ottoman dominions. For instance, a significant percent-
age found themselves in the province of Egypt, especially in Alexandria.
This geography was related to the owners of the prisoners and the place
where they were living or serving the sultan. Moreover, it was linked to
the activities to which prisoners were devoted.
Even if it is difficult to generalise, an important number of the
defeated population was held as slaves and used as oarsmen. In the early
modern Mediterranean, both in Christian and Islamic lands, the pro-
pulsion of galleys was one of the more demanding activities in terms
of employment of slave labour.39 The high number of rowers that was
needed, together with their high rate of mortality and the continu-
ous flow of fugitive slaves and those who were disabled, explain this
huge demand. Therefore, it is not surprising that the map of the pris-
oners’ destinations is a perfect match with the geography of the main
ports where the Ottoman Empire maintained galley squadrons, such as
Istanbul, Alexandria, the islands of Rhodes, Cyprus, Chios, Mytilene and
Negroponte.40
It is worth pointing out, however, that the use of slaves in the gal-
leys has benefited to some extent from good documentary visibility, both
104 C. Tarruell

in Christian and Ottoman sources and propaganda, which has attracted

considerable historiographical attention. Conversely, we know very little
about the Christian slaves employed in agricultural activities, artisan tasks
or domestic service. This fact, which is common to the whole phenom-
enon of Christian enslavement in Islamic lands, is also applicable to the
particular example of the prisoners of Tunis and La Goleta. Furthermore,
the employment of slave rowers in galleys was subject to the seasonal
calendar of sea navigation. Hence, during the winter, owners often used
their slaves for other tasks, such as building infrastructure, construction
or carrying water or wood.
Finally, there is no indication regarding the activities of the women
and children imprisoned in 1574. We can assume that their fate did
not substantially differ from the treatment of these social groups in the
Maghreb and in the rest of the Ottoman Empire. It is probable then that
they were employed in domestic service, in combination with meeting
sexual demands.41
The example of the prisoners of Tunis and La Goleta is also inter-
esting since it offers new insight into the phenomena of early mod-
ern Mediterranean bondage. In particular, two elements are especially
important in adding nuance to some of the general assumptions about
Christian captivity—and enslavement—in the Islamic lands: the prison-
ers’ geography of detention and the duration of this ordeal.
With regard to the first aspect, we have already seen that the places of
detention were not limited to the Maghrebi coast, but encompassed a
larger portion of the domains of the Ottoman Empire, especially in the
Eastern Mediterranean and, in particular, in Istanbul. This contradicts
the traditional image of a phenomenon reduced to the main cities of the
Barbary Coast, where the victims of the North African corsairs suffered
all sorts of ill treatment until they were ransomed. More importantly, the
prisoners of Tunis and La Goleta frequently enjoyed considerable spatial
mobility during their detention. This might be due to the move of their
owner or their sale to another master.
This mobility within—and outside of—the Ottoman dominions, both
across the Barbary Coast and the Levant, can be illustrated by Jerónimo
de Pasamonte’s trajectory. During his 18-year detention, Pasamonte
lived in Tunis, Bizerte, Alexandria, the Peloponnesus, Rhodes and
several times in Istanbul.42 Meanwhile, the Cordoban soldier subse-
quently renamed Soliman Pacha was sold to ‘Abd al-Malik, the future
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 105

Moroccan sharif (1576–1578), who attended the sieges of Tunis and

La Goleta as Ottoman protégé. Our character followed his master to
Morocco, where a few years later he converted to Islam and started a
promising career in the Moroccan sharifs’ entourage. With Ahmad al-
Mansur, he obtained the charges of equerry and ‘viceroy’ of Gao, capital
of the recently conquered Songhay Empire.43 Soliman Pacha died during
the civil war among the successors of al-Mansur at the beginning of the
seventeenth century.44
The second element that the case study of the prisoners of Tunis and
La Goleta allows us to enlarge upon is the length of the prisoners’ captiv-
ity or enslavement. The majority of works, based on records of the reli-
gious orders dedicated to redeeming Christian captives in the Barbary
Coast, have observed that the average time of detention barely exceeded
5 years.45 Yet, a careful analysis of the prisoners’ petitions to the Spanish
Crown offers a different picture, which is summarized in the tables
below:46 (Table 4.1) (Fig. 4.1).
Thus, even if the duration of detention varied considerably, we can
observe a relative predominance of cases lasting more than the sup-
posed average length of detention. The majority of the captives held in
the Islamic lands remained for between 5 and 15 years. Multiple rea-
sons explain these long detentions. First, many prisoners were held
directly as slaves, especially among those who were not prominent fig-
ures. In addition, the possession of Philip II’s subjects could have a spe-
cial symbolism for some owners, as they represented a constant victory
against the enemy. On other occasions, long captivities were related to

Table 4.1 Duration of detention

Duration of detention Number of individuals Percentage (%)

≤1 year 14 6
>1 year to <5 years 38 18
≥5 years to <10 years 52 24
≥10 years to <15 years 51 24
≥15 years to <20 years 17 8
≥20 years to <25 years 9 4
≥25 years to <30 years 15 7
≥30 years 20 9
Total 216 100
106 C. Tarruell

Duration of detention
20

18

16

14

12

10

0
1 year
2 years
3 years
4 years
5 years
6 years
7 years
8 years
9 years
10 years
11 years
12 years
13 years
14 years
15 years
16 years
17 years
18 years
19 years
20 years
21 years
22 years
23 years
24 years
25 years
26 years
27 years
28 years
29 years
30 years
31 years
32 years
33 years
34 years
35 years
36 years
37 years
38 years
Fig. 4.1 Duration of detention

difficulties that arose in negotiating the liberation of these individuals.

For instance, Manuel Pérez was a surgeon from the fort of Tunis. He
was captured with his brother Antonio, who was also a surgeon, and
who was released on payment of a ransom at Istanbul shortly thereaf-
ter. In contrast, Manuel was sent to Algiers and remained captive for
more than 10 years. His master would only free him in exchange for
Hassan Desmir, who was detained as an oarsman on the Lisbon galleys.
Although the Spanish Crown was willing to relinquish this slave, in 1584
the parties had not yet reached an agreement. The exchange presumably
took place a year later.47
Moreover, the duration was closely related to the place of deten-
tion and, therefore, to the possibility of being liberated. 80% of pris-
oners were held in the Levant (essentially in Istanbul), where they had
fewer chances of being freed than in North Africa, since the Orders of
Redemption did not operate there. There were also fewer networks
dedicated to ransoming. The following graph shows us the varia-
tion in the duration of captivity depending on the place of detention
(Fig. 4.2).
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 107

60

50

40
Barbary Coast

30
Levant

Levant and Barbary Coast

20

Without Information

10

0
≤ 1 year > 1 year - < ≥ 5 years - ≥ 10 years ≥ 15 years ≥ 20 years ≥ 25 years ≥ 30 years
5 years < 10 years - < 15 - < 20 - < 25 - < 30
years years years years

Fig. 4.2 Areas of detention

The Liberation and Possible Return to Christian Lands

The likely possibility of being freed after a given amount of time is one
of the major aspects that differentiate Mediterranean bondage from that
of the Atlantic slave trade. Whether the liberation occurred a few months
after the events of 1574 or several decades later, as discussed in the previ-
ous section, a considerable percentage of the prisoners of Tunis and La
Goleta managed to become free persons again. Indeed, the 267 trajec-
tories studied here correspond to individuals who were lucky enough to
recover their freedom.
There were several paths to obtain freedom. Of course, many of the
prisoners were liberated after the payment of a ransom. Yet, relatively
few of them benefited from the mediation of the Mercedarians and
Trinitarians in the Maghreb.48 Instead, the majority defrayed the ransom
themselves after settling the terms with their masters. Often, they relied
on the mediation of intermediaries who acted as negotiators or advanced
the necessary sums of money. Rosa Carta’s path is a good example of
this. Rosa Carta was the wife of the maestre de campo Luis de Segura.
Her husband, severely wounded, died shortly after the surrender of
108 C. Tarruell

La Goleta. She was captured together with her 3-year-old son and
6-year-old daughter; all three were sent to Istanbul. In 1585, after 11
years of being held captive, she finally managed to arrange their ran-
som for the price of 400 escudos. Her master allowed her to return to
Christian lands with the stipulation that this sum, plus interest, would be
paid within a year and a half. Therefore, she had to leave a guarantor as
well as her children as hostages. In the meantime, her relatives had prob-
ably concluded that she was dead. In 1584, her sister-in-law Juana de
Segura had already asked for the overdue wages of her brother, Juan de
Segura, and her son, the alférez Jerónimo de Valdés, who had both died
during the sieges. The fact that Rosa Carta asked a notary to authen-
ticate the will that her husband had made in La Goleta on 20 August
1574 immediately after she arrived at Court, proves that she needed to
reclaim what was hers.49
Others financed their freedom through their own work, after estab-
lishing a contract (mükâtebe) with their owners.50 This modality was
frequent within the dominions at the heart of the Ottoman Empire,
especially in Istanbul, whereas it remained quite rare in the Maghrebi
provinces. This solution certainly demanded several years work before
becoming effective—on average between 10 and 15 years—but it guar-
anteed liberation. At the same time, it helped to foster bonds between
the slave and the master, since many freed slaves continued to work for
their former owners, showing the continuity between forms of ‘unfree’
and ‘free’ labour. Furthermore, although their numbers remain difficult
to evaluate through the sources used for this study, it is important to
note that freedom did not necessarily imply a direct return to Christian
lands. On the contrary, many of the prisoners of Tunis and La Goleta
probably remained in the Ottoman Empire once they were manumitted;
they got married and never felt the need—or perhaps were unable—to
return home.51
One of the main tropes about Mediterranean Christian bondage is
that many slaves and captives were freed thanks to their religious conver-
sion to Islam.52 Even though the figure of the ‘renegade’ has retained
so much attention in the scholarly debate, the truth is that renegades
are barely visible in the inquiry I have conducted on the prisoners of
Tunis and La Goleta. I am inclined to think that this is essentially due to
documentary visibility, rather than corresponding to a historical reality.
Invariably, all renegades that I have found were children when they were
captured, or they were relevant spies working on behalf of the Hispanic
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 109

authorities. In the first case, authorities were willing to forgive conver-

sions that had occurred when the actors were too young to be able to
discern their mistake. In the last case, the utility of these spies made it
possible to minimise the problem of apostasy.
Nevertheless, almost half of the sample gathered for this research
gained their freedom by running away. This was sometimes an individ-
ual escape, and sometimes a small group enterprise. For instance, the
Valencian Juan Bautista Navarro was captured in La Goleta when he
was 10 years old. He was brought to Algiers and converted to Islam. In
August 1583, he made a small boat with which he fled to Oran accom-
panied by twelve Christian captives.53 Antonio de Lucía was also cap-
tured in La Goleta when he was fifteen. After becoming a renegade, he
rose to the post of captain of janissaries. Throughout the almost 30 years
he lived as a Muslim, he helped the Christian captives as much as pos-
sible and secretly baptized his son in Istanbul. Finally he escaped in the
company of fifteen captives and three renegades, reaching Palermo.54
Sometimes, these escapes required extremely long journeys. Juan de
Arenas was captured in the fort of Tunis and was sent to Istanbul. After
eighteen years of captivity, he fled on a trip that led him through Poland,
Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Milan, Rome and the Iberian Peninsula.55
Taking part in a slave rebellion in a galley was another escape route
for the Christian prisoners of Tunis and La Goleta. These extraordinary
actions, which allowed the release of a large number of Christian captives
at once, were also endowed with a great symbolic and propagandising
power. They were a tangible sign of victory against the political and reli-
gious enemy and possessed a strong exemplary value. In the years after
the events of 1574, several collective escapes of this type occurred. For
instance, Alonso Fernández de Salamanca, the author of a chronicle of
the events, was released in January 1577. He took part in the mutiny of
a galley of Alexandria in which 270 rowers were freed.56 Curiously, it was
the same galley from which John Fox was also liberated, the author of
the first English account of captivity.57
The degree of difficulty in returning and reintegrating into Hispanic
society generally depended on the duration of captivity and the condi-
tions under which these individuals returned. Oversimplifying, trajectories
after bondage followed two major patterns. On the one hand, there is the
model corresponding to relatively short captivities, where individuals were
still young, in good health and had gathered useful insight into the enemy,
especially in terms of geography and languages. As paradoxical as it may
110 C. Tarruell

seem, for some prisoners, bondage was an opportunity for social advance-
ment. When they returned home, they had acquired skills that were appre-
ciated and needed by authorities. Many became specialised in espionage
and intelligence activities that were indeed risky but were also well paid.
The Greek Jorge de Amodeo was captured in La Goleta and taken to
Istanbul. Four years later, he participated in the revolt of Caragiali’s gal-
ley, which reached Sicily. Shortly thereafter he took part in the campaign
of Portugal, being in the galleys of Sicily that had been transferred there.
Back in Sicily, he began serving as a spy in the Levant on the express
order of the viceroy.58 Juan Domingo de Rosa, captured in Tunis, did the
same in the service of the viceroys of Naples: during the viceroyalty of the
Count of Miranda, he remained for 6 years in Istanbul as an agent, 3 more
years with the Count of Olivares, and he travelled again to the capital of
the Sublime Porte under orders of the VI Count of Lemos.59
Not all returned prisoners specialised in intelligence activities. Many
came back to the army. They served wherever the Spanish Monarchy
needed men. Some did so immediately after their release. I have already
noted the case of Jorge Amodeo, who participated in the campaign of
Portugal. A few years later, Miguel Ruiz did something similar; freshly
returned from fourteen years of captivity at Istanbul he enrolled for the
Gran Armada of 1588 against England.60
Furthermore, the military trajectories of prisoners of Tunis and La
Goleta serve to illustrate the different theatres of the Spanish Monarchy
and the enormous mobility of their servants. A path like Francisco
Rugero’s perfectly exemplifies the changing priorities in the foreign pol-
icy of the Crown and the shift towards the Atlantic. In 1602, he was
granted a monthly military allowance of 10 escudos in the kingdom of
Naples. He had a 38-year career on his shoulders. He had served in the
war of Grenada against the Morisco Revolt (1568–1571) and during the
actions of the Holy League in Lepanto (1571) and Navarino (1572). He
was captured in the fort of Tunis. After 11 years of detention at Istanbul,
from where he managed to escape, he still had the force to continue his
service in England, Ireland, Flanders and France. Finally, he finished his
career in Naples.61
The captain Juan de Mérida represents another example. Mérida
participated in Lepanto and was captured 3 years later during the loss
ofTunis and La Goleta. He remained a prisoner for 30 months until
he managed to flee, arriving in Oran. He also participated in the Gran
Armada of 1588 against England. During the following years, he made
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 111

several trips to Ireland and the North Sea in order to collect information
(‘tomar lengua’) about enemy movements. In so doing, he was captured
a second time in Scotland, where he remained for nine months until
he managed to run away again. Thereafter, he served in France, in the
Carrera de Indias and at the head of an infantry company and of four
ships with which he seized several enemy ships along the coast of Galicia
and the English Channel. He died during a failed mission to Ireland,
leaving a widow and two children who were living in Sicily.62
This last example is interesting because it stresses the iterative nature
of bondage. Like Juan de Mérida, other prisoners of Tunis and La Goleta
were captured again in subsequent years and not necessarily on the
Mediterranean front. The alférez Francisco Gallo de Andrada was cap-
tured during the events of 1574 and remained in Istanbul for 6 years.
Thereafter, he was imprisoned again at the defeat of the Gran Armada
in 1588. After being held in London for 3 years, he was exchanged for
an English prisoner who remained in the galleys of Spain.63 The captain
Lope Sanz de Bolea was also brought to Istanbul, where he remained
for 13 years until he paid his ransom. In 1597 he was captured again,
this time by the French in the Gulf of Lion when he was travelling to
Sardinia in order to serve as a regular infantry captain.64
If all these cases correspond to the first model of returning, there
is a second one perfectly exemplified by the trajectory of Jerónimo de
Pasamonte. This pattern corresponded to men with serious health prob-
lems, who had suffered a long-lasting detention and had been used as
slaves. After their return, they were compelled to continue their mili-
tary careers more out of necessity than conviction. Such soldiers proved
to be of little use to the Crown, but authorities could not deny them a
way of living, especially when they had been captured while serving the
Monarchy. Pasamonte was sent to serve in Italy, a frequent destination
among former prisoners in his condition. Among the prisoners taken at
Tunis and La Goleta who remained in detention for 15 or more years,
over 80% were sent to the Italian dominions and, in particular, to the
kingdom of Naples: this is exactly the trajectory followed by Pasamonte.

Conclusions
Whether victims of corsairing were—and still are—the quintessen-
tial image of the Christian captives held in the Ottoman Empire and
Morocco, this essay has sought to highlight the importance of detentions
112 C. Tarruell

resulting from regular warfare. Although prisoners of war are rarely

taken into account in general narratives about Mediterranean bondage,
it is likely that their case was similar from a quantitative point of view to
those imprisoned during attacks driven by corsairs and privateers.65
The figure of the prisoner of war was not exclusive to the confron-
tations between Christian and Muslim powers. It was part of a shared
culture of dependence and their treatment corresponded to the codes of
warfare. However, as the case study of the prisoners of 1574 illustrates,
the fate reserved for the subjects of the Spanish Monarchy who were cap-
tured in conflicts with the Ottoman Empire could be exceptionally dif-
ficult. The main reason remained the total absence of official relations
between the two powers. This meant that their subjects could not benefit
from eventual agreements for the mutual release of prisoners, as could
happen for Venetians, for instance.
Importantly, bondage represented an occasion for exceptional geo-
graphic mobility. Furthermore, the example of the prisoners of Tunis and
La Goleta allows us to underline the existence of a continuum between
the mobility held before, during and after detention, as well as a gra-
dation of the situations of dependence experienced by these men and
women. Detainees who continued to work for their former masters once
they were redeemed illustrate this reality. Likewise, those who came back
to Christianity did not necessarily become ‘free’ in the sense we now
understand it. Bernardino de Soma was a carpenter who was seized in La
Goleta in 1574. He remained a captive for only one year; he was freed by
a merchant who advanced the amount of 400 reales. However, unable to
repay this price and the interest to his creditor, Soma spent the following
3 years in the prison of Messina, in Sicily.66 This sad irony, although it
certainly represents an extreme example, alerts us to the different degrees
of dependence experienced by former captives and slaves after they were
freed.
Relations between Christian and Islamic lands in the early modern
Mediterranean were shaped by violence and severe tensions. At the same
time, everyday life was characterized by practices of accommodation and
coexistence. Inhabitants of both sides of the Mediterranean were not
only enemies, they were also neighbours who had known each other for
a long time. In these circumstances, the possibilities of becoming master
or captive were equal on both sides.
The anecdote recounted in the papers of ‘méritos y servicios’ of a cer-
tain Francisco Hernández Garzo is a fitting conclusion to this chapter.
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 113

The dossier submitted by Hernández Garzo to the Council of State

in 1603 aimed to report the services he had rendered to the Crown.
Hernández Garzo had been captured in La Goleta and was taken to
Algiers, where he remained for over four years before running away.
Later he served in the campaign of Portugal and in the infantry in Sicily.
In 1597, he made a report with witnesses to prove these actions. Among
these witnesses, the testimony of a soldier named Francisco Hernández
de Córdoba is particularly interesting. He had only known Hernández
Garzo since 1581. Since that time, they had continued serving together
in the kingdom of Sicily. Unlike other witnesses who had been fellow
prisoners during the loss of Tunis and La Goleta in 1574, he could not
act as an eye-witness to this captivity. However, he considered that it
was relevant to relay a conversation that he had around 1587 with an
Ottoman slave, named Ibrahim, who rowed on one of Cesare della
Torre’s galleys belonging to the squadron of Sicily. Ibrahim had told
him that Hernández Garzo became his prisoner after the conquest of La
Goleta, recounting how he had treated him for an arrow wound in the
stomach—an injury, indeed, which was also described by other witnesses
to the battle.
This episode, which was probably not so exceptional, depicts the eve-
ryday relations between the two shores of the Mediterranean: a Spanish
soldier and an Ottoman slave who conversed while aboard a Sicilian gal-
ley, the subject revolving around a former prisoner who became free,
while the old master was, a few years later, enslaved.67 Like Francisco
Hernández Garzo and Ibrahim, many other anonymous men and
women suffered the ordeal of captivity and enslavement. Their lives pro-
vide a lens through which we can glimpse the shifting conditions that
individuals might experience over the course of their lives, as well as the
geographical mobility that bondage entailed.

Notes
1. On the use of the term ‘bondage’ in the humanities and social sciences,
Alessandro Stanziani, Bondage. Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the
Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries (New York, 2014).
2. Salvatore Bono, Schiavi. Una storia mediterranea (XVI–XIX secolo)
(Bologna, 2016). This very recent book reviews in depth the vast lit-
erature on these topics, which has been dominated by studies deal-
ing with Christian captivity in the Maghreb. Among some of the
114 C. Tarruell

most representative works, see Nabil Matar, British Captives from the
Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563–1760 (Leiden, 2014); Gillian
Weiss, Captives and Corsairs: France and Slavery in the Early Modern
Mediterranean (Stanford, 2011); Le commerce des captifs. Les inter-
médiaires dans l’échange et le rachat des prisonniers en Méditerranée,
XVe–XVIIe siècles, ed. W. Kaiser (Rome, 2008); José Antonio Martínez
Torres, Prisioneros de los infieles. Vida y rescate de los cautivos cristianos en
el Mediterráneo musulmán (siglos XVI–XVII) (Barcelona, 2004); Enrica
Lucchini, La merce umana: schiavitù e riscatto dei Liguri nel Seicento
(Rome, 1990); Ellen G. Friedman, Spanish Captives in North Africa in
the Early Modern Age (Wisconsin, 1983).
3. For instance, Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters. White
Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800
(Basingstoke, 2003).
4. Jocelyne Dakhlia, ‘Extensions méditerranéennes. Europe et Islam au
contact durant les siècles modernes (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles)’, in Faire des
sciences sociales. Généraliser, eds. E. Désveaux and M. de Fornel (Paris,
2012), pp. 263–292.
5. Giovanna Fiume, Schiavitù mediterranee: corsari, rinnegati e santi di età
moderna (Milan, 2009) and Maximiliano Barrio Gonzalo, Esclavos y cau-
tivos: conflictos entre la Cristiandad y el Islam en el siglo XVIII (Valladolid,
2006), as examples of works bringing together the two sides of the same
coin.
6. Molly Greene, Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History
of the Mediterranean (Princeton, 2010).
7. Wolfgang Kaiser and Guillaume Calafat, ‘The Economy of Ransoming
in the Early Modern Mediterranean: A Form of Cross-Cultural Trade
between Southern Europe and the Maghreb (Sixteenth to Eighteenth
Centuries)’, in Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World
History, 1000–1900, eds. F. Trivellato, L. Halevi and C. Antunes (Oxford,
2014), pp. 108–130; Daniel Hershenzon, ‘The Political Economy of
Ransom in the Early Modern Mediterranean’, Past & Present, 231/1
(2016), 61–95.
8. Michel Fontenay, ‘Esclaves et/ou captifs: préciser les concepts’, in Le com-
merce des captifs, pp. 15–24.
9. Salvatore Bono has dedicated several articles to the analysis of this event:
‘Documenti inediti e rari sulla storia della Tunisia negli anni 1573–1574’,
Studi Maghrebini, 1 (1966), 91–101; ‘Tunisi e La Goletta negli anni
1573–1574’, Africa, 31 (1976), 1–39; ‘L’occupazione spagnuola e la
riconquista musulmana de Tunisia (1573–1574)’, Africa, 33 (1978),
351-381 and ‘Documents italiens sur la Reconquête Musulmane de
Tunis (1574)’, in Actes du Premier Congrès d’Histoire et de la Civilisation
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 115

du Maghreb (1974) (Tunis, 1979), vol. II, pp. 29–35. More recently,
see Enrique García Hernán, ‘La conquista y la pérdida de Túnez por
don Juan de Austria (1573–1574)’, Annali di storia militare europea, 2
(2010), 39–95, and Gianclaudio Civale, ‘Tunisi spagnola tra violenza e
coessistenza (1573–1574)’, Mediterranea. Ricerche storiche, 21 (2011),
51–88.
10. Some representative studies of this trend are: Jonathan D. Spence,
The Question of Hu (New York, 1988); Mercedes García-Arenal and
Gerard Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan
Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe (Baltimore, 2003 [1999]);
Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Latitude, Slaves, and the Bible: an Experiment in
Microhistory’, Critical Inquiry, 31/3 (2005), 665–683; Natalie Zemon
Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds
(New York, 2006); Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: a Women
in World History (London, 2007); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Three Ways to
Be Alien: Travails and Encounters in the Early Modern World (Waltham,
2011); John-Paul Ghobrial, ‘The Secret Life of Elias of Babylon and the
Uses of Global Microhistory’, Past & Present, 222/1 (2014), 51–93.
11. Among studies which have studied the ‘global lives’ of groups of people,
though with very different approaches, see, for instance, Miles Ogborn,
Global Lives: Britain and the World, 1550–1800, (Cambridge, 2008);
Tatiana Seijas, Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians
(New York, 2014); Nancy E. van Deusen, Global Indios: The Indigenous
Struggle for Justice in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Durham, 2015).
12. The only exception is Daniel Hershenzon, Early Modern Spain and the
Creation of the Mediterranean: Captivity, Commerce, and Knowledge,
unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan, 2011, though he has
not used these sources in a systematic way.
13. For a synthesis of the polisinodial system, i.e. the governmental system
of the Spanish Monarchy based on several councils, see José Antonio
Escudero, Felipe II: el rey en el despacho (Madrid, 2002).
14. This estimation has been calculated based on the numbers stated in the
following accounts, which were written by eye-witnesses to the events:
Memorias del cautivo en La Goleta de Túnez (el alférez Pedro de Aguilar),
ed. P. de Gayangos (Madrid, 1875), pp. 64, 81–82 and 237–239;
Ricardo González Castrillo, ‘La pérdida de Túnez y La Goleta en 1574,
y otros sucesos de historia otomana, narrados por un testigo presencial:
Alonso de Salamanca’, Anaquel de Estudios Árabes, 3 (1992), p. 251; Une
relation inédite sur la prise de Tunis par les Turcs en 1574, Sopra la desola-
tione della Goleta e forte di Tunisi de Bartholomeo Ruffino, ed. P. Sebag
(Tunis, 1971), fol. 111r–112r.
116 C. Tarruell

15. The two classical works are Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde

méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (Paris, 1966), 2 vol., and Andrew
C. Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-century Ibero-
African Frontier (Chicago, 1978).
16. As the Venetian ambassador in the Spanish Monarchy Tommaso Contarini
reported in 1593: ‘E per cominciar […], chi considera lo stato delle cose
presenti, senza dubbio potrà con facilità osservare come le potenze e gl’imperi
del mondo si sono la maggior parte uniti sotto quei due gran monarchi,
il turco e il re di Spagna. […] Questi due grandi principi, ambidue ric-
chi per il denaro, potenti per le forze marittime e terrestri, non solo hanno
occassione, per la gelosia di tanti stati […], di sospettar l’uno del altro, ma
ancora di temersi reciprocamente, non mancando molti stimoli agli odii,
molte cause all’ingiurie, molte comodità alle offese’. Le relazioni degli
ambasciatori veneti al Senato durante il secolo decimosesto, ed. E. Albèri
(Florence, 1861), serie I, vol. V, pp. 427–428. On the role of new pow-
ers in the Mediterranean area, Molly Greene, ‘Beyond the Northern
Invasion: the Mediterranean in the Seventeenth Century’, Past & Present,
174 (2002), 42–71; Colin Heywood, ‘The English in the Mediterranean,
1600–1630: A Post-Braudelian Perspective on the “Northern Invasion”’,
in Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Early Modern Mediterranean:
Braudel’s Maritime Legacy, ed. M. Fusaro, C. Heywood and M.-S. Omri
(London, 2010), pp. 23–44.
17. Michel Fontenay and Alberto Tenenti, ‘Course et piraterie méditer-
ranéennes de la fin du Moyen Âge au début du XIXe siècle’, in La
Méditerranée entre la Croix et le Croissant. Navigation, commerce, course
et piraterie (XVIe–XIXe siècle) (Paris, 2010 [1975]), pp. 211–275.
18. J. Dakhlia and W. Kaiser, eds., Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe.
II, Passages et contacts en Méditerranée, (Paris, 2013), pp. 7–31.
19. For a critical review of the traditional periodization of warfare on the
Mediterranean front during the sixteenth century, Bernard Vincent,
‘Philippe II et l’Afrique du Nord’, in Felipe II (1527-1598). Europa y la
Monarquía Católica, ed. J. Martínez Millán (Madrid, 1998), vol. 1, issue
2, pp. 965–974.
20. María José Rodríguez Salgado, Felipe II, el ‘Paladín de la Cristiandad’,
y la paz con el Turco (Valladolid, 2004); Rubén González Cuerva,
‘Mediterráneo en tregua: las negociaciones de Ruggero Margliani con
el Imperio otomano (1590–1592)’, in El mar en los siglos modernos, ed.
M.-R. García Hurtado (Santiago de Compostela, 2009), vol. II, pp.
209–220.
21. Andrew C. Hess, ‘The Battle of Lepanto and its Place in Mediterranean
History’, Past & Present, 57 (1972), 70–73; Pál Fodor, ‘Between Two
Continental Wars: the Ottoman Naval Preparations in 1590–1592’, in
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 117

In the Quest of the Golden Apple. Imperial Ideology, Politics and Military
Administration in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul, 2000), pp. 172–173
and ‘The Organization of Defence in the Eastern Mediterranean (End
of the Sixteenth Century)’, in The Kapudan Pasha, his Office and his
Domain, ed. E. Zachariadou (Crete, 2002), pp. 87–94.
22. Miguel Ángel de Bunes Ibarra, ‘La defensa de la Cristiandad; las arma-
das en el Mediterráneo en la Edad Moderna’, Cuadernos de Historia
Moderna. Anejos, 5 (2006), 87–91; Irving A. A. Thompson, ‘Las galeras
en la política militar española en el Mediterráneo durante el siglo XVI’,
Manuscrits, 24 (2006), 95–124; Evrim Türkçelik, Cigalazade Yusuf
Sinan Pasha y el Mediterráneo entre 1591–1606, unpublished dissertation,
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2012, pp. 42–58.
23. A Genoese report noted that over 50,000 Muslims were killed during the
events, in addition to 15,000 who died of disease. Those numbers are
clearly overstated. Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen,
vol. 2, p. 427. In general, other Christian sources point to between
15,000 and 33,000 losses among the Ottomans and local population.
Regarding the Christian population who was in the places when the
sieges were held, estimates vary from 4,000 to 5,000 inhabitants. Bono,
‘L’occupazione spagnuola’, p. 369; Memorias del cautivo en La Goleta, p.
222; AGS, GA, leg. 78, doc. 7. Among them, only 15% survived.
24. This was, for example, the case of the Cypriot Juan Capón, who had
previously served as a sailor in the fleet of Naples and remained captive
for 24 years. AGS, E, leg. 1695, s.f.; AGS, E, leg. 1704, doc. 83; AGS,
E, leg. 1978, s.f.; AHN, E, lib. 328, fol. 134r and 181v (1605–1606).
Bartholomeo Ruffino reports that 200 sailors were left on the ground
to work as sappers during the summer of 1574. Une relation inédite sur
la prise de Tunis, fol. 24r and 39v. See also Jerónimo Torres y Aguilera,
Chrónica y recopilación de varios successos de guerra que ha acontescido en
Italia y partes de Levante y Berbería, desde que el Turco Selin rompió con
venecianos y fue sobre la isla de Chipre año de MDLXX hasta que se per-
dió La Goleta y fuerte de Túnez en el MDLXXIIII (Zaragoza, 1579), fol.
110v–112v.
25. This is an aspect that distinguished soldiers serving in presidios (in North
Africa or the Iberian Peninsula), compared to those who were in the
mobile armies serving in Flanders, Milan, Naples or Sicily, who prefer-
ably were to remain single. Diego Suárez Montañés, Historia del Maestre
último que fue de Montesa y de su hermano don Felipe de Borja: la man-
era como gobernaron las memorables plazas de Orán y Mazalquivir, reinos
de Tremecén y Ténez, en África, siendo capitanes generales, uno en pos del
otro, como aquí se narra, ed. B. Alonso Acero and M. A. de Bunes Ibarra
(Valencia, 2005), pp. 410–412. Regarding the presence and participation
118 C. Tarruell

of women in the defence of La Goleta and Tunis, see Une relation inédite
sur la prise de Tunis, fol. 25r and 106r; Memorias del cautivo en La
Goleta, pp. 58–59.
26. Ruffino recounts that there were around 120 merchants in the fort of
Tunis, essentially Neapolitans and Sicilians, and they were also numer-
ous in La Goleta. Une relation inédite sur la prise de Tunis, fol. 24r–v.
Concerning the ecclesiastical staff, see Memorias del cautivo en La Goleta,
p. 87 and 91.
27. In recent years, several special issues and collective books have been
dedicated to this topic. See ‘La schiavitù nel Mediterraneo’, Quaderni
Storici, 107 (2001); ‘Schiavi, corsari, rinnegati’, Nuove Effemeridi, 54
(2001); ‘L’esclavage en Méditerranée à l’époque moderne’, Cahiers de
la Méditerranée, 65 (2002); ‘La Méditerranée’, Cahiers des Anneaux
de la Mémoire, 13 (2010); Les esclavages en Méditerranée: espaces et
dynamiques économiques, ed. F. Guillén and S. Trabelsi (Madrid, 2012);
Schiavitù e servaggio nell’economia europea. Secc. XI-XVIII/Serfdom
and Slavery in the European Economy. eleventh–eighteenth Centuries:
atti della ‘Quarantecinquesima settimana di studi’, 14–18 aprile 2013,
ed. S. Cavaciocchi (Florence, 2014), 2 vol.; S. Hanß and J. Schiel, eds.,
Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500–1800)/Neue Perspektiven Auf
Mediterrane Sklaverei (500–1800) (Zürich, 2014).
28. Fiume, Schiavitù mediterranee, p. X.
29. This trend, fairly accurate concerning the early modern period, differs
from the approach of medieval historiography, as many works analyse
together the fate of individuals captured in low-intensity wars and those
taken during battles. For instance, see José Manuel Calderón Ortega and
Francisco Javier Díaz González, Vae Victis: Cautivos y prisioneros en la
Edad Media Hispánica (Alcalá de Henares, 2012); El cuerpo derrotado:
cómo trataban musulmanes y cristianos a los enemigos vencidos, ed. M.
Fierro and F. García Fitz (Madrid, 2008).
30. Fritz Redlich, De Praeda Military: Looting and Booty, 1500–1815
(Wiesbaden, 1956); Philippe Contamine, ‘Un contrôle étatique crois-
sant. Les usages de la guerre du XIVe au XVIIIe siècle: rançons et butins’,
in Guerre et concurrence entre les États européens du XIVe au XVIIIe siè-
cle, ed. P. Contamine (Paris, 1998), pp. 199–236. Cf. The Laws of
War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World, ed. M. Howard, G.
Andreopoulos and M.R. Shulman (New Haven, 1994).
31. Besides references already mentioned in the note above, see René
Quatrefages, Los Tercios españoles: 1567–1577 (Madrid, 1979), pp.
251–259.
32. Among the few exceptions, see the on-going research of Renaud Morieux
on prisoners of war of France and England during the long eighteenth
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 119

century. First results have been published in ‘French Prisoners of War,

Conflicts of Honour, and Social Inversions in England, 1744–1783’,
The Historical Journal, 56/1 (2013), 55–88, and ‘Patriotisme humani-
taire et prisonniers de guerre en France et en Grande-Bretagne pendant
la Révolution française et l’Empire’, in La politique par les armes. Conflits
internationaux et politisation (XVe–XIXe siècle), ed. Laurent Bourquin
et al. (Rennes, 2014), pp. 299–314.
33. In der Hand des Feindes: Kriegsgefangenschaft von der Antike bis zum
Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Rüdiger Overmans (Cologne, 1999); Les pris-
onniers de guerre dans l’histoire: contacts entre peuples et cultures, ed. S.
Caucanas, R. Cazals and P. Payen (Toulouse, 2003); Prisoners in War, ed.
S. Scheipers (Oxford, 2011); How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender,
ed. H. Afflerbach and H. Strachan (Oxford, 2012).
34. Jean-Marie Le Gall, L’honneur perdu de François Ier. Pavie, 1525 (Paris,
2015).
35. For instance, in his dictionary of Spanish Sebastián de Covarrubias pro-
poses the following definition of captive: ‘Captivo. El enemigo preso y
habido en justa guerra […]. Hase de advertir que entre captivo y esclavo
hay mucha diferencia, porque captivo es el enemigo de cualquier con-
dición que sea, habido en buena guerra, esclavo el mesmo siendo infiel, pri-
sionero el que es católico y de rescate’. Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco,
Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, ed. I. Arellano and R. Zafra
(Madrid–Frankfurt, 2006 [1611]). Cf. Yusuf Hakan Erdem, Slavery in
the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 1800–1909 (Houndmills, 1996), pp.
29–33.
36. Fontenay, ‘Esclaves et/ou captifs’, pp. 15–24.
37. Fontenay rightly points out: ‘[…] le captif est un esclave en attente d’être
racheté, tandis que l’esclave est un captif qui n’espère plus être racheté (s’il
n’a jamais pensé l’être)’. Ibid., p. 22.
38. Will Smiley, ‘“After being so long Prisoners, they will not return to
Slavery in Russia”: An Aegean Network of Violence between Empires
and Identities’, The Journal of Ottoman Studies, 44 (2014), 221–
234; ‘Let Whose People Go? Subjecthood, Sovereignty, Liberation,
and Legalism in Eighteenth-Century Russo-Ottoman Relations’,
Turkish Historical Review, 3 (2012), 196–228; and ‘The Meanings of
Conversion: Treaty Law, State Knowledge, and Religious Identity among
Russian Captives in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire’, The
International History Review, 34 (2012), 559–580.
39. Luca Lo Basso, Uomini da remo. Galee e galeotti del Mediterraneo in età
moderna (Milan, 2003).
40. On the organisation of the Ottoman navy, see Colin Imber, ‘The Navy
of Süleyman the Magnificent’, Archivum Ottomanicum, 6 (1980),
120 C. Tarruell

211–282; Fontenay, ‘Chiourmes turques au XVIIe siècle’, in Le genti

del mare Mediterraneo, ed. R. Ragosta (Naples, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 877–
903; Palmira Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in
the Age of Discovery (Albany, 1994), pp. 89–121; Fodor, ‘Between Two
Continental Wars’, pp. 171–190; The Kapudan Pasha, his Office and his
Domain, ed. E. Zachariadou (Crete, 2002); Daniel Panzac, La marine
ottomane: de l’apogée à la chute de l’Empire, 1572–1923 (Paris, 2009).
41. Madeline C. Zilfi, Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire: the
Design of Difference (Cambridge, 2010); Marc Baer, ‘Islamic Conversion
Narratives of Women: Social Change and Gendered Religious Hierarchy
in Early Modern Ottoman Istanbul’, Gender & History, 16/2 (2004),
425–458.
42. Jerónimo de Pasamonte is the author of an autobiographical account:
Pasamonte, Autobiografía, prefaces M. A. de Bunes Ibarra and J. M. de
Cossío (Seville, 2006). Moreover, see AGS, SP, leg. 1796, doc. 150. San
Lorenzo, 17 August 1594; and Wipertus Hugo Rudt de Collenberg,
Esclavage et rançons des chrétiens en Méditerranée (1570–1600). D’après
les ‘Litterae hortatoriae’ de l’Archivio Segreto Vaticano (Paris, 1987), pp.
172–173.
43. Gao was the capital of the Songhay Empire. About its conquest by Ahmad
al-Mansur, see Nabil Mouline, Le califat imaginaire d’Ahmad al-Mansûr:
pouvoir et diplomatie au Maroc au XVIe siècle (Paris, 2009), pp. 332–
354 and Mercedes García-Arenal, Ahmad al-Mansur: the Beginnings of
Modern Morocco, (Oxford, 2009), pp. 97–110.
44. Jorge de Henin, Descripción de los reinos de Marruecos (1603–1613).
Memorial de Jorge de Henin, ed. Torcuato Pérez de Guzmán (Rabat,
1997), pp. 49, 56–59, 64, 69–73. See also Jerónimo de Mendoça,
Iornada de Africa composta por Hieronymo de Mendoça, natural da cidade
do Porto, em a qual se responde à Ieronymo Franqui, & outros, & se trata
do successo da batalha catiuerio, & dos que nelle padecerao por nao serem
mouros, com outras cousas dignas de notar (Lisbon, 1607), fol. 139v;
Mouline, Le califat imaginaire d’Ahmad al-Mansûr, pp. 216–218, 237,
304, 350.
45. Friedman, Spanish Captives in North Africa, p. 5; Martínez Torres,
Prisioneros de los infieles, p. 145.
46. Within the corpus of 267 captives whose trajectories I have been able to
reconstruct, the tables correspond to the 216 cases (i.e. 77%) for which I
have information about the exact duration of captivity.
47. AGS, CC, leg. 499, doc. 325 and leg. 592, doc. 503; AGMM, LR, lib. 6,
fol. 141v and 172r–v, and lib. 7, fol. 18v–19r and 230r–v; AGS, GA, lib.
39, fol. 44v–45r; AHN, Cs, leg. 4416, doc. 122 and leg. 4417, doc. 112
y 164 (1579–1606); BZ, Altamira, Carpeta 184, D. 91 [Mentioned in
 4 PRISONERS OF WAR, CAPTIVES OR SLAVES? … 121

García Hernán, ‘La conquista y la pérdida de Túnez’, pp. 90–91]. About

the exchange of prisoners see Daniel Hershenzon, ‘“[P]ara que me saque
cabesa por cabesa…”: Exchanging Muslim and Christian Slaves across the
Mediterranean’, African Economic History, 42 (2014), 11–36.
48. Between 1575 and 1591, 67 prisoners of Tunis and La Goleta were ran-
somed by the Mercedarians and Trinitarians in Algiers. BNE, Mss. 2963;
AHN, Códices, lib. 118, 119, 120 and 121.
49. AGS, GA, leg. 181, doc. 399; IVDJ, Envío 81, caja 108, doc. 580; AGS,
SP, leg. 983, s.f. and lib. 853, fol. 35v and 102r (1585–1589); Memorias
de la Real Academia Española: Noticias y documentos relativos a la histo-
ria y literatura españolas, ed. C. Pérez Pastor (Madrid, 1910), vol. 10, p.
356.
50. Nur Sobers-Khan, Slaves Without Shackles: Forced Labour and
Manumission in the Galata Court Registers, 1560–1572 (Berlin, 2014);
Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Manumission in Seventeenth-century Suburban
Istanbul’, in Mediterranean Slavery Revisited, pp. 381–402; Hayri
Gökşin Özkoray, ‘Une “culture de la résistance”? Stratégies et moy-
ens d’émancipation des esclaves dans l’Empire ottoman au XVIe siècle’,
in Mediterranean Slavery Revisited, pp. 408–410; Yvonne J. Seng, ‘A
Liminal State: Slavery in Sixteenth-Century Istanbul’, in Slavery in the
Islamic Middle East, ed. S. E. Marmon (Princeton, 1999), p. 29; Halil
Sahillioğlu, ‘Slaves in the Social and Economic Life of Bursa in the Late
fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries’, Turcica, 17 (1985), 53–57.
51. For instance, Luis de Miranda lived for 33 years in Istanbul: thirteen as a
slave and the ensuing twenty as a free person. The reason for his return
to Christian lands was to escape the Sultan’s reprisals when Miranda’s
involvement in a network of espionage—managed by the viceroy of
Naples in the capital of the Sublime Porte—was discovered. It is prob-
able that he would never have returned otherwise. AGS, E, leg. 1984, s.f.
Madrid, 21 June 1611.
52. About the phenomenon of renegades, some of the most representative
works are Bartolomé and Lucile Bennassar, Les chrétiens d’Allah: l’histoire
extraordinaire des renégats, XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris, 1989); Lucetta
Scaraffia, Rinnegati. Per una storia dell ‘identità occidentale (Rome,
1993); Conversions islamiques. Identités religieuses en Islam méditer-
ranéen, ed. M. García-Arenal (Paris, 2002).
53. AGS, E, leg. 1087, doc. 79 and leg. 1088, doc. 48.
54. AGS, E, leg. 1955, s.f. Valladolid, 29 September 1603.
55. AGS, SP, leg. 7, s.f.; AGS, GA, leg. 530, doc. 130 and AGS, GA, lib. 80,
fol. 71Bv–72Br and 78Br–v (1595–1598).
122 C. Tarruell

56. González Castrillo, ‘La pérdida de Túnez y La Goleta’, pp. 283–285;

Miguel Martínez, Front Lines: Soldiers’ Writing in the Early Modern
Hispanic World (Philadelphia, 2016).
57. Nabil Matar, ‘English Accounts of Captivity in North Africa and the
Middle East: 1577–1625’, Renaissance Quarterly, 54-2 (2001), 553–
572; Piracy, Slavery and Redemption. Barbary Captivity Narratives from
Early Modern England, ed. D. Vitkus (New York, 2001), pp. 55–70.
About John Fox see also AGS, GA, lib. 32, fol. 184r and lib. 33, fol.
383r–v.
58. AGS, SP, lib. 751, fol. 86r–87r, lib. 851, fol. 169r and lib. 853, fol. 208r,
226r–v; AGS, SP, leg. 984, s.f. (1586–1610).
59. AGS, E, leg. 1710, doc. 182; AGS, E, leg. 1974, s.f.; AHN, E, lib. 310,
fol. 15r–v (August-October 1602).
60. García Hernán, ‘La conquista y la pérdida de Túnez’, p. 91; Ricardo
González Castrillo, ‘Cautivos españoles evadidos de Constantinopla en el
siglo XVI’, Anaquel de Estudios Árabes, 22 (2011), pp. 275–277.
61. AGS, E, leg. 1692, s.f. and leg. 1967, s.f.; AHN, E, lib. 309, fol. 206v
(August–October 1602).
62. AGS, SP, leg. 3, doc. 78 and AGS, SP, lib. 749, fol. 161r–162v
(1576–1607).
63. BZ, Altamira, Carpeta 184, D. 91; AGS, E, leg. 1086, doc. 99; AGS, GA,
leg. 343, doc. 312; AGMM, LR, lib. 13, fol. 145v and AHN, Cs, lib. 7,
fol. 116v (1574–1608).
64. AGS, E, leg. 1983, s.f. Valladolid, 11 November 1602.
65. This conclusion comes from an inquiry into the former captives and slaves
who received military pensions from the Hispanic Crown between 1574
and 1609. From the total of 2,491 trajectories that I have been able to
reconstruct, we do know the conditions of detention for 1,699 individu-
als. Among them, 874 were victims of corsairing, 798 were prisoners of
war, while 27 individuals experienced both situations since there were
seized more than once in their lives. Cecilia Tarruell, Circulations entre
Chrétienté et Islam: captivité et esclavage des serviteurs de la Monarchie his-
panique (ca. 1574–1609), unpublished dissertation, EHESS-Universidad
Autónoma de Madrid, 2015, especially p. 124.
66. AGS, SP, leg. 987, s.f. Madrid, 8 April 1597.
67. ‘[…] Di più dice esso testigo che anni dieci in circa, si fanno andando esso
testigo inbarcato sopra le galere di Cesare La Torre, si pose a ragionare con
un turco, nomme Ebraim, nal al quale esso testigo conobbe et nel diccorso
del parlare, li disse detto Ebraim qualmente nella presa della Goletta, havia
havuto in mano et scavo al detto Francisco Hernandes Garzo, producente, et
che si havia tenuto scavo et che l’havia curato et guarito di una flecciata che
havuto nel ventre’. AGS, E, leg. 1577, doc. 58. November 1603.
 CHAPTER 5

Making the Place Work: Managing Labour

in Early Modern China

Anne Gerritsen

The collection of Asian art in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam holds this

‘peculiar waterjug’ in the shape of a half moon (Fig. 5.1).1
Generally known as kendi, such waterjugs were made in many sizes and
shapes. This example was made around 1500 in the city of Jingdezhen in
the southeast of China, where some of the finest-quality porcelains in the
world were made at that time. Since before the year 1000, emperors had
ordered porcelain goods from here, both for their private use and for the
rituals of state, but scholarly connoisseurs, wealthy merchants, and large
numbers of ordinary people also bought Jingdezhen’s porcelains. In fact,
the production of porcelain at Jingdezhen was so vast that its goods were
distributed all over the empire.2 This half-moon-shaped object, standing
on four tiny feet, with a spout in the middle, two small openings at oppo-
site ends of the crest, and four ridges or ribs along the sides, is a most
unusual shape, of which only a few examples remain, and most are dam-
aged, as indeed this object is. It seems to have been made in imitation of
an object in an entirely different material, perhaps leather, but more likely
metal.3 Most probably, it was not intended for a consumer within China

A. Gerritsen (*)
University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 123

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_5
124 A. Gerritsen

Fig. 5.1 Blue-and-white glazed moon-shaped porcelain water-

jug, made in Jingdezhen, ca. 1475–ca. 1525. H 15,5 cm x L 21 cm.
Rijksmuseum, AK-RAK-1982-2

at all, but made for export, and in all likelihood for export to an Islamic
country like Indonesia.4
Why would a worker in the sixteenth-century ceramics industries of
Jingdezhen make an object that probably looked different from anything
he or she (but most likely he) had ever seen before, for someone prob-
ably unknown, located somewhere where the potter had probably never
been nor would ever go? These are assumptions and unanswerable ques-
tions, not least because we cannot know who exactly made this object.
The production of porcelain in Jingdezhen was done in clearly sepa-
rated stages, and thus numerous individuals would have been involved
in its manufacture, and all of these remained anonymous. The potters
of the sixteenth century did not leave any traces other than the objects
they made. Not only do we not have signed objects, but we also have no
records penned by sixteenth-century potters in Jingdezhen, and there-
fore no descriptions of individual workers making something specifi-
cally for export.5 But this crest-shaped object and the material record of
this period more generally do tell us a number of things. Large num-
bers of workers in Jingdezhen manufactured porcelains of all kinds: fin-
est wares for imperial consumption, medium-quality goods for regional
distribution, low-quality goods for local consumption, and objects with
 5 MAKING THE PLACE WORK: MANAGING LABOUR … 125

the designs and shapes that were favoured outside of the Chinese empire.
Those workers who produced for both nearby (i.e. local and regional)
and worldwide (i.e. global) markets and the ways in which their labour
was organised in early modern China are the subject of this chapter.
The period I refer to here as early modern China coincides more or
less with the early modernity of European history, and Britain specifically,
in other words, the period between 1500 and 1750. In China, this is a
dynamic period of economic growth, social mobility, urbanisation, intel-
lectual developments including a questioning of the orthodox sources of
political, moral and religious power, and artistic freedom.6 Specifically,
the sixteenth century was a time of unprecedented growth in China. The
fourteenth-century upheavals of the violent transition from Yuan (1279–
1368) to Ming (1368–1644) rule overcome, the fifteenth century saw a
series of expansive projects come into being: the overseas campaigns led
by the eunuch Zheng He (also known as Cheng Ho; 1371–1433), the
movement of the capital from the south to the north, and the expan-
sion of the Great Wall in response to the severe and ongoing threat from
the Mongols to the north of the Ming borders. By the sixteenth cen-
tury, the Ming emperors, who had taken personal responsibility for these
major projects and campaigns, started to take a back seat, thereby creat-
ing space for economic recovery and growth.7 The population expanded,
regional production and trade grew, and urbanisation increased, as did
the commercial manufacture of consumer goods. A range of (handi-
craft) industries began to emerge; copper coins and iron, silk and cotton,
bricks, tiles, porcelain, and paper were all produced on a substantial scale
and distributed throughout the empire and beyond.8
By the time the Europeans arrived on the scene, during the course of
the sixteenth century, they found a rich and complex empire with a silver-
ised economy and highly desirable commodities for sale. Perhaps unsur-
prisingly, scholars have paid a great deal of attention to the period after the
founding of Manila in 1571, when Ming China was drawn into networks
of trade that spanned the entire globe, and Spanish silver flooded into the
empire.9 Because of that, the late Ming, a period generally considered to
start in the sixteenth century, is no longer seen as a place of isolation and
stagnation as it once was, but as a crucial part of the early modern world.10
My interest in this chapter, however, is not so much in the macro-level
economic changes of the sixteenth century themselves, but in the per-
spective of a single locality: the city of Jingdezhen, where the vast major-
ity of the porcelains that circulated throughout the early modern world
126 A. Gerritsen

were manufactured. What kind of place was this city of porcelain man-
ufactures? Who lived there, and more importantly, who worked there?
How was their labour organised? My questions are not so much aimed at
producing a history of the locality per se, but to understand the locality
in the perspective of the changes in the wider world, of which the Ming
empire and the flows of silver formed an important part. In that sense,
then, it is a micro-spatial approach to labour: drawing on both micro-his-
torical and spatial methodologies to understand how the broad category
of ‘work’ shaped both this single location itself and its connections to the
wider world.
To understand the role and organisation of labour in the fiscal struc-
tures of the Ming dynasty and the manufacture of luxury commodities
and other consumer goods, especially porcelain, we need to begin with
the structure put into place by the first emperor of the Ming dynasty.
Only then will the significance of the fiscal reforms and the socio-eco-
nomic transformations of the late Ming, and the transition from a system
where the emperor held most of the power to a more devolved eco-
nomic system become clear.11 As I hope to show below, a micro-spatial
approach allows us to see not only how the global connectedness of the
Ming empire had an impact on the management of labour in general,
but also how this played out at the local level. The discussion below will
argue that it was through the management of labour in clearly segre-
gated tasks that such a wide variety of goods could be made locally in
Jingdezhen. Only then can we understand how something as unfamiliar
to local workers as a crescent-shaped flask intended for consumers geo-
graphically and culturally removed from the local production space could
come about.12

Zhu Yuanzhang and the Household Registration System

In 1368, with the defeat of the Mongols and the establishment of a new
dynasty known as the Ming, the emperor decided to take stock of his
population. Exact population figures would provide him with informa-
tion about his tax income, the size of his labour force, and the number
of conscripts to be recruited for his armies.13 After all, the land, the peo-
ple, and the resources they yielded, including their labour, were ideo-
logically speaking all in the possession of the emperor of China.14 The
basic unit for counting the population was the household; those who
lived behind one shared door counted as one household.15 For many
 5 MAKING THE PLACE WORK: MANAGING LABOUR … 127

consecutive dynasties before the Ming (and afterwards, up to the land

reforms of the 1950s), household registers served as the basis for the
determination of tax obligations.16 These included land tax, calculated
on the basis of landholdings, ‘capitation’ tax, calculated per adult in the
household, tax on commercial interactions, and labour services (also
known as corvée labour), including military service.17 Each household,
thus, was registered, and on the basis of that registration obliged to
provide both tax payments and labour services to the imperial govern-
ment. The nature of this labour service depended on the classification
of the household, so when the first emperor of the Ming came to the
throne, one of his first commands was to issue the instruction that ‘each
household must enrol with the authorities just as they had previously
been enrolled. Any change of their registers is forbidden’.18 The Ming’s
predecessors, the Mongol Yuan dynasty, had similarly allocated labour
duties to each household, and the first Ming emperor was intent on
maintaining the same division of the populations into separate categories
of households.
The main categories were farming households (min), military house-
holds (jun), and artisan households (jiang), but there were also numer-
ous small categories of households, such as physicians (yi), geomancers
(yinyang), salt workers (yan), and butchers (tu), up to at least 45 differ-
ent categories.19 The physical registration process of each household was,
of course, a major logistical enterprise in the first decades of the dynasty.
The Ming government began by creating a household registration form,
on which the head of the household had to fill in the full details of the
names and ages of the adult members of the household, the property
of the household (i.e. land, buildings, and cattle), and, importantly,
the labour service registry of the household. These records then had
to be submitted, approved, and stamped, and the information entered
into governmental records. In the years that followed this first demand
for registration, the system underwent several adjustments, including
the creation of units of ten households (jia) and 110 households (li)
to facilitate the implementation of all these tax and labour duties, and
a new archive to store all this information, the so-called Yellow Books
(huangce) of land levies and labour service.20 The registration of each
household into a specific category of labour service, however, did not
change. The Great Ming Commandment (Da Ming ling), printed and
issued to officials in 1373, stated that the categories of household ‘shall
permanently register according to what they originally reported. This
128 A. Gerritsen

may not be casually altered or confused. Violators will be punished. They

must remain in their original registration’.21 The first Ming emperor
wanted to pre-empt his successors by insisting his laws (‘which I have
fixed forever’) may never be changed.22
Already in the mid-fifteenth century, the option existed of paying
off one’s labour duties by means of a payment in copper, but in prac-
tice, the segments of the population eligible for corvée labour did not
always have the financial means to buy themselves out of this obliga-
tion.23 There were also numerous other ways of evading labour service,
including by holding a semi-official administrative post, registering for
civil service examinations and entering into the official ranks of scholar-
officials, although even these households maintained their official labour
registration status, and only a predetermined number of people in the
household were freed from this obligation.24 But, on the whole, the per-
centage of Ming households that could boast a member of the family
employed in the imperial civil service was extremely small, and the vast
majority of the population had an obligation to provide labour service,
which could be classified as unfree labour.25
It was this vast labour force, recruited from the population on the
basis of the labour obligations attached to each household, that con-
structed the city walls around the capital and built the new capital when
the first Ming emperor’s successor moved the capital from the south
(Nanjing) to the north (Beijing), that restored and maintained the
Grand Canal that connected the grain-rich lower Yangzi region to the
imperial capital in the north, and that rebuilt and defended the Great
Wall to stave off the attacks of Mongols in the north.26 It was also this
labour force that manufactured the goods that were demanded by the
imperial state: weaponry of all kinds, textiles such as wool, felt, silk, and
cotton, tapestries, and of course, porcelains. These manufactured com-
modities formed, in fact, the final category of tax obligations that were
in varied proportions imposed upon the Chinese population. We already
mentioned the land, capita, and trade taxes, as well as the labour service
(corvée) obligation; tribute formed the final category of tax obligation.
Tribute demands were imposed by the emperor upon all areas that pro-
duced something of value or use for the emperor, his household, and the
extended court apparatus: the grain transported from the south to the
capital via the Grand Canal was known as tribute grain, but vast quanti-
ties of goods like tea, fur, sugar, and silk, to name but a few, were also
shipped north.
 5 MAKING THE PLACE WORK: MANAGING LABOUR … 129

The best known and most extensively documented of this kind of trib-
ute payment is the porcelain tribute, imposed on various kiln sites to fur-
nish the imperial household with the porcelain goods it needed. Already
around the year 1000 (during the reign of the third emperor of the Song
dynasty, which lasted from 997 to 1002), the emperor demanded that
porcelains from the southern kiln site of Jingdezhen and several other kiln
sites throughout the empire were delivered to the imperial court.27 In the
twelfth century, when the Song empire lost control over the north and
thereby access to the porcelains manufactured in the north, the demand
for porcelain from Jingdezhen increased steeply. During the Ming
dynasty, developments in kiln technology, specifically the building of so-
called dragon kilns on an upward slope, with a fire on one end of the kiln
and a tall chimney all the way at the other end, meant that thousands of
pieces could be fired in one load. Of course, not all the pieces fired in one
kiln load would come out as intended, and only a small quantity would
pass the quality-control tests for imperial tribute. Nonetheless, in one
year in the early fifteenth century (1436), 50,000 porcelain vessels were
delivered to the imperial court from Jingdezhen, and in 1459, an order
was placed for 133,000 pieces. In recognition of the excessive burden this
placed on the workers in the kilns, the order was subsequently reduced by
80,000 pieces.28 Orders for such vast quantities were placed a number of
times during the sixteenth century, but often the demands took years to
fill. The production quantities (also known as quotas) varied from year
to year, ranging from just over 900 pieces in 1537 to 120,000 pieces in
1547, depending in part on environmental factors, and in part on the size
and complexity of the vessels demanded.29 The production of such vast
quantities of porcelain required, just like maintaining the Grand Canal
and building the new capital, the availability of a large workforce. For
much of the history of Jingdezhen, households based around the town
of Jingdezhen and registered as artisans supplied this specialist workforce
employed in a variety of roles in the imperial kilns.

The ‘Single Whip’ Reforms of the Late

Sixteenth Century
Between 1572 and 1582, a man named Zhang Juzheng (1525–1582)
served as head of the Grand Secretariat, the most powerful body in
the central government.30 The various reforms Zhang Juzheng insti-
tuted were all significant, but none more so than the commutation to
130 A. Gerritsen

silver of all taxes and labour duties. Instead of the variety of tax obliga-
tions demanded at different times of the year and payable in kind, every
household now faced only a single payment in silver, which included
a fee demanded in lieu of labour service. All artisans who had rotating
labour obligations, for example, were instructed to commute their labour
service to a payment of 1.8 silver tael once every 4 years (i.e. as often as
they would have performed their labour duty).31 Known as the Single
Whip reforms (yi tiao bian fa) , they were intended to fill the imperial
coffers with silver bullion.32 As has been widely documented, the impact
across the board in late-sixteenth-century China was significant: before
any household could pay its tax obligations, goods had to be converted
to silver, usually by taking them to local or regional markets.33 Artisans
were in a position to manufacture goods and sell these on the market
to obtain the cash to buy themselves out of their labour obligations. Of
course, this increased all economic activity throughout the empire, and
the demand for silver rose very substantially.34 What has been far less
closely investigated is the impact of this process of commercialisation and
silverisation of the economy on the workings of the state manufactories
of porcelain in Jingdezhen in the sixteenth century.

The Gazetteer of Jiangxi Province

The source that will provide most of the information here is the ‘Great
gazetteer of Jiangxi province’ (Jiangxi sheng dazhi), an extensive docu-
ment compiled over a period of several decades and published in sev-
eral editions in the late sixteenth century.35 Like all local gazetteers
(difangzhi), it contains extensive information on the province as a
whole, including the main administrative divisions of the province, the
main geographic and cultural features of each of the administrative units
(counties and prefectures), lists of office holders and successful exami-
nation candidates in each county, as well as transcriptions of the docu-
mentary and literary record produced locally. Local office holders in all
administrative units sought to edit and reissue the gazetteer for the place
they served at least once during their tenure, largely for administrative
purposes, but probably blended with a certain amount of local pride.36
The information contained in gazetteers is often difficult to date pre-
cisely, because compilers usually drew on now not always extant previ-
ous editions of the same document. The sixteenth-century gazetteer for
Jiangxi Province includes an extensive document about the manufacture
 5 MAKING THE PLACE WORK: MANAGING LABOUR … 131

of porcelain in Jingdezhen in the imperial kilns, and informs our discus-

sions below, supplemented by a small number of relevant contemporary
and later sources.37

Recruitment of the Workforce in Early Ming

Jingdezhen
The general workforce required to work in the kiln complex had origi-
nally (i.e. at the start of the Ming dynasty) been drawn from the local
battalion.38 Sometimes referred to as chiliarchy, and literally ‘thousand-
household station’ (qianhu suo), the battalions were an early Ming inven-
tion. They had been conceived of as military bases established in frontier
areas as the first Ming emperor gained ground, and after the establish-
ment of the Ming empire, combined farming and military duties, nomi-
nally in a 70% farming—30% military duties division.39 The vast majority
of the men in the battalion, then, were not engaged in military training,
but free to be dispatched for farming duties or, in the case of the region
surrounding Jingdezhen, for service in the ceramic industries. In princi-
ple, the unit dispatching the workers would usually also be responsible
for paying the cost of subsistence for the workers.40
The labour forces conscripted from the surrounding battalions were
known as workers (gongfu) or labourers (shatufu), and they coexisted
with those providing service because of their hereditary status as artisans
(jiangyi).41 When the ‘Great gazetteer of Jiangxi province’ was first pro-
duced, in the middle of the sixteenth century, there were only just over
three hundred workers with the hereditary designation of artisan serving
in the ceramics manufactures.42 However, for the production of enough
porcelain to fulfil the demand from the imperial court, never mind for
supply to the commercial stream, other supplementary kiln workers had
to be hired, and these surely had to have a certain amount of skill in the
making of pots. The author of the gazetteer observed that ‘[t]here are
relatively few craftsmen with refined skills. This is especially problematic
in the case of painting.’43 Many of the goods manufactured for the impe-
rial court were decorated by using a brush to apply the pigment (cobalt)
to the surface of the dried but unbaked shapes (known as bodies), which
required skills not dissimilar from painting and calligraphy, and thus
were hard to come by. This raises an important question about how the
sixteenth-century kiln complex of Jingdezhen worked: how was it pos-
sible to hire enough workers to make porcelain, not only to the standard
132 A. Gerritsen

required for the personal use of the emperor and his court, his imperial
household, and the ritual ceremonies of state, but also in such quantity
and variety as was demanded by local, regional, and overseas consumers?
The answer to this question is two-fold; firstly, the kiln complex
worked by separating out the different tasks, and assigning workers with
different skill levels to the multitude of separate tasks, and secondly, the
kiln complex facilitated the integration of private kilns into the imperial
production system. Both of these underscore the significance of under-
standing micro-history not merely as a focus on the local impact of
empire-wide level policies concerning methods of taxation, categorisa-
tion of the population, and recruitment of workers for large-scale work
projects, but also as a way of seeing the interconnectedness of global,
regional, and local scales. Working within a system of separated tasks,
and between imperial and private kilns, the labour force in Jingdezhen
facilitated and embodied the interconnectedness that made this place
work.

The Separation of Tasks

The separation of tasks is one of the long-standing clichés about
Jingdezhen.44 Instead of employing hundreds or thousands of highly
skilled potters who were individually responsible for the manufacture of
a piece of porcelain starting with the preparation of the clay, and ending
with the finished piece, the Jingdezhen kiln complex employed workers
who each performed separate tasks, from clay kneaders, body shapers,
and glaze makers, to firewood choppers, kiln firers, and pot packers, with
a multitude of workers involved in the production of a single pot, not
unlike an assembly-line production system. All aspects of the production
process were clearly set out as separate tasks in the ‘Great gazetteer of
Jiangxi province’.
Even the output of the workers in the kilns was very carefully set out
in the prescriptive documentation. For example, a potter working on the
largest type of vessel the kilns produced was expected to work on five
vessels at the same time (see Fig. 5.2).45 These were very substantial vats,
usually referred to as fishbowls, and used if not specifically for fish, for
water storage (in case, for example, of fire hazard) or plants.
A set amount of time was allocated for the various tasks involved in
the manufacture of such large vessels: shaping them in clay (up to 18
days), tidying the edges of the leather-hard vessel with a knife (at least
 5 MAKING THE PLACE WORK: MANAGING LABOUR … 133

Fig. 5.2 Porcelain fishbowl‚ decorated in wucai style with underglaze

cobalt blue and overglaze enamels. H 37,8 cm, D 55,2 cm, weight: 32.3 kg.
Jingdezhen, 1567–1572. Inv. no. PDF.778. © Sir Percival David collection, the
Trustees of the British Museum

two days), rinsing the vessel and smoothing the surface (two days), and
adding slip glaze (two days), with time between the different phases to
allow the clay to harden and dry.46
In the case of the smaller vessels, there were clear guidelines on the
number of items a worker should produce each day. For large vessels
(though not the very largest mentioned above), a single worker could
shape ten bodies a day, and then required a further day each for tidy-
ing the edges, rinsing and repairing, and slip glazing. So one worker still
took three whole days to make ten of these large vessels. For the size
below that, a worker could make 50 in three days, 100 in three days for
the third variety, and so on and so forth.47 Engraving or carving added
significantly more time to the process, increasing the labour costs.
To ensure that the workers produced pieces at the required produc-
tivity rate, set numbers of supervisors were appointed per workshop.
So, for example, in a type of kiln known as ‘fire and wind kilns’, there
were 29 workers, led by four appointed heads or leaders (tou), while in
the much smaller muffle kilns, where enamel colours were applied and
fired at a lower temperature, there were only ten workers, supervised by
134 A. Gerritsen

two heads. The supervisor-to-worker ratio was different in each of the

workshops, and this presumably tells us something about the level of
skill and supervision required. The highest ratios (i.e. few supervisors to
many workers) were to be found in the workshop where the slip was pre-
pared (nishui zuo), and in the iron works (tie zuo), the workshop that
made many of the iron objects required both inside the workshops and
for securing the wadding and wrapping of the porcelains as they were
prepared for travel. In both, each head was in charge of about ten work-
ers, with the iron works, which had 30 workers, also the biggest work-
shop of them all. On the other end of the spectrum was the ‘character
writing workshop’, where one worker was supervised by one head. The
kind of work that was done by large numbers of workers supervised by
small numbers of heads included the auxiliary workshops where they
made the ropes and barrels that were part of most well-equipped kilns,
made saggars, and worked with bamboo and wood. The kind of work-
shops where few workers were supervised by large numbers of heads
included the workshops where decorations were added by using an awl,
and where they prepared the lacquer used in preparing transport boxes.
Tasks like shaping bowls, dishes and plates, and decorating them all had
the average sort of ration, of roughly one head to every five workers.48
Of course, these are only ideal figures, but they give some indication of
the required skill levels and the planning, organisation, and supervision
that formed part of the porcelain production.
The allocation of specific timings to these different tasks shows not
only the level of organisation, but also the clear separation into distinct
tasks. If the work on a large fishbowl was done by a single person, then,
still there was the distinction between shaping, tidying, and smoothing,
but separate workers were identified for things like kiln-building, saggar-
baking, and barrel-making. The separation of different tasks matters for
understanding how workers without extensive training in the craft of
ceramics manufactures could still manufacture an item with a shape or
design that was entirely unfamiliar to them.
Out of all these workers, the number of individuals who had specific
skills like the ability to paint fine decorations was relatively small. The vast
majority of the workforce in Jingdezhen did not have what the gazetteer
refers to as ‘refined skills’. In fact, by the middle of the Ming dynasty,
most individuals with the hereditary status of artisan were in a position
to commute their labour service by means of a set payment.49 By the
time of the first edition of the ‘Great gazetteer of Jiangxi province’, the
 5 MAKING THE PLACE WORK: MANAGING LABOUR … 135

provision for paying off one’s labour duties was certainly in place; hence
the statement that ‘[t]he work done by hired labour and by government
artisans is the same.’ On that basis, it was possible for those with arti-
san status either to make a cash payment in lieu of their service, or to
hire someone else to provide the same service in their place. It was an
issue that Hsu Wen-chin also discussed in a 1988 study of the social and
economic conditions of late imperial Jingdezhen.50 Artisans were only
recruited for the work that required a higher level of skill, and these arti-
sans only worked in shifts or rotations (lun ban).51 This meant that those
who served in Jingdezhen with hereditary status of artisan in fulfilment
of their corvee duties, served here only once every three years.
Of course, skill did matter: ‘If clay and glazing materials are of a fine
quality, and the workers (gongfu) have refined skills (jingxi), then you
need not have any concern over coarseness or contamination [of the
wares].’52 And of course skill levels could be problematic: ‘Whenever
craftsmen are employed, if their technical skills and artistry are both
refined and based on extensive experience (jiyi jingshu), then they will
have no difficulty in achieving success in firing pots, and they can make
anything from the largest vessels to saggars. If you have workers that are
just good enough, then the biggest vessels they can make are winecups.’53
This will be a familiar issue for anyone who has ever tried their hand at
throwing pots: the bigger the size, the higher the required skill. A begin-
ner can only make small items; to make anything big requires experience
and skill. The risk with workers with low pottery skills was that their pots
failed, and that one did not find this out until after the pots had already
been fired; much better, then, to supplement the workers with low skill
with additional recruits with high skills (dian zhaomu gaoshou), so none
of the pots turned out a disaster (shu qi bu kuyu).54 But on the whole,
these reflections show that the work in the imperial kilns was carried out
by workers who were paid for their services, and workers who gained
their skills as part of the labour services they performed here.
The division of the production of porcelain into segregated pro-
cesses has been hailed as one of the key innovations of the production in
Jingdezhen. But it is worth thinking briefly about the implications of this
division for the workforce. In general, the more divided the tasks are, the
lower the skill set required to complete the tasks. The preparation of the
raw material as a whole initially required a high level of skill to identify
the best sites for mining stone and clay, the best methods for pulveri-
sation and purification in water, and for obtaining the required fineness
136 A. Gerritsen

of the materials. But once sites had been identified, water-powered mills
and pits for pulverisation had been built, and vats for washing the mate-
rials had been set up, the vast majority of the work involved digging,
carrying, pouring, stirring, and more carrying. Such tasks required and
transmitted certain skills and strengths, but little or no dedicated train-
ing or schooling. Similarly, the making of the protective cases in which
fine porcelains were fired, known in English as saggars or saggers, and
in Chinese as xiabo, required some skill, namely turning the clay to form
roughly potted bowls, and firing these on a high enough temperature
that they could withstand the high temperatures of the porcelain kilns
without falling apart, but not the refined skills required to work the por-
celain clay. Even throwing pots on the wheel required different kinds of
workman with varying skill levels. The potter throwing the larger pieces,
including bowls, cups, and plates, was different from the potter who only
worked on the smaller pieces (i.e. less than one foot in diameter).55
Throwing was only one of the ways in which vessels were formed; they
were also made by using moulds, which was especially useful when numer-
ous items of identical size and shape had to be produced. More unusual
shapes, i.e. square or polygonal, fluted or ribbed, gourd-shaped or even
animal—or human-shaped, were created by forming individually cut pieces
in the required shape, and connecting these with slip (i.e. the same mate-
rial used for the body of the vessel, but mixed with water to make it more
mouldable). While the task of forming the required shape would have
been performed by a skilled worker, the multitude of tasks that prepared
the ground for this one worker could be completed by unskilled workers:
making thin slabs, cutting these into pieces, preparing the slip, holding the
pot, washing the pot down, moving it, and drying it. All such tasks could
be learned on the job, and supervised by a worker with only a marginally
higher level of skill than the unskilledworkers. No worker was working in
isolation, and no worker would have failed to acquire at least some of the
skills of the tasks in his or her immediate surroundings. This last obser-
vation is important for several reasons. Firstly, the required entry level of
skill was low, and new workers could be brought up to speed with the
small area of work they were assigned to in a matter of days if not hours.
Secondly, the transmission of knowledge happened by osmosis and prox-
imity. A worker with next to no skill could not only pick up an individual
task easily, but could acquire enough skill from the tasks performed nearby
to import that skill to his own area of work.
 5 MAKING THE PLACE WORK: MANAGING LABOUR … 137

Overall, then, we see a production process with a division into clearly

distinct tasks, requiring varying levels of skill, executed in a series of
sequential steps. The steps can be grouped in separate stages, such as the
preparation of the clay, the shaping of bodies, the application of decora-
tions, firing in the kiln, and preparing for transport. This is by no means
a complete list, and each of these groups of steps has large numbers of
associated tasks, such as the trimming of the edges of the shaped bod-
ies, or the pulverisation of the cobalt for the preparation of the pigment.
The tasks are all necessary, and all have to be performed in sequence for
the creation of the final product. When we look at the crescent-shaped
kendi (Fig. 5.1) and the fishbowl (Fig. 5.2), the differences in size and
purpose are immediately obvious, but there are also significant similari-
ties: the clay used would have been sourced in the same place and pre-
pared in the same way, both were shaped manually, both were decorated
with cobalt, both were glazed with a transparent glaze, and both were
fired in a wood-fired kiln. The kendi would have been made in a private
kiln and the fishbowl in an imperial kiln, but most likely the hands that
prepared the clay, shaped the objects, and prepared the fire for the kiln
belonged to the same workers. The separation into different tasks meant
that only a small part of the entire sequence of production had to be
adapted to make something for an invisible consumer in an overseas mar-
ket: the shaping of the object and the style of the decorations painted on
the surface. Everything else could more or less proceed along the prede-
termined sequence of events. Very little needed to change in the organ-
isation of labour and the process of manufacture to accommodate the
desires of very different consumers.

The Emergence of Private Kilns

During the first half of the Ming dynasty, broadly speaking until the start
of the sixteenth century, all human labour and all the goods manufac-
tured by this labour force were part of the monopoly of the emperor,
who could at all times lay a claim on them.56 With the silverisation of the
economy, and the growth of demand from both regional and global mar-
kets during the course of the sixteenth century, the production of porce-
lain had to increase dramatically. From the middle of the Ming onwards,
we see the emergence of two parallel systems: an imperial kiln system,
managed by the central administration and intended to create a steady
138 A. Gerritsen

supply of imperial-quality porcelain for the emperor, his household, and

his administration in the capital, and a private production system, where
ceramics both for domestic trade and for export were manufactured.
What is at stake is not so much whether there was a distinction or not.
As the written sources tell us, in the sixteenth century, there were 58
imperial kilns (guanyao) and roughly 20 private kilns (minyao).57 Some
30 of the 58 imperial kilns were for the firing of large cisterns (fish-
bowls), which, as we saw earlier, might be as large as 86 cm high and
94 cm in diameter, and thus required a dedicated type of kiln that is left
out of consideration. The remaining 28 imperial kilns were both for fir-
ing blue-and-white wares and for enamelware.
The key difference between the imperial and the private kilns was not
just their shape (the imperial kilns were built in a narrow, rounded shape,
while the private kilns tended to be long and wide), but also in their size.
They used roughly the same quantity of firewood per firing (80–90 shoul-
der-loads or gang of firewood), but the imperial kilns could only hold
around 300 pieces, while more than 1000 vessels would be fired in the pri-
vate kilns in one firing.58 This, obviously, significantly brought down the
unit price of each vessel fired at the private kilns. When the official kilns
were fired, they only placed wares of one colour in the kiln, protected
from the flames by a row of empty saggars. In the private kilns, every row
was occupied, with some of the coarser wares placed in the very front
and back protecting the good wares in the middle rows from the flames.
Moreover, the brick walls of the imperial kilns were sturdier, and covered
with a dense layer of mud, so that no air could get in or out during the fir-
ing process. Overall, then, the text concludes that ‘the reason that the ves-
sels from the imperial kilns are pure and the vessels from the private kilns
are of a more mixed quality is because of this difference in systems’.59
So clearly there was a difference between these two types of kilns;
there were guanyao, usually translated as ‘imperial kilns’, and minyao,
for which a number of different terms circulate, including ‘folk kilns’,
‘popular kilns’, or ‘private kilns’. The nature of the relationship between
the imperial kilns and private businesses has given rise to a great deal of
discussion. One of the sites where the nature of the relationship between
imperial and private kiln production was articulated was in administra-
tive policy documentation. In the sixteenth century, during the Jiajing
reign period, a policy was initiated referred to as ‘guan da min shao’,
translated as ‘official partnership with private kilns’.60 Their description is
very insightful: ‘it was a means of broadening the base of procurement of
 5 MAKING THE PLACE WORK: MANAGING LABOUR … 139

porcelain for the court’.61 When the production quotas for the imperial
goods were too high to manage for the imperial kilns, then the ordinary
wares for daily use in the palace could be fired at those private kilns that
were deemed to produce wares of high enough quality.62
The coexistence of imperially managed and privately managed kilns,
operating in a mutually supportive production system, goes some way
towards explaining how the kiln complex of Jingdezhen could cope with
changes in demand from the imperial administration and from the mar-
ket. The imperial demand or quota was a kind of tax system, and there
was little flexibility here: the demand from the court had to be sup-
plied. In order to safeguard the production process of the highest qual-
ity wares for the imperial court, the court prescribed specific timings for
specific tasks. Of course, the skills these workers gained could then easily
be transferred to the private kiln production, and in that sense, the two
systems operated in mutually supportive ways. If we think of this offi-
cial partnership with private kilns in spatial terms, then the guan da min
shao system highlights both a vertical or hierarchical connection between
top and bottom (or imperial centre and provincial periphery) and a hori-
zontal, or sideways connection between the centre of production and the
peripheral production sites (or between imperial kiln and private kilns).

Concluding Observations
As we said earlier, the crescent-shaped kendi we started with raises
a number of questions we cannot answer. It is not possible to name
an individual creator for this object, and we know nothing about the
thoughts and emotions of the potters who worked together in crafting
this piece of ceramics in a shape that meant very little to them. But I
hope the discussion above has clarified a number of aspects of the pro-
duction process that do help us to understand better how it came into
being: the (proto-)industry in sixteenth-century Jingdezhen was very
substantial: hundreds of thousands of pieces, probably millions of pieces
were manufactured here each year, both for delivery to the imperial
court, for distribution throughout the empire, and for the overseas trade.
The exported goods were shaped and decorated to appeal to their differ-
ent markets in Japan, Islamic Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean including
the African coast, and to Europe via Portuguese shipments. The labour
force that worked in the ceramics manufactures (including all its related
industries) was made up of a mixture of corvee labourers and hereditary
140 A. Gerritsen

artisans, skilled and unskilled labourers, local residents, and migrant

workers. The segregation of the manufacturing process into clearly
defined and circumscribed separate stages both made it easier to accom-
modate this fluctuating and mobile labour force, and made it possible to
adopt and respond to the desires for specific shapes and designs of very
diverse markets, without having to change the whole production process.
To understand this kendi, then, we need both to see the spatial dimen-
sions of the nearby and the distant (or local and global), and to explore
the organisational processes and economic structures that create meaning
within this specific society.

Notes
1. A similar item, listed as ‘A Rare and Blue and White Porcelain Pilgrim
Flask Made For The Islamic Market, China, Ming Dynasty, fifteenth
Century’ as part of the Arts of the Islamic World was sold by Sotheby’s
in 2011 (lot 349). http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/
lot.349.html/2011/arts-of-the-islamic-world, last consulted on 31
October 2016.
2. The evidence for the vast circulation of ceramic goods from Jingdezhen
comes not only from the numbers of objects remaining in museums and
private collections, but also from archaeological excavation, which allows
us to see the whole range of consumers of Jingdezhen from emperors and
high officials to the lower socio-economic groups.
3. Metal flasks in the shape of a crescent moon are known as kashkul. See
A. S. Melikian-Chirvani, ‘From the Royal Boat to the Beggars Bowl’,
Islamic Art 4‚ 1990–1991‚ pp. 3–111.
4. Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer, ‘Een Eigenaardige Chinese Waterkan [a
Peculiar Chinese Waterjug]’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 32, 4 (1984),
208–214. See also R. H. Pinder-Wilson and M. Tregear, ‘Two Drinking
Flasks from Asia’, Oriental Art 16 (1970), 337–341, pl. 6 en 7; and
Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History
(Berkeley, 2010), p. 299.
5. The absence of ego-documents about labour tasks is also discussed in
Christine Moll-Murata, ‘Work Ethics and Work Valuations in a Period of
Commercialization: Ming China, 1500–1644’, International Review of
Social History 56, S19 (2011), 165–195 (167).
6. Compare the opening pages of Craig Clunas, Empire of Great Brightness:
Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368–1644 (London,
2007). The term ‘early modern’ is used for many places other than
Britain, and often refers to slightly different social and economic
 5 MAKING THE PLACE WORK: MANAGING LABOUR … 141

developments. See the discussion in Mary Louise Nagata, Labor

Contracts and Labor Relations in Early Modern Central Japan (London,
2005), 2–12.
7. For a general overview of the era, see Frederick W. Mote, Imperial China,
900–1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), especially pp. 517–684. See also
Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming
Dynasties (Cambridge, Mass., 2010).
8. I am leaving aside for the time being the discussion about whether this
period should be seen as revealing ‘the sprouts of capitalism’, as one
might argue in a Marxist discourse. The classic study in English is Xu
Dixin and Wu Zhengming, Chinese Capitalism, 1522–1840 (Basingstoke,
2000), a translation of the first volume of a three-volume series on
Chinese capitalism first published in 1985. See especially pp. 65–80.
9. On the influx of silver, and the economic consequences of this silver flow,
see André Gunder Frank, Reorient: Global Economy in the Asian Age
(Berkeley, 1998). For the comparability of the European and Chinese
economies, see Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe,
and the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000). For a divergent view,
and a critique of the arguments by Pomeranz and Frank, see Li Xiantang,
‘The Paradoxical Effect of Silver in the Economies of Ming and Qing
China’, Chinese Studies in History 45, 1 (2011), 84–99.
10. This is implicit, for example, in the organisation and contributions of
Stephan R. Epstein, Maarten Prak, and J. L. van Zanden, Technology,
Skills and the Pre-Modern Economy in the East and the West: Essays
Dedicated to the Memory of S.R. Epstein (Leiden, 2013). See also John
E. Wills, China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800: Trade, Settlement,
Diplomacy, and Missions (Cambridge, 2011).
11. In that sense, it is possible to observe similarities with the European
early modern period. For a study on artisans and work in early mod-
ern Europe, see Thomas Max Safley and Leonard N. Rosenband, eds.,
The Workplace before the Factory: Artisans and Proletarians, 1500–1800
(Ithaca and London, 1993).
12. In that sense, this essay is part of a conversation about global labour. For a
recent example of a study in this field, see Marcel van der Linden, Workers
of the World: Essays toward a Global Labor History (Leiden, 2008).
13. Endymion P. Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (Cambridge,
Mass., 2013), 285.
14. In fact, over the course of the Ming dynasty, land would gradually shift
from ownership by the empire to ‘freely alienable’ land, owned privately,
worked by tenant farmers, and taxable by the state. Madeline Zelin,
‘Economic Freedom in Late Imperial China’, in William C. Kirby, Realms
of Freedom in Modern China (Stanford, 2004), 57–83 (64). See also
142 A. Gerritsen

Prasannan Parthasarathi, ‘Agricultural Labor and Property: A Global and

Comparative Perspective’, in Global Labour History: A State of the Art,
ed. Jan Lucassen (Bern, 2006), 455–477; Wang Yuquan, ‘Some Salient
Features of the Ming Labor Service System’, Ming Studies 21 (1986),
1–44, p. 1. See also Heinz Friese, Das Dienstleistungs-System der Ming-
Zeit (1368–1644) (Hamburg, 1959), 13–15.
15. Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial
China (Berkeley, 1997), 93.
16. For a study of the household registration system under Communist
reforms, see for example, Hein Mallee, ‘China’s Household Registration
System under Reform’, Development and Change 26, 1 (1995), 1–29.
17. Wilkinson, Chinese History, 288. See also Zheng Zhongbing, Meng
Fanhua and Zhou Shiyuan, Zhongguo gudai fushui shiliao jiyao [Selected
materials on taxes in ancient China], 4 vols. (Beijing, 2003).
18. Wang, ‘Some Salient Features’, 3. Wang refers to Da Ming huidian
(1587, rpt. Taiwan, 1964), vol. 1, 350. Zhu Yuanzhang’s first order to
register the population was issued on the first day of the 11th month of
the 18th year of the Zhizheng reign (i.e. 1 December 1358). See Ming
shi lu, vol. 1, 70.
19. For a full listing of these 45 categories, see Wang, ‘Some Salient Features’,
25–29.
20. Wang, ‘Some Salient Features’, 6. On these yellow books or registers, see
Zhang Wenxian, ‘The Yellow Register Archives of Imperial Ming China’,
Libraries & the Cultural Record 43, 2 (2008), 148–175.
21. Edward Farmer, Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The
Reordering of Chinese Society Following the Era of Mongol Rule (Leiden,
1995), 161. See also Friese, Das Dienstleistungs-System, 28–29.
22. Farmer, Zhu Yuanzhang, 17.
23. Martin Heijdra, ‘The Socio-economic Development of Rural China dur-
ing the Ming’, in The Cambridge History of China, eds. Denis Twitchett
and Frederick Mote, Volume 8 (Cambridge, 1998), 417–578, p. 456.
See also Friese, Das Dienstleistungs-System, 14, 128–129.
24. Friese, Das Dienstleistungs-System, 34–36, 90 ff.
25. The key distinction between free and unfree labour in the field of labour
history is the ability to seek employment and wages in enterprises com-
peting for profit in the market. See the discussion in the chapter entitled
‘Why “free” wage labor’ in Van der Linden, Workers of the World, 39–61,
especially 39. See also Karin Hofmeester and Christine Moll-Murata,
‘The Joy and Pain of Work, 1500–1600: Introduction’, International
Review of Social History 56, S19 (2011): 1–23, p. 7.
26. For the building of the new capital in the north during the reign of the
Yongle emperor in the early fifteenth century, a workforce of hundreds
 5 MAKING THE PLACE WORK: MANAGING LABOUR … 143

of thousands of artisans, soldiers and common labourers was assembled

in Beijing, including 7000 captured Annamese artisans. The Grand Canal
was also reconstructed during this period. The channel had to be cleared
and a series of locks had to be constructed, and to complete this task,
300,000 corvée labourers were employed for 100 days. Hok-lam Chan,
‘The Chien-wen, Yong-lo, Hung-his, and Hsüan-te reigns, 1399–1435’,
in The Cambridge History of China, eds. Frederick Mote and Denis
Twitchett, vol. 7 ‘The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part I’ (Cambridge,
1988), 182–304, pp. 239–241, 252.
27. Jingdezhen taolu, juan 5.1b. See also Ching-te-Chen T’ao-lu or The
Potteries of China, Geoffrey R. Sayer, trans. (London, 1951), 39–40.
28. Kerr, Ceramic Technology, 198.
29. Kerr, Ceramic Technology, 199. See also Lee, ‘The artisans of Ching-te-
chen’, 29.
30. A great deal has been written about Zhang Juzheng. See Goodrich, L.
Carrington and Chao-ying Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368–
1644 (New York, 1976), 53–61. A full listing of biographical sources for
Zhang can be found in Lin Li-chiang, ‘The Creation and Transformation
of Ancient Rulership in the Ming Dynasty’, in Dieter Kuhn and Helga
Stahl, Perceptions of Antiquity in Chinese Civilization (Heidelberg,
2008), 321–359, p. 322.
31. Friese, Das Dienstleistungs-System, 129. The artisans that were resident
in or near the capital and served in the Jiangzuoyuan (artisans known
as residential artisans or zhuzuo renjiang) were not allowed to commute
their service to payment. See also Robert Lee, ‘The Artisans of Ching-Te-
Chen in Late Imperial China’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of British
Columbia (1980), pp. 4, 8–13.
32. Ray Huang, 1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline
(New Haven, 1981). See also Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental
Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China (Cambridge, 1974) and Liang
Fangzhong, The Single-Whip Method (I-T’iao-Pien Fa) of Taxation in
China (Cambridge Mass., 1956).
33. Heijdra, ‘The socio-economic development’, 456–457.
34. The demand for silver in China from the sixteenth century onwards has
been widely documented. The work of Dennis Flynn and Giraldez is a
good starting point, and a number of their studies have been brought
together in Dennis Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, China and the Birth of
Globalization in the sixteenth Century (Farnham, Surrey, 2010). For a
strong argument in favour of seeing China’s demand for silver as shaping
factor for the world economy, see Frank, Reorient.
35. Wanli Jiangxi sheng dazhi [Great gazetteer of Jiangxi province] (8 juan).
Wang Zongmu, comp. (Beijing, 2003).
144 A. Gerritsen

36. Joseph R. Dennis, Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers in

Imperial China, 1100–1700 (Cambridge, Mass., 2015).
37. This forms the seventh chapter (juan) of the gazetteer. For a study,
see Margaret Medley, ‘Organization and Production at Jingdezhen
in the Sixteenth Century’, in Rosemary E. Scott, ed., The Porcelains of
Jingdezhen (London, 1993).
38. Jiangxi sheng dazhi 7.6b.
39. The decree establishing military units like the battalion dates from 1364,
4 years before the establishment of the Ming dynasty. Edward L. Dreyer,
Early Ming China: A Political History, 1355–1435, pp. 78–80. Each prov-
ince had guards (wei) of 5000 men, made up of five batallions of a thou-
sand men each.
40. See Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-century
Ming China, 53. In this case, the cost of labour payable by the battal-
ion is listed as amounting to a total of 33 liang and 6 qian. It is obvi-
ously not appropriate to refer to this payment as a wage, as it was merely
intended to cover the costs of keeping the worker alive.
41. Robert Lee translates the first term, gongfu‚ as journeymen, and describes
these as the assistants to the artisans, and the second term, shatufu, as
labourers, ‘toilers of sundry works’. Lee, ‘The artisans of Ching-te-chen’,
26.
42. Christine Moll-Murata, ‘Guilds and Apprenticeship in China and Europe:
The Case of the Jingdezhen and European Ceramics Industries’, in
Technology, Skills and the Pre-modern Economy in the East and the West.
Essays Dedicated to the Memory of S.R. Epstein, eds., Maarten Prak and Jan
Luiten van Zanden (Leiden, 2013), 227–257, pp. 228–230.
43. Jiangxi sheng dazhi 7.21a.
44. In one translation of a famous seventeenth-century text by Song
Yingxing, the oft-quoted statement from Tiangong kaiwu reads:
‘Without counting the minute details, a portion of clay must pass
through 72 different processes before it is finally made into a cup’. Sung
Ying-hsing, Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century, translated
from the Chinese and annotated by E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-chuan Sun
(Mineola, NY, 1966), 154. See also Dagmar Schaefer, The Crafting of the
10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China
(Chicago, 2011).
45. There is a very similar fishbowl in the collection of the National Museum
of Scotland. See also A. du Boulay, Christie’s Pictorial History of Chinese
Ceramics (New Jersey, 1984), p. 132. Another is illustrated by R. Krahl,
Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum (London, 1986), vol. II,
p. 668, no. 1062.
46. Jiangxi sheng dazhi 7.23a.
 5 MAKING THE PLACE WORK: MANAGING LABOUR … 145

47. Jiangxi sheng dazhi 7.23a-b.

48. Jiangxi sheng dazhi 7.22b-23a.
49. It is worth noting that, as Robert Lee has shown in 1979, the Jingdezhen
conscripted labour service continued to exist well beyond the mid-Ming,
and was still in evidence in the late sixteenth century. Robert Lee, ‘The
Artisans of Ching-te-chen’.
50. Hsu argues that this transition from conscript or corvée labour to hired
labour, or wage labour, should be seen as part of the emergence of capi-
talism, especially in the handicraft industries of the late Ming. Hsu Wen-
Chin, ‘Social and Economic Factors in the Chinese Porcelain Industry
in Jingdezhen During the Late Ming and Early Qing Period, ca. 1620–
1683’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (New Series) 120, 1 (1988),
135–159, especially p. 139.
51. Lun ban literally means work in rotation. The other category were the
settled artisans, the zhuzuojiang, who were all registered in and around
the capital, and all served within the imperial household, and fell
under the jurisdiction of the eunuchs in the imperial palace. See Friese,
Dienstleistungs-System, 118–122.
52. Jiangxi sheng dazhi 7.18b.
53. Jiangxi sheng dazhi 7.23b.
54. Jiangxi sheng dazhi 7.24a.
55. Tichane, Ching-te-chen, 144.
56. Friese, Das Dienstleistungs-System, 126.
57. For a further discussion of these numbers, see Kerr, Ceramic Technology,
197.
58. Jiangxi sheng dazhi 7.17a.
59. Jiangxi sheng dazhi 7.17a-b.
60. Kerr, Ceramic Technology, 200.
61. Kerr and Wood, Ceramic Technology, 200.
62. Yip Hon Ming, ‘The Kuan-Ta-Min-Shao System and Ching-Te-Chen’s
Porcelain Industry’, Papers on Society and Culture of Early Modern China,
1992. See also the discussion in Lee, ‘The Artisans of Ching-te-chen’ and
Yuan Tsing. ‘The Porcelain industry and Ching-te-chen 1550–1700’,
Ming Studies 1 (1978), 45–54.
 CHAPTER 6

Woollen Manufacturing in the Early Modern

Mediterranean (1550–1630): Changing
Labour Relations in a Commodity Chain

Andrea Caracausi

Since 2007, I have had the great opportunity to participate in the Global
Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations, 1500–2000 held by the
International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam (https://collab.iisg.
nl/web/labourrelations). Therefore, the article has largely benefited from
the continuous exchange of ideas with the group members over these years
and, in particular, with Karin Hofmeester, Gijs Kessler, Jan Lucassen and
Christine Moll Murata to whom I would like to address a special thanks. For
the Global Collaboratory approach and the taxonomy of labour relations,
see: Karin Hofmeester, Jan Lucassen, Leo Lucassen, Rombert Stapel, Richard
Zijdeman, ‘The Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations,
1500–2000: Background, Set-Up, Taxonomy, and Applications’, http://hdl.
handle.net/10622/4OGRAD, IISH Dataverse, V1 (last accessed 30 October
2016). Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the editors of the book for their
patience during my writing of this text and Christian De Vito in particular
for our long discussions on micro-history and the history of labour relations.
The article was also carried out within the ambit of the research project FIRB
2012RBFR12GBQZ_002 financed by the Italian Ministry of Education,
Research and University.

A. Caracausi (*)
University of Padua, Padua, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 147

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_6
148 A. Caracausi

Introduction
Woollen cloth was one of the most commonplace clothing possessions in
many areas of the pre-industrial world.1 Large sections of the population
in Continental Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and, from the
seventeenth century onwards, the Americas bought locally made woollen
products.2 These encompassed a wide range of low-, medium- and high-
quality products, including caps and knitted goods, which were generally
made and marketed on the spot for their end consumers.3 The substantial
division of labour in the woollen-cloth production chain required work-
ers with different qualities and manual skills, and the labour force included
both local and migrant workers.4 Clothes were rarely produced in one
place; wool, dyes and other raw materials came from different regions, and
operations such as spinning, weaving and refining were performed in multi-
ple sites. A village of spinners had various links with other cities, towns, and
even across and beyond state borders, and therefore spinning was incorpo-
rated in a trans-local chain of economic processes.5 The way in which this
commodity chain worked is, thus, of relevance for global labour history.
In recent years, interest in the latter has grown, primarily as a result of
the doubt it has cast on paradigms founded largely on a Eurocentric per-
spective. Several studies have, for example, questioned the linearity of the
evolution of labour relations, especially the transitions from non-free to free
labour, and from servile to salaried labour, processes in which the Industrial
Revolution is teleologically seen as the determining factor. Labour com-
modification, global labour historians insist, occurred in diverse historical
periods and forms part of a multiplicity of labour relations.6
This chapter seeks to test the usefulness of combining a micro-his-
torical analysis centred on the manufacture of woollen cloth with the
heuristic tool of commodity chain analysis derived from sociology but
recently used also in historical studies.7 The first objective is thus to see
if and how these two approaches together can move the project of global
labour history forward.8 Second, I shall demonstrate that categories like
‘labour relations’, ‘space’, ‘time-framing’ and ‘historical periodisation’,
can be identified better when they emerge from the investigation of a
single place.9 My final goal is to add a further subject of study—the pro-
duction of goods—to this experiment of global history on a small scale
beyond global lives and the circulation of goods and objects.10
I will focus on the woollen cloth manufactures of Padua in the early
modern Mediterranean, approximately from the 1550s to the 1630s.
6 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURING IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN … 149

Rather than taking a large and famous manufacturing centre like Venice
or Florence as my starting point, I intend to focus on an apparently
‘remote’ location, placed outside the main routes of commerce. The
main challenge, in fact, is to demonstrate the potential of a micro-histor-
ical analysis without any reference to the potential ‘global’ dimensions of
a subject-town, suburb or remote country village.11 To this end, I pro-
pose to see this town and the manufacture of an allegedly non-‘global’
product as a dynamic space, criss-crossed by numerous vectors from the
same or other towns that all had an impact both on internal labour rela-
tions and on the structure of the commodity chain. The chapter begins
with some methodological issues and a reconstruction of the ethnog-
raphy of the Padua-based wool commodity chain. I then focus on two
specific ‘boxes’12 (spinning and weaving) that highlight the changes in
geographical distribution and labour relations, followed by a discussion
of the reasons behind these changes. The final section offers some con-
cluding comments, showing the implications from a methodological and
historical point of view.

The Ethnography of a Commodity Chain

The starting point of a commodity chain-based approach is to conceive
of a ‘commodity‘ as the outcome of a labour- and production-process
network. Each single production process can be viewed as a ‘box’ or
‘nodal point’, which is in turn connected to other nodal points within
the network. Production, distribution and consumption are thus shaped
by the social relations (including organisations) that characterise each
sequential phase of input acquisition, production, distribution, market-
ing and consumption.13 A series of questions can be posed for each sin-
gle nodal point, ranging from the degree of monopoly within it to its
geographical scope, from the number of goods chains into which the
box fits to the type of ownership regulating production, and from labour
control methods to the bonds linking the various nodal points. Cyclical
economic changes are one of the key points in the building of a com-
modity chain, prompting vertical integration phenomena or geographical
convergence/divergence in proportion to the will to reduce transaction
and labour costs.14
In my analysis of this pre-industrial commodity chain, I started by
exploring the place in which the main operations (especially weaving)
were carried out. This required using a great variety of sources, including
150 A. Caracausi

legislative, judicial, notarial and fiscal materials, to extract the quantita-

tive data to identify the interactions between the different actors over a
long period.15 For the purposes of retracing this goods chain, it proved
useful to ‘follow the traces’ of this production and to link the informa-
tion acquired in the Padua archive with data from other repositories.16
The spatial dimensions of this kind of analysis depend on the geographi-
cal scope of the industry, or the focus of the analysis. As my focus here
is on spinning and weaving, I chose to focus on Venice, which served
as the nodal point of the trade with the Near East and the Iberia, and
where the main legislative decisions were taken.17 I have identified nine
main segments, each of which represents a distinct nodal point: wool
production; wool preparation; spinning; weaving (including warping);
refining; dyeing; distribution; tailoring; and consumption.
Below, I analyse each nodal point in the commodity chain by high-
lighting three elements: geographical scope, labour control methods and
links between the various boxes.
Wool production. Wool production took place in different areas cor-
responding to diverse jurisdictions and, as a consequence, three different
categories of wool: wool ‘born and raised’ within the Padua district; wool
‘born’ in other areas but sheared within the district (and thus subject to
local jurisdiction); and wool from outside the guild’s jurisdiction and
from other Mediterranean regions (Kingdom of Naples, Lombardy, the
Papal States and, above all, Spain).18 In rural areas, sheep breeding was
generally organised around small independent firms who managed flocks.
These independent workers were, however, bound to the sheep owners
in contracts (soccida), which involved sharing the profits from the sale of
wool equally.19 Breeding involved considerable mobility, much of which
was seasonal (from the mountains to the plains in the winter and the
reverse in summer). Company contracts frequently involved paying cash
advances to travelling shepherds at the beginning of the season, often
leading to debts at the end of the contract when the winter was over.20
This kind of labour control was affected by a number of factors.
Firstly, the geo-morphological characteristics of the area: smaller flocks
on the plains, where livestock was combined with extensive farming;
larger flocks in the hills and mountains, where livestock was done in an
intensive way. Secondly, the social and financial profile of the sheep own-
ers: merchants, aristocrats and ecclesiastical bodies directly managed the
production of raw materials, employing many salaried workers at the
expense of independent workers and small- to medium-scale owners.21
6 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURING IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN … 151

The sale of raw materials, and thus the link to the wool-preparation
phase, was managed by several groups of merchants, according to the
type and provenance of the wool. For wool coming from outside the
guild’s jurisdiction and from other Mediterranean regions, the main
intermediaries between Spain and Italy were Genoese, Florentine and
Spanish merchants.22 Other specific groups can be detected in other
areas, such as Jews from the Polesine region.23 As far as wool ‘born and
raised’ in the district was concerned, the guild institutions maintained a
monopoly on behalf of their members.24
Wool preparation. The main wool preparation phases were usually
centralised within the town. Merchants managed the operations within
their workshops, employing teams of workers on weekly or annual con-
tracts. Contracts were managed by foremen, who acted as intermediar-
ies between entrepreneurs and workers. Here, too, cash advances were
commonplace, as the majority of the workforce came from outside the
town. Merchants required a guarantee issued on behalf of the workers or
those who acted for them. The degree of monopoly, thus, was minimal
in the sense that each firm only employed those workers it needed for
this phase.25
Spinning. As was common in many other Italian towns, spinning was
managed predominantly at home by a female labour force. A spinning
woman could only be allotted a limited volume of cloth, and centralisa-
tion of this phase was forbidden. Spinning women were self-employed,
or sometimes employed by their husbands, who acted as middlemen for
the suppliers of the raw material suppliers. In other cases, women con-
tracted salaries and duties with businessmen directly.26
Warping and weaving. These operations were normally managed
by self-employed workers, assisted by fewer than two helpers. Weavers
were generally responsible for collecting semi-worked goods from mer-
chants and delivering finished cloth. Here, too, payment involved cash
advances by merchants which bound merchants and workers together
more closely.27 Sometimes, more workers had to be employed in such
workshops, and in other cases work was contracted out to additional
merchants.28 The presence of migrant labour was limited in particu-
lar to occasions in which it was necessary to import new manufacturing
technologies or in the aftermath of wars. In such cases, entrepreneurs
ensured continuity in the supply of work for a specific period of time, but
normally this was a matter of non-seasonal labour.
152 A. Caracausi

Refining. This nodal point encompassed four separate operations:

scouring, pressing, tentering and nap-raising. These operations shared
several elements, most notably the control exerted by the guilds over
these operations. The guilds owned the buildings in which these opera-
tions were carried out, and rented these out to the small- to medium-
scale artisans (in the case of raisers) or small-businesspeople (in the other
three cases), who managed them. Geographically, these operations were
limited to the town of Padua. Many salaried employees on daily or sea-
sonal contracts worked within such buildings. The employees were usu-
ally local; although they moved around the urban area, their operations
took place in the town or the surrounding area, and almost always fell
under the guild’s jurisdiction.29
Dyeing. The next phase of work was dyeing. This could be done
before or after the refining phase, or even after the product was sold.
The geographical scope of the work was very wide and took place in vari-
ous contexts according to the relevant market. Dyeing was not limited
to the town of Padua but was also done in other towns such as Venice
or places where the finished product was sold (Southern Italy, Central
and Eastern Europe, Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East), and
where overseas agents and other intermediaries selling the product were
based.30 Cloth could be sold ‘white’ or undyed precisely so as to enable
buyers (or sometimes those making the product) to choose the colour
of the cloth at a later stage.31 This is an extremely important element
precisely because these were market strategies, which could impact sig-
nificantly on the commodity chain. In any event, such operations were
largely left to self-employed or small businessmen with a limited number
of salaried employees. Large agglomerations did exist, but they were spo-
radic and depended on the type of commodity chain type concerned. 32
Distribution. The merchants who manufactured the cloth generally
distributed their products themselves. They sold it on in retail outlets
locally or sent it to distant markets. Such retail sellers were called drapers
where cloth of various quality was concerned, or mercers in the case of
mixed products or knitwear. Drapers also received foreign cloth, which
they retailed in local markets. Self-employed individuals, in turn hiring
one or more permanent workers within their workshops, formed the pre-
dominant model. This phase had close links to consumption and spread
over multiple geographical areas, including Venice, the Ottoman Empire,
central-southern Italy, Iberia and, in the early seventeenth century, cen-
tral and eastern Europe.33
6 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURING IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN … 153

Tailoring. This was perhaps the central manufacturing phase, although

its importance has generally been underestimated or detached from the
specific study of wool working, which has tended to concentrate on the
finished product. After being cut to the length required by buyers, cloth
was ready to be worked by tailors. In some cases, merchants played a
direct role in this phase but this was rare. Tailors made whole garments
or just parts of them (sleeves, tunics). Most frequently they made hose
finished off with leather soles at the bottom. Tailors measured buy-
ers and cut and sewed the various parts in accordance with client tastes.
They were based in Padua or in the other market places where the prod-
ucts were sold. Merchants often sent long pieces of cloth abroad, which
were tailored according to local uses and consumers’ preferences.34
Consumption. This might be viewed as both the last and the first
phase of the chain. Consumers, of course, received the final product,
but their preferences simultaneously conditioned the production of
wool. Woollen clothes were bought by a wide range of people, in local
and long distance markets, from the Middle East to Southern Italy, and
from Spain to central and eastern Europe.35 Consumers varied widely:
rich, sophisticated clients bought luxury products whereas average or
poor clients had to content themselves with standardised and cheap
clothes.36 Accordingly, clothes were divided into fine, low-quality and
mixed, depending on the buyer. The quality of clothes depended firstly
on the quality and quantity of the raw material (wool) and secondly, on
the number of working phases it had undergone.
This ethnography (and Fig. 6.1) should not be viewed as a general
‘model’ for the Mediterranean or other woollen industries. Indeed, in
each context, configurations varied widely depending on the degree of
integration and dissemination of production, guild monopoly and the
specific areas of supplying raw materials and markets.37 For the recon-
struction of the composition of the workforce within each box and the
evolution of labour relations, it is crucial to focus on a single nodal
point, even taking into account the evolution of a commodity chain as
a whole and the links between the various changes. This choice certainly
enables us to better appreciate, on one hand, the role of individuals and
domestic households (in particular in reference to labour relations) and,
on the other, the ways in which the forces of monopoly and competition
can influence, condition and manipulate the commodity chain.
154 A. Caracausi

Wood
Guado
(r. m.)
Ash

Soap

Oil

Wool Wool Spinning Warping Refining Dyeing Distribution Tailoring Consumption

product preparation /weaving
ion

Sheep Wool Scouring

Breeding washing

Shearing Wool Pressing

beating

Wool Wool Tentering

washing carding

Wool Napping
combing Raising

Fig. 6.1 The Padua-based wool commodity chain, 1550–1630

Inside the Boxes: Spinning and Weaving

How did shifts in labour relations occur? Did the changes in one box
depend on changes in other boxes? In order to address these questions,
I will draw on some examples from two specific commodity chain boxes:
spinning and weaving. In this section I will analyse the changes within
the two boxes, while the following section will address the reasons for
such transformations.
In the second half of the sixteenth century, and particularly after
1570, spinning underwent significant changes in both manufacturing
geography and labour relations. From the point of view of work distribu-
tion, spinning, especially in the case of bobbin spinning, shifted progres-
sively to the countryside along north and north-eastern axes and in the
direction of the capital city, Venice (Tables 6.1, 6.2).
This shift was not simply geographical in nature but also related to
labour relations, techniques of labour control and the contractual
power of spinning women. Most women worked at home until the
1570s. Their relationships with the merchant-manufacturers were two-
fold. Some spinning women went directly to the merchants’ homes to
 6 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURING IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN … 155

Table 6.1 Places of residence of the bobbin spinners, 1530–1669

Padua Paduan district Paduan districts Total

(intermediaries)

Period No. of % No. of % No. of % No. of %

observations observa- observations observa-
tions tions

1530–1559 125 72.7 47 27.3 0 0.0 172 100

1560–1589 110 46.6 126 53.4 0 0.0 236 100
1590–1669 0 0.0 1 12.5 7 87.5 8 100
Total 235 56.5 174 41.8 7 1.7 416 100
Sources: ASP, UL, bb. 297–304 (a. 1529, 1543, 1556, 1557, 1565, 1566, 1572, 1575, 1577, 1578,
1579, 1583, 1589, 1591, 1598, 1659)

Table 6.2 Places of residence of the wheel spinners, 1530–1669

Padua Paduan district Paduan districts Total

(intermediaries)

Period No. % No. % No. % No. %

1530–1559 216 97.7 5 2.3 0 0.0 221 100.0

1560–1589 316 97.8 7 2.2 0 0.0 323 100.0
1590–1569 12 80.0 1 6.7 2 13.3 15 100.0
Total 544 97.3 13 2.3 2 0.4 559 100.0

Sources ASP, UL, bb. 297-304 (a. 1529, 1543, 1556, 1557, 1565, 1566, 1572, 1575, 1577, 1578,
1579, 1583, 1589, 1591, 1598, 1659)

collect the goods, and thus had a direct relationship with the latter and
were paid directly.38 Others were paid via their husbands or fathers,
who in turn were oftenworkers in the merchants’ workshops or within
the putting out system. An analysis of the declarations issued by mer-
chants shows that just over 50% of the ‘wheel’-spinning women were in
fact married to wool makers (combers and beaters), while almost 60%
of the ‘bobbin’ spinners were married to combers, raisers or weavers
(Table 6.3).
Therefore, until the 1570s, labour relations within the spinning trade
were determined by the market, but in part mediated by family members
who already worked along the production chain, a state of affairs which
led some spinners to a hybrid form of independent labour within the
156 A. Caracausi

Table 6.3 Survey

Husband’s trade “Wheel” (%) “Bobbin” (%)
of the trades of the
spinning women’s Raisers 1.9 3.4
husbands, sixteenth Wool combers 20.0 31.0
century Wool scartesini 28.4 6.9
Weavers 0.6 17.2
Jobs inside the wool workshop 51.0 58.6
Unknown trade 39.4 3.4
Other trades 9.65 37.95
Total 100.0 100.0

Sources ASP, UL, bb. 297–301 (a. 1529, 1543, 1556, 1557, 1565,
1566, 1572, 1575, 1577, 1578, 1579, 1583, 1589, 1591, 1598)

household economy. This distinction is significant as far as labour control

is concerned, and in particular in relation to salaries. On 20 September
1527, spinning woman Lucrezia Vicentina, wife of Bernardino Rosso,
obtained from the wool merchant Giacomo da Monton the payment
for a quantity of wool produced over the previous weeks on the basis
of the fact that ‘her husband was not living with her and was ruining all
her goods and that she did not want to be held to account for this hus-
band in any way at all’. In fact, her husband had received a number of
pieces of cloth as payment of his wife’s salary but his wife reaffirmed her
independence and control over her work.39 Credits and bonds were fre-
quently intertwined in the relations between employers and employees.
This situation changed radically in the 1570s when spinning moved to
the countryside. Indeed, as that process unfolded, an intermediary was
brought into the relationship between merchant-manufacturers and spin-
ning women. Whilst the latter were now independent workers at home,
their salaries were now paid via an intermediary, instead of directly by the
merchant-manufacturer or through a family member. Reduction in sala-
ries and control of labourtime frames were an inevitable consequence.40
It may be worth briefly reflecting on a related methodological issue.
‘Macro’ approaches would define these spinners as ‘self-employed pro-
ducers’ (in the case of women working at home for a weaver) or as ‘wage
earners’ (with remuneration at piece rates). These predefined categories
do not capture the specific circumstances here. The main elements which
characterized their position in the commodity chain and their bargaining
power were not labour relations but labour mediation and the specific
forms of their wage-payments. These depended on their contract with
 6 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURING IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN … 157

Table 6.4 Places of residence of the weavers, 1530–1669

Period Suburbs Padua Total

No. % No. % No. %

1530–1559 44 31.2 97 68.8 141 100.0

1560–1589 149 59.4 102 40.6 251 100.0
1590–1669 40 95.2 2 4.8 42 100.0
Total 233 53.7 201 46.3 434 100.0

Source ASP, UL, bb. 297–304 (a. 1529, 1543, 1556, 1557, 1565, 1566, 1572, 1575, 1577, 1578,
1579, 1583, 1589, 1591, 1598, 1659); bb. 48–70 and 77–88 (aa. 1525–1560, 1570–1582, 1584–
1589, 1594–1599, 1609, 1612, 1614–1618, 1620–1630, 1635–1636, 1638, 1640, 1642)

the merchant-manufacturer, which established the nature of their work

and how they received their salary, including credit operations and forms
of bondage. In this case, the ‘micro’ approach invites us to ask not only
about the evolution of labour relations, but also the forms of control on
labour within the same labour relation. 41
Transformations in the weaving ‘box’ closely resembled these shifts
in spinning. Here too, during the 1570s and 1580s, weaving workshops
shifted to the suburbs (i.e. still within the town ‘fiscal’ limits), while
those within the home disappeared altogether (Table 6.4).
Changes in labour relations followed accordingly. In the case of urban
workshops pre-1570s, it is not unusual to find weavers who simultane-
ously produced and sold cloth autonomously and received services com-
missioned by merchant-entrepreneurs as wage earners. In the case of the
non-urban weavers post-1570s, labour relations depended almost exclu-
sively on commissions given by the merchant-entrepreneurs. Like their
pre-1570s counterparts, they were both ‘wage earners’ and ‘producer
groups’, especially when they worked as a group with family and non-
family members, receiving cash advances and prizes for their produc-
tion.42 Their work was neither seasonal nor intermittent, in contrast to
what has often been argued by the proponents of the ‘proto-industrial’
model.43 Indeed, some weavers were consigned cloth all year round from
winter to the following autumn,44 while others did not work at home
but managed full-blown workshops located in villages, which in certain
cases were home to more than 1500 people.45 Once again, as we saw in
the case of spinning, the more relevant shift was not in labour relations,
but in labour mediation and, therefore, wage formation even within the
same labour relation.
158 A. Caracausi

Why This Change in Labour Relations?

In the previous section I foregrounded some shifts that took place in the
geography and labour relations of manufacturing within two ‘boxes’:
spinning and weaving. These changes were sometimes imperceptible,
but nonetheless replete with implications for the host of small produc-
ers within the commodity chain. The questions that now need to be
answered include what prompted these changes and, especially, where
they emerged.
It is important to underline that such changes originated both in
other boxes of the commodity chain, such as in distribution and con-
sumption, as well as in other places, located at various distances from the
production centre. Two product innovations led to a significant transfor-
mation of consumption patterns all over Europe. Firstly, the emergence
of the sarze or grisi cloth, and the better-known new draperies, which
from the mid-sixteenth century increasingly supplied the market with
low-quality cloth.46 Secondly, a popularisation of silk cloth took place.
This range of cloth satisfied an ever-wider market.47 Cloth also included
‘mixed’ products such as German or French-made canvas, linen and cot-
ton such as twill, grograni (made with camel hide), oeillets and stametti
(stammets).48 Finally, the more significant change in consumption pat-
terns as far as the commodity chain is concerned was the dissemination
of knitwear, which transformed the clothing market and created a new
European fashion.49 From the 1570s, the Padua merchant-manufacturers
adapted their supply including all these new woollen items (mixed cloth,
stametti, grograni and hosiery).50
These consumption changes had an impact on the distribution side
too. Geographically, retailing in Padua diminished while foreign trade
levels remained stable, particularly in the direction of the Near East,
in trading places such as Aleppo or Alexandria of Egypt.51 Merchant-
manufacturers had various commercial interests in these areas (and were
not simply linked to the textile sector) and continued to stimulate the
production of high-quality wool.
Changes in consumption and distribution also affected the geographi-
cal distribution and the labour relations in other commodity chain boxes.
The main consequence was the geographical relocation to the coun-
tryside of spinning and weaving with the shift in labour relations (and,
especially, the changes in labour mediations) discussed above. Lower
demand for such products in the Padua market, in particular low-quality
6 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURING IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN … 159

cloth, and manufacturing integration between Padua and Venice led to

the disappearance of the small-scale micro-firm sector, sometimes indi-
vidual ‘independent’ weavers, which had been a feature of the pre-1570s.
This shift is therefore linked to processes outside Padua’s jurisdiction
(the integration with another wool production chain with its centre in
another place, such as Venice), and beyond state borders, such as the
changes in consumption at the European level and the rising demand of
clothes for the Levantine markets).52
A further consequence was the increase in the number of female
entrepreneurs managing urban knitwear workshops. The knitting sec-
tor boomed during the late sixteenth century. From a labour relations
perspective, this was not household production or piece-wage payment.
Sometimes women worked at home, or outside, for merchants, receiv-
ing a piece-rate wage. Other times, they had a number of boys and girls
working for them and paid them with a time-rate wage. Piece-rate wages
paid by merchants to the women constituted a form of sub-contracting;
women were the owners of small workshops, where children and girls
worked for them. The rise of the knitting industry and consumption also
stimulated the use of unfree labour (in the form of apprenticeships) or
forced labour within hospitals, house of charity and orphanages, where
number of boys and girls worked for the merchant-entrepreneurs under
the supervision of one or more supervisors.53
The third consequence was the monopoly within the industry. Both
level and size of production saw an increase in this period. While small
cloth producers completely disappeared after the 1570s, an oligopoly of
a few merchants emerged, which led to a concentration of production
capacity.54 By the early seventeenth century, the sector was controlled by
only a few merchants manufacturing in bulk for long-distance markets.55
Greater quantities of capital enabled these merchants to look eastwards,
which boosted other commercial interests and set in motion the inten-
sification of high-quality wool manufacturing. Certain manufacturing
phases thus underwent a powerful centralisation process involving the
direct management of wool production, fulling, tentering, dyeing, and
the warping and finishing phases. This centralisation was a response to
a need for ever-more uninterrupted production and, above all, greater
product quality monitoring (especially of high-quality cloth). The mer-
chants were also able to maintain their labour control, using the guild
institution to block entry into the sector and limit competition among
producers.56
160 A. Caracausi

Conclusions
The combination of the commodity chain approach with the micro-his-
torical approach offers useful insights for global labour history, and espe-
cially for the study of the evolution of labour relations. Much remains to
be done, but I would argue that certain encouraging preliminary results
have emerged in this chapter on the potential for micro-analytical and
spatially aware analysis.
From a methodological point of view, the combination between the
commodity chain approach and micro-history has many implications.
Observation is not ‘preordained’, but varies according to the subject of
research, allowing a focus on concrete relations and interactions between
economic agents over time. This perspective facilitates an open approach
to ‘space’. Each segment within the commodity chain is ‘localised’, but
also part of a wider nexus. In this context, it is possible to better analyse
interactions emerging locally in relation to processes that unfold else-
where. Finally, it avoids the construction of general ‘models’ for indus-
trial sectors, but allows us to ‘spatialise’ the commodity chain, limiting
the investigation to one place and following the traces of production,
commercialisation and consumption.
From an historical point of view, the approach is promising too. First,
it allows us to address historical processes imbricated in the changes of
labour relations. In the case I presented here, for example, without a
careful analysis of the singularity of the context, the relocation into the
countryside of weaving and spinning could have been interpreted as a
simple process of ‘delocalisation’ in order to escape the high costs of
labour, as has often been argued in the ‘proto-industrial’ model,57 or in
response to the desire to acquire new products on the market, as seen in
the industrious revolution model.58 Conversely, the geographical change
depended on processes, which appeared inside and outside the manufac-
ture and beyond state borders, and these changes caused a partial, but
significant, reconfiguration of the position of workers and their labour
relations within the commodity chain.
The second major insight provided by this approach is that shifts in
labour relations depended simultaneously on the interweaving of wool
product manufacturing, trade and consumption. In particular, the pro-
cess of labour commodification emerged by combining forms of wage
labour, forced labour (especially in charitable institutions) and unfree
labour (such as apprenticeships), and at the expense of independent
6 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURING IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN … 161

labour (in the case of urban weavers).59 Moreover, labour commodifica-

tion was not related exclusively to blind market-forces, but a response of
specific strategies made first by certain groups (merchant-manufacturers)
within the commodity chain.60 The evolution of the single commodity
chain from a micro-perspective is therefore a vantage point from which
analyse labour relation changes.
Third, this approach can unveil questions that could be hidden by
macro-analysis. The role of labour mediation and wage formation is
indeed an equally important feature that emerges from this chapter.
Within the same labour relation, we witness several forms of labour
mediation (directly, via parents or via intermediaries), which included
credits and bonds. As Michael Sonenscher has underlined: ‘Master and
journeyman were sometimes employers and employees, but sometimes
they were patrons and client, or father and sons, or father-in-law and
sons-in-law … There was a legal dimension of the work which over-
lapped the general conditions in which productive activity took place.’61
Payment forms could have a great impact on wage formation, not merely
because they were piece-wage or time wage, but because credit, advances
on wages, and time payments bound the counterparts together (mas-
ters and journeymen, merchants and women, etc.), transforming a bar-
gain into a promise and making a ‘simple transaction a more complex
dialogue over rights and obligations’.62 Therefore, the bargaining power
depended less on the labour relation and more on other elements, as the
individual action of actors and their social position within the commu-
nity.63 Given the singularity of the context, the main implication could
be not the change in labour relations, but the forms of labour mediation
and the agency of the individual worker.
The commodity chain approach allows us to better choose the spa-
tial units under analysis. For instance, instead of taking one spatial unit
as given (the town, the district, the state), it allows us to appreciate the
interaction between trade and manufacturing, even outside the commod-
ity chain. Labour relations could shift in response to changes in distri-
bution and consumption, as was the case of the changing equilibriums
in the Mediterranean trade for the Levant and the demand for cloth at
a European level. In order to sustain a growing demand for long-dis-
tant markets, the merchant-manufacturers adapted the modes of labour
control and labour relation in two key boxes of the commodity chain,
as spinning and weaving. Their influence was, however, sustained con-
siderably by the political and institutional context which contributed to
162 A. Caracausi

shaping labour relations. In particular, their ability to rely on the guild

institutions and their privileges enabled merchants to maintain their
monopoly position and control over the workforce. 64
Finally, this approach is also useful to discuss time framing and perio-
disation in history. Some scholars have argued that in the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries, competition from the most advanced
commercial institutions such as the (British) Levant Company affected
the commercial and manufacturing costs of the woollen manufactur-
ing of early modern Italian cities, causing the ‘marginalization’ of the
Mediterranean during the ‘early modern globalization’.65 Commodity
chains invite us to see productive markets as interwoven webs of inves-
tors, traders, producers and workers crossing the borders of territories
and beyond the state or corporate jurisdictions. Working with micro-
history invites us to redefine the rise and decline of industries, looking
within the single boxes to understand what happened in terms of labour
relations, labour mediation and wage inequality.

Notes
1. For woollen production and consumption in the ancient era, see:
Margarita Gleba, Textile Production in Pre-Roman Italy (Oxford, 2008);
Margarita Gleba and Ulla Mannering, Textiles and Textile Production in
Europe: From Prehistory to AD 400 (Oxford, 2012); for the medieval and
pre-modern Europe, see: Marco Spallanzani, Produzione commercio e con-
sumo dei panni di lana, nei secoli 12.–18.: Atti della seconda Settimana
di studio, 10–16 aprile 1970 (Firenze, 1976); Giovanni Luigi Fontana
and Gerard Gayot, eds., Wool: Products and Markets (13th-20th century)
(Padova, 2004); David Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge History of Western
Textile (Cambridge, 2003), vol. 2.
2. For the Americas, where woollen industry was sometimes mixed to cot-
ton industry, see Fernando Silva Santisteban, Los obrajes en el Virreinato
del Peru (Lima, 1964); Richard J. Salvucci, Textiles and Capitalism
in Mexico: An Economic History of the Obrajes, 1539–1840 (Princeton,
1987); Manuel Miño Grijalva, Obrajes y tejedores de Nueva Espana, 1700–
1810 (Madrid, 1990).
3. 
Hermann van der Wee, ‘The Western European’, in The Cambridge
History of Western Textile, pp. 397–472; Joan Thirsk, ‘Knitting and knit-
ware, c. 1500–1780’, in The Cambridge History of Western Textile, pp.
562–583.
6 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURING IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN … 163

4. On textile workers, see Lex Heerma van Voss, Els Hiemstra-Kuperus,
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, eds., The Ashgate Companion to the
History of Textile Workers, 1650–2000 (Farnham, 2010).
5. I quote here the example made by Marcel van der Linden concern-
ing mining villages. See Marcel van der Linden, Globalizing Labour
Historiography: The IISH Approach (Amsterdam, 2002), p. 3.
6. Jan Lucassen, ed., Global Labour History: A State of the Art (Bern,
2008); Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the World: Essays Toward a
Global Labor History (Leiden, 2008); Karin Hofmeester and Christine
Moll-Murata, eds., ‘The Joy and Pain of Work: Global Attitudes
and Valuations, 1500–1650’, International Review of Social History,
Supplement, 19 - 2011, (Cambridge, 2011); Jan Lucassen, Outline of a
History of Labour (Amsterdam, 2013).
7. On commodity chain analysis in sociology, see especially: Terence K.
Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘Commodity Chains in the World-
Economy Prior to 1800’, Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 10, no.
1 (July 1986), 157–170; Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz,
Commodity Chain and Global Capitalism (Westport, 1994); Immanuel
Wallerstein, ‘Introduction’, Review (Fernand Braudel Center)
23, 1 (2000), 1–13; Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘Next Steps’, Review
(Fernand Braudel Center) 23, 1 (2000), 197–199; Y. Eyüp Özveren,
‘Shipbuilding, 1590–1790’, Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 23, 1
(2000), 15–86; Sheila Pelizzon, ‘Grain Flour, 1590–1790’, Review
(Fernand Braudel Center) 23, 1 (2000), 87–195. See also Robert Salais
and Laurent Thevenot, Le travail: marches, règles, conventions (Paris,
1986). On historical studies, see especially the innovative work by Karin
Hofmeester: ‘Working for Diamonds from the sixteenthto the twenti-
eth Century’, in Working on Labor. Essays in Honor of Jan Lucassen, eds.
Marcel van der Linden and Leo Lucassen (Leiden and Boston, 2012), pp.
19–46; Karin Hofmeester, ‘Les diamants, de la mine à la bague: pour une
histoire globale du travail au moyen d’un article de luxe’, Le Mouvement
Social, 241, 4 (2012), 65–68; Karin Hofmeester, ‘Shifting Trajectories of
Diamond Processing: From India to Europe and Back, from the Fifteenth
Century to the Twentieth’, Journal of Global History 8, 1 (2013), 25–49.
See also: Carlos Marichal, Steven C. Topik and Frank L. Frank, From
Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of
the World Economy, 1500–2000 (Durham, 2006).
8. Leo Lucassen, ‘Working together: new directions in global labour his-
tory’, Journal of Global History, 11, 1 (2016), 66–87.
9. See Christian G. De Vito, ‘New Perspectives on Global Labour History:
Introduction’, Workers of the World, special issue on ‘New Perspectives on
Global Labour History’, 1, 3 (2013), 7–31; Christian G. De Vito, ‘Verso
164 A. Caracausi

una microstoria translocale (micro-spatial history)’, Quaderni Storici, 3

(2015), 815–833.
10. On these topics see Francesca Trivellato, ‘Is There a Future for Italian
Microhistory in the Age of Global History?’, California Italian Studies
2, 1, 1 (2011); Filippo de Vivo, ‘Prospect or Refuge? Microhistory,
History on the Large Scale: A Response’, Cultural and Social History
7, 3, 1 (2010), 387–397; and the introduction of this volume. On the
‘micro-history on a small scale’, see Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity
of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade
in the Early Modern Period (New Haven, 2009), esp. pp. 7–10.
11. Van der Linden, ‘Globalizing Labour Historiography’, pp. 2–3; Van der
Linden, Workers of the World, p. 6.
12. I use the term boxes with reference to commodity chain analysis. See
Gereffi, Korzeniewicz, Commodity Chain and Global Capitalism, 2.
13. Gereffi, Korzeniewicz, Commodity Chain and Global Capitalism, 2.
14. Hopkins and Wallerstein, ‘Commodity Chains’, pp. 19–20.
15. On this point see also A.W. Carus and Sheilagh Ogilvie. ‘Turning
Qualitative into Quantitative Evidence: A Well-Used Method Made
explicit’, The Economic History Review 62, 4 (2009), 893–925.
16. See Marcel van der Linden, ‘Enjeux pour une histoire mondiale du tra-
vail’, Le Mouvement Social, 4 (2012), pp. 241, 16; and the introduction
of this volume.
17. For the other elements of the commodity chain, I have largely relied on
secondary literature. Of course, one could multiply the archives, depend-
ing on the ‘boxes’ under investigation. In the case of the Padua-based
wool commodity chain, they could span from the areas of supplying the
raw materials (in Valencia and Granada in Spain, or Foggia and Naples
in Southern Italy) or where the finished products were sold (Graz,
Innsbruck and Wien in Austria).
18. For Spanish wool: State Archive of Padua (henceforth ASP), Università
della lana (henceforth UL), 49, c. 401r; 390, c. 96r; 385, c. 87v; 395, c.
86r; 406, c. 262r; 279, cc. 88r–v; for other Italian wools, see ASP, UL,
387, c. 12r; 279, cc. 104v–105r; 282, c. 322r; 191, cc. 6v–7r. For wool
production in these areas, see also: John A. Marino, Pastoral Economics
in the Kingdom of Naples (Baltimore, 1988); Walter Panciera, ‘La tran-
sumanza nella pianura veneta (secc. XVI–XVIII)’, in Le Migrazioni in
Europa, secc. XIII–XVIII, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Firenze 1994),
pp. 371–382; Roberto Rossi, La Lana nel Regno di Napoli nel 17. secolo:
Produzione e Commercio (Torino, 2007); Rafael María Girón Pascual,
‘Los lavaderos de lana de Huéscar (Granada) y el comercio genovés en
la edad moderna’, in Génova y la Monarquía Hispánica (1528–1713),
6 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURING IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN … 165

eds. Manuel Herrero Sánchez, Yasmina Rocío Ben Yessef Garfia, Carlo
Bitossi, Dino Puncuh (Genova 2011), Vol. 1, pp. 191–202.
19. ASP, UL, 336, cc. 163r–178v (year 1552); 342, cc. 155v–233v (1563);
343, cc. 58r–75v (1503), 110v–136r (1525), 162r–210v (1547),
264r–331v (1553), 314v-262r (1552); 344, cc. 124r–171v (1563);
345, cc. 1r–72v (1563); 347, cc. 3r–49v (1576), 79r–104v (1576); 385,
205v–206r (1549); 407, cc. 225r–226r; Notarile (henceforth N), 1015,
c. 96r; 4093, c. 573v, 4 October 1568 (sheeps 124); 4094, c. 202r, 28
November 1569 (48); b. 4844, c. 194v, 4 February 1549 (37); 4849, c.
69r, 30 December 1556 (94); 4850, c. 191v, 4 June 1559 (119); 1765,
c. 762r, 13 June 1561 (46), c. 743r, 14 June 1561 (40), c. 744r, 14 June
1561 (55), c. 762r, 28 June 1561 (34); 1766, c. 26r, 27 January 1562
(33), c. 139r, 18 April 1562 (18); c. 161r, 28 April 1562 (30 e 1/2);
c. 286r, 3 December 1562 (13), 479r, 28 December 1562 (28); 1767,
c. 148r, 21 April 1564 (45); c. 151r, 21 April 1564, (16); c. 153r, 21
April 1564 (78); c. 162r, 24 April 1564 (60); c. 174, 2 May 1564 (16),
c. 183r, 4 May 1564 (16 1/2), c. 202r, 15 May 1564 (25), c. 421r, 15
December 1564 (66); 4055, c. 6r, 3 July 1565 (46), c. 7r–v, 3 July 1565
(36), c. 39r, 14 July 1565 (58), c. 58r, 23 July 1565 (43); 4056, c. 6r,
3 January 1568 (36), c. 423r, 15 May 1568 (40), c. 425r, 17 May 1568
(34), c. 426r, 17 May 1568 (50), c. 426r, 18 May 1568 (32), c. 426r,
18 May 1568 (34); 4061, c. 75r, 9 August 1568 (25), c. 76r, 9 August
1568 (24).
20. ASP, UL, 279, c. 122v; 407, c. 276r–v; 395, cc. 201r; 279, c. 143r; 407,
c. 207r; 407, cc. 225r–226r; 86, c. 423v.
21. ASP, 367, cc. 79r–104v, ad vocem ‘Loredan’; 434, cc. 110v–136v, ad
vocem ‘Contarini’; 343, cc. 264r–231v, ad vocem ‘Bernardino Maffei’;
397, cc. 122r e segg, ad vocem ‘Ca’ Buzzacarini’; 279, c. 99v, ad vocem
‘Papafava’.
22. Andrea Caracausi, ‘The wool trade, Venice and the Mediterranean
Cities during the late sixteenth century’, in Commercial Networks and
European Cities (1400–1800), eds. Andrea Caracausi and Christof Jeggle
(London, 2014), pp. 201–222. On this trade between Italy and Spain,
see also Rafael María Girón Pascual, ‘Mercaderes milaneses y regidores
de Huéscar en el siglo XVIlos Cernúsculo’, in Campesinos, nobles y merca-
deres : Huéscar y el Reino de Granada en los siglos XVI y XVII, ed. Julián
Pablo Díaz López (Huéscar, 2005), pp. 51–74; Edoardo Grendi, I Balbi:
una famiglia genovese fra Spagna e Impero (Torino, 1997); Francesco
Ammannati and Blanca M. González Talavera, ‘The Astudillo Partnership
and the Spanish “Nation” in Sixteenth-Century Florence’, in Commercial
Networks and European Cities, pp. 121–136.
166 A. Caracausi

23. ASP, UL, 279, cc. 116r–117v, 8 April 1646.

24. Andrea Caracausi, Dentro la bottega. Culture del lavoro in una città d’età
moderna (Venezia, 2008), pp. 179–189.
25. ASP, UL, 79, c. 393v e 397r; 385, c. 46r; 394, c. 192v–194r, c. 295r;
398, c. 221r; 60, c. 311v; 79, c. 415v.
26. ASP, UL, 299, c. 326r; 79, c. 396v.
27. ASP, UL, 79, c. 305r, 6 September 1577; 463, c. 256v; 49, c. 541r; 51, c.
428r, 15 October 1533; 301, c. 120r, 22 May 1577.
28. ASP, UL, 59, c. 211r, 22 May 1543; 61, c. 41r–v, 8 June 1546.
29. ASP, UL, 49, c. 285v; 191, cc. 9r, 26 November 1546, 22r, 200r–208v,
20 December 1588; 2, c. 29r–v, 12 March 1629; 61, c. 81r–v, 20
October 1546; 63, c. 539r, 14 April 1551; 61, 211v, 28 June 1546.
30. ASP, UL, 59, c. 514v, 24 July 1545; 60, c. 9v, 15 October 1544; 79, c.
103v, 23 February 1576; 67, c. 374v, 19 December 1555; 61, c. 215v,
30 June 1546, c. 224v, 12 July 1546.
31. ASP, UL, 406, c. 301r; ASP, Fondi famiglia, Manzoni, b. 11.
32. ASP, UL, 79, c. 103v, 23 February 1576; 67, c. 374v, 19 December
1555.
33. Relazioni dei rettori veneti in Terraferma, IV, Podestaria e Capitanato
di Padova (Milano, 1975) 42, 152; Giuseppe Cirillo, La Trama Sottile.
Protoindustrie e Baronaggi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia (secoli XVI–XIX)
(Pratola Serra, 2002), 13, 43–44; ASP, N, 2938, c. 574r, 27 February
1549; 1768, cc. 94r–95r, 30 March 1566; UL, 282, cc. 328r, 10 June
1691; 522, c. 101r.
34. ASP, UL, 60, c. 545r, 3 March 1554; 63, c. 134r, 19 November 1550;
63, c. 164v, 18 February 1551; 63, c. 483v, 17 June 1551; 66, c. 492r, 9
November 1554; 65, c. 291v, 8 February 1552; 61, c. 511v, 4 February
1546; 62, c. 75v, 14 July 1547, c. 344r, 4 June 1548; 63, c. 134r, 19
November 1550, c. 483v, 17 June 1551; 64, c. 277r, 23 October 1550,
c. 407v, 3 June 1550; 65, c. 129r, 2 June 1552, c. 191r, 11 January
1553, c. 282r, 15 January 1552, c. 283r, 19 January 1552, c. 291v, 8
February1552, c. 351r, 11 May 1552, 9 May 1552, c. 461r, 9 March
1553; 66, c. 17v, 4 December 1553, c. 183r, 9 January 1554.
35. ASP, N, 2938, c. 574r, 27 February 1549; 1768, cc. 94r–95r, 30 March
1566, Rettori, 42 and 152; Cirillo, La trama sottile, 13, 43–44. For later
periods, see: ASP, UL, 282, cc. 328r, 10 June 1691.
36. Some example in: ASP, N, 4966, c. 154r, 17 December 1538, c. 154r, 10
June 1540, c. 208r (14 October 1542); 3010, c. 17r (26 January 1543),
153; UL, 63, c. 420v (2 June 1551); 67, c. 118r (30 March 1553); 68,
c. 43r (3 August 1556); 70, c. 403v (1560), 77, cc. 334r–336r (1565);
388, c. 2v (12 January 1559); c. 254r (4 September 1577), 77, c. 581r,
(1561), 84, c. 543r (1594); 277, c. 156r (2 August); 67, cc. 116r–v;
6 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURING IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN … 167

391, c. 240r (1575). See in general, Patrick Chorley, ‘The Evolution of

the Woollen, 1300–1700’, in Nicholas B. Harte ed., The New Draperies
in the Low Countries and England, 1300–1800 (Oxford, 1997) 7–34; van
der Wee, ‘The Western European’, 428–452.
37. For an overview: Corine Maitte, ‘Production et marchés de la laine,
époque médievale et moderne’, in Wool: Products and Markets (thir-
teenth–twentieth century), eds. Giovanni Luigi Fontana and Gerard
Gayot (Padova, 2004), pp. 15–21. For early modern Italy see espe-
cially: Walter Panciera, L’arte Matrice: I Lanifici della Repubblica di
Venezia nei Secoli 17. e 18. (Treviso, 1996); Corine Maitte, La trame
incertaine: le monde textile de Prato, 18.–19. siécles (Villeneuve-d’Ascq,
2001); Renzo Paolo Corritore, ‘La crisi di struttura degli anni Ottanta
del 16. secolo nello Stato di Milano: le industrie della lana’, Storia
Economica 3, 1 (2000), 61–95, Edoardo Demo, L’ Anima della Città:
l’Industria Tessile a Verona e Vicenza (Milano, 2001); Francesco Maria
Vianello, Seta Fine e Panni Grossi: Manifatture e Commerci nel Vicentino,
1570–1700 (Milano, 2004); Francesco Ammannati, ‘Craft Guild
Legislation and Woollen Production: The Florentine Arte Della Lana in
the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, in Innovation and Creativity in
Late Medieval and Early Modern European Cities, eds. Bert De Munck
and Karel Davids (Aldershot, 2014), pp. 51–80; Francesco Ammannati,
‘Florentine Woolen Manufacture in the Sixteenth Century: Crisis and
New Entrepreneurial Strategies’, Business and Economic History On-Line
7 (2009), 1–9; Cirillo, La Trama Sottile.
38. ASP, UL, 77, c. 163r, 18 August 1570, as stated by Gaspare Gucchiarolo,
who mentioned that ‘spinning women often came to pick up their
pay » or « went to collect their money from the Antonio firm (cap
maker)’.
39. ASP, UL, 49, c. 280r, 20 September 1527.
40. See also for other centuries: Cherubini, ‘I lavoratori nell’Italia dei sec-
oli XIII–XV: considerazioni storiografiche e prospettive di ricerca’, in
Artigiani e salariati. Il mondo del lavoro nell’Italia dei secoli XII–XV
(Pistoia, 1984), 20–21; Dini, ‘I lavoratori dell’arte della lana a Firenze
nel XIV e XV secolo’, in Artigiani e salariati, 58–9; Panciera, ‘Padova,
1704: “L’Antica Unione de’ Poveri Lanieri” contro “la ricca Università
dell’Arte della Lana”’, Quaderni storici, 29 (1994), 629–653.
41. On this topic see: Christian Bessy and François Eymard-Duvernay, Les
Intermédiaires du Marché du Travail (Paris, 1997); Bosma Ulbe, Elise
van Nederveen Meerkerk and Aditya Sarkar, eds., ‘Mediating Labour:
Worldwide Labour Intermediation in the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries’, International Review of Social History, Vol. 57 Special Issue
(December 2012); Ulbe Bosma, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, and
168 A. Caracausi

Aditya Sarkar. “Mediating Labour: An Introduction”, International

Review of Social History 57, Supplement S20 (December 2012), 1–15;
Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik, eds., The
History of Labour Intermediation: Institutions and Finding Employment
in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (New York, 2015).
42. ASP, UL, 398, trial n. 9.
43. On the proto-industrial model see Frederick Mendels, ‘Proto-
Industrialisation: the First Phase of the Industrialization Process’,
The Journal of Economic History, 32 (1972), 241–261; Peter
Kriedte, Hans Medick and Jürgen Schlumbohm, Industrialization
before Industrialization: Rural Industry in the Genesis of Capitalism
(Cambridge, 1981).
44. ASP, UL, 355, cc. 161v–208r, (year 1626).
45. ASP, UL, 398, cc. 176–181, 12 February 1602.
46. Panciera, L’arte matrice.
47. Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore and
London, 2000), pp. 177–185; Natalie Rothstein, ‘Silk in the early mod-
ern period, c. 1500–1780’, in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles,
vol. 2, 528–562; Carlo Marco Belfanti, ‘The Civilization of Fashion: At
the Origins of a Western Social Institution’, Journal of Social History 43,
2 (2009), 261–283.
48. Van der Wee, ‘The Western European’, pp. 435–6.
49. Carlo Marco Belfanti, ‘Maglie e calze’, in Storia d’Italia, Annali 19, La
moda, eds. Carlo Marco Belfanti and Fabio Giusberti, (Torino 2003), pp.
583–623, 590; Joan Thirsk, ‘Knitting and knitware, c. 1500–1780’, pp.
562–583; Van der Wee, ‘The Western European’, p. 43.
50. See ASP, UL, 350, c. 41r, 8 March 1575; 389, c. 240r, 12 June 1577;
b. 86, c. 29r, 23 October 1620 and c. 475v, 13 February 1617; b.
81, c. 289v, 2 March 1584 and c. 452v, 8 Mai 1582; 463, c. 281v, 30
December 1658.
51. ASP, Estimi miscellanea, 22, “elenco drappieri”; UL, 399, c. 18v;
Panciera, L’Arte Matrice, p. 16; Relazioni, p. 42.
52. On the evolution of Venetian woollen industry see Sella, ‘Les mouve-
ments longs de l’industrie lainière à Venise aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles’,
Annales E. S. C., 12 (1957), 25–51; Panciera, L’arte matrice, 39–51.
53. See Andrea Caracausi, ‘Beaten Children and Women’s Work in Early
Modern Italy’, Past and Present, 222, 1 (2014), 95–128.
54. We have firms with an average production that ranks about 100–150 units
and we should not ignore some exceptional cases, with years particularly
significant and worthy of mention: the 181 clothes made by the Venetian
noblemen Sanudo in 1584; 211 made by the Belfante in 1577 or 203
and 200 made by the Zambellis in 1581 and in 1584. Over the years
there was a gradual concentration of production in a smaller number of
6 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURING IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN … 169

companies: the top 10 in 1535 produced 35% of all cloth made in Padua;
in 1559 50.86%, in 1580 67.19%.
55. ASP, UL, 399, cc. 18r-v e segg.
56. On this topic, see Andrea Caracausi, ‘Enforcing contracts through
guild courts: the case of apprenticeship disputes in early modern Italy’,
forthcoming.
57. See on proto-industrialization Frederick Mendels, ‘Proto-Industrialisation:
the First Phase of the Industrialization Process’, The Journal of Economic
History, 32 (1972), 241–261.
58. See Jan De Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the
Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge, 2008).
59. On the labour in hospitals and houses of charity, see Caracausi, ‘Beaten
Children’; on the contract enforcement in apprenticeship contracts, see
Caracausi, ‘Enforcing contracts’.
60. See also Lucassen, Outline, 34.
61. Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics and the
Eighteenth-Century French Trades (Cambridge, 1989), 40; Andrea
Caracausi, ‘I giusti salari nelle manifatture della lana di Padova e Firenze
(secc. XVI–XVII)’, Quaderni storici, 136 (2010), 3, 857–884; Andrea
Caracausi, ‘A chi appartiene il lavoro? Riflessioni per la storia del lav-
oro in età moderna’, in Microstoria. A Venticinque Anni da L’Eredità
Immateriale, ed. Paola Lanaro (Milano, 2011), pp. 153–167; Andrea
Caracausi, ‘The Just Wage in Early Modern Italy. A Reflection on
Zacchia’s De Salario seu Operariorum Mercede’, International Review of
Social History, 56 (2011), Supplement 19, 107–124.
62. Sonenscher, Work and Wages, p. 192.
63. Caracausi, ‘The Just Wage’, 123–124.
64. Caracausi, Dentro la bottega, 206–210. With reference to guild control
on quality product see: Andrea Caracausi, ‘Information Asymmetries
and Craft Guilds in Pre-Modern Markets: Evidence from Italian Proto-
Industry’, The Economic History Review, first published on-line 27
September 2016.
65. John Munro, ‘South German silver, European textiles, and Venetian trade
with the Levant and Ottoman Empire, c. 1370 to c. 1720: a non-Mer-
cantilist approach to the balance of payment problem’, in Relazioni eco-
nomiche tra Europa e mondo islamico, secoli XII – XVII, ed. Simonetta
Cavaciocchi (Firenze, 2007), pp. 905–60; See also M. Greene, ‘Beyond
the Northern invasion: the Mediterranean in the seventeenth century’,
Past and Present, 174, 1 (2000), 41–70; Maria Fusaro, ‘Cooperating
mercantile networks in the early modern Mediterranean’, The Economic
History Review, 65, 2 (May 2012) 701–718; Maartje van Gelder,
Trading Places: the Netherlandish Merchants in Early Modern Venice
(Leiden-Boston, 2009).
 CHAPTER 7

Connected Singularities: Convict

Labour in Late Colonial Spanish America
(1760s–1800)

Christian G. De Vito

Why Convict Labour?

Throughout history, the forced labour performed by individuals under
penal and/or administrative control (i.e. convict labour) has been a seem-
ingly ubiquitous phenomenon. At the same time, scratching below the
apparently uniform surface of convict labour reveals fundamental differ-
ences related to the social construction of crime, ‘the criminal’ and pun-
ishment, and the role it had within distinct labour regimes. In a recent
publication, Alex Lichtenstein and I have suggested that, rather than

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European
Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme
(FP/2007–2013)/ERC Grant Agreement 312542. For more information about
the overall project ‘The Carceral Archipelago: transnational circulations in global
perspectives, 1415–1960’, see: http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/history/
research/grants/CArchipelago/CArchipelago.

C.G. De Vito (*)

Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 171

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_7
172 C.G. De Vito

seeking to provide an abstract definition of convict labour, scholars may

want to address ‘the historical conditions under which convict labour has
been produced and exploited in the larger process of the commodifica-
tion of labour’.1 In other words, we have proposed a move away from
answering the question ‘what is convict labour?’ through a universal defi-
nition and taxonomy, and towards an interrogation of the function that
convict labour played within specific contexts and amongst other labour
relations—that is, ‘why convict labour?’ In our view, this approach pre-
sents a two-fold advantage: on the one hand, it foregrounds discontinui-
ties in the role of convict labour in space and time; on the other, it allows
for understanding convict labour as part of an integrated labour market,
in dialectic with other (coerced and ‘free’) labour relations.
The shift from a ‘universal’ definition of convict labour to the study
of its contextual and relational function raises broad epistemological
issues. In particular, it highlights the tension between the universality of
categories and the singularity of sites, and it foregrounds the dialectics
between the specificity and connectedness of each site.2 In other words,
the double problem emerges of how to deal with the uncountable variety
of historical circumstances and processes hidden beneath the apparently
flat surface of the concept ‘convict labour’; and how to fully acknowl-
edge that prisoners performed their work in very diverse, yet connected,
localities. In undertaking this task, two pitfalls seem inevitable: abstract-
ing from historical complexity can marginalize the specificity of con-
textual configurations; conversely, focusing exclusively on singularities
involves the risk of being trapped in localism, and losing the broader spa-
tial scope of social processes. Joining the endeavour of this volume, this
chapter suggests that both issues can be overcome by taking a micro-
spatial perspective that integrates the following elements: a micro-ana-
lytical approach which highlights discontinuity intime and space, and
implies the rejection of macro-analytical procedures of generalization
and comparison based on predetermined categories and units; and a spa-
tially aware perspective which foregrounds specific connections between
contexts, instead of focusing exclusively on either the local or the global
scope.
In this chapter I take up these issues by investigating the experiences
of convict labour in the presidios, or military outposts, of Spanish Havana
(Cuba) and Puerto de la Soledad (Malvinas/Falklands) in the four dec-
ades that followed the Seven Years’ War (1754–1763). Prisoners in both
sites were sentenced to the same punishments—penal transportation
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 173

and impressment in the army or the navy—and were first and foremost
occupied in building and repairing military and non-military infrastruc-
ture. However, the two sites had distinct characteristics, were differently
viewed by historical actors, and diversely connected with other places
and regions within and beyond the Spanish dominions. Consequently, in
each site convict labour took on a separate function, transported convicts
entered into contact with distinct networks of free and unfree labour and
penal transportation itself created multiple ‘networks of Empire’.3
The distinct configurations and roles of convict labour in Havana
and Puerto de la Soledad, described in the next section, warn us against
the use of macro-analytical categories and methodologies. Indeed, if
we contented ourselves with describing convict labour as a phenom-
enon with universal characteristics, we would easily categorize Havana
as ‘centre’ and Puerto de la Soledad as ‘periphery’ in the geopolitics of
Spanish American convict labour. Consequently, we would postulate the
work of the thousand prisoners who rebuilt the fortresses of Havana in
the early 1770s to be more representative of convict labour in Spanish
America than the one performed by the twenty-two non-military con-
victs that forcibly lived in the Malvinas in the same period. In so doing,
the diversity of the convicts’ contributions to empire building and eco-
nomic development would be lost. Micro-history provides an alternative
perspective. In particular, Grendi’s concept of the ‘exceptional nor-
mal’ allows us to acknowledge that each context is a unique configura-
tion and that singular configurations construct the discontinuous fabric
of history.4 This means that the context of Havana was as exceptional
as the one in the Malvinas; indeed, that every site of convict transpor-
tation was unique, and that the historical ‘normality’ of convict labour
was made up of innumerable singular configurations such as those pre-
sented here. Paraphrasing what Schiel and Hanß have recently written
about slavery, I am arguing that convict labour is ‘a context-specific
social relationship’5: convicts may have performed similar tasks across
various sites, but the function of their work can only be understood
by studying its entanglements with other labour relations within spe-
cific contexts. More generally, I contend that the concept of ‘repre-
sentativeness’ and the ‘centre’/‘periphery’ divide in historical research
and social sciences should be questioned, as they imply the postula-
tion of an abstract standard by which historical complexity is ‘puri-
fied’ from its specific determinations.6 Radeff’s suggestion to substitute
the duality ‘centre’/‘periphery’ with the concepts of ‘centralities’ and
174 C.G. De Vito

‘de-centralities’ offers an alternative way to addressing the shifting rela-

tionships that exist between the multiple nodes of extended networks,
depending on time, changing power relationships and the specific object
being researched.7 Regarding the contexts discussed in this chapter, it
highlights that both Havana and Puerto de la Soledad simultaneously
played ‘central’ and ‘de-central’ roles vis-à-vis other sites of convict trans-
portation and convict labour. This is arguably a more accurate concep-
tualization of the shifting relationship among sites, which additionally
allows for a thorough analysis of their connected nature, as I will show in
the third section.

The ‘Exceptional Normal’

In the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, the Spanish empire underwent
major changes as a result of the growing threat foreign imperial pow-
ers posed to the Crown’s dominions.8 In particular, the shock caused by
the British occupations of Havana (August 1762–July 1763) and Manila
(November 1762–January 1764) triggered fundamental military reforms
that encompassed the creation of local militias, considerable relocation of
troops from peninsular Spain to fixed battalions in the Viceroyalties over-
seas, and the rationalization of the defense system in the borderlands.
The need to prevent illegal trade along the Spanish American coasts and
reduce the political power of monopolist merchants in the peninsula
additionally prompted the gradual liberalisation of trade (comercio libre),
that is, a de facto state-controlled system of trade permits which allowed
for the multiplication of maritime routes and destinations. At the same
time, voyages of exploration and colonisation by France, Britain, Russia
and Portugal in the Pacific and the Atlantic, coincided with similar activi-
ties by the Spanish Crown. The latter included expeditions to Tahiti,
Fernando Poo (Gulf of Guinea) and Australia, the occupation of foreign
enclaves such as the former Portuguese Colonia do Sacramento (1777),
and the creation of new settlements along the coasts of North California,
Araucanía and Patagonia. Not only was the impact of these processes dif-
ferent in each site, but each locality also contributed distinctly to their
making. Consequently, the work performed by prisoners also took on
different functions, as the figures of standing convicts, their position in
the workforce and the shifts in the composition of the workforce reveal.
Convicts in Havana were part of a dynamic urban site that by the late
eighteenth century numbered approximately fifty thousand inhabitants
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 175

Table 7.1 Composition of the workforce in the construction sites of Havana,

1763–1777

Date Soldiers Civilians Convicts Free Free King’s Slaves Total

(paisa- (dester- mulattoes blacks slaves
nos) rados)

1763 795*
1764 1967*
1765 538* 1396* 2249*
1766
1767 964* 1158* 2309*
1768 773* 1072* 2004*
20.6.1772 149 160 1130 24 31 447 8 1949
20.1.1773 152 155 1077 17 23 418 5 1847
26.6.1773 156 179 1065 15 26 383 5 1829
28.2.1774 168 132 995 17 28 346 7 1693
3.4.1774 174 145 974 16 26 343 7 1685
3.5.1774 176 145 903 16 26 339 7 1612
3.6.1774 172 137 905 17 27 339 6 1603
8.7.1774 176 145 903 16 26 339 7 1612
6.8.1774 169 166 1045 20 37 337 9 1783
1774 980* 321* 1517*
1775 837* 319* 1318*
8.11.1776 162 101 1131 12 33 289 6 1734
8.12.1776 172 101 1122 13 35 289 6 1738
6.3.1777 184 101 1159 13 28 282 5 1772

and had been shaped by nearly 300 years of colonial encounters and
conflicts. The major fortresses and castles they (re)built in this period
symbolized the importance of Havana as a hub for trade routes connect-
ing peninsular Spain, the Caribbean and the Philippines (the Carrera de
Indias and the Galeón de Manila). In those construction sites, convicts
worked side by side with impressed and voluntary soldiers, free paisanos,
slaves and king’s slaves,9 in overlapping and multiple networks of free
and unfree migration. Table 7.1 integrates data from various sources:10
In the early 1770s, all categories of workers included in the table
were employed in the construction of the fortress complex of San Carlos
de la Cabaña, on the high ground whose seizure had proved essential
to the British conquest of Havana;11 after its completion in 1776, they
worked in the fortification of the Castillo del Príncipe on the hill of
Arostegui. As the priority shifted from one building site to another, con-
victs were moved too, and provided on average from one third to half
176 C.G. De Vito

of the workforce in those building sites, which in turn employed more

than half of the total workforce involved in the reconstruction program.
Moreover, with the exception of some king’s slaves and a few free work-
ers from Campeche and Cuba, who were sometimes employed in the
warehouses, on boats and as builders, the prisoners were the only group
that performed all other kinds of works, such as other building opera-
tions (e.g. the Castles of Matanzas and Jagua), service work in the ware-
houses and on boats for transporting water, food and passengers, and
skilled work (coopers, gunsmiths, postmen). Furthermore, approximately
8–9% of them were employed, on average, in timber extraction for the
building process and c. 5–6% in the transportation of lime and other
building materials—in the latter case they were employed by private con-
tractors. At least until the beginning of 1777, prisoners held in the mili-
tary fortifications also illegally worked for private employers during their
free time, a job that was remunerated and apparently sought after, but
also at the origin of considerable conflict with the authorities and among
the convicts.12 At the same time, prisoners provided the workforce for
highly visible non-military public works, most notably the construction
of the Alameda de Extramuros (today’s Paseo del Prado), initiated by
Governor Marques de la Torre and modelled after those of the European
capitals.13 Finally, when recaptured, escapees from the Havana fortifica-
tions, who amounted to approximately 4% of the total convicted work-
force in February 1774, often ended up working in the sites across the
island they had fled to, such as Matanzas and the new settlement named
Filipina.14
As the table shows, by the early 1770s, desterrados were the most
important component of the workforce inside the Havana military out-
posts, surpassing the number of the king’s slaves that had formed its
majority in the second half of the previous decade. Conversely, the num-
ber of privately owned slaves always remained marginal among this work-
force, mirroring a division of labour that accompanied Cuba’s irresistible
rise to the rung of world leader in sugar cane production in the subse-
quent decades:15 the division between privately owned enslaved labour,
occupied in the growing agricultural (and the domestic) sector(s), and
convict labour and state-owned slaves, employed in the defense and
development of an urban centre that functioned as a hub for long-estab-
lished networks of migration and trade. As I have suggested elsewhere,
direct state control of prisoners and king’s slaves allowed for a high level
of spatial mobility during the relative short time of the sentence of the
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 177

former group (from 2 to 10 years on average) and made convict labour

especially suited for military labour and the building of military and non-
military infrastructures. Conversely, chattel slavery was a lifelong and
hereditary legal status and labour relation that entailed the immobiliza-
tion of the workforce on specific sites, and therefore responded better to
the planters’ economic needs.16
A close connection existed between convicts and those that were
labelled as ‘soldiers’ in the official statistics. Indeed, descriptive sources
indicate that these were military convicts themselves, who became part
of the workforce of the Havana fortifications because of their repeated
desertion from their battalions (Lombardy, Seville, Ireland, Louisiana
and Havana, among others). Following a Royal Order dated 30 March
1773, they were assigned to the public works in the Cuban capital for a
standard period of 6 or 8 years.17
In the same years, the prisoners transported to Puerto de la Soledad
were similarly occupied in building and repairing military and non-
military infrastructures. However, the presence and work of these pre-
sidiarios (or forzados) in that tiny Spanish colony on the Eastern
Malvinas/Falklands were constructed out of the tension between the
need to prevent foreign occupation and the growing awareness of the
lack of economic relevance of that new settlement. Whereas the exploi-
tation of convict labour in Havana was a means to maintain major
infrastructures of commerce and defense, in the Malvinas it had the
function to affirm the sovereignty on, and minimize the costs of, a set-
tlement deprived of any economic significance but of great geopolitical
importance.
As Buschmann has observed, in the second half of the eighteenth cen-
tury, the Malvinas became ‘the gateway to the Pacific’ for their strate-
gic position along the important route of Cape Horn in a period that
marked the end of the Pacific as a‘Spanish Lake’.18 Convict labour played
a major role in keeping that ‘gateway’ and the surrounding area in
Spanish hands.
In April 1758, in the midst of the Seven Years’ War, the Viceroy of
Peru Manuel Amat y Junient called the attention of Secretary of the
Indies Julián de Arriaga to ‘the whisper that goes around in those ter-
ritories, that an English settlement has been established and populated’
in the Malvinas, and on the ‘disastrous’ military and economic conse-
quences that such a colony might have had on the Spanish Dominions.19
In the short term his fears were unmotivated, for no settlement existed
178 C.G. De Vito

in the region at that time. However, in the aftermath of the conflict,

the islands did become a target for competing powers seeking new areas
of colonial expansion. Their strategies of colonization of that territory
with no indigenous population differed greatly, and so did the role of
convicts within them. No convicts were ever transported to the French
and the British settlements in the islands. The former, founded on 17
March 1764 in Port Louis, Eastern Malvinas, was a settler colony with
a striking non-military character; its population was largely formed by
Acadians from Western Canada, descendants of the seventeenth-century
French settlers and who during the Seven Years’ War had been mas-
sively deported to North American territories, Spanish Louisiana and
France after the British took hold on the region.20 The British settlement
founded in 1765 in Port Egmont, Western Malvinas, was a tiny military
outpost, and totally dependent on the metropole: in December 1769,
seventy-eight men lived there, all of them belonging to the crews of the
frigates Famer and Favorite.21 Conversely, the composition of the popu-
lation in the Spanish settlement created on 2 April 1767 in Port Louis
and renamed Puerto de la Soledad, mirrored the attempt to balance geo-
political and financial imperatives by mixing military and civil settlers,
and free and unfree labour. In that context, convicts played an important
role from the start, and their number—albeit relatively low—increased as
the settlement became more stable. The available data are synthesized in
Table 7.2:22
The constant presence of presidiarios reduced the financial risks
involved in settlement, by providing a relatively cheap workforce for
building and repairing the infrastructures. Due to the climate, the poor
quality of the construction materials and the difficulties involved in pro-
curing them, this was truly Sisyphus’ work, which explains why, fluctua-
tions, amnesties and releases notwithstanding, a bulk of prisoners were
always kept in the settlement. Between April 1767 and March 1768,
convicts contributed to the building of twenty-seven barracks and huts,
including one chapel, two rooms and one kitchen for the chaplains, four
warehouses, a ten-room hospital, two blacksmith’s forges, two ovens, the
houses of the officers and the military barracks that the convicts shared
with soldiers, artisans and mariners.23 The subsistence of those buildings,
as governor Felipe Ruiz Puente noticed, ‘was the result of perpetual care’
and of relatively frequent periods of major works such as those under-
taken in May and November 1771, and September 1773.24 The military
infrastructure, however, remained largely insufficient at least until April
 7

Table 7.2 Population of Puerto de la Soledad, Malvinas, 1767–1785

24.2.1767 13.10.1768 19.6.1771 4.4.1774 15.2.1777 20.2.1781 22.5.1785

Top officers 5 13 12 9 7 8 8
Lower officers* 5 16 11 10 17 12
Soldiers and artillerymen 30 32 58 33 28 24 46
Mariners 16 12 18 8 27 23
Artisans (maestranza) 18 10 8 8
Settlers (havitantes) 2
Domestic servants (criados) 18 8 10 10
Convicts (presidiarios) 5 6 15 22 22 13 30
King’s slaves 1
Women 20 ? 3 1
Children ? 11 2
Total population 45 ** 124 133 115 86 99 129
Percentage convicts/total population (%) 11 4.8 11.3 19.1 25.6 13.1 23.2
CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE …
179
180 C.G. De Vito

1774, when it consisted only of a ‘ruined wall of turf’.25 Probably as

a consequence of the increased number of presidiarios, the state of the
buildings considerably improved by 1777. By then, wooden military
infrastructures had been built on three locations, and new stone houses,
a warehouse and a hospital existed.26
In their correspondence with Madrid, colonial officers referred to the
employment of forzados (convicts) and mariners as the ‘common way’
to perform those tasks in the islands.27 The association between the two
groups of workers points to the practice of impressment in the royal navy
of smugglers (contrabandistas) and vagrants from the Rio de la Plata ter-
ritories, often as a substitution for presidio sentences.28 Impressment in
the army, as a punishment in itself and as an alternative to a presidio sen-
tence, was also an ordinary form of recruitment throughout the Spanish
empire, and especially affected destinations like Puerto de la Soledad
which were not attractive to voluntary soldiers.
Important changes in the composition of the population took place
in the Spanish settlement between June 1771 and February 1777: a shift
in the model of colonization resulted from the growing awareness of the
unproductive nature of the colony, and the deterioration of the living
conditions in it. That transition had a considerable impact on the role of
convicts in the settlement.29
Just a few months after the colony was established, it became clear that
‘the soil and the climate offer nothing’, as Ruiz Puente wrote in March
1768.30 Indeed the ‘sterility of the island’ and the ‘cruel’ climate became
a leitmotiv in the officer’s correspondence with his superiors in Spain.31
The climax was reached in a dramatic letter the governor sent to Arriaga
on 10 February 1769, in which he referred to his presence in Puerto de
la Soledad as an ‘exile’, and implored: ‘Enough, my Lord, enough of the
Malvinas… No similar outpost exists in the populated world; it’s the most
ruined and useless site that can be thought of’.32 Geopolitical imperatives
made it impossible to abandon the islands,33 but living conditions in the
settlement deteriorated. The Acadian families had all left by 1770.34 Ruiz
Puente and other officers did their best to be transferred to other post-
ings, albeit with doubtful success in the short term.35 In the autumn of
1771, facing the failure of the authorities in Buenos Aires to provide vital
support, and as the first signs of an epidemic of scurvy appeared, all pre-
sidiarios, most of the troops and a few officers planned a mutiny: once
discovered, they were punished with a transfer to the mainland that to
most of them must have appeared a desirable outcome.36
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 181

A longer-term solution was set up jointly by the out-going governor

Ruiz Puente and his successor Francisco Gil y Lemos at the end of April
1773, and was implemented one year later, on the eve of the British aban-
donment of Port Egmont.37 The key points were that no formal settle-
ment should be kept and that settlers and artisans were to be repatriated.
All inhabitants were to be replaced annually, so that ‘the consolation of
the limited time [they will have to reside there] will dispel their terror for
that navigation and destination’. The artisans would be substituted with
mariners with skills as carpenters, blacksmiths and bricklayers, among oth-
ers,38 in a clear attempt to reduce the total costs of the settlement.
The ‘new method’—as it was called in the official correspondence39—
increased the absolute number and the percentage of non-military con-
victs and at the same time augmented the number and percentage of
mariners and soldiers, both groups including a variable proportion of
military convicts. All in all, the new system of colonization, which was
shaped by the tension between geopolitical and financial imperatives,
foregrounded convicts as a cheap and flexible workforce, in striking
contrast with their absence in the French settler colony and the British
military-only settlement of the second half of the 1760s. Accordingly,
the system of annual replacement (relevo) did not apply to the convicts,
whose length of stay on the islands depended on labour requirements as
well as, and usually rather than, on legal motivations.

Connections
The shortage of workforce in Havana and the need to populate the new
settlement in the Malvinas activated distinct networks of migration. In
turn, different migration flows affected the mix of labour relations that
existed in each location. In the building sites, convicts therefore worked
side by side with king’s slaves in Havana and with sailors in Puerto de
la Soledad: two diverse combinations that influenced the (self-)percep-
tions and representations of convict labour. Moreover, each local con-
vict population had specific characteristics, depending on the multiple
routes on which the provision of prisoners was based. Indeed, funda-
mental differences existed between the peninsular vagrants, the Mexican
bandoleros and the Apache prisoners of war transported to Havana, and
between them and the contrabandistas (smugglers) and the indios pam-
pas deported to the Malvinas.
182 C.G. De Vito

Acknowledging the contextual diversity of convict labour does not

amount to accepting a post-modernist narrative of history as a juxtaposi-
tion of irreducibly singular fragments.40 Conversely, in this section I view
the unicity of Havana and Puerto de la Soledad, and of the experience
of convict labour within them, as the result of the differentiated connec-
tions of each site.
Between the late 1760s and the early 1770s, a complex administra-
tive process unfolded, with the goal to provide a constant flow of con-
victs to Havana and San Juan (Puerto Rico).41 In peninsular Spain,
this mobilization of hundreds of prisoners entailed the forced impress-
ment of vagrants (vagos)42 and the transportation of second- and third-
time deserters and non-military convicts from inland barracks, prisons
and arsenals to the coastal depositos of Cadiz, El Ferrol and La Coruña.
Furthermore, it required accurate medical controls in all depositos, in
order to select out prisoners ‘of robust constitution and not of advanced
age’ for the Caribbean presidios, and send the rest to the North African
military outposts.43 Finally, it implied the organization of the seventy-
days-long sail from Cadiz and El Ferrol to Havana and San Juan. Due
to security reasons, an attempt was also made to differentiate the des-
tinations of military and non-military convicts: the former were usually
transported to Puerto Rico, for this ‘island with a small garrison, and so
close to foreign colonies’ was not deemed apt to host ‘thieves [ladrones],
murders and other delinquents [malhechores]’44; the latter were mainly
shipped to Havana, where ‘sufficient troops, and good militia [existed]
to restrain this people’.45
Deaths, sicknesses, desertions, budget shortages and the difficulty of
finding war-, mail- and private ships considerably hampered the opera-
tion.46 The consequences were especially felt in San Juan, where the
number of convicts remained constantly well under the 600 that were
considered necessary to attend the ongoing works.47 As far as the avail-
ability of the workforce is concerned, things went considerably better in
Havana, so much so that in January 1773, the Irish engineer Thomas
O’Daly wrote an enthusiastic report on the progress of the works he
supervised.48 The difference between the two sites can be explained by
looking at the distinct flows of penal transportation they were imbricated
in. Whereas San Juan depended almost exclusively on local prisoners and
convicts transported from peninsular Spain, the Cuban capital lay at the
heart of a much larger network of convict transportation, including indi-
viduals sentenced by legal institutions in New Spain, Venezuela, Panama
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 183

(Tierra Firme) and Guatemala, and the (quantitatively less relevant) flow
of natives deported from Northern New Spain as a consequence of mili-
tary operations in those borderlands (see map 7.1).49
As the map shows, convicts were transported to Havana from various
locations across the Spanish empire. The same holds true for the slaves,
king’s slaves, free blacks, free mulattoes and groups of paisanos they
worked with in the Castle of San Carlos de la Cabaña and in the Castillo
del Príncipe. Those labourers arrived there through different networks
of free or coerced migration, as did the soldiers who oversaw them. The
fact that those networks were more numerous and distinct from those
that intersected in San Juan contributed to differentiate the two con-
texts, notwithstanding their mutual entanglements.
Havana was not only a destination of convict transportation from vari-
ous sites across the Great Caribbean and beyond. It was also the origin
of multiple flows of convicts. Among them, some connected the Cuban
capital with the North African presidios of Ceuta, Melilla and, until 1792,
Oran. Such flows tended to be quite infrequent though, and were usually

Map. 7.1 Connected Havana: Origins of the convicts, 1760s–1800s

184 C.G. De Vito

limited to repeated deserters destined to the ‘fixed’ garrisons (fijos) that

existed in those sites.50 Conversely, convict transportation from Havana
created more stable and quantitatively broader connections with the
Caribbean. This was especially the case for the presidios of the territories
that starting from 1753 directly fell under the military jurisdiction of the
Havana ‘fixed’ garrison, the most important being the one located in San
Agustín in Spanish Eastern Florida. Individual records (filiaciones) held
at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, for example, list 950 repeated
deserters being deported there from Cuba between 1784 and 1820—a
noticeable figure and certainly one that does not include all those sent
along that route in those decades.51 Non-military convicts were the pro-
tagonists of the flows from Havana to Western Florida and Louisiana
during the periods in which part of those territories belonged again to
the Spanish Crown, respectively 1783–1819 and 1762–1800. They
were present in tiny military outposts such as the one of San Marcos de
Apalache, where a fixed quota of five forzados was established in 1794,
and in the larger presidio of Pensacola, where their number fluctuated
between 165 and 219 in the two years following April 1794.52 In the
latter location, between one fourth and one half of the convicts were
employed in the works of Fort San Bernardo across that period, the rest
performing a wide range of tasks for both the Crown and private con-
tractors: among others, they were cooks and bakers, apothecaries and
carpenters, blacksmiths and farmers, with a considerable number among
them being involved in the riverine and coastal transportation and in
the making of bricks. A dozen of forzados were additionally employed as
servants of the Governor, the military engineer and other officers.
In the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, the population of the set-
tlement in Puerto de la Soledad was entirely made of migrants, due
to the absence of indigenous peoples in the islands. Behind the con-
tinuous presence of prisoners in the Malvinas stood a complex infra-
structure of penal transportation that only partly overlapped with the
flows of other settlers. The available royal or private ships transported
weapons, cattle and all groups of the population at once in their voy-
ages. However, the officers and missionaries usually came from penin-
sular Spain; the soldiers were detached from the garrison in Buenos
Aires and Montevideo, originally recruited both locally and in Spain;
the mariners and the skilled labourers mostly came from other areas
within the Captaincy/Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata. Convicts were
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 185

equally transported along the only available route connecting Puerto

de la Soledad with Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and the island of Martín
García. Their origins varied significantly though, including inhabitants of
the two main urban centres of the Captaincy/Viceroyalty (Buenos Aires
and Montevideo)53 and individuals from three other areas: the ‘frontier
of Buenos Aires’ (frontera de Buenos Aires), that is, the line of military
outposts that served as a defense against ‘hostile’ native populations to
the south of the capital city; the settlements north of Montevideo, on the
eastern coast of the river, which functioned as a cordon sanitaire around
the Portuguese colony of Sacramento until its seizure by the Spaniards
in 1777 and as a broader frontier with Portuguese Brazil after that date;
and the fortlets in Tucumán, Chaco, and other internal areas, which
defended that frontier from the equestrian native groups of the region.54
At least one case of transportation to Puerto de la Soledad is reported
from as far away as Charcas, La Paz and Cuzco in 1809, a few months
before the May Revolution in Buenos Aires.55 In addition to those flows
within the Captaincy/Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, impressment in
the army and secondary punishment for deserters created a circulation of
military convicts from peninsular Spain.56 Map 7.2 synthesizes the main
flows.
Each flow was mainly associated with distinct types of convicts,
showing the multiple goals that penal transportation served even when
directed to a tiny settlement such as Puerto de la Soledad. In particu-
lar, the Malvinas served as one of the sites for long-term and lifelong
sentences for the perpetrators of those perceived as major crimes, such
as murder, (attempted) insurrections, ‘sodomy’ and adultery.57 This
flow might include elite convicts such as don Felipe Gonzalez as much
as black prisoners like Domingo Silva Ramon and the moreno Roque
Sanchez, all transported between 1776 and 1781. At the same time, the
removal and punishment of smugglers was the most frequent reason for
deportation from the borders with the Portuguese empire. Conversely,
transportation to Puerto de la Soledad from the frontier of Buenos Aires
included a considerable number of ‘barbarian Indians’ (indios bárbaros),
that is, native peoples hostile to the Spaniards.58 The latter was the case
of Manuel Garfios, considered a ‘spy of his nation’ and transported to
the Malvinas in October 1779 in order to prevent his escape from the
fortress of San Carlos in Montevideo, to which he had originally been
sentenced; and of the indio pampa Lorenzo, who was sentenced to
186 C.G. De Vito

Map. 7.2 Connected Malvinas: Flows of penal transportation, late-eighteenth

century

the outpost of Puerto de la Soledad one month later for having been a
‘guide during the invasion of the frontiers of Buenos Aires’.59 For the
same crime, another indigenous man named Felipe had been sentenced
for life to that destination in 1774.
The geopolitical reasons that made the Malvinas a necessary site for
settlement also made it a hub in the regional and imperial networks that
gradually emerged in the last decades of the eighteenth century. The cre-
ation of these connections expanded the networks of penal transporta-
tion and simultaneously impacted on the status and function of convict
labour within each site.
During the 1760s and early 1770s, the ‘whisper’ about the British
presence in the area stimulated a constant activity of geographical explo-
ration centred in the Malvinas and especially directed to the coasts of
Patagonia, the Strait of Magellan and the Tierra del Fuego.60 Convicts
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 187

and impressed soldiers and sailors were directly involved in these activi-
ties. Moreover, even after the British abandoned Port Egmont in April
1774, the need to prevent them from settling elsewhere in the region
induced a process of direct colonization in the southern borderlands.61
As a result, Puerto de la Soledad was gradually integrated in a network of
tiny but strategic outposts spanning the southern coasts of the Atlantic
and the Pacific, respectively, by the creation of four settlements along the
coast of Patagonia (1779–1781),62 the foundation of Osorno (1792),
and the related ‘pacification’ of the region between Valdivia and Chiloé.
Map 7.3 provides an overview of such new colonies.
Although some of those settlements were soon discontinued—most
importantly, the one in San Julián/Floridablanca, the closest to the
Malvinas along the Patagonian coast—others remained, and by the last
decades of the century the Cape Horn route became a major trade route
as part of the gradual process of trade liberalisation. Official sources
now referred to the ‘Carrera de Malvinas y Costa Patagonica’, implying
a relatively regular maritime connection across the southern Atlantic.63
Accordingly, not only did the ex-governor of the Malvinas, Juan de la
Piedra, become governor of the settlement of Carmen de Patagones,
but convict circulation expanded to these areas as well. For exam-
ple, in 1780, Andres Ynzahuralde (or Ysaurralde) and Josè Cayetano
de la Cruz, deserters of the military campaign in the region of Río
Negro, ended up in Puerto de la Soledad after a brief incarceration in
Montevideo. Similarly, when the settlement in San Julián was closed in
1784, prisoner don Josè de la Serna was transferred to the settlement in
the Malvinas.64
The strengthening of the ties across the southern Atlantic was
favoured by the continuing existence of the settlement in the Malvinas.
In turn, it allowed for the consolidation of the outpost in Puerto de la
Soledad. Indeed, the increasing connectedness of that settlement shaped
work and labour within it. Between 1781 and 1784, major works took
place there, involving the reconstruction of old buildings and the expan-
sion of the number and specialization of the buildings.65 This was
first and foremost the work of convicts and depended on their multi-
ple transportation routes. In fact, in May 1785, the non-military con-
victs formed nearly one fourth of the total 129 inhabitants, and made
up virtually the whole manual workforce in the building sites and in
the ranches. Their quantitative growth and the relative diversifica-
tion of their occupations also accounted for differentiations among the
188 C.G. De Vito

Map. 7.3 Connected Malvinas: New settlements, late-eighteenth century

 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 189

convicts, and between convicts and other residents. In particular, those

few prisoners who had special skills or were assigned to particular works
were able to earn up to four or five times the basic cost of living of 25
reales and 13.5 maravedís. Although their income remained incom-
parably lower than the one of high rank officers—ranging between
221 and 2632 reales in 1779—it positioned them above the mass of
unskilled convicts, soldiers and sailors, and allowed them to buy extra
clothes (shoes, linen), food and drink (fat, garlic, wine, aguardiente,
mate, tobacco), soap, and even gunpowder and bullets for hunting.66
Parallel to this process, a spatial differentiation was gradually introduced
between the unskilled convicts and the other inhabitants of the settle-
ment. In March 1787, the prisoners completed the construction of the
new barracks which, for the first time since the creation of the settle-
ment, separated them from the troops at night.67
Convict transportation created links between diverse sites at the
same time as it contributed to construct their very distinctiveness. No
convict was directly transported from Havana to Puerto de la Soledad,
or the other way round. Yet, the two distinct regional systems of penal
transportation to which the Cuban capital and the Malvinas settlement
belonged were not entirely isolated from each other either. Together,
they were part of broader connected histories, such as those of the
Crown’s military and commercial reforms, and new expansionism, after
the Seven Years’ War.68 From this perspective, Julia Frederick’s analy-
sis of the distinct paths of the Bourbon military reform in Havana and
Spanish Louisiana69 might be extended to include the Malvinas and fore-
ground the forgotten role that repeated deserters and other military con-
victs played as agents of Madrid’s new policies. In fact, the crew of the
royal ships that temporarily dislodged the British from Port Egmont in
1770 was largely made of sentenced smugglers from the northern side
of the Rio de la Plata.70 This action nearly ignited a new military con-
flict between Spain and Britain, and as the Malvinas crisis unfolded in
1770–1771, in order to prevent a planned British attack to New Spain
through Louisiana, recruits were sent from Havana to New Orleans,
most of them deserters and military convicts previously transported from
peninsular Spain.
Imperial careering also produced penal transportation-related links
between Havana and Puerto de la Soledad and beyond.71 After his
return in Madrid in 1773, the first governor of the Malvinas, Felipe Ruíz
Puente, became a trusted counsellor of the Secretary of the Indies for
190 C.G. De Vito

all matters regarding those South Atlantic islands, including the manage-
ment of their convicts. At the same time, in June 1774, he signed a letter
that shows his direct commitment in the organization of the transporta-
tion of 132 convicts from Cadiz to Havana and Puerto Rico.72 His suc-
cessor in the Malvinas, Francisco Gil y Lemos, became Viceroy of New
Granada in 1788 and Viceroy of Peru two years later: both were highly
prestigious positions that entailed decision-making on the regional flows
of penal transportation.73 The networks of convict transportation even-
tually spread also beyond the border of the Spanish empire. Irish military
engineers served in Havana and Puerto de la Soledad and were responsi-
ble for the works convicts were involved in.74 Portuguese smugglers and
deserters were frequently caught into the system of convict transporta-
tion based in Montevideo and Buenos Aires.75 And the fifty-five military
convicts held in the Castle of Santa Catalina in Cadiz in February 1771
awaiting their passage to Ceuta, San Juan, Havana and Buenos Aires
were born in eighteen European polities.76

Categories, Contexts and Connections

Understanding why convict labour has been produced and exploited
in the larger process of the commodification of labour implies address-
ing, at the same time, the distinctiveness of the work of prisoners in each
site and the multiple connections produced by convict transportation.
From a methodological point of view, this means that ‘convict labour’
as a universal category has to be deconstructed and subsequently recon-
structed as a history of connected singularities. In this chapter, I have
taken a micro-analytical perspective and considered convict labour in
Havana and Puerto de la Soledad as unique and equally complex within
a discontinuous historical fabric. By explicitly avoiding postulating
the homogeneity of the experiences included under the category ‘con-
vict labour’, I have refused to construct a hierarchy between allegedly
‘central’ and ‘peripheral’ sites of convict labour. This move has allowed
me to address each context in its own right, highlight the specific func-
tion of convict labour in each site and pay attention to (shifting) con-
figurations of labour relations in each locality. The second section has
foregrounded how and why convicts became necessary in Havana and
Puerto de la Soledad. In the Caribbean urban centre, they served as the
key workforce for the reconstruction and maintenance of the military
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 191

and non-military infrastructures; as such, convict labour additionally

allowed for specialization of (privately and state-owned) slave labour in
the growing agricultural sector. Conversely, in the economically deprived
but geopolitically strategic new settlement in the Malvinas, convicts
made up a considerable percentage of the total population and contrib-
uted to guaranteeing the material and symbolic presence of the Spanish
crown in the region. Shifts in the strategies of colonization impacted on
the role assigned to them as part of a highly mobile workforce.
Building on this micro-analytical deconstruction of the category of
‘convict labour’, in the third section I have taken a trans-local perspective
to address the dialectics between sites and connections. Here, the need
for labour and settlers in Havana and Puerto de la Soledad has been rec-
ognized as the starting point of multiple flows of people and commodi-
ties. In particular, convicts in those sites have emerged as imbricated in
networks of penal transportation that spanned the Spanish empire, albeit
with distinct characteristics and significant disentanglements. Moreover,
I have foregrounded the role of those penal connections in constructing
broader social processes, such as the Bourbon reforms and the renewed
Crown’s expansionism, and eventually in linking up Havana and Puerto
de la Soledad themselves and beyond. Indeed, penal transportation con-
tributed to construct connected histories of labour across distinct con-
texts, and this can be understood neither by addressing each site of
convict transportation in isolation nor by adopting a universal definition
of convict labour.
The theoretical and methodological framework of this chapter can be
further expanded in three directions. First, empirical research on convict
labour highlights the need to acknowledge both the wide scope of the
connections produced by penal transportation and the substantial differ-
ences among those connections (e.g. various types of convicts and dis-
tinct duration of voyages) and among sites linked by means of convict
transportation. Consequently, since any site of convict labour is both
unique and imbricated in multiple networks, the analysis of any other
site of convict labour in any other period can be approached through the
methodology I propose in this chapter. Second, the points I have made
here on convict labour may be applied to the study of any other labour
relations, e.g. slavery, wage labour and indentured work. All labour
relations are context-related social processes whose functions can only
be understood vis-à-vis other labour relations within specific contexts,
192 C.G. De Vito

provided that, in turn, contexts are understood as contact zones of mul-

tiple circulations rather than in isolation. As such, the question ‘why con-
vict labour?’ that opened this chapter stands out as an example of where
asking ourselves ‘why slavery?’ or ‘why wage labour?’ may lead us to in
future research. Third, the need to address the history of ‘connected
singularities’ is not specific to labour history, but regards the historical
field as a whole. Similarly to the concepts of ‘convict labour’ and ‘slav-
ery’, this chapter suggests that all seemingly universal concepts indicat-
ing historical processes, such as ‘reform’, ‘war’ and ‘revolutions’, may be
usefully deconstructed and then re-constructed as histories of connected
singularities. From this perspective, like the volume as a whole, this chap-
ter has tested the potential of the micro-spatial approach in the field of
labour history with the aim to indicate its broader relevance to other
sub-disciplines as the basis for alternative paths to global history.

Notes
1. Christian G. De Vito and Alex Lichtenstein, ‘Writing a Global History of
Convict Labour’, International Review of Social History, 58, 2 (August
2013), 292. See also: Christian G. De Vito and Alex Lichtenstein, Global
Convict Labour (Leiden and Boston, 2015).
2. Another possible direction, which is not taken in this chapter, is the study
of how ‘universality’ itself was constructed. In the case of convict labour
in the Spanish empire, for example, this would entail the investigation
of legal and punitive pluralism across the empire, especially in connec-
tion with policies that favoured the coerced employment and migration
of the convicted workforce. For a key reference on legal pluralism:
Lauren Benton and Richard J. Ross, eds., Legal Pluralism and Empires,
1500–1850 (New York and London, 2013).
3. Kerry Ward has referred to penal transportation and banishment as cre-
ating ‘networks of empire’ for the Dutch East India Company (VOC).
See her Networks of Empire. Forced Migration in the Dutch East India
Company (Cambridge, 2012).
4. The first use of the expression ‘exceptional normal’ (eccezionale normale)
is in: Edoardo Grendi, ‘Micro-analisi e storia sociale’, Quaderni storici,
35 (1977), 506–522. Grendi used the concept to foreground the heu-
ristic value of ‘exceptional’ sources and cases. In this chapter, I use it to
highlight the discontinuous nature of the historical fabric, more gener-
ally. For other interpretations: Edward Muir, ‘Introduction: Observing
Trifles’, in Microhistory and the Lost People of Europe, eds. Edward Muir
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 193

and Guido Ruggiero (Baltimore, 1991), xiv–xvi; Matti Peltonen, ‘Clues,

Margins, and Monads’: The Micro-Macro Link in Historical Research,
History and Theory, 40, 3 (2001), 356–358; Magnússon and Szijártó,
What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice (Abington, 2013), pp. 19–20;
Jacques Revel, ‘Micronalisi e costruzione del sociale’, in Giochi di scala.
La microstoria alla prova dell’esperienza, ed. Jacques Revel (Rome,
2006), pp. 36–37.
5. Juliane Schiel and Stefan Hanß, ‘Semantics, Practices and Transcultural
Perspectives on Mediterranean Slavery’, in Mediterranean Slavery
Revisited (500–1800). Neue Perspektiven auf Mediterrane Sklaverei
(500–1800), eds. Juliane Schiel and Stefan Hanß (Zürich, 2014), p. 15.
6. Angelo Torre, ‘Comunitá e localitá’, in Microstoria. A venticinque anni
da L’ereditá materiale. Saggi in onore di Giovanni Levi, ed. Paola Lanaro
(Milano, 2011), p. 55.
7. See esp. Anne Radeff, ‘Centres et périphéries ou centralités et décentrali-
tés?’, in Per vie di terra, ed. Angelo Torre (Rome, 2007), pp. 21–32.
8. On convict labour in the post-Seven Years war period, see esp. Ruth Pike,
Penal Servitude in Early Modern Spain (Madison, 1983), Chap. 8. On
military reform and the reconstruction of the defense: Allan J. Kuethe,
Cuba, 1753–1815: Crown, Military, and Society (Knoxville, 1986); Juan
Marchena Fernández, ‘El ejército de América y la descomposición del
orden colonial. La otra mirada en un conflicto de lealtades’, Militaria, 4
(1992), 63–91, esp. Section 2; Juan Marchena Fernández, Ejército y mili-
cias en el mundo colonial Americano (Madrid, 1992), Chap. 4; Carmen
Gómez Pérez, El sistema defensivo americano. Siglo XVIII (Madrid,
1992); Celia María Parcero Torre, La pérdida de la Habana y las refor-
mas borbónicas en Cuba, 1760–1773 (Ávila, 1998). On the geopolitical
consequences of the explorations in the Pacific, see esp. R.F. Buschmann,
Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899 (Houndmills, 2014).
9. The King’s slaves (esclavos del rey) were those slaves directly owned by the
Spanish Crown. Their enslavement usually followed their capture as pris-
oners of war, or alienation from their masters as a consequence of punish-
ment. For a detailed study of the role of the King’s slaves in the works,
see Evelyn Powell Jennings, ‘War as the “Forcing House of Change”:
State Slavery in Late-Eighteenth-Century Cuba’, The William and Mary
Quarterly, Third Series, 62, 3 (2005), 411–440.
10. Data in the table and in the text are taken from the statistic tables held
in Archivo General de Indias, Seville (henceforth AGI), Indiferente
General, 1907 and entitled ‘Estado que comprehende los Soldados de
los Reximientos de Lombardia…q.e se hallan destinados en los travaxos
y demas parages q.e se expresaran anexos a ellas’. Data marked with an
asterisk are published in Powell Jennings, War as the “Forcing House of
194 C.G. De Vito

Change”, p. 434, and are based on statistics in AGI, Santo Domingo,

1211, 1647 and 2129. For data on February 1774: AGI, Cuba, 1152,
‘Estado que comprehende los soldados… que se hallan destinados en los
trabajos de fortificación y demás parajes q.e se expresan anexos a ella’,
28.2.1774.
11. Parcero Torre, La pérdida de la Habana, p. 102. Notes to the original
tables in AGI, Indiferente General, 1907, clarify that only around 70% of
those included in the statistics for works in San Carlos de la Cabaña were
actually employed there. The rest were either hospitalized, employed in
the other works mentioned in the text and in the construction of public
roads, or leased out to private contractors as carriers.
12. AGI, Cuba, 1155, Marques de la Torre to Urriza, n. 1293, Havana 11
January 1777.
13. See esp. AGI, Cuba, 125, and Indiferente General, 1907.
14. For figures of escapes: AGI, Cuba, 1152, ‘Estado que comprehende los
soldados… que se hallan destinados en los trabajos de fortificación y
demás parajes q.e se expresan anexos a ella’, 28.2.1774. For two examples
of the employment of recaptured convicts: AGI, Cuba 1155: Marques de
la Torre to Rapun, n. 826, Havana 31 May 1775; Marques de la Torre to
Urriza, n. 1074, Havana 29 April 1776.
15. See esp. Evelyn P. Jennings, ‘The Sinews of Spain’s American Empire:
Forced Labor in Cuba from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries’,
in Building the Atlantic Empires: Unfree Labor and Imperial States in the
Political Economy of Capitalism, ca. 1500–1914, eds. John Donoghue
and Evelyn P. Jennings (Leiden and Boston, 2016), pp. 25–53. For
a classic account of the later stages of this process: Rebecca J. Scott,
Slave Emancipation in Cuba. The Transition to Free Labor, 1860–1899
(Pittsburgh, 2000 [first ed. 1985]).
16. Christian G. De Vito, ‘Precarious pasts. Labour flexibility and labour pre-
cariousness as conceptual tools for the historical study of the interactions
among labour relations’, in On the Road to Global Labour History, ed.
Karl-Heinz Roth (Leiden and Boston, forthcoming). For a similar argu-
ment on the importance of the State in the mobilisation and migration of
coerced labour: John Donoghue and Evelyn P. Jennings, ‘Introduction’,
in Building the Atlantic Empires, pp. 1–24.
17. See especially: AGI, 1155, Marques de la Torre to Rapun, n. 756, Havana
4 March 1775.
18. Buschmann, Iberian Visions, p. 156.
19. AGI, Buenos Aires, 552, ff. 1–11, Amat to Arriaga, 8 April 1758. For an
overview of the explorations and settlements in the Malvinas/Falklands
between the 16th century and 1833, see: British Library, Additional Ms.
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 195

32,603, Papers of the Government of Buenos Ayres. Falklands Islands

[BL, Falklands], Moreno to Palmerston, London, 17 June 1833. On
the subsequent period of British rule: Stephen A. Royle, ‘The Falkland
Islands, 1833–1876: The establishment of a colony’, The Geographical
Journal, 151, 2 (1985), 204–214.
20. Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, Voyage autour du monde par la frégate du
Roi La Boudeuse et la flûte L’Étoile (Paris, 1982), pp. 75–85.
21. See especially: AGI, Buenos Aires, 552, Ruiz Puente, Malvinas, 31
December 1769. On further exploration of Port Egmont, and the cor-
respondence between the two captains: BL, Falklands: Letter to Arriaga,
Buenos Aires, 31 January 1770 (and annex); Rubalcava to Bucareli,
Malvinas, 4 March 1770; Rubalcava to Hunch, on board de Frigate Santa
Cathalina, 20 February 1770; Hunt to Rubalcava, [Port Egmont], 21
February 1770. The same corrispondence is in: AGI, Buenos Aires, 552,
ff. 345–346.
22. Legend of the table: * Capitán, subtheniente, sargento, alferez, cavo, tam-
bor. ** Spanish population only. The table integrates all available demo-
graphic data held at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville. Its sources
are: AGI, Buenos Aires, 552: Ruiz Puente, Fragata Liebre en la Ensenada
de Montevideo, 24 February 1767; Amat to Arriaga, Lima, 13 October
1768, n. 126; AGI, Buenos Aires, 553: Ruiz Puente to Arriaga, Malvinas,
19 June 1771; Gil y Lemos to Arriaga, Puerto de la Soledad, 4 April
1774 (annex); Carassa to Galvez, Puerto de la Soledad, 15 February
1777 (annex); Vertíz to Galvez, Buenos Aires, 24 December 1781;
Altolaguirre to Galvez, Malvinas, 20 February 1781; Clairac, Puerto de
la Soledad, 22 May 1785. Additional data on the wage labourers (thus
excluding the convicts) are in: BL, Falklands, Ruiz Puente to Bucareli,
Malvinas, 25 April 1767 (annex entitled ‘Presupuesto del Caudal de R.l
Hacienda…’).
23. AGI, Buenos Aires, 552, Ruiz Puente to Julián de Arriaga, 22 March
1768.
24. AGI, Buenos Aires, 553: Vertíz to Arriaga, Buenos Aires, 11 May 1771;
Bernarani to Arriaga, Malvinas, 15 November 1771; Reggio, Ruiz Puente
and Cartejón, Isla de León, 10 September 1773.
25. AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Ruiz Puente, Puerto de la Soledad, 4 April
1774.
26. AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Carassa to Galvez, Puerto de la Soledad, 15
February 1777.
27. See for instance AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Ruiz Puente to Arriaga, Isla de
León, 2 August 1774. In the same legajo see also: Ruiz Puente, Puerto
de la Soledad, 4 April 1774.
196 C.G. De Vito

28. AGI, Buenos Aires, 552: Arriaga to Madariaga, Aranjuez, 6 June 1769;

Bucareli to Arriaga, Buenos Aires, 27 October 1769; Madariaga to
Arriaga, Montevideo, 1 January 1770.
29. Three considerations reinforce this point. First, data regarding 10 January
1767 include the Spanish population only. However, because no convicts
existed among the French settlers, their percentage on the total popu-
lation was considerably lower than what it appears in the table. Second,
the figure regarding 23 February 1767 exclude the Spanish women and
children, who were transported from Buenos Aires only after February
1767 (see BL, Falklands, Bougainville, Buenos Aires, 8 February 1767).
Third, based on the correspondence, it seems safe to assume that on 19
June 1771 some women and children were also present in Puerto de la
Soledad, thus lowering the ratio of prisoners/total population.
30. AGI, Buenos Aires, 552, Ruiz Puente to Bucareli, Malvinas, 22 March
1768.
31. See for instance: AGI, Buenos Aires, 552, Ruiz Puente to Arriaga, 22
March 1768; AGI, Buenos Aires, Ruiz Puente to de Arriaga, 10 February
1769.
32. AGI, Buenos Aires, 552, Ruiz Puente to Arriaga, Malvinas, 10 February
1769. On the same date, in another note to the same recipient, the gov-
ernor asserted that ‘with the exception of the port and the pasture, this
island is nothing, nothing worth’.
33. The abandonment of the settlement was discussed among high-rank
colonial officials between October 1779 and January 1781, during the
Anglo-Spanish War (1779–1783). The discussion is especially relevant for
its being contemporary with the creation of the four settlements along
the coast of Patagonia (end 1779–beginning 1781). Unsurprisingly,
one of the main sponsor of the Patagonian colonization, the Count
of Floridablanca, was the main opponent of the abandonment of the
Malvinas. The motivations contained in his letter were finally accepted by
the Viceroy of the Rio de la Plata, Vertíz, who had originally favoured
the abandonment. For related documents see AGI, Buenos Aires, 553:
Vertíz to Galvez, Buenos Aires, 8 October 1779; Floridablanca to Galvez,
El Pardo, 10 February 1780; Muzquiz to Galvez, El Pardo, 4 February
1780; Vertíz to Galvez, Buenos Aires, 26 January 1781. For an earlier
warning about the danger of a British invasion of the islands, and the
state of that ‘open, and almost undefended, settlement’: AGI, Buenos
Aires, 553, Carassa to Galvez, Puerto de la Soledad, 15 October 1778.
34. AGI, Buenos Aires, 552, Vertíz to Arriaga, Buenos Aires, 13 May 1770.
The two male adults are described respectively as ‘carpenter/peasant’
(carpintero labrador) and ‘sawyer/peasant’ (aserrador labrador).
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 197

35. For the insistent requests of transfer made by governor Felipe Ruiz

Puente: AGI, Buenos Aires, 553: Ruiz Puente to Arriaga, Malvinas,
29 March 1771; Ruiz Puente to Arriaga, Malvinas, 24 July 1771; Ruiz
Puente to Arriaga, Malvinas, 14 November 1771. For request by the
Extraordinary Engineer Esteban O’Brien: AGI, Buenos Aires, 552,
O’Brien to Ruiz Puente, Malvinas, 12 February 1769. For the Second
Captain Antonio Catani: AGI, 553, O’Reilly to Arriaga, Madrid, 20
October 1773 (and annex).
36. AGI, Buenos Aires, 553: Vertíz to Arriaga, Buenos Aires, 1 March 1772,
15 March 1772 (three letters); Arriaga to Vertíz, Madrid, 2 July 1772.
On the state of the colony before the attempted mutiny: AGI, Buenos
Aires, 553: Bernarani to Vertíz, Malvinas, 19 June 1771 (and the same
letter to Arriaga on the same date); Bernarani to Arriaga, Malvinas 15
November 1771.
37. AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Ruiz Puente and Gil y Lemos to Vertíz, Buenos
Aires, 30 April 1773. The plan was transmitted to the Secretary of the
Indies in September 1773: AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Reggio, Ruiz Puente
and Cartejon, Isla de León, 10 September 1773. The following report
on the expenses of the colony arguably influenced the decision to elab-
orate a new system: AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Piedra to Arriaga, Puerto
de la Soledad, 16 March 1773 (and annex). On the link between the
British abandonment of Port Egmont and the implementation of the
new method in Puerto de la Soledad: AGI, Buenos Aires, 553: Letter
to Ruiz Puente, Aranuez, 12 April 1774; Ruiz Puente, Isla de Leon, 22
April 1774 (and annexed ‘Plan de los medios que considero oportuno
para la conserbacion de la Ysla, y Puerto de la Soledad de Malvinas’). The
new plan was re-proposed by former governor Ruiz Puente, who had by
this time been transferred in Spain, and was regularly consulted regarding
the Malvinas. Ruiz Puente’s plan was approved by the King on 6 March
1775, and the decision was subsequently confirmed by the Viceroy of the
Rio de la Plata. See AGI, Buenos Aires, 553: Letter to the Governor of
Buenos Aires, San Ildefonso, 9 August 1776; Vertíz to Galvez, Buenos
Aires, 7 November 1776.
38. This point appears especially important for the colonial officers, since
complaints about the shortage of skilled workers had been constant in the
previous years. See for instance: AGI, Buenos Aires, 552: Ruiz Puente to
Arriaga, Malvinas, 22 March 1768 and 10 February 1769.
39. See for example: AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Gil y Lemos to Arriaga, Puerto
de la Soledad, 3 June 1774. The governor refers to ‘the colony’s new
method to subsist’. In the same legajo, see also: Vertíz to Galvez, Buenos
Aires, 7 November 1776.
198 C.G. De Vito

40. An explicitly post-modernist interpretation of micro history can be found

in Magnússon and Szijártó, What is Microhistory, p. 115. Magnússon
presented similar arguments in: ‘‘The singularization of history’: social
history and microhistory within the postmodern state of knowledge’,
Journal of Social History, 36, 3, 2003, pp. 701–735; ‘Social History as
“sites of memory”? The institutionalization of history: microhistory and
the grand narrative’, Journal of Social History, 39, 2006, 891–913. For
a discussion of the relationship between microhistory and post-modern-
ism: Richard D. Brown, ‘Microhistory and the post-modern challenge’,
Journal of Early Republic, 23, 1, 2003, 1–20; Magnússon and Szijártó,
What is Microhistory, pp. 18–19 (for Szijártó’s point of view).
41. Similar patterns to the one referred to in the text can be observed for
Veracruz and its forts of San Juan de Ulúa. See for instance: Leonardo
Pasquel, ed., Forzados de Veracruz 1755 (Veracruz, 1969).
42. For the deportation of 100 vagrants from Galicia to the works in Puerto
Rico in 1770: AGI, Indiferente general, 1907, O’Reilly to Ordeñada,
Madrid 7th October 1770.
43. AGI, Indiferente general, 1907, Conde de Aranda to Julian de Arriaga,
Madrid 18th December 1769.
44. AGI, Indiferente general, 1907, Communication of the Conde de Aranda,
Madrid 19th May 1770. Here the record summarizes a previous commu-
nication of Alejandro O’Reilly.
45. Both citations in the text are taken from AGI, Indiferente general, 1907,
O’Reilly to Arriaga, Madrid 10th August 1770.
46. For example, see the case of 400 convicts shipped to Puerto Rico in
December 1769, 100 of whom died either during the transportation
or during the first months after arrival. AGI, Indiferente general, 1907,
Communication of the Conde de Aranda, Madrid 19th May 1770.
47. The ‘banished’ (desterrados) or ‘forced labourers’ (forzados), as the con-
victs were referred to, totaled 412 on 3rd November 1770, 463 on 7th
April 1772, 480 on 7th January 1773, 463 on 1st July 1774, 515 on 1st
July 1777 and 530 on 1st January 1778. All statistics are from records
held in AGI, Indiferente general, 1907.
48. The report is attached to the letter of Muesas to Arriaga, Puerto Rico,
26th January 1773, in AGI, Indiferente general, 1907.
49. On prisoners transported to Havana from New Spain, usually called
‘guachinangos’: Jorge L. Lizadi Pollock, ‘Presidios, presidiarios y deser-
tores: Los desterrados de Nueva España, 1777–1797’, in El Caribe en
los intereses imperiales, 1750–1815 (San Juan Mixcoal, 2000), pp. 17–28;
Isabel Marín Tello, La importancia de los presidios como lugar de castigo:
el caso de Cuba en el siglo XVIII, paper presented at the 22nd Simpósio
Nacional de Historia, ANPUH, João Pessoa, 2003, available on-line
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 199

at: http://anpuh.org/anais/wp-content/uploads/mp/pdf/ANPUH.
S22.474.pdf (consulted on 27 October 2016). See also: AGI, Cuba,
1152, 1156, 1190, 1207 and 1260. On the Tribunal of the Acordada,
see esp. Colin M. MacLachlan, Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century
Mexico: A Study of the Tribunal of the Acordada (Berkeley, Los Angeles
and London, 1974).
50. See esp. AGI, Cuba, 1155, n. 756, Marques de la Torre to Rapun,
Havana 4 March 1775. For an individual example of transportation: AGI,
Cuba, 1155, n. 1048, Marques de la Torre to Urriza, Havana 25 March
1776.
51. See AGI, Cuba, 365B. On the presidio of Saint Agustin, see especially:
Juan Marchena Fernández and María del Carmen Gómez Pérez, La Vida
de Guarnición en las Ciudades Americanas de la Ilustración (Madrid,
1992), Chap. 2; James Coltrain, ‘Constructing the Atlantic’s Boundaries:
Forced and Coerced Labor on Imperial Fortificatons in Colonial Florida’,
in Building the Atlantic Empires, pp. 109–131.
52. For detailed figures on the standing convicts in both sites: AGI, Cuba,
126.
53. On 20 September 1770 the governor of Buenos Aires issued an orde-
nance (bando) prescribing that ‘all vagabonds and individuals who do not
live of their work, nor have a profession or Masters, leave this city by the
third day; in case they are caught after this date, they will be legally pun-
ished, if not recidivists, to 4 year exile in the Malvinas islands’. Quoted in:
Alejandro Agüero, Castigar y perdonar cuando conviene a la República.
La justicia penal de Córdoba del Tucumán, siglos XVII y XVIII (Madrid,
2008), p. 231.
54. Together with Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the Malvinas islands are
mentioned as a ‘usual destination’ of penal transportation from Córdoba
del Tucumán in: Agüero, Castigar y perdonar, p. 182.
55. Quoted in Rossana Barragán, Miradas a la Junta de La Paz en 1809 (La
Paz, 2009).
56. For the Malvinas as destinations for deserters who failed to appear within
three months from the issue of the Royal amnesties, see Rafael Salillas,
Evolución penitenciaria de España (Madrid, 1918), vol. 2, p. 493. On p.
444 the author additionally reports the case of fifteen non-military con-
victs transported in 1803 from Cadiz to the Malvinas islands via Buenos
Aires on board the frigate Eulalia, after having their sentences of trans-
portation to the Philippines commuted.
57. For a rare list of prisoners including information on the crimes for which
they were sentenced: Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires (hence-
forth AGN), 9.16.09.05, Altolaguirre, Puerto de la Soledad de Maluinas,
6 April 1782, ‘Noticia de los Precidiarios que existen en el Precidio de
200 C.G. De Vito

esta Colonia con las de sus Condenas el tiempo que tiene cada uno ven-
cido, y el que les queda’.
58. AGI, Buenos Aires, 553: Gil y Lemos to Arriaga, Puerto de la Soledad,
4 April 1774 (and annex); Carassa to Galvez, Puerto de la Soledad, 15
February 1777.
59. In AGN, 9.16.09.05, respectively: Vertíz to the Governor of Malvinas,
Buenos Aires, 13 October 1779; and Medina to Vertíz, Colonia de
la Soledad de Maluinas, 14 January 1780. On the indio Felipe, see the
same file, Altolaguirre, Puerto de la Soledad de Maluinas, 6 April 1782,
‘Noticia de los Precidiarios que existen…’.
60. Among other sources: AGI, Buenos Aires, 552: Bucareli to Arriaga,
Buenos Aires, 9 April 1767; Ruiz Puente to Arriaga, Malvinas, 22
March 1768; Horozco to Arriaga, Ferrol, 16 October 1769; Letter to
Ruiz Puente, Buenos Aires, 30 November 1769. AGI, Buenos Aires,
553: Ruiz Puente to Arriaga, Malvinas, 29 March 1771. BL, Falklands:
Bucareli to Ruiz Puente, 30 November 1767; Conde de Aranda to
Bucareli, Madrid, 25 July 1769; Marques de Grimaldi, Buenos Aires,
22 February 1769 (and annex); Relacion que hace el Theniente de Navio
y Capitan de la Fragata Santa Rosa D.n Fran.co Gil, March 1769. For
an example of the circulation of ‘whispers’ about the British plan to set-
tle in the Falklands: AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Principe de Masserano to
the Governor of Malvinas, Madrid, 2 April 1776 (and annex). Another
input for explorations came from the will to establish new settlement in
the Tierra del Fuego, as different sources referred to the friendly attitude
of the natives of the area: BL, Falklands: Bucareli to Ruiz Puente, Buenos
Aires, 30 November 1767 (and annex); Pando to Arriaga, Buenos Aires,
30 January 1769 (and annex); Bucareli to Madariaga, Buenos Aires,
28 October 1769; Arriaga to Bucareli, Madrid, 7 February 1770; AGI,
Buenos Aires, 553, Ruiz Puente to Arriaga, Malvinas, 19 June 1771.
This continuous regional activity of exploration produced an extended
maritime and cartographic knowledge, with considerable global politi-
cal impact. See for example: AGI, Buenos Aires, 552, Arriaga to Ruiz
Puente, Madrid, 16 July 1770; AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Ruiz Puente to
Arriaga, Malvinas, 29 March 1771.
61. For example: AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Carassa to Galvez, Puerto de la
Soledad, 6 February 1777.
62. On the Patagonian settlements see esp.: Juan Alejandro Apolant,
Operativo Patagonia. Historia de la mayor aportación demográfica masiva
a la Banda Oriental (Montevideo, 1999, 2nd edition); Carlos M. Garla,
Los establecimientos españoles en la Patagonia. Estudio institucional
(Sevilla, 1984); Dora Noemi Martínez de Gorla, ‘El primer asentami-
ento de colonos en el Río Negro en Patagonia’, Temas Americanistas,
 7 CONNECTED SINGULARITIES: CONVICT LABOUR IN LATE … 201

6 (1986), 42–56; Perla Zusman, ‘Entre el lugar y la linea: la con-

stitución de las fronteras coloniales patagónicas 1780–1792’, Fronteras
de la Historia, 6 (2001), 41–67; Maria Ximena Senatore, Arqueología e
Historia. Arqueología e Historia en la Colonia Española de Floridablanca
(Buenos Aires, 2007); Marcia Bianchi Villelli, Cambio social y prácticas
cotidianas en el orden colonial. Arqueología histórica en Floridablanca (San
Julián, Argentina, Siglo XVIII) (Oxford, 2009). The circulation of infor-
mation had a still further reach, as for Governor Phelipe Ruiz Puente’s
letters for the Viceroy of Peru, transported to El Callao (Lima) by the
frigates Liebre and Aguila: AGI, Buenos Aires, 552, Manuel Amat to
Julián de Arriaga, Lima, 13 October 1768, n. 126.
63. AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Junta Superiore de la Real Hacienda, Buenos
Aires, 1 March 1792.
64. AGN, 9.16.09.05, petition signed by Juan Josef Ysaurralde, to Vertíz,
undated [1780]; AGN, 9.16.09.06, Vertíz to the Governor of
Malvinas, Buenos Aires, 16 February 1784. See also AGN, 9.16.09.05,
Altolaguirre, Puerto de la Soledad de Maluinas, 6 April 1782, ‘Noticia de
los Precidiarios que existen…’
65. See esp. AGN, 09.16.09.05, Altolaguirre, Maluinas, 8 April 1782, ‘Estado
que manifiesta… con respecto a la explicación de la adjunta Relación’.
66. AGN, 9.16.09.05, Ministerio de la Hazienda de la Yslas Maluinas, Año
de 1779, Ajustam.to de Raciones de los Yndividuos de esta Colonia,
Maluinas, 31 October 1779.
67. AGN, 9.16.09.06, Clairac to the Marques de Loreto, Soledad de las Islas
Malvinas, 20 March 1787.
68. On connected history see esp.: Sanjay Subrahmanyan, ‘Connected
Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’,
Modern Asian Studies, 31, 3 (1997), 735–762; Subrahmanyan,
Explorations in Connected History. See also: Giuseppe Marcocci, ‘Gli
intrecci del mondo. La modernità globale di Sanjay Subrahmanyam’,
in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Mondi connessi. La storia oltre l’eurocentrismo
(secoli XVI–XVIII) (Roma, 2014). The vision proposed here also con-
nects to Sandra Curtis Comstock’s ‘incorporating comparisons’:
‘Incorporating Comparison’, in The Handbook of World-System Analysis:
Theory and Research, eds. Christopher Chase-Dunn and Salvatore
Babones (Routledge, 2011), pp. 375–376; ‘Incorporating Comparisons
in the Rift. Making Use of Cross-Place Events and Histories in Moments
of World Historical Change’, in Beyond Methodological Nationalism:
Social Science Research Methodologies in Transition. eds. Anna Amelina,
Devrimsel D. Negriz, Thomas Faist and Nina Glick Schiller (Routledge,
2012), pp. 176–197.
202 C.G. De Vito

69. Julia Frederick, ‘In Defense of Crown and Colony: Luis de Unzaga and
Spanish Louisiana’, Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana
Historical Association, 19, 1 (2008), 389–422.
70. See: AGI, Buenos Aires, 552: Bucareli, Buenos Aires, 30 March 1770
(with annex); Bucareli to Madariaga, Buenos Aires, 29 April 1770.
71. On the concept of ‘imperial careering’: David Lambert and Alan Lester,
Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long
Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2006).
72. AGI, Indiferente General, 1907, Ruiz Puente to Arriaga, Isla de León, 14
June 1774.
73. For another example, before becoming vice-governor of Puerto de
la Soledad in February 1767, coronel Antonio Catani had: served in
Granada; participated in a siege of Oran and the campaign in Nice and
Savoy (1747); ‘disciplined the troops’ in Buenos Aires; guided three
punitive expeditions against the natives of the Tucuman region (1755–
1760); repeatedly ‘dislodged’ the Portuguese from the surrounding of
Río Pardo; and fought in the Seven Year’s War against the indios infieles
in New Spain. See AGI, Buenos Aires, 553, Conde O’ Reilly to Julián de
Arriaga, Madrid, 20 October 1773 [annex].
74. Respectively, Thomas O’Daly and Esteban O’Brien.
75. For various examples, see AGN, 9.16.09.05.
76. AGI, Indiferente general, 1907, ‘Relación de los reos que con asistencia
del Zirujano Mayor de la Armada… fueron conducidos de Cartagena de
Lebante en los Navios de S. Mag.d’, attached to the letter of Marques de
la Victoria to Julián de Arriaga, Isla de León, 7 February 1771.
 CHAPTER 8

Keeping in Touch: Migrant Workers’

Trans-Local Ties in Early Modern Italy

Eleonora Canepari

Introduction
In 1594, Luca Bartolo borrowed 230 scudi from Giacomo Corsetto.
Luca and Giacomo had a close relationship: they were both grocers and
came from the same village in the diocese of Novara, more than 600 km
north of Rome. In the following months, Luca paid back approximately
half of the amount he had borrowed and then, in 1597, he returned to
his birthplace for several months. Taking advantage of Luca’s absence,
Giacomo tried to fool his friend: he managed to convince Luca’s
brother—Antonio—to sign a notary deed stipulating that the debtor still
had to reimburse the entire sum, without mentioning the payment that
had already been made. Antonio agreed to sign because, as Francesco
Simonetta (Giacomo’s apprentice) testified, he was ‘an idiot who can nei-
ther read nor write’.1 When Luca came back from his village in 1598,
Giacomo immediately visited him at his home, asking him to approve the
notary deed made out on his behalf by his brother Antonio, and Luca
did so. As a consequence, a few days later Giacomo demanded that Luca

E. Canepari (*)
Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, TELEMME, Aix-en-Provence, France
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 203

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_8
204 E. Canepari

give him the entire sum of the loan; Luca sued him, and in 1599 the trial
commenced.
In his deposition at the Governor of Rome’s tribunal, Francesco
Simonetta was critical of Antonio and Luca because they could not read,
but he also pointed out that Luca’s absence from Rome was the real rea-
son for the conflict:

The above mentioned Luca and Antonio are two men who run their shop
and manage their businesses, but they don’t do it as they should, because
they need advice, and if Luca had been in Rome the notary deed wouldn’t
have been made because he would have claimed that the money already
paid should be remitted. […] Someone who can neither read nor write is a
Zanni, and he can be fooled in written records.2

This declaration of Francesco’s provides another relevant detail of the

story when he adds that Antonio, Luca’s brother, was in their village
at that time. Interrogated by the Governor, Giacomo stated that Luca
had never paid him back, and as a result he was unable to pay his niece’s
dowry.

He [that is Luca] owes me some money that I lent him amore dei a long
time ago, but I never got it back, and it caused me a lot of problems
because I couldn’t provide a dowry for my niece, with whom I had come
down from the village, and that money was for her.

The depositions provided by Francesco and Giacomo were some-

what counterbalanced by the interrogation of Giovanni Battista Citoia.
Having arrived in Rome from the same village four years earlier,
Giovanni Battista, Luca’s nephew, testified to the good reputation of
his uncle, who provided him with housing. Giovanni Battista pointed
out that he was as comfortable ‘as my peers’, and that he owned sev-
eral houses and fields in their home village worth 2000 scudi. Indeed,
the hospitality his uncle offered was even more valuable in that Giovanni
Battista was not really in need of such charity.
The story of Luca Bartoli and Giacomo Corsetto is a story of a con-
flict between two grocers who came to Rome from a distant village.
They were ordinary people who migrated for work and nevertheless
maintained strong ties with their birthplace. In doing so, they lived in
a ‘transnational’, multi-sited dimension and experienced what has been
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 205

called ‘simultaneity’. The story of these immigrant grocers tells a great

deal about multi-local ties and the ‘transnational’ dimension of ordinary
migrants’ lives in early modern society. First of all, we can observe a form
of circular mobility. The fight began because Luca had gone back to the
village for several months between 1597 and 1598 and, at the time of
the trial in 1599, it was his brother Antonio’s turn to go back home. As
I will show, these examples are not exceptional. Rather, many migrants
travelled back and forth on a regular basis even when their birthplace
was located at a considerable distance from the host city. The connec-
tion between the two places made it possible for migrants to have their
relatives come to Rome, as in the case of Giacomo’s niece, who got mar-
ried in her uncle’s host city. Besides kinship, migrants can also be seen
to have maintained a bond with their birthplace because they continued
to own goods and properties there even after having emigrated. At the
same time, however, this story also tells us about the establishment of
ties in other places that were neither Rome nor the village: specifically,
Giacomo also lent some money which, to collect, required that he go to
Bracciano.3
The disagreement between Giacomo and Luca is only one example
of the wealth of information historical sources can provide about the
multi-sited dimension of ordinary people’s mobility. In relation to the
preindustrial context, historians have mainly used notions of ‘transna-
tionalism’ and the global labour market to describe the mobility of the
migrant élite comprising merchants and travellers.4 Nevertheless, migra-
tory flows in preindustrial Europe were composed in large part of labour
migrants who moved across cities and national borders in search for work
and the means to survive. Although harder to track, their familial ties
were often rooted in more than one place, as studies by Angiolina Arru
and Laurence Fontaine on credit and debit have demonstrated.5 Indeed,
the two historians have pointed out that lending and borrowing relation-
ships were often incorporated into trans-local networks.
Although ordinary migrants (neither merchants nor aristocrats) com-
prised the majority of people on the move in early modern societies, the
multi-local dimension of their mobility still remains largely unknown.
Indeed, while some studies—such as those by Laurence Fontaine and
Angiolina Arru—have investigated the remittances and other economic
activities of multi-sited families, many other aspects have been granted
less consideration than they deserve. This paper thus aims to explore the
geographically multi-sited dimension of ordinary people’s migrations,
206 E. Canepari

a dimension deriving not only from circular mobility but also from
migrants’ enduring bonds with their places of birth, where they often
owned property and had living relatives. It is a well-known fact that the
mobility of ordinary migrants is harder to track than that of merchants
and aristocrats; however, it is not impossible: in sources such as notary
deeds, judiciary documents (such as the above-mentioned trial) and
testaments, we find the ‘traces’ left by multi-local ties. Thanks to these
sources, with this paper I seek to shed light on the ‘transnationalism’ and
multi-locality of labour migrants in the early modern age.

‘Transnationalism’ and Multi-Locality

in a Preindustrial Context

Before I begin, it is necessary to first address the notion of ‘transnation-

alism’ applied to a preindustrial context. According to Linda G. Basch,
Nina Glick Schilier and Cristina Blanc-Szanton, ‘transnationalism’ is
defined ‘as the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-
stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and
settlement. (…) An essential element is the multiplicity of involvements
that transmigrants sustain in both home and host societies’.6 The notion
of transnationalism is obviously related to that of transnational migration,
which implies the existence of the state and its national borders as a nec-
essary condition. Moreover, it is also inextricably linked to the globalisa-
tion of production, exchange and, above all, the division of labour. Some
scholars have claimed that transnationalism is a novel development rep-
resenting a specific characteristic of contemporary societies—for instance,
as Katy Gardner and Ralph Grillo argue: ‘Recent theories of transmigra-
tion suggest that in the past migrants (unless they were ‘guestworkers’
recruited for specific periods of employment) were expected to settle in
the countries of reception. Nowadays, however, they are more likely to
retain significant, ongoing ties with their countries of origin’.7 There is
no doubt that transnationalism comprises ‘phenomena which, although
not entirely new, have reached particular intensity at a global scale at the
end of the twentieth century’.8 According to some scholars, this increase
in transnational migrations marks the beginning of a new age of migra-
tion, characterised by mobility of people in search of work and refuge.9
The intensification of transnational migration over the past two cen-
turies notwithstanding, world-systems theory has described globalisation
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 207

not as a recent phenomenon but rather as a process with its historical

roots in the early modern age, namely, the birth of world capitalism in
the fifteenth century, ‘absorbing in the process all existing mini-sys-
tems and world-empires, establishing market and production networks
that eventually brought all peoples around the world into its logic and
into a single worldwide structure’.10 The opportunity to ‘backdate’ an
approach that goes beyond states and nations is linked not only to the
early birth of capitalism but also to the high rates of mobility that char-
acterised early modern societies. Historians of migration have criticised
the concept of ‘mobility transition’ according to which twentieth-cen-
tury modernisation was the key event that produced a sharp increase in
individual migration, as opposed to pre-modern societies, which are cast
as stable and self-sufficient. Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen have argued
that a high incidence of mobility actually dates back much further than
the twentieth century, and that people moved for many reasons, but
not because they were left with no other choice. ‘Most basic decisions
by human beings—the choice of a profession or a partner—often entail
leaving their place of birth or residence. While they may not go far, their
moves nevertheless lead them to other social and sometimes geographi-
cal environments.’11 In a recent article, they point out that increased
mobility is due more to improvements in transportation than to so-called
‘modernisation’:

This increase in migration rates, however, was not so much caused by the
‘modernisation process’, a paradigm dominant since the birth of the social
sciences at the end of the nineteenth century. At most, the jump after
1850 should be considered primarily as an acceleration of cross-commu-
nity migration. This was facilitated by cheaper and faster transport, which
dramatically increased possibilities for people to find permanent and tem-
porary jobs farther away from home, notably in an Atlantic space. We con-
clude that it was not the underlying structural causes of migration that
changed, but rather its scale.12

Indeed, as the two historians argue, early modern societies (at least in
Western Europe) were driven by temporary and permanent migrations of
various kinds.13
Although scholars have convincingly demonstrated that a high rate of
mobility characterised early modern societies and the existence of signif-
icant ‘transnational’ migratory flows, this notion has yet to be applied
208 E. Canepari

to examining migration within the Italian peninsula. In this paper, I

use samples composed of migrants coming to Rome from other coun-
tries (i.e. France), other ancient Italian states (for example the Duchy of
Parma) and other cities/villages in the Pontifical State. While only the
first two examples of these migrations can properly be defined as ‘trans-
national’, I would like to emphasise, as some authors have argued, that
the distinction between intra—and international mobility is often arbi-
trary and difficult to apply to the early modern age.

[…] national borders historically were not fixed. Thus, internal mov-
ers in the past would now be considered as international migrants due
to the presence of modern national borderlines. The notion that inter-
national migration connotes long-distances moves is also problematic.
Movement of people across borders can be very short and still includes
a change of national territory (e.g., job mobility in the border regions of
France, Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg), whereas internal movement
within large countries such as the USA or China can be over a very long
distance.14

Thus, the specificity of the early modern period does not imply the
impossibility to use concepts created to describe modern societies and
mobilities, such as ‘global’ and ‘trans-local’. It rather suggests that the
dynamics of multi-locality present striking similarities, no matter the
short or long distances travelled, and the kind of borders that were
crossed. From this perspective, the use of such concepts in this chapter
resonates with sociologist Michael Eve’s insightful comment regarding
the fact that certain dynamics of mobility are inherent to migration as
a process (e.g. keeping ties, reconstructing networks at destination, the
initial difficulties following arrival), rather than to the distance migrants
actually travel.15
While the adjective ‘transnational’ will be used only when appropri-
ate, it should be noted that my use of this notion is meant to stress the
fact that many ordinary migrants lived ‘here and there’, in a ‘multiplic-
ity of involvements’ spanning their hometowns and the arrival city. In
other words, for the purposes of this paper, the crucial aspect of ‘trans-
nationalism’ is the notion of simultaneity. This notion calls into question
the dichotomy between departure place and arrival city and asserts the
multiplicity of individual belonging. In a recent volume on transnational
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 209

families, the anthropologist Élodie Razy and geographer Virginie Baby-

Collin explain the shift from assimilation to multiplicity of identities:

Moving beyond a vision of migration understood in dichotomous terms

on the spatial and temporal level, the transnational perspective is dynamic,
privileging the point of view of migrant actors no longer seen as here or
there but rather here and there, between two worlds or, even more so,
articulated through multiple networks—a reformulation of a key con-
cept. The issues of assimilation and integration are thus shifted toward the
potential deployment of multiple identities and loyalties.16

The practice of maintaining bonds with the birthplace led to a double

form of belonging which was not in contradiction with full social inser-
tion in the arrival place. In their article on simultaneity, Peggy Levitt and
Nina Glick Schiller argue that ‘Once we rethink the boundaries of social
life, it becomes clear that the incorporation of individuals into nation-
states and the maintenance of trans-national connections are not contra-
dictory social processes’.17 As a matter of fact, incorporation into a new
city and connection to the birthplace can be simultaneous processes:

Simultaneity, or living lives that incorporate daily activities, routines, and

institutions located both in a destination country and transnationally, is a
possibility that needs to be theorized and explored. Migrant incorporation
into a new land and transnational connections to a homeland or to dis-
persed networks of family, compatriots, or persons who share a religious or
ethnic identity can occur at the same time and reinforce one another.18

The notion of simultaneity also relates to what Paul André Rosental calls
espace investi (‘invested space’), which can be much broader than the
actual living place (espace vecu). Indeed, Rosental asserts the importance
of migrants’ chosen reference space, wherein they project their individual
expectations and plans. Rosental defines this as a space ‘in which indi-
viduals’ objectives are supposed to become concrete. It may be physi-
cal (seeking to acquire residency, purchasing a house or piece of land)
or social (trying to become part of a group for instance through endog-
amy, the network of conviviality or the aspiration to represent a com-
munity, etc.)’.19 By sustaining connections to their homelands, migrants
participate in two geographically distinct worlds; as a consequence, their
210 E. Canepari

invested space is usually broader than that of native residents. Because

it allows migrants to draw on two distinct sets of resources, this ‘dou-
ble horizon’ can constitute an advantage that migrants have over native
individuals.20 As Rosental points out, the invested space can be broader
not only as a consequence of individuals’ migration, but also due to the
influence of mobility on migrants’ children. Thanks to this dynamic,
which the historian defines as finalisme urbain, the bonds between
migrants and their homeland can be very useful for the next generation:

[…] without knowing it, the migrants who are able to implement their
project of maintaining ties and even return to their villages end up chang-
ing their children’s potential expectations. Indeed, the information that
their children have about the city even before migrating is very different
than the information that was available to their parents. Even when they
were born in the village after their parents returned, this space—though
unknown to them—forms a part of their potential spaces, the spaces in
which they might potentially project their expectations.21

As we will see in the next section, many ordinary migrants lived in such
a double space, a broader ‘invested space’ that characterised their biogra-
phies and their kinship relations even many years after they had left their
home villages.

A Broader ‘Invested Space’: Multi-Local

Kinship Relations
On January 1693, Carlo Palazzino, a 30-year-old migrant from the
Duchy of Parma, was interrogated by the officers of San Sisto hospital in
Rome, where he had requested admittance, in order to ascertain his eli-
gibility. When asked about his family, Carlo stated that he was not mar-
ried, and that he had two brothers. They did not live in Rome; however,
one lived in their hometown of Luzzano, where he ran a grocery, while
the other lived in Civitavecchia and worked as an innkeeper. The three
brothers owned two houses in the village. Carlo Palazzino was one of the
many migrants whose families continued a multi-sited group. In his case,
the family was ‘scattered’ across three locations: Rome, Luzzano and
Civitavecchia. It is important to note that the ‘multi-sitedness’ of familial
bonds was more complex than a simple ‘country of origin vs. host city’
dichotomy. Familial bonds actually suggest a picture of both individual
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 211

and familial migration that goes beyond simply relocating from the home
village to the destination city as the first and last step in the migratory
trajectory; instead, trajectories potentially included other movements and
relocations as well. Indeed, in both samples (San Sisto and testaments)
the component of relatives living outside Rome includes a small percent-
age of individuals who no longer lived in the hometown because they
had moved somewhere else. Besides brothers and sisters, the children of
immigrants could also become migrants themselves for various reasons,
leaving their parents’ arrival city for other new destinations. The painter
Giovanni Battista Bussolino, a native of Bergamo, had five daughters
and two sons: one was a soldier and the other lived in Naples;22 one of
the sons of Filippo Lavazzolo, a cardinals’ servant who had arrived in
Rome from Nice, moved to Sicily;23 while one of the sons of the tai-
lor Pompilio Serangelo, from Velletri, had become a priest of San
Carlo dei Catinari in Bologna.24 For all of these migrants, the ‘invested
space’, rather than narrowing, potentially broadened from generation to
generation.
In order to study multi-local relations, San Sisto pauper hospi-
tal’s records are very useful. The ospizio di San Sisto was built in 1596
by Pope Sixtus V; it was a shelter for the poor, both Romans and for-
eigners.25 To be admitted to the hospice, people had to pass a selection
process, which consisted of some questions about their age, their job,
their families and the goods they own. The volumes of Esami dei pov-
eri, containing these interrogations, are available from the second half of
the seventeenth century (starting in 1647) and they go on continuously
until the nineteenth century. To find out who were the poor and their
families, I collected a sample of 500 people, women and men, Romans
and immigrants, admitted to the hospital from 1694 to 1701.26 These
volumes are a very important source, allowing us to know the personal
situations of San Sisto’s poor. Moreover, they provide data about the
migration process, seldom available in other sources. In the most com-
plete version of the interrogation,27 the following pieces of information
were indeed asked and provided: name, surname, father’s name (hus-
band’s name for married women and widows), birthplace, profession,
age, years already spent in Rome, reason for the immigration, last par-
ish of residence, relatives (both in Rome and in their birthplace), goods
owned and reason for the application to enter the hospital.
Out of a sample of 380 male and female migrants who requested
admittance to the San Sisto pauper hospital between 1694 and 1701,
212 E. Canepari

Step-brother(s) 1%
Relatives (not
Cousin(s) 1%
specified) 15%
Mother 1%
Brother(s) 24%

Nephew(s)/
Niece(s) 11%

Sister(s) 23%
Son(s) 14%

Daughter(s)
10%

Fig. 8.1 Foreigners’ relatives in the birthplace and elsewhere. Source ASR,
Ospizio Apostolico di San Michele, part II, vol. 204, 1694–1702

approximately one third (29%) had one or more relatives in the birth-
place.28 This figure rises to 43% if we redraw the sample to exclude
migrants who declared that they had been left alone. As Fig. 8.1 shows,
these relatives were mainly brothers and sisters (representing almost
50%), but sons and daughters are quite numerous as well (24%).
It is worth noting that the 109 migrants who declared having relatives
in their birthplace had an average age of 63.5 years, and had been living
in Rome for an average of 32.5 years. Nevertheless, they were still con-
nected to their relatives living in their homeland, even many years after
their departure.
Although the extended length of time spent outside the homeland does
not seem to have affected the maintenance of multi-local relations, we
might expect these relations to have become less important in migrants’
networks as the years went on. Indeed, the sociologist Michel Bozon, in
his investigation into today’s regional migration in the city of Villefranche-
sur-Saône, describes a two-step process of integration and relates the
intensity of certain local practices to the number of years the migrant had
spent in the new setting.29 Since the San Sisto records indicate the number
of years each applicant had spent in Rome, is it possible to relate this infor-
mation to the ‘intensity’ of bonds with the homeland (Fig. 8.2).
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 213

40 38
35
29 30 28
30
25 Relatives in Rome
20
Relatives in the birthplace
15
9 8 Relatives elsewhere
10 6
5 2 2
0
0
Up to 10 years 11 to 30 years 31 to 50 years Over 50 years

Fig. 8.2 Percentages of relatives living in Rome, the birthplace or elsewhere,

related to the number of years the migrants had spent in Rome (tot. 128). Source
ASR, Ospizio Apostolico di San Michele, part II, vol. 204, 1694–1702

50 43
40
30
30 26 Relatives in Rome
22
20 Relatives in the birthplace
10 Relatives elsewhere
10 6 4 6 5
0 0 0
0
Up to 10 years 11 to 30 years 31 to 50 years Over 50 years

Fig. 8.3 Percentages of relatives living in Rome, the birthplace or elsewhere,

related to age at migration (tot. 127). Source ASR‚ Ospizio Apostolico di San
Michele‚ part II‚ vol. 204, 1694–1702

It is clear that the number of relatives in the birthplace continued

to be high even when the migrant had been in Rome for more than 30
years (28 vs. 38), becoming much less significant only when residence in
the city lasted more than 50 years (22 vs. 2). I would thus conclude that,
while there is a relationship between the number of years spent in the
arrival city and the intensity of migrants’ bonds in this place‚ the bonds
with relatives in the birthplace were not severed until very late in life.
In Fig. 8.3, the presence of relatives is related to age at migration.
Not surprisingly, in this case the data display an opposite trend as com-
pared to Fig. 8.2, with the number of migrants having relatives in the
homeland tending to increase with age at migration. Indeed, the older
the migrant was when he/she left the birthplace, the stronger were the
ties in the homeland.
214 E. Canepari

And yet, how is it possible to know if these ties were truly main-
tained? Part of the answer lies in the fact that migrants who had broken
their bonds with relatives living outside Rome promptly reported this
fact to the officers because one of the criteria for admittance to San Sisto
was a solitary state, lacking relatives who might take care of the pauper
in question. In other words, individuals seeking admission to the hospital
had an interest in minimising their connections with relatives, especially
male ones. Despite this fact, only a small number of them described these
bonds as weakened or broken.30 While we cannot estimate how frequently
migrants made contact with their relatives, we certainly know that most
of these connections survived the departure of the migrants. Interrogated
in 1674 by the officers of San Sisto about his family, Carlo Migliorio, a
35-year-old French man from Burgundy, replied that he left his village
when he was 19 years old, and that he had a brother who lived there, but
he had not heard from him for one year. This statement suggests that, pre-
viously, the two brothers had been in touch, probably on a regular basis.31
The longevity of these bonds is also demonstrated by the fact that many
migrants used their wills to bequeath a portion of their belongings and/
or money to heirs living in the birthplace. Out of 174 wills made in Rome
between 1610 and 1650, 41 mention at least one relative living in the
homeland, which corresponds to a percentage of 23.5%.32
The analysis of this body of records highlights some important char-
acteristics of migrants’ multi-local bonds. Firstly, as we have already seen
in the San Sisto sample, many of these ties connected migrants with their
brothers/sisters and nephews/nieces: in most cases, they were horizontal
kinship relations. Giovanni Bozzi from Valtellina, in his will drawn up in
1615, bequeathed an annuity of 20 golden Spanish scudi to his nephew
Gregorio, the orphaned son of his brother Stefano, who was to receive
the money in his birthplace.33 In exchange, two masses—one for the soul
of the testator and one for that of his wife—were to be performed in the
church of San Maurizio, located in the home village. It was the respon-
sibility of the universal heir—the great-nephew Giovanni—to send the
money to Gregorio. It is worth noting that Giovanni was appointed as
universal heir of all the goods the testator owned in Rome. In the case
of Giacomo Conagiosi, a furrier who arrived in Rome from a village in
Genovese dioceses, the bond with his nephew, the orphaned son of his
brother Carlo, was established after the migrant departed the home-
town.34 Indeed, the testament specifies that the child was ‘born in the
homeland after the testator had already left’.35 The bequest consisted of
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 215

100 scudi, which the child was to receive when he turned 18. A similar
case is that of Pasquino Pasinetto, a sharpener (arrotatore) from the dio-
cese of Bergamo. In 1649, he made out a will in which he left 200 scudi
in Bergamo currency to his brother Giovanni, and bequeathed all of his
properties located in the birthplace to his other brother, Bartolomeo.36
He left 200 Bergamo liras to Caterina, the orphaned daughter of his sis-
ter Margherita, for her dowry. The fact that the girl is called ‘Caterina
(or whatever her name will be)’ suggests that Pasquino had never seen
his niece, who was probably a child at the time of his departure.37 The
will of Roberto Nari, a French servant to Cardinal Antonio Maria Salviati,
expresses an uncle’s wish that his nephew come to Rome. The testament
(1620) set forth that the heirs living in Rome must send 1100 scudi to
Roberto’s nieces and nephews living in Paris within 6 months of their
uncle’s death.38 Accustomed to moving around, like many servants of
cardinals and aristocrats who followed their masters, Roberto sought to
‘relocate’ various family members, suggesting that some leave Rome and
others come to live there. Madonna Pasqua and Vittoria, his wife’s aunt
and niece, were invited to return to Florence, ‘their home, where they
were born, with their relatives and so make their lives there’. In contrast,
Roberto left 100 scudi and wool clothing to Giovanni, the son of his niece
Maria, ‘on the condition, however, that this Giovanni come to Rome as
the testator has written he should, otherwise this bequest is null’.
Another characteristic of multi-local bonds is the fact that they coexist
with local ties, which migrants had or created in the arrival city. This con-
dition ofsimultaneity is especially evident when migrants appointed two
universal heirs, one for goods and money acquired in Rome, the other
for properties owned in the hometown. Pietro Seitarelli from Monte
San Leone, in the Duchy of Urbino, was a vineyard sharecropper who
named as his universal heirs his brother Marino, for the goods he owned
in Rome, and his mother, for those in San Leone.39 The same solu-
tion was adopted in 1619 by Bartolomeo de Longhi, a carpenter from
Mapello, in the dioceses of Bergamo. He appointed as universal heirs his
brothers: Donato, who lived in the homeland, and Giovanni Antonio,
who had migrated to Rome.40 Even when there was only one universal
heir, many testaments provide evidence of the double belonging of their
migrant authors. Indeed, the division of goods in many wills appears to
follow a precise logic: goods that remained in the birthplace were left to
the relatives still living there, while goods owned in the city were left to
family members who migrated to Rome or other individuals with whom
216 E. Canepari

the testator had established new relationships after arriving in the city.
For instance, Perpetua Petrella, a widow from L’Aquila, left 10 scudi to
her cousin in their home village and bequeathed all her property located
in her birthplace to her two nieces, who had likewise remained there.41
Perpetua had thus maintained personal connections and property in her
hometown while at the same time establishing relationships in Rome that
were completely independent of her kinship ties. Indeed, Perpetua left
5 scudi each to her goddaughters Marta and Porzia, the daughters of a
bricklayer named Pietro; moreover, she willed all the furniture and ‘deco-
rations’ she owned in Rome to her friend, the girls’ mother.
In these wills, it appears that the ‘invested space’ of the migrants—to
borrow Rosental’s expression—continued to extend to the hometown
even while new relationships were created in the arrival city. These bonds
were not limited to social relationships; they also included ‘spiritual ties’
linking the migrant to a church in the home village. Indeed, wills often
include bequests to one or more churches in exchange for masses to be
said for the testator’s soul. These cases display the same logic of double
belonging described above. Tomasso dalla Chiesa, from Morbio in the dio-
ceses of Como, appointed his mother as universal heir, left some money
to his sisters (one of whom lived in the home village) for their dowries,
and bequeathed 200 scudi to the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in
Morbio.42 According to the intentions of Tomasso, the sum was to have
been invested in real estate, in order to perpetuate the bequest.43
The double belonging of migrants, the condition of being at once
‘here and there’, is further enhanced by the fact that they maintained not
only social and ‘spiritual’ bonds in their hometowns, but also property.
The importance of studying the circulation of goods has been underlined
by George E. Marcus, who stresses the fruitfulness of ‘the ‘follow the
thing’ mode of constructing the space of investigation’:44 ‘This mode of
constructing the multi-sited space of research involves tracing the circu-
lation through different context of a manifestly material object of study
(at least as initially conceived), such as commodities, gifts, money […]’.45
As the wills show, the maintenance of familial ties was closely linked
to the possession of goods at home: houses, land and vineyards that
migrants continued to own even many years after migrating. Returning
to the San Sisto paupers, it can be seen that all the properties they owned
were located in their birthplaces. It should be noted that the specificity
of this particular source—San Sisto pauper hospital records—implies that
most of the individuals in the sample belonged to the lower classes, and
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 217

could not afford to acquire real estate in Rome.46 Nevertheless, it is clear

that migrants continued to own property in their birthplace even when
many years had passed since their departure (Fig. 8.4).
As Fig. 8.4 shows, migrants continued to own property in their birth-
place even when they had been in Rome for more than 30 years. On this
subject, Angiolina Arru underlines that migrants very seldom sold off the
goods they possesses that were located at home:

Migration studies have neglected to analyze […] relationships with the

material goods of varying importance that migrants left behind in the
home village. As the sources show, in these cases it was even more evi-
dent that the significance of wealth lay not so much in economic logics
as in the need to preserve ties, identities and, above all, a presence in the
community from which they had departed momentarily or permanently.
Following migration, it was common for goods owned in the home village
to be abandoned, often for long periods, but never sold.47

As we have seen, property in the birthplace was usually bequeathed to

fellow villagers, while the heirs living in Rome more frequently inher-
ited moveable possessions, objects and furnishings. As the wills of non-
Romans and the declarations of the San Sisto paupers illustrate, the practice
of holding on to the real estate owned at ‘home’, even many years after
departure, was made possible by a form of ‘plural’ management. Indeed,
migrants often owned these goods together with their brothers and sis-
ters (or other relatives). For instance, Antonio Vestri from Velletri, who

12 11
10
8
6
4
4 3
2 1
0
Up to 10 years 11 to 30 years 31 to 50 years Over 50 years

Fig. 8.4 Possession of property at home and years spent in Rome (tot. 19).
Source ASR, Ospizio Apostolico di San Michele, part II, vol. 204, 1694–1702
218 E. Canepari

worked as a cook for the Duke Strozzi, owned a house in his hometown
together with his sister, and this half-share of the property was her dowry.48
Lorenzo Marchiono from Urbino had two brothers and two sisters in his
place of origin, where they collectively owned a vineyard and a house.49
Andrea Ricci, a 50-year-old porter from Valtellina, owned several parcels of
land and a share of three houses together with his brothers, ‘in addition
to nine goats and a cow’.50 While on the one hand, the fact that property
was often ‘shared’ partially explains the reluctance to sell such possessions,
on the other hand, it underlines the key role these goods played in helping
migrants maintain symbolic and concrete bonds with their home villages.
Despite the distance and years separating migrants from their places of ori-
gin, familial relationships and the collective management of these posses-
sions mutually reinforced and preserved one another.
In order to manage possessions at a distance, migrants drew on geo-
graphical community networks and, more specifically, on those members
of the community who travelled between the home village and the arrival
city on a regular basis. As I have shown elsewhere, in cases where this
network was less developed and the migration was essentially an indi-
vidual trajectory, it was more difficult for migrants to gain possession
of money they had inherited or manage goods at a distance.51 Owning
property at a distance was only possible within a dense and long-standing
migratory network including individuals who, thanks to their frequent
mobility, were capable of acting in both the Roman environment and the
home village. These dense and long-standing networks, along with the
creation of a multi-local space that extended beyond individual cities and
villages, are the focus of the next section.

Beyond Distance: An Early Modern

‘Transnational Community’
Surprisingly enough, if we look once again at the will samples and analyse
the testators’ places of origin, we discover that the maintenance of bonds
with the home village had nothing to do with the distance from Rome.
Indeed, the maintenance of multi-local ties appears to have been a com-
mon practice, especially among those migrants who came from the vil-
lages of the dioceses of Bergamo, Como and Milan. These three dioceses
were outside of the Pontifical State: it is thus appropriate to define such
bonds as ‘transnational’. Figure 8.5 illustrates the relationship between
the percentage of places of origin as a share of the sample total (A) and,
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 219

18 17
16 14.6
14 12
12
9.3 8.7
10
8 A
6 4.6 4.6 4.8
4 2.4 2.9 2.9 2.9 2.9 B
2.3 2.4 2.4 1.7 1.7
2
0

Fig. 8.5 Places of origin of the migrants included in the wills sample
(tot. 173). Source ASR, Trenta notai capitolini, uff. 13, Testamenti, volumes
904–911, 1610–1653

for each place of origin, the share of migrants who had relatives and/or
goods in the birthplace (B). Only the main places of origin (places that
contributed at least three migrants) have been taken into account.
It is immediately clear that there is a sharp disconnect between col-
umn A and column B for the categories Bergamo, Milan and Como,
while in the other categories, the A and B columns represent a very simi-
lar value—and, in the Tiburtina, Sabina, Parma and Norcia categories,
column A is greater than B. This means that migrants from the dio-
ceses of Bergamo, Milan and Como are overrepresented among those
migrants who had heirs in the home village. For instance, the migrants
from Como dioceses make up 4.6% of total testators, while their por-
tion rises to 12% if we take into account only those testators who sent
money/goods as bequests to the home village or town.
The maintenance of multi-local bonds is thus independent of the geo-
graphical distance between hometown and arrival city; it is likewise inde-
pendent of whether or not the two places are located within the same
country. In a study I carried out on migrant women in Rome, it emerged
that being part of a multi-local network was much more important than
geographical proximity for the maintenance of bonds with the place of
origin.52 In this study, I observed that some women who did not return
to their home village for years, and who had nobody to act as agent on
their behalf, appear to have lost their property when relatives or other
villagers took ‘illegal’ possession of it. I have concluded that the lack
220 E. Canepari

of a dense, multi-local network made it virtually impossible to main-

tain bonds in the birthplace, regardless of distance. The data outlined in
Fig. 8.5 suggest the same conclusion: despite the fact that circular mobil-
ity was common practice among these migrants, it cannot be assumed
that all of them returned home on a regular basis. It is much more likely
that the maintenance of bonds of the community ‘scattered’ between
Rome and the home village relied upon the mobility of a limited number
of individuals, who acted as intermediaries.
In order to study these communities, it is necessary to adopt a multi-
sited, micro-historical approach and ‘track’ the mobility and biographies
of migrants both in the birthplace and in the arrival city: an approach
that is closely connected to the multi-sited ethnography suggested
by George E. Marcus.53 In the trial mentioned in the introduction, I
noted that both the plaintiff and his brother had temporarily returned
to Gattinara, their home village. Another trial provides an example of
this practice within a ‘transnational’ community living between Rome
and Borgo Sessia, in the diocese of Novara.54 In 1624, Giovanni Moglia
had a disagreement with Pietro Godio. Just as in the other trial, the con-
flict revolved around a loan. Pietro, who owed 25 scudi to Giovanni,
told him that his uncle, Giuseppe Progliano, who lived in Borgo Sessia,
would pay back the sum. When Giovanni went to the village, however,
Giuseppe refused to pay him. Back in Rome, Giovanni asked Pietro for
the money, but Pietro continued to claim that Giovanni had collected
his money at the home village, until one day they were both eating at
a tavern and the fight broke out. The two trials provided as examples
show that circular mobility was a common practice for these migrants,
even over long distances. If we adopt a multi-sited approach taking into
account not only Roman sources but also the notary deeds drawn up in
the places of origin, the sources confirm the existence of a pattern of cir-
cular mobility between Rome and these far-distant villages.
In October 1622, in the village of Gattinara, dioceses of Vercelli,
Giorgio Calza appointed as his agents his cousin Antonio Calza and his
friend Giovanni Duco, both living in Rome, in order ‘to collect from
Luca, the son of the late Giacomino Sodano, also from Gattinara, liv-
ing in the same city [of Rome], the sum of 25 scudi, bequeathed to
him by the late Michele Floretta from Gattinara, in his will made about
2 years ago’.55 Michele Floretta was the same migrant who had mar-
ried the niece of Giacomo Corsetto—mentioned in the trial cited in the
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 221

Introduction—whose uncle had come from the home village. Michele

had also left some money to several confraternities in Gattinara, includ-
ing the confraternity of the Santissimo Rosario, to which the testa-
tor bequeathed 50 scudi. The prior and sub-prior of the confraternity
were Giorgio Calza and Lorenzo Bardoni; in 1623, they appointed as
agents their brothers—both named Antonio and both living in Rome—
in order to collect the money from Michele’s universal heir, Luca
Sodano.56 If Lorenzo Bardoni appointed his brother as his agent, it is
not because he lived in Gattinara; in reality, he was only staying in the
home village temporarily. Indeed, Lorenzo travelled between Rome and
Gattinara on a regular basis, as a comparison of sources recorded in the
two places shows. From 1611 to 1618, Lorenzo is mentioned in several
notary deeds recorded in Rome, and from 1619 to 1620, his name is
listed in the status animarum (parish census records) of Santa Maria ai
Martiri, but at the same time, Lorenzo also signed several notary deeds
in Gattinara, where he was present in 1621–1623. We can thus maintain
that Lorenzo’s movements followed a pattern of circular mobility, which
enabled him to maintain bonds in both places, including membership to
confraternities in Rome and Gattinara.
Lorenzo and the other migrants who travelled on a regular basis were
often appointed as agents by their relatives and fellow ‘villagers’. As
we have seen, circular mobility was an essential condition for the exist-
ence of a ‘transnational’ community, as agents played a key role in the
maintenance and management of goods. Moreover, exchanges related
to marriages and the payment of dowries always involved agents: as a
matter of fact, they held a particularly important role in managing the
funds that went into dowries. For example, Lorenzo Bardone made it
possible for Pietro Antonio Sodano to arrange the payment of his sister
Caterina’s dowry. He is reported to have been present when Caterina’s
husband took receipt of 100 scudi, whereas Pietro Antonio is defined as
‘absent’ due to his being ‘resident in Rome’.57 In the case of Bernardina
Regaglietto, even though all the individuals involved in the operation
lived in Rome, the dowry was paid through an agent. Both the girl and
Gabriele Pastorino, her husband, were residents of Rome, as were her
brothers Francesco and Giacomo. Another brother, Giovanni, lived in
Gattinara, and he was the one who paid the dowry for his sister, giving
the money over to an agent appointed by the future husband.
222 E. Canepari

Giovanni Battista Buggio of Gattinara, the agent of Gabriele Pastorino

of Gattinara living in Rome, as this power of attorney attests […], in the
name of this Gabriele has declared to have had and received from Giovanni
Regalietto of Gattinara the present payment in his name and from
Francesco and Giacomo, her brothers resident in Rome, for the dowry
of their sister Bernardina […] the sum of 100 scudi, worth 9 florins each
[…].58

The dowry was thus paid in the hometown, even though the bride,
groom and brothers had migrated to Rome, an operation that was made
possible by the fact that the payment did not involve cash but rather
an income (censo)59 from a piece of land located in the home village:
Giovanni had placed the censo on his property in Gattinara and then
transferred it to the groom in Rome.

Giovanni Regaglietto of Gattinara, in his own name and in the name of his
absent brothers Giacomo and Francesco, and to endow Bernardina their
sister, the wife of Gabrielle Pastorino, both residents of Rome, has imposed
and assigned a censo, that is a perpetual yearly income of 12 scudi at 9 flor-
ins each, on a lot in the village of Gattinara in the neighbourhood of Porta
di Santo Pietro […] and another on a piece of land located in Gattinara
in a place called Bozalla […], this censo is to be sold to Giovanni Battista
Bugio of Gattinara, the agent of the above-named Gabriele Pastorino
[…].60

The case of Bernardina’s dowry shows that migrants’ economic base

often remained in their home village; this property, as I outlined earlier,
consisted of ‘immovable’ goods—real estate and lands—which accounted
for the most significant portion of many migrants’ wealth. It can thus
be argued that the goods owned in the hometowns served as ‘backup’
resources, whose possession was preserved as long as possible, and which
might be exploited by imposing forms of income such as the censo.
Besides the symbolic ties, this economic function of ‘backup’ appears to
have represented a further motivation for migrants to hold on to pos-
sessions despite long periods spent outside the place of origin. As we
have seen, this required being part of a network of villagers who might
be interested in purchasing (as in the example of Bernardina) an income
on a property located far from Rome. In other words, one of the condi-
tions for the existence of these ‘transnational’ communities, besides the
circular mobility of some of their members, is the fact that individuals
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 223

participating in these networks did share a common, multi-local space

that bound the home village to the arrival cities. This was a multi-local
space overlapping the espace investi of each of its members that represents
the spatial framework in which the lives of these ordinary migrants’ com-
ing from distant villages unfolded.

Concluding Comments
In conclusion, drawing from commonly used sources such as notary
deeds and hospital records, it is possible to shed light on the conditions
of common people whose ‘invested space’ comprised more than one site.
Kinship relations, property management, economic exchanges, ‘spirit-
ual’ belongings, the circulation of money, and social networks—whose
sources I have used for this paper—provide information and detail on
all of these topics. Even without adopting a multi-sited (micro-)histori-
cal approach, as I have done for the Gattinara community, a great deal
of information can be found in the arrival city’s sources. This investiga-
tion highlights the fact that, despite the significant differences between
contemporary migrants and those of the past, the categories of ‘transna-
tional’, multi-locality and simultaneity enable us to describe the ‘simul-
taneous’ dimension that characterises many ordinary migrants’ lives.
Moreover, it points to the necessity of taking into account the multiplic-
ity of identities and forms of belonging not only within the arrival city,
but also outside. The dichotomy between birthplace and arrival city thus
gives way to an approach that goes beyond individual cities and villages
and calls into question the notion of integration as assimilation (i.e. the
loss of contact with one’s hometown and ‘adhesion’ to the society of the
host place). As the case of the Gattinara community has shown, far from
being contradictory processes, insertion in the arrival city and the main-
tenance of bonds at ‘home’ might be two complementary strategies. To
return to the example of the dowries, it is clear that marriage with a ‘vil-
lager’ resident in Rome was possible thanks to the possession of land in
the hometown, exploited as ‘backup’ resource to pay the dowry. It also
emerges that being part of the community network, while not incom-
patible with full social insertion in Rome, enabled migrants to manage
property and kinship relations and to carry out their associations in two
places simultaneously. As a matter of fact, these dense and long-standing
networks were the main actors in the making of a ‘transnational’ space.
224 E. Canepari

Notes
1. Archivio di Stato di Roma (ASR), Tribunale Criminale del Governatore,
Processi, 1599, n. 318.
2. Idem.
3. Bracciano is a village in the region of Lazio, located 30 km northwest of
Rome.
4. On multi-sited ties and kinship in the early modern age see J. F.
Chauvard, C. Lebeau, eds., Eloignement géographique et cohésion famil-
iale (XVe–XXe siècle) (Strasbourg, 2006); C. H. Johnson, D. W. Sabean,
S. Teuscher, F. Trivellato, eds., Transregional and Transnational Families
in Europe and Beyond: Experiences since the Middle Ages, (New York and
Oxford, 2011).
5. A. Arru, ‘Reti locali, reti globali: il credito degli immigrati (secoli XVII–
XIX)’, in L’Italia delle migrazioni interne. Donne, uomini, mobilità in età
moderna e contemporanea, eds. A. Arru and F. Ramella (Rome, 2003),
77–110.
6. L. G. Basch, N. Glick Schilier, C. Blanc-Szanton, Nations Unbound:
Transnational Projects, Post-colonial Predicaments, and De-terrirorialized
Nation-States (Langhorne, PA, 1994), p. 6.
7. K. Gardner and R. Grillo, ‘Transnational households and ritual: an over-
view’, Global Networks, 2, 3, (2002), 179–190, p. 181.
8. L. E. Guarnizo and M. P. Smith, ‘The Locations of Transnationalism’,
in Transnationalism from Below: Comparative Urban and Community
Research, eds. M. P. Smith and L. E. Guarnizo (New Brunswick, 1998),
3–34, p. 4.
9. S. Castles and M. J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International
Population Movements in the Modern World (London, 1993).
10. W. I. Robinson, ‘Theories of Globalization’, in The Blackwell Companion
to Globalization, ed. G. Ritzer (Malden MA et al., 2007), 125–143,
p. 128–129.
11. J. Lucassen and L. Lucassen, eds., Migration, Migration History, History:
Old Paradigms and New Perspectives (Bern, 1999), p. 8.
12. J. Lucassen and L. Lucassen, ‘The Mobility Transition Revisited, 1500–
1900: What the Case of Europe Can Offer to Global History’, Journal of
Global History, 4, 3 (2009), 347–377, p. 371.
13. ‘A high level of early modern mobility resulted largely from ubiquitous
local and regional moves from parish to parish, both temporary and
permanent. There was also the demand for large numbers of seasonal
migrants over longer distances, and the development of an international
labour market for soldiers and sailors. Finally, there was the constant
draw of cities, which needed many migrants. In other words, the unruly
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 225

phenomenon of migration has now been placed centre stage’. Ibid.,

p. 349.
14. C. M. Aybek, J. Huinink, and R. Muttarak, ‘Migration, Spatial Mobility,
and Living Arrangements: An Introduction’, in Migration, Spatial
Mobility, and Living Arrangements, eds. C. M. Aybek, J. Huinink, and R.
Muttarak (Cham, 2015), 1–19, p. 3.
15. M. Eve, ‘Established and Outsiders in the Migration Process’, Cambio,
2 (2011), 147–158; M. Eve, ‘Una sociologia degli altri e un’altra soci-
ologia: la tradizione di studio sull’emigrazione’, Quaderni storici, 106
(2001), 233–259.
16. E. Razy and V. Baby-Collin, ‘La famille transnationale dans tous ses états’,
Autrepart, 57–58 (2011), 7–22, p. 8.
17. P. Levitt and N. Glick Schiller, ‘Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A
Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society’, International
Migration Review, 38, 3 (2004), 1002–1039, p. 1004.
18. Idem.
19. P. A. Rosental, ‘Maintien/rupture: un nouveau couple pour l’analyse
des migrations’, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 45, 6
(1990), 1403–1431, p. 1408.
20. In addition to credit, we might also note legal status: as Simona Feci has
shown, the different legal statuses individuals simultaneously held as
citizens in their home countries and foreigners in the place where they
lived (or even as holders of dual citizenship), constituted an important
resource for migrants’ economic and social practices. This is especially
clear in relation to the legal rights of women, which differed from one
Italian city to another, thus giving rise to practices that in some cases
actually changed the laws of host cities. S. Feci, ‘Cambiare città, cambi-
are norme, cambiare le norme. Circolazione di uomini e donne e tras-
formazione delle regole in antico regime’, in L’Italia delle migrazioni
interne, 3–31.
21. Rosental, ‘Maintien/rupture’, p. 1424.
22. ASR, Ospizio Apostolico di San Michele, part II, vol. 204, 20/4/1695.
23. Ibid., 20/2/1696.
24. Ibid., vol. 201, 20/9/1672.
25. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Pope Clement XI (1700–
1721), gathered together in the new hospital of San Michele (built
en 1686), all the poor of San Sisto and the Lateran hospitals. For this
reason, San Sisto’s records are part of the Ospizio Apostolico di San
Michele’s archival fund.
26. The sample was collected with data from ASR, Ospizio Apostolico di San
Michele, vol. 204, 1694–1702.
226 E. Canepari

27. As we will see, in charts and tables the sample changes depending on
which information we are focusing on. The total was 500, but not all of
the applicants were asked the same questions: it depended on the person
in charge of examining them. Not all the pieces of information are thus
available in all cases.
28. ASR, Ospizio Apostolico di San Michele, vol. 204 (1694–1702).
29. M. Bozon, Vie quotidienne et rapports sociaux dans une petite ville de prov-
ince. La mise en scène des différences (Lyon, 1984), p. 52.
30. These include Carlo Canali, a 77-year-old Milanese man who had arrived
in Rome 43 years before. He was a cook and innkeeper, and he had sev-
eral male relatives: a son who had lived in Naples for 1 year, a brother and
two stepbrothers. However, his connections with these last two relatives
appear to have been severed, since Carlo stated: ‘They are loose in the
world and I don’t know if they are dead or alive’ (ASR, Ospizio Apostolico
di San Michele, part II, vol. 203, 1st December 1694.). Anna Zocchina,
a French widow who came to Rome from Burgundy, had a son named
Domenico who had apparently left the city without bothering to inform
either his mother, who declared that she did not know what country her
son was living in, or his wife and young son, Anna’s only remaining rela-
tives (Ibid, vol. 202, 10 August 1691). Maria Capassoni from Florence,
also widowed, had a son named Bartolomeo who had left Rome (Ibid,
vol. 203, 18 January 1693). Her account of him remained quite vague,
stating only that he had lived ‘outside of Rome for a handful of years, and
I don’t know where he is presently, and he works as a grocer’.
31. ASR, Ospizio Apostolico di San Michele, part II, vol. 201, 24 August 1674.
32. This sample has been built from data drawn from the following sources:
ASR, Trenta notai capitolini, uff. 13, Testamenti, volumes 904–911,
1610–1653.
33. ASR, Trenta notai capitolini, uff. 13, 10 October 1615.
34. Ibid, 9 June 1621.
35. ‘nato in patria post ipsius testatoris discessum a dictae eius patriae’, Idem.
36. Ibid, 18 April 1649.
37. ‘Caterina (vel alio quovis nomine appelletur)’, Idem.
38. Ibid, 5 February 1620.
39. Ibid, 8 December 1612.
40. Ibid, 19 September 1619.
41. Ibid, 7 June 1617.
42. Ibid, 7 October 1610.
43. In only one case, the bequest was made not to a church but rather to the
school of the home village: Girolamo Falabretti, a sharpener (arrotatore)
from Bortanugo in the dioceses of Como, left 6 scudi to the school of his
birthplace. Ibid, 30 January 1615.
 8 KEEPING IN TOUCH: MIGRANT WORKERS’ TRANS-LOCAL TIES … 227

44. G. E. Marcus, ‘Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of

Multi-Sited Ethnography’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24 (1995),
95–117, p. 108.
45. Ibid., p. 106.
46. However, in reality this population is not so different from the rest of
Rome’s residents, whether migrants or natives. Individuals requesting aid
from the hospital were not only beggars and ‘needy’ individuals, rather,
they represented a range of social statuses: they were men and women
who were experiencing periods of serious difficulty for various reasons
(the loss of a source of income, death of a spouse, illness, etc.).
47. Arru, ‘Reti locali, reti globali’, p. 103.
48. ASR, Ospizio Apostolico di San Michele, part II, vol. 204, 23 September
1695.
49. Ibidem, vol. 203, 18 January 1693.
50. Ibidem, vol. 204, 13 June 1694.
51. E. Canepari‚ ‘‘In my home town I have...’. Migrant women and multi-
local ties (Rome, 17th–18th centuries)’‚ Genesis. Rivista della Società
Italiana delle Storiche‚ 13 (2014), 11–30.
52. E. Canepari, ‘“In my home town I have…”: Migrant women and multi-
local ties (Rome‚ 17th–18th centuries)’, Genesis, 13 (2014), 11–30.
53. Marcus, ‘Ethnography in/of the World System’.
54. ASR, Tribunale Criminale del Governatore, Processi, 1624, n. 189.
55. Archivio di Stato di Vercelli (ASVC), Insinuazione di Gattinara, vol. 9,
24 October 1622.
56. ASVC, Insinuazione di Gattinara, vol. 10, 15 December 1623.
57. Ibid., vol. 15, 6 March 1629.
58. Ibid., vol. 7, 12 November 1620.
59. The censo consisted of a loan issued by a private individual (or even the
state), the yield for which was associated with the income from a piece
of land, for example. Over time, the censo became a yearly payment on
the basis of which the seller received a sum of money and agreed to pay
the buyer interest on an annual basis. The censo could take the form of an
annuity, perpetuity or perpetual loan, similar to a mortgage. In the major-
ity of cases it could be redeemed at the request of either party.
60. ASVC, Insinuazione di Gattinara, vol. 7, 13 November 1620.

Acknowledgment The project leading to this publication has received funding

from Excellence Initiative of Aix-Marseille University – A*MIDEX, a French
“Investissements d’Avenir” programme.
 CHAPTER 9

Spatiality and the Mobility of Labour

in Pre-Unification Italy (Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Centuries)

Laura Di Fiore and Nicoletta Rolla

Introduction
In the course of a single century, between 1620 and 1720, the city of
Turin experienced significant demographic and urban growth, to which
immigration contributed decisively. Urban development in Turin, marked

This chapter is the product of shared reflections between the two authors, who
co-wrote the introduction and the conclusions. Laura Di Fiore is the author of
paragraphs The countryside between the Papal State and the Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies and Space practices and rights of use along the border between the Papal
State and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, while Nicoletta Rolla is the author of
paragraphs Construction sites in Turin and Mobility management and conflict
resolution in Turin.

L. Di Fiore (*)
University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]
N. Rolla
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 229

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_9
230 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

as it was by three successive enlargements of its walls (1620, 1673 and

1719), attracted entrepreneurs and labour employed on construction
sites, which became the contact zones for immigrants from different
regions. A century later, in the countryside between the Kingdom of the
Two Sicilies and the Papal State, the local populations, especially shep-
herds, peasants and seasonal workers, continued to move at will on either
side of the border as they had been accustomed to do since the beginning
of the early modern era. Nevertheless, something had changed, as in the
nineteenth century, state borders underwent a process of increasing stabi-
lisation, being more meticulously traced and policed than in the past.
What did the eighteenth-century workers on construction sites in
Turin and the nineteenth-century peasants of the Roman Campagna
have in common, save perhaps their calloused hands and bruised and
battered bodies? The answer is the capacity, we would argue, to define
particular social spaces through their experience of migration. The con-
struction sites in Turin in the eighteenth century and the countryside
between the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Papal State in the
nineteenth century offer a perfect vantage point from which to observe
workers’ mobility in pre-unification Italy and to consider its characteris-
tics in terms of several crucial questions. In such contexts of high popu-
lation mobility, how do migrations define social spaces? An analysis of
the phenomenon focusing on the capacity of foreign workers to integrate
into a given social context seems inappropriate, not least because it fails
to show the active role played by immigrants in the definition of social
space. On building sites in Turin and in the countryside across the bor-
der between two states in Southern Italy, in fact, what developed was the
construction of trans-local and trans-national spaces rather than a process
of integration.
Indeed, the creation of such spaces was due on the one hand to work-
related mobility, and, on the other hand, to conflicts over access to local
resources. Furthermore, in both cases, these trans-local and trans-state
spaces were produced through an intense interplay between workers and
institutions.
Therefore, some significant points in common, revealed through scru-
tiny of the two case-studies, make it of interest to bring together events
that took place against the background of pre-unification Italy during
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Firstly, both the entrepreneurs
and labourers at construction sites in Turin, as well as the seasonal shep-
herds and day labourers migrating between the Neapolitan mountains
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 231

and Roman Campagna did much through their work-related mobility to

carve out specific spaces of a trans-local and trans-state nature. Indeed,
both the Kingdom of Naples-Papal State border and the building sites in
Turin that attracted workers from Alpine areas represent spaces that can-
not properly be analysed within a nation-state framework. This is because
they represent places of transition, of seasonal mobility and of a conver-
gence between long-term migration and flows of workers who main-
tained enduring relationships with their communities of origin. They did
so despite putting down deep roots in the socio-economic fabric of their
places of destination, thus circulating within trans-local contexts, which
in any case cannot be reduced to a national dimension.1
In this sense, both cases show that it is possible—and indeed neces-
sary—to create frameworks of historical analysis that go ‘beyond meth-
odological nationalism’.2 What we have in mind are frameworks where
acceptance of the spatial turn3 does not of itself entail a macro-analytical
approach.4 For here the original spatial dimensions underlying the two
studies allow us to reconstruct connective networks marked out by the
movement of workers within integrated economic systems and by the
inter-connection of their familial, economic and social relations.
Secondly, both cases show how the workers in question gained access
to local resources within their respective environments, once again,
to this end, creating specific spaces. The latter could be marked out
through putting down deep roots within the territory—as in the case of
entrepreneurs and master builders vying for public and private contracts
in Turin, and in that of Neapolitan and Papal State shepherds and agri-
cultural workers competing over co-grazing rights and the communal
use of woodlands and cultivated fields. Or they could be marked out by
short- and long-distance migration organised through intermediaries—as
in the case of salaried workers at construction sites in Turin.
However, the procedures for accessing these resources were not man-
aged in a completely independent manner by the workers in question,
but through discussion, conflict and negotiation with the relevant insti-
tutions. And these were the dynamics responsible for engendering or
redefining spaces through which to access local resources.
Consequently, the bringing together of such cases set against the
background of these two shared dimensions makes it possible to for-
mulate a broader and undoubtedly more complex overview of worker
mobility in the Italian peninsula between the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries, and of spaces alternative to those defined at a
232 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

political-institutional level, marked out as such spaces by movements

associated with the labour process.
This overview also benefits from the fact of there being two distinct
methodological approaches in play, one based mainly on a perspective
focusing on social actors (the first case) and the other relying chiefly on
institutional sources (the second case). Our vantage point thus offers, we
believe, a more comprehensive vision of the topic under examination,
bringing together as it does approaches traditionally kept separate by the
tendency to focus either on provisions made at an institutional level, or
on social practices adopted at an individual or collective level.
However, intense interaction between institutional agencies and
social actors emerges in both cases, despite this complementary equilib-
rium. The institutional agencies—worker confraternities, the Vicariate of
Turin, the Bourbon police force and Border Commission—took steps to
regulate in various ways worker mobility, procedures for accessing local
resources, disputes and labour conflicts. The social actors, for their part,
did not fail to turn provisions and measures related to these matters to
their own advantage, availing themselves of them in a completely instru-
mental manner, as well as to defend their own interests, as an integral
part of the construction of those alternative spaces organised on the basis
of their own working experience.
This chapter focuses on two main issues. In the first part, the two case
studies will highlight the social actors’ ability to construct original trans-
local and trans-state spaces, marked out by the routes of worker mobil-
ity. The second part of this chapter will then focus on the role played by
institutions in the construction of these trans-local and trans-state spaces
in relation to their regulation of access to local resources, and on the
resulting dialectical exchange between institutions and social actors.

Trans-Local and Trans-State Spaces in Europe’s Cities

and Countryside

Italy’s cities and countryside prior to industrialisation were witness to

significant migratory movements of their population. Internal and exter-
nal migration served constantly to redefine spaces in a manner quite at
odds with political borders, in some cases, contributing to the organi-
sation of specific trans-local and trans-state spaces marked out by the
movements of migrant workers. Cross-border worker mobility, the
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 233

maintenance of strong ties with places of birth and the construction of

extensive networks of social relations and migratory chains helped, on
the one hand, to link different local contexts in a permanent manner. On
the other, they served to transform spaces straddling political borders
into cohesive territorial entities which thereby came to constitute a spa-
tial continuum.

Construction Sites in Turin

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Turin, at that date, still a
relatively small city, had only recently become the capital of the Duchy
of Savoy, which extended from the southern shore of Lake Geneva to the
Po Valley and was a predominantly mountainous area astride the western
Alps. One hundred years later, Turin was the capital of a kingdom and its
surface area had increased significantly after three successive expansions
in 1620, 1673 and 1719.5
As in many other European cities, so too here urban development was
the practical consequence of demographic growth, due in no small meas-
ure to the presence of immigrants from different areas within the Duchy
and nearby States. Between the first and the third expansion, the number
of inhabitants rose from 14,244 in 1614 to 47,433 in 1719.6 During
both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there were a consider-
able number of foreigners living in Turin. Giovanni Levi’s study of the
geographical origins of married couples in the first half of the eighteenth
century showed that foreign couples represented 51.6% of all married
couples in Turin during the first decade (1700–1709) and 68.1% during
the middle decade (1740–1749).7 These data roughly match those used
in the analysis of the 1705 population census drawn up on the occasion
of a military levy. In 1705, some of Turin’s neighbourhoods were inhab-
ited mainly by foreigners: for example, 65% of householders residing in
the San Cristoforo area and 60% of those residing in the San Giovenale
area were not originally from Turin.
Due to the presence of so many foreigners, Turin became a point of
contact for people coming from all corners of the State and indeed from
more distant regions. Many of them stayed in touch with their place of
origin, where they may still have had family and property and, as seasonal
workers, returned periodically or in the last years of their lives. All of
them could call upon assets, comprising social relationships and material
interests that served to sustain strong bonds with their place of origin.
234 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

Indeed, Levi stressed the fact that foreigners entering the city—to judge
by the data relating to married couples—would not necessarily settle in
Turin permanently. Conversely, in most cases, the habit of returning peri-
odically to their communities of origin was common to nearly all incom-
ers, as in the case of innkeepers, porters and brentadori (wine carriers
from Viù, in the Lanzo valley).8
At the height of its urban development, Turin attracted many entre-
preneurs and construction workers: master bricklayers, master carpenters,
stonecutters, sculptors, brick kiln masters, stucco decorators and painters,
just to mention some of the professions employed on construction sites
at the time. The Savoy capital attracted many people, mostly because of
the numerous building sites found within the city walls: the three suc-
cessive expansions mentioned above represented an opportunity for sig-
nificant private investment and profitable property speculation. At the
same time, the king’s concern with the embellishment and decoration of
the city, along with his preoccupation with military matters, gave a boost
to many new public construction sites, particularly after Turin became
the capital (1713). However, the lure of living in Turin did not depend
solely on the possibility of being involved in construction of the city
through private or public commissions. Turin was also where the nego-
tiations for all of Piedmont’s public construction sites took place.
Most master builders and entrepreneurs working in Turin during
the second half of the eighteenth century were not originally from the
city (Map 9.1). In 1742, the names of all craftsmen working in Turin
were, for fiscal reasons, entered on to a list: many of the master build-
ers, master carpenters and master stonecutters were originally from
Lugano, Milan and Biella.9 Most master builders had migrated from
the Alpine areas of southern Switzerland10 and from the State of Milan.
The majority came from a particular area near Lake Lugano. Swiss and
Milanese master builders are reported to have been in Turin since the
sixteenth century and their presence was to become so regular and con-
stant a feature during the 1620s that a confraternity under the protec-
tion of Saint Anna was founded,11 an early example of a trade association
in Turin.12 Most master carpenters were from the Piedmontese western
Alps, especially from specific villages around Biella: the earliest surviv-
ing documents regarding a confraternity in Turin, once again under the
protection of Saint Anna, comprising master carpenters from Graglia
and Muzzano (two villages near Biella) date from the early 1700s,
almost 100 years after the foundation of the Company of Saint Anna by
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 235

Map 9.1 Origin of entrepreneurs and construction workers active in Turin in

the eighteenth century

architects and master builders from Lugano and Milan.13 Therefore, the
leading protagonists on the Turin construction scene were not actually
from the city itself, but were master builders from two Alpine regions,
one of which lay outside the state. The same was true of other masters.
Turin was full of stonecutters and stucco decorators from Lugano, paint-
ers from Milan and sculptors from Chieri. The situation was similar in
many other Italian and European cities where the presence of special-
ised masters from Lugano and Milan is documented. At the same time,
‘Lombard’, although actually Swiss and Milanese, master builders were
united in Rome and Florence in Rome’s Archconfraternity of Saints
Ambrogio and Carlo and in Florence’s Company of Saint Carlo dei
Lombardi. These two companies brought together Swiss and Milanese
practicing different professions, linked through relations of mutual aid.14
Despite their foreign origins, entrepreneurs and master builders laid
claim to their membership of the city’s social and economic fabric on a
236 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

number of different occasions. And, indeed, the existence of trade asso-

ciations that brought together master craftsmen from the same Alpine
villages was the result of a constant, organised presence within the ter-
ritory. Generations of master builders followed on one from the other
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This shows how some
families put down roots in the urban social fabric, a presence capped by
the purchase of real estate and consolidated through marriages with local
families.
A quite different situation pertains in the case of the salaried work-
force and the processes of urbanisation to which they were subjected.
The information available to historians attempting to reconstruct the
paths taken and professional choices made by the salaried workforce
is, unfortunately, scant and fragmentary. We know only of great num-
bers of day labourers, to whom we can rarely attach any names. As the
name suggests, journeymen or day labourers were defined by the way
in which their wages were quantified—by the day. The labourer sold his
time, and a day’s work was paid according to skill and experience. This
generic definition conceals a wide variety of trades, abilities and roles that
included—in the construction industry alone—building measurers, mas-
ter craftsmen, labourers and apprentices. They were all paid according
to the number of days worked, although they each held markedly differ-
ent positions on site which translated into different salary brackets.15 The
differences between craftsmen, labourers and apprentices were not espe-
cially rigid within this hierarchy and no single position on a construction
site was definitive.
The duration of a period of employment on a construction site
depended on various factors, beginning with the amount of work com-
missioned and the weather conditions. Construction site requirements
varied from day to day as works progressed, resulting in different num-
bers of workers: craftsmen, labourers and apprentices were continuously
hired and fired, and there was a rapid turnover. Given the flexibility of
construction sites and the precarious nature of contracts, workers them-
selves needed to have alternative sources of income and to carry out vari-
ous jobs which cannot be defined in a more precise manner given the
paucity of information available with regard to individual workers. We
used workforce payment records in order to monitor the activities of a
number of construction sites. Master craftsmen and contractors drew up
monthly or weekly lists of working days, organised in terms of the differ-
ent types of worker and with a view to calculating the total wages owed.
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 237

An analysis of various construction sites within the city, for example that
of Superga in the 1730s16 and the Royal Gardens in the 1750s,17 reveals
considerable flexibility on the part of the contractors in hiring and firing
the workforce in accordance with a project’s shifting requirements and
changes in the weather.
As a result, construction sites defined dynamic areas within cities
where salaried workers, from various regions inside and outside the king-
dom, were hired and fired with a quick turnover. Their extreme geo-
graphical and work-based mobility was offset by the still greater—and
much vaunted—stability of a number of master builders and contractors
required for the awarding of important tenders.
Master builders and labourers maintained close ties with their place
of birth. Migration was in fact an intrinsic part of the specific economic
and social systems of Alpine villages,18 based on the integration of two
elements: the economy of those who remained behind and who were
generally women working in subsistence agriculture, and the economy
of those who left, the men, who provided the remittances needed to
buy essential goods. As well as yielding a meagre harvest, the land rep-
resented a guarantee which the close network of credit that sustained the
local economy and consolidated social relations was based upon.19
Many of these specialised labourers made their way from one
European city to another. The letters left by some of them allow a
reconstruction, at least in part, of their journeys along the highways and
byways of Europe. Giovanni Antonio Oldelli, a plasterer from Meride,
near Lugano, sent letters to Giovanni Oldelli from Münster, Steinfort,
Bensberg, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Rotterdam, Mannheim, Vienna,
Olmutz, Prague, Turin, Zurich, Genoa and Bergamo between 1707 and
1757. This itinerary also took in the Savoyard capital where, in 1732,
Giovanni Antonio bid for a contract for ‘faux marbling at the Royal.
Gallery’.20 Like Oldelli, many specialised labourers brought with them a
wealth of technical knowledge, experience and trans-local social relations
that linked them to their native villages and, from there, opened up the
roads and cities of all Europe.

The Countryside Between the Papal State and the Kingdom

of the Two Sicilies
Moving southwards down the Italian peninsula, we can discern the crys-
tallisation of a specific space during the nineteenth century along the
238 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

Map 9.2 “Carta generale del Regno delle Due Sicilie”, Gabriello De Sanctis,
1840

border between two other pre-unification states—the Papal State and

the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies—on the basis of work-related mobility
(Map 9.2). Agricultural labourers were the protagonists of this process,
having been responsible for centuries, through seasonal movements, for
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 239

agropastoral activities in the vast rural area stretching along either side of
the border between the two states.
Indeed, the Roman Campagna (Papal State) was a vast, sparsely popu-
lated area, where the huge latifundia relied chiefly on seasonal labour for
cultivating and harvesting wheat and for grazing livestock.21 Numerous
flows of workers from the Abruzzi mountains or the Terra di Lavoro
countryside thus travelled along the seasonal migratory routes towards
destinations where the agricultural calendar and the demand for labour
power offered greater economic opportunities throughout the whole of
the modern period.
So, in the months of ice and snow, Abruzzo’s mountain dwellers led
their flocks to winter pastures in the plains where the climate was milder.
Many agricultural workers also travelled along the same ‘sheep tracks’,
in other words, the transhumance trails, in specific seasons of the year.
Indeed, for approximately 8 to 9 months of the year, from October to
May, they found employment in a farming context with a significant
labour shortage.
These intense migratory flows were managed through a rather com-
plex system, the linchpin of which was the mediation performed by
so-called caporali (foremen) andlocatori d’opera (principals). In fact,
themercanti di campagna—in other words the tenants of the vast areas
of land belonging to aristocrats and ecclesiastics mostly living in urban
settings—relied on the above-mentioned intermediaries who were
responsible for recruiting workers in their places of origin and form-
ing the ‘companies’ subsequently brought to the Roman fields.22
Nevertheless, in addition to these more systematically organised work
groups, there were also independent flows of individuals comprising
teams of harvesters and reapers during the summer months, as well as
various types of workers not directly linked to agropastoral activities.
They accompanied the myriad shepherds and day labourers, performing
the most diverse activities including, for example, services offered to the
itinerant country population,23 the transportation of grapes during har-
vest time,24 or land drainage, construction and road maintenance, and a
wide range of commercial activities.
A very extensive and detailed overview of these figures is offered by
the Napoleonic survey of seasonal migrants conducted by the depart-
ments annexed to the Empire during 1811–1812.25 The report drawn
up by the Department of Rome’s prefect26 included great numbers
of woodcutters and coal merchants, shoemakers from Amatrice and
240 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

individuals from Leonessa responsible for keeping livestock clean, along-

side skilled workers from Abruzzo specialising in road construction
and those from Terra di Lavoro responsible for clearing ditches. The
prefect ended his report by listing the number of seasonal migrants in
the Roman Campagna between October and June 1812 as approxi-
mately twenty-five thousand.27 It is possible that the prefect’s calcula-
tions slightly underestimated the number of citizens of the Kingdom of
Naples within the territory of Rome if we consider that, at the end of the
1700s and for the Aquilan part of Abruzzo only, the number of seasonal
workers travelling to the Roman Campagna was reckoned to be some
20,000.28
In any case, it is certain that, as can also be seen from archive records,
sizeable migratory flows continued to cross over the kingdom’s border
to the Roman state at seasonal intervals and for the whole of the 1800s.
This occurred within an integrated economic system, featuring a reason-
able level of structuring and, above all, backed up by an age-old tradi-
tion, not least in the minds of the protagonists.29
However, in the 1800s, and specifically during the Napoleonic era,
the customary circuits of shepherds and day labourers came up against
the new personal identification procedures employed in controlling pop-
ulation movement, introduced into the Kingdom of Naples during the
decade of French rule (1806–1815). This situation was similar to that
recorded in the vast international historiography for the rest of continen-
tal Europe under Napoleon’s command.30
So, for the first time, seasonal workers were obliged to hold a spe-
cific travel document—the passport—to circulate within a physical space
that had hitherto been experienced as unitary. This was the result of a
complementary economy having fostered and consolidated interde-
pendency between two portions of territory located within two differ-
ent state bodies and regarded throughout the modern period as a single
‘transhumance area’. This cross-state territorial entity, built on centuries-
old economic relations and physically marked out by the movements of
migrants abiding by the ‘nature of the seasons’,31 now found itself up
against the Napoleonic administrative organisation, which placed greater
emphasis on the state border’s power to divide than on its capacity to
connect.
On a more strictly material level, the obligation to hold travel docu-
ments represented a by no means minor problem for all those who had
to cross over the border for work-related needs given that the procedure
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 241

entailed applying to the Papal representative residing in Naples (the

apostolic nuncio) for a visa on the passport. This meant that the labour-
ers of the border provinces had to undertake an arduous journey to the
capital which, in many cases, was longer than the journey that would
have brought them to their destination across the border.
Agricultural workers, in particular, were not slow to inform the
authorities of the difficulties caused by the new regulations regarding
documents. Their own experience was, after all, of a ‘lived frontier’32 in
its areal configuration, one that by and large cleaved to the coordinates
of migrant worker routes. These objections were accepted and codified
at a legislative level in the form of a law promulgated in 1821 to regu-
late the mobility of subjects of the Kingdom of Naples in a complete and
exhaustive manner. Based on agreements with the papal government, the
law absolved the shepherds and day labourers of Neapolitan provinces
bordering with the Papal State from the obligation to hold a passport
in order to travel abroad, granting the said individuals the right to cross
the border with a less ‘formal’ document, in other words, a simple carta
di passo (pass card). This was the same document as was used by these
groups for internal mobility and issued by the Mayor of their municipal-
ity free of charge, valid for a period of one year (and not just for one
journey). Thus the card-holder was exempt from the preliminary police
check required for the issuing of a passport.
It is thus clear that this was an especially significant exception, and one
that increased the porosity of a state border which, otherwise, was in the
process of being rendered as impermeable as possible. Nevertheless, state
institutions—in this case, the police responsible for controlling popula-
tion movements—regarded cross-border mobility needs as a priority and,
hence, created a special area along the border between the two states,
founded on laws that often differed from those in force in the rest of the
state territory.
Indeed, during the decades stretching from the Restoration and the
end of the Kingdom up to Italian unification, a series of administrative
circulars and ad hoc regulations were issued. These were the result of a
process of directly dealing with the area’s social practices by the police,
measures whose ‘governmental’ character and propensity to adapt to
the actual situation on the ground and to the prevailing social reality has
been highlighted in the most original research to have been published in
recent years.33 Indeed, these measures tended to foster a gradual exten-
sion of movement-related concessions granted to various categories of
242 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

labourer leading a cross-border existence. These included, for example,

‘individuals who, for property or trade’ needed to sustain ‘ongoing com-
munication’34 between the two states, viaticali—in other words, indi-
viduals driving vehicles hauled by horses, mules or oxen35—‘traders of
retail goods, fish sellers and oil traders in the district of Gaeta’36 and day
labourers from Sora ‘who go to recite novenas in the Roman state’.37
So, what came to light was a complex tension between, on the one
hand, the notion of an administrative boundary—which (between
the Napoleonic era and the Restoration) was set to be tightened both
through more systematic control of the movement of goods and peo-
ple and (as we shall see) through negotiations conducted at a diplomatic
level with the Papal State in order to stabilise the boundary—and, on the
other hand, a border in the zonal sense. A zonal border, conceived not in
terms of its linear, political-juridical essence but rather in its areal dimen-
sion,38 could also be defined as ‘regional’.
Indeed, the survival of a border region that transected the border
itself, and that the state, to some extent, helped mark out in a novel way
at an administrative level through conceding numerous exceptions to the
laws then in force, can be set against the nineteenth-century administra-
tive state’s move towards a more marked territorialisation of the king-
dom. An essential part of this process was reinforcement of the external
perimeter and definition of a fully homogeneous internal space, separate
from what extended beyond the border.
During an age witnessing the construction of a new type of ‘territo-
riality’39 by nation-states in the process of emerging or consolidating
their identity, the case in question points to the evident co-existence of a
number of cross-state ‘territorialisation systems’.40 These were the result
of social actors living in and occupying space in a manner that differed
greatly from, but tended to overlap with, the concept of political-admin-
istrative ‘territoriality’. Such a space was marked out by the movement
of seasonal workers (including a considerable number of women) and
identifiable with existing cross-border territorial entities. The latter were
mainly linked to the abovementioned space’s established social practices
and consolidated network of economic and social relations, but now they
were defined anew by virtue of an interaction between state institutions
and social actors.
In this way, the geographies of the local communities along the
border clashed dialectically with the geographies of the central power
engaged in building the state territory, thereby engendering a more
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 243

complex areal dispensation than the demand for the most homogeneous
regulation possible of a political-institutional space might be thought to
have envisaged. The geographies of the local communities were organ-
ised in a trans-local dimension through the border’s interstitial space,41
around the key locations of the Abruzzi mountains and the Roman
Campagna up to Dogana dei Pascoli del Patrimonio di San Pietro, from
the gates of Rome (where crowds gathered at the Neapolitan representa-
tive’s office with requests for documents to re-enter the Kingdom) to the
borders with Tuscany.

Institutions and Access to Resources

Studies devoted to the history of police institutions and the history of
mobility have highlighted the focus placed on the mobility of the popu-
lation by institutions during various historical periods. Control of mobil-
ity, and more specifically of non-regulated mobility, gradually became
one of the major concerns of city and state authorities during the period
in question.
Mobility also posed the problem of access to local resources by for-
eigners, for competition over resources generated conflicts that had to
be limited, resolved and managed. It is therefore of key importance to
examine the role of institutions in managing and controlling worker
mobility, regulating access to local resources and resolving the result-
ing conflicts and, lastly, in creating trans-local and trans-state spaces for
migrant workers. Indeed, what comes to light is the dialectical exchange
among actors and between actors and institutions, at times conflictual
and at times involving negotiations, which actively helped construct or
redefine spaces, the latter activity proving to be highly dynamic, provi-
sional at all times and in constant development.

Mobility Management and Conflict Resolution in Turin

The close ties which master craftsmen and labourers maintained with
their place of origin did not prevent them from successfully embrac-
ing urbanisation and establishing strong economic and social ties with
the Piedmont’s capital. The latter were essential in order to guarantee
access to local resources, or indeed to public and private contracts and
the labour markets. The ability to successfully assert themselves is evi-
dent in the case of entrepreneurs and master builders and can be seen
244 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

from their well-established presence at construction sites in cities and

throughout Piedmont. In 1742, a year taken as a cross-section/sample,
most contracts were assigned to foreign entrepreneurs (30.9% from the
State of Milan, 16.1% from Biella, 9.1% from Lugano and 18.3% from
the Piedmont area), 90% of whom were permanent residents in Turin.42
This clearly demonstrates their ability to forge strong links with the capi-
tal. Above all, an evident eagerness to reside in Turin reflected the need
to maintain direct contact with the place where negotiations for public
contracts in Turin and Piedmont took place. The Azienda generale di
fabbriche e fortificazioni (General Office for Buildings and Fortifications),
based in Turin, was responsible for managing the king’s civil and mili-
tary building sites in Turin and Piedmont, awarding works and signing
contracts with contracting firms. The procedure involved the publication
of an invitation to bid, or tiletto, in Turin and in the locations directly
affected by the proposed works. The intendant chose the firm able to
guarantee implementation of the works requested at the best price and in
compliance with the consignment timeframe from among those respond-
ing to the invitation. Generally speaking, the firms received an advance
payment against the total cost of works and undertook to comply with
the terms of the contract while, at the same time, declaring their liabil-
ity as regards the Azienda generale for any delays or damages incurred.
The risks and costs related to the performance of works could only be
borne thanks to the setting up of companies among entrepreneurs that,
as a result, were able to operate on several sites contemporaneously. A
guarantor and approver of the guarantor were always named alongside
company partners and undertook to cover any debts incurred by the
contracting company. Therefore, contracts with the Azienda generale
implied a credit relationship and included the signing of a guarantee.
So, permanent residency in Turin offered the chance to create the net-
work of stable social relations required to set up companies and seek out
guarantors and approvers. Lastly, it generated the conditions needed to
acquire sufficient wealth to be able to guarantee undertakings, which was
a fundamental prerequisite to access public contracts.
If, as regards contracting companies, it is possible to assess their
presence at construction sites in Turin and Piedmont, it is more diffi-
cult to reconstruct the paths followed by salaried workers to access local
resources, or the labour markets.
In some cases, recruitment was performed in the places of origin
through the drawing up of apprenticeship contracts or pacta ad artem.
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 245

According to Marco Dubini, who has studied the pacta ad artem stored
in Bellinzona’s archives, these contracts may be compared to emigration
documents—an emigration over a short distance, that which separated
the apprentice’s place of birth from the location of the master crafts-
man’s workshop.43 This could be transformed, for some, into a migra-
tion over a long distance when the young person was committed to
following their master when they needed to travel in the course of their
professional duties. It is likely that some of the journeys made by con-
struction workers from Alpine regions to cities in Piedmont began with
the signing of an apprenticeship contract. Consequently, regulation of a
part of the initiation into a profession took place at a great distance from
the workplace.
As regards Turin, current research has not revealed apprentice-
ship contracts that throw any light on the transfer of knowledge and
entry into the world of employment through workshops active in the
city. Giovanni Craveri44 and Onorato Derossi,45 who respectively have
described the city as it was in the middle and at the end of the eighteenth
century, tell us of the existence of two labour markets, one in Piazza San
Giovanni where construction craftsmen and labourers gathered, and the
other in Piazza Susina where farm labourers looked for work. The scene
was much the same in other old city squares, beginning with Place de
Grève in Paris.
The forms of entry into the workplace which we are aware of—the
pacta ad artem and public city squares—represent the two extremes
of a wide variety of forms of recruitment. The role of intermediar-
ies must have been equally important: not only master builders—who,
as we shall see, managed and distributed the workforce at construction
sites together with master carpenters—but also stewards and custodians,
whose role as intermediaries for work supply and demand has been dem-
onstrated in other employment contexts.46
During the first half of the eighteenth century, competition to access
local resources resulted in a period of conflict among master craftsmen,
voiced by trade associations, confraternities and universities. One of the
most acrimonious disputes involving construction sites in Turin was the
one that caused strife between master joiners, or master carpenters, and
fine wood carvers, and that was brought in front of the courts of the
Consulate of Commerce and the Piedmont Senate.47 The charge lev-
elled at the carpenters, accused of performing fine wood carving with-
out belonging to their university and, hence, without having passed the
246 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

admission examination to exercise this profession, lay at the root of the

dispute. The dispute ended in 1733 following an edict issued by Carlo
Emanuele III approving the setting up of a university for master carpen-
ters and establishing their monopoly as regards certain specified works.48
In order to avoid any kind of objection, the edict included a detailed list
of works reserved for carpenters and those reserved for fine wood carv-
ers, drawn up by the architect, Filippo Juvarra.
The monopoly granted to master carpenters excluded all other mas-
ter craftsmen and entrepreneurs from performing the works included in
the list drawn up by Juvarra, including master builders, laying the foun-
dations for a subsequent conflict. Ten years on from the setting up of
the university of master carpenters and the publication of the document
defining its functions, organisation and skills, the master carpenters, con-
cerned to defend their professional status, accused the master masons of
failing to respect their monopoly. In 1748, the Consulate’s judge, called
upon to voice an opinion on the dispute, confirmed the master carpen-
ters’ monopoly over all works included in the list compiled in 1733 and
promised to punish any offenders.49
Thus, during the first half of the eighteenth century, following a
period of conflict between confraternities and universities, the conditions
for accessing local resources were defined by attributing monopolies to
individual specialist craftsmen.
How did the specialised labourers from remote Alpine villages manage
to find their bearings, organise themselves and gain access to local city
resources, be they important tenders or temporary employment? Clearly,
the answer is the sum of a number of factors where all those informal
social relations that elude archival investigation play a fundamental role.
Documents, for their part, can tell us about the role played by city insti-
tutions and the relationships the elements in question were able to estab-
lish with them.
A first, clear contribution on the part of city and state institutions
was that of managing and supporting the arrival of specialist craftsmen
in Turin through the according of privileges, such as those granted to
Luganese residents in Piedmont.50 The latter enjoyed exemption from
paying a number of taxes and suspension of the aubaine law.51 These
obvious advantages undoubtedly played a part in influencing the choice
of specialised labourers who left their native villages to practise their
crafts.
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 247

Defence of the privileges enjoyed by the Swiss in Piedmont appears to

be strongly linked to the establishment of the Company of Saint Anna
by architects and master builders from Lugano and Milan. Whenever it
proved necessary to negotiate with the Piedmontese authorities regard-
ing the Swiss presence in the region, the Company presented itself as the
legitimate counterpart representing the interests of all Swiss residents in
the states of the Duchy of Savoy, whatever their profession.52
Alongside defending the privileges and monopolies enjoyed by mas-
ter craftsmen, the confraternities also performed the all-important task of
supervising and managing workforce mobility. They provided assistance
to master craftsmen and labourers temporarily without employment, dis-
tributed labourers among the city’s various construction sites and met
the travel expenses of workers wishing to return to their place of origin.
The assistance provided to unemployed master craftsmen represents one
of the main activities of confraternities and universities that we are aware
of.
Assistance consisted mainly of the distribution of small sums of money
(generally 5 lira) to those craftsmen who, for one reason or another,
were unable to work, or to the widows of deceased master builders. As
regards the Company of Saint Anna, 150 appeals were accepted, assisting
122 people with an average of ten people assisted per year and an overall
total of 908 lira dispensed (just over 75 lira per year) during the period
analysed to date, which runs from 1726 to 1737.53 There were a number
of reasons for turning to the Company of Saint Anna for assistance: from
temporary states of ill-health to requests for money to cover the cost of
travelling back to native villages.
As regards distribution of the workforce among the city’s workshops
and construction sites, the conflict that set master carpenters against
master masons provides us with some information. The monopoly
granted to master carpenters was easily bypassed by using figureheads.
Master masons performed carpentry works and hired working carpen-
ters in agreement with their masters who limited themselves to acting
as figureheads, asking for a percentage of the wage paid to workers in
return.54 The practice of using figureheads made it possible to manage
the workforce distributed among the city’s various construction sites
against payment of a percentage of the salaries.
Simona Cerutti has illustrated the guilds’ interest in, and capacity to
manage, the mobility of salaried workers. This was effected through the
efforts of custodians and stewards, who were paid to distribute workers
248 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

around the city’s workshops and to provide financial support to workers

who were temporarily unemployed. The collection of alms to celebrate
the feast of patron saints provided master craftsmen with the means—
through custodians and stewards—to manage and control the mobil-
ity of workers.55 Strife within confraternities, dividing, for example, the
Milanese and Swiss members of the Company of Saint Anna, was closely
linked to the collection of alms.56 This conflict, which lasted through-
out the first half of the eighteenth century, was centred on ownership
of the chapel dedicated to the patron saint, the control of which pro-
vided access to management of the Company’s funds. Alms made it pos-
sible for the Company—among other initiatives—to come to the aid
of impoverished master craftsmen and their families, succouring them
while in Turin and paying the necessary travel costs for them to return to
their places of origin. So, once again, the collection of alms provided the
Company with the resources needed to manage the mobility of workers.
The city’s authorities were also responsible for controlling the mobil-
ity of workers, especially district captains, under the authority of the
Vicariate of Turin. They were appointed to draw up lists, updated on a
monthly basis, of those dwelling in the groups of buildings they were
responsible for, paying special attention to changes of address of salaried
workers and servants.57
The Vicariate of Turin, just like other city courts, represented, at vari-
ous different levels, an instrument for accessing local resources. We have
seen how disputes between fine wood carvers, master carpenters and
master masons were brought before the Consulate of Commerce and
the Senate. In the event of disputes between master builders and salaried
workers, the court of jurisdiction was the Vicariate of Turin. This was a
court of the first instance whose responsibilities also included the sala-
ries of domestic workers and day labourers, including many builders, and
lawsuits involving the sale and purchase of construction materials. When
looking at the lawsuits brought before the Vicariate, what is surprising
is the speed with which judgements were passed and the sheer num-
ber of trials held each year. An average of approximately 1100 lawsuits
were brought before the Vicariate every year during the 1720s, which
is the period for which the most records are available.58 The desire on
the part of the judge and litigants to reach a consensual resolution of
the lawsuit contributed to the speed with which trials were completed,
as well as application of summary procedure, «simpliciter et de plano, ac
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 249

sine strepitu et figura iudicii».59 The latter guaranteed short, inexpensive

trials, without the production of written records, based solely on fact
and on the general principles of aequitas, ratio and iustitia. This was a
procedure specifically targeted at those classed as ‘miserabili’ by the legal
culture of that period, a category that also included foreigners.60 The
Vicariate’s legal practice saw the parties directly involved illustrating the
reasons behind appeals, without the mediation of professionals, be they
prosecutors or attorneys, and without the facts being translated into legal
cases. Thus, master craftsmen and workers came into direct contact with
one of the city’s most important courts, bringing their claims before the
court without legal mediation.
The most frequent reason for having recourse to the Vicariate court
was a request for payment of a debt. It was mainly master builders who
turned to the Vicariate when awaiting in vain a payment for work per-
formed or for their share in the division of the profits of a company in
which they had participated. There were many lawsuits brought by day
labourers waiting for their salaries. In this regard, the Vicariate’s civil
decrees provide valuable information for understanding the salary con-
ditions of day labourers, contractual forms and payment of salaries. So,
study of the civil decrees reveals how negotiations between employers
and labourers could begin before the start of their employment on site
or, as in most of the cases looked at, even after the termination of the
working relationship. Agreements between master builders and labour-
ers were mainly verbal, as shown by the total lack of written evidence,
and backed up by the lawsuits brought by day labourers in the Vicariate’s
courts. Contracts remained open up until the end of the working rela-
tionship and could be renegotiated. The ambiguity surrounding the
agreement which persisted until the end of the working relationship did
not refer solely to financial questions such as the amount of salary, but
also concerned the very nature of the relationship, the role performed
on site and the responsibilities undertaken within the company. These
aspects of contracts were not clarified from the outset but remained
open, subject to discussion, renegotiation and redefinition at the end of
the relationship. So, in addition to the professional mobility generated by
the flexibility of construction sites and the brevity of employment, there
was also the flexibility which workers’ contracts were subject to.
Therefore, the Vicariate court became the place where the terms of
a contract were renegotiated and defined once and for all, and where
they received appropriate certification by means of a deed such as a civil
250 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

decree. Given these uncertain working conditions, the Vicariate court

offered a tool for consolidating professional relationships and certifying
labour agreements.

Space Practices and Rights of Use Along the Border Between

the Papal State and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
The procedures for accessing resources—woods, pastures, culti-
vated fields, rivers for fishing—regulated by age-old agreements also
played a role in the organisation of specific spaces and geographies for
the agropastoral communities located along the border between the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Papal State. However, these agree-
ments had already been the cause of violent territorial disputes along the
border when the governments of the two states decided at long last to
bring them to an end by stabilising the border, which was still uncertain
and undefined at some points in the mid-1830s.
So, the two states entered into diplomatic negotiations which resulted
in a stable, shared border line, in accordance with a procedure similar to
that entered into by most European states that undertook a more pre-
cise definition of borders from the second half of the eighteenth century
onwards, and especially during the transition from the eighteenth to the
nineteenth century.61
The border between the two pre-unification states was ratified by a
treaty signed in 1840, but which only came into effect 12 years later—
for reasons which we will explain below. However, the process of stabi-
lising the border was not limited to an exchange between government
representatives of maps marked by lines drawn on the basis of measure-
ments taken by military topographers and engineers. An alternative spa-
tiality to the one the two states were deciding on, influenced above all
by some collective uses of the land, came to light along the border both
during the four years of negotiations prior to the signing of the treaty,
and during the period between the signing of the treaty and its coming
into effect.
The agreements regarding these rights of use, dating back to previ-
ous centuries, were reproduced at the commencement of border nego-
tiations and brought together in the so-called ‘Sunto delle controversie’
(Summary of disputes),62 since they were the subject of bitter wrangling.
At the time when the two governments decided to take action to sepa-
rate the two state entities on the basis of the sole principle of territorial
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 251

sovereignty, the disputes, which tended to develop at a distinctly local

level, with state membership playing only a secondary role, actually
became intertwined with the negotiations conducted by the central
power. For example, in 1838, the inhabitants of Tonnicoda, in the prov-
ince of Abruzzo Ulteriore II (Kingdom of the Two Sicilies), complained
that the community of Ricetto (Papal State) failed to acknowledge their
right to ‘mixed’ grazing, established under age-old agreements.63 As
can be seen from material collected in relation to the two municipali-
ties’ territories, included among those where the border was disputed,64
a judgement probably issued in 1579 listed the borders between the two
communities on the basis of some waterways, acknowledging however
the right of the inhabitants of Ricetto to graze and water animals in the
Kingdom’s districts and likewise the equivalent right for the popula-
tion of Tonnicoda on papal land. However, in 1838, these mutual graz-
ing rights were blocked by the community of Ricetto, the result being
that, while Papal State inhabitants continued to graze their herds in the
Kingdom without any problems, the inhabitants of Tonnicoda had their
animals confiscated as soon as they set foot in the Papal State and were
obliged to pay a ransom in order to get them back.
So, in order to gain advantage from the transition phase as regards
border definition, the Papal State’s customs officers opposed the princi-
ple of state sovereignty to ‘other forms of possession’,65 in other words,
to rights acknowledged in relation to a different concept of territory.
More specifically, the debate was centred on two ways of conceiving
‘property’: one more in line with the canons of ‘possessive individual-
ism’ that had prevailed from the start of the nineteenth century; the
other tending to maintain a more complex form of property, of medieval
ascendancy, and to envisage a dominium utile, that is, a power of enjoy-
ment66 alongside direct property, in the sense of power of disposal.
The rights of use were at the core of the lengthy negotiations that
took place between the two governments in order to formulate the
‘Border legislation’, a specific body of laws for regulating life along the
border. Indeed, if this legislation opened with an affirmation of the pri-
macy of private property, rights regarding ‘grazing and collection of
wood’, which ought to have been maintained even when moving funds
from one state to another, were matters of fierce debate. These rights
were questioned because they contrasted with the construction of homo-
geneous territorial spaces pursued by the two pre-unification states,
rather than as such. Indeed, far from fully embracing the ‘possessive
252 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

individualism’ referred to above, ‘as regards property and other material

rights, the historical arena of the first half of the nineteenth century (and
a good part of the second half) was a unique transition space in almost
all of Europe, and as such was filled with contradictions and unvoiced
misoneisms, or covertly voiced misoneisms that were able to resist in
an extraordinarily obstinate manner’.67 A compromise formulated by
Neapolitan plenipotentiaries was incorporated within the legislation in
question at the end of lengthy, complex negotiations: for the parts of
each municipality’s territory that, based on the new borders, had passed
from one state to the other and where the municipality’s inhabitants
‘collected wood and grazed animals, where the loss of the said practice
[was] significant, … the two governments [would reach] an agreement
as regards a way to not deprive them of this, either through compen-
sation, or by allowing them to continue with the practice, setting lim-
its and bans’.68 While, in those cases where maintenance of the rights in
question did not prove to be indispensable, and hence ‘the said excep-
tion to the border principle was not necessary’, the border would remain
‘intact’.69
So, even if recognised as being in conflict with the plan to create a
sovereign-state space unaffected by the vagueness that was the cause of
so many disputes regarding the border, the existence of extra-state spaces
linked to the local communities’ needs to access agropastoral resources,
was acknowledged in relation to specific cases. The local context inter-
sected here with the construction of a broader statehood which it made
an active contribution to. For example, in addition to becoming targets
for acts of vandalism and explosions of anger as regards a frequently
contested border, the new border’s provisional symbols, in the form of
wooden poles, were removed and arbitrarily repositioned on numerous
occasions by inhabitants involved in territorial disputes. These inhabit-
ants, intent on marking out the border as they wished, resorted to a ‘cre-
ative’ use of the border. One such example in this regard is the case of
the territory between Oricola, a municipality in Abruzzo in the Kingdom
of the Two Sicilies and the papal municipalities of Riofreddo and
Vallinfredda.70 Indeed, in 1845, the inhabitants of the papal municipali-
ties diverted the watercourse known as Riotorto, which the temporary
border between the two states ran along, gaining five modii of land in an
area of specific interest for the inhabitants, in other words in the Sesera
wood, whose possession had been long disputed.71
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 253

What was being claimed was a concept of territory linked not only
to habits and age-old conventions, but also to the memory of ‘very old
men’,72 the credibility of local people, and the existence of trees and
other specific natural features with evocative names. These were all ele-
ments that continued to be called upon to support the various territo-
rial claims throughout the process of defining the border and even after
this was completed, ‘in a kind of ‘popular’ geography that tells of the
uses, well-established habits, movements and existential practices deeply
rooted in the territory’.73
An analysis of the border space thus offers historians the chance to
integrate the ‘big stories’ of nation-building with the ‘small narratives’
of local experience.74 This shows how, by accessing resources linked to
agropastoral activities, local people marked out cross-state spaces that
differed in part from the political-institutional border in the process of
being defined, spaces with which state institutions had to deal in any
case, at times by acknowledging their existence and at times by looking
for solutions through compromise.

Conclusion
Juxtaposition of two cases that are far removed one from the other in
space and time can entail numerous interpretational difficulties. To
start with, the settings of the events under discussion differ markedly.
In the first case, we are concerned with the urban setting of Turin in
the eighteenth century, an actual European capital at that date. While in
the second case, we have to do with a rural, nineteenth-century setting
extending along the border between the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
and the Papal State.
Furthermore, the protagonists of the events described are also dif-
ferent, belonging to quite distinct and distant worlds of work—in other
words, urban construction in the first case and agro-pastoral activities in
the second.
Besides these differences, the research perspectives adopted also differ
in many respects. Nevertheless, the experiment has made it possible to
answer some shared questions through two approaches which, though
distinct, are not necessarily incompatible.
Worker mobility created trans-local spaces both at construction
sites in Turin and Piedmont and in the countryside along the border
between the Papal State and the Kingdom of Naples. The presence in
254 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

Turin of workers coming from at least three different Alpine areas, who
maintained close relations with their place of origin and with migrants
from other European cities, created figurative trans-local spaces. A spe-
cific, circumscribed working space such as a construction site became a
contact zone that looked towards the outside world thanks to frequent
journeys back home and networks of trans-local relations that con-
nected it to places of origin and to other European cities. In the case
of the Roman Campagna, a space which from an administrative per-
spective was crossed by a border, was regarded as a unitary, trans-state
space—the ‘­ transhumance space’—by thousands of migrants, agri-
cultural workers and shepherds. Every year they arrived at the Roman
­latifundia and pastures from the Abruzzi mountains and Terra di Lavoro
countryside, together with other workers not directly connected with
agropastoral activities, but nevertheless involved in the same integrated
economic system. In both cases, the seasonal movements or definitive
transfer of workers marked out figurative or real spaces that differed from
the political-institutional frameworks.
Furthermore, it is of the utmost importance that, if we are ever to
reconstruct the internal dynamics that regulated these spaces, we
grasp which instruments allowed a migrant population to access local
resources. In the case of Turin, this involved on the one hand retrac-
ing the process that led some master craftsmen to gain privileged access
to private and public contracts through acknowledgement of a monop-
oly with regard to specific works, and on the other, reconstructing the
paths taken by salaried workers in order to access the labour markets. In
the case of the Roman Campagna, the focus was placed on negotiations
between social actors and institutions that guaranteed migrant work-
ers access to the territory’s resources—woodland, pastures, rivers and
fields—during a period of major political and administrative change.
In both cases, the focus was placed on the key role played by insti-
tutions in regulating access to resources. In Turin, the city’s courts
regulated disputes between guilds and confraternities regarding the
assignment of monopolies, and hence the definition of respective profes-
sional spaces. Guilds and confraternities there played an important role
in regulating the access of salaried workers to the labour markets and
in managing workforce mobility. As regards the cross-border territory
between the Papal State and the Kingdom of Naples, access to resources
during a period of ever stricter administrative definition of the border
area was guaranteed for seasonal workers, firstly through the granting of
 9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 255

some exceptions to border movement regulations such as the carta di

passo (pass card), and subsequently through ‘border legislation’ designed
to regulate life along the border thanks to a series of agreements regard-
ing rights of use.
What emerges in both cases is the capacity of institutions to heed soci-
ety’s requests and to adapt to them. In Turin, this was done by providing
courts with instruments such as summary procedure that allowed litigants
to take part directly in lawsuits without any intermediaries and without ref-
erence to local positive law. In Naples, it was accomplished by introduc-
ing exceptions and provisions differing from those for the rest of the state
territory in order to meet borderers’ needs. Therefore, the definition of
procedures to access resources was the result of negotiations between insti-
tutions and social actors or between litigants in the case of judicial pro-
ceedings. Trans-state spaces—figurative or real—were by their very nature
highly dynamic, not only because they bore witness to migratory flows
and were connected to a broader geographical horizon through social net-
works, but also because they were regulated in accordance with legislation
and social practices that were constantly redefined through negotiations
among social actors, and between social actors and institutions.
This chapter has brought together two analytical perspectives that are
normally kept apart—one viewpoint concerned with the actors’ activities
and the other focusing on institutional action. Within the methodological
framework suggested in this volume, observing the same question from
two different viewpoints has foregrounded the process of constructing
trans-local and trans-state spaces in all its complexity and intricacy, whereas
keeping them apart would have rendered the picture incomplete and
superficial. Bringing the two perspectives together also sheds light upon
the negotiations and discussions between actors and institutions. By the
same token, actors and institutions emerge not simply as counterposed or
independent but as equally involved and active in the process of construct-
ing spaces for worker mobility and in regulating and organising them.

Notes
1. See the introduction to this volume as regards the concept of trans-local-
ity and its variations in various fields.
2. Anna Amelina et al., eds., Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Research
Methodologies for Cross-border Studies (New York, 2012).
3. Barney Warf and Santa Arias, eds., The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives (New York, 2009).
256 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

4. For further discussion of this specific interpretation of global history, we

would refer the reader to the introduction to this volume.
5. There are numerous studies regarding architectural and urban develop-
ment in Turin in the 1600s and 1700s. Among these, see Vera Comoli
Mandracci, Torino (Bari, 1983), pp. 29–92.
6. Giovanni Levi, Centro e periferia di uno stato assoluto. Tre saggi su
Piemonte e Liguria in età moderna (Turin, 1985), pp. 13 and 35.
7. Ibid., p. 39.
8. Ibid., pp. 50–57.
9. Turin State Archive (hereinafter ASTo), S. R., Regie Finanze, I archiviazi-
one, Commercio, mazzo 1, Fasc. 23, ‘Stato de Negozianti e Artisti della
presente Città di Torino’ (1742). A comparison between the signatories
of contracts with Azienda fabbriche e fortificazioni and the documents of
the confraternities of master carpenters and the master builders show the
incompleteness of the list drawn up in 1742.
10. The presence in Turin of people from the Lugano area is documented
from the sixteenth century when they obtained a series of tax exemptions
from the Duke of Savoy, which were renewed over the following century;
in this regard see Dante Severin, Per la storia della emigrazione artistica
della Svizzera italiana. Privilegi sabaudi agli architetti e mastri da muro
luganesi (XVII secolo) (Bellinzona, 1933).
11. Vera Comoli Mandracci, Luganesium Artistarum Universitas: l’archivio
e i luoghi della Compagnia di Sant’Anna tra Lugano e Torino (Lugano,
1992); Maria V. Cattaneo, Nadia Ostorero, L’ Archivio della Compagnia
di Sant’Anna dei Luganesi in Torino. Una fonte documentaria per cantieri
e maestranze fra architettura e decorazione nel Piemonte sabaudo (Turin,
2006).
12. As Simona Cerutti has shown, the history of associations in the
Piedmontese capital contrasted markedly with that of their counterparts
from the other Italian cities: the guilds failed to develop in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries despite attempts made by the authorities on
several occasions to promote their foundation, and experienced rapid
development during the 1720s when they were in decline in the rest of
Italy. See, Simona Cerutti, La ville et les métiers. Naissance d’un langage
corporative (Turin 17e–18e siècle) (Paris, 1990).
13. ASTo, Corte, Archivio Mastri da Bosco, m.1, Ordinati (1710–1733).
14. Chiara Orelli, I migranti nelle città d’Italia, in Storia della Svizzera itali-
ana. Dal Cinquecento al Settecento (Bellinzona, 2000), pp. 282–288.
15. The same master builders received from clients remuneration calculated
on the basis of days of work, alongside a lump sum upon completion.
16. ASTo, S. R., Real Casa, Libro mastro, vol. 374 (1733), vol. 375 (1734),
passim.
9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 257

17. ASTo, S.R. Azienda della Casa di S. M., Registro fabbriche, vol. 412
(1750), passim.
18. Laurance Fontaine, Histoire du colportage en Europe. XV–XIX siècle (Paris,
1993).
19. Raul Merzario, Adamocrazia. Famiglie di emigranti in una regione
alpina. Svizzera italiana. XVIII secolo (Bologna, 2000); Luigi Lorenzetti,
Raul Merzario, Il fuoco acceso. Famiglie e migrazioni alpine nell’Italia
d’età moderna (Rome, 2005).
20. Giusppe Martinola, Lettere dai paesi transalpini degli artisti di Meride e
dei villaggi vicini (XVII–XIX) (Bellinzona, 1963), p. 144.
21. Giuseppe Orlando, Le campagne: agro e latifondo, montagna e palude,
in Storia d’Italia, Le Regioni dall’Unità a oggi, Il Lazio (Turin,1991),
pp. 83–165.
22. Angela De Matteis, Terra di mandre e di emigranti: l’economia
dell’Aquilano nell’Ottocento (Naples, 1993) and Orlando, Le campagne.
23. Antonella Sinisi, ‘Migrazioni interne e società rurale nell’Italia meridionale
(secoli XVI–XIX)’, Bollettino di demografia storica, 19 (1993), 41–63.
24. De Matteis, Terra di mandrie e di emigranti.
25. The survey has been analysed in Carlo Corsini, Le migrazioni stagionali di
lavoratori nei dipartimenti italiani del periodo napoleonico (1810–1812),
in Saggi di demografia storica, eds. Carlo Corsini et al. (Florence, 1969),
pp. 89–157.
26. Archives Nationales de France (ANF), F20/435, Annexed offices: report
by Prefect of Rome’s Office, 1812.
27. ANF, F20/435, Annexed offices: report by Prefect of Rome’s Office, 7
January 1813. It must be taken into account that the estimate in ques-
tion also included individuals from the Kingdom of Italy and some
Tuscan areas that featured in almost all the categories looked at, albeit in
a smaller percentage.
28. De Matteis, Terra di mandrie e di emigranti.
29. For a more detailed analysis of these issues, see Laura Di Fiore, Alla fron-
tiera. Confini e documenti d’identità nel Mezzogiorno continentale preuni-
tario (Soveria Mannelli, 2013).
30. See at least Ilsen About, Vincent Denis, Histoire de l’identification des per-
sonnes (Paris, 2010) and Jane Caplan, John Torpey, Documenting indi-
vidual identity: The development of state practices in the modern world
(Princeton and Oxford, 2001).
31. Naples State Archive (ASN), Ministero degli Affari Esteri, fascio 6211:
memorandum by Cardinal Busca Secretary of State to Marchese del
Vasto, September 1796.
32. James C. Scott, The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of
upland Southeast Asia (New Haven & London, 2010), p. 335.
258 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

33. Paolo Napoli, Naissance de la police moderne. Pouvoir, normes, société

(Paris, 2003).
34. ASN, Ministero degli Affari Esteri, fascio 6214: correspondence between
Cardinal Della Somaglia and Marquis di Fuscaldo Minister at Royal
Legation in Rome, October– November 1826.
35. ASN, Ministero degli Affari Esteri, fascio 6214: September 1841.
36. ASN, Ministero degli Affari Esteri, fascio 6214: 18 October 1841.
37. ASN, Ministero degli Affari Esteri, fascio 6214: 29 November 1844.
38. Paola Sereno, Ordinare lo spazio, governare il territorio: confine e frontiera
come categorie geografiche, in Confini e frontiere nell’età moderna: un con-
fronto fra discipline, ed. Alessandro Pastore (Milan 2007), pp. 45–64. For
a different interpretation of this terminology, Massimo Quaini, Ri/trac-
ciare le geografie dei confini, Confini: costruzioni, attraversamenti, rappre-
sentazioni, ed. Silvia Salvatici (Soveria Mannelli, 2005), pp. 187–198.
39. Charles Maier, Transformations of territoriality, 1600–2000, in
Transnationale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien, eds. Gunilla
Budde, Sebastian Conrad, Oliver Janz (Göttingen 2006), pp. 32–56.
40. Matthias Middell, Katja Naumann, ‘Global history and the Spatial Turn:
From the Impact of Area Studies to the Study of Critical Junctures of
Globalization’, Journal of Global History, 5 (2010), 149–170.
41. Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta, eds., Translocal Geographies: Spaces,
Places, Connections. (Farnham, 2009), p. 4.
42. ASTo, S.R., Ministero della guerra, Azienda generale fabbriche e fortifica-
zioni, Contratti, vol. 38 (1742).
43. Marco Dubini, ‘Pacta ad artem, una fonte per la storia dell’emigrazione’,
in Con il bastone e la bisaccia per le strade d’Europa. Atti di un seminario
di studi (Bellinzona, 8–9 settembre 1988), Bollettino storico della Svizzera
italiana, CIII (1991), pp. 73–81.
44. Giovanni Craveri, Guida de forestieri per la real città di Torino (Turin,
1753).
45. Onorato Derossi, Nuova guida per la città di Torino (Turin, 1781).
46. Simona Cerutti, ‘Travail, mobilité, légitimité. Suppliques au roi dans une
société d’Ancien Régime (Turin, XVIII siècle)’, Annales, HSS, 3 (2010),
571–611.
47. ASTo, Corte, Archivio Mastri da Bosco o di Grosseria, m. 1, fasc. 1/8:
Atti e scritture delli mastri da bosco di grosseria contro l’università de mas-
tri minusieri ebanisti ed altri; ivi, fasc. 1/10, Atti dell’università dei mas-
tri di grosseria contro l’università dei minusieri ebanisti ed altri.
48. Ivi, fasc. 1/1, Mastri da bosco di grosseria 6 manifesti del regolamento
(1733); ivi, fasc. 1/6, Copie di pareri sulle specifiche mansioni di ogni arte
(1712–1731);
49. ASTo, Corte, Commercio, cat. IV, m. 5, fasc. 1, Sentimento del Consolato
di sovra la supplica de Mastri falegnami di Grosseria, contro supplica dei
9 SPATIALITY AND THE MOBILITY OF LABOUR IN PRE-UNIFICATION ITALY … 259

Mastri da Muro per l’ampliazione di alcuni privilegi riguardanti tall’arte

(1748).
50. ASTo, Corte, Materie politiche per rapporto all’estero, Negoziazioni
con gli Svizzeri, m. 5, fasc. 13; Severin, Per la storia della emigrazione
artistica.
51. As regards application of the aubaine law in Turin and its meaning, see
Simona Cerutti, ‘A qui appartiennent les biens qui n’appartiennent à per-
sonne? Citoyenneté et droit d’aubaine à l’époque moderne’, Annales,
HSS, 2 (2007), 355–383.
52. Severin, Per la storia della emigrazione artistica, p. 9.
53. Archives of the Company of Sant’Anna dei Luganesi in Turin, (hereinafter
ACSALT), Ordinati e verbali, II, 1, passim.
54. ASTo, Commercio, Categoria IV, m. 5, fasc. 1.
55. Cerutti, Travail, mobilité et légitimité.
56. References to the conflict that divided the Swiss and the Milanese can be
found in ACSALT, Liti, IV, f.9 (s.d.); ivi, Ordinati e verbali, II, f. 34;
ASTo, S.R., Notai di Torino, I versamento, vol. 4193, Transazione tra i
signori capimastri da muro luganesi ed i signori capimastri valsoldesi e mil-
anesi (5 May 1762).
57. ASTo, I sez., Materie economiche, m. 2 d’addizione, f. 10, Viglietto di S.
M. Re Carlo Emanuele al Vicario di Torino di stabilimento di 50 Capitani
Cantonieri (17 May 1752).
58. ASTo, S.R., Vicariato di Torino, Atti e ordinanze civli, vol. 6–12
(1724–1731).
59. ‘Simply and plainly, without clamor and the forms of procedure’. As is
well known, the definition is taken from the decretal Saepe contingit by
Pope Clement V (1305–1314), issued to streamline trials, eliminating
the production of an introductory libellus and limiting the possibility of
delaying tactics. As regards summary procedure see also Alain Bureau,
‘Droit naturel et abstraction judiciaire. Hypothèse sur la nature du droit
médiéval’, Annales, HSS, 57, 6 (2002), 1463–1488; Simona Cerutti,
‘Nature des choses et qualité des personnes. Le Consulat de commerce
de Turin au XVIIIe siècle’, Annales, HSS, 57, 6 (2002), 1491–1520;
Simona Cerutti, Giustizia sommaria. Pratiche e ideali di giustizia in una
società di Ancien Régime, Milan 2003; Faramerz Dabhoiwala, ‘Summary
Justice in Early Modern London’, in English Historical Review, CXXI,
492 (2006), pp. 798–822; Alessandro Lattes, Studi di diritto statutario,
vol. I, Il procedimento sommario o planario negli statuti, (Milan 1886);
Charles Lefebvre, ‘Les origines romaines de la procédure sommaire au
XII et XIII siècle’, Ephemerides Juris Canonici, 12 (1956), 149–197;
Giovanni Minnucci, «Simpliciter et de plano, ac sine strepitu et figura
iudicii». Il processo di nullità matrimoniale vertente fra Giorgio Zaccarotto
260 L. Di Fiore and N. Rolla

e Maddalena di Sicilia (Padova e Venezia 1455–1458): una lettura storico-

giuridica in Matrimoni in dubbio. Unioni controverse e nozze clandestine
in Italia dal XIV al XVIII secolo, eds. Silvana Seidel Menchi, Diego
Quaglioni (Bologna, 2001), pp. 175–197. As regards its application to
trade disputes brought before the Vicariate of Turin, mention should also
be made of Nicoletta Rolla, La piazza e il palazzo. I mercati e il vicariato
di Torino nel Settecento (Pisa, 2010).
60. For a definition of ‘miserabili’ see Cerutti, Giustizia sommaria.
61. Alessandro Pastore, Introduzione, in Confini e frontiere nell’età moderna:
un confronto fra discipline, pp. 7–20, p. 15.
62. ASN, Sunto delle voluminose e molteplici memorie esistenti nel deposito della
guerra intorno alle annose reclamazioni di confine tra Il Regno di Napoli e
lo Stato Pontificio (Naples, 1837).
63. ASN, Archivio Borbone, busta 964: report by Captain De Benedictis to
Marchese Del Carretto, 31 August 1838.
64. Sunto delle controversie, Dispute 20, between the university of Tonnicoda
in the Kingdom (Abruzzo Ulteriore II, District of Cittaducale) and the
community of Ricetto in the Papal State, pp. 38–41.
65. Paolo Grossi, Un altro modo di possedere. L’emersione di forme alternative
di proprietà alla coscienza giuridica post-unitaria (Milan, 1977).
66. Paolo Grossi, Naturalismo e formalismo nella sistematica medievale delle
situazioni reali, in Paolo Grossi, Il dominio e le cose: percezioni medievali e
moderne dei diritti reali (Milan 1992), pp. 21–55, pp. 21–28.
67. Paolo Grossi, Tradizioni e modelli nella sistemazione post-unitaria della
proprietà, in Grossi, Il dominio e le cose, pp. 439, 569, here pp. 440–441.
See also Grossi, Un altro modo di possedere.
68. ASN, Archivio Borbone, busta 979: May 1852.
69. Ibid.
70. Sunto delle controversie, Dispute 16 between Oricola (Province of Abruzzo
Ulteriore II, District of Avezzano) and Riofreddo and Vallinfredda in the
Papal State, pp. 26–29.
71. ASN, Archivio Borbone, busta 973: 1845.
72. ASN, Archivio Borbone, busta 971: letter by a papal priest transmitted to
the Neapolitan police force by the papal government on 12 September
1843.
73. Paolo Marchetti, Spazio politico e confini nella scienza giuridica del tardo
Medioevo, in Confini e frontiere nell’età moderna, pp. 65–80, p. 77.
74. Anssi Paasi, Territories, boundaries and consciousness (Chichester, 1996),
p. 303.
 CHAPTER 10

Oil and Labour: The Pivotal Position

of Persian Oil in the First World War
and the Question of Transnational Labour
Dependency

Touraj Atabaki

A War that Changed the World

The world coming out of the first world war and its catastrophic practices
was emphatically a different world. Eastern and Western Asia, Europe,
and North Africa were transformed regions by the end of the carnage.
The changes in Britain, as one of the major imperialist powers present
in Asia, came as a result of several factors: first, the war itself, which was

This chapter partially draws on previous research, a revised version of which has
appeared in the International Encyclopaedia of the First World War, published by
the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin and “Oil and Beyond
Expanding British Imperial Aspirations‚ Emerging Oil Capitalism‚ and the
Challenge of Social Questions in the First World War”, co-author Kaveh Ehsani‚
in Helmut Bley and Anorthe Kremers (eds)‚ The World During the First World
War (Essen: Klartext Verlag‚ 2014), pp. 261–287.

T. Atabaki (*)
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 261

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_10
262 T. Atabaki

the first instance of total warfare involving entire populations and new
technical means of destruction; second, the mounting crisis of capitalism
(especially after the 1890s) and the transition to a new regime of accumu-
lation; and third, the far-reaching and slower consequences of what has
been called ‘the Second Industrial Revolution’.
Militarily, the first world war was the culmination of the industrialisa-
tion of warfare under mounting capitalist competition and technologi-
cal development. It brought to an end the somewhat ironically labelled
‘long peace of the nineteenth century’, when major European powers
fought each other directly on the continent on only a few occasions,
while being constantly involved in colonial skirmishes and wars.1 By the
end of the nineteenth century, industrial technology had already trans-
formed the nature of warfare, with railroads, steamships, and the tel-
egraph making total warfare possible and involving whole populations.
Instead of long marches or limited troop transport by sea, these technol-
ogies allowed coordinated mass movement of soldiers and created fronts
instead of skirmishes and isolated battles.2
During the war, the ensuing malaise in Britain created a link in politi-
cal culture between war and social policy. It was felt that the empire’s
destiny was in the hands of the masses, which needed to be better edu-
cated and physically fitter.3 Improved public health, municipal reform,
educational improvement, and various schemes of social insurance were
proposed and weighed up by segments of the political elite as necessary
measures for addressing debilitating poverty, but without much result.4
At the same time, the importance of propaganda and moulding public
opinion became evident, as was the conviction that the empire needed to
invest in military technological innovation. The Russo-Japanese war of
1905 and the emergence of Japan as a rival to British colonial interests in
the Indian and Pacific Oceans, together with German military advances,
prompted a costly arms race, especially in the construction of new heavy
battleships (dreadnoughts). Ironically, these costly battleships never
played a large role in sea battles, but they became a major conduit for the
ascendency of petroleum as the preferred fuel and internal combustion
engines as the new primary means of locomotion.
In 1911, the United States adopted oil-fired boilers for its new heavy
warships. In 1914, Admiral John Fisher returned as the head of the
British admiralty for the second time and succeeded in getting the British
navy to convert all its boilers from coal to oil.5 Oil had significant advan-
tages over coal. It weighed less per thermal unit, was easier to transport,
had twice the thermal energy of coal by bulk, and did not require stokers
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 263

to feed the boilers as it could be fed automatically via pipes into engines.
This released a significant amount of space in battleships, expanded the
range of their operations, and reduced labour requirements.6 In addi-
tion, internal combustion engines were less bulky, and more economi-
cal than steam power during off-peak use since they could be turned on
or off with ease. Oil burned more cleanly than coal and produced less
smoke, a major advantage in sea warfare, which relied on covertness.
The strategic problem with oil was its uneven geographic distribution
since, aside from the United States and Russia, all the major protagonists
in the first world war were oil importers. For Britain, oil was far more
costly (four to twelve times more) than coal, especially since the country
had significant coal deposits and was itself a major exporter.7 The oppor-
tune discovery of oil in the Persian southern province of Khuzestan
in 1908 removed that major obstacle for Britain, which had already
acquired shares in the company exploiting Persian oil and smoothed the
way for the eventual conversion.8
Unlike the conventional European chronology of the first world war,
which began in 1914 and ended in 1918, for Iranians, the war period
lasted longer, at least within its own national frontiers. Following the
Constitutional Revolution (1905–1909), in 1911 Russian military forces,
by occupying the northern provinces of Iran, imposed an ultimatum on
the government of Iran to observe the Russian interest in Iran, an ulti-
matum which concluded with the closure of the Second Parliament.
The end of the war in Iran was also 3 years later than the Armistice in
Europe. The last British troops withdrew from southern Iran, and the
Russian Red Army from northern Iran, only in 1921. The outbreak of
the war coincided with a period in Iranian history when, following the
Constitutional Revolution, the Iranians were poised to refashion the
constitutional order and establish an independent, accountable, and
effective government. The global conflict between the great powers,
which embraced Iranian social, economic, and political establishments,
deepened political factionalism and rigorously undermined this effort.
What was initiated merely as a European war reached Iran when the
Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, making Iran a direct neigh-
bour to combatants from both camps: Russia joined Britain in a fight
against the Ottoman Empire, which in turn allied with Germany. For
Iranians, the declaration of war in Europe meant more foreign pressure
to take sides in a conflict in which Iran had no national interest.
In November 1914, the war on the eastern front escalated when
British forces marched toward Mesopotamia and landed in Basra.
264 T. Atabaki

The British now aimed to control Mesopotamia to secure the route

to Baghdad, as a way station to the Russian army already stationed in
northern Iran, and to establish a line of defence against incursions by the
Central Powers in central and southern Asia. It also wanted to secure the
control of oil from Persia, which had gradually evolved into a corner-
stone of their geopolitical and military strategy. Khuzestan’s oilfields and
the Abadan oil refinery were located a mere 60 kilometers from Basra,
and only the Shatt al-Arab River separated Khuzestan from Ottoman
Mesopotamia.9
The Iranian government’s early reaction to the outbreak of the war
was to declare Iran’s strict neutrality with a royal decree on 1 November
1914.10 One might well ask what sense there could be in Iran’s announce-
ment of its neutrality, when Russian troops were already occupying a
sizeable part of Iranian northern territory. When Iran’s Prime Minister
Mostowfi al–Mamalek approached the Russian authorities, demanding
the withdrawal of their troops from Azerbaijan on the grounds that their
presence would give the Ottomans a pretext for invading Iran, the Russian
ambassador in Tehran replied laconically that he ‘appreciated the Iranian
view-point but inquired what guarantees could be given that after the
withdrawal of Russian forces, the Turks would not bring in theirs’.11
In the absence of a powerful central government in Iran to resist the
Russian and British burden, some Iranians came to the conclusion that
aligning with Germany was the best option for guaranteeing Iran’s
national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The interests of the power-
ful neighbouring empires of the Russians, the Ottomans, and the British
(whose Indian dominion bordered Iran) automatically led them to med-
dle and to intervene in Iran. By contrast, Germany, a powerful but geo-
graphically remote power, seemed at first sight to present no direct threat
to Iran. When the Third Iranian Parliament was convened in December
1914, 30 of a total 136 deputies were members of the pro-German
Democrat Party.12 Britain viewed the pro-German activities of the
Democrats with mistrust and dismay, as did the Russians, who decided
to increase their occupying forces in Iran. The situation became so tense
that Russian troops stationed in Qazvin, 160 kilometres northwest of
Tehran, began marching toward the capital, threatening to occupy the
city. The cabinet of Mostowfi al–Mamalek seriously considered moving
the capital from Tehran to Isfahan, with support from the majority of
the Democrat deputies as well as a number of influential journalists and
politicians. While the Prime Minster under the British and the Russian
pressure finally retreated from moving the capital‚ nevertheless‚ some
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 265

prominent politicians and political activists hurriedly set out on a ‘long

march’ to Isfahan to relocate the legitimate government there. Unable to
reach Isfahan, the marchers finally established themselves in Kermanshah,
where they called themselves Dowlat Movaqat Melli (the Provisional
National Government).13 However, this provisional government, which
obtained the official recognition of the Central Powers as the sole legiti-
mate government of Iran, could not survive the ever-escalating pressure
from Britain and Russia. In 1916, Kermanshah fell to Russian forces, and
the Provisional National Government collapsed.14
Having defeated the Ottoman army in southern Mesopotamia, the
British were able to secure the oilfields of Khuzestan. They established
a stronghold in the Ottoman-occupied territories, and from there,
gradually wrested control of the rest of Mesopotamia and the Arabian
Peninsula from the Ottomans.15 The ‘Arabs Revolt’ against the Ottoman
Empire in 1916, initiated by the British military officer T.E. Lawrence,
better known as Lawrence of Arabia, was eventually followed by the cap-
ture of Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul, and finally Jerusalem in 1917. The suc-
cessive defeats of the Ottomans certainly changed the theatre of war in
Iran. Nevertheless, it was the Russian Revolution of February 1917 that
appears to have had the more significant impact.
A whole year after the second Russian revolution in 1917, the last
phase of the war began in Iran. On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of
Mudros was concluded, and in Istanbul the cabinet of the Committee of
Union and Progress resigned. Ahmed Izzet Pasha formed his new cabi-
net, and called on all Ottoman troops to return home. Yet the departure
of foreign troops from Iran—first the Russians, then the Ottomans—
did not strengthen the Iranian government’s stand. The population was
impoverished, the economy was ruined and almost bankrupt, and the
treasury coffers were empty. Soon the government was besieged by cen-
trifugal forces, as regional protest movements began to challenge the sta-
tus quo. In the northern provinces of Azerbaijan, Gilan, and Khorasan,
there were reform-minded and revolutionary individuals who believed
that, if they could succeed in launching campaigns to initiate change
in their own region, the same reforms would gradually spread through
the rest of the country. The regional campaigns of Kuchek Khan Jangali
in Gilan, Sheikh Mohammad Khiyabani in Azerbaijan, and Colonel
Mohammad Taqi Khan Pesyan in Khorasan were not territorially separa-
tist, but aimed to establish stable yet accountable political arrangements
that would redress local grievances about an unfair distribution of power
266 T. Atabaki

between central government and local authorities throughout Iran.16

Apart from these regional protest movements, there were other local
insurgencies and movements in the south and west of the country, which
were not politically reformist in character, and aimed at weakening the
authority of the central government in favour of local magnates.
The bleak atmosphere in Iran during those years was not limited to
the political scene. For most of Iran’s working poor, the First World War
brought nothing but misery. Hunger, famine, drought, insecurity caused
by armed violence, price inflation, and unemployment forced many
to abandon their homes in search of a safer existence in other parts of
the country, or even beyond its borders. Tens of thousands of migrant
Iranians were employed in factories, oilfields, mines, and construction
works in the Caucasus. When they returned home after the 1917 Russian
revolutions, they added to the army of the unemployed.17 Nor was nature
benevolent to the country’s poor: successive seasonal droughts caused
widespread famine in 1917–1918. Requisition and confiscation of food-
stuffs by occupying armies to feed their soldiers exacerbated the famine.18
In November 1915, when the total granary of the southeast province of
Sistan was sold off to the British troops, it was reported that ‘the price
of one kharvar (100 kilos) of wheat was raised to 20 tomans, if there
is any to be found.’19 In the northeast province of Khorasan, Russian
troops blockaded all roads and prohibited any transfers of grain, except
those destined for the Russian army.20 The requisitioning of pack animals,
mules, and camels for the oil industry in Khuzestan, and for the British
and Russian armed forces, left the country’s transport network in seri-
ous disarray, and disrupted the distribution of foodstuffs and other goods
throughout the country with disastrous consequences.21 During the war,
in many parts of Iran, it often cost more to transport grain than to grow
it, causing very difficult living conditions, especially for the poor.22
A series of severe droughts from 1916 onward further decimated agri-
cultural supplies. By early February 1918, famine had spread across the
country, and panicked crowds in major cities began to loot bakeries and
food stores. In the western city of Kermanshah, confrontations between
the hungry poor and the police ended in casualties. In Tehran, the situ-
ation was ‘aggravated by hoarding and short-selling to the customers by
bakers.’23 Adulteration of bread as well as exorbitant prices charged by
some bakers outraged Tehran’s working poor. Thus, for example, the
printing-house workers, who had recently formed a union, staged a dem-
onstration in Tehran in 1919, during which crowds attacked the bakeries
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 267

and granaries, and called on the government to increase food rations, to

standardise the price of bread, and to regulate the quality, supply, and
sale of foodstuffs. Nevertheless, in this turbulent post-war era, neither
the national government nor foreign powers were in a position to do
much to alleviate the human crises. The devastation caused by famine
and contagious diseases continued for many years.
Beyond deaths from starvation, epidemics also killed many people.24
The colossal food crisis, plus a large number of soldiers, refugees, and
destitute people constantly on the move in search of work and survival,
facilitated a deadly combination of pandemics and contagious diseases.
Cholera, the plague, and typhus spread with terrifying speed across the
country, claiming huge numbers of lives every day. From 1915, cases of
cholera were reported in Azerbaijan.25 In the following year, the disease
was widespread not only in all northern provinces; it also reached the
south.26 Typhoid, too, spread through many parts of the country, and
caused so many deaths that, according to an eyewitness, ‘the high mor-
tality in Tehran was not due to famine, but rather because of typhoid
and typhus’.27 By the end of the war in Europe, Spanish influenza had
also reached Iran. The foreign diplomatic missions in the capital regis-
tered reports of the devastation across the country, the most horrendous
in Hamadan.28 A British officer in northwest Iran and south Caucasus
refers in his eyewitness account to the devastating famine and disease in
Hamadan, which brought 30% of the city’s 50,000 inhabitants to the
verge of starvation, causing many deaths. Cases of cannibalism were
reported as well.29 In Iranian historical memory, the First World War is
remembered as a period of carnage—not primarily because of combat
deaths, of which there were certainly many, but much more because of
famines and epidemics that claimed far more victims.

Wartime Challenges Facing the Persian

Oil Industry: Security of Oil Supply
The outbreak of the First World War coincided with a major global shift
in technology, industry, and defence, in which coal was replaced by oil,
making oil a pivotal strategic commodity, a status sustained for a cen-
tury to follow. The rise of oil to such an elemental status resulted in the
British government, which already held 51% share in the Anglo–Persian
Oil Company (APOC), becoming the largest supplier, expanding the oil
268 T. Atabaki

industry under its direct management.30 With the completion of a pipe-

line carrying oil from Masjid Suleiman to Abadan and the construction
of the Abadan refinery, the APOC was able to supply up to two-thirds
of the British Royal Navy’s fuel needs. This was in addition to some
200,000 tons of refined petroleum product that the APOC offered to
the British military in Mesopotamia.31 The British military’s mounting
dependency on Persian oil can be better assessed if one considers that in
Mesopotamia alone, the British had up to 450,000 troops,32 the majority
of them foot soldiers, recruited from India.33 If one adds to this mili-
tary setup the 6400 motorised vehicles running on internal combustion
engines and 45 airplanes deployed in Mesopotamia, then the voracious
demand for the Persian oil becomes clear. During the war, next to petro-
leum products, the British war machine, by commissioning some 900
thousand people, enrolled the majority of the manpower available in the
region.34
Political security and labour scarcity were two major challenges fac-
ing the APOC during the war. While the belligerent powers looked on
Iran as one battlefield among many, the pivotal position of oil for the
war industry and the proximity of the Persian oilfields and refinery to the
warfront of Mesopotamia turned Persia into one of the major theatres
of operations, if not an enduring combat zone. Furthermore, the same
proximity caused a large number of workers, especially skilled workers,
to abandon work in the oil industry, when the industry was expanding its
production. Even the supply of local unskilled labour became scarce, and
caused a major hurdle for the company.35
On 1 November 1914, a military contingent made up mainly of
Indian infantry landed in the south of Iran to secure the oilfields and
Abadan refinery.36 While the British warship Odin patrolled the Shatt al-
Arab River, deploying this contingent was a preventive measure against
likely Ottoman and German attacks on the oil refinery. There were
reports of 30,000 Ottoman troops stationed in Basra.37 According to
Christopher Sykes, the Germans (with the help of Niedermayer, their
secret agent in Iran) planned to set fire to the Abadan refinery and then
to sink the German cargo steamer Ekbatana and other vessels south of
Abadan to block the British from travelling up the river to rescue their
European employees at the burning refinery.38 The British premonition
was partly realised on 6 November 1914, when the Ottoman army’s
coastal batteries opened fire on the British navy sloop Espiegle, which
had embarked up the Shatt al-Arab in September 1914. The Ottomans
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 269

then made a futile attempt to block the river above Mohammareh (later
Khoramshahr), by sinking Ekbatana and three smaller ships.39 After
this failed offensive, there were some more sporadic exchanges of fire
in the following days, which finally concluded with the retreat of the
Ottomans.40
The retreat of the Ottomans and the British seizure of Basra on 22
November 1914 were followed by British advances to Amara and Tigris.
Basra became the bastion of British forces in Mesopotamia, which
stopped the Ottomans from mounting any direct offensive against the
oil industry in southern Iran. Yet for the Oil Company, Ottoman and
German intrusions and acts of sabotage remained a major threat.
Moreover, the Ottoman offensives in northern Mesopotamia forced
APOC to adopt various precautionary measures. In January 1915, the
Oil Company decided to move all its European employees from Ahwaz
and Abadan to Mohammareh. On the eve of the war, the number of
staff and labour in the Persian oil industry reached 4277, including 64
Europeans, 2744 Persians, and 1074 Indians.41
The Ottoman defeat in Basra was still considered minor compared to
what they suffered in the north. It was indeed following their military
failure on the northern front that the German–Turkish alliance focused
once more on the south. However, instead of pursuing direct military
confrontation, they tried to stir up populist uprisings in the region from
below and to negotiate deals with the tribal chiefs from above.
In January 1915, the Germans deployed a major infiltration campaign
in southern Iran. They dispatched a number of agents to the region,
whose mission it was to instigate popular rebellion against the Allied
forces, and to sabotage and destroy British installations and interests.42
Wilhelm Wassmuss, initially the German Acting Consul at Bushehr, later
nicknamed the Lawrence of Persia, became the most celebrated of these
secret agents, partly because of his dashing and adventurous lifestyle.
Other German and Ottoman agents were sent to Isfahan, Kermanshah,
Hamadan, Najaf, and Karbala, and the oil province of Khuzestan. Their
general objective was to obtain a Jihadi decree from the Shiite and Sunni
‘ulama, and rally the local population to the Central Powers. There were
also reports that ‘the Ottomans had dispatched some 2000 foot soldiers
and cavalry and a number of canons in order to cross Mohammareh, and
reach Basra’.43
Finally, in February 1915, the German and Ottoman lengthy cam-
paign to persuade local Arab tribes to sabotage APOC installations was
270 T. Atabaki

realised.44 The tribes attacked pipelines and some oil installations north
of Ahvaz. They set fire to the oil spilled from the broken pipelines, cut
telephone lines between Abadan and the oilfields, and looted the Oil
Company’s stores.45 The impact of the February disruption lasted until
June of the same year, causing Abadan’s output to fall from 23,500 tons
to 5‚600 tons. ‘At the field, large quantities of oil had to be burned,
since all available storage was soon filled and the producing wells could
not be completely shut off.’46
The sabotage of February 1915 was the only significant, direct attack
on oil installations in Khuzestan during the wartime. In the following
months and years, no other major incident was recorded and somehow
the security of oil installations in Khuzestan was preserved.47 This result
was largely due to protection offered by the Bakhtiyari khans, the chiefs
of the local Bakhtiyari tribe,48 ‘securing the Oil Company’s employees
and properties within the limits of their jurisdiction.’49 The Bakhtiyari
Khans affirmed their commitment to protecting British interests in the
south, including the oilfields, the refinery, and transport networks, and
to cooperate with the Sheikh Khaz‘al (1861–1936), the British govern-
ment’s most trusted Arab tribe chief in the south.50 Furthermore, on a
request by APOC, Nasser Khan Sardar Jang (1864–1931), the Bakhtiyari
tribe chief, sent a message of reprimand to the chiefs of Bavi and Bani-
Turuf tribes, ordering them to evacuate the lands of Bakhtiyari at once.
Facing such a setback, the Bavi and Bani-Turuf accepted the authority of
the rival tribe, the Ka‘bian tribe headed by Sheikh Khaz‘al, who enjoyed
British support. The Bavi and Bani-Turuf subsequently turned their back
on the Ottoman and Germans, and took on the new task of guarding
APOC pipelines and installations in the region.51
After an agreement was signed by the Bakhtiyari Khans and the Arab
tribes, it appeared that the threat to the strategic interests of the British
in the south and the lives of its employees had ended. However, given
the reality of local politics in the region, this expectation was soon
proven to be overly optimistic. Within the Bakhtiyari establishment,
rivalry existed between the old chiefs and the younger generation, who
did not miss an occasion to challenge the authority of the old guard.
The war and the great powers contesting one another’s presence in the
region offered them an opportunity to raise their status within the tribal
hierarchy. Furthermore, when the total disruption of the Khuzestan oil
installation failed, German and Ottoman agents began to track the activi-
ties of the APOC beyond the borders of Khuzestan.
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 271

Following the first discovery of oil in southern Iran, at Masjid

Suleiman on 26 May 1908, APOC intended to extend exploration to the
west and south of Iran. The limited oil deposits in the west, and difficul-
ties in excavation, caused the British to focus once more on the south.52
A group of geologists from Britain and Burma arrived in Iran, first vis-
iting Ahvaz and Haftkel, which harboured extensive boiling springs of
white oil. Later, however, on advice of the British navy, they extended
their discovery mission to southeastern Iran, in a region along the sea
shore of Mokran from Baluchistan to Bushehr, covering the island of
Qeshm. The geologists’ expedition, followed by APOC’s gradually
expanding excavation activities in Qeshm, led the Oil Company to con-
clude that Qeshm would soon become another major oilfield, next to
Naftoun in Masjid Suleiman. These new developments obviously could
not escape the attention of German and Ottoman agents, who followed
APOC’s activities in the region with interest and concern.
Having assessed the British presence in the region, and following their
limited success in rousing the Arab tribes in southwestern Iran against
the British, the Germans and Ottomans decided to leave Khuzestan, and
to prioritise other regions instead. Thus, except for the western front in
Kurdistan, the main zone of German and Ottoman presence during the
war was to the west of a line between Isfahan and Bandar Abbas, includ-
ing Shiraz, Bushehr, Tangestan, and Dashtestan. By exploiting traditional
rivalries among local tribes, and encouraging the local Muslim ‘ulama to
call for a Jihad against the British and Russians, they opened a new front
in southeastern Iran for their political and military sponsors. Once again,
the Germans became political and military advisors to the tribal chiefs,
and the agents of the Taşkilat-i Mahsusa, the Ottoman secret service,
dispatched the Najaf and Karbala decrees, as well as local Muslim ‘ula-
ma’s Jihadi Fatwas, among the southern population of Iran.53
After scrutinizing the subversive activities of their enemies, the British
sent troops to Bushehr in August 1915.54 The occupation of Bushehr
was followed by the establishment of a special military proxy unit in the
spring of 1916, known as the South Persia Rifles (SPR). It comprised
locally recruited troops, whose task it was to put down tribal insurgencies
and local resistance.55 The establishment of the SPR was supported by a
number of local tribal chiefs who were close allies of the British, but the
Iranian government strongly objected to it and resented the violation of
its territorial sovereignty, which it implied.56
272 T. Atabaki

In June 1915, local tribes in Qeshm, with the support of the Ottoman
secret agents of Taşkilat-i Mahsusa, organised a surprise attack against
the APOC installations in Salkh on Qeshm. The immediate result of this
camisado was the end of APOC’s work on the island.57 The spring attack
on the British enterprise in Qeshm was followed by an even tougher setback
for Britain.58 In early summer, the British military forces in Bushehr came
under siege by the local tribes. In retaliation, the British introduced martial
law and declared the total subjugation of the port. According the witness
account of Mehdi Qoli Khan Hedayat (1864–1955), the Iranian govern-
ment representative in Bushehr, the British troops in the port even printed
a postal stamp with the wording of ‘Bushehr under British Occupation.’59
The British military presence in Bushehr caused major grievances
amongst the population. Public protests were staged against the British
and its war ally, the Russians, which extended to Isfahan, Ramhormoz, and
Bushehr, and once more the local ‘ulama called on their people to rise up
in a Jihad against the Allied troops. In a number of incidents, even local
APOC offices were set on fire.60 However, once more, the British regional
command opted for confrontation over compromise. By founding the SPR
unit and suppressing local protests (in particular, the revolt of Tangestanis
in August 1915), the British authorities generally attempted to placate the
local tribal chiefs, even if they could not win them over to their side.

Wartime Challenges Facing The Persian Oil Industry:

Scarcity Of Labour And The Question Of Labour
Recruitment And Dependency
Next to operational security issues, the persistent scarcity of labour, both
skilled and unskilled, was the APOC’s major concern during the war. Oil
production continued to increase, and the Abadan refinery expanded
to meet the ever-increasing demand for petroleum products. Yet, at the
very time that more labour was needed, it was in short supply. In addi-
tion to the high wages offered by the British Army, which caused many
highly skilled and unskilled employees to leave the oil industry and join
the army as casual labour,61 the proximity of the oilfields and refinery
to the warfront also resulted in the exodus of a large number of work-
ers. Therefore, recruiting and retaining labour, together with negotiating
with the army to alter its own manpower recruitment policy, became the
priority of the APOC during the war. The situation became so serious
that APOC pleaded with the British military to issue an order that would
prohibit army and naval units from hiring former oil industry employees,
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 273

and to establish a labour corps to serve and assist the oil industry. The
British Army was also called upon to assist in forcing APOC employees
to stay on the job for the duration of the war. The Admiralty consented,
and issued an order on 6 August 1915 which classified the Abadan refin-
ery as ‘a munitions factory and [declared] that those working there could
not, under the King’s Regulations, leave the Company’s service.’62
APOC additionally approached the government of India ‘to issue
instructions through the Bombay Government to all concerned to facili-
tate recruitment and dispatch’ of labourers for the Persian oil industry,
an industry run by a company in which ‘the majority of shares are held
by the British Government which has full power of control and of British
Indian subjects, being under the British jurisdictions.’63 APOC claimed
that the biggest obstacle in obtaining labour for the Persian oil industry
was a formality in the Indian Emigrations Act of 1883, which restricted
labour migration to specified destinations, including Persia.64 In March
1915, the APOC board proposed that restrictions imposed by the act be
waived so that APOC could recruit more skilled labourers:

‘Owing to the non-existence of such [skilled] labour in Persia, and the

impossibility of training Persians in sufficient number for their require-
ments, the Company is compelled to depend largely on India for skilled
labourers of many kinds, such as riveters, engine drivers, assembling
machine men, iron and brass moulders, solders, core makers and others.
At the present time the number of Indian employees in Abadan and the
oil fields is about 1020. It is found nevertheless that it is very difficult to
induce men of these classes to leave Bombay, Rangoon, Karachi or the
other ports where they are recruited and to accept employment in Persia
… [due to the] Indian Emigration Act, which is unduly magnified in the
emigrant’s imagination, and consequently acted as a serious deterrent to
obtaining and inducing men to leave for Persia.’65

To strengthen its argument, APOC emphasised its patriotic credentials,

which included its special status as a British company in which the British
government had acquired majority shareholding, providing ‘full power
of control and of British Indian subjects being under the jurisdiction of
His Majesty’s Consul.’ APOC accordingly petitioned the government
of India to apply the same emigration rules to Persia as those used for
Ceylon and the Straits Settlement. According to APOC, the administra-
tive power of the government of India should be extended to the new
territory:
274 T. Atabaki

‘… under the provisions of the Persian Coast and Islands Order of 1907,
British Indian subjects in the Persian littoral are entirely under the jurisdic-
tion of the Consul-General and Political Resident and his subordinate officers.
British Indian law is in force and under the provision of the Order, the Indian
Code of Criminal and Civil Procedure have effect ‘as if the Persian Coast and
Islands were a neighbourhood in the province of Bombay’. In these circum-
stances the position of Indian emigrants in the Gulf approximates to their
position in Ceylon and the Straits Settlements, which are expressly exempted
from the operation of the Emigration Act, and the object of this letter is to
enquire whether a similar exemption cannot be accorded to the areas occu-
pied by the Company’s Work at Abadan, Mohammareh and the oilfields.66

The Persian Coast and Islands Order of 1907 mentioned in APOC’s

petition refers to an appendix of the aforementioned Anglo-Russian
Convention signed in August 1907 in St Petersburg. This conven-
tion aimed to consolidate, in terms of international agreements, vari-
ous political changes that had occurred in the Far East, the Middle East,
and Europe after the Russo-Japanese War and the Russian Revolution
of 1905. Since 1903, the territorial integrity of Persia had been recog-
nised by both Russia and Britain, except for the Persian Gulf, which was
considered a ‘British lake’. However, the 1907 Convention effectively
rejected Persia as a sovereign territory, although formally it was still
regarded as a sovereign state. The core of the Convention was its first
section, which created Russian and British territorial spheres in north-
ern and southern Persia, while leaving the central part as a buffer zone
between the two imperial powers.67
In April 1915, India’s Department of Commerce and Industry
reacted to APOC’s petition in the following terms:

‘The Government of India are very reluctant to extend the exemption to

other countries. The conditions mentioned above do not apply to the Persian
Gulf. Emigration of artisans to the Persian Gulf is of very recent date and liv-
ing very expensive. It is possible that on account of these reasons artisans are
unwilling to proceed to the Persian Gulf even on the high Burma rates and
not because of the restriction imposed by the Emigration Act. The artisan
class is not so ignorant as the ordinary coolie class and are not likely to be
frightened by requirements of the Act, which are not of a harassing nature.’68

However, the Indian government did not completely close the door
to further negotiations with APOC, and in the same memorandum, it
was considered that if ‘His Majesty’s Government would consent to be
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 275

Table 10.1 Employment in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, 1914–1921

Year Iranians Indians Europeans Others Total

1914 2744 1074 64 395 4277

1915 2203 979 80 187 3449
1916 2335 1366 120 104 3925
1917 n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d.
1918 n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d.
1919 3979 2641 117 47 6784
1920 8447 3616 244 35 12,342
1921 9009 4709 271 51 14,040

n.d. no data available.

Source R.W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum. The Developing Years 1901–1932 (London,
1982)

a party to the agreement’, then it would consider the desirability of an

exemption, provided that ‘the Governments of Bombay, Punjab—where
the emigrants proceed mostly from—United Province, Bengal, and Bihar
and Orissa [were] consulted’69 (Table 10.1).
The dispute between APOC and the government of India about
whether Persia could be a legal destination for Indian labour migrants
was not settled until February 1918. At that time, the government finally
agreed to a temporary suspension of the Emigration Act restrictions for
territories under the APOC aegis. By then, it had recognised the strate-
gic importance of maintaining oil supplies in war-time, and as a result,
extended the scope of its cooperation with APOC, so that oil production
would not be hindered by labour scarcity.70 APOC remained very insist-
ent about the importance of a continuing labour supply from India, and
despite the persistent problem of desertions by workers in pursuit of bet-
ter pay, or the restrictions imposed by the government’s Emigration Act,
it continued the recruitment of migrant workers from India.
During the war, with expansion of the Persian oil industry, the recruit-
ment process of labour altered practically. In the early years of its oper-
ation, following the oil discovery in 1908, the company was mainly
concerned with establishing the basic infrastructure, constructing roads,
laying pipelines, and building refineries. Enjoying absolute monopoly over
the extraction, production, and marketing of the oil, the APOC embarked
on a massive labour recruitment campaign. The composition of the work-
force in the early stages of recruitment was loosely regulated by the terms
of the Oil Concession of 1901, known as the D’Arcy Agreement.
276 T. Atabaki

According to Article 12 of the agreement, ‘the workmen employed

in the service of the company shall be subject to His Imperial Majesty
the Shah, except the technical staff, such as the managers, engineers,
borers and foremen.’71 In the terms of this article, APOC was free to
recruit skilled and semi-skilled labour beyond Iran’s borders, which it
did—mainly from India. To obtain un-skilled labour, APOC looked pri-
marily to the region adjacent to the oilfield. The Bakhtiyari peasants and
pastoral nomads living there became the main source of the workforce.
However, in a region where human needs were few and cheap, it was no
easy task to persuade young men to leave their traditional mode of life in
exchange for industrial milieu with radically different work patterns.
Moreover, because of the discrepancy between the lifestyle of the
pastoralists and the employee requirements of APOC, recruiting labour
from the Bakhtiyari pastoralists soon became a major burden for APOC.
The Bakhtiyari pastoralists migrated seasonally twice a year. In the late
spring, they left the scorching desert plains in the South with their flocks
and herds and headed for the Northern highlands and the snow-clad
mountain range of Zagros, where fresh pastures could be found. That
was their yaylaq or summer quarter. In late autumn, when the grass died
in the freezing weather of the elevated Zagros plateau, the Bakhtiyaris
descended to the lowlands again, in search of grazing pastures and fresh
grass on the plain, which provided plenty of food for their flocks of sheep
and goats. That was their qeshlaq, or winter quarter. The qeshlaq was also
the season for marketing their surplus and buying what they needed in
market towns of Dezful, Shushtar, Ramhormoz, and Isfahan.
The seasonal migration was not compulsory for all members of the
Bakhtiyari tribe. For example, when periodic droughts occurred and
when the weather in yaylaq or qeshlaq was not favourable, a mem-
ber of the tribe, usually from the lower rank of ‘amalehjat, would go
to the khan and ask for permission to stay behind. Permission was usu-
ally granted. It was among these ‘amalehjat that the APOC enlisted its
early unskilled labour employees, first in the elementary operations of
rig-building and drilling or in road-building and transport, and later in
laying the oil pipes or constructing the Abadan oil refinery. Since the Oil
Company operated year-round, the major challenge was obviously in
retaining the recruited labour in the off-season, for more than 6 months
at a time.
The labour recruits gradually adopted the new industrial lifestyle.
Some of them formed a new cluster of the workforce known as sarkar,
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 277

an abridged form of sar-kargar (headworkers). The sarkars were distinct

from the foremen; the latter represented a labour category exclusively
reserved for European skilled workers in the early days of APOC’s activi-
ties. Among other functions, the sarkar recruited labour for the com-
pany. In the early days of oil excavation, it was the Bakhtiyari khans who,
through negotiations with the Oil Company, acted as the main provider
of labour. But now there were sarkars who not only supervised the per-
formance of the new recruited labour, but also took charge of recruit-
ing new workers. They were paid bonuses per head of each new recruit
hired. Thus, in the formative years of the oil industry in Persia, the func-
tion of the intermediary, the sarkar, was not only to conscript men for
the new workforce of the expanding industry, but also to ensure their
loyalty in performing their new tasks. It was a dual mission: sarkar was
both a recruiter and, effectively, a foreman.
With the expansion of the oil industry, and especially with the con-
struction of the Abadan refinery, the practice of recruitment by
Bakhtiyari khan and sarkar ended,72 and as the APOC was poised to
consolidate and extend its activities by acting as merchants, bankers, and
traders; commission, commercial, and general agents; and ship-owners,
carriers, and dealers in all kind of commodities, a new labour recruit-
ment process was needed. Within these terms, the new labour office was
established on the premises of the Abadan Refinery. One of the main
tasks of this new office was to bring seasonal work to an end in favour
of permanent employment. To reach this goal, the labour office utilised
ancestral bonding in organised networked migration. It encouraged the
employment of workers’ descendants in an elementary apprenticeship in
the use of lathes and simple machine tools.73 In the long run, this pre-
ferred employment policy reshaped social relations among oil workers
by encouraging successive generations to work in the oil industry. The
impact of this policy went beyond the shop floor, and gradually fash-
ioned a new culture in the public space of Iranian oil towns.
The establishment of the new labour office in Abadan was able to
address the question of mass recruitment of unskilled labour, but it could
not tackle the demand for skilled and semi-skilled labour, now becom-
ing more pressing with the inauguration of the refinery. For the cleri-
cal skilled and semi-skilled manual professional, the APOC turned to
migrant workers from India and Burma.74 In India, the British Indian
trading company Shaw Wallace & Co. Ltd, with Strick, Scott & Co. as
its representative in Persia, was the intermediary agent recruiting labour
278 T. Atabaki

for Persia. Shaw Wallace worked closely with the Burma Oil Company
and APOC, and its mission as labour recruitment agency lasted until
1926, when APOC decided to take over the task and recruit Indian
labour via its office in Bombay. In India, Shaw Wallace was the sole agent
of these oil companies, providing various services in addition to labour
recruitment.
The majority of migrant workers recruited to the Persian oil industry
from Burma were Indians employed by the Burma Oil Company. Their
extensive experience working at the Burma oilfields and the Rangoon Oil
Refinery made them an attractive labour source. Using a free-contract
system, Shaw Wallace arranged for the passage of these workers from
Burma to Persia. They were mainly Chittagonian Sunni Muslims who
had joined the Burmese oil industry in the 1890s.75 In APOC adminis-
trative records or British colonial archives, the social, territorial, ethnic,
and religious background of Indian migrant workers was never separately
identified. The same applied to Iranian workers. Thus, all migrant work-
ers from India employed by the Persian oil industry were simply classified
as ‘Indians’. However, by collating data found in the national archives
of India, Iran, and Britain, sources in the APOC and British Petroleum
Company archives, and records from the community of Indian migrant
workers living in Iran, additional distinctions can be made. In Persia,
workers originating from Burma, for example, were categorised as
Rangoony (from Rangoon), so distinguishing them from other Indian
migrants. In the city of Abadan, the Rangoony community had its own
mosque, segregated from other Indian Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Still
standing, it is known as the ‘Rangoony Mosque’, no doubt a reference to
a substantial Burmese population in Abadan.
In addition to recruiting Indian migrant workers from Burma for
work in the Persian oil industry, Shaw Wallace recruited both skilled
and semi-skilled workers from Bombay and Karachi through subsidi-
ary or subcontractor offices. Subcontractors likeI.A. Ashton & Sons and
Bullock Brothers specialised in recruiting fitters, oil and diesel engine
drivers, marine signalmen, marine raters, boilermakers, and pipe fitters.76
Recruiters often advertised in Bombay papers, especially for clerical
employment. However, there are also references to the fact that inter-
mediaries such as I.A. Ashton posted notices, posters, and wallpapers in
the Punjab.77 All workers who applied for the announced positions first
had to undergo a qualification examination. Those recruited in Punjab
were interviewed in Lahore, and Bombay recruits were interviewed in
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 279

Mazagaon Dock Bombay, before joining the mass of employees depart-

ing for Persia. The intermediary companies charged each new recruit
25% of their first month’s pay. Those who had previously worked for the
Oil Company in Persia and had returned to India within the past 2 years
were required to pay an admission fee of 10 rupees.78 The same rule
applied to workers hired for household and domestic services, such as
butlers, cooks, domestic servants, hospital ward orderlies, and sweepers
(these were chiefly recruited by Osborn & Co., affiliated with the Parsee
enterprise based in Bombay).79
During the war and in the immediate years after, recruitment of
migrant labour from India continued and even increased significantly
despite the desertions by workers in pursuit of better pay and the restric-
tions of the Emigration Act, which remained in force during the war.
By the end of the war, the enlarged army of Indian migrants at work in
the Persian oil industry was sourced from all across India: Chittagonian
labourers worked in harbour engineering and naval transport, while the
Punjabi Sikhs were chiefly employed as drivers, technicians, and security
agents. Migrants from the Madras Presidency occupied clerical functions,
the Gazars from Punjab working as dhobis (washermen), while Goans
served as cooks and servants.80
It is interesting to note that, according to the signed contract,
migrant Indian employees were not allowed to take their families to
Persia. While this was of major concern to some workers who wanted
to bring their families, the Oil Company considered the ban on family
reunion as strictly non-negotiable, except for some high-ranking clerks.
However, reports in Iranian archives state that some Indian Muslim
migrant workers approached the Persian authorities to intervene on
their behalf, calling on APOC to grant permission for family living
arrangements.81
As mentioned before, months before the final armistice of November
1918, the government of India suspended the application of its
Emigration Act to Persia, and liberalised migration traffic. However, this
suspension was short-lived. In 1920, the government reversed its policy,
and once again restricted labour migration to the Persian oil industry.
Two years later, in 1922, the old Emigration Act was restructured via an
amendment. The amendment intended to end the practice of indentured
labour, extensively practised during the war. The new labour recruitment
policy was influenced by political factors—both at the top, through the
tripartite relations of APOC, the government of India, and the Persian
280 T. Atabaki

government, and from below, through labour activism aimed at improv-

ing the situation of workers. Consequently, APOC opted to open its own
labour recruitment office in Bombay, and began to tap the local labour
market for its Persian industry. In November 1925, APOC instructed
Shaw Wallace & Co. to end its labour recruitment mission for the
Persian oil industry in India as of January 1926.

Working and Living Conditions of Oil Workers

in Wartime

New measures in work discipline were introduced during the war to

ensure the continuity of work mainly for European employees and Indian
skilled workers. In the early days of oil discovery, there were no standard
working days, and employees had to work from sunrise to sunset, seven
days a week, throughout the year, in the harsh climate of southern Persia.
During the war, however, a modified workday regime was implemented:
6 days were worked per week, from 9 to 12 hours per day, depending on
the season. Work typically started at 6:00 in the morning and ended at
6:00 in the evening during the winter, and continued from 6:00 in the
morning until 3:00 in the afternoon during the summer. It was only after
several labour protests in the 1920s that APOC eventually adopted fixed
working hours throughout the year, commencing at 6:00 in the morning
and finishing officially at 5:30 in the afternoon, with an hour and a half
for breakfast and one hour for lunch. In the early days, the Oil Company
designated Sunday as a day off; however, during the war, the ‘weekend’
started at noon on Thursday, and included Friday.82
While APOC tried to refashion working conditions in the oil industry
by introducing a new working day, the fear of disease and contamina-
tion remained a major concern that deterred new recruits from seeking
employment in Khuzestan. Their apprehension was well-founded. The
deadly effect of the pandemic was made worse by the endemic warfare
of marauding armies and warlords, famine, drought, and debilitating
poverty, especially in the west and south of the country. British troops
were not spared either. The Indian infantry, which constituted the bulk
of the British troops, suffered particularly large losses.83 Although APOC
imposed quarantines and had well-equipped hospitals and medical facili-
ties, the overall casualties were devastating. In Mohammareh alone, 6000
people fell ill, and 240 deaths were recorded.84
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 281

The living conditions of the workmen did not improve much dur-
ing the war. Prior to the discovery of oil, Abadan was an agrarian island
with a scattered population of Maniuhi and Nassar Arab tribes, who
had settled in several villages. Masjid Suleiman was a newly founded
Oil Company town, built around oilfields that straddled the migra-
tory routes and spring pasture of the Bakhtiyari nomads. Migration to
Masjid Suleiman, either to seek employment in the oil industry or to
provide services to its employees, pushed the new city’s frontiers out-
ward. An oilfield town originally accommodating a mere 523 employ-
ees in 1910,85 it grew by leaps and bounds into a company town with a
population of 17,000 around 1920.86 The population of Abadan grew
to an even greater extent. In 1917, 5000 residents were reported in the
town of Abadan—a figure that ‘included the Oil Company’s employees,
local people, shopkeepers, and petty traders who had recently migrated
to provide services to oil employees.’87 By the end of the war, the inward
migration to Abadan of people seeking work in the oil industry or pro-
viding services to employees in the oil industry had caused Abadan to
grow beyond all expectations. By the mid-1920s, the population of
Abadan Island had reached 50,000–60,00088 and by the early 1930s,
the town of Abadan alone numbered 30,000–40,000 residents, of which
about half—17,370 men—worked at the oil refinery.89
During the war, there were three distinct and separate classes of
accommodation for APOC employees. While APOC offered exclusive
company housing for its European staff in furnished brick bungalows
with gardens, the Indian employees were housed in large, semi-furnished
common barracks. The Persian unskilled recruits lived in shelters made
of sticks or bamboo, latched loosely together, and roofed with palm
leaves. It was only after the war, during the 1920s, following the Oil
Company’s new social policy toward recruitment, employment, and wel-
fare that the question of urban planning and housing began to be con-
sidered more seriously by the company.90
The oil towns of Masjid Suleiman and Abadan were tripartite cities, in
which urban space was divided spatially according to the social stratifica-
tion principles imposed by British colonialism.91 A highly stratified racial
hierarchy existed, which APOC’s British employees had brought with
them from home and from India, with Europeans at the top, Indians
in the middle, and native Persians at the bottom. This racial partition-
ing was reflected in the areas occupied by each group. It was consist-
ently imposed, even when new neighbourhoods were added to the city,
282 T. Atabaki

as the oil industry grew, the refinery was extended, and employment pol-
icies were modified.92 Crossing this very rigid racial partition was pos-
sible when higher-ranking Indians (and later, Persians) were invited to
attend official ceremonies, congregations, or services of worship with
the European community.93 However, mixing across racial borders was
‘specifically discouraged, and segregation was held up as the best alter-
native.’94 Such segregation remained in force for years to come and was
lifted only in 1951 when the Iranian oil was nationalised.

Conclusion
The First World War exalted the status of oil as a critical strategic com-
modity. The expeditious shift from coal to oil in technology, defence,
and industry was concomitant with the exorbitant expansion of the oil
industry, itself reliant on massive recruitment of skilled, semi-skilled, and
unskilled labour.
The global shift to oil had enormous implications for the strategic
significance of West Asia; Persia, the Persian Gulf, and Mesopotamia, a
region that contains the world’s largest oil deposits. Although Iran’s piv-
otal oil position during the first world war caused it to become a bat-
tlefield for the belligerent powers, the major challenge for the expanding
oil industry, in addition to political security, was the scarcity of labour
in all categories. Given that the British government held a 51% share in
APOC, it first appeared as though the scarcity of skilled and semi-skilled
labour would soon be overcome through recruitment of labour from
other industries in the British Empire, namely the Rangoon oilfields and
refinery. However, for the Oil Company, the recruitment process became
more convoluted than was earlier anticipated. The complexity in the
process of labour recruitment form the British Raj, as examined in this
paper, reveals the degrees of inaccessibility of labour within the British
Empire. During the First World War, this complexity was not limited to
skilled and semi-skilled labour. The scarcity of unskilled labour led the
Oil Company to exploit all possible means for the enrolment of labour,
including the Labour Corps, founded in British India.
The end of the war resulted in the combatant labour departing from
the military camps and joining the camps in the labour market. The new
politico-economic regime of Fordism, which was characterised by mass
industrial production and consumption under scientific labour manage-
ment, ushered in a new social policy toward recruitment, employment,
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 283

and welfare, where the question of urban planning and housing began
to be considered more seriously. The Oil Company, by setting up new
quarters for skilled and semi-skilled workers in oil towns, spatially divided
the urban space according to the social stratification principles imposed
by British colonialism. In the present study, the old and widely perceived
practice of colonial dual cities, dividing urban spaces between the binary
of colonised and coloniser settlers, was challenged by the advancement
of tripartite cities, where the European management, the Indian skilled
and semi-skilled migrant labour, and the Iranian unskilled labour became
permanent residents.
In the present work, the contribution of the micro-spatial history of
labour in the Iranian oil industry to global labour history is refashioned
by highlighting the labour dependency of the oil industry not only on
labour markets beyond Iranian national frontiers, but also within the
larger trans-local context of empire, colonial, and semi-colonial settings.
Furthermore, by referring to the regional political development during
the First World War and global economic development in the post-war
era, this study reveals the historical complexity of centre and periphery in
local, regional, and global contexts.

Notes
1. The adjective “European” needs to be appended to “hundred years’
peace”, otherwise the notion would be Eurocentric. During this “hun-
dred years”‚ the world witnessed many colonial wars outside Europe.
Between 1803 and 1901 British troops were fighting continuously in
some 50 colonial wars. Giddens, The Nation State and Violence (Berkeley‚
1987), p. 233.
2. Ibid., pp. 223–232.
3. Asa Briggs, A Social History of England (London, 1983), pp. 251–252.
4. Pat Thane, ‘Government and Society in England and Wales: 1750–
1914’, in Cambridge Social History of Britain: 1750–1950, ed. F.M.L.
Thompson, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 1–62.
5. Nicholas A. Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution (Columbia,
2002), pp. 274–304.
6. According to Landes, half of the naval ship crews were stokers and half
of the cargo space was taken up for coal storage. David Landes, The
Unbound Prometheus; Technological Change and Industrial Development
in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge, 2003),
pp. 279–281.
284 T. Atabaki

7. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, p. 281.

8. Marian (Kent) Jack, ‘The Purchase of British Government’s Shares in the
British Petroleum Company 1912–1914’, Past and Present, 39 (1968),
139–68.
9. Stuart Cohen, ‘Mesopotamia in British Strategy, 1903–1914’,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 9, 2 (1978), 171–181;
Lev Ivanovich Miroshnikov, ‘Iran in the World War I, Lecture read
at Harvard University in November 1962’ (Persian translation by A.
Dokhaniyati, Iran dar Jang Jahani Avval (Tehran, 1965).
10. Ahamd Ali Sepher (Movarekh al-Dowleh), Iran dar Jang-e Bozorg 1914–
1918 (Tehran, 1983), p. 102.
11. Ibid., p. 15.
12. Kaveh, nos. 29 and 30, July 1918.
13. Ahamd Ali Sepher (Movarekh al-Dowleh), Iran dar Jang Bozorg 1914–
1918, p. 239.
14. For the Provincial National Government see: Mansoureh Ettehadiyyeh,
‘The Iranian Provincial Government’, in Touraj Atabaki (ed.), Iran and
the First World War, A Battleground of the Great Powers (London, 2006)
pp. 9–27; ‘Alireza Malaii Tavani, Iran va Dowlat Melli dar Jang jahani
Avval (Tehran, 1999); Hossein Sami‘i and Amanollah Ardalan, Avvalin
Qiyam Moqadas Melli dar Jang Beynolmelel Avval (Tehran; 1953);
‘Abdolhossein Shaybani Vahid al-Molk, Khaterat Mohajerat. Az dowlat
Movaqqat Kermanshah ta Komiteh Meliyyoun Berlan (Tehran, 1999).
15. For a British account of the impact of the Russian Revolution on the
eastern front in the First World War, see: Arnold T. Wilson, Loyalties:
Mesopotamia, 1914–1917 (London: 1931).
16. Touraj Atabaki, Azerbaijan: Ethnicity and the Struggle for Power in Iran,
2nd ed. (London, 2000), pp. 39–51.
17. For a study of the migrant Iranian labourers in the Caucasus see: Touraj
Atabaki, ‘Disgruntled Guests, Iranian Subaltern on the Margins of the
Tsarist Empire’, International Review of Social History, 48, 3 (2003), pp.
401–426.
18. Iran National Archive, 240–3920, 293–3828, 240–1493, 240–6246,
240–5161.
19. Archive of Documents and Diplomatic History, Iran Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. GH–133–58–4–91, GH–1333–58–4–68.
20. Iran National Archive, 293–003828.
21. British Petroleum Archive (hereafter ‘BP Archive’), ARC141294, January
1938. Laurence Lockhart, Record of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, vol.
I, 1901–1918, p. 268.
22. Iran National Archive, 240–18279.
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 285

23. Willem Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions in Iran (1900–1941)

(Durham, 1985), p. 12.
24. For an eyewitness account of the famine and epidemics spreading across
Iran during the first world war, see: Qahreman Mirza Salour, Rouznameh
Khaterat ‘Ayn al-Saltaneh, Vol. 7 (Tehran, 1999) pp. 5275–5277.
25. Iran National Archive, 360–1569.
26. Archive of Documents and Diplomatic History, Iran Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. GH–1334–25–1–305.
27. ‘Abdollah Mostowfi, Sharh Zendegi Man, Vol. 2 (Tehran, 1964), p. 513.
28. Report from the US Legation in Tehran, 1 November 1918, US National
Archive 891.00/1072.
29. Majid Foroutan, Oza’ Siyasi va Ejtema’i dar Jang Jahani Avval (Tehran,
2011); L.C. Dunsterville, The Adventure of Dunsterforce (London,
2009).
30. Stuart Cohen, ‘Mesopotamia in British Strategy, 1903–1914’,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 9, 2, May 1978.
31. R.W. Ferrier, History of the British Petroleum Company, vol. 1, The
Developing Years 1901–1932 (London, 1982), pp. 288–290.
32. Between 1914 and 1918, British troops in Near East and Middle East
numbered nearly 3 million. At maximum strength, there were 1.3 mil-
lion. They suffered 303,000 casualties during this period, i.e. one out
of every ten men. See: Roger Adelson, London and the Invention of the
Middle East, Money, Power, and War, 1902–1922 (New Haven, 1995), p.
171.
33. For the presence of the Indian workers in the Persian oil industry and
Persian Gulf in wartime period see: Touraj Atabaki, ‘Far from Home, But
at Home: Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian Oil Industry’, Studies
in History, 31(1): 85–114. Radhika Singha, ‘Finding Labour from India
for the War in Iraq: The Jail Porter and Labour Corps, 1916–1920’,
Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 2 (2007): 412–45;
Stefan Tetzlaff, ‘The Turn of the Gulf Tide: Empire, Nationalism, and
South Asian Labour Migration to Iraq, c. 1900–1935’, International
Labour and Working-Class History 79: 7–27; I.J. Seccombe and R.I.
Lawless, ‘Foreign Worker Dependence in the Gulf, and the International
Oil Companies: 1910–1950’, International Migration Review 20, no. 3
(1986): 548–74.
34. Roger Adelson, London and the Invention of the Middle East, Money,
Power, and War, 1902–1922, p. 171.
35. BP Archive, ARC 68779, Strick, Scott & Co. to Wilson, October 7th
1916.
36. BP Archive, ARC 141294, p. 265.
286 T. Atabaki

37. ‘Abbas Mirza Farman Farmian–Salar Lashkar (ed. Mansoureh

Ettehadiyyeh and Bahman Farman), Jang-e Engelis va ‘Osmani dar Beyn
al-Nahrain va ‘Avaqeb-e An dar Iran (Tehran, 2007), pp. 27–28.
38. Christopher Sykes, Wassmuss, ‘the German Lawrence’ (London, 1936),
p. 51.
39. BP Archive, ARC141294, January 1938. Lockhart, Record of the Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company, Volume I, 1901–1918, p. 262.
40. BP, ARC 176338; George Thomson, ‘Abadan During the World War’,
Naft, 8.5 (September 1932), p. 8. Miroshnikov, Iran dar Jang-e jahani-e
Avval, p. 37.
41. R.W. Ferrier, History of the British Petroleum Company, p. 276.
42. Ulrich Gehrke, Persien in der deutschen Orientpolitik während des
Ersten Weltkrieges, Darstellungen zur Auswärtigen Politik, Volumes
1 & 2. (Stuttgart, 1960), translated into Persian, Parviz Sadri, Pish beh
Sou-ye Sharq. Iran dar Siyasat Sharqi Alman dar Jang Jahani Avval
(Tehran, 1998), pp. 133–136; Dagobert von Mikusch, Wassmuss, der
deutsche Lawrence (Berlin, 1938); translated into Persian by Keykavous
Jahandari, Wasmus (Qom, 1998), pp. 77–84. Oliver Bast, Almani-
ha dar Iran. Negahi be Thavolat Iran dar Jang Jahani Avval bar Asas
Manbe‘Diplomatik Faranseh (Tehran, 1998), pp. 35–43. See also:
Christopher Sykes, Wassmuss, ‘the German Lawrence.’
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., p. 97.
45. BP Archive, ARC141294, January 1938. Lockhart, Record of the Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company, Vol. I, 1901–1918, p. 269. R.W. Ferrier, History
of the British Petroleum Company, p. 280. Ulrich Gehrke, Pish beh Sou-ye
Sharq. Iran dar Siyasat Sharqi Alman dar Jang Jahani Avval, p. 163.
46. BP Archive, ARC141294, January 1938. Lockhart, Record of the Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company, Vol. I, 1901–1918, p. 265.
47. Archive of Documents and Diplomatic History, Iran Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. GH–132–66–35–014.
48. Archive of Documents and Diplomatic History, Iran Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, GH–132–66–35–075.
49. BP Archive, ARC 141294, January 1938. Lockhart, Record of the Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company, Vol. I, 1901–1918, p. 270.
50. BP Archive, ARC 70297, April 24 1915. See also: ‘Alireza Abtahi, Naft
va Bakhtiyari-ha (Tehran, 2005), p. 39.
51. BP Archive, ARC 141294, p. 272. See also ‘Abbas Mirza Farman Farmian
–Salar Lashkar (ed. Mansoureh Ettehadiyyeh and Bahman Farman),
Jang-e Engelis va ‘Osmani dar Beyn al-Nahrain va ‘Avaqeb-e An dar
Iran, p. 64.
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 287

52. R.W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company 1901–1932

(London, 1982), p. 282.
53. For a study of Taşkilat-i Mahsusa in Iran, see: Touraj Atabaki, ‘Going
East, The Ottomans’ Secret Service Activities in Iran’ in Touraj Atabaki
(ed), Iran and the First World War. Battleground of the Great Powers
(London, IB Tauirs, 2006) pp. 29–42.
54. For the political geography of the region during the first world war,
see: Seyyed Qasem Yahussein, ‘Parkandegi Qodrat dar Jonoub Iran dar
Astaneh Jang Jahani Avval’ in Safa Akhavan (ed), Iran dar jahani Avval
(Tehran, 2005) pp. 311–317. If the landing of British troops in Bushehr
in 1909 was as result of 1907 treaty between Britain and Russia, dividing
Iran into their zone of interest, the landing in 1915 was mainly linked
with the APOC’s interests in the region.
55. Archive of Documents and Diplomatic History, Iran Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. GH–1302–27–19–19; GH–1320–27–19–20. F.J. Moberly,
Operations in Persia, 1914–1919, Reprint (London, 1987). For a com-
prehensive study about the South Persia Rifles, see: Florida Safiri, Polis
Jonoub Iran (Tehran, 1985). The history of the popular resistance against
the British in the region has been the subject of series of studies. See,
for example: Seyyed Qasem Yahussein, Reis ‘Ali Delvari. Tajavoz Nezami
Britania va Moqavemat Jonoub (Tehran, 1997).
56. Archive of Documents and Diplomatic History, Iran Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, GH–1336–48–14–89.
57. BP Archive, ARC 141294, p. 273.
58. ‘Abbas Mirza Farman Farmian-Salar Lashkar (Mansoureh Ettehadiyyeh
and Bahman Farman eds.), Jang-e Engelis va ‘Osmani dar Beyn al-Nah-
rain va ‘Avaqeb-e An dar Iran, p. 90.
59. Mehdiqoli Hedayat, Khaterat va Khatarat, p. 270.
60. BP Archive, ARC 141294, p. 270.
61. BP Archive, ARC 176338; Naft, 8, 5, (September 1932), p. 9. BP
Archive, 176338.
62. BP Archive, ARC141294, January 1938. Lockhart, Record of the Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company, Vol. I, 1901–1918, p. 264. BP Archive, ARC
176338.
63. National Archive of India, General Department 689, 1915; Department
of Commerce and Industry 332–12, 1915.
64. Indian Emigrations Act of 1883, in: Royal Commission on Labour. Foreign
Reports. Vol. 2. The Colonies and the Indian Empire. House of Commons
Parliamentary Papers, C. 6795–XI, 1892, p. 234. Stefan Tetzlaff,
Entangled Boundaries, British India and the Persian Gulf Region during
the Transition from Empires to Nation States, c. 1880–1935, Magisterarbeit
288 T. Atabaki

(Berlin, 2009), http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/savifadok/3202/,

p. 30.
65. National Archive of India, ARC. 332–12, 1915. See also Tetzlaff,
Entangled Boundaries. pp. 68–70.
66. Ibid.
67. For the Anglo-Russian 1907 Convention, see: Firouz Kazemzadeh,
Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864–1914 (New Haven, 1968) Chap. 7.
For a detailed study of this convention, and the reaction of the Iranians,
see: Mahmoud Mahmoud, Traikh Ravabet Siyasi Iran va Engelis dar
Qarn Nouzdahom Miladi, Vol. 8 (Tehran, 1954), pp. 2228–2266.
68. National Archive of India, ARC. 332–12, 1915.
69. Ibid.
70. Tetzlaff, Entangled Boundaries, pp. 68–70.
71. J. C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near East and Middle East: A
Documentary Record (New Haven, 1975), 249.
72. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum, 151.
73. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum, 128.
74. I.J. Seccombe and R.I. Lawless, ‘Foreign Worker Dependence in the
Gulf, and the International Oil Companies: 1910–1950’, International
Migration Review, 20 (3) 1986, p. 549.
75. Willem van Schendel, ‘Spatial Moments: Chittagong in Four Scenes’, in
Helen Siu and Eric Tagliacozzo (eds.), Asia Inside Out: Connected Places
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). I am grateful to
Willem van Schendel for providing me with valuable information on the
categorisation of the Chittagonian workforce.
76. BP Archive, ARC 68877.
77. Ibid.
78. During the war period, the average salary of Indian workers was between
80 and 100 rupees per month. In the same period, the salary of Iranian
workers was on average about one-third of the salary of Indian workers.
Ibid.
79. Ibid.
80. Michael Edward Dobe, A Long Slow Tutelage in Western Ways of Work:
Industrial Education and the Containment of nationalism in Anglo-
Iranian and ARAMCO, 1923–1963, PhD thesis (Gradate School-New
Brunswick, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey) p. 62; Rasmus
Christian Elling ‘On Lines and Fences: Labour, Community and Violence
in an Oil City’ in Urban Violence in the Middle East: Changing Cityscapes
in the Transition from Empire to Nation State, Ulrike Freitag (Ed.)
(Forthcoming); Henry Longhurst, Adventure in Oil (London: 1959),
pp. 72–73.
81. National Archive of Iran, File no. 240017531, 17 December 1927.
 10 OIL AND LABOUR: THE PIVOTAL POSITION OF PERSIAN … 289

82. BP Archive, ARC 176326, George Thomson, ‘Abadan in its Early Days’,
Naft, 7, 4, (July 1931), p. 17.
83. Ibid.
84. Op.cit., p. 384.
85. R.W. Ferrier, History of the British Petroleum Company, p. 276.
86. The figure for the population of Masjid Suleiman around 1920 is based
on an estimate derived from data in the British Petroleum Archive and
the National Library and Archive of Iran.
87. Archive of Documents and Diplomatic History, Iran Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, GH–1337–2–14–2.
88. The figure for the population of Abadan in the early 1920s is based on
an estimate derived from data in the British Petroleum Archive and the
National Library and Archive of Iran.
89. BP Archive, ARC 71879.
90. For the making of Masjid Suleiman and Abadan as company towns,
see: Kaveh Ehsani, ‘Social Engineering and the Contradictions of
Modernization in Khuzestan’s Company Towns, A Look at Abadan and
Masjid Suleiman’, International Review of Social History, 48, 3 (2003),
pp. 361–390.
91. For the tripartite cities, see: Touraj Atabaki, ‘Far from Home, but at
Home. Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian Oil Industry’, Studies in
History.
92. For the city planning of Abadan, see: Mark Crinson, ‘Abadan, Planning
and Architecture under the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’, Planning
Perspectives, 12, 3 (1997), pp. 341–60; Kaveh Ehsani, ‘Social Engineering
and the Contradiction of Modernization in Khuzestan’s Company
Towns, A Look at Abadan and Masjid Soleyman’, International Review of
Social History, 48, 3 (2003), pp. 361–390.
93. BP Archive, ARC 71183, Naft, 2, 3 (1926).
94. Reidar Visser, The Gibraltar That Never Was (www.historiae.org/abadan.
asp) [Paper presented to the British World conference, Bristol, 11–14
July 2007], p. 9.
 CHAPTER 11

‘On the Unwary and the Weak’: Fighting

Peonage in Wartime United States:
Connections, Categories, Scales

Nicola Pizzolato

The focus of this chapter is two-fold: the problem of the political and
cultural representation of a local phenomenon within teleological narra-
tives of modernisation as well as the use and construction of local events
by actors to impinge on global political projects and policies. Using mul-
tiple scales, I attempt here to refocus the question of American peonage,
a condition of ‘involuntary service or labour’ enforced in ‘liquidation of
a debt’ widespread in the American South from the late nineteenth cen-
tury to mid-twentieth century.1 Starting from an episode in Oglethorpe
County, Georgia, I follow the transformation of its meaning beyond the
local level to become one of the most significant, though rapidly for-
gotten, causes of mobilisation against social injustice for a generation
of leftist activists. ‘Following the traces’ where they lead, I restore the
historical complexity of this little-known campaign against peonage dur-
ing the New Deal, which led to the involvement of actors and institu-
tions in different locales, across the world (Georgia, Chicago,New York,

N. Pizzolato (*)
Middlesex University, London, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 291

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_11
292 N. Pizzolato

Geneva), operating at different geographical scales and with different

agendas.2 My intent is also to address the construction of ‘peonage’ as a
socio-juridical category in the language and practices of individuals and
institutions—an interpretation that requires the investigation of how this
term was negotiated by individuals and institutions. I adopt a notion of
context that assumes that ‘localities are connected to wider geograph-
ical histories and processes’, as well as Italian micro-history’s idea that
individuals are inscribed in multiple contexts and processes, at different
geographical scales, entangled through causal relationships.3 This is not
meant to assume a discontinuity between the local and the global level
but rather to emphasise a spatial dimension that is constructed through
the multiple connections established by historical actors.4
Another underlying methodological premise of this chapter derives
from Italian micro-history (especially authors such as Carlo Ginzburg,
Osvaldo Raggio, Franco Ramella, Angelo Torre and others5): its practice
to challenge sweeping historical narratives by focusing on the study of
episodes occurring on a small scale—in this case, originating at the small
scale. Italian ‘micro-historians’ have emphasised the discontinuity of pro-
cesses of modernisation, such as the development of capitalism or the
formation of a centralised state, while often concentrating on ‘peripher-
ies’ and fragmentation of power. Their work has therefore offered me
insights on how to interpret unfree labour in a peripheral area (a low-
income southern county) of a twentieth century modern capitalist and
liberal nation (the United States). Indeed, micro-history has challenged
notions such as modernisation, proletarisation, or state-formation as
overarching narratives of historical change by showing that they are often
sweeping generalisations that do not hold their coherence in front of the
complexity of specific contexts.

The Place
On 13 October 1939, Oglethorpe County, Georgia, made headlines in
the African American newspapers when planter William Cunningham
demanded the arrest and attempted to indict and extradite from Chicago
three workers escaped from his plantation, Santa Cross, and return them
to what the defendants claimed was a condition of slavery or forced
labour.6 Testimonies revealed that Cunningham kept a sizeable number,
probably close to a hundred, of unfree labourers in his farm, rounded up
in a variety of ways, though mainly by hiring blacks convicted for small
 11 ‘ON THE UNWARY AND THE WEAK’: FIGHTING PEONAGE … 293

crimes from the county jail, using a form of convict leasing that was still
legal at the county level, even if banned at the state level. Working with
no pay, the workers did not have the chance to pay back the small fee
that Cunningham had disbursed to ‘release’ them and would labour in
his farm for as long as 18 years. Other times the recruitment of unfree
workers resembled more a kidnapping, as in the case of African American
Will Fleming who had met Cunningham while walking on the road, was
offered a drink, a decent pay and then brought to the plantation to work
without pay and unable to leave for the following two decades.7
Cunningham’s violence and brutality seemed to know no restraint:
old men, pregnant women, as well as men and children were beaten and
lashed. Runaways were captured by sympathetic sheriffs and returned
to the plantation under the threat of convict labour sentence. Worker
Solomon Mccannon related that, during 15 years, ‘he [Cunningham]
would tell me that I would have to continue working whether I liked
it or not, threatening to send me back to the chain gang if I left while
this debt was still charged against me’.8 Cunningham and his men could
also maim and kill with impunity, according to the investigation of the
Abolish Peonage Committee, whose pre-eminent goal was to mobi-
lise political support in favour of the prosecution of Cunningham and
his accomplices. Notwithstanding the horror stories told by some fugi-
tives who had escaped to Chicago, Cunningham received the solidar-
ity of fellow planters, among whom was Georgia Congressman Paul
Brown, who went on record saying that ‘there is no section of the South
where Negroes are treated better or [are] more generally contented
than Oglethorpe County’.9 The FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar
Hoover, also declined to investigate the case, and Assistant General
Attorney Rogge initially refused to press charges. A meeting with a del-
egation of activists concerned about this blatant peonage case only led
to the declaration that ‘the Department of Justice will take cognizance
of the fact presented in regard to peonage conditions in the plantation
of William T. Cunningham’.10 However, the Department of Justice did
initiate prosecution after the campaign gained momentum. In 1941, the
district federal court indicted and prosecuted Cunningham for the crime
of peonage, but did not convict him and his accomplices. Encouraging
as the indictment might have been, there was no chance that a court in
Georgia, even a federal one, would condemn Cunningham. Predictably,
Cunningham produced an array of testimonies in his favour that
depicted idyllic labour conditions in his farm and which showed that the
294 N. Pizzolato

most prominent citizens of his county supported him.11 However, in the

preceding 2 years, the question of peonage, so well exemplified by the
fraudulent recruitment and coerced labour routines of his Santa Cross
plantation, acquired a larger significance that went well beyond the lives
of the men and women of Oglethorpe County.

The System
Between the accession of President Roosevelt in 1933 and the end of the
Second World War, hundreds of letters, pamphlets, newspaper articles,
investigations, affidavits as well as indictments and court cases provided
evidence of numerous cases of unfree labour, especially concentrated
in the cotton plantation of the Black Belt (with a peak in Georgia and
Mississippi) and in the turpentine and timber industry in Florida. While
it was expected that, in a segregated society, African Americans would
be in a state of economic subordination, never before had the extent
of coercion to which many rural black workers were subjected been
revealed and denounced in such moving details. The Santa Cross planta-
tion represented only one particularly graphic example of labour prac-
tices both tolerated and supported in the American South. While some
cases became publicly known, many others remained confined to the
hundreds of letters that African Americans across the American South
addressed to labour and civil rights organisation, to the Department of
Justice, and, sometimes, to President Roosevelt himself.
Entry points to American peonage were similar to pathways to
forced labour in colonial Africa or in Latin American plantation econ-
omies. Comparative elements were never systematically investigated,
but ‘American Congo’ was an expression sometimes used by activists
to highlight the analogy of parts of the American South with the worst
excess of colonial supremacy in Africa. ‘If we take the Mississippi Valley’,
wrote in 1919 W.E.B. DuBois in an unpublished paper‚ ‘from Memphis
to New Orleans, we have a region whose history is as foul a blot on
American civilisation as Congo is a blot on Belgium and Europe.’12
Was the American South really the ‘last outpost of slavery’ in twen-
tieth-century US as DuBois claimed? When landlords advanced money
for food, housing, tools, and clothes in return for a share of the crop
that paid the debt with interest, they were often binding the sharecrop-
per and his family for a long period, as the account books would be
fixed so that the debt would increase.13 This was common in Mississippi,
 11 ‘ON THE UNWARY AND THE WEAK’: FIGHTING PEONAGE … 295

Arkansas, Georgia and Alabama, but the degree and the length of this
debt bondage varied from county to county, from case to case, and
according to the circumstances of the victim. The premise was that it
involved actors of unequal standing in a racist society. Black sharecrop-
pers lacked the cash to pay for their own provisions at the beginning of
the year; they had no independent access to credit or financial support,
and they usually were forced by the circumstances and societal pressure
to enter such unfavourable agreements with white farmers. Although
both white and black sharecroppers would fall into debt, the system
was in particular rigged against African Americans who could not chal-
lenge the bookkeeping (or lack of it) without further economic, social,
or even penal sanctions. It was, in the restrained words of James Weldon
Johnson, ‘a system that lent itself to gross exploitation of the tenant’.14
Often presented as an exception to the rule, American peonage was
instead structurally inscribed in the political economy of the American
South, justified and rationalised in both economic and ideological terms
by its practitioners and supporters: it provided cheap labour and but-
tressed the racial hierarchy. It went against the explicit letter of the law,
but it conformed to what cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek calls the ‘unwrit-
ten code’, that is, ‘a set of implicit and unspoken, obscene injunctions
and prohibitions, which taught the subject how not to take some explicit
norms seriously and how to implement a set of publicly unacknowledged
prohibitions’.15 This unwritten code sustained unfree labour in spite of
its formal unconstitutionality because it remained the norm in the com-
munity. ‘We have been very careful to obey the letter of the Federal
Constitution’, declared Senator Walter F. George from Georgia, ‘but we
have been very diligent in violating the spirit of such amendments and
such statutes as would have a Negro to believe himself equal of a white
man. And we should continue to conduct ourselves in that way.’16
American peonage in the 1930s must be seen in a continuum with
practices of coerced labour since the Reconstruction, including chain
gangs and convict leasing, which was used to cheapen the cost of work
of modernisation and of building of infrastructure.17 In practice, convict
leasing and peonage were sometimes overlapping when prisoners were
handed over to private employers to work out a debt (usually a fee) that
they owed to the state. The state convict lease system ended through-
out the south by the 1920s. Alabama was the last state to abolish it in
1928.18 But in its wake, the leasing of convicts by counties continued
to prosper. As an illegal practice, peonage could hardly exist without
296 N. Pizzolato

collusion with public officials. Sometimes, private employers took it in

their hands to ‘arrest’ African Americans for vagrancy, without the help
of public officials, but this too presupposed collusion. Peonage should be
interpreted as one of many ways in which employers and public officials
of the American South attempted to restrict the labour market, in old
as well as innovative ways. The spectrum included anything from soci-
etal pressure to actual captivity. In light of the remarkable changes that
the US had undergone in the previous half-century, it is extraordinary
that this system survived well beyond the 1940s, but this is testimony to
the high malleability of a structure of labour coercion which, although
not exposed in its details, was evident to any casual observer of the rural
south.

Construction of a Category
According to a disgusted white observer who wrote to the Department
of Justice in 1937, ‘I met a condition that I did not think existed any-
where in the United States, the negro share cropper in my opinion and
observation, was just as much in bondage as they was (sic) before the
war between the states’.19 What made this bondage peonage? As it was
applied in the United States, peonage was a rather imprecise label for a
number of situations in which white employers, mostly southern, com-
pelled with violence African Americans to work without or with very lit-
tle pay. For most of the 1930s, outside of the legal profession, it was
used interchangeably with terms like slavery, bondage and, sometimes,
forced labour. The Oglethorpe County case shows that peonage is not
a classification that, although used in the sources and in the language
of the protagonists, can be considered as the most legally accurate, nor
a blanket category that can indiscriminately form the basis of compari-
son with the way this term is used in other settings elsewhere. Its con-
notations have to be understood as the result of a process of negotiation
between individuals, groups and institutions and as result of a relation-
ship between rule of law and social practice.20 ‘Peonage’ is thus a cat-
egory generated in a specific context and which historical actors will
strategically deploy in other contexts and localities, where its political
meaning would become multi-layered by being construed not only to
a condition of labour but as an element of a wider system of political
oppression.
 11 ‘ON THE UNWARY AND THE WEAK’: FIGHTING PEONAGE … 297

By 1939, at the onset of the Oglethorpe County case, there existed a

sizeable federal jurisprudence which placed peonage within the remit of
Federal criminal justice. A practice was defined as violating the federal
statute of peonage when it ‘established, maintained, or enforced, directly
or indirectly, the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons
as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise.’21 (More
punchy, and accurate, was the informal characterisation of a NAACP
organiser, that peonage consisted in ‘working without pay under threat
of prosecution for an imaginary offense’, which recognised that the
actual presence of a debt played little role in perpetuating the condi-
tion.22) This definition had been endorsed by a number of Supreme
Court sentences that went back to the turn to the century when, for
the first time, federal district attorneys had utilised the 1867 Peonage
Act to prosecute a narrow range of coercive labour practice in Georgia
and other southern states.23 However, ‘Compulsory service based upon
the indebtedness of the peon to the master’, in which the link between
compulsion and a debt had to be demonstrated with evidence, made the
scope of the judicial definition of peonage too narrow to have an impact.
In 1905, for instance, the Supreme Court ordered a reversal of judge-
ment in Clyatt v. United States, in which the defendant had been accused
of arresting two African Americans in Florida to return them to a con-
dition of peonage in Georgia. The majority of justices agreed that the
defendant aimed to force the plaintiffs to work out a debt, but there was
no evidence that they had been peons before the event. Debt and com-
pulsion were present, but the link between the two had not been demon-
strated, according to the court.24 If anything, this convoluted argument
made grand juries very cautious in returning indictments for peonage. It
is interesting to note that no official definition of peonage made refer-
ence to its racial component, even though the totality of ‘peons’ were
African Americans.
How did this narrow conception of peonage come to encompass the
situation at the Santa Cross plantation? Because many of Cunningham’s
forced labourers were neither indebted to their master nor had a con-
tractual relation with him, ‘peonage’ was redefined, or, if you prefer,
reinvented, so that district attorneys could initiate prosecution also in
cases where the contracted debt did not exist or could not be demon-
strated and coercion was instead the result of violence or threat of vio-
lence. Actors therefore used a category already present in the federal
jurisprudence (as opposed to state jurisprudence) and altered its scope
298 N. Pizzolato

in order to protect civil and labour rights, under the broad mandate of
the Thirteenth Amendment (abolition of slavery and involuntary servi-
tude). Until 1942, the Department of Justice refused to prosecute indi-
viduals who violated the Thirteenth Amendment on the technicality
that no statute existed to enforce it. As a result, throughout the 1930s,
victims of coercive employers, their relatives and friends, and civil rights
activists used ‘peonage’, a category on which a sizeable federal jurispru-
dence existed, as a way to draw the attention of a reluctant Department
of Justice to labour and civil rights violations that involved the restric-
tion of personal freedom. For instance, when in 1936, in another famous
case, J.D. Peacher had arrested some African Americans to work in his
sawmills overviewed by armed men with rifles—a simple case of kid-
napping—activists called for the federal government to act to redress a
violation of the Peonage Act.25 Relatives and victims in their correspond-
ence and affidavits would alternatively use the words peonage or slavery
according to the circumstances.26 In this way, social actors modified the
meaning of legal categories through their strategic use.
Initially, requests for prosecutions under the rubric of peonage
were routinely turned down after a perfunctory investigation when the
absence of debt emerged, with the stock phrase ‘there is no violation
of a federal statute of which this department could take cognizance’.27
However, at the same time, its use obliged federal agencies to take stock
of the extensive presence of ‘peonage’, in the wider sense of unfree
labour, and the need for a different strategy of prosecution. This came
to fruition for the first time in the indictment of William Cunningham of
Oglethorpe County.
The Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibited slavery or involun-
tary servitude, lacked in effect a solid legislative apparatus to enforce it,
and until the 1940s was narrowly construed to apply only to the abo-
lition of slavery as it existed in the Antebellum South.28 Federal pros-
ecutors used a number of dormant Reconstruction acts as the basis for
forms of bondage that were not based only on debt—for instance, the
slave kidnapping law of 1866 and the Peonage Act of 1867, as well as
the Supreme Court decisions that in the Progressive era had upheld
those statutes. Historian Risa Goluboff has told the story of the under-
staffed Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice, established in
1939, whose lawyers experimented with ‘different ways of practicing and
framing civil rights in the 1940s’.29 The innovation in their legal practice
that Goluboff has unveiled was crucial to create a momentum in tackling
 11 ‘ON THE UNWARY AND THE WEAK’: FIGHTING PEONAGE … 299

unfree labour during the New Deal. However, her account neglects
to investigate how the changing legal practice had been shaped by the
social actors’ manipulation of the category of peonage as well as by the
constant pressure of leftist groups and civil rights organisations. This
widening of the category of peonage to encompass a range of forms of
coercion and exploitation, as noted by political scientist Howard Devon
Hamilton, had gained usage as an instrument for actors to advance legal
claims.30 In December 1941, Attorney General Biddle issued a federal
order that recommended prompt investigation and vigorous prosecution
of cases of peonage, now finally inscribed in a new legal discourse that
linked back to the Thirteenth Amendment. In January 1942, in Taylor v.
Georgia (1942), the Supreme Court overturned a Georgia contract law
that peonage overlords such as Cunningham had often invoked to jus-
tify the capture of men who fled work. By then, however, ‘peonage’ had
become the shorthand for any situation of unfree labour, whether or not
it involved debt.

Narratives
Major protagonists of the campaign to indict William Cunningham were
the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Workers Defense
League (WDL) and the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), as well as a number of labour, civil rights and
religious organisations. They lobbied for legislative change, stimulated
legal action, and assisted plaintiffs with individual grievances and com-
plaints. In some cases, political and civil rights activists secretly helped
the victims of peonage to escape the labour camps. These associations
were all located in the Northeast and Midwest, away from the world
of cotton plantations. They had different political agendas and a differ-
ent notion of what peonage meant in their vision of history. What they
shared was the political opportunity provided by the New Deal, with its
rhetorical emphasis on labour rights, to use the struggle against peonage
to advance progressive political change.
The political language adopted by the campaigners was power-
ful because it stretched along a vast ideological spectrum drawing from
patriotism (‘cementing national unity’) to Marxism to that of human
rights—as when African American Communist William Patterson, wrote,
in an open letter to Roosevelt, ‘if you, as agent of the economic royalists
are permitted to proceed further against my people, you will bring about
300 N. Pizzolato

conditions even more inhuman than persisted in 1860’—to the tropes

of American exceptionalism, such as the US being the land of unfet-
tered freedom of opportunity, in this case, betrayed.31 What made the
labour practices of Oglethorpe County a political weapon to disparate
groups was that peonage disturbed one or the other of these narratives of
modernity—maybe all of them.
The International Labor Defense (ILD), a Communist organisation,
brought to the struggle against peonage what it had learned from two
causes célèbres of the 1930s, the Angelo Herndon (a black labour activ-
ist imprisoned after a strike) case and, in particular, the Scottsboro
boys case. The latter involved a group of nine teenagers falsely accused
of rape whom the ILD saved from execution. In those instances, the
ILD had refined its method of battling the American legal system with
mass political mobilisation rather than with legal efforts only (which
was a style more congenial to the NAACP and other similar civil rights
organisations).32 The ILD read the indictment of African Americans as
a politically motivated act of a capitalist state which should have been
countered with a movement for political change. In the communist read-
ing, after all, the courts were simply one of the places where the bour-
geois state exercised its political oppression over the working class. And
no American worker was more oppressed and exploited (and, of course,
at the same time allegedly ripe for revolution) than the southern black
farm worker. The ILD saw in the battle to prevent a small number of
African Americans to be returned to servitude a cause worthy of national
attention, an occasion for putting the spotlight on the social relations of
production in the rural south, and an opportunity to broaden its political
base.
For the communists, peonage was a local, particularly virulent,
manifestation of the general exploitation to which workers where sub-
ject under American capitalism. This framework, proposed by William
Patterson, Bob Wirtz and Vito Marcantonio, three prominent anti-
peonage Communists of their time, was aligned to a book by another
party member, Walter Wilson, who, in Forced Labour in the United States
(1933), analysed industrial wage labour alongside peonage to argue that
in any case, under capitalism, labour is bound to be exploited, and while
the form varies, the principle remains the same. The ILD construed the
struggle against peonage as moment of class solidarity, preliminary to a
process of unification of the American working class. Communist labour
activists in industrial trade unions wrote to Department of Justice, and
 11 ‘ON THE UNWARY AND THE WEAK’: FIGHTING PEONAGE … 301

ILD’s Wirtz travelled to Washington to meet the Attorney General with

the support of Chicago North Side’s unemployed workers and activists,
who, reports a pamphlet, ‘chipped in their pennies’ in aid of the cause.33
The campaign against peonage in Oglethorpe County, the ILD claimed,
would lead to an interracial uprising of sharecropper, farmers, miners,
and industrial workers across the south: ‘the colour line is crumbling
along with the plantation and the company town’.34
The theme of interracial class solidarity was present also in the narra-
tive proposed by the socialists, with whom the Communists both coop-
erated and competed in this instance. In fact, it was the socialists who
had been the champions of the cause of sharecroppers (the main vic-
tims of peonage) up to the Oglethorpe County case. Since 1934, the
Socialist-leaning Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) had done
much to arouse the sympathy and the indignation of liberals to the
cause of black, as well as white, sharecroppers. Anti-union violence in
Arkansas against the STFU had attracted national attention and the sup-
port of a congressional committee to investigate anti-labour violence in
the South.35 One of the STFU’s outspoken members, Howard Kester,
had published a well-known pamphlet called Revolt among Sharecroppers
(1936), with details about the sharecroppers living conditions and the
union’s success in organising them. Norman Thomas, six-time presiden-
tial candidate for the Socialist Party, had written a pamphlet titled The
Plight of the Share-Cropper (1935).
At the onset of the Cunningham case, while American Communists
were encumbered by the embarrassing Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact,
the Socialists were better positioned to portray American peonage as a
hurdle in the worldwide battle of progressive forces against fascism. In
their representation, the battle against peonage was but one instance of
anti-totalitarianism; it fitted both the vision of America as champion of
individual and national liberties, drummed up in the media in the years
before the US entry into the war, and the socialist emphasis of resistance
against the fascist aggression on workers’ rights and prerogative. The
Abolish Peonage Committee argued that peonage was ‘an expression of
Hitlerism in our country’ and it compared it to a ‘Nazi tyranny.’36 This
sort of comparison became even more cogent when it emerged that the
Nazi regime itself made extensive use of unfree labour. In lobbying the
Department of Justice to investigate peonage cases, the Abolish Peonage
Committee argued that it ‘would strengthen the faith of millions of
Negro people in the democracy for which they are loyally fighting
302 N. Pizzolato

against the aggressor fascist power.’37 The Communists joined this rhe-
torical strategy after Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. ‘It is our
belief’, wrote New York Communist Congressman Vito Marcantonio
in 1942, ‘that the hand of the Attorney General will be greatly strength-
ened in this prosecution [Cunningham’s], so important in cementing of
national unity in this time of all-out defense of our democracy against
fascist aggression, by public support of his policy of fighting peonage’.38
In Washington, these arguments resonated with the wartime anxiety
about the threat of totalitarianism to the American ideal of safeguarding
individual rights as well as the political liability of having a discontent
internal minority possibly susceptible to the enemy’s propaganda.39 In
the context of wartime politics, the protection of individual rights peon-
age at the Santa Cross plantation was recontextualised in a wider frame-
work and elevated to national and international significance.
Outside the left, as the cause of sharecroppers gained credit among
liberals in the mid-1930s, the middle-class NAACP provided, initially
reluctantly and eventually more assiduously, cash and publicity. Up to
that point, the foremost African American civil rights organisation had
been little attuned to the cause of the black worker, whether industrial or
rural, but in 1940, Oglethorpe County sharecroppers and peonage were
featured for the first time extensively on The Crisis Magazine, their publi-
cation for a membership which was overwhelmingly urban and northern.
Unsurprisingly, the emphasis of the NAACP was on the marked continu-
ity with slavery and the framing of the struggle within a neo-abolitionist
discourse, something picked up also by other groups. For the NAACP,
the moral lesson was clear, ‘Human slavery with all its unspeakable bru-
tality is something we have been taught to think of as hideous, but of the
past, in the history of our country. The fact that it still exists makes those
of us who abhor injustice, inequality, and cruelty, only more determined
to do everything in our power to wipe it out.’40 The abolitionist narra-
tive was essentially a Whig narrative of delayed, but inevitable, victory of
justice over injustice, humanity over brutality and freedom over bond-
age. It borrowed the lexicon and tropes of nineteenth-century anti-slav-
ery literature—tropes which still resonated with the mainstream public
opinion. This narrative eschewed the language of class conflict in favour
of that of humanitarian struggle, using a vivid, sentimental and graphic
rhetoric in which the theme of economic exploitation intertwined with
images of exploitation and physical suffering of the black worker and
with the theme of the mission of moral redemption of the nation. ‘It is
 11 ‘ON THE UNWARY AND THE WEAK’: FIGHTING PEONAGE … 303

a tale of suffering and of struggle born of suffering’, explained one pam-

phlet, while in another account, a planter was characterised as a ‘human
monster who kicked pregnant women [and] forced children to work.’41
Peonage was a story of ‘unspeakable brutality’ but a prominent part of
this rhetorical strategy was precisely to broadcast and divulge the senti-
mental themes of pain and suffering which were associated with nine-
teenth-century abolitionism and with novels such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(which the anti-peonage campaign literature often quoted). At the time,
the coalition made explicit comparisons with pre-Civil War abolition-
ists. Secretary Davis of the National Negro Congress predicted that the
rally against peonage organised in Washington would be ‘as historic as
William Lloyd Garrison’s first anti-slavery meeting in the Old South
Church, Boston’.42 Referring to the efforts of undercover activists on the
field in Oglethorpe County, the NAACP announced that it amounted
to ‘a modern replica of the pre-Civil War Underground Railroad’.43 The
point is not whether these comparisons were precise, but that the coali-
tion understood the persuasiveness of presenting themselves as continu-
ators of nineteenth-century abolitionists and drew on this as a source of
legitimisation.

From Local to Global

Unfree labour in Oglethorpe County touched the imagination of a num-
ber of individuals inspired by compassion for its victims, a sense of jus-
tice, and their own political goals, whether to advance individual and
minority rights within a liberal framework or to build a more democratic
society, of a Marxist matrix, in which egalitarianism would defeat rac-
ism. In so doing, these individuals and groups constructed a meaning of
unfree labour that transcended what social actors attributed to it at the
local level. In the 1950s, even after the acquittal of William Cunningham
and the formal end of the court case, activists and groups linked to the
Oglethorpe campaign, such as Stetson and Kay Kennedy and the WDL
further pursued the battle against peonage—now shorthand for unfree
labour—at an international level. Their focus was solely political. They
did so by leveraging international organisations such as the United
Nations and the International Labour Organisation. They failed to trans-
form policy, spur international or government intervention or change the
political focus of those institutions, but the attempt showed that peonage
in a rural county in Georgia was connected to the larger phenomenon of
304 N. Pizzolato

unfree labour worldwide as well as to the workings of institutions inter-

national in scope.
Peonage represented a key part of a report prepared by the president
of the WDL, Rowland Watts, on ‘legal and illegal forms of forced labour
in the US’ presented in 1951 to the Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery of
the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. The commit-
tee took the report into consideration but ultimately did not ‘accept’ it
as part of their proceedings.44 During the late 1930s, the WDL had been
one of the organisations at the forefront of the campaign to denounce
peonage in Georgia.45 In 1949, the WDL had set up a Commission of
Inquiry on Forced Labor which had established that’ 76,000 Americans
lived in peonage’.46 The report focused mainly on the legal aspects of
unfree labour in the US. It highlighted the persistent southern defiance,
both in the legislation and in the courts, in front of repeated, though
little-enforced, assertions of the Supreme Court that laws aiding peon-
age violated the US Constitution. In a passage that impressed the com-
mittee, Rowland Watts remarked that such laws ‘remain on the statute
books to intimidate the ignorant (…) to be enforced on the unwary
and the weak’.47 The scarce commitment of the federal government,
denounced the report, was exemplified by the miniscule staff (six law-
yers) of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Section (CRS),
the only one interested in peonage, compared to the staff of other fed-
eral agencies, which counted in hundreds. At the same time, concluded
Watts in an optimistic tone that contradicted the earlier statements,
‘such agencies [like the CRS] can go forward with their investigations
and their exposure with confidence of success in the knowledge that the
law and the government will support them in their efforts’.48 As I stated
above, the federal government had actually a patchy record in terms of
committing to defeat peonage.
The boldest attempt to move the debate about peonage onto a global
stage is, however, represented by the memo presented to (and accepted
by) the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Forced Labor by Stetson Kennedy
(with the aid of his wife Kay) in 1952. Stetson Kennedy was an essay-
ist and an activist who had collected a sizable amount of evidence about
peonage while researching books denouncing the racist society and the
racial political economy of Florida, Georgia and Alabama.49 Judging
from his correspondence and the clippings collected throughout the
previous decade, Kennedy’s understanding of peonage had been shaped
by the leftist discourse of the 1940s, driven by the campaign against
 11 ‘ON THE UNWARY AND THE WEAK’: FIGHTING PEONAGE … 305

peonage of the WDL and ILD, in primis the Oglethorpe County case.50
In the book Southern Exposure, Kennedy had utilised some of the mate-
rial collected on peonage workers in Georgia and turpentine workers
in Florida to argue for the existence of a new ‘method of enslavement’
that produced, in his view, results akin to antebellum slavery.51 Kennedy
called the Oglethorpe case ‘one of the most complete exposés of the
scope and character of slavery in the South today’.52
The report, which included testimonies from the Oglethorpe County
case, claimed that the changes wrought by the Second World War had
not eradicated forced labour. At the mid-twentieth century, peonage
persisted in the industries and geographical regions where it had always
existed: in farming, the turpentine and lumber industries and in the
South and Southwest United States. As in the past, it affected predom-
inantly African Americans, but also Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and West
Indians. The report echoed in certain aspects the one from Rowland
Watts; it pressed the federal government for the intervention, while
severely criticising it for not enforcing the constitutional protections
against involuntary servitude. ‘While the U.S. Department of Justice
has occasionally seen fit to prosecute isolated instances of forced labour
(generally after they have been brought to public attention by non-gov-
ernmental agencies), its refusal to take more resolute action has given,
indispensable aid and comfort to the exploiters of forced labor.’53 Thus,
Kennedy sought to leverage the influence of a United Nations body
to correct the lenient approach of the federal justice and of the federal
agencies, in particular the FBI, reluctant to investigate claims on the
field. A reprimand from Geneva, where Kennedy went to state his case
on 7 November 1952, would have reverberated, he hoped, down to a
labour camp in Florida or Georgia.
The report argued, controversially, that American peonage fell entirely
within the scope of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Forced Labour. In
the post-war context, the debate on forced labour had shifted a great
deal from colonial administrations and the racial economic regimes to
the ‘political victims’ of forced labour, that is, those coerced to work in
reason of their political views towards a government system. The refer-
ence was not only to the Nazi labour camps, but also, more poignantly
at the onset of the Cold War, to Soviet and Eastern Europe corrective
camps.54 It was the first time that an international organisation was
asked to consider the American peonage on a par with other instances of
unfree labour occurring worldwide, which would have in effect eroded
306 N. Pizzolato

the relevance of one propaganda weapon in the arsenal of the western

front of the Cold War. By redefining peonage as belonging to the politi-
cal as well as to the economic realm, Stetson and Kay Kennedy reiterated
a central tenet of the Oglethorpe County campaign: that forced labour
was part of an overall system of political subordination of poor African
Americans that included disenfranchisement and racial violence, as well
as economic coercion. The Kennedy report was much more detailed in
comparison to some of the other accusations against the US presented
to the committee. Poland, for instance, claimed that the sharecroppers’
‘cash income was so low and their debts to the operators so high that
they were virtually tied to the land’, but this was a very general assertion,
not accompanied by evidence, and on which the US government could
not be brought to account.55 Kennedy’s report was at times emphatic
and provocative, producing a dramatic account more in the vein of a
political agitator than of a social scientist—more ‘shrillness’ than ‘sober
fact-finding’, as a southern correspondent noted in private.56 However,
it did provide evidence, both of individual cases and of a structural
nature, of a political economy systematically geared to subdue thou-
sands of black people to a condition of unfree labour. Together with the
evidence produced by the WDL (which the committee labelled ‘unof-
ficial’ even if commissioned by the Economic and Social Council of the
United Nations), it put forward a convincing case, or at least one worthy
of international attention.57 Unfortunately, this representation clashed
with the mandate of the Committee, one that had been shaped by the
aim of targeting the dictatorial regimes of the Eastern Bloc. The origins
of the Committee in fact lay in a request of the American Federation
of Labor in 1947 for the ILO to undertake a comprehensive study of
coercive labour as form of political correction in communist countries.58
This was reflected in the terms of references of the Committee: to ‘study
systems of forced or ‘corrective’ labour which are employed as a means
of political coercion or punishment for holding or expressing a politi-
cal views and on which are on such scale as to constitute an important
element in the economy of a given country, by examining the texts and
laws and regulations and their application’.59 The last clause was cru-
cial: the Committee bound itself to accept as evidence only what was
revealed by legislative and administrative texts. This in turn excluded all
the evidence against the US, which was factual, not legalistic, in nature.
The Committee could, in fact, quote the existence of the Peonage
Act of 1867 as confirmation that unfree labour was abhorred and that
 11 ‘ON THE UNWARY AND THE WEAK’: FIGHTING PEONAGE … 307

instances of it were prosecuted under the law. While racial segregation

was inscribed in southern statutes explicitly, the racialised labour regimes
inflicted upon some black southerners were hidden from view.
Peonage subverted the idea of the inexorable march to freedom at the
core of American exceptionalism by suggesting comparisons and meta-
phors that aligned unfree labour in the US with unfree labour anywhere
else, even, according to Kennedy, to totalitarian communist regimes. In
fact, he argued, in the South, too, the oppressive labour regime was a
form of ‘political correction’, in the sense that it ensured that African
Americans would not become full-fledged participants in an otherwise
democratic system. The US government’s response to the allegations
presented to the Committee followed the demands of terms of reference.
The American representatives claimed that the US Constitution was an
‘effective safeguard’ against unfree labour.
The ambitious effort of Stetson Kennedy, building on almost two dec-
ades of activism against peonage, did not bear fruit. With leftist organi-
sations retreating fast at the height of the Cold War, Stetson Kennedy
was arguing the case for the government’s complicity to unfree labour
when the political momentum was lost. The focus of civil rights activ-
ism would soon shift from labour issues to equal access to education and
public services.60 In regard to the accusations (dismissed as ‘allegations’)
of the American activists, the Committee concluded that there was no
evidence that African Americans were coerced into a particular type
of work or that they were arrested in order to subject them to forced
labour.61 However, as we have seen, this ignored the established prac-
tices by which state legislators wrote racially coded labour legislation in
a way that read colour blind, and the way courts and the law enforce-
ment authorities coalesced to abet the unconstitutional practice.62
Unfree labour was extraordinarily resilient in the Black Belt, in spite of
Constitutional guarantees of personal freedom and of a score of Supreme
Court sentences that voided legislation used to buttress peonage.
Furthermore, apart from the exposés of political activists, this conclu-
sion contradicted the hundreds of files of prosecutions and investigations
held in the archive of the Department of Justice, open to scholars in the
1960s.
In its journey from a condition of labour and a criminal activity in
Oglethorpe County, to a court case in Chicago and Atlanta, to a political
cause in the headquarters of political groups in New York and finally to
a claim to international attention in Geneva, peonage had transformed
308 N. Pizzolato

its meaning in the way outlined above. In fact, each spatial dimen-
sion embedded a different understanding of this category based on the
actions and aims of the historical actors. Overall, the story of peonage
and the campaign against it belies any simplistic divisions between the
local and the global by suggesting how such a socially constructed cat-
egory was recontextualised in different spatial dimensions.

Notes
1. Peonage Abolition Act (1867).
2. From an expression by Marcel van der Linden, quoted in Chap. 1 of this
volume.
3. Jacques Revel (eds.), Giochi di Scala. La microstoria alla prova
dell’esperienza (Roma, 2011), p. 31; Katherine Brickell and Ayona
Datta, ‘Introduction’, Translocal Geographies: Spaces, Places, Connections
(London, 2011), p. 3. See also Ulrike Freitag and Achim von Oppen,
‘Translocality: An Approach to Connection and Transfer in Area Studies’
in Freitag and Von Oppen (eds), Translocality: The Study of a Globalising
Process from a Southern Perspective (Leiden, 2010), pp. 1–24.
4. For an overview of the methodological perspective in this chapter is
inscribed see De Vito and Gerritsen, ‘Micro-spatial History of Global
Labour: Towards a New Global History’, in this volume.
5. Angelo Torre, Stato e Società nell’ancien régime (Torino, 1983); Franco
Ramella, Terra e telai. Sistemi di parentela e manifattura nel Biellese
dell’Ottocento (Torino, 1984); Carlo Ginzburg, Il formaggio e i vermi.
Il cosmo di un mugnaio nel Cinquecento (Torino, 1976); ‘Spie. Radici di
un paradigma indiziario’, in A. Gargani, ed., Crisi della ragione (Torino,
1979); Osvaldo Raggio, Faide e Parentele. Lo Stato Genovese visto dalla
Fontabuona (Torino, 1990).
6. Some aspects of this case are also mentioned in Daniel, Shadow of Slavery;
Risa L. Gobuloff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights (Cambridge, 2010);
and Erik S. Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro
Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights (Chapel Hill, 2012),
pp. 131–133.
7. ‘He offered me several drinks of whiskey, gave me five dollars, and asked
me to work on his plantation, promising to pay me $12 a month with
board and room. For 18 years, Fleming had not received any pay and had
been unable to leave the farm. (Preece, ‘Peonage—1940 style slavery’,
p. 9).
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
 11 ‘ON THE UNWARY AND THE WEAK’: FIGHTING PEONAGE … 309

10. NAACP Papers Part 13, Series C, Reel 12, 0723.

11. NAACP Papers Part 13 Series C, reel 12, 0521.
12. WEB DuBois, Papers of the NAACP, part 11, Series B, 0038–0039.
13. On the subject of American peonage see the work of Pete Daniel, in
particular In the Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969
(Urbana, 1972); Risa L. Gobuloff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights;
Nan Elizabeth Woodroff, American Congo: The African American
Freedom Struggle in the Delta, (Cambridge, 2003); Douglas Blackmon,
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from
the Civil War to World War II (New York, 2008). On sharecropping,
among others, Theodore Rosengarten, All God’s Dangers: The Life of
Nate Shaw (New York, 1974); Joseph Reidy, From Slavery to Agrarian
Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation (Chapel Hill, 1992); Jonathan
Wiener, ‘Class Structure and Economic Development in the American
South, 1865–1955’, The American Historical Review, 84, 4 (1979), 970–
992; Contemporary texts that described the unfree conditions of black
sharecroppers in the Black Belt are: Arthur Raper, Preface to Peasantry.
A Tale of Two Black Counties (Chapel Hill, 1936); Charles D. Johnson,
Shadow of the Plantation (Chicago, 1934); Howard Kester, Revolt among
Sharecroppers (Knoxville, 1997); Norman Thomas, The Plight of the
Share Cropper (The League of Industrial Democracy, 1934); Howard W.
Odum, Southern Regions of the United States (Chapel Hill, 1936).
14. James Weldon Johnson and Herbert J. Seligmann, ‘Legal aspects of the
Negro Problem’, Papers of the NAACP part 11, Series B, 00127–00128.
15. Slavoj Zizek, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (London, 2008), p. 170.
16. Senator Walter F. George, in Liberty, 21 April 1928, quoted in Walter
Wilson, Forced Labor in the United States (New York, 1933), p. 99.
17. See Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: Political Economy of
Convict Labor in the New South (New York, 1996).
18. See Lichtenstein, Twice the Work; Matthew Mancini, One Dies, Get
Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866–1928 (Columbia,
S.C., 1996).
19. Department of Justice, Peonage Files, Reel 19, p. 7.
20. I apply here to a socio-juridical category the insights of microhistorian
Simona Cerutti in regards to construction of socio-professional categories
in the language of social groups. See Simona Cerutti, Mestieri e privilegi.
Nascita delle corporazioni a Torino secoli XVII–XVII (Torino, 1992), pp.
vii–xxiv.
21. Peonage Act (1867) then 42 U.S.C. § 1994.
22. Department Of Justice, Reel 9, 0246, 6 October 1936.
23. Baley v. Alabama (1911), United States v. Reynolds (1914).
24. Samuel M. Clyatt v. United States (1905).
310 N. Pizzolato

25. Southern Tenant Farmers Union Collection, reel 2, 23-5-1936, Henry

Mitchell to U.S. Attorney General.
26. National Negro Congress Papers, Part I, reel 25, 0619; National Negro
Congress Papers, Part I, Reel 24, 0007.
27. National Negro Congress Papers, Part I, Reel 24, 0061.
28. Alexander Tsesis, The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom. A
Legal History (New York, 2004).
29. Risa Goluboff, ‘The Thirteenth Amendment and the Lost Origins of Civil
Rights’, Duke Law Journal, 50 (2001), 1609–1685; More emphasis on
social actors’ agency is provided in Risa L. Goluboff, ‘“Won’t You Please
Help Me Get My Son Home”: Peonage, Patronage, and Protest in the
World War II Urban South’, Law and Social Inquiry 24, 4 (1999), 777–
806, pp. 777, 780.
30. Howard Devon Hamilton, ‘The Legislative and Judiciary History of the
Thirteenth Amendment’, National Bar Journal, 10 (1952), 7–85.
31. Patterson to Roosevelt, Department of Justice, Peonage files, Reel 9,
0896, 22 October 1940.
32. Charles H. Martin, ‘The International Labor Defense and Black America’,
Labor History, 26, 2 (1985), 165–194.
33. ‘Wirtz in Washington for Preliminary Conference on the Peonage
Question’, DOJ, Peonage Files, Reel 9, 0935.
34. Harold Preece, ‘1940s Style Slavery’, p. 26, Aptheker Collection, Series 3,
Box 153, folder 8, Department of Special Collections, Stanford Libraries.
35. Donald H Grubbs, Cry from Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers Union
and the New Deal (Chapel Hill, NC, 1971).
36. Preece, ‘1940s Style Slavery’.
37. William Huff to Attorney General Biddle, NAACP Papers Part 13 Series
C reel 12.
38. Vito Marcantonio to NAACP’s White, 3 March 1942, NAACP Papers
Part 13, Series C, Reel 12, 0518.
39. Risa L. Goluboff, ‘The Thirteenth Amendment and the Lost Origins of
Civil Rights’, p. 1620; Gary Gerstle, ‘The Protean Character of American
Liberalism’, American Historical Review, 99, 4 (1994), 1043–1073.
40. William Henry Huff, ‘1940 Slavery in Georgia’, The Crisis, January 1941;
see also Charles Rowan, ‘Has Slavery Gone with the Wind in Georgia?’,
The Crisis, February 1940.
41. Preece, ‘1940s Style Slavery’, p. 5.
42. Department of Justice, Peonage Series, Reel 9, 0935.
43. ‘Facts in the Oglethorpe County Peonage case’, NAACP Papers Part 13
series C, Reel 12, 0520.
 11 ‘ON THE UNWARY AND THE WEAK’: FIGHTING PEONAGE … 311

44. ‘Report on Legal and Illegal Forms of Forced Labor in the United

States’, Prepared by Rowland Watts, National Secretary Workers Defense
League 19971–14, 1951, United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on
Slavery records, 1918–1956 Collection, Box 3, Rubinstein Library, Duke
University.
45. Folder ‘George peonage, 1936–1938’, Box 171, Workers Defense League
Collection, Walter Reuther Library, Detroit.
46. ‘Peonage and Other Forms of Forced Labor in the US’, folder 3,
Box 128, Workers Defense League Collection, Walter Reuther Library,
Detroit.
47. ‘Report on Legal and Illegal Forms of Forced Labor in the United States’.
p. 2.
48. Ibid., p. 3.
49. These books are Southern Exposure (New York, 1946), I Rode with the Ku
Klux Klan (London, 1954), Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was (1956)
(Boca Raton, 1990).
50. Workers Defense League folder, Stetson Kennedy Papers, 1933–1981,
Special Collection, Stanford.
51. Kennedy, Southern Exposure, p. 48.
52. Kennedy, Southern exposure, p. 54.
53. ‘Governmental, legalistic and political aspects of forced labor in the
United States of America’, p. 3, ‘Peonage Testimony’ Folder, Stetson
Kennedy Papers, Georgia State University.
54. Sandrine Kott, ‘The Forced Labor Issue between Human and Social
Rights, 1947–1957’, Humanity: An International Journal of Human
Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 3, 3 (2012), 321–335.
55. United Nations and International Labour Office, ‘Report of the ad hoc
committee on forced labor’, 1953, E/2431, p. 121.
56. George S. Mitchell of the Southern Regional Council to Stetson Kennedy,
28 August 1952, Georgia State University, Stetson Kennedy Papers,
folder Correspondence, 1952, p. 62.
57. United Nations and International Labour Office, ‘Report of the ad hoc
committee on forced labor’, 1953, E/2431, p. 122.
58. Daniel Maul, Human Rights, Development and Decolonization: The
International Labour Organization, 1940–1970 (Basingstoke, 2012), pp.
203–205.
59. United Nations and International Labour Office, ‘Report of the ad hoc
committee on forced labor’, 1953, E/2431, p. 4.
60. Goluboff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights.
312 N. Pizzolato

61. United Nations and International Labour Office, ‘Report of the ad hoc

committee on forced labor’, 1953, E/2431, p. 116–117.
62. Testimony given by Stetson Kennedy before the UN Ad Hoc Committee
on Forced Labor at Geneva, Switzerland, 7 November 1952, Georgia
State University, Stetson Kennedy Papers, folder, ‘Peonage Testimony’.

Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the research funding

bodies that have contributed to the research leading to this chapter: The British
Academy and Leverhulme Trust (small research grant); the JFK Institute, Berlin,
(research grant); The Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther
Library, Detroit (Sam Fishman Travel Grant).
 CHAPTER 12

From Traces to Carpets: Unravelling Labour

Practices in the Mines of Sierra Leone

Lorenzo D’Angelo

Introduction1
The awareness of the complexity and contradictions of the contempo-
rary world labour organisation—at once local and global; fragmented
and heterogeneous, but coordinated and integrated at multiple levels
and scales—urges the elaboration of increasingly sophisticated method-
ologies and theoretical models capable of making sense of the multitude
of spatial and temporal connections between events, people, places, and
commodities. One of the difficulties for anthropologists and histori-
ans interested in grasping this complexity lies in finding ways to think
and write about connections that embrace moving between micro and
macro, and zooming in and out, in order to examine situations at multi-
ple scales.2
For those scholars who define and know from the very beginning
their categories and objects of investigation—for example, who are the
workers or what is labour—it is relatively simple to understand and iden-
tify the boundaries of their field of analysis, and the ways to trace the

L. D’Angelo (*)
University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 313

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4_12
314 L. D’Angelo

historical and geographical links that exist between them. If the goal is,
for example, to reconstruct the origins of a working practice, it might be
sufficient to search in different places and times for that same practice
and make the necessary explanatory or causative connections and com-
parisons. However, if the definitions of objects and categories of analysis
are part of the investigation itself, and if these definitions are primarily
related to what social actors actually do, and not to what they are or they
should be, then things become considerably more complicated.3
In this paper, the challenge is to think about labour and its specific
practices not as predefined objects, eternal and strictly governed by
the logic of global capital, but as the results of contingent encounters
between countless numbers of events, people, and other working and
non-working practices. Thinking about labour in this way means recog-
nising the fact that things are the way they are, but that the potential
exists for them to be otherwise. Hence, the causes and effects of the cap-
italist mode of production do not arise by chance; at the same time, they
are not the inevitable results of an alleged universal history.
This paper explores an approach that oscillates between the ‘fine-
grained analysis’4 of micro-history and transnational labour history by
examining a set of practices and working agreements among a specific
group of workers: diamond miners operating in Sierra Leone. Many peo-
ple of different backgrounds and a variety of experiences have worked
in the alluvial diamond mines of Sierra Leone. Since the discovery of
diamantiferous deposits in 1930 and the colonial concession to extract
this mineral at the artisanal level in late 1950s, miners have had to deal
with environmental risks, political instability, epidemics, and above all
the random distribution of gems in the soil. In other words, alluvial
diamond mining has always been a very risky and uncertain activity.5
Consequently, the division of potential profits is a crucial issue for these
workers. As I came to realise during my fieldwork in Sierra Leone con-
ducted intermittently between 2007 and 2011, the variety and complex-
ity of mining practices and agreements is astonishing. Taken together,
these agreements are practical solutions to contingent or contextual
problems; they are heterogeneous but, to an extent, consistent: an
assemblage of practices that embody the experiences of long-time min-
ers. The key issue is understanding how this set of situated working prac-
tices has taken shape historically.
One way to answer this question is to trace the origins of this assem-
blage. Following the traces to the origins is a common strategy that
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 315

seems to unite historical approaches as diverse as the micro-history of

Carlo Ginzburg and the Global Labour History (GLH) of Marcel van
der Linden. However, these scholars invoke ‘following the traces’ in dif-
ferent ways. For van der Linden, following the traces is a way of express-
ing the position that GLH should deal with connections between various
contexts at different scales. In fact, van der Linden’s recurring use of the
phrase in his essays is more an exhortation than representative of the sys-
tematic employment of a methodology. As I will show in this paper, his
study of the origins of modern labour management reveals the limits of
this proposal based on the problematic concept of origin.
For Ginzburg, the metaphor of the trace is central to the understand-
ing of the evidential paradigm, that is, the epistemological model that
emerged in the social sciences at the end of the nineteenth century.6 On
closer examination, this model also reveals some weaknesses and incon-
sistencies that Ginzburg does not fully resolve even when he relies on the
concept of ‘family resemblances’ that he borrows from Wittgenstein.
I begin by highlighting the limits of these two proposals. Then I pro-
pose the replacement of the metaphor of following the traces with the
textile metaphor of the carpet which considers connecting as a form
of weaving.7 Using this metaphor, I explore the spatial and temporal
threads that make up the tapestry of widespread mining practices among
the diamond-seekers of Sierra Leone.
My goal is to show the heterogeneity of mining experiences and the
continuity between past and present forms of labour exploitation, and
between mining and non-mining activities. I argue that unilinear and
teleological hypotheses about the morphogenesis of mining labour prac-
tices cannot convincingly account for their historical complexity as well
as their ability to change and continually adapt to different contexts.

From Traces to Carpets

For many historians and anthropologists, explaining the social means
connecting events, people, and places by following or tracking the terms
of these same relationships.8 In practice, there are many ways to imple-
ment this approach. For this reason, it is worth considering two propos-
als ostensibly focused on two very different scales of analysis: the GLH
of van der Linden and the micro-history of Ginzburg.
According to van der Linden, GLH is primarily a field of research
that deals with the ‘description and explanation of the intensifying
316 L. D’Angelo

(or weakening) connections (interactions, influences, transfers) between

different world regions.’9 When referring to ‘world regions’, this scholar
does not mean that GLH should deal only with large-scale analyses,
and explicitly states that this field of research includes micro-histor-
ical approaches. Indeed, he affirms that one of the objectives of GLH
is precisely ‘[t]o identify the big picture in small details (and vice versa,
to discover microrealities in macrospaces)—that is what it is all about!’10
Given that the distinguishing feature of GLH is not scale, the focus of
the aforementioned definition is on the type of connections that global
historians discuss. The central concern, thus, becomes identifying which
particular connections or types of relationships and transactions require
attention.11
GLH is well suited to a wide range of topics. As van der Linden
writes, ‘[t]he important thing is that we should follow the traces of inter-
est to us wherever they may lead: across political and geographic fron-
tiers, time frames, territories, and disciplinary boundaries.’12 It is not by
chance that this is a recurrent expression in van der Linden’s essays.13
However, what is meant here by ‘following the traces’? More specifically,
what is a trace? How should we think about the links between traces?
In another essay, van der Linden offers some answers to these ques-
tions by proposing an exploratory analysis of the origins of the modern
management of labour.14 Here, the Dutch scholar highlights the limita-
tions of historical perspectives that ‘situate the origins of modern labor-
management techniques in the first and second industrial revolutions in
Western Europe and North America.’15 Left out from these perspectives
are those historical experiences of unfree labour in non-Western contexts
(prior to the industrial revolution) that had an important role in shaping
the modern management of labour. Taking into consideration the inven-
tion of the gang system on sugar cane plantations in seventeenth-cen-
tury Barbados, and the management techniques developed in Australia in
the early nineteenth century to regulate convict labour, van der Linden
affirms that ‘modern labor management has many roots.’16 Moreover,
contrary to Eurocentric assumptions, some of the most important labour
innovations originated in the European colonies, namely, those territo-
ries considered to be at the margins of Western industrial development.
To van der Linden, therefore, ‘following the traces’ means identifying
the origins of a technique that we assume has changed and, at the same
time, has remained recognisable in its historical development and its geo-
graphical transfers.
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 317

The idea of trying to identify the origins of a phenomenon, however,

raises some problems. The concept of ‘origin’ introduces the possibility
of a teleological interpretation of history and an essentialist view of what
constitutes a working practice. The underlying idea of origin is that the
identity of an object remains more or less the same despite any changes
that take place: what changes is in continuity with what it has been and
what it will be, so that the origin contains an embryo of its future forms.
Talking about the ‘origins’ of the modern management of labour using
the plural (to suggest multiple roots), lowers the risk of the assumption
of a linear and orientated vision of history. However, it does not prevent
misunderstandings that may arise around this concept.17
Similar conceptual difficulties are also addressed by Ginzburg when
he confronts the theme of following the traces. In the Preface to Myths,
Emblems, Spies, Ginzburg acknowledges that his method is ‘much more
morphological than historical.’18 He declares that he came to this
conclusion through the study of Morelli’s method and after reading
Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’.19 Here, Wittgenstein
argues that historical explanation ‘is just a way to collect data—their
synopsis.’ Hence, he highlights the possibility of summarising the phe-
nomena in a ‘general image that does not have the form of a chrono-
logical development.’ This general image is what Wittgenstein calls a
‘perspicuous representation’, that is, a representation that does not estab-
lish nonexistent and unprovable historical ties—such as those that can
be imagined ‘between the ellipse and the circle.’20 In line with Goethe’s
morphology, for the author of the Remarks it is all about seeing connec-
tions and searching for ‘intermediate links.’21
Ginzburg shares Wittgenstein’s scepticism regarding naïve evolution-
ary positions. At the same time, he is sceptical about the possibility of
applying his philosophical approach to history.22 Ginzburg emphasises
that, unlike Wittgenstein, Propp considers morphology a useful tool with
regard to history.23 In Ecstasies, Ginzburg’s gratitude to the Soviet for-
malist is perhaps more evident than elsewhere. Here, the micro-historian
begins his analysis by stating that he is searching for the roots of the
Sabbath in folk culture.24 At the end, however, he comes to the conclu-
sion that what he has tried to analyse is the ‘matrix of all possible sto-
ries.’25 In this erudite and fascinating pathway, between morphology and
history, Wittgenstein apparently ends up in the shadows. However, he
still plays a crucial role.
318 L. D’Angelo

In Ecstasies, Ginzburg offers an impressive range of comparable cul-

tural phenomena in which there is no single element common to all.
Seeking this common element would be unproductive and would limit
an analysis either on the synchronic and/or on the diachronic level. In
this sense, the Wittgensteinian notion of ‘family resemblances’26 appears
to solve the problem faced by Ginzburg: connecting similar phenomena
without falling into the essentialist trap of rigidly defining the boundaries
of a class or group of examined elements. The use of this notion raises
another problem, however. Wittgenstein’s anti-essentialism is strictly
related to the impossibility of distinguishing what is inside from what
is outside, what is on the surface from what is underneath.27 But a key
assumption of the evidential paradigm, on which the metaphor of the
trace is also based, is the denial of the transparency of reality.28 As a con-
sequence, access to the truth which underlies the appearances of things—
the real author of a painting traced through the details of an ear, or the
unconscious desire that lies behind the daily lapses—is necessarily indi-
rect. To use Ginzburg’s example, Hippocrates read the symptoms and
told the stories of diseases, but ‘the disease is, in itself, unattainable.’29
Thus, it is not clear how Ginzburg could reconcile the use of family
resemblances with his belief in the existence of a hidden reality that his-
torians should reveal.30 It seems that the notion that initially appears to
bring Ginzburg closer to Wittgenstein is the one that marks how deeply
different they are. Despite Ginzburg’s reasonable concerns, is it possi-
ble to take Wittgenstein as a starting point when exploring alternatives
to following the traces without resorting to problematic notions such as
‘origin’?
There is a textile metaphor employed by the author of Philosophical
Investigation that can be of use here. The image of the thread, intro-
duced in section 67, is a typical Wittgensteinian thought-image that
can help us to think metaphorically, not only about what holds differ-
ent things together—sometimes, things so far removed from one another
as to seem completely unrelated—but also to think (in parallel) about
multi-causality and plural spatiotemporalities. So, what is a thread? A
thread is a set of interwoven fibres. None of the fibres that make up a
thread are as long as the thread itself. Some fibres overlap and inter-
twine with one another, others touch lightly, and some are very far from
each other despite being part of the same thread. None, individually, are
essential to the thread itself. No one fibre represents the origin. Not all
fibres are equal. Some are thin and long; others are thick and short. It is
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 319

the interweaving of the fibres—their ability to create friction and there-

fore relationships—that matters.
The image of the thread helps us to think about the multiple connec-
tions between different places as well as the polychronism of the events,
such as the plurality of time in the mines which is made up ​​of differ-
ent rhythms or cycles (the long rhythms of capitalism, the life cycles of
miners, and so on). In short, this image helps us to represent the plural
spatio-temporalities of every specific context, a plurality that defies a tele-
ological interpretation of history as well as the tyranny of a chronological
order.
This textile metaphor can be made more complex by imagining that
the threads composed of fibres, in turn, make up a temporal carpet (or
a tapestry) traversable in different directions: vertically, horizontally, and
diagonally—just like the carpet described by Ginzburg to explain his evi-
dential paradigm.31 As a carpet extends across a surface, this metaphor
should help to prevent, at least in part, the temptation to think about
hidden truths. In this perspective, micro-history can be regarded as a
movement of the eye’s focus that, guided by the actors’ perspectives,
alternately sees the interweaving of the fibres in a thread, the texture of
that portion of the carpet of which that specific thread is part, or a larger
part of the whole carpet. There is not a point of view which is, in itself,
privileged. It is the specific patterns, textures, and variations in colour
that, from time to time, direct the focus of the eye. Sometimes a detail
may capture our attention; other times it is the whole or that part of
the whole that the eye of our historical vision can grasp that arouses our
interest. However, the detail commands our attention because it is in a
particular relation to the whole (or better, a part thereof) and vice versa,
not because it reveals in itself something more real or deeper.

Subaltern Work in the Diamond Mines

At this point, let us examine the practices of the miners working in
Sierra Leone—in more detail. In this West African country, the alluvial
miners are organised into teams or gangs. The gangs are composed of a
variable number of people, usually ranging from a minimum of three to
a maximum of about thirty. The number involved depends primarily on
the economic resources of the owners of mining licenses, as well as the
constraints imposed by the Ministry of Mineral Resources. The gangs are
financed by one or more supporters who make available to the boss (the
320 L. D’Angelo

head of the gang or the owner of the mining license) the financial capital
necessary for the purchase of mining equipment (shovels, sieves, buck-
ets, etc.) and to cover the direct and indirect costs of mining operations
such as purchasing the mining license and remunerating the labour force.
The supporters can be bosses or miners who work for themselves. More
often than not, they are local diamond traders who decided to invest
part of their earnings in the most promising mines. It is not unusual for
the wealthiest diamond dealers to fund more than one gang in order to
diversify their investment and reduce their risk. It should be noted that
the diamond tradein Sierra Leone is mainly controlled by members of
the Lebanese community, which has been present in the country for sev-
eral generations.32
There are different types of economic agreements for the distribu-
tion of the gains from the sale of diamonds that involve the owner of
the mining license, the supporter(s), chiefs, and the landowner (that is,
the individual holding land rights to the excavation site). In particular,
there are two main methods or systems for allocating earnings or poten-
tial earnings. Before starting operations, the miners and the local actors
involved can decide a) to split, according to precise percentages, the
profits obtained by selling any discovered diamonds, or b) to divide the
gravel extracted according to specific portions.
As for the relations between supporters and labourers, there are two
prominent kinds of agreements. The ‘contract system’ or ‘wage system’
is, in fact, the main form of payment in the small-scale mines—those in
which gem-seekers are authorised by the Ministry to use machines such
as excavators, hydraulic pumps, and other mechanised machines. In this
case, each miner employed as a labourer receives a fixed level of remuner-
ation.33 Those who accept this agreement with the boss waive any other
benefits and any percentage of the diamonds discovered.
Alternatively, the ‘supporting system’ or ‘tributing system’ is a form
of compensation prevalent among artisanal miners; that is, miners who
use artisanal technologies such as buckets, shovels, and sieves to find
diamonds. In this case, the labourer receives two or three cups of rice
and a small monetary reward for each day worked.34 Each miner is then
also entitled to a percentage of each diamond discovered. In this sys-
tem of distribution, typical ratios are 50-50, 60-40, 70-30, and 80-20.
For example, a supporter makes an agreement with a landowner. After
a period of negotiation, the two parties agree on an 80-20 split. This
means that 80% of the money earned by selling the diamonds will go
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 321

to the supporter while the remaining 20% will go to the landowner.

In the event that the supporter has negotiated an agreement based on
a percentage share with the labourers, they will have to split their 80%
with them. If the miners choose, for example, a ‘60-40’, then 40% of
the money generated from the sale of diamonds, minus the fee for the
landowner and other expenses incurred to the license owner, goes to the
gang. The members of the gang, in turn, split this into shares. Usually,
the division of labour occurs in equal parts. It should be emphasised that
each miner may also receive some additional benefits (e.g., cigarettes and
medicine) from their supporter.
These last two types of arrangements—the contract or wage system
and the supporting or tributing system—can take hybrid forms. This is
more evident at the level of small-scale extraction. The supporter can
agree to a system of remuneration based on fixed payment and, yet,
behave as a patron of the tributing system by providing benefits and
food. A ‘hybrid system’ assumes that the supporters have the ability to
take on a greater amount of expenditure than those who adhere to the
standard agreements of the contract system. However, this has a double
advantage: on the one hand, labourers are excluded from any ownership
rights over the diamonds recovered in the pits, which is the benefit of
the contract system for supporters. On the other, it builds a relationship
of loyalty and trust with labourers, which is the primary objective of the
tributing or supporting system. In this way, the supporter can prevent
thefts and increase worker productivity.
Finally, miners can decide, in particular circumstances, to divide the
extracted gravel rather than splitting the money from diamond sales.
This system is often used when, for example, the license owner or the
supporter does not have enough money to complete mining opera-
tions over the entire area at its disposal. In this case, they may decide to
engage other bosses and divide the land into as many parts as there are
bosses. Instead of paying a ‘sub-lease’, each boss offers a portion of their
gravel to the boss/licence owner. Only infrequently is this system used
between a supporter and their labourers.35
To sum up, it can be said that these agreements are attempts to dis-
tribute earnings or potential earnings among the parties involved in the
extractive processes taking into account the risks, and hierarchies, as
well as the economic expectations of each miner. In other words, they
are practical attempts to find a flexible but carefully predetermined bal-
ance between available resources and social positions in order to avoid
322 L. D’Angelo

possible tensions and conflicts among workers and facilitate the opera-
tion’s success. But how to explain the morphogenesis of the different
systems of compensation and distribution of gains that coexist in this
specific working context? Instead of seeking an explanation by tracking
the stages of development of the mining industry, I outline from within a
field of action that is a spatial and temporal carpet without defined mar-
gins or origins. For this reason, the following account is only one pos-
sible way to describe this carpet and unravel the knots and fibres that
comprise it. At the same time, this sort of unravelling in part follows the
contingent logics of the internal intertwining and, therefore, does not
proceed randomly.
Given the enormous complexity of this subject, in what follows, I
focus on key aspects of the colonial history of Sierra Leone’s mining
industry. In so doing, I endeavour to tie together possible spatio-tempo-
ral fibres of analysis to shed light on current mining practices. My intent
is to tease apart mining contexts and practices to show the heterogeneity
of mining experiences, the resemblances between past and present forms
of labour organisation, and the continuities between mining and non-
mining activities.

The International Diamond Monopoly and Mineral

Discoveries in Africa
A spatio-temporal fibre key to understanding the context of diamond
mining in Sierra Leone is the one that stretches across the history of the
monopoly developed around this mineral and the history of geological
discoveries on the African continent. The monopoly was established by
De Beers Consolidated Mines in the late nineteenth century. De Beers
took control of the main South African mines and established a sales
agreement with the Diamond Syndicate, an organisation of diamond
traders operating out of London.36
Until the 1920s, South African mines were the main producers of dia-
monds in the world. This primacy, however, was questioned when sev-
eral other deposits were discovered elsewhere on the African continent.
Deposits in the Belgian Congo were discovered in 1909 but extractive
operations began only in 1913 when the Belgian company Forminieré
obtained an exclusive mining concession. The discovery of deposits in
the southern region of Congo activated the Portuguese exploration in
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 323

neighbouring Angola. The Companhia de Diamantes de Angola was

founded in 1917 and immediately afterward obtained an exclusive con-
cession for 50 years37 that lasted until the early 1970s.38
In 1924, a number of engineers employed by Forminieré, includ-
ing Chester Betty and C.W. Boise, founded the Consolidated African
Selection Trust (CAST) to extract diamonds discovered in the Gold
Coast a few years earlier. CAST created a subsidiary in the mid-1930s—
the Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST)—to extract diamonds discov-
ered in Sierra Leone in 1930. This discovery, in the eastern region of
Sierra Leone, activated the search for diamondiferous deposits in neigh-
bouring French Guinea. Here, extraction was carried out by a French
company, Songuinex, controlled by CAST. Between the 1930s and mid-
1940s other significant discoveries were made in ​​ Liberia, the Ivory Coast
and Tanganyika.39
In response to these findings and the concomitant international eco-
nomic crisis of the 1930s, De Beers refined its monopoly by convincing
the world’s main diamond producers to sell their output to the Central
Selling Organisation (CSO), an umbrella organisation created in 1934
by Ernest Oppenheimer, chairman of De Beers. The CSO realised the
dreams of the managers of De Beers for a single channel for the distri-
bution and sale of diamonds from all around the world. In this way, it
was possible to maintain high profits as the diamond industry depended
(and still does) on strictly controlling the amount of gems available on
the market at any particular time.40
The discovery of Sierra Leone’s alluvial diamond deposits created
considerable anxiety for De Beers.41 These diamonds were, on average,
of a high quality, and suitable for the jewellery industry or for economic
investment. During the interwar period, there was much uncertainty
about marketing opportunities for this type of gem. For this reason, De
Beers reduced its production—to the point of closing down some of
its major mines—with the intention of waiting to sell the accumulated
reserve in better times. In reality, between the 1920s and 1930s, the mar-
ket for industrial diamonds dropped but remained fairly robust for gem-
stones. Although CAST joined CSO and slightly reduced its operations, it
continued its mining operations in West Africa to support the war efforts
of the Allies.42 Thus, the company took advantage of the strong demand
for diamond jewellery before the Second World War and, during and after
the war, took advantage of the demand for industrial diamonds.43
324 L. D’Angelo

Monopolisation and Illegalisation of Artisanal Mining

in Sierra Leone

In Sierra Leone, mineral explorations began around the 1920s. At the

end of the First World War, the British government promoted geologi-
cal surveys in several African territories of the Empire in order to locate
mineral resources for military purposes. Between 1919 and 1922, Frank
Dixey conducted the first geological surveys of Sierra Leone, but with
meagre results.44
A few years later, thanks to the efforts of the Director of the Geological
Survey of the Gold Coast, the Colonial Office decided to resume geologi-
cal investigations in Sierra Leone. This time, colonial officers were looking
for resources to strengthen the weak economy of the colony which was
mainly based on agricultural exports (in particular, kola nuts and palm ker-
nel). With this aim, geologist Norman R. Junner was sent to Sierra Leone
in 1926. He found mineral deposits of platinum, chrome, ilmenite, rutile,
gold, and iron. In 1930, during a survey in Kono District, Junner and his
colleague John D. Pollet discovered the presence of diamonds.
The Anglo-American mining company CAST was informed of the dis-
covery a year later by Junner—who played an important role in making
connections between the mines of Sierra Leone and those of the Gold
Coast. CAST had been working for several years in the Gold Coast,
extracting diamonds in Atwakia. Its engineers immediately realised the
importance of Junner and Pollett’s discovery. In 1934, CAST created a
subsidiary, the Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST) that obtained exclu-
sive rights from the Government of Sierra Leone to explore and extract
diamonds found all over the territory for a period of 99 years.45
From the Gold Coast, the managers of SLST imported experienced
workers, engineers, and managers. From the beginning, these manag-
ers knew that they would soon face a serious problem: illegal mining.
In order to prevent the illicit extraction and trafficking of gemstones,
they took action to try and control the territory and its population.
Restrictive measures on people’s movements were first put into effect in
1936. To enter Kono District, for example, it was necessary to obtain a
special permit: the entry of ‘strangers’ without official authorisation was
banned or severely restricted.46
By the 1950s, however, the reputation of Sierra Leone an diamonds
had spread around the world. The strict measures of control over the
territory and the threat of arrest for possession of diamonds and mining
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 325

equipment were not sufficient to curb the arrival of migrants, espe-

cially from the neighbouring regions of West Africa (including French
Guinea, Liberia, Gambia, Nigeria, Gold Coast, Mali, and Mauritania).
The movement of African miners to the company’s protected areas went
on day and night.47 The monopoly and the legalisation of artisanal min-
ing certainly had a profound impact on the technical and organisational
choices of African miners. The miners aimed for the most superficial
deposits requiring the digging of only shallow pits in order to extract the
gravel containing diamonds in the shortest time possible, that is, before
the police and SLST security forces might be alerted to their presence.
It is likely that, in some cases, miners preferred to share the gravel on the
spot, without waiting for the completion of gravel washing. This impor-
tant operation could be carried out quietly, once the material was trans-
ported to less visible and more protected areas.48
In 1955, SLST made an agreement with the Government to give up
their monopoly while preserving some of the most productive mineral
areas. In return, the company obtained lavish compensation from the
Government. The latter pledged to intensify efforts to combat lawless-
ness. At the same time, starting in 1956, Sierra Leone an miners were
allowed to extract precious gems through a licensing system called the
Alluvial Diamond Mining Scheme (ADMS). For everyone else, the only
alternative was to abandon or continue illegal mining, seeking the pro-
tection of the local authorities.49
In 1959, SLST created the ‘Contract Mining Scheme.’ With this, the
company committed itself to buying diamonds from miners who dug and
sold diamonds recovered in the concession areas abandoned after the 1955
agreement, that is, those areas considered unproductive for the use of large-
scale mining technology.50 The scheme, described as ‘a form of tributing
inside the SLST lease and controlled by SLST’,51 lasted until 1970 when
SLST was nationalised by the independent government of Sierra Leone
and renamed the National Diamond Mining Company.52 Before turning
attention to ‘tributing’, it is useful to examine the interweaving of temporal
fibres to shed light on labour relations in the mines of Sierra Leone.

Labour Relations in (and Around) the Mines

Working relations among the miners employed in Sierra Leone exist
in relationship with, and against, the background of the historical con-
text of the global diamond industry and of Sierra Leone. Although
326 L. D’Angelo

slavery was outlawed in the colony—Freetown was established in 1808

as a settlement for freed slaves transported from North America—
in the Protectorate of Sierra Leone, the practice remained active and
unhindered until 1928.53 The British promoted a smooth and grad-
ual transition toward abolition,54 convinced that a sudden change of
local customs would cause unmanageable conflicts. Thus, the Forced
Labour Ordinance of 1932—which was enacted following the amend-
ment of the 1930 Geneva Convention on Forced Labour—authorised
chiefs to employ labour for public works or for specific personal ser-
vices.55 In some regions of the Protectorate, forms of forced labour
persisted until the late 1950s. In fact, it was only after the 1955 riots
and the subsequent investigation by the Cox Commission that in 1956,
the Government decided to enact the Prohibition of Forced Labour
Ordinance. The Commission noted in its report that the right of chiefs
to force young people to perform unpaid work was a major cause of the
riots. However, while the 1956 Ordinance repealed forced labour, it
still gave the chiefs some prerogatives on the use of unpaid community
labour.56
This was the context in which early labour relations in the mines
emerged. In January 1928, men and women previously considered serv-
ants or slaves became formally ‘free’. In a 1931 report,57 the British
geologist Pollet included images of large groups of people waiting to
obtain employment in the alluvial gold mines. The first companies to
obtain mining licenses for the exploitation of gold deposits—the British
Coastal Exploration Syndicate Limited and Messrs Maroc Limited58—
typically offered monthly jobs. Some miners were put on contract and
paid according to the amount of work done.59 Taking into account the
recent abolition of slavery, it is not surprising that the engineer in charge
of company’s camp found ‘there [were] always more applicants for work
than he can employ’.60 On average, about half of the miners came from
villages neighbouring the mining sites. The remainder was mainly made
up of men from different regions of the Protectorate: Mende, Limba,
Temne, and Koranko were the most well-represented ethno-linguistic
groups. Employers generally considered people from further afield more
reliable than those coming from nearby villages. According to the reports
of colonial officials, the local workers did not come to the mines on a
regular basis, and often devoted part of their working day to pursuing
other activities such as trading, farming, or hunting.61 Production costs
and international uncertainties over the trends in commodity prices
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 327

pushed the gold mining companies to keep wages as low as possible.

Thus, in many instances, the local workforce showed preference for the
often more lucrative agricultural work in the fields. Some companies
used ‘feed money’62 to compensate miners in an attempt to improve sta-
bility of their labour force. In the early 1930s, for example, the Messrs
Maroc sold rice to its workers at cost in order to keep down the prices of
basic commodities in nearby villages. By selling rice to their miners at no
profit to themselves, the company sought to discourage harvesting in the
fields and to encourage working in the mines.
SLST made similar choices a few years later in the diamond district
of Kono. Initially, the company managers brought in skilled labour from
Nigeria, and especially from the Gold Coast in order to teach the local
workforce extraction techniques adopted in the CAST diamond mines at
Atwakia.63
Although SLST offered better payment terms than other companies,
in Kono District, the sale of palm kernels was, at times, less arduous and
better paid than work in the diamond mines. The problem of local labour
force recruitment became most acute during the harvest season, between
January and February.64 In 1937 in particular, the demand for agricul-
tural production increased due to the expansion of the international cos-
metic industry. At the same time, there was a shortage in rice production,
resulting in part from the increased migrant population present in the
mining areas and the reduction of agricultural labour devoted to this sta-
ple. To address this specific problem, SLST imported quantities of rice
that it sold to the company’s employees at a regulated price. In exchange
for rice, however, the workers had to give up any increase in wages.
It should be noted that this type of non-wage benefit was not simply a
reaction to the specific difficulties of that period. Rather, it was part of a
broader and paternalistic labour policy which aimed to increase produc-
tivity, and minimise theft and illicit mining.65

The Supporting System in Tin, Gold, and Diamond

Mining
The diamond industry of Sierra Leone did not emerge in isolation from
other extractive industries. Its history is intertwined from the moment it
emerged with the simultaneously emergent gold mining industry. This, in
turn, was interwoven with other mining and non-mining experiences in
West Africa.
328 L. D’Angelo

After the first discoveries of alluvial gold deposits, between the mid-
1920s and early 1930s, the colonial government of Freetown preferred
to grant mining licenses to large-scale British operations.66 The uncertain
nature of the alluvial deposits, however, was problematic for large-scale
investors, and in fact favoured small-scale miners. Many companies went
bankrupt after a few years and others took their place and experienced
mixed results.67
Early small-scale miners managed to obtain licenses for gold extrac-
tion in 1934. They were mostly made up of educated members of the
Krio community of Freetown who obtained mining licenses as individu-
als or syndicates.68 Among them, there were a few goldsmiths, money-
lenders, and professionals, but no one with mining experience.69 Most
probably, the only ones who possessed some knowledge of gold were
A.B. Sillah and J.A. Lasite, two known Freetown goldsmiths. Before
becoming miners themselves, it is said that they bought gold from illicit
dealers.70 Among small-scale miners, members of the Lebanese commu-
nity were the most successful. They entered into the mining industry in
1935, just after the Krio. The Lebanese were mainly traders and, as far as
is known, also had no mining experience. They were able, however, to
address the risks of this sector by employing local miners as tributors.71
As under the abusa system adopted by gold miners in the Gold Coast,72
tributors did not receive a salary, but a share of the gold. Among these
workers there were often men who had worked for European companies.
Indeed, tributing offered the chance to earn more than employees of
the large operations. From the point of view of patrons, one of the main
advantages of the tributing was that workers were only paid if the mine
produced gold. In addition, the supervision of a patron was not always
necessary. Tributors self-organised and patrons could carry on other
professional activities.73 It is clear, then, that both Krio and Lebanese
learned the basics of gold mining from their ‘boys’ and, particularly,
from those who had worked for European companies.74
By analysing the reports of the colonial government’s Geological
Department, van der Laan argues that tributing was first introduced in
the gold mines in 1935 by the company Gold and Base Metal Mines
of Nigeria.75 This company mainly mined tin and other base metals in
northern Nigeria. The international economic crisis of the early 1930s,
the resulting drop in the price of tin, and the rising price of gold were
some of the reasons that likely prompted this company to explore the
opportunities offered by the alluvial deposits recently discovered in
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 329

Sierra Leone.76 In Nigeria, as in other West African colonies, tributing

was a common practice adopted especially in alluvial gold and tin min-
ing.77 Unsurprisingly, Gold and Base Metal Mines of Nigeria replicated
in Sierra Leone what had been common in Nigeria.
The small-scale miners of the Shamel Brothers group were among the
first to imitate the methods of work, recruitment, and payment of Gold and
Base Metals of Nigeria. Despite lacking mining experience, this partnership
of Lebanese traders came to employ more than a thousand men in 1936.
The following year, van der Laan notes, ‘all companies derived part of their
gold from tributors and many small miners relied entirely on them.’78
The official production of gold began to decline during the Second
World War but the number of migrants in the diamondiferous south-
eastern area of Sierra Leone grew considerably after the war. Among
these gem seekers were men with experience in gold mining, like Alhaji
Sesay. Sesay was a gold miner in the northern part of Sierra Leone from
1934 until 1941, the year he was conscripted into the army. In 1945,
he resumed mining. In 1956, he began to look for diamonds by taking
advantage of the licence scheme for the artisanal extraction of diamonds
just introduced by the government.79 Sesay’s professional trajec-
tory was not unusual. Many miners arrived in the diamond areas dur-
ing the 1950s, particularly the Temne, had worked in the gold mines of
the northern region. Others, like the Mandingo people,80 came mainly
from the French colonies, in particular, from Guinea where there were
both gold and diamond mines.81 Among the ranks of the gem-seekers
there were also many Kono and Mende people, some of whom possessed
knowledge and technical skills acquired while working for SLST.82
As a result, between the gold and diamond mining sectors there were
numerous adaptations and exchanges derived from the local and trans-
national labour force,83 and also the local entrepreneurs, particularly the
Lebanese merchants who played a crucial role in the development of the
Sierra Leonean mining industry.84

Sharing and Tributing in Farming and Mining

To understand the morphogenesis of the practices of diamond miners, it
is necessary at this point to extend our gaze towards working and agree-
ment practices that go beyond the mines. In particular, striking ‘family
resemblances’ exist between farming and mining. To examine them, it is
useful to focus on gold mining.
330 L. D’Angelo

Though pre-colonial mining in Sub-Saharan Africa is, to say the least,

as old as the Malian (from c. 1230 to c. 1600) and Ashanti Empires
(from c. 1700 to 1957),85 in the territory of Sierra Leone, there is no
clear historical evidence of extractive activities predating colonial discov-
eries.86 Van der Laan’s historical reconstruction of how tributing may
have been introduced in Sierra Leone’s mines presupposes an exogenous
(and unilinear) movement of practices and ideas. However, if tribut-
ing was immediately accepted and rapidly became a widespread practice
among Sierra Leone’s miners, this has to do with the fact that it was a
practice culturally recognised by both transnational and local labour-
ers. That is to say that van der Laan’s hypothesis does not consider the
possibility that miners’ practices, particularly at the level of artisanal or
small-scale operations, involved interwoven and multiple historical and
geographical encounters between working experiences and cultural
norms across this West African region. To clarify, it is worth briefly
exploring and further unravelling other spatio-temporal threads which
can shed light on cultural practices common in many rural societies of
the Upper Guinea Forest.87 To this end, two practices deserve particular
attention: the abusa system and the tutorat.
As historian Raymond Dumett points out in his work on the devel-
opment of the Gold Coast’s mining industry at the end of nineteenth
century, European companies based in Wassa had difficulty recruiting
local workers.88 Often, they preferred to employ unskilled workers from
Liberia and Sierra Leone’s coasts.89 Local Wassa people, in fact, preferred
to look for gold using traditional methods tested locally for centuries
by generations of African miners,90 or to alternate ‘whites’ jobs’ in the
mines with agricultural activities in the villages. Therefore, their presence
was not always guaranteed. In Wassa, the solution for the mining compa-
nies to the so-called native labour problem91 ‘was to hire Akan ‘tributors’
based on the traditional abusa share system.’92
In the Twi language, abusa means ‘one-third’, but in the twentieth
century, among Gold Coast farmers engaged in the production of cocoa,
abusa became a way to refer to the portion of the harvest that the sup-
plier of labour had to offer to the supplier of the land.93 Abusa is thus
a form of tribute related to the traditional duty of offering a portion of
the product obtained from the ground, or from the forest to the rul-
ers and local traditional authorities.94 In this sense, the abusa system for
gold miners was mainly an adaptation of the share cropping system.95
In the late nineteenth century, this system was successfully applied and
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 331

accepted by Gold Coast’s miners and European companies because it

seemed to provide benefits for all parties. Tributors held a third, or even
a half of the material extracted. In this way, they often managed to earn
more than they could as tributors of the chiefs and of local stool hold-
ers. The remainder belonged entirely to the company or it was further
divided with local traditional authorities. Thus, in Wassa, the gold com-
pany was not required to take care of labourers’ housing and feeding.96
Besides that, it did not have to spend money to import labourers from
Liberia nor did it have to worry about the organisation and recruitment
of miner gangs.97
To return to the case of Sierra Leone, we cannot exclude the possibil-
ity that the abusa system—or similar tributing systems based on patron-
age relationships such as the tutorat98—had been, at different times, a
practical model from which Sierra Leone’s miners drew ideas and solu-
tions for organising their work. Once again, it is worth stressing the cru-
cial role played by migrant workers in translating such experiences from
one context to another.
However, it is also possible that local miners, faced with the uncer-
tainty of alluvial deposits and the danger of being arrested by the colo-
nial security forces, adopted and developed existing local sharing systems
which resulted in arrangements similar to those of abusa. In this regard,
it should be noted that the traditional Akan law of the Gold Coast has
many family resemblances with the customary tenure law common to
most of the territory of Sierra Leone. In both contexts, the concept of
ownership is different from that of private property.99 In many regions
of West Africa, land is owned collectively and is managed by tradi-
tional authorities. Because of this, one of the privileges still retained by
Paramount Chiefs100 of Sierra Leone is to receive tributes from both for-
eign residents and from various subjects who occupy the land over which
they rule. Thus, Paramount Chiefs are entitled to receive as a tribute,
portions of the harvested rice and palm oil produced in their chiefdoms,
as well as portions of the game captured and the trees cut in forests.
Paramount Chiefs also have the right to receive one-third ‘of all rents
paid by non-natives in respect of lands occupied or leased in the chief-
dom.’101 Miners are not exempt from this type of contribution which is
well-regulated.
As it might be clear from the discussion above, it is not possible to
fully understand the labour practices of artisanal miners without tak-
ing into account the social institutions that shape relations between
332 L. D’Angelo

‘autochthons and strangers’,102 ‘first comers and later comers’,103 or

between ‘landowners and strangers’ in the Upper Guinea Forest.104 As
Bolay points out, the artisanal mining sector ‘is intimately related to soil
property and strongly structured by autochthony relations’.105
In the rural societies of this extended West African region, the tutorat
‘regulates both the transfer of land rights and the incorporation of the
‘strangers’ in the local community’.106 Strangers, as ‘later comers’, gain
access to the land from the landowners (‘first comers’) who then become
their sponsors or tuteurs. In return, strangers show their gratitude by
offering, for example, agricultural products or monetary compensation
for the use of land. They also contribute to the reproduction of the com-
munity social order.107 Therefore, tutorat is a kind of patron–client rela-
tionship that regulates the rights and obligations between landowners
and strangers on the basis of the principles of a local moral economy.108
In Ivory Coast, for example, the tutorat played a significant role in regu-
lating migrant access to the cocoa and coffee farms which developed in
the 1920s.109 In different ways, past and present migrants working in the
farms or in the artisanal small-scale gold mines of Guinea,110 Mali,111
Burkina Faso,112 and Benin113 have established mentoring relationships,
particularly, with residents.
Tutorat and the ‘landlord–stranger system’ have several family resem-
blances.114 Concerning Sierra Leone’s diamond mines, Jean-Pierre
Chauveau and Paul Richards have stressed how ‘Land-owning lineages
are essential partners in alluvial operations’.115 For this reason, diamond
miners divide part of their earnings with them.
To return to van der Laan’s unilinear and exogenous hypothesis, it
certainly cannot convincingly account for the historical complexity of
these social practices as well as their ability to change and constantly
adapt to different contexts. The tributing system, like all social practices,
has a social life: it changes over time and it adapts to changing cultural,
political, and historical scenarios.116

Conclusion
As noted by the anthropologist Michael Jackson, spinning, weaving,
binding, threading braiding, and knotting are at same time some of
the oldest techniques and metaphors known by human beings.117 No
wonder that it in many societies around the world, social relations are
conceived as ‘bonds, ties or strings, while wider fields of relationship
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 333

are compared to networks, webs, and skeins, or the warp and woof of
woven cloth’.118 I have endeavoured to show how textile metaphors are
also good to think through nonlinear causal relationships, as well as the
spatio-temporal entanglement specific to each historical and cultural con-
text.119 The historical and anthropological analysis of diamond miners’
working practices shows that there is not an origin that can explain their
subsequent development. There is also no single causal explanation. If
anything, what these practices reveal are the many spatial and temporal
twists that connect, in complex ways, events, people and contexts. In
other words, the practices of the miners appear to be an assemblage of
heterogeneous and, in some respects, conflicting elements. This assem-
blage is not the result of an omniscient hand that has wisely chosen and
ordered the temporal threads according to a precise final design. On the
contrary, it is the result of a number of incongruent, and sometimes con-
tradictory interventions.
If we want to bring our textile metaphor to another level, we may ask
ourselves who weaves the threads and who makes the carpet. The answer
is that there is a multiplicity of social actors, each with different levels of
ability and power to act.
In the mines of Sierra Leone, the exchange of knowledge and expe-
riences among workers, company executives, and other social actors
involved in this industry (e.g., chiefs and colonial rulers), has contrib-
uted significantly to the hybridisation of mining practices. This helps
to understand their innumerable ‘family resemblances’.120 Indeed, I
have suggested that these practices come not only from different types
of extractive contexts (for example, gold and tin mining), but also from
non-mining contexts such as agriculture. The tributing system described
by van der Laan in the case of gold mining has strong resemblances with
those common in diamond mining. In a similar vein, the share crop sys-
tem has significant resemblances with the practice of dividing extracted
material between miners, companies, and traditional authorities in both
gold and diamond mining.
Each idea or mining practice is a particular combination of knowl-
edge and experiences that has changed in response to specific problems
embedded in specific historical and political situations. To emphasise the
contingency of encounters between these practices and experiences is
to recognise that capitalism cannot be thought to have a single repeat-
able model of development.121 That is to say that diamond miners’ prac-
tices are the unpredictable result of the continuous efforts of the global
334 L. D’Angelo

mining industry to articulate different modes of production. The carpet

is the living metaphor of this spatio-temporal assemblage with no origin.

Notes
1. I would like to thank the participants of the writing workshop
‘Translocal- and microhistories of global labour’ organised by Christian
G. De Vito and Anne Gerritsen at the University of Warwick (23–24
January 2015), as well as Toby Boraman and Emma Battell Lowman
for comments and criticisms. I discussed some thoughts contained in
this paper during the Fifth Annual Conference organised by IGK Work
and Human Lifecycle in Global History in Berlin, 9 July 2014. For this
reason, I thank re:work’s staff and fellows for their useful comments.
The final stage of writing this paper has greatly benefited from a fel-
lowship granted by the Italian Academy for Advanced Study, Columbia
University, New York (Spring 2015).
2. On the difficulties of writing about connections, see Frederick Cooper,
‘Back to Work: Categories, Boundaries and Connections in the Study of
Labour’, in Racializing Class, Classifying Race: Labour and Difference
in Britain, the USA and Africa, eds. Peter Alexander and Rick Halpern
(London, 2000), pp. 213–235.
3. See De Vito (in this volume).
4. Cooper, ‘Back to work’, p. 213.
5. Since the end of the civil war (1991–2002) the extraction of this mineral
has come from two types of sources in this West African country: alluvial
and kimberlite deposits. The alluvial diamonds are extracted mainly with
artisanal technologies such as shovels and sieves (artisanal level) or with
machinery such as hydraulic pumps, bulldozers, and mechanised sieves
(small-scale level). In 2005, it was estimated that there were more than
200–300,000 people engaged at these two levels of extraction (artisa-
nal and small-scale mining). Conversely, diamond extracted from the
kimberlite rock requires large-scale technology usually owned by for-
eign mining companies capable of huge investments. As a consequence
of high capital investment in technology, large-scale mining does not
employ as much labour as artisanal and small-scale mining. These dif-
ferences in technologies and investments largely reflect the characteris-
tics of the different types of deposits. From a geological point of view,
kimberlite deposits are ancient volcanic conduits which can be localised
in specific areas. Once experts have identified these deposits, it is possi-
ble to estimate their productivity. On the contrary, alluvial diamonds are
scattered underground over vast areas. Ascertaining their location (or
quantity) is far from simple.
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 335

6. Carlo Ginzburg, Miti, emblemi, spie. Morfologia e storia (Torino, 1986).

7. As noted by the philosopher Vittorio Morfino, the Latin etymology of
the word ‘to connect’ (connectere) refers to the meaning of ‘to weave’
(Vittorio Morfino, Il tempo della moltitudine. Materialismo e politico
prima e dopo Spinoza (Roma, 2005), p. 29).
8. Bruno Latour reminds us that the etymology of the word ‘social’
has roots in ‘following’ (Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An
Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford, 2005).
9. Marcel van der Linden, ‘The Promise and Challenges of Global Labour
History’, International Labor and Working Class History, 82 (2012),
57–76, cit. p. 62.
10. Ibid., p. 62.
11. Andreas Eckert, ‘What is Global Labour History Good For?’, in Work in
a Modern Society. The German Historical Experience, ed. Jürgen Kocka
(New York–Oxford, 2010), pp. 169–181.
12. Van der Linden, ‘The Promise and Challenges’, p. 62.
13. Christian G. De Vito, ‘New Perspectives on Global Labour History:
Introduction’, Workers of the World, 3, 1 (2013), 7–31, see p. 16.
14. Marcel van der Linden, ‘Re-constructing the Origins of Modern Labor
Management’, Labor History, 51, 4 (2010), 509–522.
15. Ibid., p. 510.
16. Ibid., p. 516.
17. Different philosophers criticise the notion of origin (i.e., Louis Althusser,
Lire le Capital, Vol. 1 & 2 (Paris, 1965); Michael Foucault, Language,
Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca, NY,
1980).
18. Ginzburg, Miti, Emblemi, Spie, p. xiv.
19. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’ (Retford,
1979).
20. Carlo Ginzburg, Storia notturna. Una decifrazione del sabba
(Torino, 1989), p. xxix. See also Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations (Oxford, 1953), esp. §122.
21. For a comparison between Goethe’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophy, see
Fritz Breithaupt, Richard Raatzsch, and Bettina Kremberg, eds., Goethe
and Wittgenstein: Seeing the World’s Unity in its Variety (Frankfurt am
Main, 2003).
22. Ginzburg, Storia notturna, p. xxix.
23. Ginzburg, Miti, emblemi, spie, p. xv.
24. Ginzburg, Storia notturna, p. xxviii.
25. Ibid., p. 289.
26. Wittgenstein clarifies this notion with an example. What do board
games, card games, ball games, and the Olympic Games have in
336 L. D’Angelo

common? The answer Wittgenstein gives is apparently simple: ‘If you

look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but simi-
larities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that’ (Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations, p. 31). As among family members, we can
see similarities between the various games, or rather ‘a complicated
network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes over-
all similarities, sometimes similarities of detail’ (Ibid., p. 32). However,
there is nothing that unites them all under a single definition.
27. Giuseppe Di Giacomo, ‘Art and perspicuous vision in Wittgenstein’s
Philosophical Reflection’, Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi
dell’estetico, 6, 1 (2013), 151–172.
28. Ginzburg, Miti, emblemi, spie, p. 170.
29. Ibid., p. 169.
30. See John Martin, ‘Journeys to the world of the death: The work of Carlo
Ginzburg’, Journal of Social History, 25, 3 (1992), 613–626, esp. p.
623.
31. Ginzburg, Miti, emblemi, spie, p. 184.
32. H. Laurens van der Laan, The Lebanese Traders in Sierra Leone (The
Hague, Paris, 1975).
33. This is usually between 5000 and 10,000 Leones, the equivalent of
about 2–3 USD—for a working day of about eight hours.
34. This reward can vary, usually, from a minimum of 500 to a maximum of
3000 Leones (about 1 USD a day).
35. The miners without a license can be organised in so-called ‘gado gangs’,
that is, in groups of miners who equally share the extracted gravel.
The gain of each is related to the probability of finding diamonds in
ones’ own pile of gravel. For more details, see Estelle Levin, ‘From
Poverty and War to Prosperity and Peace? Sustainable Livelihoods
and Innovation in Governance of Artisanal Diamond Mining in Kono
District, Sierra Leone’, MA thesis, University of British Columbia,
2005.
36. Edward J. Epstein, The Death of the Diamond: The Coming Collapse in
Diamond Prices (London, 1983).
37. J. L. Burke, ‘A Short Account of the Discovery of the Major Diamond
Deposits’, Sierra Leone Studies, 12 (1959), 316–328, esp. p. 322.
38. Peter Greenhalgh, West African Diamonds 1919–1983: An Economic
History (Manchester, Dover, 1985), p. 24.
39. Ibid.
40. Colin Newbury, The Diamond Ring: Business, Politics, and Precious
Stones in South Africa, 1867–1947 (Oxford, 1989).
41. Greenhalgh, West African Diamonds, p. 61.
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 337

42. Raymond E. Dumett, ‘Africa Strategic Minerals During the Second

World War’, Journal of African History, 26 (1985), 381–408.
43. Greenhalgh, West African Diamonds, pp. 27–33.
44. Lorenzo D’Angelo, ‘The Art of Governing Contingency: Rethinking
the Colonial History of Diamond Mining in Sierra Leone’, Historical
Research, 89, 243 (2016), 136–157.
45. H. Laurens van der Laan, The Sierra Leone Diamonds (Oxford, 1965).
46. Alfred Zack-Williams, Tributors, Supporters and Merchant Capital.
Mining and Underdevelopment in Sierra Leone (Aldershot-Brookfield
USA–Hong Kong–Singapore–Sydney, 1995), p. 181.
47. William Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge,
1995), p. 62.
48. Tilo Grätz interprets the system of sharing clumps of soil containing
gold between the miners of Northern Benin as a strategy to reduce
the risk of being caught by police before they can split their gains
(Tilo Grätz, ‘Gold-Mining and Risk Management: A Case Study from
Northern Benin’, Ethnos, 68, 2 (2003), 192–208). In this case the gold
miners prefer to divide the stones and clumps extracted underground
rather than the gold actually recovered. As far as we can tell from the
brief description provided by Grätz, the method chosen by the miners
is apparently simple: half of the stones potentially containing gold is
taken by the chief d’equipe and the other half is divided among his secré-
taire and other workers (Tilo Grätz, ‘Moralities, Risk and Rule in West
African Artisanal Gold Mining Communities: A Case Study of Northern
Benin’, Resource Policy, 34 (2009), 12–17).
49. Reno, Corruption.
50. Zack-Williams, Tributors, p. 120.
51. Greenhalgh, West African Diamonds, p. 167.
52. Zack-Williams, Tributors, p. 123.
53. The Colony of Sierra Leone was founded in 1808 to receive the slaves
freed by the British in their fight against the Atlantic trade in human
beings. However, the current borders of Sierra Leone were estab-
lished only in 1896 when the British decided to annex a portion of the
African territory surrounding the Freetown Peninsula. While the Colony
was ruled under the British legal system, the hinterland was ruled as a
British Protectorate and was indirectly controlled though local chiefs
(Christopher Fyfe, A Short History of Sierra Leone (London, 1967).
54. John Grace, Domestic Slavery in West Africa with Reference to the Sierra
Leone Protectorate, 1896–1927 (London, 1975), p. 491.
55. Richard Rathbone, ‘West Africa, 1874–1948: Employment Legislation in
a Nonsettler Peasant Economy’, in Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in
338 L. D’Angelo

Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955, eds. Douglas Hay and Paul Craven
(Chapel Hill–London, 2004), p. 488.
56. Colonial Office, Sierra Leone: Report for the Year 1956 (London, 1957),
p. 74. For an analysis of the impact of these colonial decisions on the
agrarian order of the Upper Guinean Forest, and its recent conflicts, see
Jean-Pierre Chauveau and Paul Richards, ‘West African Insurgencies
in Agrarian Perspective: Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone Compared’,
Journal of Agrarian Change, 8, 4 (2008), 515–522, and Krijn Peters
and Paul Richards, ‘Rebellion and Agrarian Tensions in Sierra Leone’,
Journal of Agrarian Change, 11, 3 (2011), 377–395.
57. John D. Pollett, Report on the Gold Areas by the Acting Chief Inspector
of Mines, Mr. J. D. Pollett: The National Archives (T. N. A.), London,
U.K., CO 267/635/11, Enclosure to Sierra Leone Confidential des-
patch, 12 Oct. 1931.
58. Van der Laan, The Lebanese Traders, p. 145.
59. Pollett, Report, p. 14.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid, p. 28.
63. Letter of the Governor D. J. Jardine to W. G. A. Ormsby Gore, 3 May
1938: T. N. A. CO267/665/3.
64. Greenhalgh, West African Diamonds, p. 125.
65. Ibid., pp. 127–132.
66. On the contrary, French administrators favoured artisanal mining in
the gold mines of the Haut-Niger (see Sabine Luning, Jan Jansen, and
Cristiana Panella, ‘The Mise en Valeur of the Gold Mines in the Haut-
Niger, 1918–1939’, French Colonial History, 15 (2014), 67–86, esp. p.
75.
67. Martin H. Y. Kaniki, ‘The Economic and Social History of Sierra Leone,
1929–1939’, PhD Thesis, Birmingham, 1972, p. 167; Van der Laan,
The Lebanese Traders, pp. 147–149.
68. The Krio are the descendants of the ‘Liberated Africans’ and other ex-
slaves rehabilitated in Sierra Leone since the end of Eighteenth Century.
See Akintola Wyse, The Krio of Sierra Leone: An Interpretative History
(Washington, D.C., 1991).
69. Kaniki, The Economic and Social History, p. 170.
70. Ibid.
71. Van der Laan, The Lebanese Traders, p. 149.
72. Raymond E. Dumett, El Dorado in West Africa: The Gold-Mining
Frontier, African Labor, and Colonial Capitalism in Gold Coast, 1875–
1900 (Oxford, 1998).
73. cf. Van der Laan, The Lebanese Traders, p. 150.
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 339

74. Kaniki, The Economic and Social History, p. 171.

75. Van der Laan, The Lebanese Traders, p. 150.
76. Kaniki, The Economic and Social History.
77. William Freund, ‘Theft and Social Protest Among the Tin Miners of
Northern Nigeria’, Radical History Review, 26 (1982), 68–86, esp. p.
75; Greenhalgh, West African Diamonds, p. 175; B. W. Hodder, ‘Tin
Mining on the Jos Plateau’, Economic Geography, 35, 2 (1959), 109–
122; esp. p. 115; J. H. Morrison, ‘Early Tin Production and Nigerian
Labour on the Jos Plateau’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 11, 2
(1977), 205–216, esp. p. 208.
78. Van der Laan, The Lebanese Traders, p. 150; cf. Kaniki, The Economic and
Social History, p. 176.
79. Zack-Williams, Tributors, p. 154.
80. In Sierra Leone, ‘Mandingo’ can refer to a wide range of people of dif-
ferent origins (see Chauveau and Richards, ‘West African Insurgencies’,
p. 525, note 19).
81. Sylvie Bredeloup, La Diams’pora du Fleuve Sénégal. Sociologie des
Migrations Africaines (Paris, 2007), p. 71.
82. Van der Laan, The Lebanese Traders, pp. 158–159.
83. Bredeloup, La Diams’pora.
84. Caspar D. Fithen, ‘Diamonds and War in Sierra Leone: Cultural
Strategies for Commercial Adaptation to Endemic Low-Intensity
Conflict’, Ph.D. Thesis, London, 1999; see also Reno, Corruption; Van
der Laan, The Lebanese Traders.
85. Eugenia W. Herbert, ‘Elusive Fronties: Precolonial Mining in Sub-
Saharan Africa’, in Mining Frontiers in Africa: Anthropological and
Historical Perspectives, eds. Katja Werthmann and Tilo Grätz (Köln,
2012), pp. 23–32; Jan Bart Gewald, ‘Gold the True Motor of West
African History: An Overview of the Importance of Gold in West
Africa and its Relations with the Wider World’, in Worlds of Debts.
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Gold Mining in West Africa, ed.
Cristiana Panella (Amsterdam, 2010), pp. 137–151.
86. See Kaniki, The Economic and Social History, p. 166. This observation
is based mainly on colonial sources. It is worth noting, however, that
neither geologists, nor British colonial administrators were interested in
investigating pre-existing native extractive activity. Geologists were eager
to prove that they were the first to discoverer the deposits. Sometimes,
competition led to disputes such as the one between geologists Junner
and Pollett about who was first to discover a diamond in Sierra Leone.
For British colonial officials, documenting any precolonial mining activ-
ity risked precluding, or complicating, their creation of a legal appara-
tus for the exploitation of mineral resources. In Sierra Leone, the first
340 L. D’Angelo

mining ordinance was enacted in 1927 and was based on the assump-
tion that native people had no knowledge or established use of miner-
als in their lands. See Lorenzo D’Angelo, ‘L’Arte dello Spossessamento.
Un’Archeologia Coloniale del ‘Furto’ della Terra in Sierra Leone’, in
I conflitti per la terra. Tra accaparramento, consumo e accesso indisci-
plinato, eds. Cristiana Fiamingo, Luca Ciabarri, and Mauro Van Aken
(Lungavilla, 2014), pp. 177–190.
87. Jean-Pierre Chaueaveu, Jean-Pierre Colin, Jean-Pierre Jacob, Philippe
Lavigne Delville, and Pierre-Yves Le Meur, Changes in Land Access
and Governance in West Africa: Markets, Social Mediations and Public
Policies (London, 2006).
88. Raymond E. Dumett, El Dorado in West Africa. The Gold-Mining
Frontier, African Labor, and Colonial Capitalism in the Gold Coast,
1875–1900 (Oxford, 1998).
89. Ibid., pp. 144, 150–151, 222.
90. Jim Silver, ‘The Failure of European Mining Companies in the
Nineteenth-Century Gold Coast’, Journal of African History 22, 4
(1981), 511–529, see p. 511.
91. Dumett, El Dorado, p. 144.
92. Ibid., p. 153.
93. A. F. Robertson, ‘On Sharecropping’, Man, 15, 3 (1980), 411–429;
A. F. Robertson, ‘Abusa: The Structural History of an Economic
Contract’, Journal of Development Studies, 18, 4 (1982), 447–478.
94. Dumett, El Dorado, pp. 69, 122.
95. Silver, ‘The Failure’, p. 512; Dumett, El Dorado.
96. Ibid., p. 153.
97. Ibid., p. 222.
98. Chauveau et al., Changes in Land Access.
99. cf. Raymond E. Dumett, ‘Parallel Mining Frontiers in the Gold Coast
and Asante in the late 19th and Early 20th Centuries’, in Mining
Frontiers in Africa, pp. 33–54, esp. p. 40; and Ade Renner-Thomas,
Land Tenure in Sierra Leone. The Law, Dualism and the Making of a
Land Policy (Central Milton Keynes, 2010).
100. In Sierra Leone, Paramount Chiefs are, by definition, the custodians of
the land. See Renner-Thomas, Land Tenure.
101. Ibid., p. 172.
102. Chauveau and Richards, ‘West African Insurgencies’.
103. Igor Kopytoff, The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional
African Societies (Bloomington, 1987).
104. For the Sierra Leone’s case, see Fenda A. Akiwumi, ‘Strangers and
Sierra Leone Mining: Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development
Challenges’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 84, 1 (2014), 773–782;
 12 FROM TRACES TO CARPETS: UNRAVELLING LABOUR PRACTICES … 341

V. R Dorjahn and Christopher Fyfe, ‘Landlord and Stranger: Change

in Tenancy Relations in Sierra Leone’, Journal of African History, 3, 3
(1962), 391–397; Bruce L. Mouser, ‘Landlords-Strangers: A Process
of Accomodation and Assimilation’, International Journal of African
Historical Studies, 8, 3 (1975), 425–440. For a broader historical
and geographical perspective on this region, see George E. Brooks,
Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society and Trade in Western Africa,
1000–1630 (Boulder, 1993).
105. Matthieu Bolay, ‘When Miners Become “Foreigners”: Competing
Categorizations Within Gold Mining Spaces in Guinea’, Resource Policy,
40 (2014), 117–127, see p. 120. Sabine Luning shows the complex-
ity of the interaction among multiple actors (from international min-
ing companies to ‘earth priests’) in present Burkina Faso’s gold mines
(Sabine Luning, ‘Beyond the Pale of Property: Gold Miners Meddling
with Mountains in Burkina Faso’, in Worlds of Debts. Interdisciplinary
Perspectives on Gold Mining in West Africa, ed. Panella (Amsterdam,
2010), pp. 25–48. See also Sabine Luning, ‘Processing Promises of
Gold: A Minefield of Company-community Relations in Burkina Faso’,
Africa Today, 58, 3 (2012), 23–39.
106. Chauveau and Richards, ‘West African Insurgencies’, p. 525.
107. Ibid., p. 525.
108. Chauveau et al., Changes in Land Access, pp. 11, 15; Chauveau and
Richards, ‘West African Insurgencies’, p. 525.
109. Chauveau and Richards, ‘West African Insurgencies’, p. 527.
110. See, for example, Bolay, ‘When Miners Become “Foreigners”’.
111. See, for example, Jan Jensen, ‘What Gold Mining Means for the
Malinke, and How it was Misunderstood by the French Colonial
Administration’, in Worlds of Debts. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Gold
Mining in West Africa, ed. Cristiana Panella (Amsterdam, 2010), pp.
95–110, esp. p. 97.
112. See, for example, Katja Werthmann, ‘Gold Mining in Burkina Faso since
the 1980 s’, in Mining Frontiers in Africa, pp. 119–132.
113. See, for example, Tilo Grätz, ‘Gold Mining in the Atakora Mountains
(Benin): Exchange Relations in a Volatile Economic Field’, in Mining
Frontiers in Africa, pp. 97–118.
114. cf. Chauveau and Richards, ‘West African Insurgencies’, p. 545.
115. Chauveau and Richards, ‘West African Insurgencies’, p. 539; see also p.
537.
116. cf. Robertson, ‘Abusa’.
117. Michael Jackson, Life Within Limits: Well-Being in a World of Want
(Durham–London, 2011), p. 158.
118. Ibid.
342 L. D’Angelo

119. Cf. Morfino, Il tempo della moltitudine, pp. 29, 125.

120. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.
121. Frederick Cooper, ‘African Labor History’, in Global Labour History: A
State of Art, ed. Jan Lucassen (Bern 2006), pp. 91–116, esp. p. 93.
 Index

A Alluvial Diamond Mining Scheme

‘Abd-al-Malik, 99, 104 (ADMS), 325
Abruzzo, 239, 240, 251, 252, 260 Alps, 233, 234
Abu-Lughod, Janet, 3, 16, 30, 56, 58 ‘Amalehjat, 276
Abusa system, 328, 330, 331 Amara, 269
Acadians, 178 Amat y Junient, Manuel, viceroy of
Accumulation, 262 Peru, 177
Acosta, José de, 74, 89 Amatrice, 239
Ade, Guillelmus, 37, 42, 61–63 American Federation of Labor” (AFL),
Aegean, 30, 44, 51, 53, 56, 62, 119 306
Africa, 54, 70, 75, 83, 84, 95, 98, 99, American South, 291, 294–296, 309
106, 261, 294 Americas, 84, 87, 91, 99, 148, 162
Africanus, Leo, 9 Amerindians, 74
Agency, 3, 4, 6, 8, 32 Amsterdam, 9, 57, 123, 147, 163,
Ahwaz, 269 339, 341
Alabama, 295, 304, 309 Anatolia, 30, 37, 42, 44, 52, 53, 57,
Alameda de Extramuros, Havana, 172, 64, 66
173 Andrade, Tonio, vi, x
Albanians, 30 Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC),
Albuquerque, Juan Alfonso de, 75 268
Alcazar, 99 Ankara, 37
Alexandria, 40, 54, 60, 61, 103, 104, Antiquity, 11, 101
109, 158 Apprentices, 159, 236, 245
Algiers, 103, 106, 109, 113, 121 Arabian Peninsula, 265
Allies, 271, 323 Arabs, 30

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 343

C.G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories
of Global Labour, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58490-4
344 Index

Araucanía, 174 Bergamo, 211, 215, 218, 219, 237

Archives, 5, 6, 245, 278, 279 Biddle, Attorney General, 299
Area studies, 3 Biella, 234, 244
Arkansas, 295, 301 Bihar, 275
Armenians, 30, 44 Black Death, 42
Arriaga, Julián de, secretary of the Black Sea, 30, 31, 42–44, 48, 51, 53,
Indies, 177 55
Artisans, 35, 78, 129–131, 135, 140, Bologna, 211
152, 178, 181, 274 Bombay, 273–275, 278–280
Asia, 4, 30, 37, 43, 51, 52, 75–77, Bondage, 95–97, 100, 101, 104,
139, 261, 264, 282 107–109, 111–113, 157, 295,
Asud (Alans), 41, 42 296, 298, 302
Atlanta, 307 Borders, 7–10, 14, 30, 36, 50, 125,
Atlantic Ocean, 8, 75, 81, 83, 84, 99, 148, 159, 160, 162, 185, 205,
100, 107, 110, 174, 187, 190, 206, 208, 230, 232, 233, 243,
207 250–252, 266, 270, 276, 282
Atwakia, 324, 327 Borgo Sessia, 220
Austria, 99, 109 Boston, 303
Avignon, 40–42 Boundaries, 9, 15, 34, 50, 209, 313,
Ayasoluk, 37 316, 318
Aydin, 37 Braudel, Fernand, 98
Azerbaijan, 264, 265, 267 Brazil, 14, 69, 70, 75, 80–82, 84–87,
Azienda generale di fabbriche e fortifi- 185
cazioni, 244 Britain, 125, 174, 189, 261–265, 271,
272, 274, 278
British Petroleum (BP), 278
B Buddhism, 30
Babylon, 82 Buenos Aires, 180, 184, 185, 190
Baghdad, 264, 265 Bugia, 99
Balbi, family, 9 Bulgaria, 30
Balkans, 30, 46, 51 Bullock Brothers, 278
Baluchistan, 271 Burgundy, 214
Bandar Abbas, 271 Burkina Faso, 332
Barbary, 95, 99–101, 104, 105 Burma, 271, 274, 277, 278
Basra, 263, 268, 269 Burma Oil Company, 278
Bassein, 76 Bushehr, 269, 271, 272
Batavia, 9
Baxon, Theodoro, 45
Beijing, 41, 42, 128 C
Belgium, 208, 294 Cadiz, 182, 190
Benin, 332 Caeté, 83, 85, 86
Bensberg, 237 California, 174
 Index 345

Campeche, 176 Chieri, 235

Cape Horn, 177, 187 Chiloé, 187
Capetown, 9 China, 4, 31, 41–43, 123, 125, 126,
Cape Verde, 81, 83 130, 208
Capitalism, 12, 14, 207, 262, 292, Chinese, 4, 40, 41, 55, 125, 128, 136
300, 319, 333 Chios, 30, 103
Caporali (foremen), 239 Chittagong, 278, 279
Cappadocia, 52 Chorão, 71, 76, 78–80
Captives, 95–97, 102, 103, 105, 108, Christians, 36, 37, 40, 41, 44, 46, 72,
109, 111, 112 74, 77, 79, 95, 100
Caragiali, 110 Christine Moll-Murata, 111, 165,
Caraim, 78 167, 169, 172, 188
Caribbean, 175, 182–184, 190 Circassians, 55
Carijó, 83 Circulation
Carlo Emanuele III, king of Sardinia, circulation of ideas, 10
246 circulation of imaginaries, 4
Carmen de Patagones, 187 circulation of individuals, 4, 9
Carpenters, 181, 184, 234, 245, 247, circulation of objects, 9, 10
248 circulation of people, 75
Carrera de Indias, 111, 175 trans-continental circulation, 10
Carta di passo (Pass card), 241, 255 Civilizations, 3, 294
Caste, 78, 80 Civitavecchia, 210
Castillo del Principe (Havana), 175, Class, 4, 12, 80, 216, 249, 274, 281,
183 300, 302, 318
Castle of Jagua, 176 Climate, 3, 178, 180, 239, 280
Castle of Matanzas, 176 Coastal Exploration Syndicate Limited,
Catalans, 44 326
Catechumens, 76 Cologne, 237
Catholics, 76, 80, 82 Colonia do Sacramento, 174
Caucasus, 30, 40, 44, 266, 267 Colonial Office, UK, 180, 324
Central Powers, 263, 265, 269 Colonisation, 81, 178, 180, 181, 187,
Central Selling Organisation (CSO), 191
323 Colony, 177, 178, 180, 181, 185,
Ceuta, 183, 190 324, 326
Ceylon, 273 Commerce, 30, 31, 36, 48, 51, 52,
Chaco, 185 81, 149, 177, 245, 248, 274
Chamber of Castile, 98 Commodity, 10, 36, 44, 149, 267,
Charcas, 185 282, 326
Charles V, king of France, 40 Commodity chains, 10, 14, 162
Charles, V., king of Spain, 81, 97 Communists, 300–302
Chaudarins, 78–80 Como, 216, 218, 219
Chicago, 291–293, 301, 307
346 Index

Comparisons, 3, 8, 13, 75, 303, 307, Court, 40, 41, 75, 81, 108, 128, 129,
314 131, 139, 245, 248, 249, 254,
Complexity, 6, 10, 33, 37, 47, 56, 78, 255, 293, 294, 297, 298, 300,
129, 172, 173, 255, 282, 283, 303, 304, 307
291, 292, 313–315, 322, 332 Craftsmen, 131, 135, 234, 236, 243,
Confraternities, 221, 232, 245–248, 245–249, 254
254 Cranganore, 76
Congo, 294, 322 Crete, 37, 44, 54, 55
Connectedness, 6, 126, 172, 187 Crusaders, 30
Connections Cuatequil, 70
cultural connections, 3, 4, 7, 9–11, Cuba, 172, 176, 184
291, 324 Cultural boundaries. See Boundaries
dis-connections, 7 Culture, 10, 34, 35, 55, 56, 80, 97,
material and symbolic connections, 112, 249, 262
10 Cunningham, William, 292, 293, 297,
micro-global connection, 10 301, 303
tele-connections, 14 Cuzco, 185
Transnational connections, 209 Cyprus, 40, 52, 54, 103
Consolidated African Selection Trust
(CAST), 323
Constantinople, 30, 44, 46 D
Construction industry, 236 Dashestan, 271
Consulate of Commerce, Piedmont, Data-mining, 10
245 Datasets, 3
Contact zone, 7, 31, 45, 47, 192, De Beers Consolidated Mines, 322
230, 254 Della Torre, Cesare, 113
Context, 5–7, 9, 10, 14, 33, 34, 70– Department of Justice, U.S.A., 293,
73, 76, 80, 85, 101, 152, 153, 296, 298, 301, 304, 305
160, 161, 172–174, 178, 183, Deserters, 182, 184, 185, 187, 189,
190, 191, 205, 206, 216, 230, 190
231, 233, 239, 245, 252, 283, Desterrados, 176
292, 296, 302, 305, 315, 316, Detainee, 96, 97, 100, 102, 112
319, 322, 325, 326, 331–333 Detention, 96, 97, 103–106, 110–112
Corsairing, 96, 111 Dhobis (washermen), 279
Corsairs, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101, 104, Diachronic approaches, 12
112 Diamond traders, 320, 322
Council of Aragon, Spain, 98 Digital humanities, 10
Council of Castile, Spain, 98 Directorum ad passagium faciendum,
Council of Ferrara/Florence, 46 36
Council of Finance, Spain, 98 Discontinuities, 3, 12, 172
Council of Trent, 71 Divar, 76, 78
Count of Miranda, 110 Djerba, 99
 Index 347

Dominicans, 42 Eurocentrism, 14
Don (river), 44 Europe, 3, 29, 31, 35, 43, 49, 98,
DuBois, Willian E.B., 294 100, 102, 139, 148, 152, 153,
Duchy of Savoy, 233, 247 158, 205, 207, 237, 240, 252,
Dusseldorf, 237 261, 263, 267, 274, 294, 305,
316
Évora, 75
E Exceptional normal, 173, 174
Egypt, 40, 42, 51, 52, 54, 103, 158 Exchanges, 4, 8, 10, 11, 36, 71, 221,
Eleutheroi, 50 223, 269, 329
El Ferrol, 182
Empires
Byzantine empire, 30, 36 F
Chinese empire, 125 Falklands. See Malvinas
Iberian empires, 70 Famagusta, 52
Ming empire, 126, 131 Fazendas, 83
Ottoman empire, 97–99, 101, 103, Fernandes Sardinha, Pêro, 74, 75, 85
104, 108, 111, 152, 263 Fernando Poo, 174
Portuguese empire, 74, 77, 80, 185 Filipina, 176
Pre-modern empires, 69 Finalisme urbain, 210
Song empire, 40, 129 Flanders, 110
Songhai empire, 105 Florence, 52, 149, 215, 235
Spanish empire, 81, 174, 180, 183, Florida, 184, 294, 297, 304, 305
190, 191 Follow the Traces, 150, 308, 315, 316
Yuan empire, 41, 125 Forminieré, 322
Encomienda, 70, 81, 84, 86 Forzados, 177, 180, 184
England, 110 Foucault, Michel, 45
English Channel, 111 France, 40, 52, 101, 110, 111, 174,
Entanglements, 7, 8, 11, 33, 47, 52, 178
55, 173, 183, 191 Franciscans, 42
Entrepreneurs, 151, 157, 159, 230, Francis I, king of France, 101
231, 234, 235, 243, 244, 246, Francis Xavier, 75
329 Franks, 30
Epirus, 30 Freetown, 326, 328
Epistemology, 2, 6, 15 French Guinea, 323, 325
Espace investí (invested space), 209, Frontiers, 31, 33, 34, 40, 48, 51, 186,
223 263, 281, 283, 316
Espace vecu (living space), 209
Ethnicity, 4, 40
Ethnography, 149, 153, 220 G
Euboia (Negroponte), 50 Gaeta, 242
Eurasia, 3, 31 Galeón de Manila, 175
348 Index

Galicia, 111 Guilds, 152, 247, 254

Galleys, 44, 103, 104, 106, 110, 113 Gulf of Guinea, 81, 174
Gambia, 325 Gulf of Lion, 111
Gang, 138, 293, 295, 316, 319, 321,
331
Ganvkars, 78–80 H
Gao, 105 Habsburgs (Spanish), 103
Gasmouloi, 36 Haftkel, 271
Gattinara, 220–223 Hamadan, 267, 269
Gazars, 279 Han dynasty, vi, ix
Gender, 4, 52, 84 Havana, 172–177, 181–184, 189–191
Generalisation, 172 Health, 3
Geneva, 233, 292, 305, 307, 326 Hindus, 76, 78
Genoa, 44, 52, 237 Historiography, 2, 14, 15, 240
Gentios, 81, 85 Historische Anthropologie (journal),
Germany, 40, 46, 109, 263, 264 v, ix, x
Gilan, 265 History
Gil y Lemos, Francisco, governor of Alltagsgeschichte (History of the
the Malvinas/Falklands, 181, 190 everyday), v
Ginzburg, Carlo, 6, 9, 292, 315 comparative history, 8
GIS, 10 comparative micro-histories, 38, 46,
Global Collaboratory (research pro- 55, 86
ject), 13 construction of history, 4
Global History and Culture Centre, epistemology of history, 2, 6, 15
University of Warwick, 26 fabric of history, 5, 173
Globalization, 162 global history, 1–3, 5, 9–13, 15, 56,
Global lives, 9, 10, 97, 148 75, 148, 192
Goa, 71, 74–78, 80–83 global labour history, 12–14, 71,
Gold and Base Metal Mines of Nigeria, 72, 74, 148, 160, 283, 315
328 global microhistories, 9
Gold Coast, 323–325, 327, 328, 330, Histoire événementielle, 99
331 historicity, 5
Golden Horde, 30, 42, 44 historiography, 2, 14, 15, 71, 240
Governmentality, 4 labour history, 12–14, 71, 72, 148,
Graglia, 234 160, 192, 314
Great Khan, 31 macro-analytical global history, 2, 3,
Great Ming Commandment, 127 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 15, 172, 173,
Great Wall (China), 125, 128 231
Greenblatt, Stephen, 55, 56 macro-history, 38
Grendi, Edoardo, 9 micro-global history, 10
Gribaudi, Maurizio, 5 micro-history, 1, 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 15,
Guatemala, 183 56, 132, 162, 292, 315, 319
 Index 349

micro-spatial history, 2, 5, 11, 12, Iranians, 263, 266

15, 283 Iraq, 30
microstoria, 5 Ireland, 110, 111, 177
spatial history, 2, 4–6, 11, 12, 15, Isfahan, 264, 269, 272, 276
283 Islam, 30, 97, 105, 108, 109
universal history, 2, 314 Islamic Southeast Asia, 139
Holy Land, 37 Istanbul, 103
Holy League, 110 Italians, 44
Hospitallers, 30, 37, 46 Italy, 42, 46, 51–53, 99, 151–153,
Household registration system 203, 229, 230, 232
(China), 126 Ivory Coast, 323, 332
Households, 14, 35, 51, 127–129, ʿIzz ad-Dīn Kaykāwūs, Seljuk, Sultan
153 of Konya, 48
Hungary, 30, 46

J
I Jaffa, 46, 47
I.A. Ashton & Sons, 278 Janissaries, 109
Iberian Peninsula, 52, 109 Jan Lucassen, 28, 167, 172, 188, 233
Identities, 6, 8, 14, 32, 34, 44, 54, Japan, 139, 262
209, 217, 223 Jerusalem, 265
Ignatius of Loyola, 75 Jesuits, 71, 73, 75, 76, 78–84
Ilkhans, 30, 43 Jewish, 44, 53, 55
India, 34, 69, 70, 75–77, 80–82, 87, Jiangxi Province, 130–132, 134
268, 273–279, 281, 282 Jingdezhen, 123–126, 129–132, 134,
Indian Ocean, 80, 139 135, 139
Indios, 181, 185 John III, king of Portugal, 75, 77, 83
Industrialization, 168, 169 John III Vatatzes, 50
Industrial revolution, 148, 262, 316 John of Austria, 99
Industry, 139, 159, 236, 266–269, John of Sulṭāniyya, 42
272–275, 277–283, 294, 322, John VIII Palaiologos, emperor, 46
323, 325, 327, 329, 333, 334 Journeymen, 161, 236
Infrastructures, 177, 178, 180, 191 Juvarra, Filippo, 246
Inquisition, 26
Institutions, 33, 70, 77, 151, 160,
162, 182, 209, 231, 232, 242, K
243, 246, 254, 255, 291, 292, Karachi, 273, 278
296, 331 Karbala, 269, 271
International Labour Organisation Karin Hofmeester, 47, 111, 167, 172,
(ILO), 299, 303, 306 188
Iran, 30, 36, 43, 263–269, 271, 276, Kayseri, 52, 53
278, 282 Kendi, 137, 139
350 Index

Kermanshah, 265, 266, 269 245, 246, 248, 249, 279, 320,
Khanbaliq (Beijing), 41–43 321, 331
Khorasan, 265, 266 La Coruña, 182
Khuzestan, 263–265, 269, 270, 280 La Goleta, 97, 98, 100, 105, 108,
Kingdom of Cilicia, 30 110, 111
Kingdom of Croatia, 30 Lahore, 278
Kingdom of Naples, 110, 111, 150, Laiazzo, 43
231, 240, 241, 253, 254 Laichingen, 12
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 229, Lake Geneva, 233
230, 237, 250, 251, 253 Lanzo valley, 234
Kirkuk, 265 La Paz, 185
Konkani Indians, 76, 81, 83 L’Aquila, 216
Kono District, 324 Lascars, 77
Koranko, 326 Las Casas, Bartholomé de, 81, 84
Korone, 50 Lasite, J.A., 328
Krio, 328 Latifundia, 239, 254
Kubilai Khan, 41 Latin America, 294
Kulacari, 78, 80 Lawrence, T.E. (Lawrence of Arabia),
265
Lebanese, 320, 328, 329
L Leiden, 1, 21, 27, 60
Labour Le Mouvement Social (journal), 13
coerced labour, 95, 294, 295 Leo Lucassen, 50, 207
convict labour, 171–173, 176, 182, Leonessa, 240
191, 316 Lepanto, 98, 99
corvee labour, 139 Levant, 30, 104, 106, 110, 161
free/unfree labour, 97 Levi, Giovanni, 233
global labour histor See under Liberia, 323, 330
Historylabour history See under Limba, 326
history, 12 Linden, Marcel van der, 13, 46, 50,
labour management, 282, 315 51, 87, 112, 166, 167, 188, 189,
labour recruitment, 275 335, 340, 343, 344, 363
labour relations, 10, 12, 70, 73, 77, Lisbon, 81, 106
80, 96, 148, 153, 157, 158, Livorno, 9
160, 172, 191 Local-global divide, 4, 5, 7, 15
military labour, 177 Localities, 6, 15, 34, 39, 46, 69, 292
organization of labour, 84 Locatori d’opera (principals), 239
reciprocal labour, 78, 83 Lombardy, 40, 150
wage labour, 12, 191, 300 London, 7, 46, 111, 322
Labourers, 35, 131, 139, 183, 184, Longue-durée, 12
230, 236, 237, 239, 241, 243, Louisiana, 177, 178, 184, 189
 Index 351

Lugano, 234, 237, 244, 247 Mesopotamia, 263, 265, 268, 269,
Luxembourgh, 208 282
Luzzano, 210 Messina, 54, 112
Messrs Maroc Limited, 326
Mestizos, 73, 84
M Methodology, 1, 3, 97, 191, 315
Madras, 279 Methone, 50
Madrid, 180, 189 Metropole, 4, 178
Maghreb, 53, 96, 99, 104, 107 Mexico, 70
Mali, 325, 332 Michael of Rhodes, 45, 48
Malvinas, 172, 173, 177, 180, 181, Middle Ages, 29, 40, 45
184–187, 189, 191 Migrants, 7, 8, 10, 22, 31–33, 140,
Mamluks, 42 148, 151, 184, 205–225, 227,
Mandingo, 329 232, 239–241, 243, 253, 254,
Manfredonia, Apulia, 45 266, 275–279, 283–285, 289,
Manila, 125, 174 325, 327, 329, 331, 332
Mannheim, 237 Migrations
Manufactures, 126, 131, 134, 139, internal and international migra-
148 tions, 232
Mapello, 215 migrations, 8, 205
Marcantonio, Vito, 300, 302 migration studies, 7, 217
Marcus, George E., 216, 220 short- and long-distance migrations,
Marques de la Torre, 176 231
Massey, Doreen, 6 Miners, 314, 319–321, 325–333
Master builders, 231, 234, 235, 237, Mining, 135, 314, 315, 319–322,
243, 245–247, 249 324–330, 333
Master masons, 246–248 Ministry of Mineral Resources, Sierra
Matanzas, 176 Leone, 319
Material culture, 10 Missionaries, 41, 71, 72, 74, 78, 80,
Mauritania, 325 86, 184
Medick, Hans, v, 12 Mississippi, 294
Medieval Encounters (journal), 45, 64 Mita, 70
Mediterranean, 29–32, 34, 35, 40, 42, Mobility
44–46, 51, 52, 96, 98–101, 108, cross-border mobility, 241
113, 152 labour mobility, 38, 47, 56
Melilla, 183 seasonal mobility, 231
Memphis, 294 work-related mobility, 231
Mende, 326, 329 Modernisation, 11, 15, 207
Menteshe, 37 Modernity, 11, 15, 125, 300
Mercanti di campagna (tenants), 239 Mohammareh (Khoramsahr), 269,
Mercedarians, 97, 107 280
Meride, 237 Mokran, 271
352 Index

Mongol, 4, 30, 40–42, 126, 127 Navarre, 75

Mongol-Islamic world, 31 Navigation, 104, 181
Monopoly, 96, 137, 149, 151, 153, Negros, 81, 83
159, 246, 247, 275, 322, 323, Neophytes, 72, 76, 80, 82, 86
325 Networks
Monte Corvino, John of, 41 network analysis, 34
Monte San Leone, 215 networks of affinities, 31
Montevideo, 184, 185, 187, 190 networks of power, 7
Moor, 54 social networks, 51, 223
Morbio, 216 Neuchatel, 9
Morisco Revolt, 110 New Deal, 291, 299
Morocco, 101, 105, 111 New Granada, 190
Mostaganem, 99 New Orleans, 189, 294
Mosul, 265 New Spain, 182, 189
Muhammad al-Mutawakkil, 99 New York, 291, 302, 307
Mükâtebe, 108 Nigeria, 325, 327–329
Multi-local, 205, 206, 210–212, 218, Norcia, 219
223
Multiplexity, 39
Multi-sited, 15, 204, 205, 210, 216, O
220, 223 Oglethorpe County, Georgia, 291
Multi-sitedness, 210 Olmutz, 237
Münster, 26, 87 Oran, 109, 110, 183
Muzzano, 234 Ordenado (wage), 198
Mytilene, 103 Orders of Redemption, 106
Oricola, 252
Orissa, 275
N Orthodox churches, 44, 46
Naftoun, 271 Osborn & Co., 279
Najaf, 269, 271 Osorno, 187
Nanjing, 128
Naples, 40, 100, 110, 211, 241, 255
Napoleonic era, 240 P
National Association for the Pacific Ocean, 262
Advancement of Colored People Padua, 148–150, 152, 153, 158
(NAACP), 299 Panama, 182
National Diamond Mining Company, Papal Court, 40
325 Papal State, 150, 229–231, 238, 241,
National Negro Congress, 303 242, 250, 251, 253, 254
Natives, 70, 71, 73, 77, 79, 81, 82, Paris, 75, 215, 245
85, 86, 318, 331 Parma, 208, 210, 219
Navarino, 110 Paroikoi, 50
 Index 353

Patagonia, 174, 186 Proletarianisation, 12

Pavia, 101 Prosopographical approach, 97
Pegolotti, Francesco, 43 Puerto de la Soledad, 172–174, 177,
Penal transportation, 172, 173, 182, 178, 181, 185, 189
184–186, 189–191 Puerto Rico, 182, 190
Pensacola, 184 Punjab, 275, 278
Peonage, 291, 293–301, 304, 305, Purry, Jean-Pierre, 9
307
Perceptions, 3, 7, 11
Periodisation, 2, 3, 11, 15 Q
Persia, 42, 51, 264, 269, 271, Qazvin, 264
273–275, 279 Qeshm Island, 271, 272
Persians, 30, 269, 273, 281
Peru, 70, 74, 177, 190
Peter I, king of Cyprus, 40 R
Petitions, 97, 105 Radeff, Anne, 173
Philip II, king of Spain, 105 Raggio, Osvaldo, 292
Phokaia/Foça, 30 Raj, Kapil, 7
Piedmont, 234, 243–246, 253 Ramella, Franco, 292
Piratininga, 71, 85 Rangoon, 273, 278, 282
Poland, 109, 306 Ransom, 101, 102, 106, 107, 251
Police, 232, 241, 243, 266, 325 Refinery, 264, 268, 272, 278, 282
Polo, Marco, 31, 40 Reflexivity, 6
Pontifical State, 208, 218 Reforms
Population, 3, 35, 42, 51, 70, 72, 73, bourbon reforms, 191
97, 100, 103, 125, 127, 128, single whip reforms (yi tiao bian fa),
178, 181, 230, 239–241, 243, 130
251, 265, 271, 278, 281, 324 Regions, 3, 6, 7, 31, 36, 42, 50, 51,
Port Egmont (Malvinas/Falklands), 70, 75, 148, 150, 173, 230, 235,
187, 189 245, 271, 325, 326, 331
Port Louis (Malvinas/Falklands), 178 Relational sociology, 34
Portugal, 75, 80, 85, 86, 110 Representations, 3, 7, 10–13, 181
Portuguese, 70, 71, 74–76, 78, 79, Representativeness, 5, 173
81, 83, 99, 185 Revel, Jacques, 5
Potters, 124, 132, 139 Rhodes, 30, 37, 45, 46, 103, 104
Po valley, 233 Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, 301
Power inequalities, 5 Rijksmuseum, 123
Prague, 237 Rio de la Plata (Captaincy/
Presidiarios, 177, 178, 180 Viceroyalty), 180
Preveza, 98 Riofreddo, 252
Primary sources, 4, 5, 8, 97 Rio Negro, 88
Production process, 132, 137, 139, Riotorto, 252
149
354 Index

Roman Campagna, 230, 239, 240, Seville, 177, 184

243, 254 Sharecroppers, 295, 301, 302, 306
Rome, 42, 109, 203, 204, 210, 211, Sharif, 105
214–216, 219–221, 223, 240, Shat al-Arab river, 264
243 Shaw Wallace & Co. Ltd, 277
Roosevelt, Franklin D., president of Shepherds, 150, 230, 239–241, 254
the U.S.A., 294, 299 Shiite, 269, 278
Rotterdam, 237 Sicily, 52, 100, 110, 111, 113, 211
Ruiz Puente, Felipe, 178, 181 Sierra Leone, 314, 315, 319, 320,
Runaways, 293 322–325, 327–331
Russia, 30, 44, 174, 263, 265, 274 Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST),
Russian Revolution, 265, 266, 274 323
Russians, 41, 264, 265, 271, 272 Sikhs, 279
Sima Qian, 144
Simultaneity, 9, 69, 205, 208, 209,
S 215, 223
Sabina, 219 Sinop, 48
Safavids, 99 Sistan, 266
Salvador de Bahia, 71 Sixtus, V., pope, 211
Salviati, Antonio Maria, cardinal, 215 Slavery
Samos, 37, 50 atlantic slavery, 75, 81, 107
San Agustín, 184 chattel slavery, 100, 177
San Carlos de la Cabaña, 175, 183 enslavement, 52, 83
San Juan, 182, 183, 190 mediterranean slavery, 26, 66, 121
San Julián/Floridablanca, 187 second slavery, 8
San Marcos de Apalache, 184 Slaves, 36, 40, 42, 51–55, 83–85,
San Sisto pauper hospital, Rome, 211 102–104, 108, 175, 176, 181,
São Paulo, 14, 85 183, 326
São Tomé, 83 Slave trade, 51, 81, 84, 107
Saracens, 36, 42 Slavonic, 30
Sardinia, 111 Smyrna, 36, 40, 50
Sarkars, 277 Socialists, 301
Scale, 4, 6, 15, 37, 43, 55, 100, 132, Society of Jesus. See Jesuits
206, 291, 292, 306, 313, 315 Soldiers, 51, 77, 100, 101, 111, 175,
Schiel, Juliane, 173 177, 178, 181, 184, 262, 268,
Sebastião, King of Portugal, 99 269
Seljuks, 30 Soliman Pacha, 104
Sephardim, 9 Songuinex, 323
Serbia, 30 Sora, 242
Serenissima, 44 Southern Nicaea, 30, 50
Settlers, 70, 74, 76, 81–83, 86, 178, Southern Tenant Farmers Union
181, 184, 191, 283 (STFU), 301
 Index 355

Soviet, 302, 305, 317 Tamoio, 83

Space Tana/Azow, 43
spatial analysis, 10 Tanganyika, 323
spatiality, 8, 13 Tangestan, 271
spatially-aware approach, 15 Tartars, 36, 42
spatial turn, 2 Taxonomy, 13, 172
spatial unit, 5 Tehran, 264, 266, 267
trans-local spaces, 253 Teleology, 3, 5, 12, 34, 148, 291,
trans-state spaces, 243 315, 317, 319
Spain, 40, 54, 111, 150, 151, 153, Temne, 326, 329
174, 175, 180, 182, 189 Terra di Lavoro, 239, 240, 254
Spanish Lake, 177 Territoriality, 242
St. Petersburg, 274 Textiles, 31, 128
State-formation, 292 Text-searchability, 10
Steinfort, 237 Thogay, 41
Stoler, Ann Laura, 9 Thucydides, vi, ix
Strait of Magellan, 186 Tiburtina, 219
Straits’ Settlement, 273 Tierra del Fuego, 186
Strangers, 35, 332 Tigris, 269
Strategy, 9, 14, 42, 76, 264, 298, 302, Time, 2, 3, 7, 11, 15, 30, 34, 36, 38,
303, 314 42, 46, 52, 55, 75, 78, 80, 85,
Strick, Scott & Co., 277 97, 101, 105, 107, 108, 111,
Strozzi, duke, 218 125, 130, 156, 162, 172, 185,
Structures, 5, 6, 33, 51, 55, 70, 73, 190, 205, 215, 216, 235, 240,
126 244, 253, 262, 273, 276, 297,
Sublime Porte, 110 300, 306, 322, 325, 331
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, 8 Timur, 37
Sultanate of Konya, 30 Tiswadi, 78
Sultaniyya, 36, 42 Toghon Temür, emperor, 41
Sunni, 269, 278 Tonnicoda, 251
Superga, 237 Traces, 5, 9, 12, 98, 150, 206, 291,
Supporting system (or tributing sys- 314, 316, 318
tem), 327 Trade, 31, 42, 52, 99, 138, 150, 158,
Supreme Court, U.S.A., 304 161, 174, 187, 236, 245, 300,
Switzerland, 234 320
Sykes, Christopher, 268 Trade associations, 236, 245
Synchronicity, 12 Transhumance, 239, 254
Trans-local, 7, 9, 29, 31, 56, 75, 81,
148, 191, 205, 208, 230–232,
T 254, 283
Tabriz, 43, 44 Trans-locality, 7, 14
Tahiti, 174 Transnationalism, 205, 206, 208
356 Index

Trans-national perspectives, 7 Vlach, 30

Travel documents, 240
Trebizond, 30, 44
Trinitarians, 97, 107 W
Tripolis, 54 War
Trivellato, Francesca, 9 Cold War, 305, 307
Tucumán, 185 First world war, 282, 324
Tunis, 97–101, 103, 104, 109–111, Hundred Years war, 40
113 prisoners of war, 96, 101
Tupi, 81–86 Russo-Japanese war, 274
Turin, 229–231, 233–235, 244, 245, Second world war, 294, 305
248, 253–255 Seven Years war, 172, 174, 184, 189
Turks, 30, 31, 264 warfare, 112, 262, 280
Tuscany, 243 World wars, 101
Tutorat, 332 Wassa, 330, 331
Western Asia Minor, 30, 37
Western Canada, 178
U Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 315, 317, 318
‘Ulama, 269, 271, 272 Wolofs, 83, 84
Underground Railroad, 303 Wood carvers, 245, 248
United Nations, 303–306 Work
United Province, 275 commodified work, 83
United States of America, 311 indentured work, 191
University, 245, 246 intellectual work, 102
Urbanisation, 236, 243 physical work, 102
Urbino, 215, 218 sexual work, 102
skills, 74
tasks, 136, 173, 277
V Workers, 13, 14, 71–75, 77, 78,
Vagrants, 180, 181 83, 87, 100, 124, 126, 127,
Valdivia, 187 129, 131–133, 135, 136, 140,
Vallinfredda, 252 150, 151, 155, 160, 176, 180,
Valtellina, 214, 218 230, 231, 233, 239, 240, 244,
Velletri, 211, 217 247–249, 254, 266, 268, 272,
Venezuela, 182 277, 278, 280, 301, 313, 326,
Venice, 31, 32, 40, 44–47, 149, 150, 328, 330, 333
152, 159 Workers Defense League (WDL), 299,
Vercelli, 220 304
Vicariate, Turin, 232, 248 Workforce, 32, 49, 129, 131, 135,
Vienna, 237 153, 174, 176, 177, 190, 236,
Villefranche-sur-Saône, 212 254, 276, 327
Viú, 234
 Index 357

Workshops, 134, 151, 152, 155, 157, Z

159, 245, 247, 248 Zemon Davis, Natalie, 24, 115
World-system, 4, 11, 206 Zheng He (or Cheng Ho), 125
Württemberg, v Zhang Juzheng, head of the Grand
Secretariat, China, 129
Žižek, Slavoj, 295
Y Zomia, 4
Yangzi, 128 Zurich, 237