“a sola riserva della perduta libertà”. La schiavitù nel Mediterraneo nella seconda metà del Settecento

“a sola riserva della perduta libertà”. Slavery in the Mediterranean in the second half of the Eighteenth century

Abstract

In recent years, Mediterranean slavery in the Modern Age has become a topic of great interest to historians. The merit of having broken a long historiographical silence is to be attributed to Fernand Braudel, who was the first, in 1949, to put the accent on the issue, and to whom he dedicated more space with the second edition of the Méditerranée, in 1966, precisely to indicate its importance. Without forgetting the results of a well-established historiographical reflection on Mediterranean slavery, we could broaden the perspective of investigation, linking the final trajectory of human trade practiced in the Mediterranean at the end of the eighteenth century, and the irruption of the United States, the day after independence, and their 'encounter' with Mediterranean slavery.