#Feudal kingdoms europe free#

Each of these regions merits a bibliography of its own. Though Europe was not the only slave-holding region during the medieval period, scholarship about the history of slavery in medieval Byzantium, the Islamic world, Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Africa, and the Americas is substantial.

#Feudal kingdoms europe free#

However, the composition of enslaved populations, their demographic and social significance in relation to free populations, the precise legal meaning of slave status, and the practices associated with slavery all varied significantly by region and era. They used slaves for agricultural and artisanal labor as well as domestic, sexual, reproductive, and military service. Yet into the 14th and 15th centuries, medieval Europeans continued to own slaves, trade in slaves, and enslave each other as well as non-European others. Among scholars, this common knowledge is sometimes reinforced by Marxist historical narratives, according to which slavery was the mode of production characteristic of the Roman period, while serfdom characterized the medieval period. Where then did the common knowledge come from? In the first instance, it derives from the late-18th- and 19th-century abolitionist assumption that as Christianity spread through Europe during the Middle Ages, it must surely have driven out slavery. However, there is a thriving body of scholarship which demonstrates that slavery was practiced widely in various forms in Europe during the Middle Ages, alongside captivity, serfdom, and other types of unfreedom. Common knowledge would have it that slavery did not exist in medieval Europe.