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Introduction
This essay discusses how servants, slaves and other dependant people were classified by early modern Europeans through the analysis of the writings of ancient Greek, Italian, French and English authors, including philosophers, jurists, authors of directions on household management and travellers. After analysing common descriptions of servants and slaves, the issue of slavery in relation to the self-representation of Western Europe is briefly discussed. Finally, the chapter addresses various forms of dependence in different European countries from the late Middle Ages to the early nineteenth century as they were described by contemporaries.
Long traditions of historical studies have addressed serfdom;1 Marc Bloch, ‘Le servage dans la société européenne’, in Marc Bloch, Mélanges historiques, vol. 1 (Paris, 1963), pp. 261–528, partially translated by William R. Beer as Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages: Selected Essays (Berkeley, 1975). More recent works: Michael L. Bush (ed.), Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage (Abington, 1996); Karl Kaser, ‘Serfdom in Eastern Europe’, in David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli (eds), History of the European Family, vol. 1 (New Haven, 2001), pp. 4–62; Tracy Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom (Cambridge, 2011); Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Schiavitù e servaggio nell’economia europea secc. XI–XVIII – Serfdom and Slavery in the European Economy 11th–18th centuries (Florence, 2014). rural and
domestic service in Europe;2 Raffaella Sarti, ‘Historians, Social Scientists, Servants, and Domestic Workers: Fifty Years of Research on Domestic and Care Work’, International Review of Social History, 592 (2014), 279–314, also published in Dirk Hoerder, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk and Silke Neunsinger (eds), Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers (Leiden, 2015), pp. 25–60; Jane Whittle (ed.), Servants in Rural Europe 1400–1900 (Woodbridge, 2017); Fabrice Boudjaaba and Francisco García González (eds), El trabajo doméstico y sirviente en la Europa rural (ss. XVI–XIX). Diversidad de modelos regionales y formas de dependencia, special issue of Mundo Agrario, 18 (2017); Isidro Dubert and Vincent Gourdon (eds), Inmigración, trabajo y servicio doméstico. En la Europa urbana, siglos XVIII–XX (Madrid, 2017). and Atlantic3 For example, Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, Les traites négrières. Essai d’histoire globale (Paris, 2004); David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage. The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford–New York, 2006); Lisa A. Lindsay, Captives as Commodities. The Transatlantic Slave Trade (Prentice Hall, 2008); Michael Zeuske, Sklavenhändler, Negreros und Atlantikkreolen: eine Weltgeschichte des Sklavenhandels im atlantischen Raum (Berlin–Boston, 2015). On emancipation see Gabriele Turi, Schiavi in un mondo libero. Storia dell’emancipazione dall’età moderna a oggi (Rome–Bari, 2012). For a good overview see Patrizia Delpiano, La schiavitù in età moderna (Rome–Bari, 2009). and Mediterranean slavery.4 Salvatore Bono, Schiavi musulmani nell’Italia moderna: galeotti, vu’ cumprà, domestici (Napels, 1999); Salvatore Bono, ‘La schiavitù nel Mediterraneo moderno: storia di una storia’, Cahiers de la Méditerranée, 65 (2002), 1–16; Giovanna Fiume, Schiavitù mediterranee. Corsari, rinnegati e santi di età moderna (Milano, 2009); Giuliana Boccadamo, Napoli e l’Islam. Storie di musulmani, schiavi e rinnegati in età moderna (Naples, 2010); Roger Botte and Alessandro Stella (eds), Couleurs de l’esclavage sur les deux rives de la Méditerranée (Moyen-Âge – XXè siècle) (Paris, 2012); Fabienne Guillen and Salah Trabelsi (eds), Les esclavages en Méditerranée. Espaces et dynamiques économiques (Madrid, 2012); Sara Cabibbo and Maria Lupi (eds), Relazioni religiose nel Mediterraneo. Schiavi, redentori, mediatori (secc. XVI–XIX) (Rome, 2012); Andrea Pelizza, Riammessi a respirare l’aria tranquilla: Venezia e il riscatto degli schiavi in età moderna (Venice, 2013); Serena di Nepi (ed.), Schiavi nelle terre del Papa. Norme rappresentazioni, problemi a Roma e nello Stato della Chiesa in età moderna, special issue of Dimensioni e Problemi della Ricerca Storica, 26 (2013); Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Schiavitù e servaggio; Salvatore Bono, Schiavi: una storia mediterranea (XVI–XIX secolo) (Bologna, 2016); Giulia Bonazza, Abolitionism and the Persistence of Slavery in Italian States, 1750–1850 (London, 2019). Yet these traditions have developed rather independently from each other. Relationships and commonalities were thus partly overlooked, or described as if, in Europe, there was a linear transition from ancient slavery to medieval serfdom and then to free modern service.5 For instance, Henri Jean-Baptiste Grégoire, De la domesticité chez les peuples anciens et modernes (Paris, 1814), pp. 1–40. Only recently have historians focused on themes such as the presence and status of Mediterranean slaves in areas far from the Mediterranean; the hinterland’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade’s interest networks; the presence and status, in the Old Continent, of slaves brought from the colonies; and the long-term survival of different forms of personal dependence in Europe.6 For instance, Robert J. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor: the Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350–1870 (Chapel Hill, 1991); Sue Peabody, There Are no Slaves in France: the Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (Oxford, 1996); Suzy Pasleau and Isabelle Schopp (eds), with Raffaella Sarti, Proceedings of the Servant Project, vol. 2, Domestic Service and the Emergence of a New Conception of Labour in Europe (Liège, 2005); vol. 3, Domestic Service and the Evolution of the Law (Liège, 2005); Andrea Weindl, ‘Slave Trade of Northern Germany from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries’, in David Eltis and David Richardson (eds), Extending the Frontiers. Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Database (New Haven, 2008), pp. 250–71; Raffaella Sarti, ‘Tramonto di schiavitù. Sulle tracce degli ultimi schiavi presenti in Italia (sec. XIX)’, in Felice Gambin (ed.), Alle radici dell’Europa: Mori, giudei e zingari nei paesi del Mediterraneo occidentale, secoli XVIII e XIX (Florence, 2009), pp. 281–97; Alessandro Stanziani, Bondage. Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries (New York, 2014); Bono, Schiavi; Felix Brahm and Eve Rosenhaft (eds), Slavery Hinterland: Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe, 1680–1850 (Woodbridge, 2016).
Furthermore, some historians have now recognised that ‘unfree labor and forms of coercion were perfectly compatible with market development’: ‘economic growth between the seventh and the mid-nineteenth century in Russia, Europe, and the Indian Ocean region was achieved through the wide use of bondage and legal constraints on labor’.7 Stanziani, Bondage, p. 1. When bonded labour eventually collapsed (only ‘with the second Revolution and the rise of the welfare state’, according to Alessandro Stanziani8 Ibid., p. 2.), there was widespread expectation that secure employment would expand to an increasingly larger share of the worldwide population – as working people who enjoyed new rights were initially only a small minority, mainly located in the West. On the contrary, in many countries nowadays workers experience a loss of rights and rising insecurity, and this is particularly apparent in Europe, where for a long time labour was associated with growing rights. Additionally, there is a revival of paid domestic work and even of slavery.9 Raffaella Sarti, Servo e padrone, o della (in)dipendenza. Un percorso da Aristotele ai nostri giorni (Bologna, 2015 [Quaderni di Scienza & Politica, no. 2]), pp. 11–22; Sarti, ‘Historians’.
Besides the present socio-economic situation, the critique of Western civilisation and colonialism by post-colonial studies has also prompted new sociological, anthropological, economic and historical scrutiny of slavery, bondage and any other form of unfree labour, both now and in the past. Research covers the entire world, including areas that for a long time were only marginally considered, such as North-Western and Central Europe.
This chapter contributes to this strand of studies focusing, as mentioned, on the description and classification of slaves, servants and other dependent people by early modern authors. Understanding how Europeans perceived and described them is important to reach a more precise knowledge of the past, to assess Westerners’ self-representation and to pinpoint the differences between past and present. The results of this analysis may well surprise some readers.
 
1      Marc Bloch, ‘Le servage dans la société européenne’, in Marc Bloch, Mélanges historiques, vol. 1 (Paris, 1963), pp. 261–528, partially translated by William R. Beer as Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages: Selected Essays (Berkeley, 1975). More recent works: Michael L. Bush (ed.), Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage (Abington, 1996); Karl Kaser, ‘Serfdom in Eastern Europe’, in David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli (eds), History of the European Family, vol. 1 (New Haven, 2001), pp. 4–62; Tracy Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom (Cambridge, 2011); Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Schiavitù e servaggio nell’economia europea secc. XI–XVIII – Serfdom and Slavery in the European Economy 11th–18th centuries (Florence, 2014). »
2      Raffaella Sarti, ‘Historians, Social Scientists, Servants, and Domestic Workers: Fifty Years of Research on Domestic and Care Work’, International Review of Social History, 592 (2014), 279–314, also published in Dirk Hoerder, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk and Silke Neunsinger (eds), Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers (Leiden, 2015), pp. 25–60; Jane Whittle (ed.), Servants in Rural Europe 1400–1900 (Woodbridge, 2017); Fabrice Boudjaaba and Francisco García González (eds), El trabajo doméstico y sirviente en la Europa rural (ss. XVI–XIX). Diversidad de modelos regionales y formas de dependencia, special issue of Mundo Agrario, 18 (2017); Isidro Dubert and Vincent Gourdon (eds), Inmigración, trabajo y servicio doméstico. En la Europa urbana, siglos XVIII–XX (Madrid, 2017). »
3      For example, Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, Les traites négrières. Essai d’histoire globale (Paris, 2004); David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage. The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford–New York, 2006); Lisa A. Lindsay, Captives as Commodities. The Transatlantic Slave Trade (Prentice Hall, 2008); Michael Zeuske, Sklavenhändler, Negreros und Atlantikkreolen: eine Weltgeschichte des Sklavenhandels im atlantischen Raum (Berlin–Boston, 2015). On emancipation see Gabriele Turi, Schiavi in un mondo libero. Storia dell’emancipazione dall’età moderna a oggi (Rome–Bari, 2012). For a good overview see Patrizia Delpiano, La schiavitù in età moderna (Rome–Bari, 2009). »
4      Salvatore Bono, Schiavi musulmani nell’Italia moderna: galeotti, vu’ cumprà, domestici (Napels, 1999); Salvatore Bono, ‘La schiavitù nel Mediterraneo moderno: storia di una storia’, Cahiers de la Méditerranée, 65 (2002), 1–16; Giovanna Fiume, Schiavitù mediterranee. Corsari, rinnegati e santi di età moderna (Milano, 2009); Giuliana Boccadamo, Napoli e l’Islam. Storie di musulmani, schiavi e rinnegati in età moderna (Naples, 2010); Roger Botte and Alessandro Stella (eds), Couleurs de l’esclavage sur les deux rives de la Méditerranée (Moyen-Âge – XXè siècle) (Paris, 2012); Fabienne Guillen and Salah Trabelsi (eds), Les esclavages en Méditerranée. Espaces et dynamiques économiques (Madrid, 2012); Sara Cabibbo and Maria Lupi (eds), Relazioni religiose nel Mediterraneo. Schiavi, redentori, mediatori (secc. XVI–XIX) (Rome, 2012); Andrea Pelizza, Riammessi a respirare l’aria tranquilla: Venezia e il riscatto degli schiavi in età moderna (Venice, 2013); Serena di Nepi (ed.), Schiavi nelle terre del Papa. Norme rappresentazioni, problemi a Roma e nello Stato della Chiesa in età moderna, special issue of Dimensioni e Problemi della Ricerca Storica, 26 (2013); Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Schiavitù e servaggio; Salvatore Bono, Schiavi: una storia mediterranea (XVI–XIX secolo) (Bologna, 2016); Giulia Bonazza, Abolitionism and the Persistence of Slavery in Italian States, 1750–1850 (London, 2019). »
5      For instance, Henri Jean-Baptiste Grégoire, De la domesticité chez les peuples anciens et modernes (Paris, 1814), pp. 1–40. »
6      For instance, Robert J. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor: the Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350–1870 (Chapel Hill, 1991); Sue Peabody, There Are no Slaves in France: the Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (Oxford, 1996); Suzy Pasleau and Isabelle Schopp (eds), with Raffaella Sarti, Proceedings of the Servant Project, vol. 2, Domestic Service and the Emergence of a New Conception of Labour in Europe (Liège, 2005); vol. 3, Domestic Service and the Evolution of the Law (Liège, 2005); Andrea Weindl, ‘Slave Trade of Northern Germany from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries’, in David Eltis and David Richardson (eds), Extending the Frontiers. Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Database (New Haven, 2008), pp. 250–71; Raffaella Sarti, ‘Tramonto di schiavitù. Sulle tracce degli ultimi schiavi presenti in Italia (sec. XIX)’, in Felice Gambin (ed.), Alle radici dell’Europa: Mori, giudei e zingari nei paesi del Mediterraneo occidentale, secoli XVIII e XIX (Florence, 2009), pp. 281–97; Alessandro Stanziani, Bondage. Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries (New York, 2014); Bono, Schiavi; Felix Brahm and Eve Rosenhaft (eds), Slavery Hinterland: Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe, 1680–1850 (Woodbridge, 2016). »
7      Stanziani, Bondage, p. 1. »
8      Ibid., p. 2. »
9      Raffaella Sarti, Servo e padrone, o della (in)dipendenza. Un percorso da Aristotele ai nostri giorni (Bologna, 2015 [Quaderni di Scienza & Politica, no. 2]), pp. 11–22; Sarti, ‘Historians’. »