Beyond Exceptionalism: Traces of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Early Modern Germany, 1650-1850

Description

While the economic involvement of early modern Germany in slavery and the slave trade is increasingly receiving attention, the direct participation of Germans in human trafficking remains a blind spot in historiography. This edited volume focuses on practices of enslavement taking place within German territories in the early modern period as well as on the people of African, Asian, and Native American descent caught up in them. Acknowledgements Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Beyond Exceptionalism – Traces of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Early Modern Germany, 1650–1850 1 Germany and the Early Modern Atlantic World: Economic Involvement and Historiography 2 Violence, Social Status, and Blackness in Early Modern Germany: The Case of the Black Trumpeter Christian Real (ca. 1643–after 1674) 3 Slavery and Skin: The Native Americans Ocktscha Rinscha and Tuski Stannaki in the Holy Roman Empire, 1722–1734 4 “I Have No Shortage of Moors”: Mission, Representation, and the Elusive Semantics of Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Moravian Sources 5 Slavery and the Law in Eighteenth-Century Germany 6 From Slave Purchases to Child Redemption: A Comparison of Aristocratic and Middle-Class Recruiting Practices for “Exotic” Staff in Habsburg Austria 7 Black Hamburg: People of Asian and African Descent Navigating a Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Job Market 8 Invisible Products of Slavery: American Medicinals and Dyestuffs in the Holy Roman Empire 9 An Augsburg Pastor’s Views on Africans, the Slave Trade, and Slavery: Gottlieb Tobias Wilhelm’s Conversations about Man (1804) 10 “We Do Not Need Any Slaves; We Use Oxen and Horses”: Children’s Letters from Moravian Communities in Central Europe to Slaves’ Children in Suriname (1829) 11 “No German Ship Conducts Slave Trade!” The Public Controversy about German Participation in the Slave Trade during the 1840s