Slavery After Rome, 500-1100

Rezensionen / Stimmen

This excellent work provides a new lens for understanding the many varieties of early medieval unfreedom, and readers should welcome the clarity Rio has brought to this topic... Highly recommended. * CHOICE * Rio spends considerable ink offering critiques of key scholarship on medieval slavery. I used this book in a reading group I facilitated for graduate student women, and these extended analyses were extremely useful in thinking through the scholarly landscape on medieval slavery and, for a wider audience, modes of scholarly criticism ... [This book] is a good reminder, useful to scholars and students alike: law is not static, not in its formation or its implementation, and instead of reading law as something that shapes human behavior, we must recognize the ways in which human behavior shapes law's creation and utilization. * Rena Lauer, H-Slavery * Slavery after Rome shows in great detail and with commendable sophistication the omnipresence of that institution, in its many faces, in the early Middle Ages in the west. Rio has produced a rich and courageous book that tackles in new and original ways an important historical topic, bringing to the table an impressive array of evidence and arguments concerned with the early medieval period. * Ulrike Roth, Early Medieval Europe * Rio has done a splendid job of analysing an extremely intractable source base and providing an interpretation that, without in any way trying to smooth over the inconsistencies and messiness of the evidence, nevertheless makes sense. Her book forces us to rethink narratives regarding the importance of the slave trade for the early European economy ... She has done a tremendous service by giving us a new basis for discussion of one of those elements of social transformation. This study will be an indispensable addition to any and every library (and course bibliography) that includes early medieval history in its remit. * Shami Ghosh, Reviews in History *