IRSH 57 (2012), pp. 87–111 doi:10.1017/S0020859011000770 r 2012 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis Historiography and Research Problems of Slavery and the Slave Trade in a Global-Historical Perspective* M ICHAEL Z EUSKE Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cologne E-mail: michael.zeuske@uni-koeln.de SUMMARY: This article takes a global-historical perspective on all slaveries and slave trades (and contraband trading of human bodies) in relation to today’s state of capitalist accumulation. It follows the different ‘‘national’’ schools of slavery research in different imperial traditions, as well as the sections of historical thinking stimu- lated through slavery research. Although legal ownership over humans does not exist any more, more women and men are in conditions of slavery today than in any other period of history since 1200. Against this background, the article criticizes the concentration in historiography on ‘‘hegemonic’’ slaveries (antique, Islamic, and American plantation slaveries) and proposes a focus on smaller ‘‘slaveries’’ all over the world (first of all of women and children), and on the agency of slaves and slave women, rather than on ‘‘great’’ slavery in a tradition of ‘‘Roman Law’’. Slavery research has been dominated since c.1970 by two cultures of historiography and memory: those of the USA and Brazil – though completely unbalanced from a European perspective, with some 80 per cent of publications and research originating in the USA against 10 per cent in Brazil, despite a very important research institute in Canada (The Harriet Tubman Institute). 1 Brazilian global-historical research dominates the history of the South Atlantic and naturally enough that of the Brazilian internal market. In Brazil itself, besides slavery research on the Anglo- American space (centred on the USA), there exists the best, quantitatively most comprehensive and detailed research in the world into slavery, the slave trade, and the slave condition, as well as national post-emancipation research that includes local-historical studies. This too is only natural, * I would like to thank David Fernbach for the excellent translation. 1. Michael Zeuske, ‘‘Umrisse einer postkolonialen Geschichte der Sklaven und der Sklaverei im Atlantik’’, in idem (ed.), Sklaven und Sklaverei in den Welten des Atlantiks, 1400–1940. Umrisse, Anfa¨nge, Akteure, Vergleichsfelder und Bibliografien (Mu¨ nster [etc.], 2006), vol. 1 of M. Zeuske (ed.), Sklaverei und Postemanzipation. terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000770 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 34.228.24.229, on 26 May 2020 at 05:10:20, subject to the Cambridge Core