Introduction

The papers in this book are the result of a two-day workshop held in Oxford in April 1985 under the auspices of the History Workshop Centre for Social History. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together a wide variety of papers under the umbrella title ‘Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour’. The formal notice to prospective speakers read:

The intention is for it to be an interdisciplinary event, treating slavery in its broadest definition, within any culture and from any period (ancient and modern); to seek definitions of ‘slavery’; and to encourage a cross-fertilisation of ideas, and bring together usually isolated disciplines and areas of research.