ABSTRACT
Recent research has demonstrated that early modern slavery was much more widespread than the traditional concentration on plantation slavery in the context of European colonial expansion would suggest. Although historians have recently rediscovered many regions of world slavery there is a recognized dearth of studies in the Muscovite field. Russian captives and slaves are frequently mentioned in the sources, as far away as the Indian Ocean, Cuba, China, northern Germany or England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but only a few overviews mention them briefly, while the limited specialized studies rely on a small number of sources. Historians have categorized these people as military captives; 2 however, the majority were civilians, many of whom were subjected to exhausting work and conditions on galleys, as well as to agricultural and menial work. Slavery denotes various forms of bonded labour, a common practice in the early modern world and in the nineteenth century, both within and outside the spectrum commonly known as slavery. 3 Chattel slavery, a particularly severe form of bonded labour was ‘invented’ by Western Europeans, facing very low costs of preventing slaves fleeing across the ocean and the opportunities of plentiful, almost virgin lands on which sugar plantations were grown that quickly exhausted the soil. By contrast, Ottoman slavery was mild, at least in comparison with contemporary norms. However, this does not detract from the plight of many slaves who were forced against their will to go abroad, enduring arduous conditions during the trip across the steppe when slavers had to quicken their pace to evade persecutors. Although some elite slaves may have enjoyed luxuries or at least a secure life, others were put to hard labour such as rowing or they served to broaden the economic and social base of elite households in the provinces, which gained dependable agents to maintain far-reaching networks of power within the empire and the capital; slaves were particularly useful for these roles as within the Ottoman Empire they had no obligations to kin outside the owner’s family. While slaves in the Ottoman Empire enjoyed certain rights and often had access to the law courts there is considerable evidence that they did not always see the courts as helpful, and even in the nineteenth century slaves resisted their owners. 4 Because of such divergent life chances cases of returning former slaves were numerous but few in terms of the overall numbers of the enslaved. However, it was returning slaves, rather than those staying in the Ottoman Empire, who were more likely to influence Muscovite views of slavery in the south.
