Slavery sessions at the 2016 Leeds IMC

Sessions and abstracts for papers on slavery to be presented at the Leeds IMC 2016

Program information (including abstracts) for sessions on slavery organized for the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2016

2019

In November 2019, Jesus College, Cambridge became the first College in Cambridge or Oxford to publish the results of its ongoing inquiry into the ways in which the College benefitted from slavery and colonial violence. The uploaded Report presents the results of the first phase of the work carried out by the Legacy of Slavery Working Party (LSWP), Chaired by Veronique Mottier. The work of the LSWP was carried out by Veronique Mottier, Robert Athol, Michael Edwards, Julius Grower, Elly Robson, Christopher Jeppesen, Claire Fenton-Glynn, Shailaja Fennell, Renaud Morieux, Preti Taneja and Rohan Clarke, and scrutinised by External Member Prof. Verene Shepherd from the University of Mona/Jamaica. The Inquiry aims to examine the place of Jesus College in relation to the wider dynamics of slavery, colonial administration, colonial violence, racial science and long-term financial and social legacies including institutional exclusions and under-representation. Note that the College Inquiry runs parallel to, but is independent from, the wider Cambridge University Legacies of Enslavement Inquiry, for more information, see: https://www.v-c.admin.cam.ac.uk/projects/legacies-of-enslavement

No abstract - but extract Slavery occupies a prominent place on the political agenda today. Home Secretary Theresa May’s Modern Slavery Bill was announced in the Queen’s Speech in June 2014; in the United States, President Barack Obama proclaimed January 2014 as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. This interlacing of the terms ‘trafficking’ and ‘modern slavery’ produces an extremely broad appeal to humanitarian feeling. Those involved in campaigns against trafficking and modern slavery include politicians from across the political spectrum, and religious leaders from across the faiths. Trades unions are there, but so too are big businesses. The Global Business Coalition Against Human Trafficking (gBCAT), includes Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, Ford, Microsoft and ManpowerGroup amongst its members. As its co-founder David Arkless put it, ‘When you get involved in something like this your employees will love it, the public will love it and your shareholders will love it.’3 Famous actors and rock stars are also there ‘lovin’ it’, contributing to what Dina Haynes terms, ‘the celebrification of human trafficking’,4 and lending their support to the many NGOs that exhort ‘ordinary’ folk, especially the young, to join the struggle against modern slavery.

2009

The UN has updated definitions of slavery to take into account its presentday forms [in 1982 …]:-) slavery is any form of dealing with human beings leading to the forced exploitation of their labour.-) slavery is any institution or practice which, by restricting the freedom of the individual, is susceptible of causing severe hardships and serious deprivation of liberty.

2019

In November 2019, Jesus College, Cambridge became the first College in Cambridge or Oxford to publish the results of its ongoing inquiry into the ways in which the College benefitted from slavery and colonial violence. The uploaded Report presents the results of the first phase of the work carried out by the Legacy of Slavery Working Party (LSWP), Chaired by Veronique Mottier. The work of the LSWP was carried out by Veronique Mottier, Robert Athol, Michael Edwards, Julius Grower, Elly Robson, Christopher Jeppesen, Claire Fenton-Glynn, Shailaja Fennell, Renaud Morieux, Preti Taneja and Rohan Clarke, and scrutinised by External Member Prof. Verene Shepherd from the University of Mona/Jamaica. The Inquiry aims to examine the place of Jesus College in relation to the wider dynamics of slavery, colonial administration, colonial violence, racial science and long-term financial and social legacies including institutional exclusions and under-representation. Note that the College Inquiry ru...

Journal of Modern Slavery, 2018

This article uses an interdisciplinary approach combining social justice and history to address and offer a response to critiques that argue ‘slavery’ is not an appropriate term for present day cases of extreme exploitation. By analysing the means and modalities through which situations of slavery are established and maintained across various temporal and geographical examples, this article highlights how the practices of the past persist in the present.

2020

2000

In 2007, we commemorate the 200th anniversary of the legal abolition of the slave trade by Parliament. Slavery, however, continues and is commonplace across the world, including in the UK. Thousands of people are working as slaves within the UK at present; they are working in highly exploitative conditions, have no rights, and are threatened with the fear or the