Welcome to the Networks of Slaveholding and Enslavement the Mediterranean World (ca. 1348–1528) online portal. This project recovers the lived experiences of thousands of enslaved persons and reconstructs the social networks of enslavement in the late medieval and early modern Mediterranean world.

This project was initially developed as a companion to the PhD Thesis of Steven Teasdale (available here). It systematically encodes socioeconomic data from notarial contracts spanning the eastern Mediterranean, southern Europe, the Black Sea, and North Africa. The analysis and rigorous encoding of the persons, places, and things in these sources reveals the intercultural and transregional dimensions of the premodern slave trade. The portal seeks to documents the complete lifecycle of enslavement—from capture to forced labour to manumission and beyond—illuminating the institutional mechanisms that sustained slavery and the individual stories of those who lived through it.

This database is built upon Omeka-S and integrates thousands of primary sources. These sources include sales and leasing contracts, manumissions, petitions, wills, governmental decrees, and other records that document the experiences of enslaved people. These materials offer rare insights into a historically marginalized population, revealing their roles within broader socioeconomic networks and their agency within systems of oppression.

Researchers can utilize interactive mapping and network visualization tools to track individual journeys, examine geographic patterns of enslavement across regions, and conduct social network analyses of the complex relationships connecting enslaved persons, slaveholders, and the institutions that maintained this system. The database structure supports both micro-historical investigation of individual lives and macro-level analysis of commercial and social networks.

Current Database Statistics (October 2025):

• 11301 historical persons

• 2018 historical documents

• 829 geolocated places

• 384 categories/types

• 158 socioeconomic institutions

• 63 historical organizations

• 158364 relationships

• 2119 images

This resource serves historians, digital humanists, librarians, and researchers investigating slavery studies, Mediterranean history, late medieval commerce, and historical network analysis. It provides essential tools and primary source material for conducting innovative research.