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5 Small-scale slave trading

Abstract

Before the second half of the ninth century, in the British Isles and the tenth century in the Czech lands, slave trading primarily operated on a small scale and was primarily fuelled by opportunistic sales that were themselves motivated by individual circumstances or, to a lesser degree, commercial trading. Networks of liminal markets such as emporia and politically central high-status sites attracted slave sales through the concentration of merchants and buyers, and slaves could either remain locally with a buyer or be transported along long-distance trade routes. Case studies of England and Great Moravia illustrate the networks along which enslaved people were transported and the mechanisms by which slave trading operated.

Abstract

Before the second half of the ninth century, in the British Isles and the tenth century in the Czech lands, slave trading primarily operated on a small scale and was primarily fuelled by opportunistic sales that were themselves motivated by individual circumstances or, to a lesser degree, commercial trading. Networks of liminal markets such as emporia and politically central high-status sites attracted slave sales through the concentration of merchants and buyers, and slaves could either remain locally with a buyer or be transported along long-distance trade routes. Case studies of England and Great Moravia illustrate the networks along which enslaved people were transported and the mechanisms by which slave trading operated.

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