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“In the Streets, You See Nothing but Muslims!”

Unbound Slavery and Urban Belonging in the Spanish Mediterranean (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2025

Thomas Glesener  and
Daniel Hershenzon
Thomas Glesener
Affiliation:
Aix-Marseille Université thomas.glesener@univ-amu.fr
Daniel Hershenzon
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut daniel.hershenzon@uconn.edu
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Abstract

In 1717, an anonymous petition to the king of Spain expressed concern about the excessive number of Muslims living in Cartagena (Murcia). This complaint prompted the Council of Castile to launch a survey of the Muslim population with the aim of clarifying their status. In addition to galley slaves, the inquiry focused in particular on libertinos, a little-known category of slaves who lived and worked freely in the city but were heavily indebted to their masters due to the sums owed for their ransom. This article reconstructs the condition of these unbound slaves, who lived apart from their masters’ households, and the tensions this provoked between competing systems of norms. On the one hand, the right of slaves to work to finance their own redemption, and that of their masters to live off the rents imposed on them, were deeply rooted in local custom. On the other, rising insecurity along the coast prompted local authorities and the Crown to restrict these overlapping rights by forcing masters to keep their slaves at home. At stake in this conflict between different slavery regimes, the one based on local law and the other on royal jurisdiction, were slaves’ access to the labor market and their right to free residency and the protections afforded by contract law. Finally, by placing the inquiry itself at the heart of the study, the article investigates the meaning of a procedure that was less a demographic enumeration of slaves than a redistribution of rights to the city among its Muslim inhabitants.

En 1717, une plainte anonyme adressée au roi d’Espagne s’alarmait du nombre excessif de musulmans vivant à Carthagène (Murcie). Cette supplique déclencha une enquête du Conseil de Castille destinée à recenser les musulmans et à clarifier leur statut. Outre les esclaves des galères royales, l’enquête pointa tout particulièrement les libertinos, une catégorie méconnue d’esclaves privés résidant et travaillant librement dans la ville tout en étant lourdement endettés vis-à-vis de leurs maîtres en raison des sommes dues pour leur propre rachat. Cet article reconstitue la condition de ces esclaves déliés de leurs maisonnées et met au jour les tensions qu’elle suscita entre des normativités concurrentes. D’une part, le droit des esclaves à travailler pour financer leur affranchissement, tout comme celui des maîtres à vivre des rentes placées sur ces personnes étaient profondément ancrés dans les coutumes locales. D’autre part, en raison de l’augmentation de l’insécurité le long des côtes, les autorités locales et la couronne œuvrèrent à restreindre cet enchevêtrement de droits en obligeant les maîtres à garder leurs esclaves chez eux. Ce conflit entre des régimes d’esclavage différents, l’un inscrit dans les droits locaux, l’autre adossé à la juridiction royale, eut pour enjeu l’accès des esclaves au marché du travail, à la libre résidence ou encore aux protections dispensées par le droit des contrats. En faisant de l’enquête elle-même le nœud problématique de la recherche, cet article interroge le sens d’une procédure qui, en recensant les esclaves, procédait moins à un dénombrement démographique, qu’à une redistribution des droits de cité entre des habitants musulmans.

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Research Article
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Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , First View , pp. 1 - 34
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© Éditions de l’EHESS 2025

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Footnotes

This article was first published in French as “‘Dans les rues on ne voit que des musulmans !’ Esclavage délié et appartenance urbaine en Méditerranée espagnole aux xviie et xviiie siècles,” in the thematic dossier “Captivité et esclavage,” Annales HSS 78, no. 4 (2023): 761–95, doi 10.1017/ahss.2024.3.

*

Preliminary versions of this text benefited from the generous suggestions of Danna Agmon, Isabelle Grangaud, Paulin Ismard, Hayri Gökşin Özkoray, Natividad Planas, and Jean-Paul Zuñiga. Our work also draws extensively on research conducted for the following two-volume collection: Jocelyne Dakhlia and Bernard Vincent, eds., Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, vol. 1, Une intégration invisible (Paris: Albin Michel, 2011); Jocelyne Dakhlia and Wolfgang Kaiser, eds., Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, vol. 2, Passages et contacts en Méditerranée (Paris: Albin Michel, 2013).

References

1. Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional (hereafter “AHN”), Consejos, Leg. 147, fols. 1r–2v, the poor of the city of Cartagena to the king [July 1717].

2. Rafael Torres Sánchez, “Componentes demográficos de una ciudad portuaria en el Antiguo Régimen: Cartagena en el siglo xviii,” in I concurso de historia de Cartagena “Federico Casal,” (Cartagena: Ayuntamiento de Cartagena, 1986), 30–31.

3. This term, derived from moro, designates “a multitude of Moors.” See Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua Castellana, o Española (Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1611), 556.

4. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 147, fol. 2r, the poor of the city of Cartagena to the king [July 1717].

5. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 147, fol. 2r, the poor of the city of Cartagena to the king [July 1717].

6. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 147, fol. 2v, the poor of the city of Cartagena to the king [July 1717].

7. For an overview of the condition of Muslims in Spain before and after the Morisco expulsion decrees, see Bernard Vincent, “Les musulmans dans l’Espagne moderne,” in Dakhlia and Vincent, Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, 1:611–34.

8. When it was not possible to specify the condition or origin of people designated as moro/a, we have chosen to render this term not by its literal translation, “Moor,” which has strong colonial overtones, but by “Muslim.” However, aware that the term Muslim/musulman has undergone a comparable essentialization in present-day Western Europe, we do not use it as a neutral category of analysis but rather as a category of practice in a European context that can more closely reproduce the meanings conveyed by the term moro. See Rogers Brubaker, “Categories of Analysis and Categories of Practice: A Note on the Study of Muslims in European Countries of Immigration,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 36, no. 1 (2013): 1–8; Marie-Claire Willems, Musulman, une assignation ? (Bordeaux: Éd. du Détour, 2023).

9. This assumption has been criticized by Jocelyne Dakhlia, “Les musulmans en Europe occidentale au Moyen Âge et à l’époque modern : une intégration invisible,” in Dakhlia and Vincent, Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, 1:7–29.

10. Francisco Fernández y González, “De los moriscos que permanecieron en España después de la expulsión decretada por Felipe III,” Revista de España 19 (1871): 103–14, and 20 (1871): 363–76.

11. Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, “La esclavitud en Castilla durante la Edad Moderna,” Estudios de Historia Social de España 2 (1952): 369–428.

12. Eloy Martín Corrales, Muslims in Spain, 1492–1814: Living and Negotiating in the Land of the Infidel (Leiden: Brill, 2021).

13. Edoardo Grendi, Lettere orbe. Anonimato e poteri nel Seicento genovese (Palermo: Gelka, 1989); Cecilia Nubola, “Supplications Between Politics and Justice: The Northern and Central Italian States in the Early Modern Age,” International Review of Social History 46 S9 (2001): 35–56; James E. Shaw, “Writing to the Prince: Supplications, Equity and Absolutism in Sixteenth-Century Tuscany,” Past & Present 215 (2012): 51–83; Simona Cerutti and Massimo Vallerani, “Suppliques. Lois et cas dans la normativité de l’époque moderne – Introduction,” L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques 13 (2015): https://doi. org/10.4000/acrh.6545.

14. Maximiliano Barrio Gozalo, “La mano de obra eslava en el arsenal de Cartagena a mediados del Setecientos,” Investigaciones históricas: Época moderna y contemporánea 17 (1997): 79–100; Thomas Glesener and Daniel Hershenzon, “The Maghrib in Europe: Royal Slaves and Islamic Institutions in Eighteenth-Century Spain,” Past & Present 259 (2023): 77–116. Attracting officers, soldiers, and numerous artisans, the establishment of galleys in Cartagena encouraged the city’s demographic boom, which saw the population increase from 3,000 to 7,000 between 1660 and 1700. See Rafael Torres Sánchez, Aproximación a las crisis demográficas en la periferia peninsular. Las crisis en Cartagena durante la Edad Moderna (Cartagena: Concejalía de Cultura, 1990), 20.

15. Juan José Sánchez-Baena, Pedro Fondevila-Silva, and Celia Chaín-Navarro, “Los libros generales de la escuadra de galeras de España: una fuente de gran interés para la historia moderna,” Mediterranea. Ricerche storiche 9, no. 26 (2012): 577–602.

16. Maximiliano Barrio Gozalo, Esclavos y cautivos. Conflicto entre la cristiandad y el islam en el siglo xviii (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León/Consejería de Cultura y Turismo, 2006), 165–67.

17. André Zysberg, Les galériens. Vies et destins de 60 000 forçats sur les galères de France, 1680–1748 (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 1987), 117–48; Cesare Santus, Il “turco” a Livorno. Incontri con l’Islam nella Toscana del Seicento (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2019); Gül Şen, “Galley Slaves and Agency: The Driving Force of the Ottoman Fleet,” in Slaves and Slave Agency in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Stephan Conermann and Gül Şen (Göttingen/Bonn: V&R Unipress/Bonn University Press, 2020), 131–66.

18. Beatriz Alonso Acero, Orán-Mazalquivir, 1589–1639. Una sociedad española en la frontera de Berbería (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, 2000). With the defeat of Oran, situated only a day away by sea, Cartagena lost a trading partner that had ensured its prosperity as a hub for supplies and procurement. On the circumstances surrounding the conquest of Oran during the War of the Spanish Succession (1700–1714), see Antoine Sénéchal, “El cambio dinástico, la Guerra de Sucesión y la defensa del presidio de Orán y Mazalquivir (1700–1708),” Vegueta. Anuario de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia 16 (2016): 335–58.

19. Felipe Maíllo Salgado, “The Almogataces: A Historical Perspective,” Mediterranean Historical Review 6, no. 2 (1991): 86–101; Luis Fernando Fé Canto, “Oran (1732–1745). Les horizons maghrébins de la monarchie hispanique” (PhD diss., EHESS, 2011), 438–72.

20. Since 1663, the governor of Oran had been authorized to issue passports for moros de paz wishing to travel to Spain. See Antoine Sénéchal, “Par-delà le déclin et l’échec, une histoire aux confins de la Monarchie Hispanique. Le préside d’Oran et de Mers el-Kébir des années 1670 aux années 1700” (PhD diss., EHESS, 2020), 537.

21. In early modern Spain, cities did not own slaves, but they could mobilize private slaves for tasks in the public interest (road building, clearing, handling epidemics, etc.). For an example, see Juan Jesús Bravo Caro, “Esclavos al servicio de la comunidad,” Baetica. Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea 2, no. 28 (2006): 395–412.

22. Spanish historiography long considered that most manumissions were free and a result of charitable acts toward virtuous slaves. This perspective has been revised by recent studies that established the massive number of emancipations in return for payment, which potentially account for up to two-thirds of all emancipations. See Aurelia Martín Casares, La esclavitud en la Granada del siglo xvi. Género, raza y religión (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2000), 435–48. The bibliography on slavery in the Iberian peninsula is immense. Among the major works, see Alfonso Franco Silva, La esclavitud en Andalucía, 1450–1550 (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1992); Rocío Periáñez Gómez, Negros, mulatos y blancos. Los esclavos en Extremadura durante la Edad Moderna (Badajoz: Diputación de Badajoz, 2010); Arturo Morgado García, Una metrópoli esclavista. El Cádiz de la modernidad (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2013); Manuel Gómez de Valenzuela, Esclavos en Aragón (siglos xv al xvii) (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2014); José Miguel López García, La esclavitud a finales del Antiguo Régimen. Madrid, 1701–1837. De moros de presa a negros de nación (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2020). In contrast, only a few studies have focused on the subject of libertinos: Manuel Lobo Cabrera, Los libertos en la sociedad canaria del siglo xvi (Madrid: Instituto de estudios canarios, 1983); A. C. de C. M. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441–1555 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Arturo Morgado García, “Los libertos en el Cádiz de la Edad Moderna,” Studia Histórica. Historia Moderna 32 (2010): 399–436.

23. Franco Silva, La esclavitud en Andalucía, 130–33.

24. Alessandro Stella, Histoires d’esclaves dans la péninsule Ibérique (Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 2000), 156–65.

25. Walter Johnson, “On Agency,” Journal of Social History 37, no. 1 (2003): 113–24; Fabienne P. Guillén, “Agency. Un nouveau dieu invitant au blasphème,” in Ser y vivir esclavo. Identidad, aculturación y agency (mundos mediterráneos y atlánticos, siglos xiii–xviii), ed. Fabienne P. Guillén and Roser Salicrú i Lluch (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2021), 157–86, and the review by José Antonio Martínez Torres, Annales HSS 78, no. 4 (2023): 807–809. On participation in the market as a process of emancipation, see Laurence Fontaine, Le marché. Histoire et usages d’une conquête sociale (Paris: Gallimard, 2014).

26. Numerous works have called into question the separation between slavery and free labor: Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the World: Essays Toward a Global Labor History (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Alessandro Stanziani, Les métamorphoses du travail contraint. Une histoire globale, xviiie–xixe siècles (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2020).

27. On wage labor for slaves, which has been well documented for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see Jacques Heers, Esclaves et domestiques au Moyen Âge dans le monde méditerranéen (1981; Paris: Fayard, 1996), 135–63; María Teresa Ferrer i Mallol and Josefina Mutgé i Vives, eds., De l’esclavitud a la llibertat. Esclaus y lliberts a l’Edat Mitjana. Actes del Colloqui Internacional celebrat a Barcelona, del 27 al 29 de maig de 1999 (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas/Institución Milá i Fontanals, 2000); Josep Hernando i Delgado, Els esclaus islàmics a Barcelona: blancs, negres, llors i turcs. De l’esclavitud a la llibertat, s. xiv (Barcelona: Institución Milá i Fontanals/Departament d’Estudis Medievals, 2003), 135–69; Antoni Furió, ed., “Treball esclau i treball assalariat a la baixa edat mitjana,” special issue, Recerques. Història, Economia, Cultura 52/53 (2006); Antoni Albacete i Gascón, “Les formes d’accés pactat a la llibertad entre esclaus i propietaris a la Barcelona del segle xv,” Pedralbes. Revista d’història moderna 28, no. 2 (2008): 465–84; William D. Phillips, Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Moreover, all these forms of servile wage earning are attested in other parts of the world up to the nineteenth century: Halil Sahillioğlu, “Slaves in the Social and Economic Life of Bursa in the Late 15th and Early 16th Centuries,” Turcica. Revue d’études turques 17 (1985): 43–112; Luiz Carlos Soares, “Os escravos de ganho no Rio de Janeiro do século xix,” Revista Brasileira de História 8, no. 16 (1988): 107–42; Beatriz Mamigonian, “Revisitando a ‘transição para o trabalho livre’: a experiência dos africanos livres,” in Trafico, cativeiro e liberdade. Rio de Janeiro, Seculos xvii–xix, ed. Manolo Florentino (Rio de Janeiro; Civilização Brasileira, 2005), 389–417; Kerry Ward, “Slavery in Southeast Asia, 1420–1804,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3, AD 1420–1804, ed. David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 163–85.

28. Matthias van Rossum, “Slavery and Its Transformations: Prolegomena for a Global and Comparative Research Agenda,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 63, no. 3 (2021): 566–98; Michael Zeuske, “Historiography and Research Problems of Slavery and the Slave Trade in a Global-Historical Perspective,” International Review of Social History 57, no. 1 (2012): 87–111.

29. The role of municipalities in the regulation of slavery has been largely underestimated. The rich information furnished by municipal bylaws has recently been highlighted by Raúl González Arévalo, La vida cotidiana de los esclavos en la Castilla del Renacimiento (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2022).

30. E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New York: The New Press, 1993), 9–35; Tamar Herzog, “Immemorial (and Native) Customs in Early Modernity: Europe and the Americas,” Comparative Legal History  9, no. 1 (2021): 3–55.

31. Historians of Atlantic slavery have recently shed new light on the role of tribunals in the production of “customary rights” by highlighting their power to transform enslavers’ obligations into slaves’ rights. See Alejandro de la Fuente, “Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba: Coartación and Papel,” Hispanic American Historical Review 87, no. 4 (2007): 659–92; Bianca Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 191–223; Adriana Chira, “Freedom with Local Bonds: Custom and Manumission in the Age of Emancipation,” American Historical Review 126, no. 3 (2021): 949–77. Historians of slavery in Spain have tended to use fewer legal sources, despite the huge number that exist. On this topic, see Javier Fernández Martín, “La esclavitud ante la justicia del rey: el caso de la Chancillería de Granada (ca. 1577–1700),” in Tratas, esclavitudes y mestizajes. Una historia conectada, siglos xv–xviii, ed. Manuel F. Fernández Chaves, Eduardo França Paiva, and Rafael Pérez García (Seville: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 2020), 277–88.

32. According to the same mechanisms providing access to local citizenship analyzed in Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Simona Cerutti, Étrangers. Étude d’une condition d’incertitude dans une société d’Ancien Régime (Montrouge: Bayard, 2012); Maarten Roy Prak, Citizens Without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World, c. 1000–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

33. Sally Falk Moore, Law as Process: An Anthropological Approach (London/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978); Fredrik Barth, Process and Form in Social Life (London/ Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981).

34. On this approach, which sees sources as actions, see in particular Angelo Torre, “Percorsi della pratica 1966–1995,” Quaderni storici 30, no. 90/3 (1995): 799–829; Simona Cerutti and Isabelle Grangaud, “Sources and Contextualizations: Comparing Eighteenth-Century North African and Western European Institutions,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 59, no. 1 (2017): 5–33; Isabelle Grangaud, “Fragment(s) of the Past: Archives, Conflicts, and Civic Rights in Algiers, 1830–1870,” Annales HSS (English Edition) 72, no. 4 (2017): 641–70. For an overall discussion of this approach, see Étienne Anheim, ed., “Archives,” special issue, Annales HSS 74, no. 3/4 (2019).

35. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 147, Exp. 1, fol. 9v, Joseph Antonio García Vila to the bishop of Murcia, Cartagena, September 16, 1717. Other accounts confirm the visual dimension of the North African presence in Cartagena. In 1734, for example, a Jesuit deplored the excessive presence of Muslims in Spanish ports, “some with the status of slaves, others as hawkers of amulets and other small objects, as I saw in Cartagena.” See Pedro de Calatayud, Doctrinas prácticas que solía explicar en sus misiones, dispuestas para desenredar y dirigir las conciencias, vol. 1 (Valencia: Imprenta de Joseph Esteban Dolz, 1737), 190.

36. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 147, Exp. 1, fols. 6–11, Joseph Antonio García Vila to the bishop of Murcia, Cartagena, September 16, 1717.

37. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6988, Exp. 2, fol. 54, deposition of Juan Martínez Ballesteros, former alguacil mayor of the city.

38. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6988, Exp. 2, fol. 54, deposition of Juan Martínez Ballesteros, former alguacil mayor of the city, and fol. 70, deposition of Pedro Minguez Terguel, lawyer.

39. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6988, Exp. 2, fol. 47, deposition of Manuel Esteban del Castillo, lawyer.

40. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6988, Exp. 2, fol. 54, deposition of Juan Martínez Ballesteros, former alguacil mayor of the city.

41. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6988, Exp. 2, fol. 59, deposition of Bartolomé García Ibarguen.

42. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 147, Exp. 1, fol. 24r–v.

43. What follows simply reports the findings of the census. We will return below to the conditions in which the investigation was carried out.

44. In 1691, a “free” Muslim from Puerto Real turned out to be a fugitive slave from Murcia, “residing in this town, having changed his name to Muza, and passing himself off as free.” Puerto Real, Archivo Municipal, Caja 1591/8.

45. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6987, Exp. 2.

46. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 147, fols. 24–26, Martín de Ibarguen to the Council of Castile, Cartagena, June 17, 1722.

47. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 147, Exp. 1, fol. 28.

48. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6987, Exp. 2, fol. 40v. The strand relating to city government continued for another ten years. See Concepción de Castro, La corrupción municipal en la Castilla del siglo xviii (Madrid: ACCI, 2019), 90–97.

49. Francisco Chacón Jiménez, “Los moriscos de Lorca y algunos más en 1571,” Anales de la Universidad de Murcia 40, no. 3/4 (1982): 313–26.

50. Isidoro Martínez Rizo, Fechas y fechos de Cartagena. Primera serie (Cartagena: s.n., 1894), 56.

51. Lorca, Archivo municipal, M-77, Philip III to Diego Sandoval, Tordesillas, December 4, 1602. Document noted by Chacón Jiménez, “Los moriscos de Lorca,” 316.

52. Cartagena, Archivo municipal (hereafter “AMC”), CH 2131, Exp. 2, royal order to the corregidor of Murcia, Lorca, and Cartagena, Madrid, March 16, 1615; Martínez Rizo, Fechas y fechos de Cartagena, 114.

53. Juan E. Gelabert, Castilla convulsa, 1631–1652 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2001), 343–66; Manuel Fernández Chaves and Rafael Pérez García, En los márgenes de la ciudad de Dios. Moriscos en Sevilla (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2009), 287–88. In Andalusia, a general levy of slaves had already been decreed in 1637, provoking much resistance. See Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, La esclavitud en Castilla en la Edad Moderna y otros estudios de marginados (Granada: Comares, 2004), 34–37.

54. Murcia, Archivo municipal (hereafter “AMM”), Reales provisiones, Leg. 787, no. 106.

55. AMM, Actas capitulares, July 4, 1662, fol. 187v, and September 23, 1662, fol. 240r. This order was published in all cities in southern Spain.

56. Novísima Recopilación de las Leyes de España, vol. 5, libro XII, título II, “Expulsión general de todos los moros llamados cortados o libres,” Buen Retiro, September 29, 1712.

57. José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez and Vicente Montojo Montojo, Entre el lucro y la defensa. Las relaciones entre la Monarquía y la sociedad mercantil cartagenera (Murcia: Real Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1998); Julio D. Muñoz Rodríguez and José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez, “De personas y de territorios. La defensa del reino de Murcia entre los siglos xv y la primera mitad del siglo xviii,” Obradoiro de Historia Moderna 30 (2021): 71–100.

58. Alain Cabantous, Les côtes barbares. Pilleurs d’épaves et sociétés littorales en France, 1680–1830 (Paris: Fayard, 1993); Francesca Trivellato, “‘Amphibious Power’: The Law of Wreck, Maritime Customs, and Sovereignty in Richelieu’s France,” Law and History Review 33, no. 4 (2015): 915–44; David Cressy, Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). This way of constructing royal jurisdiction is clearly related to shipwreck law, which asserted royal preeminence over stranded goods to the detriment of coastal jurisdictions.

59. On the status of shorelines as res publica, see Guillaume Calafat, Une mer jalousée. Contribution à l’histoire de la souveraineté, Méditerranée, xviie siècle (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2019), 32–33.

60. On the status of property without master in Spain, see Thomas Glesener, “La Cruzada et l’administration des biens vacants en Espagne (xve–xviiie siècles),” L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques 22 (2020): https://doi.org/10.4000/acrh.10966. In Oran, a Muslim who was mostrenco (without master) was a free Muslim who was not a moro de paz, and could therefore be enslaved. See Alonso Acero, Orán-Mazalquivir, 278.

61. Yan Thomas, “La valeur des choses. Le droit romain hors la religion,” Annales HSS 57, no. 6 (2002): 1431–62; Simona Cerutti, “À qui appartiennent les biens qui n’appartiennent à personne ? Citoyenneté et droit d’aubaine à l’époque moderne,” Annales HSS 62, no. 2 (2007): 355–83.

62. Seville, Archivo Histórico Provincial, Colección Celestino López Martínez, no. 23834, royal order decreeing the forced levying of Turkish and Maghrebi slaves to serve on the galleys, Madrid, April 12, 1639. This order instructed the Chancellery of Granada to start with “those that are lost and [therefore] belong to me.” This type of royal confiscation could be contested by masters. In 1655, thirty-nine slaves, sent to the galleys “because they lived on the coast,” were claimed by their rightful owners, who demanded that the king “free them or failing that buy them.” Madrid, Archivo del Museo Naval, Leg. 54, MS 56/62, royal order to the count of Linares, captain general of the galleys, Madrid, March 2, 1655.

63. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 147. A report from Seville indicated that “the captive Muslims do not live in their owners’ household, but work as day laborers, taking advantage of [this work] so that they cannot be expelled from the land.” Cited in Domínguez Ortiz, La esclavitud en Castilla, 60. In 1626, Granada’s deputy to the Cortes of Castile denounced Muslim slaves who paid their ransom but “kept part unpaid so as not to be expelled as required by law.” See Domínguez Ortiz and Bernard Vincent, Historia de los moriscos. Vida y tragedia de una minoría (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1985), 265. This practice was also reported by Jacques Philippe Laugier de Tassy among Christian slaves in the Maghreb, some of whom “buy the right to be slaves for a long time, or for their whole life … and do not pay the rest of the agreed ransom price in order to have the name of slave and be protected as such.” See Jacques Philippe Laugier de Tassy, Histoire du royaume d’Alger, avec l’état présent de son gouvernement (Amsterdam: Henri Du Lauzet, 1725), 281.

64. AMC, CH 2148, Exp. 3, royal order for the registration of Muslim slaves and libertinos, El Pardo, May 28, 1679.

65. On the registration of Muslims, see AMM, Leg. 3082, Exp. 10, Registro de moros y moras declarándolos libres para el canje de prisioneros de África, 1690. See also Manuel Jesús Izco Reina, “El censo de moros de 1690 en Puerto Real. Un caso de intercambio de cautivos moros y cristianos bajo el reinado de Carlos II,” in Amos, esclavos y libertos. Estudios sobre la esclavitud en Puerto Real durante la Edad Moderna (Cádiz: Universidad de Cádiz, 2002), 81–97.

66. Gillian Weiss, Captives and Corsairs: France and Slavery in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011); Michele Bosco, Ragion di stato e salvezza dell’anima. Il riscatto dei cristiani captivi in Maghreb attraverso le redenzioni mercedarie, 1575–1725 (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2018).

67. Based on the ratio of slave baptisms to all baptisms. The proportion of 5.5% was calculated from the baptismal registers for the years 1688–1692 (105 slaves for 2,003 baptismal entries). Choosing only the year 1692, when the number of slave baptisms was highest, Torres Sánchez arrives at a ratio of 8%. See Rafael Torres Sánchez, “La esclavitud en Cartagena en los siglos xvii y xviii,” Contrastes. Revista de Historia Moderna 2 (1986): 81–102, here p. 87. Data for Madrid come from Claude Larquié, “Les esclaves de Madrid à l’époque de la décadence (1650–1700),” Revue historique 244, no. 1 (495) (1970): 41–74, here p. 55. For Extremadura, see Periáñez Gómez, Negros, mulatos y blancos, 60–61; for Cádiz, see Morgado García, Una metrópoli esclavista, 133.

68. Antonio Peñafiel Ramón, Amos y esclavos en la Murcia del setecientos (Murcia: Real Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1992), 74–75. On rural slavery, see Bernard Vincent, “L’esclavage en milieu rural espagnol au xviie siècle : l’exemple de la région d’Almería,” in Figures de l’esclave au Moyen Âge et dans le monde moderne, ed. Henri Bresc (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996), 165–76.

69. Franco Silva, La esclavitud en Andalucía, 39–52.

70. Guy Lemeunier, Economía, sociedad y política en Murcia y Albacete, s. xvi–xvii (Murcia: Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1990); Vicente Montojo Montojo, El Siglo de Oro en Cartagena, 1480–1640: Evolución económica y social de una ciudad portuaria del Sureste español y su comarca (Cartagena/Murcia: Ayuntamiento de Cartagena/Real Academia Alfonso X el Sabio/Universidad de Murcia, 1993).

71. Roser Salicrú i Lluch, “L’esclau com a inversió? Aprofitament, assalariament i rendibilitat del treball en l’entorn català tardomedieval,” Recerques. Història, economia i cultura 52/53 (2006): 49–85.

72. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6987, Exp. 2, fols. 56–57.

73. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6988, Exp. 2, fol. 55.

74. Federico Maestre de San Juan Pelegrín, “La influencia de la escuadra de galeras de España en la ciudad de Cartagena. Sociedad, entramado urbano y devociones,” Cartagena Histórica (2017).

75. Natividad Planas, “Musulmans invisibles ? Enquête dans les territoires insulaires du roi d’Espagne (xvie–xviie siècle),” in Dakhlia and Vincent, Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, 1:558–92.

76. Murcia, Archivo General de la Región de Murcia (hereafter “AGRM”), Protocolos, Cartagena, Pedro Lorenzo Galinsoga, prot. 5223, fol. 14, deed of sale, Cartagena, April 27, 1694.

77. This scenario concerns in particular moros de paz reduced to slavery for debts contracted with Spaniards in Oran. See Bernard Vincent, “L’esclavage dans la péninsule Ibérique à l’époque moderne,” in Les traites et les esclavages. Perspectives historiques et contemporaines, ed. Myriam Cottias, Élisabeth Cunin, and Antonio de Almeida Mendes (Paris: Karthala, 2010), 67–75; Érika Rincones Minda, “Muslim Sequential Mobilities: Merdia Ben Hazman, an ‘Exceptional’ Case in the Early Modern Spanish Mediterranean,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 28, no. 3 (2022): 371–85. This practice of pledging should be compared with the “pawnship” practiced in West Africa: Toyin Falola and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Pawnship in Africa: Debt Bondage in Historical Perspective (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994). The distinction between war captives, debt slaves, and pawns has been the subject of debate. See Alessandro Stanziani and Gwyn Campbell, eds., Debt and Slavery in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013).

78. Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, Consejo de Aragon, Leg. 911, no. 106, and Leg. 557, no. 21. On the emancipation of slaves in the Maghreb and the practice of repurchase contracts (al-mukātaba), see José Antonio Martínez Torres, Prisioneros de los infieles. Vida y rescate de los cautivos cristianos en el mediterráneo musulmán, siglos xvi–xvii (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2004), 119–20; Wolfgang Kaiser, ed., Le commerce des captifs. Les intermédiaires dans l’échange et le rachat des prisonniers en Méditerranée, xve–xviiie siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 2008); Daniel Hershenzon, The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 29; M’Hamed Oualdi, “Affranchissement,” in Les mondes de l’esclavage. Une histoire comparée, ed. Paulin Ismard (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2021), 409–17.

79. The relationship between debt and slavery has been the subject of much debate: Alain Testart, L’esclave, la dette et le pouvoir. Études de sociologie comparative (Paris: Errance, 2001). For an overview, see Paulin Ismard, “Dette,” in Les mondes de l’esclavage, 475–85.

80. An etymological evolution that dictionaries often have great difficulty in explaining, as they fail to consider slavery from the angle of debt.

81. AGRM, Protocolos, Cartagena, Pedro Lorenzo Galinsoga, prot. 5695, fol. 123.

82. Mula, Archivo municipal, FMA, Leg. 35b–40.

83. These practices have been well documented, in particular by Martín Casares, La esclavitud en la Granada del siglo xvi, 449–55.

84. Peñafiel Ramón, Amos y esclavos en la Murcia del setecientos, 70.

85. Domínguez Ortiz, La esclavitud en Castilla, 63.

86. AHN, Estado, Leg. 409, Luis Belluga, bishop of Murcia, to Joseph Grimaldo, Moratalla, October 12, 1711.

87. Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “El difícil regreso a su patria de los moros libertos y el problema de su conversión en el siglo xvii,” in Esclavitud, mestizaje y abolicionismo en los mundos hispánicos, ed. Aurelia Martín Casares (Granada: Editorial de la Universidad de Granada, 2015), 265–83.

88. Henri Pérès, L’Espagne vue par les voyageurs musulmans de 1610 à 1930 (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1937), 26. There is an excellent recent translation of the ambassador’s travelogue into English: Aḥmad ibn al-Mahdī Ghazzāl, The Fruits of the Struggle in Diplomacy and War: Moroccan Ambassador al-Ghazzāl and His Diplomatic Retinue in Eighteenth-Century Andalusia, ed. Travis Landry, trans. Abdulrahman al-Ruwaishan (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2017), here p. 166. However, Pérès’ older French rendering is more precise in the paragraph we focus on, and is the basis of the translations presented here. We are grateful for Nina Zhiri Oumelbanine for pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of each of these translations.

89. On this cession of debts to “the poor,” see Simona Cerutti, “La richesse des pauvres. Charité et citoyenneté à Turin au xviiie siècle,” in Appartenance locale et propriété au nord et au sud de la Méditerranée, ed. Sami Bargaoui, Simona Cerutti, and Isabelle Grangaud (Aix-en-Provence: IREMAM, 2015), http://books.openedition.org/iremam/3497.

90. Yann Moulier-Boutang, De l’esclavage au salariat. Économie historique du salariat bridé (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1998); Matthias Van Rossum, “Global Slavery, Local Bondage? Rethinking Slaveries as (Im)Mobilizing Regimes from the Case of the Dutch Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago Worlds,” Journal of World History 31, no. 4 (2020): 693–727.

91. In general, work and residence were inseparable in early modern Europe. See Michela Barbot, “Residence as Belonging: Spatial and Legal Categories of Social Inclusion in Italian Cities Under the Ancien Régime,” Urban History 36, no. 1 (2013): 29–47.

92. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6988, Exp. 2, fol. 71v.

93. Siete Partidas, partida 4, título 2, ley 7.

94. Sue Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

95. Auguste Cherbonneau, Dictionnaire arabe-français, vol. 1 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1876), 140; Franz Rosenthal, The Muslim Concept of Freedom, Prior to the Nineteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 7–14.

96. Janine Cels-Saint-Hilaire, “Citoyens romains, esclaves et affranchis : problèmes de démographie,” Revue des études anciennes 103, no. 3/4 (2001): 443–79.

97. Gabriel Audisio, “Recherches sur l’origine et la signification du mot ‘bagne,’” Revue africaine 101 (1957): 364–80. On galley slaves’ baños, see Salvatore Bono, Schiavi. Una storia mediterranea, >xvi–xix secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2016), 192–201; Guillaume Calafat and Cesare Santus, “Les avatars du ‘Turc.’ Esclaves et commerçants musulmans en Toscane (1600–1750),” in Dakhlia and Vincent Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, 1:471–522; Santus, Il “turco” a Livorno, 28–52.

98. AHN, Estado, Leg. 1749. In Tunis, “bagños” also housed Christian slaves subject to the wage system, who no longer lived in their owners’ households. See Jean-Baptiste de La Faye, État des royaumes de Barbarie, Tripoly, Tunis et Alger, contenant l’histoire naturelle et politique de ces pays […] (Rouen: Guillaume Behourt, 1703), 187.

99. Inès Mrad Dali, “Problématique du phénotype. Approche comparative des esclavages dans la Tunisie du xixe siècle,” in Couleurs de l’esclavage sur les deux rives de la Méditerranée, Moyen-Âge–xxe siècle, ed. Roger Botte and Alessandro Stella (Paris: Karthala, 2012), 337–69; Guillaume Calafat, “Topographies de ‘minorités.’ Notes sur Livourne, Marseille et Tunis au xviie siècle,” Liame 24 (2012): https://doi.org/10.4000/liame.271; Isabelle Grangaud, “L’asile des biens des pauvres (Alger, xviiie–xixe siècles),” in La cité des choses. Une nouvelle histoire de la citoyenneté, ed. Simona Cerutti, Thomas Glesener, and Isabelle Grangaud (Toulouse: Anacharsis, 2024), 173–209.

100. Brian A. Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050–1614 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 350–420; Ana Echevarría Arsuaga, Los mudéjares de la Corona de Castilla. Poblamiento y estatuto jurídico de una minoría (Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2021). In some localities, Mudejar communities lived in separate neighborhoods until the early seventeenth century: Bernard Vincent, “Espace public et espace privé dans les villes andalouses (xve–xvie siècles),” in D’une ville à l’autre. Structures matérielles et organisation de l’espace dans les villes européennes, xiiie–xvie siècle, ed. Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur (Rome: École française de Rome, 1989), 711–24.

101. Domínguez Ortiz, La esclavitud en Castilla, 60; Fernández Chaves and Pérez García, En los márgenes de la ciudad de Dios, 443–49.

102. Fabienne Plazolles Guillén, “Moro den Miralles ou moro d’Elx. Conservation et/ou élision de l’identité religieuse du singulier au pluriel; Royaumes de la couronne d’Aragon (xive–xvie siècle),” in Dakhlia and Vincent, Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, 1:523–55.

103. Mula, Archivo municipal, FMA, Leg. 47-17. Cited in Bernard Vincent, “Musulmans et conversion en Espagne au xviie siècle,” in Conversions islamiques. Identités religieuses en Islam méditerranéen, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2001), 193–205, here p. 79.

104. Granada, Archivo municipal, Actas capitulares, 1657, fol. 529r–v. Cited in Vincent, “Les musulmans dans l’Espagne moderne,” 628.

105. On neighborhoods as sets of rights and obligations, see Jacqueline David, “Les solidarités juridiques de voisinage, de l’ancien droit à la codification,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger 72, no. 3 (1994): 333–66. The hawma (Maghreb) and mahalle (Turkey) are equivalent to the notion of neighborhood in the Muslim world. See Hülya Canbakal, “Some Questions on the Legal Identity of Neighbourhoods in the Ottoman Empire,” Anatolia Moderna. Yeni Anadolu 10 (2004): 131–38; Işik Tamdoğan, “Le quartier (mahalle) de l’époque ottomane à la Turquie contemporaine,” Anatolia moderna. Yeni anadolu 10 (2004): 123–25; Isabelle Grangaud, “La Hawma : les processus de disqualification d’une institution ottomane (Alger 1830),” Insaniyat. Revue algérienne d’anthropologie et de sciences sociales 59 (2013): 105–32.

106. Donatella Calabi and Jacques Bottin, Les étrangers dans la ville. Minorités et espace urbain du bas Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne (Paris: Éd. de la MSH, 1999). On the difference between domicile and residence, see Guillaume Calafat, “Domicile des capitaines, nationalité des navires (Antibes-Gênes, 1710–1720),” in Cerutti, Glesener, and Grangaud, La cité des choses, 275–310.

107. Jorge Gil Herrera and Bernard Vincent, “La población berberisca en Málaga en el siglo xvii,” in Otras historias: conversos, moriscos y esclavos. Nuevas visiones para viejos problemas, ed. Francisco Moreno Díaz del Campo and Borja Franco Llopis (Gijón: Ediciones Trea, 2023), 187–203.

108. Domínguez Ortiz, La esclavitud en Castilla, 63. This also explains the common practice of registering physical markers such as scars and tattoos. See Fabrizio Filioli Uranio, “Embodied Dependencies and Valencian Slavery in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Working Paper 2/22 (Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, 2022), https://doi.org/10.48565/bonndoc-62.

109. In Ayamonte, the municipal authorities prohibited residents from crossing into the part of town where the Muslims lived, controlled by an influential figure called Cidauleques. See Vincent, “Les musulmans dans l’Espagne moderne,” 628.

110. AHN, Estado, Leg. 421, Luis Belluga, bishop of Murcia, to Joseph Grimaldo, Murcia, October 25, 1712.

111. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6988, Exp. 2, fol. 47v, deposition of Manuel Esteban del Castillo, lawyer.

112. Simancas, province of Valladolid, Archivo General de Simancas, Guerra moderna, Sup. 49, “Relación de las personas de las familias de moros que salieron de las plazas de Oran y Mazarquivir a quienes ha concedido Su Majestad raciones de pan diarias.”

113. Indeed, we know that the moros de paz intervened in the slave markets of Murcia and Cartagena to buy back (and probably free) a number of private slaves. See Peñafiel Ramón, Amos y esclavos en la Murcia del setecientos, 45.

114. For example, in 1723, the salt tax register listed the following taxpayers for Jimero Street: Ali, Muslim libertino; Amete Conejillo, water seller; Amete, tailor; Garrafa, free Muslim; Hudaia, Muslim.

115. Olivier Zeller, “Un mode d’habiter à Lyon au xviiie siècle : la pratique de la location principale,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 35, no. 1 (1988): 36–60.

116. AHN, Estado, Leg. 409, Luis Belluga, bishop of Murcia, to Joseph Grimaldo, Moratalla, October 12, 1711.

117. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 6987, Exp. 2, fols. 4r–5v.

118. For a reading of identity as an act of laying claim, see Alessandro Buono, “Tener Persona. Sur l’identité et l’identification dans les sociétés d’Ancien Régime,” Annales HSS 75, no. 1 (2020): 75–111.

119. For example, Ali, a 102-year-old slave from Tunis, owned by Damian Rosique, was freed in February 1723. He was not included in the census taken in 1720. See AGRM, Protocolos, Cartagena, Pedro Sola, prot. 6172, fol. 148r–v.

120. José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez, Las dos caras de Jano. Monarquía, ciudad e individuo. Murcia, 1588–1648 (Murcia: Ayuntamiento, 1995), 263–86.

121. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 7181, Exp. 25.

122. AHN, Consejos, Leg. 147, Exp. 1, fol. 28r–v, the Count d’Arschot to the Marquis de Miraval, Cartagena, January 2, 1723.

123. Melchor García Navarro, Redenciones de cautivos en África, 1723–1725, ed. Manuel Vázquez Pájaro (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas/Instituto Jerónimo Zurita, 1946), 48 (our emphasis).

124. AMC, Actas capitulares, 1723–1726, fols. 1v–2r.

125. Eduardo Galván Rodríguez, La abolición de la esclavitud en España. Debates Parlamentarios, 1810–1886 (Madrid: Librería-Editorial Dykinson, 2014).

126. Ramón Lourido Díaz, “Hacía la desaparición de la esclavitud cristiano-musulmana entre Marruecos y Europa (siglo xviii),” Cuadernos de la Biblioteca española de Tetuán 5 (1972): 47–80.

127. Morgado García, Una metrópoli esclavista, 144–51; López García, La esclavitud a finales del Antiguo Régimen, 85–113.