Ranging from the Neolithic to the 21st century, this course will survey the history of human bondage. Topics to be explored include the role of slavery in the rise of the first Neolithic states; the institutionalization of slavery in ancient Mesopotamia, the Greco-Roman Mediterranean, and ancient China; the proliferation of slave systems elsewhere in Eurasia and on the African continent; the economic and political transformation of the Old and New Worlds through the commodification of African and Native American bodies; and the feedback loops linking ancient slave systems to modern ones.
