“The bond of said child’s blood through her, his slave”: The Social Worlds of Slavery in Late Medieval MarseilleThis thesis explores the precarious and uncertain position of slaves in Marseille during the long fourteenth century (approximately 1280-1430). It argues that in Marseille, the norms of slavery were negotiated by a triangulated relationship between slaves, their masters, and the myriad friends, enemies, and neighbors that master and slave alike knew in the city. In Marseille, slavery was a relatively minor phenomenon. The population of slaves was small for a large port city in the western Mediterranean, and local institutions had little interest in regulating slavery or the slave trade. There was not much of a defined, institutionalized culture of slavery, and the experience of slaves was marked by frequent interactions with free people in the city who were not their masters. Stories of men and women who were brought against their will to this Provençal port, and whose lives this thesis attempts to elucidate with a combination of notarial and judicial evidence, illuminate how slaves played an active role in creating new social networks to adapt to life in a foreign and often hostile society.Steinman, Charles E.creatorRemensnyder, Amythesis advisorBrown University. Historysponsor2020textborn digitalEnglishSenior thesis (AB)--Brown University, 2020HistorythesesMiddle AgesSlaveryFrance--MarseilleSocial history--Medieval10.26300/ehfy-bk48In CopyrightCollection is open for research.