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Podcast: New Books in Italian Studies
Episode: Giulia Bonazza, "Abolitionism and the Persistence of Slavery in Italian States 1750–1850" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
Description: Abolitionism and the Persistence of Slavery in Italian States 1750–1850 (Palgrave MacMillian, 2019) offers a pioneering study of slavery in the Italian states. Documenting previously unstudied cases of slavery in six Italian cities—Naples, Caserta, Rome, Palermo, Livorno and Genoa—Giulia Bonazza investigates why slavery survived into the middle of the nineteenth century, even as the abolitionist debate raged internationally and most states had abolished it. She contextualizes these cases of residual slavery from 1750–1850, focusing on two juridical and political watersheds: after the Napoleonic period, when the Italian states (with the exception of the Papal States) adopted constitutions outlawing slavery; and after th...