Steven Teasdale
I am currently employed as a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Genoa. I am responsible the analysis of archival sources and collection of data relating to marine insurance policies stipulated in Genoa and the general average procedures presented to the city authorities during the early modern period. The data collected during this research will be used enrich the AveTransRisk online database (https://tinyurl.com/mrz96jjz) and allow scholars to carry out comparative assessments with other port cities. The results of this research will be presented at the 20th World Economic History Congress will convene in Lund, Sweden, in July 2025.
My other research examines the social and economic history of late medieval and early modern Mediterranean. I am particularly interested in Genoese merchants in the Mediterranean slave trade, the expansion of this trade from the Black Sea region through the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic, as well as the social networks underpinning this expansion and how they serve to connect the diverse Mediterranean world. My primary methodological approach involves the detailed analysis of notarial contracts and the social networks instantiated and consolidated through business partnerships. I am currently modeling these networks with digital humanities and semantic data analysis software to construct a database of slaveholders and enslaved persons in the fifteenth and sixteenth century Mediterranean and plan to extend this modeling to include the commerce in a variety of physical goods between the Atlantic and Mediterranean region.
My recent PhD thesis examined the socioeconomic networks of Mediterranean slavery from 1348 to 1528. It was based upon a close analysis of over two thousand contracts enacted by Genoese notaries involved in the commerce of enslaved persons and included both extensive transcriptions and digital analysis of these contracts. It demonstrated that the phenomenon of slavery in the late medieval and early modern Genoese Mediterranean was not just a system of household service: it was a complex entangled network of socioeconomic interests, forms of exploitation, and modes of action. My study of its legal and financial tools provides a critical context for subsequent developments in the Atlantic Slave Trade, in which the Genoese were critical financial and administrative agents.
Supervisors: Nicholas Terpstra, Natalie Rothman, and Mark Meyerson
Address: 88 Kenilworth Avenue
Toronto, ON
M4L 3S5
My other research examines the social and economic history of late medieval and early modern Mediterranean. I am particularly interested in Genoese merchants in the Mediterranean slave trade, the expansion of this trade from the Black Sea region through the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic, as well as the social networks underpinning this expansion and how they serve to connect the diverse Mediterranean world. My primary methodological approach involves the detailed analysis of notarial contracts and the social networks instantiated and consolidated through business partnerships. I am currently modeling these networks with digital humanities and semantic data analysis software to construct a database of slaveholders and enslaved persons in the fifteenth and sixteenth century Mediterranean and plan to extend this modeling to include the commerce in a variety of physical goods between the Atlantic and Mediterranean region.
My recent PhD thesis examined the socioeconomic networks of Mediterranean slavery from 1348 to 1528. It was based upon a close analysis of over two thousand contracts enacted by Genoese notaries involved in the commerce of enslaved persons and included both extensive transcriptions and digital analysis of these contracts. It demonstrated that the phenomenon of slavery in the late medieval and early modern Genoese Mediterranean was not just a system of household service: it was a complex entangled network of socioeconomic interests, forms of exploitation, and modes of action. My study of its legal and financial tools provides a critical context for subsequent developments in the Atlantic Slave Trade, in which the Genoese were critical financial and administrative agents.
Supervisors: Nicholas Terpstra, Natalie Rothman, and Mark Meyerson
Address: 88 Kenilworth Avenue
Toronto, ON
M4L 3S5
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Talks by Steven Teasdale
See the accompanying PDFs for the conference programme description and slides of the presentation. This was a short five-minute presentation for the DH Projects Lightning Round & Interactive Demonstrations workshop and was accompanied by an interactive demonstration of an early version of the Omeka-S database afterwards (currently in development with a beta preview online at http://www.genoesemerchantnetworks.com/s/main/page/welcome). It was a condensed and updated version of a paper presented in Warwick in 2018.
See the accompanying PDF for the conference programme description.
See the accompanying PDFs for the conference programme description and slides of the presentation. A visit to modern-day Tunis often entails a side-trip to town of Tabarka, where the primary cultural attraction is the so-called “fort génois.” This large walled fortress on the tip of the peninsula, facing squarely northwards towards the Mediterranean, was the central commercial base for European enterprise in North Africa. This paper will consider the role of Genoese merchants in the Tunisian city between 1400 and 1600, examining the exchange of African and European goods, both luxury and everyday items. This examination will illustrate the importance of Tabarka as a central node of contact between African and European merchants, a nexus connecting commercial flows between the Ottoman Levant, sub-Saharan Africa and Mediterranean Europe. In particular, the paper will focus on the networks of the Lomellini family of Genoa, who would eventually receive a monopoly in the coral trade off the coast of Tunisia along with political administration of Tabarka in 1574
See the accompanying PDF for the slides of the presentation. This paper examines the Genoese involvement with the exploration, settlement, and exploitation of west Africa and the Atlantic Islands through the lens of slavery. Not only do we see the Genoese as investors of early expeditions to the islands, but as early explorers and settlers who were crucial to constructing the plantation complex and sugar industry. First, I will demonstrate how the Genoese were crucial to administering the structures of early Atlantic slavery, including plantations and monasteries, and were also closely involved with the political and military administration of the islands, while ultimately profiting from industries becoming increasingly reliant on slavery.
Secondly, an examination of Genoese notarial deeds will illuminate their extensive commercial activities on the African coast and Cape Verde—activities that would prove essential in their advisory roles to the Portuguese. The Genoese presence in the early settlements of the African coast—coupled with earlier expertise from North Africa and the East—would prove essential in establishing merchant colonies that traded for slaves with the indigenous African regimes.
See the accompanying PDFs for the workshop programme and slides of the presentation.
See the accompanying PDFs for the conference programme description and slides of the presentation. This presentation examines the intersection of banking, politics, slavery, and humanism in fifteenth-century Genoa through an examination of Genoese merchant networks and the Banco di San Giorgio in the Mediterranean slave trade. After the conquest of Constantinople by Ottoman forces in 1453, the Genoese state transferred the administration of the Black Sea colony of Caffa, which been the primary source of female domestic slaves in the fifteenth-century, to the bank. This transformation of the Banco di San Giorgio from a financial institution to a political institution, into what Machiavelli had admiringly characterized as a “state within a state”, was largely driven by the financial interests of Genoese merchant networks. These merchants had made considerable fortunes in the slave trade and its adjacent activities, but their political influence in the colonies had been constrained by legislation limiting their participation in the decisions of the state. However, this legislation did not apply to the governance of the bank, which was almost exclusively controlled by elite Genoese merchant families. As such, the transfer of political administration of Caffa and other Genoese colonies to the bank allowed these merchants to seize political control over territories central to their business interests. Moreover, the chancellors of the bank included noted humanists like Antonio Gallo, whose literary works demonstrate his keen understanding of the Mediterranean slave trade in Genoa, the emerging African slave trade in the Atlantic islands, and the possibilities presented to the bank and merchants by expanding into Africa and the Atlantic world. Thus, the expansion of the slave system into the Atlantic world in the late fifteenth-century must consider the central role of Genoese merchant networks and the Banco di San Giorgio.
The presentation described the framework and early development of what would become the Networks of slaveholding and enslavement the Mediterranean World (ca. 1348–1528) online database that accompanied my PhD Thesis (currently in development with a beta preview online at http://www.genoesemerchantnetworks.com/s/main/page/welcome).
See the accompanying PDFs for the conference programme description and slides of the presentation. This talk summarized my initial research into the subject of the Circassians and the ethnography of Giorgio Interiano. The presentation forms the the basis for a future article which has been submitted to the Journal of Early Modern History.
See the accompanying PDFs for the conference programme description and slides of the presentation.
See the accompanying PDF for the slides of the presentation. The presentation described the conceptual framework and earliest work on what would become the "Networks of slaveholding and enslavement the Mediterranean World (ca. 1348–1528)" online database that accompanied my PhD Thesis (currently in development with a beta preview online at http://www.genoesemerchantnetworks.com/s/main/page/welcome).
See the accompanying PDF for the slides of the presentation.
Thesis by Steven Teasdale
The socioeconomic networks of slaveholding encompassed a diverse range of individuals, from elites nobles to itinerant merchants to artisans. The intersections between slavery and gender are illustrated through an examination of women slaveholders, the use of enslaved women as wet nurses, and the development of life insurance for enslaved pregnant women. These analyses demonstrate how the market economy of slavery provided an effective means for slaveholders to accumulate financial capital while instantiating crucial social ties and expanding their social networks.
The second part provides glimpses into the everyday life of the enslaved. They faced particular health problems and were held under strict social control that regulated their movement and behaviour. The contracts reveal that enslaved women were subject to sexual exploitation from their holders, but they also illustrate how some entered into relationships on their own accord. It has been well established that enslaved persons were exploited for household service by elites, but they were also separated from their children, leased to other families to serve as wet nurses, exploited as servants in monasteries, and toiled in the industrial workshops of the Genoese Mediterranean.
The possibility of freedom was real: it could be granted by the slaveholder or obtained by the enslaved. But the attempts by enslaved persons to obtain freedom by legal means faced a system that was stacked against them. This led some to consider extralegal means, waiting for the opportune moment to escape their holders. Slavery in the late medieval Genoese Mediterranean was not just a system of household service: it was an entangled network of financial interests, forms of exploitation, and modes of action. This study of the legal and financial tools used in organizing it contributes a critical context for understanding early developments in the Atlantic Slave Trade, in which Genoese financiers were deeply involved.
Digital Humanities Projects by Steven Teasdale
This online database was developed as a companion for my thesis and reconstructs the social networks of thousands of slaveholders and enslaved persons attested in Genoese notarial contracts. As of September 2023, this database has encoded 9879 historical persons, 1888 notarial contracts, 58 socioeconomic institutions, 4018 parental relationships, 2057 marriage relationships, 8722 contractual relationships, and 447 institutional relationships.
I was part of a team of six graduate students who traveled to the Venetian State Archives to identify and transcribe late medieval cargo manifests in order to study the interdependent processes of trade and communication in the Mediterranean and create a collaborative digital project in ArcGIS and Storymaps. We received a Dean’s Fund Initiative award to collect information which became the basis of the above online portal.
Book Reviews by Steven Teasdale
I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2019. Pp. x, 310. ISBN 978-0-674-23835-0 (hardcover) US$52.
See the accompanying PDFs for the conference programme description and slides of the presentation. This was a short five-minute presentation for the DH Projects Lightning Round & Interactive Demonstrations workshop and was accompanied by an interactive demonstration of an early version of the Omeka-S database afterwards (currently in development with a beta preview online at http://www.genoesemerchantnetworks.com/s/main/page/welcome). It was a condensed and updated version of a paper presented in Warwick in 2018.
See the accompanying PDF for the conference programme description.
See the accompanying PDFs for the conference programme description and slides of the presentation. A visit to modern-day Tunis often entails a side-trip to town of Tabarka, where the primary cultural attraction is the so-called “fort génois.” This large walled fortress on the tip of the peninsula, facing squarely northwards towards the Mediterranean, was the central commercial base for European enterprise in North Africa. This paper will consider the role of Genoese merchants in the Tunisian city between 1400 and 1600, examining the exchange of African and European goods, both luxury and everyday items. This examination will illustrate the importance of Tabarka as a central node of contact between African and European merchants, a nexus connecting commercial flows between the Ottoman Levant, sub-Saharan Africa and Mediterranean Europe. In particular, the paper will focus on the networks of the Lomellini family of Genoa, who would eventually receive a monopoly in the coral trade off the coast of Tunisia along with political administration of Tabarka in 1574
See the accompanying PDF for the slides of the presentation. This paper examines the Genoese involvement with the exploration, settlement, and exploitation of west Africa and the Atlantic Islands through the lens of slavery. Not only do we see the Genoese as investors of early expeditions to the islands, but as early explorers and settlers who were crucial to constructing the plantation complex and sugar industry. First, I will demonstrate how the Genoese were crucial to administering the structures of early Atlantic slavery, including plantations and monasteries, and were also closely involved with the political and military administration of the islands, while ultimately profiting from industries becoming increasingly reliant on slavery.
Secondly, an examination of Genoese notarial deeds will illuminate their extensive commercial activities on the African coast and Cape Verde—activities that would prove essential in their advisory roles to the Portuguese. The Genoese presence in the early settlements of the African coast—coupled with earlier expertise from North Africa and the East—would prove essential in establishing merchant colonies that traded for slaves with the indigenous African regimes.
See the accompanying PDFs for the workshop programme and slides of the presentation.
See the accompanying PDFs for the conference programme description and slides of the presentation. This presentation examines the intersection of banking, politics, slavery, and humanism in fifteenth-century Genoa through an examination of Genoese merchant networks and the Banco di San Giorgio in the Mediterranean slave trade. After the conquest of Constantinople by Ottoman forces in 1453, the Genoese state transferred the administration of the Black Sea colony of Caffa, which been the primary source of female domestic slaves in the fifteenth-century, to the bank. This transformation of the Banco di San Giorgio from a financial institution to a political institution, into what Machiavelli had admiringly characterized as a “state within a state”, was largely driven by the financial interests of Genoese merchant networks. These merchants had made considerable fortunes in the slave trade and its adjacent activities, but their political influence in the colonies had been constrained by legislation limiting their participation in the decisions of the state. However, this legislation did not apply to the governance of the bank, which was almost exclusively controlled by elite Genoese merchant families. As such, the transfer of political administration of Caffa and other Genoese colonies to the bank allowed these merchants to seize political control over territories central to their business interests. Moreover, the chancellors of the bank included noted humanists like Antonio Gallo, whose literary works demonstrate his keen understanding of the Mediterranean slave trade in Genoa, the emerging African slave trade in the Atlantic islands, and the possibilities presented to the bank and merchants by expanding into Africa and the Atlantic world. Thus, the expansion of the slave system into the Atlantic world in the late fifteenth-century must consider the central role of Genoese merchant networks and the Banco di San Giorgio.
The presentation described the framework and early development of what would become the Networks of slaveholding and enslavement the Mediterranean World (ca. 1348–1528) online database that accompanied my PhD Thesis (currently in development with a beta preview online at http://www.genoesemerchantnetworks.com/s/main/page/welcome).
See the accompanying PDFs for the conference programme description and slides of the presentation. This talk summarized my initial research into the subject of the Circassians and the ethnography of Giorgio Interiano. The presentation forms the the basis for a future article which has been submitted to the Journal of Early Modern History.
See the accompanying PDFs for the conference programme description and slides of the presentation.
See the accompanying PDF for the slides of the presentation. The presentation described the conceptual framework and earliest work on what would become the "Networks of slaveholding and enslavement the Mediterranean World (ca. 1348–1528)" online database that accompanied my PhD Thesis (currently in development with a beta preview online at http://www.genoesemerchantnetworks.com/s/main/page/welcome).
See the accompanying PDF for the slides of the presentation.
The socioeconomic networks of slaveholding encompassed a diverse range of individuals, from elites nobles to itinerant merchants to artisans. The intersections between slavery and gender are illustrated through an examination of women slaveholders, the use of enslaved women as wet nurses, and the development of life insurance for enslaved pregnant women. These analyses demonstrate how the market economy of slavery provided an effective means for slaveholders to accumulate financial capital while instantiating crucial social ties and expanding their social networks.
The second part provides glimpses into the everyday life of the enslaved. They faced particular health problems and were held under strict social control that regulated their movement and behaviour. The contracts reveal that enslaved women were subject to sexual exploitation from their holders, but they also illustrate how some entered into relationships on their own accord. It has been well established that enslaved persons were exploited for household service by elites, but they were also separated from their children, leased to other families to serve as wet nurses, exploited as servants in monasteries, and toiled in the industrial workshops of the Genoese Mediterranean.
The possibility of freedom was real: it could be granted by the slaveholder or obtained by the enslaved. But the attempts by enslaved persons to obtain freedom by legal means faced a system that was stacked against them. This led some to consider extralegal means, waiting for the opportune moment to escape their holders. Slavery in the late medieval Genoese Mediterranean was not just a system of household service: it was an entangled network of financial interests, forms of exploitation, and modes of action. This study of the legal and financial tools used in organizing it contributes a critical context for understanding early developments in the Atlantic Slave Trade, in which Genoese financiers were deeply involved.
This online database was developed as a companion for my thesis and reconstructs the social networks of thousands of slaveholders and enslaved persons attested in Genoese notarial contracts. As of September 2023, this database has encoded 9879 historical persons, 1888 notarial contracts, 58 socioeconomic institutions, 4018 parental relationships, 2057 marriage relationships, 8722 contractual relationships, and 447 institutional relationships.
I was part of a team of six graduate students who traveled to the Venetian State Archives to identify and transcribe late medieval cargo manifests in order to study the interdependent processes of trade and communication in the Mediterranean and create a collaborative digital project in ArcGIS and Storymaps. We received a Dean’s Fund Initiative award to collect information which became the basis of the above online portal.
I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2019. Pp. x, 310. ISBN 978-0-674-23835-0 (hardcover) US$52.