Female slaves in Malta and the Mediterranean in the eighteenth century

Abstract

This dissertation embarks on a journey of exploration, examination and interpretation of documents. Documents are scarce but what they reveal about these females is loud and clear, shedding light on paths rarely explored and ground scarcely trodden. This study looks into the reality of slavery within a Mediterranean and Maltese social framework, making the female slave a protagonist within a cosmopolitan society especially in the port cities like that of San Paolo in Valletta. It investigates relationships, marriages, subjection and liberation of these women who did what they could in order to fit into a framework which was otherwise alien to them by means of baptism. The documents found are definitely not representative of the majority of slaves because many had nothing written about them and many had nothing to write but the few documents encountered and studied shed a new light on subjects like marriage and liberation of female slaves, their influence and position within the families where they served and their emotional baggage. The best research starts with a curiosity, and it is usually motivated by unanswered questions in a particular field of study. This dissertation too starts with a question, it questions how these female slaves managed to survive in an alien world, the tenacity of some and how this helped them cope and overcome their chains, how they lived their everyday life. It would have been exciting to come across a diary or letters expressing the emotions of these slaves but unfortunately this did not happen therefore although this dissertation tries also to explore the emotions of these slaves this remains a hypothesis, maybe a possibility for further research. My research on local primary sources was carried out at the Notarial Archives of Valletta (N.A.V.), the Parish of San Paolo in Valletta, the Parish of Mqabba, the National Library Manuscripts (N.L.M. Lib. Ms.) and the National Archives of Malta Banca Giuratale (Mdina). I also carried out some research at the Archives of the Inquisition (A.I.M.) and the National Archives in Rabat (N.A.M.) but I decided not to pursue research there and not to use these documents due to the limited word count and due to the Covid-19 Closure in March 2020. Furthermore, I did not use the documents from the Archives of the Inquisition because these have already been thoroughly studied by a number of other historians. The local documents are used in this dissertation in order to provide a detailed case study of an island in the very middle of the Mediterranean, an island which is very representative of the whole of the Mediterranean with the diversity of cultures, languages and religions sharing this tiny space with the cosmopolitan port city of San Paolo being representative of major port cities in the Mediterranean. As Arlette Farge states, archives only serve as a social observatory, where society is observed through scattered scraps. The puzzle is never complete but one full of gaps which spark curiosity for further research. All this is done while comparing local documents with foreign works by historians like Salvatore Bono, providing the general Mediterranean framework, a framework of a region which had slaves coming from different areas. Bono specifies that the study of female slaves would be complex because of their conspicuous minority when compared to men, a situation which makes them less visible and very easily assimilated and lost within the society they lived in. Gaining freedom was already quite difficult for female slaves, maybe more so than their male counterparts but managing to become rich and acquire social recognition was out of this world but some did. Because the stories of these women have practically never been unearthed, it is only through archival documents that one can start giving life to these individuals who make part of the history of women in Malta and the Mediterranean.