2024/03/29 by Angela Zhang
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #Italian Fascism and Post-war Society #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis
paper · doi:10.1086/729295
In the intake records of the Foundling Hospital in Florence between 1445 and 1453, only two infants, out of almost three hundred, were marked as “ghezzo” and “nero,” meaning dark-skinned and Black. At the same time, about fifty percent of the children left there were the children of enslaved women, who accounted for ninety-two percent of the enslaved population of Florence. While archival documents have not yet shown evidence of enslaved West Africans arriving in Florence before 1462, the Foundling Hospital records demonstrate the pervasiveness of Black and White boundaries as a site of difference. The use of epidermal descriptors, hereditary racialization, and gender division in a single archival record reveals the necessity of an intersectional approach to the study of enslavement. My article applies premodern critical race studies (PCRS) to archival documents by examining the language Florentines used for enslaved domestic servants in their sale, in their daily lives, and in describing their offspring. Through an examination of racialized terminology in the Florentine archives, I argue that considerations of race and race-thinking should now form a part of any scholarly analysis of this late medieval Tuscan city. The formulations of racial languages are found in the daily interactions and relationships of Florentines, especially women, with enslaved domestic laborers. I conclude that women, both enslaved and free, were instrumental to race-thinking in Florence. Since race in the late medieval Mediterranean was written on the canvas of female bodies and their productive capabilities, its study necessitates a close analysis of the words used about and by women.