Events

Mediterranean Slavery during the 18th Century and the Historical Study of Race: M’hamed Oualdi in Conversation with Shreya Parikh
February 24 @ 10:00 am | Virtual Event
From ancient times through abolition, scholars have often described slavery in the Mediterranean region as being relatively unaffected by the history of racial thought. Instead, many historians have focused on the decisive role played by religion. At the same time, however, it is undeniable that dark-skinned enslaved people occupied a more subordinate position in comparison with other dominated groups. Presented by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa, this talk investigates whether theories of race and racism can elucidate the social, political, and economic dimensions of slavery in the Mediterranean, while also asking how studying slavery in the Mediterranean might provide a different understanding of racialization during the early modern period.
M’hamed Oualdi is a Professor at the European University Institute, Florence. Before joining the EUI, he taught at Sciences Po-Paris and Princeton University. He is supervising a European Research Council-funded project about the demise of slavery in the Mediterranean from the mid-18th century to the 1930s. He is the author of Esclaves et maîtres. Les mamelouks au service des beys de Tunis du XVIIe siècle aux années 1880 (Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011) and A Slave between Empires (Columbia University Press, 2020).
Shreya Parikh is a lecturer and affiliated researcher at Sciences Po Paris. She received a Dual Ph.D. in Political Science and in Sociology from Sciences Po and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2024. Her dissertation, Mirages of Race: Blackness, Racialization, and the Black Movement in Tunisia, examines the intersections of race, migration, and citizenship in the production of Blackness in contemporary Tunisia. She is currently working on adapting her dissertation manuscript into a book.