Re:The Language of the Roman Empire
by Balero on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @05:32AM
(#17081057)
The Venetians in this were just traders, slavery was a business not a part of the society. Most of the unskilled labour was done by peasants who's rights were different across Europe. From being slaves in all but name (not allowed to leave the land, and the land could be bought and sold), through having to work, but otherwise having a decent amount of freedom, to owning a small plot of land.
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Venetians, and especially the Genoese had large slave populations at the time. This source quotes up to 10% of the population being slaves around 1400:
https://books.google.dk/books?id=G4dECgAAQBAJ&pg=PT28&lpg=PT...
Yeah, especially the Genoese. They dominated the Black Sea slave market all throughout the 1300s and the early 1400s, they used to buy them from the Mongols, on the Black Sea Northern shores, and ferry them (so to speak) down South to Pera (across the Golden Horn from Constantinople) where they were selling them.