Talk At Yale

The Yale University Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition is hosting Elizabeth to give a talk on European Slavery from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of the Transatlantic Trade: the British Isles. (This is the first chapter of the book.)

Wednesday, September 24, 2025
11:45 am – 1:00 pm
On Zoom and live at Rosenkranz Hall, 115 Prospect Street, New Haven CT, 06511

The enslavement of Europeans, by Europeans, is among the least known of global slaveries and is the subject of a book-in-progress by independent scholar Elizabeth Griffith. In this talk, Griffith presents her chapter on slavery in the British Isles from the definitive departure of the Romans in 410 CE to the last-documented evidence of English “bondmen” in 1617. The chaotic post-Roman period saw warfare and slave-making between Picts, Saxons, Romanized Britons and others. Anglo-Saxon slavery, with Viking raids and Danish demand for geld, was extensive, characterized by practices from various cultures and legal traditions. The Normans imposed Carolingian-inflected limitations on the slave trade in the 12th century, and slavery in the British Isles was long thought to have withered after that. However, a little-known but substantial presence of “bondmen” persisted on British demesnes, both lay and ecclesiastic, until Stuart times. Griffith cites new scholarship (historical, literary, and archaeological), recent reassessments, and little-known sources to tell the story, which includes Elizabeth I’s involvement in bondmen and her about-face on the African slave trade.