Summary

This chapter focusses on experiences of slavery and unfree labour that emerged in the age of abolition and its aftermath, continuing to the present day. It engages with the idea that the persistence of slavery is grounded on labour and affective practices structured along lines of race, class, and gender that were first articulated within slavery-based societies during the nineteenth century. Rui Gomes Coelho outlines the development of ‘Second Slavery’ as an industrialised, technological, and science-oriented institution that emerged out of American plantation economies. Camille Westmont contextualises the history of convict leasing and penal labour in the United States—one of the many legacies of antebellum slavery in the South. Heather Burke and Claire Smith focus on the development of unfree First Nations labour in Australia, a settler colony that was consolidated after the formal abolition of slavery. Beatriz Serrazina analyses forced labour in mining projects in colonial Africa, with a focus on Diamang, a mining company that operated in late colonial Angola. The last two sections deal with the ways in which labour and affective practices structured within the institution of slavery shaped Europe’s contemporary societies, especially along the lines of race and gender. Reinhard Bernbeck discusses the materiality of slavery under the Nazis and argues that archaeology is a crucial tool to critically reflect on suffering and modes of witnessing. Finally, Xurxo Ayán Vila looks at the materiality of sexual exploitation in contemporary Galicia, in northwest Spain.

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