The Slave Trade in Western Georgia, According to Reports of Italian Missionaries (XVII century)

Abstract

In the 17th century, selling people as slaves abroad was widespread in Georgia and throughout the Caucasus. This grave circumstance was the result of deep political, economic and social preconditions.

There were various forms of trade in captives and the sale of people deprived of their freedom abroad. Since the passage of captured slaves was mainly carried out by sea transport, the people living near the Black Sea suffered the most. Consequently, the slave trade was especially active in the western Georgian principalities: Guria, Samegrelo and Abkhazia.

In the present work, the issue of the slave trade is discussed based on reports provided by Catholic missionaries of the Theatine Congregation, who worked in Georgia in the second and third quarters of the 17th century. The informative accounts of the Italian missionaries Pietro Avitabile, Giuseppe (Josepho) Giudice, Cristoforo Castelli, Arcangelo Lamberti and Giuseppe Maria Zampi provide more than enough material to create a reasonably complete picture of the subject.

In order to confirm individual reports of Theatine missionaries and to supplement them further, the article examines other foreign authors (Ottoman historian Evliya Çelebi, French merchant Jean Chardin, Antiochian Orthodox Patriarch Makari) who traveled to Georgia in the second half of the 17th century have also left behind very important evidence about the slave trade in Georgia, and the Caucasus in general. The diverse material they provide is an excellent historical source in this respect.