2026 ECGH Annual Lecture in the History of Slavery - Professor Nino Luraghi "In this paper, I confront a challenge to the study of ancient slavery posed by the study of modern resistance and revolts of enslaved people. Scholars studying especially the sugar islands of the Caribbean have come to realize that robust resistance on the part of enslaved people had been marginalized both by contemporary observers and by previous research. Historians of antiquity have also occasionally observed that ancient textual evidence, emanating essentially from the slave-owning class, tends to underrepresent and explain away the more serious forms of resistance, such as flight and revolt. This awareness, however, has not prevented mainstream scholarship from replicating the tendency of the sources, systematically minimizing the minimalist assessment found in them without any serious attempt at unpacking its ideological presuppositions. The issue at stake is not merely that the sources underplay resistance and historians buy into their bias. The issue – a more fundamental one – is that underplaying resistance is an essential feature for the survival and coherence of any system of enslavement. Seeing this both allows for new readings of ancient resistance and is part of the new readings itself. In my paper, I will offer a preliminary exploration of these points."The reception will follow the lecture. This event is hosted by the Edinburgh Centre for Global History and co-badged by the Edinburgh Classics Research Seminar. Professor Nino Luraghi Nino Luraghi is Wykeham Professor of Ancient History at the University of Oxford. Educated in Italy, he has held academic appointments in Germany, the US, Canada and the UK. He is a social and cultural historian of ancient Greece. His main interests include ancient and modern historiography, sole rulership, ethnicity and the cultural history of enslavement. He is the author of 'The Ancient Messenians: Constructions of Ethnicity and Memory' (Cambridge, 2008) and the editor of 'The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus' (Oxford, 2001) and of 'The Splendors and Miseries of Ruling Alone' (Stuttgart, 2013). Tags History Lecture Lecture in the History of Slavery Nov 05 2026 17.00 - 19.00 2026 ECGH Annual Lecture in the History of Slavery - Professor Nino Luraghi The 2026 ECGH Annual Lecture in the History of Slavery will be on 'Silencing the Past: From Haiti to the Peloponnese'. G.159, MacLaren Stuart Room, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL Find the venue This article was published on Thursday 17 September 2026
2026 ECGH Annual Lecture in the History of Slavery - Professor Nino Luraghi "In this paper, I confront a challenge to the study of ancient slavery posed by the study of modern resistance and revolts of enslaved people. Scholars studying especially the sugar islands of the Caribbean have come to realize that robust resistance on the part of enslaved people had been marginalized both by contemporary observers and by previous research. Historians of antiquity have also occasionally observed that ancient textual evidence, emanating essentially from the slave-owning class, tends to underrepresent and explain away the more serious forms of resistance, such as flight and revolt. This awareness, however, has not prevented mainstream scholarship from replicating the tendency of the sources, systematically minimizing the minimalist assessment found in them without any serious attempt at unpacking its ideological presuppositions. The issue at stake is not merely that the sources underplay resistance and historians buy into their bias. The issue – a more fundamental one – is that underplaying resistance is an essential feature for the survival and coherence of any system of enslavement. Seeing this both allows for new readings of ancient resistance and is part of the new readings itself. In my paper, I will offer a preliminary exploration of these points."The reception will follow the lecture. This event is hosted by the Edinburgh Centre for Global History and co-badged by the Edinburgh Classics Research Seminar. Professor Nino Luraghi Nino Luraghi is Wykeham Professor of Ancient History at the University of Oxford. Educated in Italy, he has held academic appointments in Germany, the US, Canada and the UK. He is a social and cultural historian of ancient Greece. His main interests include ancient and modern historiography, sole rulership, ethnicity and the cultural history of enslavement. He is the author of 'The Ancient Messenians: Constructions of Ethnicity and Memory' (Cambridge, 2008) and the editor of 'The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus' (Oxford, 2001) and of 'The Splendors and Miseries of Ruling Alone' (Stuttgart, 2013). Tags History Lecture Lecture in the History of Slavery Nov 05 2026 17.00 - 19.00 2026 ECGH Annual Lecture in the History of Slavery - Professor Nino Luraghi The 2026 ECGH Annual Lecture in the History of Slavery will be on 'Silencing the Past: From Haiti to the Peloponnese'. G.159, MacLaren Stuart Room, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL Find the venue This article was published on Thursday 17 September 2026
Nov 05 2026 17.00 - 19.00 2026 ECGH Annual Lecture in the History of Slavery - Professor Nino Luraghi The 2026 ECGH Annual Lecture in the History of Slavery will be on 'Silencing the Past: From Haiti to the Peloponnese'.
