Intellectual and Legal Abolitionism in the Italian States, 1750–1889

The historiography of abolitionism has focused mainly on American, British and French anti-slavery campaigns, but the juridical steps that eventually resulted in the abolition of slavery, involved many European countries during the nineteenth century. Among these, the pre-unification Italian states and, post-1860, the unified Italy, have received scant attention. In reality, a transnational debate on abolitionism involved the whole of the Italian region, and some Italian states abolished slavery from a juridical point of view. Italy signed up to international treaties and the Papal States played a fundamental role not only regionally, but also in the broader transnational abolitionist debate. I will focus on legal norms that abolished slavery internally and on external legal norms for the abolition of slave trade, but also on intellectual abolitionism through newspapers, university courses and books of abolitionist thinkers. Juridical abolitions did not mean an immediate end of slavery, and the problem of the illegal slave trade and slavery endured for an extended period in both the colonies and around the Mediterranean Sea and in Italian States.