Phillips has produced an excellent survey of slavery as practiced in Iberia (with an emphasis on Spain) for nearly a millennium. Ranging from the Roman period to the nineteenth century, Phillips offers a thematic, rather than an argument-driven, overview of the contours of the institution within Spain and Portugal. His synthesis of existing scholarship, including a helpful bibliography, will be of great use to (Anglophone) scholars less familiar with published work in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and French.
The book opens with a concise but rich historiographical introduction followed by six chapters—“The History of Slavery in Iberia,” “To Become a Slave,” “To Traffic in Slaves,” “To Live as a Slave,” “To Work as a Slave,” and “To Become Free”—and concludes with a brief epilogue entitled “The Wider Extensions of Iberian Slavery.” As Phillips acknowledges in the introduction, “The history of slavery in Spain is complex and lacks a clear narrative line”...