¿Una oferta sin demanda? La esclavitud rural en Mallorca antes de la peste negra (ss. XIII-XIV)

This paper seeks to raise some questions regarding the persistence of slavery in Majorca between the Catalan conquest in 1230 and the Black Death in 1348. The native Moslem population, initially enslaved (with the exception of some self-employed workers entitled to set up family groups), decreased in number, under the demographic pressure of the colonists, until their role was merely additional manpower in the farms that were established during the process of colonisation. The depletion of native slave manpower -a process noted before the end of the 13th century- led to slaves being imported from several Mediterranean areas; this fact, along with the reinstatement of the jouissance prior to the Black Death and, mainly, the Rural Uprising(14th-15th centuries), reveal the importance of slave-labour on large feudal estates before the Black Death. Although there is no doubt about the quantitative importance of slavery in Majorca during the first half of the 14th century, a question mark arises regarding its functional nature: slave-labour on large feudal estates certainly played an important role, but the ransoms that the captives had to pay - either in hard cash or by working - for their freedom seem to have been even more important. This would in fact seem to have been the main purpose of slavery. Slavery, exclusively as forced labour, was apparently a phenomenon subsequent to the Black Death.