Biography
Achille Marotta is a social historian of slavery and the early modern Mediterranean. His interests include archives, microhistory, legal history, and the comparative history of Catholic and Islamic societies in the Mediterranean.
In 2024, Achille received his PhD from the University of Bologna, defending a thesis titled ‘Slavery, Normativity, and Muslim-Christian Relations in Early Modern Genoa (1600-1800)’. His thesis studied the life of enslaved and manumitted Muslims in the Republic of Genoa, uncovering the local social institutions that governed bondage, freedom, and cross-confessional relations.
At the EUI, Achille will revise his dissertation for a monograph, while developing his second research project. This new project deals with the curious phenomenon of ‘merchant slaves’: men who, despite their enslaved status, amassed an impressive capital by working as traders, shopkeepers, and street vendors, sometimes even purchasing their own freedom. Achille will be analysing the social, cultural, and economic role of this group in Italian port cities during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For this project, Achille has already received a research grant from the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi in Turin.