Slave Resistance in Early Medieval England

Abstract

Considering early medieval slave resistance proves difficult, given our limited knowledge of all people of low status, especially slaves. Without oral histories, slave narratives, or strong indications of agency, we cannot confidently move beyond discussion of what slave-owners feared into what slaves intended. In lieu of broad discussion of slave agency for early medieval England, we can speak instead of the anticipated problems of slave-ownership. Elites were most concerned by behaviours which could fall into three overlapping categories of ‘problems’: those of property ownership, labour and violence. Each issue focusses heavily on legal responsibility for actions by slaves within a communal compensation-based legal system. Examination of these fears indicates that lawmakers and slave-owning elites were consistently engaged in problematizing slave-ownership, either in reaction to known slave behaviour or in anticipation of it. What emerges, then, is a situation in which both real and imagined acts of resistance helped shape ideas of power and authority both at a personal and administrative level. The expectations of slave behaviour also illuminate some aspects of slavery’s role in society.