Alessandro Stanziani

Directeur d’études (full professor) EHESS, Paris, Directeur de recherche (Senior researcher) CNRS Paris, France.

Main fields of interest: comparative and global labor history: Russia, Europe, the Indian Ocean, 17th–early 20th century; comparative business and economic history, 18th–early 20th century. Current projects: bondage and debt in the Indian Ocean, 17th–20th century; military market and labor market, Muscovy, Mugal, and Inner Eurasia. Main books: L'économie en révolution. Le cas russe,1870-1930, Albin  Michel, "L'évolution de l'humanité", 1998; Histoire de la qualité alimentaire, 18e–20e siècles, Paris, Seuil, 2005; Rules of Exchange. French Capitalism in Comparative Perspective, 18th–20th centuries, Cambridge University Press, 2012; Bâtisseurs d’Empires. Russie, Inde et Chine à la croisée des mondes. Paris, Raison d’agir,  2012.

Conrad’s Periple: Labor, Rights, and Bondage in Eurasia

I am presenting my research on labor constraints in Eurasia: Russian serfdom, Indian bondage, and European labor. This will include a discussion of communal trends and local specificities; freedom and unfreedom; stages in history (critics); backwardness (critics).