This roundtable session in honor of 2020 President of the AHA Dr. Mary Lindemann questions the modernity of human rights, discussing whether its history can be extended to the late medieval and early modern period. Currently, the study of human rights as a field of historical inquiry is primarily focused on the modern period. Many historians agree that the human rights regime emerged during the Atlantic revolutions with the declaration of individual rights and liberties. Their codification in national constitutions is considered a watershed moment, heralding the beginning of the modern era. Scholars have therefore extensively researched the evolution of these rights from a national set of legal principles targeting small groups in the late 1700s to a universal regime of international lawyers safeguarding global rights in the present; a stage Samuel Moyn has identified as the last utopia. Only a few historians, like Lynn Hunt, have endeavored to explore the history of human rights before 1789 even though, she too, takes the Atlantic revolutions as the birthmark of human rights.

This panel questions this periodization by focusing on the problem of Mediterranean slavery that subjected an estimated three million people into many forms of human bondage in the period 1450-1850. The panel members are specialized in the legal, financial, and political ramifications of ransoming captives and the cultural complexities of Christian-Muslim encounters. Their international and interdisciplinary background will offer different perspectives on the interactions and interdependencies between European states and Maghribi polities in the ransoming of captives (known as booty slavery). The main topics include questions on "the right to freedom"; freedom and citizenship; moral responsibility of the state; and representations of humanity and slavery. The purpose of the session is a re-appraisal of the concept of human rights and a discussion of the feasibility of extending its study to the late medieval and early modern period. It will be sponsored by the Central European History Society.

The discussion will be led by Dr. Erica Heinsen-Roach, Independent scholar of history based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Dr. Heinsen-Roach will be joined by Dr. Joachim Östlund, Associate Professor of History at Lund University, Lund, Sweden; Dr. Magnus Ressel, Substitute Professor of Early Modern History at Bremen University in Germany; Dr. Daniel J. Vitkus, Professor of English at the University of California San Diego; and Dr. Gillian Weiss, Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.