Out of the Americas: Slave traders and the Hidden Atlantic in the nineteenth century

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay on the “Hidden Atlantic” was first published in German in 2009, systematically employing the concept for the first time. It is published here in English translation, slightly revised and supplemented with the most important recent literature. Its basic assumption is that since the beginning of British and US policies implemented against the Atlantic slave trade, slave ship voyages (1808/1820–1874) were no longer outfitted in Europe, but, especially since 1820, equipped in the Americas, primarily in Brazil and Cuba (“Out of the Americas”). In a first part, the essay analyzes the emergence of the Hidden Atlantic, its agents (here essentially “slave traders” and various other agents, such as Atlantic creoles), and the numbers of displaced persons from Africa (2–3 million according to www.slavevoyages.org). Further, the essay considers the marginalization (Joseph C. Miller) of the Hidden Atlantic and the emergence of a research field emanating from the search for negrero ships on the slave trade Atlantic, primarily the search for the other ships which belonged to the captain of the Amistad, Ramón Ferrer. This essay concludes with some initial results of the “Slave Trader Project” on the Hidden Atlantic.