Next dossier to be published in CHDJ 2023, Vol. 12, No. 2

2023-04-28

The Iberian Atlantic and the making of the modern world. Scientific editors: Dale W. Tomich (Binghamton University) and Leonardo Marques (Universidade Federal Fluminense).

The present dossier explores the Iberian Atlantic as a critical component of capitalism's historical trajectory. All the essays explore different aspects of three key commodity frontiers of the Atlantic world that were largely the creation of the Iberian Atlantic system over the long sixteenth century: precious metals, sugar, and slaves. The essays by Gabriel Rocha/David Wheat and Dale Tomich explore the history of sugar in different ways, focusing on sixteenth century São Tomé and seventeenth century Brazil. Manuel Fernández Chaves, and Maximiliano Menz discuss some of the key dynamics of the transatlantic slave trade in Angola, the largest slave-trading region in early modern history, while Jennifer Wolff and Leonardo Marques add to the discussion on the intra-American slave trade, focusing, respectively, on the Spanish Caribbean and Rio de Janeiro. Finally, the essays by Leonardo Marques and Eduardo Corona deal with the connections between mining in colonial Latin America and slavery and other forms of coerced labor. The goal of the present dossier is to contribute to bringing particular studies into a common framework and creating a shared dialogue in order to show the centrality of the Iberian world to any debate on the relationship between capitalism and slavery.

Contributors:

Gabriel de Avilez Rocha (Brown University, Departments of History and Portuguese & Brazilian Studies) / David Wheat (Michigan State University, History Department): The Uncertain Atlantic: African and European Transformations of São Tomé Island c. 1533.

Dale Tomich (Binghamton University): O Engenho de Açúcar: André João Antonil and the Anatomy of the Seventeenth Century Brazilian Slave Plantation.

Jennifer Wolff: Liquid Geographies of Transatlantic Slavery: Caribbean Pathways of Forced Migration, 1580-1640

Leonardo Marques (Universidade Federal Fluminense): The making of a slave-trading entrepôt: Rio de Janeiro in the economic spaces of mining, 1565-1763.

Manuel F. Fernández Chaves (Universidad de Sevilla): Managing the slave trade: the accounts of the Angola contract between 1597-1600.

Maximiliano Menz (Unifesp): The Gold Mining Boom, North European Capital, and the Reorganization of the Portuguese Slave Trade in Angola (1710-1730).

Eduardo Corona Pérez (Universidad de Sevilla): Población y esclavitud en Vila Rica de Ouro Preto (1712-1770).

Battista Agnese, Portolan Atlas (approximately 1540). Atlantic Ocean with portions of North America, South America, Europe, and Africa. Courtesy of the Huntington Library Digital Library (mss HM26 Manuscripts, f. 5v-6r).