The Slave Business and Its Material and Moral Hinterlands in Continental Europe

CONFERENCE: The Slave Business and Its Material and Moral Hinterlands in Continental Europe 
International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, April 20-22, 2012


The history of transatlantic slavery is one of the most active and fruitful fields of historical research worldwide. As scholarship in this field is increasingly global, it opens up unique possibilities for international collaboration. More particularly, the most recent research which looks beyond the familiar Atlantic axis and the principal slave-trading nations has made clear the scope for new kinds of comparative and trans-regional studies. The conference revisits a number of key themes relevant to the relationship between slavery (outside Europe) and the dynamics of (European) metropolitan society, giving specific attention to developments in Continental Europe and in particular to the German-speaking regions. These themes include the impact of the slave business on capitalist development and the development of discourses around slavery and abolition in the public sphere. Behind that there lie questions about private conscience – in the first instance about what was known and knowable about the implication of individual economic actors in one of the earliest globalised businesses. By focusing our attention on regions which were physically and politically distant not only from the mines and plantations of the Americas but also from Europe’s ‘slave capitals’ like Liverpool, London, Nantes and Bordeaux, we hope not only to assemble new data and thereby better understand the material ‘reach’ of transatlantic slavery, but also to address wider questions about the ways in which location/space structures knowledge, values and interest by applying them to the particularly dramatic case of slavery in what are still seen as marginal places. How does the geographical status of ‘hinterland’ relate to conditions of economic and moral/discursive interchange?

The conference begins with a keynote lecture by Catherine Hall, Director of the UCL/ESRC project on British stakeholders in slavery and post-abolition compensation, and ends with a session on memory work in teaching, public art and public and community history.

Confirmed speakers

Sabine Broeck (University of Bremen): Bremen and the slave business: Notes on a Hermeneutics of Absence, and a Pedagogy of the Trace Peter Haenger (Basel): Basel and the slave trade: from profiteers to missionaries Dan Hopkins (University of Missouri at Kansas City): Julius von Rohr, an Enlightenment scientist of the plantation Atlantic Jokinen (Hamburg): The Slave Trader Heinrich Carl Schimmelmann and Cultures of Remembrance in Wandsbek: Vestiges, Myths and Protests Craig Koslofsky (University of Illinois at Urbana): A German Diary of a Slaving Journey in the 1690s Jochen Meissner (Humboldt University Berlin): Southern European and Latin American Responses to British Abolitionism Kwame Nimako (University of Amsterdam): The Peace of Westphalia, Slavery and the Berlin Conference: A Continuum Anne-Sophie Overkamp (Viadrina University, Frankfurt a.d.O): The German backcountry and the Atlantic exchange: The participation of textile merchants from the Wupper valley in the Atlantic trade, 1760-1810 Allan Potofsky (University of Paris-Diderot): Paris as Atlantic Hinterland, from the Ancien Régime to the French Revolution Alan Rice (University of Central Lancashire): Chair / comment Barbara Richiger (Cooperaxion - Bern): A Swiss database of slave-trade stakeholders Alexandra Robinson (University of Liverpool): A case study of the Earle family’s Leghorn business 1751 -1808 Klaus Weber (Viadrina University, Frankfurt a.d.O): ‘All the Negroes cloathed with German Linen’: Central European Implications with the Atlantic Slave Trade, 15th-19th Centuries



For full details, visit the conference website at http://www.liv.ac.uk/soclas/conferences/Hinterlands/

Slavery collections

Please note that the Senate House Library Slavery archive subject guides have been upgraded.


They now include relevant archives held by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library, including Taylor Family, West India Committee, Castle Wemyss Estate and Sandbach Tinne and Co collections, adding to the Senate House Library collections, including those of the Akers Family and of William Hewitt

http://www.shl.lon.ac.uk/specialcollections/archives/slaveryarchivesources.shtml

Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of Hull Ph.D Scholarships for 2011

Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of Hull Ph.D Scholarships for 2011



To celebrate recent research successes, the University of Hull has made available 30 UK/EU PhD scholarships and 30 international PhD fees bursaries. Of these, 20 scholarships and bursaries will be available to students from FASS (Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences), which includes the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation.

 Applicants from European Union are eligible for a scholarship which includes course fees and a stipend to cover living costs. Students from outside the European Union are eligible for a scholarship which covers course fees. As part of this larger scholarship round, the Wilberforce Institute is particularly keen to encourage applications for scholarships in the following areas:


* Historical Slave Systems and Global Diasporas.


* The Abolition of Slavery and the Transition to Freedom.

* Memories, Legacies and Representations of Slavery and Abolition.

* Modern Slavery, Human Rights and Human Development.


* Wartime Enslavement and Sexual Violence.


The deadline for applications is the 31st of May.


Applications


Formal applications for a scholarship need to be made through the University's Admissions Office, rather than to the Wilberforce Institute directly. Application forms can be obtained from the University Admissions Office or downloaded in Word format from their website.


University of Hull Admissions Office <http://www2.hull.ac.uk/student/admissions.aspx>
The University of Hull, HU6 7RX, UK
Tel +44 (0)1482 466850
 Fax +44 (0)1482 442290
Email admissions@hull.ac.uk


In order to apply for a scholarship, you should submit the following information:


1. A Completed Application form:


2. A research proposal (around 1,000-1200 words) which should explain:
a) the area of the project
b) the research questions that will be addressed
c) the approach and methods to be employed

3. A brief statement of how the applicant is qualified (formally and in terms of skills, personal attributes etc.) to carry out the project

4. Two references from individuals who are qualified to comment upon your project and professional career to date.

For further information, please contact Dr Douglas Hamilton at D.Hamilton@hull.ac.uk

list available online for early West India Committee records

The West India Committee was formed in the 18th century, by London merchants, engaged in the West Indian trade, and absentee owners of West Indian estates. The Committee acted as a pressure group for West Indian interests, principally in the support of the sugar and rum trades and, in the first decades of its existence, in opposition to the abolition of the slave trade and then slavery.


The collection description of the collection is available on the ULRLS Archives Catalogue.

Included in the collection is a microfilm copy of the early records, minutes and papers of the West India Committee, the original material being sold by the West India Committee to the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, and the microfilm copy being made as a condition of export.

M915 West India Committee minutes 1769-1924 [microfilm] contains:

Minutes and papers of the West India Committee and its predecessors, sub-committees and related organisations, including:

•West India Merchants
•West India Planters and Merchants
•Admiralty Committee of the West India Merchants
•Sub-Committee of the West India Planters and Merchants Appointed to Oppose the Abolition of the Slave Trade
•Literary Sub-Committee of the West India Planters and Merchants
•Merchants, Owners and Masters of Ships
•Jamaica Planters and Merchants
•Country Committees and Proprietors’ Groups: eg. Demerara and Berbice (later British Guiana), Jamaica, Trinidad, and Importers of West Indian Cocoa committees
•British and Colonial Anti Bounty Association
•Board of Commissioners of Grenada and St. Vincent
•Meeting of MPs Interested in the West Indian Colonies

We have added a PDF listing for contents of the microfilm to the collection description. We hope this increases access to the collections and assists users in requesting parts of the collection. (If you want to see this colelction please ask for Reels required). If interested in using this collection please email Senate House Library Special Collections.

Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

Between 1514 and 1866 an estimated over 10 million people of African descent entered the Americas via the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database was launched last year by the Emory University Digital Library Research Initiative, to help researchers, students and the general public  track and better understand this part of history.
The open access (free) online database offers information on nearly 35,000 voyages across the Atlantic - approximately 82 percent of the entire slave trade. Although not complete, Voyages provides a look at the contours of the trade, over four centuries, across four continents, and through these patterns allows insight into its impact. Researchers can look at particular voyages, examine estimates of the extent of the trade, and search by names. The website includes essays, introductory maps, a selection of images and lesson plans and links to other related resources.
The project is the result of collaborative research drawing on data in archives and libraries around the Atlantic world.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database is freely available online at http://www.slavevoyages.org/

Resource for Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

The Transatlantic Slave Trade Data base http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces - this free website, created by Emory University, is an enlarged and revised edition of the Cambridge 1998 CD-ROM dataset. It is much easier to use, and consists of four main databases:

• Voyages - search for particular voyages in this database of documented slaving expedictions. Lists, tables, charts, and maps can be created using information from the database.


• Estimates - this database offers an interactive feature to help you to analyze the full volume and multiple routes of the slave trade.


• Images - this database is a collection of digitised maps, manuscripts, paintings, sketches, and photographs of people, places, and vessels. Many of these also link to related voyage records.


• African names - this database identifies over 67,000 Africans aboard slave ships, using name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation.