From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, European slave traders forcibly and violently shipped more than 12.5 million men, women and children from the coast of West Africa to North and South America. Who invested in this slave trade, in Europe and beyond? How did they influence the European economy, politics and culture? Historian Pepijn Brandon, together with three other researchers from the European Research Council (ERC), has received a Synergy Grant of 10 million euros to investigate these questions within the TASTADE (The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Development of Europe) project.
The place of the slave trade in European history has often been dismissed as marginal in the past. By mapping tens of thousands of investors and their connections, the researchers expect to change this picture. "Research has mainly been done into how the slave trade formed societies in West Africa and North and South America," says Brandon. "For Europe, the emphasis was on the companies and traders who organized the slave trade, their profits and losses. In this project, we collect all available information about the men and women across Europe and in European colonies who invested in the slave trade, and their connections within the state, trading communities, philanthropic institutions and the church. The availability of large amounts of data can fundamentally change our view of the influence of the slave trade on European societies."
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Development of Europe project
Together with William Pettigrew (University of Lancaster), Silvia Marzagalli (Université Côte d'Azur, Nice) and Leonardo Marques (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro), Pepijn Brandon will lead the TASTADE project (The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Development of Europe). A large team of junior researchers, PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and data specialists will collect, compare and analyse data on investors in the slave trade within this six-year project.
The four main applicants are each experts on the history of the slave trade, but combine specialisms on different regions, periods, types of historical sources and approaches. This enables them to coordinate archival work in a wide range of languages and national contexts. One of the major innovations in their approach is that they do not focus specifically on the Dutch, English, French, Spanish or Portuguese slave trade, but on the transnational networks that linked investors in all parts of Europe.
Approximately 2.5 million euros of the total amount of 10 million euros will go to research at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Around 1.8 million euros go to the International Institute of Social History (IISH), which will, among other things, house the digital infrastructure of the research.