Abstract:
The article deals with the microstory of two men between Africa and the Americas (Cuba): a doctor and captain/ slaver born in Germany and his slave born in the region or the hinterland of the Gambia river. Both have extraordinary knowledge of the slave Atlantic (hidden Atlantic) "from below", especially on Africa. The doctor becomes a rich merchant with this knowledge and marries within the framework of an old elite of Cuba (not without conflicts). His slave and African cosmopolite is trying to acquire his freedom (against his cosmopolitan master). The article shows the agency of both by three legal cases.
Keywords:
hidden Atlantic; new Iberian Atlantic of the nineteenth century; trafficking and smuggling of human bodies; new social history of law; cases before the Court of Commerce of Havana; captains; merchants and slavers/ negreros