Enterprising merchants in the global Atlantic: Austrian-Netherlandish trade with West and Central Africa, 1776-1786

The historiography on the Atlantic System, of which the trade with Africa was part, has long been characterized by a focus on the major colonial powers and their central power strategies of empire-building, especially through mercantilist barriers and monopolistic companies. Recently, this traditional perspective has been challenged in numerous ways. First, historical strands such as Atlantic or global history have pleaded to look beyond nations and empires, describing the boundaries of Atlantic polities as spaces of transnational connection rather than separation. Second, scholars have reassessed the agency of private, enterprising merchants and their informal, international networks as a counterweight to the aforementioned focus on the monopolistic company. These novel perspectives have had several important consequences. First, they compounded existing Atlantic histories of nations in a rich way by including new cross-imperial and informal connections. Second, and more crucially, they also had the consequence of drawing attention to the participation in the colonial project of European areas not yet considered. Using these shifts in perspective, I examine the ties of the Southern Netherlands with the Atlantic complex using the case-study of Frederic Romberg, an eighteenth-century merchant settled in Brussels who moved into the slave trade during the American War of Independence (1775-83). I demonstrate how Romberg partnered with foreign slave traders, acquired slaving licences from the Spanish court, and forcibly transported thousands of captive Africans toward the Americas. By conducting a micro-study of the organization, strategies, and consequences of Romberg’s operations, I dispel the idea that the Southern Netherlands were disconnected from the European colonial project.