Linking the Atlantic and Indian Oceans: Asian textiles, Spanish silver, global capital, and the financing of the Portuguese–Brazilian slave trade (c.1760–1808)

Abstract

This article aims to analyse some of the multilateral flows of capital that contributed to weaving a Global South during the second half of the eighteenth century. It specifically revisits the functioning and financing of the Portuguese slave trade from a global perspective, and offers insights for assessing older frameworks that explain it, in either triangular or bilateral terms. The article argues that the Portuguese slave traffic should be liberated from the South Atlantic borders to which it has been confined. In so doing, it offers an Atlantic history in a global perspective, disclosing the connections between the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Putting the financing of the slave trade into a larger global perspective helps to more accurately explain how it actually operated in terms of the organization of trade. When the financial and institutional foundations of Asian and African trade are analysed together, it becomes evident that they were part of larger networks and capital flows, both westwards and eastwards, which were not just framed imperially or locally.