The Hinterland of the Holy Roman Empire and the Slave Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century

Abstract

Residing in Brussels from 1755, Friedrich Romberg, a native of Hemer near Iserlohn in Westphalia and a friend of Emperor Joseph II, may be an exceptional figure in the line of German slave traders with his intensive involvement in the French colonial empire of the 1770s/80s. However, he can also be seen as an emblematic exponent of a profitable niche in the overall panorama of the Atlantic slave trade—namely, the connection of the German and even Italian textile industries with the Caribbean plantation economies. By examining the trading circuits within Romberg’s freight forwarding company and his textile trade and production, we can extend and praxeologically nuance the concept of the central European “slavery hinterland.”