Veleros y vapores, velocidad y engaño. Análisis socio-técnico de las transformaciones en la navegación marítima en el proceso de abolición del comercio atlántico de esclavos (siglo xix)

Abstract

This article analyzes the process of co-constructing the systems of maritime navigation, naval design, and the Atlantic slave trade during the nineteenth century. To do so, it reconstructs the complex relations between actors, artifacts, states, institutions, scientific and technological knowledge, ideologies, and the techno-productive systems involved in this process. From the end of the eighteenth century, the legitimacy of the transatlantic slave trade was increa­singly questioned. In 1807, the British government - representing the county with the greatest participation in the trade at the time - unilaterally abolished it. Simultaneously, it started actively perse­cuting slave traders and promoted the abolition of the trade among the countries still involved. In this new scenario, transformations occurred among the heterogeneous elements tied to the slave trade, as well as the kinds and ways of interaction between them. To over­come mono-causal and deterministic explanations of technological development, the theoretical and methodological approach we use is constructivist. This allows us to identify new relations, reconstruct new processes, and generate new explanations.

Keywords

• Slave trade
• slave ships
• abolition
• maritime navigation
• technology.