This multi-year endeavor will “follow the money” as it investigates the technologies of finance that facilitated the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Atlantic plantation complex. The group seeks to develop new perspectives on the financial mechanics of slaving operations and the trade’s relationship to maritime insurance, commodity brokerage, currency arbitrage, banking, and other endeavors that have come to constitute the financial services industry. Equally important is the relationship of slavery and the slave trade to state monetary regimes, sovereign debt, and central banking. Finally, the cluster seeks to learn more about the financial side of emancipation, including programs for reparatory compensation and colonization.

The group hopes to facilitate comparative study across empires and regions, as well as to engage a broad chronology stretching from the early modern period through the Atlantic slave system’s nineteenth-century culmination. Although its questions are fundamentally historical, the cluster is eager to bring together scholars working under the auspices of multiple disciplines, employing a range of methodologies, and equipped with investigative tools both technical and theoretical. The endeavor also seeks to foster a reflexive awareness of the violence embedded in slavery’s financial archive and to promote scholarly practices that confront the ethical and political implications of this research for the present.

In its inaugural year (2023–2024), the research cluster operated as a reading group and workshop in order to refine its core questions in conversation with visiting speakers. In its May 2025 mini-conference, the cluster brought twelve scholars to campus for several days of discussion and to hear a keynote lecture from acclaimed author and journalist Rachel Swarns. As it continues to develop, the cluster will support faculty and graduate scholarship through proctorships, research grants, conferences, and publication opportunities. With momentum, the cluster will also turn its attention to public-facing engagement in recognition of the topic’s resonances in contemporary politics, policy-making, and collective memory.