Introduction From Practices to Structurations: German Involvement in Slavery and the Slave Trade

In recent years, research on the concept of the European hinterland of the transatlantic slave trade has intensified considerably. We are now much more aware of the general contours of the reciprocal intricacies, interdependencies, and entanglements of most parts of Europe with the colonial world across the Atlantic and the slave trade it entailed. However, we still lack more detailed knowledge of the practices that created, stabilized, and reproduced these connections-or discontinued them. Recent developments in the social sciences have resulted in substantial elaboration of a "theory of practices", often called "Praxistheorie" in German. By focusing on the microhistorical practices that formed the base of reciprocal connections between the phenomenon of global slavery and central Europe in the eighteenth century, we aim to arrive at insights regarding the structurations of the big picture. We assume that such structurations and their effects amounted in turn to a framework of German entanglements with Atlantic and global slavery during the eighteenth century that shall be illuminated here from different perspectives and in diverse connotations.