Galbán Godríguez, Eduardo, La abolición de la esclavitud en España. De­bates parlamentarios, 1810-­1886, Madrid, Dykinson, 2014, 237 pp.

Los estudios sobre la esclavitud y la trata de esclavos en el contexto imperial español son significativamente escasos en la historiografía española. Mientras las historiográficas nacionales de Gran Bretaña, Estados Unidos, Brasil, Cuba o Francia han prestado gran interés a los procesos de conformación, mantenimiento y abolición del comercio de esclavos y de la esclavitud, las investigaciones producidas en España han sido pocas, generalistas y, salvo destacadas excepciones, con muy poco impacto internacional. Ello a provocado una desconexión entre las grandes narrativas anglófona y francesa y el marco histórico español. En este contexto historiográfico se inserta la obra de Eduardo Galván Rodríguez, La abolición de la esclavitud en España. Debates parlamentarios, 1810-1886, que supone la primera compilación completa de los debates parlamentarios acerca de la trata de esclavos y la esclavitud en los parlamentos y cortes españoles desde 1810 hasta 1886. Galván es catedrático de Historia del Derecho y de las Instituciones de la Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria y Académico correspondiente de la Real Academia de Jurisprudencia y Legislación

Centring Blackness : towards a new public history of the Spanish empire

History 'is, at last, impossible'.1 No single narrative, study, research, or reconstruction of events can capture the complexity of human existence. No single narrative can tell us the story of everything and everyone that has ever existed. Nor it can describe with a genuine level of honesty the emotional universe of individuals that once were. History is the discipline of approximation, a partial description, a bounded analysis of the past.2 When individuals build histories, they tell us a lot about themselves, their values, and their aspirations. Creating a specific type of history is a political choice. Historiographies are political vehicles. As David Harlan put it 'a sense of the past is a way of being in the present. At its best it is a way of arguing with ourselves'. If impossible, what is the goal of history? Or to be more precise, what is the role of public historians in creating new histories of Europe? Olivette Otelle told us in her powerful recent book, African Europeans, that learning the history of Afro-descendants in Europe has the transformative capacity of dismantling ‘racial oppression in the present’.4 History then is a transformative tool, a vehicle for thinking about the past to change the present. More recently, the historiography of the Global South has demonstrated a growing concern with the histories of those who have been silenced, ignored, or disregarded in terms of the grand narratives.5 Creating the histories ‘of the nobodies’, as Eduardo Galiano called them, allows us to build more accurate, more inclusive, more exciting and complex, democratic, and better descriptions of the past. It is an extraordinary task, but it is also, as Josep Fradera asserted, an important responsibility – ‘the responsibility of explaining (to our compatriots) what they may not want to know’.6 Centring Blackness in European history means inserting the social, intellectual, political, and cultural contribution of Black people in our analysis of the past, going beyond merely acknowledging their presence, and engaging with their individual and collective stories. In this short essay, I will reflect on how these ideas have impacted my work and how telling the history of Spanish anti-slavery activists and of Black soldiers in colonial Cuba allows us to build a better and more exciting European history

Centring Blackness in European History : a European History Quarterly forum

Black History is European History. By placing Blackness at the centre of the historical narrative, historians are transforming the way in which we think of the history of Europe and successfully overcoming intellectual frameworks which have consistently failed to produce accurate, diverse and compelling analyses of European societies. This collection of essays engages with the methodological and intellectual challenges that we, as historians, face when doing so. We conclude that no matter the difficulties, these new approaches have proven genuinely liberating, and it has allowed historians to escape traditional narratives that consistently ignore the intellectual, political, social and cultural contribution of Black people to European History

Negros o esclavos : la retórica de la esclavitud en la prensa española del exilio londinense (1818-1825)

This article examines the differences in the use of the terms: “negroes”, “slaves” and “slavery” in the Spanish press published in London while in liberal exile between 1818 and 1825. The aim is to frame the ideological and cultural implications arising from previously mentioned differences differences and to analyse the meaning of slavery in the context of Spanish liberalism. After categorising the concepts, the article tackles the term “blacks” in opposition to the use and rhetoric of the concepts of “slaves” and “slavery”, in the context of the construction of liberal discourses in the 18th and 19th centuries; and particularly in the shaping of the first anti-slave trade and anti-slavery discourses in Spain. Finally, this article analyses the differences in the use of the aforementioned terms in the two most relevant newspapers published in London by the Spanish exiles: El Español Constitucional and Ocios de los Españoles Emigrados

Singularities in DROMO formulation. Analysis of deep flybys

The singularities in Dromo are characterized in this paper, both from an analytical and a numerical perspective. When the angular momentum vanishes, Dromo may encounter a singularity in the evolution equations. The cancellation of the angular momentum occurs in very speci?c situations and may be caused by the action of strong perturbations. The gravitational attraction of a perturbing planet may lead to rapid changes in the angular momentum of the particle. In practice, this situation may be encountered during deep planetocentric ?ybys. The performance of Dromo is evaluated in di?erent scenarios. First, Dromo is validated for integrating the orbit of Near Earth Asteroids. Resulting errors are of the order of the diameter of the asteroid. Second, a set of theoretical ?ybys are designed for analyzing the performance of the formulation in the vicinity of the singularity. New sets of Dromo variables are proposed in order to minimize the dependency of Dromo on the angular momentum. A slower time scale is introduced, leading to a more stable description of the ?yby phase. Improvements in the overall performance of the algorithm are observed when integrating orbits close to the singularity

Jovian Capture of a Spacecraft with a Self-Balanced Electrodynamic Bare Tether

This paper proposes and analyzes the use of a nonrotating tethered system for a direct capture in Jovian orbit using the electrodynamic force generated along the cable. A detailed dynamical model is developed showing a strong gravitational and electrodynamic coupling between the center of mass and the attitude motions. This paper shows the feasibility of a direct capture in Jovian orbit of a rigid tethered system preventing the tether from rotating. Additional mechanical–thermal requirements are explored, and preliminary operational limits are defined to complete the maneuver. In particular, to ensure that the system remains nonrotating, a nominal attitude profile for a self-balanced electrodynamic tether is proposed, as well as a simple feedback control

New approaches to the slave trade, slavery, abolition and emancipation across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans

Taking the theme of “abolition” as its point of departure, this collection of essays builds on the significant growth in scholarship on unfree labour in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds during the past two decades. The essays revisit some of the persistent problems posed by the traditional comparative literature on slavery and indentured labour and identify new and exciting areas for future research

Efficient computation of current collection in bare electrodynamic tethers in and beyond OML regime

One key issue in the simulation of bare electrodynamic tethers (EDTs) is the accurate and fast computation of the collected current, an ambient dependent operation necessary to determine the Lorentz force for each time step. This paper introduces a novel semianalytical solution that allows researchers to compute the current distribution along the tether efficient and effectively under orbital-motion-limited (OML) and beyond OML conditions, i.e., if tether radius is greater than a certain ambient dependent threshold. The method reduces the original boundary value problem to a couple of nonlinear equations. If certain dimensionless variables are used, the beyond OML effect just makes the tether characteristic length L* larger and it is decoupled from the current determination problem. Avalidation of the results and a comparison of the performance in terms of the time consumed is provided, with respect to a previous ad hoc solution and a conventional shooting method

DROMO formulation for planar motions: Solution to the Tsien Problem

The two-body problem subject to a constant radial thrust is analyzed as a planar motion. The description of the problem is performed in terms of three perturbation methods: DROMO and two others due to Deprit. All of them rely on Hansen?s ideal frame concept. An explicit, analytic, closed-form solution is obtained for this problem when the initial orbit is circular (Tsien problem), based on the DROMO special perturbation method, and expressed in terms of elliptic integral functions. The analytical solution to the Tsien problem is later used as a reference to test the numerical performance of various orbit propagation methods, including DROMO and Deprit methods, as well as Cowell and Kustaanheimo?Stiefel methods

Solution of optimal continuous low-thrust transfer using Lie transforms

This paper addresses the problem of optimal constant continuous low-thrust transfer in the context of the restricted two-body problem (R2BP). Using the Pontryagin’s principle, the problem is formulated as a two point boundary value problem (TPBVP) for a Hamiltonian system. Lie transforms obtained through the Deprit method allow us to obtain the canonical mapping of the phase flow as a series in terms of the order of magnitude of the thrust applied. The reachable set of states starting from a given initial condition using optimal control policy is obtained analytically. In addition, a particular optimal transfer can be computed as the solution of a non-linear algebraic equation. Se investiga el uso de series y transformadas de Lie en problemas de optimización de trayectorias de satélites impulsados por motores de bajo empuj