This special issue addresses the concealment of slavery and other forms of coerced labour. It brings together contributions from scholars working on different regions and time periods between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. The starting point is the observation that in the wake of abolitionism and imperial anti-slavery rhetoric, persisting areas of slavery and coerced labour became increasingly hidden. The term “hidden economies” helps to identify those areas that have been (and often still are) less visible for a variety of reasons, be it the development of shadow economies around them, the opacity of increasingly complex global supply chains, the remoteness of the region concerned, or the marginalisation of the economic sectors involved.

Gérants—plantation managers in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue—occupied a unique position as indispensable intermediaries and agents of a thriving hidden economy. Responsible for overseeing enslaved labour and maximising plantation productivity, they operated within the tensions of absentee ownership and the structural contradictions of the colonial economy. The cases of Binet and Arnaudeau, two gérants under absentee landlords, reveal how their autonomy facilitated fraudulent practices and illicit trade. These activities, driven by economic necessity and personal ambition, expose the complex interplay of trust, delegation, and exploitation at the heart of plantation life. By bringing these hidden economies to light, the role of the gérant emerges as central to both the economic prosperity of Saint-Domingue and the broader dynamics of colonial slavery and economic history.