The project Bahia16-19 aims at creating a top-level research and advanced training network on the colonial history of the Atlantic. The coordinator, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal), promotes this network together with the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil) and with Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (France). The aim of this proposal of mobility scheme is to give birth to a trans-Atlantic web of faculties and advanced students, specialized in the long-term history of colonial Atlantic. The partners have chosen to focus on Salvador de Bahia, and to study its role and functions as a capital city in an imperial context. In Salvador de Bahia European settlement, native cultures, and African forced migration created a multi-cultural society. Due to this fact, this city was undoubtedly an exceptional place. Covering the period from the 16th century to the post-independence era, the ensemble of researches due to be carried out within the project will provide an archival based and reflexive addition of up-to-date knowledge. The promoters of the project share the assumption that Salvador da Bahia may be the shortest way to link European scholars with African history and historiography. The recent Brazil’s massive investment in research and training on African history and society had become a major resource to reformulate also European approaches to Africa. Another major output of the project is the joint Master’s proposal on Trans-Atlantic colonial history. Such a course will be a dramatic move forward in the relations between the European, the Brazilian and the African scholarships. The applicants think of offering further partners from African universities to join our Master’s syllabus and, at the end of this program, to apply to a Erasmus Mundus training.