Abstract

The 2019 version of the transatlantic slave trade database contains 36,108 voyages compared to 34,940 in 2008 (and 27,233 in the 1999 version of the database that appeared on CD-ROM). Since 2008, several thousand corrections have been made and additional information added. Thus 284 of the 2008 voyages have been deleted either because we found they had been entered twice, or because we discovered that a voyage was not involved in the transatlantic slave trade. For example voyage id 16772, the Pye, Captain Adam, turned out to have carried slaves from Jamaica to the Chesapeake, but obtained its captives in Jamaica, not Africa. Offsetting the deletions are 1,345 voyages added on the basis of new information. Further, many voyages that are common to both 2008 and 2019 versions of the database now contain information that was not available in 2008 (see table 1 of “Understanding the Database” for the current summary).

Usage

The 2019 version has 274 variables, compared with 98 in the Voyages Database available online. Users interested in working with this larger data set can download it in a file formatted for use with SPSS software. Because some users may find it useful to view data as it existed in earlier versions, the database as it was in 1999, 2008 and 2010 can also be selected for download. A codebook describing all variable names, variable labels, and values of the expanded dataset is available as a pdf document. With only a few exceptions, it retains variable names in the original 1999 CD-ROM version

Beginning in the 16th century, European traders began to buy or capture people in the African continent to enslave and sell for profit. This trade began with Portugal and Spain, but it later expanded to include France, England, the Netherlands and other European countries. By the time the trading of enslaved people was finally put to an end in the 19th century, Europeans had abducted an estimated 12.5 million African people from their homelands, forced them onto ships, trafficked them to the Americas, and sold them on the auction block. Almost two million people died during transport; most of the rest were forced into labor camps, also called plantations. This extensive and gruesome human trafficking is commonly referred to as the transatlantic slave trade. The Portuguese began human trafficking in Africa by trading manufactured goods or money for Africans who had been captured during local wars. Later, some Europeans captured Africans themselves or paid other local Africans to do it for them. Europeans traded for or kidnapped Africans from many points on Africa’s coast, including Angola, Senegambia and Mozambique. Most of the people who were enslaved by the Europeans came from West and Central Africa.The most brutal segment of the route was the Middle Passage, which transported chained African people across the Atlantic Ocean as they were packed tightly below the decks of purpose-built ships in unsanitary conditions. This trip could last weeks or even months depending on conditions, and the trafficked people were subjected to abuse, dangerously high heat, inadequate food and water, and low-oxygen environments. Olaudah Equiano, a young boy who was forced into the Middle Passage after being captured in his home country of Nigeria, later described the foul conditions as “intolerably loathsome” and detailed how people died from sickness and lack of air. Approximately 1.8 million African people are thought to have died during the passage, accounting for about 15–25 percent of those who were taken from Africa.For many enslaved Africans trafficked across the Atlantic, the port at which their ship landed was not their final destination. Enslaved people were often transported by ship between two points in the Americas, particularly from Portuguese, Dutch and British colonies to Spanish ones. This was the intra-American slave trade. No matter where they landed, enslaved Africans faced brutal living conditions and high mortality rates. Moreover, any children born to enslaved persons were also born into slavery, usually with no hope of ever gaining freedom.This data set is the culmination of decades of archival research compiled by the SlaveVoyages Consortium. This data represents the trafficking of enslaved Africans from 1514 to 1866. All mapmakers must make choices when presenting data. This map layer represents individuals who experts can definitively place at a given location on one of at least 36,000 transatlantic and at least 10,000 intra-American human trafficking routes. However, this means the enslaved people for whom records cannot place their departure or arrival with certainty do not appear on this map (approximately 170,985 people). This map, therefore, is part of the story and not a complete accounting. You can learn more about the methodology of this data collection here.

In 1807, the US Congress enacted the "Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves," which outlawed the nation’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade. This very same statute required any captain of a coastwise vessel with enslaved people onboard to file a manifest listing those individuals by name with the collector (or in his absence, the surveyor) of the port of departure and of the port of arrival. As a result of this legislation, the coastwise traffic was systematically documented. Enslaved people were forcibly carried to and from dozens of ports in this period, but by far, the largest portion of the coastwise trade consisted of enslaved people being sent to New Orleans, the largest slave market in the country. In total, approximately 4,000 "inward manifests” documenting the coastwise traffic to New Orleans survive. They list the names of more than 63,000 enslaved people. The Oceans of Kinfolk Database includes information from each of these records, including captive names (first and often last), heights, racial descriptions, as well as each individual’s owner, shipper, and/or consignor. "Every variable found in the first edition of Oceans of Kinfolk presented a new, tidy encapsulation of grotesque epistemological violence," the creator argues; the data is being reconfigured and recontextualized at Kinfolkology, a digital archive, collaborative database collective, and living memorial honoring the humanity and kinships of enslaved people, https://www.kinfolkology.org/.

This study uses historical records from 36 archives in the United States to analyze 8,437 enslaved people's sale and/or appraisal prices from 1797 to 1865.

A “runaway slave record,” or as it is officially titled, “Runaway and Escaped Slaves Records, 1794, 1806-1863,” include accounts, correspondence, receipts, and reports concerning expenses incurred by localities related to the capture of enslaved people attempting to escape bondage to pursue freedom. The collection also includes records with information related to enslaved people from multiple localities who escaped to United States military forces during the Civil War. While many independent businesses bought and sold human beings, local and state governments such as the state of Virginia also participated in and profited from human trafficking. Localities were reimbursed for the expenses of confining, feeding, and selling of self-emancipated people, and likewise, the state established procedures to compensate enslavers for their financial loss when enslaved people ran away or were imprisoned or executed. If a person was captured and their enslaver could not be identified, they became the property of the state and were sold. The proceeds from these sales went to the state treasury, and often, records of those sales can be found in the Public Claims records from the Auditor of Public Accounts. The net proceeds were deposited into the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Literary Fund for the public education of poor white children.

The data in this collection is drawn directly from the historical documents and may contain language that is now deemed offensive.

The Curaçao colonial administration began keeping track of slaves at the beginning of 1839. This so-called slave record was maintained until 1863, when slavery was abolished. All owners were obliged to register the name, gender, year of birth and name of the mother of the people in their property. Furthermore, all changes had to be registered: birth, death, sale, release and the import and export of people in Curaçao. This resulted in a closed registration: as long as someone was alive and in slavery, this person could be followed in the slave registers. In total, the slave registers of Curaçao consist of eight books, with a total of 1,070 folios (pages). The registers consist of 21,515 entries for 13,062 unique individuals. Absent from the registers are governmental owned enslaved persons. This encompasses maybe a few tens to a hundred individuals in Curaçao. Furthermore, as enslaved persons were not permitted to marry and hence are legally fatherless, the name of the father is missing in all slave registry.

This document provides an overview of the construction of the Curaçao slave registers database and the variables therein. A quick summary of the variables is given first. An detailed description of the variables is provided in the appendices, which is then followed by an explanation of how the variables were created.

The Santos Enslaved and Enslaver Dataset (SEED), created between 2003 and 2006, offers an innovative micro-historical method so users can better understand the diverse lived experiences and oppression of enslaved people. The dataset is one of the most detailed for any city or county of a slave society. It cross-references the identities of thousands of enslaved individuals and enslavers in documents from 13 Brazilian archives and 43 primary source types. It contains more than 42,806 entries drawing from information in medical, church, government, and judicial records of the nineteenth century. More than 1,960 individuals were identified and cross-referenced through multiple historical sources, allowing for a wide range of narratives to emerge from the data.

This study includes data on slave sales that occurred on the New Orleans slave market between 1804-1862. For each sale, information was recorded on the date of the sale, the number of slaves on the invoice, the geographical origin of the buyer and seller, the sale price, and characteristics of the slaves sold (age, sex, family relationship, and occupation). The information presented for each transaction was obtained from the notarized bills of sale in the New Orleans Notarial Archival Office. These bills often contained information on several persons who were sold in a group or as a "lot." Whenever feasible, sale and personal characteristics of individuals appearing in such groups were entered on separate records. This was usually done when separate sale prices were recorded for each member of the group. When separate prices were not recorded for children sold in a group, information describing those children was attached to the record of a principal slave with whom they were associated on the original bill of sale. This data set contains information on slave sales occurring at the New Orleans slave market in the period from 1804-1862. The bills of sale which served as the original source for all material appearing in this data set often contained information on several persons who were sold in a group or as a 'lot'. Whenever feasible, the sale and personal characteristics of individuals appearing in such groups were recorded on separate data records. Thus each record represents the sale of one or more slaves. Variables include: initials of notary, month of sale, year of sale, invoice number, initials of seller of slave(s), origin of seller of slave - general and specific, initials of buyer of slave, origin of buyer of slave - general and specific, number of slaves on the original invoice, number of price quotations on the original invoice, price of slave as recorded on the invoice, sex of slave, age of slave (in years), skin colour of principal slave being sold, number of children associated with the principal slave of record, sexes and ages of children, family relation of individuals being sold, terms of sale, amount of down payment for credit sales, longest period of credit, interest rate, guarantee indicator, reason given on the invoice for the slave being 'not guaranteed', occupation or skill of principal slave, slave importation indicator, geographical origin of slave, previous transaction involving the slave being sold, index of individual price.

This publication contains a spatial database of bedrock geological features of the Archean Slavecraton of Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The database was developed by interpretation ofsatellite and aeromagnetic data in conjunction with bedrock maps, from both proprietary andnon-proprietary sources, and has allowed generation of new data and reinterpretation ofgeological relationships. Rock units are classified into a harmonized legend with pan-Slaveapplicability. Point data, including kimberlite locations and geochronological sample sites, forman integral component of the database. The traces of numerous interpreted and mappedfaults, diabase dykes, and topographical lineaments contribute to significant advancements inthe understanding of the Slave’s crustal fracture systems.This compilation builds upon a similar product released by the Northwest Territories GeologicalSurvey (formerly the Northwest Territories Geoscience Office) in 2005 as NWT-NU Open File2005-01. Upgrade, revision, and expansion of geological information primarily by M. Stubley;database design and integrity, and topological consistency by D. Irwin. Both the NorthwestTerritories Geological Survey and the Canada-Nunavut Geoscience Office, the latter throughNRCan, provided financial support to M. Stubley.The compilation was created using ArcMap 10.6.1, and is amenable to integration to other GISplatforms. All data is projected to Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) Zone 12 North usingNorth American Datum 1983 (NAD83). The accuracy of geological relationships reflects thesource data. Many areas are valid at scales of 1:30,000 to 1:50,000, but more-detailed sourcedata are simplified prior to incorporation.NWT Open File 2019-01 contains information on data sources related to this dataset and additional geological interpretation.Recommended citation: Stubley, M.P. and Irwin, D., 2019. Bedrock Geology of the Slave Craton,Northwest Territories and Nunavut; Northwest Territories Geological Survey, NWT Open File2019-01, ESRI® and Adobe® digital files.

Nunn and Wantchekon (2011) argue that slave trades led to a culture of mistrust in Africa. They regress self-reported trust from the 2005 Afrobarometer surveys on ethnicity-specific historic slave exports. Individuals from ethnic groups that experienced high levels of slave exports are less trusting. Causality is demonstrated by instrumenting slave exports using the historic distance of each ethnic group to the coast. Our narrow replication yields identical results. The scientific replication repeats the analysis with Afrobarometer survey data from 2008, which includes two new countries and more ethnic groups. Our replication confirms the results of Nunn and Wantchekon.

This study uses historical records from 36 archives in the United States to analyze 8,437 enslaved people’s sale and/or appraisal prices from 1797 to 1865. Demographic information, including name, year, age/age group, gender, state, and trade/skill notations were recorded when applicable. By calculating average appraisal and sale values across cross-sections of gender (male or female) and age group (0-10 years old, 11-22 years old, 23-39 years old, and 40+ years old), a total of sixteen major comparative prices were analyzed (app/male/0-10; app/female/0-10; sale/male/0-10; sale/female/0-10; app/male/11-22; app/female/11-22; sale/male/11-22; sale/female/11-22; app/male/23-39; app/female/23-39; sale/male/23-39; sale/female/23-39; app/male/40+; app/female/40+; sale/male/40+; sale/female/40+). Scholars have the opportunity to use this data set to understand how enslaved people were valued and appraised. The demographic data included will be useful to those who want to explore various aspects of the history of slavery and enslaved people.

The Louisiana Runaway Slave Advertisements Database (LRSAD) contains information about 861 individuals who appeared in 691 advertisements placed in Louisiana (predominantly New Orleans) newspapers between 1801 and 1820. These advertisements were mostly placed by enslavers wishing to capture someone who they claimed to enslave but had escaped or by sheriffs and jailers alerting the public that a person who was African or of African descent had been jailed on suspicion of being a runaway slave. These advertisements are somewhat unique in North America in that they often include information on individuals’ places of origin and language skills.

The company known as Franklin & Armfield was the largest slave-trading business in the United States during its years of operation from 1828 to 1836, and it may have been the largest in American history. Partners and agents of the company sold more than 1,600 enslaved people in New Orleans, which housed the largest market for enslaved people in the entire country. The dataset included here contains detailed information about those sales, documenting the names of the enslaved and the individuals who purchased them, some demographic and physical descriptions of the enslaved, the terms of their sales, and other relevant matters. Most information was extracted from records kept by notaries who recorded many of the slave sales in the city.

Deeds of emancipation and manumission record an enslavers’ intent to emancipate enslaved people from bondage. In 1726, the Virginia General Assembly passed a law allowing enslavers to emancipate enslaved people “by last will and testament or other instrument in writing sealed and witnessed to emancipate and set free his slave or slaves.” A 1782 law added that enslavers were no longer required to seek a special act from the General Assembly. These documents sometimes include an enslavers’ intent for emancipation ranging from religious and moral motivations to binding legal agreements.

Deeds of emancipation and manumission essentially provide the same information and there is little difference between the two. Both include the name of the enslaver, the name of the enslaved person to be freed, the date of anticipated freedom, the date the manumission was proved or certified, and as mentioned, sometimes a reason why the enslaver decided to emancipate the enslaved person. In a deed of manumission, an enslaver directly freed an enslaved person by manumission. In a deed of emancipation, an enslaved person could be freed after the enslaver’s death by those executing a last will and testament. This collection also includes court orders that record the date or age when enslaved individuals were to be emancipated by deed as stipulated in an enslaver's will.

Descriptions included in this dataset are drawn directly from the original documents and may contain language which is now deemed offensive.

SLP (Slavery, Law, and Power) is a project dedicated to bringing the many disparate sources that help to explain the long history of slavery and its connection to struggles over power in early America, particularly in the colonies that would become the United States. Going back to the early English Empire, this project traces the rise of the slave trade along with the parallel struggles between monarchical power and early democratic institutions and ideals. We are creating a curated set of documents that help researchers and students to understand the background to the fierce struggles over both slavery and power during the American Revolution, when questions of monarchical power, consent to government, and hereditary slavery were all fiercely debated. After America separated from Britain, the United States was still deeply influenced by this long history, especially up to the Civil War. The colonial legacies of these debates continued to affect the course of politics, law, and justice in American society as a whole.

This dataset covers transcriptions from our 2022-2023 document selection on various curated documents related to slavery, law, and power. The purpose of this set it too make these transcriptions accessible for future scholars as well as store these transcriptions in long term digital storage.

Anansi Masters - the story continues

The Anansi Masters project is developed by Vista Far Reaching Visuals (Mr. Jean Hellwig) and partners. It is designed as a public digital platform at http://www.anansimasters.net and opened in 2007. At the website one can find information about the story character of Nanzi (or Anansi or Kweku Ananse), with English and Dutch subtitled video recordings of storytelling in several countries in different languages, educational modules about storytelling for use at schools and academies, and digital issues of the Anansi Masters Journal published since the beginning of the project. All storytelling videos and videos that were made for documentation or marketing purposes are published on Youtube. Since 2012 all films of Anansi Masters were uploaded to Youtube and linked to the Anansi Masters website. Their display is embedded in the website together with the respective metadata that are entered through a custom made content management system (CMS).

In March 2012, public storytelling events were organized by Drs. Jean Hellwig (Hellwig Productions AV / Vista Far Reaching Visuals Foundation) on the islands of Curacao and Aruba. Any professional or non-professional storyteller was invited to tell a story in front of the Anansi Masters camera and the available audience. Storytellers were free to choose their story and language. Each storyteller had to agree that the video registration of their story could be made available for open access. Storytellers were asked in front of the camera to answer a few questions about who they are and how they selected the story that they told. The Anansi Masters project started in 2007 with the registration of Kweku Ananse stories in Ghana and The Netherlands. The storytelling events organized on Curacao and Aruba in 2012 were part of the second phase 'Anansi Masters - the story continues'. The project registers contemporary ways of storytelling from an old tradition and aims to stimulate and revitalize the Nanzi storytelling by making the storytelling videos available to a large international audience. In 2008 a dvd in Dutch was released with 22 stories from Ghana and The Netherlands. In 2013 a dvd in English is released with all 32 stories that were recorded on Curaçao and Aruba.

The stories of the Anansi tradition originate in Africa and were exported to other parts of the world through slave trade and migration. In Anansi Masters, the similarities and differences between the stories and storytellers, who tell in their own language, can be found. Anansi Masters initiates different activities all over the world where stories from this oral tradition can be found. The founder has the ambition to film as many stories from this tradition as possible in as many countries as possible. Anansi Masters collaborates with writers, theatre makers, filmmakers, researchers, schools and of course with many many storytellers.

This dataset contains the documentation, video files, documents and pictures that were made to document the second phase of the Anansi Masters project with the subtitle 'the story continues'. These files were produced to report the process and results to the sponsoring funds and to be used in marketing through Facebook.

This dataset contains the following: - report in Dutch with separate appendices - videos with datasheets 0015 - 0022 reflecting some of performances in the media to market the storytelling events - short video impression with datasheet 0023 of a musical performance at the storytelling event in Curacao - a list with names and codes of the recorded stories and storytellers

For each storyteller and their stories a new dataset has been created. Links to these datasets can be found under 'Relations'.

SLP (Slavery, Law, and Power) is a project dedicated to bringing the many disparate sources that help to explain the long history of slavery and its connection to struggles over power in early America, particularly in the colonies that would become the United States. Going back to the early English Empire, this project traces the rise of the slave trade along with the parallel struggles between monarchical power and early democratic institutions and ideals. We are creating a curated set of documents that help researchers and students to understand the background to the fierce struggles over both slavery and power during the American Revolution, when questions of monarchical power, consent to government, and hereditary slavery were all fiercely debated. After America separated from Britain, the United States was still deeply influenced by this long history, especially up to the Civil War. The colonial legacies of these debates continued to affect the course of politics, law, and justice in American society as a whole.

This dataset covers transcriptions from our 2021 document selection on various curated documents related to slavery, law, and power. The purpose of this set it too make these transcriptions accessible for future scholars as well as store these transcriptions in long term digital storage.

Nanzi and the soldiers told by Ena Pamela Lewis, recorded on video for the Anansi Masters project on Aruba.

Subject: How avoid punishment.

Description: When Nanzi is caught by the King's soldiers because he steals, he finds a way to escape by anticipating to the superstition of the soldiers.

Content: Nanzi and Sésé steal fat from the King's cow every night. The King is angry and he orders his soldiers to catch the thief. Nanzi is fast enough to escape but Sésé is caught. He is beaten up and he betrays Nanzi. Nanzi is also caught and beaten up. By pretending he died of the beating, Nanzi can escape, but later he is caught again. This time he has another plan to escape. He starts singing in a low voice as if he is cursing the land, the King and his family. The superstitious soldiers panic and let him go.

About Anansi Masters: The Anansi Masters project is developed by Vista Far Reaching Visuals (Mr. Jean Hellwig) and partners. It is designed as a public digital platform at http://www.anansimasters.net and opened in 2007. At the website one can find information about the story character of Nanzi (or Anansi or Kweku Ananse), with English and Dutch subtitled video recordings of storytelling in several countries in different languages, educational modules about storytelling for use at schools and academies, and digital issues of the Anansi Masters Journal published since the beginning of the project. All storytelling videos are also published on Youtube. The stories of the Anansi tradition originate in Africa and were exported to other parts of the world through slave trade and migration. In Anansi Masters, the similarities and differences between the stories and storytellers, who tell in their own language, can be found. Anansi Masters initiates different activities all over the world where stories from this oral tradition can be found. The founder has the ambition to film as many stories from this tradition as possible in as many countries as possible. Anansi Masters collaborates with writers, theatre makers, filmmakers, researchers, schools and of course with many many storytellers.

This dataset contains: - the video recording of the storytelling with English subtitles - the video recording of the storytelling with Dutch subtitles - the video recording of the short interview with the storyteller with English subtitles - the video recording of the short interview with the storyteller with Dutch subtitles - a text datasheet with information about the stortyteller and story in English and Dutch

Mister Throw Far Away told by Eligio (Boy) Koeyers, recorded on video for the Anansi Masters project in Curacao.

Subject: Searching for food

Description: Nanzi finds a strange gap in the ground. He devises a ruse to get food.

Content: In this story about Kompa Nanzi, we meet him in a time of drought. Due to the drought Nanzi is unable to feed his family. His wife sends Nanzi out on a quest for food. On his journey, he trips over a strange gap. While examining the gap his hand gets stuck in the hole and Nanzi meets mister Throw Far Away. Nanzi learns that there is only one way to get out of the hole: he has to ask mister Throw Far Away to toss him away. After he is released Nanzi devises a ruse to use mister Throw Far Away to surreptitiously catch food. Miss Goat and Miss Cow do not escape. But mister Monkey thinks he is smarter than Nanzi. Is that possible?

About Anansi Masters: The Anansi Masters project is developed by Vista Far Reaching Visuals (Mr. Jean Hellwig) and partners. It is designed as a public digital platform at http://www.anansimasters.net and opened in 2007. At the website one can find information about the story character of Nanzi (or Anansi or Kweku Ananse), with English and Dutch subtitled video recordings of storytelling in several countries in different languages, educational modules about storytelling for use at schools and academies, and digital issues of the Anansi Masters Journal published since the beginning of the project. All storytelling videos are also published on Youtube. The stories of the Anansi tradition originate in Africa and were exported to other parts of the world through slave trade and migration. In Anansi Masters, the similarities and differences between the stories and storytellers, who tell in their own language, can be found. Anansi Masters initiates different activities all over the world where stories from this oral tradition can be found. The founder has the ambition to film as many stories from this tradition as possible in as many countries as possible. Anansi Masters collaborates with writers, theatre makers, filmmakers, researchers, schools and of course with many many storytellers.

This dataset refers to: - the video recording of the storytelling with English subtitles - the video recording of the storytelling with Dutch subtitles - the video recording of the short interview with the storyteller with English subtitles - the video recording of the short interview with the storyteller with Dutch subtitles - a text datasheet with information about the stortyteller and story in English and Dutch

As part of the Telling All of Our Stories project, Oatlands created a dataset to record every reference to a named enslaved person. The goal was to provide a source for locating ancestors or certain individuals and learning more about the people who were enslaved at Carter plantations Oatlands and Bellefield in Virginia. The first phase consists of names extracted from George Carter's will, written in 1842, and Elizabeth O. Carter's diary, kept from 1860 through 1873. The database contains over 900 entries, and there are approximately 120 distinctly different names. Information from or questions raised by Oatlands researchers are recorded in the Notes column. “List of slave expenditures kept by B. Grayson,” part of a Works Progress Administration Historical Inventory Project conducted in 1937, also provided some details for the dataset.