Slave trade database relocating to Harvard

SlaveVoyages, an innovative resource for data concerning history’s most extensive slave trades, is receiving a new location.

The announcement regarding the project’s imminent relocation was made recently by Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. “I’m delighted to inform you today that the SlaveVoyages site, with all of its databases, will permanently reside here at Harvard University,” Gates declared at a conference focused on commemorating the open-access resource.

SlaveVoyages emerged from nearly forty years of academic contributions, with scholars from various institutions diligently working to digitize handwritten documents from collections around the globe.

Currently situated at Rice University, its multisource dataset comprises information on over 30,000 slave ships that sailed the Atlantic between the 16th and 19th centuries. Details are also recorded on nearly 221,000 individuals involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, including captains and the people they trafficked.

The project’s website, initiated in 2008 at Emory University, animates the data through dynamic visualizations. A time-lapse animation traces each of the individual voyages on a map of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Two 18th-century French slaving vessels, both destined for present-day Haiti, have been modeled in 3D video based on existing drawings.

As SlaveVoyages progressed, the Hutchins Center contributed significant funding along with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Emory University. Supporting the project in its new venue is the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative (H&LS).

“Education is fundamental to the mission of the initiative,” remarked Sara Bleich, vice provost for special projects and the leader of H&LS. “SlaveVoyages’ databases enhance the curiosity of Harvard students who have prompted the University’s ongoing assessment of its connections to slavery. By co-funding the project with the Hutchins Center, the initiative can boost knowledge-sharing and exposure, empower scholars and students globally, and reaffirm our dedication to truth.”

The conference held from April 3-5, organized by the Hutchins Center, welcomed researchers connected with the project as well as those it has inspired.

“This conference gathers generations of scholars who have devoted their lives to revealing centuries of data to help us comprehend in detail and with nuance the nuances of the slave trade — a quantifiably brutal commerce in human lives that traversed oceans and continents while devastating millions,” explained Gates, who is also a member of the initiative’s Advisory Council.

Across three days, sessions encompassed a diverse array of subjects showcasing the global extent of the slave trade. The conference commenced with a panel discussing the genetic ramifications of the slave trade featuring David Reich from Harvard Medical School, Kasia Bryc from the Broad Institute, alongside scholars from Johns Hopkins University and the National Center of Medical Genetics of Cuba.

Daniel B. Domingues da Silva, associate professor of history at Rice University and current host of the SlaveVoyages project, presented his insights on Brazil’s 19th-century slave trade. Jorge Felipe-Gonzalez, an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at San Antonio, explored the potential incorporation of AI into the database. Jane Hooper, a history professor at George Mason University, examined shipboard uprisings on Indian Ocean voyages.

A concluding panel concentrated on the South West Pacific trade, with Francis Bobongie-Harris, an educator and researcher from Queensland University of Technology, highlighting the human toll.

Gates commenced one of the afternoon sessions by surprising SlaveVoyages creator David Eltis, an emeritus professor of history at Emory University and the University of British Columbia, presenting him with the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal “in acknowledgment of his unwavering vision that brought forth a resource transforming our comprehension of one of the most catastrophic and significant economic, social, and cultural forces unleashed in human history.”

The medal is “particularly appropriate” for Eltis, Gates remarked, considering that Du Bois, the first Black American to obtain a Ph.D. from Harvard University, composed his 1895 dissertation addressing efforts to suppress the trade of enslaved Africans in the U.S.