The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: a revised and enlarged database

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade remains a major field of academic enquiry and public interest. Work by numerous scholars over three decades culminated in the publication in 1999 of a CD-ROM containing data on 27,233 slaving voyages between 1519 and 1867. Unprecedented in scale and detail, this unique record nevertheless had major gaps, notably with respect to the early history of slave trafficking as well as that to Brazil more generally. These deficiencies have been addressed in this project by conducting new research in Angolan, Brazilian, Portuguese, and other archives, and by incorporating the results of this new research in a revised and enlarged version of the database published in 1999.

Main Topics:This new database includes information on some 7,000 previously unknown voyages and additional information relating to over 10,000 of those voyages included in the 1999 publication. The new database of over 34,000 slaving voyages represent the largest single resource of information available for the study of pre-colonial African history and a major asset for the study of Atlantic history and race relations more generally. The resource provides information on the itineraries and characteristics of ships involved in trans-Atlantic slaving voyages from the early sixteenth to the later nineteenth centuries. It also provides data on the human dimensions of the slave trade, including the slaves embarked in Africa and disembarked in the Americas and the owners and crews of the ships involved in the traffic. It provides details of the geography of the trade, notably ports of provenance and return of ships, trading destinations in Africa, and ports of slave embarkation in the Americas, together with the time schedules involved in completing the various phases of voyages. The database comprises voyages of British, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese (including Brazilian), Spanish and US origin. In addition to the recording of original or raw data relating to voyages, the database includes imputed data for a range of variables.