The Atlas of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

[bookfan]

CNN reports that two professors, from Emory University and the University of Hull in England, have analyzed the records of 35,000 slave-trading voyages over three and a half centuries. They have published their findings on a web site -- The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database -- and in a book -- Atlas of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The database identifies 67,000 captives by name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation. The atlas features 189 maps showing where Africans were taken from, where they were taken to, and who took them.

Among the findings:

• Four enslaved Africans left the Old World for every European.
  
• Almost every port city on the Atlantic was active in the slave trade.
  
• New York was a major center of the slave trade.
  
• The trans-Atlantic slave trade continued to grow until the very end, when it was forcibly suppressed.
  
• A total of 12.5 million Africans were taken in the slave trade.
  

The numbers are staggering. African outnumbered Europeans in the New World then, but not now. The numbers imply a centuries-long wave of death that may surpass the Jewish holocaust in absolute numbers.

The CNN writers say, "It is becoming commonplace to claim that there are more slaves in the world today than ever and that large-scale trafficking in people continues. The 'Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade' suggests that such claims tend to obscure the horrors -- unique in human history -- of the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas."

[Linda Chavis]

CNN reports that two professors, from Emory University and the University of Hull in England, have analyzed the records of 35,000 slave-trading voyages over three and a half centuries. They have published their findings on a web site -- The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database -- and in a book -- Atlas of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The database identifies 67,000 captives by name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation. The atlas features 189 maps showing where Africans were taken from, where they were taken to, and who took them.

Among the findings:

• Four enslaved Africans left the Old World for every European.
  
• Almost every port city on the Atlantic was active in the slave trade.
  
• New York was a major center of the slave trade.
  
• The trans-Atlantic slave trade continued to grow until the very end, when it was forcibly suppressed.
  
• A total of 12.5 million Africans were taken in the slave trade.
  

The numbers are staggering. African outnumbered Europeans in the New World then, but not now. The numbers imply a centuries-long wave of death that may surpass the Jewish holocaust in absolute numbers.

The CNN writers say, "It is becoming commonplace to claim that there are more slaves in the world today than ever and that large-scale trafficking in people continues. The 'Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade' suggests that such claims tend to obscure the horrors -- unique in human history -- of the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas."

This is great..thank you ! I have shared..

LiLi

[Troy]

Yeah this was excellent post.

[Chrishayden]

Of course save for some particulars we knew all this already.