Global Passages: Creating a Public Database of Slaving Voyages across the Indian Ocean and Asia

FAIN: MN-290193-23

Rice University (Houston, TX 77005-1827)
Daniel Domingues da Silva (Project Director: May 2022 to present)

The creation of an Indian Ocean and Asia (IOA) slave voyages database and its contextualization in the open access SlaveVoyages website.

The project will create, incorporate, and contextualize an Indian Ocean and Asia (IOA) slave voyages database as an integral part of the open access SlaveVoyages website. Pioneering scholarship highlights the need to expand the spatial, chronological, and conceptual parameters of Americans’ knowledge of their history as they pursue social justice in the early 21st century. The IOA database will demonstrate that the maritime commerce in slave labor was a truly global phenomenon, that millions of enslaved Africans and Asians were caught up in this traffic between 1500-1939, and that Arabs, Asians, Europeans, and Indians actively participated in this trade, knowledge of which is crucial to expanding public and scholarly understanding of the complexity of the human experience with slavery since 1500. The project will also lay the foundation for expanding this database further as research on the IOA trades continues.

Media Coverage

Research on televised opera, slave voyages honored with National Endowment for the Humanities grants (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Amy McCaig
Publication: Rice News
Date: 1/17/2023
URL: https://news.rice.edu/news/test/research-televised-opera-slave-voyages-honored-national-endowment-humanities-grants

Associated Products

Integrating the Indian Ocean and Asian Slave Trades into Global History: Creating Trans-Regional Databases (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Integrating the Indian Ocean and Asian Slave Trades into Global History: Creating Trans-Regional Databases
Author: Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
Author: Jane Hooper
Author: Matthew S. Hopper
Abstract: Momentum has been growing in recent years to form a database that would catalog slaving voyages in the Indian Ocean and Asia. Workshops, papers, and successfully funded grants testify to scholarly interest in this topic. Our team of scholars has begun work to merge our existing databases, focused primarily on East Africa, Madagascar, and the Mascarenes, into a searchable database for the public, accessible on the SlaveVoyages website (slavevoyages.org). We will also bring in contributions from other scholars, enabling the database to cover other regions of slave trafficking. This paper will report our team’s progress, reflect on the challenges encountered to present, and invite conference participants to collaborate with us.
Date: 09/06/2023
Conference Name: Colonialism, Slavery and Local Histories in Early Modern Asia, Exploring Slave Trade in Asia Conference, Linnéuniversitetet, Växjö, Sweden

The Chagos Archipelago in Late Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Indian Ocean World History (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Chagos Archipelago in Late Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Indian Ocean World History
Author: Richard B. Allen
Abstract: The following presentation provides an analysis of the place of the Chagos Archipelago in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indian Ocean World History.
Date: 05/26/2023
Conference Name: Challenges and Prospects for the Chagos Archipelago, University of Worcester, United Kingdom

Merchant Capital and Labor Migration in the Colonial Indian Ocean World (Article)
Title: Merchant Capital and Labor Migration in the Colonial Indian Ocean World
Author: Richard B. Allen
Abstract: Historians have long acknowledged the importance of merchant diasporas and trade networks in Indian Ocean history but paid little attention to merchant capital’s role in transoceanic labor migration in and beyond this part of the globe. Research on slave trading in the Indian Ocean during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries highlights the need to pay closer attention to the complexities of economic life in this oceanic world. Methodology: This article surveys relevant historiography and draws on archival research in the India Office Records in London and the Mauritius National Archives in Coromandel. Originality: This article illustrates some of the ways in which Asian and European merchant capital shaped colonial social and economic life. Conclusions: A deeper understanding of the social, economic, and political complexities inherent in Indian Ocean history is contingent upon situating the specialized case studies that characterize this field of study in more fully developed local, regional, pan-regional, and comparative contexts.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.7440/histcrit89.2023.05
Primary URL Description: DOI
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Historia Critica

Hidden Archives of Capitalism and Slavery in the Indian Ocean: State, Business, and Personal Collections (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Hidden Archives of Capitalism and Slavery in the Indian Ocean: State, Business, and Personal Collections
Author: Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
Author: Richard B. Allen
Author: Jane Hooper
Author: Matthew S. Hopper
Abstract: This symposium will foster collaboration and partnerships between Rice and European institutions by throwing light on the hidden archives of capitalism and identifying previously untapped sources of information on slaving voyages across the Indian Ocean and maritime Asia. This information will be subsequently incorporated into the database under construction with the support of a grant from the Digital Projects for the Public program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. It will also help the research team develop new grant applications with our European collaborators with the purpose of expanding the coverage of the data collection. Finally, a selection of the papers presented at the symposium will be published in a journal's special issue or a book edited by a reputable academic press.
Date Range: April 22-24, 2024
Location: Paris, France

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