Final Passages: The Intra-American Slave Trade Database

FAIN: PW-234691-16

Regents of the University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA 95064-1077)
Gregory E. O'Malley (Project Director: July 2015 to September 2019)

The addition of thousands of records of intra-American slave trafficking and a new “Final Passages” web interface into Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

Later this year, www.slavevoyages.org will complete seven years of operation offering public access to details of 34,934 documented slave-trading voyages from Africa to the Americas. On average, more than 1,000 visitors consult the site each day. As great a resource as it is, however, the database is limited in one key respect. It only includes voyages across the Atlantic, whereas recent research shows that arrival in the Americas did not end many captives' journeys. Instead, approximately 25% of arriving Africans quickly boarded new vessels for distribution within the Americas. This project seeks to add such intra-American trafficking to www.slavevoyages.org. We will construct an additional interface, offering the same search options for intra-American migration as currently exist for transatlantic voyages. This addition promises a more complete picture of enslaved migration, since many American regions acquired slaves indirectly, rather than straight from Africa.

Associated Products

The Intra-American Slave Trade Database (Web Resource)
Title: The Intra-American Slave Trade Database
Author: Alex Borucki
Author: Gregory E. O'Malley
Abstract: A searchable database of more than 11,500 slave trading voyages between ports in the Americas.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://slavevoyages.org/american/database
Primary URL Description: The Intra-American Slave Trade Database
Secondary URL: https://slavevoyages.org/american/about
Secondary URL Description: Explanatory text to supplement the database and explain its contents, organization, and methodology.

Patterns in the Intercolonial Slave Trade across the Americas before the Nineteenth Century (Article)
Title: Patterns in the Intercolonial Slave Trade across the Americas before the Nineteenth Century
Author: Alex Borucki
Author: Gregory E. O'Malley
Abstract: The slave trade within the Americas, after the initial disembarkation of African captives in the New World, has received scant attention from historians, especially before the abolition of the transatlantic traffic. This article examines such intra-American trafficking as an introduction to the digital project Final Passages: The Intra-American Slave Trade Database, which aims to document evidence of slave voyages throughout the New World. This article does not provide statistics on this internal slave trade, as ongoing research will deliver new data. Instead, we consolidate qualitative knowledge about these intercolonial slave routes. As the article focuses on the era prior to British and U.S. abolition of the transatlantic trade (1807-1808), we leave out the nineteenth-century domestic slave trades in the United States and Brazil to focus on survivors of the Atlantic crossing who endured subsequent forced movement within the Americas.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1413-77042017000200314&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
Primary URL Description: Link to the article on the journal's website.
Access Model: Open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Tempo
Publisher: Tempo

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