The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database

FAIN: RT-21506-93

President and Fellows of Harvard College (Cambridge, MA 02138-3800)
Henry Louis Gates (Project Director: September 1992 to February 1998)

This project will support the creation of a database that will consolidate existing national studies of the transatlantic African diaspora, providing a searchable resource of over half of the slave trade voyages made from Africa to the Americas between 1650 and 1867.

We propose to produce an accurate portrait of the transatlantic African diaspora by combining existing national studies into a consolidated database, covering over half of the slave trade voyages made from Africa to the Americas between 1650 and 1867. The database will contain detailed information on volume, origin, and destination of the trade; age, sex, mortality and ethnicity; economic organization, productivity and profitability; and will be of enormous utility to social, cultural, medical, demographic and economic research on Africa, the Americas, and Europe.