Slavevoyages org resources names database

Exploring the Roots of Inequality: Gender and Race

We cannot separate gender from race or class when we study the roots of inequality. For the Exploration Gender discussion, you choose the path you follow to research the connections between slavery and gender, but you must begin with Slave Voyages Website and its Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade databases along with an abundance of additional resources that include maps, images, and animations: http://www.slavevoyages.org (Links to an external site.)

For the Discussion Emphasis is on Primary Sources

Keep in mind as you become familiar with the Slave Voyages Website and its Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade and the African Names databases that you explore them in order to pose a research question about gender, race, and slavery that you think the Slave Voyages Website will yield information to answer.

Though you may use the secondary sources on the Slave Voyages Website such as the essays available under the Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade databases, the emphasis for the discussion assignment is use of the primary sources on the Website principally the databases and the images.

The more you learn about what types of information are available on the Slave Voyages Website, the more likely you will construct a research question for which the site provides data appropriate to answering the question.

Watch Video Introduction

Begin with the 6-minute video on the home page in which noted historian Dr. Henry Louis Gates and others discuss "Slave Voyages 2.0." You may want to turn on the video closed captioning by clicking the "CC" in the video's control bar.

Introduction to Slave Voyages

This database provides the most comprehensive source of data on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The records of over 36,000 separate slaving voyages from Africa to the Americas (trans-Atlantic), another 11,400 voyages within the Americas (intra-American), and 92,000 Africans who were forced on these voyages between 1514 and 1866 are accessible in the database. Originally found in documents and historical publications in archives, libraries, and other institutions around the world, these records can be searched by you in the database. You can see for a single voyage where the slaves came from, where they were transported to, the dates of the voyage, the crew members, and the sources of this information. Or you can research many voyages searching on other variables that you choose. These database records are primary sources (sources created by the people of the time).

For the Exploration Gender discussion, you explore Slave Voyages, but keep in mind the intersections you discover between gender and race in the slave trade.

Before You Begin--Review

Review what historian Merry Wiesner-Hanks wrote about gender and slavery in Chapters 2 and 3 in Gender in History. Look again at the Week 4 Slideshow section on "Race, Gender, and Colonization." Both the chapters and slideshow are accessible in the Week 4 Module .

Before You Begin--Importance of Primary Sources

Through Slave Voyages, you gain access to primary sources about slavery. Historians look for primary sources and value them because they are sources produced by people at that time. They can be diaries, letters, paintings, oral histories, photographs, census data, newspaper articles from the time as well as buildings and other items of material culture such as quilts or scrapbooks. In the database, you access the primary sources created about slaving voyages. The GUIDES Module explains much more about primary sources in the item called "Primary Sources and Secondary Sources (HIST 105)."

Before You Begin--Background on Gender and Slavery

You can look up other resources to provide more background on women slaves. These articles below are secondary sources because they are historian authors' interpretation and analysis (much of it based on primary sources).

Here is an encyclopedia article about gender and slavery in the Americas: https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199227990.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199227990-e-24 (Links to an external site.)

In the article below, Diane Paton of Newcastle University in Great Britain reviews how slave women were affected by Great Britain's 1807 ending of the slave trade in the British Empire. Those of you who study U.S. history know that in 1808 the United States no longer engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The fact that British and American ships no longer carried slaves from Africa to the Americas did not, of course, end slavery. In the United States, slavery continued until the end of the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. Slavery was finally abolished in Brazil in 1888.

https://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Slavery/articles/paton.html (Links to an external site.)

Chicago Notes and Bibliography citation of the above articles:

Paton, Diane. "Enslaved Women and Slavery Before and After 1807." History in Focus 12 (Spring 2007). Institute of Historical Research, University of London. https://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Slavery/articles/paton.html

Wood, Kirsten E. "Gender and Slavery." In The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas, edited by Mark M. Smith and Robert L. Paquette. NY: Oxford University Press, 2010, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199227990.013.0024

Getting Started in Slave Voyages

To gain a deeper understanding of the slave trade and especially of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, take a look at the maps, the 3D video of the slave vessel L'Aurore, the timeline of slave numbers, and the timelapse of slave voyages. These are all available beneath the introductory video on the home page.

The map and pie chart above give you a quick visual of the magnitude of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in which at least 10 million and probably as many as 12.5 million Africans were transported to the Americas.

With a stronger background in the history of the slave trade, you are now ready to look at what the databases have to offer.

Accessing the Databases

From the Slave Voyages home page, you can access the home pages of the

· Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

· Intra-American Slave Trade Database

· African Names Database

· Image Galleries

Note that each of the databases is always available from the menu at the top right of each page too as you can see below.

The Image Galleries are listed under Resources in the top menu. The Image Galleries include digitized pages from ship registers, engravings and paintings of slaves, original maps, and so on.

You can access any of the three databases from the Slave Voyages home page or from within any database by accessing the pull-down menus for each one in the top right of the page. For example, the screen shot below was taken on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database page but shows the pull-down menu for the Intra-American Slave Trade Database pages.

Understanding the Databases

Read the "About" pages for the databases. Notice that all three databases have "Understanding the Database" and "Database" pages. The "Understanding the Database" age opens the Methodology section that tells you about the types of information available such as "Geographic Data," "Slaves and Mortality," and "Age and Gender Ratios." Note also that the African Names Database includes gender identification.

Searching a Database

Searching one of the Slave Voyages databases can be very complex because of the many variables that you may select from ship name to dates to specifics about the people on board including the slaves as well as captain and crew.

When you first enter a database such as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, you land on the "Results" page where you see voyages by identification number from 1 to 900237. This "Results" page is like an Excel spreadsheet. Click on the up/down arrows (circled below) to sort that column.

Notice that you can click on the "Configure columns" on the right (arrow points to it above) to add columns such as for "Mortality rate."

Explore the menu: Results, Summary Statistics, Tables, Data visualization, Timeline, Maps, Timelapse

Refining Your Results

Slaves first arrived in colonial Virginia in what would become the United States in 1619, but most arrived in the 125-year span from 1675 to 1800. The U.S. Constitution did not outlaw slavery when it was signed in 1787, but it contained a provision that resulted in the end of the slave trade into the United States in 1808.

Below you see a table created when I refined my search to choose a year range from after 1675 to 1800, which was the time period for the greatest number of slaves to arrive in on the North American mainland. I also chose to narrow my search to the slaves who landed (disembarked). As you know, many more Africans left on slave ships than arrived in the Americas because of the high death rate in the Middle Passage (the time Africans spent being transported across the Atlantic).

I refined my search by specifying the year range and outcome. The (1) after those two categories indicates that the results are filtered by choices made there. Those categories are circled above.

Helpful Hint: You can save your search (what you searched for) by clicking the circles Star above to create a link gives you a URL that you can save and later paste back into your browser's Address bar to see your search results again.

Destination Note: As nations, especially Great Britain, outlaw the slave trade in the 19th century (1800s), you will see some voyages leave Africa and then arrive in another African port because British naval cruisers intercepted them in an effort to stop the now illegal slave trade in the British Empire.

Writing Historical Research Questions about Gender, Race, and Slavery

For the Exploration Gender discussion, you begin the process that every historian follows of choosing a topic of interest and then asking a question about that topic that leads you to research it. Before you can construct a research question, you need to explore your sources. Once you compose the question and use the sources to try to answer then, in most cases, that research of that question allows you to narrow/reframe your topic and then ask a question about your new focused topic.

For the Explorations discussion, you complete the first steps of exploring a source, the Slave Voyages database, constructing a research question, and then attempting to answer that question with your sources.

Historical research questions are clear, debatable, focused, significant, and researchable.

· Clear--concise and well written

· Debatable--not simply factual such as "How many slaves were in Barbados in 1700?"

· Focused--not too broad such as "How is global warming affecting the environment?"

· Significant--the answer is of interest not just to you but to a wider audience

· Researchable--evidence is available to enable you to answer the question

Historical Research Process

The diagram below gives you an overview of the iterative (meaning that it repeats) research process. For the Exploration Gender discussion, you take only the first step (the first line in the diagram below): initial topic based on your sources, research question, research, and result.