Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an
estimated 12.5 million Africans and involved almost every country with
an Atlantic coastline. In this extraordinary book, two leading
historians have created the first comprehensive, up-to-date atlas on
this 350-year history of kidnapping and coercion. It features nearly 200
maps, especially created for the volume, that explore every detail of
the African slave traffic to the New World. The atlas is based on an
online database (www.slavevoyages.org)
with records on nearly 35,000 slaving voyages—roughly 80 percent of all
such voyages ever made. Using maps, David Eltis and David Richardson
show which nations participated in the slave trade, where the ships
involved were outfitted, where the captives boarded ship, and where they
were landed in the Americas, as well as the experience of the
transatlantic voyage and the geographic dimensions of the eventual
abolition of the traffic. Accompanying the maps are illustrations and
contemporary literary selections, including poems, letters, and diary
entries, intended to enhance readers’ understanding of the human story
underlying the trade from its inception to its end.
David Eltis is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of History and
principal investigator, Electronic Slave Trade Database Project, Emory
University. The author of The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas, he lives in Atlanta. David Richardson
is director, Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and
Emancipation, and professor of economic history, University of Hull,
England. He serves on the advisory board of the Electronic Slave Trade
Database Project and lives in England. Together, the authors coedited Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database.
ACESSE: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300124606
