Mapping the Slave Trade: 1556-1823 – A Digital Humanities Project

“Mapping the Slave Trade…” is a digital humanities project of the African Historical Graphics Archive for the in-depth study of Africa, American, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-American history.  For a brief description of the context as well as some potential applications of the project in exploring history and understanding our current circumstance in the Atlantic world see:

This excerpt was drawn from a program of tribute to the important life-long work of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard University.

See related:

• Curating a Fractured Past: The Role of Museums, Maps, Manuscripts, Prints, Rare Books, Photos, Artifacts, Literature & the Arts in Embracing Our Common Humanity on a Finite Planet
  

For further discussions of the integrative and restorative role of museums/art/artifacts & maps see:

• Future of Africa-based Curatorial Practice Workshop | Harvard University Center for African Studies

as well as:

• Maps, Stones & Plants…” – Harvard University – History Design Studio – 2019 Group Exhibit
• Maps, Stones & Plants: Agents of Empire and the Ecology of the Atlantic Trade [Directory web page.]
  
• ‘My Nigerian great-grandfather sold slaves’ – BBC News
• Recalling Some Aspects of America’s Immigration Policies in Black History Month | EV & N – 238 – CCTV
• A Tribute to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. …a Cambridge~Global Living Legend
• The Historical Origins, Evolution and Future Dimensions of Africa’s Recurrent Food Crises
• Old Maps & New Narratives: Digitizing Historical Maps to Analyze New Dimensions of the Atlantic Trade
• The Globalization of Food Production and the Origins of Africa’s Food Crisis
• Castles and Dungeons on the Coasts and Islands: Retracing Some Steps in the Atlantic Trade
• The Atlantic Trade and Africa: The Portuguese, the Spanish & the Dutch – Part 1
• The Atlantic Trade and Africa: The Portuguese, the Spanish & the Dutch – Part 2
• Old Maps, Picks and Shovels: Steps Toward An Archaeology of the Atlantic Slave Trade 
• Historical Cartography and the Archaeology of the Atlantic Trade
• A New Look at Old Maps: The Islands, the “Prior Plantations” and the Provisioning of the African Maritime Trade
• Historical Cartography in the Digital Age: Imaging Senegal – The Last 500 Years ~ New Technologies, New Questions, New Communities
• Africa & World Historical Cartography: Old Maps, New Technologies, New Questions & New Research Communities | EV & N 445 | CCTV
• Early Days in African Historical Cartography ~ From the Portolan Charts to Printed Maps: Imagining and Imaging Africa in the Atlantic System – Part 1
• Early Days in African Historical Cartography: From the Portolan Charts to Printed Maps: Imagining and Imaging Africa in the Atlantic System – Part 2

See related news of recent report:

• Why Schools Fail To Teach Slavery’s ‘Hard History’ : NPR February 7, 2018

* * * *

“Mapping the Slave Trade…”  is part of a larger scholarly collaborative known as the  “African Historical Graphics Archive”

See related events:

• Colloquium with Mary Hicks: ‘Africa/Brazil: Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery’ November 7, 2018
  and
• Cheryl Finley – Events – Harvard Book Store

See international dimensions of the problem:

• Archivists race to digitize slavery records before the history is lost | Public Radio International

Important related online resources:

• Afriterra – The Cartographic Free Library — [an online research and reference facility of for digital access to maps and other primary source materials relating to the study of African history and its role in the world from the late early-modern period through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries].

and

• Slave Voyages -This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them. European colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved laborers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. They forced millions of mostly unnamed Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action.
  See particularly:

• Introductory Maps
• Slave Ship in 3D video
• Timelines of estimates
• Timelapse animation

For a general introduction to the study of the Atlantic slave trade in the digital age see:

• History in the Digital Age: New Technologies, New Data, New Insights, New Questions

* * * * *

Learn more about teaching Africa subjects:

• 2019 African Studies Association – Teacher’s Workshop

See related:

• Africa Map Circle 
• Commerce and Cartography on Colonial Frontiers: Reexamining American & African History ~ through Maps
• An Integrated Art, Historical Map and Photographic Collection for the Study of African Culture
• New Material for Teachers of American and African History: The Historical Cartography of Colonialism

Cities Stepping up on Climate – Video – NYTimes.com

By THE NEW YORK TIMES | Dec. 12, 2017 | 1:21

Mayor Ed Lee of San Francisco, in conversation with New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Thomas L. Friedman and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel at the Times’s ClimateTECH conference in November, discusses how cities and states must boost efforts to target climate change in the absence of federal leadership.

Billion-Dollar Storms: Is This the New Normal? – Video – NYTimes.com

By DEBORAH ACOSTA | Jan. 29, 2018 | 5:39

In 2017 the U.S. saw some of the strongest and most expensive storms in history. As global temperatures continue to rise, things will get worse and more costly.

“Planetary health: is human health at risk in the Anthropocene?” with Sir Andrew Haines

How the rich get richer – money in the world economy | DW Documentary

DW Documentary

Published on Jul 5, 2017

Exploding real estate prices, zero interest rate and a rising stock market – the rich are getting richer. What danger lies in wait for average citizens? For years, the world’s central banks have been pursuing a policy of cheap money.

The first and foremost is the ECB (European Central Bank), which buys bad stocks and bonds to save banks, tries to fuel economic growth and props up states that are in debt. But what relieves state budgets to the tune of hundreds of billions annoys savers: interest rates are close to zero.

The fiscal policies of the central banks are causing an uncontrolled global deluge of money. Experts are warning of new bubbles. In real estate, for example: it’s not just in German cities that prices are shooting up. In London, a one-bed apartment can easily cost more than a million Euro. More and more money is moving away from the real economy and into the speculative field. Highly complex financial bets are taking place in the global casino – gambling without checks and balances. The winners are set from the start: in Germany and around the world, the rich just get richer. Professor Max Otte says: “This flood of money has caused a dangerous redistribution. Those who have, get more.” But with low interest rates, any money in savings accounts just melts away. Those with debts can be happy. But big companies that want to swallow up others are also happy: they can borrow cheap money for their acquisitions. Coupled with the liberalization of the financial markets, money deals have become detached from the real economy. But it’s not just the banks that need a constant source of new, cheap money today. So do states. They need it to keep a grip on their mountains of debt. It’s a kind of snowball system. What happens to our money? Is a new crisis looming? The film ‘The Money Deluge’ casts a new and surprising light on our money in these times of zero interest rates.

Jacob S. Hacker | American Amnesia: Forgetting What Made Us Prosper || Radcliffe Institute

Harvard University
Published on Dec 15, 2016

American Amnesia: Forgetting What Made Us Prosper https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/eve… (6:10) Jacob S. Hacker discusses the importance of an effective public sector to America’s health, wealth, and well-being and explores why so many of our economic and political leaders seem to have forgotten this perspective. He explains these concepts in the context of recent political events, the historic 2016 election, and changing ideas about government itself. Hacker, the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science and the director of the Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, is the author, with Paul Pierson, of the recently published American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper (Simon & Schuster, 2016), an Editors’ Choice of the New York Times Sunday Book Review. Introduction by Lizabeth Cohen, dean, Radcliffe Institute, and Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies, Department of History, Harvard University

Undoing the New Deal: Eisenhower Builds an Arsenal of Nuclear Weapons and a Cabinet of Millionaires

TheRealNews

Published on Jan 29, 2018

Historian Peter Kuznick says that in spite of his famous warning, Eisenhower can be called the father of the industrial-military complex; when he takes office, the U.S. has a 1,000 nuclear weapons, when he leaves, it’s 22,000 – with host Paul Jay

Being Ecological | Timothy Morton | RSA Replay

The RSA

Streamed live 2 hours ago

Timothy Morton, named one of the world’s most influential living philosophers, and a cross-disciplinarian who has collaborated with Björk, Pharrell Williams and Hans Ulrich Obrist, is at the forefront of a group of thinkers offering new insights into ecological awareness and the human experience in the Age of the Anthropocene. In his new work, Morton confronts the information-dump fatigue of the digital age, by offering no ecological ‘facts’ but instead a radically invigorated and liberating approach to understanding ourselves, our interconnectedness with each other and the biosphere that sustains us.

Climbing China’s Incredible Cliffs | National Geographic