ATLAS OF THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK RECOMMENDATION

This big, impressive hardback book is quite the accomplishment for the authors. Eltis is the a the Robert W. Woodruff Professor History and Principal Investigator for the electronic Slave Trade Database Project, at Emory University.  RIchardson is the director of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation, and professor of economic history, University of Hull, England and also is on the advisory board for the Slave Trade database 

The book contains old art that depicted slavery (as the artist imagined it), maps of the slave trade word of the Atlantic including routes and numbers of slaves transported from place to place (or region to region),  quotes from journals of slavers, and discussion of the roles various ethnicity-nationals played in the trade; the Portuguese - who dominated Africa to South American, the Spanish who moved slaves from Central and West-Central Africa to the Caribbean,  the Dutch who moved slaves from Dutch owned Africa to Dutch owned plantations of Spanish America - and from there, British slave trafficking and how it changed over the years ... and an overall history with details and specifics.

Consider that fewer slaves died on the way to Brazil as the length of the voyage was shorter but there were also other factors such as, possibly, that the slaves taken started out in better health, or - perhaps - this is my notion - that the slavers became more careful to take those who were healthier as they had more money to gain with an alive shipload of humans than not.

So, you may be wondering how this book might benefit you and your ancestral research into genealogy.

Many people who know or suspect they have African slave heritage go with DNA testing to get information about the ethnic group or groups they have lineage with.  But maybe the testing could lead to a discovery that is more unusual.

According to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. this book is a "gold mine" of information.

For instance on page 216  (Map 143 New England, 166-1802) it says:

Relatively few slaves (some 10,000) reached New England directly from Africa.  Most came from areas west of modern Nigeria.  Ninety percent arrived in Boston - and Newport owned vessels.  More African captives reached New England through inter-colonial trafficking or as the residual of a larger group of slaves sold from New England Transatlantic vessels in the West Indies.

EMORY SLAVE INDEXES

Excerpt:  The Slave Voyages site now provides resources detailing more than 36,000 Slave trading Voyages between Africa and the New World, another 11,400 intra-American Voyages from one part of the Americas to another, and data on some 92,000 Africans forced to make those journeys. 

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