Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database Debuts at Emory: 'Voyages' sheds light on hidden history of 12.5 million slaves: A group of international scholars will gather at Emory University Dec. 5-6 to celebrate the debut of 'Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database' (http://www.slavevoyages.org) as it begins its own maiden expedition.
Two years in the making at Emory, the free and interactive Web-based resource documents the slave trade from Africa to the New World between the 16th and 19th centuries, says David Eltis, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of History and one of the scholars who originally published 'The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade' as a CD-ROM in 1999. He and Martin Halbert, director of digital innovations for Emory Libraries, directed the work that made the online 'Voyages' project expandable, interactive and publicly accessible.
''Voyages' provides searchable information on almost 35,000 trans-Atlantic voyages hauling human cargo, as well as maps, images and data on some individual Africans transported,' says Eltis.
The conference, which also marks the bicentennial of the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1808, will feature presentations by Eltis' graduate students who have worked on the database, with leading scholars commenting on their papers.
