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Follow news about the SlaveVoyages project on our blog, Echoes: The SlaveVoyages Blog.
The South Sea Company was one of the chief carriers of enslaved people from Africa to the Americas during the first half of the eighteenth century. It also transported captives between ports within the New World. As a consequence, it left a significant paper trail now housed in archives on both sides of the Atlantic. View digital copies of these papers and explore how they document the trans-Atlantic and intra-American slaving voyages available on this website.
At the foundation of the African diaspora lay an enslaver (or an owner), the enslaved person, and the movement of the enslaved person initiated by the enslaver or owner (this could be one of the various slave trades, a self-emancipated person or a single transaction between buyer and seller). Any movement of property or changes in that property’s status generated documentation – in the case of enslaved persons and their owners, these were typically accounts, baptismal certificates, newspapers, or shipping records.
During the last 60 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, courts around the Atlantic basins condemned over two thousand vessels for engaging in the traffic and recorded the details of captives found on board including their African names. The African Origins Database was created from these records, now located in the Registers of Liberated Africans at the Sierra Leone National Archives, Freetown, as well as Series FO84, FO313, CO247, and CO267 held at the British National Archives in London. Links are provided to the ships in the Trans-Atlantic Database from which the liberated Africans were rescued, as well as to audio recordings allowing users to listen to the names and help us identify to which languages they belong.
This database contains information on more than 37,000 maritime voyages trafficking enslaved people within the Americas between 1550 and 1887. These slave trades operated within colonial empires, across imperial boundaries, and inside the borders of nations such as the United States and Brazil.Explore the forced removals, which not only dispersed African survivors of the Atlantic crossing but also displaced enslaved people born in the Americas.
This database compiles information about more than 36,000 voyages that forcibly transported enslaved Africans across the Atlantic between 1514 and 1866. Search and analyze the database for information on the broad origins of enslaved people, the tortuous Middle Passage, and the destinations of Africans in the Americas.
