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Animated interactive of the history of the Atlantic slave trade (2015)
- corey_moncure 9y agoWatch what happens in 1776!
- tboyd47 9y agoYep, looks like during the Revolutionary War the British stopped shipping slaves to the Americans.
- eighthnate 9y agoThe british were by far the largest atlantic slave traders and the american colonies were largest market to ship slaves to. Once they lost the colonies, they lost their largest slave market and switched to anti-slave trade to punish the US and also to hurt the french slave markets as well. They even ran blockades against the US and french to keep slaves from markets and starve the economies of slaves. Pretty interesting how self-interest and economics drove american/british views on slavery back then.
- anc84 9y agoPlease add (2015) to the title.
- Pigo 9y agoThis kind of makes me wonder if there are museums or memorials in Europe and central/south America dedicated to their role in the slave trade, the way we have them here in the states.
- lern_too_spel 9y agoIndeed they do — far more impressive museums and monuments than we have here [1]. Notably, they do not have hundreds of monuments dedicated to those who fought to preserve slavery. [1] http://www.theroot.com/look-at-all-these-monuments-from-around-the-world-that-1798358305 http://www.theroot.com/look-at-all-these-monuments-from-arou...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Pigo 9y agoThat one in the Guadeloupe Islands looks like a pretty big deal. We have the Freedom Center here in Cincinnati, which gets like 0 visitors a year, but the city spent a fortune on it and the water-front location. http://www.freedomcenter.org/ http://www.freedomcenter.org/
- jeroen94704 9y agoYes, there are some (there are 4 in the Netherlands, for example: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_slavernijmonumenten_in_Nederland https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_slavernijmonumenten_...), but I think people in Europe are generally less aware of their countries' role in slavery compared to people in the US.
- interfixus 9y agoAlso whether there are museums or memorials in eastern Africa, commemorating the selling off of hundreds of thousands of fellow Africans into slavery.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- magic_beans 9y agoHenry Louis Gates did a documentary where he visits some of the monuments in Benin (and elsewhere in West African port cities) that commemorate the people forced into slavery.
- interfixus 9y agoI could rephrase my somewhat retorical question: Has any African nation publicly apologised for selling hundreds of thousands of its kinfolks into foreign slavery?
- gol706 9y agoI did an independent study back in college to make maps like these. At the time there was a CD-ROM floating around with a database containing all of this data. It must have been an amazing amount of work to compile that database from the shipping records. As impersonal as numbers can be, work like this really helps you wrap your mind around the magnitude of the slave trade and how it shaped the Americas.
- truth-teller 9y agoI can't wait to see Slate's interactive history of the Arab slave trade of East Africans (twice as massive as the Atlantic slave trade, and the male slaves were virtually all castrated), or the Barbary slave trade of Europeans (totaling one million over three centuries), or the Ottoman slave trade of whites from the Balkans (Devsirme), Armenia, and Georgia.
- aklemm 9y agoSlate focuses on things most relevant to our current politics and culture.
- truth-teller 9y agoSlate focuses on demonizing white people as somehow being uniquely evil, to the point of inciting blacks to commit acts of racial violence against whites, like this: http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/18/report-vanderbilt-football-rape-was-payback-for-400-years-of-slavery/ http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/18/report-vanderbilt-football...
- magic_beans 9y agoThis is heinous. Slate does not demonize white people. This article you've linked doesn't exactly speak for all Black people.
- neves 9y agoWhat impresses me it the amount of ships that never arrive.
- mcguire 9y ago"For the full interactive version, use a larger device." Nice.
- tomcam 9y agoNo mention of who sold these slaves to the Europeans. For 1300 years, right up to the 20th century, the business was dominated by Muslim slavers. Slavery is truly America's original sin and will be a stain on her memory forever, but Europeans didn't just march in and grab them. They bought slaves wholesale from an African dealer network that goes back centuries. http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/AfricanHistory/SlaveryInAfrica.html http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/AfricanH...
- akilism 9y agohope you are also comparing chattel slavery as practiced in the americas vs slavery is Africa at the time.
- phjesusthatguy3 9y agoOne has to read until the fourth paragraph of TFA before running across anything hinting at placing blame for any of the slave trade. Indeed, the first paragraph spells out how little what became the USA had to do with slavery in general. How about we just appreciate the visualization of an interesting data set?
- liberte82 9y agoI'm seeing this meme every time slavery is brought up these days. I'm trying to understand why it's so important to some people to add this bit of context. The only reason I can think of is it out some desire to bring an "all sides are bad" mentality to things, to somehow lessen the wrongness of what was done by Americans.
- tomcam 9y ago> I'm trying to understand why it's so important to some people to add this bit of context. For me, context is important. For example, killing is bad. Killing someone in the process of shooting up a school or subway is less bad. I believe deeply in diversity, and I am also to keep more than one concept in my mind at the same time--America's evil, and that of others. > to somehow lessen the wrongness of what was done by Americans. If you mean to include my comment, I find your observation bizarre and revealing. Bizarre because you can't read my mind, and revealing because apparently you think you can. My wording about America was pretty strong. I honestly couldn't think of a more appropriate and accurate description. How would you phrase it?