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Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Africans and involved almost every country with an Atlantic coastline. In this extraordinary book, two leading historians have created the first comprehensive, up-to-date atlas on this 350-year history of kidnapping and coercion. It features nearly 200 maps, especially created for the volume, that explore every detail of the African slave traffic to the New World. The atlas is based on an online database (www.slavevoyages.org) with records on nearly 35,000 slaving voyages—roughly 80 percent of all such voyages ever made. Using maps, David Eltis and David Richardson show which nations participated in the slave trade, where the ships involved were outfitted, where the captives boarded ship, and where they were landed in the Americas, as well as the experience of the transatlantic voyage and the geographic dimensions of the eventual abolition of the traffic. Accompanying the maps are illustrations and contemporary literary selections, including poems, letters, and diary entries, intended to enhance readers’ understanding of the human story underlying the trade from its inception to its end.
This groundbreaking work provides the fullest possible picture of the extent and inhumanity of one of the largest forced migrations in history.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionAfrica
336 pages, Paperback
First published November 18, 2010
6 people are currently reading
419 people want to read
About the author
David Eltis
28 books9 followersDavid Eltis is an Emeritus Professor of History at Emory University, Atlanta and a Research Associate at the Hutchins Center, Harvard University, Massachusetts and at the University of British Columbia. His publications include Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (with David Richardson, 2010), The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (1999), and Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (1989).
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 18, 2021
A wonderful companion to the online Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (www.slavevoyages.org) that needs to be read in its physical edition. Eltis and Richardson have compiled close to 200 maps of different aspects of the triangular routes of the transatlantic slave trade. Along with the very well done maps, Eltis and Richardson provide narratives, pictures, sketches, and primary resources from letters and ship logs that provide context and understanding to the African people who were forcibly captured and enslaved, the voyages of the middle passage, and the disembarkation points along the Atlantic ocean. This is a must-have resource for anyone researching the transatlantic slave trade.
August 24, 2023
Atlas Of The Transatlantic Slave Trade, by David Eltis and David Richardson
I have to say that this book positively surprised. I expected that this book would be short on data and long on the politics of blame, and even in the most text-heavy portions of it, the foreword by David Brion Davis and the afterword by David W. Blight, those are nowhere to be found. The book certainly does comment on the feelings of horror and revulsion that many visitors (like myself) to African slave forts have had upon seeing the places where this infernal trade happened, but blame is not being laid on heavy here, although there is plenty of it to be found. Nor did I find something I expected very much to find, which was the book minimizing the other trading in slave that has gone on, including the contemporaneous Muslim slave trade that brought roughly equal numbers of Africans with perhaps even more waste of life for a longer period of time from Central and Eastern Africa to Mediterranean and Levantine slave markets. Instead, the beginning of the book put the Transatlantic Slave Trade into a larger context that included the sale of Europeans (mostly Slavs) as well as the slavery of Sub-Saharan African populations in the Muslim world, which deserves a book of its own, assuming the statistics are available. What this book did, and deserves a great deal of credit for, is place the practice of the slave trade as much as possible on a statistical basis, and letting the data itself do all the conversation that is necessary.
This book is about 300 pages long in its core contents (300 large pages, it should be noted), and is divided into six parts. After a list of maps, foreword, and information about the atlas, the introduction of the book takes about 20 pages, and includes a series of maps that look at the Atlantic basin as a whole as well as a regional look at the slave trade that took place there. The first part of the book briefly focuses on the nations transporting slaves from Africa, organizing based on the nationality of the slave trading vessel, while also looking in general at the Spanish, Portuguese/Brazilian, Dutch, British, French, North American (mostly American), and Danish/Hanseatic/Baltic slave trade. This is followed by a larger examination of the ports that outfitted voyages in the transatlantic slave trade, looking at the regions of Africa that were frequented by the slave traders of such ports as Lisbon and Seville, Brazil, British and French ports like Liverpool and La Havre, and so on, some of them divided into different eras to show how it is that sources of slaves were often based on regional connections that generations of traders had with particular local African regimes to allow for a mutually beneficial long-term trading relationship. The third part of the book discusses the African coastal origins of slaves and the links between Africa and the greater Atlantic world, including a regional analysis of slave trading expeditions as well as political and ethnolinguistic boundaries in various African regions ranging from Senegal to Mozambique. The fourth part of the book provides maps and graphs that detail the unpleasant and harrowing experience of the Middle Passage for those unfortunate enough to suffer it. The fifth part of the book then provides a large amount of data concerning the destination of slaves in the Americas and their links to the Atlantic world. The sixth and shortest part of the book then provides some maps and charts about the abolition and suppression of the Transatlantic slave trade, after which the book ends with a short afterword, timeline, and glossary.
Among the most notable aspects of this book is just how much data is available about the slave trade. To be sure, data is less present about the latter migrations of slaves after they arrived in a given area. We can thank, though, the obsession that early modern European states had with trying to maintain a positive balance of trade with the sort of records that we do have about slaves, which focused on the transit points from Africa, which were often places where the Europeans had negotiated deals with each other and with local African regimes concerning various prices and payments of taxes and duties, as well as the points in the Americas (or, to a much lesser extent, in Europe) where the slaves were marked as received and were then sold or transshipped to buyers or other markets. The book also manages to portray, through its rigorous use of data from slave voyages, the differences in slavery between mainland North America and all other areas--where far more slaves were sent to the country than managed to stay alive, unlike the natural increase found in the United States, which ironically has made the United States seem like a bigger participant in the international slave trade than was actually the case. The book also brings up the interesting and tricky point that the efforts that Great Britain made against slavery appear to have been in violation of international law at the time, pointing out a reality that self-righteous progressives have always sought to put themselves above the law through their obedience of a higher law, even when they are doing something that the authors view as an immensely praiseworthy act in seeking to interdict slave vessels. At any rate, if you want to base your understanding of the transatlantic slave trade on a firm grasp of the data as well as visualization of that data, this book is an excellent one.
I have to say that this book positively surprised. I expected that this book would be short on data and long on the politics of blame, and even in the most text-heavy portions of it, the foreword by David Brion Davis and the afterword by David W. Blight, those are nowhere to be found. The book certainly does comment on the feelings of horror and revulsion that many visitors (like myself) to African slave forts have had upon seeing the places where this infernal trade happened, but blame is not being laid on heavy here, although there is plenty of it to be found. Nor did I find something I expected very much to find, which was the book minimizing the other trading in slave that has gone on, including the contemporaneous Muslim slave trade that brought roughly equal numbers of Africans with perhaps even more waste of life for a longer period of time from Central and Eastern Africa to Mediterranean and Levantine slave markets. Instead, the beginning of the book put the Transatlantic Slave Trade into a larger context that included the sale of Europeans (mostly Slavs) as well as the slavery of Sub-Saharan African populations in the Muslim world, which deserves a book of its own, assuming the statistics are available. What this book did, and deserves a great deal of credit for, is place the practice of the slave trade as much as possible on a statistical basis, and letting the data itself do all the conversation that is necessary.
This book is about 300 pages long in its core contents (300 large pages, it should be noted), and is divided into six parts. After a list of maps, foreword, and information about the atlas, the introduction of the book takes about 20 pages, and includes a series of maps that look at the Atlantic basin as a whole as well as a regional look at the slave trade that took place there. The first part of the book briefly focuses on the nations transporting slaves from Africa, organizing based on the nationality of the slave trading vessel, while also looking in general at the Spanish, Portuguese/Brazilian, Dutch, British, French, North American (mostly American), and Danish/Hanseatic/Baltic slave trade. This is followed by a larger examination of the ports that outfitted voyages in the transatlantic slave trade, looking at the regions of Africa that were frequented by the slave traders of such ports as Lisbon and Seville, Brazil, British and French ports like Liverpool and La Havre, and so on, some of them divided into different eras to show how it is that sources of slaves were often based on regional connections that generations of traders had with particular local African regimes to allow for a mutually beneficial long-term trading relationship. The third part of the book discusses the African coastal origins of slaves and the links between Africa and the greater Atlantic world, including a regional analysis of slave trading expeditions as well as political and ethnolinguistic boundaries in various African regions ranging from Senegal to Mozambique. The fourth part of the book provides maps and graphs that detail the unpleasant and harrowing experience of the Middle Passage for those unfortunate enough to suffer it. The fifth part of the book then provides a large amount of data concerning the destination of slaves in the Americas and their links to the Atlantic world. The sixth and shortest part of the book then provides some maps and charts about the abolition and suppression of the Transatlantic slave trade, after which the book ends with a short afterword, timeline, and glossary.
Among the most notable aspects of this book is just how much data is available about the slave trade. To be sure, data is less present about the latter migrations of slaves after they arrived in a given area. We can thank, though, the obsession that early modern European states had with trying to maintain a positive balance of trade with the sort of records that we do have about slaves, which focused on the transit points from Africa, which were often places where the Europeans had negotiated deals with each other and with local African regimes concerning various prices and payments of taxes and duties, as well as the points in the Americas (or, to a much lesser extent, in Europe) where the slaves were marked as received and were then sold or transshipped to buyers or other markets. The book also manages to portray, through its rigorous use of data from slave voyages, the differences in slavery between mainland North America and all other areas--where far more slaves were sent to the country than managed to stay alive, unlike the natural increase found in the United States, which ironically has made the United States seem like a bigger participant in the international slave trade than was actually the case. The book also brings up the interesting and tricky point that the efforts that Great Britain made against slavery appear to have been in violation of international law at the time, pointing out a reality that self-righteous progressives have always sought to put themselves above the law through their obedience of a higher law, even when they are doing something that the authors view as an immensely praiseworthy act in seeking to interdict slave vessels. At any rate, if you want to base your understanding of the transatlantic slave trade on a firm grasp of the data as well as visualization of that data, this book is an excellent one.
February 9, 2018
The Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade draws from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (now part of the Slave Voyages website), which contains details of roughly 35,000 documented journeys to and from Africa. Yes, this is an atlas, but there is also a fair amount of excellent text and many excerpts from contemporary documents. I learned so much from studying the 189 maps and have a much better understanding of where the slaves were taken from, where they ended up, who was funding the voyages, and the demographics of the slaves themselves. Over roughly 350 years 12.5 million men, women, and children were kidnapped in Africa, sold as commercial ware, and packed into ships bound for North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. 10.7 million of them disembarked, which means nearly 2 million people died en route, suffering through the atrocious conditions on overcrowded and unsanitary vessels.
Always before I had a sort of amorphous view of where African slaves came from - some where "over there" on that dark continent. Now I understand that there were hundreds of Atlantic ports, but around 20 major ones, to which captured Africans were consolidated, and that different European powers had established trading relationships with certain ports. Because of this, for example, the British colonies tended to be peopled by slaves from the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, and Senegambia, while Portuguese Brazil drew heavily from West Central Africa. I also learned that surprisingly few slaves arrived in North America directly from Africa; while the harsh Caribbean sugar plantations had to continuously replenish their labor force, Southern planters could rely on natural increase to provide slaves.
I also learned a lot about the suppression of the slave trade, led largely by the British in the early 1800s. Though naval slave patrols rescued several hundred thousand Africans, around 2 million more were successfully enslaved after 1807, largely by the Spanish and Portuguese, the last to disavow slaving. I was also surprised to find that many more slaves were taken to Brazil than to the United States, because the stereotype in my mind has always been that of the Negro on the Georgia cotton plantation.
I'm glad to have purchased this atlas that will now be part of my collection!
Always before I had a sort of amorphous view of where African slaves came from - some where "over there" on that dark continent. Now I understand that there were hundreds of Atlantic ports, but around 20 major ones, to which captured Africans were consolidated, and that different European powers had established trading relationships with certain ports. Because of this, for example, the British colonies tended to be peopled by slaves from the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, and Senegambia, while Portuguese Brazil drew heavily from West Central Africa. I also learned that surprisingly few slaves arrived in North America directly from Africa; while the harsh Caribbean sugar plantations had to continuously replenish their labor force, Southern planters could rely on natural increase to provide slaves.
I also learned a lot about the suppression of the slave trade, led largely by the British in the early 1800s. Though naval slave patrols rescued several hundred thousand Africans, around 2 million more were successfully enslaved after 1807, largely by the Spanish and Portuguese, the last to disavow slaving. I was also surprised to find that many more slaves were taken to Brazil than to the United States, because the stereotype in my mind has always been that of the Negro on the Georgia cotton plantation.
I'm glad to have purchased this atlas that will now be part of my collection!
January 15, 2023
This book is a great picture of our horrible past and is an easily followed read as well. It contains evidence of how long it can take to change something that is so wrong and how economics has shaped so many terrible things in our past. Most of the countries controlling this transatlantic trade to increase their wealth and power were countries that prided themselves on their religious moralism which is starting to be described today as righteous and superior behavior hidden in a cloak of superiority known as religion.
January 2, 2022
Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2022 - An Anisfield-Wolf Book award winner
This Atlas lays out, in 189 maps, the entire scope of the transatlantic slave trade that existed between 1501 and 1867. The maps are accompanied by contemporaneous quotes and pictures and explanations of the data and what it shows.
This Atlas lays out, in 189 maps, the entire scope of the transatlantic slave trade that existed between 1501 and 1867. The maps are accompanied by contemporaneous quotes and pictures and explanations of the data and what it shows.
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June 30, 2013Eltis, D., & Richardson, D. (2010). Atlas of the transatlantic slavetrade. Yale University Press. Retrieved from http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/bo...
Citation by: Carrie Gupton
Type: Geographical Reference (Atlas)
Call Number: REF 381
Description: In this extraordinary book, the first comprehensive, up-to-date atlas on this 350-year history of kidnapping and coercion, features nearly 200 maps, especially created for the volume, that explore every detail of the African slave traffic to the New World.
Review: Booklist review. (2011, February 11). Retrieved from http://www.booklistonline.com/Atlas-o...
Scope: The book covers the Transatlantic Slavetrade from 1501 to 1867.
Accuracy, Authority, & Bias: Based on the free Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, the information presented here is a result of a collaboration between African American studies programs at Harvard and Emory Universities and features contributions from scholars from all over the world.
Arrangement & Presentation: The atlas is organized around the 189 maps that were created especially for this volume. The maps, in turn, are broken down into six major categories.
Relation to Similar works: There are many atlases out there. This allows student research to be accurate according to the time line they are studying.
Timeline and Permanence: This up-to-date atlas is based on an online database (www.slavevoyages.org) with records on nearly 35,000 slaving voyages—roughly 80 percent of all such voyages ever made. This volume is will be an asset in years to come.
Accessibility/Diversity: This book is set up with maps that pique student interest. Information is presented in small, easily digestible bits, making this appropriate for students,
Cost: $50
Citation by: Carrie Gupton
Type: Geographical Reference (Atlas)
Call Number: REF 381
Description: In this extraordinary book, the first comprehensive, up-to-date atlas on this 350-year history of kidnapping and coercion, features nearly 200 maps, especially created for the volume, that explore every detail of the African slave traffic to the New World.
Review: Booklist review. (2011, February 11). Retrieved from http://www.booklistonline.com/Atlas-o...
Scope: The book covers the Transatlantic Slavetrade from 1501 to 1867.
Accuracy, Authority, & Bias: Based on the free Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, the information presented here is a result of a collaboration between African American studies programs at Harvard and Emory Universities and features contributions from scholars from all over the world.
Arrangement & Presentation: The atlas is organized around the 189 maps that were created especially for this volume. The maps, in turn, are broken down into six major categories.
Relation to Similar works: There are many atlases out there. This allows student research to be accurate according to the time line they are studying.
Timeline and Permanence: This up-to-date atlas is based on an online database (www.slavevoyages.org) with records on nearly 35,000 slaving voyages—roughly 80 percent of all such voyages ever made. This volume is will be an asset in years to come.
Accessibility/Diversity: This book is set up with maps that pique student interest. Information is presented in small, easily digestible bits, making this appropriate for students,
Cost: $50
March 28, 2014
This book depicts the routes taken from African ports to the American ports in heavy black lines. The thicker the line, the more the people who were shipped. I confess I did not read the entire book since it was due back before I had the time to finish it. It was interesting but super depressing for obvious reasons. Every line represented the anguish of so many people.
In general, people were shipped like a commodity, the shorter the trip the higher the profit, so the further north the destination point, the further north the origin.
In general, people were shipped like a commodity, the shorter the trip the higher the profit, so the further north the destination point, the further north the origin.
Want to read
December 9, 2010The Book Web page: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/bo...
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database; Voyages: http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/inde...
February 18, 2011
This was an Honorable Mention for the Dartmouth Medal for 2011. For the complete list, go to http://ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/aw...
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews