Essays


Data Analysis

17 May 2024

A preliminary analysis of the data presented herein is peer-reviewed in “‘Liberated Africans’ in Global Perspective: Government Schemes to Indenture Enslaved People Captured from the Slave Trade, 1800-1920,” Past & Present (forthcoming). Upon publication, relevant datasets will be made accessible to the public via Harvard's Dataverse (see below).

New Maps

20 April 2024

Fresh maps showing the scale and scope of secondary migratory patterns of "Liberated Africans" mostly throughout the British Empire during the suppression of the slave trade. See essays on settlements.

USAntiSlaveryLaws.org

5 March 2024

Inspried by W.E.B. DuBois' dissertation from 1896, USAntiSlaveryLaws.org launches with interactive maps for over 350 federal and state anti-slave trade laws from the United States after 1641. For increased accessibility, this complimentary digital archive links directly into the global Anti-Slave Trade Legislation Archive on LiberatedAfricans.org.

Data Archiving

25 January 2024

Harvard Dataverse receives copies of over 113,500 registered "Liberated Africans" is being incorporated into the website. This expanded list builds on previous transcriptions of "Liberated Africans" in Freetown, Sierra Leone after 1808. The expanded list includes other registers made in Cuba, Brazil, the British Caribbean, East Africa, Southern Europe, and the Middle East.

Data Archiving

22 December 2023

Harvard Dataverse receives copies of over 20,000 interpreted African names leaving the Western Bight region and is being incorporated into the person dataset. For more information of the Western Bight region see AfricanRegions.org.

Data Archiving

10 July 2023

Harvard Dataverse receives copies of three key datasets: "Global Survey of "Liberated African" Cases during the Suppression of the Slave Trade from Africa, 1800-1920;" "Maritime Blockade of the Slave Trade, 1800-1900;" and "Catalogue of Anti-Slave Trade Legislation in Global Perspective."

Version 3

1 June 2023

Walk With Web Inc. designed Version 3. Upgrades include a legislation archive, departure regions, and maritime slave trade blockades. Global totals expand to over 5,500 cases involving over 700,000 people between 1800 and 1920. Mapping supported by the University of Colorado Boulder and a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship (NN-2006-08535).

Congress

1 June 2023

At the Congress of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and with the Canadian Association of African Studies, the talk entitled "Relaunch: LiberatedAfricans.org" explains the website's new mapping features and expanded dataset.

Press Release

25 May 2023

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine publishes "Historian Hones Website Focused on African Slaves Who Were ‘Liberated’ but Not Freed."

AfricanRegions.org

15 December 2022

Designed by Walk With Web Inc., AfricanRegions.org launches to regionalize pre-colonial Africa and align with LiberatedAfricans.org. This controlled vocabulary was previously published in History in Africa. Mapping supported by a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship (NN-2006-08535) and a National Endowment for the Humanities Connections Grant (AKB-285879-22).

New Developer

28 September 2020

LiberatedAfricans.org moves to Walk With Web Inc. for improved development. Domain transferred and files imported into the Regenerated Identities network of African Digital Humanities projects.

Edited Volume

January 2020

The University of Rochester Press publishes Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896. This edited volume questions the integrity of some of the world's earliest international courts of humanitarian effort and "liberation" of over 200,000 enslaved people from Africa from 1808 to 1848.

Version 2

15 March 2018

Version 2 relaunches to improve searchability. It is designed and hosted by Matrix: The Center For Digital Humanities & Social Sciences at Michigan State University. This version uses a relational database scheme developed around lists of people, places, events, and sources for around 500 trials held in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Founding Partner

9 January 2018

LiberatedAfricans.org is named a founding partner of Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade. This Linked Open Data project is a clearinghouse of information listing names of enslaved people compiled by scholars who can make submissions to Enslaved.org for online publication.

Digital Publication Fellowship

Fall 2017

LiberatedAfricans.org receives a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Publication Fellowship to redesign datasets and organize documentation based on people, places, events, and sources. The focus is to preserve the "Registers of Liberated Africans" produced in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Uses materials digitized from the Sierra Leone Public Archives via the British Library Endangered Archive Program (EAP 284, EAP 443, and EAP 782).

Conference

10-12 June 2017

York University hosted a conference entitled, "Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade." The conference featured several African History, Digital Humanities and multi-disciplinary scholars and was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Conference Grant.

Panel

1 December 2016

At the African Studies Association 59th Annual Meeting, there is a panel entitled, “The Liberated Africans Project: New Developments for the Study of the Abolition of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Slave Trades.”

Hutchins Center Grant

2 October 2015

The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University awards LiberatedAfricans.org a grant to support the redesign of Version 1 for improved searchability.

LiberatedAfricans.org

6 August  2015

Version 1 is handcoded in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Content focuses on preserving the "Registers of Liberated Africans" made by the Havana Slave Trade Commission's first 44 trials between 1824 and 1841, as well as a mini-documentary entitled, "Liberated Africans of the Havana Slave Trade Commission" and an Image Gallery in global perspective.