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teriboop's review against another edition
5.0
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.
tanyarobinson's review against another edition
4.0
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!
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