We are pleased to announce that the SlaveVoyages website will be undergoing its first major update since 2018. The new user interface will ease searches across several databases, including voyages (Transatlantic and intra-American), people (with a newly expanded database of enslaved people and enslavers), and archival documents.
The new website will feature a search bar on its homepage, which will allow users to immediately query the database for voyages, people, documents, and essays. The newly designed voyages interface will let users choose whether to search all voyages, or just a particular branch of the traffic (Transatlantic, intra-American and, coming soon, Indian Ocean and Asia). This interface will be easier to navigate. Connections with people, from ship owners, merchants, captains to enslaved people named in surviving records of voyages, will be easier to visualize and trace. There will be new ways to see these connections through updated interactive site elements, including network graphs, that will give users more insight into individuals and groups across the globe.
The People page will allow users to identify and uncover information about individuals associated with documented voyages, whether enslaved or enslavers.
Many records of voyages and people will be connected to primary source documents, streamed electronically straight from their original repositories and made searchable and viewable directly in the SlaveVoyages website.
Manifests from the US National Archives and Records Administration will provide information about ships and people cataloged in the Intra-American database.
Documents from the South Sea Company will provide direct insight into the workings of the British slaving activities across the Atlantic and within the Americas.
The site will also be updated with new information throughout the coming year that will provide crucial insight into the global expanse of slavery and the trade in enslaved Africans. We anticipate the new site will launch in the first half of 2025, and will provide more previews and announcements in the coming months.
The website’s new look and feel were conceptualized in 2022 by researchers, students, and members of African American community organizations based in Houston, Texas, where Rice University, our current host, is located. April M. Frazier and Kathie Foley-Meyer advised the artistic development of the new interface. Anna Cook and Jessica LaBarbera sketched the layout, while Thasanee Puttadimalok coded everything into the website. The looping video featured in the background of the homepage was generously provided by Lina Dib. It could very well be a beach anywhere in the world connected with the greatest saga of all times, but it is in Galveston, Texas.