About the Project
Led by UCSC Professor of History Greg O’Malley and UC Irvine Professor of History Alex Borucki, The Intra American Slave Trade Database documents and makes publicly accessible evidence on the historic trafficking of enslaved Africans and their descendants within the Americas. The online database compiles the research of dozens of scholars from around the world, who examined public records and manuscript sources at more than one hundred libraries and archives. The use of the database is free for academic researchers and the general public, and the website is available in three languages.
The Intra-American Slave Trade Database is a companion to Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, which also appears on the Slave Voyages website. Whereas the Transatlantic Database documents voyages that carried enslaved people from Africa to the Americas, the Intra-American Slave Trade Database records additional voyages that enslaved people endured within the Americas (e.g. from Jamaica to Cartagena, or from Barbados to South Carolina). This addition illustrates the ubiquity of slavery throughout the Americas, with voyages carrying captives as far north as Massachusetts and even Newfoundland, or as far south as Chile and Argentina.
Call for Applications: Intra-American Slave Trade Database Summer Research Internship Program
Application Deadline: Tuesday, February 6th, 2024
The Intra-American Slave Trade Database Summer Research Internship program is pleased to invite applications from interested undergraduate students enrolled at Historically Black Colleges and Universities for paid internships in the summer of 2024.
Visit the Application Page for more information on how to apply.
Events
February 1, 2024 – What Actually Happened in 1619: The Origins of Slavery in North America
This project has past support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) Engaging Humanities Grant, and an ACLS Digital Extension Grant. The project is currently supported by a UC-MRPI grant that brings UC Merced Assistant Professor of History Sabrina Smith into the project team and aims to expand the database’s coverage to the Pacific Coast and to overland movements within the Spanish Americas. Undergraduate research on the project is also supported by a UC-HBCU summer internship support grant.