Bringing together a premier group of world slave trade researchers with an innovative team of Emory University digital library development experts, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database project is an effort to provide the first solid and continually updated database on the trans-Atlantic slave trade -- the major branch of migration that sustained the early modern re-peopling of the Americas.

In May 2008, as a commemoration of the bicentennial of the slave trade's abolition in Britain and the United States, this project proposes to release an interactive educational Web-based resource about the transatlantic slave trade between Africa and the New World from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Beginning with information on 27,233 voyages documented in the renowned Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database CD-ROM (Eltis et al 1999), this project will produce a revised and significantly expanded database that will be freely available via the Internet and will contain more than 35,000 voyages, approximately 82 percent of the entire history of the slave trade. The project will present the database and its auxiliary materials, including maps and archival documents, in a format accessible to both professional researchers and K-12 and generalist audiences. The Web-based resource will enable researchers to submit new data to an Editorial Board for vetting and inclusion in the database.

Major funding for construction of the expanded, online version of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database is provided by Emory University's Robert W. Woodruff Library and by the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH), who have honored this project with its designation as a "We the People" grant. Additional funding is provided by Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research and by Emory University's Robert W. Woodruff Professor of HIstory endowment.

This website serves as a communication device for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database project team and members of the public interested in knowing more about the developing database, the project, and the people involved. If you are seeking information about this project and do not find it here, please contact the Project Manager.