Animated History of the Atlantic Slave Trade | Hacker News Reader

Animated History of the Atlantic Slave Trade

slate.com

79 pointsaidos46 comments

It's a shame that it stops at 1860 -- since a major part of the article is about how it was not primarily North America that was the recipient of slaves, but 1860 is the beginning of the Civil War (which concerned just the US).

Also would have been nice to show 'events', such as the banning of importing slaves to the US in 1807 (you can see the boat traffic essentially stop to North America at that point).

While there were sporadic slave ships making the crossing after 1860, the trade was already illegal in all destinations. This meant that unlike for the period during which the slave trade was legal, we have no surviving records of them.

From the FAQ for the database which it visualizes:

"For the Voyages Database, the time frame is set by default to the period from 1514, the first year in which a slave voyage can be documented, to 1866, the year of arrival of the last three documented slave voyages."

I don't know what accounts for the 6-year discrepancy there, but I would wager that the choice of ending in 1860 is not due to the US Civil War.

The level of detail is impressive. What would be even more impressive would be to combine this with something like Geacron [1] to show the correct country borders for each year (instead of showing modern borders), as well as a timeline of major historical events on the side.

If you liked this and you're not aware of Geacron, you're in for a treat. Go ahead and spend countless hours on it, knowledge of history is something that's sorely lacking these days, and yet we have such amazing tools to learn it. There's also Centennia [2] for a more detailed moving map of Europe (but that's commercial).

[1]: http://geacron.com

[2]: http://www.clockwk.com/

And here's a video for the lethargic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxDyJ_6N-6A

Thank you for posting those resources.

Yes,it would be very interesting to see changing countries and borders during the Atlantic slave-trade era. we may learn or understand something new from that.

Seriously impressive interactive map, especially when you realize you can pause and click any "ship" for more information.

If this kind of thing had been available when I was in school, I may have had a whole different perspective on history.

Ha - I was impressed before realizing you could do that. Now I'm even more amazed!

One of the back projects that I will never get to is "how much of this kind of moving graphic could be built with basic animation tools and data from tables in a spreadsheet style interface". I think a HyperCard for showing simulations would be an amazing tool. For something like this put the map as a graphic for the background, define the animation routes, the shape of the ship, and then read the data off a table to know what to animate when. There are tools for this type of stuff, but, last time I looked, they are fairly complicated. It would be amazing to have Harry Potter-style living documents.

Ha sheet, part of my ancestry was on one of these ships. My mother met an mixed Indian at the head of an associations, he told us records (for what they're worth) were kept in an archive somewhere. I didn't know (maybe him too) there were digitalization efforts to make them ...clickable. Weird loop.

psedit: Erf, sheet again, "only" African trade. Too bad, can't click on my (grand^n)pa.

With such high numbers going to the Caribbean and Brazil, were these just holding ports before the slaves were moved onto their final destinations?

No, that was their final destination. Brazil had by far the largest slave population in the world. Haiti was the crown jewel of the French empire and the envy of all nations. The caribbean slave trade began to decline when Toussaint L'Ouverture rose to power in Haiti (The Haitian and French revolution were very closely intertwined) and slavery was abolished.

The seminal book on this period of Haitian history is "The Black Jacobins" by CLR James.

Haitian revolutionaries murdered virtually all white men, and spared only the women willing to marry black men. [1] "Black Jacobins" is indeed an apt term for such barbarism.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre

Perhaps enslaving, torturing, murdering, and raping people might one day result in a negative outcome for the slavemasters? Fancy that. My heart bleeds for them.

Even whites who had been friendly and sympathetic to the black population were imprisoned and later killed.[3] A second wave of massacres targeted white women and children.[3]

Assigning blame for individual actions to members of an amorphous group may feel wonderful vengeful, but it's ethically shitty.

If you live entirely on the proceeds of slavery, you are likely to be killed if the slaves revolt. This is not a matter of ethics. If you live on a boat that sinks, you are likely to drown.

So, basically, they deserved it. How nice. This is how good people can support mind-boggling evil.

The British Empire managed to abolish slavery without anything remotely so horrific as the Haitian Revolution. As a result, former British colonies are what, hellholes? And Haiti is a paradise on Earth?

You are likely inheritor to the American Abolitionist tradition, which managed to abolish slavery by fomenting a Civil War that, in its wake, claimed the lives of a quarter of the newly freed slaves—approximately a million people. Does your heart bleed for them? Or to the dead do you say, at least you aren't slaves?

Wow, a downvote already? Under 5 minutes—that's impressive. Who is still even reading this thread? Bloodthirsty assholes, I guess, or maybe neo-Abolitionists. (But I repeat myself.)

The barbarism began 200 years prior when Africans were stolen from their homeland. Slavery in Haiti stood out as particularly brutal, even by Caribbean standards. The white landowners in Haiti were greatly outnumbered so they had to resort to unrestrained barbarism to keep the slave population in order.

L'Overture was admired by many in revolutionary France because of his compassion towards the former slave-owning whites and mulattos. He was incredibly forgiving and humane given the circumstances. Even the former slave-owners couldn't hate him because he consistently stuck his neck out to protect the lives of whites and mulattos.

What you reference happened in 1804. In 1803, L'Overture was arrested and exiled to France where he died later that yet. Also in 1803, Napoleon announced that he would re-introduce slavery in Haiti. The whole episode would have been avoided if Napoleon had a conscience.

"The barbarism that began 200 years prior when Africans were stolen from their homeland"

Yep, their a lot of guilty folks in this violation, but someone also was selling on the Africa side. I often wonder if the bad shape and tragedy that has visited Africa is the result.

Sadly, this is still current events and not history.

Generally the way slaves were captured was that the Europeans would approach a west African tribal chief and give him an ultimatum. Either you bring us a boatload of slaves from the interior or we'll just take you and your people. The Africans weren't making a profit either way.

The Europeans deserve 100% of the blame for the slave trade.

How would the Europeans have been able to do this? They couldn't field armies in the African interior due to disease and African military resistance. Recall that the "scramble for Africa" happened after the discovery of Quinine and the invention of the Maxim gun.

I grew up learning that they traded manufactured goods (and, according to Roots and 1776, rum) to certain kings who were now able to gain more power by using European-made weapons to expand their territory and capture more prisoners. This led to a sharp increase in warfare as militaries could plunder not just wealth found in cities but bodies of civilians in villages.

Can you link to a source on your account?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade

Bullshit. The Trans-Saharan and East African/Indian Ocean slave trade pre-dated and post dated the Atlantic one. Slaves, gold and ivory were the only trade goods Africa had that were worth trading across those distances and the slave trade was an African invention. Slavery has been completely normal for the vast majority of human history.

This is not to say that the Atlantic slave trade wasn't incredibly destructive, unusually pervasive and far reaching, but the idea that the fault was entirely with the West is a ridiculous denial of the agency of every African individual and political unit that took part in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa

> Slaves, gold and ivory were the only trade goods Africa had

Is this bit true? I thought they also traded wood to the Arabian peninsula for instance. Granted, my knowledge here is coming from an episode of CrashCourse[1] and my knowledge of pre-colonial Africa is woeful.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6XtBLDmPA0

I was wrong. I was only familiar with West Africa. I stand by the statement in that context. That's why there was a Gold, Slave and Ivory Coast, all exonyms obviously.

> The barbarism began 200 years prior when Africans were stolen from their homeland

Sure is a lot of presentism and tu-quoque-ing going on here.

I would say the situation there was beyond the realm of moral judgment. When you have a society like that you're in law of nature territory.

Whit if it was really necessary to do these acts in order to prevent worse atrocities (e.g. what would occur if the White people were permitted to leave Haiti, but then garnered support while abroad and returned with armed forces)?

Certainly many civilians were killed in WW2, ostensibly to further the war effort and thus prevent a worse outcome of the Axis winning.

At the very least, we should judge this in the context of the terrible barbarism committed against Black slaves.

And by the same token let's judge trans-atlantic slave trade in the context of the terrible barbarism of human trafficking. Given how ancient and modern history is littered with instances of racially motivated massacres, one might think you could find a more accurate example from WW2 to illustrate the idea of a larger population destroying a smaller one on the basis of 'what if this is really necessary for the X people'. I understand that your point is a small expense today avoids a greater expense tomorrow. It's just that reasoning isn't normally extended to wide-scale murder/rape; though when it is it's usually mitigated with sentences that often begin, 'At the very least...'.

Also, so many of the ships landed in the Caribbean because the death rate of the slaves on many of the Caribbean plantations were high enough that the populations could not replace losses through natural growth, requiring constant new shipments.

Sadly, the plantations were profitable enough that constantly bringing in new slaves to die in hellish conditions was just a cost of doing business.

/adds to reading list

A very short introduction to the Haitian revolution can be found on CrashCourse World History https://youtube.com/watch?v=5A_o-nU5s2U

For those interested in the history of Haiti and learning how, as the parent indicated, slavery and the Haitian and French revolutions were intertwined, I highly recommend:

Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People 1492-1995

by Robert and Nancy Heinl

http://www.amazon.com/Written-Blood-Haitian-People-1492-1995...

It's a chilling read, in many parts, and some of the material may disturb readers who do not care for written depictions of violence – atrocious acts were committed by both slaves and slave owners during the revolutionary period. Having lived in Haiti (Cap-Haïtien) for a year (2007-08), the Heinls' book gave me a much broader perspective on how things got to be the way they are on that beautiful but desperately poor island, so very close to the shores of the wealthiest country on earth.

Not really, they were sent there to work on the sugar cane plantations (and other products).

Unlike Mexico or Peru, there was not enough native population to exploit and lots of work to do in Brazil. Hence the much higher percentage of African descendants that continues today.

The pope outlawed slavery of the native population.

No. They used the slaves there for sugar plantations, among other things.

In the Caribbean, slaves were used in the sugar trade. Apparently also in Brazil based on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil

Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600–1650.

Sugar was principally used to produce molasses, and from that, rum:

In colonial times, sugar formed one side of the triangle trade of New World raw materials, along with European manufactured goods, and African slaves. Sugar (often in the form of molasses) was shipped from the Caribbean to Europe or New England, where it was distilled into rum. The profits from the sale of sugar were then used to purchase manufactured goods, which were then shipped to West Africa, where they were bartered for slaves. The slaves were then brought back to the Caribbean to be sold to sugar planters. The profits from the sale of the slaves were then used to buy more sugar, which was shipped to Europe.

Another major use of slave labour was in cotton and tobacco production. Also of mining, in Brazil.

In the Caribbean:

Due to overwork and tropical diseases, the death rates for Caribbean slaves were greater than birth rates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery#British_and...

Another statistic I've seen: life expectancy of British soldiers in West Africa during the 18th and 19th century was about six months.

Government servants fared no better. During one seven-month period Sierra Leone went through 4 acting governors; two died in office and another, mindful of his predecessors fates, left the colony when he fell ill. On another occasion, a governor returning from a trip found his administration had no lawyer, no chief justice, no secretary, no chaplain, and only one schoolmaster....

The story was similar elsewhere in Britain’s West African outposts. In 1824 half the 600 soldiers garrisoned in the Gold Coast died within a few months, and the House of Commons was told in 1826, that of 1,567 troops sent out in the previous two years, 905 had died.

Europeans died mainly from malaria and yellow fever - or from the “cures” which were nearly as dangerous as the ailments.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/kenanderson/histemp/whitemansgrav...

Yellow fever also reached the US:

Yellow fever has been a source of several devastating epidemics.[107] Cities as far north as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston were hit with epidemics. In 1793, one of the largest yellow fever epidemics in U.S. history killed as many as 5,000 people in Philadelphia—roughly 10% of the population. About half of the residents had fled the city, including President George Washington.[108] In colonial times, West Africa became known as "the white man's grave" because of malaria and yellow fever.[109]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic#Yellow_fever

Scientific paper, paywalled:

The End of the "White Man's Grave"? Nineteenth-Century Mortality in West Africa Philip D. Curtin The Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 21, No. 1 (Summer, 1990), pp. 63-88 http://www.jstor.org/stable/204918?seq=1#page_scan_tab_conte...

(Compiled for comment elsewhere.)

I found 12 years a slave difficult viewing but watching this animation makes my skin crawl. The sheer scale of it is horrifying.

Clicking randomly on one of the ships revealed its name: Liberty. How pathetically ironic.

History is full of horrors. Failure to appreciate that makes it all the easier for such horrors to happen again because we didn't do enough to keep them at bay.

This is just heartbreaking. If you're inclined to take a dim view of human progress, think about where we started. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice, and all that.

It's worth mentioning that the Transatlantic Slave Trade wasn't even the largest:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/slaver...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_s...

Taking millions of Africans and even one million Europeans as slaves doesn't quite mesh with the popular perception of Arabs as poor, helpless victims of Western imperialism.

>Taking millions of Africans and even one million Europeans as slaves doesn't quite mesh with the popular perception of Arabs as poor, helpless victims of Western imperialism.

Even in the bbc article you posted they're being apologetic and trying to convince the reader that Islamic slavery was somehow exceptional. Great example of why Western narratives are essentially tone-deaf to Eastern Europeans. Can you imagine a respectable publication taking such a tone towards Southern slave owners and not getting into hot water for it?

That's actually interesting, but immediately invoking some racial/political agenda spoils your comment. HN is for intellectual curiosity, not ideological wars.

>HN is for intellectual curiosity, not ideological wars.

/s?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Do you find it intellectually curious that Eastern European and Balkan women are still being trafficked by the thousands into the Middle East using many of the same traditions and rationalizations?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com