Jane Hooper, director of undergraduate history programs and associate professor of history, is the recipient of an NEH production grant (Digital Projects for the Public) for her work on “Global Passages: Creating a Public Database of Slaving Voyages across the Indian Ocean and Asia." The grant will fund this three-year project, to begin in March 2023. The database will ultimately be incorporated into the SlaveVoyages website (slavevoyages.org). Jane is one of four researchers working on the project, which will be run through Rice University.
From the grant abstract: This Production project will create an Indian Ocean and Asia (IOA) database of voyages of enslaved African, Malagasy, Middle Eastern, Indian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian men, women, and children as an integral part of the open access SlaveVoyages website (https://www. slavevoyages.org). While the existing website includes databases on the transatlantic trades, the intra-colonial American trades, and individual enslaved Africans, it does not adequately demonstrate the globality of transoceanic forced migrations. By providing readily accessible information about slaving voyages in the IOA via a catalogue of known voyages, new interactive, timelapse maps, lesson plans, and explanatory essays, the database will encourage hundreds of thousands of unique visitors each year to understand the transatlantic commerce in slave labor was a truly global phenomenon that also involved Americans. Members of the general public, students and educators at all levels, researchers, and others will have an unprecedented opportunity to learn about the magnitude, dynamics, and longevity of slave trafficking in the IOA, examine the ways in which the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and Pacific worlds became increasingly interconnected with one another since 1500, and appreciate the complexities of the human experience with slavery. The project, which seeks to fund the production of the IOA database and its public dissemination, will also establish the foundation for expanding the SlaveVoyages website as research on slavery continues.
February 01, 2023
