Completed Project

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

The initiative exposes the bleak truths of one of the biggest human rights crimes in history.

Project summary

The Challenge

The task of recording the estimated 36,000 slave-transporting voyages between the 16th and 19th centuries.

The Approach

Professor Richardson collaborated as part of an international team to create one universal record of slaving voyages.

The Outcome

It became the basis for major publications such as the prize-winning Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale, 2010).

Lead academics

The Challenge

The transatlantic slave trade is one of the largest forced movements of people in world history, yet for decades it was proving difficult to quantify the exact number of people who were transported as slaves across the Atlantic to the Americas.

The Approach

Harnessing decades' worth of research expertise in historical slavery, Professor Richardson collaborated as part of an international team to create one universal record of slaving voyages. The database documented the estimated 36,000 slaving voyages that forcibly transported over 10 million Africans to the Americas in the 16th to 19th centuries.

The Impact

The project laid bare the harsh realities of one of the world’s worst violations of human rights. The database is for the general public as well as researchers. It became the basis for major publications such as the prize-winning Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale, 2010), which was hailed as one of the greatest historical achievements of its time.

This project was completed in 2008.

A monumental chronicle of this historical tragedy."

Dwight Garner, New York Times

Case studies

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Project summary

The Challenge

The Approach

The Outcome

Lead academics

The Challenge

The Approach

The Impact

Case studies

Redrawing Slavery

Virtual Wilberforce

The Legal Enforcement of Modern Slavery

The Antislavery Knowledge Network

Stolen Lives

Scotland’s Diasporas in a Global Context