Digital Publications


AfricanRegions.org

Screenshot of AfricanRegions.org randomly showing the central savanna subregion.African Regions is a teaching/research tool is directed at historical periods between circa 1500 and 1900, for which there are few inland maps other than depictions often based on incomplete and inaccurate information drawn up from hearsay and speculation. The aim is to provide an introductory geographic understanding of the continent and its peoples from perspectives rooted in African and African diaspora history. They are primarily devised as a neutral guide to the continent with labels that are easy to translate and input as categorical data. AfricanRegions.org is helpful for teaching this continent’s complex history in broad, regional terms. It centers on a geographic hierarchy that divides Africa into six broad regions that are sub-divided into 34 subregions, including major offshore islands. They were created following rigorous academic standards and collaboration. The regional labels attempt to avoid terms that might be confused with ethnolinguistic groups, the language of slave traders, colonial places, modern countries, and other biases.

 


LiberatedAfricans.org

Liberated Africans logo with enslaved person holding a staff. Tile links to www.liberatedafricans.orgThis research database, digital archive and learning resource provides for an unprecedented analysis of the contradiction of abolition as both a humanitarian effort and a crime against humanity. Between 1800 and 1920, abolition advanced legal mechanisms to disguise another type of slavery, which was known paradoxically as Liberated Africans. Under the pretense of freedom, Portugal, France, Britain, Spain, Brazil, Germany, the United States, the Netherlands, the Ottoman Empire, and various Latin America republics involuntarily indentured and conscripted people for terms lasting several years. LiberatedAfricans.org is dedicated to the legacies of 700,000 people. Alongside millions of indentured Europeans and Asians, Liberated Africans were settled into various societies transitioning out of a dependency on chattel slavery. This digital publication includes an anti-slavery legislation archive, and over 4,000 cases involving the departure, capture, indenturing, and settlements. These case files are gradually being attached to a growing digital archive.

 


SlaveryImages.org

Slavery Images logo with Akan symbol meaning "independence." Tile links to www.slaveryimages.orgSlavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora is an educational resource with a two-part website created for teachers, researchers, students, and the general public. It exists to assist anyone interested in visualizing the experiences of Africans and their descendants who were enslaved and transported to slave societies around the world. The website is built using Omeka-S and integrated with the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), while the mapping of images on the landing page uses Leaflet. The project has also begun to consider the possibilities and difficulties related to hosting and making accessible 3D point clouds of full-scale world heritage sites to develop augmented/virtual/mixed reality educational environments.

 

 


YorubaDiaspora.org

Yoruba Diaspora logo with conflict map of Bight of Benin hinterland. Tile links to www.yorubadiaspora.orgYoruba Diaspora: A Cartographically Based Interactive Digital Archive (CBIDA) maps intra-African conflict to unravel internal migrations within Africa and external departures of Africans into diaspora.The website incorporates a Cartographically Based Interactive Digital Archive (CBIDA) containing a series of annual maps that operate on a temporal scale. Development involves uploading data and primary sources as they are verified. Connecting data to the CBIDA concept is challenging and involves collaboration among historians, computer scientists, and mathematicians. As a sustainable resource to facilitate usability in places with poor connectivity, Yoruba Diaspora is built using Omeka-S, QGIS and R ShinyApp, but implements simple technologies to visualize inland zones of conflict which are linked to slave voyage data and their available primary sources and imagery. The CBIDA operates on an image carousel that hosts annual maps and tagged image co-ordinates that are linked to individual pages containing caches of multimedia.