Visualizing Emancipation is a map of slavery’s end during the American Civil War. It finds patterns in the collapse of southern slavery, mapping the interactions between federal policies, armies in the field, and the actions of enslaved men and women on countless farms and city blocks. It encourages scholars, students, and the public to examine the wartime end of slavery in place, allowing a rigorously geographic perspective on emancipation in the United States.
This map shows the cities where black abolitionists lectured in Britain. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, but it gives some idea of how far these men and women travelled – literally the length and breadth of the country!
This map shows the cities where Frederick Douglass lectured in Britain. It also shows the emerging industrialism within Britain – a railway boom was sweeping the nation in the 1840s, and the routes Douglass travelled align almost exactly with new railway lines. For example, the line from Bristol to Exeter via Taunton in the South West, and the route from Sheffield to Edinburgh. In some parts of Scotland, transport was fairly limited, and you can see Douglass hugged the coastline around Aberdeen – he was speaking so often that it was necessary to reach places easily and as quickly as possible.
The animated thematic map Slave Revolt in Jamaica narrates the spatial history of a large-scale slave uprising in 18th-century Jamaica.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 36,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The actual number is estimated to have been as high as 12.5 million. The database and the separate estimates interface offer researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.
An interactive map created from this database can be seen in many places.