Numbers 2 Assignment (1102)

Use your knowledge of numbers to explore the history to Trans-Atlantic Slaver.

Slavery is a vast subject to cover for any history course, and its practice varies. You may be familiar with chattel slavery, or the slave system that treats slaves as low-cost manual laborers, investing as little as possible in order to gain as much profit from the slaves agricultural outputs. This is largely the type of slavery practiced in the Americas. Still, consider that slavery is but one form of what we call coerced labor. Spanish law and the Catholic religion forbade Spaniards from owning Native Americans, but the tax requirements that Spaniards created for the Native Americans were so burdensome that many Native Americans performed labor that equalled slavery.

As well, the type of slavery that developed in the Americas differed from slavery in many other parts of the world. What I call service slavery amounted to using slaves according to the slaves abilities. If a slave was good in math, he might become your accountant. If a slave was a good sailor, that slave might be an officer in your navy. The most powerful slave perhaps of all time was Zheng He, who sailed as “Admiral of the Oceans,” commanding the Ming Dynasty’s navy. For many around the world in the period up to 1800, slavery was just a property relationship, not a defined pattern of treatment or work.

None of this background exculpates the practitioners of slavery. In every age there have been historical voices protesting the inhumanity of slavery. Still, it’s useful to see that how slavery was practiced in the Americas is distinctive when compared with China or Africa.

Studying slavery through numbers can be useful. It allows you to grasp the big picture of slavery across four continents and four centuries. Nevertheless, there’s s risk of losing the personal picture of slavery that comes from working with first person accounts. Please keep this challenge in mind when working with the Slavery website. All these numbers were people (slaves, sailers, slavers, and merchants), who had families, felt pain and joy, and largely did not see their lives caught up in a centuries-long fight over human rights. The colossal atrocity that was the slave trade can only be approximated with numbers, yet these numbers help us understand the past more fully.

Learning goals

Students will:

1. Demonstrate the ability to navigate around the Trans-Atlantic Slavery Database

2. Interrogate the database for answers to basic research questions.

3. Analyze and draw conclusions based on information gained from queries to the database.

4. Answer questions about information in the database.

https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/database

Next click on “Hamburger” icon to give you search options.

Select the “Ship, Nation, Owner” variable, and click on “Flag”

Choose “Portugal/Brazil” and “Portugal”

Click "Apply’ to save.

Next select “Enslaved people”

Chose “Percentage by sex and age”

Set Percent girls to “at least” and “30%”.

Click “Apply” To save.

Questions:

1. How many Voyages meet the criteria we have selected?

2. In what century are all of these voyages?

3. Click on Voyage 2580, Princesa Africana (1837). How many crew were there at the outset of the voyage?

4. What percentage of the captives were girls?

Moving on go to “slavevoyages.org” and click on “Trans-Atlantic” and then “Estimates.”

Use this table to answer the following questions. You’ll need to click on around

Questions:

1. What is the total number of slaves estimated between 1501 and 1866?

2. Using this link, what is the current population of Minnesota?

Select “Embarked/Disembarked” next to “Cells”.

Questions

1. During the period 1776–1800, what number of slaves embarked but did not disembark (total.)

2. For that same period, and using that number, what percentage of slaves died along the voyage?

Click on the “Timeline” tab.

1. What role did the American Revolutionary War have on the Slave Trade? (Please write at least three sentences of analysis).

Go to the African Names part of the database at https://www.slavevoyages.org/

Enter in the age your are now and your next birthday age in the “Age” category.

Select “males” or “females” based on your preference.

Click “search.”

Select a slave to research.

Questions:

1. What is slave’s name, height, ship, and from where did they leave Africa?

2. Click on the “Go” under “African Origins.” Where is the city located that the slave your are researching is from?

One paragraph analysis.

Based on your use of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, what can we conclude about the slave trade based on numbers? You analysis may include questions about who practiced the slave trade, what regions/countries benefited the most, what countries/regions where hurt the most, the economics or technology of the slave trade, the people pressed into slavery, or the way in which the slave trade shaped the Atlantic world.

200 words.

Grading Criteria

Student

1. Demonstrated the ability to navigate around the Trans-Atlantic Slavery Database

2. Interrogated the database for answers to basic research questions.

3. Analyzed and drew conclusions based on information gained from queries to the database.

4. Answer questions about information in the database.

5. Wrote a 200-word analysis on what numbers can tell us about the Trans-Atlantic slave trade?