Tuesday, November 17, 2020, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EST

David Eltis, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of History Emeritus



“www.slavevoyages.org and Slavery in the Atlantic World: IBM Punch Cards to Virtual Reality”



In the letter nominating David Eltis for an EUEC Faculty Award of Distinction earlier this year, he was described as “the driving force behind a great international investigation.” Today, he will share the story of that investigation into the slave trade in the Atlantic world, from its origins in archival jottings in 1971, through the compilation of the records of more than 27,000 slave voyages on a CD-ROM in 1999, to the expanded and refined version of the material offered as an open access website in 2008. Still further support from fellow researchers and funding agencies around the world has allowed David and his co-editors to turn their attention to the passengers on the slave ships, yielding the database www.African-origins.org in 2011, and, more recently, information on all the “People of the Atlantic Slave Trade”(PAST). A remarkable story. But, as David will explain, the study of slavery in the Americas, Africa and Europe has shifted even more dramatically in its substance than has the technology involved. And he’ll answer some key questions that follow from both evolutions:  What do we know now that we did not know before slavevoyages.org went live? And (in looking to the future), what are the site’s limitations, and what are we planning to do about them?