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April 1, 1999
Resources on Slavery in Modern Western History
by Roger Gottlieb
For Black History month and anytime, these Web sites offer these resources on and about slavery. All but the last of these sources are concerned with the enslavement of Africans and their lives in captivity in what is now the United States. The final source is on Nazi forced labor in the Netherlands, which shows that the human cruelty visited upon Africans beginning four centuries ago was almost as easily visited upon non-Germans earlier in this century.
Slavery in Pennsylvania
Slavery existed even in a "northern" state like Pennsylvania, as this site created by a resident of Harrisburg proves. It includes a chilling "Listing of Slaveholders and Slaves," complete with names, ages, genders, and even brief descriptions of slaves held in Dauphin County, PA during both the 18th and 19th Centuries.
Slave Transactions
http://www.tulane.edu/amistad/
Both of these sites involve years of research by historians into transactions in the slave trade, especially in 17th Century Louisiana, where meticulous records were kept. One researcher has compiled a CD-ROM database of over 100,000 slaves who were bought.
Black Resistance: Slavery in the United States
Not every enslaved African docilely accepted his/her fate. Many refused to submit and became firebrands, urging their brothers and sisters to rise up against their captors. This site, compiled by Dr. Carolyn L. Bennett and part of AFRO-Americ@'s Black History Museum, is a testimonial to their efforts.
Africans in America
Companion to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) series Africans in America, this site deals with slavery from its 16th Century beginnings through the end of the War Between the States in 1865. It also shows how the descendants of slaves transformed American culture and society.
History 277: Syllabus for Colonial America and West Africa in the 17th and 18th Centuries
This is the syllabus for a course, offered by the University of California's Riverside campus, which attempts to examine modern cultures by looking back at West Africa and The New World in those early but formative centuries.
African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P.Murray Collection, 1818-1907
This is part of the Library of Congress "American Memory" online exhibit and presents almost 100 years of materials depicting African-American history and culture. It includes works by Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.
Remembering Slavery
These are the actual recollections of former slaves as recorded by African-American scholars in the 1920s and by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s. Later other researchers transcribed these memories to tape. The site is produced by The Smithsonian Institution.
American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology
What was it like to be enslaved? These recollections of more than two thousand former slaves gathered during a WPA project between 1936 and 1938 help shed some light on that question.
The timeline source Chronology on the History of Slavery, 1619 to 1789
Focuses on the early years in the history of slavery in what would become the United States.
Data Sites -- A variety of sites maintained by The Data and Program Library Service at the University of Wisconsin, Madison offers data on the history of slavery in many parts of the Western Hemisphere. The sites include:
- Slave Movement During the 18th and 19th Centuries
- Records of Slave Ship Movement Between Africa and the Americas, 1817-1843
- Slave Ships of Eighteenth Century France, 1748-1756, 1763-1792
- Slave Trade to Rio de Janeiro, 1795-1811
- Virginia Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century, 1727-1769
- English Slave Trade, 1791-1799 House of Lords Survey
- Angola Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century, 1723-1771
- Slave Trade to Rio de Janeiro, 1825-1830
- Internal Slave Trade to Rio de Janeiro, 1852
- Slave Trade to Havana, Cuba, 1790-1820
- Nantes Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century, 1711-1791
- Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1782-1788, 1805-1808
Arbeitseinsatz: The Nazi Forced-Labor Program in the Netherlands
Sponsored by the Netherlands Association of Slave Laborers, this site looks at the use of forced labor in the German war economy. Note that the articles are shcolarly and that some German words are not well-translated into English.
Baltimore Anti-Slavery Society
Unfortunately, slavery has not been totally eradicated. According to this site, its modern-day incarnations include: bonded labor, serfdom, child labor, migrant labor, domestic labor, forced labor and slavery for ritual or religious purposes.
E-mail: Roger Gottlieb
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