
Animated History of the Atlantic Slave Trade - aidos
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/06/animated_interactive_of_the_history_of_the_atlantic_slave_trade.html?hnrepost=9783442
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mmanfrin
It's a shame that it stops at 1860 -- since a major part of the article is
about how it was not primarily North America that was the recipient of slaves,
but 1860 is the beginning of the Civil War (which concerned just the US).

Also would have been nice to show 'events', such as the banning of importing
slaves to the US in 1807 (you can see the boat traffic essentially stop to
North America at that point).

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Tuna-Fish
While there were sporadic slave ships making the crossing after 1860, the
trade was already illegal in all destinations. This meant that unlike for the
period during which the slave trade was legal, we have no surviving records of
them.

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pierrec
The level of detail is impressive. What would be even more impressive would be
to combine this with something like Geacron [1] to show the correct country
borders for each year (instead of showing modern borders), as well as a
timeline of major historical events on the side.

If you liked this and you're not aware of Geacron, you're in for a treat. Go
ahead and spend countless hours on it, knowledge of history is something
that's sorely lacking these days, and yet we have such amazing tools to learn
it. There's also Centennia [2] for a more detailed moving map of Europe (but
that's commercial).

[1]: [http://geacron.com](http://geacron.com)

[2]: [http://www.clockwk.com/](http://www.clockwk.com/)

And here's a video for the lethargic:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxDyJ_6N-6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxDyJ_6N-6A)

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arjn
Thank you for posting those resources.

Yes,it would be very interesting to see changing countries and borders during
the Atlantic slave-trade era. we may learn or understand something new from
that.

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Falcon9
Seriously impressive interactive map, especially when you realize you can
pause and click any "ship" for more information.

If this kind of thing had been available when I was in school, I may have had
a whole different perspective on history.

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protomyth
One of the back projects that I will never get to is "how much of this kind of
moving graphic could be built with basic animation tools and data from tables
in a spreadsheet style interface". I think a HyperCard for showing simulations
would be an amazing tool. For something like this put the map as a graphic for
the background, define the animation routes, the shape of the ship, and then
read the data off a table to know what to animate when. There are tools for
this type of stuff, but, last time I looked, they are fairly complicated. It
would be amazing to have Harry Potter-style living documents.

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yitchelle
With such high numbers going to the Caribbean and Brazil, were these just
holding ports before the slaves were moved onto their final destinations?

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maceo
No, that was their final destination. Brazil had by far the largest slave
population in the world. Haiti was the crown jewel of the French empire and
the envy of all nations. The caribbean slave trade began to decline when
Toussaint L'Ouverture rose to power in Haiti (The Haitian and French
revolution were very closely intertwined) and slavery was abolished.

The seminal book on this period of Haitian history is "The Black Jacobins" by
CLR James.

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lexcorvus
Haitian revolutionaries murdered virtually all white men, and spared only the
women willing to marry black men. [1] "Black Jacobins" is indeed an apt term
for such barbarism.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre)

~~~
rodgerd
Perhaps enslaving, torturing, murdering, and raping people might one day
result in a negative outcome for the slavemasters? Fancy that. My heart bleeds
for them.

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oldmanjay
Assigning blame for individual actions to members of an amorphous group may
feel wonderful vengeful, but it's ethically shitty.

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pessimizer
If you live entirely on the proceeds of slavery, you are likely to be killed
if the slaves revolt. This is not a matter of ethics. If you live on a boat
that sinks, you are likely to drown.

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corford
I found 12 years a slave difficult viewing but watching this animation makes
my skin crawl. The sheer scale of it is horrifying.

Clicking randomly on one of the ships revealed its name: Liberty. How
pathetically ironic.

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InclinedPlane
History is full of horrors. Failure to appreciate that makes it all the easier
for such horrors to happen again because we didn't do enough to keep them at
bay.

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cmyr
This is just heartbreaking. If you're inclined to take a dim view of human
progress, think about where we started. The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice, and all that.

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thrwy00001
It's worth mentioning that the Transatlantic Slave Trade wasn't even the
largest:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/slaver...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/slavery_1.shtml)

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_s...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml)

Taking millions of Africans and even one million Europeans as slaves doesn't
quite mesh with the popular perception of Arabs as poor, helpless victims of
Western imperialism.

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dang
That's actually interesting, but immediately invoking some racial/political
agenda spoils your comment. HN is for intellectual curiosity, not ideological
wars.

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s_baby
Do you find it intellectually curious that Eastern European and Balkan women
are still being trafficked by the thousands into the Middle East using many of
the same traditions and rationalizations?

