Record Details

Oceans of Kinfolk Database

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Oceans of Kinfolk Database
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/E31O7Q
 
Creator Williams, Jennie K.
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description In 1807, the US Congress enacted the "Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves," which outlawed the nation’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade. This very same statute required any captain of a coastwise vessel with enslaved people onboard to file a manifest listing those individuals by name with the collector (or in his absence, the surveyor) of the port of departure and of the port of arrival. As a result of this legislation, the coastwise traffic was systematically documented. Enslaved people were forcibly carried to and from dozens of ports in this period, but by far, the largest portion of the coastwise trade consisted of enslaved people being sent to New Orleans, the largest slave market in the country. In total, approximately 4,000 "inward manifests” documenting the coastwise traffic to New Orleans survive. They list the names of more than 63,000 enslaved people. The Oceans of Kinfolk Database includes information from each of these records, including captive names (first and often last), heights, racial descriptions, as well as each individual’s owner, shipper, and/or consignor. "Every variable found in the first edition of Oceans of Kinfolk presented a new, tidy encapsulation of grotesque epistemological violence," the creator argues; the data is being reconfigured and recontextualized at Kinfolkology, a digital archive, collaborative database collective, and living memorial honoring the humanity and kinships of enslaved people, https://www.kinfolkology.org/.
 
Subject Arts and Humanities
Slavery
New Orleans
 
Language English
 
Date 2023-08-11
 
Contributor Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation
 
Type Ship Registry, Log, or Manifest
 
Source Slave Manifests of Coastwise Vessels Filed at New Orleans, Louisiana, 1807–1860. NARA microfilm publication M1895, 30 rolls. Records of the U.S. Customs Service, Record Group 36. National Archives and Records Administration. Fort Worth, TX.