The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, in cooperation with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University, the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, The Reed Foundation, UNESCO, and the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull, will convene a major international conference in Ghana, West Africa, on August 8–12, 2007.  The meeting will examine the national and international contexts of the transatlantic slave trade at the end of the eighteenth century, the changing circumstances that underpinned the call for abolition, and the resolutions of some of the trade’s original instigators and greatest beneficiaries to outlaw participation in it. The conference will also address the social, political, economic, and cultural consequences for the enslaved and free inhabitants of the kingdoms and nations involved, of actions that ultimately abolished one of the pillars of Atlantic commerce.

The goals of the conference are twofold:  

• to explicate the domestic and international forces in play when the first decisions to end the transatlantic slave trade were made
• to examine and illuminate the short- and long-term consequences for Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America of these initial attempts to end further transportation of captives from Africa.

The Institute is offering travel scholarships to support the attendance at the conference of African faculty and graduate students who are teaching or pursuing graduate work in sub-Saharan colleges and universities.  Funding will cover travel and lodging expenses for persons whose applications to attend the conference are accepted.  The travel scholarships have been made possible by grants and gifts from the following institutions and individuals: the College of William and Mary, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Gilder Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rouse-Bottom Foundation, Mr. Sidney Lapidus, Mr. Paul Sperry, Mr. Hays Watkins, and anonymous donors.