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By Chris Hodson October 08, 2015

French Atlantic? Why now and why Williamsburg

Today’s post is courtesy of Chris Hodson, co-organizer of the “Emerging Histories of the Early Modern French Atlantic” conference.   Yes, Virginia, there was a French Atlantic… …and from October 16-18, over 30 distinguished presenters and commentators will descend on the Omohundro Institute to prove it. Featuring scholars from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America, “Emerging… Read More

conferences 3 min read
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By Nick Radburn May 13, 2015

From Port to Plantation

In today’s post, WMQ author Nick Radburn writes about the process he used to trace the journeys of several enslaved Africans in the Americas using the papers of slave traders. Nick writes: I ended my recent WMQ piece on slave trader John Tailyour with the stories of Simon, John and Taylor, three of the 17,295 Africans who Tailyour sold into Jamaican… Read More

WMQ 9 min read
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By Gregory E. O'Malley January 14, 2015

Balancing the Empirical and the Humane in Slave Trade Studies

Gregory E. O’Malley, author of Final Passages contributes the following post. In recent years, something of a divide has emerged in slave trade studies. In one camp, for decades after Philip Curtin published his pioneering The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census in 1969, historians of the slave trade focused on quantitative analysis. Study after study refined our understanding of just how… Read More

digital projects 11 min read
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