Daniel Domingues
Rice University, History, Faculty Member
- Slave Trade, Brazil History, History, African History, African Diaspora, History of Slavery, and 22 moreAtlantic World, Latin American and Caribbean History, Slavery In Angola, Angolan Slaves, History of History, Digital Humanities, Immigration History, Creolization, Angolan History, Portuguese Inquisition, Ovamboland, Mozambique, Indian Ocean World, Indian Ocean History, History of the Western Indian Ocean XV-XIX Century, Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Economics, Communication, and Political Scienceedit
- Daniel B. Domingues da Silva is an associate professor of history at Rice University, in Houston, Texas, and host of ... moreDaniel B. Domingues da Silva is an associate professor of history at Rice University, in Houston, Texas, and host of the renowned website SlaveVoyages.org. His most recent book publication is The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780-1867 (Cambridge University Press, 2017). In 2022 Daniel succeeded as the third chief editor of "Slavery: An Annual Bibliographical Supplement," published since 1980 by Slavery & Abolition, the premier journal in the field. Daniel's first installment in the bibliography came out last September 2023, containing works published during the 2022 calendar year.edit
- David Eltisedit
The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780-1867, traces the inland origins of slaves leaving West Central Africa at the peak period of the transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on archival sources from Angola, Brazil, England,... more
The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780-1867, traces the inland origins of slaves leaving West Central Africa at the peak period of the transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on archival sources from Angola, Brazil, England, and Portugal, Daniel B. Domingues da Silva explores not only the origins of the slaves forced into the trade, but also the commodities for which they were exchanged, and their methods of enslavement. Further, the book examines the evolution of the trade over time, its organization, the demographic profile of the population transported, the enslavers’ motivation to participate in this activity, and the Africans’ experience of enslavement and transportation cross the Atlantic. Domingues da Silva also offers a detailed “geography of enslavement,” including information on the homelands of the enslaved Africans and their destination in the Americas.
Research Interests: African Studies, Latin American Studies, Cuban Studies, Brazilian Studies, African Diaspora Studies, and 15 moreAfrican History, Brazilian History, Atlantic World, Slavery, History of Slavery, Abolition of Slavery, Brazil, Cuban History, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Atlantic history, Africana Studies, Atlantic Slave Trade, Angolan History, and Abolitionism
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Beginning in 1856 and ending in 1876, Portuguese colonial authorities in Mozambique registered almost 55,000 enslaved and freed Africans (libertos). The sources for these twinned registration processes are located in the national archives... more
Beginning in 1856 and ending in 1876, Portuguese colonial authorities in Mozambique registered almost 55,000 enslaved and freed Africans (libertos). The sources for these twinned registration processes are located in the national archives of Portugal and Mozambique. Fragments of the originals survive for only six of the ten districts of the colony, but contemporary copies exist for nearly all districts. Combined, they provide a unique opportunity to understand both the extent of slavery — as opposed to the export slave trade — and the process of abolition in late-nineteenth-century Mozambique. In this article we first describe the registers themselves, then focus on the registration of enslaved and freed Africans, the resistance of slaveholders, and the kinds of information that we can glean from the registers. We also explore the ways in which freed Africans were employed after registration and the extent to which being a liberto implied ‘freedom’. Finally, we consider how the registration led to new laws and policies in Portuguese Africa, opening a new era of European colonialism and imperial expansion.
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Any imperial power requires a bureaucratic machine to help rule its possessions. Traces of such machinery can be found in archives around the world. Although previously restricted, access to these archives' collections has widened thanks... more
Any imperial power requires a bureaucratic machine to help rule its possessions. Traces of such machinery can be found in archives around the world. Although previously restricted, access to these archives' collections has widened thanks in part to the Digital Revolution. This article examines the digitization of imperial sources through analysis of a research project aimed at building a database of slave and freed Africans from Portuguese Mozambique in the nineteenth century. It looks at the selection of the sources, its digitization, and transcription into a database. The database is freely available to the public through a website, so the article also discusses its creation as well as the development of the supporting textual and visual materials. Collaboration was vital for the project's success, challenging traditional research methods, practices, and forms of evaluation. Such endeavors, however, will only prosper when collaborative research receives greater consideration.
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In the 19th century, Rio de Janeiro emerged as the largest slaving port in the Americas. Every year, ships, mainly from Brazil and Portugal, poured thousands of enslaved Africans in that port. But what happened to them after they... more
In the 19th century, Rio de Janeiro emerged as the largest slaving port in the Americas. Every year, ships, mainly from Brazil and Portugal, poured thousands of enslaved Africans in that port. But what happened to them after they disembarked? This paper examines a database of passports and other sources compiled by the Brazilian Institute of Applied Economic Research to address that question. It also discusses the challenges and methods of adjusting the database to an ongoing project focused on the intracontinental slave trade in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The paper shows that, although Rio de Janeiro was the final destination for many slaves disembarked there, a significant proportion of them was re‐exported into the interprovincial traffic, to regions as distant as Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Rio Grande do Sul.
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Brazil was the most important destination for enslaved Africans forced into the Atlantic between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. While Rio de Janeiro became the country's leading slave port, the regions north of Rio were no small... more
Brazil was the most important destination for enslaved Africans forced into the Atlantic between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. While Rio de Janeiro became the country's leading slave port, the regions north of Rio were no small players in the business. This article uses the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database to analyze the evolution of the traffic to Amazonia and Northeast Brazil. It provides an assessment of its volume, orientation, and organization. Rio may have eventually dominated the traffic, but the participation of its northern neighbors laid down the foundations for this most notorious trade.
Research Interests: Black/African Diaspora, African Diaspora Studies, Atlantic World, Slavery, History of Slavery, and 11 moreSlave Trade, African Diaspora, Colonial Brazil, Atlantic history, Africana Studies, Atlantic Slave Trade, Slavery in the Americas, Brasil Colonial, História do Brasil Imperial, Transatlantic Slave Trade, and Atlántico
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Since the 16th century, African Muslims figured prominently among the slave population of the Americas. While the number of Muslims pulled into the trade has always been a matter of speculation, lists of Africans rescued from slave ships... more
Since the 16th century, African Muslims figured prominently among the slave population of the Americas. While the number of Muslims pulled into the trade has always been a matter of speculation, lists of Africans rescued from slave ships provide us with some clues about the size and direction of the Muslim diaspora to Latin America in the 19th century. Based on an analysis of tens of thousands of names recorded in these lists, this essay argues that the majority of Muslim captives leaving Africa departed from Upper Guinea and suggests that Cuba was the center of the forced Muslim diaspora in the Americas. It traces the transatlantic links that connected particular regions of embarkation in Africa to their counterparts in Latin America and considers the implications of those connections for religious and cultural change within 19th-century slave populations. The essay challenges in important ways the colonial/postcolonial divide in Latin American history and uses Islam to pose important questions about the dynamics of social change across slave societies.
Research Interests: American History, African Studies, Latin American Studies, Latin American and Caribbean History, Cuban Studies, and 15 moreBrazilian Studies, African Diaspora Studies, African History, Brazilian History, Atlantic World, Transatlantic History, Slavery, History of Slavery, Brazil, Islamic Studies, Slave Trade, Islamic History, Cuban History, Atlantic Slave Trade, and US History
In 1776, the Portuguese government ordered the first systematic census of its whole empire, including Angola. Despite some difficulties, colonial officials in Angola created hundreds of tables with precious demographic information, such... more
In 1776, the Portuguese government ordered the first systematic census of its whole empire, including Angola. Despite some difficulties, colonial officials in Angola created hundreds of tables with precious demographic information, such as the number of residents by sex, color, social condition in addition to the number of births, deaths, and marriages occurred in the colony in different years. This article provides a preliminary assessment of the early population charts of Portuguese Angola compiled by the Counting Colonial Populations project. It shows that, although from a modern perspective the charts’ numbers may not be accurate, they provide a unique perspective of the size and demographic profile of the colonial population of Angola.
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The Kwango River has long been viewed as the limit of the transatlantic traders' access to the main sources of slaves in the interior of Angola, the principal region of slave embarkation to the Americas. However, no estimates of the size... more
The Kwango River has long been viewed as the limit of the transatlantic traders' access to the main sources of slaves in the interior of Angola, the principal region of slave embarkation to the Americas. However, no estimates of the size and distribution of this huge migration exist. This article examines records of liberated Africans from Cuba and Sierra Leone available on the African Origins Portal to estimate how many slaves came from that particular region in the nineteenth century as well as their ethnolinguistic distribution. It shows that about 21 percent of the slaves leaving Angola in that period came from beyond the Kwango, with the majority coming from among the Luba, Kanyok, and Swahili speaking peoples. The article also analyzes the causes of this migration, which helped shape the African Diaspora to the Americas, especially to Brazil and Cuba.
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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was a major slave trading port in the nineteenth century, with most of the slaves coming from Angola, in West Central Africa. The inland origins of these captives, however, are still largely ignored. This article... more
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was a major slave trading port in the nineteenth century, with most of the slaves coming from Angola, in West Central Africa. The inland origins of these captives, however, are still largely ignored. This article traces the linguistic origins of slaves transported from Angola to Rio de Janeiro based on the names of Africans liberated from the slave ship Brilhante in 1838. It shows that a significant proportion of these Africans had Kimbundu names, indicating that they were originally captured in regions close to the coast through warfare, judicial proceedings, and self-enslavement. The names further indicate that these Africans came from rural societies divided by social class and who had a profound belief in god, the power of spirits, and in the afterlife.
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This article uses the extensive documentation of Africans liberated from slave vessels to explore issues of identity and freedom in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. It tracks the size, origin, and movement of the Liberated African... more
This article uses the extensive documentation of Africans liberated from slave vessels to explore issues of identity and freedom in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. It tracks the size, origin, and movement of the Liberated African diaspora, offers a preliminary analysis of the ‘disposal’ of African recaptives in societies on both sides of the Atlantic, and assesses the opportunities Liberated Africans had in shaping their post-disembarkation experiences. While nearly all Liberated Africans were pulled at least partly into the Atlantic wage economy, the article concludes that recaptive communities in Freetown and its hinterland most closely met the aspirations of the Liberated Africans themselves while the fate of recaptives settled in the Americas paralleled those who were enslaved.
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Between 1808 and 1862, officers primarily from the British navy liberated approximately 175,000 enslaved Africans from transatlantic slavers. Information on more than half of this group has survived in bound ledger books. Based on the... more
Between 1808 and 1862, officers primarily from the British navy liberated approximately 175,000 enslaved Africans from transatlantic slavers. Information on more than half of this group has survived in bound ledger books. Based on the assessment of extant data for more than 92,000 Liberated Africans whose information was copied in at times duplicate and triplicate form in both London- and Freetown-based registers, this essay explores the pitfalls and possibilities associated with using the Registers for Liberated Africans as sources for historical analysis of the slave trade. The article explains the relationship of multiple copies of the registers to each other, demonstrates the link between the African names they contain and ethnolinguistic identities, argues for crowd-sourcing – drawing on the knowledge of the diasporic public and not just scholars – and, finally, shows the importance of such an approach for pre-colonial African history.Entre 1808 et 1862, les officiers de la Marine Britannique libérèrent environ 175,000 esclaves africains des négriers transatlantiques. Ils furent amenés par la suite à Freetown, à la Havane, et à d’autres ports où leurs noms et des informations personnelles furent inscrits dans les régistres relies. En se servant des données sur plus de 92,000 de ces Africains libérés, cet article s’interroge sur la possibilité d’utiliser les Registers for Liberated Africans comme sources d’analyse historique de la traite des esclaves. La relation entre les régistres différents mentionnant les mêmes individus est examinée, ainsi que les liens possibles entre noms africains et identités ethnolinguistiques. En proposant comme méthode d’analyse le “crowd-sourcing,” à savoir, l’appel aux connaissances des publiques diasporiques au lieu de se limiter au savoir des experts, l’étude montre le besoin d’une telle approche dans l’étude de l’histoire de l’Afrique précoloniale.
The supply of slaves from Luanda was an activity that required significant experience in the transatlantic slave trade. Luanda, in Angola, was one of the principal ports of slave embarkation to the Americas. In the eighteenth century, it... more
The supply of slaves from Luanda was an activity that required significant experience in the transatlantic slave trade. Luanda, in Angola, was one of the principal ports of slave embarkation to the Americas. In the eighteenth century, it met with strong competition from ports situated north of the Congo River. As a consequence, merchants based in Luanda had to develop strategies to cope with this increasing competition. Studies of the slave trade generally focus on the carriers of successful merchants to decipher these strategies, but they pay little attention to the years of experience required from these merchants to become reliable slave suppliers. The records of Anselmo da Fonseca Coutinho document the career of a major slave merchant based in Luanda from its beginning to maturity. They show that successful merchants had to gain significant experience in the trade before they could enjoy some prominence in their activity. They further reveal the strategies that successful merchants adopted to face the increasing competition in the transatlantic slave trade from Angola during the second half of the eighteenth century.
Maranhão has the best documented slave trade in all Portuguese America. However, it is one of the least studied branches of the Atlantic slave trade. This article provides an assessment of the volume, routes and organisation of the slave... more
Maranhão has the best documented slave trade in all Portuguese America. However, it is one of the least studied branches of the Atlantic slave trade. This article provides an assessment of the volume, routes and organisation of the slave trade to Maranhão, in northern Brazil. It shows that, although small in scale, the slave trade to Maranhão displayed important features concerning the routes and organisation of the Atlantic slave trade. Finally, because of the late European occupation and relative isolation, the slave trade to Maranhão offers ideal conditions for observing the rise and fall of African slavery in the New World.
The transatlantic slave trade involved the capture and transportation of millions of Africans across the Atlantic for a period of approximately four hundred years. European and New World merchants, traders, and ship captains were behind... more
The transatlantic slave trade involved the capture and transportation of millions of Africans across the Atlantic for a period of approximately four hundred years. European and New World merchants, traders, and ship captains were behind much of the organization of this huge forced migration. They also captured and loaded Africans onto slave ships themselves via raids, warfare, or trade. However, the traffic would not have evolved as it did had they failed to rely on a series of mechanisms of enslavement indigenous to Africa. Some of these mechanisms included judicial proceedings, debts, pawning, trickery, kidnapping, and, of course, warfare. Each of them had an impact on Africa and her children, both those who stayed behind and those scattered across the Atlantic. Nevertheless, these mechanisms helped sustain the traffic as a long-lasting and complex historical event.
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Over the past six decades, the historiography of Atlantic slavery and the slave trade has shown remarkable growth and sophistication. Historians have marshalled a vast array of sources and offered rich and compelling explanations for... more
Over the past six decades, the historiography of Atlantic slavery and the slave trade has shown remarkable growth and sophistication. Historians have marshalled a vast array of sources and offered rich and compelling explanations for these two great tragedies in human history. The survey of this vibrant scholarly tradition throws light on major theoretical and interpretive shifts over time and indicates potential new pathways for future research. While early scholarly efforts have assessed plantation slavery in particular on the antebellum United States South, new voices—those of Western women inspired by the feminist movement and non-Western men and women who began entering academia in larger numbers over the second half of the 20th century—revolutionized views of slavery across time and space. The introduction of new methodological approaches to the field, particularly through dialogue between scholars who engage in quantitative analysis and those who privilege social history sources that are more revealing of lived experiences, has conditioned the types of questions and arguments about slavery and the slave trade that the field has generated. Finally, digital approaches had a significant impact on the field, opening new possibilities to assess and share data from around the world and helping foster an increasingly global conversation about the causes, consequences, and integration of slave systems. No synthesis will ever cover all the details of these thriving subjects of study and, judging from the passionate debates that continue to unfold, interest in the history of slavery and the slave trade is unlikely to fade.
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Iberian traders, especially from Portugal, not only spread Christianism and Western values to Africa and Asia, but they also helped connect these regions to the emerging Atlantic economy, further expanding the slave trade in the Indian... more
Iberian traders, especially from Portugal, not only spread Christianism and Western values to Africa and Asia, but they also helped connect these regions to the emerging Atlantic economy, further expanding the slave trade in the Indian Ocean and the Far East. This chapter examines the presence of these traders in that region as well as the relative size of their participation in the slave trade. It shows that, although newcomers to the region, they were no small players in the traffic, which had a lasting impact on the prevailing patterns of discrimination in Africa and Asia.
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From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, enslaved Africans made up the largest population group arriving in the Americas since the end of the Ice Age. They were brought in vessels that sailed along specific patterns of wind and sea... more
From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, enslaved Africans made up the largest population group arriving in the Americas since the end of the Ice Age. They were brought in vessels that sailed along specific patterns of wind and sea currents, which had maintained the Old and New Worlds apart from each other until European mariners and traders charted their movements in the Early Modern Era. This chapter examines data from Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database to reconstruct some of these patterns. It shows that the winds and sea currents of the Atlantic helped shape the slave trade, creating two major sailing routes, connecting specific regions in Africa to specific regions in the Americas.
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Visualizing Abolition maps the suppression of the African slave trade by tracing nearly 31,000 records of correspondence exchanged between the British Foreign Office and British commissioners, ministers, naval officers, and... more
Visualizing Abolition maps the suppression of the African slave trade by tracing nearly 31,000 records of correspondence exchanged between the British Foreign Office and British commissioners, ministers, naval officers, and representatives of foreign governments around the world over the course of the nineteenth century. It provides users with three resources. First, a database that lists the names of the senders, recipients, places of origin and destination, dates, as well as the subject of the letters when available. Second, essays exploring different topics related to the suppression of the traffic. Finally, a gallery of images that provides visual context for the information available on the website. These resources allow students and researchers to further understand the history of the suppression of the African slave trade and expand our knowledge of the largest coerced migration in history.
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The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on more than 35,000 slave voyages that forcibly embarked over 12 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. If offers researchers,... more
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on more than 35,000 slave voyages that forcibly embarked over 12 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. If offers researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.
African Origins contains information about the migration histories of Africans forcibly carried on slave ships into the Atlantic. Using the personal details of 91,491 Africans liberated by International Courts of Mixed Commission and... more
African Origins contains information about the migration histories of Africans forcibly carried on slave ships into the Atlantic. Using the personal details of 91,491 Africans liberated by International Courts of Mixed Commission and British Vice Admiralty Courts, this resource makes possible new geographic, ethnic, and linguistic data on peoples captured in Africa and pulled into the slave trade. Through contributions to this website by Africans, members of the African Diaspora, and others, we hope to set in motion the rediscovery of the backgrounds of the millions of Africans captured and sold into slavery during suppression of transatlantic slave trading in the 19th century.
Land Grants of the Luso-Brazilian Empire is a database of almost 16,000 records of lands distributed by Portuguese colonial officials in Brazil between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. These records provide the applicants' names,... more
Land Grants of the Luso-Brazilian Empire is a database of almost 16,000 records of lands distributed by Portuguese colonial officials in Brazil between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. These records provide the applicants' names, their request purpose, and their obligations towards the government, particularly the cultivation and demarcation of their lands. Although the database currently focuses on lands distributed in Brazil, information on lands distributed in Portuguese territories in Africa and the Atlantic islands will be added shortly. Land Grants of the Luso-Brazilian Empire is the most complete database of its kind and it provides a unique perspective of the colonization and occupation of the earliest and longest living empires of the modern age.
Over the past decade increased access to digital archives and exhibits has markedly altered the production and consumption of history. The growing abundance of digitalized sources, geo-mapping software and videos offer historians the... more
Over the past decade increased access to digital archives and exhibits has markedly altered the production and consumption of history. The growing abundance of digitalized sources, geo-mapping software and videos offer historians the opportunity to ask different kinds of questions and employ new kinds of methods. The ease of building websites and creating on-line exhibits has moved history in to public spaces in new and exciting ways. Even a quick jaunt through cyberspace reveals a wealth of sites exploring aspects of the history of the slave trade, the Civil War, World War II, the holocaust, women’s rights, civil rights and transnational migration. Weaving together new kinds of evidence, new forms of presentation and new voices, these sites illustrate how new media and technologies are blurring the lines between academic and public history. Digital History at MU seeks to explore the possibilities inherent in digital media by showcasing student scholarship and faculty projects.
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Research Interests: African Studies, Black/African Diaspora, African Diaspora Studies, African History, Atlantic World, and 15 moreAntebellum South, Slavery, History of Slavery, Slave Trade, African American History, Black History, Black Atlantic, Atlantic history, Atlantic Slave Trade, US History, Madagascar, History of Madagascar, USA History, history of the USA, and Transatlantic Slave Trade
Research Interests: African Studies, Black/African Diaspora, African Diaspora Studies, African History, History of West Africa, and 11 moreAtlantic World, Transatlantic History, Slavery, West Africa, History of Slavery, Slave Trade, Atlantic history, Atlantic Slave Trade, Transatlantic Studies, Atlantic Studies, Slavery, West African History, and Transatlantic Slave Trade
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Sites that mark the injustice of the past may be unexpected casualties of climate change.