Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean: Expanding the SlaveVoyages Database

ABSTRACT While the trans‐Atlantic slave trade has been thoroughly documented in a database of slaving voyages freely available to the public, few comparable resources focus on the traffic across the Indian Ocean and Asia exist. This article seeks to change that picture by discussing the preliminary findings of a research project aimed at expanding the geographic coverage of SlaveVoyages, the premier database of slaving voyages available to the public. Since it was launched on the Internet in 2008, SlaveVoyages has become the destination for anyone interested in the history of the trans‐Atlantic trade. In 2018–2019, a new version of the website provided users with information on trade within the Americas. More recently, thanks to a grant from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, this database will be further enlarged to include the traffic within the Indian Ocean and maritime Asia. This important expansion will not only allow users to place the history of slavery and the slave trade in a global perspective but also gain a deeper understanding of the shape and scale of the trade in that particular region of the world.