Open events

First published in 2015, LiberatedAfricans.org is a digital platform that traces the routes of
enslaved people who were “Liberated” from the slave trade. The relaunch of this website
includes user-friendly and interactive interfaces with streamlined navigation, cartographic
visualizations, and enhanced accessibility features. Built-in partnership between the Digital
Slavery Research Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder and Walk With Web Inc., the
underlining database of the new website is now migrated to the Regenerated Identities network
of African Digital Humanities projects. LiberatedAfricans.org has been expanded to include the
abolition and suppression of the slave trade, documenting the indentured through government
schemes from 1800 to 1920. This digital humanities publication traces the routes of over 700,000
individuals who were emancipated from slavery through state intervention, and then subjected to
involuntary indentures lasting several years. Portugal, France, Britain, Spain, Brazil, Germany,
the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, the Ottoman state, and various Latin
America republics recruited a new labor force to replace chattel slavery on a scale that has only
recently come into global focus. This new website features over 500 pieces of anti-slavery
legislation and hundreds of trial records on a government-by-government, court-by-court, and
case-by-case basis, including the registration of nearly 200,000 people. An examination of data
and digitized materials retraces the experiences of these so-called “Liberated Africans” from
their enslavement in Africa through their seizure in slave trade blockades and their subsequent
settlement as forced laborers. This website offers an unprecedented analysis of the contradictions
of abolition as both a humanitarian effort and the continuation of a crime against humanity,
highlighting the importance of this period in shaping the history of the African diaspora and
colonization of Africa. The website features interactive maps that inform and engage the user
experience, especially in the classroom. The revised version enhances the website's effectiveness
and outreach, furthering its mission to provide documented information on the migration and
dispersal of Africans in the long nineteenth century and inspire research into the history of Africa
and the African diaspora.

Sign up for updates on this and other Walk With Web projects: https://eepurl.com/ipZO2w