Transoceanic Mortality: The Slave Trade in Comparative Perspective

TLDR

The Middle Passage death rate has been a focal point of moral debate for two centuries, and shipboard mortality remains the most conspicuous aspect of the transatlantic slave trade, a major international movement of enslaved Africans to the Americas. The study compares slave mortality with other long‑distance oceanic voyages to generate new interpretations and highlight challenges for African, European, and American historical scholarship. The authors use the Du Bois Institute’s 27,000‑voyage dataset—of which 5,000 include shipboard mortality—to analyze embarkation and disembarkation ports, vessel nationality, slave and crew numbers, ship size, and voyage duration, and to link these data to government records.

Abstract

EATH in the Middle Passage has long been at the center of the moral attack on slavery, and during the past two centuries estimates of the death rate and explanations of its magnitude have been repeatedly discussed and debated. For comparative purposes we draw on studies of mortality in other aspects of the movement of slaves from Africa to the Americas, as well as the experiences of passengers on other long-distance oceanic voyages.1 These comparisons will provide new interpretations as well as raise significant problems for the study of African, European, and American history. The transatlantic slave trade represented a major international movement of persons, and, although only one part of the movement of slaves from the point of enslavement in Africa to their place of forced labor in the Americas, shipboard mortality was its most conspicuous and frequently discussed aspect. Of the more than 27,000 voyages included in the Du Bois Institute dataset, more than 5,000 have information on shipboard mortality. Information is provided on African ports of embarkation; American ports of disembarkation; nationality of carrying vessels; numbers of slaves leaving Africa, arriving in the Americas, and dying in transit; ship size; numbers of crew and their mortality; and length of time at sea. The dataset also permits, with subsequent collecting, the linking of this information to government