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F. DOUGLASS*
St-BENEDICT *
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A. DUMAS*
W. E. DU BOIS*
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A. S. PUSHKIN*
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he slave trade represents a dramatic
encounter of history and geography. This four
century long tragedy has been one of the
greatest dehumanizing enterprises in human history.
It constitutes one of the first forms of globalization.
The resultant slavery system, an economic and
commercial type of venture organization, linked
different regions and continents: Africa, the Arab
World, Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean and
the Americas. It was based on an ideology:
a conceptual structure founded on contempt for
the black man and set up in order to justify the sale
of human beings (black Africans in this case) as a
mobile asset: For this is how they were regarded
in the “black codes”, which constituted the legal
framework of slavery in the Americas.
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These slave trade maps are only a “first
draft”. Based on currently available historical data
gathered by Joseph Harris (USA) about the slave
trade and slavery, they should be completed to
the extent that the theme networks of researchers,
set up by UNESCO, continue to bring to light the
deeper layers of the iceberg by exploiting archives
and oral traditions. It will then be possible to
understand that the black slave trade forms the
invisible stuff of relations between Africa,
the Arab World, Europe, the Indian Ocean, Asia,
the Americas and the Caribbean.
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The history of this dissimulated tragedy, its
deeper causes, its modalities and consequences
have yet to be better elucidated: This is the basic
objective that the UNESCO’s member states set
for the “Slave Route” Project. The issues at stake
are: historical truth, human rights, development,
identity and citizenship in the modern multicultural
societies. The idea of “route” signifies, first and
foremost, the identification of “itineraries of
humanity”, i.e. circuits followed by the slave trade.
In this sense, geography sheds light on history.
In fact, the slave trade map not only lends
substance to this early form of international
trade, but also, by showing the courses it took,
illuminates the impact of the system.
3UPPLY¬SOURCE¬OF¬THE¬
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17th Century
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DEPORTATION FLOWS, 15th-16th Centuries