DistantReading

Appearance

Distant reading case study "slavery" ​

🙌 This case study was inspired by a course I teach with Prof. Susan Schreibman (FASoS Maastricht), who suggested some of the digitised historical sources and databases.

Slavery as an important theme in media studies ​

Slavery is an important theme in postcolonial studies but also societally relevant. As James W. Loewen wrote in 2017, "we are a product of our history — even the history we don’t like to think about." (Adapted excerpt from the first chapter of Understanding and Teaching American Slavery, published in Learning for Justice, Issue 55, Spring 2017) Slavery undoubtedly is a global phenomenon that shaped the cultures and economic fortunes of many present-day countries and communities. One lasting challenge that cannot be detached from slavery is racism. Loewen reminds us in his article:

In the United States, as a legal and social system, slavery ended between 1863 and 1865, depending upon where one lived. Unfortunately, racism, slavery’s handmaiden, did not. In turn, white supremacy, the ideology that slavery begot, caused the Democratic Party to label itself the “white man’s party” for almost a century, into the 1920s. Also during the 1920s, white supremacy led to the “science” of eugenics (human breeding), IQ and SAT testing, and restrictions on the immigration of “inferior races” from southern and eastern Europe as well as Asia and Africa.

For media studies students, working with slavery-related data from the past can, therefore, be a way to better understand ongoing legacies of colonial power and (problematic) media portrayals of different ethnic and social groups today. It is also important to remember that slave trade and slavery were sustained by many agents, including people from countries which we would consider small and of lesser influence today. One example is the Dutch involvement in the slave trade, which can be overlooked when the focus is on the English-speaking world. According to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's Slavery and Remembrance website, "the Dutch transported about half a million Africans across the Atlantic" between 1596 and 1829. Moreoever, they shipped "about a half million Africans to their settlements in Dutch Guiana, notably Suriname, where they worked primarily on sugar plantations."

The broader topic of slavery offers many opportunities for data analysis, either based on historical records or based on modern perceptions and debates. On the internet, you will find several projects dedicated to making records from the colonial period accessible. Here is a list of resources worth consulting:

  • The project Enslaved - Peoples of the Historical Slave trade links to data collections in several languages and with different foci.
  • The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that contains records of the largest slave trades in history. The data include details like ship names, departure ports, and demographic data of enslaved individuals. While this data is primarily quantitative, accompanying documents can be used for computational text analysis.
  • The collection Documenting the American South includes full-text narratives from formerly enslaved people, slave traders, and abolitionists although this is not the collection's only focus.
  • Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1938 (Library of Congress) assembles photographs and firsthand accounts from formerly enslaved individuals. One item in the collection is a type-written 32-page report based on interviews with former slaves that can be downloaded for research purposes.
  • The various archival collections highlighted on British Online Archives: Slavery and Abolition contain documents on the transatlantic slave trade, abolitionist efforts, and economic records of slavery. According to the British Archives, these documents range from "records of British companies, merchants, and slave ships" to "family papers and business records from Jamaica, Antigua, and other Caribbean islands".
  • To find Dutch sources relevant to slavery, you can consult the collections recommended by the Dutch National Archive.
  • As a Dutch national program for the preservation of paper heritage, Metamorfoze includes projects related to slavery and colonial archives.
  • The National Archives of Suriname houses extensive records on the colonial history of Suriname, including documents on slavery and plantation management.
  • The Zeeuws Archief hold records related to Zeeland’s involvement in the slave trade, especially through the Dutch West India Company.
  • This Zeeuwse Bibliotheek is a library in Zeeland which contains collections on Dutch maritime history and the region’s participation in the Atlantic slave trade.
  • The Dutch National Military Museum includes collections related to the military aspects of colonial rule and control.
  • The Royal Collections of the Netherlands hold documents and artifacts related to the Dutch royal family’s role in colonial administration.
  • The Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands supports research in Dutch history. Some of their projects and digital resources cover slavery and colonialism.
  • Another Dutch resource of interest could be the Database Dutch slave trade, 1600-1800, which "contains information on the seavoyage of Dutch slave traders in the 17th and 18th century." The database predominantly assembles structured data such as the number of slaves that boarded the ship in Africa, the number of deaths, places of departure and places of landing.
  • Focused on British colonial administration, Colonial Despatches (University of Victoria) is a collection of government records that includes information on (slave) trade as well as the treatment of enslaved and indigenous people.
  • The digital collection of African American Newspaper previously hosted by Accessible Archives has moved to History Commons and now requires registration. If you are interested in using this resource, you have to contact Rutgers University Libraries, 169 College Ave, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1163.

Data sets regarding modern slavery debates ​

If you want to focus on recent discussions of the legacy of slavery or on debates regarding modern forms of slavery (including human trafficking), the following data sources can be of interest:

‼️ While one individual podcast may not give you many reviews to work with, it is often worth scraping reviews from several related podcasts to get a more comprehensive picture and perform comparative analysis.

You may also want to scrape the reviews for the History Extra podcast and search for reactions to one of their several episodes on slavery, slave revolts, and abolitionism.

Questions for Data Analysis on Slavery Case Study ​

In your data analysis, you can follow the steps outlined in Skill 2.1 on Voyant Tools and Skill 2.2 on Case Study. You may also want to discuss the following questions:

  • What (historical) sources did you select and why? What do they reveal about power structures of the past and persisting inequalities today?
  • What groups of people play a particular role in your data? You may want to look for merchants, soldiers, administrators, plantation owners, scientists, journalists, clerics, or teachers. When looking for the enslaved people mentioned, are they predominantly male or female? What is their age? Are children and entire families mentioned?
  • How do descriptions of slaves in your chosen records reflect past and / or present societal attitudes toward certain ethnic and social groups?
  • What role does intersectionality play in understanding the experiences and treatment of enslaved individuals?
  • What justifications are given for slavery and / or involvement in the slave trade? Who voices these justifications and can you find any counter-narratives in your sources?
  • What implications does studying the slave trade have for current anti-racist, decolonial, and human rights advocacy today?

In addition to using multiple tools in Voyant, consider using additional data sets for comparative analysis. Look for recurring patterns in language use, e.g. when it comes to descriptions of enslaved people. Also try and identify minority voices / conflicting opinions and discuss why or why not they have been heard.