Public Memory and Heritage of Slavery
- LAST REVIEWED: 31 January 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 19 December 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0130
- LAST REVIEWED: 31 January 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 19 December 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0130
Introduction
The study of public memory and heritage of slavery emerged during the 1980s. In various former slave societies, the rise of the public memory of slavery and the development of specific projects to highlight the multiple facets of its heritage were carried out by social actors who identify themselves as descendants of the victims of the Atlantic slave trade and who attempted to denounce the present social and racial inequalities. Since the 1990s, especially in West Africa, an increasing number of venues sought to “crystallize” the public memory of slavery in more permanent forms, including monuments and memorials. These initiatives were associated with cultural tourism and sought to attract tourists to countries with severe economic needs. Institutions played an important role in this process. Launched in 1994, the Slave Route project of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) developed numerous initiatives, which contributed to a growing interest in public memory and heritage of slavery among scholars. Three events played an important role in promoting the study of the memory and heritage of slavery in Europe, Africa, and the Americas: In 2001, France passed law number 2001-434 recognizing slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity; in 2007 and 2008, Britain and the United States, respectively, commemorated the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade. These celebrations resulted in numerous public activities, which, in turn, created a growing scholarly interest on how slavery was remembered in the public sphere. Despite this growing interest, several regions remain to be covered. Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America remain largely understudied. In Europe, Portugal and Spain have not yet developed initiatives to remember slavery and the slave trade in the public space. Moreover, the need is urgent to study the memory of slavery in East and West Central Africa, as the latter regions exported the largest number of Africans. The study of public memory of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade faces particular challenges. First, the slave trade and slavery lasted more than three hundred years, affecting various regions of the world. Second, the witnesses of these crimes against humanity are not alive, and in most regions of the Americas, except for the United States, and Africa where slavery was a central institution their testimonies were not systematically collected. Third, there are competing memories in the public space. Whereas the descendants of the victims formulate demands to redress inherited social, economic, and racial inequalities, the descendants of the perpetrators also attempt to make their past officially recognized.
Data Sources
Several online resources focus on the public memory of slavery in Europe and the Americas. These Internet resources include visual records (L’esclavage par l’image, Handler and Tuite 2011), museum exhibitions (Slavery in New York), heritage sites (Landscape of Slavery: Mulberry Row at Monticello), and documentary films (Mattos and Abreu 2007, Mattos and Abreu 2005b, Cicalò 2010) made by scholars, which are available online.
Cicalò, André, dir. Memories on the Edge of Oblivion. Documentary film, 2010.
This documentary film explores the public memory of slavery in the port area of Rio de Janeiro.
Handler, Jerome S., and Michael L. Tuite Jr. “The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record.” Charlottesville: Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 2011.
This online database provides hundreds of images of slavery in the Americas and Africa.
Landscape of Slavery: Mulberry Row at Monticello.
This online exhibition explores slavery at Mulberry Row on Thomas Jefferson’s estate, Monticello (today a National Historic Landmark), located in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Mattos, Hebe, and Martha Abreu, dirs. Memórias do Cativeiro. Documentary film. Gragoatá, Brazil: Laboratório de História Oral e Imagem/Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2005b.
This documentary examines the memories of descendants of slaves in the region of Paraíba Valley, Brazil. In Portuguese, but also available with English or Spanish subtitles.
Mattos, Hebe, and Martha Abreu, dirs.. Jongos, Calangos e Folias: Música Negra, Memória e Poesia. Documentary film. Gragoatá, Brazil: Laboratório de História Oral e Imagem/Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2007.
This documentary explores the music and dance tradition of jongo, calangos and fest of kings, in the Paraíba Valley, Brazil. In Portuguese, but also available with English subtitles.
Slavery in New York. New-York Historical Society, 2005.
Online version of the groundbreaking exhibition “Slavery in New York,” presented at the New-York Historical Society, New York, in 2005–2006.
Traites négrière, esclavage et abolitions, pour un inventaire muséographique. Paris: Comité Pour la Mémoire de l’Esclavage, 2006.
Developed in France, this project aims create an inventory of artifacts associated with the Atlantic slave trade in the French museums.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Brazil
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
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- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
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- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
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- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
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- Language, State, and Empire
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- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
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- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
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- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
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- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
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- Quilombos
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- Red Atlantic
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- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
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- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
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- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
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- Science, History of
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- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
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- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos South Atlantic Creole A...
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
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- Transatlantic Political Economy
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- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
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- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
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- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
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- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets