Charting The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

The importance of tracing back where we came from to know where we are headed.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade dashboard maps out the voyages of the slave trade that disrupted the lives of 12.5M enslaved African people over the course of 400 years. The author, Spencer Baucke, created it to challenge our perspective and understanding of ourselves and society.

Spencer Baucke recently created an interactive dashboard that maps out the tragic voyages of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Atlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported were people from Central and West Africa, who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders. A small number of slaves were captured directly by slave traders during coastal raids.

Spencer Baucke is a consultant at Tessellation, a boutique analytics consultancy. He enjoys using data to help up better understand the world in which we live. While vacationing in Portugal, he was inspired to create the Trans-Atlantic dashboard.

It’s an understatement to say that Spencer’s dashboard caught my attention. Enthralled by this visualization for what it meant to me, personally, as both a Black American and data enthusiast, I reached out to him to discuss it. I had so many questions, starting with his motivation, process and the whole experience on an operational and emotional level. Spencer, a consultant at a boutique analytics consultancy, describes these past two years as a deep sea exploration of big data. He enjoys using data to help himself…