Yoruba Diaspora

Meyer-Heiselberg, Richard, Notes from Liberated African Department: Extracts from Sources on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade 1808-1860 from the Archives at Fourah Bay College, The University College of Sierra Leone, Freetown, Sierra Leone (Uppsala: The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1967).

In 1966, Meyer-Heiselberg compiled a preliminary inventory of the registers’ contents, including systematic notes on the age and gender distribution of Liberated Africans. He projected that the overall total was 94,329 individuals. Of that total, just over 30,000 departed from ports in the Bight of Benin, whereby over 20,000 likely had Yoruba names documented therein. Scholars continue to work on the story of Liberated Africans, which amounts to over 225,000 worldwide and made accessible via www.LiberatedAfricans.org.

Verger, Pierre, Trade Relations Between the Bight of Benin and Bahia, 17th to 19th Century (Ibadan: University of Ibadan Press, 1976), 421-423, 568-575.

This ship list derives from Pierre Fatumbi Verger's footnotes on slave voyages leaving the Bight of Benin for Bahia. Verger (4 November 1902, in Paris – 11 February 1996, in Salvador, Brazil) was a photographer, self-taught ethnographer, and babalawo (Yoruba priest of Ifà) who devoted most of his life to the study of the African diaspora — the slave trade, the African-based religions of the new world, and the resulting cultural and economical flows from and to Africa. Verger continued to study and document his chosen subject right until his death in Salvador, at the age of 93. He was a professor at the Federal University of Bahia since 1973. He was responsible for the establishment of the African-Brazilian Museum in Salvador; and served as visiting professor at the University of Ifé in Nigeria, too. The non-profit Pierre Verger Foundation in Salvador, which he established to continue his work, holds more than 63,000 photos and negatives, as well as his papers and correspondence. For more information see Fundação Pierre Verger http://www.pierreverger.org/en/homepageen-2.html.

Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia (APEB), Maço 456, “Alvarás de navegação (registros),” 1789-1822, f. 288-308v.

The available metadata on this archival resource includes: type of vessel, date and place of departure from Bahia, and names of the captain and owner (if known). However, there is much missing data since the record refers to outbound vessels and not inbound arrivals; hence, totals for number of enslaved people on board is absent. The Voyages database provides estimates for these ship totals based on the type of vessel, which denotes tonnage and ship capacity. This record contains sparse details about Yoruba speakers beyond usages of "Costa da Mina," which is an ambiguous geographic slave trading term for the Gold Coast and Bight of Benin.