The database includes corrected and consolidated versions of references published over more than thirty years in print formats. Elements of the bibliography appeared first as Joseph C. Miller, Slavery: A Comparative Teaching Bibliography (Waltham MA: Crossroads Press, 1977), and then in annual installments in Slavery and Abolition (London and Portland OR: Frank Cass, vol. 1 = 1980). Alicia Cole, Robin Good, William Hoest, Emilie Inman, Jennifer James, Kate Murphy, Brenda Nelms, Ann Parrella, John Stephens, and Thomas Robisheaux joined in expanding the scale of operations to higher orders of magnitude in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia, under the founding direction of Armstead Robinson, supported the contributions of these agile research assistants.
Materials accumulated through the 1982 supplement were collected in Joseph C. Miller, Slavery: A Worldwide Bibliography, 1900-1982 (White Plains NY: Kraus International, 1985), prepared with the able assistance of Daniel H. Borus and Larissa V. Brown.
When the scale of the research exceeded the level of paid assistance available, their successors were offered the opportunity to continue on as co-compilers; no one ever refused, and all richly earned the recognition they received. The full 1983 supplement (with Larissa V. Brown) appeared in Slavery and Abolition, 4, 2 (1983), pp. 163-208 (Part I), and 4, 3 (1983), pp. 232-74 (Part II). “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1984)” and “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1985)” (both with James V. Skalnik), and “Slavery: Current Bibliographical Supplement (1986)” and “Slavery: Current Bibliographical Supplement (1987)” (both with David F. Appleby) appeared in Slavery and Abolition, 6, 1 (1985), pp. 59-92; 7, 3 (1986), pp. 315-88; 8, 3 (1987), pp. 353-86; and 9, 2 (1988), pp. 207-45. “Slavery: Current Bibliographical Supplement (1988)” (with Randolph C. Head) is in 10, 2 (1988), pp. 231-71; “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1989)” (with Jena R. Gaines) is in 11, 2 (1990), pp. 251-308; and “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1990)” and “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1991)” (both with Randolph C. Head) are in 12, 3 (1991), pp. 259-312, and 13, 3 (1992), pp. 244-315. Randy Head, in particular, updated procedures in significant ways.
All materials compiled since 1983 (through 1991) were corrected and consolidated during 1992 in a new single-volume indexed bibliography (10,351 entries), published as Slavery and Slaving in World History: A Bibliography, 1900-1991 (Millwood NY: Kraus International, 1993).
The series of yearly updates continued with “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1992)” in Slavery and Abolition, 14, 3 (1993), pp. 264-304 (with Emlyn Eisenach), “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1993),” Slavery and Abolition, 15, 3 (1994), pp. 134-97, “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1994),” Slavery and Abolition, 16, 3 (1995), pp. 398-460, and “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1995),” Slavery and Abolition, 17, 3 (1996), pp. 270-339 (all with Janis M. Gibbs); Slavery and Slaving in World History was republished (with corrections) in 1998 by M. E. Sharpe, together with a second volume consolidating and indexing the 3897 entries compiled between 1992 and 1996.
The annual supplements continued with “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1996),” Slavery and Abolition, 18, 3 (1997), pp. 312-66, “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1997),” Slavery and Abolition, 19, 3 (1998), pp. 169-236, and “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (1998),” Slavery and Abolition, 20, 3 (1999v), pp. 169-236 (all with John R. Holloran); “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (2000),” Slavery and Abolition, 22, 3 (2001), pp. 174-268 (with Roderick H. Martin); “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (2001),” Slavery and Abolition, 23, 3 (2002), pp. 167-318 (with Thomas E. Ridenhour, Jr.); “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (2002),” Slavery and Abolition, 24, 3 (2003), pp. 148-240, and “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (2003),” Slavery and Abolition, 25, 3 (2004), pp. 144-215 (both with Fred K. Drogula). John Holloran and Fred Drogula dragged me into the digital era.
Thomas Thurston, Director of Education at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, assumed responsibility for compiling the 2004 and following annual supplements: to date and included here, “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (2004),” Slavery and Abolition, 26, 3 (2005), pp. 421-516 (with Joseph C. Miller), “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (2005),” Slavery and Abolition, 27, 3 (2006), pp. 415-512, and “Slavery: Annual Bibliographical Supplement (2006),” Slavery and Abolition, 28, 3 (2007), pp. 407-508. Compilation continues at the Gilder-Lehrman Center, with ongoing annual supplements appearing in Slavery and Abolition. The contents of each current supplement are incorporated into this database when its successor appears in print/digital format, so that the database currently contains material through the supplement for 2006 (published at the end of 2007). Listings of works published (or presented) in 2007 (published at the end of 2008) will be incorporated when the annual supplement for 2008 appears in print, at the end of 2009.
Taylor & Francis assumed publication of Slavery and Abolition in 2005, and the original bibliographies — arranged by regional/historical fields not recoverable in the database — may be consulted on-line at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0144039x.asp or through numerous journal-access sites. I am grateful to all of the publishers of these materials in print formats for permission to present them here in database format. The annual supplements, arranged as they are in regional sections, complement the range of accessibility provided in the database, as the database cannot be used to reconstruct the original regional presentation.
Acknowledgments
The database has been prepared by Lucy Dunderdale, John Mooney, and Amanda Mushal, led by Sarah Maxwell, and under the technical direction of Kimberly Tryka and Bill Covert, with the generous financial support of the Virginia Center for Digital History (University of Virginia, directed by William G. Thomas, Crandall Shifflett, and Scot A. French), the Gilder-Lehrman Institute (New York, president James G. Basker), the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Virginia (deans Karen Ryan and Edward Ayers), the Office of the Provost (Eugene Block), University of Virginia, and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (president Robert C. Vaughan). Ms. Maxwell has been distinguished in her steady guiding hand and perseverance over what has been a very long haul; she has my particular gratitude and admiration.
The able University of Virginia graduate students who assisted in the compilation of the annual supplements are named above, and in the original supplements to which they contributed. In addition, numerous colleagues around the world alerted me every year to materials not yet included; they, too, are named and thanked, in the annual supplements in which their leads appeared in print.
Beyond these contributions, several specialists in fields difficult (at the time) to follow from the materials available in the United States provided professional quantities of materials, sometimes entire regional sections for a given year, or more. The comprehensiveness of the database is significantly owing to their skills and generosity. They include
In 1998, Jesse Hingson and Roberto Pacheco, both of Florida International University, contributed citations of a high level of accuracy and retrospective thoroughness from their extraordinarily careful review of the literature on Africans and slavery in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Flávio dos Santos Gomes, of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, undertook an extensive review of the abundant Brazilian scholarship on slavery that was then beginning to appear in thesis form and in departmental publications at the numerous universities in that country. The first results of his expert knowledge — mostly retrospective coverage of theses — accounted for much of the lengthy section in this year's bibliography on Brazil. Wim Hoogbergen provided a substantial portion of the entries on Dutch-speaking parts of the world, as he did for most of the subsequent years.
For several years, Flávio dos Santos Gomes has contributed toward keeping up with the growing literature from Brazil, and Mary Karasch has been a steady source of references to current monographs in the same field.
1999 - Walter Scheidel contributed to the section on the ancient Mediterranean; for the latter, we are also particularly grateful to (the now late) Professor Thomas Wiedemann, director of the International Centre for the History of Slavery, University of Nottingham, for marshaling his considerable resources, including the members of the Ancient Slavery research project of the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur at Mainz, Germany.
2000 - This year, coverage of early modern Europe and the Mediterranean benefited enormously from the courtesy of Prof. Salvatore Bono, who contributed the bibliography from his then-forthcoming monograph on Christian and Muslim corsairing, seizing of hostages, enslavement, and redemption. Similar generosity has also led to greater inclusiveness than usual this year in the Iberian section of the early modern European part of the bibliography, thanks to the rich list of works that William D. Phillips sent us from his research for his forthcoming history of slavery in Spain.
2001 - Prof. Robert Slenes, of the Universidade de Campinas, supervised two student researchers, Lucilene Reginaldo and Albina Luciani Albuquerque Pereira, who conducted a thorough search of local resources that generated some 700 additional titles. Walter Scheidel, again contributed to the Ancient section of the bibliography, and Wim van Hoogbergen, as ever, provided the materials in Dutch.
2002 - Manolo Florentino, of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, provided much of the content of the Brazil section.
2003 - The growing content and search capabilities of the Internet allowed greater independence in the preparation of this annual supplement. Fred Drogula, research assistant and then joint compiler began the conversion of our research procedures from 5x7 notecards, supplemented in recent years by on-line library catalogs and OCLC/WorldCat, toward full digitization.
2004 - Thomas Thurston, of the Gilder-Lehrman Center at Yale University assumed primary responsibility for compilation of the annual supplements and expanded the digitized aspects of the process.
Contact
It is intended that the database will continue to be corrected and expanded through the contributions of users who detect the omissions, errors, and duplications that have inevitably eluded the best efforts of all of the above. Please submit details to jcm7a@virginia.edu.
Joseph C. Miller
Ivy,Virginia
1 February 2009