Paper short abstract:

Using data from a variety of sources, including the soon to be launched Slave Biographies: Atlantic Slave Data Network, this paper explores how Church and secular officials categorized people in terms of race and ethnicity in a variety of records in the early periods of trans-Atlantic interactions

Paper long abstract:

Using data from a variety of sources, including the soon to be launched Slave Biographies: the Atlantic Slave Data Network (http://slavebiographies.org/project/ ), this paper explores how Church and secular officials categorized people in terms of race and ethnicity in a variety of records in the early periods of trans-Atlantic interactions. It is from records that historians know what they know, so this paper begins with records. Among those the paper considers are books of baptism, marriage, birth, and death , commercial journals, and inventories. The paper is particularly concerned with documentation about Upper Guineans in Africa and diaspora. It considers how and why categories were assigned in a variety of records. It ponders whether or not racial and ethnic designations that appear in sources had then the meaning that historians assume they had. Did a slave's profession of a Mandinka identity in the Americas mean that "being Mandinka" meant something in Africa? If so, what did it mean there and in the New World? If ethnic identities were fluid, does their inclusion in a database distort past reality? With regard to race, the paper asks what can be taken from descriptions of people as "black," "white" and "mullato" in the Americas and whether or not those categories had different meanings (or any meaning) across the ocean in Guiné.