Between Oceans and Continents: Slavery in Portuguese Mozambique through digital methods in collaborative research

Abstract

Any imperial power requires a bureaucratic machine to help rule its possessions. Traces of such machinery can be found in archives around the world. Although previously restricted, access to these archives’ collections has widened thanks in part to the Digital Revolution. This article examines the digitization of imperial sources through analysis of a research project aimed at building a database of slave and freed Africans from Portuguese Mozambique in the nineteenth century. It looks at the selection of the sources, its digitization, and transcription into a database. The database is freely available to the public through a website, so the article also discusses its creation as well as the development of the supporting textual and visual materials. Collaboration was vital for the project’s success, challenging traditional research methods, practices, and forms of evaluation. Such endeavors, however, will only prosper when collaborative research receives greater consideration.