KingKung Blog

What does the Map Say?

The project I decided to look deeper into is Mapping Marronage which is an interactive visualization of the trans-Atlantic networks of enslaved people in the 18th and 19th century. It was created by the Agile Humanities Agency which is a software, design, and consulting collective. According to their website they work with academic researchers and institutions. In addition, Kaiama Glover and Alex Gil worked on the development of the code base. I was unable to find the institutional home and who specifically made up the team, but it seems like this company specializes in digital humanities projects. The map is a historical one and uses letters, testimonies, and financial exchanges by enslaved people of African descent to build out the network. The entire data set is not accessible, however, by interacting with the visualization you can see the various points of data that help build out the map. It even allows users to interact with primary documents that are used at data points. The research questions are not easy to find nor clear but I think they have to do with learning more about the varying types of mobility and legal disputes of enslaved people. How did different enslaved people go about marronage? The analysis being done is a timeline of the flights and networks of various enslaved individuals. It allows users to click on specific names and see their path as well as click on any documents associated with them. The data visualizations are run on the Creative Commons-licenced code originally built to power In the Same Boats. I was able to find this information by going into the about tab to learn more about the project. The website is executed extremely well as it visceral in the sense of visualizing the amount of travel done by the individuals. It is also easy to navigate as I am able to interact with specific individuals as well as see them overlapping with one another. Overall, I thought this project was easy to navigate and engaged users.

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