Written by Debbie Smit Sunday, 26 April 2009 00:00
The World Digital Library, a globe-spanning project which aims to make humankind's accumulated knowledge accessible, went live for the first time this week. The aim of the library, according to U.S. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, who began the project four years ago, is to provide a collection of readily-navigable primary documents on all subjects accompanied by explanations from leading libraries.
So far, the site is home to around 1200 documents, with explanations in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian, but is designed to accommodate an unlimited number of texts, charts, illustrations and photographs.
These four drawings are held by the Yale University Library. They are from a collection of 22 portraits of the slaves who stood trial in 1839 in New Haven, Connecticut, for mutiny, murder, and piracy for overwhelming the crew of the Spanish ship, La Amistad while it was bound for a sugar plantation in Cuba. They had spared the lives of José Ruiz and Don Pedro Montez, the merchants who had bought them from Portuguese slavers who had originally abducted them from what is now known as Sierra Leone, so that they could guide the vessel back to Africa. Instead, Montez sailed north and west and La Amistad was eventually seized off the coast of Long Island. The original charges against the Africans were dismissed, but a two year court battle to decide who rightfully owned the slaves followed. In March 1940, the US Supreme Court ruled that their capture was illegal and ordered that they be set free. Thirty-five of the former captives returned home.
Image: Beru, Little Kimbo, Farquanar and Marqu. Portraits of the Amistad trialists by William H. Townsend, c. 1839
Show/hide comment form