Time is so vast that we, as humans, can’t even begin to comprehend it. To cope, we’ve developed timelines, maps and other means of visualization to aid in our understanding of all time has to offer. Visual representations of time help to shape such a vast construct into something tangible and digestable.
Slave Voyages’ Example
The amount of data needed to produce these visualizations is immense. Organizations like Slave Voyages are doing great work by compiling that data and turning it into graphics and animations that are accessible and easy for the general public to understand. To create their animated map of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, over 36,000 voyages were compiled into the database. The estimated number of passengers, age range of passengers, ship names, captain names, and embarkation and disembarkation locations of each voyage were collected by combing through archival data, including manifest records, personal diaries and newspapers.
While the work is painstaking and tedious, the outcome is incredibly valuable. Seeing the data visualized in a dynamic rather than a static way allows for observations to be made that would likely be overlooked in a static format.
Visualizing the Morant Bay Rebellion
My classmates and I are currently working to develop our own visual representation of the timeline of events that occurred during the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica in 1865. The data that we are using to build our timeline primarily includes the first-hand testimonies of witnesses to the Morant Bay Rebellion from the Jamaica Royal Commission report.
These testimonies help to create a clear image of what exactly happened on the night of October 11, 1865, and the days that followed. As my classmates and I have transcribed the testimonies into editable documents (a process I described in detail in my first blog post), we’ve identified multiple instances in which the interrogators asked the witnesses the time at which the recounted events occurred. One of the testimonies I transcribed indicated that the witness’s story occurred just before midnight. These fragments of information act as pieces in a puzzle, and as we place each testimony in its rightful spot on the timeline, we’ll get closer and closer to assembling the full puzzle and, hopefully, establishing a clear order of events for the rebellion.