# Historical sources for the study of Global Africa  
This volume offers a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, especially because of the multiplicity of historical sources used. The authors of this section were invited to develop other ways of writing the history of the African diasporas, taking into account new epistemes, interdisciplinary methodologies, both traditional and unfamiliar historical sources, literary and artistic works on African history, and diasporic experiences as essential material.  
The methodology used to study Africa and its diasporas must take into account several aspects of the issues involved, such as: the historiography on the specific theme; the nature of the sources, which are often written, by European and African authors alike, in European languages, in addition to Arabic, Mandarin and other Asian languages; familiarity with documentary typologies and their variations; the colonial nature of reports and other narratives (such as travel logs); the logic of the records' formation and organization; the context in which the records were produced; their potential for revealing controversial facts and complex processes; the cross-checking of different types of sources; and the interdisciplinary interpretation and critique of the documents. Any questions regarding sources, whether written, oral or part of material culture, should, preferably, focus on the production of history from an endogenous viewpoint, which favours the agency of Africans and their descendants, as well as their cultural references and class and gender backgrounds.  
The section contributions are based on a wide range of historical sources. Documents of the slave trade, such as ship manifests, customs documentation and other serial records, as well as slave trade data stored in digital databases, were revisited for the purpose of reconstructing individuals' trajectories and their efforts to change their living conditions. Other records, such as travel diaries and police, legal and administrative correspondence, form a corpus of