NWD · RESEARCH PROTOTYPE

Namibian Worker Database

A conversational interface to archival records of migrant laborers in colonial Namibia, 1892–1925. Every answer is grounded in the underlying dataset and cited to its source file.

BEFORE YOU CITE THIS This tool surfaces details on real, often deceased individuals, including causes of death and next of kin. Please contact William Lyon before using any specific personal details in a publication — consultation with the Namibian National Archives may also be advisable.

Built from the dataset underlying Forged in Genocide: Migrant Workers Shaping Colonial Capitalism in Namibia, 1890–1925 (De Gruyter) and "From Labour Elites to Garveyites" (JSAS, 2021).

Powered by an open-weight model (Mistral Small 4, via Mistral AI), in keeping with the open-access argument in "Leveraging Open Source LLMs for Historical Databases of Agricultural Science Research."

All monetary figures are standardized to Pound sterling (£) from original multi-currency records; minor inaccuracies from this conversion are possible.

Dataset DOI: 10.18452/28347

TRY ASKING

Ask about an individual, a mine, a cause of death, or a pattern across the archive. Answers are retrieved from the cleaned dataset and cited to the archival file — ask for a different citation style any time.

Prototype interface · answers grounded in 1,153 cleaned archival records