You can now browse slavery records from British colonies online
What's the story
In a major development, nearly four million records documenting the lives of enslaved people across 20 former British colonies have been digitized and made searchable online. The massive collection is now available through a partnership between genealogy company Ancestry and University College London's Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. It provides millions of descendants in African-Caribbean and wider African diasporas access to one of the largest surviving records on British enslavement.
Detailed records
Registers created by the British government
The collection, dubbed the Former British Colonies Enslavement Registers, consists 300,000 pages detailing enslaved individuals in former British colonies between 1813 and 1840.
The registers were created by the British government after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807. They were intended to prevent illegal trading and monitor the population.
Each entry includes names, ages, physical descriptions, family ties, births, deaths, and transfers of ownership, with some even distinguishing whether a person was born in Africa or Caribbean.
Personal stories
Reconstructing family histories
Nicka Sewell-Smith, a professional genealogist and senior story producer at Ancestry, emphasized the importance of these records in reconstructing family histories.
She said, "When I use these records to unearth my ancestors, I'm using them for a purpose that was different than what it was intended for."
The digitization process has made it easier for those interested in exploring their family histories.
Instead of navigating registers at London's National Archives, descendants can search the collection by simply entering a name.
Archival documents
'Most systematic set of archival documents'
Professor Matthew J Smith, director of the center at UCL, described these registers as "the most systematic set of archival documents we have on enslavement in the British Caribbean and British colonial world."
The collection comes after last week's release of the Register of British Slave Traders, a three-year research project that highlighted Britain's involvement in transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans.
The register identified up to 10,500 people who invested in this trade over nearly 250 years.
Research evolution
Shifting focus to lives of enslaved individuals
There have been growing calls for historians to shift their research focus from those who owned and trafficked enslaved populations to lives of these individuals themselves.
Smith said, "The biggest piece of the story of British slavery, and it's also the most misunderstood piece, is the experience of the enslaved."
He added that seeing names, ages, children gives "very fine glimpses into their lives" and transforms understanding about this system.
Story recovery
Tracing family histories across generations
Professor Smith said these records allow researchers to begin recovering "family stories, community stories, stories of survival, stories of resistance, stories of the search for freedom."
He added that in Jamaica they had been able to trace some families across six generations.
"It opens up a whole new way for descendants of enslaved people in the Caribbean, across the African diaspora, to understand how their heritage came to the Caribbean and survived slavery," Smith said.