17th century sugar production in the French Antilles: featuring an evaporating furnace (left), oxen-driven mill (right), slave dwellings (lower right) and plantation house (upper right). Specific plantation unknown.

 

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Works on the slave trade, plantation slavery, the abolition of slave trading, the dynamics of plantation Life, indenture and abolition each feature prominently in the collections. Special strengths include original archival papers by numerous plantation owners and administrators, as well materials from trading companies and interest groups operating in the region. There is also a small corpus of films, original seminar papers and works from Cuba and the Dutch Caribbean. 

Key catalogue subject themes: Slaves Emancipation Caribbean Area History ; Caribbean Area History to 1810Caribbean Area Slave Trade ; Caribbean Area Slavery ; Caribbean Area Slavery History ; Caribbean Area Slaves Emancipation ; Caribbean Area Slaves Emancipation History ; Slave Trade West Indies British History ; Indentured Servants Caribbean Area History ; Indentured Servants Guyana ; Indentured Servants Jamaica History ; Indentured Servants Trinidad And Tobago.

 

Enslavement and Plantations

The Simon Taylor Papers

  • Simon Taylor: Planter born in Jamaica (1740-1813) probably the richest man in Jamaica in 1813 when died. Personal papers: letters between Simon, family, close friends on slave trading, the anti-slavery movement, the maroon and French wars, slave revolts, treatment of colonists by the British; as well as domestic matters - illness, family quarrels, disinheritance, bigamy births, deaths and marriages, debts and family quarrels; the effects of hurricanes, the introduction of a steam engine on an estate. http://archives.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/resources/ICS120.pdf 

William Hewitt Papers

  • Land owner and colonist (1719-1781). Once Commissioner for the Sale of Crown Lands in the Caribbean.  Personal correspondence (1772-1781) re: land interests in Dominica, dealings with British merchants invested in the West Indies, financial papers re: his land and papers relating to slaves owned by him between 1768-1781; as well as surveys, maps etc.  http://archives.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/resources/MS522.pdf 

Special Collections Slavery Subject Guide

The West India Planters and Merchants Committee

West-Indische Compagnie (Netherlands)

  • Various Netherlands Antilles company sources from 17th and 18th centuries [8 items] http://bit.ly/2t32JAj

Colonial and Plantation Cuba

Literature and film

Abolition, Anti-Slavery and Emancipation

Goldsmiths’-Kress library

The G-K Library is a digitised online history archive. Onsite SHL access is available via the eduroam network; or offsite SHL login is required. It holds numerous abolitionist and antislavery materials – speeches, reports and proceedings - of which a number are listed below. The rest are available at http://bit.ly/2vbYrmB

Leeds Anti-Slavery Series

Emancipation Compensation Claims

Reparations and Legacies of Enslavement

The UCL Legacies of British Slave Ownership Project http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/project/project  offers a good context for understanding the afterlives of enslavement and the transatlantic slave trade. 

Indenture

General

ICOMM Publications ​

Suriname

Guyana

Trinidad