Resource pack - Objects of emotion: Colonial legacies and stories of feeling

Histories of enslavement in The National Archives collections

The National Archives holds extensive and wide-ranging records related to histories of transatlantic enslavement and its legacies. As the archive of the UK Government, many of the records relate to the state’s administration of enslavement. This includes Britain’s role in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved people and plantation slavery in the Caribbean, as well as Mauritius, and South Africa.

Records detailing the British trade in enslaved people can be found in the Board of Trade and Admiralty collections. The Colonial Office records include material documenting the governance of each of Britain’s former plantation colonies including correspondence, entry books, dispatches, acts, and sessional papers among other records.

Histories of enslavement can also be traced using records of the Office of Registry of Colonial Slaves and Slave Compensation Commission in the Treasury department (T 71). For example, almost every enslaved person living in the British Caribbean from 1817 to 1834 is mentioned by name in the volumes of the Registration Records.

Some of the most detailed histories of enslavement within The National Archives can be found in documents that would have normally remained the private papers of enslavers (traders and owners of enslaved people) but became state records following legal proceedings. This includes material offered as evidence in Chancery Court cases including registers of enslaved people, ships logs, correspondence, accounts, and more.

Similarly, the records of the High Court of Admiralty feature proceedings of cases brought against slave ships. This includes material seized from captured ships known as the Prize Papers. As most of these ships were not British, the records represent global histories of enslavement.

The National Archives also holds the business records of British companies operating in Africa in the series known as T 70, which documents the trafficking of enslaved people on the West African coast from 1660 onwards, most famously under the auspices of the Royal African Company.

These records remain inherently limited and often dehumanising However, they also offer material that can be reclaimed to tell enslaved histories and serve as reminders of the emotional resonances the archive holds.

Researching the history of enslavement

We are in the process of developing a new guide to researching histories and legacies of enslavement in our records, please look out for this on our website in future. In the meantime, we have research guides relating to how to look for records of slavery and the British transatlantic slave trade and enslaved people and slave owners.

Some examples of records include:

• C 107/7 A sample of ‘smoak’d taffety’ manufactured in Manchester to trade for enslaved people on the West African coast, 1787
• T 70/1563 Bill from Thomas Barnard, at corner of Adam Street, Adelphi, Strand, London to the Committee of the Company of Merchants trading to Africa, for scymitar, 'Morocco scabbard', and other items for [King of Dahomey via] Whydah [Ouidah], 15 November 1791
• HCA 32/996 A glass bead necklace from Amsterdam sent as a sample of the kind traded for enslaved people and two gold rings crafted by Ghanian artisans who may have been enslaved, 1803
• C 108/214 Logs of the Swift and Sally, 1803-05
• CO 116/143 Extract from a Punishment Record Book, Vryheid Plantation, Guyana, 1826-27
• T71/223 ‘Slave Register: Jamaica: St. James’, 1832
• CO 137/185 ‘Slave Rebellion Trials’, 1832

Research projects and museum exhibitions exploring archival and material legacies of enslavement

Read more about the Partnership for Atlantic Slavery Scholarship, Archiving and Global Exchange (PASSAGE) at The National Archives funded by Lloyd’s Register Foundation. You can also find out more about the Prize Papers project and the material links to transatlantic slavery in this collection.

There are many projects and exhibitions addressing histories and legacies of enslavement. Below is a small selection of recent and upcoming examples.

• Holding Emotions display at London Museum Docklands
• Manchester, Cotton and Transatlantic Slavery exhibition opening at the Manchester Science and Industry Museum in 2027
• New World Royalists digital humanities project from the Centre for the study of the Legacies of British Slavery, UCL
• Underwriting Souls project by Black Beyond Data at Johns Hopkins University drawing on the collection of Lloyd’s Insurance Market
• Slave Voyages database of records about the origins and forced transportation of more than twelve million Africans across the Atlantic and within the Americas
• Legacies of British Slavery database searchable records of the Slave Compensation Commission and other sources

Blog posts and articles

We regularly publish blog posts and articles on the stories behind and about our records. These can include stories about the histories and legacies of enslavement in the archive. Some examples include:

• ‘Affidavit describing the uprising of enslaved people onboard the Bedford’
• Cataloguing transatlantic slavery records: an archival history
• The transatlantic slave trade

Further reading

• Saidiya Hartman, ‘Venus in Two Acts’, Small Axe, Number 26, 12.2 (June 2008), pp. 1–14.
• Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, A Black Family Keepsake (Profile, 2021).
• Liberty Paterson, ‘“Wider than the Realm of England”: The Hosack Family Heritage, Atlantic Slavery and Casting Mary, Queen of Scots for the Nation’, Sculpture Journal, 32.4 (2023), pp. 469–92.
• Hannah Cusworth, ‘Whose Emotions?’, Slavery & Abolition, 45.1 (2024), pp. 171–186.
• Emotionally Engaged: A Toolkit for your Archival Journey

Get in touch

Contact the Research team

We collaborate on research projects with a number of different partners, and we welcome suggestions for new projects and collaborations.