Shed Light on Transnational Slavery

Historians believe humanity has practiced slavery since ancient times, starting when people first settled in fixed locations and began agricultural societies. From the Roman Empire to the British Empire to the New World, slaves were exploited for free labor throughout history. In many cultures, enslaved people were considered property that could be traded, bought, and sold—a mentality that formed the basis of chattel slavery. 

During the sixteenth century, powered by the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery became the dominant system of slavery, particularly in the United States.

Help researchers find unique historical insights into the practice, experiences, and resistance against chattel slavery in over five million cross-searchable pages of rich archival material. Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive provides an extensive and carefully curated selection of books, legal documents, pamphlets, newspapers, monographs, manuscripts, records, maps, and more covering the history of slavery across various countries around the world.

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Chart the History of Slavery

Understanding the evolution of slavery starts with tracing the practice from ancient empires into colonialism. Although slavery was initially a product of culture or war, the slave trade eventually became commercialized and industrialized.

The practice of slavery predates recorded history. Far before the transatlantic slave trade, humans began enslaving people for unpaid labor once they transformed from nomadic life to set societies. For many, slavery was the foundation of economic growth, used to scale agriculture and industrialization.

In many instances throughout history, slavery had nothing to do with selling people for labor. Rather, it served as a product of warfare. Those who had been captured in war were often used as slaves, sometimes with the option of debt bondage in which they could work toward their freedom. However, even those who were offered debt bondage were often enslaved for life, never achieving the impossible requirements to earn their freedom.

The most heavily documented period of slavery, however, is after Europeans began colonizing the New World and formed the transatlantic slave trade. From the sixteenth to nineteenth century, around 12.5 million enslaved people were captured, sold, and transported, mainly to the Americas from Africa. European ships created an entire economy centered around chattel slavery and the triangular trade route that connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas


How Does Chattel Slavery Differ from Other Forms?

Chattel slavery is also known as traditional slavery, a system in which individuals were treated as personal property and bought and sold as commodities. The transatlantic slave trade instigated a significant increase in the prevalence of chattel slavery, as Europeans transported African men, women, and children across the Atlantic Ocean to be sold into bondage.

Chattel slaves faced constant harsh conditions during this period, from transport across the Middle Passage to grueling life in agricultural and urban settings in the Americas. Their struggles fueled the growth of American plantation economies, including sugar, tobacco, and cotton, primarily in the Southern United States and the Caribbean.

Resistance movements challenging the institution of chattel slavery occurred throughout history, but documents from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century offer researchers unique insights into the fight for freedom. Within Slavery and Anti-Slavery, researchers can unearth records and letters that shed light on everyday acts of defiance and organized rebellions of enslaved people as well as campaigns for emancipation by abolitionists and activists. Researchers can track efforts that led to the gradual dismantling of slavery, culminating in landmark events such as the American Civil War and the subsequent abolition of slavery in the United States.


Discover the History of Chattel Slavery through Primary Sources

Provide researchers with a detailed and carefully curated selection of primary source material to uncover the history of slavery with Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive. Documents in this archive illuminate the experiences of enslaved individuals, the systems that perpetuated their bondage, and the actions of abolitionists that led to emancipation. Researchers will find firsthand accounts and official records to understand the growth of chattel slavery during the transatlantic slave trade, the struggles of enslaved persons, and the institution’s eventual abolishment.

Offer a glimpse into the daily lives of enslaved persons, abolitionists, plantation owners, and political leaders through diaries, letters, and personal narratives. Reveal the economic side of buying, selling, and managing chattel slaves as well as the conditions in which enslaved people lived and the labor they were forced to perform with plantation records and slave auction documents. And provide insights into the legal framework of slavery, highlighting its complex and contradictory nature and the ongoing struggle for justice and freedom, with legal and legislative documents.


Highlights from the Collection

  • British Library Collections

    Spanning continents and centuries, the British Library Collections provide insight into correspondence and records tracing the slave trade, colonization and slavery in North America and other countries, and abolitionist initiatives. 

    Source Institution: British Library

    Date Range: 1781–1887
  • Caribbean Documents Collection, 1699–1959

    The Caribbean Documents collection contains correspondence and other documents from Caribbean islands, such as Jamaica, Barbados, Tobago, and Cuba. These documents include details about day-to-day life on plantations and registers of enslaved people to paint a picture of the institution of slavery spanning centuries in the Caribbean.

    Source Institution: University of Miami Special Collections
    Date Range: 1699–1959
  • Rice C. Ballard Papers, 1822–1888

    A Richmond native, Rice Carter Ballard was an agent in the internal slave trade and a co-owner of several plantations in the Mississippi Valley. Mostly correspondence, these papers include letters from enslaved people, slave trading accounts, plantation journals, and more. 

    Source Institution: Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    Date Range: 1848–1886
  • Selected Colonial Office Collections

    The Colonial Office, which was established in 1768, was a department of the British government created to oversee British colonies in North America. Colonial Office records bring researchers information about slavery and emancipation in Britain's former colonies.

    Source Institution: The National Archives (Kew, United Kingdom)

    Date Range: 1600–1969
  • Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1938

    During the Great Depression, the Federal Writers' Project, which was part of the Works Progress Administration, sent out-of-work writers to seventeen states to conduct interviews with former enslaved people. The writers collected over 2,000 narratives, and the result was the Slave Narrative Collection. Seventy years after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, these narratives allow a glimpse into freed people's memories of slavery.

    Source Institution: Library of Congress

    Date Range: 1633–1960

View the Full Archive

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive: Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition

Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition sheds light on the abolitionist movement, the conflicts within it, the anti- and pro-slavery arguments of the period, and the debates on the subject of colonization. It explores all facets of the controversial topic, with a focus on economic, gender, legal, religious, and government issues.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive: Part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World

Part II: The Slave Trade in the Atlantic World charts the inception of slavery in Africa and its rise as perpetuated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, placing particular emphasis on the Caribbean, Latin America, and United States. More international in scope than Part I, this collection was developed by an international editorial board with scholars specializing in North American, European, African, and Latin American/Caribbean aspects of the slave trade.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive: Part III: The Institution of Slavery

Further expanding the depth of coverage of the topic, Part III of this series explores, in vivid detail, the inner workings of slavery from 1492 to 1888. Through legal documents, plantation records, first-person accounts, newspapers, government records, and other primary sources, this collection reveals how enslaved people struggled against the institution. These rare works explore slavery as a legal and labor system, the relationship between slavery and religion, freed slaves, the Shong Masacre, the Dememara insurrection, and many other aspects and events.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive: Part IV: Age of Emancipation

Part IV: Age of Emancipation includes numerous rare documents related to emancipation in the United States, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean. This collection supports the study of many areas, including activities of the federal government in dealing with former slaves and the Freedmen's Bureau, views of political parties and postwar problems with the South, documents of the British and French government on the slave trade, reports from the West Indies and Africa, and other topics.