Theme

Slavery and the Slave Trade

Featured Items

Engraved, hand colored illustration. Labels in English read [top] "The Leguana or Iguana Lizard of Guiana, [bottom] "The Alligator or Cayman of Surinam."

Narrative, of a five years' expedition,

John Gabriel Stedman
1796
Printed document shows details of a sugar plantation with manuscript notes.

Particulars of two valuable sugar plantations, St. Kitts . . .

Brettell, Rupert Street, Haymarket
1828
printed list and descriptions of commodities

General orders of the government of officers in the plantations

H. Teape
1764-1805
Detail from book cover shows flower pattern with red details.

Descripçaõ da arvore assucareira

Hipolito Jose da Costa
1800
Detail of a hand colored lithograph shows enslaved Black people planting sugar cane in an open field.

[Post-emancipation Life]

Ladies' Society for Promoting the Early Education of Negro Children
1833-1837
Detail of a printed book shows a page with text in Dutch.

Pertinent en waarachtig verhaal van alle de handelingen en directie van Pedro Van Belle

1689
Detail of title page shows red and black printed text reading "Oronoko, traduit de l'anglois, de Madame Behn."

Oronoko

Aphra Behn
1745
Detail of a printed newspaper shows headline "Negro Slavery" and other text in English.

[Album]

Female Society...for the Relief of British Negro Slaves.
1828-1829

Related

View of the fort and watchtower or lookout at Cayenne, Guiana. Includes fortifications, ships, boats, dwellings, and barracks.
Fellow's Talk

“Vast Forests of Clove”: Spice Production in French Guiana, 1790-1848

Engraving showing whale fishery
Fellow's Talk

Baleação e Escravidão: Conexões Atlânticas entre New England, África e Brasil. Séculos XVIII e XIX (in Portuguese)

An image showing a women in chains knelling on the shore
Fellow's Talk

Abolitionist Imperialism in the Archives. Or, How to Prove Racism in Anti-Slavery

Portrait of Graman Quacy
Fellow's Talk

Studying Absence: Archival Fragments and Interdisciplinary Methods in the History of Medicine in the Atlantic Slave Trade

colorful 18th century map of part of West Africa
Collections Up Close

Carte du Cours des Fleuves du Sénégal et de Gambie Dédiée et Présentée à Monsieur le Duc de Lauzun…, 1779

July 31, 2020
detail of a plan showing plantations and dwellings

Rooms of their Own: Dwellings of the Enslaved and the Free in the Early Americas

Spring 2018
photo of Herman Bennett
Lecture

Kings and Slaves: Diplomacy, Sovereignty, and Black Subjectivity in the Early Modern World

image of terrestrial sphere including Africa, Asia, and the Americas

Lecture on the African-European Encounter to Kick Off New JCB Initiative (and 75th Anniversary Meeting)

August 23, 2019

See Also

History of the Book

Black History