Nearly four million records detailing the lives of enslaved people across 20 former British colonies have been made searchable online. This marks the first time such an extensive collection has been digitally accessible.
The genealogy company Ancestry digitised and indexed these records, collaborating with the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London. The collection, known as the Former British Colonies Enslavement Registers, spans approximately 300,000 pages and documents enslaved individuals in dependencies such as the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius, and Trinidad between 1813 and 1840.
These registers were initially created by the British government after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807 to prevent illegal trading and monitor the enslaved population. Entries include names, ages, physical descriptions, family ties, births, deaths, and transfers of ownership, with some distinguishing between those born in Africa or the Caribbean.
Professional genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith, a senior story producer at Ancestry, noted that records originally intended to count enslaved people as property are now being used by their descendants to reconstruct family histories. Professor Matthew J Smith, director of the UCL centre, described the registers as the most systematic archival documents available on enslavement in the British Caribbean and colonial world.