Ancestry releases 4 million records on British slavery

Ancestry has partnered with University College London and the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery to digitize and index approximately four million entries from the British slavery era. The collection is derived from roughly 300,000 pages of records held at the National Archives, covering twenty former British colonies and dependencies between 1813 and 1840. Notable locations included in the records are Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, Mauritius, and the Cape.

The records provide detailed personal data, including names, ages, origins, family connections, physical descriptions, births, deaths, and changes in ownership. These documents were originally created following the 1807 abolition of the British slave trade to monitor enslaved populations and curb illegal trafficking.

In regions such as Mauritius, the records highlight a diverse enslaved population with origins in Mozambique, Ethiopia, the Comoros, and West and East Africa. The collection, which is now searchable for free with an Ancestry account, offers historians and descendants a way to trace family lineages and document the lived experiences of enslaved individuals during a period of transition in the British Empire.