Slavery
Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery: Middle Passage
Born in present-day Ghana, young Ottobah Cugoano was kidnapped and sold into slavery at the young age of 13. Cugoano worked in the sugar fields of a Grenadan plantation until 1773.
The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
The images document the history of enslavement in West and West Central Africa, the English and French Caribbean, Brazil, and the United States.
Caribbean Views
The online collection is of extraordinary quality, both in terms of the scanned images and the contextual detail provided.
Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History
Students may begin by focusing on 'solving' the crime itself, but along the way will be drawn into the consideration of wider issues
Antislavery Agitation: Abbé Raynal, Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies (1770)
Abbé Guillaume–Thomas Raynal (1711–96), known by his clerical title [abbé refers to ecclesiastical training], first published his multivolume history of European colonization anonymously in French in 1770.
The Dolben's Act of 1788
The Dolben's Act of 1788 was proposed by noted abolitionist Sir William Dolben before the English Parliament. While it was meant to restrict the slave trade, it actually had an adverse effect on children.
Request: Playden Onely to the Royal African Company, 1721
This excerpt is of a request made by Playden Onely to the members of the Royal African Company in 1721 for 130 children to be taken from West Africa to the West Indies for sale as slaves. The RAC commissioned the slave ship Kent for the task, and the operation was a success.
Execrable Human Traffick, or The Affectionate Slaves
This reproduction of a painting by George Morland (1789) has lurid colors and shows the sale of an enslaved person.
Toussaint L’Ouverture
A slave inspired by the French Revolution’s egalitarianism, Toussaint saw himself as French and struggled for French control of the island of Saint Domingue. Nonetheless, he had no intention of letting whites rule, for he wanted blacks to control their own destinies.
The Mode of Training Blood Hounds in St. Domingo
This image reveals grotesque mistreatment of blacks even during training exercises. Here a French cavalryman (chasseur) plans to use someone as a live prey for hunting dogs.