Not before time:
France overturns law classing people as property – 178 years after it abolished slavery
National assembly votes to repeal Code Noir under which enslaved people were beaten, raped and killed
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/28/france-votes-code-noir-slavery-law-colonialism
Pepys ‘curated’ letters to conceal being offered enslaved boy as bribe
Cambridge University historian uncovers letter to diarist who was a naval official in 1670s
The actual #OpenAccess research:
Interview with @brookenewman.bsky.social on her new book 'The Crown’s Silence':
British crown was world’s largest buyer of enslaved people by 1807, book reveals
New from Bristol Record Society:
Documents on the Bristol Slave Trade
https://archive.org/details/bristol-record-society-80/mode/2up
Really great to see BRS publish #OpenAccess on @archive.org !
New from UCL Press , a very important, #OpenAccess book:
Teaching Slavery
New approaches to Britain’s colonial past
Teaching Slavery offers ground-breaking research and practical guidance for teaching Britain’s role in transatlantic slavery. Combining historical analysis with classroom strategies, it equips educators to address race, resistance, and abolition with confidence and ethical engagement.
New project: 'Voices in Slavery’s Archive: Law, Place and Testimony in British Guiana'
"to make the largest collection of first-person testimony of enslaved people from the Caribbean in existence – the Reports of the Protectors of Slaves – accessible to researchers anywhere in the world.
Voices in Slavery’s Archive: Law, Place and Testimony in British Guiana will digitise, map and analyse the records which are here at [the U.K. National Archives] and allow researchers to examine how enslaved people used the courts to make complaints relating to family life, work, health, violence, and a host of other issues."
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/project-to-bring-voices-of-enslaved-people-to-life/
The National Archives is working with international academics to make the largest collection of first-person testimony of enslaved people from the Caribbean in existence – the Reports of the Protectors of Slaves – accessible to researchers anywhere in the world. Voices in Slavery’s Archive: Law, Place and Testimony in British Guiana will digitise, map […]
Important new #OpenAccess article on how slavery in Britain was ended, and who ended it.
Taken Not Given: The End of Slavery in Britain
by Simon Newman
Good news: The Runaways database is up and running again.
Workhouses in England and Wales linked to transatlantic slave trade, study suggests
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/08/britain-workhouses-transatlantic-slavery-research
The #OpenAccess paper itself
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anti.70038?af=R
and
https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/178220/1/A%20Williams%202025%20Racial%20Capitalism%20pub%20ver.pdf
New research reveals King George IV profited from slavery in Grenada
Experts say finding heightens pressure on the monarchy to confront its historical links to slavery
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/07/king-george-iv-profited-slavery-grenada
The Statutes Project
British History Online
John Levin
