The world’s largest archive on the history of slavery

In its entirety, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive consists of more than five million cross-searchable pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts, and maps from many different countries. An unprecedented collection developed under the guidance of a board of scholars, it offers never-before-available research opportunities and endless teaching possibilities.

Additionally, many of research tools – research guides, subject outlines, and scholarly essays on the subject – highlight the value of the content and assist students with access to the primary materials; introductory essays on sources will describe archival collections history and explain their research value. A subject guide search allows researchers to submit searches against the archive's subject vocabulary.

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Collections

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive: Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition

Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition sheds light on the abolitionist movement, the conflicts within it, the anti- and pro-slavery arguments of the period, and the debates on the subject of colonization. It explores all facets of the controversial topic, with a focus on economic, gender, legal, religious, and government issues.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive: Part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World

Part II: The Slave Trade in the Atlantic World charts the inception of slavery in Africa and its rise as perpetuated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, placing particular emphasis on the Caribbean, Latin America, and United States. More international in scope than Part I, this collection was developed by an international editorial board with scholars specializing in North American, European, African, and Latin American/Caribbean aspects of the slave trade.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive: Part III: The Institution of Slavery

Further expanding the depth of coverage of the topic, Part III of this series explores, in vivid detail, the inner workings of slavery from 1492 to 1888. Through legal documents, plantation records, first-person accounts, newspapers, government records, and other primary sources, this collection reveals how enslaved people struggled against the institution. These rare works explore slavery as a legal and labor system, the relationship between slavery and religion, freed slaves, the Shong Masacre, the Dememara insurrection, and many other aspects and events.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive: Part IV: Age of Emancipation

Part IV: Age of Emancipation includes numerous rare documents related to emancipation in the United States, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean. This collection supports the study of many areas, including activities of the federal government in dealing with former slaves and the Freedmen's Bureau, views of political parties and postwar problems with the South, documents of the British and French government on the slave trade, reports from the West Indies and Africa, and other topics.

Product Features & Tools

Term Frequency

Researchers can see the frequency of search terms within sets of content to begin identifying central themes and assessing how individuals, places, events, and ideas interact and develop over time.

Topic Finder

By grouping commonly occurring themes, this tool reveals hidden connections within search terms—helping to shape research by integrating diverse content with relevant information.

Cross-Search Capability

Search across the content of complementary primary source products, including books, in one united, intuitive environment, enabling innovative new research connections.

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