Slave Trade collections
These 18th - 19th century collections reflect Liverpool's historic importance as a port city with an active mercantile community involved both in the slave trade and its abolition.
Research notes and primary research materials
Trading records, logbooks and letter books in the papers of Liverpool historians:
- Stanley Dumbell
logbooks of eight slaving voyages from Liverpool to Africa 1782-1807 - Frank Sanderson (MS.25.31-36 and microfilms)
notes on Liverpool shipping and the slave trade - Henry Peet collection (Peet 13)
notes on 18th cent. slave ships sailing from Liverpool to Africa - F.E. Hyde (MS.24.36-53)
records of ships trading from Liverpool to Africa 1814-1839
Archives
Correspondence, minute books, business records and photographs of shipping lines and personnel trading in or with Liverpool.
- Rathbone family of Liverpool
18th-20th century records of a major Liverpool shipowning family
Printed sources
18th-19th century pamphlets, slave narratives, microfilm and online resources
- Knowsley Hall Library: Pamphlets on colonial slavery, 1820s-1850s.
Online: 19th Century British Pamphlets. - Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: SPEC L34.2(2).
- 18th-19th century publications on slavery in the Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature
Online: The Making of the Modern World. - ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Online resources Liverpool University users only)
Slave Trade highlights
Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1793)
The autobiographical account of a former slave who later bought his freedom and campaigned for the abolition of slavery. SPEC L34.2(2)