Special Collections & Archives : Slave Trade collections

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 (LUL MS 107)
  Logbooks of eight slaving voyages from Liverpool to Africa 1782-1807
• Papers of Frank Sanderson (SAN)
  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 (LUL MS 137)
  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 (University of Liverpool members only) 
• ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (University of Liverpool members only)

Slave Trade highlights

Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1793)

The autobiographical account of a former enslaved person who bought his freedom and campaigned for the abolition of slavery. SPEC L34.2(2)

Finding and using

Related collections

• Merseyside Maritime Museum