The Laws of Enslavement and Freedom in the Anglo-Atlantic World is an ongoing project that seeks to provide worldwide, digital access to the laws governing slavery and freedom in the Anglo-Atlantic World, with a particular focus on the British Caribbean. This digital archive spans from the early founding laws of the seventeenth century to the laws that governed emancipation in the nineteenth century. The body of British slavery legislation is vast and consists of both manuscript and printed laws, which can be found in various UK, North American, and Caribbean archives and online databases. The Laws of Enslavement and Freedom in the Anglo-Atlantic World seeks to make all these laws accessible to scholars, students, and the general public. This project is a work-in-progress and is regularly updated with new source materials.
The Slavery And Freedom Laws website itself is the product of three years of development by a multidisciplinary team of librarians, application developers, graduate students, and in consultation with leading historians of Atlantic World slavery. The Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada was the original sponsor of this project carried out at the University of New Brunswick. The Laws of Enslavement and Freedom in the Anglo-Atlantic World was created and is maintained by Dr. Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy.
Primary Investigator:
Dr. Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy is a historian of the Caribbean and Atlantic World and an Associate Professor at the University of New Brunswick. Her research explores the histories of disability and slavery, and the intersecting histories of race, gender, and class in the British Caribbean. She is the author of several articles and book chapters and the monograph, Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean (University of Illinois Press, 2020), which received the Disability History Association's Outstanding Book Award, 2021.
Research Assistants:
Colin Waters is a graduate student at the University of New Brunswick interested in the history of British slavery legislation in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution. He is currently working on his Bachelor's of Education at St. Thomas University.
Connor DeMerchant is a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick. His research explores the the resettlement of Barbados' poor whites to Saint Vincent in the mid-nineteenth century.
Zoe Jackson is an MA student at the University of New Brunswick. Her research examines the historical relationship between Edward Long's History of Jamaica (1774) and the notion of limpieza de sangre, or blood purity, in the British Caribbbean.
Emma Hourihan is an MA student at the University of New Brunswick. Her research focuses on both enslaved and free Black men on pirate ships during the Age of Piracy.
Library Staff:
Jeff Carter is Manager of Library Systems, UNB Libraries. He is a reformed educator with a passion for purposeful and considered implementation of technology. Jeff has been working in the field since 1993 and in web development at UNB Libraries since 2000.
Camilo Villamizar is a web developer with Systems Group, UNB Libraries. He transitioned from commercial database and application development out of an interest to support academic endeavours. Camilo has been with the library systems team since 2016.
James MacKenzie is Associate Dean of Libraries, Advanced Digital Research And Scholarship. He works closely with the Library Systems Group, the Centre for Digital Scholarship (CDS), and the Harriet Irving Library Research Commons to advance digital scholarship at UNB, develop digital research and literacy skills, explore new approaches to digital publishing, and preserve and share UNB's research output and unique digital collections with the world.
Sponsors:
- Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC)
- University of New Brunswick
Special Thanks:
- Melanie Newton, University of Toronto
- Jenny Shaw, University of Alabama
- Edward Rugemer, Yale University
- Randy Browne, Xavier University