The Commons gives the abolition bill its third reading

President Andrew Jackson signed legislation authorizing negotiated removal of Indigenous nations to lands west of the Mississippi. In practice, pressure and coercion made removal devastating. The...

The Liberator began publication in Boston and demanded an immediate end to slavery. Black readers and supporters helped sustain the newspaper. Print campaigning connected local organizing with a wider...

Nat Turner and companions began an armed uprising in Southampton County. They killed white residents, and white reprisals killed many Black people. Authorities then imposed further restrictions. The...

Resistance organized around Samuel Sharpe’s demand for freedom and paid labor developed into armed rebellion in western Jamaica. Colonial repression was severe. The struggle shows enslaved people...

The Supreme Court held that Georgia’s laws had no force within Cherokee territory. The case supported Cherokee arguments against state intrusion. Judicial recognition did not prevent forced removal,...

The abolition act took effect in most British colonies, while many formerly enslaved people were required to work as apprentices. Enslavers received compensation; emancipated people did not receive...

A party led by Governor James Stirling attacked a Bindjareb Noongar camp at Pinjarra. Calling the event a “battle” obscured the unequal violence inflicted on the community. Colonial control of land...

African Muslims, including enslaved and free people, organized an uprising in Salvador. Religious networks and literacy supported their mobilization. Its suppression intensified controls over...

Northern Māori rangatira signed He Whakaputanga, asserting independent authority and collective government. It provides a record of Indigenous political agency before the Treaty of Waitangi. The...

Armed men killed at least twenty-eight Wirrayaraay people, many of them women and children, at Myall Creek. The massacre reveals the violence of settler expansion. The later prosecution was unusual,...