Akwamu insurgents seize a fort on St. John

Four Germantown Quakers submitted a petition questioning the morality of buying and selling people. Written amid Quaker participation in slaveholding, the protest challenged the practice through...

Parliament ended the Royal African Company’s exclusive privilege and opened English trafficking to independent merchants. Competition increased the scale of forced transportation, while state policy...

The statute defined enslaved Africans and their descendants as property and restricted movement, testimony, and legal recourse. It entrenched racialized status in colonial law and helped make...

A group of enslaved people set fire to a building and attacked white residents in an organized revolt. Colonial authorities crushed the uprising, executed several participants, and imposed harsher...

The asiento contract granted the South Sea Company a monopoly to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America for thirty years. The contract treated the forced migration of people as a diplomatic...

Spanish authorities established Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose north of St. Augustine, accepting Black people who escaped English Carolina if they converted to Catholicism and served the Crown....

British authorities signed a treaty with Maroon communities led by Cudjoe after prolonged warfare and Maroon resistance. The settlement recognized a degree of autonomy while imposing conditions,...

Enslaved people began a major armed uprising near the Stono River and moved south, seeking freedom in Spanish Florida. Colonial forces violently suppressed the revolt and lawmakers tightened...

The assembly enacted a sweeping code that restricted movement, assembly, education, and independent economic activity among enslaved people. It followed the 1739 Stono uprising, which is covered in...

After fires and rumors, officials arrested and prosecuted Black residents and poor white people in what became known as the 1741 conspiracy. Many were executed or transported. The episode reveals...