Rhode Island assembly passes a law limiting terms of servitude

A privateer delivered captive Africans to Point Comfort in August 1619, where colonists exchanged food for them. This often-cited arrival is not the beginning of African presence in the Americas,...

The charter authorized a Dutch company to wage war, trade, and govern in Atlantic territories. Its later activities included conquest, plantation production, and trafficking in enslaved Africans,...

The ship returned from the Caribbean carrying enslaved Africans and is often identified as an early New England voyage in the Atlantic trade. Its cargo linked New England commerce to Caribbean...

The legal code permitted enslavement of captives taken in just wars and people sold into bondage by others. Its language shows colonial lawmakers creating legal openings for enslavement while claiming...

Eleven Black residents petitioned for freedom for themselves and their families, citing decades of service and asking for land. The Dutch authorities granted conditional freedom while keeping their...

The English conquest brought Jamaica into an expanding plantation empire. Enslaved Africans and Indigenous people were forced into labor under changing imperial rulers, while Spanish-speaking and...

Barbados enacted a law for the “better ordering and governing” of enslaved Africans. It made racialized hereditary slavery a state-enforced institution, restricted movement and testimony, and...

The statute made children’s legal status follow that of their mother, securing hereditary slavery for children born to enslaved women. It converted sexual violence and family separation into an...

The law declared that baptism did not alter an enslaved person’s condition. It blocked an older route by which Christian conversion might challenge bondage and subordinated religious claims to...

Charles II chartered the Royal African Company, giving it a privileged role in English trade with West Africa. The company transported captive Africans and traded commodities, while royal and elite...