English Parliament opens the African trade to private traders

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...

The ordinance regulated slavery and racial hierarchy in French colonies, including the Caribbean. It mandated Catholicism and set rules governing enslaved people while affirming slaveholders’...

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...

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...

Enslaved people, many of Akwamu origin, seized the Coral Bay fort and began a sustained uprising against Danish colonial rule. Breffu and other insurgents became leaders in a struggle that lasted...

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....