British Slavery Abolition Act receives royal assent

Clause 37 subjected enslaved defendants accused of rebellion, murder, burglary, robbery, arson, and several other serious offenses to the Supreme Court’s criminal process. The court was to assign...

A February 11 issue of the St George’s Chronicle printed a list covering runaways apprehended by the Rangers from August through December 1825. Historian Heather Freund uses the list alongside other...

A Grenada act clarified that earlier laws requiring £100 for each manumission had been repealed and that properly proved and registered freedom documents should be accepted in court. The need to...

After court decisions exposed uncertainty in earlier rules, the Assembly made enslaved people competent witnesses for or against other enslaved defendants without requiring registry certificates. This...

The Grenada Free Press and Public Gazette printed an advertisement seeking two boys for purchase and another offering a reward for Thomas, who had escaped from Cape Sale Estate. The notice described...

The British Slavery Abolition Act took effect. More than 23,600 enslaved people in Grenada were legally reclassified as apprentices, not granted full control over their labour and movement. Field...

A letter published in the St George’s Chronicle described the Loyal Black Rangers as an armed police force used to arrest runaways and uphold slaveholders’ authority. This is a retrospective...

A colonial return dated 14 October 1836 records Africans seized from the Negrinha and Phoenix. The ships carried people being trafficked despite Britain’s 1807 trade ban. Officials used the label...

On 25 May 1838 Grenada’s legislature voted to end apprenticeship before its scheduled term. Apprenticeship had followed the 1834 legal abolition of slavery and compelled formerly enslaved people to...

The apprenticeship system ended in Grenada and formerly enslaved people gained legal freedom. Emancipation did not redistribute plantation land or undo the wealth transferred to owners through...