Slavery and Revolution - new resource partly based on our archives

We're pleased to promote a new resource, developed by Dr Christer Petley, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Southampton

Slavery and Revolution, is an internet resource for research about Jamaica and Atlantic slavery in the Age of Revolution, which uses a blogging format to showcase excerpts from letters written by Simon Taylor (1738-1813), a slaveholder and plantation owner who lived in Jamaica during a period characterised by revolution, war, and imperial reform.   Taylor wrote from Jamaica to friends, family members, business associates, and political allies in Britain. The letters showcased were written between the 1770s and Taylor’s death. These were years of uncertainty and change for all the inhabitants of the British Caribbean, enslaved and free. They included rebellions and resistance by enslaved people, hurricanes, drought, disruption to trade, the rise of the British abolition movement, the French and Haitian Revolutions, war between Britain and France, the Second Maroon War, civil rights campaigning by free people of colour, and the abolition of the slave trade.
Taylor’s worldview was that of a slaveholder. He perceived Africans as inferior to Europeans and believed that it was his right to treat Africans and their descendants as property, as slaves who he could buy, sell, and put to work as he pleased. He generally saw enslaved people not as human beings but as a source of labour. His comments can make for uncomfortable reading. Nevertheless, his letters are important sources for historical research because of the new light that they can shed on a number of themes, including transformations to empire and slavery during the Age of Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.

The original copies of these letters are held in the UK at Cambridge University Library and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library. The transcriptions appear here with the kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library. Each excerpt is accompanied by the full reference to the item from which it has been drawn in the Vanneck-Arcedeckne collection in Cambridge University Library or the Taylor Family Papers in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library

The website is a free resource, open to anyone. Its contents are intended for use by academics, students, and others to use in their research, teaching, and learning.
Web address: http://blog.soton.ac.uk/slaveryandrevolution/

Follow Slavery and Revolution on Twitter: Slavery & Revolution @SlandRev

Email: c.petley@soton.ac.uk

New archives list available for download - Simon Taylor papers

The Taylor family papers are one of the most used collections in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies archives collection.

Mainly comprising letters written and received between 1770 and 1835 by Simon Taylor, his family and heirs, and his friends, agents and business partners. About a quarter of the letters are contained in Simon Taylor's letterbooks. Though the majority of the correspondence consists of letters either to or from Simon Taylor up to his death in 1813, there is also correspondence between other family members, notably his brother Sir John Taylor, his sister-in-law Elizabeth Haughton Taylor, Sir John and Lady Taylor's son (and Simon Taylor's heir) Sir Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, and Simon Taylor's second cousin and business partner Robert Taylor. The subject matter ranges from the domestic (illness, family quarrels, disinheritance, bigamy) to business (slaves, sugar, trade and shipping, the effects of hurricanes, the introduction of a steam engine on an estate), to politics (the Maroon and French wars, the anti-slavery movement and abolition of the slave trade). The collection also includes detailed reports on the estates made for Anna Susannah Watson Taylor in 1835.

Slaveholders in Jamaica

Tomorrow, Wednesday 28th October 2009, the Caribbean Studies Seminar Series at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies presents:

Seminar & Book Launch: Slaveholders in Jamaica: Colonial Society and Culture during the Era of Abolition

Speakers: Christer Petley, University of Southampton and Professor Gad Heuman, University of Warwick
Time: 5pm; Venue: G32, Senate House.

Slaveholders in Jamaica draws on a number of sources, including slave registration data, tax records, property deeds, court records, vestry minutes, electoral records, newspapers, published works, Governors' correspondence, local Assembly records and collections of letters and correspondence. Among these sources have been the Taylor family papers (ICS 120) held in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Archives, mainly letters written and received between 1770 and 1835 by Simon Taylor, his family and heirs, and his friends, agents and business partners, relating to their Jamaican estates and business interests.

A detailed catalogue of this collection is available within the ULRLS Archives Catalogue. The archive collections also include records of the Jamaican Castle Wemyss Estate, and of the shipping and trading compant of Sandbach, Tinne and Co.