Introduction
In August 1807 an act was passed abolishing the slave trade in the British empire. It was an important step in the abolition of slavery and in the suppression of the slave trade. To commemorate the bicentenary of the Act, the National Archives of Scotland (NAS) has produced an online guide for anyone using Scottish archives to research aspects of slavery and the slave trade.
From government, court and private records in the NAS it is possible to describe the experiences of black people in Scotland from at least the early 1500s onwards. Until the mid-nineteenth century the surviving records provide little in the way of information about the majority of the inhabitants of Scotland, whatever their race. Occasionally an individual life
is described more fully. One such case is the former slave, George
Dale, who was transported against his will from Africa aged about
eleven, and ended up in Scotland after an unusual career as a plantation
cook and a crewman on a fighting ship. At the time of the French Revolution
in 1789 there was a move towards freedom and liberty for all people,
and The Society for the Purpose of Effecting the Abolition of the
African Slave Trade gathered evidence like George Dale's life story
for the anti-slavery abolitionist cause (NAS ref GD50/235/2).
Read a transcript
of George Dale's story.
Read about how runaway slaves challenged the legal status of slavery in Scotland and attempted to gain their freedom in our features on Jamie Montgomery and David Spens and Joseph Knight.
On the Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) website you can see an exhibition about Glasgow's role in the slave trade and its abolition at http://www.scan.org.uk/exhibitions.
The fight against slavery continues
The slave trade may have been abolished in the British Empire in 1807 and eventually prohibited by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but slavery still exists and millions of lives are affected by it. Women from eastern Europe are bonded into prostitution, children are trafficked between West African countries and men are forced to work as slaves on Brazilian agricultural estates. Contemporary slavery takes various forms and affects people of all ages, sex and race. If you would like to know more about slavery today and how to support campaigns against, a good place to start is the Anti-Slavery International website (see 'Other websites' on the left side of this page).
Find out how
to carry out research in the NAS.
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