In Commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade

(Acrobat Reader is required to view some files)

The transatlantic slave trade is largely responsible for bringing to the Americas enslaved Africans. The slave trade is said to have drawn between ten and twenty million Africans from their homeland, with approximately six hundred thousand coming to Jamaica (one of the largest importer of slaves at the time) between 1533 and 1807.

Referred to as the triangular trade, it involved three points, Europe, Africa and the West Indies and represented a complex financial business at its peak in the 18^th century. The cruel and inhumane conditions experienced by the Africans from their initial capture, their journey along the middle passage and enslavement in the West Indies demanded that the slave trade be abolished and slaves be freed.

After much agitation by anti-slavery individuals and groups in and outside of the Caribbean, as well as passive and active resistance by the Maroons as well as the enslaved, the Slave Trade Abolition Bill was passed in the British House of Lords on the 25^th of March 1807.

The bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade (2007), in the British West Indies is being recognized in Jamaica and other regions. In acknowledgment of this year as an important historical event, the National Library of Jamaica has compiled a select bibliography of materials available on this subject in its collections. The National Library of Jamaica holds a number of materials on the slave trade, dating as far back as 1671 and publications from each century thereafter....read more 

Entire Bibliography

• View full text material from the Bibliography (will be updated periodically)

Books and Pamphlets