Candid Reflections (1772): A Scholarly Introduction By: Lara Rose Candid Reflections was published in London for the bookseller T. Lowndes in 1772 and sold for one shilling and six pence. Edward Long (1734-1813), who signed this text anonymously as “a planter,” was an English lawyer with a family history of Caribbean plantation ownership. Long lived…

True Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1657): A Scholarly Introduction By: William Bond and David Medina Richard Ligon (c.1585- 1662) was an English gentleman, legal executor and writer in the first half of the seventeenth century. He was present at the Royalist surrender of Exeter in 1646. Scholars have disagreed over the extent…

The Memoir of Pierre Toussaint, Born a Slave in St. Domingo (1854): A Scholarly Introduction By: Elizabeth Polcha The Memoir of Pierre Toussaint by Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee was published in Boston in 1854, a year after Pierre Toussaint’s death. Lee, born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, was a popular author of biographies and educational and domestically…

Narrative of Joanna; An Emancipated Slave, of Surinam (1838): A Scholarly Introduction By: Elizabeth Polcha Based on John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative of a Five Year Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796), this 1838 revised and redacted edition of Stedman’s travel narrative focuses on Joanna, Stedman’s fifteen-year-old enslaved “wife” who cared for him while…

Memoir of the Life of Florence Hall c.1810: A Scholarly Introduction By: Nicole Aljoe, PhD. “The Memoir of Florence Hall” tells the story of Florence Hall, whose African name was Akeiso, as she was captured in Africa and then sold into enslavement in Jamaica. The text is a four-page handwritten document that is presented as…

Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council (1789): A Scholarly Introduction By: Elizabeth Polcha The Board of Trade, formerly the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, delivered this report to the British House of Commons as “the outcome of the first parliamentary enquiry into the slave trade” dated February 11, 1788 (it was…

Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council (1789): A Scholarly Introduction By: Elizabeth Polcha The Board of Trade, formerly the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, delivered this report to the British House of Commons as “the outcome of the first parliamentary enquiry into the slave trade” dated February 11, 1788. The 900-page…

Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council (1789): A Scholarly Introduction By: Elizabeth Polcha The Board of Trade, formerly the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, delivered this report to the British House of Commons as “the outcome of the first parliamentary enquiry into the slave trade” dated February 11, 1788. The 900-page…

An Essay on the More Common West-India Diseases (1764): A Scholarly Introduction By: David Medina First published in 1764, James Grainger’s (c. 1721 – 1767) An Essay on the Common West-India Diseases; and the remedies which that country itself produces. To which are added, some hints on the management, &c. of Negroes concerns the “management”…

An Essay on the More Common West-India Diseases (1802): A Scholarly Introduction By: David Medina First published in 1764, James Grainger’s (c. 1721 – 1767) An Essay on the Common West-India Diseases; and the remedies which that country itself produces. To which are added, some hints on the management, &c. of Negroes primarily concerns the…