Voices in Slavery’s Archive: Law, Place and Testimony in British Guiana is a major international research project that will produce the first comprehensive digital and spatial analysis of the largest surviving body of first-person testimony by enslaved people from the Caribbean: the Reports of the Protectors of Slaves. Held at The National Archives (UK), these records document hundreds of complaints made by enslaved people in British Guiana who sought legal redress for violence, abuse, disrupted family life, health crises, labour exploitation, and other forms of hardship under British slavery. By foregrounding the words and agency of enslaved people themselves, rather than relying solely on administrative or quantitative data, the project offers a transformative perspective on the legal, social, and spatial dynamics of slavery.
Bringing together historians, archival professionals, digital humanists and community partners, the project will digitise, transcribe and map the corpus of complaints, creating an openly accessible online resource that integrates full-text transcripts with high-resolution images of the original documents. This platform will enable researchers, students and descendent communities to analyse thematic patterns, geographical relationships and the lived experiences articulated in the testimonies. To enhance access in the region of origin, the project will also produce a high-quality physical facsimile of the records for deposit in the Walter Rodney National Archives of Guyana.
An international advisory board will guide the work, including representatives from the Guyana Reparations Commission and Guyana Heritage Society, as well as leading scholars in Caribbean Digital Humanities. Through its integration of historical scholarship, digital methods and collaborative practice, Voices in Slavery’s Archive will provide an unparalleled resource for understanding enslaved people’s strategies for seeking justice and illuminate the legal landscapes of slavery in the British Caribbean.
Project Team
- Professor Diana Paton – Project Lead (University of Edinburgh)
- Philippa Hellawell – Project Co-Lead (The National Archives)
- Estherine Adams – International Project Co-Lead (University of Guyana)
- Randy Browne – International Project Co-Lead (Xavier University)
- Linsey McMillan – Research and Innovation Associate (University of Edinburgh)
- Jamie McLaughlin – Senior Reserarch Software Engineer (Digital Humanities Institute)