Slavery in Saint Lucia: Insights from the Saint Lucia Register of Plantation Slaves, 1815

This dataset is based on digital copies of British National Archives item T 71/379: Register of Plantation Slaves, St. Lucia, 1815. The original register is retained in the National Archives of the United Kingdom and photographs of each page are available through ancestry.com. The register contains 745 pages, handwritten in English or French according to the language of the plantation owner, that collectively furnish demographic and kinship information about 12,727 individuals enslaved on plantations in the island, as well as information about the size, location, and type of production of each plantation, and basic information about the plantation’s owner or manager. A combination of verbatim transcriptions and engineered columns allow us provide information about the size, location, and type of production of plantations in one of the last Caribbean islands to be colonized by Great Britain, while also offering demographic data, biographical and genealogical information about people who were enslaved in this little-studied colony. The dataset has tremendous potential for expanding current understandings of slavery and plantation production in St. Lucia, facilitating comparisons with better-known colonies such as Jamaica or Barbados, and for centering the experiences of enslaved people and families in the island. Users can use available information to generate individual biographies and genealogies of people who did not have an opportunity to leave written or oral records of their lives, or to provide a basis for comparing the experiences of enslaved people in St. Lucia with those of people enslaved elsewhere. The team also hopes to facilitate genealogical research, allowing members of descendant communities to locate their ancestors.