From 2021 Will Pettigrew and Nick Radburn led the huge research project on ‘The Register of British Slave-traders’ at Lancaster University (with colleagues from UCL and Manchester). Now, five years later, they present the distillation of their findings in a completely accessible database. They will talk about their findings and how what they found has changed their idea of British history. Using newly assembled data from the research project, Nick Radburn will demonstrate that, far from having little impact on the development of Lancashire, as had been previously thought, the entire historic county of Lancashire was shaped by Atlantic slavery, and that by 1800 the county had become the ‘slaving capital of the world'.

Will Pettigrew will talk about what the database tells us about the national picture and will trace the wealth of slave-traders in the Register into various organisations around the country.

Nick Radburn & Will Pettigrew: The Register of British Slave Traders database