Will Pettigrew will describe progress on the research project to date and then talk about the history of Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. James Dawkins has been researching small shareholders of stock in the Royal African Company during the enterprise’s final three decades of operation (1720–50), and will explore the potential implications, including evidence for much wider public participation in the trading of enslaved African people at all levels of British society and not simply among the wealthy elite.

Will Pettigrew is Professor of History at Lancaster University. He is the author of Freedom's Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672–1752.

Dr James Dawkins is a socio-economic historian and Research Fellow on the Register of British Slave Traders project headed by Lancaster University.

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Lancaster & The Atlantic Slave Trade: The National Picture - Will Pettigrew & James Dawkins