Slavery

Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Samba schools used the carnival to foreground overlooked histories"

A historical reenactor, dressed as a member of the United States Colored Troops during the American Civil War, takes a selfie with a phone. He is standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC; a Stars and Stripes flag is to his right.

What is Juneteenth, and why is it celebrated? A historian explains the significance of the holiday today

Amazing livesRobert Wedderburn: the ‘notorious firebrand’ who campaigned against slavery

Portraits of William and Ellen Craft

A “desperate leap for liberty”: how Ellen and William Craft made a daring escape from slavery

Basildon Park in Berkshire

The profits of slaveryThe dire impact of empire on Britain's countryside

The history of Africa: why we need to look much deeper than slavery and colonisation

A mural in Bristol of activist Roy Hackett, one of the primary organisers of the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott (Photo by Steve Taylor ARPS/Alamy Stock Photo)

Hakim Adi | “Racism in Britain has a long history – but so does anti-racism”

Video podcastRoman slavery: a brutal life in the ancient empire

Roman slavery: a brutal life in the ancient empire

Video podcastAn audacious escape from slavery

An audacious escape from slavery

Britain’s war on the slave ships: how the Royal Navy policed the Atlantic in the 19th century

Roman slaves: the hidden lives of the empire's invisible labour force

Slave markets – as shown in this engraving – were a staple of most Roman towns (Image by Alamy)

Ancient Roman slavery: what was life like as an enslaved person?

British author Sathnam Sanghera poses for a photograph in Hampstead

Sathnam Sanghera on the legacy of empire

The abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade: everything you want to know

General History

Slavery podcast episodes

VideoSlavery and abolition

Michael Wood on the ongoing legacy of slavery"Slavery’s effects are still working themselves out in our lives today"

The shoemaker who helped slaves escape the South

Sierra Leone in the mid-19th century – houses and people walking past.

Recaptive Number 11,407Piecing together the life of a freed slave

A boy signs a petition against slavery (bottom left) in an 1826 satirical cartoon originally titled 'John Bull Taking a Clear View on the Negro Slavery Question', by R Cruikshank (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)

The children who fought for the abolition of slavery

Illustration of Spartacus, the escaped gladiator who became a leader in the Third Servile War, and his comrades using vines to abseil down the slopes of Mount Vesuvius in preparation of a surprise attack.

The Servile Wars: Spartacus & the rebellions that threatened the Roman Republic

How women helped sustain the slave trade

Historian Caroline Dodds Pennock (Photo by Ellie Grace)

Caroline Dodds Pennock“Indigenous Americans were horrified by inequalities in European society”

Enslavement, separation & survival: the story of "Ashley's sack"

Captives being brought on board a slave ship on the West Coast of Africa (Slave Coast), c1880. Although Britain outlawed slavery in 1833 and it was abolished in the USA after the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War in 1865, the transatlantic trade in African slaves continued. The main market for the slaves was Brazil, where slavery was not abolished until 1888. (Colorised black and white print). Artist Unknown.. (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)

General History

Black British historySlavery's painful legacy

Black History MonthThe slave who stole a ship and sailed to freedom

Paterson Joseph and Ignatius Sancho

My history heroPaterson Joseph chooses Ignatius Sancho

Hakim Adi

Hakim Adi“There’s still this hangover that everything has to be seen through the prism of enslavement”