The Register of British Slave Traders

This month, October, is Black History Month in the UK. This year’s theme is
Honouring our Communities:
Communities, schools, organisations and institutions across the UK will honour the contributions of Black people to Britain’s past, present and future, recognising the individuals whose everyday contributions shape, support and sustain Black life across the United Kingdom.

And, at the end of last month, on 24 September, 2026 The Register of British Slave Traders was published. The Register includes information on all known slave-traders in Britain who invested in the trafficking of captive Africans from 1563 to 1807. It details those who financed the British slave trade, where they lived, what legacies they made, which other businesses they were involved with, and which organisations they were connected to. It focusses on the individuals who sought to profit from the enslavement of over three million African men, women, and children, whose identity was, for the most part, erased from the historical record.

I hope the Register will strengthen the case for Reparations because the slave-traders were compensated for loss of the enslaved at Abolition, but the enslaved have never been compensated. Reparations, to quote the Runnymede Trust, are:

not about imposing collective guilt or punishment, but acknowledging shared responsibility for a more equal society.

David Olusoga has made two connected BBC programmes called Finding Britain’s Slave Traders:

Essential watching, especially during this Black History Month.

16 October: CORRECTION: an anti-racist colleague of mine searched the Register of British Slave Traders yesterday and couldn’t find the names he expected to find. I realised then that that Register is separate and different from UCL’s Legacies of British Slavery Register. For clarification: King’s College’s Register of British Slave Traders, published on 24 September 2026, focusses on: investors and financiers of the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans between the 16th to 19th centuries, up to the 1807 Abolition of the slave trade. WHEREAS, UCL’s Legacies of British Slavery Register focusses on: slave-owners and plantation estates at the end of the colonial slavery era (primarily centred around the Abolition of Slavery Act 1833 and the Slave Compensation Commission records). For the differences between the 1807 Abolition and the 1833 Act of Abolition, see here.