During the industrial revolution, rise of capitalism, and transition from slavery to wage labor, the abolition of the slave trade advanced legal mechanisms to disguise another type of slavery, known paradoxically as “Liberated Africans.” Unlike stories of enslavement that were silenced, these records retell lived experiences in vivid detail for an unprecedented analysis of the contradiction of abolition as both humanitarian effort and a crime against humanity.

According to anti-slavery legislation drafted in the eighteenth century up until the foundation of the International Labor Organization in 1919, enslaved Africans were swept into state-run schemes involving “liberation,” but which led to involuntary indentures and conscriptions for terms lasting several years. Alongside millions of other indentured Europeans and Asians, Liberated Africans were settled and resettled into various societies transitioning out of a dependency on chattel slavery. Portugal, France, Britain, Spain, Brazil, Germany, the United States, the Netherlands, the Ottoman Empire, and various Latin America republics produced upwards of 700,000 Liberated Africans on a global scale during the suppression of intercontinental slave trades leading into the rapid colonization of Africa.

The long-term benefits to research, education, and public programming of this website revolve around consolidating collections of materials related to the history of Liberated Africans into a single data-driven reference resource. This approach allows for deeper analyses of global history, while gleaning more insight into the heritage and legacies of African ancestry from around the world. The project re-organizes knowledge around carefully curated datasets, web content, and visualizations, which are linked into an expanding digital archive. Presenting open-access materials online de-colonizes the archive to facilitate comprehension and discoverability of source materials regarding a complex historical process about the gradual abolition of slavery and its more questionable outcomes for the people involved.

Organized on a government-by-government, court-by-court, and case-by-case basis, the current list of over 5,000 cases involved at least 15 different nations, which produced hundreds of thousands of Liberated Africans as an indentured labor force. In total, over 175 judicial or administrative bodies were legally charged with the authority to issue certificates of emancipation, alongside contracts of indenture and conscriptions for terms lasting several years. During the age of indenture, upwards of 180,000 Liberated Africans were registered to monitor their contracts of indenture or conscription, which often resulted in re-enslavement or inescapable bonded labor.

This digital publication contains materials surrounding anti-slavery legislation, departures of enslaved Africans, slave trade blockades, trial proceedings, registers of Liberated Africans, settlement strategies, as well as paintings, prints, and photographs. Much of the voluminous documentation has been sourced in many languages from digital archives around the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, and Red Sea worlds. This collaborative project would not be possible with the many contributions of regional experts, national granting agencies, and other forms of support.