Organised jointly with Exeter University’s European Research Council-funded FORMSofLABOUR project.

This workshop brings together researchers who are currently independently engaged in research projects drawing on evidence from Barbados wills to examine the history of slavery between 1627 and c.1750. The tiny island of Barbados was England’s richest colony in the seventeenth century. It was also the destination of 236,725 enslaved Africans during that period, twice the number who were sent to Jamaica, and more than 10 times those sent to mainland north America. Wills illuminate the strong connections between Barbados and England in this formative period of plantation production based on slave labour. This workshop will allow researchers to compare their approaches and discuss plans for future research.