University College London - Legacy of bondage

The debt owed by modern Britain to slavery is to be investigated by historians at University College London. The team aims to create the first encyclopaedia of British slave owners, an online database that will identify every UK resident who owned slaves when the practice was abolished within the British Empire in the 1830s. It will also show how slave-related wealth was put to use. The three-year project, "Legacies of British Slave Ownership", is the first comprehensive attempt to trace the impact of slave ownership on the development of modern Britain. It is being funded by a £613,000 grant from the Economic and Social Research Council, and the results will be accessible to researchers and the general public.