The Huntington Library in the US has acquired an important collection of letters that offer new light on the British Atlantic slave trade. Many of the 87 letters were written by William Freeman (1645-1707), a London-based, Caribbean-born slave agent, active between 1685 and 1690. 

The letters contain detailed plans and instructions from Freeman to his clerks, revealing the minutiae and chilling logistics of the slave trade. “These recently discovered letters shed light on a crucial gap in our understanding of early Atlantic slavery and empire building,” said the library's Vanessa Wilkie.

Recent years have been notable for a wider awareness in Britain of its role in the slave trade. We expect slavery-related collections will become increasingly sought after. 

The Huntington, based in California, is one of the world’s foremost research libraries, offering 12 million objects from the 11th to the 21st centuries.

“Each year, our curators take us to places we thought we knew but didn’t,” said Sandra Brooke Gordon, Avery Director of the Library. 

The library has also recently acquired: 

• Rare 1764 eyewitness account from Pontiac’s War

• Records of Chinese indentured laborers in 19th-century Cuba

• First edition of the first color-printed medical text, De Lactibus (1627)

• Unique 18th-century work on mint taxonomy with 26 original watercolors

• A series of intimate letters and inscribed books by John Steinbeck