│By Helen Cartledge, Gale Ambassador at the University of Birmingham│
Post-colonial thinking is always developing and expanding, especially in relation to how historians understand the Atlantic Slave Trade. Primary sources are integral to the underpinning of this historical narrative and the new ways historians are trying to reconceptualise and re-narrate the slave trade in ways that decentre the European.
Countless types of primary sources exist that can help historians uncover the experiences of many people who were oppressed and marginalised. However, we need to be aware of how primary sources can reveal multiple and strikingly different ideas, even if this is not revealed at first glance.
Thus, this blog post guides you through the process of finding and using primary sources from Gale’s Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive and the different ways such sources can be used within research.