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Open research questions in Colonialism, slavery, and trade

59 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 4,116 Colonialism, slavery, and trade papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • UNESCO’s 2005 inscription of Ifa as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity was an important moment of international recognition, but recognition without resources, without institutional infrastructure, and without the active engagement of initiated practitioners is insufficient.

    From Slavery to Source Code: The Suppression of African Spiritual Intelligence · 2026 · DOI

  • To effectively address the deep-rooted exclusion faced by descendants of slavery, policymakers must adopt a multi-faceted approach incorporates both immediate and long-term strategies.

    Historical Accountability and Reparative Pathways: Addressing the Legacies of the Transatlantic Slave Trade · 2026 · DOI

  • While slavery studies scholars have discussed the individual impact sales had on enslaved people, and historians of emotion have explored white communities’ understandings of both white maternal love and enslaved emotion, few studies have explored how events such as sale shaped enslaved women’s own emotional understandings, practices, experiences and expressions.

    ‘Her Work of Love’: Forced Separations, Maternal Grief, and Enslaved Mothers’ Emotional Practices in the Antebellum US South · 2024 · DOI

  • How did Indigenous peoples engage with European diversity—its Muslims, Jews, schismatics, and oddball cosmopolitans at court? How did they learn about the wider Old World? And how did so many make Europe their willing or unwilling home? The broad sweep of this story invites further studies on early modern cosmopolitan Indigenous subjects just as ambitious and wide-eyed as Dodds Pennock's.

    On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe · 2024 · DOI

  • While the RAC's exit from the slave trade has received scholarly attention, little is known about the company's response to the loss of its trading privileges.

    (Un)principled Agents: Monitoring Loyalty after the End of the Royal African Company Monopoly · 2023 · DOI

  • 3 This collection supersedes earlier efforts by historians Graham Hodges, who reprinted only fifty-eight such advertisements; Michael Groth, who compiled slave advertisements limited to the Hudson Valley's Dutchess County between 1785 and 1827; and the team of Susan Stessin-Cohn and Ashley Hurlburt-Biagini, who assembled an extensive list of runaway slave advertisements from the Hudson Valley.

    Dutch-Speaking Runaway Slaves in New York and New Jersey, 1730–1825 · 2021 · DOI

  • The author insists on the importance of the Black slave trade and the connections among all of its actors, as well as the need to understand non-Western conducts, a subject traditionally limited to anthropology, on the basis of a study of the clash between European mercantile colonialism and the native nations of the northwest coast of North America (18th-19th centuries).

    El reto de las historias conectadas · 2018 · DOI

  • Focusing on the specific context of the Napoleonic Wars and in particular the Duke of Wellington and his horse Copenhagen, I show why agency is a continuum, not limited to the complex and intentional acts of a rational man, for instance a field marshal, but extending to basic actions, group actions, and less self‐conscious actors, for instance a horse.

    THE TORTURER'S HORSE: AGENCY AND ANIMALS IN HISTORY · 2013 · DOI

  • Before the establishment of Virginia and Bermuda in the early 1600s, numerous attempts had been made by the English to found colonies in North and South America as well as in the Caribbean, but each and every one failed miserably, so that their activities were limited to the parasitic and pitiless pilfering of Spanish settlements and shipping in precious metals and slaves.

    A Tale of Two Colonies: What Really Happened in Virginia and Bermuda? by Virginia Bernhard (review) · 2013 · DOI

  • Focusing on one little known popular melodrama and locating it in the history of its time reveals a network of connections that span the British abolition of the slave trade, the importance of Brazil to the development of Britain's economy, the role of the London merchants and, of course, a clearly developed racial hierarchy.

    Jacks and diamonds — some aspects of race on the London Victorian stage · 2008 · DOI

  • Bussa is a ‘surrogate’ in at least three ways: 1) his heroic reputation fills the space left by others who suffered the physical and epistemic violence of slavery, and about whom little is known; 2) he represents ‘Africa’ in a thoroughly creolized society searching for its pan-African roots; and 3) he makes good the (supposed) absence of a national tradition of radicalism on the island.

    ‘Part of the blood and dream’: surrogation, memory and the National Hero in the postcolonial Caribbean · 2007 · DOI

  • There was no consensus about an economic activity which raised complicated economic, social and political issues and conflicts of interest; the measures were not introduced as a co-ordinated policy and were in the hands of different agencies; punitive proposals to increase the penalties for child stealing put falsely accused merchants at risk; and the extension of preventive servant registration in private hands for profit became politically unacceptable if it was to be compulsory.

    Preventive and punitive regulation in seventeenth-century social policy: Conflicts of interest and the failure to make 'stealing and transporting Children, and other Persons' a felony, 1645-73 · 2002 · DOI

  • In Essai sur le don (Essay on Gifts), a work that the author himself noted was only indicative and incomplete, Marcel Mauss recommended in his conclusions on general sociology and morality that the analysis should be taken further and future research should focus on certain cultural areas that he had not been able to take into account: Micronesia, Indochina, Tibet, Burma, and North Africa, among others.

    The Obligation to Reciprocate Gifts and the Spirit of the Item Given: From Marcel Mauss to René Maunier · 1991 · DOI

  • While the relationships between literacy and these other revolutions are not fully understood, their association is apparent and many potential influences exist (Cipolla 1969; Cremin 1970; Graff 1981: 232–60; 1987a, 1987b; Jensen 1986: 114–28; Maynes 1985: 117–31; Mitch 1984, 1988; Sanderson 1983; West 1978).

    Growth of Literacy in Colonial America: Longitudinal Patterns, Economic Models, and the Direction of Future Research · 1990 · DOI

  • While the historic Caribbean ties with Maryland are not well known and documented, there are a variety of intercultural and economic relationships that span the 350‐year period.

    The Caribbean presence in Maryland, 1634–1984: An overview · 1987 · DOI

  • T h e role of race prejudice in the origins of slavery dominates the problem today, but what of tomorrow? What avenues of research remain to be explored? What new questions can be asked? It is likely that future generations with assumptions and values different from ours will ask new questions.

    Historians and the Origins of British North American Slavery · 1973 · DOI

  • Constitutional politics have achieved political independence for the island; it remains to be seen whether these means can also achieve the economic and social reconstruction which are as necessary for the mass of the people now as in 1831.

    THE JAMAICA SLAVE REBELLION OF 1831 · 1968 · DOI

  • This would be true, of course, of almost any colonial newspaper of a comparable period and state of preservation which has not been examined thoroughly; the unique opportunity presented by the Gazette lies in the materials it contains concerning the vocabulary associated with the slave system, concerning African influences on the dialect of the sea island, and concerning patterns in the nomenclature of slaves.

    Slave Names in Colonial South Carolina · 1952 · DOI

  • The fundamental wrong of colonialism was grounded in inequalities of power that persist today and that continue to contribute to economic injustices and to the failure to regard the weaker as equals, in a variety of contexts, including, but not limited to the case of formerly colonized peoples.

    The Fundamental Wrong of Colonialism · 2025 · DOI

  • Importantly, this article illustrates how dichotomic framings of American abolitionism as either radical or conservative are insufficient to explain the diversity of thought within the movement, as reflected in abolitionists' reactions to Haiti.

    “The fires of liberty”: American abolitionist perspectives on the Haitian revolution, 1791–1806 · 2024 · DOI

  • She signed a treaty with the English Crown after the rebellion that changed the trajectory of Native slavery in Virginia: only Indigenous people whose nations could not establish sovereignty before the crown would be subject to racial slavery.

    Cockacoeske’s Rebellion: Nathaniel Bacon, Indigenous Slavery, and Sovereignty in Early Virginia · 2023 · DOI

  • Her broad scope means that the experiences of many of the entrepreneurs, merchants, traders, abolitionists, and consumers who cross her pages remain unexplored.

    Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition · 2022 · DOI

  • These children’s passage to Europe is an understudied aspect of the Atlantic slave trade and one which is central to the story of the African and African-descended community in Britain.

    ‘[A]s Fast as Ships Return he Will Send Every one a Boy’: Enslaved Children as Gifts in the British Atlantic · 2022 · DOI

  • As a result, slaves from Africa were brought to plantations in the New World, the most sought-after products, such as sugar, cotton and indigo, came to Europe from colonies, while almost all products that were scarce in colonies were imported from Europe.

    Economic Aspects of Slavery in the Triangular Trade in the Early Modern Period · 2021 · DOI

  • Largely understudied, this legislation has been characterized in most previous work on the subject as a fundamental break from British mercantile policies and meant to benefit North American colonial merchants.

    An Empire of Free Ports: British Commercial Imperialism in the 1766 Free Port Act · 2021 · DOI

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59 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 4,116 Colonialism, slavery, and trade papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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