Project Launch: New World Royalists - CANCELLED

The project uses an array of digital resources to produce a deep and unique history of Port Royal Parish from the perspective of enslaved people who lived there. The project eschews familiar tales of piracy by remapping a town which looms large in the popular imaginary, to instead tell stories of urbanity, mobility, enslavement, labour, and freedom from new perspectives.

This interactive textual, visual, and sonic narrative of local lives integrates genealogical information and data from the Register of Returns on enslaved people published triennially from 1817-1832. It draws on large datasets and previously unused surveys and archival sources to tell detailed and experiential stories of Port Royal town and plantation communities in the Blue Mountains.

This innovative work reveals mobility patterns across Jamaica, changes in Jamaica’s political economy in the late-slavery and early post-slavery period, and links between Jamaica, the UK, and the other islands of the Caribbean, promising to open new frontiers for transnational genealogical research and scholarship.

The event will involve a detailed overview of the New World Royalists digital tool and a rich discussion by the CSLBS team and our collaborators.