Last Slave Market

Last Slave Market

I attended a talk in the NLS by Alister Hazell who discussed his research into the life of the Scottish explorer Dr John Kirk, who fought against the slave trade in East Africa including the infamous Zanzibar slave market which closed in 1873. There was a House of Commons Commission set up and I thought it would be interesting to look at this parliamentary paper. I decided to use the on-line electronic resource called HCPP which stands for the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers. It is a full-text digital archive to the 19th and 20th century House of Commons parliamentary papers, 1801 to 2000, with an index of papers to 2004. It also includes debates, proceedings and reports of the committees and outside bodies on public affairs.
I did a simple search using the words: slave, trade, Zanzibar and dates 1870, 1874
And the wealth of information that appeared on my screen was amazing.
I found the actual treaty that mentioned Dr John Kirk and the suppression of the slave trade, but also found House of Commons and Lords Hansard extracts.
I usually prefer looking at the paper copy as there is something exciting about opening an old volume of parliamentary papers, but for the convenience at getting all the information I need on my screen HCPP is excellent and saves a lot of time.
Note on licensed digital collections
When you register with the National Library of Scotland you have free access to an extensive range of licensed digital collections. If your main address is in Scotland you can also use many of these resources from any computer outwith NLS. You can also use a number of open access resources without registering.
Picture credit:- http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/