CALL AND RESPONSE: THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW AND SLAVERY
PEGGY
Appraisement of the slaves, stock, buildings and land of the Invera Estate, Tobago, 28 March 1829
University of Glasgow Library, MS Gen 946/4
This inventory lists the individual and total value assigned by slave-holders to 120 enslaved men, women and children who worked on the Invera Estate in Tobago. The total value of the Estate at the time of this survey was £13,862. Of this total, £4,689 was the appraisal value of the people. The document was gifted to the University in 1934 by Thomas Fraser Campbell of Helensburgh.
“This is a document about exploitation and human misery in pursuit of profit, yet it tells us very little about the people listed. What of Peggy, the 34 year-old who laboured in the plantation’s sugar fields? From further research we know she was an Igbo woman born in present-day Nigeria and transported to Tobago as a child. This document was created as an inventory but it is also a memorial.”
Professor Simon Newman
Sir Denis Brogan Chair of American History
University of Glasgow
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