Update on the Penrhyn Jamaica Papers Project
In December 2024, we reported that Bangor University Archives and Special Collections (BUASC) and the Institute for the Study of Welsh Estates (ISWE) have been awarded a grant from Welsh Government to digitise and provide online access to the Jamaica Papers within the Penrhyn Estate Archive at Bangor University. The project is now well underway, and the BUASC team, including ISWE Doctoral Researcher Alex Ioannou who has been appointed Research and Digitisation Assistant, are in the process of selecting and digitising records to be presented online on JSTOR. Thirty-three items have been digitised and uploaded to JSTOR so far.
The Penrhyn Estate Archive is the most significant and chronologically expansive collection of records relating to the operation of transatlantic slavery. It reflects nearly 700 years of the Pennant family’s involvement and management of their estates across Jamaica, England and Wales. Records include: accounts, deeds, inventories, letters, lists of enslaved people, maps, surveys, plans and wills. The earliest document that BUASC holds in regards to Jamaica in the Penrhyn Collection is a 1666 grant of land in Clarendon by Charles II to a “Thomas Alwinkle”.
The capacity of the Pennant’s to amass, manage, improve and exploit their estates was underpinned by a wealth accumulated from the enslavement of African people on their Jamaican sugar plantations. The family owned and managed much of their landholdings congruently for long periods of time and the archives preserve a detailed account of the family’s global operations. These include - the management of their sugar plantations; the lives of enslaved Africans; the politics of colonialism and abolition; the post-enslavement history of the Caribbean; the wealth generated through the sugar industry; and the investment of this wealth across the agricultural, industrial, religious, political, civic and educational institutions of north-west Wales.
The BUASC team aspires to reveal and question their own archival praxis and the vocabularies that maintain colonial power hierarchies. The project seeks to empower individuals and communities across Wales and internationally to engage with the historical resources and evidence, through their own lens.
You can keep up to date with the digitisation project, and its follow-on initiatives, by following BAUSC and ISWE on social media.
BUASC - Facebook and BlueSky: @ArchPBU
ISWE - BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter: @YstadauCymru
