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ALICE KINGHORN: Hi, I'm Alice Kinghorn I'm a third-year history PhD student at the University of Bristol. I did my undergraduate degree in history

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at the University of York and my master's in history at the University of Manchester. My PhD thesis focuses on the Church of England's involvement in transatlantic slavery through the work

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of Anglican missionary societies. I look at these societies in two ways. Firstly, I'm interested in who was funding the societies. What's interesting is that lots of enslavers in Britain

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and members of the West India interest were donating to these missionary societies alongside abolitionists. The missionary societies themselves

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were working to try and convert and provide religious instruction for enslaved people in the Caribbean. This was part of a wider political concept called

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"amelioration," where it was believed that enslaved people needed to be civilised and Christianized before they could be emancipated.

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So my theory is that British enslavers and the West India interests were donating to these societies so that they had some sort of control over how this civilization process took place.

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The second part of my thesis looks at the work of the Anglican missionaries themselves. What were they teaching in the Caribbean? How did they interact with enslaved people?

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How did they interact with enslavers? Finally, I'm also interested in the lives of enslaved people under Anglican missionary societies. How were they interacting with the missionaries?

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How did they respond to their teachings? Did they choose to accept or reject missionary teachings? Overall, I hope to demonstrate that Anglican missionary societies were key and became a sort of ameliorative arm

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for the British government in this period, but ultimately, that enslaved people had autonomy over whether they chose to accept or reject these teachings. I think it's really important to study

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Anglican missionary societies in a wider context of the Church of England's involvement in transatlantic slavery. And I think there's two reasons for this.

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Firstly, because of the Church of England's previous attempts to address its involvement in transatlantic slavery. The church first did this in 2007, following the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade

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where the Church of England apologised in particular for owning enslaved people on their own Codrington plantations. And then following the murder of George Floyd

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and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed in May and June 2020, the church again apologised for its involvement in transatlantic slavery, in particular for the over 100

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Anglican clergymen that received emancipation compensation for owning enslaved people in the 19th century. What's been left out of this is the work of Anglican missionaries.

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Anglican missionaries themselves owned enslaved people and they also perpetuated racist tropes of civilization and Christianization. For example, in my thesis I look at something called the Slave

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Bible, which was created by the Bishop of London Beilby Porteus at the time. In this Bible, over 90% of the New Testament was removed and any reference to equality and freedom was removed

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and this is the Bible that was distributed amongst enslaved people by Anglican missionaries. And so this is a really key example of how the Church of England manipulated

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scripture in order to justify this movement of amelioration at the time. I also think that looking at this is really important because the missionary archive opens up

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opportunities for us to look at different visions of mission and amelioration and we're able to see how enslaved people responded to this. And I think traditionally the missionary archive

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has been used in a kind of a top-down approach. And so I think that by looking at it in the context of enslavement and how we can look beyond these original missionary objectives

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we can really start to see how enslaved people responded to missionaries. I use a number of different primary sources in my research. The first come from the missionary societies

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themselves. I look at two Anglican missionary societies in my work. The first is the Church Missionary Society.

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And their archives are held at the University of Birmingham in the Cadbury Research Library and they've also been digitised. The second missionary society I look at

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is the Conversion Society. These records are held at Lambeth Palace Library in London and these haven't been digitised. These archives mainly contain missionary letters

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and missionary correspondence coming from the missionaries themselves. Secondly, I look at Colonial slave registers, which are held at the National Archives at Kew

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but have also been digitised and have been transcribed online as well. And finally, the third body of sources I look at are colonial correspondence, mainly

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coming from the Bishop of Jamaica and the Bishop of Barbados. These are held at the National Archives at Kew and they have also been digitised.

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The missionary archive itself is challenging. The nature of the sources means that we're kind of getting a one-sided view of how missionaries were approaching their work when they were writing back

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to the societies in London. They kind of had one aim, which was to demonstrate how well they were doing. This is so that the societies knew

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that it was worth employing them and also because they knew that this information would be passed on to the funders of the society and they wanted to encourage more funding.

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This means that we are getting a biassed and one-sided view of how the missionary world worked in the Caribbean. But by doing something that historian Ann Stoler calls "reading along the archival grain,"

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we're able to use these sources to understand a different narrative from the one that the missionaries were perpetuating. By reading along the archival grain,

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it means we're looking for gaps in the correspondence. What were the missionaries not telling us? For example, if missionaries were writing back to the societies in London and stated

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that enslaved people were not responding, quote, "well" to religious instruction, then we can use this to see that enslaved people were choosing whether to receive religious instruction or not.

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This is something that Saidiya Hartman has called "critical fabulation," which is the idea that we're not looking to kind of retell the stories of enslaved people but we're just trying to build a bigger picture of their life

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as much as we can, as much as possible. I use digital tools to try and create a more holistic picture of the lives of enslaved people under Anglican missionaries in the Caribbean.

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The first one that I think is really helpful is handwritten text recognition software. When missionaries were writing letters back to the societies in London, they would sometimes

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mention the names of enslaved people. By using the digitised and transcribed colonial slave registers, I can then cross-reference the names of these enslaved people into the slave registers

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and then you can find out how old they were, where they were enslaved, where they lived, and even changes over time. How long they had been enslaved by this particular slave owner.

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And so by cross-referencing this you're able to build a much more holistic picture of enslaved people's lives in the Caribbean beyond what the missionary correspondence is telling us.

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Using handwritten text recognition software saves so much time. Traditionally, when you search for a term in the archives-- for example, a name-- you would only

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receive search results of perhaps letters written to or from that person. But by using handwritten text software it means that it brings up examples

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of names within letters or within the colonial slave registers for example. This saves time for the historian and it also means that you're able to work with lots

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of bodies of sources together. And I think this is one of the main benefits of digitization. I know that traditionally historians say that it's important to visit the archive so

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that you get an idea of what the physical source is like. And I agree with that, except I do think that by having the sources digitised, it means that we can step back and take a distance,

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and take a distance look between us and the source itself. It means that we're able to quickly cross-reference with other sources. And it also means that we're able to not take

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that source at face value. This opens up the possibility that the subjects of these sources might appear elsewhere. And without digitization, this would

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take multiple archive visits, which can be both time consuming and expensive. And so digitization not only helps with the practicalities of archival research but also helps

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us to build a more rounded picture of individuals that appear in the sources. My main pieces of advice for maximising the effectiveness of using digital tools in historical research is firstly

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just to be aware of what's out there. What does your university subscribe to? What sources in your field have been digitised? How easily accessible are these for you?

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And I would also say to familiarise yourself with how to use this? Are there any courses that you can take? How might you use handwritten text recognition

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to support your research? Are there any helpful databases there for you? Secondly is be aware of the context of the digital source. Don't view it in isolation.

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If it's a letter, is it part of a series? If it's a photograph, who took the photograph? If it's one page, are there any more pages to this document? Have they been digitised too?

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Thirdly, consider what terms you're using to search in digital tools. If you're searching for names, are there any alternative spellings that

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could come up that might result in different search results? Some digital tools do allow for this in that they'll have options to have "sounds like," but be aware of how you're using it

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and how you're using your search terms. And then finally, if your institution is offering training in how to use digital tools, then I would definitely take this up.

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Different referencing guides will outline how to cite your digital sources, and so I would always check these along with where you found the source itself.

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It will probably include things like author, title, date, date published, date digitised, but I would definitely check these first. It's also important to note that you

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did view the source digitally rather than physically. Secondly, if I have seen a source, whether that be physically or digitally, and I know that the source has been digitised,

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then I will always put this in the citation. This is mainly for accessibility reasons. If somebody is later reading your work and they think they would like to see this source,

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it can be helpful for them to know that they can see it digitally rather than having to go to the archive. Particularly if the work is going to be published online,

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then I would highly recommend using hyperlinks to digital sources. This can save researchers lots of time and it also helps the journal.

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I've been able to use digital tools to uncover otherwise hidden or suppressed narratives. Most recently I looked at the colonial correspondence of the Bishop of Barbados, which in 1828 outlined a disagreement

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between the bishop to enslavers and an Anglican clergyman over whether an enslaved woman and a free man of colour in Montserrat should be allowed to marry. In the correspondence, we only hear

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the opinions of the Anglican clergyman and the bishop and the enslavers. We don't hear the opinions or anything about the free man of colour named William Harris and the enslaved woman named

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Betty Cudjoe. All we know is that they wish to marry. We know nothing beyond this. And so I hope to build a more comprehensive picture

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of the couple and why they might have wanted to marry at the time. And so I looked to other sources. Firstly, to find out more about Betty Cudjoe I

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looked at the colonial slave registers, which are held at the National Archives at Kew and have also been digitised. And in here I found who she was enslaved to, how long she

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had been enslaved for, how old she was, and what kind of work that she did. Looking for William Harris, the free man of colour, was a little trickier, as he obviously didn't appear

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in the colonial slave registers as a free man and he also didn't appear in other correspondence. However, I made a search for his name in another online digital tool and this brought up that he had signed a petition

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petitioning for the rights of free people of colour in Montserrat. And from this I knew that he was obviously active politically in Montserrat and also that he was engaged in the early 1820s.

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And so by using these digital tools, I was able suddenly to build up a bigger picture of the couple and why they might have wanted to marry beyond that of the missionary correspondence between the clergyman,

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the Bishop of Barbados, and their enslavers. Without the digitization and searchability, the chances are I never would have found this information.