The BBC and Professor David Olusoga have announced a new two-part documentary series, Finding Britain’s Slave Traders with David Olusoga.
The programme will air on BBC Two at 9pm on Monday 21 and Monday 28 September 2026.
It is based on the Register of British Slave-traders, a newly-launched online database of 13,000 people involved in the British slave trade from the 1564 to 1807.
The documentary will trace how the British slave trade was originally run by monopoly companies set up by the Stuart monarchy, before transferring to independent traders based in cities such as Liverpool and Bristol.
In a previous 2014 series Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners, David Olusoga explored the compensation paid to Britain’s slave owners when slavery in the British Empire was abolished in 1833.
The research for that series was based on records created by the Slave Compensation Commission that have been digitised and are available to view along with other online Caribbean records.
David Olusoga said: “This new series is a follow-up to a series we made over a decade ago; Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners. Both series have been built on the very latest academic research that allows us to reveal new details from our expanding understanding of slavery and the slave trade. Like the previous series, Finding Britain’s Slave Traders presents the granular details and human stories that lie at the centre of this vast and complicated history.”
