Nearly 4m records of enslaved people in 20 former British colonies now searchable online

Archival images from British Enslavement Registers/T71 collection. Composed with selections from a portrait of Civil War 'contrabands,' fugitive slaves who were emancipated upon reaching the North of the US in the 1860s. Composite: Guardian/Getty/British Enslavement Registers

Nearly 4m records documenting the lives of enslaved people across 20 former British colonies have been made searchable online for the first time.

The records have been digitised and indexed by the genealogy company Ancestry, which has partnered with the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London.