The FOI File
The T 71 series holds 663 registers of enslaved people recorded across Britain’s colonial territories between 1812 and 1851. The National Archives describes them as very heavy and large records requiring specific handling. On January 3, 2026, the archive published its response to Freedom of Information request CAS-291991, concerning how those registers were licensed, converted to digital form, and made accessible. The response confirms that the version most researchers encountered in 2007 was not drawn from the originals at all.
CAS-291991 was published under a partial disclosure outcome. Portions were withheld under three sections of the Freedom of Information Act 2000: section 40(2), protecting personal data of junior staff; section 43(1), covering trade secrets; and section 43(2), protecting information whose release would prejudice the commercial interests of a third party, in this case Ancestry.
The disclosed record includes a 2007 licensing agreement signed by Dan Jones, then Head of Business Development at The National Archives; a letter written by the TNA Chief Executive on behalf of Michael Wills, Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice (partially redacted); a partially redacted email with the subject line “RE: T71 British Slave Registers”; and images taken from microfilm title boards associated with the T 71 series.
The Microfilm Proxy
The 2007 licensing agreement was not for digitization of the original T 71 registers. The National Archives confirmed in its response that the agreement with The Generations Network / Ancestry covered conversion of pre-existing microfilm copies into digital images, filmed by the Reprographics teams of the Public Records Office and later The National Archives across several decades.
The microfilm creation dates documented in the response run from 1971 through 2006: Barbados and Nevis in 1971; Trinidad in 1972; St Vincent in 1975; Berbice in 1977; St Lucia in 1978; Nevis again in 1993; the Bahamas in September 2001; Mauritius in 2003; Honduras, Jamaica, and St Christopher in 2004; Grenada between 2004 and 2005; Antigua, Dominica, Trinidad (again), and the Virgin Islands in 2005; and Tobago in 2006. The creation date for the Sri Lanka (Ceylon) reels is not recorded. When Ancestry published “Slave Registers of former British Colonial Dependencies, 1813-1834” in 2007, the underlying images came from this accumulated film, not from any direct handling of the paper originals.
The Preservation Defense
The National Archives offered an explanation for the microfilm decisions. According to the response, filming was carried out either to fulfill orders from paying customers or as preservation work during periods when no customer orders were scheduled. The archive noted that the extreme weight and fragility of the T 71 registers may well have been a factor in selecting them for preservation microfilming. TNA also stated that it receives no financial income from its licensing arrangement with Ancestry and that the agreement operates on a non-exclusive basis under Open Government Licence version 3.
The Procedural Gap
The National Archives concluded that it does not hold, and has not located, any of the following: correspondence between TNA and Ancestry negotiating the 2007 agreement, internal memos or briefings proposing or approving the partnership, board papers or committee minutes authorizing it, or documentation setting out criteria for deciding which T 71 pieces would be included in the microfilming program. No documented logic for sequencing the work is held by TNA, and the archive has not located any.
On the question of whether descendant communities or other stakeholders were consulted about which registers to prioritize, TNA’s response is the same: it does not hold such records. That absence applies equally to the years when filming was most active and to the period immediately before the 2007 agreement was signed.
The Redactions
Three items in the disclosed record are partially withheld. The email with the subject “RE: T71 British Slave Registers” has sections blacked out under section 40(2). The letter from the TNA Chief Executive, written on behalf of Minister of State Michael Wills, is similarly redacted under section 40(2), protecting the personal data of junior members of staff. A further set of emails concerning Ancestry’s access to original materials is withheld in part under all three applicable sections: 40(2), 43(1), and 43(2). TNA stated that only the minimum necessary information was withheld and that Ancestry was consulted in determining the scope of the commercial exemptions.
Unresolved Coordinates
Three gaps remain open as of the CAS-291991 response dated January 3, 2026. First, TNA holds no documented criteria explaining why particular colonies’ registers were microfilmed when they were and in what order, despite filming activity spanning 1971 to 2006 across seventeen named territories. Second, the content of the redacted correspondence, the internal email concerning the T 71 series and the letter addressed to the office of Minister of State Michael Wills, remains outside the public record. Third, a license designated “Addendum 11,” signed in 2023 and covering full digitization of the original T 71 paper documents in collaboration with University College London, was to be made publicly available without charge through Ancestry’s platform with a link from TNA’s Discovery catalogue; as of January 3, 2026, TNA had not confirmed when that work would be published.