Slavery, Abolition and Compensation in the Dutch Colonies in the West and in the East

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/L_GAMAGES031

Course Objective

Becoming familiar with debates in the field of comparative slavery studies. Developing research skills and archival research in particular.

Course Content

In 1860 slavery was formally abolished throughout the Indonesian archipelago and three years later in the Netherlands Antilles and Suriname. In both Dutch colonies and in the Netherlands the ideological and the practical sides of the emancipation of the enslaved proved to be thorny issues. Compensations for the slave owners were considered to be indispensable and immediate emancipation undesirable by most of the decision makers involved. Although the situation in the Dutch Asian colonies was very different from the Dutch colonial possessions in the Atlantic, there are similarities as well. Both the government in the Hague and local colonial administrators took a cautious and gradualist approach to emancipation. Racial prejudice, social conservatism, lobbying by colonial interest groups and even outright resistance by slave owners all played a role in this gradualism. In this research seminar we will dive into primary sources of these histories and study their comparison. Among the specific research topics is the history of the Dutch protestant churches and their involvement in slave trading and enslavement in the West and in the East.

Teaching Methods

This seminar will consist of finding, transcribing and analysing primary sources, and reporting the findings in presentations. Students are encouraged to find their own research topic after an initial period of collective research meetings and discussions. There are options to contribute to ongoing research projects at the VU and the International Institute for Social History (IISH) on the history and memory of the slave trade and slavery both in the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean World.

Method of Assessment

Assignments (30%), research paper (70%).

Literature

In English and will be announced in the course manual.

Target Audience

Master Students and Research Master Students in History.

Additional Information

This is a research seminar aimed at doing archival research and writing a MA research paper. The focus will be on the Dutch plantation colony Suriname as well as Indonesia. International students will have the option to write a paper on neighbouring British colonies in the same regions and with similar experiences (e.g. British Guyana or Malaysia) and of which relevant documents are online available.