This book is scheduled to be released April 2025 and is now available to pre-order.
It is the paradox at the heart of the Dutch Republic: how could a state emerge from resistance to political slavery and subjugation by a foreign power, only to become a colonial empire that promoted slavery all over the world? Slavery and the Dutch State shows how the modern Dutch state and its predecessors were complicit in colonial slavery.
It describes the roles of various actors, such as enslaved people, administrators and merchants in the Netherlands and the colonized societies. More than thirty authors discuss the afterlives of slavery, the systematic nature of slavery in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the worldwide scope of slavery, and the various individuals, groups and organizations that had interests in slavery and colonialism starting in the sixteenth century.
With chapters covering topics such as the Dutch Reformed Church’s role in slavery, how the history of slavery is taught in schools, and the involvement of the Dutch parliament and royal family in colonial slavery, Slavery and the Dutch State is one of the main publications to appear between July 1, 2023 and July 1, 2024, the year when the Netherlands collectively commemorated the legacy of slavery.
Esther Captain (1969) is a historian and senior researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden. She is a member of the committee overseeing independent research into the role of the House of Orange-Nassau in Dutch colonial history and an author/editor on this research team. She is specialized in late colonial Indonesia, the Indonesian revolution, and postcolonial Netherlands in relation to the Dutch Caribbean islands, Indonesia and Suriname.
Matthias van Rossum (1984) is a historian and senior researcher at the International Institute of Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam. He focuses on the history of slavery in Asia and its links to the Atlantic slave trade.
Urwin Vyent (1958) is the director of the National Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery and its Legacy (NiNsee). In addition to his work for NiNsee, he is part of the team planning and developing the National Slavery Museum in Amsterdam.
Rose Mary Allen (1950) is an anthropologist and extraordinary professor of Culture, Community and History at the University of Curaçao. In April 2024, Professor Allen became the first Thinker in Residence at the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
