A Free Non-White Elite in Paramaribo, 1800 – 1863 AND: Indian Ocean Slavery, 1700 – 1850 (Studium Generale)
8 mei 2017Van 15:30 - 17:45uur
Two lectures on the Dutch colonial past. The first lecture explores how the free non-white population eroded the slavery system from within in early 19th-century Paramaribo. The second lecture focuses on slavery in the Indian Ocean, in particular in the regions of Sri Lanka and the Indonesian Archipelago.
Lecture 1: The Characteristic Story of the Free Non-White Family Vlier
The Formation of a Free Non-White Elite in Paramaribo, 1800 – 1863
Manumission in Suriname existed from the time slavery started (± 1650) and it was mainly an urban phenomenon. The freed slaves, also called the manumitted, and their descendants made up the group of free non-white people. This group grew quickly and at the start of the nineteenth century it became the largest segment of Paramaribo’s population.
By the time slavery was abolished, in 1863, some 65 per cent of the city’s non-white population was already free.
The diversity of occupations practiced by this group demonstrated the important role this segment of the population played in Paramaribo already during the period of slavery. In the social sphere they were also actively supporting the very poorest.
This lecture will bring to light how the free non-whites eroded the slavery system from within.
The speaker
Dr Ellen Neslo LLM, Utrecht University
Lecture 2: Indian Ocean Slavery, 1700 – 1850
Local Experiences in Global Perspective
This lecture focuses on slavery in the Indian Ocean, in particular in the regions of Sri Lanka and the Indonesian Archipelago. It looks at local practices of bondage and slavery and raises the question how the intensification of long distance trade (European, Chinese, Arabian) and colonialism influenced patterns of slavery in the region and vice versa. The literature often focuses on the question of numbers and geography: how many people were traded by whom and whereto. But is it possible to come to a closer understanding of what it meant to be a slave? Examples from eighteenth-century Jaffna (Sri Lanka) and nineteenth-century Manado (North Sulawesi) are used to show the possibilities and constraints in analysing the local experiences of the enslaved in this early globalizing world.
The speaker
Dr Alicia Schrikker, University Lecturer, Institute for History, Leiden University
Free entrance.
Open to all.
No advance registration required.