Meet the author: Ana Lucia Araujo on ‘Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History’

Professor Ana-Lucia Araujo (Howard University) will visit Leiden in December to discuss her most recent publication Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History. This new book examines the history of the demands of reparations for slavery and the slave trade in the Americas, Europe, and Africa from a transnational perspective.

Slavery and the Atlantic slave trade are among the most heinous crimes against humanity committed in the modern era. Yet, to this day no reparations have been made to former slaves, their descendants or afflicted societies. Araujo argues that calls for reparations are still very much alive and have a long history. Since the 18th century, enslaved and freed people began to conceptualize the idea of reparations in petitions, correspondences, pamphlets, public speeches, slave narratives, and legal claims, written in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Despite the legality of slavery at the time, slaves and freed people were conscious of having been victims of a great injustice. Drawing from the voices of people who identified themselves as the victims of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery, Araujo illuminates the multiple dimensions of the demands of reparations, including the period of slavery, the emancipation era, the post-abolition period, and the present.

Program

5 PM                Opening by host Nancy Jouwe
5.05 PM          Talk by author Ana-Lucia Araujo
5.20 PM          Interview with the author by Marcel van der Linden (IISH)
5.40 PM          Responses by Jessy de Abreu (Black Archives) and Antoin Deul (NiNSEE)
5.55 PM           Drinks
6.30 PM          Closing

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