“On behalf of the municipal executive, I apologise for the active involvement of the Amsterdam city council in the commercial system of colonial slavery and the global trade of enslaved people,” Mayor Femke Halsema said in 2021 during the commemoration of Amsterdam's history of slavery. This apology was a result of the research into the city of Amsterdam's history of slavery for which VU scholars and others delved into the archives. Those archives contain extensive information on history, but how can we make sense of all the figures and records? And how can we ensure to not only highlight the economic side of slavery, but also to learn more about the lives of enslaved people?
VU Professor of Global Economic and Social History Pepijn Brandon coordinated the project and is also researching the socio-economic and socio-historical aspects of slavery. The relationship between power relations and capitalism is at the centre of his research. “It is often thought that capitalism is diametrically opposed to coercion, because market regulation is in effect,” Pepijn Brandon explains. “But actually, a lot of coercion is found in historical markets. Slavery is a clear example of this. Perhaps slavery was the first system of global production in which each and every link in the chain was vigorously tackled in a corporate manner. From robbing people on the West African coast to the huge transnational investment flows that were used to build the plantation sector. Not to mention the very regulated insurance practices for slave trade and colonial goods trade encorporating a wide-spread network between producers and consumers. This was a modern system of international trade, founded upon the most heinous forms of exploitation and coercion.”
How, then, do we unravel the details of what took place in historical slavery? To do this, Brandon dived into archives, combining various types of sources and research. “The archives related to slavery are incredibly rich. Of course, we would always want more information, and the main emphasis here is on documents from the colonial rulers' perspective. But even without documents from the enslaved people’s perspectives, a lot can be deduced from these archives. Take the archive of the MCC - the Middelburgsche Commercie Compagnie, one of the largest private slave traders in the Netherlands during the eighteenth century, which contains a wealth of information on slave voyages. Like ship logs, but also delivery notes from every supplier involved in such voyages. That network can be analysed in great detail. By reading between the lines, a lot of information can be found on the abominable circumstances on the ships, and how enslaved people reacted to that.”
Older studies of slavery often dealt with business operations only and did not include events on the slave ships and the plantations themselves. Pepijn Brandon is looking for data behind the data: “We often come across a very brutal, economic perspective in the cases we analyse. A company’s accounting is all about profit and loss accounts, and numbers. While on the plantations, people were being horrifically abused. I think that in the past, historians often, quite carelessly adopted the numerical perspective in their writing. How much profit or loss was made? I think we are much more conscious of the human impact now, and as a result we have gained a more appropriate perspective on sources. Because the reality of slavery is not absent in books; it is just subordinated to numbers. In this system, people functioned as collateral for things like loans. I would find a list from the accounts of 50 enslaved people who served as collateral, with characteristics and values assigned, saying, ‘This person is worth 150 guilders, because he is a healthy man; this person is worth 80 guilders, because he is old and sick’. That is a process of dehumanisation, and part of a historian's job is to figure out the human part in it. To not adopt that dehumanisation, but to fight it, and to present the human perspective, including the horrific and oppressive side of that past.”
That is sometimes easier said than done. Pepijn Brandon says: “These are obviously themes that are heartbreaking to research. When I started out as an academic, the prevailing tone in Dutch literature was still quite trivialising. Somewhere along the lines of: ‘The Dutch history of slavery is not that bad’. It hit me hard, because with every box that is opened, stories of horrific abuse pour out. Physical abuse, psychological abuse and also sexual abuse. One case that devastated me was of an administrator who abused 17 young girls and women on the plantation where he worked as a supervisor. He was eventually sent away and sentenced by the court to a fine for mismanagement. That injustice affected me deeply.”
“At the same time, I came across admirable, hopeful things. When I was researching the social unrest in Paramaribo around 1740, I came across stories of enslaved people who still did everything they could to uphold their own customs and live their own lives. They honoured their deceased family members in ways that were forbidden by colonial authorities. They managed to escape the plantations for a few days, which they left to have fun, not just to stay alive. Those stories show resilience. I loved the story of a white ex-soldier who opened an illegal bar in Paramaribo and was condemned by the colonial authorities for repeatedly serving black Surinamese – which was forbidden by law. It was obvious from his interrogation, that he believed the charges against him to be unjust, because he did not understand what he had done wrong. Colonial history is a history of dehumanisation, but also one of people who went against the system nevertheless, kicking at its boundaries. I think it is extremely important to understand and to present all sides of this story.”
