This thesis investigates the surprising number of shipboard insurrections during the transatlantic voyages of captain Jan Menkenveld and his former officers: David Mulders, Daniel Pruijmelaar and...Show moreThis thesis investigates the surprising number of shipboard insurrections during the transatlantic voyages of captain Jan Menkenveld and his former officers: David Mulders, Daniel Pruijmelaar and Willem de Molder. Compared to the other registered insurrections on Dutch slave ships in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, these MCC captains appear to have experienced the most insurrections on their triangular voyages. By carefully interplaying the muster rolls, ships’ journals and correspondence of their voyages on which insurrections occurred, this thesis traces the surrounding conditions aboard the slave ships and answers to what extent the captaincies kindled shipboard insurrections.Show less
This thesis studies the way in which colonists and revolutionaries defined the value of the French Revolution and its relation to the colonies. It does so by looking at the issue of citizenship for...Show moreThis thesis studies the way in which colonists and revolutionaries defined the value of the French Revolution and its relation to the colonies. It does so by looking at the issue of citizenship for free people of colour in Saint-Domingue. This question was central to the colonial debate between the colonist lobby, the Club d’hôtel Massiac, and the revolutionaries of the Société des Amis des Noirs. Both these pressure groups used the press to influence the public. A look at some of the relevant newspapers shows how revolutionary discourse developed throughout 1790 and 1792 and how colonial events were shaped in the narratives of the Revolution. By reconstructing this colonial debate in the press, this thesis argues that the colonial question became an essential part of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary ideologies throughout the years 1790-92. In these two years, revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries appropriated the colonial issue in their developing political identities. Questions of colonial reform changed from pragmatic considerations in 1790 to an ideological struggle between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries in 1792. The integration of the colonial question in revolutionary narratives was stimulated by domestic developments and by the complex connection between metropole and colony. The discourse in the press showed how much the colonies affected the development of ideologies and narratives in the French Revolution and how the colonial issues were appropriated in pre-existing discourses in France. Despite recent attention to the impact of the Haitian Revolution, little is known about the French reaction to the events on France’s most important colony. However, as this thesis argues, the colonial debate was essential to the experience of Revolution.Show less
This article investigates how Moravian missionaries influenced the abolitionist debate in the Netherlands through the imaging they put forth in their periodical Berigten uit de Heidenwereld. The...Show moreThis article investigates how Moravian missionaries influenced the abolitionist debate in the Netherlands through the imaging they put forth in their periodical Berigten uit de Heidenwereld. The author aims to go beyond the strict dichotomy between pro- and antislavery camps, by elaborating on the moderate character of Dutch abolitionism, which led to a large overlap between radical abolitionists, gradualists and obstructionists. By studying the archives of the Moravian Brotherhood, colonial administrators, and published documents, the article reveals that the missionaries contributed to the negative imaging of the slaves, and denied and demonized the slaves’ right to agency and autonomy, and therefore sustained the discourse that justified the continued curbing of physical freedom during the period of Staatstoezicht.Show less
