6.1 The Historiography of Black Slavery in the United Provinces

We noted how the first sizeable proportion of blacks in the Low Countries was to be found in Antwerp. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the bulk of the black presence shifted to the Northern part of the Low Countries.

In the early seventeenth century, the largest proportion of slaves lived amongst the Sephardic Jewish community and those ethnic Jews who had come from Antwerp to the North after that city had fallen into decline.¹ These Iberians were accustomed to using slaves in their own country. Given that legislation had prohibited Jews to have Christian slaves from early on, the obvious choice for them fell to black pagan slaves.² Recent research has also shown the existence of a very small black community in 17^th century Amsterdam, which can be linked to the rise of the Dutch Empire, especially so after the conquest of Recife in 1630.³

The second wave, which was more numerous, arrived in the eighteenth century, again mostly in the second half of that century. Here as elsewhere, masters took their slaves from the West Indies (mainly Surinam, secondarily Curaçao) with them to the United Provinces.⁴ Next to them and comparable to what we saw for England as well, some slaves also arrived when ship captains were allowed to take one or more with them that were subsequently sold or given to someone (so-called presentslaven).⁵ During the seventeenth-eighteenth century, slaves were occasionally taken from the East Indies to the United Provinces as well, but far less is known of them.⁶

Lacking a census, the numbers of black people in the United Provinces cannot be exactly measured. Over time, several scholars have tried to give a measure of the black population primarily using ship records.⁷ Two scholars have made assessments for this period, and the most recent one, that of Oostindie, comes to a number of 749 black people and native Americans going to the Netherlands from Surinam between 1729 and 1781 (with 672 of them returning in the same period).⁸ We do not know the numbers for the Antilles but can safely presume that they were far lower.

That being said, we do know that the issue of taking blacks to the metropolis was perceived to be an issue at times by different Dutch colonial governments. One author has traced immigration restrictions for slaves in the Placaetboeken of the WIC colonies, and another one has traced the regulations made by the EIC. The EIC was most stringent, enacting several blanket bans on taking slaves to the metropolis in the seventeenth century.¹¹

As concerns their regional spread, the great majority of black people lived in the Province of Holland, more specifically in the bustling trade metropolis of Amsterdam. Next came the Province of Zeeland, where Vlissingen and Middelburg were the cities economically most involved in the slave trade in all of the Dutch Republic, particularly with the rise of the Middelburgse Commercie Compagnie in the eighteenth century. However, the amount of black people in Zeeland must have been fairly small in comparison with Holland, as return goods from Surinam mostly arrived in markets in Amsterdam. Besides for those two provinces, we know of the occasional appearance of black people in cities such as Groningen or Hoorn as well, although the numbers must have been minimal.¹² In comparison with France and England, the black presence was rather small.¹³

What was the legal status of those coming from the colonies? Again, we find the presence of few free blacks amongst those going to the metropolis (for Surinam, 74 between 1729 and 1781 according to Oostindie), and a majority of these free black people stayed in the metropolis.

The question as to their personal status in the United Provinces is much harder to answer. In the previous chapter, we have seen how there was a strong freedom tradition in the Low Countries. Unfortunately, we have very few cases that tell us something about the slave’s legal status in the Dutch Republic. As for France and England, this partially has to do with the relative well-being of the slave’s situation in the United Provinces vis-à-vis the lot of most plantation slaves, as well as the enslaver’s obvious position of power. This, together with the fear many must have had for a forced return to the Dutch Indies, limited the slave’s incentives to petition the courts. In contrast to France and England, there were also fewer slaves coming to the metropolis and little evidence of networks of free blacks in the eighteenth century who could help their enslaved colleagues. Next to that, much research on blacks in court cases is still in the making. As a result, recent scholars still turn to a combination of notarial deeds and inventories, passenger lists, incidental court cases and even paintings and drawings to learn more about black people in the United Provinces during the eighteenth century.¹⁶ In that sense, conclusions from this part are more tentative than they are for England or France. For the period before 1734, I have not been able to find any court cases myself, and I will draw on secondary sources to try and explain the slave’s legal status in the United Provinces up to that point. After that date, we do know something about the way in which courts dealt with stowaways. Next to that, the Dutch followed the French example by making legislation on the issue through a Placaet in 1776. This allowed masters to send their slaves to the metropolis, albeit under certain conditions.¹⁷ Likewise, scarce material from the nineteenth century gives an indication of the relationship between the freedom principle and black slavery.