Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Dutch Politics, the Slavery-Based Economy, and Theatrical Culture in 1800
- 2 Suffering Victims: Slavery, Sympathy, and White Self-Glorification
- 3 Contented Fools: Ridiculing and Re-Commercializing Slavery
- 4 Black Rebels: Slavery, Human Rights, and the Legitimacy of Resistance
- 5 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Appendix
- Index
1 - Dutch Politics, the Slavery-Based Economy, and Theatrical Culture in 1800
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 November 2023
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Dutch Politics, the Slavery-Based Economy, and Theatrical Culture in 1800
- 2 Suffering Victims: Slavery, Sympathy, and White Self-Glorification
- 3 Contented Fools: Ridiculing and Re-Commercializing Slavery
- 4 Black Rebels: Slavery, Human Rights, and the Legitimacy of Resistance
- 5 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Appendix
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter clarifies some of the specific contexts in which the Dutch “repertoire of slavery” was produced and perceived. The decades around 1800 saw significant political and philosophical change. Inspired by revolutionary principles of freedom, integrity, and equality, people across the globe combatted systems of injustice and oppression. In the Netherlands, the Batavian Revolution led to the establishment of the Batavian Republic and serious discussion of the slavery system in parliament. Colonial oppression was denounced by some representatives, but the supposed profitability of the slavery-based trade, together with racist beliefs, eventually hampered prospects of abolition. The Dutch theater was the most democratic cultural forum of the time and therefore an excellent site to expose brutal realities and discuss alternatives.
Keywords: Dutch trading companies, slavery-based consumption, Batavian Revolution, state-led empire, abolitionism, bourgeois theater
The survey of Repertoires of Slavery spans the decades between 1770 and 1810, a period marked by fundamental political, economic, and ideological change on a global scale. In the Netherlands, these decades generated a recession of the (colonial) economy, the consolidation of bourgeois mentality, and severe political unrest. All of these issues were abundantly discussed in and shaped by Dutch culture which was in itself increasingly politicized. This first chapter will delve into the contexts in which the repertoire was produced, performed, and consumed in order to allow for a better understanding of the analyses in the following three chapters. It first sketches a nonexhaustive overview of how the Dutch, through private and public investors, entered human trafficking and the slavery-based trade in the Atlantic and Asian orbits in the early seventeenth century and continued to benefit from them throughout the eighteenth century. The chapter goes on to describe the Dutch revolutionary period at the turn of the nineteenth century and to examine how it impacted the course of colonial management and slavery politics. The third section then concisely outlines the development and nature of Dutch abolitionist sentiment and slave-led resistance in the overseas territories. A final section turns to the ways in which theatrical culture of the Netherlands in 1800 offered an environment in which a broad audience learned about domestic and colonial affairs through a variety of dramatic genres and looks at how the institution of theater was intrinsically connected to municipal, national, and imperial politics.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Repertoires of SlaveryDutch Theater between Abolitionism and Colonial Subjection, 1770-1810, pp. 29 - 56Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2023