An Intra-Caribbean Slave Movement Network : Export of Enslaved People from Curaçao 1847-1856
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2023-10-23
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en
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The export requests and slave registers of Curaçao provide a snapshots of a part of enslaved life that is rarely studied, the possibility to be sold to a different colony. This thesis investigated the export requests slave owners wrote to obtain permission from the local authorities to export their enslaved property. These requests had never been studied before. The main objective of this research was to gain more insight into the slave movement networks that evolved around enslaved people who left the island. Who were these enslaved persons, where were they sent and who sent and took them to their destination? Additionally, these new sources are compared and contrasted to slave registers, which also registered export to foreign colonies, to gain more insight into the network that guarded these movements, and the sales of enslaved persons that often preceded their exportation. By combining quantitative and qualitative approaches this paper aims to gain more insight into an under researched aspect of enslaved life in the Dutch Caribbean. Academic research has previously focused on Curaçao’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, but what role did slave export have on the island decades after the trade in African captives had been abolished? Enslaved people could be transported or sold abroad at any given time in their lives, something that had been part and parcel of enslaved life on Curaçao during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. This research examines the network of slave movements that were tied to legal slave export in the 1847-1856 period through a unique combination of methods.
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Faculteit der Letteren