Shrewd Sirens of Humanity

the changing shape of pro-slavery arguments in the Netherlands (1789-1814)

Resumo

One of the puzzling questions about the formal Dutch abolition of the slavetrade in 1814 is why a state that was so committed to maintaining slavery in its
Empire did not put up any open resistance to the enforced closing of the trade that fed
it. The explanations that historians have given so far for this paradox focus mainly on
circumstances within the Netherlands, highlighting the pre-1800 decline of the role of
Dutch traders in the African slave-trade, the absence of a popular abolitionist
movement, and the all-overriding focus within elite-debates on the question of
economic decline. This article argues that the (often partial) advanced made by
abolitionism internationally did have a pronounced influence on the course of Dutch
debates. This can be seen not only from the pronouncements by a small minority that
advocated abolition, but also in the arguments produced by the proponents of a
continuation of slavery. Careful examination of the three key debates about the
question that took place in 1789-1791, 1797 and around 1818 can show how among
dominant circles within the Dutch state a new ideology gradually took hold that
combined verbal concessions to abolitionist arguments and a grinding
acknowledgement of the inevitability of slave-trade abolition with a long-term
perspective for prolonging slave-based colonial production in the West-Indies.