What did enslaved people do to gain citizenship rights and what determined their success? By analyzing and linking different archival collections, this project investigates how people in Dutch colonies emancipated over several generations and developed an informal form of citizenship.
We aim to investigate the emergence of this proto-citizenship during slavery and the ways it changed after abolition of slavery. This allows us to better understand why some societies were more successful than others to develop equal citizenship after the abolition of slavery.
More project information will follow soon.
Research team
Karwan Fatah-Black (project leader)
Ramona Negrón (postdoc)
Mary-Anne Nicolaas (PhD)
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Opening lines of the Haitian constitution of 1805, which mention the end of slavery and the outlines of the post-slavery citizenship arrangements.