These are exciting times for research into colonial slavery. For a long time, slavery has primarily been viewed as an economic activity, because the colonial archives described people in slavery primarily as property, merchandise, and workers. This is now changing due to modern digitization techniques and the use of many volunteers, who make colonial archives searchable online on a large scale. This is good news for people looking for ancestors in slavery, but also for science.

Finally, it is possible to connect all the individual entries of people in archives. This provides new stories and surprising insights into the history of slavery and colonialism. Insights that show that people in slavery were engaged, active and entrepreneurial. They weren't just the helpless and defenseless people as they've been seen so far.

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Ten years ago, historian Dr. Coen van Galen of Radboud University in Nijmegen started a campaign to bring Suriname's slave registers online. This resulted in the Historical Database of the Suriname and the Caribbean (HDSC) project. This project tries to reveal the human story behind colonialism and slavery. In his lecture, he shows what slavery meant for the people who had to endure it and how colonialism and slavery worked to Deventer. This period is no longer a thing of a long time ago and far away, but part of our shared history.

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Live music is provided by Dubio and moderator is Lineke Tak.

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