There are few European countries that do not have a historical link to slavery. Sometimes this was direct through colonisation and the slave trade, as well as through production of goods, finance, and just general trade. This means, of course, that institutions such as their universities often have a link to the institution of slavery and the practice of enslavement. Sometimes they have investigated this, stimulated by current awareness. How they have done so has varied. The University of Glasgow, for example, has done some impressive work.
Members of the Law School of the University of Utrecht (the favoured place in the Netherlands for Scots to study law between ca. 1680 and 1750) have just published Sol iustitiae setting? The Utrecht Law School and its Relation to Slavery, edited by J. M. Milo, J. A. Fraser, B. N. McGonigle Leyh and E. G. D. van Jongen. With a foreword by the Chair of the National Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery and its Legacy, there are chapters on slavery in the work of Dutch law professors, the tacit acceptance of slavery in Dutch law, the issue of reparations, and the need to disrupt the silence. As in Britain and France, emancipation involved compensation to the slave owners, when enslavement was finally abolished in 1863 in the Dutch colonies. As most readers of this Blog will know, the British compensation records have proved a rich historical resource with the wonderful work developed and co-ordinated at UCL. One chapter here explores the compensation paid to individual with links to the University of Utrecht. The research of David Alston shows that the Dutch government compensated the English and Welsh owners for 412 enslaved individuals held in Suriname but compensated the Scots for 998. But these figures only apply to those resident in the British isles. Alston has observed that Hugh Wright, a Scotsman resident in Paramaribo in Suriname, but whose wife lived in Edinburgh, was compensated for no fewer than 1,709 slaves. The Scots, like the Dutch, were much involved.
Details of this fascinating study may be found here.
