Documentary heritage of the enslaved people of the Dutch Caribbean and their descendants (1816-1969)

The collection consists of archives located in Suriname, Curaçao, St. Maarten, and the Netherlands. It includes mostly slave, manumission and emancipation registers and civil registry documents of freed slaves. The records shed light on the state of compensation received by plantation owners after the abolition of slavery in the Dutch Caribbean in 1863. More specifically, they show the connections between the Dutch, French and British networks in the Caribbean, which formed part of the global network of slavery and slave trade. The documents provide insight into the ways in which slavery and the legal structure behind it shaped the lives of the enslaved people of the Dutch Caribbean as well as their descendants. It is thereby a unique collection of documents that gives us a better understanding of the mechanics behind one of the darkest periods in human history.