Preliminary Programme

Labour coercion is typically studied from "within" the labour relations. The last decade has seen the development of a tradition of studying labour coercion from the vantage point of those who exited labour relations illicitly: Runaways, deserters, maroons, prison breakers etc. By studying exit, scholars have uncovered multiple ways in which coercion undergirded labour relations. However, in many cases the empirical traces produced by illicit exits can also be used to map the coercive geographies faced by those who escaped.
This paper presents an empirical examination of such a geography. More specifically it examines the ways prison breakers in eighteenth century Denmark worked their physical and social surroundings in their efforts of autonomy. The paper is rooted in what has become known as micro-spatial history – an approach that adopts the experimental character of microhistorical empirical analysis in combination with an interest in the way spaces were produced, maintained and appropriated through practices. It argues that this approach is eminently suitable for the contextual study of labour coercion. By empirically tracing how autonomy was exercised as well as the conditions of failure, careful reading of the sources allows for a way to identify how coercion unfolded in specific ways that were shaped by bundles of variables, both human and non-human. (Show less)

In 1775 the enslaved Maria complained to the directeur of her plantation just outside of Paramaribo about the circumstances she had to work in. When she approached him, she was pregnant. She said she knew she had been bought to work, but that – in order to work – she also had to eat, and she was not given the time to do so. When she continued explaining she could not manage to do the same work as the other slaves because of her pregnancy, the directeur kicked her in the stomach. That caused her to have a miscarriage. The directeur showed no pity; after three days he asked her why she was not working and he hit her again. This forced Maria to make the ‘wanhoopige resolutie’ to run away into the forest. Maria clearly suffered from bad working conditions and mistreatment. When negotiating with the directeur did not have any effect, she chose to disappear. In similar court records of the Dutch West and East India Companies (WIC & VOC) one can encounter a highly diverse range of men and women that populated the cities of the Dutch empire: Africans, Asians, European settlers, Euro-Africans, Eurasians, in free as well as enslaved positions. On top of that, these court cases are exceptional when compared to other colonial sources, since they are one of the few sources where women like the enslaved Maria are allowed to speak themselves, instead of being described by men. Consequently, they can among others be used to show how women living in the early modern Dutch colonial empire employed various ways to improve their socio-economic position.

This paper wants to compare work strategies and their outcomes of women living in the urban area of Paramaribo and its rural environments. The purpose of this approach is twofold: to examine why some women managed to gain more independence than others, and whether the geographical position of women (in or outside the city) was a decisive factor. Accordingly, the life courses of three types of women occurring in the WIC court records will be analyzed: enslaved women, women of European and women of non-European status. With questions such as ‘How did the work strategies and outcomes of enslaved women in Paramaribo differ from enslaved women on plantations outside of the city?’, this paper wants to show whether and how women took advantage of socio-economic opportunities despite the omnipresent lack of freedom and inequality in colonial contexts such as the colonial city of Paramaribo.

In order to study the outcomes of strategies and potential explanations, this paper will make an attempt to complement the small court-snapshots of the lives of women in Suriname with information from other sources. These include baptism, marriage and funeral registers (DTB-registers) and notarial archives (containing for example testaments and inventories). Women of (non-)European status, free as well as enslaved can be found in these sources, which are essential to reconstruct the social contexts and networks of women and the outcomes of their economic strategies. (Show less)

Filling vacant positions through external hiring or internal promotion has important and varying degrees of performance impact on the organization. This article uses the personnel administrative files preserved by the Dutch United East India Company in the Dutch National Archives to analyze the internal and external resources of captains who were responsible for leading ships between Europe and Asia between 1700 and 1795. The main results showed that the technical performance of those externally hired performed worse than those internally promoted during the first voyage, while organizational performance and financial performance were the opposite. After acquiring VOC-specific knowledge and skills, during the second and subsequent voyages, the performance gap between the two groups became insignificant. In order to explore the mechanism of specialization, this article added the interaction terms of external hiring and the pre-1742 period. It was found that after the VOC carried out professional reforms in skills and management in 1742, the company paid more attention to internal training, thus VOC-specific knowledge and skills become more important, and the internally promoted captain became particularly important. In order to explore the mechanism of loyalty, this article added the interactive terms of external employment and whether the hometown is from the sponsor chamber of the voyage, and found that VOC companies paid more attention to professional skills, and loyalty was not important. In order to explore the promotion mechanism, this article proposes that if the performance gap between the externally hired and internally promoted captains on the first voyage is caused by the VOC-specific knowledge and skills, for those internally hired captains who had a longer term or had more differences with other VOC employees, people with more social connections and other traits would be promoted more easily than those without these traits. (Show less)

This paper aims to explore the presence of black sailors in the French maritime world during the second part of the 18th century. It is apparent that both French and navies at this time of war seem to have had opposite policies with regards to the employment of black sailors as almost none may be found on French warships whereas several examples may be found in the Royal Navy. This paper further explore if the military navy was the rule or the exception in the French maritime world, seeking black sailors, either slaves or freemen, in the maritime activities of the French West Indies and in the islands of Guadeloupe in particular. Finally, the third part of this paper examines the use of black sailors in the French Merchant Navy in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, but also in the Indian Ocean (Show less)