Not Free: A Comparison of the Evolution of Anglophone and Dutch Arguments about Slavery, c.1775-1860

As European governments are increasingly struggling with their colonial past, and with modern slavery, we urgently need to improve our understanding of the debates about slavery which took place between the late eighteenth century and c.1860, when the last major western colonial empires abolished slavery. Existing accounts of these debates tend to be based on an unduly restricted analysis of what it means for slaves to lack personal liberty. As a result, these accounts underestimate the extent to which the concepts of liberty and slavery (no less than the legitimacy of slavery) became subjects of debate. Building on recent advances in political theory, and focusing on the British and Dutch slavery debates, NotFree isolates different understandings of the concepts of liberty and slavery, and develops a highly original account of the changing structure of arguments about slavery. This will supplement the recent cultural turn in slavery studies (thereby reshaping the field) by making it clear that any study of abolitionism needs to take account of the changing meaning of the concept of slavery. By examining the connections between the slavery debates and political traditions of thinking about liberty, NotFree also integrates the history of political thought and slavery studies. Finally, by employing a comparative approach, NotFree uncovers what was distinctive about British and Dutch thinking about liberty and slavery. Revising our understanding of these debates helps to deal with contemporary legacies of slavery. First, NotFree promotes a self-critical understanding of arguments that were characteristic of an ugly phase in the history of our Western cultures. Second, NotFree excavates neglected views of how unfreedom is generated. By doing so, it enables us (in line with the research priorities of Horizon Europe, and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, art. 5) better to recognise, and hence to combat, inequality arising from enslavement in the contemporary world.