To what extent did the Netherlands grow rich from the Transatlantic slave trade? In his dissertation 'Walcherse Ketens', Gerhard de Kok looks at Vlissingen and Middelburg, the most important slave trade cities in the Netherlands during the second half of the 18th century. It turns out that, although…

When many people think of slavery, they think of the translatlantic trade that took place between Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean.

What did it mean to be enslaved in in the Indian Ocean world in the 18th and 19th centuries? Over the last decades, historians have mined French, British, Portuguese and Dutch records for quantitative data on the European slave trade. This project focuses on the experience of being a slave and seeks…

Being a Slave brings together scholars and writers who try to come to terms with the histories and legacies of European slavery in the Indian Ocean.

For hundreds of years, the island of Sri Lanka was a crucial stopover for people and goods in the Indian Ocean. For the Dutch East India Company, it was also a crossroads in the Indian Ocean slave trade. Slavery was present in multiple forms in Sri Lanka—then Ceylon—when the British conquered the island…

How did the slave peculium function in the socio-legal context of the Roman Empire?

This project applies a social-historical approach to examine and contrast various groups of African-American slave refugees who sought freedom within North America between 1800 and 1860. It innovatively distinguishes between different “spaces of freedom” for runaway slaves, namely sites of formal, semi-formal,…

‘In recent publications about the slave trade the same rhetorical weapons are used as two centuries ago in the battle for the abolition of the British slave trade. It is a topic fraught with emotions, but that should not prevent historians from being as careful and impartial as possible in their research,’…

The idea that prejudices about the (Middle)-East came to be during the colonisation of North-Africa in the 19th century is false. Mounir el-Badri wrote a cum laude bachelor thesis about orientalist judgments with which 18th century slaves in Morocco much earlier characterised their captors with.

The Pioneer Years of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, 1818-1840

Creating a framework to assess the sustainability of fish farms which will set sustainability standards and give consumers information about the the sustainability and safety of their seafood.

In Slaving Zones: Cultural Identities, Ideologies, and Institutions in the Evolution of Global Slavery, fourteen authors—including both world-leading and emerging historians of slavery—engage with the ‘Slaving Zones’ theory.

How did slaves in the eighteenth century manage to empower themselves and their kin, and why did this become all the more difficult in the nineteenth century?

The relationship between States and foreign corporations are regulated by international economic law and international investment law in particular. Any disputes between States and foreign corporations must therefore also be solved by reference to this body of public international law, for example when…

SLAVES TO THE SYSTEM: Locating Responsibility for Forced Expatriate Labour Practices by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)

MIDDELBURG/GENEVA – The president of the United Nations Human Rights Council has invited the Zeeland Archives from the Netherlands, to Geneva on March 20th in order to present its project about the historical slave voyage aboard The Unity (1761-1763).

In the series 'PhD in the Picture', our PhD students tell us all about their research: what are their findings? How did they do it, and how does their research touch upon hot topics in our society today?

This book published by Oxford University Press discusses religion and trade in world history.

This book explores the links between maritime trading networks around Europe, from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the North and Baltic Seas.

Citizens’s attitudes towards trade are not only about the (perceived) economic effect. Commerce also has a variety of security implications. Employing an original experiment, political scientists Matthew DiGiuseppe (Leiden University) and Katja Kleinberg (Binghamton University) demonstrate that security…

In the absence of stringent and coordinated international action, States might seek alternatives to promote environmental protection unilaterally.

On 21 February 2019, Ruben Zandvliet defended his thesis 'Trade, Investment and Labour: Interactions in International Law'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. N.J. Schrijver.

Painstaking research in Dutch and Portuguese archive materials, so far poorly assessed on the topic of social relations, reveals intense and intricate associations between different European individuals both in terms of ethnicity and social strata.

PhD Defence

Lecture

This research project addresses an unexplored dimension of historical conflict resolution: the dynamics of strategic choices made by traders engaged in foreign trade in the city of Danzig (Gdansk) c. 1450-1580, a Hanseatic city under the Polish Crown.

Dr. Gruni published an article on the impact on sustainable development in the EU Common Commercial Policy of recent Opinion 2/15 CJEU on the Global Trade and Customs Journal.

The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resista…

Conference

The role of transnational, non-institutional networks in the opening up of British transatlantic trade at the end of the 17th/beginning of the 18th century

Individual traders should be at the forefront of the study of early modern world trade rather than institutions such as states and companies, argues Professor of Global Economic Networks Cátia Antunes. Inaugural lecture on 9 June.

Arts and Culture, Book launch

Which traits and/or trade-offs determine benefits of being deciduous or evergreen?

Afro-American slaves in the 19th century did not always flee to the north of the United States, according to historical research. Most of the slaves who fled remained in the southern states and posed as free coloured people. This is the conclusion that Professor Damian Pargas from Leiden University…

An interesting Ottoman History podcast that deals with the slave trade and the African Diaspora in Ottoman Izmir.

The dental remains of 25 enslaved Africans from the site of Newton's Plantation, on Barbados, were subjected to isotope analysis. Previous research had pointed out that the locally born individuals were subjected to high concentrations of lead poisoning. A new study, done by Dr Jason Laffoon among others…

The transatlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries represents one of the most traumatic chapters in history and is now widely recognised as a crime against humanity. EUROTAST is a new European-funded research network that will bring together an unprecedented range of researchers to examine…

After Wallonia’s veto on CETA, a group of 60 academics has come out to defend the European decision-making process in trade policy.

Very few treaties that are negotiated by the EU, have triggered such resistance as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). From chlorinated chicken to a lack of democracy and transparency: emotions on TTIP run high. For that reason, the conference “TTIP: an EU perspective on global…

Tensions ran high last week after China published a list on Wednesday of $50 billion in American products that would be hit by tariffs; a direct response to the United States' decision to implement $50 billion of tariffs on Chinese products. Could this be the start of a new trade war? And if so, what…

The journey of sugar from east to west

International trade plays a critical role in global food security, with global consumption having highly localized environmental impacts.

Julie Svalastog is one of the four PhDs in Cátia Antunes’ ERC Research Project 'Fighting Monopolies'.

Marco Bronckers, professor for trade law at the Europa Institute at Leiden University, is cited by POLITICO as one of the initiators for a new approach to the ratification of EU trade deals.

Colonial and Global History 1200-present explores the global circulation of people, goods and ideas during early-modern and modern times. Taking a comparative perspective, this program investigates the development of transnational and transcontinental connections and their impact on the making of identities,…