Filip Batselé - Liberty, Slavery and the Law in Early Modern Western Europe: Omnes Homines aut Liberi Sunt aut Servi

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In 1777, a family of three enslaved persons petitioned the States General, the most important institution of the Dutch Republic. In their petition, Blondin and his family, who had lived most of their lives on a Suriname plantation, asked the States General to reconsider a previous decision and grant him and his family their freedom. What were the grounds for their claim? The enslaved family believed that, because they had previously been in the Dutch Republic for a short while, they had become personally free. The case of Blondin and his family was not unique. In fact, especially during the eighteenth century, several enslaved persons in the Low Countries, England, France and several other European countries were making the same claim. They and some of their lawyers believed that a freedom principle, which legally entailed that one became free upon touching the soil of a certain country, had saved them from continued slavery. This book traces both the origins and the development of that freedom principle in several jurisdictions, namely England, the Low Countries and France.

This book aims to contribute to a fuller understanding of the legal manifestations of slavery. While the field has been dominated, understandably so given the numbers, by the legal manifestations of the Atlantic slave trade in the New World, it has always been clear that metropolis and colony were closely connected with one another. A growing number of scholars have become interested in the presence of enslaved persons on European soil. This book aims to both synthesize and supplement that growing body of literature.

Over the years, European countries have wrestled with their colonial past and involvement in the slave trade. To name but a few examples, in the wake of US universities, several British universities have started enquiring into their involvement in the slave trade and considered if something can and should be done to compensate for past gains they had derived therefrom. Likewise, closer to my own home, the Netherlands has continued to debate the role the slave trade had for the Dutch Republic. For example, a very recent report concluded that 5.2% of the Republics GDP in 1770 was fueled by the Atlantic slave trade. This and other reports have prompted the difficult questions of apologies and possible compensation by municipal, regional and national authorities. In all these discussions, an argument that is sometimes brought to the fore is the idea that slavery was in the Americas, and that European states themselves had banned the practice of slavery much earlier. This book undoubtedly problematizes that latest contention.