Multiple Crossings: The Lives of Two African Men in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Atlantic

FAIN: FEL-281719-22

Marjoleine Kars
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD 21250-0001)

Research and writing leading to a book that reconstructs the biography two West African men who were forcibly uprooted from their communities in the mid-1740s and shipped to the Dutch colony of Berbice, and who played a pivotal role in the slave rebellion that erupted there in 1763-1764.

My project is a biography of two highly mobile African men, Accara and Gousarie, who were caught up in Dutch slavery and colonialism during the Age of Revolution. Their lives were characterized by remarkable mobility and fluidity, both geographically and with respect to legal status, identity, and positionality. They crossed the Atlantic multiple times, experiencing a shift in status and fortunes each time. They fought an armed war in Berbice to emancipate themselves from slavery but they gained freedom only because they betrayed their comrades. After serving as drummers in the Dutch Republic, they joined the Dutch in fighting Maroons (self-liberated Africans living in the hinterlands) in Suriname. I want to tell the pair’s remarkable stories in order to think about how people can be simultaneously victims, perpetrators, resisters, and collaborators, and what that means for our understanding of Atlantic slavery, as well as, perhaps, other human atrocities.

Associated Products

"Kolonialisme, slavernij en slavenhandel in Berbice, Demerara en Essequibo," (Book Section)
Title: "Kolonialisme, slavernij en slavenhandel in Berbice, Demerara en Essequibo,"
Author: Marjoleine Kars
Editor: Rose Mary Allen
Editor: Esther Captain
Editor: Matthias van Rossum
Editor: Urwin Vyent
Abstract: Summary:"Staat en slavernij' laat zien hoe de Nederlandse staat en haar voorlopers betrokken waren bij het koloniale slavernijverleden. Het beschrijft hoe verschillende betrokkenen, zoals slaafgemaakten, bestuurders en ondernemers in de metropool en in de gekoloniseerde samenlevingen, hiermee omgingen. Aan de hand van actuele kwesties bespreken ruim dertig auteurs de doorwerkingen van het slavernijverleden, slavernij als systeem in de negentiende en twintigste eeuw, de omvang ervan wereldwijd en de vorming van belangen bij slavernij en kolonialisme sinds de zestiende eeuw. 'Staat en slavernij' roept de huidige vertegenwoordigers van de Nederlandse staat in het herdenkingsjaar 2023 op om ruimte te maken voor voortgaande dialoog en de mogelijkheid van herstel."-
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://search.worldcat.org/title/1377390226
Publisher: Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep
Book Title: Staat en Slavernij: Het Nederlandse koloniale slavernijverleden en zijn doorwerkingen
ISBN: 9789025316617

---