'Shrewd Sirens of Humanity': the changing shape of pro-slavery arguments in the Netherlands (1789-1814)

Abstract: One of the puzzling questions about the formal Dutch abolition of the slave-trade in 1814 is why a state that was so committed to maintaining slavery in its Empire did not put up any open resistance to the enforced closing of the trade that fed it. The explanations that historians have given so far for this paradox focus mainly on circumstances within the Netherlands, highlighting the pre-1800 decline of the role of Dutch traders in the African slave-trade, the absence of a popular abolitionist movement, and the all-overriding focus within elite-debates on the question of economic de...