Repertoires of Slavery

Sarah Adams

Repertoires of Slavery

Dutch Theater Between Abolitionism and Colonial Subjection, 1770-1810

Through the lens of a hitherto unstudied repertoire of Dutch abolitionist theatre productions, Repertoires of Slavery prises open the conflicting ideological functions of antislavery discourse within and outside the walls of the theatre and examines the ways in which abolitionist protesters wielded the strife-ridden question of slavery to negotiate the meanings of human rights, subjecthood, and subjection. The book explores how dramatic visions of antislavery provided a site for (re)mediating a white metropolitan—and at times a specifically Dutch—identity. It offers insight into the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century theatrical modes, tropes, and scenarios of racialised subjection and considers them as materials of the “Dutch cultural archive,” or the Dutch “reservoir” of sentiments, knowledge, fantasies, and beliefs about race and slavery that have shaped the dominant sense of the Dutch self up to the present day.
Author

Sarah Adams

Sarah J. Adams holds a Ph.D. in Dutch Literature (Ghent University, 2020). Her postdoctoral project Blackface Burlesques, funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders, investigates the scenarios, tropes, and techniques used to design and represent “Blackness” on the comic stage of the Low Countries before the heyday of minstrel culture.
Title
Repertoires of Slavery
Subtitle
Dutch Theater Between Abolitionism and Colonial Subjection, 1770-1810
Author
Price
€ 129,00 excl. VAT
ISBN
9789463726863
Format
Hardback
Number of pages
258
Language
English
Publication date
Dimensions
15.6 x 23.4 cm
Categories
Cultural Studies
Early Modern Studies
Literary Theory, Criticism, and History
Sociology and Social History
Theatre and Perfomance Arts
Discipline
History, Art History, and Archaeology
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Table of Contents
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Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Table of Content
0. Introduction
1. Dutch Politics, the Slavery-Based Economy, and Theatrical Culture in 1800
2. Suffering Victims: Slavery, Sympathy, and White Self-Glorification
3. Contented Fools: Ridiculing and Re-Commercializing Slavery
4. Black Rebels: Slavery, Human Rights, and the Legitimacy of Resistance
5. Conclusions
Bibliography
Consulted Archives, Collections, and Databases
Literature
Appendix

Reviews and Features

“Adams’s study of abolitionist theater is an important book, which convincingly shows that the white abolitionist movement in the Netherlands upheld a colonizing agenda. It provides a timely counter-narrative that exposes the Dutch performance of anti-Black racism in the past and its impact in the present.”
– Angela Vanhaelen, Eighteenth-Century Studies , Vol. 58, Fall, 2024