The Dutch slavery and colonization DNA. A call to engage in self-examination

This article answers the question whether there is a Dutch slavery and colonisation DNA. After all, the Netherlands has centuries of experience (approximately three and a half centuries) with colonisation (including occupation, wars and genocide, rearrangement of land and population, plundering and theft), trade in enslaved people (the Atlantic route: Europe, Africa, North and South America) and trade in the products of these enslaved people. The Netherlands has colonised large parts of the world. This was a large part of Asia, including the Indonesian archipelago, Malaysia, Ceylon, Taiwan and New Guinea, large parts of the continent Africa, including Madagascar, Mozambique, Cape of Good Hope, Luanda, Sao Tome, Fort Elmina etc., and North (New York) and South America (including Brazil, Dejima, Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles). It is a fact that human conditions and circumstances influence the human DNA that is passed on to posterity. This goes through the mechanism of methylation. This mechanism is used by cells in the human body to put genes in the "off" position. Human conditions and circumstances are abstractly formulated, poverty, hunger, disasters and wars. These are also horrors that accompanied slavery and colonisation. The Dutch, as slave traders, plantation owners, occupiers of lands, soldiers, merchants, captains and sailors, and administrators and their staff, have had centuries of experience with practising atrocities. Because those experiences are translated into the DNA of posterity, it is understandable that Dutch authorities misbehave towards immigrants and refugees. Those institutions are political leaders, governmental institutions, such as the tax authorities and youth welfare, and also companies that do their utmost to avoid taking on immigrants. This behaviour is called institutional colour and black racism.

United Kingdom Policy Towards Universal Jurisdiction Since the Post-War Period

From the 17th century onwards, Britain played a leading role in asserting the application of the universality principle to international piracy, the first crime to which the principle applied. Thereafter, during the quest for abolition, it exercised universality over slave traders at sea. With the exercise of universal jurisdiction over atrocity crimes in the post-War period there was a notable shift in the UK position to the principle. This article traces the history of UK policy towards the application of the universality principle to atrocity crimes since wwii. Using archival research from the UK National Archives and the travaux préparatoires to international treaties, it analyses UK policy towards the inclusion of universal jurisdiction in international treaties concerning atrocity crimes. It argues that historically, the UK supported the application of the principle to atrocity crimes committed during an international armed conflict, as this position supported its interests. The nexus between universal jurisdiction and international armed conflict shielded colonial abuses from prosecution in foreign courts. Once the colonial period had come to an end, there was a shift in UK support for the inclusion of universal jurisdiction in international treaties, which is evident since the negotiation of uncat and the Rome Statute.

Defining Regions of Pre-Colonial Africa: A Controlled Vocabulary for Linking Open-Source Data in Digital History Projects

Regionalizing pre-colonial Africa aids in the collection and interpretation of primary sources as data for further analysis. This article includes a map with six broad regions and 34 sub-regions, which form a controlled vocabulary within which researchers may geographically organize and classify disparate pieces of information related to Africa’s past. In computational terms, the proposed African regions serve as data containers in order to consolidate, link, and disseminate research among a growing trend in digital humanities projects related to the history of the African diasporas before c. 1900. Our naming of regions aims to avoid terminologies derived from European slave traders, colonialism, and modern-day countries.

Cabeças: disseminação, desigualdade e concentração no mercado de cativos (Luanda, c. 1798-1804)

Based on baptismal parish records, this paper analyses the relative market share between slave traders in Luanda from 1798 to 1804. In the context of high Atlantic demand for slaves, the baptism of cabeças (term used to refer to adult slaves destined for sale) show that the market was at the same time open and concentrated. Alongside many small-scale merchants, that sold a few slaves at a time, an extremely reduced number of large-scale traders dominated the trade in people. However, this select group of nearly monopolistic traders was heterogeneous, since it was composed of different kinds of people, including vessel captains, members of the Luanda elite and men from other parts of the Portuguese monarchy (Brazil and Portugal). The conclusion reached is that the intense participation of different social groups in the business meant that the market for captives had wide political, moral and social support.

Prospects and Problems of the Use of New Order PMSC in East Africa

In recent decades, some researchers and experts have written a lot about the fact that the monopoly of nation-states on external violence is gradually disappearing, and non-state entities are becoming more and more proactive, challenging the state. Among these actors are criminal groups, underground trade networks, smugglers, slave traders, drug traffickers, gun runners, terrorist groups, pirates. All of them pose so-called non-traditional threats and challenges to states. In the context of the new Cold War, their activities are intensifying. This article is devoted to the analysis of the situation in the coastal waters of East Africa, one of the so-called gray zones, where non-state shadow actors are especially active. The authors investigate the capabilities of the East African states to withstand non-traditional maritime challenges and threats and come to the conclusion that these states are unable to cope on their own. The great powers, on the other hand, are focused on confronting each other and have no capacity to divert forces for operations to maintain order in distant regions. The authors believe that in these conditions, Russia is faced with new opportunities: it can create and send to the region private maritime security companies of a new type, New Order PMSC, which will be financed through a contract with the client state and at the same time will help to strengthen Russia's influence. Unlike ordinary PMSCs, they are not interested in dragging out the conflict, their goal is to eliminate hotbeds of danger and prepare the coast guard forces of client states to deal with potential threats. The activities of these companies will be equally beneficial to the states of East Africa and Russia. The authors propose an approximate composition of such PMSCs, outline the goals and objectives they face, and make certain that with the help of relatively low costs, Russia can improve the effectiveness of its policy in the region.

Slave Trade Dynamics in Abbasid Egypt: The Papyrological Evidence

This article discusses the commercial, socio-economic and legal dynamics of slave trading in Egypt on the basis of papyri from the AH third-fourth/ninth-tenth centuries CE. Particular focus is given to the activities of slavers, the networks of professional slave traders, the socio-economics of slave acquisition, and commercial dynamics at slave markets. Much of the discussion draws on the contents of five contemporary papyrus documents that are presented, translated and annotated in the appendix.