Bastiaan D. van der Velden - Publications & Research

My latest research—conducted over the past three years—will be published in February 2026, and I’m excited to share a first glimpse.

This book, which will be available as open access soon, delves into a compelling question at the heart of legal history: how did Roman law shape the lives of enslaved people in the Dutch Republic (1579–1794)? Although Roman law was applicable alongside contemporary legislation, only a carefully selected set of its provisions was applied across the Republic’s diverse territories. Why were some rules adopted while others were deliberately set aside?

To unravel this, the study follows the legal transfer of Roman law in both the metropole and the colonies. It brings fresh insight into the private-law frameworks that governed the lives of enslaved individuals in the Dutch Republic and its overseas domains—from the WIC islands of Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire to the Sociëteit van Suriname and the VOC-run Cape Colony. Throughout the analysis, the 2012 Bellagio–Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery—highlighting ownership-based legal institutions at the core of slavery—serve as an important conceptual guide.

Ultimately, this work reveals not only how legal norms traveled, evolved, and legitimized systems of enslavement, but also how these legal instruments are pivotal to our understanding of slavery’s history today.