The Legitimacy of Resistance in Dutch Abolitionist Theater

Abstract

This chapter explores the ways in which Dutch authors, thespians, and audiences envisioned slave-led resistance through a comparative examination of Nicolaas Simon van Winter's infinitely popular tragedy Monzongo, of de koningklyke slaaf (1774), the anonymously written De verlossing der slaaven door de Franschen (1794), and Johannes Kisselius’ De blanke en de zwarte (1798). If slave-led opposition in the Atlantic was viciously curbed by white officials, militias, or colonial policies, this chapter will demonstrate that dramatists and spectators alike, despite their antislavery beliefs, disparaged nonwhite protesters and thwarted their role as crucial actors both on and off the (political) stage of 1800. This thwarting contrasted sharply with the violent ways in which the Dutch Patriots sought to overthrow the oligarchic yoke of the Stadtholderate during the Batavian Revolution in the very same decades.