ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relation between the elephant and the idea of slavery in the Dutch Empire of the early modern period. The Dutch had access to elephants in Ceylon, where trading settlements of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) were located. This chapter shows how the discourse of slavery was expressed, negotiated, and criticised through the Dutch knowledge and management of elephants. Treatises on the elephant published in the Dutch Republic expressed conflicting ideas regarding enslavement when applying the discourse of slavery to the elephant. On the one hand, the elephant was indisposed to bondage and servitude. On the other hand, it was compliant and loyal to its master once tamed. This chapter will show that the elephant was part of a spectrum of thinking about slavery. On the one hand, the slave-elephant was both criticised and empathised with when considered as a rational and freedom-loving being very close to the human. On the other hand, the slave-elephant was cherished due to its strong compliance. It is within this paradox, so this chapter argues, that the early modern idea of slavery hinged upon the ambiguous, contingent line between the human and non-human animals, while also going hand in hand with the abstract qualities of rationality and liberty, which were not monopolised by the human being, but also shared by the elephant.
