ABSTRACT
What exactly were the university’s ties to slavery? In the preceding text, I have occasionally pointed out some connections with slavery. From a strong Western-colonial superiority perspective, the university was continuously in contact with the ‘Other’ — those who were yet to come to believe in ‘our’ Christian faith and those deemed ‘as yet undeveloped’ in ‘our’ science. This sense of superiority is deeply rooted in (Western) modernity, which had a necessary counterpart in the coloniality of the Other. It is this sense of superiority and slavery that are so uncomfortably closely related. The book Slavernij en de stad Utrecht [Slavery and the City of Utrecht] emphasises that the university educated people who ultimately were part of the elite, often the economic elite, and who were linked, sometimes through shares, to the plantation economy in Suriname and the East Indies, which was based on slavery. A striking example is that of Christiaan Hendrik Trotz, professor of law at Utrecht (1755-1773) and, during his term of office, rector (1757-1758), who was a co-owner of the Georgia plantation in Essequibo (now Guyana).
