Legacies of bondage: towards a database of Surinamese life courses in a multigenerational perspective (1830-1950)

Legacies of bondage: towards a database of Surinamese life courses in a multigenerational perspective (1830-1950)

Applicant: prof. dr. Jan Kok (Radboud University)

This proposal aims to construct a consolidated database of the population of Suriname between 1830 and 1950. The rich archival sources of Suriname offer the opportunity to combine records on the individual lives of enslaved, bonded labourers and free inhabitants over five or six generations. This makes it possible to study social processes and diversity in a colonial society as well as the repercussions of slavery over multiple generations. This makes this project truly unique.

This digital infrastructure facility will have a major impact on research, because it can be used to answer a wide range of questions from scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences. To make the database accessible for different types of questions we will publish the data in two different formats; 1) transcribed datasets of each individual archival source, which will be useful for genealogists, school projects and qualitative historians, and 2) a database with reconstructed life courses including links to family members, spanning several generations. This project starts from a proven concept, developed for the Surinamese slave registers database which was published in 2018/2019, and will include citizen science.

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