At the Point of Departure: Migration, Mobility, and Freedom in the Dutch Atlantic

For many free Black people in the Dutch Atlantic World, migration and mobility were matters of life and death. Migration enabled free Black people to seek opportunity, find family, and evade would-be enslavers. I argue that African and African-descended migrants used the notarial office as a space in which to assert their personhood, create families, and shape political and social identities for themselves on both sides of the Atlantic. In notarial offices, free Black people could draw up contracts, compose wills, and give testimonies that were witnessed and legitimized by a stroke of the notary’s pen. In conversation with scholars of the Dutch Atlantic like Andrea Mosterman and Susanah Romney, who have examined the power of spatial control and intimate ties, respectively, my work advances our understanding of the experiences of free Black people in the Dutch Atlantic World.

My research reveals that free Black people in the Dutch Atlantic tended to be highly mobile, with some crossing the Atlantic Ocean multiple times in the span of a few years. With relatively limited social capital, marginalized migrants like free Black people depended on notaries to help verify their free status, protect their assets, and codify their social ties to other people. In the face of dangerous and uncertain transatlantic journeys, having written proof of one’s assets, familial bonds, or emancipated status were of paramount importance. Thus, the notary’s office became a particularly important – and fraught – space for free Black migrants. I examine how they used notaries strategically before and after setting out on transatlantic voyages. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, wills, and contracts, this paper brings an innovative new perspective to questions of exclusion and belonging, enslavement and freedom, and identity and migration in the Atlantic World.