Sodomitical outlaws in the VOC colonial encounter
We warmly invite you to join the next gathering of the monthly seminar series Micro-Global Histories of Slavery: Sources and Approaches with River Baars (SOAS, University of London) who will give a talk titled Sodomitical outlaws in the VOC colonial encounter.
In Dutch Queer history, the origins of homosexual subjecthood are usually traced back to the mass gay prosecutions in the Dutch Republic in 1730. However, this project discusses how the Dutch began to regulate sexuality much earlier and for a specific purpose in the East Indian colonial encounter. Through dozens of sodomy trials on ships, at trading posts and in its colonial settlements, the Dutch East India Company constructed a strict 'white, cis-heterosexual' Protestant ideal in the service of its for-profit colonial enterprise. The Company used this ideal to 'other' the various Asian societies it sought to exploit and massacre, but also to discipline its own labour force. By the end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, this prosecutorial practice had 'boomeranged' back to Europe via the Cape and London, reaching the Dutch metropolis. There, it was a contributing factor to the mass 'gay panic' of 1730, during which more than 300 men were prosecuted, over 70 were executed, and hundreds fled the Republic. We examine the 'enclosure' of sex and the construction of the sexual subject in relation to the transition to capitalism, which has implications for how we conceive of and fight for liberation today.
Practical information
Date 20 January 2026
Time 13:00-14:30
Place IISH, Cruquiusweg 31, Amsterdam
Admission Free, but please send email to Sanne Muurling (Sanne.muurling@iisg.nl) if you plan to attend. Online participation via Zoom is also possible. Let us know in your registration email if you would like to receive the Zoom link.
You can find more information on upcoming seminars at the events page on voices.iisg.nl.
River Baars is a Reader at SOAS, University of London, and co-director of the Centre for Law and Social Change. They work on the role of law in society using queer and Marxist theory, with a focus on how law produces gendered, sexualised and racialised subjects in the service of capital. Their current research, including work in the Dutch East India Company archives, examines the regulation of sodomy and sexuality during the VOC period as part of a broader historical-materialist analysis of colonial capitalism. They are also the author of The Corporation, Law and Capitalism (2019).
About the Seminar Series Micro-Global Histories of Slavery: Sources and Approaches
A global turn in slavery studies urges us to bring together the study of histories of slavery from across the globe, from Asia to the Atlantic, from local regimes of slavery to the impact of colonial slave trade and slavery.
Linked to the combined research team of slavery projects at the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam) and Radboud University (Nijmegen), this seminar aims to further critical reflections of sources and approaches for the study micro-global histories of slavery. We invite scholars to share insights, questions and ideas that are grounded in research practice and experiences with colonial and other or vernacular sources. Discussing sources, research practices and methodologies thus serves as a way to further develop the practice of micro-global histories of slavery.
The seminar series is organized by a coalition of research and data projects at the IISH and the RU
- Voices of Resistance: A Global Micro-Historical Approach to Enslavement across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean;
- Resisting Enslavement: A Global Historical Approach to Slavery in the Dutch Atlantic and Asian Empire (1620-1815);
- The Global Business of Slave Trade: Patterns, Actors and Gains in the Early Modern Dutch and Iberian Slave Trade and
- Exploring Slave Trade in Asia
