Micro-Global Histories of Slavery: Sources and Approaches
We warmly invite you to join the next instalment of monthly seminar series Micro-Global Histories of Slavery: Sources and Approaches, featuring Miguel Rodrigues (International Institute for Social History) who will give a talk titled Spiritual Salvation, Enslavement, and Creolization: The Formation of Colonial Societies in the West African Archipelagos of Cape Verde and São Tomé (16th–17th Centuries).
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
You can find more information on upcoming seminars at our events page.
Practical information
Date 2 December 2025
Time 15:00-17:00
Place IISH, Cruquiusweg 31, Amsterdam
Admission Free, but please send email to Sanne Muurling 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.
Miguel Rodrigues's research focuses on the early modern Iberian slave trade, examining its financial structures, trade networks, and impact on colonial societies across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. He earned his PhD in History from the European University Institute in 2019, with a dissertation centered on the slave trade from colonial Angola to Spanish America. He has held research positions at Lancaster University, where he studied the slaving accounts of the South Sea Company, and at NOVA University’s ERC project VINCULUM, which mapped Portuguese imperial entails and their relationship to slavery and creolization in Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the International Institute of Social History, working on the Portuguese and Spanish slave trade in Asia.
