
On 1 July 1863, the Netherlands formally abolished slavery in Suriname and the former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean by means of the Emancipatiewet (Emancipation Act). This day is celebrated and commemorated as Keti Koti (meaning 'broken chains' in Sranantongo) or Emancipation Day. In the Netherlands, the annual National Commemoration of the Dutch slavery past takes place in the Oosterpark in Amsterdam.
This year's ceremony will also mark the beginning of the Slavery Past Commemoration Year. On the occasion of this commemorative year, the library has compiled a selection of books on historical slavery as well as decolonization and law.
- Erkenning, excuses en herstel / Arjen van Rijn, Bastiaan Rijpkema, Glenn Thodรฉ
- Staat en slavernij: het Nederlandse koloniale slavernijverleden en zijn doorwerkingen / Rose Mary Allen, Esther Captain, Matthias van Rossum, Urwin Vyent (red.)
- We slaves of Suriname / Anton de Kom (Dutch edition: Wij slaven van Suriname)
- Postcolonial memory in the Netherlands: meaningful voices, meaningful silences / Gerlov van Engelenhoven
- Freedom, justice, and decolonization / Lewis R. Gordon (e-book)
- Decolonization, self-determination, and the rise of global human rights politics / edited by A. Dirk Moses, Marco Duranti, Roland Burke
- Decolonizing human rights / Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim
- Decolonising international law: development, economic growth, and the politics of universality / Sundhya Pahuja (e-book)
- Decolonizing law: Indigenous, third world and settler perspectives / Sujith Xavier, Beverley Jacobs, Valarie Waboose, Jeffery G. Hewitt and Amar Bhatia (ed.)
- Decolonizing international relations / Branwen Gruffydd Jones (ed.)
- Decolonizing Enlightenment: transnational justice, human rights and democracy in a postcolonial world / Nikita Dhawan (ed.) (e-book)
- Empire, incorporated: the corporations that built British colonialism / Philip J. Stern (e-book)
- The eight: the Lemmon Slave Case and the fight for freedom / Albert M. Rosenblatt
- The Princeton fugitive slave: the trials of James Collins Johnson / Lolita Buckner Inniss
- Race, nation, and capital in the modern world: the nexus of inequality / Philip Yale Nicholson
- Nothing more than freedom: the failure of abolition in American law / Giuliana Perrone
