Labouring bodies: Dirk Valkenburg’s Gathering of Enslaved People on One of Jonas Witsen’s Plantations in Suriname in context

This essay situates Dirk Valkenburg's extraordinary painting, 'Gathering of Enslaved People on one of the Plantations of Jonas Witsen in Suriname' within a broad pan-European visual context across the course of the eighteenth century. Steeping the work within the politics of slavery and abolition across empires, it asks what role the picture might have played, particularly with regards to the rise of neo-natalist policies and practices.