This dissertation examines the evolution of colonial land tenure in the former Dutch colonies of New Netherland, the Cape, and Sri Lanka. In particular, it explores how the structural organisation of land tenure enabled individuals existing on the margins of colonial society, such as formerly enslaved people, to become prosperous landowners - a position largely unattainable in most other contemporary European colonies. Drawing on material from multi-sited archives, including title deeds and official correspondence, the dissertation demonstrates that the participation of formerly enslaved people in Dutch colonial landholding systems was neither inevitable nor static, but rather developed over time through a combination of endogenous and exogenous processes. More significantly, this phenomenon was not confined to a single colony, but emerged, often unintentionally, across multiple regions of the Dutch Empire.
Paul Phillip van der Linde (1996) is a social and economic historian specialising in the early modern Dutch Empire. He completed his B.A. in History, English Literature, and Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2018, followed by a B.A. Honours degree, awarded cum laude, in 2019. After graduating, he worked as an archival conservationist at the Brenthurst Library. In 2021, he commenced his M.A. at the University of Cape Town under the supervision of Professor Emeritus Nigel Penn, graduating cum laude in 2022. After submitting his PhD dissertation in January 2025, he was appointed as a postdoctoral fellow on the project Economies of Trust: A New Digital Infrastructure on the Urban Poor in the Cape Colony (2025–2028).