The Servus project. Reception of Roman law outside Europe

What happened when Roman law—crafted for citizens and slaves of the ancient world—was revived to justify colonial domination centuries later? In this episode, we explore how early modern thinkers like Hugo Grotius reinterpreted Roman legal categories to structure Dutch imperial rule, and how these ideas took shape in the colonial reality of Curaçao. Legal historians Jacob Giltaij and Christine Mertens (University of Amsterdam) discuss their project Servus, which traces the global afterlife of the Roman servus, uncovering how concepts born in Antiquity continued to define freedom, subjection, and race across the Atlantic world.