“Nos esclaves” : a podcast with Izabel Barros and Bernhard Schär

Izabel Barros and Bernhard C. Schär were contributors to this podcast series on Switzerland’s role in the transatlantic and Asian slave trade. The podcast series illuminates the lesser-known fact that modern Switzerland was the last European nation to defend slavery until the 1860s. Furthermore, it reveals that even one of its ‘founding fathers’ in 1848 had owned an enslaved woman in the Dutch Indies and fathered three children with her.

In episode 4, Izabel provides a detailed account of the exploitation of African women’s bodies as a crucial element of racial capitalism. She also highlights the pivotal role played by Swiss plantation owners in 19th-century Brazil in this system. In episode 6, Bernhard C. Schär elucidates how the son of an enslaved woman from Borneo and a Swiss colonial mercenary officer became one of the first politicians of colour in modern Switzerland at a time when the Swiss national parliament and government were engaged in debate regarding the right of Swiss plantation owners in Brazil to own enslaved people.