On 31 December 1737, the slave ship Leusden shipwrecked off the coast of Suriname. As the ship sank, the captain ordered his crew to lock 664 abducted African peoples aboard into the hold. Although the records tell us this is the largest recorded massacre in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, the mass murder has remained but a footnote in the archive. This video essay seeks to attend to the lives taken and surviving in the wake of the Leusden. Although it is impossible to attend to the loss on the Leusden, this video essay insists on working through and thinking with this impossibility. In doing so, I am forever indebted to the works of Leo Balai, Dionne Brand, Hazel Carby, Marisa J. Fuentes, Édouard Glissant, Saidiya Hartman, Nancy Jouwe, Tiffany Lethabo King, Anton de Kom, Egbert Alejandro Martina, Katherine McKittrick, Cynthia McLeod, Jennifer Morgan, Fred Moten, Kwame Nimako, M. NourbeSe Philip, Cedric Robinson, Walter Rodney, Christina Sharpe, Stephanie Smallwood, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, Jennifer Tosch, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Gloria Wekker, Glenn Willemsen, Eric Williams and Sylvia Wynter. This piece originally emerged as an academic essay. With this work I seek to shore up against the limitations of the academic form in the wake of the Leusden massacre. The work is ongoing.

Any shortcomings are my own…