Until recently, slavery and colonial heritage received little attention in Dutch science. The new generation of historians looks at the subject in a different way and with the help of new sources. Opinions are divided, but perspectives are slowly shifting.
Due to the growing discussion about the impact of our slavery past, the Netherlands is forced to reflect on the negative sides of its history. It is no longer enough to dismiss it as a black page of a closed book. Slavery lasted too long for that, it made too many victims and its share in our society was too large.
Ingrained historians
In recent years there has been a clear increase in the number of scientists and disciplines that conduct research into the subject of 'slavery' in an innovative way. This is sometimes diametrically opposed to the ideas of the established order. Take the historians. Leiden professors Henk van der Heijden and Piet Emmer (both retired), for example, have done a great deal of important research into slavery. However, they downplay the impact and atrocities that accompanied it. Emmer nuanced the economic impact of slavery last summer:only one percent of the Dutch would have had something to do with it, he says in the Volkskrant.
Meanwhile, their research results are being overtaken left and right by a new generation of historians. They use previously untapped sources and can conduct large-scale research in recently digitized archive documents. Matthias van Rossum (International Institute of Social History) and Karwan Fatah-Black (Leiden University), for example, looked broader than the slave trade and the profits made from it. In 2012, they showed that the Dutch slave trade did indeed benefit the Dutch economy, if you do not only look at the proceeds of the slaves sold. A lot of money was also made in shipbuilding and supplying the slave ships.
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In addition, Pepijn Brandon (Free University Amsterdam) states that the slave trade was only the supporting branch for the production of coffee and sugar, which was based on slave labor. The profits from the slave trade may not have been great, but gold was made with plantation products. All this contradicts the marginal profit and thus the minor importance of slavery for the Netherlands.
Extent of slavery
Van Rossum has shown in recent research (2015) that slavery did not only occur in the West (Suriname and Caribbean islands) but also in the East. Enslaved people were trafficked by the Dutch East India Company and its employees and forced to work en masse on plantations and mining. By misinterpreting the sources - the VOC also used the word 'servant' when they meant enslaved, while historians later took it literally - a very large group of enslaved people disappeared into obscurity.
The research shows that slave trade in the East was even more extensive than to the West. Downplaying the magnitude and thus the role that slavery played in the lives of the Dutch at the time is based on incorrect myths, according to Brandon in a column:'The myth that slavery was only of marginal significance for the development of the Dutch economy and society, the myth that the enslaved resigned themselves to their fate, and the myth that the abolition of slavery was a triumph for (white) Dutch civilisation.'
On and off the record it is said that old figures and insights about slavery are no longer tenable. Also the ideas about the still elaborating influence on today's society are tilting. Take the appearance of Zwarte Piet. Scientists from various disciplines, such as art historian Elwin Kolfin (University of Amsterdam) and cultural scientist John Helsloot (Meertens Institute) have shown that Piet's appearance is the result of racist ideas. Piet was conceived in 1850 and, according to Kolfin, quickly became a copy of the child slaves in puff pants from Africa. They were fashionable from the sixteenth century and can also be found in paintings by the Dutch elite.
What doesn't know, what doesn't hurt
Perspectives on our colonial heritage are shifting, but how could it have taken so long? After slavery was abolished (1860 in the East and 1863 in the West), the whole subject has been obscured in historiography. This process has already started in the nineteenth century, when the former Seven United Netherlands turned into one nation-state. Historians preferred to write about Dutch exploits to authorize that nation than about crimes against minorities. And what was done about slavery research remained within academic circles.
The enslaved themselves were not a source of this. They were mostly unable to write and their own voices can hardly be found in written sources. But there are more sources than what the colonizer wrote down and they are now being used more and more. Research into the letters from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that were hijacked by the British shows how Dutch letter writers experience daily life in Suriname or the Indies. Dirk J. Tang (University of Amsterdam) demonstrates how slavery was written casually about slavery, as something that simply belongs.
Slaves also lived in the Netherlands itself, although this has been denied for a long time because it was forbidden. In addition to the aforementioned elite, for example, Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam also had enslaved Africans in their homes. Their tombstones have been found in the old Jewish cemetery Beth Haim. Both slavery and the slave trade were a recognized part of our society and did not just take place far away, in the colonies.
Intangible heritage
Slavery received little or no attention in schools, until around the Independence of Suriname (1975) Surinamese started living in the Netherlands. Many Dutch people had no idea why, so there was temporarily more teaching material about it. Due to the discussions about the multicultural society, a broad social debate about our slavery past really started at the end of the twentieth century, according to historian Alex van Stipriaan (Erasmus University Rotterdam).
Stipriaan started mapping our slavery heritage in 2007. It is slowly becoming a subject that more and more museums are doing something with. The exhibition 'The present of the slavery past' is currently on view in the Tropenmuseum and the Rijksmuseum will also follow in 2020 with a major slavery exhibition.
However, the slavery heritage is not only hidden in museum collections but also in stories within the communities of descendants or simply on the street. Slavery is very visible in a trading city like Amsterdam. The offices of the companies involved in the slave trade or the houses of slave traders can still be found there. It is important to make this visible as part of our slavery heritage, just as we have made the persecution of the Jews visible in our society.
Stipriaan also demonstrates the importance of intangible sources such as stories, song lyrics, dance and oral history. They say a lot about the history of minorities that have left few traces in archives. The stories that have been passed down orally from generation to generation by descendants of the enslaved Africans, now mainly remain within that group. But as long as these stories are not generally good for all Dutch people, it will remain 'their' history instead of ours.
Loaded
To learn more about the slavery past and its impact on today's society, scientists must therefore approach sources differently and tap into new sources. The number of scientists working on this is increasing, which is apparent from, among other things, the increasing number of projects on the subject that receive grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. There are also many enthusiastic volunteers and organizations that spread knowledge about the subject. It is of obvious importance that colonial heritage is given a fair and more prominent place within the historical canon, education and society. Despite the inconvenience that comes with a loaded topic.