What Behind Dutch Apology for the Crimes the Netherlands Committed Centuries Ago?

On Monday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte made an official apology for his country’s involvement in slavery for centuries. This re-sheds light on the Netherlands’ dark history at a time when the victims refuse to accept it without actual reparation for the pain their ancestors suffered.

Last week, Sigrid Kaag, the Dutch Deputy Prime Minister, said during an official visit to Suriname that a process was about to begin and that another very important moment would come on July 1.

On this date, the descendants of Dutch slavery celebrate the 150th anniversary of the end of slavery during the annual ceremony known as Keti Koti in Suriname.

 

Netherlands to Make Official Apology

Mark Rutte, the Dutch Prime Minister, appeared in a speech at the national archives in The Hague, offering a formal apology on behalf of the Dutch state for the Netherlands’ historical role in the slave trade. The minister acknowledged that slavery must be recognized in “the clearest terms” as a crime against humanity, and he is sorry for the centuries his country had “enabled, encouraged and profited from slavery.”

Expressing regret, the minister said that people were “commodified, exploited and traded in the name of the Dutch state,” adding: “It is true nobody alive today bears any personal guilt for slavery…But the Dutch state bears responsibility for the immense suffering of those who were enslaved and their descendants. Today, on behalf of the Dutch government, I apologize for the past actions of the Dutch state.”

The Dutch Prime Minister’s apology sheds light on his country’s dark history of slavery and colonialism, as the country was responsible for the transport of an estimated 600,000 people, including Africans, over the Atlantic Ocean, especially toward South America and the Caribbean. This inhuman commercial activity led the Dutch state to a “Golden Century” of prosperity through sea trade during the 16th and 17th centuries.

It is noteworthy that the Netherlands was previously the third largest colonial power in the world, and it had enslaved more than 500,000 people for more than 200 years, most of whom were kidnapped from West Africa, sold and forced to work on plantations in Suriname, Antilles, South America, and the Caribbean.

The Dutch monarchy was one of the last countries in Europe to officially abandon slavery on July 1, 1863, and slavery effectively ended in 1873.

“This month, six Surinamese organizations in the Netherlands had hoped to push the apology to that date, but a judge denied their request,” The New York Times reported, quoting Rutte: “We know there’s no one right moment for everyone […] there aren’t the right words for everyone or the right place for everyone.”

He also acknowledged that the run-up to the apology “could have been better.” But, he said, “don’t let that be a reason to do nothing.”

Hamza Guenouni, researcher at Kent University, said to Al-Estiklal that “the apology timing of the Dutch state is not as innocent as it appears; the Netherlands needed to escape responsibility and accountability, so it had to offer apology before July 1, to avoid larger numbers of human rights activists, journalists and more importantly the victims’ grandsons.

“The government’s desire for an apology was leaked to the Dutch press in November and sparked heated debate and wide controversy in the Netherlands and abroad for weeks; this might be an additional reason.”

Guenouni said that “the organizations specialized in the history of slavery and its legacy wanted the apology to be made on July 1, the date that coincides with the 150th anniversary of the end of slavery in Keti Koti annual celebration, but the leaked information messed up the Dutch plan.”

The researcher believed the apology was not sincere at all, and it came as a result of the pressure of the enslaved people’s grandsons to push the Netherlands to acknowledge the heinous crimes and that the establishment of “the empire” was made thanks to the slave trade and theft of the African wealth.

“However, many people in the Netherlands still did not consider slavery and racism as serious issues.”

 

250 Years of Slavery

For more than 200 years, the Netherlands, the state of law, played a key role in the trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved people, “primarily through the Dutch West India Company and the Dutch East India Company. The organizations were established with private and state capital and governed by Dutch state officials and, later, royalty,” NYT put.

The capital, Amsterdam, and its port were one of the main stops for cruises loaded with enslaved people as part of what was known as the triangular trade.

For this purpose, the Netherlands established the “Dutch West India” and “Dutch East India” companies at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th, which owned colonies in the Caribbean and Suriname in South America, in addition to Indonesia in East Asia.

Amsterdam was financing the slave trade, where enslaved people were being sold in the colonies or used there to work in coffee, tobacco, and sugar plantations, before being returned to the Netherlands, where they would be pumped onto the European market.

Revenue from slave labor financed the Netherlands’ golden age in the seventeenth century, a period noted for its artistic, literary, scientific, and philosophical achievements. However, the direct and indirect links between that lauded era and the concurrent use of slavery in the Dutch colonies are rarely discussed.

Historians estimate that the Dutch-owned nearly 30 percent of the total slave trade between 1660 and 1690. From 1658 to 1674, an estimated 45,700 slaves were transported to the Americas. In 1662, the Dutch West India Company signed an agreement with the Spanish colonies for a period of 7 years, according to which it supplied 3,500 slaves every year.

Enslaved people who rebelled were subjected to the worst forms of torture, most famously when slavers hung them from their ribs using a hook attached to a chain to a pole. Some of them succeeded in fleeing to the jungles of Suriname, but the Dutch succeeded in arresting some of them, humiliatingly displayed in an exhibition in Amsterdam during the 18th century.

 

Not Accepted

In recent years, the Netherlands has begun to consider the legacy of its role in slavery and its colonial history, without which the Dutch cities and famous museums would not be what they are today.

The Dutch Prime Minister’s official apology did not receive positive reactions from the victims of his country’s dark history. Human rights activists in Suriname complained that the Dutch government had not announced concrete measures accompanying this apology.

Among these actors is Ioan Wijngaardi, head of an organization representing Surinamese of African descent, who said he did not see much in terms of Dutch steps and “that’s a pity.”

The same position was expressed by the Prime Minister of Sint Maarten, Silveria Jacobs, who said that she would not accept the Netherlands’ apology as long as it did not come during an official dialogue and did not speak to the right stakeholders and descendants of enslaved people. Jacobs said it was not the right way to apologize for something as important as slavery and racism without respecting the feelings of the victims’ families. Many felt the apology had been forced upon them, as they said

“We came here to make noise against an apology that’s being rammed down our throats,” said Reggie Hoogvliets, who was at the protest in Amsterdam on Sunday.