In recent years, Prime Minister Rutte did not see much point in apologising for the Netherlands’ history of slavery. So why has he changed his mind now?
“Times have changed. For a long time there was resistance to changing the appearance of Black Pete, but at many of the Saint Nicholas festivities that are held by Dutch municipalities, he’s now been replaced with Sooty Pete. It also helps that a great deal of research has been carried out in recent years. For many years, we primarily associated our history of slavery with the ring of canals and Middelburg, but we now know that traces of this history can be found in many places. For instance, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Groningen and other cities commissioned an investigation into the role that they played in the history of slavery. More and more people have become aware of the fact that institutional racism still exists today, and that this is linked to the history of slavery. Apologies are basically an acknowledgement of the suffering that stems from this history.”
Which traces of past slavery can still be found in our society today?
"Visible traces can be found in many places in the Netherlands, for example on buildings or in archive materials. Research shows that 22 landowners in Gelderland were awarded compensation after the abolition of slavery, while those people who were actually enslaved received nothing. But the fact that a lot of the information about enslaved people is missing can also be seen as a trace of past slavery: the colonial oppressors believed that it wasn’t even worth their while to write about the slaves. This realisation still causes quite a lot of psychological suffering – and occasional physical suffering – in descendants. There is also contemporary institutional racism: white people and black people are not always treated equally. And the colonial concept of always taking from the earth and always taking from others also leaves a trace, namely one of depletion, much like what we now see with climate change.”
The cabinet will be allocating money for an awareness fund and a museum of slavery. Will these things help people to deal better with what happened in the past?
“I certainly hope so. The exact details are still not clear, but there’s definitely a need for greater knowledge and deeper reflection. The gaps in our historical knowledge need to be reduced even more. This is something that we’re also working on at Radboud University; part of this work includes the project that revolves around Surinamese slave registers, which is being managed by Coen van Galen. These registers have now been digitised, which means that they can be used, for example, for conducting further research into family histories about which little is still known. In addition to this, we’ll obviously need to raise awareness about this aspect of the history of slavery, for example by drawing attention to it in schools.”
Did the university itself contribute to the history of slavery?
“We should always be aware of the fact that our own research disciplines often have colonial roots, such as those in linguistics or biology. The campus also contains plenty of traces of the colonial past. For example, we have the Linnaeus Building and the Beel Room. One of my colleagues was invited to a symposium that was being held in the Beel Room, but they felt so uncomfortable about it because of the role that Louis Beel played in colonial history, so they didn’t attend the symposium. At Utrecht University, they’ve appointed a PhD candidate who has been given the task of investigating the university’s involvement in colonial history. Perhaps we could do the same thing here.”
Your own research is about using dance as a means of opening up the discussion on social issues that are related to the history of slavery. What made you choose dance?
“A subject like body culture is not often associated with academic knowledge in the Western world, because it is less focused on reasoning. But traces of past slavery can also be found in the human body. Descendants of enslaved people have often consciously or unconsciously been given a range of norms about how they should behave or how they should view other people. As a result, we’re still able to feel colonial power relations in our bodies. We explore the effect of Radiant Shadow, which is a dance performance and workshop by Farida Nabibaks. This performance really does seem to give participants new insights, for example into the relationship between dominance and oppression. Dance can make these relationships palpable and help people to process what has happened.”
Photo: Wikimedia Commons