The National Slavery Museum, a long-awaited project by descendants of African communities from the Netherlands' former colonies in Suriname (South America) and the Netherlands Antilles (the Caribbean), is taking shape. With funds provided by the Government and the Amsterdam City Council, the new center aims to show that slave exploitation between the 17th and 19th centuries was decisive for the economic and social development of the country. Conceived as a permanent place, its design was presented this February and will also highlight that the history and identity of the enslaved began long before the arrival of the slave ships. After decades of requests, the opening is scheduled for 2030.
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“We have been fighting for this museum for 60 years, and slavery must be addressed to be able to move forward together as a nation,” says, on the phone, John Leerdam, former Social Democratic deputy and one of the three experts who have prepared the project. During those seven decades, the voice of African communities from the Caribbean and Suriname - many of whose members live on Dutch soil - has been heard incessantly in the Netherlands asking for such an institution. “Keep in mind that the six Caribbean islands where your ancestors suffered are today part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands,” Leerdam recalls. “And colonialism continues to mark the relationship between both parties in a certain way.” He is referring to Curaçao and Saint Martin, which have the status of independent countries, like Aruba. And to Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba, considered special Dutch municipalities.
Peggy Brandon, an expert in education and museology, is part of the trio responsible for the museum plan, and assures that the descendants of slaves “did not have the feeling of belonging to a country that is also theirs.” They have been asking for recognition of what happened since the 1950s, and they began organizing small temporary exhibitions. The Amsterdam City Council gave the green light to a permanent institution in 2017, and in 2019 the Government joined. In 2021, the mayor, Femke Halsema, apologized for the role played by the capital in slavery and the wealth from which it benefited. Later, other cities have done so, such as Utrecht, Rotterdam, The Hague, or Haarlem, and institutions such as the Dutch National Bank and the ABN Amro bank.
Engravings from the Nationaal museum van wereldculturen, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Isaac Owusu
Of Surinamese origin, Brandon's great-grandmother was the daughter of a freed slave, and she traveled to the Caribbean and Suriname with John Leerdam to check the attitude towards the museum locally. “In Curaçao I found in the archives a document from 1863 [date of abolition by the Dutch] where the slaves were told that they were now free, but the same silence and obedience of their previous condition was expected of them.” They ended up speaking with a total of 5,000 people and broke what they call the circle of silence that still surrounds the descendants. “They wanted to know if we were part of the white man's feeling of guilt. That is, if we wanted to open a museum and that's it,” says Leerdam.
Although the push from Indonesian descendants, the other noted Dutch colony, has not been as strong, that past will also be addressed in the museum. According to Brandon, you have to see “the connections between both ends of the world,” and he gives an example. This is the money paid to the owners of freed slaves in the Caribbean and Suriname to cover the loss. “Those sums were extracted, by force, from the people of Indonesia and the average Dutchman does not know it.”
Prints from the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Isaac Owusu
For historian Pepijn Brandon, Professor of Global History at the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in the Dutch capital, other themes have played a role in Indonesia's colonial memory. In particular, the war crimes perpetrated by the Dutch during the war of independence (1945-1949). “In addition, at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century, the abolition of slavery was used as an excuse to colonize Indonesian areas where there were still slaves,” he says. And that has clouded the anticolonial perspective, “because the antislavery discourse was that of the colonizer of the last stage.”
Perception change
While Dutch museums have made reference to slavery in their collections, the exhibition organized in 2021 by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam marked the pace for those that followed. The perception has changed over time because in the historical debate about the 17th and 18th centuries, the slave trade was a marginal section. In the 19th century, the prevailing morality rejected those who participated in it, but “it was still not considered important for economic and social development,” indicates historian Brandon. He says it “did not fit into the self-perception of a nation of traders rather than conquerors; tolerant and liberal.” Hence the trafficking and subsequent yoke on colonial plantations was presented as “a black page, as if it could be separated from all the others.” He dates the moment of change to 2013, with the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of abolition in Suriname and the Caribbean. King William of Orange expressed his “remorse and repentance” because about 5% of the total European traffic was traded from Africa to America. A decade later, in 2023, the sovereign asked for forgiveness as head of state. In 2022, Prime Minister Mark Rutte had done the same. “But since 2013 the debate could no longer avoid the fact that slavery paid for the enrichment of the Netherlands.”
For years there was also no mention of the direct link between the assets of many families that had shares in the two firms that dominated the colonial business. They were the East and West India Companies. The first operated in South Africa and Asia, in present-day Indonesia, and historical estimates attribute trafficking between 600,000 and more than a million people. The other negotiated in Suriname, Brazil and the Caribbean and subdued nearly 600,000 human beings on coffee, tobacco, sugar, cotton and cocoa plantations.
Prints from the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Isaac Owusu
Each country with a colonial past deals with it in a different way. What has it been like in other places? “For the United Kingdom, for example, slavery marks a milestone in collective memory because they focus on the glorious role of the British Empire in abolition,” says Pepijn Brandon. To remember later: “When the truth is that in the 18th century they were the largest slave traffickers in the world.” The Dutch dates mark, for their part, two key moments. The abolition took place in 1863 and, chronologically, 2023 marked the 160th anniversary in a ceremony called Keti Koti (broken chain). However, between 1863 and 1873 the freed slaves were forced to work for miserable wages so that their former masters would not lose the investment made when purchasing them. That is why it is considered that the chains were definitively broken 150 years ago, in 1873.
The National Slavery Museum proposal includes a 9,000-square-meter building in Amsterdam's port district. It will present “multiple perspectives and be a place for sharing perspectives and knowledge,” according to Peggy Brandon. The objects on display will not only be related to slaves but there will be pieces by contemporary artists made by members of the diaspora. “That what is exhibited be seen as art and not only from an ethnographic point of view,” she warns. “There is a lot of interest and we have been inspired by the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington,” says Leerdam. “A part of the Dutch population has an unrealistic view of the past and believes that this type of information damages the national image,” notes the historian. All three agree, however, that the official commitment to the museum is firm.
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