Netherlands, Boston Apologize For History Of Slavery, Dodging Subject Of Reparations
The country that brought the world the richness and beauty of Rembrandt, Vermeer and VanGogh and for centuries provided a safe haven for ethnic minorities fleeing from discrimination and persecution is also the country that was once largely dependent on more than 1.1 million enslaved people who provided labor to the Dutch settlements in Africa and Asia.
On Monday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized on behalf of his government for the Netherlands’ role in slavery and the slave trade. Rutte said the nation is not committing to paying reparations for descendants of formerly enslaved people but it is establishing a $212 million fund for initiatives to improve education about the legacy of slavery in the Netherlands and its former colonies.
The Dutch apology comes two months after the city of Boston was the first major American city to formally apologize for Boston’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Boston declaration came nearly 400 years after slavery began in Boston. It condemned the unique “dastardliness” of slavery and its legacy of “systemic white supremacy and racism” that’s reflected in ongoing racial inequities in housing, education, income and more.
Like the Dutch announcement, Boston officials also did not agree to making reparations, although a number of state and local government have reparation programs. Federal reparations efforts have stalled in Congress.
In March 2021, the city of Evanston became the first city in the nation to approve reparations. Officials voted to grant $25,000 to African American descendants of enslaved people to pay toward a down payment on a home, mortgages or home repairs.
This past July, Detroit’s city council unanimously approved structuring the city’s first reparations task force. In Amherst, Mass., the town council approved creating a fund to allocate a total of $2 million in reparations over the course of about a decade.
One of the largest reparations efforts in the nation is in California, where a state task force is expected to become “a model for partners across the nation.” In 2020, California became the first state in the country to establish a state reparations task force and in April, the panel released its first report outlining the state’s involvement in slavery and how it continues to harm Black Americans.
The Netherlands joined a small number of nations that have officially apologized for their histories of enslavement. In 2018, Denmark apologized to Ghana, which it colonized from the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century. In June, King Philippe of Belgium expressed “deepest regrets” for abuses in Congo. In 1992, Pope John Paul II apologized for the church’s role in slavery.
The African American Redress Network reported that less than 20 local or state governments in the U.S. have offered an official, blanket apology for slavery. As of June 2008, the latest available data shows that six states have apologized for their historical roles in supporting slavery, including Florida, Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey and Virginia while Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska were considering resolutions. Virginia, the state with the most enslaved people in the nation in 1860, was the first state to vote an official apology in 2007.
The House of Representatives passed a resolution on July 29, 2008, apologizing to African Americans for slavery and the era of Jim Crow. The resolution did not address the issue of reparations. The Senate did not act on a similar resolution but in April, 2008, senators voted to apologize to Native Americans for “the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect.” In 1993 the Senate also passed a resolution apologizing for the “illegal overthrow” of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893.
The Netherlands abolished slavery 160 years ago but its dark legacy continues to effect millions of descendants of formerly enslaved people through institutionalized racism in the Netherlands.
The Dutch first became involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the late 1500s and became a major trader in the mid-1600s. Eventually, the Dutch West India Company became the largest trans-Atlantic slave trader, in Suriname and former colonies that make up the Kingdom of the Netherlands, including Aruba, Curacao and Saint Maarten as well as three Caribbean islands that are officially special municipalities in the Netherlands, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba. In Suriname, Dutch plantation owners generated huge profits through the use of enslaved labor.
The Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) or Dutch East India Company was formed in 1602 after the company was granted a monopoly to trade with Asia by the government of the Netherlands. In ensuing years, more than 600,000 African men, women and children were shipped, “like cattle” by Dutch slave traders, mostly to the former colony of Suriname. In all Dutch traders shipped and sold between 550,000 and 850,000 enslaved people in the Atlantic area: first to Brazil, later mainly to Suriname and the Antilles. It is estimated that throughout history between 660,000 and 1,135,000 enslaved people were traded to provide labor to the Dutch settlement areas in Asia.
In Boston, Faneuil Hall is a historic landmark where Samuel Adams and other founding fathers met to plan acts like the Boston Tea Party and other acts which led to the American Revolution. Faneuil Hall is named after Peter Faneuil, an 18th century merchant, slaveowner and trader whose fortune derived from his complicity in the system of slavery.
Boston was a busy port for slave trade with the West Indies and West Africa, beginning with the voyage of the ship Desire in 1637–1638, which brought Native American captives to be sold in the Caribbean in exchange for enslaved Africans and raw materials. At least 175 transatlantic trips started in Boston, according to the SlaveVoyages online database.
Estate inventories between 1700 and 1775 show that about a quarter of all white Bostonians owned enslaved people. At the peak of slavery in Boston in the mid-18th century, experts estimate that more than 1,600 Africans were enslaved in Boston.
And although Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, Boston remained complicit in the practice for decades, buying slave-produced commodities and selling goods and produce to be used or consumed by slaves elsewhere. In addition, the federal Fugitive Slave Acts provided that former slaves living in states where slavery was outlawed could be captured and returned to slavery.