"The colony became independent in 1975, after which many Surinamese migrated to the Netherlands and settled in neighborhoods like Bijlmermeer." One could argue the reason they settled there was because of increasing rents due to expats immigrating to Amsterdam and decreasing public housing. It is also important to mention that the West India Trading company's headquarters, the one which was actually important regarding what the company did in the colonies became a campus of the University of Amsterdam. I think the author needs to brush up on Dutch history as the claim "Amsterdam was also home to the world’s first stock exchange, which was founded in part to trade shares in industries based on slavery." is ouright false, the trading of the Dutch was spices, tea coffee, etc, not slaves.
3
Sure, but coffee and tea were produced with the 'help' of slaves. The Correspondent, moreover, tells a story about the stock exchange in New Amsterdam. So....
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Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Dutch slave trade resides at the Elmina slave castle in Cape Coast Ghana. Dutch overseers presided over the distribution of slaves worldwide for the majority of the castle's operational years. The top floor of the castle housed the Comandant's quarters (including special access for bringing selected female Africans upstairs) as well as Calvinist chapel for "worship".
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“But it [Bijlmer] ultimately failed to attract many Dutch people, and became increasingly gritty and urban.” I can just imagine the writer describing crime in American so-called “ghettos” here with this coded and de-contextualizing language. We have so much work to do across the board...
3
It's a bit too charged this article, not fully informed and hence not entirely true. The majority of the people of Amsterdam agree with the apology and the party that won the elections in Amsterdam is left intellectual (Groen Links), not FvD. Also, our mayor protects women in burquas and niqabs; she openly refused to enforce the law. Stories about brutal police in the Bijlmer are fictional and probably from one source only. We do our best to better ourselves, but there is still a lot to do.
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How are they going to make any kind of sincere apology and wear blackface every December?
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@MC Stevens Blackface isn't accepted anymore in the city of Amsterdam, and it's no longer in practice here. It does, sadly, happen outside Amsterdam, mainly in rural areas.
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The Dutch ended slavery in 1863 and still there are people who want an apology. No one living then is alive today. My poor ignorant Irish ancestors came to the port of New Orleans as ballast on the cotton ships making their way back from Liverpool. It was cheaper than going to New York. Never has England offered an apology for their treatment of the Irish. And that is fine with me. Those poor ditch diggers of the first generation in New Orleans produced my grandfather, a sign painter and he produced an accountant. My father produced a Masters in English Literature and my son is a professor of International Studies. My husbands Irish ancestors produced two PHDs in Mathematics. I would refuse an apology. We made it on our own.
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@AFC
Two things:
1) immigration and slavery are two vastly different things.
2) No one ever makes it 'on their own.'
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@AFC
There is a big difference between how the Irish, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Finns, Norwegians, etc were treated by their European rulers, and the way Europeans behaved in Asia and Africa.
One simple fact - the Irish were freely allowed to enter the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Asians and Africans are still heavily restricted from entering these countries, even today. Only 1 percent of Asians and Africans can enter these countries freely.
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@AFC
Wonderful. Another Irish American drawing comparisons between their ancestor's treatment, and the treatment of slaves. It's utterly embarrassing. Congratulations for 'making it on your own', but it's certainly easier when you're not considered literal property.
(And I can think of a few communities of Irish people who would indeed welcome an apology, and more, from still lingering occupiers)
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From the beginning of recorded history, how many countries/regions are there that did not have slavery or did not discriminate against a certain group of people at some point in their existence? That list would be short, very short.
Countries ruled and inhabited by people of color enslaved other people of color. Slavery is not a European or American invention.
Stop with the culture of victimhood. It is ineffective and produces nothing, but a sense of entitlement and a setup for failure. It is also insulting to people of all colors who have goals and work hard to achieve them.
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Move on. Are we going to condemn today what everyone did in the past? If so it's going to be a very, very long line.
President Xi of China espouses "bootstrapping" with the result of an economic revival. Dwelling on the past serves no productive purpose". Get your act together and build for the future.
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@MJG What happened in the past is what determines the present. The past is not past.
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@MS You learn from the past; you don’t dwell in it.
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@MJG
Nope, one has to understand the past to understand the present. For example, China and India were the world's largest economies for 4000 years, till 1800 A.D. It's not a fact taught in any western school. Westerners think Columbus was looking for India so that he could spice up his cuisine.
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It's interesting that there's no mention of slavery in NEW Amsterdam, later known as New York City. The Dutch West India Company owned quite a few slaves and they built much of the infrastructure of New Amsterdam, including the wall of Wall Street fame. I imagine it's too late to calculate the wealth that the DWIC gained through the use of slave labor, but the colony was undoubtedly more profitable for its investors than it would have been if it had relied on free labor alone.
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I’ve spent many months, over the course of my lifetime, in Amsterdam, and I love the place and it’s people. No question that modern Holland has been towards the top rank of tolerant countries. Still, facts are facts and there are people not more than one generation away from slavery that still live today - people who grand or great-grand parents were slaves. Coming to full terms with the country’s past isn’t instilling a cover of guilt over anyone. Rather, coming to full terms with one’s past is always a sign of strength and never weakness. Think about THAT, Amsterdamers.
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A push by politicians for an apology, any type of apology, will always be met with considerable pushback. A forced or pressured apology is a meaningless apology. There is too much soul-searching that needs to take place for this to possibly happen . In reality, it may never happen.
5
"Considering" an apology? Oh, Please. Just do it. And by the way, how about actually doing something to help the people in Suriname? There must be some universities in the Netherlands that can offer scholarships by way of reparation.
7
Before industrialization servitude by any name was the basis of all production. The industrialization of that labor, what we call slavery, was it’s zenith - and it’s nadir. But every grand thing on this earth pre-19th century has a stain of man’s inhumanity to man. Why do we act like we are discovering this for the 1st time? Who besides a child could say they have crossed the threshold of any castle without knowing full well its complete historical measure?
4
Why now? Oil exploration in Guyana-Suriname Basin is finding huge natural resources that Royal Dutch Shell would like to exploit.
4
It’s interesting that “the world’s first stock exchange, which was founded in part to trade shares in industries based on slavery”.
Like a window into the character of the world’s economic system that still derives vast wealth from a brutally harsh labor system.
9
It's clear that ages where traders earn a lot of money, they earn it, as we say, over the backs of the mass. The period described in this excellent article was called 'De gouden eeuw', the golden age. Like in many of such periods the gold was only for the rich, so it were 'gilded ages' really. At this moment it seems that all of the world is in a 'Gilded Age': the rich get richer and the rest poorer. It is right that we look back towards our gilded ages with remorse, even if we can't feel ourselves personally guilty.
But people like the 'Forum voor Democratie' - needs no translation' - guy in the article want only their own, selfish, democracy. I really don't doubt how they would have behaved in periods like our 'Gouden Eeuw'.
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