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Ahmad Seir and Mike Corder
Published July 1, 2023 • Last updated 34 minutes ago • read for 3 minutes
Clave, Monument to Slavery, by Alex da Silva, is on display in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Monday, December 19, 2022. The Dutch King Willem-Alexander gives a speech in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Saturday, July 1, 2023, at the start of a year in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery by the Netherlands. The king’s speech follows Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s apology for the country’s role in the slave trade and slavery at the end of last year. Photo by Peter Dejong /THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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AMSTERDAM (AP) — Dutch King Willem-Alexander will deliver a speech on Saturday to commemorate the anniversary of the country’s abolition of slavery, amid speculation that he could apologize on behalf of the royal family.
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The king’s speech follows Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s apology late last year for the country’s role in the slave trade and slavery. It is part of a wider reckoning with colonial history in the West that has been spurred in recent years by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Slavery was abolished in Suriname and the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean on July 1, 1863, but most enslaved workers were forced to work on plantations for another 10 years. Saturday’s commemoration and speech mark the start of a year of events marking the 150th anniversary of July 1, 1873.
Research published last month showed that the king’s ancestors earned the current equivalent of 545 million euros ($595 million) from slavery, including profits from shares effectively given to them as a gift.
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When Rutte apologized in December for the historical role of the Netherlands in slavery and the slave trade – an apology that also concerned the royal family – he stopped offering compensation to descendants of enslaved people.
Instead, the government is setting up a 200 million euro ($217 million) fund for initiatives that address the legacy of slavery in the Netherlands and its former colonies and to improve education on the issue.
That is not enough for some in the Netherlands. Two groups, Black Manifesto and The Black Archives, staged a protest march on Saturday ahead of the king’s speech under the motto “No cure without reparations”.
“The apology is an important historic step, but not enough. Descendants of enslaved people are entitled to reparations,” the march’s organizers said in a statement.
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The often brutal colonial history of the Netherlands has come under renewed and critical scrutiny in the wake of the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd, a black man, in the US city of Minneapolis, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
A groundbreaking exhibition from 2021 at the National Museum of Art and History takes an intrepid look at slavery in the Dutch colonies. In the same year, a report described Dutch involvement in slavery as a crime against humanity and linked it to what the report described as ongoing institutional racism in the Netherlands.
The Dutch first became involved in the transatlantic slave trade in the late 1500s and became a major trader in the mid-17th century. Eventually, the Dutch West India Company became the largest transatlantic slave trader, according to Karwan Fatah-Black, an expert in Dutch colonial history and an assistant professor at Leiden University.
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Authorities in the Netherlands are not the only ones apologizing for historical wrongs.
In 2018, Denmark apologized to Ghana, which it colonized from the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century. King Philippe of Belgium has expressed “deepest regret” over the abuses in Congo. In 1992, Pope John Paul II apologized for the role of the Church in slavery. Americans have had emotionally charged disputes over the tearing down of statues of slave owners in the South.
In April, King Charles III first voiced support for investigations into the British monarchy’s ties to slavery after a document revealed an ancestor owned shares in a slave-trading company, a Buckingham Palace spokesman said.
Charles and his eldest son, Prince William, have expressed their grief over slavery but have not acknowledged the crown’s connections to trade.
At a ceremony marking Barbados becoming a republic two years ago, Charles referred to “the darkest days of our past and the terrible cruelty of slavery, forever staining our history”. English settlers used African slaves to turn the island into a wealthy sugar colony.
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Mike Corder reported from Ede.
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