Guest post: How dark is the Dutch past?

Slavery in the Netherlands and its conflicting history

How sorry should the Dutch be for the dark pages of their past, in particular for their participation in the slave trade and slave-based economies, such as that of present Surinam, the Indonesian Archipelago, or the Cape Colony? The discussion about this has culminated recently in official apologies, expressed by prime minister Rutte, on behalf of the Dutch government. But in the discussion that has flared up in recent years about Dutch slavery, a somewhat oversimplified picture of that past is given, summarized as ‘400 years of slavery’. It suggests that this past is an endless black page, about which we, Dutch citizens, can only be ashamed. The historical story is, however, more complex, as is so often the case. There is indeed much to be ashamed of, but that is only part of the story. This is an attempt to find nuance.

To begin with, there is even some good news: if we go back in time, to the period before the Dutch slave trade started, to 1500 for example, the Netherlands is part of one of the few complex, urbanized, and (by the standards of the time) relatively wealthy societies that did not have slavery. The general human pattern seems to be that pre-modern economies, from the very beginning of complex societies in Mesopotamia, were characterized by intense socio-political inequality. The enslavement of people was a ‘normal’ phenomenon throughout most of the history of human ‘civilization’. It was not only characteristic of the Roman Empire, but also occurred on a large scale in Africa, India, China, the Indonesian Archipelago, and Latin America. A Chinese father who got into financial problems due to crop failures or other causes often sold one or more children (often girls for prostitution or concubinage), or his wife, or went into debt slavery himself until the loan was paid off. Warfare often led to the en masse enslavement of the population of conquered cities and empires. Through debt and war, slavery was a common institution throughout much of world history.

That a complex society that was able to ban slavery arose in North-West Europe in the Middle Ages is still a bit of a mystery. The Catholic Church played a role in this; it prohibited Christians from enslaving or selling into slavery other Christians – especially to non-Christian nations. This goes back to the history of feudalism, which replaced slavery, but fell apart at the end of the Middle Ages. And perhaps even more important was the freedom of the medieval city, which drew inspiration from classical antiquity, and became a core value of European society. In southern Europe, which was largely affected by the same influences, enslaved Muslims obtained through warfare or trade remained part of society, but in England, the Low Countries, and France people were aware of the free status of the inhabitants, and measures were taken to safeguard this freedom. Significant is the ruling in the mid-16th century of the Grand Council of Mechelen, the highest legal body of the Habsburg state, not to return a runaway slave of a Spanish merchant who was visiting here to his ‘owner’, because slavery was not recognized as a legal institution.

The globalization wave of the 16th century put this norm under pressure. Was a Dutch merchant allowed to profit from the slave trade and even to offer slaves for sale here (as Portuguese merchants did in Portugal)? This question came to the fore in Middelburg in 1595, when a skipper tried to sell a group of slaves captured from the Portuguese. Mayor Adriaen Heindricxsen ten Haeff successfully protested against this attempt to establish a slave market in his town to the States of Zeeland, after which the slaves were released and placed with the inhabitants of the city who had to train them in a craft. The owner of the ship appealed against this to the States General, who, after some deliberation, decided that the property rights of the owner and skipper should be respected, but that trade in humans would not be allowed, after which most of the slaves were captured again and the ship departed again with cargo.

In fact, the discussion of 1595 determined what would follow in the centuries that followed. On the one hand, it was affirmed that slavery would not become a Dutch institution; Mayor Ten Haeff 's principled resistance meant that no slaves would be sold in Middelburg, and that slavery would not become an ‘indigenous’ institution. That was an extremely important decision because large-scale imports of enslaved people and the transformation of the Netherlands into a slave economy would have had far-reaching consequences for socio-political relations and economic structures. This decision was guided by the existing institutional structure, in which slavery had no place.

On the other hand, however, the States General succumbed to the argument that the private property of the slaves brought to Middelburg should be respected, that the slave owner had the right to recover his property – or at least to collect it again by force – and to take this property with him to places where the slaves could be sold. In a way, this was consistent with the judgment of the Grand Council a few decades earlier – after all, it had only decreed that slaves taken to the Low Countries should be set free, while there had been no judgment on slavery in general.

This double standard – sometimes summarized as ‘vicar (dominee) in the Netherlands, merchant (koopman) beyond the borders’ – would become characteristic of the Dutch attitude towards slavery. In Asia, slave labor has been used without moral restrictions since the early years of the VOC (1602). The VOC had an enormous need for labour, and bought slaves on the spot (in which there was a brisk trade) or looted them from one of the islands of the Archipelago. A single critical note was added from ecclesiastical circles. The classes of Walcheren and Amsterdam condemned slavery in various terms in 1628/29 (Amsterdam wrote that ‘it was not Christian to have serfs’, Walcheren played it even more to the man by ruling that keeping slaves was ‘immoral and illicit for the Christians in the Indies’). The VOC quickly learned to deal with the special situation of two different moral codes and institutions surrounding slavery. VOC employees were forbidden to bring their slaves to the Netherlands (households of VOC employees and free citizens often owned dozens of them, and it was difficult to relinquish the services that came with them). In order to restrict the import of enslaved people from the Caribbean, the States General determined in the 18th century that they were free persons after a year's stay in the Netherlands.

What was at the root of this double standard was the concern that people shared – with Mayor Ten Haeff – about the quality of society, and about the freedom of its citizens. Slavery was an institution based on violence, often accompanied by direct violence, as the historical evidence shows overwhelmingly. The enslaved were deprived of virtually all agency, and to force and keep them in this role, slave-based societies developed repertoires of direct violence by the slave owner. In fact, the state’s monopoly on violence was ‘delegated’ to the slave owner, with all the associated risks of arbitrariness and excessive use of force. Slavery was also based on fundamental inequality, which ran counter to the egalitarian traditions of European society, and to the beliefs of certain religious movements that drew on and nourished it, such as the Mennonites in the Netherlands and the Quackers in England. After all, slavery was a recipe for short-term economic gain – because the slaves could be put under great pressure to work hard and produce a lot – but also for long-term economic and social malaise. Family ties were torn apart, labour was associated with coercion and violence, and trust was destroyed – both in the places where the slaves came from and in the new plantation economies.

This institutionalised double standard – in which the Netherlands remained a more or less free society, but slaves were traded and exploited overseas without restriction – is what can be blamed on the Dutch. They did not act out of ignorance of the dramatic consequences of slavery, but allowed the commercial advantages overseas to outweigh the moral concerns. And only a tiny minority cared about the underlying norms and values. It caused countless untold suffering, then and there, but also greatly adversely affected the possibilities of the enslaved and their children, children's children and all generations after them. The slave trade was massive – both in the East and in the West – and it was pressure from outside, from the increasingly powerful United Kingdom, that led the Netherlands to abolish the slave trade and slavery in the course of the 19th century. In addition – to give the story a somewhat more optimistic twist – the abolition drew on the egalitarian traditions that had already created a society without slavery in North-West Europe in the Late Middle Ages. Because that is a point that can also be made: this part of the world was not only special because of the emergence of a society without slavery between 1200 and 1500, but also because after 1780 a movement emerged aimed at abolishing the trade and exploitation of slaves. Economic motives did not play a decisive role in this – slavery as a system was and remained quite profitable. It was mainly religious and socio-political motives that drove the movement for abolition. And the resurgence of resistance to slavery by the enslaved themselves also played a major role in this – fueled by Enlightenment ideals of equality and freedom.

So we plead guilty, to degrading slavery, to a double standard (which was in fact the double standard of colonialism), to profiting from short-term profits at the expense of long-term development opportunities – for all this mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. But we also recognize that the society of Northwest Europe fostered and developed the values and ideas that brought the ideal of a slavery-free society and of the abolition of this degrading institution within the reach of the possible.

Jan Luiten van Zanden is Emeritus Professor of Economic History at Utrecht University, and Honorary Professor of Economics at Stellenbosch University. This blog summarizes some of the ideas developed in more detail in the book ‘Pioneers of Capitalism. The Netherlands 1000-1800', recently published by Princeton University Press, co-written with Maarten Prak. Photo by Utsman Media on Unsplash.