Amsterdam Mayor apologizes for city’s role in slave trade

Amsterdam Mayor apologizes for city’s role in slave trade

Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema has apologized for the Dutch capital’s role in the slave trade. Halsema became the first mayor in the Netherlands to formally apologize for his history of slavery. In the Netherlands, the municipalities of Utrecht, The Hague and Rotterdam are planning to take a similar step.

Dutch Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren also opened the door for a national apology for the history of slavery.

Ollongren called on the new government to be formed to take steps in this regard.

“On behalf of the municipality, I apologize for the active participation of the Amsterdam City Council in the commercial system of colonial slavery and the trade of enslaved people around the world,” Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema said at a meeting in Amsterdam on the occasion of the July 1 National Day of Remembrance for the Abolition of Slavery.

Amsterdam Mayor Halsema, of the Green Left Party, said that not a single Amsterdamite living now can be blamed for his past as slavery.

Halsema stressed that the city council is willing to take responsibility for the history of slavery.

“It’s time to embed the great injustice of colonial slavery into the identity of our city. With generous and unconditional recognition,” said Halsema, pointing out that the history of slavery has long been ignored in the exploitation of the past and the inequality of today.

Research by the Netherlands Institute of International Social History concluded that “Amsterdam administration in the past was directly involved in the worldwide, large-scale, multifaceted and long-term slave trade and slavery.”

Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema then decided to make a formal apology on “Breaking the Chains Day” (Keti Koti).

Earlier, the cities of London and Liverpool in England and the cities of Chicago in the USA had apologized for the history of slavery.

Dutch Interior Minister Ollongren: We must face our past

The Dutch government also opened the door for a national apology. Before the commemoration ceremony, the Advisory Board of the Slavery History Dialogue Group sent its report on government recognition of the history of slavery to Kajsa Ollongren, the interim government’s Minister of the Interior.

The report stressed that the Netherlands should recognize slavery and the slave trade, for which it was guilty until 1863, as crimes against humanity and apologize for it.

“These recommendations are important and cannot be misunderstood. We cannot ignore it. We must face our past, we must overcome it,” said Minister Ollongren.

Ollongren emphasized that the past of slavery can only be looked at with “fear, regret and shame” and demanded that the new government to be established take the necessary steps in this regard.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte had previously refused to accept calls for an apology regarding his past as slavery, on the grounds that “it would not help social debates, but would cause polarization on the contrary”.

Although the legal slave trade ended in 1814, slavery in the Netherlands was only formally abolished on 1 July 1863 in Suriname and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. Although slavery was ended on paper at this date, more than 33,000 slaves in Suriname and more than 11,000 in the Antilles continued to be forced to work for free.

The Netherlands abolished slavery completely in 1873. July 1 is celebrated annually in the former colonies and the Netherlands as Keti Koti (broken shackles). Official ceremonies are held at the National Slavery Memorial in Amsterdam.

The Netherlands was one of the world’s largest slave traders, especially in the 17th century, called the “Golden Age”.

When the Dutch West India Company (WIC), the second largest transporter of slaves from Africa to the Americas, seized part of Portuguese-dominated Brazil in 1630, it also became interested in the slave trade in Africa.

In 1637, the WIC established dominance in West Africa, again in Portuguese-occupied Ghana, creating the base for the slave trade.

The Dutch transported at least 550,000 of the 12 million Africans sold into slavery across the Atlantic between the 15th and 19th centuries.

Although slavery was outlawed in Western Europe, slave traders continued transatlantic slavery. Losing Brazil again to Portugal in 1654, the Netherlands made Curaçao in the Caribbean an important station in the slave trade.

Dutch traders were responsible for half of all slave transports to the New World between 1650 and 1675. The Dutch were selling enslaved Africans to Spanish, English, Portuguese and French traders.

The slave trade is not limited to Africa. It is estimated that the Dutch enslaved approximately 1 million 135 thousand people in Asia as well.