The apologies ABN Amro made last week about its role in the transatlantic slave trade and slavery is a good start, says Surinamese researcher and economist Armand Zunder.
But the apology should also be linked to a recovery program, which should be carried out by ABN Amro in Suriname, he believes. This is where the slavery and slave trade took place. While in the Netherlands the bankers, city councilors, merchants and many others enriched themselves and plundered our country, Suriname was hell on earth for more than three hundred years for enslaved people. The centuries-old crimes in colonial times between 1667 and 1939, when the plantation economy collapsed, are still visible and tangible in Surinamese society to this day,” Zunder said in a telephone conversation from his hometown of Paramaribo. He is also chairman of the National Repair Commission Suriname, a presidential body that investigates crimes in colonial times and wants to have them corrected through apologies and reparations.
Mees & Sons
The investigation into the involvement of ABN Amro was carried out in the Netherlands, on behalf of the bank, by a team from the International Institute of Social History (IISH). This showed that the historic predecessors of ABN Amro, such as bankers from Hope & Co in Amsterdam and the Rotterdam banking house Mees & Zoonen, were involved in the slave trade and slavery.
The Hope banking family, for example, provided so-called negotiation loans to plantations in Suriname, among others, where slaves, among others, served as collateral for the loans. They were also directly involved in the management of the plantations and the purchase and sale of the kidnapped Africans.
Read alsoAlmost all investors of De Nederlandsche Bank were involved in slavery
For Zunder, an authoritative voice in the slavery debate in Suriname and the Caribbean, the conclusions of the IISH are not new: in 2010 he himself already conducted research into the damage caused by slavery and Dutch colonialism in Suriname. He does welcome the fact that more and more Dutch institutions are now investigating their own role in that past. De Nederlandsche Bank has already done this before.
According to Zunder, the focus is still too much on pure archival research. “These studies are mainly done from a Eurocentric perspective by white researchers in the Netherlands. It is often a far-from-my-bed show, in which, in my opinion, too little attention is paid to the atrocities and the human significance of the fact that such great crimes have been committed for centuries,” says Zunder.
According to him, the population groups in Suriname have been completely disrupted by this history. “The enslaved Africans have been tortured and murdered for centuries, women were raped, families were torn apart. Whole generations have been systematically taught that they are worth less: they were seen purely as the property of the planters. It is time that the traumas that still persist today, and the socio-economic legacy, were also thoroughly investigated with experts in Suriname. There are already numerous studies on this and there is expertise in the Caribbean.”
In May, Zunder will travel to the Netherlands at the invitation of De Nederlandsche Bank to discuss repairs and reparations. He published his own research on this in 2010 in the book Reparations† In this, Zunder calculated, among other things, what the Netherlands owes Suriname in reparations. He calculated that the free labor performed on plantations under inhumane conditions between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries would now amount to a cash value of approximately 25 billion euros per wage bill. In addition, he concluded, Dutch merchants had obtained a value of 125 billion euros worth of wealth from Suriname.
Zunder: “It is of course not about the exact amount of money, because you cannot express human lives and injustice in money. But it is mainly about the ethical principle that for centuries free labor has been performed by people kidnapped from Africa. In addition, when slavery was abolished in 1863, there was compensation for the plantation owners, while the enslaved received nothing: no money, no education, no land.”
Your research was received with great interest in Suriname at the time, but you were reviled in the Netherlands. What is it like now, twelve years later, with a growing interest in the slavery past in the Netherlands?
“What strikes me is that Dutch researchers who are now investigating the role of the Netherlands and the slavery past do draw on my research and are also familiar with my findings. I also identified the Hope & Co banking family in my book, as well as 83 other Dutch institutions that use enslaved people as collateral for loans. However, not a single Dutch scientist includes my book in his bibliography. Nobody mentions my research. I think that’s a shame, but also unscientific.”
What causes this do you think?
“I don’t know, but I’ve been waiting for 12 years for an answer to my scientific analysis and conclusions. Maybe my calculation scares you off? Although it is not so much about the amount, but about the progressive insight: if you are going to do scientific research, you start calculating. Slavery and colonialism have provided the Netherlands with great wealth and have eroded Suriname.
At its independence in 1975 Suriname received an amount of 3.5 billion guilders from the Netherlands. But that money was used for development aid, and much of it has flown back to Dutch companies and the Dutch state. For example, Suriname has never had a good industrial base of its own. Over the centuries, Suriname has always been an import company focused on the Netherlands, and it still is an import company. That too is a legacy of the colonial past.”
In addition to apologies, ABN Amro also promised last week to “take concrete steps to help improve the structural social disadvantage that descendants of enslaved persons may experience,” they write on their website.
“If ABN Amro really wants to give something back, let them invest in projects in Suriname. There has been an appeal within the Caricom for reparations and repairs to former colonizers since 2013 and there is a whole program ready that I would like to inform the bank about,” he says enthusiastically. He mentions the strengthening of micro-enterprises as an example, but also investing in the mental repair of the descendants. “Trauma processing needs to be done. What happened in our history, with our ancestors, has left deep mental wounds and scars: it still works.”
During his planned visit to the Netherlands in May, Zunder also wants to talk to organizations in cities such as Amsterdam, which apologized last year for its role in slavery. And he would like to talk to ABN Amro. “And make it clear to them what we expect and propose a recovery program. If I look at it from the Surinamese side, I think we need a recovery program of about ten to twenty years.”
But are the consequences of three centuries of slavery still recoverable?
“After the Second World War, which lasted five years and in which six million Jews were murdered, a recovery program was also started. In the case of slavery and colonial times, the crimes are very great and extensive. But we must make a start. And I now want to work hard for that in the Netherlands.”