He will remain in place for the time being, although his future is still surrounded by a lot of uncertainty. Supporters and opponents of the statue of Jan Pieterszoon Coen in Hoorn hoped in vain on Wednesday evening for clarity about the fate of the monument. A proposal calling for a final decision on whether to keep or remove the statue did not receive sufficient support.
The debate about the desirability of the Jan Pieterszoon Coen stirs up a lot of emotions among both supporters and opponents. Representatives of anti-racism action groups see the statue as an expression of “colonial propaganda” and the debate about it as an ongoing and “long conversation” the outcome of which is a repetitive record: no decision yet.
This frustration also exists among parties and citizens who want to cherish the monument. Eighteen months ago, the municipality announced that it would make a decision about its future “after the summer”, but so far this has not happened. This is partly due to the division within the Hoorn coalition: GroenLinks and D66 are in favor of change, while VVD and the local ÉénHoorn want to preserve the monument. The two other coalition parties CDA and Hoorn Lokaal kept a low profile.
Although the position of most parties is clear – a majority is in favor of provisional maintenance of the statue – they did not want to attach any direct political consequences to this. Before a final judgment is made, the results of the so-called city discussions must first be clear, to the annoyance of both supporters and opponents. “Indecisive management,” said the PvdA. The party, like GroenLinks, wants to move the statue to the garden of the Westfries Museum. Then it visibly disappears from the public space, although its proposed new location is also publicly accessible – and without a museum ticket.
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No excuses for slavery history
Activists fighting against the statue entered into discussions with the National Coordinator against Discrimination and Racism last month because the Hoorn municipal council decided not to apologize for the history of slavery. The West Frisian port city is an exception – many other cities that were involved in the slave trade in the seventeenth century did apologize.
According to a majority in the council, such excuses would be “exaggerated” and “unnecessarily polarizing”. Parties that voted against apologies for the history of slavery cited the reason that outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) and King Willem-Alexander had previously done so on behalf of the state. Opponents also believed that many Horinese themselves would not support an apology from their city.
Previous research showed that Hoorn, which bills itself as the City of the Golden Age, played a leading role in the economic advance of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). From the seventeenth century onwards, at least 17,000 enslaved Africans were shipped and traded under the Hoorn flag under the responsibility of Hoorn city administrators.
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Long history
And Hoorn is the city and birthplace of Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the governor general of the VOC who has been honored with a monument in the center since 1893 and has since caused a lot of controversy. “Now we are back in the negative spotlight,” sighed the PvdA on Wednesday in the debate about the image.
The discussion about the desirability of Coen has a long history. In response to a citizens’ initiative asking for its removal, the municipality placed a sign next to the meter-high pedestal in 2011 that also described his misdeeds. As Governor-General of the VOC, Jan Pieterszoon Coen laid the foundation for the economic and military advance in the Indonesian archipelago. He founded Batavia, among other things, and exterminated thousands of inhabitants of the Banda Islands – now the Moluccas – to defend the trade monopoly on spices.
Some of the more than 70,000 inhabitants of Hoorn believe that the bronze statue in the historic city center should disappear. It is unclear how large that group is. In 2012, the Westfries Museum asked three thousand visitors their opinion about Coen. 68 percent thought the statue should remain on. Museum director Ard Geerdink suspects that nowadays there is a larger group in favor of possible adjustments, because more attention is paid to the dark sides of Dutch history.
Mayor Jan Nieuwenburg decided in the summer of 2020 to organize conversations about ‘inclusion and the colonial past’ after the debate derailed into violence. Demonstrators on the Roode Steen, the square where the statue is located, clashed with the police after which the area was evacuated. Nieuwenburg said on Wednesday that it would await the continuation of the city talks, but kept open the possibility of a local referendum on Coen.