Klaas Knot’s voice fluttered from the radio. In the voice with which he normally speaks about monetary policy instruments or mortgage rates, he apologized for the role played by De Nederlandsche Bank in slavery. When he called all overseas territories and former colonies by name and extended his apology to ‘all people who were reduced to the color of their skin by the personal choices of my predecessors too’, I was moved.
Because they are excuses for a role that someone of less good will could have easily avoided with administrative agility. That’s not difficult, just look around you. Follow the parliamentary inquiry into gas extraction where Annemarie Jorritsma could only remember what had gone well when she was responsible for energy policy. Read in de Volkskrant the lament of Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who evaluated the corona policy and violently encountered the First Act of The Hague (the cabinet rarely takes responsibility for important conclusions from research reports; see also: all previous alarm signals about nitrogen since the last century), and the Second Law of The Hague (the prime minister magnifies when it is opportune, ‘but’, observes Dijsselbloem, ‘now it is about accountability, reflection and learning, and then he will no longer be there’).
It was also moving, because Minister Weerwind had to make do with Keti Koti with a silly ‘the cabinet will come up with a response before 2023 to the advice ‘Chains of the Past’ of the Dialogue Group Slavery History’. As a result, every organization that is older than 170 years will have apologized, while the cabinet is still meeting about the fearful question of whether someone might get angry. Worse: whether it might cost money.
At Klaas Knot it is different: different institute, different wood. Last year, he had the role of DNB in the economy based on human trafficking examined by Leiden scientists. They mapped out how the bank served the Colonial Office and how innovative financial products were created such as mortgages with land, buildings and people held in slavery as collateral; the value of those people was carefully recorded in thick books, they were called Cornelis, Mary or Eva and were sometimes worth 200 guilders, sometimes 300, sometimes more. The researchers also documented how the Amsterdam elite, the majority of DNB directors included, were up to their necks in plantation interests and fiercely opposed the abolition of slavery. For fear of a financial loss. Never underestimate the primal powers that are released when people who already have quite a lot have to give something of it. Peat how often the words ‘it’s not fair’ come up.
Knot’s words were especially touching because after years of just thinking ‘how slow’ at home, everything suddenly comes together. That there is serious interest in what happened in the past in the areas that the Netherlands had appropriated, complete with all the people who were already there or who were dragged there. That there are the lovely people in Rheden from Friday’s newspaper who want to learn. That there is the tipping point in the Zwarte Piet struggle. That there are chic reviewers who hear about old books by dead Antillean and Surinamese writers and write about them in 2022 as if they had made the discovery of the century. That there are Dutch people from here who realize that they belong to Dutch people and former Dutch people from there.