Maybe your ancestors brought along as sailors of the VOC or they drank coffee in Joure

A few weeks ago, in the middle of the day, I get a call from an unknown elderly lady. I think I hear a slight panic in her voice. “I’ve had an heirloom on the wall here for years,” she says, “But I think it’s horrible, and I want to get rid of it.”

She sends me a photo of a print, I think from the early 19th century. I recognize a sugar plantation on a river, with two beautiful wooden houses on high tops, a factory, a lock and a mill. Black figures, dressed in white, walk on the bank, carrying bags. On the river eight of them row a dug-out canoe: a boat carved from a single log. Farther on, near the mill, a sailboat docks – to load sugar, I think. On the bank, white gentlemen in top hats and pawnshops are discussing. Their weighty arm gestures say: This is where business is done.

The plantation of our ancestors

The lady says that she has never made the connection between the reality depicted here and the name of the company in graceful letters below it: her last name. She recently learned more about the Dutch slavery past, and now she has to do something with it. Do I know what to do?

I no longer look up to these kinds of calls. My mailbox is full of messages, often very personal and emotional, from people who have changed their view of their family history since hearing the podcast ‘The Plantation of Our Ancestors’.

In it I look for traces of the slavery past in my family tree. I discover that my ancestor of the abolition of slavery in 1863 was co-owner of the Surinamese sugar plantation Tout Lui Faut, and made contact with Peggy Bouva, descendant of enslaved people from that plantation. We will investigate together. We make horrific discoveries. People were chained on Tout Lui Faut, 48-hour shifts were worked. Those who refused received the whip.

Discomfort and Empathy

When I started this project, I had a personal and a social goal in mind. I wanted to overcome my own discomfort with the issues of slavery and racism. And I wanted other – especially white – Dutch people to see these themes as part of their own history.

I achieved that personal goal thanks to Peggy, my wonderful partner in crime, who, however uncomfortable, tirelessly continued the conversation with me. For the social purpose we draw, two years after the podcast came out, still touring the country together. We visit schools, women’s associations, Rotary’s, speak with police officers and the broadcaster. Everywhere we encourage people to overcome their own discomfort. To see that this conversation isn’t about guilt, it’s about empathy.

Many others have been working with us for years to achieve the same. But it is too big a task. Many Dutch people still see the slavery past as something of, above all, ‘those Surinamese’. They still see this too little as a Dutch history, the consequences of which extended far into East and West.

Sailors and coffee

And therein lies a task for you, Members of Parliament. There is a small group of Dutch people whose family history has been recorded for centuries. People like this lady on the phone. People like me, who saw my great-great-great-grandmother’s signature under a notarial deed in the National Archives in The Hague. As a plantation owner, she had abolition of slavery right to ‘compensation money’ from the Dutch government – ​​while Peggy’s ancestors had to continue to do plantation work for another ten years.

But there is a much larger group of Dutch people for whom the link with the slavery past is less tangible. Their ancestors sailed as sailors for the VOC, they baked bread or distilled gin for the crew. They took out insurance in Utrecht. Maybe they only drank coffee in Joure.

For these Dutch people, the slavery past has never been visible. Not in their house, not in their city, not in their history books. And for a few years now, they have only seen a traditional children’s party being stolen from them by a couple of activists from the Randstad. Where do they suddenly come from?

Dear Members of Parliament: make our slavery past something of all Dutch people. Give us more pictures on the wall that we can’t look away from. Facilitate more awkward conversations like the one between Peggy and me.

National commemoration

Train teachers to discuss this topic with their students. Name streets after resistance heroes against slavery, not only in Amsterdam, but also in Dokkum and Breda. Place plaques or stones in front of the houses of former plantation owners – also in the streets in Driebergen, also in Hummelo, also in Tiel. Organize Keti Koti dialogue tablesin-depth encounters between white and black, on the Binnenhof and on the Vrijthof.

Make Keti Koti a national memorial and a day off. And let the head of state make excuses to show: that was the society we were, this is the society we want to be.

I advised the lady on the phone to donate the print to a municipal archive so that more people can see it. She will. The scene is already etched in her memory. Still in that of the rest of the Netherlands.