From David Commissiong Ambassador to Caricom
On December 19, 2022, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, speaking on behalf of the entire Dutch government, issued a formal apology for the role the Dutch government played in the enslavement of the African people and the so-called slave trade that supported that system of human oppression.
Now, properly understood and interpreted, Prime Minister Rutte’s Declaration constituted not only an apology, but also an “Acceptance of Responsibility” for the damage that centuries of Dutch government criminality inflicted on enslaved Africans and their descendants today.
Here are some of the most critical admissions made by Prime Minister Rutte in his statement in question:
• “We who live in today’s world must acknowledge the evils of slavery in the clearest possible terms and condemn it as a crime against humanity—as a criminal system that caused untold suffering to untold numbers of people—suffering that continue in people’s lives. today”
• “By 1814, more than 600,000 enslaved African women, men, and children had been shipped to the Americas in deplorable conditions by Dutch slave traders. Most were sent to Suriname, but others were sent to Curacao, St. Eustatius and other places. They were cut off from their families and stripped of their humanity. They were transported and treated like cattle – often under the governmental authority of the Dutch West India Company.”
• “The Dutch state, in all its manifestations in history, bears responsibility for the terrible suffering caused to enslaved people and their descendants. So we cannot ignore the effects of the past on the present.”
• “Today, on behalf of the Dutch government, I apologize for the past actions of the Dutch state: to the people enslaved in the past, everywhere in the world, who suffered as a result of these actions, as well as their daughters and daughters and sons and to all posterity, to this day”
• “During the year of commemoration all aspects of the history of slavery and its effects to our day will come to light……..We will also create a fund for social initiatives across the Kingdom and in Suriname, so that the impact of the history of slavery is given the visibility, attention and action it needs. The healing process must begin now, and we will write the program for that process together.”
• “We cannot change the past, but we can face it. What the government fervently hopes, and what I personally fervently hope, is that this moment, this day, will help us – throughout the Kingdom and together with Suriname and other countries – to fill the blank pages that await us with dialogue, gratitude and healing. “
Prime Minister Rutte is to be congratulated for making this historic Apology/Acceptance of Responsibility. Indeed, he and the government he leads have come a long way from the position they adopted in December 2016 when, in response to CARICOM’s letter dated January 25, 2016, informing Mr. Rutte that CARICOM considered that the Netherlands owed an indemnity. In responding to the genocide of the native people and the enslavement of our African ancestors, Prime Minister Rutte could only manage an expression of deep regret for the suffering of innocent people caused by the horrors of slavery.
And so, we at CARICOM must congratulate Mr. Rutte and his administration for the admirable progressive development in their thinking on this issue over the past six years.
CARICOM must also carefully explain to Prime Minister Rutte when he commits to a process of “healing” the damage that the past criminal actions of the Dutch government have caused to the sons and daughters of Africa and their descendants today. , that this can only mean a process of “reparation” or “Reparations”, as required by the CARICOM Ten Point Plan for Restorative Justice.
Indeed, there can be no meaningful healing process that is not based on the Dutch government – in consultation with the affected populations and their governments or political leaders – creating and funding concrete development initiatives and programs designed to correct education, health, technology. , human welfare, economic and cultural deficits and which also support a substantial “repatriation” program for relevant African descendants who wish to return to the African mother continent from which Dutch slave traders brutally removed their ancestors. All this should be made very clear to Prime Minister Rutte.
And another thing that should be made clear to the Prime Minister is that Dutch involvement and responsibility for the evil consequences of slavery and the slave trade is not limited to countries or territories that were directly colonized by the Netherlands!
Rather, Dutch merchants, bankers, slave traders, sugar technologists, industrialists, and government officials played critical roles in creating, financing, and otherwise supporting slavery and slave-based production in many non-Dutch territories, especially in the Caribbean.
Let us take the case of my homeland of Barbados – a British colonial possession from 1625 to 1966. Historian, Matthew Parker, writing in his insightful text entitled The Sugar Barons gives this account of the critical role played by the Dutch in the Establishment of Barbados as a slave-based, sugar-producing British colonial territory in the first half of the 17th century:
“The earliest accounts of Barbados… are partial and contradictory. All agree, however, that Dutch influence was decisive in establishing the sugar industry on this island in the early 1640s.
The actual technology was Portuguese……But it was the Dutch…..who were the engine of its transfer as well as providing the labour, tools, easy credit and ships to get the finished sugar……”
Indeed, Matthew Parker actually quotes from a historical document from the 1660s which testified to the critical role of the Dutch in Barbados as follows:
“The Dutch who are great encouragers of our Plantations, in the first attempt to make sugar, gave great Credit to the more sober Inhabitants…….They also furnished the Island with negroes, copper, cane, and all other things that belong to… ..making sugar.”
But, of course, it wasn’t just Barbados. Similar Dutch involvement, influence and support was found throughout our Caribbean region. Here, then, is the most extensive and comprehensive testimony of the eminent Caribbean historian, Dr Eric Williams (the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago) contained in his magnum opus From Columbus to Castro:
“Seventeenth-century Caribbean history saw a perpetual struggle ….between the Netherlands, England, and France over the Caribbean trade. The Dutch, turning their attention to trade rather than plantations, early took the lead……
“So successful were the Dutch in their chosen field that by the middle of the century, out of a total of 25,000 ships engaged in the maritime trade of Europe, the Dutch owned 15,000….
“The Caribbean Sea became practically a Dutch canal.
The new European annexations in the Caribbean, de jure English, French and Danish, were de facto Dutch…….It was the Dutch who, when tobacco prices fell on the world market, taught the planters the secrets of cane cultivation and sugar production. . It was the Dutch who provided the necessary supply of slaves…”
So there can be no doubt that the Netherlands or the Netherlands were critical to the establishment and operation of a number of slave-based sugar plantations in Barbados and several other non-Dutch Caribbean territories, and that the Netherlands benefited enormously from the involvement and support of these in essentially criminal enterprise.
It is now up to the CARICOM Reparations Commission to inform Prime Minister Rutte that the time has come for a conversation about the role his government must now play in healing the wounds that still exist not only in the Dutch-speaking CARICOM member state of Suriname. , but also in Guyana (a former Dutch colonial possession), and in Barbados and all other relevant CARICOM nations.
