First published on NYCritics.com
What a fuss about slavery. It is now more than 160 years since slavery was abolished in the Netherlands (in 1863), and in many other parts of the world even earlier. Yet the moment something appears in the news, the flames flare up again. Time and again we hear the call for apologies, recognition and money.
I am slowly getting fed up with it. Not because I want to excuse slavery, for it was a horrific injustice, but because the bill is being presented to the wrong people. My position is simple: do not blame an entire nation of today, but look at the institutions and elites that truly profited from it at the time. Those are the royal houses, the Church, and also the rulers in Africa themselves.
Judging the Slave Trade by Today’s Standards: Can Modern Citizens Be Guilty of Historical Crimes?
Can I, in 2026, still be held responsible for the “crimes” of my ancestors and their ruling monarchs? Must I defend myself for the money the House of Orange once plundered? I find the word crime a big word in this context. Did the people in the age of slavery actually know what grave crime they were committing? Did the Egyptians, long before the coming of Jesus, know they were doing wrong when they kept slaves?
For centuries, slavery was a custom, an “ordinary” spirit of the age. Just like the spirit of the age in which pagans burned people at the stake because they saw evil spirits in them, or in which Christians sent anyone who thought differently to the stake. I am not excusing any of it. But whoever judges the past by today’s standards must do so consistently. And then it does not stop at the ordinary Dutch citizen.
Constantine, the Bible and Dum Diversas: How the Catholic Church Blessed the Slave Trade
Take the Church. Have you ever wondered who actually decided what went into the Bible? That process received a major impetus under Emperor Constantine (c. 272–337), who supported Christianity and was baptised shortly before his death. His confidant, Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 263–339), described which writings were and were not considered authoritative, and on Constantine’s orders he had fifty Bibles produced for the churches of Constantinople. Around the year 400, church councils definitively fixed the list of the New Testament.
In doing so, emperor and Church laid the foundation for centuries of spiritual subjugation. Popes and monarchs together kept a tight grip, and anyone who deviated faced the most gruesome punishments, up to the gallows and the stake. Gnostics, Cathars and Huguenots were persecuted and murdered. Through the sale of indulgences, believers were moreover swindled out of their money with the promise of a better “life” after death. Can you not simply call that theft?
The Church also played a direct role in the slave trade itself. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V, with the papal bull Dum Diversas, explicitly authorised the King of Portugal to reduce ‘unbelievers’ to slavery. With that, the European trade in African people received the Church’s blessing. In 1992, Pope John Paul II did ask for forgiveness on the Senegalese slave island of Gorée, but has the Vatican, with its enormous wealth, ever paid back a single thing? Why is the Dutch taxpayer held to account, and not Rome?
Kings of Dahomey and Ashanti: The African Rulers Who Sold Their Own People
What almost everyone forgets is that the ruling elites in Africa themselves often helped capture, ship and sell slaves, their own people. Think of the Kingdom of Dahomey in present-day Benin, the Ashanti Empire in Ghana, the kingdoms in present-day Nigeria and Congo, and the slave market of Zanzibar in Tanzania. Local kings and warlords made a fortune from the trade. Are there not wealthy families among them who could contribute something today?
I therefore wonder whether some of the people who today demand compensation on behalf of the descendants are not “simply” treasure hunters. They target the hard-working European of today, but remain silent about the role of their own elites back then. Is demanding money for an injustice from centuries ago not easier than building prosperity yourself?
Slave Owners Got Paid, the Enslaved Got Nothing: The Shameful History of Slavery Compensation
When money was paid in the past, it almost always went to the wrong people. Two painful examples:
- When Britain abolished slavery in 1833, it paid 20 million pounds (roughly 40% of annual government expenditure) as compensation for the ‘loss of property’ – to the slave owners, that is. The loan taken out for this was only fully paid off by the British taxpayer in 2015.
- In 1863, the Netherlands paid the owners 300 guilders for every enslaved person in Suriname. The freed people themselves received nothing, and were even forced to keep working on the plantations for another ten years under ‘state supervision’.
So the money went to the perpetrators, not to the victims. And even if we were to pay again now, it remains to be seen whether it would reach those who deserve it. Why, then, should we ordinary citizens foot the bill once more?
A Royal Apology Without Repayment: Why King Willem-Alexander’s Words Are Not Enough
Some will now say: hasn’t the Netherlands already apologised? That is true. Prime Minister Rutte apologised on behalf of the Dutch state in December 2022, and King Willem-Alexander did so on 1 July 2023, during Keti Koti, also on behalf of the House of Orange. The King’s apology was the very least he could do: his ancestors made a fortune from it. But apologies are cheap. As long as the House of Orange does not return a single cent of that money, it remains nothing but fine words. And the state, in the end, is all of us, the taxpayers of today. Most Dutch people back then had no say in the matter. Why, then, should the Dutch citizen of today be guilty?
From Colonial Profits to a Tax-Free Allowance: The House of Orange and Modern Exploitation
Before 1789, the year of the French Revolution, and in many countries long after, citizens were subjects who simply had no say. If a king wanted to burn down a village or have people killed, he did so. That was not considered a crime, but the exercise of state power. Universal human rights that applied to everyone did not yet exist. They only truly took shape after the Second World War, with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
In other words: do not blame the Dutch people as a whole, but collect the fine from the rulers of the time, and first and foremost from the House of Orange. According to the 2023 study State and Slavery (Staat en Slavernij), the House of Orange earned the equivalent of some 545 million euros from the colonies between 1675 and 1770. Stadtholders William IV and William V, as governors-general, were the supreme heads of the VOC and the WIC, the company that ran the Dutch slave trade for decades. That money was never returned. Worse still: the House of Orange still lives off money that ordinary citizens pay in taxes, and they pay no income tax on their own royal allowance. Their fortune was built partly on investments, historically including Shell. So we pay, and they receive. Is that, then, modern slavery? Apart from corporal punishment, little has changed when it comes to exploitation. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Anyone who truly wants to do justice to the slavery past must therefore stop pointing at the ordinary citizen of today and present the bill where it belongs: to the rulers who profited from it back then, and who are often still wealthy today. Starting at Huis ten Bosch Palace.
