A Look Back on History of Dutch Colonialism, Slave Trade in Africa

The National Monument Slavery Past by Erwin de Vries in Amsterdam, Netherlands is seen in this Dec. 10, 2020.Muhammad OsmanWith Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte expected to issue a formal apology for the country’s long involvement in the slave trade on Monday, Sputnik looks back at the Netherlands’ history of colonial activities and slavery across the world, including in Africa, which suffered the most from slavery.The history of Dutch slavery predates the establishment of the Netherlands as a state in the 16th century. The ethnic groups that lived in the region, the Celts, Germanic peoples, and Frisians, had a history of slave trade. Their societies were divided into nobles, freemen, and slaves.At the beginning of the 17th century, during a period nicknamed the “Dutch Golden Age,” the Netherlands’ involvement in the overseas slave trade began alongside growth in the country’s trading interests across the world.In the early 1600s, the Dutch established two trading companies, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (WIC), which later took the lead in trading enslaved people across Asia, the Americas, and Africa.In 1634, the WIC kidnapped about a thousand people from the Gold Coast (known today as Ghana) and sent them to work in the WIC’s plantations in Dutch Brazil, also known as New Holland, marking the first notable involvement of the Dutch companies in slavery.Eventually, the Dutch Republic managed to colonize a number of territories on the northeast coast of South America and turn them into “plantation colonies” that were mainly dependent on slave workers brought from Africa.AfricaNetherlands Expected to Officially Apologize for Its Role in The Slave Trade08:07 GMTSeeking natural and human resources, the Dutch Republic and its companies began colonizing territories in Africa, from West Africa, with some territories of contemporary Ghana becoming the first victim, followed by Senegal and the Ivory Coast. The Dutch later captured some parts of contemporary Angola, Namibia, South Africa, along with Mauritius.Colonizing these territories and enslaving their people, the Dutch Republic grew over the course of more than 200 years to one of the world’s leading economic powers.As the Dutch colonial activities flourished, the Dutch East India Company built a hub for the slave trade in Cape Town on South Africa’s southwest coast to receive slave traffic coming mainly from Mauritius and Madagascar, as well as from India and Indonesia in South Asia. The enslaved Africans and Asians were later transported to the Americas and Europe.Besides being used as a resupply and layover port for vessels of the VOC trading with Asia, the Dutch Cape Colony also served as an ideal retirement place for employees of the company, where they could receive pieces of lands and slaves, cultivate crops, and sell them to the VOC at fixed prices.© AFP 2022 / KOEN VAN WEELPresident of De Nederlandsche Bank, Klaas Knot (L), attends the national commemoration of the abolition of slavery in Suriname and the Caribbean Netherlands, at the National Slavery Past Remembrance Monument in Amsterdam, on July 1, 2022. (Photo by Koen van Weel / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT1/1President of De Nederlandsche Bank, Klaas Knot (L), attends the national commemoration of the abolition of slavery in Suriname and the Caribbean Netherlands, at the National Slavery Past Remembrance Monument in Amsterdam, on July 1, 2022. (Photo by Koen van Weel / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT1/1President of De Nederlandsche Bank, Klaas Knot (L), attends the national commemoration of the abolition of slavery in Suriname and the Caribbean Netherlands, at the National Slavery Past Remembrance Monument in Amsterdam, on July 1, 2022. (Photo by Koen van Weel / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUTAccording to historians, two-thirds of the population of Cape Town, then known as the Cape Colony, which occupied much of modern South Africa, consisted of slaves in 1795, when the colony fell into the hands of the British Empire.In 1863, the Netherlands was one of the last European countries to give up the slave trade. After the start of its practice in the 1590s, the Dutch Republic transported about half a million Africans across the Atlantic, with thousands dying on the way, before making it to their final destination in the Americas.Generally, Africa was the hardest hit by Western slave activities. According to a UNESCO report, during the period between the 16th and the 19th centuries, approximately 28 million Africans were enslaved, and only about 10 to 12 million out of the 14 million slaves who made it to the African coast were transported alive over the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans to Europe and the Americas. Millions of African people died due to these slave trade activities.

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