Amsterdam Mayor Apologizes for City Fathers’ Role in Slavery

The mayor of Amsterdam apologized Thursday for the extensive involvement of the Dutch capital’s former governors in the global slave trade, saying the moment had come for the city to confront its grim history.

Debate about the role of Amsterdam’s city fathers in the slave trade has been going on for years, but it has gained more attention amid the global reckoning with racial injustice that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“It is time to engrave the great injustice of colonial slavery into our city’s identity. With big-hearted and unconditional recognition,” Mayor Femke Halsema said. “Because we want to be a government for those for whom the past is painful and its legacy a burden.”

While apologizing, she also stressed that “not a single Amsterdammer alive today is to blame for the past.”

The Dutch government has in the past expressed deep regret for the nation’s historic role in slavery, but has stopped short of a formal apology. Prime Minister Mark Rutte said last year that such an apology could polarize society.

An independent commission that discussed the issue in recent months issued a report Thursday advising the central government to apologize, saying it would “help heal historic suffering.”

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Black activist and actor Patrick Mathurin said some in the Netherlands try to ignore the country’s colonial past, “but through our activism, we forced them to look at it. And also what happened, of course, with George Floyd made it all … evolve faster.”

Halsema said history casts a shadow that reaches into the present day.

“The city officials and the ruling elite who, in their hunger for profit and power, participated in the trade in enslaved people, in doing so entrenched a system of oppression based on skin color and race,” she said. {snip}

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The apology came during an annual ceremony marking the abolition of slavery in Dutch colonies in Suriname and the Dutch Antilles on July 1, 1863. The anniversary is now known as Keti Koti, which means Chains Broken.

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Research into the involvement of Amsterdam’s city fathers in the slave trade and slavery was commissioned by the municipality in 2019.

Halsema said it showed that “from the end of the 16th century until well into the 19th century, Amsterdam’s involvement was direct, worldwide, large-scale, multifaceted and protracted.”

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