On July 1, a commemoration will be held for the 150th anniversary of the practical abolition of slavery under Dutch rule. King Willem-Alexander will give a speech that day at an event at the National Slavery Monument in the Oosterpark in Amsterdam. Sources expect him to repeat the apologies that Prime Minister Mark Rutte previously offered for the country's dubious past.
Without slavery there would have been no Dutch colonial empire. The political and economic elite were strongly intertwined in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries and slavery was the spearhead of their policy. The consequences of this can be seen all over the world to this day.
The Netherlands did not abolish colonial slavery until 1863, making it one of the last countries to do so. The House of Oranje-Nassau, the Royal House of the Netherlands, earned at least 545 million euros from the Dutch colonies, where slavery was widespread. The figure has been adjusted for inflation, and covers the period from 1675 to 1770. It is one of the results of the investigation into the country's connection to the slave trade. The investigation was commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations at the request of the lower house of Parliament.
Willem III, IV and V had an important political function as stadtholder in the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, a predecessor to the present-day Netherlands. As stadtholders, they were essentially leaders, and their "colonial profit" accounts for half of the now known income that the stadtholders received during the period that was researched.
The House of Oranje-Nassau benefited in various ways from the colonies and thus from slavery, the research showed. For example, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was an important source of colonial revenue. The noble family did not invest in the VOC directly, but at the time of incorporation the shareholders arranged to pay the Oranjes as if they owned approximately 3 percent of the shares. They then regularly used their influence to solve problems for the trading company.
