While calls for an apology for the slave trade are growing louder in the Netherlands, a Dutch historian has drawn an unpopular conclusion: overseas slavery was less cruel than people think. Dutch Professor Henk den Heijer believes the cruel image of slavery that has developed over the centuries is too moralistic.
Slaves spent weeks at sea, shoulder to shoulder chained up in the ship’s hold without fresh air. They were beaten and fed poorly. Women were sexually abused and there was no medical care.
“This cruel image formed in around 1800,” says Professor Den Heijer, “during the debate to abolish slavery. You mainly see interviews, books and pamphlets written by people who supported the abolition of slavery and emphasised the bad side of the trade. Those sources have become the standard for its history.”
Doctor at hand
Professor Den Heijer has uncovered a different image by looking in the archive of a shipping company, the Middelburgse Commercie Compagnie (MCC). It was the largest shipping company to transport slaves in the Netherlands in the 18th century with 113 ships. The archive is unique, painting a picture of life on board the ships which took slaves from Africa to America.
The ships’ logs in the archive reveal a different story: on board the ships slaves were treated as well as the crew. A doctor was at hand for both the crew and the slaves and they were fed well. It was logical from a commercial point of view to treat slaves well.
“They were considered to be valuable. A good trader tried to get his slaves to the other side of the ocean in good condition to sell for a good price. Slavery is still morally objectionable, but that does not mean they were abused.”
Slave revolts
Abuse was the exception and officers would be punished by losing pay or being dismissed according to the ships’ logs.
Nevertheless there were slaves who revolted on board. But out of a total of 1500 trips by the MCC, this only happened 53 times. And the situation was probably the same for other counties involved in slavery like Great Britain.
Heated debate
The professor hasn’t had many reactions from his colleagues, but there are heated discussions on internet forums. On a Surinamese site one blogger wrote:
"If people are made into slaves and transported to a foreign continent, if you rob them of their language, culture, family and belief and then you say we have to see it in the light of the time, then there is something wrong with you.”
However, Surinamese sociologist at the National Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery and its Legacy Aspha Bijnaar says she is open to Professor Den Heijer’ s conclusions.
“It is too easy to say ‘he is trivalising the matter’. I am not able to check his sources myself, but he is a historian and I assume he has good arguments.”
Mr Den Heijer was recently appointed professor at the University of Leiden and is working on a television series on slavery to be broadcast in the Netherlands from September.
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The author of this article and the professor who is promoting this theory is clearly intoxicated and mentally impaired. Are we to believe the slave trade was a luxurious boat ride to a lifetime of labor and phsyical beatings? Perhaps, slaves were hung and mutilated because the slave owners were so appauled that someone would be so disrespectful to think it were okay to leave this luxurious lifestyle of handpicking cotton and being raped by their "owners." You know what that sounds really pleasant--Slavery was not cruel at all. I actually wish I could wake up every morning, be whipped, have all my coworkers raped, have no days off, not be paid, be herded like cattle, have my children sold, have my genitals mutilated for being accused of looking at someone of another race, and if im lucky I can have my foot chopped off if I decide to "run away". Sign me up.
I was born in South Africa. I am a decendant, from my mothers family, of a Dutch slave, who married a VOC soldier. If it were'nt for slavery I wouldnt be here.
The thing is, all our ancestors did bad things in one way or another. We shouldnt go around beating ourselves up for things our fofathers done. Things like that happened and there's nothing we can do to reverse it...
How fortunate the internet is available for the anonymous and illiterate to have their voice heard.
When commenting on an article on a scientific publication please refrain from commenting on the scientific publication you have never read. Try to do this in your direct environment and you will be despised.
Whatever you may think of the internet, it's anonymity etc., always remember you are only it's slave.
One might surmise that you are the slave of the so-called scientific publisher. I have not yet found out that history is a science. I will ask my grandmother about it.
One might surmise that you are the slave of the so-called scientific publisher. I have not yet found out that history is a science. I will ask my grandmother about it.
I love how Dutch people can make an issue of slavery and turn into islamophobia. I lived in the Netherlands for 2 years, and colonial mentality is well and alive in that country. It has not embraced globalization and does not welcome foreigners. One can argue that by the many faces in Amsterdam it does, but Amsterdam does not represent other parts of the country. I know the Dutch will be happy, so am I, that I left.
It would be an error to presume that the comments below were written by Dutch people.
I wrote 2 of the comments and I know Dutch and the Dutch colonial history.
Good for you, Lala. But I was trying to stress to Anonymous/Canada that one should not use the English comment pages of RNW as a barometer of the Dutch psyche. They're a barometer of people who, for whatever reason, have an interest in the Netherlands and happen to be able to write in English. Turning a seemingly unrelated subject into a rant against Islam is a popular pastime worldwide these days.
Interesting, been there on holidays once?
Het kenmerkende sarcasme van JW blijft zelfs in anonimiteit onverborgen.
Oh now I seem to understand that it was just a free cruise, on a luxury cruise ship from Africa to the Americas. The slaves had cabins with a view on the ocean and were treated like VIPS, every day the crew of the ship served them breakfast, lunch and dinner also for free. Gosh what a great treat, I wish I were a slave at that time.
It was a free cruise with a 24 hrs. open bar and free meals.
I suppose this is a way for a nation which profited from a morally objectionable enterprise to feel less guilty about it. Especially when some aspects can be traced back to pro slavery policies of beloved William of Orange. Hey kids, don't forget your orange scarf on Saturday!
What a silly superficial sensational headline. Shame.
Were the ship logs based on the truth and do they reflect the truth? I don't think so; they are like the medical files of patients in a hospital, who died because of the neglect or malpractice of a medical doctor or nurse; all was fine and dandy, only the patient passed away.
Blacks are not known for their intellectual attainments. They have a simplistic image of the White man and of themselves. They feel comfortable believing in their equality and even their superiority as a race. Consequently they must entertain the most outrageous notions about slavery and the White man.
If the White were capturing lions, snakes, zebras in Africa and transporting them to America to sell would he
(A.) Crowd them into the ship and allow hundreds to die thus costing him a fortune?
(B.) Or would he be smart enough to pack them economically and feed them well to make sure that he got a big payday?
Of course B is the correct answer. Only a silly foolish anti-white racist would believe all the nonsense about ill treatment of slaves.
Now if you know Black people you know that a very small percentage of them are incorrigible, just like a certain percentage of all races are incorrigibles. So as ship captain if there is a man or woman that is causing more trouble than he or she is worth then overboard, after all other measures fail.
But you would no more want to throw a slave overboard than a good horse.
Let's suppose: New Research: HOLOCOUST LESS CRUEL THEN WE THOUGHT. Documents from 1943 found, researched in 2011 by German institutions, documents 'bout Dutch Jews and others: " During transport from Westerbork to Dachau, Dutch Jews were treated less cruel then we thought". Even if this would be true, would it be relevant?!
Is this another ad for the Holocaust and the Chosen People doctrine that Jewish suffering is greater and more importance than any other group’s suffering?
I don’t see why anyone would exclude the Arabs from a slavery discussion. 2 excepts from Wikipedia:
1 - “As recently as the 1950s, Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 450,000 — approximately 20% of the population. It is estimated that as many as 200,000 black Sudanese children and women had been taken into slavery in Sudan during the Second Sudanese Civil War. Slavery in Mauritania was legally abolished by laws passed in 1905, 1961, and 1981. It was finally criminalized in August 2007. It is estimated that up to 600,000 black Mauritanians, or 20% of Mauritania's population, are currently enslaved, many of them used as bonded labour.”
2 - “The Arab slave trade from East Africa is one of the oldest slave trades, predating the European transatlantic slave trade by 700 years.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade#The_Islamic_world
Slavery was a trade and a lot of money was being made with it. Look only at the mansions in Amsterdam along its canals, built by dutch slave traders and merchants, on the account of the suffering and death of many fellow human beings treated and traded like cattle or worse.
So happy to see that a reader has found again a reason to attack Muslims. What the Western "culture" did to others world-wide far outstrips anything Muslims might have done. The colonial mentality is still alive and well - slavery is still around but in a much more 'modern' way. As to the professor's claims...is he speaking from personal experience? What rubbish.
rather think, the slave trade was not a good thing; court testimony from the crews suggest it was more than brutal with fattening warehouses on arrival. In America 60-70% of the slaves were muslim and were prohibited from religous practices under consequence of death or dismemberment. The time for appologies are past, it is time to think of reparations.
Your statistic about Muslims being enslaved is absolute rubbish. Most Africans who were enslaved and taken to the Americas (both North & South) held spiritual beliefs that were local to their region. These included spiritual and tribal beliefs, NOT those of doctrines. You say you're from the US, but obviously you've never gone to school there, otherwise you'd have learned some basic tenets of history. Look it up. As much as you may want to make this another muslim/chistian issue, it's simply not true.
Plenty of Muslim societies throughout Africa and W.Asia also participated heavily in the slave trade.
"The time for appologies are past, it is time to think of reparations."...Reparations would be a good idea for those slaves born before 1865 but none are around to receive them. If reparations are to be given a couple of hundred years later for crimes committed by others, then everyone on this planet would get a cheque from the government. Lets start off making the Dutch pay the largest percentage. They are the ones who helped perpetuate slavery and then lets make the British Germans, Irish, Scottish, pay reparations for stealing and murdering the American Indians and stealing their land. Didn't the Dutch steal some land from the American Indians for some beads? Then let the Dutch and British pay for reparations for their part in murdering South Africans and stealing their lands? It is not the responsibility of the citizens of today to pay for the crimes of the past. The reparations scheme only perpetuates hate. What the world needs today is to hold people responsible for their murdering acts such as in Libya and Syria before future generations have to pay reparations for "our" (not their)crimes against humanity.
Good point Hiram, thanks for your sound arguments.
exactly what i was thinking, an im from an ex-colony
I guess that it was also OK the bloody fights between gladiators in the arena of the Roman Coliseum. They were captured slaves forced to kill other slaves.
It would be a little naive to believe that the reports written in the ships logs was the real story. Take for example the official reports in today's wars with respect to treatment of prisoners.
Being taken away from your homeland like an animal is cruelty enough to make any other niceties seem trivial. Slavery was WRONG and still is.
Why don't the Muslims apologize for slavery? They were always the worst offenders. Arab Muslim slave traders dominated the African trade. In the heyday of the Muslim Barbary Pirates of North Africa, over 1 million Europeans were captured and held in slavery. In fact,there are still millions of slaves held in Muslim countries today because Sharia Law still permits it.
I don't think another Western country should apologize for slavery until after the Muslims have apologized.
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