Vlissingen, once the center of the slave trade, grapples with a contaminated past

From the statue of Michiel de Ruyter on the boulevard de Vlissingen, Angélique Duijndam points to a few monumental buildings near the port below. ‘Do you see the Lampsinshuis there, where the maritime muZEEum of Zeeland is now? In the 17th century, the wealthy shipowner Lampsins lived there, who helped establish a colony of slaves on the Caribbean island of Tobago.

Defying the permanent drizzle blowing from the Western Scheldt, she continues: “And there, the stock exchange building in the Dutch Renaissance style from 1635. Vlissingen grew rich thanks to the slave trade. It was mayor and merchant Jan de Moor who sent the ship Fortuyn to Tobago in 1628 to establish a plantation colony. A town on this island was even called Nieuw-Vlissingen.

Duijndam, who was born in Suriname and works at the Anti-Discrimination Bureau Zeeland, is one of the initiators of Keti Koti Zeeland, which commemorates the abolition of slavery in Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles in 1863 on July 1. His ancestors still worked on the Surinamese plantation La Prosperité, which became famous because nine former slaves bought the plantation in 1882.

Capital of the Dutch slave trade

The 52-year-old “SuriZeeuwse”, as she describes herself, shakes her head with hair extensions when the very topical discussion of Vlissingen’s slave past returns. Because research shows that the small port town in the Western Scheldt was an important player in the slave trade.

“In the second half of the 18th century, Vlissingen was even the undisputed capital of the Dutch slave trade”, conclude two researchers in a report written in 2021 on behalf of the municipality. “Between 1750 and 1780, ships from Vlissingen transported about 60,000 Africans as slaves.”

Another shocking finding: “The slave trade elite had strong ties to the city government of the day. In the 18th century, for example, various slave traders were ships (aldermen) of Vlissingen. And: At the height of the Vlissingen slave trade, perhaps a quarter of the local economy was directly or indirectly linked to the transatlantic slave trade.

Apologies for a painful past

In response to the investigation report, the city council acknowledged that Vlissingen had played an important and therefore dubious role in the Dutch slave past. But official apologies to the descendants of slaves, including Angélique Duijndam, were never made.

Five parties in the city council are therefore asking the city council to apologize on July 1. “Vlissingen City Council is the legal successor to the predecessors who made this historic injustice possible,” says Pieter Jan Mersie of the ChristenUnie in the initiative proposal he submitted last Thursday evening together with colleagues from GroenLinks, SP, PvdA and D66. “By apologizing, we are putting the pain of the descendants of slaves first and not our own right. As a city council, we are indicating that we want to understand their grief. (….) The apology goes further than the recognition of a historical fact.’

But at the committee meeting last week, other parties still had the necessary questions and doubts about it. In fact, it looks like there won’t be a majority in favor of an apology in Vlissingen City Council when the proposal is voted on April 13.

“You cannot hold the current council responsible for what happened then,” said VVD councilor Yvette Hoogstraten. She also wonders “what is the added value of a more or less forced apology”.

Some advisers also fear that an apology will result in the payment of damages. But to overcome this fear, the initiative explicitly states that “there is no cost associated with an apology.”

UC counselor Mersie continues to hope for a positive outcome. And that Vlissingen, after Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague, will apologize. The neighboring city of Middelburg will also do so on July 1. Mersie would be “devastated” if Vlissingen, once the capital of the Dutch slave trade, failed: “What effect will this have on the descendants?

monument of slavery

Angelique Duijndam calls Vlissingen’s struggle with its slavery past painful. “It seems that the naysayers are further trivializing Vlissingen’s role in this story.”

She also points out that this is not a personal apology from the current administrators, but an apology from the council as an institution: “It is about what the municipality did at the time. We have to be responsible for it.

According to her, apologies go much further than recognition. “Acknowledging that something happened is an empty word,” says Duijndam. “Offering an apology is a first step towards healing and connecting black and white people. Because white people live in shame and black people live in anger. It’s time for mutual respect for the history of the other.

She has also been campaigning for her own slavery monument in Vlissingen for years. Because now Keti Koti (meaning: broken chains) is commemorated jointly by the towns of Walcheren at the slavery monument in Middelburg, together with Vlissingen and Veere.

“I think Michiel de Ruyter should stay here on the boulevard, as an admiral and naval hero, even though he also played an indirect role in the slave trade in the 17th century,” says Duijndam. “But it would be nice if further down the boulevard, between the cannons overlooking the water of the Western Scheldt, a separate monument was erected in memory of all slaves. For everyone to know, even in the era of modern slavery – just look at the conditions of migrant workers: we must always continue to see ourselves as human beings, not as productive assets.