History of slavery in the Netherlands
During the early modern period, Dutch slave traders bought and sold over 1.6 million enslaved people.
[3] Though not officially "abolished" everywhere slavery as an institution had for all practical purposes fallen in disuse in the Habsburg Netherlands for these reasons.
[5] According to Leuven professor Petrus Gudelinus, in 16th-century Mechelen, an escaped slave was freed because it was argued that slavery did not exist in the Low Countries.
On average between 1729 and 1775, 10 people of African descent (not necessarily slaves) would travel from Suriname to the Netherlands, of which most would return after a short stay.
[8] The slave trade by the Dutch West India Company (wic) has in their starting years contributed to the status of the Netherlands as an economic world power.
Already in 1528, an asiento or contract was made between the rulers of Spain and assumingly the Southern Netherlandish merchants Willem Sailler and Hendrink Eynger, to transfer during the next four years 4,000 slaves from Africa to the Caribbean.
With the capture of a Spanish treasure fleet during the Battle in the Bay of Matanzas in 1628, sufficient money was available to carry out the Groot Desseyn.
After this reconquest, the sugar cane cultivation was transferred to the Caribbean and in 1634 to Curaçao, which then became the Dutch collection point for slaves.
Coymans died in 1686 and the Spanish lost faith in his successor and in granted the asiento back to Nicolas Porcio in 1688.
In 1697, there was a contract with Real Compañía de Cacheu, the successor of Porcio, for the delivery of 2,500 to 3,000 slaves per year, but Curaçao did no longer serve as a transfer port.
In 1713, immediately after the War of the Spanish Succession, Curaçao's central position as a regional slave market came to an abrupt end.
The slave trade continued despite the low profit margins, partly because many traders also had interests in plantations in Suriname.
After the uprising, protective slave legislation was enacted in Curaçao, which regulated, among other things, the provision of food rations and clothing, as well as working and rest times.
Descriptions of mistreatment by Dutch slaveholders and the images by William Blake were an important weapon for the mainly British advocates of the abolition of slavery.
Notable captains of the Marrons were Adyáko Benti Basiton (known as Boston Bendt), Adoe, Alabi, Boni, and Broos.
In the 17th century, Zeelanders had founded a colony on the banks of the River Berbice in present-day Guyana with plantations that were worked by African slaves.
In 1763, the slaves of the Berbice colony led by Cuffy (Kofi, Coffy) revolted, which was eventually brutally suppressed with the help of six naval ships carrying 600 soldiers.
The economic recession of 1773 caused a decline in the entire Dutch merchant shipping industry, including the slave trade.
When the Dutch Republic delivered weapons and ammunition to the rebels in the American Revolutionary War via the colony of Sint Eustatius, this aroused anger from Britain.
When the British arrested the newly appointed American ambassador Henry Laurens in 1780 on his way to the Dutch Republic, they seized a secret treaty between the city of Amsterdam and the rebels in his luggage.
In addition, Britain feared that the Dutch Republic would join the First League of Armed Neutrality, which would further protect trade with the Americans.
The development of agricultural machinery provided an additional reason to abolish slavery; the use of machines made slaves obsolete.
In May 1818, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands concluded an Anglo-Dutch Slave Trade Treaty, which, among other things, provided for the establishment of two Joint Courts of Justice to convict slavers who tried to evade the ban.
The United Kingdom abolished slavery in 1833, resulting in Dutch slaves fleeing from Sint Eustatius to the nearby British colony of Saint Kitts.
Parties were organized in which King William III was presented as a key figure and benefactor of the freed slaves.
In all Dutch traders shipped and sold between 550,000 and 850,000 slaves in the Atlantic area: first to Brazil, later mainly to Suriname and the Antilles.
Historian Matthias van Rossum estimates that throughout history between 660,000 and 1,135,000 slaves were traded in order to provide labor to the Dutch settlement areas in Asia.
[citation needed] The National Slavery History Monument was unveiled on 1 July 2002 in the Oosterpark in the presence of Queen Beatrix and many other invited guests from both the Netherlands and abroad.
In particular, the monument commemorates the slavery past in Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles, Aruba, and the west coast of Africa, including Ghana.
In particular, North African privateers and merchants, also known as Barbary pirates, operating under the banner of the Ottoman Empire, targeted Europeans for, among other things, construction projects and as galley slaves.
