INTRODUCTION
Textbooks, often a critical element of primary and secondary curriculum, play an important role in shaping how students view their nation’s history and conceptions of racial groups, racial and power hierarchies (Apple and Christian-Smith, Reference Apple, Christian-Smith, Apple and Christian-Smith1991; Giroux Reference Giroux and Hill1997; Giroux and McLaren, Reference Giroux and McLaren1989). U.S. scholars consistently find that curriculum privileges the dominant culture by excluding minority groups and their oppression by the dominant group thereby obscuring historical roots of contemporary inequality and signaling to students which groups belong to the national community (Brown and Brown, Reference Brown and Brown2010; Pinar Reference Pinar, McCarthy and Chrichlow1993; Zimmerman Reference Zimmerman2002). Texts written from a Eurocentric perspective often exclude the histories and cultures of minorities and emphasize Western superiority and continue to depict colonialist ideologies and histories (Araújo and Maeso, Reference Araújo, Maeso, Hamilton, Hodgson and Quirk2012b; Willinsky Reference Willinsky1998).
The misrepresentation of non-dominant groups’ histories, enslavement in particular, in American and British textbooks is well documented. Growing attention among scholars of “Black Europe,” particularly in The Netherlands, to colonialism and enslavement’s role in shaping contemporary racial attitudes and inequalities has produced important research on slavery and its legacy (Hira Reference Hira2012; Nimako Reference Nimako2012; Nimako and Willemsen, Reference Nimako and Willemsen2011). But little attention is paid to depictions of slavery in continental European primary school history texts.Footnote 3
This article deploys this new scholarship of the role of the Dutch in the trade and enslavement of Africans to empirically document and critically analyze these depictions in Dutch primary school history textbooks published since 1980. Similar to those which exist in the United States and other European nations, I find that Dutch textbooks feature a Eurocentric master narrative within the unique context of the Dutch history of social forgetting of slavery and scientific colonialism. Given The Netherlands’ denial of race, and racism, in their society, these findings have critical implications for contemporary children and adults’ conceptions of race, and racial inequality. This paper engages previous and emerging literatures, highlighting racial neoliberalism and racial Europeanization, to describe first, how the social forgetting of enslavement is accomplished through curricular forms encountered by schoolchildren in The Netherlands, and second, how Afro-Dutch people are racialized through these same texts and, when it occurs, in contemporary commemoration of this phenomena.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Contemporary racism is inextricably linked to capitalism and exists largely in the form of neoliberal denial that disregards how the historical and contemporary private control of resources generates and maintains racial inequality (Deveau Reference Deveau and Diène2001; Goldberg Reference Goldberg2009). In Europe, racial neoliberalism exists as racial Europeanization, which buries history alive (Goldberg Reference Goldberg2009) by depoliticizing the contemporary presence of non-Whites on the continent, dissociating inequalities non-Whites experience today from centuries of colonialist doctrines and rationalities and, where it is addressed at all, blames minorities for their individual failings to socioeconomically assimilate, thereby bringing inequality upon themselves (Araújo and Maeso, Reference Araújo and Maeso2012a; Goldberg Reference Goldberg2009). In other words, centuries of exploitation, colonialism, and racially subordinating policies do not feature in explanations for heterogenous populations in Europe or minority groups’ socioeconomic disadvantages compared to Whites.
The “break” of World War II reconfigured racial discourse from biological to cultural racism and rearticulated the master narrative of White social, political, and economic dominance as one posing Europe’s rebirth as a function of European work ethic rather than exploitation of colonial assets (Winant Reference Winant2001). However, the ideologies of European supremacy developed during early modernity and the European Enlightenment that privileged Whites as the supreme creators and bearers of knowledge and civilization still remain in the form of policies and political discourse that promotes a racially pure and homogenous “Fortress Europe” (Goldberg Reference Goldberg2009; Grosfoguel 2011; Hesse Reference Hesse2007; Melamed Reference Melamed2006; Mills Reference Mills1999; Quijano Reference Quijano2000; Wieviorka Reference Wieviorka, Goldberg and Solomos2002). This hegemonic Eurocentric power-evasive master narrative naturalizes colonialism, slavery, and racism in Europe’s development into the modern capitalist global economy’s center with insufficient protest from the oppressed to denounce race and racism’s exclusion from discourses of nationhood, democracy, and citizenship (Araújo and Maeso, Reference Araújo and Maeso2012a; Grosfoguel 2011).
In The Netherlands, racial Europeanization is accomplished through social forgetting, the distortion, marginalization, or trivialization of slavery and its importance to the empire’s growth (Nimako and Small, Reference Nimako, Small, Schalkwijk and Small2012), which is linked to both the Dutch belief that their society is tolerant and racism-free (Brown Reference Brown2012; Essed Reference Essed1991; Hondius Reference Hondius, Alghasi, Hyland Eriksen and Ghorashi2009) and the relative lack of faculty of color in Dutch universities (Nimako Reference Nimako2012). Instead, traditional Dutch scholars of enslavement minimize the institution’s impact on their society through scientific colonialism, which portrays “colonialism as a normal form of relations between human beings [rather than] a system of exploitation and oppression” (Hira Reference Hira2012, p. 53).
The Enslaved in Textbooks
Representations in textbooks align with national dominant racial ideologies. For nearly a century, U.S. scholars have documented textbooks’ inaccurate Eurocentric exclusion and misrepresentation of African American history (Allen Reference Allen1971; King Reference King1992; Swartz Reference Swartz1992; Woodson 2000[1933]; Wynter Reference Wynter1992). While advocates continue to argue the importance of including critical examinations of slavery in European history as a compulsory subject and on examinations at every grade level (Cole Reference Cole2004; Deveau Reference Deveau and Diène2001; Lyndon Reference Lyndon2006), scholarly literature examining slavery in textbooks in Europe remains sparse. What little exists finds textbooks deploying Eurocentric epistemologies to glorify both national and European colonialist projects, while failing to address the impact of enslavement on the lives of millions of Africans who were stolen from their homes and enslaved for generations, forced to leave families and communities behind.Footnote 4 Textbooks of other nations, including France, Denmark, Germany, and The Netherlands, either depict slavery as primarily an American (United States, Caribbean, and Latin American) phenomena or remain silent on the subject (Broeck Reference Broeck2003; Deveau Reference Deveau and Diène2001; Small Reference Small, Nimako and Willemsen2011). This omission is symptomatic of racial Europeanization (Goldberg Reference Goldberg2009), silencing slavery’s role in establishing European (and individual European nations’) social, political, and economic hegemony over the last half millennia (Grosfoguel 2011; Wallerstein Reference Wallerstein1974, Reference Wallerstein1980). Given the paucity of scholarship examining slavery in European textbooks, the literature review below reflects U.S. scholarship, except where noted otherwise.
As in Europe, depictions of slavery in American textbooks feature a master script of Eurocentric White dominance that “fails to address underlying issues such as the purpose, cause, and consequence of events and systems such as slavery” (Swartz Reference Swartz1992, p. 343). These texts ignore institutional racism and present enslavement in a detached and perfunctory tone that “obscures the oppressive role of those who perpetuated slavery” (Foster Reference Foster1999, p. 269), rendering this “peculiar” institution sanitized and neutral rather than central to the rise of a capitalist global economy (Magubane Reference Magubane2004; Sivanandan Reference Sivanandan1982).
With slavery depicted as primarily about profit, rather than about the millions of individual African lives affected by slavery, these textbooks ignore racism and exploitation to normalize slavery “more as a necessity, not as a choice, implying that slavery was natural, inevitable, and unalterable” (Swartz Reference Swartz1992, p. 354) and as such, simply the politics of the time (Foster Reference Foster1999; Gordy and Pritchard, Reference Gordy and Pritchard1995; Ogden et al., Reference Ogden, Perkins and Donahue2008; Washburn Reference Washburn1997). Depicting slavery as natural, inevitable, and necessary, texts offer tacit support of slavery as central to the rise of the Eurocentric global capitalist economy (Ogden et al., Reference Ogden, Perkins and Donahue2008) without considering its link to racist ideology and accumulation of resources (Magubane Reference Magubane2004; Sivanandan Reference Sivanandan1982). This sanitized treatment of slavery, told from the White perspective, with only a few “bad” masters allows textbooks to “ignore, undermine, or misrepresent the larger institutional/structural ties that supported (through actions and/or inactions) and, more important, benefited from their enactment” (Brown and Brown, Reference Brown and Brown2010, p. 45). Textbooks’ neglect of slavery as an economic and ideological system, which facilitated Whites’ accumulation of material resources over centuries and continues to impact contemporary Whites’ and African Americans’ economic conditions, decouples slavery from racism and White privilege (Brown and Brown, Reference Brown and Brown2010; Gordy and Pritchard, Reference Gordy and Pritchard1995; Hughes Reference Hughes2007). Discussions of enslaved Africans are limited to narrow historical eras and sections of the text, rather than holistically integrated into the nation’s entire history, and remain largely absent from subheadings, highlights, and bibliographies (Cha-Jua and Weems, Reference Cha-Jua and Weems1994). This textual segregation dissociates enslavement as a practice from the economic and ideological system undergirding it.
In most Western nations, the voices of the enslaved are not figured into the narrative of slavery as “normal” (Hira Reference Hira2012). Instead, students hear the voices of sympathetically depicted master enslavers who, students are told, faced challenges of their own on plantations and in controlling the people they enslaved (Brown and Brown, Reference Brown and Brown2010; Foster Reference Foster1999; Gordy and Pritchard, Reference Gordy and Pritchard1995; Swartz Reference Swartz1992). This explicitly White perspective fails to account for the horrors and tragedy of Africans’ ordeal during their capture, on the way to trading forts on Africa’s West Coast, and during the Middle Passage. Nor does this perspective capture Africans’ and their descendants’ lives and cultures, which they fought to maintain as enslaved men, women, and children on plantations. Textbooks suggesting that treatment varied across master enslavers diminishes their role in the national and global systems in which slavery operated and the racial violence endemic to enslavement (Brown and Brown, Reference Brown and Brown2010). Furthermore, regular use of the passive tense absolves Whites of responsibility for enslavement, leaving no one culpable for African exploitation and genocide (Eichstedt and Small, Reference Eichstedt and Small2002; Foster Reference Foster1999; Gordy and Pritchard, Reference Gordy and Pritchard1995). Depicting Blacks as perpetual victims (but not of sexual exploitation), with their families sold apart, as property, frequently punished, lacking freedom, and depending on Whites for food and shelter (Gordy and Pritchard, Reference Gordy and Pritchard1995), suggests they deserve this treatment (Brown and Brown, Reference Brown and Brown2010).
U.S. textbooks rely on stereotypical images of Africans and enslaved Africans, depicting them as fear-inducing among Whites, physically strong, criminal, looking alike, enjoying music, dance, and stories, exploitable, and lacking intellect (Foster Reference Foster1999; Godreau et al., Reference Godreau, Cruz, Franco Ortiz and Cuadrado2008; Swartz Reference Swartz1992). Frequent use of “Black” in front of “slave” without using “White” to refer to master enslavers equates “Black” with slave but not “White” with “colonizer” or “oppressor” (Godreau et al., Reference Godreau, Cruz, Franco Ortiz and Cuadrado2008; Swartz Reference Swartz1992). Lacking culture and agency, enslaved Africans appear frozen in time without any influence on U.S. history or politics (Cha-Jua and Weems, Reference Cha-Jua and Weems1994). Together, these absences leave “unchallenged the stereotype of Africans as uncultured, allowing their dehumanization to be justified” (Gordy and Pritchard, Reference Gordy and Pritchard1995, p. 207), since “they” are not “us” (Godreau et al., Reference Godreau, Cruz, Franco Ortiz and Cuadrado2008).
Group depictions of enslaved Africans are similarly stereotypical and ignore heterogeneity within the Black population. Enslaved Africans appear submissive, bound in shackles, crowded together on ships during the Middle passage, or in “banal celebration” dancing, singing, jumping, playing banjoes rather than telling stories of their homelands, planning resistance, or learning to read covertly (Godreau et al., Reference Godreau, Cruz, Franco Ortiz and Cuadrado2008). Although some texts depict violent and covert resistance on plantations (Brown and Brown, Reference Brown and Brown2010), those who resist by running away are “problems” for master enslavers (Swartz Reference Swartz1992). Stories about individual run-aways and heroes offer simplistic narratives that silence complex stories of dissent, exclude controversial figures due to their critiques of structural inequality, render resistance by ordinary, everyday people invisible, and contribute to a larger narrative of progress away from racism (Alridge Reference Alridge2006; Carlson Reference Carlson2003).
Historical Context
The Social Forgetting of Slavery in The Netherlands
The Netherlands played a prominent role in the slave trade. Spanning three centuries, the Dutch enslaving enterprise generated millions in profits and entrenched discourses of Africans justifying their enslavement in both their colonies and the metropole. Enslaved Africans and their descendants, considered objects (Emmer Reference Emmer1972; Postma Reference Postma1972), grew, harvested, and processed coffee, sugar cane, cocoa, and cotton in the colonies of the Dutch Antilles (Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, Sr. Martin, St. Eustatius, and Saba) and Surinam. Funds from this exploited labor, alongside that in Indonesia, built the national Dutch economy so that it could compete in the global system, the beautiful homes lining every major Dutch city’s canals, and the Dutch reputation as master artists, all while leaving the colonies’ infrastructure underdeveloped (Emmer Reference Emmer1972; Horton and Kardux, Reference Horton and Kardux2005; Nimako and Willemsen, Reference Nimako and Willemsen2011). While some, particularly clergy, opposed slavery, abolitionism and abolitionist movements were largely absent from The Netherlands (Drescher Reference Drescher1994). The Dutch continued trading in enslaved men, women, and children even after it was outlawed in 1814 by acting as middlemen with Spain (Postma Reference Postma1972). The Dutch legally abolished slavery in 1863 but then required a ten-year “apprenticeship” (Drescher Reference Drescher1994; Oostindie Reference Oostindie2005) which Whites paternalistically argued was necessary for the enslaved to understand the meaning and responsibilities of their freedom (Nimako and Willemsen, Reference Nimako and Willemsen2011). The Dutch government then financially compensated master enslavers for their loss of “property.”
Although they featured prominently in the global history of enslavement, the Dutch remain ambivalent about their complicity with the kidnapping, enslaving, and exploitation of Africans (Nimako and Small, Reference Nimako, Small, Schalkwijk and Small2012; Nimako and Willemsen, Reference Nimako and Willemsen2011; Oostindie Reference Oostindie2009); and there is little to no recognition of the connection between slavery and contemporary inequalities experienced by Afro-Dutch in The Netherlands today. Some scholars describe this institutionalized practice of the social forgetting of slavery in the Dutch national narrative (Nimako and Small, Reference Nimako, Small, Schalkwijk and Small2012) as a “willful act of forgetting” (Horton and Kardux, Reference Horton and Kardux2005, p. 42). Dutch history scholarship has followed suit, using scientific colonialism to portray “colonialism as a normal form of relations between human beings” rather than “a system of exploitation and oppression” (Hira Reference Hira2012, p. 53). Slavery’s trivialization likely contributes to the long-standing resistance to using the term “race” and thus any discussion or recognition of racism, particularly institutional racism within Dutch society, with many instead believing that their society is especially tolerant and racism-free (Brown Reference Brown2012; Essed and Nimako, Reference Essed and Nimako2006; Essed and Trienekens, Reference Essed and Trienekens2008; Grosfoguel and Mielants, Reference Grosfoguel and Mielants2006; Hondius forthcoming).
Rather than the central mechanism underpinning the Dutch Golden Age, slavery has long been considered “something that happened over there, far away, not for very long, and with little consequence for Dutch society today” (Small Reference Small, Nimako and Willemsen2011, p. xiii). Only recently have scholars and politicians begun to address The Netherlands’ role in the trade and enslavement of Africans (Horton and Kardux, Reference Horton and Kardux2005; Oostindie Reference Oostindie2009; Nimako and Small, Reference Nimako, Small, Schalkwijk and Small2012). In 2002, the Dutch state erected a national monument commemorating slavery,Footnote 5 and established a research institution, the National Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery and its Legacy (this institution is known by its acronym, NiNsee, in The Netherlands) (Nimako and Small, Reference Nimako, Small, Schalkwijk and Small2012); and, in 2007, included slavery as one of fifty “windows” in the new Dutch History Canon (van Oostrom Reference van Oostrom2007). In January 2013, The Netherlands ceased funding to NiNsee for, allegedly, austerity purposes.
Critical scholars of Dutch slavery have recently offered significant challenges to previous scholarship and the master narrative asserting The Netherlands’ minimalist involvement in the trade and enslavement of Africans. Traditional scholarship discussing slavery in the Dutch context focuses not on people but on enslavement’s lack of profit or economic benefits to The Netherlands (Emmer Reference Emmer1972; Postma Reference Postma1972; Small Reference Small, Nimako and Willemsen2011; van Dantzig Reference van Dantzig1968), compared to their colonies in Southeast Asia, thus rendering enslavement not as central to Dutch national history. Critical scholars (Hira Reference Hira2012; Nimako and Willemsen, Reference Nimako and Willemsen2011; Zunder Reference Zunder2010) argue this is unlikely given that The Netherlands was among the last European power to outlaw slavery in its colonies. Other scholars downplay the Dutch as smaller traders compared to other nations, often noting that of the millions of AfricansFootnote 6 enslaved in the “new world,” the Dutch “only” transported 550,000 (Hira Reference Hira2012). But there is little attention given to whether this was due to the Dutch not wanting, or their inability to acquire, more (Hira Reference Hira2012) or the fact that privateers transported significant numbers of Africans outside of the legally-sanctioned Dutch West Indies Company (WIC), or if more were transported after the trade was abolished in 1814 (Nimako and Willemsen, Reference Nimako and Willemsen2011; van Stipriaan Reference van Stipriaan, De Barros, Diptee and Trotman2006) and so are not accounted for in official government documents. Literature does not significantly address emancipation’s consequences for generations of Afro-Dutch in the colonies, or the presence of Africans in The Netherlands prior to the early 1900s (Willemsen Reference Willemsen2006; Zunder Reference Zunder2010). Recent scholarship finds master enslavers living in The Netherlands, accumulating significant profit from enslavement, and bringing enslaved Africans to The Netherlands (Hondius Reference Hondius2011). Indeed, these financial privileges and ideologies have cumulatively multiplied through centuries of Dutch history, allowing White Dutch to pass on their wealth for centuries while excluding Africans from both collective national memories and profits from their labor.
Racial Images in The Netherlands
Although little scholarly research addresses Dutch depictions of slavery in history textbooks, “most basic texts have racist content advanced through such fundamental subjects as geography, history, and biology” (Blakeley Reference Blakely1993, p. 198). Children’s books, especially dictionaries, have long equated Blackness with evil and are infused with stereotypes and scientific racism, depicting Blacks as having a reeking scent, an unclean lifestyle, and engaging in cannibalistic and superstitious practices (Blakeley Reference Blakely1993; Kapelle and Tang, Reference Kapelle and Tang2008). Contemporary children’s stories employ Black figures, long synonymized with the devil, stupidity, and misbehavior, to scare children into conforming to Dutch values and enforce conventions of morality. Tien Kleine Negertjes (Ten Little Niggers), like the poem of the same name in the United States, finds Black children disappearing in horrific ways, symbolizing desires to be rid of them. In this and other nursery rhymes, Black children become objects to be counted (as they were during slavery); things rather than people.
Not least of these stereotypes is Zwarte Piet (Black Pete), Santa’s Black slave/servant/helper who wears the shoes of an enslaved page boy, often has a Surinamese accent, and is ubiquitous in schools, advertising, toys, trinkets, candy, cakes, movies, TV, and on the streets as White men and women don Blackface in the weeks leading up to Sinterklaas on December 5th (Blakeley Reference Blakely1993; Helder and Gravenberch, Reference Helder and Gravenberch1998; Helsloot Reference Helsloot2012; Hondius Reference Hondius, Alghasi, Hyland Eriksen and Ghorashi2009; Lindsay 2008). On Sinterklaas, Saint Nicolas arrives to The Netherlands by boat, surrounded by dozens of White men and women in Blackface dressed as Zwarte Piet, and is reminiscent of slavery when multiple enslaved Africans served a master enslaver. Though significant protest has arisen in the last three years against Zwarte Piet, the Dutch people and government are loathe to abandon the tradition, or even acknowledge its racist connotations, claiming it is an important tradition (Hondius Reference Hondius, Alghasi, Hyland Eriksen and Ghorashi2009).Footnote 7
School curriculum, which teachers have total freedom to select,Footnote 8 addressing slavery and abolition has been historically limited, likely contributing to the subjects’ erasure from the Dutch national narrative. In 2007–2008, the Ministry of Education finalized a new Dutch History canon featuring 50 “windows,” people and objects that “represent” The Netherlands.Footnote 9 At NiNsee’s insistence, slavery was included (Cain Reference Cain2013). However, the government has defunded the canon beginning January 2014, thereby, for all intents and purposes, eliminating it (NRC Handelsblad 2013). The recommended topics for primary schoolbooks and teachers to address are: life on plantations, uprisings and escapes by the enslaved, Afro-Surinamese culture, Antillean music, and songs of the enslaved (Entoen.nu 2007; van Oostrom Reference van Oostrom2007). The guide notes slavery’s existence between 1637 and 1863, the largest slave uprising (on Curacao in 1795 under Tula),Footnote 10 and growing opposition to the slave trade in the late 1700s. Recommended links between the past and present include “Monuments to and the remembrance of slavery including the question of historic responsibility” and “Does slavery still exist? Human rights” (van Oostrom Reference van Oostrom2007, p. 163). The official curriculum image representing slavery features a White man leading smiling Africans with a whip. On the official website, the Africans are whipped every two seconds, allowing contemporary visitors to participate in slavery’s violence and humiliation (Entoen.nu 2007).
This new canon is not institutionalized and serves only as a guideline for textbook publishers and teachers. Students do not learn The Netherlands’ history of conquest and exploitation of non-dominant racial groups, women, and the working classes unless teachers introduce them (de Vos Reference de Vos2009). The limited scholarship on this new curriculum finds cultural differences muted and, when addressed, seen as problems to confront rather than realities to embrace and/or celebrate, even though both Dutch and minority students express interest in learning about all aspects of Dutch history (Grever et al., Reference Grever, Haydn and Ribbens2008). The social forgetting of enslavement and a socioeconomic racial hierarchy clearly exist. Yet, it is unclear from the literature how these phenomena occur.
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYTIC METHODOLOGIES
To address depictions of Dutch trade in and enslavement of Africans, I examined the newest version of all Dutch primary school history textbooks, workbooks, and in-class activity books published since 1980 (N=203), drawing heavily on the analytic techniques of Marta Araújo and Silvia Maeso (2012a), Ellen Swartz (Reference Swartz1992), and Bernice Pescosolido et al. (Reference Pescosolido, Grauerholz and Milkie1997). All books are written in Dutch and all translations are mine. Although slavery is designated as a particular topic for study by 7th groupers,Footnote 11 I examined all primary school textbooks to account for all books possibly used in schools today. While some books are available in the archives of the Dutch Education Museum,Footnote 12 a more complete collection is housed at the Dutch Royal Library in The Hague. The list’s completeness was confirmed by a Dutch history textbook and publisher expert at the National Education Museum. I account for changes made since the Canon’s revision in 2007 by examining books released by the same publisher before and after this curricular intervention. Each book was read closely for mentions of or allusions to slavery of all kinds, trade in enslaved Africans, plantations, and Africans in the Dutch colonies. I photographed pages addressing these phenomena on site and then typed all data into Word, which I then imported, along with photos of images from the texts, into Atlas.ti for analysis.
Methodologically, I used content and discourse analytic strategies (LeCompte and Preissle, Reference LeCompte and Preissle1993; van Dijk Reference van Dijk2008, Reference van Dijk1984) combined with inductive and deductive coding categories (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, Reference Fereday and Muir-Cochrane2006; Ragin Reference Ragin1994). Deductive coding allowed me to generate coding categories based on scholarship addressing slavery’s treatment American textbooks, publically in Dutch society, and The Netherlands’ historical involvement with slavery and the slave trade. Inductive coding allowed me to generate new codes as they emerged.
International literature on slavery in textbooks alongside scholarship addressing the social forgetting of slavery and scientific colonialism in The Netherlands guided my coding strategy. I document slavery’s presence in the tables of contents, the number of pages devoted to slavery and the slave trade, and whether discussions of slavery addressed Black slavery (Cha-Jua and Weems, Reference Cha-Jua and Weems1994). Qualitatively, I code for passive and active tenses used in discussing slavery, references to The Netherlands or “Dutch” in discussing trade in enslaved Africans and slavery in the Dutch colonies, government ties to the WIC, other nations’ involvement in this trade, and how many Africans the Dutch transported to the Americas. In addition, I code for slavery as a form of commerce, the justification of slavery for profit and labor in the Dutch colonies, and profit generated from the trade in and labor of enslaved Africans. I also coded for enslaved Africans’ emancipation, the apprenticeship period between 1863–1873, White master enslavers’ compensation, and commemoration in The Netherlands, current Dutch colonies, and Suriname (a former colony). Based on the New History Canon’s recommendations, I coded for life on plantations, slave uprisings and escapes, and slave songs, Afro-Surinam culture, and Antillean music (van Oostrom Reference van Oostrom2007).
To account for explicit racialization, I coded for images and words ascribing negative characteristics to Africans and those highlighting Black humanity. Coding for negative stereotypes included Africans labeled as slaves in Africa, Africans’ dehumanization through comparisons to animals, depictions of them dancing, violent, or strong, or described as better slaves than Caribbean and South American natives. Black humanity includes references to African languages, culture, names, stories, mention of families, and depiction of Africans’ emotions. I documented the inclusion of White Dutch and African voices, and enslaved Africans’ resistance on ships during the Middle Passage, in the colonies, on plantations, and by running away, particularly to join the Maroon societies.
FINDINGS
Of the ninety-six textbooks, workbooks, and activity books in eighteen seriesFootnote 13 published since 1980, forty-nine mention Black slavery, including thirty-three textbooks, fifteen workbooks, and one copybook (for teachers to make overheads), and forty address trade in enslaved Africans or enslavement by the Dutch. Just over 16% of books feature slavery in their table of contents. None of the books include race or racism in their discussions of slavery.Footnote 14 The books only discuss trade in enslaved Africans in the context of the WIC. They do not address the Middlebury Commerce Company (which preceded the WIC) or the many independent traders who transported Africans outside of any legal framework before, during, and after the trade was abolished in 1814 (Nimako and Willemsen, Reference Nimako and Willemsen2011; van Stipriaan Reference van Stipriaan, De Barros, Diptee and Trotman2006).
The Dutch Trade and Enslavement of Africans
Books devote significantly more pages to the slave trade than slavery in the Dutch colonies, with a ratio of three pages of the former for every two pages of the latter. There is no mention of enslaved Africans in The Netherlands. Nearly half of the books (49%) explain the trade in enslaved Africans in the context of larger global colonial efforts to generate wealth for the metropole. To accumulate wealth, one book explains, the Dutch “went first to the west coast of Africa. There they found a much better trade: slaves!” (Panday et al., Reference Panday, Kouwenberg and Engelen2000, p. 45). 30% of the books highlight other countries’ trade in enslaved Africans, with some suggesting Dutch tardiness in this endeavor. One book states that the Portuguese were first to discover the west coast of Africa, and the Dutch began to trade in Africans with other European nations only following the Portuguese’s lead (de Bruin Reference de Bruin2003a). Another, describing Dutch involvement, notes, “The English, French and Portuguese also traded in slaves” (Goris et al., Reference Goris, Bulthuis, Barge, Praag and Ooijen2008, p. 31).
Most books attempted to couch Dutch trade within this larger global commerce while minimizing the Dutch nation and people’s involvement, except for one book highlighting Dutch prowess in trading, a trait for which the Dutch have historically taken great pride, revealing that, “The Dutch were also ‘good’ at slave trading” (van Reenen Reference van Reenen1998a, p. 323). Most describe the WIC as founded by traders or “was founded” to trade. Many books distance the Dutch from the trade in Africans by stating that it was the WIC who did so, implying it was not the Dutch people or government. Only one book states explicitly, “the Dutch founded the WIC” (Kratsborn et al., Reference Kratsborn, Verschuren, Vermeer and Adriaans2007b, p. 20). One book mentions that Dutch government officials had ties to the WIC (Wagenaar et al., Reference Wagenaar, Baal, Maters and Pijl2007), one uses the adjective “Dutch” before WIC (Berserik Reference Berserik2005), and another, in the index, notes that King Willem IV was the director of the East and West Indies Company (Buijtendijk et al., Reference Buijtendijk, Kuperus and Seip1986). Books also visually minimize the Dutch role in the trade of enslaved Africans by including either numerical lists of stolen Africans transported to the colonies, or blocks with each block representing one million people. The Dutch, with their half a block, representing 550,000 enslaved Africans (Boivin and Torreman, Reference Boivin and Torreman1994) (although recent research contests this figure (Hira Reference Hira2012)) look much less culpable than the Portuguese, who have nearly ten. Though perhaps attempting to distance themselves from other European nations’ trade in enslaved Africans during this era, in comparing themselves with these nations, The Netherlands becomes similarly complicit in this exploitative European project.
Combined, over 40% of the books justify the trade in enslaved Africans for either labor or profit, with nearly 25% justifying the trade for profit and 29% justifying it for labor. Those that do, highlight its benefits to the metropole; “From the slave trade, the Dutch merchants earned a lot of money” (van Duinen Reference van Duinen1982, p. 10). Upon colonizing Suriname and the Dutch Antilles, the story in many books goes, “Slaves were needed for the work on the plantations” (de Bruin Reference de Bruin2003a, p. 60) since “[th]ere were too few workers. So Spain, Portugal and the WIC brought workers from Africa” (Janssen et al., Reference Janssen, Maters and Vonk2010, p. 6). Another book states,
The plantation owners now had no workers for the work on the plantations. But Dutch traders offered a solution. They decided to buy Black slaves in Africa. In the eyes of the White Europeans, they were inferior people who they could use very well as slaves (Wagenaar et al., Reference Wagenaar, Baal, Maters and Pijl2007, p. 53).
There is no discussion as to why or how using African (rather than Dutch) labor, as a part of a global social, cultural, and economic system, entrenched ascribed racial identities and racist ideologies to create a racist hegemonic world system based on the accumulation of White Western capital that remains in place today (Quijano and Wallerstein, Reference Quijano and Wallerstein1992). The use of “workers” rather than “slaves” diminishes Dutch responsibility for enslaving Africans in their colonies and suggests the Dutch paid African workers for their labor rather than “treated [them], not like people, but animals” (de Bruin Reference de Bruin2003c p. 18) or “inferior people” (Wagenaar et al., Reference Wagenaar, Baal, Maters and Pijl2007, p. 52) as many books point out. Obscuring the inextricable links between the darkest trade in human history and the brightest era of Dutch history, only two books mention the Dutch “Golden Age” in their discussions of slavery or the trade in enslaved Africans. Indeed, the primary focus of textbooks is on commerce, rather than racial domination and slavery’s centrality to the rise of a global capitalist system based on exploited African labor facilitating the Dutch metropole’s generation of wealth leading to the Dutch Golden Age (Wallerstein Reference Wallerstein1974, Reference Wallerstein1980).
White Perspectives
Essentialized Africans and “Normal” Slavery
Nearly half of the books essentialize Africans as slaves and normalize slavery by describing its existence in Africa, which minimizes the differences between slavery in Africa and the Americas. About 45% of the books state that the traders took “slaves from Africa” [“slaven uit Afrika”], rather than that they took people out of Africa and enslaved them.Footnote 15 With 16.3% of books justifying slavery as existing in Africa, textbooks naturalize Africans’ essential utility as laborers for White profits, particularly when coupled with statements that Africans made better slaves than indigenenous islanders and South Americans, which 12.2% of books do. A book for 11–year-olds states, “Black men from Africa were much better slaves [than indigenous South Americans]. The traders bought slaves from the Africans kings for weapons, clothing and strong drink” (Fenger and Siemensma, Reference Fenger and Siemensma2004, p. 78). Combined, 49% of books describe Africans as “slaves in Africa” or made better slaves than indigenenous South Americans and Caribbean islanders. These books depict Africans as labor machines, rather than individual people with lives, dreams, and independent thoughts.
White Voices
While the voices and contemporary ideologies of enslaved Africans are rarely heard in textbooks, children do encounter those of White master enslavers, some of whom are depicted sympathetically (Foster Reference Foster1999; Swartz Reference Swartz1992). Textbooks and accompanying workbooks repeatedly refer to Whites’ perceptions and treatment of enslaved Africans as “animals” or “pets” (de Bruin Reference de Bruin2001, p. 75) while workbooks ask students variations of, “which people found slavery very normal?” (Visser-van den Brink et al., 2006, p. 42; de Bruin Reference de Bruin2003c, Reference de Bruin2001). Explicitly articulating Whites’ assessment of slavery, one book explains, “The life of the Black slave was not that hard in the eyes of Whites” (Wagenaar et al., Reference Wagenaar, Baal, Maters and Pijl2007, p. 52). Synthesizing the views of millions of White Dutch over centuries, another book states, “The Dutch found slavery very normal for over 200 years” (Goris et al., Reference Goris, Bulthuis, Barge, Praag and Ooijen2008a, p. 37).
Sympathetically addressing “difficulties” White traders and master enslavers experienced, many books describe both the trade in enslaved Africans and living in the colonies as dangerous due to illness, misfortune, shipwreck, and piracy, documenting the many Whites who died during the Middle Passage (Buijtendijk et al., Reference Buijtendijk, Kuperus and Seip1986; de Bruin Reference de Bruin2003a; Wagenaar et al., Reference Wagenaar, Baal, Maters and Pijl2007). A book for 8th groupers describing the Middle Passage reveals it was “a dangerous undertaking [for the Dutch], as a result many did not make the trip back. Others contracted unknown sicknesses and died” (de Bruin Reference de Bruin2003b, p. 55). On the plantations, “the Whites did not have it easy” either (Brenninkmeyer et al., Reference Brenninkmeyer, Houdt and Leeuw-Roord1995, p. 21). A book for 10– and 11–year olds includes a drawing of a White man with a speech bubble over his head reading, “It is way too hot to work the land. Fortunately, our slaves are used to this heat” (Kratsborn et al., Reference Kratsborn, Verschuren, Vermeer and Adriaans2007b, p. 22). This statement not only sympathizes with Whites, but justifies and essentializes enslaved Africans given the long-standing scientific racist notion that Blacks are better physiologically equipped to work in hot climates. Prominent White voices throughout the textbooks sublimate those of enslaved Africans to enhance the textbooks’ Eurocentric master narrative and render enslaved Africans voiceless and powerless.
Treatment of Enslaved Africans
Students encounter conflicting images and descriptions of life on the plantations with slavery described as horrible, filled with harsh punishment for not working hard (but not as a form of social control on its own or ever over-used), and families sold apart, alongside images of well-clothed enslaved men and women, smiling as they sing and dance. More than half of the books (61.2%) describe the harsh treatment enslaved Africans faced during the Middle Passage and on plantations, usually in the passive tense. Representative sentences include “The slaves were treated badly” (Panday et al., Reference Panday, Kouwenberg and Engelen2000, p. 47) or “On the sugar plantations life was deadly” (de Bruin Reference de Bruin2003a, p. 58), thereby lacking attribution as to who treated enslaved Africans badly or made their lives deadly.
Books describe the Middle Passage (though not referred to as such) as a hell, with Africans crowded into hot, dark, and tight spaces, (van der Vlis Reference van der Vlis1986) with little food (Visser-van den Brink et al., 2006; van Reenen Reference van Reenen1998b) resulting in many people contracting diseases and dying (de Bruin Reference de Bruin2003d; Wagenaar et al., Reference Wagenaar, Baal, Maters and Pijl2007). Nine books use the passive voice in describing Whites’ branding of Africans, either with “WIC” before being herded onto the ships or the initials of their master enslavers upon reaching the plantation. A number of books feature images of branding tools, as well as other forms of torture, such as thumbscrews and multi-tailed whips used by master enslavers.
While the Dutch actively enslaved and exploited Africans for their labor, most books switch from the active tense, used to discuss their trade in enslaved Africans, to the passive voice when discussing slavery on plantations, thereby alleviating the Dutch of their responsibility for the harsh lives of the enslaved on plantations. For example, one book reads, “there were black slaves from Africa that were going to do the work on the plantations” (Boivin and Torreman, Reference Boivin and Torreman1995, p. 30). This statement fails to address how and who brought Africans to the plantations, and the extreme coercion necessary to ensure their work.
The horrors of slavery on the plantations, particularly the hard, dangerous work the enslaved had to do, and whippings the enslaved often received as punishment, appeared in many discussions of life on the plantations. Images of enslaved Africans in the colonies consistently depict them engaging in hard labor, in both sugar cane fields and mills, but not one links this labor to the profit generated in The Netherlands. Enslaved Africans are simply working hard. Nor are White master enslavers ever implicated in murder.Footnote 16 Indeed, the Dutch rarely appear in these scenes.
Slightly more than a tenth of the books describe this treatment and enslaved Africans’ lives on the plantations as “not that bad” (Goris et al., Reference Goris, Bulthuis, Barge, Praag and Ooijen2008a, p. 38), particularly for those who worked in the houses rather than the fields, since “some slave owners treated their slaves well” (Visser-van den Brink et al., 2006, p. 71); and that many of the enslaved did not have to work on Sundays (Goris et al., Reference Goris, Bulthuis, Barge, Praag and Ooijen2008a). Describing the situation of those who worked in houses at length, the book says,
Slaves who worked in the planter’s house had it a little bit easier. They got better food and good clothing. House slaves worked as cooks or helped in the household. Slave women looked after the small children. They were named Nene. A footboy was a young slave. He was a small boy who was always around the planter to do small chores (Goris et al., Reference Goris, Bulthuis, Barge, Praag and Ooijen2008a, p. 35).
Images feature enslaved people smiling while playing the banjo, well-dressed in pants and shirts in good condition (de Kiefte Reference de Kiefte1986), or smiling while fanning a White man sitting on a large porch (van der Vorst and Weeber, Reference van der Vorst and Weeber2004). Another book features a young boy who is taught to read by a White girl on a plantation after being purchased and given a new Christian name, and hopes for a better life, and reconsiders the idea that all master enslavers are bad (Panday et al., Reference Panday, Kouwenberg and Engelen2000). These statements and images minimize the horrors of slavery, relegate treatment of generations of enslaved men, women, and children to individual master enslavers. The individual master enslavers are themselves detached from the global hegemonic exploitative and oppressive system of enslavement that relied on discourses of racial inferiority and brutal force to ensure its continued existence and generate White profits and privileges (Araújo and Maeso, Reference Araújo and Maeso2012a). Only one book approaches Whites’ sexual exploitation of enslaved women by stating that “relationships” with enslaved women resulted in children, who would sometimes be freed. Others resulted in some free Africans and Creoles on the plantations with better jobs (as overseers), or who left the plantations for the capital, Paramaribo (Brenninkmeyer et al., Reference Brenninkmeyer, Houdt and Leeuw-Roord1995). There is no mention of rape, or the coercive nature of these “relationships,” in any book.
Black Humanity and Black Stereotypes
Roughly a third of the books (32.65%) featured some form of Black humanity, with families, culture in the form of songs, stories, language or names, or emotions. Conversely, over two thirds of the books (67.35%) omit any form of Black humanity. Six books (14.3%) feature two elements and 32.65% have just one. Individually, 20.4% exhibit enslaved people’s emotions, often those of children crying as they are torn away from their family, 14.9% reference African cultures, and 12.2% reveal Africans’ and enslaved Africans’ families. 22% of books feature both Black stereotypes and Black humanity. Books that include stereotypes are less likely to contain elements of Black humanity.
References to family often depicted families torn apart on the auction block, marching to the African coast, or living together on a plantation. For example, one book explains, “Often [Africans] were taken from Africa as a family. They could be sold apart” (van der Vlis Reference van der Vlis1986, p. 44). The Journey describes how enslaved Africans spoke “a mix of African languages, Spanish and English but were not allowed to speak Dutch, the language of his master” (Kratsborn et al., Reference Kratsborn, Verschuren, Vermeer and Adriaans2007b, p. 23), rendering a rare link to Dutch in the colonies. Five books feature African names, but often in the context of receiving new ones from master enslavers (Panday et al., Reference Panday, Kouwenberg and Engelen2000). Other emotions include expressions of desires for freedom (Kratsborn et al., Reference Kratsborn, Verschuren, Vermeer and Adriaans2007b) or dreams of returning to Africa (Panday et al., Reference Panday, Kouwenberg and Engelen2000).
Often coexisting within the covers of the same books as those containing Black humanity, were images and description that reified stereotypes of Africans and Afro-Dutch. Nearly one third of books (30.6%), slightly fewer than those featuring Black humanity, featured discourses and images representative of longstanding stereotypes of Africans. Books described Africans as “strong” (Brenninkmeyer et al., Reference Brenninkmeyer, Houdt and Leeuw-Roord1995; de Bruin Reference de Bruin2003c; Fenger and Siemensma, Reference Fenger and Siemensma2005; Goris et al., Reference Goris, Bulthuis, Barge, Praag and Ooijen2008a; van Duinen Reference van Duinen1983a), better workers than indigenous South Americans and Antilleans (12.2% of books), dancing on plantations or during the Middle Passage (van der Vlis Reference van der Vlis1986) or violent. One of the books, and its accompanying workbook, show Black men in loincloths dancing for Whites on the deck of a ship. The White men are smiling but there is no text about whether the slaves were forced to dance (van Duinen Reference van Duinen1983a, Reference van Duinen1983b). The icon of the “Africa group,” appearing throughout the workbook paired with The Journey (Kratsborn et al., Reference Kratsborn, Verschuren and Vermeer2007a), is a Black man in only a loincloth, bare-footed with his hands bound. These images, combined with those describing Africans as essentially slaves, dehumanize Africans as mere figures, rather than real people whose lives for centuries were disrupted by slavery for White profit.
Resistance and Legal Abolition
Resistance to slavery, though appearing in nearly half of the books, is limited to enslaved Africans’ attack on individual master enslavers and their property, rather than a challenge to the institution. Less than half (41%) of the books address resistance by enslaved Africans, often in the form of running away or uprisings on plantations, but rarely through more subtle forms of covert resistance during the Middle Passage or on plantations. Resistance, when it occurs, appears to arise as reactions to bad treatment, rather than representing an indictment of a globalized racist economy founded on the labor of enslaved men, women, and children.
A book for 7th groupers reads, “The Black slaves sometimes revolted against the Whites. Or they ran away” (Fenger and Siemensma, Reference Fenger and Siemensma2005, p. 78) while another states, “Whoever had the chance left and went with others who fled and lived in the jungle. But it was a dangerous life because those caught could pay with their life” (van Reenen Reference van Reenen1998b, p. 145). Resistance in the form of attempting to escape is described by one book as “natural” (Wagenaar et al., Reference Wagenaar, Baal, Maters and Pijl2007, p. 53). Featured in 36.7% of the books, Maroons, enslaved Africans “who had managed to build an independent existence in the forests” (de Bruin Reference de Bruin2003c, p. 18), would be harshly punished if caught (Visser-van den Brink et al., 2006). Most books describe Maroons as terrorizing Whites or depict them as physically dangerous, threatening, and/or primitive (i.e., wearing nothing but a loincloth and holding a spear). A textbook for 8– to 9–year-old reads, “From the jungles, [Maroons] attacked the plantations. They set the sugarcane field and the house of the planter on fire” (Goris et al., Reference Goris, Bulthuis, Barge, Praag and Ooijen2008a, p. 39). Enslaved or Maroon men (but notably never women) challenging slavery only through violent means allows Whites to become victims of “angry Black men” for whom sympathy from readers would be normal. These depictions reproduce the viewpoint of master enslavers who likely viewed resisters’ actions as individualist, rather than challenging systemic enslavement.
Unlike many U.S. texts (Alridge Reference Alridge2006; Carlson Reference Carlson2003), no central hero of resistance arises. The only named Maroon is Quassi, who collaborated with Whites (Brenninkmeyer et al., Reference Brenninkmeyer, Houdt and Leeuw-Roord1995). None of the books mention the most well-known Maroon leader, Tula, although even the New Canon recommends his inclusion. In addition, even though Suriname held the largest Maroon communities among Dutch colonies, none of the texts mention Surinamese Maroon leaders, such as Boni, Captain Broos, Kormantin Kojo, or Puja (de Groot Reference de Groot1975; Hoogbergen Reference Hoogbergen1997). This “symbolic annihilation” (Eichstedt and Small Reference Eichstedt and Small2002, p. 10; Small Reference Small2013) of a significant Afro-Dutch figure contributes to the Eurocentric narrative excluding challenges to systematic exploitation. Perhaps the most well-known Afro-Dutch critic of slavery and its legacy, Anton de Kom (1898–1945),Footnote 17 appears in only one book, which omits his critique of White enslavement of Africans but includes his denouncement of the Dutch treatment of indigenous groups (Brenninkmeyer et al., Reference Brenninkmeyer, Houdt and Leeuw-Roord1995).
Twenty-five books discuss legal abolition and two include the ten-year “apprenticeship.” A representative statement is, “Slavery was abolished on July 1, 1863” (Panday et al., Reference Panday, Kouwenberg and Seffelaar1999, p. 34) or “In 1863 slaves in Suriname were freed” (Wagenaar et al., Reference Wagenaar, Baal, Maters and Pijl2007, p. 53), ignoring other Dutch colonies. The textbooks do not use the word, “emancipation;” they state that the slaves were freed.Footnote 18 Most books describe abolitionists and emancipation in British colonies, other European colonies, and the United States, with the Dutch following these other nations in abolishing slavery (Goris et al., Reference Goris, Bulthuis and Barge2008b; Wagenaar et al., Reference Wagenaar, Baal, Maters and Pijl2007). Some mention that the English did so nearly fifty years earlier, a hint of critique of the Dutch (Goris et al., Reference Goris, Bulthuis, Barge, Praag and Ooijen2008a). One book links enslaved Africans’ protest with abolition: “Increasingly often, slaves protested. And more and more people in Europe came out in support of the slaves…. In Suriname, slavery had existed for a long time. But that began to change. The ideas from Europe penetrated to the other side of the world” (Goris et al., Reference Goris, Bulthuis, Barge, Praag and Ooijen2008a, p. 40). A number of books recognize master enslavers’ resistance to losing their labor force with one reading, “the farmers in Suriname did not want to lose their slaves” (Visser-van den Brink et al., 2006, p. 71). None of the books explain that White master enslavers received financial compensation from the Dutch government for their soon-to-be-freed enslaved men, women, and children.
Commemoration and Afro-Dutch after Emancipation
Commemoration of emancipation, in the form of Keti-Koti (Sranantongo translating roughly to “the breaking of the chains”), held annually in Suriname, The Netherlands, and the National Monument to Dutch Slavery, feature prominently in the Dutch national narrative about slavery (Nimako and Small, Reference Nimako, Small, Schalkwijk and Small2012; Nimako and Willemsen, Reference Nimako and Willemsen2011). However, commemoration does not equate to recognizing or redressing historical enslavement’s continued impact on contemporary inequalities. Six books mention Keti-Koti and five mention the National Monument to Dutch Slavery located in Amsterdam (one mentions a similar monument in Paramaribo, Suriname but not the one in Amsterdam). The workbook accompanying a 7th groupers’ textbook includes this discussion prompt: “Some people find the monument unnecessary. The slave trade ended almost 150 years ago, they say. But there are also people who find the monument very important” (Fenger and Siemensma, Reference Fenger and Siemensma2005, p. 36). The prompt then asks students to discuss these statements and write their opinion (Fenger and Siemensma, Reference Fenger and Siemensma2005). In these textbooks, Afro-Dutch people in the colonies disappear after 1863 and do not reappear until Suriname’s independence in 1975, after which they flee Suriname for a “better future” in The Netherlands (Boivin amd Torreman, 1995, p. 30; de Bruin Reference de Bruin2003a, p. 62). None of the books include information linking African’s enslavement in the Dutch colonies to contemporary inequality. One book asks students to explain why many people in the Antilles and Suriname have dark skin (van der Vlis Reference van der Vlis1986).
Slavery Since the New Dutch History Canon
Since the Dutch unveiled their New History Canon in 2007–2008, some books have been revised and demonstrate more attention to slavery, compared to the trade in enslaved Africans, but stereotypes persist (see Table 1). Increased coverage of slavery on the plantations, and its centrality to Dutch history, measured by its appearance in the table of contents, Maroons and Black humanity and a decrease in Black stereotypes have been matched by increases in the passive voice, the White perspective, justification of slavery for labor and profit, characterizations of Africans as “slaves in Africa” and more suitable to slavery than natives.
Table 1. Presence of Variables in Dutch History Textbooks (%)
Slavery appears only during the 1700–1800 time period (one of ten explicitly delineated by the New Canon) and never overlapping others, when a close reading of the books reveals that it lasted a minimum of 262 years (1621–1863). It is unlikely that students will connect these years, placed pages apart, to recognize slavery’s significant duration. Depicting slavery within a single era and disconnected from The Netherlands’ establishment as a preeminent member of the global economy through their successful exploitation of African labor, suggests enslavement was of limited scope and impact. Two books, which also include negative stereotypes of Africans and Afro-Dutch, contain content linking history to the present. One book features a three-page discussion of Dutch advertising depicting stereotypical images through the last century (Panday et al., Reference Panday, Kouwenberg and Engelen2000). Only one book links slavery to The Netherlands today with a story of a Black boy and White boy who meet at Amsterdam’s slavery monument (Wagenaar et al., Reference Wagenaar, Baal, Maters and Pijl2007). Rather than explaining how racial ideologies developed during the colonial era impact contemporary inequality or racism, the book suggests that the White boy’s ancestors could have owned those of the Black boy’s, and therefore reestablishes the subordinate relationship between Afro-Dutch and White Dutch in contemporary Amsterdam. Rather than being equal citizens, the racial hierarchy that existed on the WIC’s ships and Dutch plantations is alive and well in The Netherlands today, both in fact and in history textbooks. This compensatory approach of including additional perspectives, does not sufficiently address entrenchment of power relations (Araújo and Maeso, Reference Araújo and Maeso2012a; Swartz Reference Swartz1992). Scientific colonialism continues to minimize the Dutch role in centuries of exploitation and oppression and the consequences of these phenomena for White and Afro-Dutch today.
CONCLUSION
Dutch primary school history textbooks published since 1980, and including those published since the release of the New Dutch History Canon, feature a Eurocentric master narrative reflective of racial neoliberalism and contributing to The Netherlands’ social forgetting of slavery and scientific colonialism. By ignoring African perspectives (Deveau Reference Deveau and Diène2001), Dutch textbooks perpetuate White racial epistemologies and an educational coloniality of power (Quijano Reference Quijano2000) to racialize White and Afro-Dutch people, which likely contribute to The Netherlands’ socioeconomic racial hierarchy and lack of social activism to address racial inequalities.
Clearly articulating a colonialist perspective reflective of The Netherlands’ participation in the European projects of trade and enslavement of Africans (Araújo and Maeso, Reference Araújo, Maeso, Hamilton, Hodgson and Quirk2012b; Willinsky Reference Willinsky1998), the social forgetting of the horrors of slavery is accomplished even as they are explicitly articulated in accompanying text. Racial neo-liberalism, in the form of “racial Europeanization” (Goldberg 2009, p. 151), which divorces racial history from contemporary inequalities, appears clearly in these books. Textbooks obscure and distort The Netherlands’ role in enslaving Africans, justify their history of colonialism, exploitation, oppression and genocide for profit and labor, and promote Eurocentric epistemic privilege by decoupling colonialism and capitalist exploitation of Africans from Dutch presence in their colonies. This results in the severance of all ties between historical oppression of enslaved Africans from The Netherlands’ historical rise as a global economic power, and contemporary racial ideologies and socioeconomic inequalities experienced by Afro-Dutch throughout The Netherlands, their kingdom, and Suriname.
Locked in a segregated history (Eichstedt and Small, Reference Eichstedt and Small2002), rather than depicted as parallel histories and intertwined belongings (Nimako and Willemsen, Reference Nimako and Willemsen2011), slavery is compartmentalized in separate subsections, using short terse sentences that likely fail to capture students’ attention and leave little room for explanation or details. Nor are these sections integrated into discussions of 350 years of Dutch history, the rise of The Netherlands as a global economic power, or the international links between racism and capitalism (Magubane Reference Magubane2004; Sivanandan Reference Sivanandan1982; Wallerstein Reference Wallerstein1974, Reference Wallerstein1980). This compartmentalized history is similar to international commemorations reflecting a necessity to remember a shameful past, but do so without altering the nation’s larger narrative (Eichstedt and Small, Reference Eichstedt and Small2002; Olick Reference Olick2007). Like the Slavery Monument located far outside Amsterdam’s city center, the story of slavery in Dutch history remains far from the center of the nation’s past, particularly the Dutch Golden Age. Since historical enslavement, exploitation, wealth accumulation, and privileges are completely decoupled from contemporary inequality, presentation of information about slavery “matter[s] little since the books disavow material implications of sustained racial violence on sustained White privilege and entrenched African American inequities” (Brown and Brown, Reference Brown and Brown2010, p. 31). These findings suggest an international institutionalization of hegemonic racist discourses obscuring White privilege in Western nations’ textbooks of relevance to other nations eschewing the terminology around race (Lentin Reference Lentin2008; Moschel Reference Moschel2011).
Given the long-documented role of education in shaping children’s racialized conceptions of their nation, realities, and identities, these textbooks reveal the racial neoliberal foundation that young adults in The Netherlands today encountered and that with which the current generation of Dutch children will be embedded. Socially constructing enslaved Africans as strong, violent, and lacking humanity, these books essentialize and racialize both the enslaved and their descendants and likely contribute to the aversive racism demonstrated by 30–50% of the Dutch population (Kleinpenning and Hagendoorn, Reference Kleinpenning and Hagendoorn1993). Furthermore, they racialize White Dutch as largely uninvolved with the dehumanization and exploitation of Africans but as good traders, or businessmen, on a global scale who now commemorate the freeing of the enslaved (but not the compensation of master enslavers). White Dutch, according to these books, are not impacted by the racialized ideologies developed during hundreds of years of enslavement and so cannot be racist, even in the case of Zwarte Piet. Depriving students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds of accurate knowledge about racism, racial oppression, or contemporary consequences of slavery these textbooks will have real consequences throughout Dutch society. Without changing curricular representations, students will continue to disregard the history and consequences of historical enslavement, and these groups’ intertwined histories, on contemporary racial identities and inequalities. The perpetuation of stereotypical images of Afro-Dutch enslaved descendants as well as recent African immigrants likely contributes to Black social marginalization and discrimination that, though extensive, is frequently denied (cf. Essed Reference Essed1991).
Enslavement’s distortion also likely perpetuates the (non-)existence of large-scale activism seeking to redress the legacies of Dutch enslavement. As in the United States, Dutch racial neoliberal discourses of involvement in African enslavement represent and contribute to “differential access to political power and knowledges” (Small Reference Small, Nimako and Willemsen2011, p. xvii). Some Afro-Dutch suggest that the lack of resistance by the enslaved, and, specifically, individual figures who led them, contributes to a “mental slavery” of Afro-Dutch in The Netherlands that inhibits large-scale social justice action pursuing racial equality (Essed Reference Essed1991; Hira Reference Hira2012; van Dijk Reference van Dijk1984). Obscuring the racial ideologies and White privileges generated through wealth derived from slavery and accumulated over multiple generations, these books may contribute to contemporary essentialization of Afro-Dutch and/or dysconscious racism that tacitly accepts dominant White norms and privileges (Swartz Reference Swartz1992). They likely constrain White Dutch people’s ability to recognize, and thus critically examine, institutional racism and racialized power inequalities in contemporary Dutch society contributing to persistent social, economic, and political exclusion of Afro-Dutch in The Netherlands today (Essed Reference Essed1991; Vasta Reference Vasta2007).
