On July 1, we celebrate Keti Koti, literally breaking the chains. On that day in 1863, the Netherlands officially abolished slavery in Suriname and the Antilles. How we should now deal with this legacy is a hot topic in the debate. Historian Alex van Stipriaan sheds light on the struggle.
Alex van Stipriaan is a veteran of slavery research. For more than twenty-five years he has been trying to make this shameful past an integral part of Dutch history. He is currently writing a public book about Suriname. Bas Kromhout of History Magazine talks to Van Stipriaan.
Why a new book?
“Apart from Piet Emmer's The Dutch Slave Trade 1500-1850, there is no book that is scientific, but still accessible. Moreover, I try to write much more than usual from the perspective of the enslaved Surinamese.”
Are there enough resources to show that perspective?
“The vast majority of sources were written by colonial officials. So you never have the voice of the person you want to hear directly. Fortunately, we have handles to deal with that material. The American anthropologist Ann Stoler taught us to read and listen contrary. What is not said in the sources and what does that mean? I also use the oral method. It works especially well with Maroons [descendants of runaway slaves who founded their own communities in the jungle, ed.], because they have a living oral tradition.”
“Each Maroon people have their own Genesis, which begins the moment the ancestors have fled. Those stories also say something about life on the plantations. Unfortunately, most other Afro-Surinamese no longer know any traditions from the time of slavery. I've done many interviews, but the stories people told were mixed with images and interpretations from the American TV series Roots. I do get a lot of information from sayings. They tell something about the norms and values of the past.”
Would black Surinamese interpret the perspective of slaves better than a white historian?
“To a certain extent, I don't think skin color matters. It's about your attitude. There are black researchers who use a very colonial perspective and there are white researchers who try to adopt a post-colonial perspective. As the British writer L.P. Hartley said:the past is a foreign land. The Afro-Surinamese who wants to describe his history also talks about a context that he has not experienced himself.”
“That does not alter the fact that there should be more black historians. I am affiliated with Erasmus University, the blackest university in the Netherlands, but my history department is just about the whitest within it. Law, public administration and medicine are much blacker faculties. Second-generation Dutch people first opt for social security, and a history study does not always provide this immediately. I hope that will change.”
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Why?
“Being black helps in your approach to the research material. For example, it can be useful to know how to comb frizzy hair if you want to understand something about morning rituals. It is very fundamental that you know what it feels like to walk around in a white world as a black man or woman. My emotions may be different from those of a black historian. Then you can say that emotions should not play a role in science, but I think that is nonsense. I don't think any historian is completely emotionless. Of course we are all stuck in our color, sexuality and age. That affects you.”
Shouldn't you stop writing about slavery then?
“No, of course I can write about that. I have built up a certain expertise and I think I can make a contribution. I also write about young people and women, while I am an older man. Can I only write about men who come from exactly the same background as me?”
Some activists believe that a white man has no right to write about black experiences.
“I'm glad there are activists who say things like that because they make you sharp. If I am occasionally told:'Shut up, because you have talked enough as a white man', then that is often right. But I will never agree to shut up completely. Forbidding something else leads to a standstill. Then no conversation is possible and you get a one-dimensional story from the other side again. There must be dialogue. It can be razor-sharp, because that is the engine of curiosity and innovation in science.”
Have you changed your view of the slavery past over the past twenty-five years?
"Secure. Just the terminology has changed. For example, I will not use the word "runaway" anymore, because that term expresses much more the perspective of the slave owner than of the one who has been enslaved. Today I am talking about people who have fled or escaped. Or I call them Maroons, as their descendants themselves do. In the past it was quite normal to speak of 'Bush Negroes'. In recent years we have become more and more accustomed to following the English enslaved to speak of 'enslaved'. A whole mouth full. I myself omit the word 'until'.'
Has anything substantive changed?
“Twenty-five years ago we still regarded enslaved Surinamese as an amorphous mass of oppressed and subjugated people. There are now all kinds of studies showing that they could take very different positions. Some had slave status, but were relatively free in their own way. Others were officially free, but actually had to lead a slave life.”
“There were also people of mixed descent, who you could find in all layers of society. We have gained a much better insight into the complexity and stratification of Surinamese society. We are also more aware of changes over time. The system in 1700 looked different than in 1850. Moreover, there were large differences between locations.”
Is slavery in Suriname compared to other countries?
“We are still at the beginning of that. The vast majority of slavery studies concern North America and the British Caribbean. Surinam and the Dutch Caribbean have also not been compared much with each other, while there were large differences. It would also be interesting to include South Africa. If you visit the museum in the former Slave Lodge in Cape Town, you will see images of Caribbean slavery.”
“Everyone knows the engravings that John Gabriel Stedman made in Suriname in the 1770s. You will also find them in English, French and Portuguese books. It is questionable, however, whether the circumstances were the same. That should be investigated. Now things are often simply appropriated.”
What other questions are still open?
“How do people create space for themselves in rigid circumstances? You're talking about people being enslaved, but they were simply living. Children were made, so there was love. Was there love and how did that work? There is still a world to be gained by mapping that.”
“There is also a lot of attention for women, but there is little research into what masculinity is. In addition, historians make too strict a distinction between the periods before and after the abolition of slavery. We speak of the Emancipation. But emancipation is a process. When does it start and when is it finished? Are we still in the middle of it?”
What do you think?
“There are still all kinds of legacies that we have to deal with. Descendants of slaves score poorly in all Dutch lists. Unemployment is three times higher, home ownership is much lower, the debt position is higher. Statistics Netherlands also says that if you correct the figures for other variables, there is still about thirty to forty percent that can only be explained on the basis of discrimination – you can also call it racism."
“That is a legacy of the slavery past. We may well have extended this legacy to other minorities. The paradox is that the Dutch see themselves as tolerant, but that has always been limited to very specific groups and that tolerance was still complex. In any case, it never concerned black people.”
Has the image the Dutch have of their history become more inclusive?
“Over the past fifteen years, much more attention has been paid to the history of slavery. Two television series and dozens of exhibitions have been created. Novels have been written, films have been published, streets have been named. There is no longer a teaching method that does not pay attention to the slavery past. That's the positive story.”
And the negative?
“In many textbooks, more pages are devoted to American slavery than to Dutch slavery. The perspective is also quite Dutch. Of course, all methods say slavery was bad. But it remains a far-from-my-bed story, while it is one of the most traumatic pieces of Dutch history, permeating the whole of society. In fact, fewer pages are devoted to the slavery past today than ten years ago.”
“In society you see a return to a kind of nineteenth-century Dutch history. A bad trend. Many want to be heirs of the Golden Age and in which-a-small-country-can-be-big, but not from the other side that has determined our society as well. The conversation about it is slow to start. We scream and close our ears to 'the other'. That's what I'm most concerned about.”