Slavery

This exhibition is the first to focus on slavery in the Dutch colonial period. Spanning 250 years - from the 17th to the 19th century - this period is now considered to be a shameful but integral part of the history of the Netherlands which involved both Suriname, Brazil and the Caribbean, and South Africa and Asia, where the Dutch East India Company operated. The exhibition tells ten true stories: about people who were part of the slave trade or kept slave themselves; people who were enslaved, some of them brought in slavery to the Netherlands; and people who resisted the trade. It asks, what were their lives like? How did they relate to the system of slavery? Were they able to make their own choices? Yet to open, it is already being hailed as one of the exhibitions of the decade.

Gerrit Schouten, Diorama of a Du, Dance Celebration on the Plantation, 1830, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.