Anyone who enters the first pop-up exhibition of the National Slavery Museum in the Resistance Museum Amsterdam feels like they have entered a time capsule. The illuminated display cases of the exhibition Opposition to slavery show some scarce and cherished objects, such as a stack of letters from 1839 from a Dutch father from Suriname, the weathered cover of the first Dutch translation of the book Uncle Tom’s cabin and a letter from Betje Wolff, one of the first female novelists in the Netherlands. She writes that she does not want to stay with a family in Vlissingen because of her “natural aversion to slave buyers.”
The number of objects in the exhibition seems scarce in relation to the amount of text. Yet the exhibition has a lot to offer: virtually unknown and intriguing personal stories of Dutch resistance are revealed and placed in a broader global picture of uprisings during the period of transatlantic slavery.
Museum in 2030
The National Slavery Museum is a museum in the making. Three quartermasters have been unleashed. Its own building is expected to be built in 2030. The intended location is the head of Java Island (the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Municipality of Amsterdam have both reserved 29 million euros for the construction of the building). Discussions about the realization have now also been held with interested parties in the Netherlands and the former colonies. Before that happens, the museum-in-the-making is organizing a number of pop-up exhibitions.
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It is striking that the Resistance Museum was chosen for the first of these: the exhibition hall Opposition to slavery can be reached by zigzagging past an old printing press, placards with NSB propaganda and black and white portraits of resistance fighters from the Second World War.
Opposition to slavery tells the story mainly through the hall texts and an accompanying film by Tirsa With, a descendant of the Maroons. Next to the entrance it is immediately emphasized that long before the rise of anti-slavery movements in the Netherlands, there was already resistance from the people who lived in slavery. Opposite an open sales register – for a slave the seller receives 3,000 pounds of sugar – there is a timeline on the wall from the 17th to the 19th century. Illustrated with, for example, the drawings of Life on Surinamese plantations (1840-1850) by plantation owner Theodore Bray, examples of uprisings from the plantations on Dutch territory at the time are highlighted.
Such as the resistance led by rebellion leader Cuffy in the Dutch colony of Berbice (modern Guyana) in 1763 and the Tula rebellion in 1795, which spread like wildfire across Curaçao. Both uprisings were bloodily suppressed. The most striking story concerns the Temphati rebellion in 1757 and specifically about Boston Band, a slave who was shipped from Jamaica to the Beerenburg plantation in Suriname and led a successful rebellion together with a group of maroons.
Enslaved people were deliberately kept illiterate, but Boston Band was an exception. He had the strategic insight to commit to a peace treaty and left letters for the colonial ruler as he traveled from plantation to plantation. Ultimately he obtained freedom, weapons and food, but this was offset by the promise to help the Dutch fight other Maroon groups and extradite other enslaved people.
Uncle Tom’s cabin
The scarce news that filtered through in the Netherlands about the uprisings, for example an eyewitness account of the bloody suppression of the uprising in Berbice, fueled Dutch abolitionism.
The exhibition mainly surprises in the personal examples of this, which are illustrated with painted portraits. An early example of abolitionism occurs, for example, in 1662, when philosopher Franciscus van den Enden argues for a new colony without slavery. Or in 1797, when parliamentarian Pieter Vreede wanted to include a ban on slavery in the constitution. The movement grew larger after the abolition of slavery in Great Britain in 1833 and the resistance spread to the port city of Rotterdam. There, in 1842, a group of women presented a petition to King William II for the abolition of slavery.
The most moving story comes from student Frits Moquette. In his father’s estate he finds four letters describing atrocities during his father’s stay in Suriname. Moquette decides to found the ‘Youth Society for the Abolition of Slavery’. He was also inspired by the Dutch translation of Uncle Tom’s cabin, written by American abolitionist Harriet Beecher-Stowe. A play based on the book was performed more than twenty times in the Amsterdam Theater.
The exhibition clearly shows that resistance to transatlantic slavery has a long history and has become increasingly visible in the Netherlands. It is also unfortunate that it is mainly the examples of resistance in the Netherlands that have been more extensively documented and preserved, says quartermaster Peggy Brandon. She had Frits Moquette’s story researched for this exhibition. “He lived in 1850. We have been able to find out a lot about him and his ancestors. But if, like me, your ancestors were partly born in slavery, that won’t work. It is very unbalanced.”
She is determined to unlock more personal stories through the museum. “We have to look for the human dimension. By only talking about the numbers in slavery, you go along with the prevailing idea at the time that you are not talking about persons.”
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Tags: resistance slavery Netherlands shows popup exhibition National Slavery Museum
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