Colonial Cabinet

For this perspective, we made a phone call all the way to San Francisco to talk to Aminata Cairo, a lecturer in social justice and diversity and author of the book Holding Space. What does this cabinet have to do with the ongoing effects of slavery, and what traces of it do we still see today?

So how did you come across this exhibition? 

Bedel [programme development, Paleis Het Loo]. I think he's familiar with my work. 

And after you received pictures of the cabinet, I assume?  

Yes, that's correct. 

What did you think when you saw it?

I wasn't surprised. I wasn't surprised, considering the era these things come from. What interests me, however, is the story behind it and how it has been handled. Especially the fact that the museum initially removed the cabinet. What does that say? You know this is a part of our history. When it comes to how we live together and what we understand about how our history contributes to who we are now, you need to embrace the whole story. With all its complexities. Not shy away from it. So instead of hiding it, put it out there. 

Maybe also as a way to spark conversation?

You know what it is? It's a part of our history. Do we now want to make it more beautiful or more pleasant because it's uncomfortable to look at? That also causes harm, because then my story is incomplete. This is a part of my story too. It says something about how we relate to one another. Being confronted with that makes you think: so this is how we related to each other. This is how we were depicted. What does that say about how people view us? What does that say about how we interact with each other today? I think you need the full picture for that.

So on the one hand, you're saying you're not surprised when you see such a cabinet. On the other hand, it's also a confronting image that you need to engage with in order to understand the best?

Exactly. 

So it's not surprising, but it is confrontational or maybe painful in a way. 

The painful part is that we're still doing it today. That's much more painful than the fact that it happened hundreds of years ago. What's painful is that we still haven't learned and that we still, in some ways, look at people of color the same way, still marginalizing them today. That's much more painful to me than looking at something from the past. We are still not equal. You know, in 2017 I became a lecturer. I was the only black lecturer in the entire Netherlands. I stopped in 2020. I started again in 2022, and I was still the only one in the entire country. Come on. What does that say? 

Indeed. What does that say? 

You know, when it comes to leadership positions, and I really don't want to suggest that there aren't enough qualified people, but there is something in the system when it comes to who is considered worthy and who is not. Who gets the opportunities. That's still alive today. 

So then how do we present these cabinets in a way that's relevant today? 

When we look back and we're being honest. We shouldn't just focus on the good and happy things. You know, our stories are complex, and as long as we only look at the positive and ignore the painful parts, we won't make any progress. You won't progress because you never have to confront it. You never have to sit down and ask, but how? Why was that acceptable and how has it contributed to the fact that certain things are still acceptable today? Maybe something like this will wake you up and make you think: wow, that's really something. That shouldn't be possible. Hopefully it inspires a conversation, or at least raises awareness. Awareness of how this legacy still lives within us today.

And who do you think that conversation is most important for? 

I think it's important for everyone. I think the conversation is important for everyone because we underestimate how much this is a part of our everyday interactions. You know the idea that some bodies are considered lesser is still seen as normal. With something like this cabinet, it's very clear. And yes, there is a king involved, but it's not just about the king, it's also about your neighbor. It's about when I go to the supermarket, it's in all those small everyday interactions where racism or inequality still exists and has become normalized. It's not just an intellectual exchange about where it comes from or about a king. That's all well and good, but how does it make you feel? How does it make us feel? When we look at this, when we have these conversations, what does it do to you? And when things get uncomfortable, do you stay present, or do you withdraw, stay silent or walk away? That's what we need to address. 

What do you feel when you look at the cabinet? For more perspectives, listen to the other stories as well. This is a Studio Kabba production, commissioned by Paleis Het Loo.  

For this perspective, we're in the studio with Nancy Jouwe: , cultural historian, author and researcher with a focus on postcolonial history and intersectionality. What kind of resistance was there against slavery and what was the difference between resistance in Europe and resistance in the colonies?

So we are collecting different perspectives on the cabinet and the cabinet is carried by enslaved people in chains. What I find interesting is that the symbol of the abolitionist movement in the West for a very long time was the same image of this kneeling man in chains. So. What does abolitionism have to do with the cabinet? 

Everywhere slavery took place, caused by European colonists, resistance occurred. And at every stage of the lives of the enslaved. When they were captured, when they were put on a ship, when they were forced to work on plantations, often to the point of death, in households, in mines, in shipyards, resistance happened everywhere. This news reached Europeans. It was a source of information, but also I think an inspiration for abolitionists to speak out publicly against slavery and to say: this is an inhumane system. But in Europe there were no plantations. For many people it was a distant issue. So, images had to be used to show Europeans: this is how it works. Look, here's a man being hung by his ribs. Here's a woman being punished with whippings. Here you see someones hand being chopped off? So one side of it was showing those gruesome atrocities. But the other side was simply showing black people. In the cabinet we see, of course, two African men. The mere sight of a black person conjured up all kinds of connotations, various forms of information, and the abolitionists built on that. But it was also important that they spoke publicly in various places. I live in Utrecht and I've done research into the colonial history of Utrecht. What turns out? Utrecht was actually a center where abolitionism was very strongly represented in the 1840s. With scholars and clergymen, mostly white men, who actively organized, raised money and strategized about what to do on this issue. What's also interesting is that women clearly played a role in this. You could say the first political petition ever submitted in the Netherlands was by a group of women from Rotterdam, who wrote a petition pleading for the abolition of slavery. Well, that was sent to the father of King Willem III. He was shocked. He thought: ladies, what are you doing? Calm down. You could tell that the resistance was simmering in certain parts of society, but the state wasn't quite ready for it yet. 

So since 16th century people had already begun questioning slavery, and eventually there was a group of women from Rotterdam who sent the first petition to the government?

To the king. The father of Willem III. 

So he received the petition and at that point, the government wasn't really ready to abolish it. But then his son Willem III, abolishes slavery in the Netherlands. So what did Willem III have to do with abolitionism? 

That is a very good question. I'm not really an expert on Willem III, but I would understand it this way: he was king at the time when Dutch society and the broader European Society had long been discussing abolitionism. The Netherlands was lagging behind because in France and England, slavery had already been abolished much earlier, so it was about time. The debate kept dragging on in Dutch politics. That also had to do with people wondering: wait a minute, if slavery is abolished, I lose my property. Will I be compensated for that? So there was a lot of thought put into compensating the loss of enslaved people. If we're talking about reparations. There were reparations already in the 19th century, reparations for the slaveholders. You see in various ways, before they could even abolish slavery, they wanted to make sure there was compensation. So you could say that there was also a delaying factor. Those are the aspects King Willem III was involved in. He saw that his counterparts in other countries had already abolished slavery. So at some point, he had to. It was time. The moment had come. A movement had to take place. 

So when we talk about the abolition of slavery, it's often credited to abolitionists, a very western lobby. But resistance from the enslaved has always been there, right? 

Yes, well, there were many forms of resistance. Some of which may have been crushed within hours. But if you look, for example at the uprising in Berbice for instance, that's super unknown, especially in the Netherlands. Berbice is in what is now Guyana, West of Surinam, and in 1763 a slave uprising lasted there for more than a year. That was really extraordinary. That they held out for a year is incredibly impressive. You could say it was the first slave uprising in the Americas where the entire colony was involved. And yes, usually when we think of slave uprisings, we think of the United States or Haiti. But this was in 1763. And at that time Berbice was under Dutch control. 

What shouldn't we forget? For more perspectives, listen to the other stories as well. This is a Studio Kabba production commissioned by Paleis Het Loo.  

For this perspective we are speaking with art historian Elmer Kolfin. What kind of cabinet is it? Would it be considered as a piece of craftsmanship? And what does the cabinet say about its time?

So, what do you see? 

Well, a large buffet cabinet in Neo Renaissance style. That basically means it imitates the style from the 16th century recreated in the 19th century. The cabinet is supported by two black men who are chained. I think that's the most striking feature. Above that, the top part is decorated with a number of putti. These are small naked children, or toddlers. Putti is an Italian word for toddlers. They seem to be dancing around and holding masks surrounded by fruit. That's also very common in Renaissance art, representing the grotesque. So it's a bit of a fanciful depiction. Beneath that, there's a garland of flowers on which two or more of those putti are sitting, huddled just like the two black men underneath the cabinet. It echoes the same posture, but there is a significant difference between the black men and the small naked children. As the children don't have any chains and the black men do. 

And is there anything else that particularly stands out to you?

Yes, those men. They're quite peculiar. There's a tradition behind it, a long history. The artist who made this didn't come up with it himself. But that's what's interesting about these specific men. It's their eyes. They seem to have white inlaid eyes with black, which makes them more expressive. Especially the man on the left with those inward V shaped eyebrows. That gives someone an angry look, and the downturned corners of the mouth add a personal expression. Although of course it's not a portrait of anyone in particular, the really interesting thing here is that the artist clearly understood this was not a comfortable position for anybody. So on the one hand, he knew exactly what he was depicting. And that's the intriguing contrast I hadn't seen before. 

In this particular cabinet, or more generally?

I hadn't seen it in this cabinet, and in general I don't know of any other examples like it either. 

Examples in which you see someone who looks genuinely uncomfortable. 

And the fact that there are two people with their own individual expressions.

Maybe it makes them more human. 

I would definitely say so. Yes, absolutely. 

So these chained men are clearly a reference to slavery, but could it also symbolize something else? 

No, I don't think so. This is a clear reference to slavery. Although we should be aware that it might not be the type of slavery we first think of. When we think of slavery in the 21st century, we often think of black slavery in the West Indies. For the Netherlands, that would mean Surinam or the Caribbean, perhaps. Whereas this cabinet is inspired by Italian’s Renaissance examples. In that world, the Mediterranean region was much more important. And there were various forms of slavery there as well. The artist who made this might have been thinking more about that than about black colonial slavery, the kind that we're familiar with. That raises a very interesting question. What was the frame of reference, the worldview of someone like King Willem III? 

Well, he acquired this cabinet just 10 years after he signed the abolition of slavery into law. So that's really soon after.

Yes. So the question is whether he really made the connection with Surinam and the Antilles and the abolition of slavery. You'd hope he did, of course. But what is he doing with the cabinet that reinforces everything he just abolished? Since the cabinet essentially confirms what he just outlawed, I'm inclined to believe that he viewed it more as an artistic tradition than as something reflecting the issues of his time. 

So what you're saying is that for us in 2024, it's really difficult to separate the social context from the art of such a piece of furniture. But back then it was probably much easier to do so. They were two separate worlds. 

I think for him these were two separate worlds, one highly stylized the world of art. And the other, the world of sweat and blood, and they didn't intersect. 

So this cabin would be considered as high art? Or was this more common at the time? 

No, it was certainly not common and within its category, I think it's a very well-crafted piece. So yes, as a work of decorative art, I definitely consider this high art, beautiful materials, a lot of attention to detail and caring. The craftsmanship I mentioned earlier, the different facial expressions of the men, they're distinct postures. This suggests the maker didn't use a mold, but had to think twice. How does a man in this position look while supporting such a heavy cabinet? And how does he feel that takes imagination? 

So can you personally separate those two worlds, appreciating this as high art while also acknowledging the complex societal issues? 

On one hand, I find this an exemplary cabinet for what it's meant to be. But yes, the black men give it a very unpleasant and disturbing connotation that for me dominates. So yes, it remains high art, but I don't enjoy looking at it. However, as an art historian by profession, I can separate personal taste from historical or art historical interest. I think it's important to discuss these things, and I also believe it's very important to show them, but I certainly wouldn't want it in my home.

But you do believe it should be exhibited. 

Absolutely yes, as long as it's presented within the right context. You can find it beautiful, partly beautiful, horrible or entirely horrific. You might find it painful, and sometimes these feelings coexist. You might find the top part very beautiful and the bottom part deeply painful, but it's still the same cabinet. People are complicated, so sometimes opposite emotions or thoughts can exist in one person. If we create space for that, I think it's wonderful. Because in that space we can engage in meaningful conversation. 

What do you see in the cabinet? For more perspectives, listen to the other stories as well. This is a Studio Kabba production commissioned by Paleis Het Loo. 

For this perspective, we're speaking with Karwan Fatah-Black. He is a historian and expert on the history of the Atlantic slave trade. Which perspectives are we missing when we look at this cabinet?

The image of the chained or submissive African is a part of European art history across many different phases. And its meaning changes slightly over time, which is why it gets interpreted differently in various times and places. But the question remains: at what moment was this cabinet purchased? How did people view it back then? The common thread, however, through all these interpretations, in my opinion is that it always revolves around superiority and submissiveness, civilization and liberation, leading people toward Christianity or providing good governance for those who can't achieve it themselves. That's also the way someone would look at a cabinet like this. It's simply a repetition of the cliché of Africans who are chained, who are submissive and who either need to be helped by being kept in slavery or need to be helped by being freed from slavery. But it's always that hierarchical relationship. 

That really sounds like white savior complex. I just mentioned the white savior complex. The term refers to an attitude in which a white person positions themselves as the savior towards people of color, thereby overlooking the experiences and capabilities of those people themselves. 

Absolutely. So even during the period of slavery, Europeans viewed slavery as a sort of good deed. We are saving people from those terrible wars in Africa and bringing them closer to Christianity. Without us, everything would go wrong. Luckily, they are in our slavery and we can bring them to freedom. That was the narrative at the time, and that changes with abolition. Then it becomes: we are the ones who are bringing abolition, and that's a highly deceptive narrative. 

What I also find interesting is that you describe it as propaganda. They are all narratives to conceal the evil of it, and in every narrative the African person is portrayed as this passive character. 

Certainly there have been debates about what came first. Was it slavery and then people came up with racist ideas to justify it? Or were there already ideas about racial hierarchy and slavery followed from that? I believe the answer is that it's a mix of both, but those racialized ideas in Europe did evolve because of slavery. Though something preceded it as well. After all, why go to all that trouble to enslave people from Africa and then bring them to the Americas? You could have done the same with Europeans, which would have been less complicated, but that didn't fit the worldview. 

I wonder if there were any coping mechanisms to deal with the impact. 

For the people who experienced it, well, there has been some research on people who ended up in slavery. Who were they? There are a few who survived and told their stories, and some have even written them down. And what you see is that a large portion of the people who were enslaved during this period, especially in the 18th century, were children. What you notice is that these children, when they are adults, can't or won't talk about the period before their enslavement. This phenomenon still exists today. It's also true of modern slavery. People don't really want to talk about what they've been through. There is clearly an extreme form of trauma which makes it difficult for them to speak about it. That means there is also very little to base an understanding on, to make it clear what happened, because people find it hard to talk about. There's also clearly a problem with language. We have an example of a Dutch child from present day Ghana, who talks about his youth and childhood. He was probably enslaved at the age of 7 or 8 and he tells everything in Dutch. But he can't really say anything about the time when he was still with his parents or the original community he came from. He just doesn't have the words to describe it. So while he shares a lot about the rest of his life and so on, the earlier period is very difficult to learn about. And that, yes, has a lot to do with the extreme violence of being enslaved and the transatlantic voyage. Research has been done, for instance, in Curacao. You can see very clearly where they grow up in the bones of people in graves. Felicia Fricke has done some research in Curacao on the skeleton of a person. You can clearly see the first period in Africa, then extreme trauma, interruption of growth, et cetera, and then the period of hard labor on the island. Well, the cliché about what slavery was really holds up, you know. And that has had an enormous impact.

If there is one person or story from all your research that has stayed with you, what would it be? 

Those aren't happy stories. 

I do think it's important. 

Yes. During my research for the Dutch Bank into its history of slavery, I happened to read an article by a colleague who had found a few court cases involving a woman, Rebecca. Rebecca had fought several legal cases trying to prove that she should have been free, and therefore her children too. She had several children while she was enslaved on a plantation. If she had been wrongly enslaved, those children would have been born free. But Rebecca's story was fascinating, I think, because she explained why she believed she should have been free, and she brought these cases before the British court of a British colony which had previously been a Dutch colony. She arrived there during a Dutch period on board a Dutch ship under Captain Verschuur. At that time she was between 12 and 14 years old. She calls herself the captain's wife. She was enslaved and the captain actually raped her during the journey. She was with him, but he promised her that if she had his child, she would be freed. And that happens. She has a child by him, but he doesn't free her and she ends up on a plantation held there by the Boda family. At some point, she tries to win her freedom by filing these legal cases three times. In these cases, she repeatedly tells her story. There were also other people aboard the ship who witnessed it and confirmed her account. The story of Rebecca is representative in so many ways of the practice of slavery, of deception, violence, but also the persistence in seeking freedom. That family can’t even prove that Rebecca was their property because they don't have any purchase papers. Verschuur had just left her there, and they pretended to own her as if they had bought her. They couldn't prove it. But the court said: she's listed in the record, so it's fine that you don't have a purchase receipt. 

How can we make our history more inclusive? For more perspectives, listen to the other stories. This is a Studio Kabba production commissioned by Paleis Het Loo.

For this perspective, we're sitting at the table with Dik van der Meulen, writer, historian and biographer. His biography of King Willem III was awarded with the Libris history prize in 2014. So who was King Willem III really? The Great Liberator or King Gorilla?

We would like to start with a text we found.

Praise King William with great honor. Give him thanks, let us sing hymns in his name. He has done a great deed. Because of him, all black people are freed. He has removed our shame. King Willem III is his name. Oh God. Bless him. 

Yes, I am of course familiar with that text and it also exists and I think Sranantongo and it was created because people truly believed that Willem III  personally abolished slavery in the Western colonies. And the question is, of course, how much he actually felt connected to that. Well, he just had to sign a signature. So you never really know, but my idea is that Willem III signed this wholeheartedly. There are a few indications for this. For example, he received a letter of thanks from an English organization that was working towards the abolition of slavery, and then he dictated the letter of thanks himself back to them through his secretary, saying that he really thought it was a great cause, that they were fighting for. So he did that very deliberately. And yes, I think that through his friendship with those people, he took a somewhat uncharacteristically different stance on this matter. 

So what kind of person was he? You already said he was reactionary. 

Yes. Well, Willem III became a king in 1849. His grandfather, King Willem I was an absolute ruling king. And when Willem III grew up, he thought: I also want to be a king like this. With a lot of power and with a great kingdom. But of course, Belgium became independent and during his father's reign, the monarchy was severely weakened. Now, he became a bit of a ribbon cutter so to speak. And he hated that because he wanted real power. And all of his beliefs. I mean, he was misogynistic. He opposed anything that pointed to change reforms. He was against the expansion of voting rights and he certainly wanted nothing to do with women's rights. So he didn't like change. With a man like this, you would actually expect him not to support change when it came to slavery, either. Yet just as suddenly he was against slavery. He wanted to see that changed.

You mentioned earlier that colonialism was actually beneficial for the Netherlands, for the economy and the royal family. So what did King Willem III  have to gain from abolishing slavery? 

He didn't have much to gain, except maybe a certain level of popularity. He was an impossible man, but he was surrounded by intelligent people. And I think there could have been a certain level of calculation involved as well, where people told him you should support this because slavery is simply becoming unpopular in the country. Slavery was on its way out internationally, so people were telling the king: if I were you, I would start supporting the anti slavery movement because it resonates with the public. So a form of pragmatism might have played a role here as well. With an impossible man like Willem III, it's very tempting to condemn everything he did. But maybe for once, he genuinely did the right thing. That's of course not out of the question. 

So his reputation in the Netherlands wasn't as good as it was in the colonies. He also had a few nicknames here, like King Gorilla. What do you know about that time? About how people in the Netherlands viewed him? 

People didn't think very favorably of him. The King's power was fading during that time. And Willem III couldn't adapt to that and people noticed. He also behaved very unpleasantly in public. Many people were offended by him. What also played a not insignificant role was his first marriage to Queen Sophie. It was a bad marriage. And that was bad for the monarchy, because the royal family was seen as a kind of role model. Man, woman, children, it all had to be harmonious and good. And it wasn't. That was very well known, and it was also visible because Willem III almost never appeared in public with his wife. That wasn't in the newspapers, by the way. The papers were very loyal to authority in those days, except for a few marginal anarchist or Marxist publications. It did, however, appear in the foreign press, and it did trickle down to the Dutch population because people were talking about it.

We actually found another text, maybe from one of those anarchist publications you just mentioned. It's from the social magazine called Recht voor alle or Justice for all. Here it is.

There once was a king called Gorilla. A prime example of a king. He was famous for his drinking and swearing. He had never been ashamed of his wickedness and feared no punishment or chastisement. That monster chose for himself a German Princess renowned for her talents and gifts as a wife. But he beat her with a bottle instead of being inspired by her virtues. When he forgot his marital duties, he sought destruction in brothels. Oh, what a splendid king he was. Oh, what a splendid king. 

It's actually largely true. The man did everything that was forbidden then. And of course other people did that too, but you weren't supposed to flaunt it. And Willem III did. With a man like this, you wouldn't expect him to suddenly do something where you'd think. Well, he got it right for once. Namely the abolition of slavery. You wouldn't expect that from someone like him. And then ten years later, he buys a cabinet. Yes, a cabinet carried by two unmistakably obvious wooden slaves with chains around them. So yes, there's no doubt what that cabinet represents. When I saw that, even as the biographer of Willem III, I was struggling with it. How can I reconcile this man who, in my opinion, was genuinely against slavery? I can’t. I don’t know.

Is there such a thing as one historical truth? For more perspectives, listen to the other stories. This is a Studio Kabba production commissioned by Paleis Het Loo.