Forgotten Slavery in the Dutch East Indies

When slavery comes up, the Dutch think of Suriname and the Antilles, and not about the more than 260 years of slave trade in the Dutch East Indies. Reggie Baay wrote about this in Daar werd wat gruwelijks verricht (Something Terrible Happened There).

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Date and time Saturday 17 January 2015 21:00 tot 21:40 uur
Location Theater aan het Spui - Zaal 2

When slavery comes up, everyone thinks of Suriname and the Antilles but never of Indonesia. Why has the Dutch history of more than 260 years of slave trade in the Dutch East Indies been collectively forgotten? Exactly 155 years after the (official) abolition of slavery in the Dutch East Indies, Reggie Baay published Daar werd wat gruwelijks verricht (Something Terrible Happened There), a non-fiction book about the unknown history of slavery in the Dutch East Indies. Paul van der Gaag leads a conversation about forgetting, remembrance, and slavery in the "other former Dutch colony." In Dutch.

Line-up

Paul van der Gaag

(Netherlands, 1958) has produced and presented the VPRO radio programme OVT since 2002, a two-hour show about the historical roots of current events as well as newly released historical books, films, commemorations, and anything else related to history. The show features live interviews, reportage, columns and a weekly documentary during the last half hour. He was already linked to OVT since 1992 as a programmer and previously freelanced for other national Dutch broadcasters such as VARA and IKON.
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Reggie Baay

(Netherlands, 1955) won much praise for his books about the njai, women in the Dutch East Indies who lived in concubinage and had children with Dutch men. He debuted in 2006 with the semi-autobiographical novel De ogen van Solo (Solo’s Eyes), dealing with the rootlessness of people from the Dutch East Indies. Gebleekte ziel (Bleached Soul, 2012) is a novel based on historical fact about the son of a Balinese nobleman sent to the Netherlands to be "bleached", to erase his indigenous identity. Daar werd wat gruwelijks verricht (Something Horrible Happened There) is a non-fiction book about the unknown history of slavery in the Dutch East Indies. In 2018 he published the documentary novel Het kind met Japanse ogen (The Child with Japanese Eyes), a personal quest and historical investigation into the life of his father.
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