Mayor Aboutaleb of Rotterdam apologizes this afternoon on behalf of the council of b and w for the participation of successive Rotterdam executive councils in the system of colonialism and slavery from 1600.
This excuse follows an investigation into the role of Rotterdam in the colonial trade, slave trade and slavery. The results of that research, by the Royal Institute for Land-Language and Ethnology, were presented at the end of 2020.
This showed that in the 17th and 18th centuries there were close ties between the city administrators and the trading companies and that the growth of the city as a world port was partly possible due to the trade in the 19th century in the Dutch East Indies.
Mayor Aboutaleb has chosen December 10 as the day of apology because it is International Human Rights Day. The college sees an important connection between this excuse and human rights in the present.
Rotterdam follows the example of Amsterdam, which already apologized on 1 July for the city’s role in the slavery past. Research is underway in The Hague and Utrecht into the role of the city government in the colonial past. National politics is divided over apologies.
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