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There was quite a lot of genocide that it was built upon: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/10/dutch-colonial-history-indonesia-villains-victims/ https://foreig

There was quite a lot of genocide that it was built upon: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/10/dutch-colonial-history-indonesia-villains-victims/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/10/dutch-colonial-history-...

jacquesm 4y ago
Yes, there was a lot of that. Our colonial history is nothing to be proud of. But Dutch engineering prowess is something to be proud of. The whole country is essentially a giant machine and if we collectively stopped maintaining it within a surprisingly short time large chunks of it would cease to exist.
- dekhn 4y ago
  I've told lots of people the US should get prepared to pay the dutch to build the Great Atlantic and Pacific Seawalls. We should probably get started soon...
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    A decade ago or so... it's going to get terribly interesting in the next 20 years.
boplicity 4y ago
Interesting that the article, subtitled "A refusal to confront colonial atrocities persists in the Netherlands," lead to you getting downvotes. Coincidence? I think not. The so-called "civilizing mission" continues to this day, with glorification of Dutch ideas and ideals, even though those ideals indeed led to mass atrocities. Such atrocities were often cited as "necessary," in order to impose "improvement" upon the victims society. This "civilizing mission" is often seen as worth it -- it includes many good ideas, after all. Even to this day, the respect for "civlizing" ideas remains, while the acknowledging of mass atrocities is often ignored, or covered up. Even worse, many of the people who committed atrocities are thought of as heroes.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  The same kind of sentiment goes for all of the colonial powers of old, it's a real problem. Some part of society finds it impossible to admit that they are where they are today because of crimes from the past. The Germans are the only country that I'm aware of that have successfully absorbed lessons from their history, but at the same time not all Germans and not all of history. This is a huge problem and is likely going to be the root cause of some of these lessons having to be learned all over again. Today there is human trafficking and slavery in pretty much every country on the globe, just more or less of it. And yet, nobody really lifts a finger to the point where we will be able to once and for all ban this out. Reparation payments, which would be one way to deal with all this (because obviously you can't undo history) are opposed because the people that live here today do not see themselves as complicit even if they are the beneficiaries. Hardly any Western European country has clean hands, and I highly doubt we will ever be able to move on from this in a way that satisfies everybody.
  - WJW 4y ago
    It's much more complex than that of course. First of all it is practically impossible to determine what percentage of Dutch prosperity is due to slave trade, how much of it was due to income from selling natural gas and how much came from the Dutch people being clever merchants and light-bulb-builders and chip-machine-designers and whatnot. Not to mention that putting a definite price on the enslavement of your ancestors is likely to be pretty insulting. "Sorry we enslaved your great-grandfather, here is 5000 euros and let's call it even" is probably not going over well, even if that was the inflation-adjusted profit realized. Secondly of all the damage to local institutions we've done has often caused corruption to be normalized so much that reparations payments would merely enrich the ruling elite further. We can't just send over a few billion to soothe our conscience and hope everything will be OK. It's not really like everyone in the victim countries were innocent either, many tribes were all to happy to sell some of their rival to the westerners. Not everyone has documentation to prove anything either, precisely because their ancestors were slaves. Finally, how far are we going back? Do the Dutch have the right to claim reparations from German occupation? From Napoleonic occupation? From the descendants of the Romans? I don't dispute that there is a debt of honor to help everyone on earth towards a more prosperous state, but reparation payments have so many issues that they might create more problems than they solve.
paganel 4y ago
Of course you're getting downvoted for stating out the truth related to a colonial and criminal country. But, hey, the Dutch are funky and cool!
crote 4y ago
That's what history is like, unfortunately. And it is probably what the future is going to be like too. The Dutch Republic itself, as it existed in the 1600s, was created out of an extremely bloody revolution against the Spanish (the Eighty Years' War) - in which the Spanish committed quite a bit of genocide against Dutch cities too. Look into the Spanish Fury at Mechelen, for example. Despite being the recent victims of it, they went on to commit similar acts only decades later. Genocide has been extremely common in pretty much all of history, and it is only quite recently that most societies have at least been pretending to be explicitly against it. We should definitely remember the atrocities that have been committed, but thinking of it as an explicit "victim vs villain" on a country-per-country base doesn't really help with that. Pretty much every single country has committed atrocities, and pretty much every single country is able to commit them in the future. We in the Western world pretend to be all modern and civilized, but recent history in the Middle East has shown that we haven't learned a goddamn thing. Pulling down statues at home of long-dead oppressors isn't going to do shit if we just keep on committing the same crimes in the present without even batting an eye.

jacquesm 4y ago

Yes, there was a lot of that. Our colonial history is nothing to be proud of. But Dutch engineering prowess is something to be proud of. The whole country is essentially a giant machine and if we collectively stopped maintaining it within a surprisingly short time large chunks of it would cease to exist.

dekhn 4y ago
I've told lots of people the US should get prepared to pay the dutch to build the Great Atlantic and Pacific Seawalls. We should probably get started soon...
- jacquesm 4y ago
  A decade ago or so... it's going to get terribly interesting in the next 20 years.

boplicity 4y ago

Interesting that the article, subtitled "A refusal to confront colonial atrocities persists in the Netherlands," lead to you getting downvotes. Coincidence? I think not. The so-called "civilizing mission" continues to this day, with glorification of Dutch ideas and ideals, even though those ideals indeed led to mass atrocities. Such atrocities were often cited as "necessary," in order to impose "improvement" upon the victims society. This "civilizing mission" is often seen as worth it -- it includes many good ideas, after all. Even to this day, the respect for "civlizing" ideas remains, while the acknowledging of mass atrocities is often ignored, or covered up. Even worse, many of the people who committed atrocities are thought of as heroes.

jacquesm 4y ago
The same kind of sentiment goes for all of the colonial powers of old, it's a real problem. Some part of society finds it impossible to admit that they are where they are today because of crimes from the past. The Germans are the only country that I'm aware of that have successfully absorbed lessons from their history, but at the same time not all Germans and not all of history. This is a huge problem and is likely going to be the root cause of some of these lessons having to be learned all over again. Today there is human trafficking and slavery in pretty much every country on the globe, just more or less of it. And yet, nobody really lifts a finger to the point where we will be able to once and for all ban this out. Reparation payments, which would be one way to deal with all this (because obviously you can't undo history) are opposed because the people that live here today do not see themselves as complicit even if they are the beneficiaries. Hardly any Western European country has clean hands, and I highly doubt we will ever be able to move on from this in a way that satisfies everybody.
- WJW 4y ago
  It's much more complex than that of course. First of all it is practically impossible to determine what percentage of Dutch prosperity is due to slave trade, how much of it was due to income from selling natural gas and how much came from the Dutch people being clever merchants and light-bulb-builders and chip-machine-designers and whatnot. Not to mention that putting a definite price on the enslavement of your ancestors is likely to be pretty insulting. "Sorry we enslaved your great-grandfather, here is 5000 euros and let's call it even" is probably not going over well, even if that was the inflation-adjusted profit realized. Secondly of all the damage to local institutions we've done has often caused corruption to be normalized so much that reparations payments would merely enrich the ruling elite further. We can't just send over a few billion to soothe our conscience and hope everything will be OK. It's not really like everyone in the victim countries were innocent either, many tribes were all to happy to sell some of their rival to the westerners. Not everyone has documentation to prove anything either, precisely because their ancestors were slaves. Finally, how far are we going back? Do the Dutch have the right to claim reparations from German occupation? From Napoleonic occupation? From the descendants of the Romans? I don't dispute that there is a debt of honor to help everyone on earth towards a more prosperous state, but reparation payments have so many issues that they might create more problems than they solve.

paganel 4y ago

Of course you're getting downvoted for stating out the truth related to a colonial and criminal country. But, hey, the Dutch are funky and cool!

crote 4y ago

That's what history is like, unfortunately. And it is probably what the future is going to be like too. The Dutch Republic itself, as it existed in the 1600s, was created out of an extremely bloody revolution against the Spanish (the Eighty Years' War) - in which the Spanish committed quite a bit of genocide against Dutch cities too. Look into the Spanish Fury at Mechelen, for example. Despite being the recent victims of it, they went on to commit similar acts only decades later. Genocide has been extremely common in pretty much all of history, and it is only quite recently that most societies have at least been pretending to be explicitly against it. We should definitely remember the atrocities that have been committed, but thinking of it as an explicit "victim vs villain" on a country-per-country base doesn't really help with that. Pretty much every single country has committed atrocities, and pretty much every single country is able to commit them in the future. We in the Western world pretend to be all modern and civilized, but recent history in the Middle East has shown that we haven't learned a goddamn thing. Pulling down statues at home of long-dead oppressors isn't going to do shit if we just keep on committing the same crimes in the present without even batting an eye.