GREAT BAY, St. Martin — On the eve of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21, 2025, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this year, Dutch media reported that the city of Nijmegen had joined the growing list of municipalities and institutions in the Netherlands that have “uncovered” through research their deeply ingrained role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Chattel Slavery.
Political Involvement in Colonialism
The research stressed that Nijmegen, despite being landlocked, significantly profited from Slavery and colonialism for centuries (1596-1873). According to historian Joris van den Tol, during this period the mayors and the councils “prioritized their own and their families’ economic interests through administrative roles.”
Nijmegen’s prominence in the Dutch Republic (1579-1795) allowed it to influence colonial trade through positions in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (WIC). These companies, chartered by the Dutch States General, played a pivotal role in international trade, colonial expansion, and warfare conducted on behalf of Dutch “national” interests.
St. Martin, “the Netherlands part,” in fact, was ostensibly under the control of the Dutch West India Company, which extracted enormous profits from the island’s salt for centuries. For example, in the book National Symbols of St. Martin, an illustration shows a single stock certificate for salt valued at 250 guilders, drawn from a total capital investment of 1,000,000 guilders in 1859. Three million barrels of salt were harvested from the Great Salt Pond in 1789.
Enslaved African men, women, and children, people from whom most of us descended, were forced to pick this salt, and perform other forms of brutal, unpaid labor for hundreds of years under the Slavery-based economy of the Netherlands — including during the height of its maritime power. The slave-based economy was responsible for sustaining the Dutch empire, in no small measure.
Economic Interests Centered around Slavery
The new study, released in March 2025 in the book Nijmegen & Slavernij: Publiek bestuur en persoonlijk profijt, 1596–18731 (Nijmegen & Slavery), uncovers Nijmegen’s vital role in colonial trade by supplying wood for ships and oxen for plantation sugar mills. As a transit hub, Nijmegen facilitated the movement of goods between the western Netherlands and Germany, enabling the city to develop a processing industry that increased the value of products for re-export.
French “refugees” also contributed by establishing a cloth trade supported by child labor from orphanages in Nijmegen, aided and abetted by the municipal government. These findings reveal how the city’s economy was intertwined with Slavery and colonialism, with the eventual enormous Dutch wealth derived from both.
Imagine that, instead of Slavery, the trade in oranges had catapulted Nijmegen’s economy. Would this not have been proudly advertised, much like the tulips and the windmills?
How is it that such a foundational economic pillar has gone virtually “unknown” until 2023, when the workgroup “Colonial and Slavery History Nijmegen” petitioned the city council to “acknowledge, recognize, and explore how to give Nijmegen’s Slavery history a place within the community”? The workgroup was a collaboration between Amnesty International Nijmegen, GroenLinks Nijmegen, and Bij1 Nijmegen, supported by individuals and groups.
And the People … ?
One argument I often heard growing up in St. Martin was that the average Dutch person was largely unaware of their country’s involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Chattel Slavery. The immense wealth generated for the Netherlands from that barbaric enterprise in St. Martin and other Dutch slave-holding territories in the Caribbean region was rarely acknowledged. In fact, while there was some debate about Slavery in the Netherlands (especially during the Eighty Years’ War), the researchers found absolutely “no evidence of this in Nijmegen.”
Historian van den Tol pointed out that “in Nijmegen’s newspapers and pamphlets, you find articles opposing the abolition of slavery, and it is clear from the coverage that everyone knew what was happening in Suriname down to the last detail.”2
It should be noted that St. Martin, like the rest of the Dutch Antilles and Suriname, was “administered” by the WIC. Regent families in Nijmegen profited from the economic activities surrounding Slavery and had shares in slave and colonial plantations in the Caribbean, the Americas, and Asia.
The historical records challenge any notion that the people in the Netherlands had little knowledge of what was happening during Slavery. And to my larger point, such deep ancestral ties and legacies of wealth and power built on Slavery does not simply disappear after the Emancipation period of 1863-1873 in most of the Dutch colonies; they remain entrenched in the society up to this day.
Another interesting fact “uncovered” from Nijmegen & Slavernij is that the University of Nijmegen’s (Radboud University) campus was built on property formerly owned by Adam Jacob Smits (1685-1742).
Smits was an administrator in Nijmegen for over 30 years, held the office of mayor twice, and was a governor in the WIC and VOC on behalf of the province of Gelderland (of which Nijmegen is part). With his investments in WIC and VOC, one of the perks that he received was the naming of the ship Horssen after him.
The above examples show how beneficial Slavery was to Nijmegen and the Netherlands as a whole. Nijmegen, and the Netherlands, were standing ten toes down on the “unholy institution” of Slavery in St. Martin and throughout the colonies.
The Netherlands was fully and intentionally involved in Slavery, built immense wealth upon it, and then paraded that wealth, deliberately omitting how it was accumulated.
In fact, the educational system in St. Martin (and throughout the remaining Dutch colonies) would have us believe that Europeans were great explorers and skilled negotiators, positioning themselves, especially the Dutch, as great tradesmen; hence, the reason for their global status and power. Clearly that is not the whole picture. Some important details were deliberately omitted: selective amnesia, if you will.
When the current mayor of Nijmegen, Mayor Bruls, received a copy of Nijmegen & Slavery, he stated in part: “Even though this took place in the spirit of the times, what we know does not make it any less sad, painful, and horrible.”3
“This took place in the spirit of the times” is another common trope, a phrase repeated even by some in St. Martin and elsewhere. King Willem Alexander of the Kingdom of the Netherlands made a similar statement in his 2022 speech from the throne, beseeching us “not to judge our forebears through the prism of modern values.”4
These recent statements continue to infantilize and minimize the intentionality and orchestration of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Chattel Slavery, and colonialism to this day. This underscores the insidious nature of colonialism, its mindset, structures, laws, and the behaviors and activities, including racism, that continue to shape societies today.
As the St. Martin nation, we must confront colonialism for what it is, reject it in all its forms, and reimagine a St. Martin in the image of our ancestral and modern nation-building values. And work like hell to build it. It is what the spirit of our times demands.
1, 2 https://www.voxweb.nl/en/nijmegen-administrators-and-residents-benefited-from-slavery
3 https://nltimes.nl/2025/03/21/nijmegen-played-crucial-role-maintaining-slavery-study
4 https://www.government.nl/documents/speeches/2022/09/20/speech-from-the-throne
Ed. Note: Aishira Cicilia is a jurist and St. Martin activist. She is the founder of Pelican Pride, a Facebook blog, and a member of the One SXM Association (www.facebook.com/onesxm).
