A three-year historical study commissioned by King Willem-Alexander has concluded that the House of Orange-Nassau supported Dutch colonialism for centuries, profited substantially from it and shares responsibility for the survival of the Dutch slave trade and slavery. The findings were presented on Friday in Leiden, in the eastern Netherlands' neighbouring university town, where the five-volume, roughly 2,000-page report was handed to the king.
The research, conducted by Leiden University with more than 60 experts who were given access to the royal archives, covers the period from 1600 to the present. Its central conclusion is that the House of Orange-Nassau was involved in colonialism "wholeheartedly and without any real reservations". Lead researcher Gert Oostindie said all stadtholders, kings and queens, at least up to Queen Wilhelmina, were convinced of colonialism's legitimacy and importance for the Netherlands. Yet the family only rarely determined colonial policy. Power largely lay with the States General, the parliament, and with trading companies such as the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Only King Willem I, who reigned from 1813 to 1840, set colonial policy himself. The study says the family offered mainly symbolic legitimacy, and that the Netherlands would probably have become a colonial power without the Oranges.
The financial findings are significant. In the 19th century the family earned about 576 million euros (roughly $650 million in today's terms), mostly from the VOC and from the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. By contrast, the family earned almost nothing from the slave trade itself, which the West India Company never managed to make profitable. Historian Idesbald Goddeeris noted that little of this wealth remains with the family, partly because of failed investments in Tsarist Russia and the Habsburg empire.
The king called the conclusions "painful and confronting" and said they affected him, even though he is three generations removed. "I cannot change the past, but I can contribute to the present and the future," he said. He apologised for slavery in 2023, following a 2022 apology by the Dutch government.
Reactions have been mixed. Bianca Groen Gallant of NiNsee, the national institute for the Dutch slavery past, welcomed the scientific confirmation but said the next step, a conversation about redress and a bigger role for education, matters most. Yvonne van Genugten of the Indisch Herinneringscentrum found the profits from the East Indies shocking and said slavery in the Indian Ocean region has been overlooked. Diana Vlet of SHS-GI said Indigenous people enslaved in Suriname and the Caribbean again received too little recognition. Anti-racism activist Mitchell Esajas returned a state decoration he received in 2023, saying words of reconciliation are not enough while economic and racial inequality persists, and he called for a "national route to repair".
Prime Minister Rob Jetten said no new payments will follow, pointing to the 200 million euro fund set up in 2023 for commemoration and education. He said he hoped the study would contribute to reconciliation and greater awareness of colonialism's legacy. The debate over reparations in the Netherlands, however, appears far from settled.