Bonus: Dark Chocolate: Amsterdam, Slavery and Chocolate
This is a special episode we were invited to make by Tony's Chocolonely, an Amsterdam-based chocolate company which is on a mission to eradicate modern slavery and make 100% slave-free the norm in chocolate. Earlier this year, the Chief Chocolate Officer of Tony's Chocolonely, Henk Jan Beltman, was arrested for spray painting a Black Lives Matter slogan next to a statue of one of the most notorious Dutch colonial figures, Jan Pieterszoon Coen.
The statue stands on the corner of the Beurs van Berlage, an iconic building in the centre of Amsterdam, and one in which Tony's Chocolonely have set up shop today. When speaking to the media after being released without charge, Beltman said "Jan Pieterzoon Coen was one of the largest slave traders in our history, which must be indicated with such a statue. We cannot rewrite history and I am normally not fond of graffiti, but with this action I hope to keep the social debate going.”
To this end, Tony's approached us and asked us to create a podcast for their staff which would help them better understand the historic connections Amsterdam has with both the chocolate industry and the slave trade. Amsterdam is a city which has been involved in the cocoa trade and chocolate production almost since the bean’s first introduction into Europe. It is in Amsterdam that the history of modern economics, slavery and chocolate intersect.
Sources
‘Narrative of the Enslavement of Ottobah Cugoano, a Native of Africa; published by himself, in the Year 1787’, in The Negro's Memorial, or, Abolitionist's Catechism, by an Abolitionist by Thomas Fisher, 1825 https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/cugoano/cugoano.html
Merchants, Missionaries and Migrants:300 years of Dutch-Ghanaian Relations by I. van Kessel (ed)
Curaçao as a Transit Center to the Spanish Main and the French West Indies by Wim Klooster
Slavernij en vrijheid op Curaçao : de dynamiek van een achttiende-eeuws Atlantisch handelsknooppunt by Henri Romondus Jordaan
The Town of San Felipe and Colonial Cacao Economies by Eugenio Pinero
The First Modern Economy Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 by Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude
The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600-1815 by Johannes Menne Postma
Slave Trading and Slavery in the Dutch Colonial Empire: A Global Comparison by Rik van Welie
Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817 edited by Johannes Postma and Victor Enthoven
Learning About Sensitive History: “Heritage” of Slavery as a Resource by Geerte M. Savenije, Carla van Boxtel and Maria Grever
‘De held en de geboren soeverein die in Indië noodig was’ Jan Pieterszoon Coen in Albert Verweys decoratieprogramma voor de Beurs van Berlage by Evelyne Shamier
Ideologie in Steen: Het beeldhouwwerk van Lambertus Zijl aan het beursgebouw te Amsterdam by Madelon Broekhuis
The Enslaved Children of the Dutch World: Trade, Plantations and Households in the Eighteenth Century by Ramona Negrón
Bittersweet: Sugar, Slavery and Science in Dutch Suriname by Elizabeth Sutton
Approaching freedom: The manumission of slaves in Suriname, 1760–1828 by Rosemary Brana-Shute
A Handbook of Food Crime: Immoral and illegal practices in the food industry and what to do about them edited by Allison Gray and Ronald Hinch
Slavery and abolitionism: a Dutch history through intersectionally explored stories by E.C.J. Sprangers