Colonial-era Royal Car Boosts Modern Reactions in the Netherlands


AMSTERDAM – In 1896, the city of Amsterdam decided to make a very special gift to Queen Wilhelmina: a chariot covered in gold. The “Golden Chariot” was designed to represent the entire kingdom and its resources, with cushions filled with leather from Brabant, linen from Zeeland and teak from the Dutch colony of Java.

The leading Dutch artist of the period, Nicolas van der Waaywas commissioned to make panel paintings on all four sides. One of them, “Tribute from the Colonies,” depicts a virgin on the throne. On the left, Africans in loincloths bow before him. On the right, Southeast Asians in colorful batiks offer him gifts as a representation of the Dutch East Indies colony.

All of these components that glorified the empire were appreciated by most of the Dutch at the time. But it is precisely these elements – reminders of slavery and colonial oppression – that make the car a source of pain in the Netherlands, especially for the descendants of people who were previously colonized.

In the context of the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, the trainer has become the focus of anti-colonial and anti-fascist protests. The debate is an echo of similar debates in the United States. Confederate statues and other monumentsand monuments honoring colonists in Europe and slave traders.

an online petition Golden Coach received more than 9000 signatures to retire.

The coach was first used to carry Queen Wilhelmina in 1898, eight years after she became queen at the age of 10, in what the Dutch call a “mission ceremony”. In recent years, the Golden Car was primarily used for the ceremonial opening of the Dutch Parliament. In The Hague and sometimes for weddings and coronations. Since the 1960s, royal rides in the carriage have often been met with street protests.

It was last used without incident in 2015 and then went through a five-year, $1.4 million renovation process before being displayed at the Amsterdam Museum where it will remain until February 27, 2022.

What will happen to him next – whether to put him back in the service of the king and queen; or keep it in the museum with plenty of explanatory content; or keep it out of sight; or destroy it – it has become the subject of intense public debate. Ultimately, the decision will be made by the royal family.

“We must finally end the practice of exposing colonial images as displays of power,” Sylvana Simons, a member of parliament and founder and leader of BIJ1, an anti-apartheid political party, said in June.

Gideon van Meijeren, a lawmaker from the right-wing populist party Forum for Democracy, couldn’t stand it. “We must not allow ourselves to be emotionally blackmailed by a small group of aggressive extremists who see racism under every stone,” he said.

His comment repeated 2020 Twitter emotions The words of populist Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who described his efforts to sack the coach, known in Dutch as Gouden Koets, as “leftist, anti-racist terror.” Using a slang term for the fallen dead, he continued: “I say: Don’t bend over, don’t kneel, all take my ram!”

Last month, Emile Schrijver, director of the Jewish Cultural Quarter, wrote an opinion piece in the Amsterdam daily newspaper. Het Parooldescribes the coach as “an outdated and unacceptable glorification of colonial superiority” that should be decommissioned and permanently placed in a museum.

On July 16, King Willem-Alexander addressed the issue at a press conference, saying he was “listening” to public forums on the subject organized by the museum. “The debate continues,” he added. The car is scheduled to return to The Hague after the exhibition. “You’ll hear from us then,” he said.

The Golden Car was craned to the top of the museum for the grand opening of the exhibition in June, in which the king also attended, and is now displayed in a large glass box in the inner courtyard. Exploring history from the 19th century, the exhibition fills six rooms in the museum and another room devoted to the visual reactions of 15 contemporary artists to the coach.

Margriet Schavemaker, artistic director of the Amsterdam Museum, said she hopes the exhibition will help inform the public about all coach-related issues.

“What I hope this exhibit will show is that there are many different histories and perspectives,” he said in an interview. “I hope that thanks to these many perspectives, we can open up and listen to each other. A museum is the perfect place to consider all the different angles in peace and tranquility.”

Before the coach arrived at the museum, sculptor Nelson Carrilho, an artist from Amsterdam from the Netherlands Antilles, gave a performance in the courtyard, which he called “a ritual to bring wisdom to this exhibition.”

Carrilho’s great-grandmother, an Indian woman living in Suriname, was brought to the Netherlands in 1883 and displayed at a human zoo as part of the World Expo, a colonial showcase. He was studied and photographed during his time in Amsterdam. Mr. Carrilho made a contemporary work of art using photography for the museum exhibition.

He criticized the car, but said it should still stay in use until society is ready for change. “Society needs to get to a point where they can say, ‘We don’t want this Golden Coach anymore,'” he said in an interview. “It shouldn’t come from us, because we’re just ambassadors.”

The exhibition highlights that discussions about the car date back to when it was created. To build the car, royal supporters known as the Orangists raised money from the working-class residents of the Amsterdam neighborhood known as the Jordaan. The socialist press of the time argued that poor people should not have to support “the way of life of these useless people”.

Since then, the coach has been a lightning rod for criticism from opponents of the monarchy. In 1966, after the wedding of Queen Beatrix and Claus van Amsberg, a German prince Hitler Youth memberactivists dropped smoke bombs at the Golden Coach in Amsterdam.

“To me, the car represents a long history of using such symbols to support a lineage, a national identity the Dutch are proud of,” said Jennifer Tosch, cultural historian and founder of Black Heritage Tours in Amsterdam. was a member of a group of experts convened by the museum to advise the curators of the exhibition. “Descendants of colonies have strengthened their objections to constantly reproducing this memory in this way in recent years.”

He said that if the Royal House continued to use the coach in the future, it would only inflame national tensions around social justice issues.

“It certainly sends a very strong message to those advocating its removal from public use that these voices don’t matter,” he said. “We can’t put the genie back in the bottle or ring the bell. Trouble arose. The question is, ‘Now, what do we do with it?'”





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