Symposium: Colonial past of Dutch medical (knowledge) institutions - ‘After the comma’

Research on the colonial past is often characterised by a call for balance and by the idea that both the positive and negative aspects of that past should be highlighted. In the colonial context, for example, there was racism, but healthcare was also provided.

Such historiography, although understandable, appears problematic from a historian's perspective, because it often fails to explain the how and why of that past. Balance approaches tend to be one-sided and overlook the broader contexts in which people lived; they contain anachronistic elements; they underestimate the fundamental role of ideology in people's lives; and they are not grounded in critical historical analysis.

In my presentation, I will address these four problems of the balance approach and explain why a meaningful history of the colonial past is not about finding the right balance, but about providing meaningful explanations of that past.

In recent years, there has been growing attention in the Netherlands to how the colonial era and the history of slavery continue to shape our present-day society. The Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport commissioned a study specifically examining the legacy of Dutch transatlantic slavery on the health of descendants of enslaved people.

The University of Amsterdam conducted a literature review and consulted around thirty experts from Dutch academia, the healthcare sector, and civil society. The study shows that descendants are, in a sense, “doubly burdened”: they carry experiences and effects inherited from ancestors who lived through slavery, while also often facing racism and discrimination in contemporary Dutch society.

When indentured labour was introduced, expectations were quite high among the plantation owners and colonial governments at the one hand, and among the workers at the other hand. The goal for the colonial authorities and the planters was to save the plantations for destruction after the abolition of slavery. Although the emancipated slaves were forced to continue working for their former owners or employers for years to come. Despite this the production declined. British authorities and entrepreneurs initially faced a dilemma: Was it appropriate to introduce indentured labor within the free market economy system in which workers would be bound by a contract to work for an employer for an extended period.

Economic factors led to the introduction of indentured labor, despite protests from the Anti-Slavery society, because the production of sugar and other export products declined, which meant a loss of capital for the planters and society in the metropolitan countries. After a period of experimentation, the decision was made to continue with indentured labor because the results were positive and regulations were introduced to minimize abuses.

In my presentation, I will provide an impression of the living and working conditions of the indentured labourers, focusing on whether and to what extent the migration of indentured labourers was beneficial for them and their descendants. Health aspects will also be addressed.

Questions that arise include:

Were they generally better off or worse off in their new situation as indentured labourers? How was their material and immaterial well-being? What was their mental and physical health like? How did they experience the separation from the loved ones they had left behind?

I will end my presentation with a recommendation the Netherlands has a moral obligation to help address certain contemporary problems, that belong to the consequences of the colonial past of the Netherlands.

For this we need collaboration between institutes, organizations and individual actors on both sides of the ocean, because we not only have a common past, but also a shared future.

This contribution starts from experiences within the programme Pressing Matter (2020-2025), initiated by Wayne Modest and the World Museum and funded by the National Science Agenda (NWA). Pressing Matter focused on collections in the Netherlands acquired in colonial contexts. This was possible thanks to the project's firm embedding within four universities, the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, eight museums - including the university museums in Groningen and Utrecht and Museum Vrolik - and social initiatives such as Framer Framed, Imagine IC and artist interventions in the museums involved. In this lecture, Legêne will elaborate on the concept of ‘colonial epistemology’ and the research methods that have emerged from colonial social contexts, such as prisons, hospitals, expeditionary studies and administrative practices. What do these contexts tell us about the distinction between (colonial) subjects and (cultural) objects? And what challenges do university museums and medical historians face in addressing these distinctions?

In this presentation, I will situate the Utrecht Medical Faculty-both as an institution and through the individuals connected to it-within the broader context of global colonialism. As an institution, it never operated in isolation; it was always entangled with other colonial structures. The same applies to the individuals linked to it. Students trained in Utrecht often built their careers elsewhere in the empire, while professors appointed in Utrecht frequently brought with them training and experience from other colonial or metropolitan institutions. In both cases, the development of Utrecht's involvement in colonial medicine can only be understood through these wider institutional connections. By emphasizing this, I argue that the Utrecht Medical Faculty's role must be seen as part of a larger web of colonial entanglements that linked multiple institutions across the empire.

In this session, we explore the role that higher education institutions (HEIs) can play in responding to their colonial past “after the comma,” particularly through education. As research increasingly uncovers the historical entanglements of medical institutions with colonialism and slavery, an important question arises: how can these insights be translated into meaningful educational practice?

The session addresses the need to move beyond the transmission of historical knowledge. How can we help students develop historical consciousness and recognise how historically shaped power relations continue to influence healthcare interactions today? The session discusses didactic principles for developing such education, shares emerging initiatives at the University Medical Center Utrecht, and invites participants to exchange ideas on how education can contribute to addressing colonial legacies in healthcare.