Question to non-Americans

[SvennoJ]

PDF said:

SvennoJ said:

Raised in the Netherlands, and nope not accurate.

The 17th century was glorified, the golden age, the amazing East India Company. Not much about the Dutch practically starting the slave trade in Africa, Khoikhoi massacre, creating Apartheid and the things they did in Indonesia, like the 1740 Batavia massacre and as recent as the 1947 Rawagede massacre. We did get to learn about the bad things France, Spain and the UK did.

WW2 did get a lot of attention, all the bad things the Germans did at least. The USA was painted in the best possible light, USSR the worst possible, We learned hardly anything about Eastern Europe, everything behind the iron curtain was simply a blank.

That is really interesting, if the VOC was an American entity it would for sure be glorified in our history. The largest corporation in world history sounds pretty cool, but I am glad you acknowledge all the terrible things that came with that.

I always wondered why apartheid was such a Dutch sounding word, never having got anything about South Africa in school in the past. We heard about Nelson Mandela, but nothing about the back story. Next to that, my mother was a refugee from Indonesia when she was 4 years old. Her mother is born Indonesian, her father was a Dutch railway worker on Java. Their first born (before my mother) died of malnutrition in a Japanese concentration camp. My grandmother never talked about that but it had a severe impact on their lives until her death. I never knew the background of Indonesia from school, only how the VOC got all the great spices from there.

So yeah, I knew there were serious gaps in the history we got in school. Focusing a lot on Greece, Romans, medieval times, the 17th century, Naval battles the Dutch won against the British and WW1 a bit, a lot of WW2, cold war, the end. The cold war was still going when I was in school.

It leads to things like, why is Suriname asking for an apology. Never heard of that place in school... Suriname was a lot on the news though, about the Tamil tigers, painted more as terrorists, guerilla warfare.

Look at that, about time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/world/europe/amsterdam-considers-apology-for-slavery-in-former-colony.html

It's getting addressed now. maybe it will still end up in the school history books as well
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/10/netherlands-rijksmuseum-exhibition-to-tell-story-of-dutch-slave-trade