Hague court orders Dutch state to pay out over colonial massacres
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
How far into the past do we allow for these historic compensations to be still valid? Can Spain sue Turkey for the occupation of the peninsula (711 - 1492)?
I think this is just a bad idea.
"If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. They won’t even admit the knife is there"
Consider Korea (31k), Taiwan (24k), Finland (48k), Austria (50k), Switzerland (80k), Czechia (23k), Hungary (17k), Slovenia (26k), Estonia (23k), Greece (19k), Lithuania (23k), Latvia (18k), and Cyprus (27k).
Hard to make the case that colonialism is the sole or principal factor that produced the prosperity of any of these countries.
But if it is true that Portugal (23k) is an evil white supremacist economy and Lithuania/Estonia/Czechia/Taiwan (~23k) are virtuous economies, we should study Lithuania, Estonia, Taiwan and Czechia! Great job lads!
Does the Republic of Ireland (#4 per capita GDP) need to pay for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland colonies or does the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (#21 per capita GDP) need to pay Republic of Ireland?
Is the Ottoman Empire also very bad? Do the Turks need to pay up? The colonialism people seem to pass over them for some reason.
I don't believe people or nations should receive any sort of monetary reparations. I think there are far better ways to do this sort of thing.
For instance, if we know that, say, ex French colonies had slaves taken away from them and those who remained were obliged to pay onerous taxes to France, fine. If that is proved in a court of law, which would be a mere formality in the case of most French colonies, particularly the African ones, then we relax WTO rules on these colonies so they can build their internal markets. Same would apply to any former colony of any former colonial power. (It should have to be people based harm though, not monetary. So not, "the Dutch West India company gave me 23 beads for the Island of Manhattan." That's just a bad business deal that you shouldn't have accepted. But if the Dutch East India company rounded you up, shipped you to Cuba and forced you to work the Sugar plantations, that's a whole different story.)
Such former colonies should be able to be in WTO even if they have rules about domestic ownership percentages of businesses. Just prove the harm to your people.
Problem solved.
You want money? Great! There's your opportunity to make money on the global market with your own resources and efforts, and at a favorable rate to your own people to boot.
In any case, even if killing someone's family members just so happened to help increase their country's GDP in the long run, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be compensated the killing of their family.
When thinking about what we "should" do here, we're really just thinking about what policies would create the most ideal incentives in service of creating a better world in the long run.
Eastern Europe is not as rich as the west, but is not all that far behind -- Poland has the GDP that the UK had in about 1987 (says google). And of course got deeply massively trodden on in a way that certainly wasn't colonialism, rather more recently than most ex-colonies.
The East India companies were indeed large for their time, the biggest companies ever until canals & railways got invented. But it's hard to comprehend how small the scale of commerce was then, the sum of all long-distance trade was a few containers. Enough to make a few well-positioned men very wealthy indeed, they built some nice mansions. But not countries.
That only makes it worse.
> Hard to make the case that colonialism is the sole or principal factor that produced the prosperity of any of these countries.
If I make 300k a year via human trafficking can I then point towards a doctor also making 300k and say "see, that means I didn't make my money through human trafficking!"
> But if it is true that Portugal (23k) is an evil white supremacist economy and Lithuania (23k) is a virtuous economy, we should study Lithuania! Great job lads!
Now you make it a race thing when nobody else has even mentioned race.
> Does the Republic of Ireland (#4 per capita GDP) need to pay for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
I can't see any way you could make a case for that. What's next, making Israel pay Germany?
> Is the Ottoman Empire also very bad? Do the Turks need to pay up? The colonialism people seem to pass over them for some reason.
Nobody in this thread has mentioned Turkey but you. Seems like you want to make this a racial thing.
(Incidentally, at least two commenters mentioned Turkey.)
Personally, I have ancestors on both sides of colonial history. So am I holding the knife that is impaled in my back?
In the particular context of the article. These events happened during the victims life so justice seems much more clear cut in this case.
Let's dispense with the requirement that I provide you with a comprehensive legal framework that would nicely sort all countries into whether they are responsible for colonial reparations or not. I live in America, so I'll just say that America's (and basically all of Europe's) direct connection to colonialism is so obvious (and continuing) that their responsibility need barely be justified.
Even though capitalists and their inheritors convinced many, 'countries' didn't have colonies, companies and individuals often did, and 'countries' sometimes were instructed by them to participate in their commercial endeavors. Most citizens ancestors in former colonial countries were often no less oppressed by their ruling classes and factory owners as natives in the colonies.
Current ancestors of those working classes are not responsible for their ancestors oppressors. To the contrary. Both people in now former colonies and former colonists are by and large co-victims. While capitalists wealth was largely spent in their native lands and so workers there profited through trickle down economics, we should be very careful validating that slowest of the slow of economic models. It is a malicious model, like colonialism was malicious. It is in workers interest around the globe to correctly identify their oppressors, and not be played against each other and let true inheritors of much of that ill-gained wealth 'socialize' their losses upon their states.
I'll not go into detail into how colonialism actually was differently implemented across Europe (e.g. you may say the State was far more core to colonialism in France, whereas in Belgium it was the king personally owning the colony, and in the Netherlands it was company property). The core of my argument is that the since there isn't a European alive who's ever profited off a slave in the colonies back, the only way to make former colonialists return all their wealth would mean turning this into a sort of blood feud that would never end.
Let's not take Israeli-Palestine as a model. Let's rather think of ways to engrain the idea equality between people worldwide is both fair and the most effective method in preventing conflict, and think of ways of how to implement such a global wealth sharing in ways other than accounting for past rulers/capitalists of fences over which very few had any day, let alone influence, certainly noone alive right now. Let's begin by cracking down hard on current day slavery, and all forms of labour related abuse.
Average humans in former colonist countries are not enemies with average humans in former colonies. The opposite.
You have no idea what you're talking about. You ought to read about this before making such sweeping claims. The Dutch invaded islands, killed and tortured the locals into submission, razed the island and enslaved the women and children to work on spice plantations.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/11/26/165657050/no...
> Current ancestors of those working classes are not responsible for their ancestors oppressors.
No one is arguing that. They're making the very reasonable claim that one group of people oppressed another and that this put the oppressed people at a significant disadvantage relative to those who benefited from the oppression, and thus that resources should be redistributed to balance that - a policy that makes perfect sense in terms of economic incentives.
I hesitate to say more. Yourexample is particular bit of history is actually for me family history, so I think I know quite a bit, but you tone and neglect of my argument makes it seem you have a bone to pick, which you can do very well without me.
I for one will never accept people being dragged into blood feuds, carrying over unto I don't know how many generations of descendants. That's just reusing classic nationalist/capitalists arguments.
I hope any reader got my point that inequality is a huge problem and that blood feud accounting is not a solution, just continuation.
> blood feuds
Again, no one is arguing for that. We're trying to create policies which incentivize good behavior and disincentivize bad behavior in the world, in the long term. The straw person that you're fighting there has been defeated, but this has not (from my above comment):
> They're making the very reasonable claim that one group of people oppressed another and that this put the oppressed people at a significant disadvantage relative to those who benefited from the oppression, and thus that resources should be redistributed to balance that - a policy that makes perfect sense in terms of economic incentives.
> Forcing colonialist countries to return their ill-gotten wealth is nothing but justice.
Even though I am a firm believer that we are not nearly doing enouhhto equalize wealth in general, that statement seems to be to be all about some sort of blood debt. That I cannot agree with, which I have tried to make clear.
The matter of these particular victims is in my view another one, and I wish the compensation would have come decades sooner (and any other victims that have died by now), and had been compensated much better, by trials preferably.
But that is a far cry from what I understood the GP meant with his or her post, in particular the first line.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm not claiming anything about this Dutch case, I'm just playing along with your contrived example.
Ah, you mean that other definition of fairness...
So I could go to a poor country and enslave a bunch of people and train them up and get them to write code for my companies for several generations (all completely against their will - through physical force), and that would be fine with you?
We're trying to construct good incentives for the world here. Your system of incentives doesn't sound great to me.
Do you think that life was purely cake and candy for the western underclasses during the colonial period? Debtors prisons, work farms, indentured servitude, the list of _historical_ abuses goes on.
Yes, there were brutal practices in the past. This is true of both east and west. But the comparison you make implies (at least in my eyes) that you assume this brutality would have continued if colonialism had. The truth is that the west has been a driver and proponent of human rights reform.
The will to be introspective and self-critical has allowed the west to evolve. This same trait can be taken to an extreme of illogic which unduely dismisses the progress it has set the stage for.
The comparison is not between slavery (which we can all easily condemn) and freedom. A better comparison would be between the current western standards of sanitation and jurisprudence vs. the relatively undeveloped current conditions of many former colonies. That said, there are still plenty of reasons to oppose colonialism.
At the end of it all we are left with a choice between optimism and pessimism. Descendants of slaves can choose to count their blessings and appreciate the opportunities they have in their life while still being proud of their heritage. Alternatively we can pessimistically and regressively seek to relitigate the past and blame others for our situation.
Which choice empowers the individual and recognizes his agency? Which choice makes him a victim who must be granted redress by institutions?
Frankly, some of this guilt tripping smacks of condescending nobelesse oblige, although I appreciate that not everyone feels that way.
That's a false dichotomy, I think. This issue is about neither of those things. It's about creating a system of incentives which we predict will create a better world in the long term.
An obviously-good incentive, so far as I can see, is "If you try to enslave a bunch of people, you'll have to pay for the negative externalities of that later".
One could perhaps argue that governments are too short-term oriented to care about the future costs of their actions (see climate change), but I'm hopeful that we're slowly moving towards a better world in this regard.
However, Mauritania still has slavery on a private basis. Libya has slave markets. China and N. Korea have forced labor camps, despite the liberation theology of their political fore-bearers. These countries and slave owners are outside the bounds of any incentives you suggest.
Getting back to the point at hand, judging past abuses is pessimistic and regressive. Yes, slavery in the past was a terrible (although somewhat acceptable at the time) institution. But there are also advantages to being a descendant of a slave in the developed world rather than living in an impoverished country.
Judging the past by the standards of the present, for mistakes which have already been corrected is illogical in my view. It dismisses the possibility for Panglossian optimism, that we live in the best of all _possible_ worlds. It suggests that the struggles endured were not for the best.
It is cavalier to make such judgement. What else would have been possible? No slavery and no contact, thus no life in the developed west for millions? We can always point to an idealized vision of a purely altruistic contact between Europeans and Africans, but was that _possible_ under historical circumstances?
I must politely disagree. I find this line of judgement regressive. The incentives you suggest do nothing for current circumstances. They only narrowly apply where amends have already been made. On the grander scale they perpetuate a toxic culture of unending victimhood.
Finally, if colonialism were still active in Libya, then the aforementioned slave markets wouldn't exist. There's something of a contradiction between narratives here.
This seems similar to the case if Erich Priebke[0] and Herbert Kappler[1], nazi officials who were responsible for the execution of 335 italian civilians in retaliation for a partisan attack where 33 germans had been killed.
The people who were killed were unrelated to the attack, and there was a standing order to kill 10 italian for each german so this was "correct" in some sense. But the extra 5 (or 15, there is some discrepancy) were unlawful, and the germans were condemned for them after the war.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Priebke [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Kappler
If there's not a case to be made, a reasonable court won't award a penalty. So it shouldn't be a big problem for states that are not somehow connected to the historical actions in question.
What does it mean to be "somehow connected to" historical actions? (Is today's Spain responsible for the fate of the Incas? Is Italy "connected to" abuses committed by the Roman empire?)
I don't know where/how to draw a line. (Fortunately, I'm not in a position to be asked to do so.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_of_states
Ah, but:
"There are several recent examples where a succession of states, as described above, has not been entirely adhered to. This is mostly a list of the exceptions that have occurred since the creation of the United Nations in 1945. In previous historical periods, the exceptions would be too many to list."
Seems like there's going to be scope for endless debate here... at least the lawyers should do well.
I believe this swamp would be bottomless, and not every nation or victim who suffered from wrongdoings of others would get paid anyway.
Edit: victim
The son that saw his father being killed is still alive.
Judging the past on the standards of the present is usually a bad idea. This doesn't excuse past misdeeds or dismiss the need for progress. The human condition is a work in progress.
UK should compensate its victims too, as should The Netherlands, as should France, as should Belgium, as should Japan, as should former-USSR, as should USA.
Justice must be blind.
What about the Nigerian/Pakistani/Jamaican/Indian English folk?
And, if you say that should not be limited to current passport nationality (in case of the White English) but who their ancestors were, and we test everyone's DNA and so, there's a lot of Americans and other people who will be liable?
Moreover, do people with mixed ethnicity pay partial reparations to reflect the number of 'national' genes in their genome, and how many thousands of years are we going to backdate this?
Is it just me, or are these astoundingly small amounts of money to compensate people for having their immediate relatives murdered by the state?
He also points out the rather shocking fact that eleven out of the first fifteen US presidents were themselves slaveowners.
One way to move that balance is to bribe some of the powerful people who are on the fence, or close to it. (For instance, people who are starting to see the moral case, but are also pretty concerned about their 401k, or its 18thC equivalent.) Of course this bribe was tempting to those pushing for change, they could have victory now, instead of waiting another generation.
On the other hand, attaching to the bill to free the slaves a huge bill to pay them each compensation, this would clearly push the balance the other way, and thus delay the date until it could get a majority (of those with the relevant power).
Though I can't see that the compensation would ever have been significant enough to cover the costs of having been enslaved.
Most slaves were banned by law from learning to read or write, and that alone (I mean, even without being enslaved) would have been an _immense_ cost on any individual trying to make their way in the world at that time.
Wouldn't anyone who was killed earn more than €100 a year for their lifetime?
I am sure the court has some guiding rationale, but without it this feels outrageous.
Adjusting for inflation would get us to around 2000 euro, which makes sense for poor countries.
> The court recognised in its ruling that the sums granted the relatives of victims were “disproportionate” to the suffering caused.
(But, not picking on the Netherlands here, for it is shockingly poor in lots of other countries too.)
Of course, the fact that this "disaster" was directly caused by the government probably builds a stronger case for the government having to use some of its budget to help them out. That just seems like a good policy in terms of incentive design.
Edit: Maybe your argument is that Indonesia should have (in effect) sued the Netherlands if they wanted to get compensation for their citizens?
Makes no sense, unless the court couldn't give more by statute. He saw his father killed and was deprived of his love and financial care. This is a joke, after 8 years, $11K