Memory Laws on Slavery in France and the Netherlands: From Guillotines to Windmills

This article compares legislation addressing the legacy of slavery in France and the Netherlands. By virtue of its 2001 ‘Taubira Law’, France recognised the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity. Two decades later, the Netherlands has opted for softer measures, materialising in state apologies from the Prime Minister Mark Rutte (2022) and the King Willem-Alexander (2023) for the slavery trade by the Dutch empire, without its Parliament embedding these actions into a more extensive memory law. This article critically explores these divergent approaches, zooming into the strengths of France’s formal legislative framework vis-à-vis the less prescriptive strategy in the Netherlands. Although the French legislative model seems more robust in its legal reckoning with the colonial past, that potentially aligns with global movements towards decolonisation and racial equity, the Dutch model benefits from avoiding the controversies associated with more rigid memory laws elsewhere, including their role in prompting ‘cancel culture’. The softer approach in the Netherlands, while still adhering to international human rights standards, may foster a reconciliation on collective memory that acknowledges the Dutch colonial past without undermining social and academic dialogue on the complex subject of slavery. The constitutional context of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which is wider than the country of the Netherlands, also bears considerable socio-legal intricacies in adopting a memory law on such issues. The model of symbolic recognition notably through the King, who embodies a form of ontological security and mnemonic constitutionalism in a monarchy, aptly fits the socio-legal settings of the Netherlands.