Unlike most city histories, this book focuses exclusively on the city's connections with colonialism and slavery. Rotterdam, the second-largest Dutch city, is one of Europe's leading ports. Its maritime expansion was intrinsically linked to Dutch colonialism, including slave trading and colonial slavery in the Americas, Africa and Asia. This painful history sits uneasily with the city's modern cosmopolitan image and its large population of 'new Rotterdammers' with colonial roots. The present volume provides a summary of the research that has documented this history, with chapters on the contribution of colonial trade to economic development; the city's involvement in slavery; the role of the urban political elites; the impact on urban development and architecture; the 'ethical impulse'; colonial art and ethnographic collections; colonial and postcolonial migration; and finally the resonance of this history in postcolonial Rotterdam.
I Colonial and Postcolonial Rotterdam (Gert Oostindie)
II Rotterdam's Colonial Connections. Shipping and Trade, Industry and Finance (Gerhard de Kok)
III Rotterdam and Transatlantic Slavery (Alex van Stipriaan)
IV Civic Government and Businessmen in Rotterdam: Colonial Cross-fertilization (Henk den Heijer)
V More than Meets the Eye. Traces of a Colonial Past in the City of Rotterdam (Pauline K.M. van Roosmalen)
VI Colonial Rotterdam: a Hotbed for Dutch Missionary Work, 1797-1977 (Tom van den Berge)
VII A Never-ending Story. Colonial Collections in Rotterdam (Alexandra van Dongen and Liane van der Linden)
VIII Making a Home in Rotterdam. Colonial and Postcolonial Migrants To and From the City (Esther Captain)
IX The Road is Mine. The Summer Carnival as a Case Study for Postcolonial Rotterdam (Francio Guadeloupe, Paul van de Laar and Liane van der Linden)
About the Authors
Index
