Leisure and the afterlives of the slavery and colonial past of the Netherlands

We are living in a defining moment – a conjuncture. In this conjuncture of contemporary social life, there is an increasing reckoning with the afterlives of the slavery and colonial past across many Western European countries. Central to this current conjuncture are the increasing societal discussions about ‘decolonisation’, reparations, repair, and healing in the context of how to address the injustices of the past and to give space to related cultural memories in the present. The cultural memories of the slavery and colonial past are found both at the discursive and material levels of society. Discursively, cultural memories are held in the choice of which aspects of the past become part of what Smith (2006) has called authorized heritage discourse (AHD). At the material level, cultural memories are curated through for instance, statues, monuments, memorials and other spatial markers in public spaces to tell the story of the past. It is particularly at the material level that societal discussions in the current conjecture intersects with tourism and leisure. What do we do with those physical markers of the slavery and colonial past in many Western European countries that ‘glorify’ exploitation and subjugation of other people in other parts of the world?

The issues around coming to terms with the slavery and colonial past are being discussed within tourism and leisure studies as an academic field and as an everyday phenomenon. How can leisure (studies) respond to this current conjuncture? Can leisure (studies) be a tool for positive transformative societal change or does it become a platform of collective amnesia in which the issue of slavery and the colonial past is rendered absent and/or silenced? In this note, I seek to outline some ideas on how leisure (studies), particularly in the Netherlands, can begin to fully engage with the slavery and colonial past. I do this by offering a summary of my recently completed Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) funded Veni project and an ongoing European Research Council (ERC) funded Starting Grant project – FRICTIONS –in which we explore the generative tensions of tourism in the context of slavery and colonial heritage. First, it’s important to outline the societal context of the postcolonial Netherlands (Oostinde, 2010), in relation to the slavery and colonial past.

In the Netherlands, slavery and the colonial past were for a long kept outside national historiography (Wekker, 2016; Cain, 2015; Nimako, 2012; Nimako and Willemsen, 2011). It was only in 2002 that a National Slavery Monument was unveiled. The past decade has seen more urgent calls by people of African descent to address the past and present legacies of slavery and colonialism in the Netherlands (Weiner and Baez, 2018; Balkenhol, 2011, 2016; Hondius, 2014a, 2014b). The culmination of these calls was that in a little over two years between 2021 and 2023, official apologies for slavery and the colonial past were issued in the Netherlands. These apologies range from the local levels of cities such as Amsterdam, Den Haag and Rotterdam, to the state level by former Prime Minister Mark Rutte and at the level of the Dutch Royal Family by King Willem Alexander. These apologies were a culmination of years of calls for facing up to slavery and the colonial past and their afterlives. It is worth noting that the apologies by the mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema in 2021 and that of King Willem Alexander in 2023 took place during Keti Koti commemorations that take place in the Oosterpark of Amsterdam on 1 July each year. The Oosterpark is largely a leisure space that also hosts the National Slavery Memorial monument. Here we find the intersection of leisure and the slavery and colonial past. How do we make sense of the Oosterpark as a site of leisure in the context of this layer of memorial landscape that is curated there? Like the Oosterpark in Amsterdam, a number of the landscapes around the Netherlands that are considered mainly in leisure terms are often places implicated with the slavery and the colonial past. Such places offer the potential of retelling the stories the connect the past, present and future, notwithstanding potential discomfort that some leisure visitors might experience.

The number of these leisure sites across the Netherlands with implicated slavery and colonial entanglements are increasingly coming to light. This has been the result of activists and researchers who continue to put the issue on the public agenda. Thus, a number institutions, such as universities, museums and many municipalities have undertaken historic research into their past. Particularly for municipalities, a common outcome of such research has been the publication of books outlining their connections to this past. Such books usually include a listing of the various personalities, stories and the physical sites that have direct connections with slavery or colonialism. Thus, we have come to know that some of what have now become public buildings and parks in a number of cities, towns and villages around the Netherlands were acquired through the proceeds made from the transatlantic slavery trade and through profits from colonial plantation projects. In addition to well-known places in big cities like Amsterdam, Leiden, Utrecht and Rotterdam with entangled history, other cities and towns like Arnhem, Nijmegen, Groningen, Leeuwarden, Delft and Wageningen also have leisure spaces with implicated history. Given these histories, it is important for such leisure spaces to open up to their connections to the difficult past and to offer leisure visitors opportunities to learn of the traces of the slavery and colonial past that co-constitute their leisure spaces. One of the initial easy-to-do ways in which this learning can take place is through guided walking tours.

In my recently completed NWO Veni project, I examined the narratives which emerge from the transformation of the shared slavery-related historical sites between Ghana, Suriname and the Netherlands into heritage tourism and leisure places (Adu-Ampong, 2025). My research showed how such places become places of cultural remembrance through the active role of tour guiding and informational boards that give context to these sites. In the case of the Netherlands we found that tourism transforms sites connected with the slavery past into spaces of commemoration and cultural memory. It is this process that has implication for how leisure (studies) can become a transformative avenue for addressing the challenges of reconciling with a difficult past. Leisure practices therefore have the potential to become the vehicles of activating and transmitting cultural memories. But tour guides and managers at leisure sites need to be willing to engage visitors with the difficult topics of slavery and the colonial past. I found that tour guides in Amsterdam, for instance, were often wary of engaging visitors with the narratives of the slavery and colonial past found in the city (Adu-Ampong and Berg, 2025). This is mainly because they consider it more important to give visitors a good vibe and do not want to make visitors uncomfortable with the narratives about the slavery and colonial past. Thus, the prevention of visitors’ potential discomfort is prioritized over the learning opportunity in the leisure experience. This raises questions as to how leisure can become more than just sustaining the comfort of visitors by making present those narratives that are considered difficult in a given site (Adu-Ampong, 2023).

In my ongoing ERC funded research project – FRICTIONS – I am exploring how tourism and leisure practices can lead to the transformation of slavery and colonial heritage sites into places of cultural memories.The aim of FRICTIONS is to unravel how such transformations generate tensions in dominant narratives and how these then are scaled up to provoke shifts in societal narratives about dealing with this shared past in the present. The setting of tourism and leisure practices provides an innovative lens to explore these issues because slavery and colonial histories, legacies and memories are often inscribed in the material form of monuments, memorials, museum exhibitions, public parks, (botanical) gardens, stately houses and other landscapes. Tour guiding in such places can therefore be a tool for (re)telling new stories and opening up new narratives that visitors can engage with. To do this effectively, there is a need for further research into the various dimensions of the leisure experience at such sites. Leisure research in this area could explore issues such as:

How can leisure (studies) facilitate discussions about the wider societal issues of remembering, forgetting and commemorating the (un)shared past?

• What is the relationship between emotions and leisure experiences at contested heritage sties?
• How does guided tours shape the leisure experience in terms of local place identities, meanings and collective memory?
• How does leisure, in its diverse cultural practices and performances, transform and narrate the past through particular forms of representation that engage the senses, emotions and imagination of visitors?
• How are emotions (re)produced and performed in the context of contested heritage sites?
• How do visitors experience and engage with leisure spaces with slavery and colonial histories?
• How do debates about coming to terms with contested heritage and their ongoing impact in contemporary society circulate, translate and travel between leisure scholars, cultural institutions and the general public?
• How does leisure feature in contemporary processes of heritage and memory formation and museum practices?

The current conjuncture calls for coming to terms with the complicated history of the past of places and society as a whole. In the context of an increasing number of people engaging in leisure activities, this note has sought to outline how leisure (studies) can come to terms with the afterlives of the slavery and colonial past. While the focus has been on the Netherlands, the issues outlined here are applicable to many other Western European countries . The evolving societal discussions about the cultural memories of slavery and the colonial past offer an opportunity for leisure scholars to contribute their research insights into how best to come to terms with a difficult past. Some of the ideas outlined here can offer a starting point for such engagement.

References

• Adu-Ampong, E. A., & Berg, S. (2025). The spatial narratives and representation of slavery and colonial heritage on guided tours in Amsterdam. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 20(1), 59-77. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1743873X.2024.2382483
• Adu-Ampong, E. A. (2025). Making an Embodied Absence Present: Tourism and the Cultural Imaginary of Slavery and Colonial Heritage in the Netherlands. In M. Paijmans and K. Fatah-Black (eds). Slavery in the Cultural Imagination: Debates, Silences and Dissent in the Neerlandophone Space, Amsterdam; Amsterdam University Press (pp. 235 – 252)
• Adu-Ampong, E. A (2023). THE EMBODIED ABSENCE OF THE PAST: slavery heritage and the transformative memory work of tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 101 (2023), 103590 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738323000634
• Balkenhol, M. (2011). Emplacing slavery: Roots, monuments and politics of belonging in the Netherlands. African Diaspora, 4(2), 135-162.
• Balkenhol, M. (2016). Silence and the politics of compassion. Commemorating slavery in the Netherlands. Social Anthropology, 24(3), 278-293.
• Cain, A. (2015). Slavery and Memory in the Netherlands: Who Needs Commemoration?, Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage, 4:3, 227-242
• Hondius, D. G. (2014a). Mapping Urban European Histories of Slavery: New Developments in Historical Research, Commemoration, and Heritage. WERKSTATTGESCHICHTE / Heft 66–67, 135-147
• Hondius, D. G. (2014b). Black Dutch Voices: Reports from a Country that Leaves Racism Unchallenged.” In P. Essed and I. Hoving (eds.) Dutch Racism, pp. 273-294. Amsterdam, NL: Rodopi
• Nimako, K. (2012). About Them, But Without Them: Race and Ethnic Relations Studies in Dutch Universities. Human Architecture 10:45-52
• Nimako, K. and Willemsen, G. (2011). The Dutch Atlantic Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation. London: Pluto Press.
• Oostindie, G. (2010). Postcolonial Netherlands: Sixty-Five Years of Forgetting, Commemorating, Silencing. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press
• Smith, L. (2006) The Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge
• Wekker, G. (2016). White Innocence: Paradoxes of colonialism and race. Duke University Press
• Weiner, M. F. and Baez, A. C. (2018, eds.). Smash the Pillars. Decoloniality and the Imaginary of Color in the Netherlands, Lanham: Lexington Books

Emmanuel Akwasi Adu-Ampong is an Associate Professor in Cultural Geography at Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands, and a Senior Research Associate at the School of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Tourism Planning and Development journal.

He works at the intersection of cultural geography, critical tourism studies, critical heritage studies and cultural memory studies. He is the Principal Investigator (PI) for an ERC Starting Grant project (2025 – 2030) on Frictions of Space: the generative tensions of slavery and colonial heritage tourism. He was previously PI for the Dutch National Research Council (NWO) Veni project (2021 – 2024) on: The Embodied Absence of the Past: Slavery, Heritage and Tourism in the Ghana-Suriname-Netherlands Triangle. His other research interests revolve around sustainable tourism development, tourism policy and planning, and innovations in qualitative research methodologies.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6285-3875 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6285-3875