Wij slaven van Suriname

I've always been romanticizing the exploration of new worlds. I loved reading about the Holland Empire and how Dutch names ended up on various maps. As a kid, it also drove me to play the game “Settlers of Catan” fondly. But I never thought about it from a domination of other people kind of perspective.

Nevertheless, 16th-century discovery voyages are inextricable from the ensuing establishment of exploitation of local resources, especially with the help of enslaved laborers from the African region. This book, written in 1933 (!) by the son of a former slave, is a magnificently clear and eloquent protest against the excruciating conditions in which hundreds of thousands of workers were forced to grind on plantations in the Dutch colony of Suriname. Especially, physical torture through flagellation is one that was completely normalized as a supposedly punitive measure.

Reading this has been a true eye-opener and as most have commented similarly, I believe we ought to teach newer generations the full story of colonial powers. All that generated wealth was evidently at the expense of others.