En Volkenkunde 159 (2003), No: 1, Leiden, 135-161
G. Oostindie Squaring the circle; Commemorating the VOC after 400 years In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 159 (2003), no: 1, Leiden, 135-161 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access GERT J. OOSTINDIE Squaring the circle Commemorating the VOC after 400 years In 2002, the Netherlands 'celebrated' the establishment, exactly four centu- ries before, of the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, East Indies Company). By pure coincidence, that same year a national monument in commemoration of the Atlantic slave trade and Dutch Caribbean slavery - in which the Dutch West Indische Compagnie (WIC, West Indies Company) was a key player - was inaugurated in Amsterdam. In both the celebration of the Dutch East Indies Company and the act of repentance regarding its West Indies counterpart, Queen Beatrix and the then Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok were conspicuously present.1 1 The official dates were 20 March and 1 July, respectively. This article was first presented in November 2002 as a paper at the Erasmushuis in Jakarta and for the Lembaga Adat/ Kebudayaan Toar Lumimuut Masyarakat Minahasa in Tondano. I owe thanks to the audiences at these occasions for their reactions, to the anonymous readers for the Bijdragen and to several colleagues who commented on a draft of this article: Taufik Abdullah, Sander Adelaar, Michiel Baud, Vincent Houben, Adrian B. Lapian, Remco Raben, Merle Ricklefs, Leslie Witz and, at KITLV, David Henley, Gerrit Knaap, Harry Poeze, Henk Schulte Nordholt, and Roger Tol. Enriq Hessing and Laura van Deelen of the Stichting Viering 400 jaar VOC kindly shared their criticism on this paper with me; we agreed to disagree on interpretation.
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