Dutch want to return items looted during colonial rule

A 1765 canon that belonged to the King of Kandy is at display at Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

Dutch authorities are intent on tracking down rightful owners of thousands of objects their forefathers had seized during the colonial era, agency reports said yesterday.

Reports from Amsterdam said that at least 4,000 objects in its collections have clear ties to the country’s colonial empire, which spanned some 300 years from the mid-17th century and whose main centres of power were in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean.

The reports said: A cannon that once saluted a Sinhalese king and a diamond looted from an Indonesian sultan are among thousands of objects seized during the colonial era whose rightful owners Dutch authorities are intent on tracking down.

But establishing who those owners are can be complicated, the national Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam argues.

It says at least 4,000 objects in its collections have clear ties to the country’s colonial empire, which spanned some 300 years from the mid-17th century and whose main centres of power were in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean.

The Rijksmuseum’s Head of History, Valika Smeulders, welcomed plans by the government to right what an independent commission this month called the “historical wrong” of continuing to keep valued objects taken by force during that era.

“The museum is really bringing in new knowledge, new voices, new expertise, new ways of dealing with the past and looking at these objects… We’re trying to bring down the walls of the museum,” she said.

The Dutch plan to set up an independent research centre as a database for colonial-era art, including where it came from and how it was obtained, and assemble panels to handle restitution requests.

And that, says Smeulders, is where difficulties may arise.

The 36-carat diamond, for instance, was looted in 1875 by Dutch troops from the Sultanate of Bandjamasin, now part of Indonesia on the island of Borneo.

Governments in both countries have changed many times since then.