The National Monument to the History of Dutch Slavery was unveiled by Queen Beatrix in Amsterdam.s Oosterpark in 2002. The sculpture group serves mainly to commemorate the centuries-long Dutch participation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Since Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1492, Europeans have settled in the New World. The Portuguese began with sugar cane plantations in Brazil, employing slaves from Africa to work on them. All colonizing European states adopted this practice. Together they transported an estimated twelve million Africans in this slave trade over a period of some two hundred years. Over half a million of them were transported by the Dutch.

At fort Elmina in what is now Ghana, the slaves purchased were embarked by the Dutch for the long ocean voyage. At first the slaves went to the then Dutch possessions in Brazil. Later they were mainly shipped to Suriname and the Dutch Antilles, partly to work on the plantations there and partly to be resold at the slave market of Curacao. Pressured by the English, King William I forbade the Dutch slave trade in 1814, but not until 1863 was slavery itself abolished in the Dutch colonies. The Netherlands was one of the last European states to do so.

Slavery belongs to all times and all cultures. In ancient times it was the custom for the victor to enslave the vanquished. The Greeks and Romans in particular applied this principle. In the early Middle Ages, aversion developed towards holding fellow Christians in slavery. From that moment on, unfree workers were mainly recruited among the Slavic population of Eastern Europe which was as yet unchristianized, and this explains the origin of the word slave.

Slavery is a form of involuntary service in which a person is treated as another person.s property. This is not a phenomenon from the past but still daily practice in large parts of the world. An estimated ten million children . other estimates even speak of a hundred million . work as slaves. Take, for instance, the child soldiers in Colombia and Sierra Leone. Or the child slaves on the cocoa plantations on the Ivory Coast. Or the child prostitutes in Southeast Asia. Initiatives have sprung up worldwide to put an end to this exploitation, such as protest marches against child slavery in the Indian carpet industry and the 'slave-free' chocolate bar Tony's Chocolonely which has been on the market in the Netherlands since 2005.