Category: Content

By Doreen van den Boogaart

On display in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam is an object that is inventoried as a betel box. Specific elements on the silver ornamentation on the box point to a workshop in Sri Lanka, mid-eighteenth century. Inside the box are compartments containing the ingredients needed for rolling a betel chewing quid; areca nuts, ginger gum, limestone chalk and betel leaves from the Piper ‘betel’ pepper plant. These leaves are known in Sri Lanka as bulath in Sinhala and vetrilai in Tamil.

During his tour around the island, James Cordiner noted in his A Description of Ceylon, that the habit of chewing this mild stimulant was completely prevalent among the Sinhalese. ‘At all hours and on every occasion the mastication of those articles prevails; and two persons seldom meet without opening their boxes and exchanging a portion of their contents.’ Cordiner also noticed that ‘many of the old Dutch ladies in Ceylon have attained a relish for this practice, which they observe as regularly and enjoy as much as the native.’ From the seventeenth century onwards, also the colonial elite turned to betel chewing, it became primarily a women’s affair.

And this brings us to another story that can be told with the Rijksmuseum betel box. A story one will not usually read about on the museum label. Who the maker, purchaser and owners of this specific box were, is unknown. What is certain however is that betel boxes like this Rijksmuseum box, were at times carried by enslaved girls and women. These servants followed their Eurasian mistresses with all the needed ingredients in a box, so the latter had always their inseparable bulath available. This situation is described by Robert Percival in his The Account of the Island of Ceylon. He also noticed the hostile treatment by their mistresses during social gatherings:

“To these visits they go attended by a number of slave girls, dressed out for the occasion. These girls walk after them carrying their betel-boxes, or are employed in bearing umbrellas over the heads of their mistresses, who seldom wear any head-dress, but have their hair combed closely back and shining with oil. Their chief finery consists in these female attendants, and their splendour is estimated by the number of them which they can afford to keep. These slaves are the comeliest girls that can be procured, and their mistresses in general behave very kindly to them. With that caprice however, which always attends power in the hands of the ignorant and narrow-minded, the Dutch ladies frequently behave in a very cruel and unjust manner to their female attendants, upon very trifling occasions, and in particular on the slightest suspicion of jealousy.”

Captured in the Indian Ocean area or born into slavery, these attendants were forced into subordinate positions. In the Dutch colonial records people like them were defined as ‘slaaf’ (slave) or ‘lijfeigen’ (bonds(wo)man). Enslaved persons were often listed as property in personal of governmental documents, like inventories and wills. In the Dutch colonial empire, the colonial powers adopted existing forms of unfree labour, but also introduced a system of lifelong slavery in which people were reduced to a commercial property. Due to this involuntary position, enslaved people could be traded and forced to perform labour.

Enslaved servitude, one of the many forms of slavery, is exemplified on the drawing below. The church-going party displays what was thought to be necessary to bring to church: two enslaved servants, a fan, Bible, betel box and cuspidor. The latter was meant to spit the finished betel roll into. Being seen with enslaved servants was a way the colonial elite showed their wealth and status. On the drawing a man is carrying a payung (parasol) to shield the woman. Carrying a parasol was often a marker of slavery for (young) men in urban colonial Dutch East Indies. Likewise, bearing a beautifully decorated betel box and cuspidor marked the position of (young) enslaved women.

Instead of looking at the exquisite craftmanship of the Sri Lankan made betel box, the attention in this blogpost went to the relationship of this object to colonial slavery. Even though it is not certain if this specific box in the Rijksmuseum was carried by an enslaved servant, it does open up for unfolding the lives of enslaved female servants. However, the colonial archive does not reveal much about them, as the information that the archive contains depended on what the owner or colonial government wanted the world to know. The beliefs, sentiments or experiences of enslaved people were not thought to be important. By using snapshots of their lives from colonial records, but moreover going beyond the written records and engaging rituals, arts, music, oral tradition and also the senses or possible experiences in the reconstruction of the lives of enslaved peoples, their humanity can be retrieved.

In that way, we can wonder if the smell if the ingredients in the betel box remind an enslaved servant of her situation and her freedom that was taken from her. Or did she maybe chew bulath herself, like many enslaved women did? Did it perhaps even feel as an act of protest as she mirrored the one that she had to call mistress? One of her most important tasks was following her mistress and carry her betel box, but for the enslaved woman, a talisman or amulet might have been the most valuable object she was wearing. A reminder of her family tradition or the religion she was secretly adhering. We can think about what social contacts and relationships she was having. We can also try to emphasize with her feelings as she was unjustly threatened. With these kinds of efforts, one refuses to accept the one-sided way enslaved persons were presented in colonial records where their humanity is rejected.

A recent example of this historical project is the exhibition on Slavery in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The exhibition tells ten true personal stories about people who were enslaved as well as people who kept slaves. Objects that on the first glance do not have a direct connection with the lives of enslaved are used to tell their stories, the exhibition also present sources that have never been displayed in the museum before, like items that were cherished by enslaved individuals or oral histories. The exhibition can be visited online via this link: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/stories/slavery

The first time I visited the beautiful island Lanka, in 2011, I spent many hours in the archive reading about and collecting details of the lives of enslaved people who lived in Colombo when the port city formed an important node in the world of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the Indian Ocean. I was confronted by the variety of experiences of the enslaved: violence, dislocation, intimacy (chosen and unchosen), death, freedom, inheritance, family life, resistance and loyalty. More than 350 years after the Dutch had conquered the city from the Portuguese, I sat in the archive, poring over the old papers, tracing the lives of many people who have mostly been forgotten over the centuries.

The Dutch East India Company documents which have been preserved offer rich and detailed insights into the experiences of men and women who were enslaved, who lived and worked in coastal areas of the island in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There are of course many silences and gaps in the archives – at least in part where documents have been lost or not survived the passing of time. The textual sources that still remain range from snapshots of named individuals who appear for instance in the last will of the man or woman who claimed ownership over them, to far more detailed accounts of lived experiences when, for instance, an enslaved man fled from his owner and was on the run for days, which tale he recounted after his recapture.

What we can glean from the variety of records is that during the eighteenth century, owning enslaved people was a common occurrence in Colombo. Slave-holdings were not large, certainly not in comparison to plantation slavery in the sugar islands of the West Indies for example, but nevertheless, men and women across the city of a variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds were slave-owners. And the enslaved themselves were from diverse Indian Ocean origins. Based on the way in which they were recorded in Company sources, we can trace at least the place from which they were transported, if not their place of origin. Through names such as Apollo from Makassar, Itam from Goda (Java), Augustus from Cochin, and Modest from Sumbawa we can trace the shipping networks along which routes of forced migration these people travelled (see the map below for most of the locations within the Dutch empire). VOC Ceylon was both a destination for these forced migrants as well as a departure point. Sources from the same period but a very different location – the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa – recount the lives of enslaved people such as Andries of Ceilon who lived and worked on a Cape farm, along with Ceres of Madagascar, a woman named Louisa and her mother, all of whom were owned by the same Cape family.

Through these old documents, we can see that slave-ownership was widespread and we can trace some aspects of individual enslaved people including their names, a guess at their age, and some part of their journey to or from the island. Other sources reveal more details of their everyday lives, and this is especially true of the enslaved men and women who were named in manumission deeds and in court cases.

Manumission was the process whereby an individual enslaved person or a few individuals were declared free. Some enslaved people purchased their own freedom, others were freed on the death of their owner, or as a reward for ‘good and faithful service’. For instance, Kastoerie and her daughter Thomasie purchased their freedom from their owner Manuel Adam Fernando; Breana and her son were manumitted by their mistress Christina van Angelbeek for the ‘exemplary loyalty’ which they had shown.

Over the last few years, a number of scholars have emphasized the need to move away from the binary conception of slavery as the opposite of freedom, a way of conceptualizing slavery that those who study the Indian Ocean world have inherited from the excellent scholarship on the Atlantic but which sits uneasily in Asian contexts, where European colonial empires faced long local genealogies of bonded labour. The intersections and overlaps between forms of bonded labour – including caste and corvée – remain little understood in the histories of slavery in Asia. In exploring the history of slavery in Sri Lanka under the Dutch East India Company, and in particular the sources, it is revealed that the lines between a condition of slavery and living in freedom were certainly blurred. This was true not only in terms of lived experience but also before the law. Through a mid-eighteenth-century court case involving a family and those people who claimed ownership over them, we get some insights into these issues of slavery and freedom, and the spaces between these legal categories which individuals inhabited.

Sabina who lived in Colombo was a mother, a wife and at some points in her life was enslaved. She was also a litigant who spent years in the VOC courts contesting the claim that she was enslaved. The dispute began in dramatic style when a widow barged into a man’s wedding, halting proceedings. The man was Christoffel, Sabina’s son, and the widow claimed to be their owner. The widow’s claim was based on unpaid debts and the case appears to have revolved around whether or not Sabina’s husband, Anthonij, had repaid money borrowed in the past. But what was the connection between his debt and Sabina’s slave status? When Sabina was manumitted she received proof of her freed status, which proof Anthonij used as collateral on a loan. If he could not pay, Sabina and her children would be re-enslaved to cover the outstanding debt. It was Sabina’s freedom and that of her children that was at stake. The resolution of the case has been lost in the intervening years but whatever the outcome of the dispute, it is clear that freedom was precarious, and that even before the law slave and free status were not clear cut.

Over the last few years, since my first trip to Colombo, there have been a number of wonderful books and articles published based on sources including those documents which I pored over in the archive. Most recent among them is Nira Wickramasinghe’s fantastic Slave in a Palanquin. There is of course still much to be done and many lives and experiences of these historical individuals to uncover. Through a variety of academic projects and heritage partnerships, this work is underway.

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Kate Ekama is a postdoctoral researcher at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Her work on slavery in the Indian Ocean focuses on Sri Lanka and the Cape, spanning the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The work discussed in this post refers to documents housed in the Sri Lanka National Archive in Colombo and to recent published research in the Journal of Social History. You can contact Kate at kateekama@sun.ac.za.  

Interview by Doreen van den Boogaart & Luc Bulten

In Spring 2020 Dr. Uditha Jinadasa defended her dissertation ‘Changes in the Cultural Landscape and their Impacts on Heritage Management: A Study of Dutch Fort at Galle, Sri Lanka’ and earned her PhD from the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University. The fortified town of Galle is a living heritage city, but this status is threated by gentrification. Dr. Jinadasa researched what has happened to the architecture, demography, economy, and city culture since the Fort has become UNESCO World Heritage in 1988. Luc Bulten and Doreen van den Boogaart, young ambassadors of the Netherlands Sri Lanka Foundation, interviewed her about her thesis and her view on heritage management in Sri Lanka.

Q: In your PhD thesis you note that on the one hand the current ongoing gentrification of Galle fort has caused many local inhabitants to be forced to leave, while at the same time it provides a stable method of income for the local community. We were wondering, who could stay, and who had to move, and why?

‘In the gentrification process of the fortress, I identified three waves. It all started with the Galle Fort’s UNESCO World Heritage recognition in 1988. The land prices gradually went up and the local people sold their properties. These were the ordinary people in need of money in that very moment. During the second wave the middle class started to sell their properties too, for better prices as the land increased in worth. In contrast to what happened during the first wave, the residents saw the economic benefits as from 1988 foreign investors bought properties in the Fort. People sold or rented out their properties, others started business to meet the wishes of the influx of tourists. In the third wave none of the local community sold their properties; they stayed, started tourist business, or leased out their houses. In thirty years, the number of residents in the town decreased by two-thirds.’

The text continues after the documentary made by Uditha Jinadasa in which she speaks with several (former) residents of the Fort.

‘Unfortunately, the residents of Galle Fort who moved out in the earliest wave, are hit twice as hard.’ Jinadasa puts her attention to the impact of the gentrification of Galle Fort on the former residents. ‘They regret losing their houses and if they had sold their land later on, they could have sold it for a far better price.’ The feeling of loss is a recurring topic in the documentary ‘Another Story of Galle Fort, A UNESCO World Heritage City’. One of the main characters is a person who sold his house to a foreign investor in 2011. He regrets selling his property in the Fort, because his former house at the Pedlar Street contains a lot of his memories. ‘Not only the ones moving out are sorry for the changes the fortress goes through.’ Jinadasa continues, ‘The influx of tourists and (foreign) investors changed the environment in the city. However, in 2019, the majority of the local residents were earning their living in the tourist industry, with B&Bs, souvenir shops, restaurants, etc.T hey experience the financial benefit of the current situation and accept it.’

‘Despite the changes, the (former) inhabitants still like the place. Some people who moved out still visit the fort in the evenings to look at the sunset. Many have a very personal connection to the city, which has not faded away after they left. Others, like a banker Jinadasa asked what Galle meant to him, never wants to leave. He spoke about the Fort as gama (village): ‘I was born in this place, I worked in this place and I want to die in this place.’

Q: Next to the people, a large part of your doctoral research focused on the buildings. Your research pointed out that a minority of the buildings within the fort is still true to the original colonial architecture (36%, opposed to 44% that can no longer be considered as such), would you argue that the influx of domestic and foreign tourists is the prime factor contributing to this ‘loss’?

Yes, there were around 350 buildings in 1988, now there are nearly 500, including the subdivisions and the new infill. Foreign and local investors moved their attention to Galle. Not to live there, they needed space for their business. The buildings consequently developed towards the tourist industry: they became luxury villas, hotels, shops, galleries. You must not forget’, Uditha Jinadasa explains, ‘that the buildings were very old, which do meet the modern living requirements. These buildings had to the building development regulations of Galle Fort. Experts had identified several colonial elements of Galle, like verandas, pillars, internal courtyards. As a result, around 40 percent of the buildings were developed, many according to the regulations and the rest were illegal developments.

Q: In the documentary the (then-)director of the Department of Archeology mentions that they cannot stop the gentrification from taking place, as you cannot deny people from selling their property. Do you believe there is a way the local authorities could negate this process and allow local people to stay?

‘We could shift to a community-centered approach and encourage people to stay. For example, by giving people the (financial) support to develop their property. Developing property is very expensive as accordingly to the regulations an architect needs to be consulted, whose service fees are to high. In any case we should make laws that are community friendly and not laws that are beneficial for investors.’

Q: Is it at all important for historical heritage sites like Galle to maintain its ‘authenticity’? Or should it predominantly serve the contemporary purpose of tourism, education, and recreation? In other words, is it that bad if the original architecture is lost if it contributes to its economic function [e.g. swimming pools for hotels]?

‘Let us take the canal area of Amsterdam as an example: People visit the Canal Ring precisely because of its historic buildings. If there are no historic buildings left in Amsterdam or Galle Fort, why do we still visit the places then? Moreover, since the fort is a living heritage site, the local people should benefit from it and be able to enjoy the place as it was before. So yes, the authenticity needs to be preserved to a certain extent.’

Q: In several other cases in Sri Lanka, particularly in Colombo, old and decaying heritage was rebuilt and repurposed – particularly into (high-end) shopping malls like Dutch hospital and Arcade Independence Square – often saving it from demolition. Do you think this is a good way to save historical buildings and heritage?

‘Sri Lanka has a long history of old preserving buildings and monuments. The Department of Archeology issued the antiquities ordinance already in 1940. According to the law buildings over 100 years can be regarded as a monument. Now people are considering monuments, either local or colonial, as something to be preserved. Looking at it as an ordinary person, I would say that it adds diversity to Colombo with it colonial, traditional, and modern buildings. You should look at it like it is in the Netherlands; people visit the city of Rotterdam as one can find there very different buildings than in other big Dutch cities. In that way tourists and locals enjoy visiting former colonial places in Colombo.’

Q: Learning from the aforementioned examples, and other such situations worldwide, what would be the ideal method to ensure that the heritage site would get a sustainable, yet economically feasible purpose that would be beneficial to local communities without it losing its historical value? Could perhaps name some examples of near-perfect practices surrounding heritage site around the world?

‘The World Heritage program started in the 1970s,’ Jinadasa explains, ‘Many World Heritage listed historic cities experience gentrification today. An example to successful heritage site with regards to the local communities is said to be the City of Vigan, in the Philippines. However, a good start does not guarantee a good outcome. And the other way around is true as well!’ Dr. Uditha Jinadasa ends on a happy note: ‘We should make use of the best practices that are introduced in our time, such as a community-centered approach and see what happens…’

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By Bente de Leede

This story is about a boy who travelled from Sri Lanka to Amsterdam in the eighteenth century. He was not the only one to do this, and certainly not the most famous one. Willem lived a short life and suffered a tragic fate, though his story is worth telling, not in the least because so many elements of Sri Lankan-Dutch connections are reflected in it: from Tamil translators, community conflict, to Christian religion and Dutch revolution! The interaction of Sri Lankans and Dutchmen during the Dutch colonial period was not just contained to Asia, and to politics and economics. Over the course of 150 years, Sri Lankan people also travelled, studied and lived in the Netherlands. Around 20 of them were students of theology, trained at the Dutch seminary in Colombo, pursuing a doctorate at the universities of Leiden and Utrecht, and returning to a career in Dutch Colonial Asia. Willem, however, never left the Netherlands to return to Sri Lanka: he was buried here.

Translators and Ministers

Willem was born in Sri Lanka in 1761 as Wilhelmus Philippus Simon de Melho, in a Tamil-speaking Chettiar family. He was reportedly a keen and amiable boy. Willem’s grandfather Simon was, together with the Ondaatjes – another well-known Chettiar family – part of a clan of which many members worked for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch Reformed Church in Sri Lanka. Within the Chettiar community they formed a faction that clashed with other members of their community, one of the reasons being Simon’s presumably low status as an illegitimate child of a formerly enslaved woman. Within the colonial government, Simon climbed the social ladder quickly though, seizing the opportunity of making himself indispensable to the Dutch as the chief Tamil translator for the VOC. His son, Philip de Melho, Willem’s father, was soon a rising star within the Dutch Reformed Church. Philip married Magdalena Ondaatje and they had several children, among whom two sons. The church considered Philip to be extremely talented and devoted. He attended the seminary, became a junior minister, and also wrote and translated several books in Tamil to explain and defend the Dutch protestant faith to his congregation in Jaffa. And while it was mandatory for all ministers within the Dutch church system to have studied theology at a university, and thus to have to travel to Europe, Philip de Melho refused. It was exceptional, especially since the Dutch governor-general had specifically arranged for him to go to the Netherlands. Was Philip scared to travel to Europe for such a long time? Was he confident enough in his own ability as a minister? Whatever his reasons were, he became one of the greatest exceptions in Dutch church history, and especially in colonial Sri Lanka, since he was even ordained as a senior minister – a predikant – without a university degree.

To Amsterdam

Knowing that Philip de Melho had refused to go, it is at least remarkable that he did send his youngest son Willem to attend the Atheneum in Amsterdam, and after this preparatory school to continue his theology studies at university. His oldest brother had died before being able to take that trip, according to some from ‘studying too hard’, which sounds daunting, but perhaps mainly suggests he was a zealous student. It must therefore have been hard for Philip, and Willem himself, that the only remaining son was leaving the family for Europe. Fortunately, he was not alone: he travelled with his cousin Pieter Ondaatje, who was three years older and whose mother Hermina Quint was from Amsterdam. In 1773, the boys travelled to Galle first, where they boarded a ship to Amsterdam. In Galle, Pieter and Willem stayed with their aunt, whose late husband Petrus de Silva had been predikant as well. A familiar theme in this family be now, uncle Petrus himself had also studied theology in the Netherlands. On November 16^th, together with several hundreds of sailors, soldiers and merchants, the boys travelled the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape, and arrived in Amsterdam about seven months later, on 10 June 1774. There they were awaited by an unfamiliar face, but a familiar name. Pieter Quint, Pieter Ondaatje’s maternal grandfather, would be their legal guardian during their stay in the Netherlands, and the boys were to live at his house. Pieter Quint was a church elder and merchant, living in the Binnen Bantammerstraat in Amsterdam, close to the docks. This street still exists, its name refers to a region in West-Java, and this has over the centuries been a neighbourhood where many Asian travellers in Amsterdam have settled.

Of Pieter and Willem’s time in Amsterdam and attending the Atheneum Illustre not much is known. Pieter decided after four years to continue his studies in Utrecht, starting with theology, and later switching to law, resulting in doctorate degrees from both the Universities of Leiden and Utrecht. He became part of the official historical canon of the Netherlands, as one of the key ideologists and charismatic leaders of the Batavian Revolution in the Netherlands.

Archival memories
While this story might feel like it’s just getting up to steam, this is where the engine suddenly comes to a full stop. Unlike his cousin, Willem never got a degree. One of the only archival remains of Willem where he is not in the slipstream of his famous cousin or father, is his record in the Burial Registry in the Amsterdam Municipal archives. This is where I first met Willem, by reading about his death. The house at the Bantammerstraat had been struck by tuberculosis and Willem did not survive. And so, at age nineteen, not quite graduated from school and after being in the Netherlands and away from his family for seven years, Willem de Melho passed away on February 23^rd 1780. The plans were ambitious, but had worked for most of his relatives: getting a degree in the Netherlands and return to Sri Lanka to work in the Reformed Church, next to his father. On February 28^th, Willem was buried in the Oudezijdskapel, or St. Olof’s Chapel, at the Zeedijk, close to the harbour and the ships returning to Sri Lanka. Ten years later, Willem’s guardian Pieter Quint was also buried there. Pieter Ondaatje could not attend that funeral, as he was exiled in France. Would the death of his grandfather have reminded him of his deceased cousin? On his grandfather’s wish, and showing how much the men had meant to each other, Pieter took Quint’s name, and is nowadays remembered as Pieter Quint Ondaatje.

In the margins of his family members’ histories Willem might seem only a footnote, but in all these stories his memory does live on. On the picture below is Willem’s burial record. He is referred to as

Wilhelmus Philippus Simon de Melho, the only son of Philippus de Melho, servant of the Holy Gospel in Jaffanapatnam [Jaffna], on the island Ceylon.

It is striking, and significant for the history of Dutch colonialism and the connection with Sri Lanka, that the administrative and physical remains of these Sri Lankan men, Willem, Philip and Simon, can still be found in Dutch records and churches in Europe.

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To read more from the world of the Ondaatje and De Melho families in Sri Lanka during the Dutch period, read Herman Tieken’s Between Colombo and the Cape. Letters in Tamil, Dutch and Sinhala, Sent to Nicolaas Ondaatje from Ceylon, Exile at the Cape of Good Hope (1728-1737). Delhi: Manohar 2015.

By Bente de Leede & Deborah de Koning

Jos van Beurden PhD is an affiliated researcher at the Free University Amsterdam. As a scholar and writer he focuses, amongst other matters, on the protection and restitution of cultural heritage. He was one of the speakers at the event ‘Who own(s?) Heritage?’ held at the Dutch National Archives in Den Haag, November 2019, which was organised by Stichting Nederland-Sri Lanka. In this interview, young ambassadors of the Stichting, Deborah de Koning and Bente de Leede, ask him about his experience of the event and his work in the heritage sector.

Q. On the 5th of November you were the first invited speaker to deliver a presentation at the event ‘Who own(s?) Heritage?’. Your presentation was about the current debate on restitution of cultural objects from a colonial context. What was the main purpose of your contribution to this particular event?

‘There were two very specific reasons why I wanted to contribute to this event. The first was that I wanted to place the debate of restitution of cultural objects in a larger context – not limited to Sri Lanka. The second reason was that my presentation was a tribute to Pilippi De Silva, who was a predecessor to dr. Sanuja Kasthuriarachchi, the present director-general of the department of National Museums in Sri Lanka.’  Van Beurden elaborates on the former director-general: ‘De Silva has made an incredible contribution to the cultural restitution debate by visiting museums all over the world and making a museum inventory of cultural objects from the colonial period. At least two copies are also in the Netherlands, in Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It is on the basis of this book that Sri Lanka made a list of cultural objects the country would like to see returned.’

Q. So you would say the initiative to discuss restitution lay primarily with Sri Lanka?

‘Yes. A similar kind of process happened in Indonesia. When, in 1975, Indonesia and the Netherlands discussed new cultural relations, Indonesia presented a wish-list with around 10.000 cultural objects in Dutch public collections that it wanted back. After tough negotiations this number was reduced to several hundreds of items that have been returned in the following years. There is a serious desire inside several former colonies to retrieve some cultural objects from former colonisers.’

Q. In your research you focus on cultural objects from a colonial context. What does that mean, exactly?

‘It means that an object is of significant cultural and historical importance to the country of origin, and that it has been lost in the colonial period. I make a division between three types of these objects, the first being for example war booty, objects confiscated by missionaries and objects smuggled by colonial administrators, soldiers, scientists, traders and so on. Secondly, there are many cultural objects deliberately produced by craftsmen, sometimes on demand, with the purpose of selling them to colonisers. These objects were handed over for money or by barter, and can be considered as a win/win situation. There is however a large grey area, a third group between these two categories: there are many objects of which we do not know their story and origin. For these objects we need provenance research [herkomstonderzoek, red.].’

 Q. Following our question of what Van Beurden considered the most interesting contribution or presentation during the Heritage Event, he recalls:

‘One was a remark of Paul Russell – who works as a lawyer on, amongst others, cultural heritage: “When you have stolen something, you have to return it.” He worded that very straightforward, strong and clear, there is not much to discuss about that. What we see now, is that it takes the Rijksmuseum several years to go through this process of research and possible restitution. How long will it take then for all the other thousands of objects?’ In this context, Van Beurden thought dr. Sanuja Kasthuriarachchi’s remarks on the Blue Canon were also particularly interesting. When the Canon was discussed, Kasthuriarachchi suggested that objects such as the canon could also be researched, or exhibited, by a Sri Lankan museum.

Q. The ‘Blue Canon’ was a common thread in several presentations on November 5^th. For those who did not attend the event: can you explain what this debate is about?

‘VOC soldiers captured the Blue Canon during the 1765 Kandyan war. It was obviously war booty’, Van Beurden argues. ‘The war was caused by Dutch agitation over the increase of cinnamon prices. The Dutch took the canon and several other objects and even returned one, a silver and gold holder of the relic of the tooth of the Buddha. The canon was stored in the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities and ended up in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam at the end of the nineteenth century. There it is currently on display. The canon was on the aforementioned inventory list of cultural objects and Sri Lanka asked for it in 1980, but the museum nor the Dutch government reacted positively.’

There are different positions in the present debate on restitution of cultural and historical objects from colonial contexts, Van Beurden emphasises, though his view on the matter is clear: ‘For some objects it seems obvious that they should be returned to their country of origin, especially when they are war booty. In 2017 the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam started a project on the provenance of several of its objects with complicated histories. In 2019 researchers from the museum went to Sri Lanka, but to do more research on the background of the objects, not to discuss restitution. Why did it take two years for the museum to include Sri Lanka in this provenance research-project? In my opinion, the information exchange with Sri Lanka began two years too late. The Netherlands should admit that, from a 21^st-century point of view, they should not have confiscated the Canon. Communications and relations between the Netherlands and Sri Lanka should be one of as much equality as possible.’

Q. Does it make a difference for you, in the restitution debate, if the country that asks for the object will have a place to conserve the cultural and historical objects in a secure way (for instance in a museum)?

‘Not in the first place. In my opinion, a restitution process should have three steps: firstly, the former colonising country should admit that from its present perspective, it was wrong to take the object(s) concerned during the colonial era. Secondly, the former coloniser should make clear that it wants to build a new relationship, based on mutual respect and equality. The physical return of the object is the third step, but the two parties might also even agree that this step will not be necessary. Some countries are not so much interested in the object itself, but mainly want the former colonising country to include the complete story in their museums. In such instances, the first two steps are enough. They are just as important for a fruitful conversation about these objects.’

Van Beurden brings forward another restitution debate, that he compares to that about the Blue Canon: the Benin objects have been the subject of many restitution discussions.  In 1897 British soldiers took thousands of objects from present-day Nigeria during a violent clash with the king of Benin. Around 140 of these ‘Benin objects’ are in the Netherlands. In 2010, the Benin Dialogue Group started, consisting of the government of Nigeria, the Royal Benin court and the Edo State, where the court is located, next to a number of European museums, such as the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures. One of the goals of the group is to make the objects accessible in Nigeria in, for example, permanent exhibitions. Van Beurden: ‘Looking at these examples of war booty from Sri Lanka and Nigeria, European countries and museums should start returning this type of objects. It is obvious how there were acquired. I do see indications that Nigeria wants all of the thousands of Benin objects returned, and the European participants should recognise that the African partners are more entitled to them. We should avoid a neo-colonial position by demanding certain conditions of how the former colony should treat the object after restitution.’

Q. Most of the objects we have discussed here are kept inside of museums. Are there also objects like these outside of museums, and do you have an example of how restitution works in these cases?

Van Beurden gives an example from the Dutch East Indies, current Indonesia, where Governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, Mr. J.C. Baud, received several gifts during his time in office. ‘He once received the pilgrim’s staff of prince Diponegoro, national hero in Indonesia and leader of the anti-colonial Java War (1825 – 1830). The heirs of J.C. Baud still owned this staff. In 2015, the family decided to return it to Indonesia, where it is exhibited at the National Gallery, since they felt that it belonged in Indonesia more than in their home. An interesting, rare and very clear case: the family was not obliged to return it, it was not war booty but a gift – but they decided to return it themselves.’

Queen Juliana is also known for returning some gifts. ‘The Dutch royal family owned several paintings and drawings from Indonesian artist Raden Saleh. The painter had given some of his works to the royal family, because they had provided him the opportunity to study in Europe. Queen Juliana decided to return some of the paintings to Indonesia in the 1970s. Since these drawings were private gifts as well, there was no legal obligation to return them.’

Van Beurden continues: ‘A dilemma surrounding both the pilgrim’s staff and the paintings, however, is that they were received by people in their function as public officials. I think, it raises the question whether the possessors of such objects can fully decide by themselves to sell it. Both the Baud family and Queen Juliana have solved this in a constructive way. In 2014, another Raden Saleh painting, Boschbrand (Forest fire), was auctioned off by Juliana’s grandchildren to the highest bidder, the National Gallery in Singapore. This raised serious objections with Dutch art historians [and the Dutch Parliament red.] in 2016, and Dutch museums argued that, since the painting is part of Dutch history and heritage, they would have wanted the opportunity to purchase it first.’ Van Beurden, amongst others, asks however, ‘would Indonesia not have been a more fitting residence for this show piece?’

Q. As colonial encounters are border-crossing, how do you think the current COVID crisis affects the processes of restitution?

While no objects or people can travel, ‘there is time now, for reflection and research.’ Van Beurden also remarks that in global heritage research there has been enough experience in long-distance, digital communication. ‘People working in museums and involved in this debate are used to international communication. I myself of course miss the presentations and meetings abroad, but I do notice among colleagues an increased willingness to help each other out with information.’

Q. You have worked on return of cultural heritage in many countries, do you have any specific experience with this process and discussion in South Asia – or Sri Lanka – specifically?

‘My focus is on the global level – that is why I could contextualise the discussion we had about Sri Lanka at the Heritage Event.’ Van Beurden does have personal experience in South Asia though: ‘I have lived in South Asia, mainly Bangladesh, for three years in the 1970s. At that time I was traveling through Asia with my partner.’ He adds: ‘In South India we wanted to cross the Palk Strait to Sri Lanka, but due to the monsoon we had to take an airplane. Since we had no money for that, we decided to travel to Bangladesh. One simple moment prevented me from traveling to Sri Lanka!’

Q. As a final question, are you yourself involved with specific restitutions too, or do you mainly study the debate?

‘I have a role in a few cases, but a very informal one’, says Van Beurden. ‘I am a networker, bringing people in contact with others, advising people working on this subject. I have been involved in this debate for over thirty years now!’

We thank Jos van Beurden for his willingness to speak to us regarding his reflections on the restitution debate.

By Deborah de Koning

As Sri Lanka has faced a lock-down due to the Corona virus in the past months, I wondered what happened to Buddha and the deities at several Hindu and Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka: did some of the rituals at famous sites continue to take place and how? I assumed that monks took care of the rituals to Buddha as they often live on the temple premises. But what about the rituals to deities at shrines that are taken care of by lay-priests who often do not live at or close to the shrines? The restriction to travel in times of Covid formed an even more challenging problem for lay-people – devotees – as they would be prevented from conducting rituals to deities and demons, while these beings are considered to be able to both protect and bring misfortune upon people – important traits in time of crisis. A central principle of the Sinhalese Buddhist pantheon is the principle of mutual interdependence of deities, semi-divine beings, demons, and lay-people: humans seek the protection of deities or semi-divine beings for daily matters (as the Buddha is often considered too exalted to be involved in worldly matters) and by the offerings performed by lay-people to the deities as reward for the alleged protection, deities or semi-divine beings gain merit and enforce their status in the pantheon.

It happened that at the urban site of my research the connection between ‘deities’ and Covid became prominent in a ritual. The head monk of this Buddhist site in Colombo where I have conducted extensive research (see for more information my article on this temple) had decided that – despite the full lock down at that moment – he would organize a small perahera (procession). This procession took place around the temple premises and involved several volunteers.  Recordings were made of the procession and posted on Facebook. The head monk walked in front of the procession with a relic of the Buddha and while holding the casket he expressed the wish that ‘the pandemic that unfortunately embraced Sri Lanka and the fear of death that is spreading through the world would be dismissed by the power of Buddha, dhamma (Buddhist teachings), and sangha (monastic order) and by the power of pirith that is chanted continuously at the temple site.’ On the procession palanquin that immediately followed him the statues of Mahamaya and Suddhodana (Buddha’s parents) and Ravana were taken around. As the head monk further explained, the procession was a tribute to Mahamaya and Suddhodana and the dynasty of kings under the great monarch Ravana.

This procession that was organized at the time of the full lockdown, led to heated discussions in the media. But soon after the procession was held, media started to spread other news items about the same temple in Colombo, that ultimately would dominate the frame through which the temple was seen by the general public. As it turned out, the Mahamaya shrine at the site was now used as storage place for red onions, the meeting room was filled with bags of rice and volunteers helped to distribute the food items to the houses of the needy. Facebook posts explained that the monk had sold a BMW 7 series – which was his private property! – to use the money to feed the poor during the lockdown. A police officer/public health inspector praised the priest on TV saying that this temple had set an ideal example of how Buddhist monks should serve the community as they did in the past.

The news items on the food distribution that has been initiated (and financed) by this Buddhist temple illustrate two key-characteristics of Sri Lankan Buddhism that have risen into prominence during the twentieth century Buddhist revival in Sri Lanka:  it first of all shows the social engagement of monks: this monk decided to organize a perahera – probably to a large extent to show off in the media as he explicitly focused on the digital message at the time he walked around with the casket. Also, he took the initiative to distribute food among the poor people in his neighborhood. These examples both illustrate the importance of lay-people for the ‘success’ of an urban Buddhist site – by posting the monks’ messages online and by actually distributing the food. As I learned over the years, those volunteers form a close-knit community of people who meet each other on a regular basis. The dynamics between lay-people and monks in joint activities as food distribution are important in order to rethink what urban Buddhism on a grassroots level actually means to people in Sri Lanka in the twenty first century. This Buddhist temple shows that urban temple sites do not only provide ‘food for the soul’, but also create social structures that allow monks and lay-people to work together in times of crisis, in order to take care of the needy.

Deborah de Koning