The Dutch East and West India Companies once controlled vast trading networks that stretched from the Cape of Good Hope to the Indonesian archipelago, and from New York to South America's Wild Coast. Although they came in pursuit of short-term profits, the companies left behind a legacy that can still be seen in the cultures, and in the bloodlines, of people and communities around the world.
Shot in ten countries over the course of four years, Empire employs human-scaled storytelling to explore how the conditions of the past impact our lives in the present.
Directed, produced, shot and edited by
Web DevelopmentGenevieve Hoffman
Additional DevelopmentSam Bailey
Exec. Producer for POV DigitalAdnaan Wasey
UX and Graphic DesignClint Beharry
POV Technology FellowBrian Chirls
Exec. Producer for POVSimon Kilmurry
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Schiphol Airport handles 1100 flights on average per day.
Of those flights, 6 to 7 planes are carrying the body of a deceased person. A great number of these deceased people were born in former Dutch colonies, and are now returning to the countries of their birth for final burial.
Within the borders of the Netherlands, people from former Dutch colonies and/or "overseas territories" like Suriname, Indonesia and The Antilles make up about 5.5% of the total population. Other notable immigrant groups include Turkish and Moroccan "guest workers" - many of whom came to The Netherlands in the decades after WWII to take on low-wage jobs - and Korean adoptees. These days, due to stricter asylum and family migration rules, intra-European migrants make up the fastest-growing immigrant population in the Netherlands.
Absorbing, and consequently rearranging, immigrant populations (from former colonies or otherwise) around cities in the Netherlands has long been a favorite hobby of Dutch engineers and city planners. Other typical Dutch hobbies include ice skating, building canals and watching through binoculars as planes take off and leave from Schiphol Airport.
The original video installation Empire: Cradle was made and exhibited in January 2012 during the 2011-2012 Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA)/ CBK Zuidoost BijlmAIR residency. The project received support from the Mondriaan Fund and DutchCulture. Johan Lagerwerf provided production assistance and Matt Dougherty created the music. A prototype web adaptation of the installation won the Participants' Choice Award at the January 2013 POV Hackathon.
A Nazi reenactment group in Indonesia.
A tombstone factory in India.
A whites-only community in South Africa.
A living god in Sri Lanka.
Navigate between these stories to discover the global web of connections that is the Dutch East India Company's legacy.
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Between 1602 and 1795, nearly one million European colonists employed by The Dutch East India Company — known in Dutch as the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC — sailed from The Netherlands to ports in Africa and Asia. Some returned to Europe with spices and textiles, while others perished abroad. Still others settled in unfamiliar territory and built plantations, forts and factories.
Exploration and exploitation of these regions was not new, as the English and Portuguese claimed their stake in the East long before the Dutch arrived. There was, however, one key difference to the Dutch endeavor: while other European colonials sailed under the protection of their royal houses, the Dutch sailed under a corporate logo. The VOC was just that: a privately held company operating independently from the Dutch government. It was the first company to issue public stock, and the first to control a private military. Through financial cunning and sheer force, the company pressured territories the world over into exclusive trading contracts.
The VOC's continuing legacy is proof that a corporation's influence can persist long after the corporation itself has disappeared. In Indonesia and Sri Lanka, in India and South Africa, the trading routes and social divisions carved out by 17th century merchants, bureaucrats and mercenaries continue to define society today.
Empire: Legacy was made possible by financial support from the Mondriaan Fund, and in-kind support & exhibition assistance from the following arts institutions: Theertha (Sri Lanka), HONF & Lifepatch (Indonesia), 1 Shanthi Rd & Khoj (India), Africa Centre & Stevenson Cape Town (South Africa).
The world watches an ever-repeating cycle of stories
about the aftershocks of the Dutch slave trade.
Ghana
Suriname
Brazil
Only by enduring the complete cycle can you liberate yourself from the loop.
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While the Dutch East India Company dealt in spices and goods from Asia, the Dutch West India Company (WIC) dealt primarily in human beings from Africa. Established in 1621, the company controlled the "triangular trade" of slaves and slave-grown commodities—sugar and tobacco, for instance—between West Africa, the Americas and the Netherlands. The WIC fell, rose and fell again throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, but experienced peak success in the 1630s and 1640s, when its traders controlled vast swaths of the new world, from Brazil to the Guyanas, from the Caribbean to the North America Northeast.
Empire: Migrants investigates the aftershocks this trade by examining three locations that were once of key importance to the Dutch West India Company: In Ghana, photographer Isaac Vanderpuije, a descendant of a prominent Dutch-Ghanaian family, represents the long-term financial beneficiaries of the transatlantic slave trade. In Suriname, gold miner James Libretto embodies the descendents of the runaway slaves who are sometimes called "Maroons," those who fled Dutch plantations in the 18th century and established a new society in Suriname's rainforests. In Brazil, student Rayanne Reinholz speaks for her ancestors, impoverished European immigrants who replaced West African slaves as the New World's imported labor of choice during the 19th century.
Empire: Migrants was shot between February and June of 2012, and received support from the National Archives of the Netherlands (Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science) and the Creative Industries Fund NL. Thiago Moulin, Greco Nogueira, Gilbert Lobato de Mesquita, and Jeff Ekow Cobbah provided production assistance. The original installation premiered at IDFA 2012.
Two stories play out on opposite sides of the world.
In the US, a man forsakes his childhood dreams to play the part society has written for him.
In Australia, a man draws on a disputed history to create a new identity.
Watch Empire: Periphery to meet two men who are each other's reflection.
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In the late 1940s, a bloody struggle for independence transformed the Dutch East Indies into the independent nation of Indonesia. A sizable portion of the Dutch–Indonesian minority – many of whom had enjoyed privileged positions under Dutch colonial rule – fled to the Netherlands. Some set off from there to Southern California, where they created enclaves in a more familiar climate. Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley now hold three generations of Dutch–Indonesians, although few outsiders are aware of this ethnic minority's existence. The blended quality of their features defies easy categorization: sometimes they are taken for Southern Europeans, sometimes for Filipinos, and most frequently for Mexicans.
In 1711, a VOC ship called the Zuytdorp set out on a trading mission to the Dutch East Indies. Nearly a year later, the ship smashed into a reef off of Western Australia, dislodging a cadre of European sailors into some of the most desolate country in the world. Local legend says that the Zuytdorp surviving crew were taken in and given shelter by the Nhanda, a coastal or "salt water" aboriginal tribe. Today, the Nhanda are known to be taller and lighter skinned than other tribes in the area – evidence, some say, of interbreeding with the marooned Dutchmen of the Zuytdorp. The story has captured the imagination of the Dutch media: rumors of blond-haired, blue-eyed aborigines appear on television programs and in newspaper stories.