Mapping the Colonial Past in the Public Space

Both in Belgium and the Netherlands, the colonial past is currently fiercely debated. This review article discusses recent publications on colonial heritage in the public space in the two countries: an academic monograph on Belgian postcolonial memory written by Matthew G. Stanard, a Belgian walking guide authored by Lucas Catherine, and a series of Dutch slavery heritage guides set up by interdisciplinary authors’ collectives. This review article also reflects on the different ways in which Belgium and the Netherlands deal with their colonial past. The decolonisation of the Belgian public space has recently shifted into a higher gear: in 2018, the first prime minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was honoured in two street names for the first time, and in 2019 two cities decided to re-baptise their Leopold ii Avenues. Yet, Belgium lags behind the Netherlands in this matter. There, several monuments for heroes and victims from the former colonies have been established and a handful of slavery heritage guides have been published. These guides uncover a past that deliberately had been silenced and assist diaspora groups in creating a memory, by marking significant sites and making slavery legacy visible. Several elements, both from the past and the present, can account for this gap between Belgium and the Netherlands.

review article -recensie-artikel Yet, this has for a long time been the major concession to action groups aspiring for the decolonisation of the public space. One of the most iconic campaigns, namely the demand to name an anonymous little square in the Brussels municipality Ixelles after Patrice Lumumba, has not been complied with. As late as in 2018, the two city councils of Charleroi and of Brussels-City (another municipality in the Brussels Capital Region) named respectively a street and a square after the first Prime Minister of independent Congo who was assassinated in January 1961, and in this way were the first to honour a Congolese in the public space. In 2019, two city councils for the first time decided to rename their Leopold ii Avenues: Dendermonde in March and Kortrijk in November. 7 This review article reflects on the Belgian and Dutch decolonisation of the public space by discussing several publications that recently have appeared: a monograph on Belgian postcolonial memory written by Matthew G. Stanard, a Belgian walking guide authored by Lucas Catherine, and a series of Dutch slavery heritage guides set up by multiple authors' collectives. These books under review are highly diverse. The former is an academic study, the latter two are aimed at a broader readership. Yet, these publications allow for a comparison of how both countries currently deal with their colonial past and, more particularly, its reflection in streets, statues and other lieux de mémoire.
The article first reviews Stanard's monograph on Belgium, in particular his analysis of Belgian (post)colonial memories and his presentation of colonial monuments. The article subsequently analyses the most recent developments in Belgium and wonders to what extent they can be seen as examples of a genuine decolonisation of the public space. Then, the article shifts to the Belgian and Dutch walking guides and discusses the Dutch dealing with colonial heritage. The last section examines the major differences between the two countries and the reasons that account for them. Stanard's study entitled The Leopard, the Lion, and the Cock -referring respectively to symbols of Congo, Flanders and Wallonia -consists of two parts. The bulk of the book is a chronological overview of the ways in which Belgium has dealt with its colonial past. Stanard touches on a wide field of areas: museums (obviously extensively about Tervuren, but also the Ethnographic Museum in Antwerp and the Musée Africain in Namur), monuments, literature, theatre, music, art, comics, magazines, television documentaries and series, photographs, films, newspaper reports, news agencies, stories from missionaries, classroom education and school textbooks, higher education and academic research, bilateral relations, official apologies, restitution, et cetera. The result is absolutely impressive. Stanard has succeeded in painting a many-coloured picture of the varieties and evolutions of the Belgian perception of its colony.

Colonial memories in Belgium
Of course, some fields are less elaborated upon than others. For instance, the part on bilateral relations especially focuses on the Congo travels of Belgian kings and other members of the royal family, and neglects the visits of Belgian prime ministers to the former colony. Yet, such lacunas are largely compensated by the great attention given to less evident topics, such as the collection, pillage, sale, and research of African art and ethnographic objects.
Stanard's bibliography of twenty-seven pages is imposing and also comprises works in French and Dutch. He claims to have used secondary literature only, but actually includes thirty Belgian and international newspaper titles in his bibliography and regularly refers to them in the footnotes. On top of that, many observations of the Belgian public space are based on the author's visits between 2003 and 2018.
Stanard is not only thoroughly acquainted with a plethora of details, he also sees the forest for the trees and comes to several relevant conclusions.
Pointing at dozens of temporary expositions in the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, as well as small changes in its permanently exhibited collection, Stanard demonstrates that the museum had been subject to shifts way before its closure for renovation between 2013 and 2018, and argues that the recent restoration resulted in continuity rather than a great break with the past. He is critical of, what he calls, anti-colonial iconoclasts who often bracket Leopold ii's monumental buildings and avenues together with his policy and profits in Congo, and points at the fact that Leopold began his urban planning shortly after he became king in 1865 and only used colonial profits to finance his architectural plans from the late 1890s onwards.
More broadly, Stanard convincingly shows that the decade of the 1950s had a disproportionately large impact on Belgians' postcolonial memories, among others due to the increased investments in infrastructure and the growing number of Belgian settlers. Moreover, since people tend to remember events that were salient during their childhood, memories from the 1950s goddeeris continue to play a role today. Stanard also reacts against the common view that prior to 2000, Belgium suffered from a 'Great Forgetting' -as his fellow countryman Adam Hochschild phrased in his bestseller King Leopold's Ghosts -and posits that instead, there were constant ebbs and flows in terms of remembering the colonial past.
As the title of his book suggests, Stanard's most fundamental argument is about the differences between memories of the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and those of the French-speaking part. The former has maintained a great respect for missionary activities, the latter is especially positive about the monarchy and the administration.

Colonial monuments in Belgium
The second part of Stanard's book consists of more than fifty inset boxes, each presenting one Belgian colonial monument (see an example on the next page). To each colour photograph, detailed information is added about the subject (often with a bio of the depicted people) and the monument, such as the location, the sculptor, the year of inauguration, the initiators and financial contributors (mostly associations of pro-colonial enthusiasts and colonial veterans, but also often via public subscription), the image and style, the inscription, the changes in the monument (such as relocation and added texts). References to or comparisons with similar markers that for instance honour the same person are included to the photograph's description as well. Almost all of these colonial lieux de mémoire are statues, busts, and plaques, but Stanard also pays attention to bus stops and street names. Next to these fifty entries, Stanard has included a link to an Excel sheet, which is available online and comprises the details of about 442 monuments. He could confirm the existence of 309 of them, and concludes review article -recensie-artikel  The fifty inset boxes are spread all over the book. They can be read independently from the rest of the monograph. This sometimes leads to repetition, since many of them are also discussed elsewhere. Another critique is that Stanard sometimes dilates upon the history of Congo instead of sticking to the monument. For instance, he concludes that many of the Belgian pioneers in Congo lived a short life (p. 55) and did not die a heroic death (p. 51) or that Leopold ii's Congo Free State was a regime of conquest (p. 120) and that his forces were still exploring Central Africa well into the 1890s (p. 135).
Yet, this is just a minor criticism. Stanard's impressive list unshakably lays bare a Belgian colonial propaganda in stone and bronze that affected the entire country and reached small municipalities and lesser known places like Bonlez and Vezin. The topics of the monuments are of course highly selective, especially celebrating pioneers of Leopold ii who were born in these locations.
Most of them are Belgian men operating in the military, whereas female missionaries outnumbered male ones from the 1930s onwards, and whereas the Congo Free State was an international enterprise. Most monuments were inaugurated during the interwar period and the 1950s and sought to rehabilitate Leopold ii's colonial project, but Stanard also smartly unravels other agendas, such as legitimising the monarchy during and immediately after its postwar crisis of the Royal Question or countering the criticism of the Belgian administration of the un trust territory Ruanda-Urundi.

Decolonising the Belgian public space?
Stanard equally analyses how Belgians tend to deal with this colonial heritage during the past twenty years. Very few monuments were permanently removed and if this happened, it was due to road reconstruction, not because of postcolonial criticism. Stanard regrets this. He believes that some scholars exaggerate the monuments' importance, but also notes that they have turned into permanent and almost 'natural' indicators that for instance reinforce the image of so-called Arab viciousness (p. 131).
Stanard regularly demonstrates how more than a dozen of colonial monuments have become sites of protest and have been subject to 'vandalism' over the past twenty years, and how local authorities have been increasingly  goddeeris adding plaques with explanatory texts. Still, it is a pity that he does not further elaborate on them. It would have been interesting to analyse the texts on these plaques, which often use a woolly language and avoid the core of the problem. Stanard only quotes two of them, namely from Halle and Wilrijk, and is too brief on others. Regarding the Leopold ii monument in Ghent, for instance, he only writes that 'in 2018 there was a substantial explanatory plaque' but he does not discuss its content, whereas this raises the eyebrows, to say the least. The text dwells on the history of the park, the equestrian statue of Leopold's successor Albert i, and only then touches upon the Leopold ii monument. The plaque 'deplores the many Congolese victims who died in the time of the Congo Free State', emphasising discontinuity with Belgian Congo, and notes the 'protest, especially in Great Britain, that had missed out on rich Central Africa, although the British did not really avoid similar practices in their own colonies', by which the authors of the text return to an old and unjustified reproach, common in Belgian colonial discourse. The newly added text in Geraardsbergen from 2017 is even worse in presenting a one-sided view and does not explicitly take distance: 'This monument was an initiative from the colonial cercle in Geraardsbergen and was placed as a memorial to the local inhabitants [from Geraardsbergen] who lost their life in Congo. It was made in 1948 from cement and metal and inaugurated on 10 July 1949'.

Stanard also mentions the plaques in Ostend and in the Brussels Parc du
Cinquantenaire that he observed in the early twenty-first century, but that have since been removed or replaced. It would have been interesting if he had given the texts of these first plaques, and the reasons why they disappeared.
This would have made his book, which is now a beautiful synthesis and a work of reference, also a primary source of information.
Another important conclusion is that 'there has never been a public monument to African victims of colonization' or to Congolese opponents and freedom fighters (p. 100). Stanard notes some modest exceptions, such as the bas-relief for the Belgian Colonial Volunteers who defended Namur in 1914 (among whom were four Congolese soldiers; at least one face on the monument is recognisable as African), the Monument to the Troops of the Square can hardly be considered as lieux de mémoire. In Charleroi, it is a small street outside the ring road surrounding the city. Its former name, the Paul Pastur Street, caused confusion with the much bigger Avenue Paul Pastur, also located in Charleroi, which was not renamed. In Brussels-City, it was just a small and up until then anonymous section of a larger square that was turned into the Lumumba Square. The rest of the square belongs to the neighbouring municipality of Ixelles, which for more than ten years had been the target of campaigns for a Lumumba square in the African neighbourhood Matonge, located in Ixelles. The fact that Brussels-City approved the renaming in April 2018 was not so much an act of postcolonial recognition, but rather a tactical move in the build-up to the local elections of October 2018 and the result of the competition between the two neighbouring mayors, a liberal one in Ixelles and a socialist one in  In 2019, two other Belgian cities were the first to rename a Leopold ii Avenue. Interestingly so, they both are located in Flanders, which confirms Stanard's argument that the two major language communities have different attitudes towards the colonial past. Whereas the Frenchspeaking community is closer to the demands of the Congolese diaspora, which until recently was predominantly French-speaking, some Flemish nationalist parties are receptive to criticism of the monarchy (rather than of the government) because this puts the Belgian dynasty -as one of the last  This latter discussion was also more widely covered in the media than the discussion about the Leopold ii Avenue. After having determined to remove the Verschaeve Street, the city council in one and the same breath decided to change the Leopold ii Avenue, which had previously also been subject to motions and debate. 12

A Belgian walking guide
These recent events demonstrate that the decolonisation of the Belgian public space has moved into a higher gear. Although this is not explicitly referred to in the introduction, this is undoubtedly the reason why Lucas . 13 Unlike Stanard's monograph, this is not an academic study, but a book for a broader audience presented as a walking guide (albeit without maps and itineraries) by a prolific writer who has published more than twenty books, especially on Islam and Palestine, but also on colonial history and on Brussels. At first sight, his revised walking guide (251 pages) seems to be a substantial revision of the first version (139 pages). However, this is only partly true. Catherine rewrote text fragments, but kept the same structure, and apart from some exceptions, held on to the same topics.  All in all, one should thus certainly not downplay the importance of Catherine's work, because of his non-academic approach. On the contrary, he reintroduces forgotten colonial pioneers that are unconsciously celebrated in the public space, connects Belgian landmarks such as the Atomium or the Godfrey of Bouillon statue to colonial history, and explains the colonial origins of street names which at first sight do not seem to be linked with colonialism. For instance, the Sobieski Avenue is named after the Polish king Jan iii Sobieski because he defeated the Ottomans at Vienna, just as Leopold ii was crushing Muslim slave traders in Congo. Catherine also denounces the colonial origins and financial sources of several royal residencies, such as the Laeken Castle, the greenhouses, and the Belvédère Castle. As a result, his book convincingly reveals how the Belgian national past is closely knit with its colonial history, with a special focus on late-nineteenth-century businessmen. Being written for a larger audience, its impact may be as great as Stanard's contribution to historical research.

Dutch guides on slavery heritage
Whereas recently in Belgium a start has been made to contextualise or modify a limited number of colonial monuments, in the Netherlands different strategies have been adopted to deal with the colonial legacy in the public space. Initially, from the late twentieth century and especially in the early review article -recensie-artikel congregations, botanical gardens, palaces where important treaties were signed (for instance in Breda in 1667 and in Utrecht in 1713) or meetings were held (for instance the Synod of Dordrecht in 1618-1619), museums, places where people were displayed in the colonial era or where exhibitions were shown in the twenty-first century, principal seats of migrant organisations, monuments, and more. Even more numerous are the residences, country houses, and mansions that have been inhabited by people involved in slavery.
These include white people: from a voc chief petty officer to a wic director, from a privateer captain to a governor, from a pastor defending slavery to a minister who preached against enslavement, from numerous abolitionist activists to as many slave traders, from well-known people such as Hugo There is no doubt that the Slavery Heritage Guides make a paramount contribution to uncovering a past that deliberately had been silenced. These guides also assist diaspora groups in creating a memory, by marking significant sites, making slavery legacy visible and giving a face, not only to slave traders and abolitionists, but also to enslaved people.
The guides indeed bring together a remarkable number of paintings and photos of black people in the early modern age and the nineteenth century.
Last but not least, the authors contest dominant conservative takes on the history of slavery, without falling into one-sidedness and exaggeration.
The Leiden guide explicitly puts slavery into perspective. Oostindie and Fatah-Black mention that slavery was the rule rather than the exception in world history, referring to Romans and Barbary pirates who also captured Leiden inhabitants, and emphasise that the Dutch prosperity of the past centuries cannot be explained in the first place by means of the profits from colonial trade, let alone from slave trade and slavery. This last point is prone to adaption as this statement has recently been countered by the historians Ulbe Bosma and Pepijn Brandon, who claim that slavery was much more important for the Dutch economy than previously thought: in 1770 slavery accounted for 5 percent of the Dutch and 10 percent of the province of Holland's gdp. 20

A comparison between Belgium and the Netherlands
The Dutch guides, websites and walking trails on slavery and colonial heritage also inspired Belgium. The latter had witnessed similar initiatives even before In contrast to the Dutch guides, Catherine's books are poorly edited, and lack maps and coloured photos. The fact that the Belgian colonial space is examined by an American historian in an English-language monograph published by an academic publishing house, epitomises the huge difference with the here reviewed Dutch initiatives. But there is a second major difference. Stanard elaborates on a wide range of examples, but he does not include those elements that are numerous in the Dutch guides, such as the decorative adornments of buildings and the many private houses, public places and other landmarks that can be related to the colonial past. Catherine does discuss these traces, but only in a small selection of cities.
There are several reasons that can account for the gap between Dutch and Belgian initiatives. First and foremost, the colonial past itself fundamentally differs. The Dutch colonial history stretches four centuries back, was part of the growth of the Republic, considerably contributed to its rise, and consequently has often been looked at with national pride. Belgium, in contrast, only 'received' its major colony by circumstances, taking over its king's private property in 1908, and lost it after barely half a century. Congo goddeeris the Belgian colonial project came into being in the late nineteenth century when slavery was officially abolished. Even more, the colonisation of Congo was presented as a fight against Arab slave traders, an element that is visible in several monuments. This propaganda was effective and has eclipsed the role of forced labour both before and after 1908. This divergent past had an impact on the collective memory in both countries.
In addition, there are other explanations. Stanard rightly refers to the present-day Belgian identity crisis in which many Belgian politicians and opinion makers avoid to criticise Belgium's colonial policy, since this may also affect the Belgian identity, nation and, accordingly, state. Another element is the royal involvement in the most crucified chapters of colonial history, namely Leopold ii's rule over Congo in 1885-1908, and king Baudouin's involvement in the Congo crisis in 1960-1961. Moreover, Belgium lost its colony suddenly, unlike other European powers whose colonial decline stretched over decades. In addition, there is, of course, the role of migration.
Returning white Belgian settlers dominated public memories during the first decades after the Congolese independence. Only from the 1990s onwards Congolese were allowed to migrate to Belgium in more substantial numbers. In the Netherlands and other European countries, postcolonial diaspora groups have often taken the lead in debates on the colonial past. This is happening with a delay in Belgium, and certainly in Flanders, where especially a second generation of Belgians of Congolese and other African descent mastered the Dutch language and started to pitch in on the debate. review article -recensie-artikel major Flemish journal De Standaard. Also 'new Belgians' from beyond Sub-Saharan Africa take the floor in postcolonial debates, such as the theatre maker Chokri Ben Chikha who, among others, organised human zoo actions and truth commissions that dealt with the Belgian colonial past.
As a result, the postcolonial debate in Flanders and in Belgium as a whole has recently become more nuanced and more vivid. This evolution, obviously, also accounts for the tentative steps that are being made in the decolonisation of the public space and the increasing consciousness of the white hegemony in the Belgian postcolonial memory and its effects on the presentday society. In this way, Belgium is catching up with the Netherlands. Yet, this does not mean that there is only one path to complete this process and that the Netherlands is the model country in all fields. On the contrary, other debates related to postcolonial heritage, such as the one on Zwarte Piet (Black Peter), are unfolding in different ways. While the discussion on Zwarte Piet has resulted into an annual polarisation in the Netherlands, Belgians initially observed their northern neighbours with much astonishment and little understanding, but over the last two or three years they took the sting out of the issue and accepted the claims of the opponents of Zwarte Piet. The so-called 'Roetpieten' and 'Roetmieten', male and female attendants of Saint Nicholas covered with soot marks instead of blackfaces, are now more widely accepted in Belgium than in the Netherlands (although this is also due to the fact that Saint Nicholas Day is a much more central holiday in the Netherlands than in Belgium).