Study: Orange family backed colonialism and earned almost €576 million from it

The House of Orange-Nassau was “with conviction and without any substantial reservations” involved in Dutch colonialism. This is the conclusion of a three-year study into the royal family’s role in the Netherlands’ colonial history between 1600 and 2025. The research was commissioned by King Willem-Alexander.

“All the stadtholders, kings and queens, at least through Queen Wilhelmina, were convinced that colonialism was legitimate and important to the Netherlands. All of the members of the House of Orange considered colonial warfare and the violent suppression of uprisings both unavoidable and justified. Nor did the stadtholders or King William I express any objections to the trade in enslaved people or slavery,” lead researcher Gert Oostindie said Friday while presenting the report.

The House of Orange-Nassau earned the equivalent of nearly 576 million euros from the Netherlands’ colonial history. Almost all of that money, around 566 million euros, came from the former Dutch East Indies, the researchers found.

The remaining income came from territories formerly controlled by the Dutch West India Company, including parts of West Africa and the Americas. The study found that the House of Orange-Nassau earned virtually nothing directly from the trans-Atlantic slave trade or slavery in the Caribbean.

Most of the income did not come from companies such as the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and Dutch West India Company (WIC) in the 17th and 18th centuries, but from the Netherlands Trading Society and the Billiton Company in the 19th century. King William I and his grandson Prince Hendrik founded these companies, giving the royal family direct financial involvement in Dutch colonialism.

King Willem-Alexander described the findings of the study as “unvarnished and deeply confronting.” He said the absence of dissenting leadership within his family was “painful and confronting.”

“Until Queen Juliana, no criticism of colonialism was ever voiced from the royal palaces, and there was never any call for a different course. No one from the House of Orange showed leadership by challenging the prevailing approach,” Oostindie said.

“That made them people of their time,” the king said in response. “Those were the prevailing views at the time, both in the Netherlands and across Europe. But that does not change the finding that there was a lack of ‘dissenting leadership’ where it might have made a difference.” Willem-Alexander called this “a painful and
confronting conclusion.”

“A conclusion that affects me, even though I am three generations removed from them,” he added.

Researchers state that the Orange family’s involvement in colonialism was reflected in practices such as employing Black servants, building collections of exotic objects and maintaining hierarchical relationships with rulers in the colonies. These practices brought prestige to the royal family, Oostindie said.

Oostindie also stressed that the Netherlands would likely have become a colonial power without the House of Orange. “The Netherlands did not need its stadtholders or royal family to become a colonial power,” he said. “Dutch colonialism was more important to the House of Orange-Nassau than the House of Orange-Nassau was to Dutch colonialism.”

Colonialism brought the House of Orange not only financial benefits but also prestige, Oostindie said. “The stadtholders built up collections of exotic objects through the trading companies and decorated their homes and gardens with colonial elements.” According to Oostindie, this began to gradually shift toward discomfort with colonialism during the reign of Queen Juliana.

The support and admiration for the House of Orange-Nassau in the former colonies did not arise freely, but was shaped by unequal relations of power, researchers found.

Researcher Esther Captain said there was a façade of “carefully orchestrated displays of imperial unity and loyalty to the royal family,” behind which exclusion, inequality and resistance were taking place.

Captain said that criticism of the royal family and “other forms of resistance in public spaces” were often silenced. She said many people appreciate the symbolic act of apologizing for the Netherlands’ slavery past, but stressed that “this must be followed by efforts to tackle injustice and inequalities in the present.”

The king said he welcomed the findings of the study. “For me, your work is not an ending, but an encouragement to act. I cannot change the past, but I can do my best to make a positive contribution to the present and the future.”

Willem-Alexander said the study, with its “uncomfortable findings,” had given him “an extra incentive to continue devoting all my efforts to what I swore to uphold at my inauguration.”

“That is, to protect the freedom and rights of all Dutch citizens and all residents,” he said.