Podcast Verborgen Verbanden: een onbekende koloniale erfenis

Author and independent researcher Reggie Baay knew virtually nothing about his Javanese grandmother Moeinah. All he had was one piece of information: she had been sent away in autumn 1919, after giving birth to his father in the former Dutch East Indies. One hundred years later, in October 2019, he stumbled across a trace of her during a search in Indonesia. In the three-part Verborgen Verbanden: een onbekende koloniale erfenis podcast series, listeners follow Baay as he researches his family history; it includes contract labour in Deli’s plantations on the island of Sumatra. The podcast is part of the exhibition Hidden Connections at the Van Abbemuseum. The podcast is only available in Dutch, you can listen to the podcast here.

Contract labour

Baay’s research started with the discovery that his desperate grandmother had signed up for life as a contract labourer in Deli after being sent away from her home. But his happiness at finding this trace of her is mixed with confusion and fear. Wasn’t this form of labour actually just a continuation of slavery, which had been abolished just several decades before? A cruel system of injustice, exploitation and racism? Baay is surprised how little is known about these practices. Just like Moeinah’s life, the forced labour system is veiled in mystery. In the Verborgen Verbanden: een onbekende koloniale erfenis podcast, Baay tries to learn more about his grandmother’s life and about the shady practices that contract labour involved.

Two sides

Listeners follow Baay as he visits archives and libraries and talks to experts and people ‘on the ground’. One of his interviews is with Cis van Abbe, the grandson of cigar dealer Henri van Abbe (1880-1940), who founded a museum for contemporary art back in 1933. Van Abbe’s cigar factory was the biggest buyer of Deli tobacco in the first half of the last century. So, two grandsons of people who were on opposite sides of Deli’s history were speaking to each other: what did Henri van Abbe know, or what could he have known, about the origin of ‘his’ tobacco? Baay also visits sociologist Jan Breman, an expert on forced labour in the former Dutch East Indies. There is very little about this subject in the archives. Baay wonders whether Breman can tell him more about what life might have been like for Moeinah, as a contract labourer in Deli.

Heritage

In Baay’s Verborgen Verbanden: een onbekende koloniale erfenis podcast, which he created in collaboration with Aldus’ producties (responsible for the creation of podcasts like Hier hing een schilderij and Buiten de Muren), he reflects how people today are affected by the fate of ancestors who were forced to work as contract labourers. And: how has his search added to our general knowledge about our colonial past? The three, 20-minute episodes of his podcast will be available in podcast apps as of 22 May 2024.

The Hidden Connections exhibition

The podcast forms part of the Hidden Connections exhibition, which opened at the Van Abbemuseum in March 2024. In this exhibition, the museum discovers the role it played in the Netherlands’ colonial past. Reggie Baay was involved in the exhibition as a researcher and curator. In archive material, illustrations and audio and video interviews, visitors learn about previously-hidden events on plantations and the stories of resistance by contract labourers. The Hidden Connections exhibition is housed in the basement of the museum, where it literally and figuratively forms the basis for the Delinking and Relinking collection display (which will be on display until the end of 2026) on the three floors above. The addition of Hidden Connections offers a new perspective on the circumstances in which this art collection was created.