Historical consciousness and controversial statues in a postcolonial world: the case of Missionary Peerke Donders (1809–1887)

This article focuses on the controversies surrounding a statue in the Dutch city of Tilburg: the public representation of a nineteenth-century missionary and a kneeling African Surinamese person with leprosy. To understand the current tensions over the statue, the concept of historical consciousness as part of the Dutch changing historical culture is historicised. It is shown that the statue combines interpretative frameworks from different times, evoking opposing emotions: aversion to the old disdain for Catholics in the predominantly Protestant Netherlands; admiration for Catholic missionary work in the colonies; fierce criticism fuelled by the Black Lives Matter movement. Colonialism and missionary work had strengthened the civilising mission in the colonies, which was grounded on a western conception of progress and white superiority. From a postcolonial perspective, the statue is a narrative of submission and racism, the material presence of an older mnemonic infrastructure. However, the statue also represents the triumphant progress of Catholic emancipation in the Netherlands.