Our collections that we use for scientific research have been built up over several centuries. They serve as a catalogue of all life on Earth. These enormous collections bring together and conserve over 43 million objects from different regions of the world and include plants, animals, fungi, and minerals from the past until today. They are of immense value for scientific research in the Netherlands and other countries.
Collectingin the past
The trend of acquiring collections of natural objects in the 16th and 17th centuries, but particularly during the emergence of the Enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries, greatly increased the interest in animals, plants, and minerals from other parts of the world. Biologists seized every opportunity that came their way to travel to far-off places to collect naturalia. The historical collections reveal this quest for new and unusual species for science, but also for useful plants, animals and minerals that could be economically important as medicines, food, dyes, minerals, plantation products, etc.
As a result of these efforts, ever-growing scientific collections were built up in the Netherlands and other countries. Dutch researchers frequently took passage on Dutch ships that sailed the eastern and western trade routes. If you examine the collections of other large museums in Europe, such as in London, Paris, Brussels, and Berlin, then the same picture emerges. All these collections show evidence of a strong relationship between those Western countries and their former overseas colonies. Naturalis is aware of the history of its collections, and the colonial context in which parts of them were collected. The circumstances were not always equal, voluntary or just.
Research into the colonial past
The colonial past and the redressing of injustice should receive the attention they deserve. It is therefore a good thing that research is carried out into the provenance of Dutch museum objects that are of cultural, historical or religious importance for their country of origin. This kind of research also makes it possible to determine whether these objects were stolen or forcibly misappropriated in the past. As the collections of the national museums in the Netherlands are the property of the Dutch state, the museums themselves do not get to decide whether such objects will be transferred or not. An independent committee advises the government about this based on the provenance research that museums are obliged to carry out. Naturalis is, of course, more than willing to participate in this research by providing the committee with the information it requires and answering any questions they might have.
As the Dutch government has also made clear: art that has been stolen must be returned. If the provenance research provides no clear answer to the question of how objects became part of the collections, or if the objects were not obtained forcibly but represent a major historical interest, the committee will issue a judgement. Read more about the procedure in the letter to the Dutch Lower House (PDF, in Dutch)
Possibly, the Dubois collection in Naturalis falls under this procedure. That is not up to Naturalis to decide, but to a special commission and the responsible secretary of state. If they decide to repatriate this collection, Naturalis will of course give its full cooperation.
The Naturalis Collections
The Naturalis collections may also contain objects that are of immense value for the countries in which these were found. For example, the Indonesian government has indicated that the committee should examine the collections of the Dutch researcher Dubois. Naturalis understands the Indonesian request, and will do careful provenance research into the Dubois collection, in close cooperation with our Indonesian counterparts.
