When the North is the South: Life in the Netherlands

After years of watching colleagues fly to Paris, Johannesburg, Beijing, or Bogota for research trips and speaking engagements, I decided to apply for a posting abroad. Holding only the vaguest and most stereotyped visions, I chose the Netherlands. My application stressed, perhaps impolitely, the direct Dutch involvement in the slave trade and their indirect connection to South African apartheid. Such commonalities with white southerners, I suggested, might serve as the basis for interesting discussions of race and region.