ABSTRACT
The Netherlands is often imagined as dichotomously divided into the ‘Randstad’ and the rest of the country (sometimes referred to as the ‘province’) and often issues related to colonial legacies are imagined similarly. Such a view of the Netherlands ignores the lasting negative impacts of colonial legacies throughout the Netherlands. This chapter explores how imaginations of colonial legacies, in particular the transatlantic slave trade, and imaginations of the rural-urban divide interact with and co-construct one another by analysing the TV programme Grenslanders (‘Borderlanders’; dir. Erik de Bruyn 2019). The show focusses on a human trafficking ring located in rural Zeelandic Flanders, tracing back its history to the transatlantic slave trade. I contend that on the one hand, the show mounts an effective critique of the role of the imagination of the rural within a colonialist worldview, by revealing the horror of the idea of the ‘idyllic’ countryside. On the other hand, however, the show ultimately also relies on colonial narratives. Moreover, the ruralisation of the province of Zeeland perpetuates rural stereotypes and forecloses any critique of colonial legacies as systemic by distancing its locus from the mainstream and thereby making it into an anomaly.
