Colonies of Benevolence
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How it came to be
In 1818 the Dutch general Johannes van den Bosch set up the Society of Benevolence to help poor families rebuild their lives by giving them farmland. He petitioned King William I for its formation and bought uncultivated heath in Drenthe, and an estate at what is now Frederiksoord became the society's headquarters. The first families arrived on 29 October 1818; 52 families from all over the country took part in the trial colony.
The other colonies were built between 1820 and 1823. In Frederiksoord-Wilhelminaoord small family farms lined planted avenues, and the colony was called 'free'. Veenhuizen had large dormitories and central farms for orphans, beggars and vagrants who worked under the supervision of guards, and was called 'unfree'. Wortel, in the south, began in 1822 as a free colony for families and was later used for beggars and vagrants.
The Dutch state took over the colonies in 1859, and at their peak in the mid-19th century more than 11,000 people lived in them. In Belgium the project stopped after independence in 1830 for lack of money, but after the 1866 act on vagrancy and begging, large numbers of people were sent from 1870 to the State Benevolent Colonies at Merksplas and Wortel. Their population peaked at 6,000 in 1910. Wortel closed in 1993, when Belgium abolished the vagrancy law, and the three component parts were inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2021.
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