African Diaspora Stories in the Netherlands & Former Dutch Colonies

The Netherlands has always been a country of mystique to me, especially Amsterdam with its UNESCO World Heritage canal system, the backbone of the country for generations in terms of transport and trade.

I have always wanted to experience Amsterdam and my wish was granted in fall 2018 on my second solo travel to the BeNeLux region. Amsterdam is just as I imagine: beautiful and walkable city, magnificent architecture, picturesque canals and chill ambience. Coming from New York City, a crowded Amsterdam in fall is soothing and bearable.

Related: Amsterdam Culture Sprint in 48 hours

As a Black African of Nigerian heritage, I always play this game with myself where I try to spot another African on my travels, and not another traveller like me. I meet like individuals in London, Brussels, Paris and even have relatives who reside there, but I am fascinated with the history of the African diaspora in the Netherlands.

Prior to this trip, I know very little about the African diaspora in the Netherlands and the former Dutch colonies and experiencing Amsterdam for 48 hours really opened my eyes to this history and the stories of the African diaspora that come with it.

 

I learn about the African diaspora in the Netherlands and former Dutch colonies via Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam as well as asking questions of Surinamese people I meet in the city and online.

 

The Dutch played a very crucial role in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade via the Dutch West India Company with jurisdiction over the Slave Coast of West Africa down to southern Africa, the Americas and New Guinea. On my Amsterdam canal tour cruise, it is acknowledged that the Dutch only transported enslaved Africans but never involved themselves in their trade.

That is hard to believe seeing as there are former Netherlands Antilles islands of the Caribbean and Suriname in South America. South Africans know of the Dutch settlers (Boers) who arrived the Cape and spawned descendants that brought forth the inhumanity known as apartheid.

Just as African-Americans are descendants of enslaved Africans brought to North America, the African diaspora in the Netherlands are descendants of enslaved Africans taken to Suriname and the former Netherlands Antilles, and their descendants sold to Dutch officials in the Netherlands for domestic work. This demographic is different from continental African immigration to the Netherlands in recent decades.

 

African Diaspora in the Netherlands & Former Dutch Colonies

#Taken!

The Dutch are renowned water experts and engineers – I mean, look at their canal systems of locks and dams – so it is no surprise when the Dutch West India Company is founded in 1621 in response to the Spaniards’ trading competition at the time.

Before this, Dutch merchants are very active on the west coast of Africa along with the Portuguese, both of them jostling for alpha status and bragging rights for copper, gold and other natural resources.

Much to my surprise, I learn that the Dutch are present in the Dutch Gold Coast – present day Ghana. I know of British colonial history in Ghana and other Anglophone countries, but the Brits are the last of a long list of Europeans laying claim over the Gold Coast’s resources.

Stick the Brits behind the Portuguese – they built the popular Elmina Castle or Sao Jorge de Mina (St. George of Elmina fort) – Dutch, Danes and even Swedes! Huh!?

Of all the European colonialists I’ve read about since childhood, Swedes are not on the list but there they are establishing a Swedish Gold Coast colony in the 1660s before the Danes snatched it away and incorporated their area into the existing Danish Gold Coast.

Anyway, all this tug-of-war between the European powers over global territories lead to the Dutch capturing Suriname from the British and in return, giving up New Amsterdam (now New York City) to the Brits in the Treaty of Breda. How gentlemanly of them both /s/.

 

African Diaspora in the Netherlands & Former Dutch Colonies

#Africans in Suriname (Formerly Dutch Guiana)

Suriname is geographically located in South America between Guyana and French Guiana but culturally, it is considered Caribbean along with the other two Guianas. With its ideal tropical climate, Suriname is conducive to the cultivation of cotton, cocoa and other cash crops, which of course require labour.

Remember that the Dutch already have a presence in West Africa – as Dutch Gold Coast – thus they are able to enslave and transport Africans to Suriname, most of whom come from West and Central Africa.

It is purported that 66,900 Africans arrived from central Africa, 53,000 from present day Ghana and 34,700 from Bight of Benin, which is the Atlantic coast of present day Nigeria and Benin Republic. Click To Tweet

Majority of the Afro-Surinamese are descendants of Akan people brought from Dutch Gold Coast – now Ghana, where many of the enslaved Africans escaped their plantations into the forest interior to become Maroons. No prizes as to why this happened: conditions on plantations were so horrific, they were left with no option.

The people could not return to their native lands so they forged uniquely rich cultural tribes in the interior based mostly on Akan culture and a handful of other West African tribes. They were also assisted greatly by the indigenous Amerindian tribes who lived within the interior.

There are six Maroon groups formed from escaped Africans into the interior and they are:

• Ndyuka (Awka), Aluku and Paramaka of the Eastern tribes and,
• Saamaka, Matawai and Kwinti of the Central tribes.

The Saamaka and Ndyuka are the largest African groups numbering a majority of the Maroons while the smallest tribe is the Kwinti numbering a few hundred. Nevertheless, they all share similar matrilineal cultural traditions and native African ceremonies and naming conventions identical to the Akan of Ghana. For example, some Aluku Maroon settlements were named Kwamigron and Kofi-hay, which to West Africans in the know, are Ghanaian-sounding names.

The Maroons independence was recognized by the signing of a peace treaty with the Dutch in the 1760s till abolition of slavery in 1863.

Source: Study by Richard Price (1976) cited by Black History Heroes. Black Suriname: African Maroon Societies in South America. Accessed Jan 2019. http://www.blackhistoryheroes.com/2010/02/african-maroon-societies-in-americas.html

 

African Diaspora in the Netherlands & Former Dutch Colonies

#Quassie Van Timotibo

Quassie Van Timotibo or Graman Quassi. Quassie was born around the 1690s in present-day Ghana as is evident from his name. Kwesi is a popular Ghanaian name given to boys born on a Sunday, or “Sunday born”, as they’re called. Click To Tweet

He is said to be from the Kwa-speaking Akan people and was transported from West Africa to Suriname as a child to work on the New Timotibo plantation. He stood out for being a polyglot, a diviner (lukuman) and a physician.

The Saamaka maroons of Suriname remember him as a traitor because Quassie organized expeditions to hunt down and return maroons and was so good at this that he was honoured in 1730 with an inscription meaning “Quassie, loyal to the whites”.

The healing properties of a medicinal plant to treat malaria & intestinal parasites, Kwasibita (Quassia amara), were discovered by Quassie and named after him by Carl Linnaeus, a renowned scientist. Quassia amara is still used by pharma companies to produce parasitic medicines today and is one of many important innovations by the African diaspora worldwide.

Quassie’s story is very interesting because he is considered a traitor by the Maroons till today. In fact, he was once captured by a Maroon faction who sliced off his ear for his treachery but let him return to his master to pass the message.

If you are Dutch-speaking, there are several stories on Quassie, his skills as a botanist and narratives of his part in slave revolts.

 

#Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein

Jacobus was born in 1717 in Ghana and abducted at 8 years old from his family. He was sold to Captain Steenhart of Zeeland who then presented him as a gift to Jacobus van Goch of the Dutch West India Company. Jacobus was sent to The Hague in 1728 where he studied theology and wrote a thesis that defended slavery.

He is one of the first Africans to be ordained as a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church and seeing as the church and most of Christianity at the time defended enslavement, it is no wonder that Jacobus held these same views even as an elevated and educated slave, but slave nonetheless.

He was permitted return to Elmina, Ghana, as a minister where he tried to convert and baptize the locals but was spurned because he was too Dutch for them regardless of shared kinship. He was also spurned by the Dutch colonialists in Elmina because he frowned upon their extra-marital affairs with local women and of course, because he was black.

This left him with no support from the Dutch in Elmina, the Church in The Netherlands and the Dutch West India Company, resulting in mounting debts. He did set up a school and an orphanage for the local population and his main achievements were the translation of the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments into Fante.

His Akan name is unknown and he died embittered in debt in 1747. He was 30.

 

#Africans in Curacao

Curacao – or Kursow, as the locals call her – is part of the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire & Curacao) that were once part of the Netherlands Antilles until its dissolution in 2010. There is an Afro-Curacaoan majority on the island of a 2017 population estimate of 150,000.

Enslaved Africans were brought to the island from present West and Central African regions like Senegambia in the far west to Congo and the province of Cabinda in present day Angola. The people brought their different traditions and forged a culture with music, food, dance & instruments based on their stripped culture which still thrive today.

 

Tambu Music. This is music and dance on the ABC islands that are enduring manifestations of African culture with an anti-establishment message. In its original form, it was used between slaves to pass messages and warnings across plantations till the Dutch discovered them.

According to Dutch history, tambu was condemned by the Catholic Church because of its “lewd” and rhythmic dance between both men and women even though bodies do not make contact. Up till 2012, tambu was subject to strict rules with permits required for festivities; however, musicians were not deterred and still play tambu to keep their ancestral connection intact.

 

Papiamentu. This is a Creole language spoken in the ABC islands. In Curacao, the root language is a hybrid Portuguese/Spanish/Dutch/Arawak mix and there are many theories as to where it originates from. Papiamentu also contains Afro-Portuguese Creole words spoken in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde so one theory of its West African origin seems to be right.

Afro-Portuguese Creole was a form of communication between Africans and the Portuguese at the time and indeed, all West African countries part of the slave trade have their own Creole version depending on their colonizing country. Papiamentu has slight variations depending on the country; for example, it is Papiamento in Suriname.

 

Bastel. This is literally a cow horn turned musical instrument with roots in Africa. African ethnic groups still use cow horns in traditional music such as the nzamba from Burundi, made from the Ankole cow; and the nomadic Fulani people of northern West Africa renowned for their traditional cattle horns used for music making.

 

#Tula

A national hero in Curacao since 2010, Tula led a rebellion of enslaved Africans after he and his comrades demanded their freedom from the Dutch owners of the Knip plantation and were denied. They took up arms in August 1795, freed other enslaved people who joined their army but as these stories always go, he was betrayed to the colonialists and summarily executed: his bones were broken, face burned then they put him out of his misery by beheading him. He is known for leading the Curacao Slave Revolt of 1795 but it is unknown what African tribe or country he originates from.

The Netherlands abolished slavery in its colonies in 1863 but it took a decade before enslaved people were granted permission to leave plantations because they were manadated to work on these same plantations for minimum wage until 1873. The masters and plantation owners were of course compensated for their “losses”.

 

African Diaspora in the Netherlands.

#Joseph Sylvester

Born in 1890, Joseph Sylvester is considered the first Black businessman in the Netherlands. He fled from St. Lucia to Antwerp in the 1920s to sell his Babajana menthol toothpaste across Dutch towns, marketed as a natural secret. For a lot of the country people, he was the first Black human they had ever seen.

During WW 2, he was a civilian internee of the Germans but was released months later for being “harmless”. He married a white Dutch woman which was very much against Nazi racial ideology at the time but they divorced after his release because he didn’t want to get his wife into more trouble. Though their divorce was never finalized, they lived together until his death in 1955.

 

#Louise Yda

This is a very interesting story of how an Afro-Surinamese woman travelled to The Hague in 1898 for the Dutch National Exhibition of Women’s Labour. It seems that Louise Ada was born free in 1858, as she was born to an enslaved mother and and enslaved father who gained freedom shortly after Louise’s birth.

Louise came over to serve refreshments for which she was paid well for her status. For most Dutch, this was their first time seeing and interacting with a Black human and so her fluent Dutch, foreign attire, white teeth and temperament were marvelled over.

She wore a koto (dress) and angisa (headscarf) which were worn by enslaved African women in Suriname and continued after abolition. Koto is a long dress made voluminous by petticoats and was worn by house slaves to discourage the sexual arousal of their masters.

The press made a big deal of her as the main attraction of the exhibition and this irritated her, saying, “why don’t you write in the papers that I am not to be pitied, I was fully aware of what I was doing.”

#Keti Koti

The abolition of slavery is known as keti koti, which means “the breaking of chains” in the local Sranantongo language of Suriname. Very apt! Keti koti is celebrated by the Surinamese in Netherlands and former Dutch colonies every July 1 to commemorate the official end of slavery in Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles on July 1, 1863.

In The Netherlands, Keti Koti is an opportunity for reflection on equality and a shared Dutch history beginning at the Slavery Monument in Oosterpark after which there is an open-air festival for everyone.

Alas, not many Dutch recognize this shared history that their society flourishes from the blood, agony and intellect of enslaved African diaspora in the Netherlands and former Dutch colonies but strides are being made by the Netherlands government in getting citizens to recognize this shared history.

*****************************************************

This is a change from my usual travel tips and how-to articles but it is in line with my interests in history and culture. The Tropenmuseum exhibit on the Afterlives of Slavery was the inspiration and source of most of the material with the rest coming from trusted online material linked within the paragraphs.

I also got much info from a Surinamese Insta acquaintance, Olivia Samuel, with maternal Maroon heritage who educated me on Surinamese history. She is a gorgeous fashion blogger so please read and support her blog as well.

Thank you for reading and I hope you learned something very new and interesting with this article.

Do not forget to comment and Pin. See you on the social streets! xoxo

Sharing is caring! xx