Procuring slave children on the Gold Coast (I): The European position

Children without names

When we study Africans in the Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these individuals are denied their original African identity. This is of course also the case with Presto, whose African name, given to him by his parents, is unknown to us, and was possibly even unknown to Presto himself, as was his African family history. It makes looking for his origins in Ghana quite complicated.

However, it also poses questions about the social status of African children like Presto in general. Were they chattel slaves, like the enslaved people that were sent to the plantations in the Americas? Or were they a special category of captives, and if so, how did this play out in the way in which they were procured in Africa and treated in Europe? Let's first look at their European position, and then move back to Ghana in a second instalment of this blog, and see what we can find there with regard to these young children. Also as another point of interest for the field trip.

African children in Europe: made-up identities

The research into Presto's / Christiaan van der Vegt's origins, his stinge at the Court of the Prince-Stadtholder, and as servant to the mayor of Weesp, Abraham d'Arrest, has yielded a large amount of information about other African boys in the Netherlands and Europe too. One rich source for our knowledge about these boys - and some girls - are the formal portrait paintings in which African children figure, usually in the background, as servants to 'important people.' Annemieke is collecting them on a special Pinterest Board, titled Young Africans with Europeans in the 17th and 18th century. And indeed, at the time of writing this blog, the board counts 412 pins already.

Portrait of Cocquamar Crenequie
(Coll. Museum Weesp)

In art history there has long been a tendency, so it seems, to regard these young African servants as ornaments, rather than real people. In current museum collections this is still very much visible in the descriptions of these paintings, which never name the African servants, if mentioning them at all.

We take the position that most, if not all of the seventeenth and eighteenth-century portraits, should be seen as  real-life depictions in which all elements have meaning, and are part of the main figure's life. This includes servants, African or otherwise, pets, and inanimate ornaments and objects. Only by taking this position, it becomes possible to seriously study the prevalence of African child servants in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, no longer as something exceptional, but as a regular occurance. As Annemieke already stated: 'Christiaan was not the only one.'

 And more importantly, by naming the African children in these pictures, we make a start in giving them their identity back.

To prove the point that efforts to identify these pictured anonymous African boy-servants can be fruitful, there is the case of Cocquamar Crenequie, or Willem Philip Frederik, as he was called after his christening. He was born on 'the Coast of Guinea', i.e. in West Africa, around 1739. Since the middle of 1750 he was a member of the household of the Count Gronsfeld, special envoy of the Dutch States General to the Court at Berlin. Cocquamar Crenequie was christened in Berlin on Sunday  27 January 1754. The reason we know all this is that his christening was reported in a Dutch newspaper, which report coincides with our knowledge about the provenance of a painting of the same year in which he was pictured with the Countess zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Virneburg, Gronsfeld's wife.

Report on the christening of Cocquamar Crenequie in Berlin, in
Opregte Haerlemsche Courant 5 February 1754

In her blog postings, Annemieke has also shown that there were more boys like Presto who were brought to the Netherlands by (former) officials of the Dutch West India Company, sometimes identifiable by an African or African-sounding name, like Accra Doura, a contemporary of Presto and also living in Weesp for a while. In most cases African names are not known, and when they are, they are invariably too mangled to make sense of for purposes of regional identification or meaning (which includes Cocquamar Crenequie). Others were given fantasy names or exotic names, like Presto, Fortuin, Coridon, Cupido or Cedron, to name the boys touched upon in Annemieke's blog alone. When baptised the Christian name Christaan is prevalent, sometimes connected with a fantasy name of sorts, as was the case with Christiaan van Souburg, Christiaan Narcis and Christiaan Congo Loango. Proper African names usually do not occur.

From the Netherlands to West Africa

So far, we have a fair idea of the scope of these African boys living in Europe in higher-placed servile positions, through their appearance in paintings, and because of selected case studies from archival sources. That does not mean that the picture is complete yet, however, or that we fully understand the social positions of these boys and the social mechanisms governing their position and status, including Presto. This is a research topic in itself, which should be undertaken with some urgency.

During our trip, Annemieke and I will look into the context of the Atlantic slave trade and the position of enslaved people for that trade on the one hand, and into the physical and social context in which children were procured for service in the Netherlands on the other.

An important issue to consider is how the procurement of these children in Africa worked. The premise here is that the children brought directly to Europe cannot, in social terms, be compared to the huge numbers of chattel slaves shipped 'in bulk' - excuse the expression - and anonimity to the Americas. In the case of these children, one can ask whether their was some sort of 'parallel trade', considering the numbers found in Europe, or whether it was a more incidental occurance with its own rules and regulations?

In the next blog I will go into that more in detail, on the basis of several recorded cases from the era in which Presto and Fortuin were also brought from the Coast of Guinea to the Netherlands.

Presto returns to Ghana: Where to begin? (I)

At the Court of Orange-Nassau

Annemieke was able to make a detailed reconstruction of Christiaan's / Presto's life in the Netherlands, because the records about that life are abundant. I will not go over this here, as it would mean summarising three years of research, already published in Annemieke's blog extensively. Her own summary in English can be found here. Let us try to make a reconstruction of what we know about his early years in the Netherlands, however, and try to build a bridge to West Africa.

Letter to the King by Christiaan van der Vegt, 1817

One of the most important sources for Presto's early life in Europe are the letters that he and his daughter Antje wrote to King Willem I of the Netherlands between 1815 and 1830. They contain intimate details about his early life at the courts of several members of the Dutch princely family of Orange-Nassau, and their spouses, and traces his presence back at least to 1760, when he was in his teens.

The letters, together with other evidence, also give an indication of his birth year, which can be pinpointed at circa 1743/1744. This means that between the hard evidence of his presence in the Netherlands and his birth in Africa there is still a gap of about sixteen years with limited information about his life and whereabouts.

Princess Carolina of Orange-Nassau

The records have turned up evidence to develop a hypothesis to fill this gap, and make a case for Presto's presence at Court since his arrival. They also allow for a hypothesis on the circumstances and date of his arrival.

So what evidence is there to support such a hypothesis? In his third letter to King Willem I of the Netherlands, dated 2 May 1817, Christiaan indicated that he had worked as a domestic at the Court for (inter alia) the Princess Carolina of Orange-Nassau (1743-1787), the King's aunt.

The period in which he was in her employ is not indicated and remains an educated guess for the moment. He may very well have been around at the time of her marriage in the Hague in 1760, to Prince Carl Christian of Nassau-Weilburg, who was also listed by Christiaan as an employer in his letters, after the marriage.

In a drawing of the wedding ceremony in the Grote Kerk in the Hague we find a single African young man dressed in the uniform of a boy-servant, standing with a group of people that can be qualified as the "court family," the household of the princess and prince. We can surmise that this is indeed Presto, celebrating the day with his protector. The full analysis by Annemieke, with source references can be found here.

Presto attending Carolina's wedding?

In the letter to the King from 1817 mentioned above, Christiaan also recalled his service as domestic to Carolina's brother Willem, whom he called his benefactor. It is unclear when he was in the latter's service, but in view of Carolina's difficult character - she is said to have been unable to keep her staff for more than a year - it is well possible that he served both brother and sister in the period before 1760.

So we can position Presto in the households of Princess Carolina and her brother Willem, we possibly have an image of him, and we know that he was born in or around 1743/1744. Then the next find may provide the key to his transfer from Africa to the Netherlands.

In 1748 the Prince-Stadtholder Willem IV and his family celebrated the birth and baptism of their newborn son and male heir to the position of hereditary prince-stadtholder, the later Willem V. On this occasion, on 20 April 1748, his five-year old sister Carolina was given a precious gift: "two small African Moors, as well as a precious hammock from that Continent."

Could one of the two children be Presto? The sources are elusive. The gift was mentioned in the newspaper, but without further details. So we do not know who the gift-giver was, nor the rationale behind it. The detailed financial administration of the court, kept in the Royal Archives in the Hague, was unfortunately not detailed enough to provide an answer either. Annemieke and I set up a search which yielded no additional information.

We do know a little bit more, however. The 'other' boy in the gift can be identified. He was given the name Fortuin, but died ten months later in the Hague, and was buried in or near the church of the neighbouring seaside fishing village of Scheveningen. The burial record identifies him: 'The little Moor of Her Highness the Princess Carolina, named Fortuin, transported to Scheveningen"

Bringing Presto back to Africa: the hypothesis

As for a hypothesis, we can work with the following suggestions:

• We know that Presto worked for and lived with the Princess Carolina and Prince Willem. For certain in 1760, but possibly much earlier, without any evidence that proves he was not the boy given as a gift to Carolina in 1748.
• We know Presto's approximate year of birth was 1743/1744, from a variety of sources, and that he was born in Africa. Evidence suggests, that, normally, African boys entered into European household service at an early age, not as teenagers.
• When looking at the possibility of other African boys entering the Court's household between 1748 and 1760, the harvest is thin, or rather zero. There were other boys in Court, including two whom Christiaan mentioned in his letters, but their arrival cannot be aligned with the gift of 1748. In other words, Presto is our only candidate for the moment.

This would qualify Presto to be the anonymous boy in the 1748 gift.

But who then gave the gift to the Princess Carolina? This is an issue Annemieke has not yet written about in her blog, although she hints at it in the English summary, but for which we have strong indications based on evidence in the records and circumstantial evidence. In a later post we will address this question, the answer to which is an important starting point for our research in Ghana itself.

First we will look into the question how African boys came to the Netherlands from West Africa, and address the issues of slavery and slave trade with regard to this rather peculiar group of involuntary African migrants.

Preparations for a special field trip

Presto returns to Ghana

Between 9 and 20 August, Annemieke van der Vegt and I will undertake a field trip to Ghana to investigate the early life of the African boy Presto, or Christiaan van der Vegt. For the backgrounds of this visit see the Introduction page.

The trip includes visits to and research in Accra, the current capital of Ghana, the town of Elmina, from 1637 to 1872 the Dutch headquarters in Ghana, the important urban centre Axim in the Western Region, the stilt-village Nzelezu, the Ankobra River, and several other places, which (may) have played a part in Presto's life.

Watch this space for regular updates on the trip and results of our research. When in Ghana I will try to add posts on a daily basis, internet availability permitting.

Background picture

The background picture of this blog is a lithograph of the town of Elmina. It was taken from the north wall of the castle of St. George d'Elmina around 1870, at the end of the Dutch presence. The Dutch flag can be seen flying from the tower of Fort Coenraadsburg on St. Jago Hill. Some 135 years earlier Presto was in Elmina and could have stood on this spot. His view would have been different. The houses were not there yet. Most of these date from the 1840s. In Presto's time this was a sandy area with a footpath running through it, some small huts, a wide beach on the right, and scrubs and trees on the hill-side to the left. Fort Coenraadsburg was there, however, and a landmark Presto may have kept in his mind for some time, also because this fort, together with Elmina castle, is the last he would have seen of the his mother country when he departed from Elmina on his voyage to Europe.

By the 1980s, the big corner-house in the middle of the picture had fallen in disuse and was a total ruin. The house is called Bridge House as it stands next to the bridge crossing the Benya Lagoon (not in view). In the late 1990s, Elmina businessman Paa Kwesi Nduom, whose wife's family owned the house, had it demolished and replaced by a new building which is in use as a hotel: Coconut Grove Bridge House. The terrace of the hotel will be a vantage point for Annemieke and I to discuss the history of the town and to view the fishing activities.