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

Starting the search in Ghana

When this blog is published, Annemieke and I have arrived in Ghana and are on our way to Elmina, the place Presto departed from on his voyage to the Netherlands in the 1740s. We made the trip in reverse, but in a stunted manner. We did not travel by ship, arriving first at Axim in the west of Ghana, and then sailing on to Elmina, to anchor in the roadstead and be ferried ashore on a small boat or canoe. We arrived by plane at Kotoka International Airport Accra, spent the night in a comfortable hotel, and now travel to Elmina in an equally comfortable rental car.

And equally so, when we arrive in Elmina, this will be a very different place from the one Presto left some 270 years ago. One of the most important tasks therefore is for us to recreate the world Presto came from. In this last blog written from Europe, we once more revisit the clues and hints Christiaan left for us in his later life, as a starting point for the historical recreation of his world in the following blogs, which we will write from Ghana.

Clues on origin and arrival

Throughout his life, Christiaan left hints about his African origins and arrival in the Netherlands. That this is helpful for his identification has been shown in the earlier blogs. The letters Christiaan wrote to the King from 1815 onwards, and the letter his daughter Antje wrote in 1830 are most helpful here.

In all his letters to the King Christiaan wrote that he was born on the Coast of Guinea ('de kust van Guinea'), by way of introduction, and rather than emphasising his colour or former name of Presto. But he does not give many more details.

In her letter to the King, asking for assistance, his daughter Antje gave some additional information. She wrote:

'That in his lifetime, her [...] Grandfather was General on the Coast of Guinea, where her father was stolen as a child by the Guineans'

This is a very valuable clue. We may expect that this story came from her father. And the element of the 'grandfather-general' is new. Who can this 'General' be? The governor-in-chief of the Dutch Gold Coast had the official title of 'director general.' In daily practice this was often shortened to 'general,' in which form it even entered into official documents. When we then look at the period in which Presto came to the Netherlands, this coincided with the term of office of Jacob Baron de Petersen as director-general over the Dutch Gold Coast. He arrived in 1740, and left in 1747.

Prince-Stadtholder Willem V takes office as Superior Director of the W.I.C., Amsterdam 1768 (Simon Fokke, Coll. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam). Jacob de Petersen is purportedly seated to the right of the Prince.

But obviously, General Jacob de Petersen was not the biological father of Presto. So talking about him as 'grandfather' must be understood in a metaphorical or figurative sense. Apparently Christiaan had spoken to his family about De Petersen having been a fatherly figure to him. Possibly even making De Petersen his only connection to Africa.

In the last blog we showed how Jacob de Petersen was involved in the transfer of two young boys in Elmina in 1744. We here asked the question if these could be Presto and Fortuin. In view of Antje's statement, this suggestion becomes more plausible.

Jacob de Petersen registered on audience with Prince Willem V of Orange Nassau, 7 March 1771. Coll. Koninklijke Bibliotheek Den Haag

Besides, De Petersen was in a position to bring children with him to the Netherlands. He was a very powerful person in the West India Company, and very wealthy as well. He had served the W.I.C. from 1725 onwards in executive positions, first in Curaçao and afterwards in West Africa. His relationships with the upper classes of Amsterdam and the Hague were strong, and he had a good relationship with the Court of Orange-Nassau as well. After his final return to the Netherlands in 1747 he first became a W.I.C. director, then the presiding director, and finally the representative of the Prince-Stadtholder Willem V in his capacity of governor-general of the W.I.C. By then De Petersen was the most powerful and influential figure in the running of the Dutch Atlantic slave trade and the Dutch West Indian colonies.

When Jacob de Petersen requested his dismissal as director-general of the Gold Coast in 1746, he had a clear idea about the remainder of his career. For starters he set up a private slave trading expedition. He hired the private slave trading ship Watervliet and prepared for a slave voyage that was to transport more than 700 enslaved men and women to Suriname. He travelled on the ship himself. The fortunes of the voyage are currently a matter of academic research.

The records show that in Paramaribo, Suriname, Jacob de Petersen changed ships and boarded the ship Jalousie, with his servants. It is very well possible that Presto and Fortuin travelled with Jacob de Petersen to the Netherlands in 1747, together with a richly adorned hammock, as present for the Princess Carolina.

Gouvernment Journal Suriname, General Jacob de Petersen and servants on board the ship Jalousie

 

Jacob de Petersen's Gold Coast

So now we know where to start: on Jacob de Petersen's Gold Coast. To recreate Presto's early years and experience in Ghana, we have to look for the Dutch Gold Coast as it was in Jacob de Petersen's time, the period between 1740 and 1747. Who was there, what did it look like, what activities were going on? And: how do you make such a reconstruction in an environment that has changed beyond recognition?

In the oncoming blogs we will address these questions. However, we cannot solve them alone, and all contributions from our virtual fellow travellers and followers are welcome. What do you think about Presto's early years?

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.