The Air of Liberty: narratives of the South Atlantic past (Cross Cultures)

The ‘Air of Liberty’

C

ross ultures

Readings in the Post / Colonial Literatures in English

96 Series Editors

Gordon Collier (Giessen)

Hena Maes–Jelinek (Liège)

Geoffrey Davis (Aachen)

The ‘Air of Liberty’ Narratives of the South Atlantic Past

Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008

Cover design: Gordon Collier and Pier Post Cover painting: José Maria Capricorne, Our Lady of Aparecida (2001) The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2396-3 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2008 Printed in The Netherlands

Table of Contents List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Introduction

vii ix xi xv

The Dream of Order 1 2

Mauritsstad–Recife in Seventeenth-Century Brazil Amsterdam and the South Atlantic

3 29

The Crisis of Enlightenment 3 4

The Jewish-Portuguese Nation in the Colony of Suriname The Maroon and the Creole as Narrative Tropes

49 69

The Search for Alternatives 5 6 7

Manuel Piar and the Struggle for Independence in Latin America Popular Rhythms and Political Voices in Curaçao New Landscapes, Creole Belonging

93 113 135

Toward a Cultural History of the South Atlantic 8

The South Atlantic Revisited

155

Concluding Remarks

177

Works Cited Index

193 213

List of Illustrations

Figure 1 – Frans Post, Antônio Vaz from a Distance (1640; oil on panel, 66 x 88 cm). Courtesy Institute Ricardo Brennan, Recife. Figure 2 – Frans Post, Mauritsstad with a View of Recife (1653; oil on canvas, 48.2 x 83.6 cm). Courtesy private collection, São Paulo.

Figure 3 – Frans Post, Mauritsstad with a View of Recife (nd, drawing). Lost. Figure 4 – Frans Post, Mauritsstad from the Dike Leading to Afogados (c.1650, oil on canvas, 142 x 217 cm). Courtesy Prussian Palaces and Gardens Heritage Foundation, Potsdam. Figure 5 – Frans Post, Mauritsstad–Recife from the Cliff (c.1650, oil on canvas, 143 x 217 cm). Courtesy Prussian Palaces and Gardens Heritage Foundation,

Potsdam. Cover: José Maria Capricorne, Our Lady of Aparecida (2001; oil on paper, 50 x 65 cm). Courtesy private collection, Berlin. Nossa Senhora da Aparecida, or the Black Madonna, is the patron saint of Brazil. She has her own pilgrimage site in the Basilica of the city of Aparecida (named after a statue’s miraculous ‘appearance’ to fisherman of the São Paulo village of Guaratinguetá). José Maria Capricorne (Curaçao) painted her as part of his Brasiliana series (2001–2004). She is depicted being borne aloft in a procession. The statue-bearers have double faces, black (Afro-Brazilian) and red (Amerindian), evoking the marginalization brought by colonial expansion. Their walking, moving, dancing, praying, singing, and large hands symbolize the often overlooked creativity of these sectors of the population.

Preface

T

H E ‘ A I R O F L I B E R T Y ’ I S A R E M A R K A B L E B O O K for a number of reasons: it focuses on an area of the Caribbean that has not received the critical and expanded attention it deserves; it does so from a Latin American perspective; it shows how a measured exercise in cultural studies in the tradition of Ángel Rama (the author’s former colleague at the University of Maryland) and Antonio Cornejo Polar, as well as on some of Alejandro Losada’s insights, generates a productive dialogue across disciplinary lines. The “Rama effect,” notably through his La ciudad letrada, and Luiz Felipe de Alencastro’s O trato dos viventes anchor this work, which, in its emphasis on urban settings, also recalls Richard Morse’s pioneering studies. Dr Ineke Phaf–Rheinberger is widely acknowledged as the foremost specialist in the cultures of Curaçao and Suriname and, in a broader context, as a lucid analyst of the impact of Dutch colonial rule and its institutions. Her distinct readings analyse “Narratives of the South Atlantic Past” interacting with other Caribbean and Latin American nations. These connections can best and most accurately be understood as recipients of and players in the South Atlantic slave trade. Slavery’s “open wound” is viewed in “the representation of urban societies as agents in the scenario of the South Atlantic trade,” and in this thoroughly informed book, the historical background is also brought to bear in order to understand developments in nascent democracies. Nation-building generates endless debates on identity and, as shown in The ‘Air of Liberty’, the former Dutch possessions also engaged in them vis-à-vis creole vernaculars and their impact on both political and cultural production. In recent years, Frank Martinus Arion’s campaign to keep Papiamentu alive, as well as Capricorne’s art, point to a creole cultural prism that serves as both a sign of

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resistance and, at the same time, as a marker of local, national, and regional assertiveness. Keenly aware of their African-Portuguese roots and of the impact of Dutch colonial rule on their region, contemporary authors and artists are waging an inclusive campaign that articulates those roots with the current pressures for democratization and for integration in a wider community of nations. In calling attention to this phenomenon, The ‘Air of Liberty’ projects itself onto the circum-Caribbean nations and opens up a dialogue with the rest of Latin America’s cultures. The author asserts at the outset that “Dutch-related representations of modernity from a South Atlantic perspective [...] imply the subversive questioning of contemporary cultural hierarchies in historical research and literary fiction.” And so the book moves lucidly through chapters that address “The Dream of Order” through “The Crisis of Enlightenment” to “The Search for Alternatives” in order to draw the parameters for an innovative cultural history of the South Atlantic. In so doing, Dr Phaf–Rheinberger builds on the cross-disciplinary, encompassing and probing tradition that was the hallmark of Ángel Rama. This is a notable achievement, for it both draws attention to the region and challenges critics and historians to engage in cross-regional and ‘transdisciplinary’ research and analysis.

SAÚL SOSNOWSKI University of Maryland, College Park

Acknowledgments

M

O R E T H A N A D E C A D E A G O , from 29 November to 1 December 1996, I organized the workshop “Looking Through the Habsburgs’ Glasses” at the International Institute for Cultural Studies (I F K ) in Vienna. It meant a new stage in the long-standing project I was undertaking as sub-editor of the volume on the Dutch-speaking Caribbean in A. James Arnold’s A History of Literature in the Caribbean (2001). After this project concluded, my engagement with visual art in the context of colonial history remained an interest that I have been pursuing ever since. The idea for combining this interest with the organization of a book elucidating crucial stages in the (colonial and postcolonial) cultural history of Dutch-related societies in the South Atlantic came to me during a guest professorship in Santiago de Chile in the Spring of 2003. Encouraged by the generous support of the late Monica Blanco (Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación), I began to reflect in a more ‘panoptical’ way on several of the connections within the critical discourse on colonial history and culture that I had elaborated in some of my hispanophone articles concerning the Dutch Caribbean. The plan to dedicate a room at U M C E to the memory and heritage of Rodolfo Lenz, the Chilean-German linguist who was the first to write a comprehensive study of Curaçaoan Papiamentu, gave me the sense of being in the right place at the right time. From the very beginning of his research on this creole1 1 At this early juncture, I should note that I shall be employing lower-case ‘creole’ to refer to linguistic phenomena (as here) and to sundry sociocultural phenomena of ultimately African origin, while upper-case ‘Creole’ is used in this book to refer to persons of essentially European origin born in the New World, along with their communities.

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language, Lenz had been keenly aware of its vital Afro-Portuguese component. Back in Berlin, and thanks to the support of Flora Veit–Wild, Dieter Ingenschay, and Werner Thielemann (Humboldt University), I was able to teach courses on the cultural history of the ‘Dutch period’ in Brazil and Angola in the seventeenth century, as well as to collaborate with Tiago de Oliveira Pinto (Universidade de São Paulo) on the ethno-musical exchanges that had taken place throughout the early modern history of the Atlantic. The international conference Recife século X V I I , urbs atlântica, organized by Christoph Ostendorf (director of the C C B A , Cultural Centre Brazil–Germany) in Recife in August 2004 gave me a first opportunity to present some of my findings. It was especially the salient, provocative views expressed by my colleague Silvio Torres–Saillant in his recent book An Intellectual History of the Caribbean (2006), in which he touches on critical aspects of the Dutch Caribbean tradition, that prompted me to make its South Atlantic connections available for inclusion in the broader network of the various Caribbean discourses. For their continuous support of and interest in this book, I am most grateful to Saúl Sosnowski (University of Maryland, College Park) and A. James Arnold (University of Virginia). I feel equally indebted to Staffan Müller–Wille (University of Exeter) and Leoncio López-Ocón (C S I C , Madrid) for their comments on earlier versions of my first chapter and for their collaboration on panels in Amsterdam (2002 C E I S A L ) and Santiago de Chile (2003 A I C ) respectively. I have also profited considerably from the rich documentation resulting from the close contacts cultivated by Count (later Prince) Johan Maurits van Nassau with Brandenburg, finding, as I did, several crucial relevant seventeenth-century publications – such as those of Barlaeus – in the State Libraries of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin. I owe heartfelt thanks to the librarians there, with their always professional and friendly assistance. Luiz Felipe de Alencastro (Sorbonne Paris) recommended that I contact Blanche Ebeling–Koning (Library Rare Books, Brown University), who was generous enough to check my translations into English from Caspar Barlaeus’s Latin, while Matthias Röhrig–Assunção (Essex University) gave his approval for me to publish the revised version of the essay we had earlier written together. The German Research Foundation financed my participation in the 2006 Latin American Studies Association Congress (16–18 March) in Puerto Rico, where I was able to acquaint

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myself more closely with recent historical research in Brazil on my subject. Without the editing support of Carolyn Vines–van Es and her insightful, encouraging readings over the past few months I would not have been able to find the proper formulations for my thoughts. Rivka Feldhay (Cohn Institute, Tel Aviv) and Angela Carreño (New York University, Latin America Library Collections) provided careful commentaries on my work. I have benefitted from a fruitful exchange with León Krempel, curator of the impressive exhibition on the seventeenth-century painter Frans Post in the House of Art in Munich, from 2 June to 17 September 2006. Gordon Collier was a stimulus for me to get the manuscript completed, and did much to tidy up my English and hone my translations. My thanks also go to Hena Maes–Jelinek for her astute suggestions on an earlier draft of the book. And Mieke and the late Henk Mantje at The Hague followed this project closely from its very beginnings. The articles listed below contain material that has been re-worked for inclusion in the present study: “La utopía moderna en Brasil en el siglo X V I I : Los pinceles descriptivos y el diccionario visual de Frans Post,” in Estudios avanzados inter@ctivos 2.4 (2003), ed. Ineke Phaf–Rheinberger & Leoncio López–Ocón, www.usach.cl/revistaidea/; “Caspar Barlaeus y la ética de una expansión global: ‘Mercator sapiens’ (1632) y ‘Rerum per octennium in Brasilia [...] gestarum [...] historia’ (1647),” in De litteris Neolatinis in America Meridionali Portugallia, Hispania, Italia cultis, ed. Dietrich Briesemeister & Axel Schönberger (Bibliotheca Romanica et Latina 1; Frankfurt am Main: Valentia, 2002): 123–36; “The Portuguese Jewish Nation: An Enlightenment Essay on the Colony of Suriname,” in A History of Literature in the Caribbean, ed. A. James Arnold, vol. 2, sub-editors Vera Kutzinski & Ineke Phaf–Rheinberger (Amsterdam & Philadelphia P A : John Benjamins, 2001): 491–502; “Actualizando el viaje de Stedman: El retorno improvisto del ‘matrimonio surinamés’,” Dispositio 17.42–43 (1992), ed. Andrea Pagni & Ottmar Ette: 135–63; with Matthias Röhrig–Assunção: “History is Bunk! Recovering the Meaning of Independence in Venezuela, Colombia, and Curaçao: A Cross-Cultural Image of Manuel Piar,” in A History of Literature in the Caribbean, ed. A. James Arnold, vol. 2 (Amsterdam & Philadelphia P A : John Benjamins, 1997): 161–74; “Papiamentu, Popular Music, and Narratives of Modernity: The Dutch Antilles and Latin America,” in Marginal Migrations: The Circulation of Cultures Within the Caribbean, ed. Shalini Puri (Oxford: Macmillan, 2003): 190–211; “Adyosi versus Sunrise Inn: El

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paisaje alternativo del Caribe no-hispánicico,” in Creole Presence in the Caribbean and Latin America / Presencia criolla en el Caribe y América Latina, ed. Ineke Phaf (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 1996): 99–128.

B E R L I N , 30 S E P T E M B E R 2007

Introduction

A

took place on Dutch television on 5 February 2006. It concerned two different interpretations of history, one academic and intellectual, the other imaginative and psychological – the view of a creative writer endeavouring to come to terms with the problems of his local community. Piet Emmer, the author of an influential study of the Dutch slave trade,1 put forward the argument that the slave trade has received proper historical treatment and that the Dutch have recently paid adequate attention to its memory in comparison with the other European nations in question. Frank Martinus Arion, the foremost Dutch-Antillean author at the present moment, countered that the Antilleans needed more time to overcome the pain of their “geschonden gemeenschap” (violated and damaged community). He recommended a reparations period of two decades, concrete support during this phase to take the form of a graduated payment of six billion Euros distributed by the appropriate local foundations for educational and academic purposes.2 This debate has a political background. Arion lives in Curaçao, one of the five islands making up the Netherlands Antilles that still form an autonomous part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.3 A referendum carried out on 8 April 2005 showed that the population there desires a different 1

MOST REMARKABLE DEBATE

Piet C. Emmer, De Nederlandse slavenhandel 1500–1850 (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2000). 2 This debate is mentioned on the internet under the rubric Boeken & cetera: 5 februari over de slavernij: Piet Brands spreekt met Frank Martinus Arion en Piet Emmer: www.boeken.vpro.nl/ 3 The Netherlands Antilles consists of two groups of islands: Aruba (status aparte), Curaçao, and Bonaire (or A B C islands); and Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Maarten (part of a tiny territory, the other, French part of which is St.-Martin).

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legal status; the implications of this vote are being discussed intensively at present by various political interest-groups. The status of Curaçao, however, was a matter of concern for Arion long before this referendum, dating from the very beginning of his career as a writer, and he has elaborated on this theme in five novels published so far. His most recent book, significantly entitled De deserteurs (The Deserters), came out only a week after the above-mentioned debate with Piet Emmer.4 I take these divergent interpretations of history on the part of a DutchAntillean writer and a Dutch historian as my starting-point for the main argument to be developed in this book. It aims at connecting the critical discourse on colonization and its aftermath in Dutch-Caribbean literature with the assumption that narrative fiction increasingly concentrates on telling history from the global perspective of the (former) slaves whose roots are to be found in African-Portuguese influenced societies. The writers concerned live in communities in which the remnants of the slave trade are still profoundly experienced as an obstacle to social mobility today. Contemporary prose from Brazil, Suriname, Angola, and Curaçao reflects aspects of the perception of slaves in those territories, all of which have at some stage or another been, or are still, subject to control by Dutch governmental institutions.5 This ‘Dutch period’ is what they have in common, and my contention is that authors, in order to underscore the powerful impact of the past on local memory, have organized their plots around this phase of history in order to criticize the mercantile philosophy elaborated to justify the slave trade from the West African coast to the Americas. It is not enough to condemn this slave trade as having been a crime; the details of its afterlife, the cultural heritage it left in its wake, have to be understood as a contemporary dilemma, an open wound. Awareness of the need for intellectual and spiritual reconsideration of this mercantile philosophy accounts for the fact that, thanks preeminently to Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, it has come under fire in recent cultural criticism.6 4 Frank Martinus Arion, De deserteurs (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2006). See the excerpt translated into English by Paul Vincent in Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 74/40.1 (2007): 87–90. 5 It concerns the following time-spans: Northeast Brazil from 1630 to 1654; Suriname from 1667 to 1975; Luanda from 1641 to 1648; Curaçao from 1634 onward. 6 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge M A : Harvard U P , 1993).

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In my book, the accent will fall on the representation of urban societies as agents in the scenario of the South Atlantic trade. This trade involved the setting-up of a network of port cities supplied with the necessary infrastructure for commercial transactions. When they began to function, “these interconnected cities provided the nucleus for the consolidation of the Atlantic commercial community and for the socio-political integration of the Americas – especially the Latin American and Caribbean sectors – into the broader western economy.”7 On the West African and Brazilian coasts as well as in the Caribbean, these cities were connected umbilically to plantation society (not least because many slaveholders were urbandwelling absentee landlords) and required strict military organization for their defence, as Antonio Benítez Rojo has pointed out in The Repeating Island.8 Large Atlantic port settlements were situated on both sides of the ocean and cultural history has not yet focused much on the mutual specifics of these urban life-styles. Critical anthologies have been assembled and seminal essays written about the relationship of American cultures to Africa, and research on the Caribbean has proceeded from a comparative perspective. But the argument of the present study underscores the necessity of a South Atlantic vantage-point in putting today’s problems with these port settlements into broader focus. Because of the historical awareness embedded in contemporary fiction, it is important to stress how the past differs from the present as well as continuities between past and present. The Portuguese served as the original bridge to the South Atlantic world; Emmer’s book establishes this link, dating the start of the slave trade at around 1500. His historical method is grounded in the fact that Europeans always have everything keurig uitgerekend (nicely calculated). Such an accounting concept is complementary to that of cultural historians such as Johan Huizinga, who tried to explain to his German readership in the early 1930s what he considered to be the main characteristics of the Dutch mentality in the seven-

7 Franklin W. Knight & Peggy K. Liss, “Introduction” to Atlantic Port Cities: Economy, Culture, and Society in the Atlantic World, 1650–1850, ed. Liss & Knight (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P , 1991): 3. 8 Antonio Benítez Rojo, The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective, tr. James Marannis (La isla que se repite, 1989; Durham N C : Duke U P , 1996).

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teenth century.9 Huizinga praised the cultural treasures of the Golden Age in the Netherlands, concluding that its reverence for rationality as the quotidian norm informed the plain, sober, and clear-headed nature of the Dutch. However, Huizinga also remarked that this spirit grew barren after 1685, and even spoke of a general depression, which he attributed to the fact that mercantile rationality was now reduced to a merely commercial reflex; the enterprising merchant had become a bourgeois magistrate and investor. For Huizinga, seventeenth-century Dutch ‘civilization’ was indeed illustrious by virtue of the organization of its mercantile cities, in which citizens enjoyed greater freedom than in other European countries with their outdated feudal structures. My enquiry turns on the effects this urban mercantilism has on the symbolic knowledge concerning Dutch-based societies in Africa and America. An indispensable work is the Rerum per octennium in Brasilia (Amsterdam, 1647), written in Latin by Caspar Barlaeus and illustrated by the painter Frans Post.10 This book describes the military and colonizing strategies of the Dutch West India Company since its foundation in 1621 and its ideas for urban expansion in Northeast Brazil in particular, regarded as an ideal environment for successful plantation agriculture. Barlaeus and Post also pay much attention to the connections with Africa, especially with Angola. Thereafter, it was a native Jewish writer who, in the Surinamese Enlightenment, first questioned the social mobility operating in this mercantile colonial environment bound to the South Atlantic trade. After the ‘loss’ of Brazil, the Dutch plantation economy was established on the ‘Wild Coast’ of America (the coastal region between Venezuela and Brazil) and, in 1788, the Sephardic author David Isaac de Cohen Nassy wrote a critical Essai historique sur la colonie de Surinam.11 I will be discussing his views, relating them to the perception of social identity

9

Huizinga’s views were later published in Nederlands beschaving in de zeventiende eeuw: Een schets, ed. & intro. Anton van der Lem (1941; Amsterdam: Contact, 1998): 167–74. 10 Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium in Brasilia et alibi nuper gestarum (Amsterdam: Ionannes Blaue, 1647). A translation of this book into English by Blanche Ebeling–Koning is in progress. 11 David Nassy, Essai historique sur la colonie de Surinam (1788; Amsterdam: S. Emmering, repr. 1968).

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among the creole slave and ‘free’ population on the one hand as well as, on the other, the (escaped) maroons in the same period. In the Netherlands Antilles, and in Curaçao and St. Eustatius in particular, the intensification of economic activity in the eighteenth century is attributable less to the plantation dynamic itself than to the region-wide contraband and maritime connections among the various American dependencies. The slave trade was still in full swing when the struggle against slavery acquired an international dimension during the wars of independence in North America, Haiti, and Spanish America. For these processes, the port cities were of outstanding significance, echoing prominently the search for alternatives to European colonization and its promotion of caste societies that extended to the Netherlands Antilles. In fact, Simón Bolívar counted two high-ranking officers from Curaçao among his patriotic army; the admiral and businessman Luis Brion, and the general and sailor Manuel Piar. Their quite different backgrounds and the fact that they both belong to Venezuela’s national pantheon of liberation heroes indicate how several social strata of Curaçaoan society, familiar with the maritime contraband routes and clandestine networks in many different places, were actively involved in this historical scenario. Manuel Piar (1777–1817) exerts a particular influence on popular culture in Venezuela today. I will be arguing that his involvement is denied in the novels of those Curaçaoan writers of the 1980s who deal with Latin American independence, in contrast to the detailed attention paid to it in certain narratives of the same decade from Venezuela and Colombia. The past hundred years constitute the time-frame within which professional writing by Surinamese and Curaçaoan authors began to take hold, develop, and mature. In these writings, the search for alternatives to colonial models proceeded along a less contentious route, and this process accelerated after World War II when modern political institutions finally became established. One decisive matter was the introduction of democratic parties, which provoked a still-ongoing debate on the question of the creole vernaculars, Sranan (in Suriname) and Papiamentu (in Curaçao and Bonaire). According to linguistic research,12 both are creole languages 12

Efraim Frank Martinus, The Kiss of a Slave: Papiamentu’s West-African Connections (Curaçao: De Curaçaosche Courant, 1997); Efraim Frank Martinus is the pseudonym of Frank Martinus Arion. See also Eithne B. Carlin & Jacques Arends, ed. Atlas of the Languages of Suriname (Leiden: K I T L V , 2002).

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‘born’ in the South Atlantic, and especially Papiamentu has a considerable African-Portuguese background. To politicize the relevance of these languages, Albert Helman from Suriname and the Antillean Frank Martinus Arion transpose this question of the linguistic, historical roots onto the level of utopian proposals for the future political development of their respective nation. The relevance of the Rerum per octennium returns in recent historical research in Brazil as well as in recent novels by Brazilian and Angolan authors who revisit the South Atlantic past to relate the so-called ‘Dutch period’ to the local slave viewpoint. Pepetela, Alberto Mussa, and José Eduardo Agualusa variously stress the importance of understanding global realities, calling into question traditional assumptions about specific urban hierarchies in Luanda and Rio de Janeiro. Arion adds to this argument with his most recent book, on Philadelphia and the role of St. Eustatius in the Caribbean, the international playing-field for politics at the end of the eighteenth century. In outlining these historical settings since the seventeenth century, my readings will draw on scholarly research inspired by the Annales School in France. This means that I shall be availing myself of the findings of various disciplines in order to focus on long-term continuities in historical mentalities. One of my primary sources is Ángel Rama’s study The Lettered City, a basic reference work.13 Rama’s book, building on the methodology of Fernand Braudel, links the colonial and republican urban cultures in Latin America so convincingly that one even speaks of the ‘Rama effect’.14 Rama was an ardent reader of studies on urbanization and transformed their general characteristics into a pattern that took the colonial ‘ballast’ of Latin America seriously into account. In this context, Rama refers only once to the role of the Atlantic port cities, although he considers the omnipresence of African languages in the New World to be self-evident.15 For the subject of my study, it is important to extend Rama’s notion of the ‘lettered’ city as guarantor of developmental continuity to the Atlantic 13

The first edition was in Spanish, La ciudad letrada (Hanover: Ediciones del Norte, 1984). I will be quoting from the English translation: Ángel Rama, The Lettered City, tr. & intro. John Charles Chasteen (1984; Durham N C : Duke U P , 1996). 14 Mabel Moraña, ed. Ángel Rama y los estudios latinoamericanos (Pittsburgh P A : Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 1997). 15 Ángel Rama, The Lettered City, 68, 32.

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port cities of Mauritsstad–Recife, Paramaribo, Willemstad, Rio de Janeiro, Luanda, Philadelphia, and Orangestad. To this end, I will also be making reference to my second primary source, the already classic study O trato dos viventes (Trade in Human Beings) by the Brazilian historian Luíz Felipe de Alencastro.16 As Alencastro explained in an interview, he was influenced considerably in his intellectual development in France by historians such as Georges Duby, Philippe Ariès, Le Roy Ladurie and Frédéric Mauro, all of whom formed part of the Annales school.17 Alencastro’s elaboration of the constitutive bond between Brazil and the regions of Angola and Congo in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is reflected in the works of fiction under review in the present book. Such a concentration on long-term continuities supports his argument that the formation of Brazil in the South Atlantic expressed a need to shift the focus away from the traditional bonds with European countries toward the notion of interconnections with more complex dynamics in past and present. This shift also applies to the concerns of recent literary works in Angola, Brazil, Suriname, and Curaçao. Their content will thus be set out against the background of the representation of this historical framework, in order for us to appreciate properly the import of current narrative responses to South Atlantic history. The South Atlantic is a Black Atlantic, of course, and signifies a life-or-death struggle. Its history starts with river- and sea-scenes such as those described in Arion’s De deserteurs, which function as transpositions, as it were, of the engravings of maritime scenes and river landscapes by Frans Post in early modern history. The mathematical rigour and calculated informality of Post’s style stand in great contrast to Arion’s approach of depicting scenes on board ship with carnivalesque exhilaration yet with a constant undertone of danger and mortality. It is this playful, but ultimately dramatic response to history that also characterizes the paintings by Post’s present-day Antillean equivalent, José Maria Capricorne, whose Brasiliana series draws on his ex16

Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, O trato dos viventes: Formação do Brasil no Atlântico Sul, séculos X V I e X V I I (Rio de Janeiro: Companhia das Letras, 2000). This book is currently being translated into English by H. Sabrina Gledhill from the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin. 17 Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, “Luiz Felipe de Alencastro,” in Conversas com Historiadores Brasileiros, ed. José Geraldo Vinci de Moraes & José Márcio Rêgo (São Paulo: Ed. 34, 2002): 239–61.

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periences as a black Antillean living in Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s, a decade of great expectations for Brazil’s ‘progresso’.18 Dutch-related representations of modernity from a South Atlantic perspective thus involve the subversive questioning of contemporary cultural hierarchies in historical research and literary fiction as discussed in the present book. This crucially entails providing an account of the dynamic behind the ascendancy of the Atlantic port cities related to slavery and mercantile logistics as well as remaining alert to the continued presence of colonial historical processes within the provocative arguments mounted by narrative works and visual art in our own time.

¹º

18

See, on these paintings, Ineke Phaf–Rheinberger, La Belle Caraïbe: The Art of José Maria Capricorne (Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2005).

T HE D REAM OF O RDER

1

Mauritsstad–Recife in SeventeenthCentury Brazil

T

H E V O L U M E R E R U M P E R O C T E N N I U M , published in Amsterdam in the spring of 1647, is a paradigmatic example of displaying seventeenth-century Europe’s ideas on urban modernity in the overseas colonial territories. Caspar Barlaeus (1587–1648) wrote the Latin text, while most of the illustrations are by the Haarlem painter Frans Post (1612–80). This combination of visual material and écriture, covering the period of the governorship of Count Johan Maurits van Nassau in Northeast Brazil, from 1637 to 1644, constitutes a unique account of the urban expansion of Dutch colonial history. Post’s illustrations depicting the splendour of the new city in America are of outstanding documentary value and aesthetic quality. Whitehead and Boeseman recognized this quality in their Portrait of Dutch 17th Century Brazil when examining the findings concerning the natural sciences obtained during Johan Maurits’s term in Brazil. Appointed by the West India Company, the governor hired scientists and artists to document the glory of the military conquest and colonization of this Dutch territory. The authors of A Portrait suggest that representation accomplished what the still clumsy and inexact vocabulary of the pen could not. The brush and quill of the scientifically trained draughtsman succeeded in ‘transcribing’ flora and fauna and portraying human activity with a precision not yet developed in writing:

What makes the Dutch contribution so remarkable is not just the artistic calibre of Post and Eckhout, but the fact that their artistic programme was so closely bound up with the factual or scientific one. These were truly ‘expedition’ artists, instructed like those on Captain

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THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º Cook’s voyages to record in detail and not merely to produce pleasing souvenir pictures.1

These remarks imply that the scientific value of the volume is to be found in the visual and not so much in the textual material. I will be exploring this claim by Whitehead and Boeseman in the two first chapters, starting with an analysis of Post’s pictorial idiom. Post’s Brazilian images are well known and we already encounter him on the cover of Emmer’s book on the Dutch slave trade mentioned in the introduction. It is adorned by the reproduction of one of Post’s paintings, which shows the interior of a Brazilian sugar mill with a view of the big house and accompanying chapel.2 Post is famous for his skilful depictions of the ingenio, the mills in which sugar cane was pressed on plantations in Brazil.3 While Jacob van Ruysdael and Meindert Hobbema are known for their depictions of the water mill in Holland, Post can be considered the master of the Brazilian sugar mill in seventeenth-century landscape painting. Although Post is mostly regarded as a landscape painter, he seems to have been equally interested in city planning and water management. Before his stint in Brazil, he learned his craft in Haarlem, which city in North Holland was at the centre of the most progressive projects in hydraulic engineering at that time. This specialization is discussed in the Atlas of the Dutch Water Cities,4 a collaborative study issuing from the faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Delft University. The authors inform us that the study of civil engineering began at Leiden University in 1600, at the request of Prince Maurits. He collaborated with Simon Stevin, a mathematician and specialist in surveying methods and town planning whose major work, Van den oirdening der steden, was published

1

Peter J.P. Whitehead & Martin Boeseman, A Portrait of Dutch 17th Century Brazil: Animals, Plants and People by the Artists of John Maurits van Nassau (Amsterdam, Oxford & New York: North Holland, 1989): 202. 2 This picture is reproduced in the catalogue Frans Post (1612–1688): Obra completa, by Pedro & Bia Corrêa do Lago (Recife: Capivari, 2006), no. 58: 214–15. 3 León Krempel, ed. Frans Post (1612–1689): Painter of Paradise Lost (Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2006): 80–81, 98–103, 112–13, 126–27. 4 Fransje Hooimeijer, Han Meyer & Arjan Nienhuis, Atlas of Dutch Water Cities (Nijmegen: Sun, 2005): 26–27.

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posthumously in 1649.5 Stevin follows the “large-scale application of grid-shaped street plans”: His urban design is based on the existing size and structure principles of agricultural engineering and urban development. The perspectives of water management, derived from the pattern of the polders, are directly applied in this city. In the centre of the grid there is a square around which public buildings are situated, and there are canals with houses alongside for wealthy citizens.6

Water management was decisive for ‘typical Dutch’ modern urbanization and the Delft atlas mentions the construction of four Dutch water cities overseas: Batavia (1619), Mauritsstad–Recife (1644), Basra (now in Iraq; 1650) and Cape Town (1652). Unique to Mauritsstad–Recife, though, is the extant iconographic record of the different stages of construction, thanks to the efforts of Post among others, as I will argue below.

Landscape Painting and Mapping To proceed from Whitehead and Boeseman’s hypothesis and undertake a comparative enquiry into the illustrations and text in Rerum per octennium (published by the foremost printing house of Willem Janszoon Blaeu in Amsterdam) is to embark on an intriguing adventure. Soon after his return from Brazil in the summer of 1644, Post must have begun preparations for the book’s engravings, of which twenty-two original drawings are preserved in the British Museum in London.7 The earliest-known of Post’s works are the so-called landverkenningen, seaboard views of Madeira, and the Canary and Cape Verdean islands. He probably sketched them on board ship while under way to Brazil in December 1636 and January 1637.8 They illustrate his itinerary at sea and did not serve as preliminary studies for his oil paintings. The latter concentrate on the achievements witnessed in Brazil; León Krempel estimates 5

Simon Stevin (1548–1620). His manuscript was edited by Isaak Beekman and published in Hendrick Stevin, Materiae politicae: Burgherlicke stoffen (Leyden: Justus Livius, 1649). 6 Fransje Hooimeijer et al., Atlas, 27–28. 7 Leonardo Dantas Silva, Dutch Brazil, vol. 1: Frans Post, The British Museum Drawings (Petrópolis: Editora Index, 2000). 8 León Krempel, Frans Post, 116–23.

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that some 150 paintings of Brazilian scenes by Post have survived, most of them executed after 1650. Post’s engravings, drawings, and oils are famous in Brazil today, and the artist is revered as Brazil’s preeminent landscape painter of the seventeenth century and as part of the national heritage; some Brazilian museums possess extraordinary collections of his work.9 Post’s style accords with general tendencies in Dutch art. In “Drawing Things Together,” Bruno Latour understands them as influenced by the general progress in the technology of optical precision.10 Latour, who is an historian of science, quotes the art historian Svetlana Alpers in arguing that this development of an outstanding visual ability supports the emergence of a descriptive genre of art in the Low Countries, an art of ‘describing’ founded in arguments that relied on scientific and technical expertise.11 Alpers’s hypothesis has posed a profound dilemma for Dutch specialists. One group identifies exclusively with the narrative representation of a humanist symbolism that refers to texts, whereas the other group adheres to the method of descriptive representation that extends knowledge of visual reality in general.12 The most salient criticism of Alpers’s theory is that it leaves the ‘art of describing’ devoid of originality and converts it into mere technical design. That notwithstanding, Alpers’s hypothesis of the ‘art of describing’ is instrumental for interpreting Post’s work.13 He began painting in Brazil 9

A special case is the Ricardo Brennard Institute in Recife, inaugurated in the fall of

2002. The Institute owns a considerable collection of Post’s paintings, published in the

catalogue Frans Post e o Brasil Holandês na Coleção do Instituto Ricardo Brennard, ed. Bea Corrêa do Lago (Recife: Capivara, 2003). 10 Bruno Latour, “Drawing Things Together,” in Representation in Scientific Practice, ed. Michael Lynch & Steve Woolgar (Cambridge M A & London: M I T Press, 1988): 30. 11 Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (1983; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989). 12 Thijs Weststeijn, “Schilderkunst als ‘zuster van de bespiegelende Wijsbegeerte’: De theoretische Status van het afbeelden van de zichtbare wereld in Samuel van Hoogstratens Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst,” De zeventiende eeuw: Cultuur in de Nederlanden in interdisciplinair perspectief 18.2 (2002): 184–85. 13 Thanks to a suggestion by Hanns Zischler, I found the book The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge U P , 1996), written by Timon Screech. This author refers to Alpers for the notion of the precise Dutch gaze, and describes its tremendous popularity in eighteenth-century Japan.

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among architects, physicians, other painters, geographers, biologists, astronomers, and cartographers.14 This entourage around Johan Maurits was expected to legitimize the claim of European preeminence by promoting an impression of exact knowledge of the New World via iconographic evidence. Nothing is documented about Post’s formal training, but his style corresponds to the Dutch tradition of genre painting, which underwent a process of rapid specialization. His birthplace, Haarlem, was even known for its branch of the St. Lucas guild, established as early as 1590. The art scene here profited considerably from the migration of Southern artists to the North due to the war. Its seascapes, landscapes, and still-lifes were much in demand on the rapidly expanding market.15 This market crossed with a growing interest in mapping on the part of publishing houses. Blaeu’s printing house in Amsterdam became a leading outlet for these advances in visual representation. It made propaganda with a series of maps and descriptions of all the coasts and harbours of the west, north and east seas, which were conceived as guides for collecting information about far-away, unknown places.16 The costly volume with Post’s engravings was a highlight of Blaeu’s catalogue. Ton Harmsen suggests that this volume might even have been commissioned by Blaeu himself,17 whereas other sources claim that Johan Maurits funded it, as he did for the twenty volumes of the Historia naturalis Brasiliae (1648) by Wil-

14

Apart from Post, Albert Eckhout (1610–64) is the best-known painter. Whitehead and Boeseman mention others: Franciscus Plante (poet, physician, latinist); Georg Marcgraf (astronomer, cartographer and naturalist); Willem Piso (physician and naturalist); Willem van Milaenen (physician); Elias Herckmans (humanist); Cornelis Bastianszoon Golijath and Johannes Vingboons (cartographers); Gaspar Schmalkalden and Zacharias Wagener (draughtsmen); Pieter Coninxloo, Anthony de Later, Jacob Pauwelsen, Paulus Anwaarts (glass artisanship). 15 Maarten Prak, “Guilds and the Development of the Art Market during the Dutch Golden Age,” Simiolus 30.3–4 (2003): 236–51. 16 Johannes Keuning, Willem Janszoon Blaeu: A Biography and History of his Work as a Cartographer and Publisher, rev. & ed. Marijke Donkersloot–de Vrij (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1973). 17 Ton Harmsen, “Barlaeus’s Description of the Dutch Colony in Brazil,” in Travel Fact and Travel Fiction, ed. Zweder von Martels (Leiden, New York & Cologne: E.J. Brill, 1994): 163–64. Barlaeus had, of course, been familiar with Blaeu’s firm since at least 1632, when his inaugural lecture was published there. Other publications followed thereafter. See Keuning, Willem Janszoon Blaeu, 35–37.

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helm Piso and Georg Marcgraf, the most frequently consulted source for the study of the natural history of Brazil until the nineteenth century.18 The scientific and technological precision of Post’s graphic reproductions recalls Alpers’s discussion of the art of describing. Jonathan Israel adds to her argument by proclaiming the Dutch as “architects of culture” responding to the emergence of a mechanistic world-view “whereby all worldly reality is reducible to terms of extension, mass, and movement which can be expressed mathematically.”19 This mathematical scrutiny was a result of the influence of Cartesian methods together with the explosive development of lenses, loupes, glasses, and microscope technology. Even when they did not use them, painters were highly attentive to the meticulous descriptio of every visible element. Alpers consequently observes a new attitude in recording land and the graphic mode of inscribing it on a surface. In her view, an entire genre of landscape paintings is rooted in habits of mapping. As an example she refers to a 1603 drawing of the dunes near Haarlem by Hendrick Goltzius to illustrate the transformation of a purely cartographic method into a method of landscape representation: What is significant here is that the conventions are like those of some contemporary maps. The artist acknowledges and accepts the working surface – the two-dimensional surface of the page to be worked on. In this drawing, as in the entire tradition of panoramic landscapes that follows, surface and extent are emphasized at the expense of volume and solidity. We note that lack of the usual framing devices familiar in landscape representations which serve to place us and lead us in, so to speak, to the space. We look on from what is normally (and somewhat misleadingly) referred to as a bird’s-eye view – a phrase that describes not a real viewer’s or artist’s position but rather the manner in which the surface of the earth has been transformed onto a flat, two-dimensional surface. It does not suppose a located viewer. And despite the tiny figures just visible at the bottom edge, this landscape can virtually be said to be without people.20

18

Georg Marcgravius & Guilielmi Pisonis, Historia naturalis Brasiliae (Lugduni Batavorum, 1648). 19 Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995): 568, 583. 20 Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing, 139–40.

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These words echo Latour’s “drawing things together” or converting the land into a mechanical image and object of permanent simulation. Ann Jensen Adams relates this approach to the water management around Amsterdam and Haarlem at that time.21 Recalling Dutch efforts to reclaim land from the sea, a commercial enterprise, she maintains that the concluding negotiations on the Peace of Westphalia around 1648 are strongly reflected in such paintings: […] the visual dramatization of the landscape and its sense of history must also have been reassuring to a citizenry forging new political institutions and to a population constituted by a large number of immigrants. It visually gave this population a sense of stability through a fabricated communal history in the land.22

The dramatization of the landscape thus provides an imagined relationship with a communal history through landscape painting. Walter Melion summarizes Karel van Mander’s thoughts on landscape in his Schilderboek (Book of Painting), the standard work for genre painting in the guilds, first published in Haarlem in 1604: Recalling the earlier discussion of history, Van Mander argues that the most important element of landscape is the view in ‘t verschieten, ‘into the distance’, which impels the beholder to enter the image. The inviting distance liberates the eyes, propelling them into depth and facilitating the oblivious crossing of the image’s representational threshold. At its farthest reach the distance obscures the delimiting horizon, merging earth and air to imply yet greater extension. See the forms of the distant landscape flow into the sky and seem to melt into the air, standing mountains seem to be clouds in motion, while from either side of the panel, fields, ditches, and furrows, whatever we see, recedes and converges, narrowing like the tiles of a pavement. Take note of this and let it not oppress you, for it will extend your backgrounds into the distance.23

21

Ann Jensen Adams, “Competing Communities in the ‘Great Bog of Europe’: Identity and Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Painting,” in Landscape and Power, ed. W.J.T. Mitchell (Chicago: U of Chicago P , 1994): 35–76. 22 Ann Jensen Adams, “Competing Communities,” 65. 23 Walter S. Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck (Chicago: U of Chicago P , 1991): 12.

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The view ‘into the distance’ is introduced in the first volume of the Schilderboek, which consists of an instructive compendium accompanied with verses, Het leergedicht (The didactic poem). Van Mander writes that the painter lives in town and goes outside its city gates in the early morning: And come let us early open the gate and while away the time together to lighten our spirit and see the beauty that is there outside.24

Van Mander’s is the traditional Flemish landscape according to the Italian model, in which trees, plants, mountains, and rivers must be grouped in a certain order. Although he distinguishes clearly between urban images (historien) mediated allegorically via mythological figures (Rome as Prometheus) on the one hand and, on the other hand, urban views of country landscapes, his emphasis is on the cultivated décor of nature. Post certainly knew van Mander’s work, because he had been an influential personality and “long-time Haarlemmer.”25 In Post’s time, meanwhile, city views became an autonomous genre of painting as the outcome of “a classic example of the transformation we find often in Dutch art from a graphic medium to the more expensive medium of paint.”26 Alpers mentions that Blaeu completed an ambitious project to publish the first atlas of all Netherlandish cities, now divided between north and south to commemorate the political division confirmed by the Treaty of Münster a year later.27 This coincided with a new burst of artistic interest in cities, and may well have been a decisive influence on some of Post’s works over the next few years, as we will see below. 24

“En comt / laet ons vroech met ’t poort onsluyten / T’samen wat tijdt corten / om s’ gheests verlichten / en gaen sien de schoonheyt / die daer is buyten.” My translation from “Van het landschap: Von der Landschaft,” in Das Lehrgedicht des Karel van Mander, ed. & comments by Dr R. Hoecker (1618; The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1916): 197. Van Mander lived from 1548 until 1608. 25 See, for van Mander and Haarlem, Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570–1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge U P , 2001): 60–67. 26 Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing, 152. 27 Joan Blaue, Toonneel der steden van de vereenighde Nederlanden, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Blaeu, 1649).

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The Construction of Mauritsstad–Recife Thanks to Whitehead and Boeseman’s study, we are very well informed about Post’s interests in animals and plants in Brazil.28 Although the authors do not go into any great depth with regard to the ethnographic details they mention, they are highly informative about Post’s views on Mauritsstad–Recife, the city of residence for the artists and scientists who accompanied the count.29 Mauritsstad was the newly-built urban settlement on the island of Antônio Vaz facing Recife; its significance is made clear by the illustrations in Rerum per octennium, in which the special attention paid to Mauritsstad–Recife results, first of all, in the inclusion of two town maps of Mauritsstad, while Post contributes two engravings of Johan Maurits’s palaces there – the Vrijburg and the Boa Vista – as well as a panoptical view of Mauritsstad–Recife as seen from the cliffs. The design for Post’s depictions also appear in the British Museum drawings, and I have found at least five other other images revealing Post’s lively interest in the construction of Mauritsstad. I will therefore comment on Post’s documentation of constructing this new city in America through the available information in order to cast light on his importance as a painter of the urban scene. Post first paints Antônio Vaz in oils during his stay in Brazil as a marshy territory with little vegetation (fig. 1).30 Forts Ernest and Wilhelm Frederick are situated on the horizon, with Recife tucked away behind them and evident only to viewers who already know of its existence.

28 See also Dante Martins Teixeira, “Nature in Frans Post’s paintings of the New World,” in Frans Post, ed. León Krempel, 45–52. 29 “For natural history and ethnology, as well as for architecture and topography, Post’s works are an invaluable documentary source. For certain subjects, no counterpart exists in the material so far studied. Although his paintings are often of moderate or even large size, Post was virtually a miniaturist in scale and his eye for detail was quite meticulous. One can judge the importance that detail had for him by the lengths to which he would go, even in figures of a centimetre or so. Very often a lens is required to appreciate the amount of fine detail, which he thought necessary. We conclude, therefore, that the animals, plants and people in his pictures have a documentary value, not only to show what he observed, but in the case of ethnology to record things which are perhaps not found in Eckhout’s works or other sources”; Whitehead & Boeseman, A Portrait, 186–87. 30 Fig. 1. Antônio Vaz from a Distance (signed and dated 1640), Ricardo Brennand Institute in Recife, oil on canvas (66 x 88 cm), in Krempel, Frans Post, 68–69.

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The 1653 canvas (fig. 2) thirteen years later also depicts Antônio Vaz, but now the perspective has shifted: it spotlights the newly built Mauritsstad, with a clear view of Recife across the Beberibe River.31 The third image (fig. 3) is a small, undated drawing reproducing the same scene as in figure 2, but with one slight difference: a bridge has now been built between Mauritsstad and Recife.32 The next group of canvases to be executed were panoramic oil paintings hanging in Orangenburg, a palace in Brandenburg, northeast of Berlin. The first (fig. 4) reproduces a view of Antônio Vaz, displaced to the left in comparison with the 1640 painting, and with the emphasis now on water management. The focus on the dike leading to Mauritsstad – the city on the horizon – indicates that Post is here indicating a major achievement and depicting the genius of hydraulic engineering in draining the swamp.33 The other canvas (fig. 5) is a splendid image of Mauritsstad– Recife as seen from the cliffs,34 with the bridge and Vrijburg palace (including its lush botanical garden) as the apotheosis of the count’s benevolent government. These paintings at Orangenburg are unsigned and undated and were first registered in 1699. Given the close contacts between Johan Maurits and the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm, it is assumed that they came to Brandenburg as part of the latter’s collection.35 31

Fig. 2. Mauritsstad with View on Recife (signed and dated 29.8. 1653), private collection São Paulo, oil on wood (48, 2 x 83, 6 cm), in Krempel, Frans Post, 82–82. 32 Fig. 3. Mauritsstad with View on Recife (no date), in Whitehead & Boeseman, A Portrait, 334. 33 Fig. 4. Mauritsstad from the Dike to Afogados (ca. 1650), Museum Orangenburg, Preussischer Kulturbesitz (144 x 200 cm), in Pedro & Bia Corrêa do Lago, Frans Post (1612–1680): Obra completa (Recife: Capivara, 2006): 342. 34 Fig. 5. Mauritsstad–Recife from the Cliff (ca. 1650), Museum Orangenburg, Preussischer Kulturbesitz (143 x 217 cm), in Herz, “Frans Post zugeschrieben,” 187–88, and in Lago, Frans Post, 343. 35 Silke Herz, “Johann Moritz van Nassau–Siegen,” in Onder den Oranje Boom: Niederländische Kunst und Kultur im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert an deutschen Fürstenhöfen (Munich: Hirmer, 1999): 155–57, 185–96. Johan Maurits and Friedrich Wilhelm knew each other ever since their military service in the Netherlands. In 1650, when Friedrich Wilhelm moved with his wife Henriette of Orange Nassau from Cleves to Brandenburg, he left Johan Maurits there as his stadtholder and gifted Botzow to his wife, who changed to “Orangenburg” the name of the palace and its gardens, designed under her supervision. It is supposed that the canvases were painted around 1650: i.e. after the Peace of Westphalia and the upsurge in nationalist dedication to depicting the flourishing cities of the Netherlands.

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There is an ongoing debate about the attribution of the last three works to Frans Post. Krempel doubts the authenticity of the drawing because no other such pastel drawings have been conserved and identified as the work of Post, and its architecture seems too vaguely sketched. Krempel also thinks that the Brandenburg paintings are problematic, especially figure 4, but does not exclude the possibility that Post collaborated with another artist. Despite these objections, I shall continue to consider Post as the originator of these works, because he is the foremost painter in that period to articulate a view of an overseas Dutch settlement featuring Mauritsstad– Recife.36 Post’s 1640 and 1653 works (figs. 1 & 2) are reproduced in Mostra de redescobrimento: O olhar distante / The Distant View, a bilingual catalogue published for the exhibition on the “New Discovery” of Brazil in 2000. In his introduction, Nélson Aguilar, the curator, comments on the role played by Post in the event: From a country that reinvented landscape painting in the seventeenth century and advanced commercial capitalism, imposing mercantilism on faraway lands, came Frans Post, in the 1637 entourage of Prince Maurits of Nassau to Pernambuco.37

In publicizing this exhibition, catalogues and prospects were illustrated with fragments of Post’s works as though they were representative of Brazil as a whole. Post is hailed as the ‘inventor’ of the imaginary of the American landscape. It also redounds to his credit that back in Holland he continued to identify himself with Brazil in his paintings until his death.38 In an article about Post and his times, Pedro Corrêa de Lago develops a fourfold periodization of the artist’s oeuvre. The first stage is the most spontaneous and original and covers the – supposedly – eighteen canvases 36

I have seen all the paintings in the original; according to a communication by Krempel from 4 July 2006, the drawing is lost. See also, on the Brandenburg paintings, Pedro & Bia Corrêa, Frans Post, 342–43. 37 Nélson Aguilar, ed. Mostra de redescobrimento: O olhar distante / The Distant View (São Paulo: Associação Brasil 500 Anos Visuáis, 2000): 32 (English text corrected). 38 Luis Pérez Oramas, “Paisagem e fundação: Frans Post e a invenção da paisagem americana,” in X X I V Bienal de São Paulo: Núcleo histórico: antropofagia e histórias de canibalismos, ed. Paulo Herkenhoff (São Paulo: Fundação do Bienal, 1998): 102–10.

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realized in the seven years Post resided in Brazil. The second stage, from 1644 to 1659, covers Post’s return to Haarlem; here his production is characterized by a realistic, documentary style that may well be indebted to his diaries, which are full of notes, drawings, and designs. The impressive quality of his work continues through the third phase, from 1659 to 1669, when Post attained artistic maturity and technical mastery and enjoyed the consequent financial success. At the same time, however, Post’s work sacrificed some degree of the precision hitherto demonstrated, and he now tended to adapt his work to the decorative taste of that specific historical moment. The quality of his work clearly declined in the fourth and final period, from 1670 until his death, and many pieces were undated and unsigned. Is it a coincidence that Post lost his energy in the same year that the definitive peace treaty between Portugal and the Low Countries was signed on 30 July in The Hague?39 Or is it due to the death of his brother Pieter in that same year? There might be a less speculative answer to this question. Krempel mentions that genre painters often stopped signing their works when they had achieved sufficient popularity to be recognized as authentic without any further formal indications. This would apply to Post – his work boomed in the 1650s; in fact, his paintings fetched much higher prices than did those of many other landscape painters of the time. Lago goes into some detail on Post’s 1653 city painting and the subsequent third phase, during which he painted at least twenty views of Olinda in ruins: [this city view is] indisputably one of Post’s most important known surviving paintings, and one of his most attractive and provocative compositions. In light of the probable satisfaction the artist must have felt with the success of this painting, done less than ten years after his return, a question can be raised concerning the non-existence of similar compositions showing the present city of Recife, where the painter probably spent a good part of his seven years in Brazil. Why did he not paint more picturess of this city, which was so familiar to him? Why was Olinda painted so many times and Recife only this once? Strangely enough, this is the only painting he did in Holland depicting the city of Recife, and it can be assumed that it was painted at the request of some official of the West India Company, who wanted from Post the

39

Evaldo Cabral de Mello, O Negócio de Brasil: Portugal, os Países Baixos e o Nordeste, 1641–1669 (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1998): 147.

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evocation of a particular episode that had occurred during the time they had both been in what was then called the city of Maurícia. It has even been suggested that one of the figures at the centre of the composition could be Maurits van Nassau himself, perhaps on a special occasion forgotten by history but familiar to Post. Apart from depicting the city of Recife, the painting must surely be showing some specific event. Otherwise, how can one explain Post’s omission of the bridge between the Island of Antônio Vaz and Recife (which would normally have been clearly visible at the centre of the composition, linking the islands), whose construction had already been completed by the time Post left the Brazilian Northeast? A likely explanation is that Post wanted to reproduce some particular event that had occurred before the construction of the bridge.40

Obviously, Lago is not referring here to the paintings of Mauritsstad– Recife in Brandenburg, but his observation of the paradox between Olinda and Mauritsstad is right on target. The views of Mauritsstad–Recife belong to the second period when Post was at the peak of his documentary style.41 Recife had been the harbour city of the nearby Portuguese stronghold of Olinda until the Dutch sacked it in 1631. When he arrived in January 1637, Johan Maurits was eager to build another urban centre that would demonstrate his magnificence, in contrast to the abject ruins of Olinda. Recife’s territory on the cliffs was too small and too populous to serve this objective, so the count had another settlement built on the nearby island of Antônio Vaz. The frequency with which Post painted views of Olinda in ruins spills over into the third period after 1659 when Dutch triumph in Europe over Iberian occupation was at its height – something that provided more fuel to the artistic imagination than merely depicting a Dutch city under construction overseas. The maps included in Barlaeus’s book are thus instructive of the planning for and various stages in the construction of Mauritsstad, and it is safe to assume that Post had access to them before the volume was published.42 One of the maps was made by the cartographer Johannes Ving40

Pedro Corrêa de Lago, “Frans Post e seu tempo / Frans Post and his time,” in Mostra do redescobrimento, 93 (English text corrected). 41 Krempel even dates the Brandenburg paintings at 1644: i.e. as painted immediately after Post’s return to Haarlem. 42 The 1639 map by Johannes Vingboons (No. 33) shows Johan Maurits’s residence on Antônio Vaz with its gardens, monastery, and well, while in Recife one can distinguish a church, ecclesiastical administrative buildings, and an armory and arsenal.

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boons, who, according to Kees Zandvliet, was in Brazil and had been an employee of Frans Post.43 In fact, the corresponding maps of Mauritsstad under construction are distinguishable in Post’s five city views. The 1640 painting of Antônio Vaz (fig. 1), featuring the forts, convent, and marshy environs, matches the situation on the 1637 map, while the painting of 1653 (fig. 2), portraying local storehouses with Dutch façades, echoes the detail in Vingboons’s 1639 map. Conspicuously visible is a wooden structure, possibly serving as a repoussoir device. In the drawing (fig. 3) this wooden structure is replaced by a walled stone portal and staircase leading down to the beach and giving onto the bridge. Post might well have fashioned this drawing just before returning to the Netherlands in 1644, after the bridge had been completed and the official inauguration had taken place. Later on, in Haarlem, this drawing may also have been the inspiration for his 1653 painting – but now without the bridge and concentrating instead on the preparations for its construction. Further, Post’s paintings at Orangenburg show the impressive achievements of water management, such as indicated on the 1644 map by C.B. Golijath. In Mauritsstad from the Dike Leading to Afogados (fig. 4), the large dike and parallel road from Afogados to town directs the eye to the foreground. On the left side, the Dutch are disembarking from their small boats along the bank of the Capibaribe River. They approach the city, fortified with palisades, on horseback. The silhouette of the houses on the horizon is not marked by a repoussoir, which in the 1640 and 1653 paintings was effectuated by indigenous trees. What is featured instead is an urban centre, with a cultivated garden profile of palm trees on the horizon, built on an area of reclaimed land.44 Another map, by C.B. Golijath (1644; No. 40), underscores the perfection of the drainage constructions and depicts three bridges: one from Recife to Mauritsstad, another from Mauritsstad to the mainland, and a bridge and 2.5-long dike running from Antônio Vaz to Fort Wilhelmus. Hannedea C. van Nederveen Meerkerk describes the different stages of this urban project in her study Recife: The Rise of a 17th Century Trade City from a Cultural Historical Perspective (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1989). 43 Kees Zandvliet, “Johan Maurits and the Cartography of Dutch Brazil,” in Johan Maurits van Nassau–Siegen 1604–1679: A Humanist Prince in Europe and Brazil, ed. Ernst van den Boogaart (The Hague: Johan Maurits van Nassau Stichting, 1979), 497. 44 This garden, which surrounded the Friburgo palace, was situated between the Beberibe and Capibaribe rivers, whose banks were flooded at high tide but were dry at low tide. Land was gained by drainage in order to have sufficient space for the cultivation of bushes and herbs, vegetable beds, fruit trees, a roundel with hedges with lemons

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The second painting at Orangenburg, Mauritsstad–Recife from the Cliff (fig. 5), highlights the wonders of the Dutch water city. On the left, Recife’s harbour is filled with the masts of ships, and from there the urban profile traces a horizontal line across the bridge to Mauritsstad and lingers over its houses, the Protestant church, and the Vrijburg palace, whose whiteness and garden of palm trees catch the eye on the right side of the canvas. In this painting we can see a repoussoir consisting of low shrubs, the only possible vegetation on the arid cliff-face. These modest plants contrast sharply with the elegance of the palm trees reaching skyward next to the splendid palace and constructed urban profile. The sketch for this second Brandenburg painting can be found among the British Museum drawings, but its overall emphasis only becomes evident when one traces, through the five images, the various stages in the transformation of the marshy landscape into a ‘civilized’ urban environment. Mauritsstad comes close to being a real ‘Dutchtown‘ located on a tabula rasa – in this case, a polder landscape without context, history, or obstacles whose topography was in accordance with the wishes of its architects and builders: “Since there was nothing, everything was possible.”45

¹º

in a row, a pergola with vines, avenues lined with palm trees, a banana plantation, a pergola with grenades and citrus fruit, fishponds, green zones, an enclosure with poultry and wildfowl, an islet with rabbits and another with swans, a stone wall, a place for bleaching, slave cabins, a house for the Dutch gardener, etc. See Wilhelm Diedenhofen, “Johan Maurits and his Gardens,” in Johan Maurits van Nassau–Siegen, ed. Ernst van den Boogaart, 197–200. The detailed study of Brazilian vegetation and fauna in Post’s work reveals his familiarity with the Dutch gardening tradition, which would also play such an influential role in the work of Maria Sybille Merian and Linnaeus following their stay in the Low Countries. See Staffan Müller–Wille, “Joining Lapland and the Topinambes in Flourishing Holland: Center and Periphery in Linnaean Botany,” Science in Context 16.4 (2002): 461–88, and David Freedberg, “Ciência, Comércio e Arte,” in O Brasil e os Holandeses, 1630–1654, ed. Paulo Herkenhoff (Río de Janeiro: Sextante Artes, 1999): 192–217. 45 Michelle Provoost, Bernard Colenbrander & Floris Alkemade, “The Dilemmas of the Polder Town,” in Dutchtown: A City Centre; Design by OMA / Rem Koolhaas (Rotterdam: N A I , 1999): 12–13.

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Post and City Views in Latin America There is no seventeenth-century equivalent to Post’s American city views. In one of the first studies on Urban Images of the Hispanic World 1493– 1793, Richard Kagan touches only briefly on Post’s work, since he limits his research to the Hispanic realm.46 More information on this point is available in Ciencia y técnica en la metropolización de América by José Sala Catalá, who compares the role of science and technology in Mexico and Lima with what he calls ‘Dutch’ Olinda. Moreover, he detects an essential contrast between the Dutch and the Spanish patterns of colonization: Between 1639 and 1645 an ephemeral Dutch attempt was made to create a new type of colonial domination in America. Although very short, the story of this experiment attracts the attention as a vivid contrast with the Spanish efforts, a contrast from the point of view of mere urbanisation as well as of the use that was made of science and technology for urban development.47

The allegorical designation of the Spanish New World viceroyalties associates Mexico, for example, with Guadalupe (Guadelupe) and Lima with the Star (Estrella). Such narrative images have an ornamental function and are reproduced in book illustrations or on folding screens or maps. In the case of ‘Dutch’ Olinda, however, the approach is completely different, thanks to Post’s paintings, which set off the settlement negatively against Mauritsstad–Recife. About the construction of the latter’s main bridge, Sala Catalá reveals: At the close of 1642 the 15 pillars of the bridge at the Mauritsstad end were finished: surprisingly, however, the constructor, the Portuguese 46

Richard Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493–1793 (New Haven

C T & London: Yale U P , 2000). In 1989, Kagan was the first to publish a complete

collection of the urban-landscape drawings made in Spain by Anton van den Wyngaerde (c.1510–71), a Flemish painter in the service of Philip I I . 47 “Entre 1639 y 1645 tuvo lugar un efímero intento holandés de crear un nuevo tipo de capitalidad colonial en América. A pesar de su corta duración, el relato de esta historia viene al caso como vivo contraste con los esfuerzos hispánicos en igual sentido; contraste tanto desde el punto de vista meramente urbanístico como en el uso que se hizo de las ciencias y las tecnologías, aplicado al desarrollo urbano”; José Sala Catalá, Ciencia y técnica en la metropolización de América (Madrid: C S I C , 1994): 289. My translation.

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Baltasar de Fonseca, did not know how to proceed with the work when he came to the deepest part of the river. Nassau recommenced construction in 1643 at his own expense, installing ten pillars in the middle section, built of wood instead of the stone originally projected. By April 1644 the bridge was ready. The count had an inscription placed at the entrance to the bridge at the end leading to his city, which read: Fundabat me illustrissimus Heros Ioannes Mauricius Commes Nassaviae, Ex. Dum. In Brasiliae Terra Supremum principatum, imperiumque tenere.48

This inscription points up the paradox of Olinda in ruins and the triumph of Mauritsstad, inaugurated on 23 December 1639, as the ultimate expression of Johan Maurits’s belligerent stance towards the Universal Catholic Monarchy. Mauritsstad had to act as a counterpoise to Olinda so that, along with Recife, it would radiate the image of an “urbanized paradise,” utopian model of modernity, and ideal Dutch “water city” while being at the same time “eminently practical in its conception.”49 With this in mind, it is worthwhile revisiting Whitehead and Boeseman’s observations about the ethnological value of Post’s human figures, which are also addressed in other studies. In Blacks in the Dutch World, Allison Blakeley argues that Post’s canvases “are some of the most memorable in all of Dutch art. Human figures on these appear only as indistinct miniatures, but still convey, like Eckhout’s, a positive, realistic tone.”50 This positive realistic tone is crucial for Post’s 1640 painting (fig. 1), in which three people are represented: a mestiza, a black man, and a white man. Not only do they stand prominently in the foreground, but their presence is doubled through their reflection in the water at the side of the road. 48

“A fines de 1642 se habían terminado los 15 pilares del lado de Mauricia: pero sorprendentemente el constructor, el maestro portugués Baltasar de Fonseca, no supo hacer avanzar la obra cuando llegó al lecho profundo. Nassau lo reanudaba en 1643 a su costa, sustituyendo diez pilares centrales proyectados en piedra por otros de madera. Hacia abril de 1644 se había terminado. El conde, del lado de su ciudad, colocó a la entrada una inscripción: Fundabat me illustrissimus Heros Ioannes Mauricius Commes Nassaviae, Ex. Dum. In Brasiliae Terra Supremum principatum, imperiumque teneret”; José Sala Catalá, Ciencia y técnica, 315. My translation of the Latin text: “The most famous and heroic Count, his Excellence Johan Maurits of Nassau, built me when he held the highest civil and military office in Brazil.” 49 José Sala Catalá, Ciencia y técnica, 313. 50 Allison Blakeley, Blacks in the Dutch World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern Society (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana U P , 1993): 121.

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The mestiza – the American-born woman of obvious Amerindian, African, and European descent – and the black man are carrying burdens on their heads, signifying their servile status. In contrast to the mestiza, the black man occupies a lower social position because he is half-naked and avoids eye contact with the white man. He belongs to the same group, however, and is smoking a Dutch clay pipe.51 The white man is fully dressed, wearing a hat and holding a cane in his hand, and standing with his back to the observer in the foreground, with the woman facing him. The social difference among the figures is not so great if we take into account the fact that they all are barefoot. Shoes were a status symbol in Africa as well as America, where slaves were forbidden to wear or to possess them. This 1640 canvas (fig. 1) is certainly the first-known oil in which these three ethnicities stand together in the American landscape.52 Once again, in the 1653 painting (fig. 2), in Krempel’s words the “Mona Lisa” among Post’s paintings, different ethnic representations are positioned with relative equality. They are gathering in the newly built Mauritsstad on Antônio Vaz. The various groups are arranged according to their cultural allegiance and framed in a circle around the central figure: is Count Johan Maurits instructing his councillors on how to realize the bridge project? In contrast to these two paintings, the human miniatures on the drawing (fig. 3) are just an afterthought to the technical details of the bridge. But then, surprisingly, both Orangenburg canvases depict fully developed social stratification. White Europeans, with riding boots, on horseback symbolize a higher social status in comparison with the figures of African descent, who walk barefoot, carrying baskets on their head or caring for the animals. The view of Mauritsstad–Recife from the Cliff (fig. 5) summarizes all these important details. With his back to the viewer, the horseman, mounted on his ‘throne’ high above the Afro-Brazilians, looks out over the impressive panorama of the urban horizon. It has been argued repeatedly that the artists in Johan Maurits’s court did not criticize slavery openly, and Herkenhoff asserts that Post’s slave is typically just a slave (“é escravo, antes de mais nada,” 135) portrayed in

51

León Krempel, Frans Post, 68–69. Albert Eckhout, for instance, who was together with Post in Brazil, painted portraits underscoring typical individual ethnicities. 52

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the service of the Dutch.53 Those slaves, especially the women, did have any leisure time. This is important because, curiously, infra-red examination of the Orangenburg painting has revealed that Post replaced a second European on a horse at the right of his canvas with two slave women sitting and resting on their way to Recife; one of these women is smoking a Dutch clay pipe.54 This leisurely posture conforms to the view of van Mander, who praises the air of liberty as an essential feature of figures positioned in a landscape: Make your figures look relaxed / to lend them an amiable aspect. / Do not sacrifice concentration / by making your things so big / that hands or feet have to walk on the frames / or are uncomfortably depicted in distorted positions. / Because you only have limited space, / scratch them out and reposition them / according to the rules of art. / Because you are free, are you not? / so do not make your people into slaves.55

In all probability, Post was familiar with the lessons of van Mander’s leergedicht and thus followed the rules of his profession. He occupied prominent positions in the St. Lucas guild, open only to distinguished citizens, and was acquainted with Frans Hals, a former pupil of van Mander, who painted his portrait as well as that of his brother Pieter. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that Post was the only one among his fellow artists who knew slavery in Brazil at first hand. His depiction of the slaves in postures of calculated relaxation and enjoying leisure time is thus, despite his allusions to European control, remarkable.56 53

Paulo Herkenhoff, “Representação do Negro nas Indias Ocidentais,” in O Brasil e os Holandeses 1630–1654 (Rio de Janeiro: Sextante Artes, 1999): 122–59. 54 This information comes from Mechtild Most, who noted these details while restoring the paintings in Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin, before the Orangenburg Castle Museum in Brandenburg was officially opened in January 2001. See also Silke Herz, “Frans Post zugeschrieben,” in Onder den Oranje Boom: Niederländische Kunst und Kultur im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert an deutschen Fürstenhöfen (Munich: Hirmer, 1999): 187–88. 55 “Stelt u volckxken wat los / om een versoeten / Laet uwen gheest so wijdt niet zijn ontsprongen / U dinghen soo groot te maken / dat moeten in de lijsten loopen handen oft voeten / oft onbequmelijck liggen gewrongen / Om dat ghy door de plaetse zyt gedwonghen: / Vaeght uyt / en verstelt / na der Consten gaven / Ghy zyt doch vry / en maeckt u volck geen slaven”; Karel van Mander, Leergedicht, 96. My translation. 56 In this context, the later painting Slave Dance (1707–1709) by Dirk Valkenburg supports this argument. Here slave culture is central. Valkenburg painted the slaves during leisure activities on a plantation in Suriname, playing instruments and dancing.

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While his depiction of leisure time is itself astonishing, Post surprises us in another way of which Paul Gilroy and Tina Campt would certainly approve.57 Post’s last engraving included in the Rerum per octennium is a depiction of Dillenburg Castle, birthplace of Johan Maurits of Nassau (and also of William of Orange). The engraving is foregrounded with a familiar group of people: a man standing with his back to the viewer and gazing at two women with baskets on their head. This group, known from Post’s 1640 and 1650 paintings of Brazil, seems to be a transplantation to a European landscape in Dillenburg representing Siegen’s rural population. Leonardo Dantas Silva comments as follows on the extant 1645 preparatory drawing for this engraving: When it was published in the book by Gaspar Barlaeus (1647, plate 55) a gentleman with his dog and a beggar, sitting by the roadside, were added in the centre. On the right-hand side, there are figures of country folk engaged in work in the fields, a carriage with six horses, together with the respective attendants, and goats and sheep at pasture. A recommendation written in pencil requests that the engraver add a carriage with six horses, accompanied by the respective attendants.58

This is also the only drawing in the British Museum collection with annotations on necessary additions, and this simply cannot be a coincidence. The drawing is neither signed nor dated, and whether Post was responsible for the additional figures or not remains unknown, but he is certainly responsible for painting the ‘Brazilian’ group and the castle. Beyond doubt, his sensitivity to the function of representative buildings comes from his brother Pieter Post, the architect who belonged to the entourage of Johan Maurits and participated in the construction of his “Mauritshuis” at The Hague.59 Pieter was involved in most important projects in Holland Kolfin, who compares Valkenburg’s work with that of Frans Post, calls this painting truly extraordinary. See Elmer Kolfin, Van de Slavenzweep & de Muze (Leiden: K I T L V , 1997): 23–29. 57 Gilroy organized the Black Atlantic festival in Berlin, at which the presence of black German citizens was a significant issue. See the article in the catalogue by Tina M. Campt, “Schwarze deutsche Gegenerinnerung: Der Black Atlantic als gegenhistoriografische Praxis,” in Der Black Atlantic, ed. Paul Gilroy & Tina Campt (Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2004): 159–77. 58 Leonardo Dantas Silva, Dutch Brazil, 92. 59 T.H. Lundsingh Scheurleer, “The Mauritshuis as Domus Cosmographica,” in Johan Maurits van Nassau–Siegen, ed. Ernst van den Boogaart, 142–89.

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at that time.60 Hannedea van Nederveen Meerkerk underscores the interest of Frans Post in architecture by mentioning a wholly untypical painting, Glorification of Architecture, signed and dated 1661 by him.61 The utmost precision with which Post painted urban settlements in the pictures discussed in this chapter thus also argues strongly for the importance of this aspect in the artist’s work. Nederveen ends speculation concerning Pieter Post’s participation in the construction of the palaces and other buildings in Northeast Brazil by showing that there is no documentary evidence for it. Nevertheless, the influence of the mathematically calculated proportions of his brother’s ‘konstelijck’ constructions is clearly felt in Post’s oeuvre.62 ¹º

60 Alpers points to the importance of Constantijn Huygens, the secretary of stadtholder Frederik Hendrik and his main adviser on art and architecture. Huygens was involved in the planning of representative spaces and was closely connected with Pieter Post, one of the most outstanding architects at that time, who had collaborated closely with the court at The Hague since 1636. It is therefore generally assumed that Pieter Post intervened on behalf of his brother to recommend him for employment on Johan Maurits’s expedition. 61 Hannedea C. van Nederveen Meerkerk, “De architectuur bij Frans Post in cultuurhistorisch perspectief,” in Frans Post, ed. León Krempel, 29-43. 62 J.J. Terwen & K.A. Ottenheym, Pieter Post (1608–1669): Architect (Zutphen: Walburg, 1993).

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Figure 1: Frans Post, Antônio Vaz from a Distance (1640; oil on panel, 66 x 88 cm). Courtesy Institute Ricardo Brennan, Recife.

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Figure 2: Frans Post, Mauritsstad with a View of Recife (1653; oil on canvas, 48.2 x 83.6 cm). Courtesy private collection, São Paulo.

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Figure 3: Frans Post, Mauritsstad with a View of Recife (nd, drawing). Lost.

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Mauritsstad–Recife in 17th-Century Brazil

Figure 4: Frans Post, Mauritsstad from the Dike Leading to Afogados (c.1650, oil on canvas, 142 x 217 cm). Courtesy Prussian Palaces and Gardens Heritage Foundation, Potsdam.

27

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Figure 5: Frans Post, Mauritsstad–Recife from the Cliff (c.1650, oil on canvas, 143 x 217 cm). Courtesy Prussian Palaces and Gardens Heritage Foundation, Potsdam.

2

I

Amsterdam and the South Atlantic

I N N O C E N C E A B R O A D : The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570–1670, Benjamin Schmidt remarks that perhaps “no figure lent more prestige to the literary project of America than the esteemed humanist, Caspar Barlaeus, and certainly no work did more to celebrate the tropical feats of Johan Maurits than Barlaeus’s Rerum per octennium in Brasilia.”1 Schmidt goes on to characterize it as “a monumental work,” a “princely volume in every sense,” and possibly “the outstanding work overall of seventeenth-century Dutch geography.” The Rerum per octennium was published at a particularly strategic moment, a year before the Treaty of Münster was finally signed, and both Post and Barlaeus must have been well aware of the terms of the upcoming agreement. It brought peace with Spain and European-wide diplomatic recognition of the Seven United Provinces. Portugal, meanwhile, was at war with Spain, and the Brazilian case was most difficult to handle. According to the Brazilian historian Evaldo Cabral de Mello, Brazil was seen as a business deal between the various European partners, about which a final decision would only be taken in 1669 after long years of tough negotiations. The title of Mello’s book, O negócio do Brasil, is taken from a letter by the Portuguese ambassador Francisco de Sousa Coutinho, stationed in The Hague from 1643 to 1650. Mello provides information about the overall interest of the Dutch people in the question of Northeast Brazil. Investment in the West India Company during these years was open to small stockholders and was therefore closely followed on all levels of the population. This explains the publication of such anonymous pamphlets as De Brasilsche Breede-Byl (The Brazilian Broad-Axe), in which two ser1

N

Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570–1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge U P , 2001): 254–55.

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vants who have accompanied their masters to Brazil on business are discussing the current situation there.2 In this regard, Post and Barlaeus fit in with what Walter Mignolo characterizes as the “colonization of space” – the adaptation of New-World surroundings to European requirements, the result being a colonial hierarchy emboying the perfect ‘Dutch’ dream of order.3 As far as I know, the history of Dutch urban settlement in the overseas colonies has not yet been tackled from a comparative perspective.4 In stark contrast to this, historical research on the cities of the Spanish empire (but not on visual representations of these cities) is rich, providing Ángel Rama with the basis for his groundbreaking study, The Lettered City.5 The central emphasis of Rama’s book is on long-term continuities within the colonial period. Rama divides colonial influence into three spheres – the ordered city, the city of letters, and the city of protocols – that overlap in time and provide the colonizers with a base for administration and defence. The framework is first laid out in the ordered city, which obeys the “same regulating principles as the checkerboard”: unity, planning, and rigorous order reflecting a social hierarchy. […] Circular plans perhaps conveyed even more precisely than square ones the social hierarchy desired by the planners, with governing authority

2

De Brasilsche Breede-Byl; ofte t’samen-spreak, Tusschen Kees Jansz. Schott, komende uyt Brasil, en Jan Maet, Koopmans-knecht, hebbende voor desen ook in Brasil geweest, over Den Verloop in Brasil (Amsterdam: n.p., 1647). 3 Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P , 1995). 4 Hannedea van Nederveen Meerkerk suggests that the construction of Mauritsstad was an example for Zacharias Wagner, commander of the Cape colony in Africa and responsible for the construction of the fort and the city quarters of Cape Town from 1662 to 1667. See Nederveen, Frans Post, 34. 5 Rama participated in symposia with Richard Morse and Jorge Hardoy, among others. This aspect of Rama’s professional career, which I will be taking up later, is discussed by Gustavo Remedi, “Ciudad letrada: Ángel Rama y la espacialización del análisis cultural,” in Ángel Rama y los estudios latinoamericanos, ed. Mabel Moraña (Pittsburgh P A : Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 1997): 97–122. For Morse’s thoughts on important intellectual moments in his analysis of São Paulo, see Helena Maria Bousquet Bomeny & Dora Rocha Flaksman, “Uma entrevista con Richard Morse,” Estudos Históricos 2.3 (Rio de Janeiro, 1989): 77–93.

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located at the centre and the living spaces assigned to respective social strata radiating from the centre in concentric circles.6

The principles of this physical mapping and the distribution of space find their echo in the ‘lettered city’: i.e. in writing since the sixteenth century. Simultaneously, this echo succeeds in creating an autonomous space apart from imposed norms: While the lettered city operated by preference in a field of signifiers, constituting an autonomous system, the city of social realities operated in a field of people, actions, and objects provisionally isolated from the letrados’ chains of logical and grammatical signification […]. This labyrinth of signs is the work of the letrados, or collectively, the achievement of the city of letters. Only the letrados could envision an urban ideal before its realization as a city of stone and mortar, then maintain that ideal after the construction of the city, preserving their idealized vision in a constant struggle with the material modifications introduced by the daily life of the city’s ordinary inhabitants.7

Rama argues that methodical planning of the ‘city of the dream’ was carried out by absolute monarchies in the New-World empires. Their “spirit” did not stem “merely from the need to build cities, of course, although cities were its privileged settings, the artificial enclaves in which the autonomous system of symbolic knowledge could function most efficaciously.”8 Rama equally observes that this symbolic knowledge in Latin America was connected through major or minor ties with cities all over Europe; even though “Madrid, Lisbon and Seville were located above the apex of this structure, […] practically nobody ruminated that, at least in economic terms, other European cities like Genoa or Amsterdam might stand higher still.”9 City planning and water management were important to Post’s visual art, as we have already seen, and Barlaeus, too, was aware of their immediate relevance. The time he spent in Amsterdam after 1631 profoundly influenced the direction of his philosophical discourse. During this period of rapid economic expansion, a ring of canals, the grachtengordel, was constructed, and this experience of urban innovation did much to deter6 7 8 9

Ángel Rama, The Lettered City, 5. The Lettered City, 27–28. The Lettered City, 10. The Lettered City, 14.

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mine his world-view.10 It even makes Barlaeus, according to Huizinga, “in many senses one of the most complete representatives of civilization” in the Dutch seventeenth century.11 Different aspects are important for Brazilians when they study Barlaeus’s text on the history of their country. Whereas art historians study Frans Post’s work, Barlaeus’s descriptions are equally valued by historians, even though he never visited the American continent. Cláudio Brandão, commissioned by the Ministry of Education, translated the Latin text into Portuguese in 1940, and this translation was reprinted several times in a facsimile edition before finally appearing with all the original illustrations in 1980.12 Even before its translation into Portuguese, the volume served as an important source for research within Brazil. For example, it was already quoted as a reference on the lives of the AfroBrazilians in Alagoas during the first congress on Afro-Brazil in Recife in 1934.13 Moreover, José Antônio Gonsalves de Mello often borrowed from Barlaeus when writing his standard work on the Dutch occupation of Northeast Brazil,14 as did other more recent historical studies that have concentrated on the premisses of the slave trade and slavery in the colonial period, as we will see later on. However, research in Brazil does not merely copy Barlaeus’s views; rather, it questions his way of thinking. Alencastro’s O trato dos viventes explores various crucial aspects of Barlaeus’s philosophy. Of outstanding importance is his observation that the Amerindians and Africans were 10

“In Amsterdam an entirely new urban development structure was projected for the existing polder design. The ring of canals, the grachtengordel, is an integral design of a street plan and a new water system. The relationship between land restructuring, surveying, and water management forms the basis of urban design in the Netherlands. The construction of the characteristic grachtengordel was started in 1612 and completed in 1660”; Fransje Hooimeijer, Atlas, 27. 11 “In tal van opzichten een der volledigste vertegenwoordigers van de beschaving die hier geschetst wordt”; Johan Huizinga, Nederlandse beschaving, 79. 12 Gaspar Barléu, História dos feitos recentemente praticados durante oito anos no Brasil (1940; Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia & São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo , 1974). 13 Alfredo Brandão, “Os negros na historia de Alagôas,” in Estudos Afro-Brasileiros (1934; Recife: Editora Massangana, 1988): 55–91. 14 José Antônio Gonsalves de Mello, Tempo dos flamengos: Influências da ocupação holandesa na vida e na cultura do norte do Brasil, preface by Gilberto Freyre (1947; Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 2001).

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played off against each other in strategic Christian interpretations of political issues. Alencastro slowly builds up to his principal argument that the maritime axis in the South Atlantic was decisive in the formation of Brazil in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Then he explains convincingly how colonization was learned – how Africans became the ‘slaves from Guinea’; how Lisbon became the major market for the slave trade with America; how warfare developed between the Portuguese and the Dutch to obtain control over the slave market; and, last but not least, how Angola and Brazil became intimately interrelated. In a section on the war for slave markets, Alencastro describes the strategies employed by the Dutch West India Company to gain control over parts of Brazil and Africa. He quotes from an initial report by Johan Maurits to Amsterdam in 1638, in which the count summarizes a few necessities in the following practical format: colonists with European capital + soil, and tropical agricultural technology + African workers. By that time, Maurits had already conquered Elmina, the fort on the West African coast, from the Portuguese, and as governor he warned the administrators of the Company that scruples about these ‘facts on the ground’ were pointless. Further, Alencastro recalls Barlaeus’s cautious deliberations on the slave trade and on slavery in general.15 In his manuscript, Barlaeus had complained: The desire for profit has grown stronger even among us Christians who embraced the pure teachings of the reformed church while we engaged in arms and warfare. In so doing we have returned to the custom of buying and selling human beings created in God’s likeness, saved by Christ, the Lord of Creation, who least of all presents an image of slavery due to a lack of natural ingenuity.16

Barlaeus enhances his argument with rhetorical questions and remarks about the cruelty and inhumanity of abusing slaves as men, or rather, as

15

Alencastro refers to the pages 211 and 355 of the Portuguese translation. I will quote from the original manuscript in Latin. 16 “Nunc, postquam invaluit etiam inter purioris & in melius mutatae Fidei Christianos lucri cupiditas, aperiente viam bello & armis, rediimus & nos ad morem emendi vendendique hominem, Dei quantumvis imaginem, à Christo redemptum, imperatorem universi, & nihil minus, quàm naturae ingeniique vitio servum”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium, 185. All of the translations from Latin in this chapter are by Blanche Ebeling–Koning.

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animals. Alencastro’s second reference concerns the epilogue to the Rerum per octennium, which consists of the poem “Mauritia è Brasilia redux” (Maurits returned from Brazil).17 In this poem, Barlaeus repeats all his important points and reflects once again upon slavery: Why is a man deprived of his rightful liberty and why / is it in the nature of things that he should suffer slavery? For whoever is human / is made in the divine image. Born innocent, he rejects violence. / We mortals are all created with equal laws / and rights; / but soon injustice, the furor of war / and savage madness made us unequal.18

These admonitions are remarkable when considered in the light of the assumption that protest against slavery and the slave trade only gained ground in Dutch public opinion a century later.19 Is Barlaeus providing us here with a written parallel to Post’s visual suggestion of the ‘air of liberty’ – that slaves be considered free citizens under European control? What is Barlaeus’s own ‘urban prospect’, and how does he judge colonial settlement in the Americas?

The Wise Merchant To live in Amsterdam was of paramount importance for Barlaeus, as can be learned from his most famous speech, Mercator sapiens, delivered on 9 January 1632. He addressed the city’s merchant in his daily preparations for trade to the West and East Indies and beyond. For this merchant, Amsterdam was a central point in his global networking. The day before, Barlaeus’s friend Gerardus Vossius had given another speech about the utility of history. They were the first professors appointed to the recently founded Athenaeum Illustre. Highly distinguished men were present in their 17

This poem was written in 1644 and included in the Latin volume (1647: 334–40). The Portuguese translation is a prose version. 18 “Cur bona libertas homini subduceris? & cur / Vis servum natura pati? coelestis imago est, / quisquis homo est, natusque sibi vim respuit insons. / Mortalis aequis generamur legibus omnes, / Jure pari, mox dissimiles injuria fecit, / Et belli furor & rabies insana nocendi”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium, 339. 19 Bert Paasman, “West Indian Slavery and Dutch Enlightenment Literature,” in A History of Literature in the Caribbean, ed. A. James Arnold; vol. 2, sub-editors Vera Kutzinski & Ineke Phaf–Rheinberger (Amsterdam & Philadelphia P A : John Benjamins, 2001): 481.

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audience, such as the mayors Andries Bicker and Jacob de Graeff, who had strongly supported the foundation of this illustrious school. Bicker and de Graeff were Arminians, one of two poles in the religious schism that divided the United Provinces at that time. The problems originated in such a profound disagreement between Franciscus Gomarus and Jacobus Arminianus that it became synonymous with different political ideologies.20 Whereas the Gomarists took a hard line in the war against Spain, the Arminians were more inclined toward pacifism and negotiation. Barlaeus belonged to this latter category, and for him the inauguration of the Athenaeum Illustre was a major event. He certainly knew best how to address the spirit of that moment in history. Sape van der Woude, the editor of the bilingual edition of the Mercator sapiens, argues that in contrast to Vossius’s long-forgotten words the speech of Barlaeus captured the essence of the Athenaeum by establishing a link between academic education and business life.21 This implied that education was not simply reducible to imparting practical concrete knowledge. Rather, it assumed the task of guiding the moral qualities of the student’s character in view of his (future) mercantile activities. Such a noble objective went hand in hand with a city whose merchants were intoxicated by the impact of great economic expectations. Barlaeus perceptively grasped this spirit and made it the central topic of his speech. After addressing almighty God, the representatives of the municipal council and the church, the merchants, and the young people in his audience, he explains why he chose his subject – to establish a relationship with the prosperous city and the evocation of its splendours: No matter how often I look at your city, which is now also my city, letting my eyes wander over all its beauties and ornaments, I hesitate as to what to admire first or last.22

To further elucidate this vision, Barlaeus praises the temples dedicated to God; buildings harbouring the poor; towers and lighthouses stretching up 20

Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic, 420–49. Caspar Barlaeus, Mercator sapiens, intro. & tr. Sape van der Woude (1632; Amsterdam: Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam, 1967). 22 “Quoties urbem hanc vestram, jam quoque meam, intueor, et oculos per ejusdem decora omnia et ornamenta circumfero, pendeo animi, quid primum in ea, quid secundum, quid postremum mirari debeam”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium, 27. 21

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through the clouds yet grounding themselves on rotten pine trees; quays constructed along canals; wharfs and hydraulic elevators; the merchants’ stock market as well as the curves and arches of the bridges. He goes on to exalt the beauty of this harbour city with its shops full of goods, enormous merchant fleet, and incessant comings and goings of people. He cleverly seizes on the contrast between the gods of commerce and wealth, Mercury and Pluto, and those of science and art, Athena and Apollo, to draw attention to his argument that the Athenaeum offered the perfect balance between opulence and wisdom. Invoking ideals prevalent in Antiquity, and drawing on Aristotle and Cicero in particular, Barlaeus assures his audience that the Greeks and the Romans were already knowledgeable on this matter. They repeatedly proclaimed that true wisdom resides in displaying the virtues of mercantile activity. To inhibit the merchant’s most reprehensible vices – corruption and the absence of honesty in general – Barlaeus recommends valuing the role of experience, conscience, astuteness, innovation, powers of judgement, and dialogue. These virtues become the norms of his moral philosophy (which he distinguishes from speculative philosophy), comprising geography, the natural sciences, astrology, oceanography, mathematics, cartography, and the knowledge of many languages and different cultural habits. These last skills ensures success in foreign countries, while Amsterdam offers all of these indispensable tools, which thus privilege her above other European cities: For this reason, I think of Amsterdam as a blessed city, because here the merchant can also be a philosopher and the philosopher can carry on his trade as a merchant.23

The eloquence and self-confidence of Barlaeus resulted from his auspicious appointment to the Athenaeum after encountering considerable obstacles in his professional life. During the National Synod of Dordtrecht in 1618, when he defended his Arminian point of view, the ideals of pacific tolerance were thrown overboard. The Gomarists triumphed and, as a consequence, Barlaeus was dismissed from his public functions as a subregent of the ecclesiastical college and lost his tenure as professor of logic at the University of Leiden. To support his family, he resorted to lodging 23

“Quae cum ita sint, beatam hanc Amstelodamensium rempub. puto, in qua jam mercatoribus philosophari, et philosophis mercari concessum”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium, 46.

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students and giving private lessons. He introduced himself to the stadtholder’s court at The Hague by writing Latin verses about heroic deeds in the republic. Barlaeus loved experimenting with an elegant, learned style and equating events from Antiquity with contemporary events. He frequented humanist circles, through which he came into contact with other important men such as Pieter Cornelis Hooft and Constantijn Huygens, among many others.24 This humanist orientation is the basis of Barlaeus’s discourse on the vanity of material wealth, on the one hand, and the constant value of divine wealth – wisdom – on the other. He strengthens his argument by pointing to the frequent rise and fall of capital accumulation in contrast to the permanent role of wisdom in human history. Barlaeus is not against the race for profit, since this conforms to natural law. But this law needs regulation through wisdom, which excels when the merchant follows a moral codex that exhorts him not to forget virtues such as honesty, loyalty, hospitality, prudence, generosity, and service to the community. In the opinion of Barlaeus, this moral codex will be put in circulation by using coins stamped with the symbols of these virtues, whose instructions are administered by the Athenaeum founded by the Amsterdam municipality. Barlaeus expresses the hope that it will succeed in conducting the ship of destiny with a firm hand to its haven.

What Happened in the Eight Years in Brazil? Fifteen years later, in his Rerum per octennium, Barlaeus recalls his inaugural speech. He obviously perceives a link, because he remarks that this time he has to go beyond his main addressee, the almighty God, and speak about persons and situations that actually exist. He states that this gives him less freedom of expression. In his dedicatory to Johan Maurits, Barlaeus immediately points to mercantile goals: You continued overseas what you had accomplished in this country. There, as here, you devoted your military service to freedom and religion, to your country and the church, to the well-being of mankind

24

Koert van der Horst, Inventaire de la correspondance de Caspar Barlaeus, 1602–

1648 (Assen: van Gorcum, 1978).

38

THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º and the wishes of merchants on these two occasions you honored the glory of the United Provinces.25

The text praises the count’s renown in battle and evokes his skill at building forts, castles, and cities, which elicit the admiration and astonishment of the “barbarous.” Now Barlaeus highlights Mauritsstad as the symbol of Dutch superiority: Let the destruction of Olinda be measured against the building of M A U R I T S S T A D in your honour.26

To illustrate the impact of Dutch splendour in Brazil, he gives a lengthy account of the former richness of Olinda: I have heard from a trustworthy source that in one day forty ships loaded with sugar sailed from Olinda’s harbour, while this same quantity, enough to load forty more ships, remained in the warehouse.27

The magnificence of Olinda’s past manifests itself in descriptions of its ecclesiastical buildings, which, in Barlaeus’s view, should be rebuilt. Notwithstanding his conciliatory tone, these views serve the same purpose of underscoring the contrast between Olinda in ruins and the present magnificence of Mauritsstad–Recife with its bridges, gardens, palaces, scientific institutions, and commercial activities. Barlaeus extols the achievements of Johan Maurits: He annexed the island of Antônio Vaz by means of a dike and Fort Frederick, built in pentagonal form. The swamps and the vegetation in this area made the flesh creep, and it required a superhuman effort to imagine that a city could be built there. But although it seemed impossible, we believe that thanks to Nassau’s industry and courage he succeeded, even when nature forbade it, in proceeding with skill and art.28 25

“Quod dudum feceras domi, factum à te foris. nempe ut arma commodares Libertati & Religioni, Patriae & Ecclesiae, hominum saluti & mercantium cupiditati. utrumque Foederatorum gloriae”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium, dedicatio. 26 “Proponatur in conspicuo ruentis Olindae facies & surgentis in laudes tuas M A U R I T I A E ”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium, dedicatio. 27 “Non vanis autoribus habeo, uno die ex Olindae portu solvisse naves saccharo onustas quadraginta, relicta adhuc in conditoriis ea sacchari copia, quae ad totidem navium vecturam satis esset”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium, 41. 28 “Insulam Antonii Vazii, Frederici castro quinquangulari, vallo annexuit. quod spacium omne stagnis interfusis & arbustis horrebat, ut supra humanam fidem fuerit,

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It is worth mentioning that Barlaeus’s ‘pendant’, Father Manoel Calado, the author of a history of the Portuguese reconquest of Dutch Brazil published in Lisbon (1648), also marks out the details of the construction of Mauritsstad–Recife and agrees about the uniqueness of this urban settlement on the American continent. Calado had lived in Mauritsstad himself and, after Johan Maurits’s departure, joined in the Portuguese-Brazilian liberation struggle.29 That Barlaeus was fascinated with the Americas is confirmed by his biographer, Jan Adolf Worp, who reports that he had twenty-seven books about travel to the West Indies in his private library in Leiden.30 This interest in the New World was a general phenomenon in Barlaeus’s day, but he also went to the trouble of translating the first volume of the general history of the New World by Antonio de Herrera de Tordesillas, the official chronicler of the King of Spain.31 In contrast to Herrera, Barlaeus describes the American continent from a humanist point of view, stressing its novelty in comparison with Antiquity, whose authors could not report on this part of the world. He remarks that Olinda, Pernambuco, Mauritiopolis or Tamarica replace Carthage, Rome, Latium or Gaul, and enemies in war are now known as Tapuyas, Nariquites, Petivares, Caribs, Chileans, and Peruvians. Barlaeus underlines the emergence of this New World that cannot but arouse the spirit of the merchant, “whose mind is given to restlessness”: No amount of good fortune can come his way or pursue him so completely that it satisfies his desires. Finding faults for which he can blame his assistants becomes second nature. While chasing his expectations, he wants at the same time to have all his wishes already satisfied.32

urbem illic condi posse. At nunc conditam esse, Nassovii industriâ, oculati credimos. utpote cui ingenium & audacia erat, etiam quae natura prohibuisset, per artem & laboris tentare”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium, 146. 29 Frei Manoel Calado, O valeroso Lucideno e triunfo da liberdade, 2 vols, ed. & intro. Leonardo Dantas Silva, preface by José Antônio Gonsalves de Mello, presentation by Dorany Sampaio (1648; Recife: C E P E , 2004), vol. 1: 111–11, 243, 272–73. Quotation from Barlaeus by Mello, page xxxiii. 30 Jan Adolf Worp, Oud Holland 4 (1886): 172–89. 31 Antonio de Herrera de Tordesillas, Novus Orbis, sive Descriptio Indiae Occidentalis, tr. Caspar Barlaeus (Amstelodami: apud Mich. Colinium, 1622). 32 “I N Q U I E T A res est mercantium animus. nunquam illi tam plenè occurrere & obsequi ulla fortuna potest, quae vota exsatiet. Facilè invenit, quod amplitudinis suae

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The delight of Brazil, for Barlaeus, lies in its sugar, the apotheosis of taste. His poem “Triumphus super capta Olinda, Pernambuci urbe, Brasiliae Metropoli” (The triumph of having conquered Olinda, the city in Pernambuco, metropolis of Brazil) of 1630 ends with a reference to the “sugar obtained yearly from excellent canes.”33 And in “Maurits è Brasilia redux,” the author finds pleasure in “its very sweet sugar / […] secretly touching our hands.”34 After a long disquisition on sugar production in general, Barlaeus finally reveals his personal predilection for it: But the sweetness of sugar makes me drool, moistening the pages of this narrative with saliva when I compare the sugar of antiquity with ours.35

He is quick to add that this delectable sugar is impossible to produce without the toils of Africans. In passages that resemble Enlightenment treatises, Barlaeus displays his extensive knowledge of economics, geography, people, customs, fashions, and government in the European colony; this part of the text anticipates similar works by David Nassy on Suriname or by Médéric Moreau de St-Méry on St.-Domingue a century later.

Cities and Commerce in America For Barlaeus, therefore, the Dutch city in America is intrinsically connected with sugar consumption, the pattern that underlies the commercial spirit of the Baroque. Citizens are also consumers in Rama’s so-called artificial urban enclaves in America, and Barlaeus specifies some characteristic elements of their world-views. The scientific advances that inform his ‘speculative philosophy’ afford him a sense of superiority over his counterparts in Antiquity as well as over the Iberians. For example, curatoribus imputet. ac dum suas spes anteire parat, vellet confectum, quicquid animus destinavit”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium, 199. 33 “Annuaque excelsis extundi saccharra cannis,” in “Triumphus super capta Olinda, Pernambuci urbe, Brasiliae Metropoli,” in Caspar Barlaeus, Barlaei Poemata. Pars 1. Heroicorum (Amstelodami: Ioannes Blaeu, 1660): 247. 34 “Sua sacchara nostras / Laetatur tractare manus dulcissima tellus”; Rerum per octennium, 335. 35 “At mota mihi sacchari dulcedine salivâ, non alienum fuerit, eodem succo adspergere narrationis hujus paginas, & veterum sacchara cum novis conferre”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium, 71.

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according to Barlaeus, Georg Marcgraf’s method of measuring the solar eclipse in Recife was more advanced than observations made in Spanish America. Or, in his opinion, the assertions of Arias Montanus that Solomon’s ships had crossed the ocean are false because this king would never have been able to do this without the help of the magnetica directione. Loyal to the Zeitgeist, Barlaeus also documents the plants and animals of Brazil. This part of his text does not seem to be very convincing, though. More precise information is available from other sources, which explains why Whitehead and Boeseman hardly mention Barlaeus in their book on seventeenth-century Dutch Brazil. In his study of Vossius, C.S.M. Rademaker expresses doubts that Barlaeus was particularly interested in science.36 However, this judgement does not take into account Barlaeus’s explicit interest in applied sciences. Amsterdam University Library possesses a very rare volume on Barlaeus’s observations of the magnetica directione.37 It contains a treatise in Latin on geography and the magnetic fields of the earth by Barlaeus with a commentary in Dutch by Laurens Reel, a former general and governor in the service of the Dutch East India Company and member of the Amsterdam municipal council from 1630 until his death in 1637. In all probability, Barlaeus and Reel worked on the manuscript together after Barlaeus’s appointment to the Athenaeum. In his introduction, the publisher 36

“In almost every respect Vossius and Barlaeus differed from each other. While the utterly cautious Vossius tried to remain functioning on the knife-sharp division line between the opposing parties, Barlaeus had already moved for years in the Remonstrant camp without any constraint. Barlaeus sought first the aesthetic in antiquity, while Vossius was much more driven by a purely scientific interest. The ‘Spanish Brabander’ Barlaeus was exactly the opposite of the serious Vossius who always had utility in mind, while the friendly equanimity of the regent also contrasted sharply with the almost manic depressive instability of his close associate. Despite these and other deeply rooted differences the two men got along splendidly. At the States College as well as later in Amsterdam the cooperation remained unusually pleasant and the mutually assumed care for the college laid the foundation for a life-long friendship”; C.S.M. Rademaker, Life and Work of Gerardus Joannes Vossius, 1577–1649, tr. H.P. Doezema (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981): 103. 37 Observatien of Ondervindingen aan de Magneetsteen, en de Magnetische kracht der Aerde; door den Heer Laurens Reael, Ridder, eertijdts Generael van de OostIndien, en namaels Raed en Schepen der Stadt Amsterdam. Quibus adjunctae sunt celeberrimi Professoris D. Casparis Barlaei Causae et Rationes Observationum earundem Magneticarum (Amsterdam: By Lodewijck Spillebout, Boeckverkooper in de Kalverstraet, in d’Amsteldamsche Bibliotheeck, 1651).

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Lodewijk Spillebout remarks that this was a long-forgotten manuscript, damaged by water leakage, dirt, and scratches, before he finally succeeded in publishing it. Spillebouts dedicates the book to Barlaeus’s son Caspar, a lawyer and the highest functionary of the Court of Law in Wassenaar and Katwijck.38 Another interesting piece of documentation can be found on the map of the Beemster polder, published in 1644 by Baltasar Florisz van Berckenrode, which contains Barlaeus’s poem “In Bamaestram” praising the advantages of this rural environment for the merchant, where, far from the city, he can find relaxation and inspiration to quadruple his earnings.39 Another aspect of interest is Barlaeus’s ideas on the non-European population. The Rerum per octennium contains many pages describing the customs and habits of Africans (nigrita Loanda), Amerindians (nomadum Tapuya), and Chileans (Araucanos). Such ethnographic notes were traditionally included in European accounts of the Americas in early modern history writing, and were a response to the exigency that these native inhabitants had to be won as allies if Europeans were to maintain and strengthen their position on the coasts and the sea routes to America. The most delicate question, however, remains that of Barlaeus’s actual position, in the debates surrounding slavery and the slave trade, with regard to the non-European population. We have seen that Barlaeus’s rhetoric was critical of slavery. Through daily contact with his students, many of whom were involved in overseas trade and diligently followed the financial reports, Barlaeus must have known that human trade had become incorporated into the terms of Amsterdam’s stock exchange. In this respect, his report on the 1643 expedition to Chile acquires a surprising dimension. He first mentions the Dutch plan to occupy Buenos Aires in order to be able to travel to Peru overland – meaning, to have access to Potosí, the rich silver mine. Notwithstanding its clear objectives, this plan did not materialize, and a second one was established. A secret military expedition was sent from Texel to Recife under the command of Admiral Hendrik Brouwer. The ships departed from Recife for Valdivia, and the long 38

F.F. Blok describes the trouble Barlaeus had with the education of this son of his between 1639 and 1644 (Caspar Barlaeus, 87–103). Mello, too, mentions Caspar Barlaeus as being the resident minister in Lisbon in the 1650s entrusted with negotiating the Dutch conditions concerning the ‘business of Brazil’ with the Portuguese (O negócio, 241–42). 39 Balthasar Florisz van Berckenrode, Beemsterlants caerte, gemeten in 1640 (n.p. 1644). Courtesy of Amsterdam University Library.

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and detailed description of this expedition at the end of Barlaeus’s book documents its relevance. Barlaeus reproduces the instructions of the administrators of the West India Company. Brouwer’s first task was to inform the Chilean chiefs that the Dutch were fighting the Spaniards as bravely and successfully as they themselves had done. As a show of good faith, Brouwer also brought them letters from the Prince of Orange and the States General, containing an invitation to come to Holland and study the country’s buildings, markets, and government and thus to seal their friendship through mercantile relationships. The chiefs of the Arauco, Tucapel, and Purén were the first to be addressed, because they lived closest to Valdivia in a fertile area promising the most gold. After Brouwer’s death, his assistant Elias Herckmans was appointed leader of the expedition and continued negotiations in his stead. Barlaeus speaks favourably of Herckmans, the “poet-adventurer,” who had written a book about maritime expeditions.40 He informed the chiefs that the happiness of the merchants in Holland would be complete when they could extract minerals. Naturally, this upset the Araucans, who had not forgotten the cruelty of the Spaniards in forcing the natives to mine gold for them. According to Barlaeus, the chiefs proposed that the Dutch do this job themselves. Alternatively, the Chileans recommended that they attack Lima, Arica, and other Spanish cities. The Peruvians, like the Chileans, craved liberation from the Spaniards and supported Herckmans’s claim to the silver of Potosí. But Herckmans, confronted with the threat of mutiny among his men, decided to return to Recife. Barlaeus reports the Chileans’ proposition to support the extraction of minerals in their territory, “if mined by Africans,” in order to retain Herckmans. In fact, the chiefs insisted on this last point:

40

Characterization in Whitehead & Boeseman, A Portrait, 59. Barlaeus had praised the publication of Elias Herckmans, Der Zee-vaert lof, handelende van de gedenckwaerdighste zeevaerden (Amsterdam: Bey Jacob Pietersz. Wachter, 1634). This volume is famous because it contains an etching by Rembrandt. Herckmans also wrote a history of Paraiba, having been governor there in 1639; this was published in Portuguese in 1982. See Elias Herckmans, A descrição geral da Capitania da Paraiba, ed. Wellington Aguiar & Marcus Odilon Ribeiro Coutinho (João Pessoa: A União, 1982).

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THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º They [the Dutch] were urged to return with renewed energy and courage, to continue where they had left off. They should bring Africans to work in the mines and they were promised support in this enterprise.41

That Barlaeus makes no critical comment on these proposals is striking. He seems to dissociate them completely from his philosophical remorse, as Alencastro has pointed out. How should this be understood? Did the moral message apply only to the ‘dream of order’, whereas reality was excluded from his Christian horizon? Even if it is not clear what the Chileans might have actually said themselves, the fact remains that Barlaeus reproduces their proposals without any further comment.42 In the catalogue Chile a la vista, published as part of an exhibition in Santiago de Chile, we find documentation on seven ‘secret’ Dutch expeditions, which took place between 1599 and 1722.43 Negotiations with the mapuches were thus already customary before Brouwer and Herckmans tried their luck with them. The Spanish author Francisco de Quevedo, who wrote a series of satires on the ‘dream mentality’ of the Spanish empire, even interprets this encounter in a way that supports Alpers’s observations about the Dutch ‘miracle’ of visual ability. Quevedo recounts that the mapuches were not impressed when shown the wonders of the “cubo óptico” (‘optical cube’ or telescope). They declare this device to be not in accordance with natural law; just as unnatural, for them, was living below sea-level, as the Dutch did in their polders. Besides, Quevedo’s mapuches maintain that the Dutch betrayal of loyalty to the Spanish king did not exactly prove their rectitude in keeping promises.44 41

“Hortabantur, ut redirent novisque viribus & animis restaurarent coepta, Nigritas secum eruendis fodinis adducerent, ipsos non defore ista agentibus”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennium, 281. 42 In the report about the Brouwer expedition, nothing can be found to support Barlaeus’s version of the discussion between Herckmans and the Araucan chiefs. But even if he could have found it in the count’s archives, this would not invalidate my claim that he includes no comments on its moral implications. See Hendrick Brouwer, Journael ende Historis Verhaal van de Reyse gedaen by Oosten de Straet le Maire, naar de Custen van Chili (Amsterdam: Janszoon, 1646). 43 Chile a la vista (Santiago de Chile: Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos, 1999): 7–10. See also Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence Abroad, 197–211. 44 Francisco de Quevedo, “La hora de todos y la fortuna con seso” (wr. c.1635, publ. 1650), in Quevedo, Los sueños, vol. 2 (Madrid: Espasa–Calpe, 1966): 215–17. In view of the date of this ‘dream’, Quevedo might be referring to one of the five earlier expeditions.

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The Brouwer/Herckmans expedition was the penultimate one to be undertaken with a crew experienced in the routes to Asia and Africa. Historical accounts state that when the ships arrived in Recife from Texel, Johan Maurits had already developed plans for a second Recife in Valdivia. The count calculated that the Spanish defence in Chile was extremely weak and that Brouwer’s attack had a considerable chance of success. This might explain why Herckmans was received in such an unfriendly way by the count and his councillors after returning emptyhanded to Recife on 28 December 1643: he barely escaped being condemned to death on that occasion. As it was, Herckmans died shortly afterwards, in January 1644. Chilean historians endorse Herckmans’s decision: the Araucans, namely, had set up a strategic plan for attacking the Dutch. Barlaeus’s interpretation of the encounter with the Chilean chiefs might express the fact that, for him, moral philosophy means that – as a Christian – slavery and the slave trade must be judged immoral – unnatural because inhumane. In terms of the practical considerations of everyday life beyond Europe, Barlaeus seems to recognize that labour in the Americas can hardly be performed without the Africans but that the only ones who can say this openly are their ‘rivals’, the Amerindians. Apparently Barlaeus thought that Christians could not approve of such things publicly but that this logic did not apply to heathens. They are different, as we learn from his observation when speaking of the sweetness of sugar: “And it is truly astonishing that the barbarians do not think of cooking their food and continue to maintain wild and rude customs, even though they eat nectar and ambrosia.”45 ¹º

45

“Et mirum sanè, tam miti alimento non desaevire barbariem, & durare morum asperitatem ferociamque, pastis hoc nectare & ambrosia”; Caspar Barlaeus, Rerum per octennia, 71.

T HE C RISIS OF E NLIGHTENMENT

3

The Jewish-Portuguese Nation in the Colony of Suriname

I

T G R A D U A L L Y B E C A M E C L E A R that the colonial strategy of setting up and manipulating rivalries was not exclusive to the Counter-Reformation but extended to the Calvinist humanists in times of European wars overseas. In Suriname, the second area of Dutch urban expansion into plantation society in the Americas, other rivalries come to the fore, equally plotted by Christian colonial policy at the end of the eighteenth century. Suriname’s major city of Paramaribo certainly cannot pride itself on such spectacularly painted views as Mauritsstad–Recife, but it, too, is a commercial port, its main buildings all situated close to the Waterkant on the Suriname River, the meeting-place for the inhabitants and visitors from inside and outside the country. This place must have been a particularly lucrative venue. Jonathan Israel writes, in his comprehensive study The Dutch Republic, that between 1740 and the 1780s the Amsterdam– Suriname route was “one of the most important in eighteenth-century Dutch long-distance navigation.”1 Suriname was the first American colony to have a Jewish agricultural settlement with a synagogue and a village in the interior, the Jewish Savannah founded by the Sephardim. They maintained close contacts with Amsterdam, where the mahamad (general board) had been actively involved in the colonization of Dutch Brazil as well. Barlaeus devotes little attention to them in his book, in which he distinguishes between the different religions: papists, Protestants, Jews, and heathens. Barlaeus’s Christian views on heathens were discussed in an earlier chapter. In his Rerum per octennium, Barlaeus repeats the general rule 1

Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic, 945.

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that Jews are free to celebrate their Sabbath but must also respect the Christian Sunday. Further, he describes the Jews as capable planters under Portuguese rule, arguing that the suppression of their religion forced them to behave as hypocrites. Now that they were able to freely celebrate their Jewish traditions in Dutch Brazil, they fled to Recife and bought land from people who were in debt because of the wars. They virtually dominated urban commercial life. Neither Barlaeus’s respect for the Jewish population of Brazil is surprising nor his reticence about their presence, in contrast to Calado’s account, which came out in Lisbon.2 Barlaeus had been exposed to severe attacks in Holland due to this same sympathy for and friendship with the Jews, so he would be unlikely to indulge the presence of the Portuguese-Jewish community in Brazil, thinking it wiser to steer clear of such problems.3 If the economic significance of the Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam for Dutch overseas expansion cannot be underestimated, it has nevertheless not been systematically analysed. It is true, though, that Jonathan Israel briefly summarizes the tolerant W I C policy toward the community in Brazil, Curaçao, New Netherland, and Suriname, and in his chapter on the Sephardim in Dutch Brazil, Günther Böhm mentions that 2

See, on this difference, my article “Brasil en la encrucijada de la modernidad: el período holandés (1630–1654),” and Dietrich Briesemeister on Calado’s narrative style, “El Valeroso Lucideno y el Castrioto Lusitano: Historiografía y patriotismo en el Brasil del siglo X V I I I ,” in La formación de la cultura virreinal, vol. 2: El siglo X V I I , ed. Karl Kohut & Sonia V. Rose (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert & Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2004): 207–21 and 191–205 respectively. 3 Barlaeus was friends with Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel, born in Madeira as Manoel Dias Soeiro in 1604. When he came to Amsterdam he took the Hebrew name. For his relationship with Brazil, see Nachman Falbel, “Menasseh Ben Israel e o Brasil,” in O Brasil e os Holandeses, 1630–1654, ed. Paulo Herkenhoff, 160–75. Barlaeus wrote an epigraph for Menasseh’s book De Creatione Problemata (1635); this provoked outraged reactions from the Reformed Church in Holland. When Rabbi Menasseh expressed his intention to go to Dutch Brazil in 1640, Barlaeus wrote to Grotius in Paris that he was “genuinely perturbed”; Cecil Roth, A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel. Rabbi, Printer, and Diplomat (Philadelphia P A : Jewish Publication Society of America, 1934): 143–48. See also Jaap Meijer, Barlaeus overgewaardeerd. Joodse bijdrage tot de 350ste verjaardag van onze universiteit (Heemstede: n.p., 1982), and Henry Méchoulan, “Menasseh and the World of the Non-Jew,” in Menasseh Ben Israel and his World, ed. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchouland & Richard H. Popkin (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989): 83–97. On Menasseh’s contacts with Brazil, see the important article by Nachman Falhel, “Menasseh Ben Israel e o Brasil,” in O Brasil e os Holandeses, 160–75.

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three Sephardic merchants in Amsterdam recorded having received sugar from Farnaboucke (Pernambuco), via Lisbon, as early as 9 May 1600.4 He states that the Sephardic Jews were not significantly involved initially in the foundation of the W I C in 1621, in contrast to the Jewish role played in the “Companhia de Navegação e Comércio da Índia,” founded in Lisbon seven years later in competition to the Dutch Company. Participation by the Sephardim in the W I C increased over the years, though. Böhm mentions that after the ‘loss’ of Brazil in 1654, the W I C offered the Sephardic residents free transportation, materials to build houses and cultivate the land, as well as the authorization to use arms for their personal security in the new plantation societies on the Pomeroon and Essequibo rivers.5 The Nassy family, which came from Brazil to the Guianas, was engaged in these transactions, assuming a leading role when a new Dutch colony was founded at Cayenne in 1659, and continuing their involvement after the colony moved to Suriname. When the Beracha Ve Shalom (Blessing and Peace) synagogue was inaugurated on the Jewish Savannah in October 1685, this occurred on lots donated by the Nassy family. Böhm mentions their involvement in the struggle against mutinous soldiers, Amerindians, and maroons – which participation fits in with the colonialist arguments put forward by David (Isaac de Cohen) Nassy in his remarkable Essai historique sur la colonie de Suriname.6

An Historical Essay on the Colony of Suriname David Nassy, born on the Jewish Savannah in 1741, wrote his Essai historique under the influence of the spirit of the Enlightenment as it had reached Suriname; French was the main language of communication. Nassy did not belong to the rich branch of the Nassy family. In 1754, his father, Isaac, was appointed curator or notary “to exercise the said office among those of the aforementioned (Jewish) Nation”7 and remained in 4

Günther Böhm, Los sefardíes en los dominios holandeses de América del Sur y del Caribe, 1630–1750 (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 1992). 5 Günther Böhm, Los sefardíes en los dominios holandeses, 110. 6 David Nassy, Essai historique sur la colonie de Surinam, 2 vols. (1788; Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1968). 7 J.A. Schiltkamp, “Jewish Jurator in Suriname,” in The Jewish Nation in Suriname: Historical Essays, ed. Robert Cohen (Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1982): 59–60.

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that office until his death twenty years later. David worked as a clerk for his father before deciding to purchase the Tulpenburg coffee plantation. As a planter he was not successful. Bijlsma recalls the reason why Nassy was unable to continue running the plantation: “A terribly high death rate struck the blacks of Tulpenburg. Rumour had it that one of the blacks had poisoned his fellow slaves and the doctor who came to see Nassy found him depressed about the constant loss of his workers.”8 Nassy was forced to sell his property at a very unfavourable price in 1773,9 after which he moved to Paramaribo, before retreating to the Jewish Savannah, in early 1776, to avoid imprisonment for debt by one of his creditors. In the meantime, he had worked as official translator of Spanish and Portuguese for the Council of Police and, as a result, was constantly involved in many questions considering the members of the Jewish-Portuguese Nation. When Pierre Victor, baron Malouet, a royal commissioner-general and administrator in French Guiana, visited Suriname in 1777, he made acquaintance with a certain Isaac Nassy in the Jewish Savannah. Bijlsma concludes that this man must have been David Isaac de Cohen Nassy and reproduces a long fragment in which Malouet describes the qualities of this “homme extraordinaire.”10 Malouet notes that Nassy aspired to elevate the general level of instruction and knowledge of the Jewish Nation, for this purpose working in his study for at least eight hours a day. At the time he was able to return to Paramaribo, in 1782, the city had become open to such intellectual endeavours. The Governor General of Suriname, Jan Gerhard Wichers, had founded a society for the natural sciences and supported initiatives to improve general education. Together with other members of the colonial government, Wichers participated in the celebrations for the centenary of the synagogue in October 1785, witnessed by over 1,600 guests at the Jewish Savannah. Notwithstanding this attendance, however, the successful period of central government in the Jewish Savannah was over. By then the mahamad was holding its meetings in Paramaribo and had to deal with new questions of urban mobility. 8 R. Bijlsma, “David de Is. C. Nassy: Author of the ‘Essai Historique sur Surinam’,” in The Jewish Nation in Suriname, ed. Cohen, 66. 9 Jonathan Schorsch reproduces the slave inventory drawn up after the sale in 1774 in his book Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge U P , 2004): 315–16. 10 R. Bijlsma, “David de Is. C. Nassy: Author of the ‘Essai Historique sur Surinam’,” 66.

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It is clear that David Nassy had been damaged by the financial crisis that hit Suriname between 1765 and 1775. Like many others, he lost everything he owned, and the subsequent move to Paramaribo meant a dramatic change. From being the centre of community life in an agricultural environment, something of which they were very proud, having been prohibited from farming in Europe, the Sephardim had to adapt in ‘their’ colony to an urban Christian life-style. This explains why Nassy dedicated many pages to his family’s strong leadership in agricultural, financial, military, administrative, and intellectual matters. He was appointed as a salaried secretary to the mahamad in 1778 and authorized the reform of the askamoth, the religious rules of the congregation in Paramaribo, from 1785 to 1788. He was co-founder of the learned society “Docendo Docemur,” where important issues were discussed with members of the government, administrators, planters, and other interested persons. It was as a holder of these functions that Nassy wrote the Essai historique. On the cover of the original edition appear the names of the members of the mahamad: Mos. Pa. de Leon, Samuel Hco. de la Parra, Ishak de la Parra, David de Is. C. Nassy, and Samuel Whel. Brandon. The book appeared in a Dutch translation in 1791, apparently without the knowledge of Nassy, and was well received in the Netherlands, in contrast to the cold reactions (if any) it provoked in Suriname at that time. The Essai historique is divided into two parts, preceded by a preface and an introduction, while copies of several original documents are added as an appendix. The text of the subtitle makes it clear what the central topic is in this interpretation of the history of Suriname: Its foundation, its revolutions, its progress, from its origin up to our times, as also the causes which for some years now have arrested the course of its prosperity, along with the description and the actual state of the Colony, as well as the annual revenues, charges and taxes which have to be paid, and equally several other civil and political subjects; also a depiction of the manners of its inhabitants in general, W I T H the History of the Portuguese and German Jewish Nation there Established, their Privileges, immunities and franchises; their political and moral Condition, ancient and modern: The role they have played in the defence and progress of the Colony.11 11 “Sa fondation, ses révolutions, ses progrès, depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours, ainsi que les causes qui dépuis quelques années ont arrêté le cours de sa prosperité; avec la description & l’état actuel de la Colonie, de même que ses revenus annuels, les charges & impôts qu’on y payé, comme aussi plusieurs autres objets civils &

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Like Barlaeus’s book on Brazil, Nassy’s history has become a main reference for historical and anthropological research. In Frontier Society, Rudolf van Lier quotes heavily from Nassy in order to underscore his criticisms of the antisemitism prevalent in his native country, particularly in the eighteenth century: The prejudices against the Jews had gradually assumed a stereotyped form. They were held responsible for the running away of slaves, as they had sent a number of their slaves into the jungle during the French invasion in 1712 so as to reduce their share in the levy imposed by the French admiral. After that they supposedly caused a marked increase in the number of deserters because of the cruel treatment to which they subjected their slaves, amongst whom they failed to keep discipline, moreover, as a result of the large number of Jewish feasts on which work was at a standstill. Some accused them of too great a familiarity with their slaves, others of excessive cruelty. They were said to be bad farmers who had only themselves to blame for their ruin. The authors of the Essai Historique have produced sufficient evidence to disprove these views. These persisted until Emancipation, however, and claimed many innocent victims among the Jews. Especially the view that Jews were exceptionally cruel masters for their slaves constantly recurs in the literature on Surinam. We find allusions to this in the writings of Hartsinck and Stedman, while even as late as the 19th century Teenstra wrote about the cruel treatment which slaves received especially at the hand of Jewish owners.12

Nassy saw these prejudices in Paramaribo as a personal affront and attributed their existence to the grave economic crisis, which affected all planters, but Jewish planters in particular. Their situation was dramatic. In 1760 Jews still owned around 115 of the 591 estates, which number by 1788 had dwindled to 46. In order to frame his argument, Nassy first recalls the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, in 1492 and 1497 respectively. Through their contacts in the Flemish cities of Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent, the Portuguese Nation had established close ties with

politiques; ainsi qu’un tableau des mœurs de ses habitans en général, AVEC l’Histoire de la Nation Juive Portugaise & Allemande y Etablie, leurs Privilèges immunités & franchises: leur Etat politique & moral, tant ancien que moderne: La part qu’ils ont eu dans la défense & dans les progrès de la Colonie”; David Nassy, Essai historique, frontispiece. 12 Rudolf van Lier, Frontier Society: A Social Analysis of Surinamese History (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971): 91.

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the sugar business on the African coast and then in Brazil13 and with the liberation struggle against Spain and its religious policies in the North. After the fall of Antwerp in 1585 they began to move to Amsterdam, and representatives of the Sephardim participated in the Dutch conquest of Brazil. Heavy pressure from the New Christians ensured that the latter were given freedom of religion in the Dutch territories. In exchange, the Dutch could count on their loyalty, international expertise, financial acumen, and language skills. After the reconquest of Mauritsstad–Recife by the Brazilians and the subsequent loss of religious freedom, a group moved to Cayenne and, afterwards, to Suriname, where their privileges were guaranteed. In his essay, Nassy starts by addressing the discrimination and even hatred directed by Christians at the Jewish population in Europe and in Suriname. He laments this lack of respect despite the numerous instances of loyalty and responsibility shown by the Jews toward Christian governments in the past. Besides, Nassy saw this hostile attitude as itself the cause of chronic tensions and rivalry within the colony, which peaked in periods of economic crisis. The governor of the colony himself or even the Dutch government frequently had to intervene to achieve harmony between the Jewish and Christian planters and to assure the Jewish Nation that they could retain their privileges. In illustrating his arguments, Nassy regrets the misunderstandings disseminated by Dutch historical accounts of Suriname, quoting from numerous studies published in Amsterdam and in other European countries. We know that he was extremely well read. Robert Cohen’s catalogue of Nassy’s library includes 433 titles, as well as a list of ninety other titles mentioned in the Essai historique.14 Among these titles was the volume Die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, published by Christian Wilhelm Dohm in Berlin in 1781.15 In his analysis of the position of the Jews in 13

Eddy Stols, “‘O doce nunca amargou [...] E nem em Flandres’: A dinámica do novo açúcar brasileiro nas relações económicas de Portugal com Flandres na época de D. João III,” in D. João III e o Império: Actas do Congresso Internacional comemorativo do seu nascimento, ed. Roberto Carneiro & Artur Teodoro de Matos (Lisbon & Tomar: Centro de História de Além-Mar, 2004): 453–83. 14 Robert Cohen, Jews in Another Environment: Surinam in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991): 18–25. 15 Christian Wilhelm Dohm, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, 2 vols. (Berlin: Nicolai, 1781)

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European countries, Dohm questions their absence from the public service, military, crafts, and farming activities, and claims that the Jews never possessed equal civil rights despite abundant proof of their capability, loyalty, and erudition. Dohm’s work, which sparked off heated debate in Berlin and Vienna, arrived in Suriname in a French translation at the beginning of 1786. Nassy presented the book at a meeting of the “Docendo Docemur” learned society; Dohm’s arguments were so well received that the parnassim (the appointed members of the mahamad) decided to write him a letter, dated 10 March 1786, to express its gratitude for his valuable observations. By way of response, Dohm sent a letter back to Paramaribo, dated 29 January 1787 and arriving on 29 June 1787, asking for more information about the history of Jewish privileges in Suriname. This correspondence is included as an appendix to the Essai historique, as it provides the grounds for Nassy’s writing his response in French.16 In addition to disclosing the original reason for the redaction of the Essai historique, Nassy also certifies that he verified all his facts through extensive consultation of the archives of the Portuguese Nation, unfortunately seldom viewed by Dutch historians – this last remark is an allusion to Jan Hartsinck’s Beschrijving van Guyana, published in Amsterdam in 1770.17 Nassy criticizes Hartsinck’s tendentious representation of the military activities of the members of the Nation. He stresses that from the beginning of the colony Christian and Jewish colonists organized the defence of the plantation areas together, first and foremost against the Amerindians. His forefather Samuel Nassy, who spoke their language fluently, arranged peace treaties between the Amerindians and the governor, Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdyck, who received in exchange the daughter of an Amerindian chief as his wife. Thereafter, in the eighteenth century, Jews and Christians fought the maroons, who were increasingly threatening the prosperity and peace of the country. The Portuguese Nation participated in its defence at an extraordinarily high economic cost, for which Nassy provides ample documentation. A salient point in the first part of the Essai historique is the profound regret on the part of the author that the Nation had to act from the position 16

David Nassy, Essai historique, vol. 2: xix–xxiv. Jan Jacob Hartsinck, Beschrijving van Guyana, of de Wilde Kust, in Zuid America (1770; Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1964). 17

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of a minority, always subjected to discrimination and lack of respect for their traditions in this Christian colony. Nassy mentions, for instance, the constant debate about Sunday as a working day for the Jews, who often sacrified their own Sabbath in order to participate in the duties they shared with the Christians. For the Protestant planters, meanwhile, Sunday was the day dedicated to worship; jealous of the success of the Jewish planters, they insisted on forbidding work on all the plantations of the colony on this holy day. The tone is quite different in the second part of the Essai historique, which is conceived as a paean to the colony of Suriname. According to Nassy, one will find “in no other colony of the Americas plantations that are better regulated, or are more beautiful, & stocked with a greater number of superb buildings and gardens of unparallelled sumptuousness than in Suriname.”18 Apparently, Nassy wishes here to counteract the negative image of Suriname entertained in Europe. He provides detailed data about the costs and prices of plantation yields, and on the tolerance expressed toward different religions, which eventually enabled the Catholics to have a church of their own in Paramaribo (only after 1785, it must be said). Also included are surveys of government, taxes, population, institutions, literature, science, and other matters. The attitude in this second part of Nassy’s essay is that of a proud colonist from Suriname who is eager to demonstrate his superiority over the colonists in St.-Domingue. The repeated references to this French colony can be explained by the rivalry between these two Caribbean plantation societies during this period. Fernand Braudel, in his Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme: X V e–X V I I I e siècle, dedicated his third chapter to the mechanisms governing the predominance of Amsterdam on the world market, attributable to Dutch revenues from Asia and the Americas leading to the city’s monopoly on sugar prices from 1667 until about 1750.19 By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the Dutch had yielded their privileged position to the French, whose colony of St.-Domingue was emerging as the most lucrative in the world, a position maintained 18 “On ne trouvera peut-être pas dans toute l’Amérique sans excepter aucune Colonie, des Plantations plus régulieres, plus belles, & plus remplies de superbes bâtiments & de jardins d’une somptuosité beaucoup au delà des bornes du pouvoir qu’à Surinam”; David Nassy, Essai historique, vol. 2: 11–12. 19 Fernand Braudel, Civilisation materielle, économie et capitalisme: XVe – XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1979).

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until the Haitian Revolution in 1791. Like Paramaribo, Cap François – the main export town in St.-Domingue – was expanding rapidly. Its urban life – commerce, theatre, churches, architecture, public life, science, and humanities – was meticulously detailed by Médéric Moreau de SaintMéry in his Description physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de l’isle de Saint-Domingue.20 Moreau de Saint-Méry, born in Martinique, is a key figure in the historiography of St.-Domingue, as Nassy is for Suriname. James MacClellan claims that Moreau de SaintMéry is of paramount importance in “contemporary historiography, and readers should know of the extraordinary role he played in preserving Saint Domingue from historical oblivion.”21 Moreau de Saint-Méry wrote his Description physique in exile in Philadelphia, after having fled the guillotine in France. He was nostalgic at the loss of St.-Domingue, where he had spend many pleasant years. Nassy, by contrast, had never left his native country when he formulated his arguments in response to the mounting antisemitism during the period of economic crisis. Both Suriname and St.-Domingue were at war at that time. MacClellan, quoting from Moreau de Saint-Méry, even characterizes the organization of St.-Domingue as that of a military camp beset by slave rebellions and foreign invasions. Nassy, in turn, is constantly concerned at the military actions being undertaken in Suriname, as the struggle against the maroons was one of the key issues used against the Jewish planters. There was also an internal struggle going on, and it must not be forgotten that poisoning – a problem for Nassy on Tulpenburg plantation, as we saw above – was one of the most conspicuous forms of resistance by plantation slaves in both Suriname and St.-Domingue. Alejo Carpentier, after consulting Moreau’s treatise on St.-Domingue, devoted some space to this tactic in his novel The Kingdom of This World via the (historical) figure of Mackandal, who “made himself famous for the poisonings which spread

20 Médéric Moreau de Saint-Méry, Description physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de l’isle de Saint-Domingue, ed. B. Maurel & E. Taillemite, 2 vols. (1797–98; Paris: Société de l’histoire des colonies françaises; Larose, 1958). 21 James E. MacClellan, Colonialism and Science: Saint Domingue in the Old Regime (Baltimore M D : Johns Hopkins U P , 1992): 19–20.

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terror among the negroes and which made them all obey him.”22 The Surinamese belief in the cruelty of the Jewish or Christian woman, who takes revenge on the slave woman ‘courted’ by her husband, acquires a broader dimension through Moreau’s transfer of this stereotype to St.Domingue. In his chapter on creole women, he repeatedly emphasizes their extremely jealous character: And nothing can equal the anger of a Creole woman who is punishing a slave whom her husband has forced to soil the marriage bed. In her jealous rage she knows only how to devise means to satiate her vengeance. These frightful scenes which were very rare are becoming more like daily occurrences.23

In Suriname, this stereotype was applied to Susanna de Plessis (1739–95). Her father was the Huguenot Salomon du Plessis, a lawyer and one of the foremost figures in Governor Maurits’s ‘Cabale’,24 while her mother was the rich widow Johanna Margareta van Striep. Salomon, together with Striep’s former husband Samuel Pichot, had been elected member of the Council of Police in 1744. They became the leaders of the opposition of Christian planters to government restrictions. Susanna’s second marriage in 1767, to Frederik Cornelis Stolkert (a mulatto with a coloured grandmother, and likewise a member of the Council of Police), was annulled at her request in 1783.25

Social Mobility in Paramaribo It is interesting for gender research that the prime example of cruelty toward female slaves in Suriname should be a woman who pleaded for divorce from her husband because of mistreatment and violence in their relationship. Neither Moreau de Saint-Méry nor Nassy addresses violence 22

Médéric Moreau de Saint-Méry, A Civilization That Perished: The Last Years of White Colonial Rule in Haiti, tr. Ivor D. Spencer (Lanham M D : U P of America, 1985): 253. 23 Médéric Moreau de Saint-Méry, A Civilization That Perished, 37. 24 G.W. van der Meiden, “Governor Mauricius and the Political Rights of the Surinam Jews,” in The Jewish Nation in Surinam, ed. Cohen, 51–53. 25 See Hilde Neus, “Een quaad gerugt? Het verhaal van Alida en Susanna du Plessis,” Oso 21.1 (2002): 305–17. See also Hilde Neus–van der Putten, Susanna du Plessis: portret van een slavenmeesteres (Amsterdam: K I T V , 2003).

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as a consequence of slavery in plantation society. They are not writing from a contemporary postcolonial point of view, which condemns slavery as a crime. These writers aim at balancing their arguments with the norms of public opinion then obtaining in Europe and North America, according to which not slavery itself but the excesses of the system were regarded as questionable. Whereas Moreau distinguishes between the qualities of whites, free mulattoes, and black slaves, Nassy concentrates solely on the local Jewish people, for whom the status of whiteness had a relative value.26 Although they were never slaves, they were universally despised, and Nassy deplored the deterioration of their position at the same time as the manumitted population of Paramaribo was gaining ground in the public eye. Nassy’s point was not that he disagreed with these changes but that they implied such a negative attitude toward the Jews. He thus questioned the argument Hartsinck makes about the privileged position of the Jews: And what can it mean today, this privilege of contributing to the nomination of the Magistrates of the Colony? Does not a free Negro who owns a Shack or piece of land enjoy the same right? This type of democratic liberty conceded by the legislature to the inhabitants of a Colony who work equally hard, for their happiness as well as that of the Mother Country – does it deserve such childish and unjust observations? Mr Hartsinck, refusing to face the truth of this fact, and perhaps led by his own prejudices, says that ‘the liberty given to the Jews is a constant offence to the remaining inhabitants’; why did he not add the word ‘unjustified’ as evidence of his impartiality?27

This passage shows that Nassy was very much aware of the rivalry between the Jews and the manumitted slaves in the years immediately fol-

26

Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Black in the Early Modern World, 179. “Qu’est ce que veut dire encore ce privilège de contribuer à la nomination des Magistrats de la Colonie? un Nègre libre qui à une Baraque ou un morceau de terrain en propre, ne jouit-il pas du même droit? Cette espèce de liberté démocratique que le pouvoir législatif a cédé aux habitants d’une Colonie qui travaillent également, & pour leur bonheur & pour celui de la mère patrie, est il susceptible d’observations aussi pueriles qu’injustes? M. Hartsinck, sans vouloir sentir la vérité de ce fait, entrainé peut-être par ses propres préjugés, dit‚ ‘que cette liberté donnée aux Juifs, blesse encore le coeur des autres habitans’, pourquoi n’y a t’il pas ajouté le mot d’injustement pour montrer son impartialité?”; David Nassy, Essai historique, vol. 1: 109–10, my translation. 27

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lowing the economic crisis. Jewish migration to the city had increased, and Robert Cohen makes the new urban reality a crucial issue,28 grounding his analysis on three points. First, he observes that Suriname, in those days, played an important role for emigration from Amsterdam. Citing Yosef Kaplan, he argues that the Sephardim in Amsterdam had to bear a considerable economic burden because of the influx of poor Ashkenazi who had fled pogroms and war in Germany and Poland. In times of economic decay, the “Amsterdam Sephardic community in the 1740s stepped up its policy of assisting emigration of members who lacked employment opportunities in the Republic to Suriname and Curaçao.”29 The immigrants, after arriving in Suriname, generally chose to stay in Paramaribo without considering or having the possibility of settling in the interior. In this sense, the economic burden fell upon the city’s Jewish organizations. Second, Cohen makes a point of distancing his own reading of Surinamese urbanization patterns from that of Nassy, who did not question the colonial experience as such. Cohen, claiming that this attitude has lost its legitimacy, adopts a critical stance toward the parnassim and their denial of the justified claims of Jews of colour. Cohen laments that most of his colleagues do not address the ambiguous attitude of the Jews toward the Jewish mulattoes. That is why he considers it relevant to set out its dynamic in social life: If we compare the structure of a plantation society to a broadly based triangle intersected by two lines parallel to the base, we find a small apex, a middle sector and a large base, respectively representing the white European community, the free colored, and the slaves. Color is the dividing line between the two top sectors and legal status the line between the bottom and middle section. Such a model ignores two subgroups in the population: the Jews and the Jewish mulattos. Jews, being white, undoubtedly belonged to the small apex of the societal model. They had more in common with the ruling elite than just their color. They were but a small group of the population, whose socioeconomic position had little to do with their numerical strength. But in spite of their color, Jews did not enjoy full political and social acceptance in white society. As whites, they could not and did not belong to the lower strata. As Jews, they could not belong to the white apex. The Jewish mulattos found themselves in a similar societal bind. As free 28

Robert Cohen, Jews in Another Environment: Surinam in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991). 29 Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic, 1013.

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THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º men or women their place was undoubtedly among the middle sectors, but through their association with the Jewish community they were placed, or put themselves, in a separate category within the small middle section.30

In Cohen’s view, the problem of the Jewish mulattoes was a major challenge. With the help of Sephardim and Ashkenazis, the Jewish mulattoes had founded the “Darhe Jesarim” (Path of the Upright), an association inaugurated in Paramaribo in 1759. Jonathan Schorsch provides more information about the attitude of the mahamad toward this coloured society, which felt stimulated to claim equal rights in the Jewish congregation in view of their being a part – if only separate – of the new group of free mulattoes and blacks that was beginning to play a significant role in public life in Paramaribo.31 This development was supported by the government and became most visible in the events surrounding Elisabeth Samson, a free-born black woman who owned plantations and slaves and became one of the richest women in Paramaribo. But the government thought the colonial order had been disgraced when, in 1764, Samson announced her wish to marry a European and then, in 1767, went ahead with the marriage. This expectation of public recognition was deemed scandalous at a time when the economic crisis had reached its height and there was increasing animus against the Jews. Samson’s background in Paramaribo speaks for itself: she is always referred to as black, though there is no extant portrait of her to substantiate this.32 Cynthia McLeod, who conducted extensive archival research on Samson’s family background, reveals that Elisabeth lived as a child in the house of her older mulatto sister Maria, who was married to a member of the Council of Police, the highest administrative organ of the 30

Robert Cohen, Jews in Another Environment, 157. Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks, 252–53. 32 It is not known why the surname of Elisabeth and two of her siblings is Samson, a typically Jewish name. Schorsch writes: “Yet even these usually lighter-skinned Africans and their descendants, some with Jewish names, when freed, often failed to remain affiliated with the community. Many assimilated into Christian families of free Blacks and coloreds. It is unclear whether this stemmed from requirements that manumitted slaves needed to be educated in the Reformed religion, since obviously some ex-slaves did remain Jewish. Although their fascinating story deserves fuller treatment than I can give here, I try to include as well the far higher number of slaves who remained neutral to and outside the religious life of their owners”; Jews and Blacks, 219. 31

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colony.33 From 1750 at the latest, Samson shared her household with Carl Otto Creutz, a German soldier who came to Suriname in 1733 on a contract from the Society of Suriname in Amsterdam and was charged with conducting peace negotiations with the Saramaka maroons in 1749. He did this so successfully that he was appointed member of the Council of Police, which office he occupied until his death in 1762.34 In 1772, Samson’s mulatto niece Susanna Johanna Hanssen married Hendrik Schouten, a Dutch poet who also worked for the Council of Police. Schouten was co-founder in 1775 of a Paramaribo theatre, to which Jews were forbidden entry. This theatre is said to have been less successful than the theatre founded in 1776 by the Jews in response to this exclusion. These facts provide some insight into the antisemitic tendencies among the white Christian and ‘free’ creole population of Paramaribo. Their effort to improve the position of the manumitted creoles and blacks was prompted by the fact that white Europeans were leaving the country in those years of financial constraint. Some officials accordingly circulated a proposal according to which all female slaves who were made pregnant by their owners should be declared ipso jure free, along with their unborn children. This proposal was never put into practice, but the philosophy behind it underscores the changes that were to affect the Portuguese Nation. In the Essai historique, Nassy complains about the mépris continuels (constant contempt) poured upon the Jews in Paramaribo, where it became popular to abuse them as smous. The contacts between Christians and Jews had deteriorated to such a degree that they stopped visiting each other and Jews were even treated with undisguised arrogance. Such treat33 Cynthia McLeod published the results in her study Elisabeth Samson: Een vrije, zwarte vrouw in het 18e-eeuwse Suriname (Breda: Conserve, 1993). She also wrote a novel on her, De vrije negerin Elisabeth: Gevangene van kleur (Breda: Conserve, 2000). On McLeod, see Silvio Torres–Saillant, An Intellectual History of the Caribbean (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006): 181–87. 34 Creutz kept a journal about these negotiations, which Richard Price reproduces in English (49–84). He also publishes the address of Governor Maurits to the Council of Police: “To that end I have the honor of sending your Honors the Journal kept by Captain Lieutenant Creutz, and I recommend him most highly to your Honors’ favor and protection. He is a worthy officer, perspicacious and courageous. Permit me to add that in many respects, and especially to confound my abovementioned opponents, it would have a beneficial effect if your Honors were so gracious as to honor him with some public sign of approbation and satisfaction concerning the expedition”; Price, To Slay the Hydra, 44.

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ment contrasts with the status of the “Mestizos and the Mulattoes, bastards or legitimate,” with “lucrative employments to the detriment of those unhappy whites who counted among the mothers of those Mulattoes many of the slaves whom they themselves had freed.”35 In this situation, Nassy complained that Jews were being blamed for anything that went wrong; even installing a ghetto in Paramaribo seemed a possibility. And another problem emerged. Some of the slaves who had been freed by their Jewish owners and had converted to the Jewish religion remained faithful to the Jewish religion. Cohen reproduces the results of a population survey of the Joden Savannah in 1762, which listed 27 free mulattoes and blacks, a third of them children under ten years of age.36 Most of them went to Paramaribo in the 1770s, where many of them succeeded in bettering themselves economically and socially. Of course, this group could not be satisfied with the lack of democracy within the Jewish congregation, to which they were not admitted as full members. Details of the polemic on this issue were revealed when the Jewish mulattoes finally submitted to the governor a petition for full recognition, in a letter, dated 2 September 1793, that was couched in remarkably frank terms: They could not understand why the Jews could arrogate themselves more privileges than the Christian community, which is so far superior to them and whose members constitute the lawful authorities of this country and under whose protection the Jewish nation exercises its religion.37

This petition, which revealed an impressive command of divisive strategies, was dismissed by government decree. Nassy, of course, does not speak merely as an individual. As a member of the congregational board of the Portuguese Nation, he had to deal with the directives issued by his co-religionists in Paramaribo as well as in Amsterdam. Yosef Kaplan, in Judíos nuevos en Amsterdam, presents the material he obtained from the municipal archive, according to which 35

“Des Métis & des Mulâtres, tant bâtards que légitimes des employs lucratifs au détriment de ces malheureux blancs, qui comptent parmi les mères de ces Mulâtres beaucoup de leurs esclaves affranchis par eux mêmes”; David Nassy, Essai historique, vol. 1: 159. 36 Robert Cohen, Jews in Another Environment, 159. 37 Cohen, Jews in Another Environment, 167.

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blacks and mulattoes who were converts to Judaism were discriminated against by the mahamad. Kaplan even mentions the fact that, after 29 April 1647, a special section was reserved for them in the Jewish cemetery at Ouderkerk in Holland.38 Jewish-born mulattoes whose parents were married according to Jewish rituals, or mulattoes who were married to whites in a Jewish ceremony, were not denied full membership of the Nation, however. Nor were marriages between Jews and converted blacks or mulattoes forbidden, whereby converts of colour married to whites were better off. Cohen points to several marriages in the 1790s between white Jews and non-white Jews.39 These facts and distinctions are significant, indicating as they do that mixed marriages were a legal possibility for the Sephardim but seem to have been seldom put into practice. Cohen mentions that in the archives of the Sephardim he consulted in Suriname, the first marriage of a Sephardic Jew to a free Jewish woman took place only in 1817. These were the years in which religious barriers were gradually being broken down. Another first marriage in another category, of a Sephardic Jew to an Ashkenazi, took place in 1811, while it took until 1820 for a marriage to be recorded between a Sephardic Jew and a Christian woman, the latter taking on the religion of her husband.40

Nassy’s Enlightened Views If intermarriage was no alternative for the Portuguese Nation to create a better society, what, then, did Nassy have in mind? As a man of the Enlightenment, he doubtless saw the future in terms of the improvement of knowledge through education.41 His Essai historique indicates that this endeavour was a family tradition. One of his ancestors established a school in the Jewish Savannah as early as 1667, but no further details are avail38

Yosef Kaplan, Judíos nuevos en Amsterdam: Estudio sobre la historia social e intelectual del judaísmo sefardí en el siglo X V I I (Barcelona: Editorial Gedisa, 1996): 73–74. 39 Robert Cohen, Jews in Another Environment, 39. 40 Böhm mentions two marriages between Jewish mulattoes and blacks in 1725 and 1729 respectively (Los sefardíes, 163–64). 41 The coincidences with St.-Domingue, again, are remarkable. MacClellan describes the “mad-for-science summer” of 1784 in Cap François, when the “Cercle des Philadelphes,” a learned society, was founded with close connections to the U S A . Colonial problems would be solved by science!

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able. Nassy, however, in the eighteenth century, did not limit his educational goals to the Jewish community. In 1785, he proposed a reading list to Governor Wichers in connection with his preparations to set up a school in Paramaribo. The list contains the following topics, to be treated in chronological order: Classical history; Jewish history; Dutch history; commerce; navigation; agriculture; philosophy; medicine; literature; politics. Rather than a day-school, Nassy suggested establishing an evening academy, where members of “Docendo Docemur” might read important works together with the pupils of both “sexes of the age of puberty and of all religions without distinction […], the lectures were to be given in French and Dutch with the possibility of translation into Spanish and Portuguese for those who knew neither of the main languages.”42 In his response, the governor asked that geography be added as a main subject, without even mentioning the possibility of including religion in the programme. Cohen observes that this educational syllabus, with Jewish history preceding Dutch history, seems to point to an “Enlightenment Surinam style, where Jews formed an integral part of the select intellectual circle.”43 A second project of Nassy’s dates from 1797, when, after his stay in Philadelphia, he considered opening a college for the humanities in the Jewish Savannah for the “children of all ranks and classes without exemption of Nation and religion.”44 His model was Harvard or Princeton, with free admission for the poor. He now presents a different curriculum to the governor: Dutch, French, basic English, writing, moral, history, arithmetic, geography, and mathematics. This time, Nassy received no reaction to his suggestions.45 These endeavours in the interests of enlightened and modern education, though, do not suggest that the Jewish-Portuguese Nation excluded knowledge contributed by African Americans. On the contrary, the author of the Essai historique gives examples of their influence in the Jewish Savannah, where everyone lived close together and the typical caste divisions were less keenly felt than in life elsewhere in the city. Two chapters of his book are dedicated to plants and herbal medicine; this is particularly important in view of Nassy’s preference for school medicine. Bijlsma 42

Robert Cohen, Jews in Another Environment, 101. Cohen, Jews in Another Environment, 102. 44 Jews in Another Environment, 102. 45 Enzyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1972): vol. 12: 844. 43

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mentions the pharmaceutical knowledge that Nassy obtained in the Jewish Savannah. When he decided to leave Suriname for the first time in his life, in 1792, he sailed to Philadelphia, then the capital of the newly founded U S A , where he set up as a Jewish doctor. He published his findings on yellow fever, which earned him election to the American Philosophical Society.46 When he returned to Suriname in 1795, he was not allowed to practise as a doctor, and went into business instead. Nassy remained interested in political matters, however: three years later he published Lettre Político-Theologico-Morale sur les Juifs along with a Dutch translation, supporting the emancipation of Dutch Jewry.47 It would be interesting to conduct more research on Nassy’s scientific activities on a scale like that adopted by MacClellan for St.-Domingue. At the very least, Nassy’s activities in this context inevitably lead us back to African-American plant-lore and its decisive influence on methods of medical treatment in colonial society. The Essai historique reveals that Nassy, notwithstanding his role as a proud Creole inhabitant of Suriname, had to cope with strongly selfdefensive and even hostile local and sectarian attitudes. In view of this fact, his pride and rectitude constitute a form of self-affirmation, typical of the communal awareness of minority groups. In his book about Sephardic literature in Amsterdam, Harm den Boer indicates the frequent presence of a panegyric style, borrowed from Spanish literature of the Golden Age but organized in accordance with Jewish strategies for negotiating their position.48 Kaplan and den Boer see this style as a policy of camouflaging the remaining special bond with peninsular reality, notwithstanding the Inquisition. The poet Don Miguel de Barrios was its most popular mouthpiece. Born in Andalusia, he fought as a captain in the service of the Spanish Hapsburgs against the French in Flanders, and moved to Amsterdam in order to be able to pursue his Jewish faith openly. Nassy refers to him frequently and even reproduces some of his verses in the opening lines of the Essai historique: “With the Dutch in burning-hot Brazil / the holy

46

David Nassy, Observations on the Cause, Nature, and Treatment of the Epidemic Disorder, prevalent in Philadelphia (Philadelphia P A : Parker, 1793). 47 Sigmund Seligmann, David Nassy of Surinam and his Lettre politico-theologicomorale sur les Juifs (Baltimore M D : n.p., 1914). 48 Harm den Boer, La literatura sefardí de Amsterdam (Alcalá de Henares: Instituto Internacional de Estudios Sefardíes y Andalusíes, 1995).

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nation resists the Portuguese / and in this year it routs the imperial power / that threatens to subjugate it.”49 Kaplan, who considers this policy of camouflage a fundamental issue, quotes some other lines by Don Miguel de Barrios: “One People judges you negatively / because you set yourself apart from them, / and another judges you as unfaithful / because they saw you dissimulating.”50 The Sephardic culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was an exponent of this fingir or feigning, in the sense of disguise and dissimulation, as implied by their position as prosperous citizens who were nevertheless treated as a minority. Is this what Barlaeus meant to say when he wrote that the Jews were forced to behave as hypocrites under Portuguese rule? His own experiences in Amsterdam as well as Nassy’s treatise on the Enlightenment crisis of Paramaribo clearly show that the Jewish-Portuguese Nation also had problems in the more tolerant Dutch environment.

¹º

49

“Con el Hollandio en el Brasil ardiente / Se opone al Portugues la nation santa. / Y este ane en buda al imperial quebrante, / Que la amenaça con furor ambiente”; David Nassy, Essai historique, vol. 1: 10. Nassy gives a French translation of this passage on the same page: “Avec les Hollandois dans le Brésil brûlant, la sainte Nation s’opposa aux Portugais, & dérouta dans cette année la force imperiale, qui voiloit subjuguer la République.” 50 “Con un Pueblo estás mal quisto / por lo que te apartas del, / otro no te juzga fiel / por lo que fingir te ha visto”; Yosef Kaplan, Judíos nuevos en Amsterdam, frontispiece.

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O N A T H A N S C H O R S C H M A I N T A I N S that neither Nassy nor the Sephardim formed part of white society in Enlightenment Suriname or, at least, that this category was ambivalent when it came to their status.1 For the years in which the economic crisis and its aftermath beset Paramaribo, we have more detail about the lives of several other people who did not belong to the apex of white, colonial society, as we will see below. They all have in common the fact that their life stories are inextricably linked to the ongoing war against the maroons and the strategies adopted to prevent their increase. I will elaborate on this point by rehearsing the biographies of two persons: the Saramaka maroon Alabi (1743–1820); and the creole slave woman Joanna (1758–83). The Saramakas were among the first Africans to rebel against slavery in the interior. Schorsch, with reference to Richard Price, claims:

at least three clans of Maroons today known collectively as Saramaka named themselves after the Jewish plantations from whence they fled: the Nasís (after various Nassy plantations), the Biítus (after the Britto family), and the Matjáu (after the Machado family).2

They kept mounting raids on the plantations: in response to these raids, the Portuguese Nation – but not exclusively – invested considerable resources in armed expeditions against them. 1

Jonathan Schorsch refutes Cohen’s thesis that the Jews were automatically seen as white in Surinamese society: “Much evidence shows that both Jews and non-Jews during the early colonial era were ambivalent about the ‘racial’ status of the Jews”; Schorsch, Blacks and Jews, 179. 2 Schorsch, Jews and Blacks, 229.

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Maroons had been active throughout the Americas since the onset of colonization. Authorities were constantly embattled by these ubiquitous rebels – something which did not escape the attention of Caspar Barlaeus, who, in his Rerum per octennium, supplied a lengthy description of the maroon settlement of Palmares as well as of the Dutch military expedition against this quilombo in Northeast Brazil. Palmares was a conglomeration of settlements with thousands of inhabitants in the Serra da Barriga; it persisted throughout the seventeenth century until it was destroyed by the army of Domingos Jorge Velho in 1695.3 For the Dutch, it seems, Palmares was a major plague, whereas Calado hardly even mentions Palmares in his account of the same period. On the Wild Coast, in present-day Suriname, the escaped slaves also became a grave problem for the Dutch soon after the wars against the Amerindians were over, although van Lier touches only briefly on this topic in his Frontier Society. More important for him was the impact of gender and ethnicity as markers of social position and mobility within the Christian creole society of Paramaribo. Whereas any intimate relationship between a black man and a white woman was condemned, the concubinage of a black woman and a white man was commonplace, and even sanctioned by the community as a ‘Surinamese marriage’.4 According to van Lier, the aversion to a relationship between a black man and a white woman was the outcome of a subconscious guilt complex on the part of white men for their sexual abuse of black women. For a white settler, the very idea of the “domination by a black man of female members of his group, whom he was accustomed to surrounding with all kinds of taboos, assumed the

3

The word quilombo derives from the Kimbundu word kilombo, in ancient Angola a male initiation camp where young men were prepared for adulthood and warrior status. Norvan Smith assumes that some immigrants from Brazil in Suriname might have had connections with Palmares, where a Portuguese-based creole was spoken (Atlas, 137–41). See Wim Hoogbergen, “Palmares, a Critical View on its Sources,” in History and Histories in the Caribbean, ed. Thomas Bremer & Ulrich Fleischmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 2001): 23–55. A comprehensive study of Palmares can be found in Décio Freitas, Palmares: A guerra dos escravos (Pôrto Alegre: Mercado Aberto, 1984). 4 According to local custom, a European man who came to the colony lived together with a slave woman, who was responsible for looking after his health and general wellbeing. He, in turn, occupied himself with giving her a decent living, taking care of their children, and eventually obtaining manumission for her or for his children.

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proportions of an example of the most revolting sensuality and perversity.”5 Van Lier situates the origins of this trauma in the eighteenth century and remarks that things had not changed much since he left Suriname for study in Holland in the 1930s.6 His interest in creole society is also confirmed by his costly edition of the Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, the report by the Scottish soldier John Gabriel Stedman, published in 1796,7 from which we know of Joanna, a creole slave woman who was Stedman’s concubine during his stay in Suriname from 1773 to 1777. The existence of Joanna assumed new importance when Richard and Sally Price edited a different version of Stedman’s manuscript in 1988,8 after discovering the (more revealing) original version of 1790, before it was revised for the 1796 publication. Two years later, Richard Price published Alabi’s World, the biography of a Saramaka chief who lived in the same period.9 In 1749, Alabi’s father Abini helped negotiate the cease-fire with Creutz (the German lieutenantcaptain I mentioned in chapter 3). More than a decade later, in 1762, this same chief Abini secured an official peace treaty with the colonial government after a hundred years of warfare – a milestone in the history of the Saramakas. The publication of Alabi’s World was widely acclaimed. In a review of the book, the English historian Eric Hobsbawm judged maroon communities to be one of the most exceptional modes of resistance in the Americas, and “the new interest in maroon history could not but point in the

5

Rudolf van Lier, Frontier Society, 76. The first version of van Lier’s book was published in Dutch in 1949 and the English version came out in 1971, with a new foreword and an additional essay on the situation from 1940 until 1970. This exclusion of the African slave man was already visible on Frans Post’s 1640 painting (Fig. 1), where this man is disconnected from eye contact with the other two persons. 7 John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes, ed. Rudolf van Lier (Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1971). 8 John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes, Transcribed for the First time from the Original 1790 Manuscript, ed., intro. and notes by Richard Price & Sally Price (Baltimore M D & London: Johns Hopkins U P , 1988). If not otherwise indicated, I shall be quoting from this edition. 9 Richard Price, Alabi’s World (Baltimore M D & London: Johns Hopkins U P , 1990). 6

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direction of Suriname.”10 This interest in maroon history was nothing new for Richard Price, who, in the preface to the third edition of his Maroon Societies mentions that this “anthology, first published in 1973, was intended to chart a terrain, to compare across the hemisphere the historical experience of people whose ancestors had rebelled against enslavement and created new societies in the wilderness of the Americas.”11 James Clifford and George E. Marcus, who are counted among the ‘fathers’ of the anthropological turn in cultural studies for their questioning of the ‘auctorial’ position in ethnographic writing, gave high praise to another book by Richard Price, First-Time; inspired by Price’s study, they judged it to be an excellent example of self-conscious, serious partiality in ethnography, an “inherently imperfect mode of knowledge, which produces gaps as it fills them.”12 In First-Time, Price distinguished his recordings of the oral history of the Saramakas from his own ethnographic account by means of differences in typography (this scrupulousness about sourcing is also apparent, if less elaborately, in Alabi’s World). This differential marking served to question the balance between narrative strategies on the one hand and Price’s own ethnographic authority on the other. The emphasis on the auctorial position of the author should be taken into account when analysing the depiction of Joanna as well as that of Alabi. We get to know them through Stedman’s and Richard Price’s narratives, whose organization determines the degree to which dialogue with their characters is possible.

Alabi In the first place, the title of Price’s book Alabi’s World says something about the author’s positioning of his character. Alabi is the Saramaka name of Johannes Arrabini: i.e. the name with which the Moravian mis10

Eric Hobsbawm, “Escaped Slaves of the Forest,” New York Review of Books

37.19 (6 December 1990): 46. 11 Richard Price, Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, ed. Price, (1973; Baltimore M D & London: Johns Hopkins U P , 1996): xi. 12 Richard Price, First-Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People (Baltimore M D & London: Johns Hopkins U P , 1983). See also James Clifford & George Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. Clifford & Marcus (Berkeley: U of California P , 1986): 8.

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sionaries baptized him in 1771. As an anthropologist, Price is clearly more interested in Alabi’s Saramaka background than in his Christian orientation.13 In terms of his ethnographic requirements, Price had to select from an overwhelming number of sources focusing “on the fundamental negotiation of meaning between Euro-Americans and Afro-Americans in relationships of differential power.”14 He distinguishes among four different voices, to which he applies the same method – differentiating typography – as later in First-Time. The dominant voice is that of the ethnographer and organizer of the narrative. Secondly, he reproduces passages from books, reports, and letters written by the Moravian Brethren. Then he includes selections of Saramaka oral history taken from his own research; and, finally, he inserts quotations from documents by officers and functionaries in the service of the Dutch colonial government. That Price reproduces the Moravian documents is not surprising, since they are richest source for studying Alabi’s World. The missionaries lived with the Saramakas in their villages and recorded their experiences and observations in diaries, letters, and reports.15 They are thus central to Price’s book, which is structured chronologically in four stages. The first part, “Foreparents,” summarizes Saramaka history up to the peace treaty of 1762. Then, from 1763 to 1766, “In the Wings,” the Moravians arrive in the Saramaka villages and meet Alabi’s father Abini. In the “CenterStage,” Alabi succeeds his father as chief and presides over the Saramakas until his death in 1820. The final part is an “Epilogue on Alabi’s legacy.” This division makes the year 1766 crucial in Alabi’s life story. On 18 October, Captain Musinga and his men from Matawai broke the terms of the peace treaty by raiding four plantations – a personal affront to Abini, who had painstakingly negotiated the treaty. He had personally welcomed the first Moravian missionaries on Christmas Eve of 1765, eager for them to teach the Saramaka children to read and write. Obviously, for Abini peace meant an improvement in education. Simultaneously, however, the arrival of the Moravians also sparked disagreement among the various Saramaka chiefs, and Price comments extensively on this situation. The 13

The Moravians, in their turn, always address him as Johannes Arrabini or Johannes. I will adopt the name Alabi for this chapter in order to avoid confusion with the title of Price’s book. 14 Richard Price, Alabi’s World, xi. 15 The three volumes published by Staehelin on the Moravian Mission in Suriname and Berbice in the eighteenth century reproduce these reports and letters.

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main problem was that slaves, either stolen or fugitives from plantations, refused to return. The terms of the treaty, however, demanded that every runaway slave be returned to his rightful owner. Non-compliance sufficed to annul the peace treaty. As a consequence, Abini marched against Musinga’s village and was killed in a battle on 3 January 1767. Price describes his death as a terrible shock for the Saramakas: “kôndè séki, the whole land shook.”16 Alabi, who had always accompanied his father, must have been familiar with every detail of his negotiations. He was designated Abini’s successor, first as a captain, then, after attaining his majority in 1783, as chief. Alabi left for Paramaribo in June 1767 to present himself to Governor Crommelin, who was impressed by his favourable report on the Moravians. Alabi returned to Paramaribo in 1768, this time staying as long as six months to make arrangements for his father’s second funeral back home, traditionally the largest public event in Saramaka communities. Back in his village, Alabi was confronted with the ongoing negotiations with Musinga and, although he was not involved himself, he felt increasingly dissatisfied. As Price states, a “personal crisis was building,”17 and the Moravians passed down the tensions Alabi was subjected to during this period, tensions that likewise affected members of his own family as well as others in the community. In this state of mind, Alabi heard Brother Stoll preaching for the first time in the Saramaka language on 13 May 1770. This affected him so deeply that he converted to Christianity on 6 January 1771 and was the first Saramaka to be baptized by Brother Kersten. Alabi’s faith speaks through his words: “Jesus Christ […] can and wants only to help us. I believe in Him, and I foreswear with all my heart the works and service of Satan, and wish until the end of my days only to be with Jesus.”18 One can only wonder at Alabi’s firm resolve in converting to Christianity, which persisted until his death in 1820. As chief of a people whose long-established religious beliefs were paramount to their sense of identity, he nevertheless constantly tried to convince them of the value of 16

Richard Price, Alabi’s World, 84. Price, Alabi’s World, 116. 18 Alabi’s World, 126. The original Moravian text is: “Jesus Christus [...] kann und will uns allein helfen; ich glaube an ihn und entsage von Herzen allen Werken und Dienst des Satans und will bis an mein Ende nur allein auf Jesum sehen”; Staehelin I I I , vol. 1: 145. 17

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Christianity. To that end, he consulted with the elder tribal chief Kwaku Etja, involved his mother Yaya and his sister Bebi, and intervened on numerous other occasions. In 1813, when the Moravians abandoned their mission in his village, Alabi was left behind with only a few other Christian Saramaka brethren. This comparative isolation did not weaken his faith, as can be seen from final words to Grego: “When I die, make certain above all that my children learn the Way of the Lord, so that they remain in His hand.”19 Grego, like Alabi among the very first Saramakas to be baptized, died soon after him, and Alabi’s words seem to have been passed on by word of mouth until they reached the newly-arrived Moravians fifteen years later, in 1835. Price makes it very clear that Alabi’s conversion did not imply that he retired from his duties as a Saramaka chief, although he did indeed once try to withdraw before being persuaded to continue. In general, his life and influence are a success story: In 1820, when the aged Alabi – surrounded by his innumerable children, grandchildren, and great-grand-children – breathed his last at Kambalóagoón, the nation he had ruled for four decades was in full flower. What had been, at the time of the Peace, a handful of villages far up the Pikilio and the Gaanlio, deeply preoccupied with their defense against whitefolks, had become a populous, flourishing nation that stretched from those faraway sites all the way to Gingee Bambey, only a week by canoe from the capital.20

It must be remembered that the death of Abini, Alabi’s visits to Paramaribo, and his conversion took place during a severe economic crisis in which plantation owners lost their properties and social mobility in Paramaribo was at its most complex. Alabi himself spent a lengthy period of time in Paramaribo, where the Moravians preached in Sranan, the creole vernacular among the native population. Alabi must have had knowledge of Sranan, being highly sensitive to language in general. Brother Schumann, who was an expert on language,21 relied on Alabi from August 1777 to August 1778 in preparing his Saramaka–German dictionary, and Alabi was also an informant for Brother Riemer, who stayed in the Sara19

Richard Price, Alabi’s World, 430. Price, Alabi’s World, 273. 21 Schumann also compiled a Neger-Englisches Wörterbuch in 1783, which was copied and studied by André Kramp in 1983; M S in the Royal Library at The Hague. 20

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maka village from September to November 1779, and from January to March 1780. The comments on Alabi’s letters give further proof of his knowledge of Sranan. Price reproduces the letters from 1778 and 178022 and Jacques Arends and Matthias Perl have published some written in 1790 and 1791.23 In a separate chapter, Arends notes that Alabi, probably illiterate, dictated his letters to Grego, who lived in the missionaries’ household. In an analysis of the handwriting in the letters, Arends concludes they are virtually identical. Alabi’s (or Grego’s) Saramaka text borrows from Sranan lexicography, and Saramaka Christians speak a srananized version of their language even today. Alabi must have been in contact with Sranan during his trips along the Suriname River or to Paramaribo, but Price does not make much of this experience in his book, focusing instead on Alabi’s life among the Saramaka in the interior; it is significant that Price, to illustrate this process, does not rely exclusively on texts but also has recourse to iconographic material left by the Moravians. The picture on the cover of Alabi’s World, taken from an engraving in a book written by Brother Riemer, shows the visit of five Saramaka men to the Moravian mission in Paramaribo.24 Price

22

Richard Price, Alabi’s World, letter of April 1780, 207–208; letter of March

1778, 395–96. 23

Jacques Arends & Matthias Perl, Early Suriname Creole Texts: A Collection of

18th-Century Sranan and Saramaccan Documents (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 1995): 338–84. 24 The image is also reproduced on page 91. Riemer’s original account, included in

Staehelin’s volumes, was later elaborated in book form: Johann Andreas Riemer, Missionsreise nach Surinam und Barbice zu einer am Surinamflusse im dritten Grad der Linie wohnenden Freinegernation: Nebst einigen Bemerkungen über die Missionsantstalten der Brüderunität zu Paramaribo (Zittau & Leipzig: Beym Verfasser und in Kommission der Schöpsischen Buchhandlung, 1801). The main difference between the book version and the original manuscript consists in the fact that Riemer stresses the proud behaviour of those born free (the Saramakas) in comparison with that of a slave, who cannot be free in spirit. Riemer also tells of feeling unjustly treated by the Moravians because of having to leave their community due to his marriage to a woman from outside the community. Riemer was probably inspired to publish his experiences by the success of Stedman’s abbreviated edition. See Sprengel’s German translation of Stedman’s account: “John Gabriel Stedman: Stedmans Nachrichten van Suriname, und dem letzten Krieg der Einwohner mit ihren rebellischen Negersclaven in den Jahren 1772 bis 1777,” in Auswahl der besten auslaendischen geographischen und statistischen Nachrichten zur

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suggests that this image concerns the visit of Alabi and his men to Paramaribo after Abini’s death in June 1767 and wonders about the legend of the engraving, which distinguishes between the missionaries and the “freyneger.”25 The missionaries, seated, are fully clothed, whereas the maroons enter scarcely dressed and with a darker skin tone than the Europeans. For Riemer, this explanation was relevant. He was presenting this picture to German readers who were familiar neither with Moravians in Suriname nor with any “freyneger” whatsoever. To be sure, the Moravians used the word “freyneger” in reference to the maroons (and not to the manumitted creoles), whereas others in Paramaribo called them runaways or Bush Negroes (Bosnegers). Moreover, according to Riemer this same plate depicts the Saramakas when they brought him to their village in September 1779, twelve years later than Price assumed. Riemer published his Missionsreise after having been expelled from the Moravian Church. He repeatedly differentiates between the state of mind of servile, not very reliable creole slaves and the proud, independent attitude of the maroons he so admires. Although the 1801 edition is not explicit, we can assume that Riemer himself produced the sixteen plates for his book on the “Freinegernation” (Free Negro Nation). Of these plates, Price includes ten in Alabi’s World, most of them portraits of Riemer: leaving Amsterdam by boat; his ceremonial departure from the Moravian congregation in Barby, Germany; arrival in Paramaribo; the trip up-river to the Saramaka village, Bambey; the warm welcome given him in Bambey; the missionary lying ill in the village; a bird shot by Riemer that the Saramaka consider a god; and two confrontations with a ‘tiger’ (jaguar).26 The plates show the Moravians in direct contact with the village population. On an additional plate (page 161 in Price), Riemer depicted the execution of a child murderer. The reports in Staehelin’s volumes indicate that this occurred several times. Murderers of children were condemned to an excruciating death in Saramaka communities, even if their crime was committed in order to worship their gado (god).

Aufklärung der Völker- und Länderkunde, ed. M.C. Sprengel (Halle: in der Rengerschen Buchhandlung, 1797): vols. 8–9. 25 “Saramakas visiting the Moravians in Paramaribo. Note the key, apparently considered necessary to avoid any possibility of confusion” (Price, Alabi’s World, 91). 26 The plates are on pp. 55, 61, 91, 181, 187, 194, 196, 198 and 391 respectively.

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Riemer’s plates are not the only illustrations in Price’s book, in which we also find photographs of his Saramaka informants, maps, and other material. Price does not include a photograph of himself, so that Riemer’s self-portraits give his ethnographic discourse the flavour of authenticity. Thomas Mitchell has elaborated on such differences between text and image, discussing in his article “Spatial Form in Literature” the importance of different spatial metaphors for each of them, since they require their own conventions in order to stabilize their differential temporal order.27 In the present case, Riemer’s images establish Price’s narrative authority as ethnographic observer and are needed to display his transcendental subjectivity and that of his fieldwork in contrast to the Moravian horizon, which he cannot express through his text alone. Not surprisingly, Price identifies with the illustrations of a man who claimed to have written the first treatise on what he saw as the third-generation “Freynegernation.”

Joanna Stedman’s Narrative centres on the trope of the servile creole slave, whom Riemer judges as so unpleasant in his behaviour. Stedman immediately portrays himself as a military hero on the frontispiece of Price’s edition, an image that recurs on page 2 of the book. It shows a soldier standing triumphantly over a maroon lying wounded in accordance with the rules of a regular battle. It suggests a relation between this defeated victim of African descent and the standing (upright) hero, a European, to whom, the legend says, this situation is also like a wound profoundly affecting his own heart: “‘From different Parents, different Climes we came, / at different Periods’; Fate still rules the same. / Unhappy Youth while bleeding on the ground; ’T was Yours to fall – but Mine to feel the wound’.”28 Stedman’s illustrations are widely known and often reproduced. He was a talented artist and supervised the engravings of his own drawings and sketches by such famous artists as William Blake, Thomas Holloway, Francesco Bartolozzi, and Michele Benedetti in London. Because of this sophisticated interplay between image and text, the reader’s senses are engaged much more strongly than in Price’s Alabi’s World. The plates docu27

W.J.T. Mitchell, “Spatial Form in Literature: Toward a General Theory,” in The Language of Images, ed. Mitchell (Chicago & London: U of Chicago P, 1980): 271–99. 28 John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative, 2. Engraving by Bartolozzi.

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ment the lush tropical flora and teeming fauna as well as the promising cultivation of cacao, coffee, cotton, indigo, and sugar, the typical products of the plantation economy at that time. In addition, Stedman provides ethnographic details and includes maps of Guiana, Suriname, and Paramaribo with views of forts, military camps, and estates on the shores of rivers. Stedman was sent to Suriname to end the first Boni war, initiated by maroon communities formed after 1762 as a reaction to the peace treaties with the Saramakas and Djukas. The agreement to return recently runaway slaves to their owners led to the creation of new maroon communities. For the editors of Stedman’s Narrative, it was important to stress that in this time of economic crisis the Dutch colony had become a theatre of perpetual war.29 In contrast to the Moravian reports about their mission among the Saramakas, the wars against these phantom maroons are the central theme of Stedman’s account. Dating back to Aphra Behn and Voltaire, Dutch colonialism was the European paradigm of extreme cruelty.30 When Stedman recorded his experiences after 1777 he added to this already familiar trope, informing us about the regular corporal punishment and torture of slaves. His plates on this topic are among those most reproduced in other publications. Along with his artistic abilities, and in contrast to Richard Price,31 Stedman also

29

“Organized bands of maroons kept planters living in constant fear for their lives and in constant risk of losing their investments. The 1760s witnessed a tremendous increase in the extension of credit by Amsterdam bankers, as Surinamese planters mortgaged their estates and engaged in ever-increasing conspicuous consumption. By 1773, when Stedman arrived in what he called ‘this Blood Spilling Colony’ to help quell the most recent maroon depredations, heavy speculation, planter absenteeism, and rapid changes in plantation ownership were posing a serious threat to the colony’s viability”; Richard & Sally Price, Narrative, xiv. 30 Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave: A True History (1688), and Voltaire, Candide ou l’optimisme, traduit de l’allemand par M le docteur Ralph (1759). 31 Price distinguishes his ethnographic work from that of fiction, although the opening scene of Alabi’s world is written in quite a beautiful prose. But immediately thereafter, Price’s professional authority takes over and he accurately reports on his fieldwork observations and his written sources. Price is not specifically interested in literature, and in his introduction of 1996 only makes passing mention of Esteban Montejo (1860–1973), the protagonist of the Autobiography of a Runaway Slave (tr. Jocasta Innes; New York: Pantheon, 1968), omitting reference to Barnet’s book in his extensive list of works cited. This accords with the general perception of this novel in the U S A ; it appeared under the name of the ‘author’, Esteban Montejo, with Miguel

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cultivated literary pretensions. While writing his book, he lived at Tiverton among writers and was very much aware of the contemporary literary taste favouring interracial love affairs, provided they had a satisfyingly dramatic resolution. Mary Louise Pratt argues convincingly in Imperial Eyes that the outcome to be learned from these colonial love stories seemed always to be roughly the same: “the lovers are separated, the European is reabsorbed by Europe, and the non-European dies an early death.”32 This formula is in perfect harmony with Stedman’s plot. His perspective of a convinced soldier obliges him to explain his ideas about the inevitability of war in the history of men, including Africans, in order to prevent the general stagnation of the globe. In the case of Suriname, however, it is impossible to approve of the torture and unrestrained cruelty of corporal punishment, which cannot but provoke armed resistance. Stedman accordingly portrays the maroons as respectable albeit defeated adversaries and draws approving attention to their military prowess. To describe his adversary’s cultural habits, meanwhile, he displaces their African heritage into the realm of natural history. Only through their role as noble savage can he confer meaning on their family life, music, and language. Such a divergence between Europeans and natural history undoubtedly appealed to the taste of Stedman’s contemporary readers, and was already present in Barlaeus’s text. The uncoupling of the maroons (including the Amerindians) from Christian civilization is quite in accordance with van Lier’s model of ‘frontier society’. For that society, the ‘Surinamese marriage’ is an accepted model of integration into Christian society, and this is what Stedman describes. He heightens its effects by depicting Joanna, a baptized slave, as equipped with exceptional qualities that make her one of the most valuable slaves in the colony: diligence, beauty, fine manners, exemplary dedication to Stedman’s health and general well-being, and, in addition, the virtue of being almost ‘white’. For narrative and ideological balance, and as a contrast to the extremities of life in and outside Paramaribo,

Barnet as editor. In its Cuban version, the Biografía de un cimarrón (Havana: Instituto de Etnología y Folklore, 1966) was presented as a novel written by Miguel Barnet. 32 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992): 97.

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Stedman recounts their happiness on L’Espérance, an estate on the Cottica River near Fauquenbergh where Joanna was born and her family lived. L’Espérance, in the meantime abandoned by its owners, was a technologically advanced sugar plantation. It possessed water wheels and canals with floodgates, the construction of which involved such exceptionally harsh working conditions that even today Price’s Saramaka informants remember this as a prime motivation for their forebears to escape into the interior.33 In Stedman’s Narrative, L’Espérance serves as a military post, and it is here that the author lived with Joanna for a few weeks in a cottage. This idyllic background, emphasized by Stedman’s illustrations, even allows him to have a conversation with Joanna’s uncle Cojo, formerly a member of the volunteer corps of African-American Rangers, founded in 1772 to fight the Boni maroons. Uncle Cojo, who thereafter switched allegiance to fighting with the maroons, tells Stedman the reason for his choice. He knew Joli Coeur, the carpenter–protector of Joanna’s mother and her children. Having witnessed the abusive treatment of his parents, Joli Coeur escaped to join the Boni maroons and prepare to wreak vengeance. Despite emphasizing this reasonable behaviour in many parts of his Narrative, Stedman cannot possibly approve of Cojo’s choice. For him, only legal manumission is justifiable. He meticulously describes his efforts to achieve manumission for Joanna and their son Johnny. For this, he received support from the benevolent and even angelic Mrs Godefrooy, one of the first ladies in the colony, the wealthy owner of a cacao plantation where “all was Harmony and Content.”34 Mrs Godefrooy treats her slaves well, lends Stedman money, permits Joanna to live in comfortable circumstances in her Paramaribo house, and helps on various other occasions. Stedman is clearly aware of the ideological implications of his mission in Suriname. As a European soldier, he must quell maroon unrest. But he also needs local allies to show the advantages of the more peaceful avenue of manumission. In this sense, Joanna and Mrs Godefrooy are of 33

Richard Price, First-Time, 48. Stedman writes on 29 August 1773 in his diary while sailing down the Cottica River: “At eleven at night get account that three plantations, Peru, Zuyingheyd, and L’Esperance, are destroyed by bush-negroes, all white people murdered, and that the rebels must pass close by the Post S. W.”; Stanbury Thompson, The Journal of John Gabriel Stedman, 1744–1798: Soldier and Author (London: Mitre Press, 1962): 132. 34 John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative, 479.

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use for his rhetorical strategy. The author masters his theme so convincingly that, although the Prices point out notable differences between Stedman’s 1796 and 1790 manuscripts – 1) stylistic changes; 2) omission of local information, names of persons, or references to specific readings; 3) softening criticism of his superiors and 4) his remarks with respect to slavery, the slave trade, and social and religious justice; 5) reducing references to sexual relations between slave women and European men – these changes do not affect Stedman’s consistent glorification of his ‘Surinamese marriage’. Stedman illustrates his moral stance with two remarkable plates. The first, on the cover, was mentioned above – the one showing the European soldier and the fallen African hero after a legitimate battle. Legitimacy is demonstrated with even greater emphasis in the last plate included in the book. Here we observe three young women, all naked, who represent “Europe supported by Africa, and America.” The white European at the centre is leaning on the black African, who takes her right hand while resting her left arm on the shoulders of the bronze American. This time, the legend leaves no doubt that Stedman fully subscribes to a patriarchal vision endorsing the characteristic European superiority over the “very lowest of our dependants,” the colonies.35 This superiority conforms to a highly traditional gender division: the white European male predominates in the violent public atmosphere of “this Happy Nation,”36 whereas the white European woman has to create a peaceful, pleasant environment in the private realm. Stedman is well aware that slavery provides limited opportunity for upward social mobility. Women can opt for a Surinamese marriage and eventually obtain their freedom or that of their children through manumission, whereas men become free when they join the corps of Rangers, the soldiers loyal to the whites. The author obviously has a preference for these legal options, which enables him to set in motion a narrative strategy that develops a discourse of contradictory voices. Satirical or caustic comments abound on cruelty toward slaves and on the dubious question of the 35 “We All only differ in the Colour but we are Certainly Created by the same hand & After the Same Mould thus if it has not pleas’d fortune to make us equal in Authority, let us at Least use that Superiority With Moderation & not only Profer that Happiness which we have to bestow on our Superiors & Equals, but with Cheerfulness to the very Lowest of our dependants”; Stedman, Narrative, 618. 36 John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative, 625.

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indispensability of slavery. But for him, the most vicious crime in the blood-spilling colony is abuse of baptized slaves: “It is damned hard, and I think, unjust, that baptized slaves, that are become very devote Christians, get no better usage.”37 Stedman writes his narrative in a baroque style full of paradox, oxymoron, and hyperbole, often reproducing verbatim the words spoken by his addressee, in order to achieve the utmost authenticity. Very interesting in this respect are the sequences in which he addresses Joanna. First, Stedman declares his intention, “if such could be / to Purchase to Educate & to make even my lawfull Wife in Europe, the individual Mulatto Maid Joanna.”38 It is Joanna who explains why she cannot accept his offer: But as to live with me anyhow she absolutely refused it not, she said, from a want of friendship, or insensibility of the Honour I did her – But from a Sence that she must be parted from me soon, should I return to Europe without her, and a Convixion of her inferior State in that part of the world should she ever accompany me there.39

Some time later, Joanna imparts her thoughts in more detail: I am born a low, contemptible Slave, to be your Wife under the forms of Christianity must degrade you to all your Relations and your Friends, besides the expense of my Purchase and Education, but I have a Soul I hope not inferior to the best European, and blush not to acknowledge that I have a regard for you who so much distinguishes me above the rest - nay that now independant of every other thought I shall pride myself / by in the way of my Ancestors / to be yours all and all, till fate shall part us, or my Conduct Shall give you Cause to Spurn me from your Presence.40

This “valuable,” “virtuous,” and “enchanting Creauture” is so unselfish that she does not even accept Stedman’s gold and other presents but returns them to the merchants, with the following argument: your generous intentions allone Sir / Said she / are sufficient But allow me to tell you that any Superfluous expence on my Account – I will look on as diminishing that good Opinion which I hope you have, and

37

Stanbury Thompson, The Journal, 193. John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative, 98. 39 Stedman, Narrative, 98–99. 40 Stedman, Narrative, 100. 38

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THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º will ever entertain of my disinterestedness, and upon which I shall ever put the greatest value.41

All these statements of Joanna’s moral fortitude are interwoven with accounts of the most dreadful torture of slaves as well as with negotiations for Joanna’s manumission and that of their son. Upon hearing of Mrs Godefrooy’s support in preparing for manumission, Joanna bursts into tears and starts speaking Sranan: Gado Sa Blesse da Woma.42 This utterance in Sranan is highly relevant. Stedman is said to have spoken Sranan fluently43 and in all probability spoke it with Joanna, as it was the language known by her and her family. Joanna’s mother, Cery, had lived in a Surinamese marriage with a Dutchman, who (according to Stedman) died of grief from his failure to acquire the manumission of his wife and five children, of whom Joanna was the eldest. One of her sisters lived with a European in Paramaribo, as did her aunt Lucrecia, possibly characterized as “a free woman.”44 Her younger brother Henry obtained his freedom in St. Eustatia.45 The grandfather, blind and white-haired, was born on the Guinea coast and spent his old age on the Fauckenbergh estate surrounded by his family, his uncle Cojo among them. The presence of Joanna’s family in Stedman’s narrative represents his vision of social mobility for the creole slave population. They are omnipresent, constantly sending gifts or helping Stedman out of difficult situations. Nevertheless, despite these frequent references, they do not play a major role in the organization of Stedman’s text. Once, in a footnote, he observes that no respectable slave should be sold individually without the approval of all his family, but he does not follow up on this comment. 41

Stedman, Narrative, 101. Stedman, Narrative, 385. 43 “But as for that Spoke by the Black People in Surinam, I pretend to be Perfectly well Acquainted with it, being a Composition of Dutch, French, Spanish, Portugees & mostly English, Which last they liked best and have retained Since the English Nation were Possessors of the Colony - this mixt speech / in Which I have even Seen a Printed Grammar / ends mostly With a Vowel like the Italion and is so sweet, & Sonorous that even Amongst the Genteelest European Companies, nothing Else is Spoke in Surinam”; Stedman, Narrative, 515–16. 44 Stedman, Narrative, 98. 45 This is an intriguing point. What was Henry’s connection with St. Eustatius, that booming colony, in those years? See the special position of St. Eustatius as discussed in ch. 8 below. 42

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Consequently, the degree to which Joanna’s family influenced her determination to remain in Paramaribo is unknown. On the eve of Stedman’s departure, Joanna sticks to her decision to stay, despite all his offers for her to accompany him.46 With their son Johnny now freed through manumission, she sees her fate as that of loyalty to her own people.

Alabi and Joanna in Paramaribo Alabi and Joanna achieved preeminence among their people, but we only learn about their lives through their association with Europeans. Reality in Suriname, meanwhile, kept their worlds separate. Alabi lived in the interior and visited Paramaribo occasionally to negotiate with the government and the Moravians, whereas Joanna managed to move permanently from the plantation to the city, achieving the model of a typical creole career: African forefathers are brought as slaves to work on plantations; their children, born on the plantations, move to Paramaribo and live a European life-style, with manumission for their children and eventually themselves as a concrete prospect.47 The situation is quite different for Alabi. Reading between the lines of Price’s book, it becomes clear that he was constantly in contact with the city and even relocated his people’s village various times as close to Paramaribo as possible. It is safe to assume that he did not consider the urban creoles to be his most ardent supporters. Price repeatedly mentions that the Saramakas are highly suspicious of creoles not born in the matu, the rain forest. Culturally speaking, the Surinamese understanding of being creole is a broad one, but is always bound up with speaking the creole language. Riemer’s Saramaka dictionary defines kreôl as ‘born in the country’. From the perspective of the Saramakas, only the kreôl born in the matu 46 “That dreadful as appeared the fatal separation, which she forbode was for the Last time never to meet again, yet she Could not but Prefer the Remaining in Surinam, first from a Conciousness that with propriety she had not the disposal of herself – & Secondly from pride, wishing in her Present Condition Rather to be one of the first amongst her own Class in America, than as she was well Convinced to be the last in Europe at least till such time as fortune should enable me to establish her above dependance”; Stedman, Narrative, 603. 47 The best characterization of this mobility within creole slave society was given by Alex de Drie, in his radio talk on “Moi Misi,” in Sye! Arki Tori, transcribed by Trudi Guda (Paramaribo, Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschappen, 1985): 25–29.

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was trustworthy, whereas creoles from the city or the plantations were traitors or spies. The prototype of this idea was Quassi, a slave supposedly born in Africa and manumitted by Governor Maurits. Quassi’s career was not typical; I have found no indication that he was baptized a Christian, something necessary for manumission.48 On the contrary, Quassi is generally described as a lukuman (diviner) and dresiman (healer), someone possessing the expert knowledge of herbs required in religious and medical matters. He was also a member of the Freykorps in Paramaribo and worked for the whites, which made him ‘white’ in the eyes of the Saramakas. Quassi’s role continues to be controversially discussed49 and is paradigmatic of permanent conflicts between maroons and the ‘Freed Rangers’. Stedman also becomes aware of their different points of view during the attack on the rebel township, when “a Most Abusive Dialogue Ensued, between the Rebels, and the Rangers, both Parties Cursing And Menacing each other at a Terrible Rate, the first Reproaching the others as being Poltroons, and Betrayers of their Countrimen,” and that “they had Deserted theyr Masters being too Lazy to Do the Work, while they / the Rangers / Would Stand by the Europeans till they Died.”50 Joanna is the perfect embodiment in Stedman’s narrative of this loyalty to the whites. Her personality is negligible, and the author does not even say whether she spoke Dutch, in which confession she was baptized, or what her further interests were. Although he repeatedly confirms that she was educated and that she wrote him letters, Stedman’s description is limited to his own search for happiness and to efforts to improve her status through legal manumission. Joanna’s life ended tragically six years after Stedman’s departure to Europe when she and her brother Henry were poisoned “by the hand of Jealousy & Envy on Account of her prosperity

48

Ruud Beeldsnyder, “Op de onderste trede. Over vrije negers en arme blanken in Suriname 1730–1750,” Oso 10.1 (1991): 7–30. 49 Quassi lived from c.1697 to 1787. See Ruud Beeldsnyder, “Een weinig bekende brief over de heelmeester, lukuman and slavenjager Quassie,” Oso 12.1 (1993): 82–86, and Jean Jacques Vrij, “Frank Dragtenstein, ‘Trouw aan de blanken’: Quassie van Nieuw Timotibo, twist en strijd in de 18de eeuw in Suriname” (Amsterdam: KIT Publishers 2004)”, Oso 24.1 (2005): 190–94. 50 John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative, 408.

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& the marks of distinction.”51 In keeping with his style of romance, Stedman adds the possibility that Joanna died of a broken heart. Equally interesting is David Nassy’s contribution to the theme of poisoning as provided in his Essai historique. In his chapter on medicine, he complains about the ignorance and superstition rampant among the Negroes regarded as doctors in and around Paramaribo. Nassy also dedicates a long passage to Quassi, who, he claims, was sent to the plantations in order to track down Negroes who had poisoned humans or animals. Quassi was highly respected in white, creole, and especially Amerindian communities, among whom he was revered as a god. He was legendary for his recovery from the mal rouge in his youth as a result of his own ministrations, despite the loss of four fingers and almost all his toes. It is in his discussion of Quassi that Nassy expresses his ideal for a more methodical, improved approach to medical care: “because it is only with this method, together with reliable advance information on the part of the Negroes, that he was on several occasions able to divine those things that seemed the most hidden.”52 I mentioned that poisoning was a more general phenomenon in eighteenth-century plantation society. In Joanna’s case, we have only Stedman’s narrative and diary as sources of information, without any indication of a motive for the crime. The only possible clues in Stedman’s text to Joanna’s true background are her appeal to ancestral tradition when thanking Mrs Godefrooy for her kindness and her speaking Sranan on this occasion. In general, Stedman is conspicuously silent about this aspect of Joanna’s beliefs, but he must almost certainly have known about them, as they were quite common in the urban reality of Paramaribo.53 Christianity, for the creole slave women, meant the possibility of manumission and social mobility by means of the Surinamese marriage. Notwithstanding their serving the whites, these creoles maintained contact with their ancestors, a contact equally fundamental for the Saramakas, as Price has amply shown in his research. Serving the whites was out of the 51

Stedman, Narrative, 624. “Car ce n’est qu’avec cette methode, accompagnée de bonnes informations de la part des Nègres qu’il s’avoit acquéri d’avance, qu’il a su déviner plusieurs fois des choses qui paroissoient les plus cachées”; David Nassy, Essai historique, vol. 2: 73. 53 Staehelin’s reports, right from the beginning of the Moravian’s mission in Paramaribo in 1742, include descriptions of the ceremonies held in the city in honour of the ancestors. See Brother Meisser’s report in Staehelin I, 90–93. 52

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question for the maroons, of course. What, then, did Christianity mean to Alabi? In a letter to Brother Weiss from 21 March 1778 he explains the reasons for his conversion: The Devil used to plague me greatly, but when I got to know the Savior I became free. After I had asked the Savior for redemption, He freed me from the Devil and from the slavery of sin. And I know that as long as man remains in the hands of the Devil he is as much his slave, as the [plantation] negro is the slave of his master.54

In Alabi’s rhetoric (or that of the Moravians), freedom thus meant being liberated from enslavement to the Devil. From this angle, the killing of children becomes a much more crucial issue. Alabi opened the tribal council meeting that condemned the murderer to death. The council consulted the parents of the children when choosing the method of execution and opted for a gradual death over six days, during which the murderer underwent extreme torture. There are reports of Alabi’s persistence in converting the murderer to his own God, but to no avail. Despite his dreadful situation, the man remained loyal to his gado until his very last moment on earth. The second time that such a murderer was judged, Alabi is said to have refrained from further involvement in the matter. Alabi expresses a love of preaching and must have considered his contacts with the Moravians as a welcome outlet to the outside world,55 which for him was Paramaribo and its links with the Brethren overseas. Nothing has been passed down about his relationship with the creoles, for whom life in town was the standard for a decent life-style. To achieve this, they took it as read that they would have to ‘serve the whites’. Alabi’s own perception might have been quite different. In the city, he pursued such practical affairs as bargaining for goods on behalf of his community. The eagerness of the Saramakas to obtain gunpowder and other products important to their way of life is described on many occasions. Price mentions that, by December 1768, Alabi and his kinsmen had succeeded in bringing back to the village “white folks’ goods” necessary for Abini’s second 54

Richard Price, Alabi’s World, 395. He speaks about this in a letter to Brother Wietz in April 1780: “When I have the opportunity of speaking to someone about the Savior, I cannot keep my mouth quiet. Normally, the negroes come to me [in my role as captain] when they are in disagreement with one another, and I have to judge and decide who is right. Often I become very tired of this”; Alabi’s World, 208. 55

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funeral: muskets, gunpowder, earrings, finger-rings, machetes, over-theshoulder deerskin hunting sacks, umbrellas or carved staffs of office, skirts, formal clothing, jewellery, and perfume.56 To obtain such goods, Alabi’s father had established special contacts with the Moravians in Paramaribo, who as early as July 1766 write in a letter: There are presently free Negroes from among them in Paramaribo, as also Captain Abini and his two sons, who live in our house, peaceable and decent people, except that they are wont to ask the Brothers for this and for that whenever it pleases them, and it is difficult for the Brothers to deny them anything, yet to give them what they want all the time is also impossible.57

Alabi also seems to have been in close contact with Brother Kersten. In his report on the bicentennial anniversary of the Kersten Company, Albert Helman mentions that Alabi had been Kersten’s closest associate since the foundation of the firm in the autumn of 1768.58 Kersten, who resided in Suriname from 1763 to 1784, bought land to establish the Kersten Company close to the centre of Paramaribo and gave the Amerindians and maroons the opportunity to remain in this territory for several days or longer when they brought their products for barter. A year after the foundation of his Company, Brother Kersten arrived in the Saramaka village together with his wife and stayed there for seven years before returning to Paramaribo in 1776. The mind-set of this practical and spiritual brother (he was a very good preacher) must have chimed with Alabi’s own interests, and this undoubtedly made their relationship so harmonious.

¹º

56

Richard Price, Alabi’s World, 106. “Gegenwärtig sind Freineger von ihnen da in Paramaribo, wie auch des Cap. Abini seine 2 Söhne, die in unserm Hause logiren, stille und artige Leute, nur dass sie so gerne bald um das bald um jenes die Brüder ansprechen, was ihnen eben gefällt und das fällt den Brüdern schwer, ihnen abzuschlagen und gleichwohl immer geben, können sie auch nicht ausführen” (Staehelin III, 30) – Brother Lawatsch, in charge of the mission to the Saramaka, writing to Brother Leonhard. 58 Albert Helman, Merchant, Mission and Meditation: The Romance of a Two Hundred Year Old Suriname Company, tr. James J. Healey (Paramaribo: C. Kersten, 1968). 57

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Manuel Piar and the Struggle for Independence in Latin America 1

that for the creole slaves social mobility in Paramaribo was rooted in personal prosperity and in ‘serving the whites’, whereas the Portuguese-Jewish Nation was arguing for an enlightened approach to education and science. The urban dynamic of a Dutch colony had clearly become much more complicated than Post’s images and Barlaeus’s text had led us to believe from Northeast Brazil. The most important factor was marronage, which exerted a constant influence on the social environment of eighteenth-century Paramaribo, where there existed what Ángel Rama characterizes as ‘diglossia’, in which a small urban colonial elite carried out administrative and judicial functions, which they documented in the official European language. They were, so to speak, the executers of the ‘dream of order’, whereas most of the people in the ‘real city’ communicated in the language, Sranan, of a quite distinct semiotic universe which, for the creole population, established a link to their ancestors. Ancestral links are fundamental to Saramaka collective memory, as Richard Price has amply shown in many of his publications. Jacques Arends and Matthias Perl describe the main characteristics of the Saramaka and Sranan languages, both creoles, and closely related. Considerable linguistic research has been conducted on their historical origins. The Moravians repeatedly mention the influence of Portuguese in their reports on the Saramakas, and their language is also of particular interest for creole language research in general: Saramaka is the American creole that 1

E HAVE SEEN

The original version of this chapter was written with Matthias Röhrig–Assunção and published in 1994. Matthias is responsible for the historical part of the chapter, which has been slightly changed here in the light of more recent information.

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is most strongly African, in terms of characteristics preserved from the Niger–Congo languages.2 Portuguese-speaking dialectologists tend to underscore the Portuguese influences in Saramaka, as does Perl himself.3 As in the case of Saramaka, the oldest descriptions of Sranan date from the eighteenth century. At that time, Sranan could be differentiated by whether it was spoken in the city or on the plantations; Arends distinguishes between bakra tongo (white Sranan) and nengre tongo (black Sranan). Norval Smith has identified the difference between Saramaka/ Sranan and the other English-lexified creole languages, locating the critical phase of linguistic creolization in Suriname between 1665 and 1670. He takes the hypothesis on Portuguese influences very seriously and believes that the maroon inhabitants of Palmares might have used a pidginized form of Portuguese which later became creolized. This creole came to Suriname with the Sephardic planters, and Smith discusses the ‘Djutongo’, the Jewish language, as being an original source of creolization.4 Arends points to the sheer number of early Saramakan texts, in which “the 1770–1820 period is represented quite well with over 2,000 manuscript pages at our disposal.”5 The Saramaka word matu, for instance, for ‘bush’ or ‘rain forest’, strongly suggests an African-Portuguese derivation and this, again, recalls Alabi’s role as the informant for Schumann’s and Riemer’s dictionaries and perhaps for much other data that has not yet been edited for publication. Smith makes a relevant remark about the truth of history in relationship to these late-seventeenth-century Portuguese connections: However, sociohistorical arguments can never actually prove anything when the sources are so incomplete as those concerning Pernambuco, Cayenne and Suriname in that period. Most of the so-called sociohistorical evidence is in fact negative evidence, proceeding from the lack of

2

Matthias Perl, “Introduction to Saramaccan,” in Early Suriname Creole Texts, ed. Jacques Arends & Matthias Perl, 243–50. 3 Perl, “Introduction to Saramaccan,” 244. 4 Norval Smith, “The history of the Surinamese creoles II: Origin and differentiation,” in Atlas, ed. Eithne Carlin & Jacques Arends, 137–48. 5 Jacques Arends, “Early documents in the Surinamese creoles,” in Atlas, ed. Carlin & Arends, 204.

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historical sources. There is an unfortunate dearth of positive sociohistorical evidence.6

This argument might also apply to the truth concerning the life of Manuel Piar (1777–1817), a man living in that same period in which, according to Rama, initial steps to overcome the situation of diglossia were being taken by the criollo (Creole) elite, who were resisting metropolitan-colonial control in Spanish America. These native-born whites now became ‘translators’ in their appeal for greater justice. Rama foregrounds the position in Bogotá of Antonio Nariño, who translated and published the Declaration of the Human and Civic Rights of the French Revolution into Spanish in 1794, for which he had to pay with imprisonment and exile to Spain. Rama maintains that this text had an key ideological value in Creole protests against colonial domination. Notwithstanding this emphasis on the white Creoles, the ley de los franceses is repeatedly mentioned in reports on slave revolts in Venezuela. References to this ‘French law’ appear in the records of the slave rebellion near Coro on the Venezuelan Caribbean coast in May 1795 and were even instrumental in the conspiracy of Manuel Gual and José María España at La Guaira, the port city of Caracas, uncovered in July 1797. This conspiracy planned to abolish slavery and establish a republic of five Venezuelan provinces, for which contacts with the French colonies were a key issue.7 Shipping along the Venezuelan coast was intense and the harbours were places of intensive exchange of political and commercial news. Historians agree on the fact that Curaçao played a crucial role in the contraband circuit throughout the region. In this milieu lived Manuel Piar, born on the island and one of the high officers in Simón Bolívar’s liberation campaign. The businessman Luis Brion, Bolívar’s admiral-in-chief, also hailed from Curaçao, but only Piar was converted into a legend after his death in Venezuela. For instance, a verse in a schoolbook refers to his

6 Norval Smith, “The history of Surinamese creoles II,” in Atlas, ed. Eithne Carlin & Jacques Arends, 137. 7 Documentos de la insurrección de José Leonardo Chirinos (Caracas; Fundación Historia y Comunicación, Colección Abraxas, 1994), and Documentos relativos a la Revolución de Gual y España, ed. Hector García Chuecos (Caracas: Ministerio de la Educación Nacional, 1949).

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execution on 16 October 1817, and the questions that have since arisen surrounding this event are still alive in both oral and written tradition.8 Surprisingly, Piar figures centrally in literature from Colombia and Venezuela in the 1980s: in Manuel Trujillo’s El gran dispensador (The Great Dispensator); Francisco Herrera Luque’s Manuel Piar: Caudillo de dos colores (Manuel Piar: Caudillo of Two Colours); and Gabriel García Márquez’s El general en su laberinto.9 Compared to the attention given to Piar in these works, the silence surrounding him in the literary tradition of his native Curaçao in this same time period is remarkable. Although novels such as Het teken van Jona (The Sign of Jonah) by Boeli van Leeuwen and De morgen loeit weer aan (Daybreak Roars to Life Again) by Tip Marugg – both genuine bestsellers when published in 1988 – explicitly envisage Curaçao’s relationship with Spanish American republics, they omit any mention of Manuel Piar.10 How does this absence relate to the urban horizon of Willemstad in these cases?

Piar or Bolívar: Foundational Myths Manuel Piar was born in Otrabanda, the ‘free’ quarter of Willemstad, as the second natural child of an immigrant from the Canary Islands, and Isabel Gómez, a Curaçaoan mulatto woman. From 1786 until c.1797, Piar lived in the port city of La Guaira on the Venezuelan coast, where his mother worked as a midwife and her son was trained as a barber. In this 8

“Tell me who fought at Junín / And who did battle at Boyocá / To bring freedom / to Colombia at last. / Speak to me of Piar’s ungodly year, / Give me one good reason for the day / He was put before a firing squad. / I ask and urge you / To sing along with me: / ‘By Force or Reason’.” Spanish text: “Díme quién peleó en Junín / quién batalló en Boyacá / por darle la libertad / a Colombia en cierto fin. / Háblame de ese año mil / de Piar dame razón / su día de fusilación. / Te pregunto y te lo digo / tenes que cantar conmigo / ‘Por la Fuerza o la Razón’”; Anon., Folklore en Curriculum: Un estudio de las culturas de tradición oral en Venezuela aplicado a la Educación básica (Caracas: Editorial F U N D A R T E –I N I D E F –C O N E C –Oca, 1983): 280. 9 Manuel Trujillo, El gran dispensador (Caracas: Fundación Cadafe, 1983); Francisco Herrera Luque, Manuel Piar: Caudillo de dos colores (Caracas: Editorial Pomaire, 1987); Gabriel García Márquez, El general en su laberinto (Madrid: Mondadori, 1989), tr. by Edith Grossman as The General in His Labyrinth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990). 10 Boeli van Leeuwen, Het teken van Jona (Haarlem: In de Knipscheer, 1988); Tip Marugg, De morgen loeit weer aan (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1988).

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respect, his life reflects the close links that traditionally existed at that time between Curaçao and the Spanish Main. Piar surely encountered on the Venezuelan coast the new ideas concerning independence and human rights in general. The slave rebellions in Coro and subsequently in Curaçao in 1795 both responded to the revolutionary events in France and the French Caribbean and must have made their mark on him. The Gual and España Conspiracy two years later in La Guaira aimed at creating a republic on the model of the French Revolution, with slavery abolished and freedom from taxation by Spain. Isabel Piar was accused of offering shelter to Gual and España in her house in 1797.11 A year later, on 18 April 1798, Piar married Maria Martha Boom, a woman from the lower ranks of white society, and the couple settled in Otrabanda. A daughter was born on 25 January 1799 and Piar began working for trading companies as a ship’s captain, apparently following in his father’s footsteps. Although he was, according to the social norms of colonial caste society, a pardo and only three-quarters white, he had been registered in the trade documents as “Don,” a title conferred only on whites. There is little specific information about him during this period. He probably crossed the Caribbean Sea many times on different ships, and he even seems to have owned one himself. In 1804 Piar was one of the officers who defended Curaçao when the English invaded the island. Embracing the pro-French stance of the Batavian Republic in the Netherlands from 1795 to 1806, which the colonial government of Curaçao followed, Piar fought the English as a member of the Civil Guard. He might have had a rather specific Caribbean view on the events, however, because he spent most of the period thereafter until 1810 in Haiti, where he was the commander of a Haitian warship and is reported to have been a close friend of Alexandre Pétion, president of the Haitian republic from 1809 to 1818, and to have been there already when Francisco de Miranda, the famed militant Venezuelan patriot, came to Haiti in 1806. Piar closely followed the preparations for the liberation of Venezuela. On 27 April 1810, after Napoleon’s invasion of Spain, a council (junta) set up in Cumaná declared itself loyal to Ferdinand V I I and took over the local administration. Piar immediately arrived in Venezuela, ready to carry out any important military mission. When the first Venezuelan re11

Vicente Luis Narváez Churión, “Por el rescate del nombre del general en jefe Manuel Piar,” Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la historia 68.270 (1985): 435.

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public (1811–12) came to its inglorious end, Bolívar fled with his two sisters to Curaçao, at that time occupied by the English. Together with the lawyer Mordechay Ricardo, of Sephardic origin and a relative of the renowned English economist David Ricardo, Bolívar overcame his temporary depression and here outlined his famous “Manifesto de Cartagena.”12 Meanwhile, Piar took refuge in eastern Venezuela, where he joined the small group of guerrilla patriots who refused to accept Miranda’s capitulation. Under the leadership of General Mariño, they joined up on the nearby British island of Trinidad and decided to continue the war of independence in Oriente, the eastern province of Cumaná. The position of Cumaná was crucial to international trade, hence to the hegemony of urban centres such as Caracas. Above all, geographically speaking, Oriente provided access to the Orinoco delta and the interior of the country. In January 1813, together with other future generals, Piar swore an oath to his Venezuelan fatherland on the island of Chacachacare, located between Trinidad and the coast of Venezuela. Later in 1813, Piar emerged as one of the main patriotic leaders in the east, improvising armies, harassing the royalist troops, and setting up patriotic bases such as Maturín. By means of these guerrilla tactics, the patriots in the east liberated Oriente province on their own while Bolívar was conducting his more famous Admirable Campaign. Bolívar’s army of patriots expelled the royalists from central Venezuela and Caracas in less than two months. By that time, Piar was already considered the second-in-command in Oriente province, the leader being General Santiago Mariño. But the patriots were still far from victory. The royalist army had not been destroyed but remained entrenched in the ports along the coast, from where they controlled the vast hinterland; in 1814, the patriots were defeated on all fronts and were forced to retire once again to New Granada (Colombia) or go into exile on the Caribbean islands. In 1815, the restored Spanish monarchy sent an army of 10,000 men to Venezuela and Colombia. The restoration of colonial order seemed complete. Piar joined a small group of patriots in Haiti who were trying to organize another expedition. Bolívar, although his authority had been severely challenged because of the patriot’s defeat, was once again proclaimed supreme leader. Bolívar’s unique ability to articulate a continental poli12

John de Pool, Bolívar en Curaçao: Leyenda histórica, tr. Ligia Hoetink–Espinal (1944; Zutphen: Walburg, 1988).

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tical vision of Latin-American independence of the sort he expressed in his Manifesto of Cartagena certainly played a role in his selection. A new phase in the Spanish-American war of independence had begun, and Piar left Los Cayos de San Luis on the southern coast of Haiti on 10 April 1816 with Haitian soldiers and weapons. Once again, the armies led in eastern Venezuela by Piar and Mariño played a decisive role in 1816 and 1817. The most original aspect of Piar’s campaign at that time is what might be called a different strategy. Bolívar and other leaders from Caracas had in mind the usual classical concepts of war, of which the Admirable Campaign was the most striking example. Piar, by contrast, was convinced that only control of the interior could lead to victory, which in the case of Venezuela meant Guayana and the llanos (plains or lowlands). In a letter of November 1816, Piar expresses this very clearly: “Guayana is the key to the lowlands, the fortress of Venezuela; Guayana has been the centre and refuge of our enemies.”13 This meant that the conquest of Guayana would bring about victory over the Spaniards. Piar’s original strategy led to a serious conflict between him and Bolívar early in 1817, as we know from their correspondence. Bolívar was holed up at Barcelona on the coast and wanted to keep the port so as to maintain ties with the outside world. He asked for help from Piar, who was already trying at that time to conquer Guayana. Bolívar insisted on the necessity of concentrating forces, and stressed that it was not yet time to take Guayana.14 Piar reported on 19 January that it was, on the contrary, essential to take Guayana now. Extensive Spanish property there facilitated commerce with other countries; moreover, the geopolitical situation of the province offered a safe haven for an eventual patriotic retreat. Furthermore, the strong morale of the inhabitants made it easy to recruit a large and valiant army.15 Bolívar insisted on his strategy, replying to Piar that occupying the capital instead would powerfully influence foreign opinion and that of the patriots themselves.16 Piar remained obstinate in 13 “Guyana es la llave de los llanos, es la fortaleza de Venezuela; Guyana ha sido el centro y refugio de los enemigos”; Vicente Luis Narváez Churión, “Por el rescate,” 441. This quotation is taken from a letter to general José Antonio Páez of 10 January 1817, published in Daniel Florencio O’Leary, Memorias del general O’Leary (Caracas: fascimile of the 1878–88 edition, 1981). 14 Letter of 10 January 1817 in Daniel Florencio O’Leary, Memorias, 117. 15 O’Leary, Memorias, 129. 16 O’Leary, Memorias, 121.

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his refusal, justifying his stance by additionally claiming that 1) he could not cross the Orinoco River with his army because of the naval superiority of the royalists, and that 2) his army was composed of lowland soldiers who would not follow him that far.17 To some extent, later events proved Piar right. In May 1817, Bolívar left Barcelona with part of his army to meet up with Piar at his military headquarters. From then on the relationship between them seems to have become decidedly strained. Three months later, with the help of the Curaçaoan admiral Luis Brion, the patriots managed to take the last two strongholds of the royalists on the Orinoco. Despite this and other military successes, Bolívar, in an official proclamation of 5 August 1817, accused Piar of being a monster whose entire life consisted of conspiracy, violence, and crime. Piar was arrested and court-martialled, found guilty, and condemned to demotion and death. Bolívar confirmed the sentence, but without the demotion, and Piar was executed on 16 October 1817 in Angostura, which is now called Cuidad Bolívar. The documents relating to the trial throw a singular light on the whole affair.18 Piar was accused of insubordination, desertion, sedition, and conspiracy. Insubordinate he certainly was. But his refusal to follow the instructions of the jefe supremo (supreme leader) was not an isolated act. It is well known that other generals such as Mariño, Brion, Arismendi, and Bermúdez conspired against Bolívar; but they managed to retain their posts. As regards the specific accusations, the testimony of the nine witnesses provided meagre evidence. Some of them were personal enemies of Piar; another, Timoteo Díaz, even deserted during the trial. Most of the witnesses offered evidence only of Piar’s desperation and of his resistance to arrest. There are clear statements about Piar’s resentment of the Caracas elite (mantuanos) and the centralization of power. But there is not a shred of evidence for concrete plans of sedition or conspiracy by the pardos (free coloured) against the whites, as was alleged by the prosecution. Even General Carlos Soublette – another personal enemy of Piar – openly admitted that there were no concrete plans and that Piar had not made any, but he nevertheless concluded that Piar was the incarnation of evil.19

17

O’Leary, Memorias, 147–48. O’Leary, Memorias, 351–422. 19 O’Leary, Memorias, 408–409. 18

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Since then, various interpretations have been given for Piar’s execution, most of them justifying the act as a necessary sacrifice for the fatherland. Closer examination reveals several dimensions to the conflict between Bolívar and Piar. First of all, there was of course the struggle for power. It is clear that Bolívar had great problems imposing his authority. And, as Gerhard Masur pointed out in 1949, executing Piar was tactically wise, inasmuch as he was a foreign mulatto who had no powerful family to support him. There was consequently no danger of personal vendettas or financial losses arising out of this execution. The second dimension is that of regional conflict. In this regard, Piar represented the political aims of Oriente province, which were to establish the future state on federalist principles. The military tactics employed correlate with these two political strategies. Piar defended a decentralized, guerrilla form of warfare which Bolívar always found suspect. The jefe supremo feared – and not without reason – that guerrilla warfare would quickly degenerate into simple local banditry. Bolívar’s strategy consisted of seeking international recognition of the military conflict by opposing a colonial empire with a view to promoting independence from Spain. In this last dimension resides the social aspect of the conflict. Piar’s reservations concerning the mantuanos were certainly not a kind of infantile resentment but, rather, a desperate fear that independence in Venezuela might not bring about such profound social changes as it had done in Haiti. On the one hand, the existing opposition between the white elite and the pardos was strengthened by, even as it helped, the war. On the other, it gave the war a dimension that patriotic ideology had always denied: namely, that the conflict not only opposed Spain and New Granada, but also pitted the main social groups in Venezuela against each another. As John Lombardi writes, “Indeed, only by a very narrow margin did Bolívar’s generation of white leaders prevent independence from becoming a social revolution.”20 Unfortunately, there is little further information available on Piar’s views of independence and revolution. It is nevertheless significant that, from 1816 onward, Piar, in his correspondence with other officials and in his proclamations to the people of Venezuela, constantly equates military glory with the people. ‘The people’, in Piar’s discourse, assume high status in a society freeing itself from slavery or serfdom. Such terms were 20

John V. Lombardi, Venezuela: The Search for Order, the Dream of Progress (New York: Oxford U P , 1982): 57.

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used in a very loose sense, applying not only to black slavery but also to colonial oppression. Piar’s further appeals to justice and fraternity might have an equally close relationship with the Jacobin ideology of 1793 in France, as popularized by French pirates on the Caribbean coast. But there is no evidence of attacks against the whites or mantuanos, which does not exclude the possibility that Piar may have spoken of them in angrier terms in private. Is it possible that he could have become a more popular alternative to the power of the white elite at the head of a democratic revolution, as has been suggested by Brito Figueroa?21 One must also consider the fact that his friend and idol Pétion had always been strongly opposed to the killing of the whites in St.-Domingue as well as to all blacknationalist acts of revenge. Thus, by charging Piar with fomenting racial conflict, the Bolívar group projected onto him its own dread of a Haitianstyle revolution, which might entail the physical liquidation of the white elite by so-called black patriots. It was used in a populist and psychologically effective way, and this dread can be deduced from the same proclamation of August 1817, in which Bolívar blamed Piar for looking down on his mulatto mother, of whom he was ashamed. Bolívar also mentions the legend surrounding the so-called aristocratic roots of Piar, as the son of a Portuguese prince and a woman of an aristocratic mantuano family. Only such a noble person could seriously be expected to threaten the position of Bolívar. Thus, by expressing himself in racial terms, Bolívar may have intended to prevent people from understanding the real situation in the country. This argument, naturally, had a tremendous effect on the population, since non-white support for the cause of independence was of the utmost importance. Manuel Piar turned out to be the ideal scapegoat, whose physical elimination produced the cathartic effect of preventing something that was never likely to happen. Piar’s execution served to shore up the basis of elite control against any popular regional challenge.

21

Federico Brito Figueroa, El problema tierra y esclavos en la historia de Venezuela (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1983).

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Piar in Spanish-American Fiction The three novels mentioned in the opening section of this chapter all use Piar’s execution as the driving motif behind their narrative logic and structure; but each treats the conflict between Piar and Bolívar from a different point of view. In El gran dispensador, Trujillo revives the sixteenth-century Spanish figure of the pícaro, with his rather loose sexual mores and uncertain family background. His fictional Piar participates successively in the slave trade, the colonization of the Americas, and the defeat of the Indians, before being replaced, in the second part of the book, by Bolívar. Trujillo is clearly sympathetic to Piar, who is represented as a victim like the Amerindians during the conquista, but he does not elaborate on Piar’s motives and background in historical reality. The author avoids taking sides, and even when the story is told from the perspective of Bolívar, different opinions and interpretations are also given. Despite its being written like a chronicle-novel, with the classic division into three parts, El gran dispensador lacks consistency. Curaçao does not appear at all and, apart from repeated allusions to the racial dimension of the conflict, the author does not (and apparently did not intend to) give a clear interpretation of the 1817 sentence. This is much more the case in Manuel Piar: Caudillo de dos colores, the bestseller by Francisco Herrera Luque. This psychiatrist and author of a series of fictional works on Venezuelan history attempts to reconstruct Bolívar’s point of view, while focusing on the legend surrounding Piar’s aristocratic origin. Alicia Chibán even speaks of a “genealogical obsession” in his novel, owing to the tensions within caste society.22 Piar figures here as the natural son of a woman from an important mantuano family and a Portuguese prince who was brought to Curaçao as a baby, where Francisco Piar and Isabel Gómez were paid to educate him. Herrera Luque tells us that, as the only white among blacks in Otrabanda, Piar grew up with a heightened sensitivity towards the racial discrimination in the caste society of his times. Even after marrying a Protestant (i.e., in local terminology, a white woman, which means that he was officially recognized as white), Piar still behaved like a pardo: “he only socialized with coloured people from a 22

Alicia Chibán, “De genealogías y revelaciones: La novela como indagación histórica en Francisco Herrera Luque,” in Murales, figuras, fronteras: Narrativa e historia en el Caribe y Centroamérica, ed. Patrick Collard & Rita de Maeseneer (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert & Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2003): 115.

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poor background.”23 From this humble position Herrera Luque has Piar rise in rapid succession from revolucionario to holandés errante (‘flying Dutchman’), Caribe-cimarrón (Caribbean maroon), to general-leyenda (legendary general), and, finally, to caudillo de dos colores. In the last part of his book, the author, by combining the struggle for power with aspects of inner conflict, reveals how this popular hero might have become a danger to Bolívar. When the entire revolutionary army of pardos, mulattoes, and blacks finally learned of the aristocratic origins of a man so ‘coloured’ in his public behaviour, Bolívar the Liberator might have found himself in trouble over his exclusive claims to the highest position. This would undoubtedly have endangered the future unity of the movement, as the mantuanos would in no way accept Piar as leader. So Piar had to go. Herrera Luque tries to convince his readers of the plausibility of his fictional interpretation in an appendix, where he quotes from historical documents and expatiates on particular events. Such a seemingly factual confirmation of an historia fabulada is equally important to García Márquez. El general en su laberinto is his only novel so far to include material intended as testimony to the historical truth of a public figure. In 1830, shortly before his death, Bolívar travels from Bogotá to the Caribbean coast of Colombia. García Márquez’s general is a lonely hero, a sick man floating in his own aura, a shadow of what he had once been. During his long-drawn-out and feverish dreams, the whole history of the liberation period is brought before the eyes of the reader. In the penultimate part of the narrative, Bolívar reveals an apparently important fact to his doctor in the village of Soledad – he had been opposed to running into debt in the struggle for independence because he foresaw the consequences: “Debt will destroy us in the end.”24 The Liberator cries out in his sleep, trapped in an old, frequently occurring nightmare. It replays in his mind what had happened exactly thirteen years before, at five o’clock in the afternoon, on the day of Santa Margarita Alacoque, on 16 October 1817, the day Piar was executed. Bolívar suffers over and over again for this tragedy, although he insists that he would do the same thing again if political exigencies required it to prevent civil war. 23

“Se reunía sólo con gente de color y humilde condición”; Francisco Herrera Luque, Manuel Piar, 95. 24 “La deuda terminará derrotándonos”; Gabriel García Márquez, El general en su laberinto, 225; The General in His Labyrinth, tr. Grossman, 221.

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Bolívar’s nightmare can be related to a sense of underlying threat regarding the situation of the freed female slaves. Bolívar’s most loyal servant, José Palacios, who is with him until his final days, was born a slave on the family’s hacienda. Bolívar frees him, but this has no further consequences for their relationship or Palacios’s position. More complex is Bolívar’s affair with a slave girl. When the general, in the second part of the novel, undertakes his efforts to realize his fantasy of the greatest nation in the world, his queen is the beautiful mulatto Reina María Luisa. Only out of fear does she permit him to spend the night with her, a night followed by the general’s first real experience of derrota (defeat). Although he also buys her freedom, Reina Maria Luisa refuses to follow him on his campaigns of liberation, preferring to stay where she is, anchored to local reality. This decision symbolizes the internal conflict that accompanied Bolívar’s political career – the extravagance of his dreams of grandeza and international recognition versus regional claims for social justice and peace, as symbolized by Piar’s execution.

Spanish-American Independence in Curaçaoan Fiction Reina María Luisa’s decision corresponds to that of Joanna in Stedman’s Narrative. In contrast to Stedman, however, Bolívar is not the triumphant European soldier in García Márquez’ interpretation. John de Pool, a native of Curaçao, introduces another viewpoint, characterizing Bolívar as suffering from a traumatic megalomania complex,25 and this vision plays a central role in the Curaçaoan novels mentioned so far. In Boeli van Leeuwen’s vision, the island even teeters on the edge of biblical apocalypse. The protagonist of Het teken van Jona owes as much to his imagined persecution as to his paranoia. Van Leeuwen offers us no shining white horse, like Bolívar’s in El general en su laberinto, but when the “time is near” the “pale horse” from the Apocalypse or the Revelation of St. John the Divine appears: “bleak and haggard, its scrawny neck bent, [it] slowly steps through my soul.”26 Television and press reports have proclaimed that the world is in chaos. The first-person narrator, apparently the only

25

John de Pool, La trilogía psíquica del Libertador (Panama: n.p., 1942). “De tijd is nabij [...] bleke paard [...] bleek en uitgemergeld, de magere nek gebogen, stapt langzaam door mijn ziel”; Boeli van Leeuwen, Het teken van Jona, 15. 26

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philosopher on the island, seeks to overcome local constraints by living according to the motto “Learn from the big shots, and fuck mediocrity!”27 The protagonist saves one of these ‘big shots’, the rich landowner and Harvard-educated economist Juan Carlos Altamirano, from a knife attack while visiting Willemstad on business. Out of gratitude, Juan Carlos invites the island’s prophet to visit his South American country of Balboa, a “human garden,” where, surrounded by docile Amerindians, all kinds of strange refugees from Europe have found a place to live. Of course, the refugees remain dependent on the charming and intelligent Altamirano, a modern chief on a continent where poverty is felt to be “permanent, biblical, coercive from generation to generation” and is suffered in “dumb resignation.”28 This last point does not seem at all contradictory to the “civil wars and bandoleers,” or to the “psychopaths with private armies and criminals looking for prey,” or to guerrilla activities. These disruptions are easily neutralized, because all the representatives of the ruling system are psychopaths. However, almost as a consolation, they are also all doomed, as is Juan Carlos Altamirano. Because of his great efficiency, he manages to keep his country running; but as fate will have it, the mysterious, dangerous platinum-blonde Scandinavian beauty Laila spellbinds him. When the island’s philosopher risks falling for her charms, too, Altamirano prevents this just in time. Now that he and Altamirano have effectively saved one another’s lives, the narrator-prophet returns to his island and celebrates his miraculous salvation with an enormous party. The extraordinary contrast with the initial gloom surrounding the impending apocalypse underscores the happy ending. The protagonist retreats to his faithful but ever-grumbling wife. The Lord’s Prayer, which he says before going to sleep, assures him a good night’s rest and blesses his soul. The revelation of the book is that the main character is only truly at home in the environment of his island. He does not feel comfortable on the Spanish Main, in the chilly public atmosphere, the “neurotic seclusion” (neurotische geslotenheid), of Catholic countries. The first-person narrator introduces himself in the opening sentence of van Leeuwen’s book as “I am a token negro and I sit by the door. And when it is time to 27

“Spiegel je aan de groten en fuck mediocrity!”; Boeli van Leeuwen, Het teken van Jona, 29. 28 “Permanent, bijbels, van geslacht op geslacht onontkoombaar en wordt gedragen in doffe berusting”; Boeli van Leeuwen, Het teken van Jona, 130.

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smile, I smile” (9). This sentence, in English in the original text, succeeds in bridging the differences between him and the rest of the population. In Willemstad he excels as the primus inter pares, a lonely prophet, as the “Hombu, professor […], ex-secretary of the island-dominion, writer of books and newspaper articles, member of commissions, and a masterdoctor into the bargain.”29 Bankers and notaries are amazed and can hardly understand his popularity among the people. The latter, however, seem to be treated more as background décor. Van Leeuwen characterizes them in such terms as “ma brune,” with her “enormous derriere,” or a “Surinamese girly,” a “Caribbean Pietje Bell,” whereas the Caribbean islands emerge as visions of unpopulated nature. The bohemian narrator (also first-person) in De morgen loeit weer aan is on more intimate terms with the people around him. Sensing that the world is on the edge of apocalypse, he is aware of the impending destruction of the Caribbean islands and the South American continent. It makes him realize his own cowardice, which had prevented his relationship with “the girl with long blonde hair […] who once, long ago and in a far country, inflamed my only real desire.”30 All the same, in the fictional present he feels an erotic attraction for his island while reflecting in his nightly alcoholic stupor on the terrifying image presented by South America. In his nocturnal visions, he sees passing phantoms, “the doomed from five hundred years of Latin-American history,” who step out of “their spirit world to torture those still living, to exhaust or warn them; and they rob them of their armaments and jewellery.”31 On Curaçao, these doomed souls are slaves from the seventeenth or eighteenth century, or the sicknesses, summoned by the lunar wind, that reign in the village of Mourning / the Village without Music / the Village without a Smile on the northern coast. According to legend, the wandering Spanish priest called Plácido was killed there. The “ugly face of a 29

“Hombu, professor [...] de ex-secretaris van het Eilandgebied, schrijver van boeken en krantenartikelen, commissielid, een meester-doctor nog wel”; Boeli van Leeuwen, Het teken van Jona, 163. 30 “Het blonde, langharige meisje [...] dat eens, lang geleden en in een ver land, mijn enige ware wellust heeft doen ontbranden”; Tip Marugg, De morgen loeit weer aan, 141. 31 “De verdoemden uit vijfhonderd jaren Latijnsamerikaanse geschiedenis [...] uit hun schimmenrijk om de mens van vandaag te kwellen, af te matten of te vermanen; en zij beroven hem van zijn wapenrusting en zijn sieraden”; Tip Marugg, De morgen loeit weer aan, 33.

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curandera” or female healer continually disturbs or frightens him, as does the “noise of black women,” of “old women’s voices,” produced by “two old witches.” They recede only when the narrator recalls the day of the rebellion, at precisely that moment of happiness he experienced in Irma Luz’s hammock: The day when so much changed – the day when the maidenhead of the sleepy island of my birth was torn, with resistance, pain and bleeding – I spent with a sweet woman with medlar-brown skin in a hammock surrounded by tinkling calabashes.32

The radio brings him the news of an enormous throng of striking workers marching into the centre of town, of cars being overturned and burned out, of supermarkets destroyed and looted, of the alcohol-crazed mob going completely out of control, of a bloody confrontation between demonstrators and the police: riots, shooting, burning, and plundering. The central part of the town is sealed off, the sale of alcohol is prohibited, and an evening curfew is imposed. During these events – a clear allusion to the events in Curaçao on 30 May 1969 – the narrator’s erotic needs, which in his youth were awakened by the contours of a mysterious brown body, are finally satisfied. The island is the “all-comprehending Holy Caribbean Mother, the whore who eagerly received many snow-white penises in her black womb.”33 This black local counterpart to his remote first white love finally cures his feelings of frustration and helps him to calm the sorrow of his lost opportunities: “I am going to sit down in my old spot on the stoop and rest in the lap of my black woman, who has waited long enough for me to reappear.”34 Such a comfortable position prompts old memories of a stay with his family in Venezuela, twenty months in which his uncle spent his time preaching of the imminent end of the world. The nephew 32

“De dag toen zo veel veranderde, de dag waarop het maagdenvlies van mijn dommelig geboorte-eiland met weerstand, pijn en bloeding inscheurde, heb ik doorgebracht met een vrouw met een zachte, mispelbruine huid in een hangmat met rinkelende kalebassen”; Tip Marugg, De morgen loeit weer aan, 70. 33 “Allesbegrijpende Heilige Caribische Moeder, de slet die al menige hagelblanke penis gretig heeft ontvangen in haar zwarte schoot”; Marugg, De morgen loeit weer aan, 109. 34 “Ik ga op mijn oude plaats op de stoep zitten en vlij mij in de schoot van mijn zwarte vrouw, die mijn wederverschijning lijdelijk heeft ingewacht”; De morgen loeit weer aan, 109.

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connects this with memories of army transports on their way to torture, rape, and kill the wives and children of poor farmers who had provided food for the guerrillas. Hundreds of thousands of hungry children’s faces look to their god for salvation, while he resides uneasily in his palace on the highest Andean peak. The end of the world also comes to Curaçao, where the butterflies that herald decay have already alighted, although people do not recognize the signs. The old mother, who prays for the well-being of her son in Europe, has still not been informed that his corpse has been fished out of a canal in Amsterdam. The character Eugenio, an ex-schoolmaster turned village idiot, has no more idea of what is going on than does the black syndicalist. Both were leaders of the May 1969 uprising; both are now calm and passive. As daybreak arrives, at 2:46 am, the veins of the continent crack open, and at o2:49 am an all-destroying convulsion fulfils its destiny: nothing is alive anymore on the mainland. It is finished; the complete history of the Old Continent has been written down. And at o3:00 am precisely dawn breaks, at the kindling of the sun.35

Antillean Amnesia There are obvious differences between the main characters of the novels by Trujillo, Herrera Luque, and García Márquez on the one hand and those of van Leeuwen and Marugg on the other. Whereas Trujillo attempts to reshape the manifold contradictions of the Bolívar legend that have circulated since the days of Spanish colonization, Herrera Luque chooses to stress the eventual conflict. He focuses on the appearance of Isabel Gómez, Piar’s Curaçaoan stepmother. She is first introduced as an erotically attractive mulatto woman who is raising the child for her own personal advantage only. When, after Piar’s death, she asks Bolívar for a war pension, the author sharply condemns her bad morals. Bolívar and his companions are themselves insulted by the fact that such a woman would even dare to ask him such a favour. This confrontation with the demands

35

“Niets leeft meer op het vasteland. Het is volbracht; de complete geschiedenis van het oude continent is geschreven. En om o3.00 uur precies komt er licht, want de zon wordt ontstoken”; Tip Marugg, De morgen loeit weer aan, 142.

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of ‘black Curaçao’ must be characterized very negatively so as to expose the racist underpinnings of the Venezuelan mind-set. García Márquez extends the local horizon of his narrative to embrace a more general Spanish-American setting. For him, Bolívar’s great dream of the federation of nations is always associated with working mules, either a “black mule with gold teeth,” or “seven pack mules fully loaded,” or the “best of a pack of one hundred presented to the government by a Spanish merchant.”36 His mulatto queen, Reina María Luisa, becomes especially significant when we consider the ideology behind the career of the creole female in plantation society. Her role is always ambiguous and contradictory. She is mainly projected onto a static regional situation, whereas the spiritual, dynamic flights of the white enlightened male determine the narrative strategies. This flight, in García Márquez’s El general en su laberinto, is housed in the sick and dying body of Bolívar, who floats in his own aura of decay as the Great Liberator. How, then, is the white male’s spiritual flight related to regional issues in contemporary Dutch-Antillean views of Latin America? Van Leeuwen and Marugg clearly reflect fear of instability, fascism, and guerrilla war when thinking of ‘us’ from the perspective of the island. In order to support his argument, van Leeuwen twice quotes García Márquez in Spanish. The first quotation serves as an introduction to Juan Carlos Altamirano’s Balboa: “Latin America, that enormous fatherland of enlightened men and historical women, whose endless tenacity merges with legend.”37 Then, on the occasion of the visit to Balboa, another quotation appears: “Independence from Spanish rule did not save us from insanity.”38 Moreover, a surprising breakdown in the supposed identification of van Leeuwen’s protagonist with the marginal ‘token Negro’ occurs once the former returns to his Caribbean island. Before entering their bed, his wife tells him to “wipe that silly smile off your face!”39 The smile is merely a mask, and domestic peace is clearly separated from the public role of this popular 36

Gabriel García Márquez, El general en su laberinto, 30, 39, 44 (tr. Grossman, 23,

31, 36). 37 “La América Latina, esa patria inmensa de hombres alucenados y mujeres históricas, cuya terquedad sin fin se confunde con la leyenda”; Boeli van Leeuwen, Het teken van Jona, 44. 38 “La Independencia del dominio español no nos puso a salvo de la demencia”; Boeli van Leeuwen, Het teken van Jona, 92. 39 Het teken van Jona, 175. English in the text.

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hero. Marugg, on the other hand, feels at one with the black Caribbean woman/night/landscape and the author’s main character prepares for suicide before the history of his Caribbean island ends. These archipelagic male projections onto the stagnation of Latin America bring us back to the question of the various interpretations of Manuel Piar’s execution in the hispanophone novels discussed above. Whereas Trujillo is clear about his sympathy for Piar as underdog, Herrera Luque reveals the white Venezuelan’s racial prejudice towards cocky black Curaçaoans, and García Márquez identifies the regional perception of the status of free blacks as a nightmare that has persisted since independence. His fictional strategy permits him, alone among these authors, to put his finger on the historical traumas of national liberation. Integration into a republican model has preserved the limitations on regional mobility and cultural exclusion that have been imposed since colonial times. Such a distinction between restrictions on regional ‘black’ mobility and national literature is of no use in the novels by van Leeuwen and Marugg. They concentrate on the physical presence of Curaçao as the appropriate environment for a primus inter pares as well as for the staging of a chaotic moment of protest. Both authors undertake a Bolivarian enterprise on behalf of the island against Spanish America, but without endorsing a concrete liberation project of their own. No sense of Piar is felt in their narratives; there is only the self-evident absurdity of expecting military heroes in the Southern Hemisphere, where history is only imaginable as legend. There is no place for concrete history in this contemporary Curaçaoan fiction; it echoes the vacuity and stasis of Latin America as well as of their island community.

¹º

6

F

Popular Rhythms and Political Voices in Curaçao

Á N G E L R A M A , two major appropriations occur in the modernizing, republican environment of the late nineteenth century in Latin America. First of all, the lettered cities started to dissolve the sense of a clean break with the past and came to value early expressions of the local and regionalist spirit of the common people’s oral tradition. Secondly, this dissolution coincided with the advent of mass society, and with the rise of popular communication media, which fomented unrest.1 For this process Rama juxtaposes the pattern of the ‘modernized city’ with those of the ‘polis politicized’ and the ‘city revolutionized’ as the necessary ingredients for gauging democracy and culture. For him, “the formula of 1910 – nationalism and education for all – translates directly, in practical terms, into ‘Latin American democracy’.”2 The question is, how does this cultural and political modernization of the cultural traditions work in the literary tradition? How to reconcile the various levels of diglossia with the modern urge towards sociopolitical and linguistic democracy? Many of the essays in the volume Ángel Rama y los estudios latinoamericanos discuss this same problem with regard to different regional traditions, adopting Rama’s concept of transculturación as an operational instrument to measure the success of this process. Françoise Perus, for instance, points to Rama’s interest in contemporary writers who interpret archaic oral tradition in their novels of the Andes.3 Silvia Spitta even considers Rama as the transculturator par excellence 1

OR

Ángel Rama, The Lettered City, 66–68. Rama, The Lettered City, 102–103. 3 Françoise Perus, “A propósito de las propuestas historiográficas de Ángel Rama,” in Ángel Rama y los estudios latinoamericanos, ed. Mabel Moraña, 55–70. 2

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resolving the trauma of historical memory.4 In what was probably the last interview with him, conducted by Jesús Díaz–Caballero in Lima, Rama insists that literatures in Latin America written in European languages are grounded in creolization (acriollamiento) and in a differential inflexion (inflexión diferencial). He also suggests that similar processes might occur in African literatures and should be drawn on for comparison.5 Gustavo Remedi, by contrast, speaks favourably of Rama’s inspiring a new model to map cities in literature by taking their spatial environment as a democratic project, the city as a myth of modernity, into account.6 He does this by connecting the different layers to reveal an urban grammar whose rituals constantly challenge the colonial ‘dream of order’. I will return to these latter arguments in the chapters that follow, and will first concentrate instead on elaborating a link between the desire to make a clean break with the past and the lettered tradition of Curaçao. There is conspicuous amnesia in contemporary Curaçaoan literature concerning Piar’s strategies, even more so when compared with the ‘lettered’ tradition of the city in which he met his death, in Antafogasta, so important for Bolívar’s liberation project that the name was changed to Ciudad Bolívar. The anthropologist Yolanda Salas has traced a specific continuity in its orally communicated character that expresses the different ways in which the present-day population regard Simón Bolívar and Manuel Piar. Bolívar represents the official part of history, whereas Piar embodies all the suppressed desires of the powerless. In other words, they are either winners (bolivarismo) or losers (piarismo) in contemporary discussions about democracy and justice.7 These interpretations have one thing in common: they communicate through the Spanish language, which was also a common language in 4

Silvia Spitta, “Traición y transculturación: Los desgarramientos del pensamiento latinoamericano,” in Ángel Rama y los estudios latinoamericanos, ed. Mabel Moraña, 173–91. 5 Jesús Díaz–Caballero, “Ángel Rama o la crítica de la transculturación,” in Ángel Rama y los estudios latinoamericanos, ed. Mabel Moraña, 325–43. 6 Gustavo Remedi, “Ciudad letrada: Ángel Rama y la espacialización del análisis cultural,” in Ángel Rama y los estudios latinoamericanos, ed. Mabel Moraña, 103, 105. 7 Yolanda Salas, Bolívar y la historia en la conciencia popular, with Norma González Viloria & Romy Velásquez (Caracas: Universidad Simón Bolívar, 1987). Yolanda Salas & Norma González Viloria, Piar: El Héroe de Múltiples Rostros (Puerto Ordaz: Senefelder, 1995).

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Curaçao until the end of the nineteenth century. Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the island were familiar with Papiamentu, the creole language, which has always testified to the bond with Africa. Spanish lost importance in the early twentieth century, to be replaced by Dutch; the latter thus became the language of modernization, whose task, according to Rama, was to heal the break with the past, dissolved only when the ‘lettered city’ turned to popular cultural traditions. In this problem of modern democracy, the tumba has assumed key status in the politics of musical culture. John Leerdam, the former director of the Cosmic Theatre in Amsterdam, has stated that it stands for everything that fails in communication between the Dutch Antilles and the Netherlands. He said this in February 2000, when the showing of a video-clip on Dutch television caused a scandal. In the 1970s, many islanders started migrating to the Dutch (mother) country; ever since, Antilleans in Holland have had to cope with the generally negative image of them as drug dealers or criminals. This might explain their irritation following the television programme, dedicated to an anti-migration song. In her article “Kom niet aan de geuzenliederen” (Don’t Touch the Gueux Songs), Margriet Oostveen reports that a television team had recorded a tumba song, a music genre typical of the island.8 Hans Dorrestijn, a Dutch lyricist, was responsible for the text, while the Antillean guitarist Edsel Juliet composed the music. Many Antilleans in the Netherlands felt in8

The article appeared in the Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant on 18 February 2000. The song text was published in Amigoe on 11 February 2000. The song has seven verses and the following refrain: “Blijf op de Antillen / wordt geen emigrant. / Slik liever zelfmoordpillen, / Maar ga nooit naar Nederland, / Ga nooit naar Nederland. / Het eten is verschrikkelijk: bleke smurrie op je bord / Waarvan je bij de aanblik meteen al misselijk wordt. / Dat noemen ze stamppot waarvan je overgeeft / Daar het de vieze smaak van mist en regen heeft. / Ga nooit naar Nederland. / Maar het droevigste van alles is daar het carnaval / in dikke winterjassen. Het is een tranendal. / Het Nederlandse carnaval dat is zo’n droef gedoe, / Blijf op de Antillen, ga nooit naar Holland toe. / Ga er nooit naar toe / Ga nooit naar Nederland.” See www.nrc.nl/W2 /Nieuws/2000/02/18/Vp/cs.html (My translation: “Stay in the Antilles / Don’t become an emigrant. / Better to kill yourself with pills, / But never go to the Netherlands, / Never go to the Netherlands. / The food is terrible: pale sludge on your plate / Which makes you sick just looking at it. / What they call hotchpotch [mashed potatoes and cabbage] makes you vomit / With its vile taste of fog and rain. / Never go to the Netherlands. / But the most pitiful thing of all is the carnival there / In thick winter coats. It’s a vale of tears. / The Dutch carnival, that’s a dreary business, / Stay in the Antilles, never go to Holland. / Never go there / Never go to the Netherlands”).

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sulted at being identified with this interpretation. Oostveen quotes John Leerdam as commenting that such an anti-migration text in Dutch could only have come from somebody who was totally ignorant of the cultural codes of the Antilles. Starting from this notion of Antillean cultural codes, I wish to explore the function of local adherence to popular culture in the literary tradition of Curaçao. The tumba had already been a topic in the literature of the Spanish Caribbean at the end of the nineteenth century and was then introduced into Dutch-language writing from the Antilles. It is no coincidence that the tumba question of 2000 originated during the carnival celebrations following the annual tumba festival, the most typical manifestation of Papiamentu culture. This festival has taken place regularly since 1971, and partly involves a competition for that year’s road song, to be sung during the carnival parade. The festival is a commemoration of 30 May 1969, when Antillean workers rose up in protest at the discrimination of Papiamentu culture, among other things, as depicted in Marugg’s De morgen loeit weer aan.9

Papiamentu and Spanish Tumba and tambú are the most prevalent forms of popular musical expression in Curaçao. The former conveys community feeling and is closely connected to the music from other parts of the Caribbean and from Latin America. Wind instruments and a strict twelve–eight rhythm form the basis; this sound can be augmented with other instruments. Tumba texts are preferably sung in Papiamentu or Spanish but also contain English and Dutch words or phrases. Tambú, by contrast, is much more intimate and was traditionally sung in Papiamentu, while Guene – the secret slave language – might be involved.10 It consists of a call-and-response performance between a lead singer, who sets the tune with the drummer, and the audience. This musical dialogue may show slight variations, but 9

Gert Oostindie, Dromen en littekens: Dertig jaar na de Curaçaose revolte, 30 mei

1969 (Amsterdam: U of Amsterdam P , 1999). 10

Igma M.G. van Putte–de Windt, “Forms of Dramatic Expression in the Leeward Islands,” in A History of Literature in the Caribbean, ed. A. James Arnold; vol. 2, subeditors Vera Kutzinski & Ineke Phaf–Rheinberger (Amsterdam & Philadelphia P A : John Benjamins, 2001): 597–614.

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the link with the local community is crucial. Today, the boundaries between tambú and tumba are more fluid, thanks to the commercialization of popular music, where star singers frequently use material derived from traditional tambú performers. As early as 1935, tambú had played a role in Del Curaçao que se va (Vanishing Curaçao), published by John de Pool in Santiago de Chile. De Pool specialized in the history of Spanish American independence, which is also a theme in his book, subtitled “Pages from my ‘Book of Memories’.” Del Curaçao que se va is one of the first autobiographical accounts to discuss aspects of the island’s culture from a ‘native’ point of view. De Pool left the island as a young man and migrated to Panama City, but remained closely tied to Curaçao for the rest of his life, and his text leaves no doubt that he speaks Papiamentu. Although he writes in Spanish, he dedicates many pages to Papiamentu, without translation. In his chapter on “Papiamentoe,”11 de Pool tells anecdotes about encounters between his countrymen in different parts of the world, where Papiamentu always serves to establish immediate contact and therefore has highly positive connotations. The author is familiar with “Tamboe,”12 which, he says, came from Africa. Notwithstanding his explicit condemnation of performances ending in alcoholic excesses, he regards tambú as a connecting link with the island’s sense of communal identity: In the social history of Curaçao, the tamboe can be placed on the same level as the quadrille and the lancers: the aristocracy and the mob, so to say – as though a luxurious salon and a nauseating hovel were to shake hands.13

De Pool knew the work of Rodolfo Lenz, the Chilean-German linguist, who wrote the first extensive study of Papiamentu.14 Lenz met the “hero 11

John de Pool, Del Curaçao que se va: Páginas arrancadas de ‘El Libro de mis Recuerdos’ (1935; Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1981), 129–31. 12 De Pool, Del Curaçao que se va, 79–82. 13 “En la historia social de Curaçao, el ‘tamboe’ pasará, junto con la cuadrilla y los lanceros, a la par, como quien dice, la aristocracia y la vulgardad; dándose la mano el salón suntuoso y el cuartucho nauseabundo”; Del Curaçao que se va, 82. 14 Rodolfo Lenz, El Papiamento, la lengua criolla de Curazao (Santiago de Chile: Balcells, 1928). Speaking about “Nuestras comidas y bebidas” in Del Curaçao, de Pool points to Lenz’s study on Papiamentu. He sent his manuscript to Lentz, who published it in Santiago. Lenz also maintained a correspondence with de Pool, who thanks

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of these pages, the second cook on the ship, the black Natividad Sillie,”15 while sailing from Chile to Europe in 1921. He had Sillie write letters and short stories for him, which he analysed for his own research. He reproduces Sillie’s texts in his book, from which we learn that Sillie loved his Papiamentu language, that he was proud to show his ability to use it in written form, and that he felt insulted by being discriminated against in his professional life as a cook owing to his dark skin colour. Lenz endorses Sillie’s sentiments and corroborates what he says. For de Pool, by contrast, such discrimination is non-existent in his Curaçao of the past. He considers Curaçao’s lethargy and oblivion in the 1930s as the main problem, quite in contrast to the formerly active society of the shons, ‘white’ patriarchs of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish descent, who were all part of and central to social life – gezelligheidsclubs – at the end of the nineteenth century. De Pool’s father Shon Chandi was the primus inter pares of this elite, which is why he was invited to join all the committees and social activities. Shon Chandi’s complex relationship with less well-to-do Antilleans is clearly outlined in the following paragraph: He was a great dancer and extremely popular, so much so that on New Year’s Eve half the population of Curaçao passed through our house after midnight and bottle after bottle of rum was consumed in order to make sure everybody got a drink. On this occasion both of the staircases in the house were used; people stood in line up the stairs on one side, took their drink from the old man standing behind a table, and then descended the stairs on the other side. My father managed the houses of my mother, and his assistant, the Negro Martinó, a confirmed drunkard, often had difficulty collecting the rent. When tenants failed to pay, he would remove a door or rip up some tiles. This string of angry tenants came complaining to my father, and I remember the arguments my old man had with Martinó for committing such barbarities. It looked as though it was Martinó who was the owner and my father the lawyer who defended the tenant. We still have the accounts

him in a letter for having contributed to the fact that Papiamentu is no longer referred to as a “patois” or dialect. From 1921 to 1929, Lentz also corresponded with W.H. Hoyer, who regularly provided him with information on Papiamentu. See Documentos auténticos de Rodolfo Lenz: Catálogo crítico, ed. María Teresa Labarías & Juan Hernando Cárdenas (Santiago de Chile: Universidad Metropolitana, 2000): 51, 48. 15 “Héroe de estas páginas, el segundo cocinero del buque, el negro Natividad Sillie”; Lenz, El Papiamento, 7.

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book, and it would be interesting to publish some of its contents. But I dare not do so. It would be too offensive.16

This passage shows that, notwithstanding the intimate atmosphere on New Year’s Eve, de Pool considers it too risky to go beyond the patriarchal surface of this community celebration. W.R. Menkman remarks in his 1936 review of de Pool’s book that the author seems familiar with neither the Netherlands nor the Dutch language, concluding that the Dutch were seen as guests from the perspective of the shons, who were much more oriented to the Americas. The organization of de Pool’s memories confirms Menkman’s observations, including as they do chapters on Bolívar, Brion, and Piar and ending with an expression of regret at the breakdown of commercial relationships with Venezuela in 1881, after which many businessmen in Curaçao went bankrupt. This implied that the islanders had to try their luck abroad, among them de Pool himself. The Maal brothers, for instance, became agents for the French Canal Company in Colón and recruited workers from their hometown with advertisements in Papiamentu, Spanish, and Dutch in De Curaçaosche Courant (24 November, 1 & 8 December 1882). In that year of extreme drought and few job opportunities, work on the Panama Canal was certainly a good if not unique alternative. This migration in search of work explains why the texts of popular Papiamentu songs at this time, such as “Panama mi ke bai shon Bam,” so often topicalize migrants’ expectations, destinies, and destinations.17 16 “Era gran bailador y en extremo popular, de tal manera, que la noche del Año Nuevo, desfilaba por casa medio pueblo de Curaçao, después de las doce de la noche, y eran garrafones y más garrafones de ron, que se consumían en brindar a cada persona una copa. En esa ocasión, se usaban las dos escaleras y el cordón subía por un lado, tomaba la copa, delante del viejo, que estaba detrás de una mesa, y bajaba por la otra escalera. Administraba las casas de mi madre, y el cobrador, el negro Martinó, que era un borracho empedernido, tenía con frecuencia altercados con los inquilinos que no pagaban, y les quitaban la puerta o les arrancaban unas tejas. Y el inquilino moroso venía a poner la queja, y me acuerdo los pleitos del viejo con Martinó, por haber hecho esa barbaridad. Más bien parecía que Martinó era el dueño y mi padre el abogado que defendía al inquilino moroso. Todavía conservamos el libro de cuentas y sería curioso y sorprendente publicar algo de su contenido, pero a eso no me atrevo. Sería demasiado mortificante”; John de Pool, Del Curaçao, 345–46. 17 “Panamá mi ke bai shon Bam / Panamá mi ke bai shon Bam / Maske mi muri aya shon Bam / Bai mi ta bai shon Bam / Maske min bolbe mas”; Rose Mary Allen, Ta Kuba mi ke bai: Testimoniohan di trabadóhan ku a emigrá for di Kòrsou bai Cuba na kuminsamentu di siglo X X (Zaltbommel, I C S , 2001), 14. My translation: “To Panama

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Rose Mary Allen, Father Brenneker, and Elis Juliana among others conducted critical fieldwork and documented the existence and relevance of oral Papiamentu tradition. Its African origins is demonstrated in an initial academic study by René Rosalia,18 who shows that the Afro-Curaçaoan population expressed its religious and social convictions through tambú. The lead singer was traditionally a woman, accompanied and inspired by a male drummer. Rosalia argues that Papiamentu is a crucial verbal element, emphasizing that the call-and-response structure is fundamental to the coordination of text and rhythm. No time schedule was given; the lead singers’ tune and the reaction of the audience would decide how long a performance lasted in any given situation. For slave owners and functionaries, tambú was a wicked, heathen custom that interfered with work schedules. Rosalia reproduces extracts from public orders threatening legal measures against tambú and analyses the way in which these performances were described by local writers, even detecting a certain element of racist fear in the way in which de Pool refers to the tambú.19 This might well be true. De Pool published Del Curaçao que se va in 1935: i.e. the year before the colonial government banned tambú (a prohibition lasting from 1936 to 1952). It was only occasionally tolerated, in a form of “silent exemption.”20 Notwithstanding this official prohibition, tambú remained an intrinsic part of social life. De Pool’s father, Shon Chandi, was in all probability himself intimately acquainted with it, an assumption Rosalia supports with examples of shons who were assiduous observers and admirers of tambú at New Year’s Eve celebrations.21

I want to go, shon Bam / To Panama I want to go, shon Bam / Even if I die there, shon Bam / I’d go anyway, shon Bam / Even if I might never ever come back.” These songs include popular information about the outcome for migratory labourers. Suriname, for example, was an unhealthy place: “Saliendo fo’i Corsouw, / Bon bon di saloe, / Jegando na Surinam / Ata sangoera ta pieka nos [bis].” My translation: “We left Curaçao, / quite healthy. / Arriving in Suriname, / we were bitten by the mosquitos”; Nicolaas van Meeteren, Volkskunde van Curaçao (Willemstad: Scherpenheuvel, 1947): 79. 18 René V. Rosalia, Tambú: De legale en kerkelijke repressie van Afro-Curaçaose volksuitingen (Zutphen: Walburg, 1997). 19 René V. Rosalia, Tambú, 131–32. 20 Rosalia, Tambú, 292. 21 Rosalia, Tambú, 137–39.

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De Pool’s predilection for and expertise in Papiamentu culture are even more explicit in his admiration for Civilisadó (Civilizer), published from 1871 to 1875,22 which he characterizes as one of the community’s most outstanding initiatives. This weekly included articles in several languages, but Papiamentu was the most influential. For the first time in history, an editorial board aimed at reaching out to the average local population. This policy reflected their philosophy of integrating the recently emancipated slaves (1863) into the public realm and educational system. It is interesting to relate this democratic ideal to the advertisements in one of the early issues of Civilisadó, reproduced by de Pool, in which the Bethancourt printshop announces the sale of the “luz di civilisadó” with “toer sorto di lampi” (all kinds of lamps) – in other words, lamps shedding the light of civilization on all strata of society.23 Significantly, advertisement in the form of dialogues in Papiamentu appeared in Civilisadó’s early issues,24 while others were in Spanish. In her anthology of Spanish texts, Liesbeth Echteld reproduces extracts from an anonymous dialogue between a man called Populis Populorum and Juancho Juanchorum. They have differing opinions. Populis comments, of a song-writer: he’s been writing décimas In defence of those who play the drums That’s just the way they are!25

Juancho, by contrast, complains: You put the common people on display Ridicule their dancing and their drum Can’t you see that writing in this way you just make yourself look dumb?26

22

John de Pool, Del Curaçao, 163–71. De Pool, Del Curaçao, 191–92. 24 See van Putte–de Windt, “Forms of Dramatic Expression,” 597–98. 25 “Viene escribiendo décimas / Por defender los tamborum / Así son ellas!”; Liesbeth Echteld, Literatura en español en Curazao al cambio del siglo: En busca de textos desconocidos de la segunda mitad del siglo X I X y de las primeras décadas del siglo X X (Utrecht: Utrecht University, 1999) (Civilisadó, 30 September 1871). 26 “Necio al pueblo exibes / Con su baile y su tambor / Sin comprender que así escribes / Por tal baile tu baldón”; Literatura en español (Civilisadó, 7 January 1872). 23

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Civilisadó was printed at the Imprenta del Pueblo, a publishing house owned by Casten David Meyer, a freemason who contributed to De Onpartijdige (The Non-Partisan). On 12 October 1871 this newspaper printed another response by Populis to Juancho, again in favour of drums and popular music. Rutten remarks that Meyer was the best friend of Joseph Sickman Corsen, one of the most interesting poets of the Dutch Antilles.27 It is unlikely that Corsen was in Curaçao when Civilisadó was published. De Pool mentions that he lived in Venezuela for some years, before marrying in Aruba and returning to Curaçao with his wife. After that, however, from 1875 until his death, Corsen was one of the pillars of cultural life on the island.28 He formed part of the so-called groupe de six around Agustín Bethancourt, which consisted of poets, musicians, and writers. Bethancourt (of the lampi advertisement) was born in the Canary Islands and emigrated to Curaçao via Venezuela in 1860, where he founded a music academy, a publishing house specializing in sheet music and literature, and a bookshop. Nicknamed Papa Ancu, he was quite a popular personality, much mourned by the nation at his death in 1885.29 In his chapter on “Los bailes de entonces” (dances of way back when), de Pool mentions the wals, the danza, and the polka as the favourite dancing activities on Sundays and other domestic festive occasions celebrated in the domestic sala. The piano was the most important instrument for creating the requisite intimate indoor atmosphere. Furthermore, in that same period artisans had become adept at constructing small portable organs to take the place of the piano outdoors, and in this way popular musical compositions spread throughout the island. Music was closely interwoven with poetry. Along with Haim Senior (two issues) and Ernesto Römer, one of de Pool’s brothers-in-law, Corsen was co-editor of the weekly Notas y Letras: Seminario de Literatura y Bellas Artes (1886–88),30 issued by the Bethancourt publishing house.

27

A.M.G. Rutten, Leven en muziekwerken van de dichter-musicus J.S. Corsen, intro. Marius Flothuis (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1983). 28 Corsen gave private piano lessons to daughters of families of all religious faiths. He was organist in one of the synagogues and also directed the military band for quite a while. 29 John de Pool, Del Curaçao, 235–37. 30 The first issue appeared on 3 July 1886, the last issue on 19 January 1888. Echteld mentions that 72 issues were published. Corsen was co-editor until the 30th

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Corsen wrote in Spanish, of course, but Rutten mentions in his compilation of Corsen’s music scores that he must have produced quite a number of satirical texts in Papiamentu, which are now difficult to locate.31 In 1899, Corsen formulated orthographic rules for Papiamentu in De Vrijmoedige (The Candid Speaker) and also published a text about the difficulty of Palabra kla (Speaking Clearly). The poet identifies with a skirbidó (writer), who, in the moments just before his death, asks for more light (a reference to Goethe). The name of this writer is Martein Lopap, a famous fool in Aruba, who preaches in the streets about the confusing variety of oloshi (watch, timepiece). Unfortunately, Lopap knows neither the reason for nor the solution to his troubling dilemma. Like de Pool, Corsen was most familiar with Papiamentu and Spanish. Only three texts in Papiamentu are included in his collection Poesías, published posthumously by Ben Jesurun.32 One of them, “Atardi” (At Sunset, 1905), is still extremely popular today. The opening lines repeat those of a famous poem by Heinrich Heine (I don’t know / what it means / that I am so sad).33 The rhythmical influence of the Spanish décimas in popular eight-syllable lines is evident in the eleven quatrains of “Atardi.” Is it this rhythm that makes “Atardi” such a remarkable success even today? Rutten reproduces a newspaper photo, the caption of which mentions the text as early as 1911. Lenz also quotes the poem in his book because Carmen Fensohn, an Antillean woman he met in Hamburg in 1921, recited the poem to him. Papiamentu was formerly only one of the languages used in musical compositions. Edgar Palm lists over thirty musicians and composers in the issue. The reasons for his withdrawal are not known. See Liesbeth Echteld, Literatura en español, 40–49. 31 A.M.G. Rutten, Leven en muziekwerken van de dichter-musicus J.S. Corsen, intro. Marius Flothuis (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1983). 32 Joseph Sickman Corsen, Poesías de J.S. Corsen, Recopiladas y publicadas por unos amigos del finado autor (Nijmegen: J.F. Kloosterman, 1914): 101–102, 105–109. 33 The first two stanzas in Papiamentu: “Ta pa kiko mi no sâ; / Ma esta tristu mi ta bira / tur atardi ku mi mira / Solo haba den lamá! // Talbes ta un presintimentu, / O ta un recuerdo kisás; / Podise n’ta nada mas / Ku un cos di temporamentu”; Joseph Sickman Corsen, Poesías, 101. The author also published a Spanish version, which was later used for the translation into Dutch and English: “La causa de mi pesar / No la sé; pero un suspiro / Se me escapa cuando miro / Hundirse el sol en el mar. // Me parece que algo llora / En el tenue resplandor. / Y del mar en el rumor / Oigo débil voz que implora”; Corsen, Poesías, 100.

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1930s.34 The military marches have Dutch titles; waltzes, mazurkas, and

polkas are in Spanish, while tumbas have texts in Papiamentu. It was in that same decade that Papiamentu speakers started migrating to Cuba. A considerable number sought work there in the sugar industry, and Rose Mary Allen reveals in interviews she conducted with surviving migrants around 1980 that Cuba had been quite an experience for them. They had to negotiate their salary for the first time in their lives, and discovered nightlife in the cities. Meanwhile, Cuban music was becoming wildly popular back home. According to Allen, in the 1930s about thirty groups were playing Cuban music with typical Cuban instruments such as the marímbula, the tres, and the bongó, hitherto unknown in Curaçao. In the 1940s she counts fifty active groups and sixty in the 1950s. Cuban radio programmes contributed greatly to their popularity in such a small place, as did concerts by Cuban orchestras. One remarkable visit was that of Anacaona, an orchestra made up of women from Havana.35 Although the popularity of these groups seems to have diminished in the 1960s and 1970s, Allen observes a surprising revival since the 1980s at parties celebrating Cuban retro styles – the music of the 1940s and 1950s. The popularity of Cuban music today is not specific to Curaçao alone, of course; if we leave aside the enormous presence and influence of AfroCuban styles in the U S A , the ‘real thing’ became a global phenomenon, at the latest, after the success of Wim Wenders’ film Buena Vista Social Club. In Curaçao, though, Cuban music had been exercising a special influence long before Wenders’ film. Rosalia reports that despite official suppression, tambú continued to influence a positive emergence of cultural identity among Afro-Curaçaoans. It clearly addressed a particular local need. Allen’s informants recollect having performed tambú in Cuba as well as in Curaçao. They also recall that Cuban music aroused suspicion among the local police because it sounded like tambú. As a result of the campaign of the National People’s Party ( N V P ) for self-government under the leadership of the legendary Dr Moises Frumencio da Costa Gómez, tambú was legalized. After 1952, it was possible to obtain official 34 Edgar Palm, Muziek en musici van de Nederlandse Antillen (Willemstad: De Curaçaosche Courant, 1979). 35 The Anacaona women’s orchestra visited Curaçao and Aruba during a tour of Latin America. See Alicia Castro, Anacaona: The Amazing Adventures of Cuba’s First All Girls’ Dance Band, ed. Ingrid Kummels & Manfred Schäfer, tr. Steven Murray (London: Atlantic Books, 2007).

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permission to hold a tambú party, but then the celebration acquired a more commercial character; money was made from selling food and drink. The main transformation was a shift of focus from a female to a male vocalist. In the period during which the tambú was banned, meanwhile, three Antillean writers decided to compose texts in Papiamentu with rhythmical feedback. One of them, Pierre Lauffer, impressed with his recitation of a poem in that language: “Sea, with so many mysteries / Hidden in your wells, / That I cannot understand, / Your great empire.”36 At that time – around 1940 – this reading was remarkable because Papiamentu was considered blasphemous; Catholic priests even forbade it in the classroom. The love they shared for Papiamentu inspired the formation of a trio called Julio Perrenal, a contraction of their names.37 The men saw their initiative as a reaction to the publication of the magazine De Stoep (The Stoop) in September 1940 by war refugees from Holland. Irritation that this Dutch initiative might in the future prescribe the norms of cultural taste on the island led them, as a counter-offensive, to exploit the fact that many speakers of Papiamentu were fond of rumbas, boleros, and tangos. Julio Perrenal published the texts in their Cancionero Papiamento (1943), thus heralding the beginning of what Tim de Wolf has called an “explosion in the production of Papiamento songs.”38 The songs never became popular, although they were sung now and then in the countryside.

36

“Laman yen di misterio / Den bo olanan skondé / Ku mi n’por komprende / Bo gran imperio,” in Jules de Palm & Julian Coco, Julio Perrenal: Dichters van het Papiamentse lied (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1979): 25. 37 Pierre Lauffer (1920–81), Jules de Palm (1922–99), René de Rooy (1917–74). 38 The songs were: Gasolin. Marcha / Merengue Merikano / Jorando. Slow Fox / Amor loco. Wals / Cuba Libre. Merengue / Premio di feria / Mi pushi. Merengue / Anne Marie. Wals / Scuridad. Wals / Situacion. Rumba-Fox. In a telephone conversation with me in August 2006, Julian Coco recalled that a tumba was also involved, included on the performance recording of the Cancionero Papiamento. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate this musical document. Lauffer’s son recently published the C D Cancionero Papiamento (Julio Perrenal): Pierre Lauffer Jr. Sings and Recites Pierre Lauffer Sr. (Haarlem: In de Knipscheer, 2006). The C D is accompanied by a booklet (introduced by Tim de Wolf) with the song texts of the original version together with translations into Dutch and English. Some additional poems by Pierre Lauffer Sr. are included, among them three on the tambú (Balia barí; Na morto di Zenobia; Nonze su kantika di tambú).

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Papiamentu and Dutch Notwithstanding their attachment to what they called “gesunkenes Kulturgut” – Papiamentu – the three performers were fluent in Dutch and loved reciting passages from Dutch poems to each other. In 1943, Lauffer offered his first poetic contribution in Dutch to De Stoep.39 A year later, he published his first volume of poetry in Papiamentu under the title Patria. The volume was reviewed favourably in the same journal. Other Antillean writers joined the list of contributors, such as Oda Blinder, Tip Marugg, and Cola Debrot.40 These years thus signal the beginning of a dialogue between Papiamentu- and Dutch-speaking writers. The tumba appears for the first time in Debrot’s writings in 1948. In his famous short debut novel Mijn zuster de negerin (My Black Sister, 1935), Papiamentu had still been referred to as negropatois, the language spoken on the streets,41 and only in his second novel, Bewolkt bestaan (Cloudy Existence), does Debrot begin to show some sensitivity towards its rhythmical potential. After studying medicine in Paris, one of his male characters returns home to Guadeloupe and marries a creole woman, a former prostitute. The writer leaves the reader in no doubt that he considers this marriage to be problematic because of the difference in intellect and education. Still, through this couple Debrot is able to convey details 39 Lauffer also wrote novels in Spanish under a pseudonym. See Maritza Eustatia, Catalogus van werken van en over Pierre Lauffer, 1942–1986 (Curaçao: Universidat Nashonal di Antia, 1986): 36. 40 Debrot is the pioneer of Antillean writing in Dutch. He was born in Bonaire in 1902 but his family moved to Curaçao when he was still very young. In 1916 he was sent to Holland for further education. He visited his family in Curaçao twice, in 1923– 24 and 1935. In February 1948, Debrot returned for a longer period and started practising medicine in Willemstad. From 1951 until his retirement, he was in the service of the colonial government, first in The Hague and then, in 1962, in Curaçao as the first native governor of the Dutch Antilles. He held office during the social protests in Curaçao, in May 1969, which deeply affected him personally. In 1970, Debrot retired, living in Holland until his death in 1981. 41 But it was not this aspect that provoked the scandal when published. The author breaks with the traditional model of concubinage of the ‘white’ male with the ‘tragic mulatto’ woman in plantation society. In Debrot’s interpretation, this white man is a native who returns from Europe to his origins. At home, he discovers his family secrets – incestuous relationships; to mention those publicly was unheard-of in Antillean society. See Jaap J. Oversteegen, In het schuim van grauwe wolken: Het leven van Cola Debrot tot 1948 (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1994): 214–22.

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of the regional culture. The doctor from Guadeloupe explains to his friends from Curaçao that the most genuine expression of the Caribbean soul must be sought in the rumba from Cuba, the beguine from Martinique, or the tumba from Curaçao, rhythms borne everywhere “by the same melancholy that rises and descends like a bird that flutters tiredly through a big wood with trees and oversized green leaves, without ever reaching its nest.”42 The author indicates that this same melancholic mood can be found in a verse from Paraguay, “Llora llora urutaú” (Cry, Cry, Owl), and in Corsen’s “Atardi.”43 In the same year that Bewolkt bestaan was published in Amsterdam, Debrot returned to the Antilles to experience the dawn of democracy. General elections and women’s suffrage were proclaimed, and Dr Da Costa Gómez was campaigning for his newly founded National People’s Party as the alternative to the existing Democratic Party. Da Costa Gómez’s party, which, as already mentioned, was to obtain permission for tambu performances in 1952, won the elections in March 1949, and Debrot commented on the results in a brief dialogue in Papiamentu, “Camind’i cruz” (Crossroads), published in De Stoep in 1949 under the pseudonym Chandi Lagun. Two men meet shortly after the foundation of the National People’s Party. One of them, Perul, is a follower of Dr Da Costa Gómez, while the other, Pascual, sympathizes with the Democratic Party. Although the sketch takes place in a period of political change, Debrot displays little optimism. The present appears to be as desolate as the barren landscape of the island. The crucial question for Perul and Pascual, both experienced trade-union activists, is how the ordinary people – especially women – from the countryside who “live a little bit in the past and dream of colonial times”44 will handle this new situation. Obviously, with this style of dialogue Debrot is continuing the tradition of the newspaper advertisements in Civilisadó with their mixture of local gossip and social criticism, which were so important to de Pool. It reveals 42

“Door dezelfde melancholie die stijgt en weer daalt als een vogel, die vermoeid fladdert door een groot woud met bomen met groene, te grote blaren, zonder zijn nest ooit te bereiken”; Verzameld werk, vol. 4, afterword by Estelle Debrot–Reed (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1986): 198–99. 43 Cola Debrot, Verzameld werk, vol. 4: 249, 255. 44 “Hopi di e hende nan ta un poco tapá ainda, nan ta sonja ainda di tempu colonial”; Cola Debrot, Verzameld werk, vol. 3, ed. Pierre H. Dubois (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1986): 416–17.

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Debrot’s own attachment to Papiamentu, even more pronounced when his comedy Bokaal aan de lippen (Raising the Goblet), a “joyful play in seven dialogues,” is staged in Papiamentu translation. These dialogues engage with problems of inter-ethnic love affairs, and the final scene features twelve flowers dancing to celebrate the happy ending. This comedy was translated into Papiamentu by May Henriquez and Pierre Lauffer; in his brief commentary, Debrot interprets the relationship of the native tongue to Dutch. He confesses that he is finally at ease with this play after years of seeing nothing but disharmony. He was aware that he was writing his dialogue in Dutch yet having in mind the sensibilities of a Papiamentu-speaking audience. Judging that the comedy had finally found its original language, he explains the differences in the logic of the two language cultures: […] Antillean writers, and this is true for writers from Curaçao as well as from Aruba or Bonaire, prefer to take their titles and metaphors directly or indirectly from the flora of their islands. Kadushi and datu, because of the many thorns and the exquisite flowers; the flamboyants, because of their many flowers and many baina’s (literally: ‘hulls’; figuratively: ‘troubles’ or ‘difficulties’); the watapana or dividivi, because of its toughness or flexibility, and finally the anglo, madalena, trinitaria, cayena, because of the tenderness and transitoriness of everything that has the courage to flower. Antillean culture is a floral culture, just like the Dutch, but whereas Dutch interiors make a point of expressing intimacy and gracefulness, in the Antilles the focus is on playfulness and aggressiveness.45

Debrot’s commentary came out in the same year as Double Play (1973), the now classic novel by Frank Martinus Arion, on the general implica45

“[…] dat Antilliaanse schrijvers, en dit geldt voor Curaçaoenaars evenzeer als voor Arubanen en Bonairianen, graag direct of indirect hun titels en metaforen aan de flora van hun eilanden ontlenen. Kadushi en datu, vanwege de vele doornen en de zeldzame bloemen; de flamboyants, vanwege haar vele bloemen en vele ‘baina’s’ (letterlijk ‘peulen’ figuurlijk ‘troubles’ of ‘moeilijkheden’); de watapana of dividivi, vanwege de taaiheid of buigzaamheid, en tenslotte de anglo, madalena, trinitaria, cayena, vanwege de tederheid en vergangkelijkheid van alles wat de moed heeft te durven bloeien. De Antilliaanse cultuur is evenals de Nederlandse een bloemencultuur, maar in de Nederlandse binnenkamers komen vooral innigheid en sierlijkheid tot uitdrukking, in de Antillen vooral speelsheid en agressiviteit”; Cola Debrot, Verzameld werk, vol. 7, ed. Pierre H. Dubois (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1989): 286.

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tions of 30 May 1969. He debuted as an author in 1957 with his long epic poem Stemmen uit Afrika (Voices From Africa), a poetic voyage of a black Odysseus through the forest, where the ‘Negro’ voices are accompanied by the sound of “dumb tambú beating” (dof tamboe-geroffel).46 The poet shows this world to a group of white tourists and introduces them to these unfamiliar but ‘pure’ surroundings. In the foreword to the second edition of Stemmen uit Afrika, Arion explains that his study of Greek classical literature inspired his poetry. In addition, the cathartic experience of seeing the African Ballet of Keita Fodeba with the original African musical instruments prompted him to seek an “innocent use of language” for his “things.” The special character of Arion’s oeuvre consists in exploring the characteristics of Papiamentu culture while writing in Dutch; this also informs the narrative structure of Double Play. The time of day evoked in the novel is that of atardi, the early evening of a tropical Sunday. The “sad” (tristu) atmosphere of Corsen’s poem is here realized on a local level. The Sunday begins as usual in a suburb of Willemstad where the Catholic Church and the weekly dominoes match among four men are the centre of community life. In the course of the next few hours, the playful, boisterous nature of Papiamentu culture as described by Debrot is given the full treatment against a background of flowers in full bloom – trinitaria, gayena, kelki hil wabi, palu di lechi, watapana, kibrahacha, and kalebas. The narrative is organized around dialogues among, and monologues by, the four dominoes players, which address local politics, daily problems, and gossip. They are situated in the aftermath of 30 May 1969. Manchi Sanantonio and Boeboe Fiel – the losers – represent the same political parties as those depicted in Debrot’s “Camind’i Cruz,” the Democratic Party (D P ) and the National People’s Party (N V P ). In Arion’s plot, these men are not placed in a barren landscape, but live in a crowded suburb of Willemstad and are involved in a dramatic game of dominoes with two newcomers to the island. Chamon Nicolas is from Saba and wants to make money, while Janchi Pau has returned home after working on a ship along the coast of South America. These men are obviously on the winning side.

46

Frank Martinus Arion, Stemmen uit Afrika (1957; Rotterdam: Flamboyant, 1978):

58–59.

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For the two losers, music has especial significance. Manchi Sanantonio’s piano has pride of place in the sala of his impressive residence and holds him in its thrall, as it were. This recalls the omnipresence of this instrument in the past. Ángel Quintero Rivera underscores the social dimension of piano music with reference to a study by the German sociologist Max Weber.47 Weber claims that the status of the symphony orchestra and the piano had been governed by the rationalist ethos of bourgeois society ever since the nineteenth century. Quintero maintains that this assumption is only partly true, as Weber focuses too strongly on the institutionalization of music. He explains that the authority of bourgeois rationality has been increasingly challenged since the 1920s by the emergence of a New-World music, a critical modernity propelled by rhythms of African-American origin such as jazz, samba, bossa nova, reggae, calypso, mambo, bolero, merengue, nueva trova tropical, salsa, and jazz latino, as well as in works by composers such as Heitor Villa Lobos and George Gershwin. The important element in this New-World music is the space it opens for improvisation, through which these rhythms provide access to the cultural diversity of the “mulatto margins of modernity” and enjoy general popular both within and beyond the commercial music industry.48 Quintero’s remarks shed light on the unexpected deaths of Manchi and Boeboe in Arion’s novel. They both belong to the first black democratic parties and have a specific musical taste. Boeboe, the N V P -supporter and a popular union leader, is a bolero fan, as are the majority of Curaçao’s citizens, as we saw above. He is killed by Chamon after the game is over, in an accident involving a knife (the kuchu hulandes), after being insulted in the worst possible way in Papiamentu, “Bai den conjo di bo mama!”49 The member of the D P , Manchi, subsequently commits suicide while sitting at his piano, on which his wife used to play classical music. Manchi’s 47

Max Weber, Die rationalen und soziologischen Grundlagen der Musik (1921; Tübingen: Mohr, 1972). 48 Ángel Quintero Rivera, ¡Salsa, sabor y control! Sociología de la ‘música tropical’ (Havana: Casa de las Américas, 1998): 67. 49 “Go to your mother’s pussy,” in Double Play, 349. This expression is also a stock expression for Antillean criminality in the Netherlands; two recent newspaper articles by Peter de Greef describe the same situation: “Gwens laatste woorden waren ‘konjo bo mama’,” De Volkskrant (8 May 2006): 2; “Steken en gestoken worden,” De Volkskrant (15 May 2006): 2.

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death is only the capstone on his general defeat; previously, his wife had left him for Janchi, abandoning her piano. Manchi cannot come to terms with this defeat, which destroys the bond between bourgeois rationality (D P ) and his local culture (N V P ), symbolized by the presence of domino tiles from Colombia, shoes from South America, lottery-linked Venezuelan horse races on television, prostitutes from the Dominican Republic, oral anecdotes about Puerto Rican history, and the all-pervading music of the bolero. With the death of the two losers, the complicity between bourgeois rationality and the local culture is at an end; the winning team can now begin their search for political and cultural alternatives from scratch in a Papiamentu environment. In the ‘aftermatch’ or aftermath of the closing chapter of Double Play, Arion mutes the presence of music, only to take up this motif again more than twenty years later in another novel, De laatste vrijheid (The Last Freedom). The main characters are now a couple whose family members come from all types of Caribbean background. The author organizes their actions along linguistic and rhythmical lines, for which 30 May 1969 is again crucial, since the couple saw each other for the first time on that day. They later move to Suriname. In this recently independent country (1975), the composer Aideline has her first try-out for a symphony that incorporates Sranan poetry and many instruments played by Hindustani (Indo-Surinamese) musicians. Her husband, the linguist Daryll Guenepou, supports her in her endeavours; after visiting Grenada, where they meet Maurice Bishop, they return to Curaçao. While serving as members of the jury during the Duo Festival in neighbouring Bonaire, the couple quarrel violently – Daryll awards the prize to the winning twins on the basis of their Papiamentu text, but Aideline disagrees with this decision, criticizing the lack of fit between text and rhythm. They split up. Daryll leaves for the utopian island of Amber in the non-Hispanic Caribbean (see chapter 7 below) and Aideline moves to Amsterdam. Her encounter there with Cape Verdean twin brothers is a turning-point for her. She discovers that their language, music, and dance are similar to those of her homeland; to underscore this, the author refers to the resemblance between their Cape Verdean manners and the Antillean sala atmosphere of the turn of the nineteenth century. Arion concludes that “Cape Verdeans are, of course, also familiar with the danza;

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they might be better able than the Dutch to handle the syncopated Antillean waltz in 6 / 8 rhythm and the mazurka.”50 This argument closes the circle. De Pool had maintained that sala music – danza, waltz, and polka – at the end of the nineteenth century instilled a sense of belonging in the Curaçaoan community, for which the independence of Spanish America was a crucial experience. In this sala music, the tambú and the tumba had a somewhat dubious status, and not only because of their African origins. For Quintero, the danza is also the foundational myth of Puerto Rican community feeling, in both the musical and the literary tradition. He points to the affirmative nature of the references in these traditions to African rhythms, a view that is developed further in the volume Music, Writing, and Cultural Unity in the Caribbean edited by Timothy Reiss. Reiss emphasizes the shared link with the oceanic circuit, which “forces their users, creators, to take up forms and practices fractured by the transatlantic history that forged the circulation in the first place.”51 Arion has a nostalgic appreciation of the sala atmosphere of the past, but cannot possibly accept its conservative (or ‘Dutch’) politics and culture. He therefore seeks a more polyphonic structure for his narratives which will strengthen the links with the African-Portuguese origins of Papiamentu culture. For this purpose, Guene is extremely useful. Daryll’s last name, Guenepou (Guene, secret slave language; Guene pou < Portuguese pau ‘wood’) reveals that he is an expert on the ‘deep Papiamentu’ connected with several African-Portuguese languages. In his linguistic study The Kiss of a Slave, Arion (=Martinus) remarks: For over a decade now all kinds of loose Guene material have become an ingredient to give tumbas an archaic, ‘deep’ flavour, especially in the annual tumba contest for Carnival; tumba being at the moment perhaps the most popular Curaçao song and dance with African rhythm.52

50 “Kaapverdianen zijn namelijk ook bekend met de danza; zouden wellicht beter met de gesyncopeerde Antilliaanse wals in 6 / 8 maat en de mazurka kunnen omgaan dan Nederlanders”; Frank Martinus Arion, De laatste vrijheid (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1995): 310. 51 Timothy J. Reiss, ed. Music, Writing, and Cultural Unity in the Caribbean (Trenton N J : Africa World Press, 2005): 9. 52 Efraim Frank Martinus, The Kiss of a Slave, 17.

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Songs and performances were flexible enough to adapt to different geographies, social conditions, and emotions. Transatlantic circulation, rhythmical harmony, and Papiamentu, in combination, are thus the secret key to the tumba controversy of 2000. Cultural conservatism (in the sense of a disinclination to engage with popular culture) is put in question, along with the nature of the democratic institutions installed since World War I I . The tensions created by the cultural dilemma besetting the Dutch Antilles is appropriately expressed as a winners-and-losers scenario, conducted in a playful and aggressive dialogue that addresses the asymmetry between the two visions, Papiamentu and Dutch. ¹º

7

I

New Landscapes, Creole Belonging

F R A N K M A R T I N U S A R I O N ’ S N O V E L De laatste vrijheid, experimentation with text and rhythm is interlaced with the elaboration of a broader vision of modern democracy in the Caribbean. Like his main characters, the author himself lived in Suriname with Trudi Guda for several years after 1975. Here he wrote his third novel, Nobele Wilden (Noble Savages), and organized an important conference in Paramaribo on the Surinamese writer and ‘solitary hunter’, Albert Helman.1 At this conference, Arion provided insights into Helman’s voluminous oeuvre, his senior by thirty-three years, at a moment of great expectations for decolonization from Dutch normative criteria. He argued that Helman was forced into exile because he lacked sufficient publication outlets in his home country. In making this claim, Arion was incorporating his Surinamese colleague in the pantheon of those Caribbean writers for whom the move to the ‘motherland’ was often tantamount to enforced emigration. The ‘pleasures of exile’, therefore, have only a limited value for them. For Arion they are certainly not an option. With brief intervals elsewhere, such as Suriname, he has been a permanent resident of his native Curaçao, where he (with Trudi Guda) actively participates in the work of several institutions dedicated to the development of Papiamentu, including its use as a language of instruction. Of great importance to him is the Kolegio Erasmo, founded in 1987, where Papiamentu is the chief medium in the first two years, and is the primary language taught, before the acquisition of other tongues. These activities reflect Arion’s attitude toward the status of his native creole tongue, which differs from that of Helman, who 1

N

Frank Martinus Arion, Nobele Wilden (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1977), and Albert Helman: De eenzame jager (Paramaribo: Cahier van het Instituut voor de Opleiding van Leraren, 1977).

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campaigned for the teaching of European languages (Dutch and Spanish) in the educational system of his native country. In Helman’s view, publicly expressed on many occasions, Sranan cannot meet the contemporary demands of higher education.

The Foundational Period in Suriname Notwithstanding the high reputation of these two writers, their linguistic disagreement has not yet been put into comparative perspective with regard to their ideas and works. Helman’s name (‘man of hell’) is a paradoxical allusion to his real last name, Lichtveld (‘field of light’). He was born in Paramaribo in 1903 and identified completely with the well-being of his country. On his ninetieth birthday, for instance, when a conference and homage were dedicated to him, Helman once more proved his constant preoccupation – a ‘life-time sickness’, as he calls it – with Suriname.2 Helman has shown an outspoken interest in the foundational period of Surinamese plantation society in the seventeenth century in two novels, De stille plantage (The Silent Plantation) and De laaiende stilte (The Inflamed Silence), which go back to the time of Governor Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdyck, from 1683 to 1688. He also translated Aphra Behn’s 1688 novel Oroonoko or the Royal Slave: A True Story into Dutch.3 In Behn’s novel, the African prince Oroonoko and his wife Imoinda are precipitated into slavery in Suriname. Behn pretends to speak as an eyewitness telling the story of their lives, which end in tragedy. In his own novels, Helman also concentrates on tragedy in the lives of slaves, now depicted from the perspective of a Huguenot planter family. He wrote De stille plantage in the ornate, lyrical style of the Dutch 1880s 2 Helman used this last name for his literary works. He signed himself as Lichtveld for his non-literary publications. This is important to note, because he also signs some works that are not specifically fiction with his pen-name, Helman. For the sake of consistency, I will refer to him throughout as “Helman.” On the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, special issues of Oso (1995) and Mutyama (1993). Helman died in 1996. 3 Albert Helman, De stille plantage (1931; Rotterdam & The Hague: Nijgh & van Ditmar, 1951), and De laaiende stilte (1952; Amsterdam: Querido, 1973). Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, of de koningklijke slaaf, tr. & afterword by Albert Helman (1688; Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 1983). This book was discussed extensively in the earliest issues of De West-Indische Gids, in 1919–20.

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movement (Tachtigers), and the first and last chapters depict the plantation “Bel Exil” deep in the interior of Suriname, which was later abandoned and reclaimed by the rain forest. The other chapters unfold the destinies of the family members, one man and three women: Raoul de Morhang, his wife Josephine, and her sisters Agnès and Cécile. Because of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, this French Huguenot family seeks refuge in Holland. From there, they depart for the colony; Raoul’s impressions on an early summer morning before leaving Amsterdam are compared with Dutch landscape painting of that period: Where the sun was shining between the trees, it was as if humid gold covered everything; it was the colour that had impressed Raoul most in the paintings by Ruysdael and Rembrandt he had admired when visiting some of the regents’ mansions.4

The humid gold evokes Eldorado, the Promised Land, and Paradise in America. The omnipresence of gold in the first part of the book gradually recedes during the sea voyage, during which a discussion about the justice of slavery takes place, and Raoul discloses his ideals of Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood. Upon arrival in Paramaribo, his first impression is favourable: the city happens to be a true copy of the polder villages in Holland with their bridges, dikes, and canals. But as the family heads up the Suriname River for their plantation they encounter another kind of reality. It is worth mentioning that the family members, while passing the riverside plantations, observe the cruel punishment of slaves that Behn, Stedman, and Riemer had witnessed earlier. Property gives unlimited power over the body of a human being, and Helman, from his auctorial position, leaves no doubt that he regards this as a crime. In doing so, he immediately elaborates the intrinsic logic of this situation: the vicious treatment of the slaves provokes their escape. Maroon settlements were established not too far from plantations so that the latter could be raided regularly. To avoid this, Raoul choses to live as far as possible from the

4

“Waar de zon scheen tusschen de bomen, was het alsof vochtig goud over alles lag; het was de kleur die het meest van al Raoul trof op de schilderijen van Ruysdael en Rembrandt, die hij had bewonderd bij de enkele regenten door hem bezocht”; Albert Helman, De stille plantage, 34.

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iniquities of other planters and to construct an ideal state in an isolated place in the interior. Relevant to De stille plantage’s publication date of 1931 is the fact that Helman was working at that time as a composer for sound films, following a course in Berlin to learn about the newest technical developments. He wrote the music for Philips Radio in 1931, a documentary by Joris Ivens, as well as for Ivens’s Regen (Rain) in 1932.5 The silence in the title of Helman’s novel, therefore, has an audiovisual implication. The mute image of the overgrown plantation is introduced filmically when the book begins, and returns at the end. In-between these points the story develops, and the ‘soundtrack’ reveals that the territory of the plantation is rife with brutal exploitation, complete with violence and murder. Instead of the paradise expected by the colonists, sugar production and its (im)moral codes are so exhausting and unrewarding that the family soon find themselves in a difficult position. When they finally witness the execution of the heroic African slave Isidore, the country does not seem to offer them any further prospects. Raoul decides to take the boat to England, and as they look back at the coastline it shows as a dark green shadow, resembling that of the plantation they have deserted. De stille plantage is in its twenty-second edition and, by now considered a classic work of Dutch literature, is regularly included in school reading lists. The book is closely related to Helman’s own life; he named the Tobago residence where he lived for almost twenty years “Bel Exil.” In this sense, as Arion has pointed out, Helman felt like an exile, and this state of mind has a history that is situated in the period between the publication date of the two novels discussed in this chapter. The next novel by Helman (featuring the same family), De laaiende stilte, written after his return to Suriname after an absence of more than twenty years, has not had an enduring success, despite receiving a literary prize. The author applies a particular literary procedure cultivated in the Spanish Golden Age. Conforming to its rules, he straightaway confesses to being the editor of an old manuscript he ‘found’ on the same abandoned plantation in the interior of Suriname that he had taken as a model for his first novel. The manuscript contains the diary of Agnès, one of the three sisters in the Huguenot family, and the editor claims to have translated it from French 5

See, on this period, Lex van de Haterd, “Albert Helman,” in Om hart en vurigheid: De Gemeenschap, 1925–1941 (Haarlem: In de Knipscheer, 2004): 141–51.

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into Dutch. He mentions having discovered a ‘key’ to deciphering the text, which he unfortunately lost along with the original manuscript after completing his redaction. The events in this novel, narrated in the first-person singular, take place between 15 May 1685 and 27 October 1689 and concentrate on the feelings of Agnès, a passionate woman. In De stille plantage, this same Agnès was depicted merely as the female version of her practical planter brother, whereas in De laaiende stilte, in addition to possessing this professional profile, she experiences erotic feelings toward men. Helman’s direct, realistic style conveys Agnès’s rich emotional life. The diary entries stop on the last night spent on the plantation before the family returns to Europe, as Agnès contemplates the ashes in the fire and settles her account with the ‘Other’, the rain forest around her, and close with an emotive, dedicated confession before she leaves her papers behind in this place full of evil: “Yes, I am forever yours, whoever you are. Let me know you, so that I will be even more consumed in you. I am part of you and turn to you, impenetrable void.”6 It is clear that the antagonist in both novels is Dutch, the overseer Willem Das. Although indispensable for his technical expertise, he unmercifully controls the workers and abuses the slave women. He is the black spot, so to speak, that precipitates disaster. In this sense, the message of the plot is explicit: his strict regime means violence, injustice, and death. The organization of the two novels, however, reveals considerable differences. An epilogue is added to the circular structure of De stille plantage, in which there is an account of the return visit of the family’s son from Europe to Suriname twenty years later. The image of the mute green jungle has now disappeared – now the maroons live on the territory of the former plantation. Out of a sense of justice, they have changed the name “Bel Exil” into the Sranan (or Saramaka) word “Misilasi,” which Helman translates as “I shall get lost one day.”7 This connection with Sranan is absent in Helman’s second novel, in which the plantation drama is framed by a confession of being consumed by this mysterious vacuum.

6

“Ja, de uwe ben ik voortaan, wie gij ook moogt zijn. Leer mij u kennen, dat ik meer nog in uw wezen op mag gaan. Ik ben van u en keer tot u, ondoorgrondelijke leegte”; Albert Helman, De laaiende stilte, 188–89. 7 “Ik zal eens verloren gaan,” in Albert Helman, De stille plantage, 209.

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The question is thus: what happened to Sranan between 1931 and 1952? Why did Helman first employ the creole vernacular “Misilasi” but drop it thereafter? It is an intriguing question, open to various interpretations. Was he foreseeing the end of the creole vernaculars when he was writing this book around 1930? Or did he choose to stress his own “Bel Exil” while observing the political situation of his home country in 1952? Is it possible to find an answer in the change of Agnès’s character from a capable professional in De stille plantage to a passionate lover whose personality is very much in the foreground in De laaiende stilte?8 Now Agnès feels strongly attracted to Isidore and, although they come from completely different backgrounds, she and Isidore have in common their aristocratic character and noble principles. Nevertheless, and not in the least due to the presence of Willem Das, who makes advances to Agnès, their relationship is a highly unstable one. The author clarifies this through a single intervention as the editor in Agnès’s manuscript: “This night I have […] Isidore took […] impossible […] return […] (unreadable erasures. The editor).”9 The opening lines of the next chapter help to decipher the meaning of this enigmatic paragraph: Beware of the Scottish bastard, of the squanderer of lifeblood, of the one stigmatized by his own blood! Beware of the creoles, of those with mixed blood, of the degenerate, of those whose land is doomed to decadence because their hand is raised against those from whom they themselves have sprung; denaturalized beings who are the greatest danger to their own progeny.10

These ‘mixed-blood’ creoles are represented by the director of a neighbouring plantation, born of African-Scots origin in Dutch Guyana, and whose malicious disposition intensifies the traumatic rationality of the imposed human régime. In this way, Helman indirectly suggests that Agnès,

8

An excerpt from this novel translated into English by Maria Roof and myself can be found in Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 68/37.1 (2004): 73–75. 9 “Ik heb vannacht [...] nam Isidore [...] onmogelijk [...] terugweg [...] (Doorhalingen onleesbaar. De bewerker”; Albert Helman, De laaiende stilte, 151. 10 “Pas op voor de Schotse bastaard, voor de verspiller van bloed, voor de zelfs in zijn bloed getekende! Hoed u voor de creolen, voor de halfbloeds, de ontaarden, zij wier land ten ondergang gedoemd is, omdat hun hand zich keert tegen datgene waaruit zij zelf zijn voortgekomen; gedénaturaliseerde wezens die het gevaarlijkst zijn voor hun eigen kroost”; Albert Helman, De laaiende stilte, 152.

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a Frenchwoman, may not be able to live out her love for Isidore, an African slave, because she – Isidore’s opinion is not ventured – anticipates its consequence: a mulatto child. Helman is not alone in this fear, which, as we have already seen, rests on long-established stereotypes. What is important here is that Helman’s fear echoes in the resounding absence of the creole language.

Helman and Sranan It is impossible to say that Helman was not attached to Sranan; quite the contrary. He was the first scholar to publish a series of linguistic studies on Sranan and on certain African-Surinamese religious rituals.11 Helman’s first book, Zuid-Zuid-West, written in Holland, begins with an epigraph in Sranan.12 It contains memories of his youth, and Paramaribo appears as a city in South America in which Hindustanis, Chinese, creoles, Javanese, Amerindians, and Europeans live peacefully together. Vacations in the rain forest are among Helman’s dearest memories, and shuttling between Paramaribo and the interior becomes a recurrent theme in his prose and essays. When he returned to Suriname after an absence of more than twenty years in 1946, Helman, offered the opportunity to pursue a political career, acted as Minister of Health and Education from 1949 to 1951, in which years – as was the case in Curaçao – democratic parties began to enter the public arena. This held out the prospect of the granting of a political voice to creole popular culture in Paramaribo. For the creole population, Helman represented an elite within the sector of the old caste society employed by the 11

Lou Lichtveld, “Afrikaansche resten in de Creolentaal van Suriname,” De WestIndische Gids (1928–29; 1929–30), 10: 391–402, 507–26; 11: 72–84, 252–62; Lou Lichtveld, “Een Afrikaansch bijgeloof; Snétji-koti,” De West-Indische Gids (1930– 31): 12: 209–30, 305–24. 12 “Foe mi moro boen Kompé, / mi moro boen kondreman, / die sori mi na moro boen sabi. / Foe mi tetà” (To my best friend, to my best countryman, who taught me the best knowledge. To my father); Albert Helman, Zuid-Zuid-West (Utrecht: De Gemeenschap, 1926). The ninth edition of this text, 28 years later, is accompanied by a second epigraph in Sranan: “Di a ben libi a ben de so. / Now di a ded, na foe joe, / mi moro boen mati. / Foe mi fosi brada” (This was so when he lived. Now that he has died, it belongs to you, my best comrade. To my oldest brother); Albert Helman, ZuidZuid-West (Amsterdam: Querido, 1954).

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Dutch. They were not aware of the fact that this local elite had also been the victims of colonial policies. Helman’s father, for instance, was never able to attain a high position in the colonial bureaucracy of Suriname because of his local birth and, on top of that, because he was of partly Amerindian origin. Many of the creoles and their followers who represented the popular culture of Paramaribo took part in a project to study Sranan initiated by two European university professors, Wytze Hellinga and Willem Pée. They took on board Jan Voorhoeve, a Dutchman born in Indonesia, who had learned Sranan from another passenger while sailing to Suriname in 1950. Voorhoeve had explicit instructions to avoid any contact with the native ‘elite’ because it was thought that this would make it difficult for him to establish a relationship of confidence with the representatives of popular culture.13 Here two worlds were clearly colliding. Helman, confronted with a complex political situation, had to reform the completely outdated school and health systems. He soon retired from his political function after exposing a corruption scandal in a hospital, on which occasion he was opposed by most of the members of his own N V P , the creole nationalist party. Voorhoeve, meanwhile, was expected to describe the structural aspects of Sranan, on which he wrote his dissertation, published in 1953. Helman reviewed Voorhoeve’s dissertation critically, claiming that he would be better off carefully locating Sranan in its historical and geographical context, for which the West African Bantu languages play an important role.14 Voorhoeve later published the anthology Creole Drum, the result of his fieldwork in Paramaribo, which brought to light the extent to which urban creole perceptions were still haunted by memories of slavery.15

13 Peter Meel, Op zoek naar Surinaamse normen: Nagelaten geschriften van Jan Voorhoeve, 1950–1961 (Utrecht: C L A S C / I B S , 1997), 28–34. 14 Lou Lichtveld, “Voorstudies tot een beschrijving van het Sranan Tongo, door Dr. J. Voorhoeve,” De West-Indische Gids 35.3 (1954): 174–77. Peter Meel describes the polemic between Helman and Voorhoeve from the perspective of the latter, and suggests that Voorhoeve provoked Helman in his dissertation by practically ignoring his research from the 1920s while taking one of Helman’s political opponents, Eddy Bruma, as his main informant. See Meel, Op zoek naar Surinaamse normen, 75. 15 Jan Voorhoeve & Ursy M. Lichtveld, ed. Creole Drum: An Anthology of Creole Literature in Suriname, tr. Vernie A. February (New Haven C T & London: Yale U P , 1975).

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Whereas Dutch researchers had been responsible for ‘discovering’ Sranan, Helman had to bring Sranan speakers out of their isolation in the educational system. This political and linguistic problem runs parallel with Helman’s writing of his second novel on plantation society, in which he avoids any allusion to Sranan. The years from 1949 to 1961 when he was away from Suriname were decisive for the emerging debate about Sranan as an official language. Helman opposed the granting of official status, taking as his test-case the challenge of translating the following Dutch sentence into Sranan: “Ons plichtsgevoel als burger is onder meer afhankelijk van het waardebesef van ons nationalisme.” In English this might read something like: “Our sense of duty as citizens depends among other things on our sense of national values.” Helman does not judge the Sranan translation to be adequate to the civic precision of this expression, lamenting that Sranan speakers were insufficiently aware of modern developments.16 He explains the reasons for this backwardness in De foltering van Eldorado (The Torture of Eldorado), which he calls his political testament, and accuses the colonial government of having pursued bad policies concerning the creole language of communication: No thought is given to removing the language barriers that quickly arise as a consequence of multicoloured immigration. On the contrary, despite the increasing vernacular use of the creole ‘language of communication’ by the different groups of the population, they are raised even higher by a Government that has done its best to rob that in every respect useful language of communication of any status and to proclaim Dutch as the only ‘national language’, even though this was the

16 Voorhoeve gave two Sranan translations, both by Eddy Bruma. The spontaneous translation: “Wie priktie lekie Srananman no sa man kiesie pontoe, te wie no sabie san wie nationalismo waartie.” And the second, more general one: “Wie no sa man sabie san na wie priktie lekie piekien foe dotie, te wie no sabie toe san na na fetie die wie de fetie gie wie eegie sanie.” Lichtveld translated these Sranan versions back into Dutch. The spontaneous translation: “Our duty as Surinamese will not be put in order until we know what value our ‘nationalismo’ has” (Onze plicht als Surinamers zal niet in orde kunnen komen, totdat wij weten wat ons ‘nationalismo’ waard is). And the more general one: “We will not be able to know what our duty is as children of the ground, until we know what the struggle we struggle for our own case is.” (Wij zullen niet kunnen weten wat onze plicht is als kinderen van de grond, totdat wij weten wat de strijd is die wij strijden voor onze eigen zaak); Albert Helman, Jan Voorhoeve, WestIndische Gids 35.3 (1954): 178–79.

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THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º mother tongue or domestic vernacular of only a small percentage of all inhabitants. Standard Dutch was and remains the ‘official’ language of everyone in Suriname, and the linguistic imperialism of the Dutch has persisted without resistance for three centuries in Suriname, unlike the East Indies. It has consequently became one of the most onerous aspects of the heritage received by the later Republic, without the benefit of an inventory.17

De foltering van Eldorado is conceived as an ecological and political history of the five Guianas: Brazilian, Venezuelan, Guyanese, French, and Dutch. Situated on the highland plateau between the Orinoco and Amazon rivers, they constitute a natural unit. Helman opens with a beautifully written chapter on the geological history of the plateau18 and continues with an historical outline of the “people in this landscape,” the legend of El Dorado or the Golden Man, and the torturing as well as tortured subjects of history. Alongside the chronology of the Amerindian population, the discovery, the distributors, the rulers, and the tortured, the author clearly intends to place the political development of each of those five regions in a broader context. He concentrates on the changes made con-

17

“Er werd niets gedaan om de door een bonte immigratie snel ontstane taalbarrières enigermate te slechten. Zij werden integendeel, ondanks het toenemend gebruik van de creoolse ‘verkeerstaal’ door de verschillende bevolkingsgroepen, steeds hoger opgeworpen door het Gouvernement, dat al het mogelijke deed om die alleszins bruikbare verkeerstaal van elke status te beroven en het Nederlands tot de enige ‘landstaal’ te proclameren, ook al was het slechts de moedertaal, de huiselijke omgangstaal van maar een klein percentage van alle inwoners. Het standaard-Nederlands was en bleef en is nòg de ‘officiële’ taal voor iedereen in Suriname, en het taalimperialisme der Hollanders heeft zich – anders dan in Oost-Indie – gedurende drie eeuwen onverkort in Suriname doen gelden. Het is dan ook een van de meest onereuse onderdelen van de erfenis geworden, die de latere Republiek zonder beneficie van boedelbeschrijving meekreeg”; Albert Helman, De foltering van Eldorado: Een ecologische geschiedenis van de vijf Guyana’s (The Hague: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 1983), 349. This book came out in two volumes in 1995, with an additional essay on the situation after 1983, with which Helman meant to say that he continues to follow the political history of his country. Albert Helman, Kroniek van Eldorado, vol. 1: Folteraars over en weer; vol. 2: Gefolterden zonder verweer (Amsterdam: In de Knipscheer, 1995). 18 Helman loved describing landscapes; see “Landschap van Gelderland,” in De schoonheid van ons land: Het landschap (Amsterdam & Antwerpen: Contact, 1948): 50–53.

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cerning the Amerindian population, always on the margins of any political system past and present, and ends significantly by identifying them with Shakespeare’s Caliban, still threatened and abandoned at the end of the twentieth century. This configuration of Caliban as an Amerindian echoes Helman’s orientation toward the American hinterland. This is a recurrent motif in Helman’s writings; he mentions, in Zuid-Zuid-West, having been present when a Carib chief died. In another work, Het eind van de kaart (The Edge of the Map), Helman gives an account of an expedition with a Dutch engineer in 1955 to explore water management in the rain forest, on which the Amerindians and Bush Negroes were indispensable assistants; this experience prompts him to critical reflections upon his condition as a citydweller.19 Amerindians are even more prominent in another book, Hoofden van Oayapok (Chiefs of Oayapok), which contains five addresses by an anthropologist who was born an Amerindian.20 The auctorial voice speaks to his fellow tribesmen in the first four addresses, after which, in the fifth, he reveals his real identity: he has spent the past forty years of his life as a professor of anthropology. As a child he is given away to a priest, who provides him with a Western education. He then decides to return to his Amerindian community and take a wife, who dies in childbirth. Blaming the lack of modern medicine for this personal disgrace, he resolves to leave his people again. Later, after having received all manner of honours for four decades of anthropological research into Amerindian life, he experiences a crisis of faith and emotional breakdown for having chosen this career against the advice of his own people. In a later work, Verdwenen wereld: Verhalen en schetsen uit Suriname (Vanished World: Stories and Sketches of Suriname), Helman, in the course of his reading of Herrera’s Novus Orbis, recalls a dreadful scene of an old Amerindian woman being tracked down by a dog, an episode that must also have been familiar to Caspar Barlaeus when translating Herrera’s chronicle in 1622.21

19

Albert Helman, Het eind van de kaart: Journaal van een kleine ontdekkingstocht in twee binnenlanden anno 1955 (Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 1980). 20 Albert Helman, Hoofden van de Oayapok! Roman in vijf redevoeringen (The Hague: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 1984). 21 Albert Helman, Verdwenen wereld: Verhalen en schetsen uit Suriname (Haarlem: In de Knipscheer, 1990): 12–15.

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Helman had a lively interest in Amerindian languages and poetry.22 But the Sranan question, too, never ceased to preoccupy him. Ironically, on Helman’s ninetieth birthday, the volume of poetry he failed to publish in Suriname in 1961 was finally issued. It contains poems written in Sranan and Dutch and translations into Dutch from other languages. Arion suggested in 1977 that Helman was the first to write poetry in his creole vernacular, giving as an example the 1943 poem “Dyeme fu Sranan” (Sighing for Sranan),23 a significant motto for Helman’s life. Helman’s poem thus pre-dates Troki (Onset), a collection by Trefossa published by Voorhoeve in Amsterdam in 1957.24 This volume of poetry is famous because it was the first ever to be published in Sranan. In this respect, the ‘onset’ signals a meaningful moment, that of the birth of literature in Sranan. When Troki came out, Helman claims, he read the poems in the train from Amsterdam to Brussels and translated almost all of them on the spot. In a second edition of Troki, he wrote about Trefossa’s gift for modernizing Sranan by introducing words such as “drat” (cable/wire), “elèktrik powa” (electric power), and “sjatsroiti” (short-circuit). He has high praise for Trefossa’s musicality and creative talent, “capable of showing, of a Sranan-tongo with literary potential, how broad the ‘amplitude’ is of this rapidly growing language, which is capable of rapid adaptation and perhaps also of rapid development.”25

22

Helman compiled Mexico zingt, an anthology of Mexican poetry since the seventeenth century (The Hague: Leopold, 1937). A revised version covered poetic production since the fifteenth century (Amsterdam: In de Knipscheer, 1992). 23 Helman wrote this poem in Amsterdam where he was active in the resistance movement against the German occupation. His poem was published in Albert Helman, “Dyeme fu Sranan,” in Adyosi / Afscheid, ed. Michiel van Kempen (Nijmegen: Stichting ter bevordering van de Surinamistiek, 1994): 14–17. See also Kees van Doorne, “Dyeme fu Sranan: Albert Helmans Sranan-poëzie,” Oso 14.1 (1995): 43–52. 24 Jan Voorhoeve, ed. Trotji; Puëma fu Trefossa (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1957). After this, standardization rules were applied, and Trotji became Troki. 25 “Van een literair-bruikbaar Sranan-tongo, in staat om aan te tonen hoe groot nu ook de ‘amplitude’ is van deze snel-groeiende, zich snel aanpassende en wellicht ook snel ontwikkelbare taal,” in Albert Helman, “Bij Trefossa’s laatste (?) gedicht,” in Ala poewema foe Trefossa, ed. Jan Voorhoeve (Paramaribo: Bureau Volkslectuur, 1977): 149.

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The Notion of Creole Belonging Helman’s approach to Sranan, therefore, is ambivalent,26 and might be understood, in the light of Arion’s Double Play, as betraying the tensions arising from local policies. Arion is an attentive reader of the works by his Surinamese colleague, as we have already seen. In three of his novels, he develops Helman’s argument (which is also van Lier’s) about the taboo nature of the precarious love affair between a black man and a white woman.27 After his character Daryll in De laatste vrijheid moves from Curaçao to Amber, he meets a white North American of Jewish descent, Joan Nicolai, a star reporter for C I N television. Their encounter is situated in the utopian environment of Constance, the capital of Amber. This island is part of the volcanic archipelago of Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines. All these islands celebrate the 28th day of October as the day of the creole language, a ceremony shared with the Seychelles, Mauritius, Réunion, Dominica, and Haiti. The government has announced the introduction of creole as the standard language in primary schools, beginning on 1 September. The introduction of creole into the educational system is employed by Arion to suggest that a start has been made to promote an awareness of regional history. For this purpose, Constance is an important point of reference. The city, as beautiful as Lisbon, was the centre of the successful rebellion against slavery of the ‘free’ Africans against the English, French, and Dutch in 1795.28 None of the former slaveholders received any compensation for financial losses. In the early nineteenth century, Constance became the regional nucleus for independence conspiracies. And, in the twentieth century, union protests against poor working conditions on the sugar-cane fields, engineered by Marcus Garvey, were concentrated in the central highlands around Constance. Amber has undergone an interesting development in terms of democracy. From 1974 – the date of independence from Holland, France, and England – to 1989, the N V P (national people’s party) formed the government; the N V P was then 26

See, for Helman’s understanding of Sranan, his “Geleidebrief,” in Adyosi/ Afscheid, 8–12. 27 Ineke Phaf, “La deconstrucción de la nación en la imaginación del Caribe: ‘Palabra Kla’ de Frank Martinus Arion,” Iberoamericana 13.2–3/37–38 (1989): 70–92. 28 The year 1795 also is important for Curaçao as the year of the slave rebellion of Tula and Carpata. See, on this, Torres–Saillant, An Intellectual History, 114.

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replaced by the R C C (Reform and Creole Culture), a leftist party, until 1991. After an additional two years with the N V P , the political horizon changed again and the next elections produced a coalition between the R C C and the P R (Progress and Renewal), a new pragmatic party, which opened up the possibility for the renewal of language instruction. Nowadays, the R C C Minister of Education, a friend of the hotel manager, is responsible for the ‘sensational’ plan of introducing creole into the educational system. Nicolai, the North American reporter, is sent to Amber to cover the anticipated volcanic eruption on the island, a globally newsworthy story. Joan already has an underlying relationship with this country because in Lithuania, the former country of her parents, amber is equally abundant. She explains to the local population that Lithuania and Amber are young republics sharing the dissolution of strategies of manipulation, repression, and domination of the Cold War with their contemporary democracies. The utmost precision with which Arion describes the details of his landscape (as Helman does in his “El Dorado”) lends connotative pregnancy to the image of Amber as a nation. Simon Schama explains in Landscape and Memory that nations develop their landscape imagery in conformity with the pull of cultural memory. In London, as a young boy from a Jewish-Lithuania migrant family, he had experienced the importance of this factor for the first time. While studying the history of the British Empire at college, he shared an enthusiasm for, and solidarity with, the new state of Israel within his own community. Schama recalls that, for this ideal, the presence of trees in a landscape seemed to configure something indispensable, as a contrast to the desert, the sign of the diaspora. Schama visited Lithuania for the first time after it gained independence on 6 September 1991. His encounter with the forest at Białowieza seems paradoxical to him. This place is haunted by the Holocaust and the systematic eradication of its Jewish inhabitants as a result of the totalitarian ideology of Nazi Germany; Schama adds ironically: “It is, of course, painful to acknowledge how ecologically conscientious the most barbaric regime in modern history actually was.” Schama quotes an ode in Latin, “Carmen de Statura, Ferritae ac Venatione Bisontis” (1523), written in Rome and published in Krakow, by the humanist author Mikolaj Hussowski. His long poem is an ethnographic work, approaching natural history, in which the bison, an “awesome beast” associated with the immen-

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sity, darkness, and depth of its original habitat, serves as the talisman of survival.29 In De laatste vrijheid, Arion introduces a similar talisman to give his narrative an historical dimension: that of the creole linguist in Constance. Daryll remains when all others have fled town. After considering whether to die with Constance or live without it upon evacuation, he decides on the former. Only this city can give him the sense of a permanent abode and orientation. Joan Nicolai visits this man, and they cautiously establish a friendship. Her presence adds a further aspect to the African dimension of the novel. In the course of her anthropological studies in the U S A on the Dogons of Mali, Joan saw herself confronted with the realities of racial discrimination and, during her fieldwork, experienced the impact of the Cold War on Africa. Against the background of this expertise, she touches upon an entire history of African-American and African drama. Arion depicts Amber’s landscape as a contrast to this past. He recounts that the island used to be a plantation society like Brazil, Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti, Martinique, and other non-Hispanic countries of America. The mighty aquatic thread of its Grand-Rivière flows across the highland plateau, its riverbanks covered with sugar cane, as green, fertile, and abundant as in the plantation past. The river covers an unpredictable landscape with sulphuric fumes, and its surface bubbles on the eve of volcanic apocalypse. The 50,000 evacuees live in refugee camps, making Amber look more like the television images from Ruanda, Palestina, Cuba, or the former Yugoslavia than a tourist paradise. International experts attending a scientific congress offer different prognoses on the imminent volcanic eruption. One of the questions raised is the origin of Bwa Brilé (French creole, < bois brûlé), a charred tract of land in the highlands forest, halfway between Constance, the seat of government, and Richelieu, the harbour city with its airport, Canefield. No one can give a plausible interpretation of this phenomenon except a geologist from Suriname. He suggests that the Bwa Brilé might derive from the slash-and-burn method practised by the Amerindians and maroons in the interior of his country. In a rhythm of fixed periods, they would burn their gardens in the forests, which were small lots of cultivated land, and leave them alone for a while to allow their fertility to be renewed. This suggestion is immediately dis-

29

Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, 39–40.

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missed in favour of other scientific arguments, however, and the question of the Bwa Brilé remains unresolved. De laatste vrijheid ends with the final eruption, in what is ironically called the “quincentenary menstruation” of the volcanic landscape. No catastrophe results, however; all of the scientific prognoses have been rendered invalid. The man in Constance was right to stay behind and explains in front of the camera of the C I N reporter why he lives in Amber: I come from a relatively beautiful island. But I am not happy there. I cannot be happy there, because my sense of independence demands that I live in a free and independent country. And that is impossible in Curaçao. The island belongs to Holland. There was a moment in which it seemed to be on the path to freedom, but this process has now been reversed. The Dutch see an opportunity to get around the stipulations of the Economic Community, which they themselves helped to define, and draw the bonds ever tighter. It will be like Martinique and Guadeloupe for the French. I cannot live there, either. This is why I searched the whole Caribbean region for years, trying to find a country to settle in […]. Then I came here. My friend, the Minister of Education, Mr Bernard Cheri, invited me to advise him on the introduction of creole. I am very glad that creole will be introduced in Amber on 1 September. That is more important than the volcanic eruption. That really is an eruption!30

The eruption causes few deaths – three scientists, and three fishermen, killed by rocks falling into the sea. But their deaths are by no means tragic. They are all declared national heroes posthumously, although the reader knows that Daryll is the real hero of the day. His last name, Guenepou (see previous chapter), implies a profound, intuitive knowledge of 30 “Ik kom van een redelijk mooi eiland. Maar ik ben daar niet gelukkig. Ik ben daar niet gelukkig, omdat ik een onafhankelijk voelend mens ben, die het liefste leeft in een onafhankelijk en vrij land. En dat kan op Curaçao niet. Het eiland is van Holland. Het leek erop dat het op weg naar de vrijheid was, maar dat is nu teruggedraaid. De Hollanders zien een kans om de bepalingen van de Economische Gemeenschap, die ze zelf hebben helpen opstellen, te ontduiken en halen de banden steeds meer aan. Het wordt zoals Martinique en Guadeloupe voor de Fransen. Daar kan ik niet leven. Daarom heb ik in heel het Caribische gebied lopen zoeken naar een land om me te vestigen, jarenlang [...] Toen kwam ik hier. Mijn vriend, de Minister van Onderwijs, meneer Bernard Cheri, heeft mij uitgenodigd om hem te adviseren bij de invoering van het Creool. [...]. Ik ben blij dat op 1 september op Amber het Creool wordt ingevoerd. Dat is belangrijker dan de uitbarsting van de vulkaan. Dat is pas een uitbarsting!”; Frank Martinus Arion, De laatste vrijheid, 246–47.

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those local elements that acknowledge the strategies of alternative survival, symbolized by the best lot of land, the grontapu on the highland plateau. In sum, although Helman and Arion disagree on the question of making the creole vernacular one of the official languages, there are many points of convergence. Both design an alternative landscape to broaden the horizon of their respective local histories. The triumph of alternative survival – of no use to scientific discourse – is constitutive of civic identity, both on Helman’s continental plateau and in Arion’s archipelago in the Caribbean Sea. In their works, Helman and Arion see this issue as an imbalance between scientific/objective and local/subjective knowledge. They extend the geography of their respective countries to include landscapes in which local expertise is the foremost value for a spirit freed from obeisance to global concepts. This means for Helman, however, that Sranan cannot communicate with the different political histories in Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana, and French Guiana, whereas for Arion Papiamentu establishes contacts with the South Atlantic and beyond. The colonial strategies adopted toward Amerindians and people of African origin (as indicated by Alencastro; see chapter 2 above), meanwhile, have no place in resolving this linguistic dilemma. Arion and Helman are similar in holding the population of the interior in high esteem. When Helman states – At present they [the Bush Negroes] are, together with the Amerindians, still unassailable, and are in fact the only truly free inhabitants of the country because they fought for their liberty, something their former oppressors did not offer them on a golden platter. At least their national pride is justified and guaranteed by history.31

– he is alluding to the addressees of Arion’s Bwa Brulé. The focus of both writers is on the lack of balance between local knowledge and general scientific concerns. Edward Said summarizes this issue as one of the most provocative challenges of contemporary cultures, one that has “changed the terms, indeed in the very nature of the argument.”32 He even under31 “Tot op heden zijn zij [de Bosnegers] nog altijd, samen met de Indianen, onaantastbaar en in feite de enige waarlijk vrije bewoners van het land, omdat zij voor hun vrijheid vochten, en deze niet op een gouden presenteerblaadje door hun voormalige onderdrukkers kregen aangereikt. Althans hùn nationale trots is gerechtvaardigd en door de historie gewaarborgd”; Albert Helman, De foltering van Eldorado, 430. 32 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993): 297.

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stands the civilizing effect of science and technology – of metropolitan culture, to be precise – as a reductive force that, “in short, can now be seen to have suppressed the authentic elements in colonized society.”33 ¹º

33

Said, Culture and Imperialism, 303.

T OWARD A C ULTURAL H ISTORY OF THE S OUTH A TLANTIC

8

F

The South Atlantic Revisited

H E L M A N , creole policies in Paramaribo did not match his utopian vision of Great Guyana’s landscape, whereas Arion places them at the urban centre of Constance, rooted in the cultural tradition of the South Atlantic. Both visions express a critical view of (formerly) Dutch colonial strategies. It was explained in the first two chapters that Ángel Rama’s conception of the ‘lettered city’ paved the way for situating Barlaeus’s Rerum per octennium as a paradigmatic example in the pattern of long-term continuities within the cultural traditions of Latin America. Its ‘dream’ of a rigidly stratified, hierarchical order immediately exposes the role of African workers, who were brought by force to Brazil. In his sophisticated document, Barlaeus displays the consumer mentality of the urban population in Europe as the foundation of this most perfect colonization and also dedicates many pages to the West African coast, to Angola in particular. But it is Frans Post, above all, who in effect corroborates Alencastro’s thesis about the intrinsic relationship between Brazil and the Angola–Congo region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His contribution to Barlaeus’s book consists of two outsized (in comparison with the other engravings) city views, of Mauritsstad–Recife (nr. 35, page 137) and of Luanda (nr. 205, page 205) respectively. It is not known whether Post returned from Brazil via Angola, as did his colleague Marcgraf, who died there in 1644, but he seems never to have painted a view of Luanda in oils as he did for Mauritsstad–Recife. Zandvliet mentions that ‘news maps’ were regularly published in Holland at that time to inform the Company’s shareholders of military victories or losses. Baltasar Florisz van Berckenrode, for instance, published a news map in 1642 which featured a detailed view of Luanda, a brief report on the occupation, a poem about the conquest, and two rudimentary maps, OR

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one of Angola and one of the town.1 Barlaeus had collaborated with van Berckenrode on a map of the Beemster polder, and these contacts with cartographers would also explain Post’s ability, without his actually having visited Angola himself, to draw on maps in Holland that showed the military settlements, the Portuguese ecclesiastical buildings, and the living space of the nigritia in Luanda.2 Obviously, for Johan Maurits this iconography of Mauritsstad–Recife and Luanda played a special role. When he was governor in Cleve, the German translation of the Rerum per octennium was published there in 1659 in a much more modest edition than the 1647 one from Amsterdam. Only a small selection of the original engravings was included, among them the Mauritsstad–Recife folio, the 1644 city map, and the Luanda folio.3 In addition, the volume contains a completely unknown map whose legend reads: “Theile von America und Africa, worin zu sehen die Conquesten der Niderländer” (Parts of America and Africa on which can be seen the Dutch conquests). A year later, also in Cleve, the second Latin edition of the Rerum per octennium was published, in which those same urban views are included but without the formerly unknown map just mentioned.4 Both editions indicate the continued interest in South Atlantic commercial enterprise and must have played a role in the deliberations of Johan Maurits with Friedrich Wilhelm about obtaining a share in the slave 1

Kees Zandvliet, “Johan Maurits and the Cartography of Dutch Brazil,” in Johan Maurits, ed. Ernst van den Boogaard, 505. See also George M. Asher, A Bibliographical and Historical Essay on the Dutch Books and Pamphlets relating to NewNetherland and to the Dutch West-India Company and to its possessions in Brazil, Angola, etc. (Amsterdam: N.M. Israel, 1960). 2 León Krempel suggests that Post went back to Amsterdam from Recife via Luanda (Frans Post, 20). 3 Caspar van Baerle, Brasilianische Geschichte / Bey achtjähriger in selbigen Landen geführeter Regierung seiner Fürstlichen Gnaden Herr Johann Moritz / Fürsten zu Nassau; Erstlich in Latein durch Casparem Barlaeum beschrieben / und jetzt in Teutsche Sprach übergesetzt (Cleve: Tobias Silberling, 1659). Translation legend map: “Parts of America and Africa, on which you see the conquests of the Dutch”; view of Mauritsstad–Recife fol. 422, between pages 422 and 423; view of Luanda fol. 569, between pages 568 and 569. 4 Casparis Barlaei, Rerum per Octennium in Brasilia, Editio secunda, Cui accesserunt Gulielmi Pisonis Medici Amstelaedamensis Tratatus (Clivis: ex officina Tobiae Silberling, 1660). The engravings are included as folio 248 between pages 244 and 245 and as folio 343 between pages 342 and 343.

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trade.5 In these urban views of Mauritsstad–Recife and Luanda, Post delivered convincing iconographic proof of the Dutch perspective on the early importance of South Atlantic port cities and their fateful connection with African slavery.

Contemporary Views of Early Modern History It is noteworthy that the Rerum per octennium has not only become the subject of historical research in Brazil (chapter 2) but also forms an important element in contemporary narrative fiction in Brazil and Angola. First of all, when recalling Rama’s statement of the modernized, politicized, and revolutionized republican polis the question is what happened to the ‘lettered city’ of the South Atlantic port cities in this respect. For Brazil, modernization is equated with the Modernismo exhibition and activities that took place in São Paulo’s Teatro Municipal in February 1922: The new forms of creativity entailed by Brazil’s modernism significantly shaped the country’s emerging contemporary culture, and the innovative energies of modernist art have come to be regarded as a defining trait of the 1920s.6

The Modernismo week was organized in the context of the festivities for the 100th anniversary of Brazilian independence, the intention being to invent a new Brazil, free of imposed restrictions and open to the modern world. One of its central figures, Mário de Andrade, became an important collector and researcher of popular songs and music. He is also internationally known as the creator of Brazil’s ‘national’ novel, Macunaíma, 5

It is well known that Friedrich Wilhelm hired the Dutch director Benjamin Raule to work for his Brandenburg Africa Company and build a fort on the west coast of Africa, in present day Ghana, in 1682. This fort has an outstanding history. The Germans appointed John Conny, an ahanta chief, as their ‘broker’ to establish links with the hinterland for them. Conny captured the fort in 1717 and competed with prices for goods at other forts. He won the battle against a Dutch expedition and this has been celebrated “all over the black Caribbean since the late eighteenth century in the ‘John Canoe’ festivals.” Only in 1724 did the Dutch succeed in taking over. Kwesi K. Anquandah, Castles and Forts of Ghana (Paris: Atalante, 1999): 87–88. 6 Marta Rossetti Batista, “Modern Art in Brazil Between the World Wars,” in The Idea of Modernismo Brasileiro, ed. Maria Isabel Branco Ribeiro & Tiago de Oliveira Pinto (Münster: L I T , 2006): 26.

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about the hero without a character. In Andrade’s novel, the Dutch presence hovers, while Rio de Janeiro appears, in the seventh chapter, as the site of the macumba ceremony dedicated to Exu, the Yoruba god of the crossroads and, in Roman Catholic syncretism, the Devil.7 With Exu’s support, Macunaíma – the Amerindian from the Amazon region – succeeds in cursing his biggest enemy, the rich, wicked São Paulo merchant Venceslau Pietro Pietra. Antonio Candido recalls that Rama had already stated in 1964 that this novel is the happiest articulation of the Brazilian literary system.8 Candido, one of the foremost literary critics of Brazil, describes how his generation learned in high school about Brazil’s colonial past from the essays of Gilberto Freyre, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, and Caio Prado Júnior.9 All of these outstanding works consider the ‘Dutch period’ paramount for a modern understanding of Brazilian history; its innovative features were pursued further when, in the late 1960s, the concrete-poetry group joined up with the tropicalista movement, whose musicians and artists displayed their disgust with the dictatorship.10 This régime was most provocatively challenged as a dictatorship of language in Paulo Leminski’s Catatau, um romance-idéia, in which Descartes stands beneath a tree in the garden at the Dutch castle of Vrijburg in Mauritsstad–Recife. Leminski creates what Haroldo de Campos calls a “baroquedelic Leminskiade,” to which he was inspired while teaching classes about Dutch Brazil in 1966.11 7 Mário de Andrade, Macunaíma, o herói sem nenhum caráter, ed. Telê Porto Ancona Lopez (1928; São Paulo: A L L C A X X , 1997): 56–64. 8 Antonio Candido, “La mirada crítica de Ángel Rama,” in Ángel Rama y los estudios latinoamericanos, ed. Mabel Morana, 294. 9 Antonio Candido, “O significado de ‘Raízes do Brasil’,” in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil (1936; São Paulo: Editora Schwartz, 2004): 9. This book has not been translated into English. The other books mentioned by Candido are Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization, tr. Samuel Putnam (Casa-grande e senzala, 1933; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), and Caio Prado Júnior, The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil, tr. Suzette Macedo (1942; Berkeley: U of California P , 1967). 10 Gonzalo Aguilar, Poesía concreta brasileña: Las vanguardias en la encrucijada modernista (Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterio Editora, 2003). 11 Paulo Leminski, Catatau, um romance-idéia (1975; Curitiba: Travessa dos Editores, 2004); Haroldo de Campos, “Paulo Leminski y Catatau: Una Leminskíada Barrocodélica,” in de Campos, Brasil transamericano (Buenos Aires: El Cuenco de Plata, 2004).

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The ‘modernist’ development in Angola was quite different but equally strongly tied to democratizing efforts. One of the central figures, the poet Mário Pinto de Andrade, was a member of a group, called “Vamos descobrir Angola” (Let’s Discover Angola), which published in the critical journal Mensagem (1950–52) in Luanda and Lisbon. In this latter city, Andrade met students from the other Portuguese colonies of Cape Verde, Guinea–Bissau, São Tomé & Principe, and Mozambique who were engaging in the anticolonial struggle. In an interview with Christine Messiant, Andrade characterizes himself as a bicho do mato (animal from the bush) – somebody whose family did not belong to the Luanda establishment.12 Despite their non-elite status, his father had issues of the Almanaque de lembranças luso-brasileiras (Almanac of Luso-Brazilian Memories) at home, to which Angolan as well as Brazilian and Portuguese authors contributed. He also remembers the many Brazilian books he used to read; even the translations of famous French or Russian authors came from Brazil. In Lisbon, this orientation broadened to include an interest in ‘discovering Africa’. African students held reunions at the Casa dos Estudantes do Império and the Casa de África, which inspired the publication of the anthology Poesia negra de expressão portuguesa in 1953. Andrade describes the link with America in his foreword: There exists in the history of the Negro from Africa a phase of transplantion in which he becomes, by force, the colonizer of the so-called New World. A colonizer with neither cross nor sword, he is merely a slave and a bearer of cultures. Whether the process of Negro colonization of the Americas is completed or not, the destiny of his cultures on this Continent was already definitively inscribed – in the interior of the forests of Dutch Guyana, the Negroes maintain their cultural pattterns almost intact, in the cities of North America, the African cultural elements tend to disappear, and in Haiti, Cuba, the other Antillean islands, and Brazil, the black cultural survivals are mixed with the white cultures.13 12

Christine Messiant, “Sur la première génération du M P L A : 1948–1960: Mário de Andrade, entretiens avec Christine Messiant (1982),” in Lusotopie (Bordeaux: Sciencepo, 1999): 191. 13 “Há na história do negro da África uma fase de transplantação em que se torna forçosamente colonizador do dito Novo Mundo. Um colonizador sem cruz nem espada, apenas escravo e portador de culturas. Considere-se terminado ou incompleto o processo da colonização do negro das Américas, já foi devidamente assinalado o destino das suas culturas nesse Continente: – No interior das selvas da Guiana Holandesa,

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The editors of the volume make this global approach even more explicit by dedicating their anthology to Nicolás Guillén, the national poet of Cuba. Andrade was one of the first editors of Présence Africaine in Paris, from 1955 to 1960, and co-organized the first Congress of Black Writers and Artists at the Sorbonne in 1956. When Agostinho Neto was in prison, Andrade led the M P L A for some time.14 Because of disagreements with the political leadership, Andrade did not live in Angola after independence but preferred to reside in Guinea–Bissau until his death in 1990. One of today’s foremost authors from Angola, Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos or “Pepetela” (which pen-name means ‘eyelash’ in Umbundu), was also a frequent visitor to the Casa dos Estudantes do Império in Lisbon while a student there. Pepetela identified with the process of political modernization and received his nom-de-guerre when he was a militant in the M P L A against the Portuguese. Pepetela was born in Benguela in 1941, occupied positions in the republican government, and became professor of sociology at Agostinho Neto University in Luanda. He has often said that he started writing in order to understand the situation in his country better. His ninth novel, A gloriosa família, spans the so-called “Dutch period” from 1642 to 1648.15 Pepetela was clearly inspired by research carried out by Brazil historians – the subtitle, “The Age of the Flemings” (o tempo dos flamengos), is taken from José Antônio Gonsalves de Mello’s standard work on this period.16 He also quotes from os negros conservam quase intactos os seus padrões culturais, nas cidades da América do Norte, os elementos culturais africanos tendem a desaparecer e no Haïti, Cuba, outras Antilhas e Brasil, as sobrevivências culturais negras encontram-se mescladas com as culturas brancas”; Mário Pinto de Andrade & Francisco José Tenreiro, Poesia negra de expressão portuguesa (1953; Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1970): 59. 14 The M P L A is the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. The first president of Angola, the late Agostinho Neto, was one of the founders of the M P L A . 15 Pepetela, A gloriosa família (Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 1997). This novel was translated into Dutch as De roemrijke familie: De tijd van de Vlamingen, tr. & afterword by Harry Lemmens (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 2001). Pepetela received the Prince Claus Award at The Hague in 1999. 16 This book has also been translated into Dutch. José Antônio Gonsalvez de Mello, Nederlanders in Brazilië (1624–1654): De invloed van de Hollandse bezetting op het leven en de cultuur in Noord-Brazilië, tr. G.N. Visser & B.N. Teensma (Zutphen: Walburg, 2001); Leonardo Antônio Dantas Silva (2002) provides a detailed overview of research on the Dutch period in Brazil since 1853 in “Brasil Holandês: Os caminhos do conhecimento,” Ciência & Trópico 30.1 (2002): 115–40.

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other sources, such as the História geral das guerras angolanas by Antônio de Oliveira Cadornega, a Portuguese chronicler who appears as himself in the novel.17 Considering the importance of the Rerum per octennium for lusophone research, it comes as no surprise that Pepetela should be fascinated by Barlaeus’s book – something already apparent from the cover of his novel, which uses the same view of Luanda by Frans Post that was included in Barlaeus’s volume. The plot turns on the lives of the influential van Dum family, of Flemish–Angolan origin. They are traders and farmers, or, more precisely, entrepreneurs.18 Their story is told from the perspective of a domestic slave who is born mute and who is virtually invisible despite being the constant companion of the patriarch of the family, Baltasar van Dum. This nameless servant constantly reflects on his own situation. The reader learns that he is the son of an Angolan slave woman and a Neapolitan missionary at the court of Queen Nzinga in Matamba. He is thus familiar at first-hand with the situation in the kimbos (villages) and the interior mato (rain forest or savannah). His habitual terrain in Luanda is the coastal zone; he visits the island in the Bay or looks out over the Atlantic from the heights of his master’s property. To serve as topographical eyes for his descriptions of Luanda, Pepetela introduces a character who is a painter – not Frans Post, but an artist called Barlaeus, who is in Luanda on his way back to Amsterdam from Recife. The ocean connects with Brazil, the most important export market for van Dum; it is consequently a constant topic of discussion in Baltasar’s conversations with family, friends, colleagues, and functionaries from the Dutch and Portuguese administration. The novel ends when Brazilian soldiers recapture Luanda from the Dutch in August 1648. The slave storyteller does not exactly welcome them as liberators, reporting the events in a rather critical tone. It is generally known that the Brazilian general Salvador Correia de Sá was the descendant of an important Rio de Janeiro family that included governors 17

Antônio de Oliveira Cadornega, História geral das guerras angolanas, ed. José Matias Delago, 3 vols. (1680–81; Lisbon: Agência-Geral do Ultramar, 1972). 18 Jan Denucé mentions this family in the context of Antwerp, which at that time had the largest number of inhabitants of African origin after Lisbon. He says that everywhere the Portuguese settled, there were also Flemish people – merchants, seamen or missionaries. See Denucé, Afrika in de X V I de eeuw en de handel van Antwerpen (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1937).

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and captains.19 But in Pepetela’s interpretation, the general is a religious bigot who, upon his arrival in Luanda, unpacks a portable altar to celebrate Mass. Everyone is obliged to attend, even though Salvador de Sá seems uninterested in the well-being of the congregation. The afternoon of the day of liberation turns out to be tragic, since another of his official acts is to order the burning of every ‘devilish Calvinist’ document in the city. In this fire, all the plans for the eventual improvement of the urban water management system go up in smoke; it is clear that Pepetela does not consider colonial warfare to be synonymous with liberation. Warfare occurs on another level for Alberto Mussa, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1961. Mussa displays a particular interest in the history of his native city by announcing that his first novel O trono da rainha Jinga (The Throne of Queen Nzinga) is only the first of a series of five on this topic.20 Mussa is a practitioner of capoeira, played the atabaque (sacred drum) in macumba ceremonies, and wrote a dissertation about the Portuguese spoken by the slaves in Brazil. In O trono da rainha Jinga, he takes his readers even further back in time than Pepetela did. In twenty-five brief chapters, the writer presents fragments of the life of the Portuguese trader Mendo Antunes. Through flashbacks, the reader learns that Antunes establishes himself first in Goa in 1609, where he trades with the people in the interior, confronts Arab and Spanish competition, and encounters the Hindu religion for the first time. He leaves Goa for Angola in 1612 and enters the slave trade, through which he introduces himself at the court of Queen Nzinga. Finally, in 1623, he arrives in Rio during the time of the general auditor Gonçalo Unhão Dinis. Mussa organizes the chronology of his narrative around the next three years, in which strange things happen in this city. The Dutch attack on Salvador da Bahía in 1624 is inscribed in Rio’s memory along with a secret brotherhood (irmandade) of African slaves that poisons people, robs and kills them, and sets prisoners free. The third author, José Eduardo Agualusa, was born in Huambo in 1960 and has lived in Lisbon, Angola, and Brazil. He is a music specialist and

19

In O trato dos viventes, Alencastro dedicates many pages to Salvador Correia de Sá and his family (see “Índice onomástico,” 522); another important study is Salvador de Sá and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola, 1602–1686, by C.R. Boxer (London: Athlone, 1952). 20 Alberto Mussa, O trono da rainha Jinga (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Frontera, 1999).

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very active in making Africa better known. When a new programme on African literatures was inaugurated at the University of Brasília in 2005, Agualusa made the provocative statement that “Brazil is autistic.” In his opinion, Africans know more about Brazil than Brazilians do about Africa. In his novel O ano em que Zumbi tomou o Rio (The Year Zumbi Took Rio), Agualusa places the action in Rio,21 developing a contemporary scenario in which two black Angolans are confronted with an uprising of street children in the favela of Morro da Barriga. This Black Commando consists of a small group of militant black youngsters that leads an armed rebellion against social injustice and discrimination in Brazil. Agualusa already has Lula president of Brazil in April 2002 and recounts how he renounces his presidency out of protest against the intervention of the army. Agualusa’s Lula is thus situated on the side of the Black Commando, which identifies with Zumbi, the legendary seventeenth-century hero of the Palmares quilombo. We know from Barlaeus’s report that many of the inhabitants of Palmares were former slaves from Angola. Agualusa’s contemporary ‘slaves’ fight in Rio, and the repeated allusions to Palmares and its historical settings – such as Morro da Barriga and Jorge Velho – indicate the function of this myth as a leitmotif in the plot. The rap song “Preto de Nascença” (Born Black) expresses its political programme: to convert every docile black Brazilian into a Zumbi. It is evident that all three authors refer to the historical South Atlantic axis between Angola and Brazil in their own various ways. Pepetela compares the Dutch period in Angola with that in Mauritsstad–Recife in dwelling on the necessary improvements to Luanda’s water supply as well as in his recognition of the role played by art and technology in urban life. His storyteller learns the difference between physical reality and reality as captured on a canvas from Barlaeus, who explains to him the principles of modern landscape while painting a beach scene.22 The slave is also privy to the mercantile views of slavery circulating in the salon of the distinguished van Dum daughter Matilde. In the conversation between Baltasar and the Dutch engineer Daniel Boreel, different opinions are ventured. 21 José Eduardo Agualusa, O ano em que Zumbi tomou o Rio: romance (Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 2002). 22 Ineke Phaf–Rheinberger, “Pepetela’s roemrijke familie in Angola,” in Wandelaar onder de Palmen: Opstellen over koloniale en postkoloniale literatuur en cultuur, ed. Michiel van Kempen, Piet Verkruijse & Adrienne Zuiderweg (Leiden: K I T L V , 2004): 384–86.

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Boreel recalls how Godfried Udemans, a pastor in Zeeland, maintained that slavery was legal under certain conditions; slaves should not be sold to the Spanish or the Portuguese, however, because that would subject them to the false influence of Catholicism. Slaves should be instructed in the principles of Protestant Christianity in order to save their souls from Hell. Slaves should also be set free after a certain period of service and, if maltreated, have the right to run away and should not be returned to their masters.23 Pepetela’s domestic servant certainly does not live in the shadow of his text; he is the novel’s main voice. He is an Ngola given by Queen Nzinga to Baltasar as a gift when he introduced himself at her court. This slave therefore knows every detail of van Dum’s enterprise from its very beginnings, and, though illiterate and mute, he has a fitting interpretation for everything he observes. Furthermore, his centrality to the narrative is underscored by the fact that he was one of the queen’s most valuable properties, bestowed upon Baltasar as a token of her confidence that he – a Fleming – would be a loyal partner in her negotiations with the Portuguese. But, as the slave knows, the merchant deceived the queen by conspiring with both the Dutch and the Portuguese. Queen Nzinga Mbandi, who lived from 1582 to 1663, was constantly at war with the Portuguese for control over the slave markets. The legends about her cruelty and unpredictability originate in Christian interpretations which branded her behaviour as barbaric, despite her conversion to Christianity.24 One particularly vivid episode has survived in oral and written reports. In the name of her brother, King Ngola Mani a Ngola, Nzinga visited Luanda in the early 1620s for peace negotiations and was received with all the honours due under the conventions of international diplomacy. Unfortunately, during the conversations with the Portuguese governor in his palace, no seat was offered to her, whereas the governor himself was seated in an armchair. Unflustered, Nzinga ordered one of her slaves to cower down and serve as her stool, thereby preserving her dignity and self-esteem. Now she could proceed to negotiate a treaty with the Portuguese governor face to face and on equal terms. Beatrix Heintze, a German historian, has published some of the queen’s diplomatic letters, the strategic function of which Martin Lienhard has pointed out, written as 23 24

Pepetela, A gloriosa família, 303–304. Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, O trato dos viventes, 186–88, 280–81.

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they were during a war situation. He even speaks in this context of a “war of discourses” and of a profoundly “asymmetrical dialogue.”25 The title of Lienhard’s book, O mar e o mato, is highly significant in indicating the points of reference for the archaeology of slave memory. The mato is the rain forest or savannah, where colonial power has no impact; the mato is, by the same token, the site of natural history, irrationality, and barbarous behaviour, as we saw in chapter 4. Queen Nzinga corrected this one-sided view with her symbolic performance during the negotiations with the Portuguese governor, and this famous scene is integrated into the multiple memories of the slave storyteller in Pepetela’s novel. Mussa, by contrast, focuses on the ‘throne’ episode in the title of his novel. His main character, Mendo Antunes, personally testifies to the events in the governor’s palace at Luanda. Shortly afterwards, he goes to Rio, where the leader of the brotherhood is a woman, who is following the example of Queen Nzinga. Slaves from Angola, even Antunes himself, know her personally. In their affinity with this queen, hence with the irmandade, resides the dilemma of Mussa’s book, embodied in Antunes’s secretary, a slave who is literate in several languages, African vernaculars among them. Finally, few Brazilians are unfamiliar with Zumbi, the heroic presence in Agualusa’s novel. Zumbi, whose name is of Bantu origin, is still worshipped in Angola today as a spirit, as lord of the dead and the ancestors. At the time of Zumbi’s birth in Palmares in 1655, Nganga Zumba was the most important leader. Zumbi was kidnapped by the Portuguese army and given to a Catholic priest to be educated, but escaped and returned to Palmares in 1670. He became the military leader of the settlement, which was regularly attacked by Portuguese military expeditions before it was finally destroyed after a long siege in 1695.26 Zumbi escaped but was captured, losing his life on 20 November 1695. However, he survives today as a virtual hero of freedom in literature, theatre, visual art, music, and film. His omnipresence in the media constitutes the main motif in Agualusa’s narrative, wherein the provocative rap song “Preto de Nascença” 25 Martin Lienhard, “Milonga: O ‘diálogo’ entre portugueses e africanos nas guerras do Congo e de Angola (séculos X V I –X V I I ,” in O mar e o mato: Histórias da escravidão, preface by Emmanuel Dongala (Luanda: Editorial Kilombelombe, 2005): 74. 26 Selma Vasconcelos, Zumbi dos Palmares (2000; Recife: Ed. Secretaria Estadual de Cultura, 2003): 13; see also Décio Freitas, República de Palmares: Pesquisa e comentários em documentos históricos do século X V I I (Maceió: E D U F A L , 2004).

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calls for the metamorphosis of the average, quiescent urban black Brazilian into a Zumbi.

Urban Hierarchies in Atlantic Port Cities By exploring the South Atlantic connections between Luanda, Mauritsstad–Recife, and Rio de Janeiro in their novels, the three authors are clearly revising the mercantile ethos of the past from a contemporary point of view. Such critical views are central to the organization of each narrative. On the face of it, Pepetela’s novel seems like a long-winded treatise on a forgotten episode in the history of his country. His adherence to chronological sequence makes this episode sound like a ‘true’ story. He is, however, writing fiction, and the narrative moves forward under constant tension. By focusing the action on the perspective of a domestic slave who regularly comments on the absence of individual freedom, the author tests Angolan hierarchical society. From his angle, Queen Nzinga appears as a diplomat instead of the deprived human being portrayed in the texts of the European Enlightenment. Pepetela’s enlightened vision allows the Queen to assume a strong role as a crucial partner in negotiations with the Portuguese and the Dutch. The urban environment of Luanda with its European influences and visitors from and trade with Brazil and beyond obtains regional coherence through the links maintained with the hinterland. These links involve other members of the van Dum family and constitute the ‘contact zone’ between the outside and the inside world. The chronicler of this family is the slave who comments on the family’s behaviour. His owner, Baltasar, emigrated from Flanders in 1616 and married a daughter of an indigenous chief. At home, his wife mostly speaks Kimbundu to her children and servants, whereas other conversations are conducted in Flemish or Portuguese. Many of the characters belong to the biological category of the mulatto, but the storyteller rarely uses this word. He prefers to formulate other criteria by emphasizing allegiances of any kind, including those forged by churchmen, New Christians, and Calvinists. At the end of the novel, Pepetela summarizes a discussion about mulattoes between the ambassador of the King of Congo and the Dutch company director. The latter argues that the Portuguese are creating unnatural monsters by having children with native women, whereas the Mani Congo points out that the

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Dutch seem to have a similar custom. Obviously, Pepetela, by trying to include as many views as possible, wishes to avoid any impression that societal divisions operate merely along the lines of hereditary traits. To this end, he recounts the drama of one of the van Dum daughters who fell in love with a slave; this man was killed for his ‘crime’ and no one did anything to prevent or condemn this murder. On this point, Pepetela’s narrative modifies Alencastro’s thesis of the “invention of the mulatto” in Brazil, and not in Angola,27 and is more differentiated in its approach. Nor does the Brazilian author Mussa rely solely on such ‘coloured’ and racial divisional categories. He first juxtaposes a series of passages without identifying the speaker or defining the ethnic relationship between the various speaking voices. Through them, he introduces Christian or New Christian slave owners who testify to the existence of a mysterious manuscript in the Kimbundu language, obviously inspired by Queen Nzinga, that speaks of savage slaughter.28 It turns out that the Kimbundu verses in the manuscript are chanted in initiation rites and to swear eternal loyalty to the irmandade in Matamba as well as in Rio. The suspense builds around the question of which narrating voice might be involved in this secret organization, and dissolves after the scene with Nzinga’s human throne, when it becomes clear that in fact everyone who has been in Angola forms part of this brotherhood. Mussa’s ‘correction’ of the asymmetrical dialogue on the public level is even celebrated as a reconciliation with the Catholic Church, which implies that both organizations are central to the shaping of Rio’s cultural history. Antunes’ secretary, the educated slave, turns out to be the missing link between the two poles and at the end is identified with the writer of the book. Like him, the slave has an Arabic-speaking cultural background when bought by Antunes in Salvador da Bahía. Angola in Brazil is also the theme treated by Agualusa. He frequently works with paradox and hyperbole to emphasize controversial positions. In his descriptions of daily life, Agualusa is aware of the impact of the various shades of skin colour and other physical differences in personal 27

Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, O trato dos viventes, 345–55. “Múcua njinda / cariapemba uabixe / uajibe tata uajibe mama / uajibe dilemba uajibe muebo / uajibe quitumba bunjila / ni dicata buquicoca” (Hurrah, the devil has arrived. He killed father; he killed mother; he killed uncle; he killed nephew; he killed a blind man falling down; a cripple on the road”; Alberto Mussa, O trono da rainha Jinga, 9. 28

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relationships. He mocks them, telling the story of two white Angolans who, to the dismay of the black Brazilian organizers, turned up in Brazil for a conference on African literature. In the political arena, however, such sensitive gradations are of no use to Agualusa’s position, which is that Afro-Brazilians, in contrast to Angolans, have not yet freed themselves from colonialism. They are still treated as slaves and this discrimination is the decisive motivation behind the armed resistance of the Black Commando and its negotiations with the federal and state governments of Brazil. The author suggests reparations for damages done to the communal black spirit in the form of a symbolic reward for all Brazilians of African origin and a public apology for centuries of exploitation and oppression. He argues for the introduction of a system of quotas for African Brazilians to prevent under-representation (less than forty per cent) in the universities, the public service, and the army. Agualusa’s story, which has a circular structure, informs the reader at the very beginning that there will be no happy ending. The colonel and the journalist, who died in Angola during the rekindling of the civil war after the November 1992 elections, are resurrected in Rio to assist in the struggle there. As with the historical Palmares quilombo, the military intervenes, destroying the powerful Black Commando in the favela of Morro da Barriga. Its leader is killed and immediately elevated to legendary status. The two Angolans have different destinies. Loyal to his last name, Colonel Palmares fights to the very end; but although he is the real hero of the narrative, Agualusa is not telling the story of a hero. Rather, he exposes his character’s aims as those of an arms trader, and compares his fate with that of Peter Pan in an animated film: the colonel is forever tied to violent scenarios in connection with the traumatic events in Angola. In his role as a reporter and political journalist, the other Angolan character constantly recalls this past. It is impossible to expunge these memories, a truth that is apparently as important as the more recent occurrences in Rio. In sum, each author adopts a comparative approach to Angola and Brazil. They stress the hierarchies that reigned in (former) slave societies by denouncing the complex control mechanisms in their urban environments; they foreground the marginal, subaltern position of the (former) slave population. Their rhetoric of protest challenges the mercantile philosophy of early modern history and is embodied in characters that evoke the South Atlantic nexus – an observant slave embedded in an entrepreneurial family in Luanda; the educated slave of a ship owner in Rio; and

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the leader of the armed resistance in contemporary Rio de Janeiro, with the participation of the Angolan trader in arms. The bias of history is combatted; historical gaps are bridged. Pepetela identifies with his domestic slave storyteller, who was unable to write down his observations in seventeenth-century Angola; Mussa identifies with the domestic educated slave who operated secretly with the brotherhood; and Agualusa (echoing and sometimes anticipating contemporary realities) identifies with the Brazilian favela leaders and their claim for reparations and a quota system for African-Brazilians.

The Character of the Port City in the South Atlantic Commenting on the spatial dimension of cultural analysis, Gustavo Remedi argues that Ángel Rama’s approach mobilizes the urban structural mechanisms of literature, its “dynamizing logistics,” by mapping material culture within the context of a history of tensions between opposed movements.29 Recent writers of fiction from Angola and Brazil do something similar. The world of the Atlantic port cities haunts their narrative imagination, and they evoke their underlying social hierarchy and mercantile philosophy. To underline this heritage from the colonial past, the plots of their novels are carefully framed in their respective urban scenarios. The readers of Pepetela’s novel can almost draw the town plan of Luanda from the information provided in his text, and one could argue that Luanda is as important a ‘character’ as the van Dum family itself. Through the storyteller, a Ngola, Luanda connects with Queen Nzinga and her Jaga soldiers in the interior. Luanda has a longstanding tradition in the literature of Angola, of which the well-known short stories in Luuanda, written in prison by José Luandino Vieira, are only one of many high points.30 Vieira started ‘countermapping Luanda’ in 1957,31 and Pepetela was certainly

29

Gustavo Remedi, “Ciudad letrada: Ángel Rama y la espacialización del análisis cultural,” in Ángel Rama y los estudios latinoamericanos, ed. Mabel Moraña (Pittsburgh P A : Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 1997): 99. 30 José Luandino Vieira, Luuanda: Short Stories of Angola, tr. Tamara L. Bender & Donna S. Hill (London: Heinemann, 1980). José Luandino Vieira, Luuanda: Estória (1964; Lisbon: Ed. 70, 1974). 31 Phyllis Peres, “Countermapping Luanda,” in Peres, Transculturation and Resistance in Lusophone African Narrative (Gainesville: U P of Florida, 1997): 15–46. See

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familiar with his writings. Pepetela was doubtless also inspired by his own work in the faculty of architecture at Agostinho Neto University, where urban planning forms part of the curriculum. In Mussa’s book, the colonial centre of Rio de Janeiro represents the site of Catholic justice. It boasts a tavern, a prison, and an outreach to the territory of the casa grande and senzala. In this case, the canto on Capiabemba – the devil as embodied in the members of the irmandade or brotherhood – joins Rio’s urban reality to Brazil’s struggle against injustice. After the peace treaty between the Saramakas and the colonial government in Suriname in 1762, we have here another ‘peace treaty’, this time between Kimbundu beliefs and the Catholic Church, a treaty that ultimately affirms their coexistence. This coexistence has its source in a mathematical calculation, however: Mussa explains that the slaves in his book are defending the thesis that the quantity of Evil in the universe is finite and constant.32 Mussa might have been aware of the Brazilian law of 1988 making it possible for communities to apply for legal certification of their quilombo past, thus promoting the revival of quilombo culture and their present-day efforts to acquire autonomous territory in Brazil.33 The quilombo is already mentioned in the verses of Brazil’s greatest satirical poet of the seventeenth century, Gregório de Matos. In his words, one of the sins of the population of Salvador da Bahía is to visit these quilombo communities for dancing lessons and to learn sorcery from first-class instructors.34 Agualusa’s megalopolis of Rio de Janeiro, by contrast, centres on contemporary protest against poverty and the absence of opportunity in the favelas. The universe of his Rio is a semiotic mosaic of his characters’ haunts and meeting places, all bearing the burden of the colonial past: the favela of Morro da Barriga, St. Christopher Market, Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon (named for the first Portuguese owner of the lagoon after the Amerindians were driven out), the Hotel Glória, Galley Airport, the also Dagmar Borgholte, Das Bild Luandas in der angolanischen Literatur von 1960 bis 1985 (Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin, 1994). 32 Grupo Editorial Record, “Entrevista com Alberto Mussa” (2004), www.record .com.br/entrevista.asp?entrevista=45 33 Hebe Mattos, “Cidadania, racialização e memória do cativeiro na História do Brasil,” in LASA2006: Decentering Latin American Studies (C D -R O M , 3). 34 Gregório de Matos e Guerra, Obras completas de Gregório de Matos, ed. James Amado (Bahia: Ed. Janaína, 1968), vol. 1: 15.

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Yoruba Restaurant, the Portuguese Hospital, to name just a few. Luanda, with its Beer Bar Biker, also appears as a site of action. The postmodern fragmentation of Agualusa’s narrative code increases the sense of affinity nurtured by the omnipresence of literature and music (the rap song on Zumbi in particular). The author quotes from singers such as Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque de Holanda, Maria Bethânia, Zeca Baleiro, Martinho da Vila, and the rapper MV Bill. Their contributions are just as important as those of such poets as Lídia do Camo Ferreira, Aldir Blanc, Ruy Knopfly, Antônio Risério, Olavo Bilac, Noel Rosa, Lya Luft, Ferreira Gullar, and Nuno Júdice. By virtue of these references, Agualusa’s novel becomes a hymn to poetry and music in Brazil and Portuguese Africa. They all come together in a celebration of the word ‘black’ at the end, a verbal apotheosis reproduced in many languages: fekete, negro, grunho, bumbo, swart, sort, zwart, schwartz, musta, nègre, prieto, burakku.35

The Deserters We have seen how novels depict Luanda and Rio as mythic constructs in which the slavery past is summoned up and its implications extended to address the global extent of enslavement and resistance. Arion’s most recent novel, De deserteurs, refines this approach in unexpected ways by stressing the mercantile philosophy of Philadelphia during the North American struggle for independence. At that time, this city ranked first among the six largest colonial ports, before Havana, Salvador da Bahía, Rio de Janeiro, New York, and Buenos Aires.36 For Arion, Philadelphia symbolizes the principles of North American Quakers, pacifists opposed to slavery and the slave trade. He questions the seriousness of the condemnation of slavery during the First Continental Congress of the thirteen rebel colonies in Philadelphia in 1774, because, when the war against England broke out officially, after July 1776, not a word was uttered about this problem in official declarations. Arion designs the topography of Philadelphia with a similar precision to that exhibited by Pepetela in the case of Luanda. In this transatlantic 35

José Eduardo Agualusa, O ano em que Zumbi tomou o Rio, 273. Jacob M. Price, “Summation: The American Panorama of Atlantic Port Cities,” in Atlantic Port Cities: Economy, Culture, and Society in the Atlantic World, 1650–1850, ed. Franklin W. Knight & Peggy K. Liss (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P , 1991): 262. 36

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entrepôt on the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, the Quakers constitute a moral counterforce, and the city is known as a free place of tolerance and enlightenment, attracting foreigners from everywhere.37 The action covers the period from 1776 to July 1782. As in Double Play, in which four men discuss the political implications of 30 May 1969, the author chooses four male characters involved in an ongoing conversation about politics and daily life. One of them is – logically – a Quaker, the son of a Philadelphia shipbuilder. He befriends a Chinese man from Canton whose father is French, a Muslim prince from Mali, and the natural son of a Barbadian planter and a “beautiful mulatto” mother from Martinique. Only the Barbadian is an historical figure, reshaped by Arion to fit in with present-day Caribbean circumstances.38 Being intellectuals, the men all have the same favourite point of reference, a utopian treatise by the French philosopher Louis–Sébastian Mercier on the future of Paris, L’an deux mille quatre cent quarante (1771).39 While students or tutors of religion, law, natural sciences, and astrology at Princeton, the young men are kidnapped by the patriotic army and forced against their will to serve in the republican navy. They sail to St. Eustatius to acquire winter supplies for the North Americans. St. Eustatius, the Golden Rock, was a Dutch island in the midst of English possessions and profited considerably from the political situation. Its governor broke the English blockade against the patriots and sold the navy whatever goods they needed to take back home. In order to make this denouement as sensational as possible, Arion depicts Orangestad, seen from the sea, in the following manner: 37

Among the historical residents were David Nassy, a renowned physician from Suriname who lived in Philadelphia from 1792 to 1795, and Médéric Moreau de SaintMéry, who wrote his famous volumes on St.-Domingue there before they were published in Paris in 1797 and 1798. See ch. 3. 38 “Aboard the Andrew Doria there was a seventeen year old sailor, a certain John Trotman, a young man from Barbados who was studying at Princeton College in Philadelphia, and who had been pressed, while wandering with a friend down to the river front, for service in the Andrew Doria. Together with two other English men and a Frenchman, he ran away in the roadstead of St. Eustatius and escaped to St. Kitts. Here they told Craister Greathead, president of the Council at St. Kitts, what had happened”; Johan Hartog, History of St. Eustatius, tr. Carl G. Buncamper (Aruba: De Wit / V A D , 1976): 73. 39 Louis–Sébastien Mercier, L’an deux mille quatre cent quarante: Rêve s’il en fut jamais, ed. Raymond Trousson (1771; Bordeaux: Ducros, 1971).

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A surreal painting. It was a scene of low warehouses, snug gables with iron hooks for winching the goods; there behind a row of splendid mansions with even more handsome step-gables. In between the warehouses and mansions was Fort Orange, with a Dutch flag and a long, wide orange pennon high above it. On the terrace was a broad and modest semi-circle of cannon.40

This ‘surreal view’ of Orangestad in November 1776 announces the real motif of the novel. First of all, the Dutch state was probably the first among the Europeans to trade with an official delegation of North American patriots, without whose support the war against England might not have been successful. Secondly, this situation is related to the movement for independence in the Caribbean. Arion’s four students, who consider themselves ‘slaves’ in the patriotic navy, now ‘desert’ in St. Eustatius, taking refuge in a maroon settlement in St. Kitts under the leadership of a former slave woman, the ‘Queen of Sheba’. Her personality has biblical and healing resonances that accord with the religious, pacifist orientation of the four men. Simultaneously, however, this ‘hidden’ society conspires to develop another model of republican independence. Imitating the ‘New Continental Nation’ in the North, they plan to establish the region as an independent state without slavery, blockading all the seaways between the various islands as a defence against incursions from without. This New Caribbean Nation will have to protect itself primarily from the U S A – although this new nation speaks of universal equality in its independence manifesto, in reality this equality is valid only for Americans and not for citizens of other nations. This novel stands at a crossroads. It is Arion’s first historical narrative, connecting him with a rich literature on North American intervention in Latin American and Caribbean countries, of which Miguel Ángel Asturias’s short stories in Week-end en Guatemala are among the most sig-

40

“Onwezenlijk schilderij. Het was een tafereel met lage pakhuizen, knusse gevels en hijsbalken; daarachter een rij prachtige woonhuizen met nog mooiere trapgevels. Tussen de pak- en woonhuizen in lag Fort Oranje, met een Hollandse vlag en een brede, lange oranje wimpel hoog in top. Op het terras stond een klein aantal kanonnen in een wijde boog”; Frank Martinus Arion, De deserteurs, 172. Johan Hartog reproduces some interesting views of Orangestad in his book History of St. Eustatius, 90, 93, 101.

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nificant examples.41 In Arion’s novel, though, the problem is slavery rather than U S intervention as in Asturias, and the author follows the Caribbean rules of subversion, according to which “urban slave conspiracies were never common.”42 As in Brazil and Suriname, escaped ‘slaves’ are organized in a maroon settlement. In harmony with this logic, one of the four ‘deserters’ – the Barbadian John Trotman – decides to make an official stand by testifying before the English court in St. Kitts about the Dutch betrayal. His declaration outrages the English king, George I I I , who thereupon develops a plan to attack Amsterdam, the nerve-centre of the Dutch economy, with its gabled warehouses, copied in St. Eustatius. From a Dutch-Caribbean perspective, however, the king’s plan accomplishes another goal. The invasion of Amsterdam destroys the mercantile mentality which, ever since the days of the West India Company, had upheld slavery and the slave trade as a necessary evil. In this respect, Arion’s stance is the radical counterpart of Barlaeus’s seventeenth-century humanism (discussed in chapter 2 above); Arion ‘deserts’ Barlaeus’s moral philosophy to introduce a different historical view; accordingly, his novel reads in some respects as an enlightened treatise stressing the political role of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, as well as the Caribbean as a strategic playing-field for Europe and North America. Idealism is connected with questioning slavery in Buddhism, Islam, and in the Old and New Testament, while the author remains loyal to his familiar narrative style of philosophical debates among his main characters on political and ethical questions. We saw (in chapter 6) the beginnings of this technique of philosophical dialogue in Double Play, in which the protagonists are caught in the trap of violence and death in their local communities. After establishing the terminus of this scenario, the author expands its potential by having his characters move to other continents and countries. Travelling Antilleans with a Papiamentu background encounter different people in the ‘after41

Asturias wrote those eleven short stories as a reaction to the North American military intervention in Guatemala in 1954, when the democratic government was replaced by a series of dictatorships supported by the U S A , a situation that has remained essentially unchanged. I could not find an English translation, only a German one, in the catalogue of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. 42 David Geggus, “Major Port Towns of Saint-Domingue,” in Atlantic Port Cities, ed. Franklin W. Knight and Peggy K. Liss, 111.

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math’ of Double Play as well as in Arion’s subsequent novels, Afscheid van de koningin (Goodbye to the Queen), Nobele Wilden, and De laatste vrijheid. Along with this movement, the author simultaneously constructs a different vision of Caribbean reality, resulting in the plan hatched out in De deserteurs for the New Caribbean Nation of the future. From the perspective of this future, the ‘surreal view’ of Orangestad becomes a kind of willed nonsense prepared for cumulatively in each of Arion’s earlier novels and, indeed, within the structure of De deserteurs itself. In his cataloguing of New-World absurdities, Africa remains a key issue, as can be learned from the “Note” (aantekening) on the last page of this novel: NOTE. A special aspect of the historical figure of John Trotman is the fact that nobody in Barbados remembers that there were ever white Trotmans. Not even in the eastern, more elevated district of St. John and its surroundings, where the descendants of white Barbadians still form a clearly recognizable core. In the Barbados telephone directory, however, the name Trotman appears as frequently as does Jansen in Dutch phone-books or Martina in the telephone directory of Curaçao. But the name [like, say, the surname “Holder” in Trinidad and Jamaica, though of English origin] belongs exclusively to Barbadians of African descent.43

¹º

43

“A A N T E K E N I N G . Een speciaal aspect aan de historische figuur John Trotman is het feit dat niemand in Barbados zich herinnert dat er ooit blanke Trotmans zijn geweest. Ook niet in het oostelijke, hoger gelegen district St. John en omstreken, waar de nakomelingen van blanke Barbadianen nog een duidelijk herkenbare kern vormen. In het telefoonboek van Barbados komt de naam Trotman daarentegen net zo veelvuldig voor als Jansen in Nederlandse telefoonboeken en Martina in het telefoonboek van Curaçao. Maar hij staat alleen voor Barbadianen van Afrikaanse afkomst”; Arion, De deserteurs, np.

Concluding Remarks

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my translation of Arion’s paragraph1 to underscore the fact that John Trotman, not accidentally, is the only speaker of creole in his recent book. Together with the British Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney, Trotman sacks Orangestad in 1782, thus putting an end to its prosperity. This, symbolically, also puts an end to the extension of Philadelphia’s slave trade into the Caribbean, in which St. Eustatius clearly plays a special role. Historical research has addressed the international repercussions of this “Statian salute” on 16 November 1776 and has even found that Benjamin Franklin sent his mail destined for Europe via St. Eustatius during the war because it offered the swiftest and safest connection between the Congress and its political supporters in foreign lands.2 Contraband or piracy has been practically synonymous with the Caribbean ever since the international success of Exquemelin’s book on De Americaensche Zee-Roovers (The American Pirates), published in Amsterdam in 1678.3 St. Eustatius and Curaçao played a particularly important role in these illegal transactions, which, according to the historian Jacob Price, became more central the further one moved into the Caribbean:

1

HAVE PARAPHRASED

A suggestion by Gordon Collier, gratefully acknowledged here. Johan Hartog, De Nederlandse Antillen en de Verenigde Staten van Amerika (Zutphen: Walburg, 1983): 16–19. See also his History of St. Eustatius, 69–78. 3 Alexandre Exquemelin, De Americaensche Zee-Roovers (Amsterdam: Jan ter Hoorn, 1678). After publication, the book was translated into German, Spanish, English, and French. See also A. James Arnold, “From Piracy to Policy: Exquemelin’s Buccaneers and Imperial Competition in ‘America’,” Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 70/40.1 (2007): 9–20. 2

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THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º When one moves to the Caribbean, however, one moves not only into another climatic zone but into another moral world in which the normative and the norm have very little in common. On the one hand are the law books, the collections of edicts, decrees, ordinances, etc.; on the other hand there is the everyday world reported by other kinds of evidence. In this other, everyday world, cabotage and contraband are frequently hard to distinguish. […] But such activities were marginal compared to the situation at Cartagena or Buenos Aires or along the coasts of Venezuela where from early in the seventeenth century until the mid-eighteenth century, the Dutch nearly monopolized the trade of the province of Caracas.4

Price further stresses the fact that the “export trades of the Venezuela coastal regions were handled substantially through an illegal, if tolerated, trade with the Dutch island of Curaçao.”5 Indubitably, this means that the slave trade and Manuel Piar’s rise and fall as an ally of Haitian and Spanish-American independence can be accounted for in terms of this invisible network. Important research has begun to clarify some specifics of this vexed question. The historian of Coro on the Venezuelan coast, Carlos González Batista, published the contents of official documents, found in the historical archive of the city, dealing with Coro’s relationship with the Dutch Antilles since the seventeenth century; these documents testify to frequent contacts with Curaçao and to the selling of slaves.6 Because of the close connections among the various port cities of Venezuela, Piar certainly knew of the slave uprising near Coro in May 1795 led by José Leonardo Chirinos, who was executed in Caracas, and documents have been released in which the active input of the Curaçaoan community is clearly discernible.7 Piar, equally, must have heard about the Tula slave revolt in Curaçao, a few months later in August 1795, and further study of the official documents on the Gual and España conspiracy of 1797 – 4

Jacob M. Price, “Summation,” 271. Price, “Summation,” 264. 6 Carlos González Batista, Documentos para la historia de las Antillas Neerlandesas: Fondo registro principal I (Coro: Archivo Histórico de Coro, 1997). 7 Documentos de la insurrección de José Leonardo Chirinos (Caracas: Colección Abraxas 1994). On the occasion of this publication a symposium was organized on 16 and 17 November 1995, with contributions published in another volume, José Leonardo Chirinos y la insurrección de la serranía de Coro de 1795: Insurrección de libertad o rebelión de independencia, ed. Luis Cipriano Rodríguez et al. (Mérida: Universidad de los Andes, 1996). 5

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which planned to abolish slavery – will certainly reveal more about the world this later general encountered when he lived with his mother in La Guaira, the port city of the mantuanos on the Caribbean coast.8 The question remains why the local population in Venezuela saw Piar as the son of a Portuguese prince and a mantuana, a myth so persistent that Bolívar even mentions it explicitly in his public attack on Piar’s loyalty. Authors in Venezuela and Colombia do not analyse this matter of popular memory further, and modern narratives in Curaçao even suffer from total amnesia regarding Piar. The local patterns of mobility in this historical period are accordingly characterized in fictional accounts as relatively stagnant: paralysis concealed beneath megalomaniacal visions. By contrast, Arion endeavours to reveal the local realities existing beneath this ostensible stagnation (such as is portrayed in van Leeuwen’s and Marugg’s novels) by focusing on popular Papiamentu-speaking culture as well as on its inextricable links with the slave trade in the South Atlantic past.9 The end of the eighteenth century in the Caribbean and South America was a phase of searching for alternatives to existing patterns of colonization. In Suriname, for instance, there was increased involvement of local populations in this process – Sephardic, creole, and Saramaka citizens – and writers today have become keenly aware of the political and cultural tensions that arose at that time.10 Meanwhile, thanks to splendid Brazilian 8

200 años conspiración Gual y España: 1797–1997, ed. Alex Z. Martínez (Comisión Presidencial Bicentenario, Archivo General de la Nación; Santiago de León de Caracas: Archivo General de la Nación, 1998). David R. Chacón Rodríguez, Catálogo de la documentación existente en el Archivo General de Indias sobre la revolución de Gual, España y Picornell (Caracas: Fundación Hermano Nectarerio María, C O N A C , 1997). See also my article on this topic: “L’impossibilité d’une révolution dans Curaçao et Venezuela: Quatre événements en relation avec Haïti,” in Haiti 1804: Lumières et ténèbres, ed. Léon–François Hoffmann, Frauke Gewecke & Ulrich Fleischmann (Madrid: Iberoamericana, forthcoming 2008). 9 An informative book on the backgrounds of Boeli van Leeuwen, Tip Marugg, and Frank Martinus Arion is Drie Curaçaose Schrijvers in veelvoud, ed. Maritza Coomans–Eustatia, Wim Rutgers & Henny E. Coomans (Zutphen: Walburg, 1991). 10 Ineke Phaf–Rheinberger, “The Contemporary Surinamese Novel,” in A History of Literature in the Caribbean, ed. A. James Arnold, vol. 2, sub-editors Vera Kutzinski & Ineke Phaf–Rheinberger (Amsterdam & Philadelphia P A : John Benjamins, 2001): 527–41, and Phaf–Rheinberger, “Creole tori, the Waterkant, and the Ethics of a Nation: Cynthia McLeod and Astrid Roemer on Suriname,” in A Pepper-Pot of Cul-

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research, the slave trade during the ‘Dutch period’ in Angola and Brazil has been incorporated into the context of a more global vision, in line with contemporary literature by lusophone writers. For these writers, hierarchical structures in Luanda and Rio de Janeiro, interlaced as they are with Bantu rhythms and language, are seen as an expression of a differentiated sense of local belonging. As in Arion’s last novel, their urban centres are agencies linked to the global world as well as to the hinterland, with the maroon settlement or quilombo as a site of organized resistance. These newly emergent narratives based on the quilombo or favela necessarily touch on trade in human beings and the attendant mercantile mentality, which must be attacked in whatever guise, past and present. Pepetela, Mussa, and Agualusa introduce this rebellious global view into Angola’s and Brazil’s literary tradition. Rio represents an important point of orientation as a storehouse of the Brazilian past. With respect to the development of Modernismo, Tiago de Oliveira Pinto sets up a cultural comparison between Rio and São Paulo: São Paulo was [...] unable to compete with the capital, Rio de Janeiro, when it came to the fine arts, libraries or exhibition space. The magnificent national library, which the Portuguese regent, Dom João V I , had left behind upon his return to Portugal, the academy of arts, founded in the same year, and the academy of fine art built at the turn of the century – all of these were testaments to Rio’s superiority as a cultural metropolis. However, the institutions and artistic events in Rio were founded in rigid structures, in contrast to São Paulo where the general climate was freer.11

Notwithstanding São Paulo’s freer climate, it is the macumba culture of Rio that plays a key role in Mário de Andrade’s Macunaíma, as we saw earlier, and the city features again in Gonzalo Aguilar’s book on the modernist vanguard, in which he describes how contact between Rio and the critical modernism of Bahia emerged in the late 1960s. One of the foremost requirements of a modernist vanguard is openness to the world, or cosmopolitanism. This vanguard spirit appears in the transatlantic narra-

tures: Aspects of Creolization in the Caribbean, ed. Gordon Collier & Ulrich Fleischmann (Matatu 27–28; Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2003): 399–416. 11 Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, “The Invention of Brazil: The Ethnography, Folklore and Musicology of Mário de Andrade,” in The Idea of Modernismo Brasileiro, ed. Ribeiro & Pinto, 139.

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tives discussed above within the framework of a mercantile philosophy. Arion’s Quaker family is engaged in ship-building and receives friends from all over the globe. The Barbadian friend, however, is the hero of the story, attacking ‘enlightened’ Amsterdam, the source of all evil. Pepetela’s slave, his alter ego, tells of the van Dum family, whose business dealings are worldwide. Mussa’s Portuguese ship-owner, before residing in Rio, did business in Goa and Angola. Moreover, the truly important character is his slave, of Islamic origin and knowledgeable in Arabic, as is Mussa himself. Agualusa’s main Angolan character, a reporter like himself, ends up after Rio in post-communist Budapest, a city in which the contradictions of the Cold War that have been so influential in his own country’s history have now dissolved away. The financial negotiations of the Cold War period in the history of the diverse African countries have scarcely been documented as yet, but the chronicle of mercantile engagement with Africa is long and extensively researched. The painter Jan van Kessel centuries ago revealed his familiarity with this instinct for calculating global profit. His allegory of America (which features on the cover of Alencastro’s O trato dos viventes) is duly adorned with views of the Atlantic port settlements – Salvador da Bahía, Olinda de Pernambuco, and the fortress of Elmina, among others. Angola, too, so important for the formation of Brazil in the South Atlantic, appears in van Kessel’s allegory of Asia, indicating that the painter understood this coastal zone as the transit point, via Cape Town, to the continent of Asia.12 These ports were always a meeting-point for people of all national, religious, and ethnic origins, as Gregório de Matos very well knew. In one of his verses about the ‘sins’ of Bahia, Gregório has his home town speak of the numerous impious, heathen people living there: Turks, Persians, Armenians, Greek, Jews, Assyrians, and “of whatever caste there is / I have many, and shelter many.”13 Ever since the Portuguese and Dutch accounts of seventeenth-century Brazil, the maroon presence has been a familiar given. Alencastro even observes that, after the Dutch occupation, these maroon communities were a problem of nightmarish proportions for the colonial powers. In cul12

Jan van Kessel, Alte Pinakothek Munich: Explanatory Notes on the Worlds Exhibited (Munich: Karl Lipp, 1986): 275–79. 13 Gregório de Matos e Guerra, Obras completas de Gregório de Matos, ed. James Amado, vol. 1: 12 – “de quantas castas há / muito tengo, e mouto abrigo.”

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tural terms, the quilombo populations were originally stereotyped as part of the ‘savage’ or natural world. In contemporary literature, they gradually become ‘modernized’ as a living cultural force. In Brazilian Portuguese, many words and expressions of Bantu origin have been accepted.14 In Angola, the process of linguistic modernization also took place via the increasingly ‘africanized’ Portuguese language. This phenomenon is of recent vintage – in colonial Angola, Portuguese possessed an unstable status. Mário Pinto de Andrade recalls that Portuguese-speaking Angolans belonged among those who assimilated to Portuguese culture and were out of touch with the cultural heritage of the indigenous traditions in the region. He underscores the fact that the crucial dilemma confronting the Mensagem group around 1950 was how to open up to these indigenous populations with their different languages so that they might be included in the civic order.15 In this respect, it is interesting to know that the current Angolan government is preparing to introduce three African languages into the national school system, alongside the customary Portuguese. Neither Angola nor Brazil has an institutionalized creole language yet to ease communication between the different groups of the population, but critical studies of their cultural traditions are increasingly focused on processes of transculturation and patterns of “mulatto modernity.”16 These concepts are employed in analysing moves toward modern democracy (see chapter 6), and in Suriname and Curaçao are intimately linked with the process of creolization undergone by Sranan (and Saramaka) during the inter-ethnic conflicts of the eighteenth-century, and by Papiamentu.17

14 Yeda Antonita Pessoa de Castro, Falares africanos na Bahia: Um vocabulário afro-brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks / Academia Brasileira de Letras, 2001). 15 Christine Messiant, “Sur la première génération du M P L A , 1948–1960: Mário de Andrade, entretiens avec Christine Messiant (1982),” in Lusotopie (Bordeaux, 1999): 216. 16 See Phyllis Peres, Transculturation and Resistance in Lusophone African Narratives (Gainesville: U P of Florida, 1997), and Mareia Quintero Rivera (daughter of Ángel Quintero Rivera), A cor e o som da nação: A idéia de mestiçagem na crítica musical do Caribe hispânico e do Brasil, 1928–1948 (São Paulo: U S P , 1996). 17 Ineke Phaf–Rheinberger, “The Crystalline Essence of Dutch Caribbean Literature: Mirroring Creolization,” Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 74/40.1 (2007): 35–46.

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These languages have quite a long history in writing18 and the earliest Saramakan dictionaries even contain the local geographical word matu. For Helman – a man with a finely tuned rhythmical sensibility – contemporary Sranan is outdated and incapable of contributing to this process of cultural democratization, having lost any living connection with its original African or Portuguese inflections. For Arion as an Antillean, such a connection with African-Portuguese roots is simply a matter of justice. He defends them in The Kiss of a Slave, in which his thesis regarding Guene is based on this contention.19 In taking this linguistic-cultural matter seriously and building it into his own creativity, Arion achieves something truly spectacular. To adapt Papiamentu to the contemporary requirements of a democratic society, Arion launched a campaign to keep the language alive. In his article “The Rise of a Creole Language,” he provides an overview of the problems encountered since the foundation in 1987 of the Kolegio Erasmo, a school in which children are taught in Papiamentu as infants before learning any other languages. He states that there is a lack of confidence among Curaçaoans about being able to keep abreast in the higher educational system if they use Papiamentu and that this is still proving an obstacle, but the fact that they remain proud of their linguistic heritage has played a central role in keeping the Kolegio going.20 18

Sranan was first described in Herlein’s Beschrijvinge van de volksplantinge Zuriname (Description of the Plantation Society of Suriname, 1718). Arends & Perl reproduce Herlein’s ‘samen-spreaken’ or dialogues in their Early Suriname Creole Texts, 73–75. It is ironic that they contain conversations such as: Je wantje sliepe lange mie? (Would you like to sleep with me?); No mie no wantje (No, I wouldn’t); Jie no bon (You’re not nice); Jie monbie toe moussie (You’re very unwilling); Kom bosse mie wantem (Come, kiss me then) (75). See also Jacques Arends, “Young languages, Old Texts. Early Documents in the Surinamese Creoles,” in Atlas, ed. Eithne Carlin & Jacques Arends, 183–204. Papiamentu in the A B C islands crops up for the first time in 1775, in an affectionate letter by Abraham de David da Costa Andrade to his sick wife. The letter is reproduced in May Henriquez, Ta asina? O ta asana? (Korsou: Scherpenheuvel, 1988): 100–101. Arion (=Martinus) provides the translation of the letter in The Kiss of a Slave, 9–10. 19 Ephraim Frank Martinus, The Kiss of a Slave, 192–259. See also his article on “The value of Guene for folklore and literary culture,” Frank Martinus Arion, in A History of Literature in the Caribbean, vol. 2, 415–19. 20 Frank Martinus Arion, “The Rise of a Creole Language: Kolegio Erasmo,” in Curaçao: Creole Conference 2004 (forthcoming). This is not Arion’s first publication on this matter – see also his Martein Lopap 2 o malesa di semi-lingualismo (Curaçao:

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In Arion’s view, the revitalization of African-Portuguese roots aims at bringing the South Atlantic world back into focus in order to act as a counter-force to the overwhelmingly Dutch-centred interpretation of Antillean history. This is fully developed in De deserteurs, in which his ‘unreal’ Orangestad displays all the characteristics of a colonial city that defines itself in terms of its confrontation with a regional maroon spirit that can match in its dynamism the general process of creolization. For this critical discourse, the link with the slave trade and slavery is a crucial point of departure. In Questioning Creole, Paul Lovejoy and David Trotman underscore the importance of this perspective: Similarly, in the Americas, as historians have observed, the significance of the American and French revolutions takes on new meaning when viewed in Atlantic perspective, both representing the triumph of ‘Creole society,’ although in different ways. On the one hand, ‘Creole’ North America became a new nation that institutionalized slavery, while on the other hand, Haitian ‘Creole’ emerged as a new nation in which slavery was terminated. Whether through the uprising in St Domingue or the ongoing struggle against slavery in the United States, the expectations of slaves were clearly affected, but what is sometimes not recognized is that the whole Atlantic was in turmoil in the eighteenth century, at least since 1776. The ‘creolisation’ of the Americas occurred at a time when there was a prevailing mood of resistance and unrest arising from trans-Atlantic slavery. That resistance is first apparent in the baracoons of western Africa and on the slave ships themselves in the form of revolt, suicide and acts of sabotage. Hence the expectations of the enslaved were always set within a framework of resistance and schemes of freedom. Enslavers everywhere worried about what those enslaved might be scheming, but they could not prevent them from learning about ideas of abolition and emancipation.21

In this sense, historical processes of creolization are conceived of as forms of constructive creativity (rather than as erosion or decay) – as a ‘poetics of creolization’ (by Édouard Glissant) and ‘nation language’ (by Kamau Brathwaite) that requires the revision of official discourses on Editoryal Antiyano, 1983). Since 2002 Papiamentu has also been the official language of instruction in the first years of the primary school system on the whole island. 21 Paul Lovejoy & David Trotman, “Enslaved Africans and their Expectations of Slave Life in the Americas: Towards a Reconsideration of Models of ‘Creolisation’,” in Questioning Creole: Creolisation Discourses in Caribbean Culture, ed. Verene A. Shepherd & Glen L. Richards (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2002): 77–78.

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Caribbean realities.22 It is important to highlight this point, not least because of Silvio Torres–Saillant’s contention, in An Intellectual History of the Caribbean, that recent academic studies of the Caribbean no longer regard the archipelago as a centre for the production of knowledge: The new marketing of Third World knowledge under the globalizing label of ‘post-colonial theory’ came to the academic industry precisely at the moment when the prominence of Caribbean ideas, championed by such figures as Sylvia Wynter, Lamming, Césaire, Carpentier, and Fanon, had begun to command international attention. A mixture of ethnic and area studies modulated conceptually by the paradigms of Western critical theory and informed by the angst characteristic of postmodern thought, the new field removed the Caribbean from its position of relative centrality as producer of autochthonous meaning. […] The surrender to the epistemological might of the postcolonists by some Caribbeanists illustrates the erosion of the region’s intellectual self-confidence.23

I fully subscribe to Torres–Saillant’s observations, my intention in the present book having been to argue that Dutch-related imaginaries have contributed to this intellectual self-confidence by deconstructing the African-Portuguese origins of the South Atlantic heritage that is intertwined with the circum-Caribbean region. Helman and Arion certainly participate in this intellectual and imaginative project. Helman, for example, gives evidence of his wide readings of Caribbean authors in his speech on “Cola Debrot als homo Caribensis,” in which he particularly addresses his friendship with A.J. Seymour in Demarara in the 1950s and his alert reception of Edgar Mittelholzer’s writings as well as those of Aphra Behn, some of which are likewise situated in the Dutch beginnings of Guyana.24 Arion is regularly represented in publications dealing with 22

“A Conversation between Kamau Brathwaite and Édouard Glissant,” in Memorias de la fragmentación: Tierra de libertad y paisajes del Caribe, ed. Ineke Phaf– Rheinberger (Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2005): 115–30. 23 Silvio Torres–Saillant, An Intellectual History of the Caribbean (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006): 43. 24 Albert Helman, “Cola Debrot als homo Caribensis,” in De eenheid van het kristal: Cola Debrot Symposium 1986, ed. Alex Reinders & Frank Martinus (Curaçao; Editorial Kooperativo Antiyano ‘Kolibri,’ 1988). Debrot also wrote many contributions on Caribbean history, literature, and politics, collected in Over Antilliaanse cultuur: Verzameld werk I, ed. Jules de Palm (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1985). One of these essays has come out in English: Literature of the Netherlands Antilles (Curaçao:

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creolization. The alternative landscape of his fiction and essays can be seen to extend the heritage of the eighteenth-century Afro-Brazilian poet Domingos Caldas Barbosa with his lundu from the Angola–Congo region, characterized by the “umbigada, the navel bump between dancers that signals an invitation to join the dance.”25 Arion’s understanding of creolization aims at bringing Papiamentu out of its ‘splendid isolation’ by means of a comparative approach towards constructive cultural appropriation involving Chinese.26 For Arion, a pivotal influence has been another Caribbean writer, Caryl Phillips, whom he is proud to call his friend. (Quite apart from considerations of personal amity, of course, Caribbean artists and writers programmatically affirm their consanguinity and solidarity across otherwise quite distinct island territories – Derek Walcott and Édouard Glissant, for instance.) Phillips was editor of the Faber Caribbean Series when the translation of Arion’s Double Play came out there. Phillips was brought at a very young age from St. Kitts to England and started emphasizing creole English in his early work, such as his play Strange Fruit (1981), in which he inserts a note on the language: The language in Strange Fruit has to be a careful mixture of West Indian English (patois), Standard English, and English working-class regional dialect. In the language one should be able to detect the sociocultural confusion which undermines any immediate hopes of harmony within the body politic of the family.27

Since then, Phillips has become a prestigious writer who immerses himself in the complexities and analogies imbricated in historical questions

Departement van Cultuur en Opvoeding van de Nederlandse Antillen, 1964). For the political significance of Aphra Behn’s 1688 work, see the essay by Frank Martinus Arion: “In de huid van Oroonoko, hoe de roman in Suriname begon,” in Surinaamse en Caraïbische literatuur: Schrijverschap 2000; Nationaal of international (Paramaribo: S W I Forum 14.2 (1992) and 15.1 (1998): 21–31. 25 Phyllis Peres, “Writing Behind the Lines: Towards a Creole Reading of Domingos Caldas Barbosa,” in Presencia criolla en el Caribe y América Latina, ed. Ineke Phaf (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert,1996): 45–55. 26 Frank Martinus, “Creole Identity Through Chinese Wall: Affinities Between Papiamento and Chinese,” in A Pepper-Pot of Cultures, ed. Gordon Collier & Ulrich Fleischmann, 152–65. 27 Caryl Phillips, Strange Fruit (Ambergate: Amber Lane Press, 1981): 5.

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concerning the problems of the Jewish and black African diasporas.28 The narrative that comes closest to the African-Portuguese background is his non-fictional The Atlantic Sound (2000), in which his “tall-light-skinned Creole” character reports the encounter of the local king Caramansa with the envoy of the Portuguese King, Diego de Azambuja, on Friday 19 January 1482, in a village by the mouth of the river Benya. They negotiate the construction of the Elmina fortress and slave barracoon, instigating the development of the West African coast into a sixteenth-century “Harrods or Saks Fifth Avenue” warehouse.29 Phillips operates in his carefully written historical and contemporary account with a measured, gentlemanly style of ironic understatement that recalls V.S. Naipaul’s Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey.30 But, in contrast to Naipaul, Phillips directs his attention to the history of Atlantic port cities such as Liverpool or Charleston, or those on the coast of Ghana, and he does so by employing the sophisticated (and often intertextually historicizing) version of the English language. Arion, too, in his historical novel De deserteurs, for the first time in his narrative oeuvre does not foreground the creole vernacular as a unifying force. On the contrary, he mocks the Dutch, lamenting their shipwreck at Curassow in five quatrains written in an older version of the Dutch language.31 In an indirect way, of course, through his emphasis on John Trotman, the poetics of creolization are just as present as a subversive force as they are in his other works. Arion now combines it with the philosophy of the New Caribbean Nation, developed in a maroon settlement resembling the quilombo or the favela in comparable lusophone narratives, whose care28

Critical research has stressed this aspect of his work. See Bénédicte Ledent, Caryl Phillips (Manchester & New York: Manchester U P , 2002), and Ulrike Erichsen, “Caryl Phillips: Literatur statt Geschichte,” in Erichsen, Geschichtsverarbeitung als kulturelle Selbstreflexion (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2001): 122–72. 29 Caryl Phillips, The Atlantic Sound (London: Faber & Faber, 2000): 124–39. Elmina Castle was the main station for the Portuguese until 1637, when the Dutch took it from them. Elmina remained in Dutch possession until 1872. In 1972, it was taken over by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board and was included by U N E S C O on the World Heritage List. See Kwesi Anquandah, 52–61. 30 V.S. Naipaul, Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (London: André Deutsch, 1981). See the interview by Moritz Behrendt and Daniel Gerlach with Naipaul about his way of writing, “Ich bin immer ironisch. Ich kann nichts dagegen tun,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung (22 September 2006): 43. 31 Frank Martinus Arion, De deserteurs, 217.

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fully designed spatial environments are shaped in accordance with historical processes that question hierarchical urban patterns in a global perspective. Dutch readers have not been generous in acknowledging the relevance of Arion’s efforts in developing and endorsing a specifically Caribbean discourse. They do not appreciate his extended deliberations, whose ironic tone is based on Papiamentu-based dialogue to display the multiple aspects of its ‘subversive’ world-view. Readers prefer to commend his brilliant depiction of an Antillean community caught in a politico-cultural trap, as in Double Play, but choose to ignore its further elaboration in the ‘aftermath’ and his later novels. To underline Arion’s unique insistence on African-Portuguese origins in his narrative imagination and linguistic research – he has no Caribbean peer in this regard – therefore, his oeuvre has to be placed within the tradition of Dutch-related representations of this matter in order for the reader to hear properly its critical ground-tenor: that of the slave trade and colonization. Arion resists the double morality of Barlaeus with its complicity in the urban, colonialist mercantile mentality of his time – something that, ironically, would not have been so conspicuous without Post’s emphasis on the ‘air of liberty’ of the inhabitants of the mocambos (the shanty dwellings of slaves and freedmen) and the senzalas (slave barracoons) in his pictures of seventeenth-century life.32 This same spirit relates to Queen Nzinga and King Zumbi of Palmares, whose striving after better sociopolitical conditions in Angola and Brazil has made them into contemporary media icons.33 This spirit also connects with the special role of the Sephardic Portuguese Nation in colonial history34 as well as with maroon resistance as described in Anton de Kom’s

32

Hannedea van Nederveen Meerkerk judges that Post painted these mocambos and senzalas, built of mud and palm leaves, with straw roofs, with a similar degree of precision as he did castles, forts, and urban settlements; Meerkerk, “A Cultural and Historical Perspective,” in Frans Post, 39–40, 43. 33 Both historical heroes have statues dedicated to them and their symbolic heritage of resistance and independence. Another narrative on Queen Nzinga was published in Havana by the former Angolan ambassador Manuel Pedro Pacavira: Nzinga Mbandi (Havana: Ediciones Cubanas, 1985). 34 Very useful for further research on the families of the Portuguese Nation is a study by the Brazilian historian José Antônio Gonsalves de Mello, Gente da nação: Cristãos-novos e judeus em Pernambuco, 1542–1654, preface by José E. Mindlin (Recife: F U N D A J , Ed. Massangana, 1996).

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Wij slaven van Suriname35 or in Richard and Sally Price’s research on the Saramakas. These maroons in the interior live together with the Amerindians, with Caliban, whose ‘tortured’ existence in “El Dorado” is appropriately conveyed by the angry tone of Helman’s voice. The exploration of Papiamentu speech and rhythms is a liberating and enabling force in present-day democracy, as is the dialogue with tumba and tambú culture; these constitute correctives to the asymmetrical historical relationship with the Netherlands. Arion even redefines the concept of Eldorado through his etymological reinterpretation of the word ‘Curaçao’, deriving it from the tradition of the legendary powisi or the great curassow in Suriname and Latin America, a bird sought after by gold diggers in the interior because of its attraction to gold.36 This search for gold on the road to Caribbean democracy is set up as an analogy to the exploration of the ‘transatlantic sound’ in Phillips’s and Reiss’s stimulating analyses, which provoke further comments, questions, and additional research on the continuous expression of resistance to slavery and the slave trade as well as on multilayered process of cultural exchange through time. Quilombo research, especially research on the significance of Palmares, is undergoing an explosive development in Brazil.37 Frans Post’s work has been rediscovered and revalorized, thanks to persistent Brazilian efforts and important work by curators in Basel and, more recently, in Munich.38 Whitehead and Boeseman foresaw this effect: Post’s “ethnographic pic-

35

Anton de Kom, Wij slaven van Suriname (1934; Amsterdam: Contact, 1999). The book was translated into Spanish as Nosotros esclavos de Surinam (Havana: Casa de las Américas, 1981). 36 Frank Martinus Arion, “The Great Curassow or the Road to Caribbeanness,” Callaloo 21.3 (1998): 451. There are, of course, countless and controversial explanations of the origin of the place-name ‘Curaçao’. 37 João José Reis & Flávio Dos Santos Gomes, ed. Liberdade por um fio: História dos quilombos no Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996). Décio Freitas, “Apresentação,” in República de Palmares, 3–4. Hebe Mattos, “Cidadania, racialização e memória do cativeiro,” L A S A 2006, 3. 38 See esp. the exhibition Frans Post (1612–1680): Painter of Paradise Lost, curated by León Krempel. On the reception of Post, see the article by Bia and Pedro Corrêa do Lago, “A carreira de Frans Post e sua reputação póstuma,” in Frans Post, ed. Krempel, 14–18.

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tures […] will never lose their scientific and cultural value.”39 In terms of the history of science and technology, Post’s contribution adds a valuable dimension to studies such as those discussed in Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire, a collection of essays on the history of science.40 At the same time, the ‘air of liberty’ made evident by Post helps explain a pattern of colonization that has since been subjected to critical examination in creative writing, visual art, and academic research. Post’s pictorial representations provide the most appropriate starting-point for explaining the writer’s covert attack on urban mercantile rationality in periods of accelerated globalization. The restrictions imposed by this mentality can still be felt today. The critical deconstruction of patterns of colonization for the sake of presentday social and political concerns is certainly not the sole preserve of scholars interested in South Atlantic coastal territories colonized by the Dutch. Quite the contrary: beyond the Dutch Empire, the deconstructive impulse motivated Rama to conceive of his ‘lettered city’ and to analyse its development within the broader symbolic imaginary of Latin America. It also prompted Alencastro to reinforce the Brazilian sense of belonging by making the link with the Angola–Congo region, as other contemporary lusophone writers also do. They are engaged in a rewriting of history, shifting its critical framework toward African-Portuguese roots, and this key issue acquires its significance through the umbilical connection with both global expansion and sites of local resistance. The port societies of the South Atlantic associated with or established by the Dutch Empire, too, were ‘formed’ in an age of globalization. They share this link, for which the slave trade functioned as a foundational characteristic, with Brazil and Angola–Congo. The route from Africa to America left its mark on the creole languages, and writers aim at measuring the weight of this heritage within the framework of present-day exigencies. These creole language have not survived – if they ever existed – in Angola and Brazil, but here, too, authors project the transatlantic scenario as an ‘open wound’ in their works. In general, these authors en39 Peter J.P. Whitehead & Martin Boeseman, A Portrait of Dutch 17th Century Brazil, 203. 40 Felix Driver & Luciana Martins, Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire (Chicago: U of Chicago P , 2005). See also my article “Landscapes, Narratives, and Tropical Nature: Creole Modernity in Suriname” in Caribbean Literature and the Environment, ed. DeLoughrey, Gosson & Handley, 225–35, and the other essays in this collection.

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gaging with the subjectivities of slave experience open their fictions to the requirements of contemporary democracy. They are supported by historians who are gradually developing a revisionary interpretation of independence movements in Haiti, Latin America, and the U S A , as well as of the formation of early modern Europe, in which the slave trade and its long-term continuities are crucial concerns. In this context, Arion’s claims mentioned at the beginning of this book assume their proper perspective. They connect up with Agualusa’s presentation of the favela and the current public debate in the Brazilian parliament on the Statute of Racial Equality and the law on the Quota System as well as with the upsurge in claims for reparations for slavery in general. They equally refer to the debate on slavery in African countries in connection with the slave trade during European colonial expansion. Through their fictional works, the writers discussed in the present study put flesh on the bones of this inquiry, while Arion’s claim for reparations is aimed at financing further research and educational programmes designed to help us visualize the multiple aspects of the South Atlantic heritage. It has been the main objective of my book to elucidate these foundational African-Portuguese links in the cultural history of (formerly) Dutch-related societies and, by submitting them to review, to bring them to the attention of researchers on the Caribbean and Latin America. The inclusion of the South Atlantic complex in a broader network of connections will, it is hoped, stimulate deeper engagement with these aspects of lived reality in contemporary democracies.

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¹º

Index

Abini (father of Alabi) 71, 73, 74, 75, 77, 88, 89 Adams, Ann Jensen 9 Admirable Campaign (Bolívar) 98, 99 African 32, 33, 42, 43, 44, 45, 69, 71, 78, 80, 82, 85, 94, 114, 115, 120, 132, 138, 140, 141, 149, 151, 155, 157, 159, 161n18, 162, 165, 168, 181, 183, 191 African Americans 66; African-American music 130 African–Portuguese roots x, xii, xx, 94, 132, 183, 184, 185, 190, 191 Agualusa, José Eduardo xx, 162–63, 165, 167–71, 180–181, 191; O ano em que Zumbi tomou o Rio 163 Aguilar, Gonzalo 180 Aguilar, Nélson 13, 13n37 air of liberty ix, x, 21, 34, 190 Alabi (Saramakan chief) 69, 72–78, 85, 88, 89, 94 Alabi’s World (Price) 71, 72–78, 79n31 Alagoas 32 Alencastro, Luiz Felipe de ix, xxi, 32, 33, 34, 44, 151, 155, 162, 164, 167, 181, 190; O trato dos viventes ix, xxi, 32, 162, 164, 167, 181 allegory 10, 18, 36, 181 Allen, Rose Mary 119, 120, 124 Alpers, Svetlana 6, 8, 10, 23n60, 44 American Philosophical Society 67 Amerindians vii, 20, 32, 42, 45, 51, 56, 70, 80, 87, 89, 103, 106, 141, 142,

144, 145, 146, 149, 151, 158, 170, 189; Chilean 45 Amsterdam 7, 9, 29–55, 32n10, 57, 61, 63, 64, 67, 68, 115, 130, 137, 146, 174, 177, 181

Anacaona (Cuban women’s orchestra) 124

ancestor worship, among maroons 65, 72, 87, 87n53, 93, 165 Andrade, Mário de 157, 158, 180, 183; Macunaíma 157, 158, 180 Andrade, Mário Pinto de 159, 160, 182 Angola xvi, xviii, xx, xxi, 33, 70n3, 155, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 180, 181, 182, 186, 188, 190 Angola–Brazil connection, literary treatment of 159–71 Annales school xx, xxi O ano em que Zumbi tomou o Rio (Agualusa) 163 Antafogasta (= Ciudad Bolívar) 114 anthropology 54, 72, 73, 114, 145, 149 antisemitism 54, 58, 63 Antônio Vaz (island off Recife) 11, 12, 15, 15n42, 16, 20, 24, 38 Antwerp 54, 55; Africans in 161n18 Araucans 43, 44n42, 45 architecture 11, 13, 23, 23n60, 58, 170 Arends, Jacques xix, 76, 93, 94, 183n18 Ariès, Philippe xxi Arion, Frank Martinus ix, xv, xvi, xx, xxi, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 135, 138,

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(Arion, Frank Martinus) 146, 147–50, 151, 155, 171–75, 177, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191; De deserteurs xvi, xxi, 171–75, 184, 187; Double Play 128, 129, 130, 131, 147, 172, 174, 175, 186, 188; De laatste vrijheid 131, 132, 135, 147–50, 175; Nobele Wilden 135, 175; Stemmen uit Afrika 129; The Kiss of a Slave xix, 132, 183 Arismendi, General Juan Bautista 100 Arminians 35, 36 Arminianus, Jacobus 35 Arrabini, Johannes (Christian name Alabi) 73n13 Aruba 122, 123, 124, 128, 172 Ashkenazi 61, 65 Asturias, Miguel Ángel 173, 174; Weekend en Guatemala 173 “Atardi” (Corsen) 123, 127, 129 Athenaeum Illustre (Amsterdam) 34, 35, 37, 41 The Atlantic Sound (Phillips) 187 Autobiography of a Runaway Slave (Montejo/Barnet) 79n31 Baleiro, Zeca 171 Barbados 149, 172, 174, 175, 181 Barlaeus, Caspar xviii, 3, 15, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 41n36, 42, 43, 44, 44n42, 45, 49, 50, 50n3, 54, 68, 70, 80, 93, 145, 155, 156, 161, 163, 174, 188; as figure in novel by Pepetela 161, 163; Rerum per octennium in Brasilia xviii, xx, 3, 5, 11, 22, 29, 34, 37, 42, 49, 70, 155, 156, 161 Barlaeus, Caspar (son) 42 Barnet, Miguel 80n31; Autobiography of a Runaway Slave (Biografía de un cimarrón) 79n31, 80n31 Baroque 40 Barrios, Don Miguel de 67, 68 Bartolozzi, Francesco 78 Basra 5

Batavia 5 Behn, Aphra 79, 136, 137, 185, 185n24, 186; Oroonoko 79, 136, 186 Ben Israel, Menasseh 50n3 Benedetti, Michele 78 Benítez Rojo, Antonio xvii; The Repeating Island xvii Berckenrode, Baltasar Florisz van 42, 155

Berlin xii, 12, 55, 56, 138 Bermúdez, General José Francisco 100 Bethancourt, Agustín (influential Curaçaoan literary publisher) 121, 122 Bethânia, Maria 171 Bewolkt bestaan (Debrot) 126, 127 Bicker, Andries 35 Bijlsma, R. 52, 66 Bilac, Olavo 171 Biografía de un cimarrón (Montejo/ Barnet) 80n31 Bishop, Maurice 131 Black Atlantic, concept of (Gilroy) xvi, xxi, 22n57 blacks, Jewish 64, 65 Blaeu, Willem Janszoon 5, 7, 7n17, 10 Blake, William 78 Blakeley, Allison 19, 19n50 Blanc, Aldir 171 Blanco, Monica xi Blinder, Oda 126 Boa Vista (palace) 11 Boer, Harm den 67 Bogotá 95, 104 Böhm, Günther 50, 51, 65n40 Bokaal aan de lippen (Debrot) 128 Bolívar, Simón xix, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 109, 110, 114, 119, 179 Bonaire xix, 126, 128, 131 Boni wars (Suriname) 79, 81 Boom, Maria Martha 97 Brandão, Cláudio 32 De Brasilsche Breede-Byl 29 Brathwaite, Kamau 184 Braudel, Fernand xx, 57

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Index

Brazil xvi, xviii, xx, xxi, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 29, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39, 41, 42, 49, 50, 50n3, 51, 54, 55, 67, 70, 93, 149, 151, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 174, 180, 181, 182, 188, 189, 190; and Caspar Barlaeus 37, 40; Dutch xviii, 180 Brenneker, Father Paul H.F. 120 Brion, Luis xix, 95, 100, 119 Brito Figueroa, Federico 102 Brouwer, Admiral Hendrik 42, 43, 44, 45

Bruges 54 Bruma, Eddy 142n14, 143n16 Buarque de Holanda, Chico 171 Buarque de Holanda, Sérgio 158 Buena Vista Social Club (film by Wim Wenders) 124 Buenos Aires 42, 158, 171, 178 Bush Negroes (Suriname) 77, 145, 151 See also maroons Cadornega, Antônio de Oliveira 161 Calado, Father Manoel 39, 50, 70 Caldas Barbosa, Domingos 186 Caliban 145, 189 Campos, Haroldo de 158 Campt, Tina 22, 22n57 Canary Islands 5, 96, 122 Cancionero Papiamento (Julio Perrenal) 125

Candido, Antonio 158 Cap François 58, 65n41 Cape Town 5, 30n4, 181 Cape Verde 5, 131, 159 Capricorne, José Maria vii, ix, xxn18, xxi Caracas 95, 98, 99, 100, 178 Caribbean ix, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, xvi, xvii, xx, 34, 57, 63, 70, 95, 97, 98, 102, 104, 107, 108, 110, 116, 127, 131, 132, 135, 150, 151, 157, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 179, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191

Carlin, Eithne B. xixn12 carnival 115, 116 Carpentier, Alejo 58, 185; The Kingdom of This World (El reino de este mundo) 58 Cartagena 178 cartography 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 15n42, 16, 18, 78, 79, 155, 156 Casa de África (Lisbon) 159 Casa dos Estudantes do Império (Lisbon) 159, 160 Catatau, um romance-idéia (Leminski) 158

Catholicism 19, 106, 118, 125, 129, 158, 165, 167, 170 Cayenne 51, 55, 94 Cercle des Philadelphes 65n41 Cery (Joanna’s mother) 84 Chibán, Alicia 103 Chile 39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 117, 118; and Amerindians 45 Chile a la vista 4 Chirinos, José Leonardo 95, 178 Christianity 33, 44, 45, 49, 50, 53, 55, 56, 57, 59, 62, 63, 64, 65, 70, 73, 74, 75, 80, 83, 86, 87, 162, 164, 167 circum-Caribbean x, 185 Ciudad Bolívar (= Antafogasta) 114 La ciudad letrada (Rama) ix See also The Lettered City Civilisadó (Curacaoan weekly magazine) 121, 122, 127 Clifford, James 72 Coco, Julian 125n38 Cohen, Robert 55, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 69n1

Cojo (maroon rebel) 81, 84 Collier, Gordon 178n1, 179n10 Colombia xiii, xix, 96, 98, 104, 131, 179 colonialism 79, 168 Companhia de Navegação e Comércio da Índia 51 concubinage, interracial 70, 70n4, 71, 126

See also marriage, Surinamese

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THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º

Congo xxi, 94, 155, 165, 166, 186, 190 Congress of Black Writers and Artists 160

Conny, John 157n5 contraband xix, 95, 177, 178 conversion, Christian 75, 88, 164 Cook, Captain James 4 Cornejo Polar, Antonio ix Coro (Venezuela) 95, 97, 178 Correia de Sá, Salvador 161 Corsen, Joseph Sickman 8, 122, 122n27– 28, 122n30, 123, 127, 129; “Atardi” 123, 127, 129 Costa Gómez, Dr Frumencio da 124, 127 Council of Police 52, 59, 62 creole, definition of xin1, 85 creole languages ix, xix, 70n3, 75, 85, 93, 115, 135, 140, 141, 143, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 177, 182, 186, 187, 190 See also Saramakan, Sranan creole society (black) ix, xix, 69, 71, 77, 78, 84, 87, 140, 141, 179; as degenerate 140; modern culture 141, 155; non-maroon as suspect 86; upward mobility 85; urban 85, 88, 93, 142 Creole, white colonial elite ix, 67, 70, 95, 101, 102, 142 creoles, female 59, 87, 110, 126; free 63 creolization 94, 114, 182, 184, 186, 187 Creutz, Carl Otto 63, 63n34, 71 Crommelin, Wigbold 74 Cuba 80, 119, 124, 149, 159, 160; musical influence of, in Curaçao 124, 127 Cumaná (Venezuela) 97, 98 Curaçao vii, ix, xiii, xv, xvi, xix, xxi, 50, 61, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 103, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 135, 141, 147, 150, 175, 177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 185, 189; music culture and language in 113–32; origin of name 189 Darhe Jesarim (Jewish mulatto organization in Paramaribo) 62

Debrot, Cola 126, 126n40–41, 127, 128, 129, 185; Bewolkt bestaan 126, 127; Bokaal aan de lippen 128; Mijn zuster de negerin 126 Delft 5 Democratic Party (Curaçao) 127, 129, 130

Denucé, Jan 161 De deserteurs (Arion) xvi, xxi, 171–75, 184, 187 Díaz, Timoteo 100 Díaz–Caballero, Jesús 114 diglossia, in urban colonial communities 93, 95, 113 Djukas (maroons in Suriname) 79 Docendo Docemur 53, 56, 66 Dohm, Christian Wilhelm 55 Dominican Republic 131 Dorrestijn, Hans 115 Double Play (Arion) 128, 129, 130, 131, 147, 172, 174, 175, 186, 188 Drie, Alex de 85n47 Duby, Georges xxi Duo Festival (Bonaire) 131 Dutch Antilles xiii, xv, xvi, 110, 115, 122, 126, 133, 178 Dutch Brazil 5, 16, 22, 41, 50, 156, 158, 160, 180 Dutch East India Company 41 Dutch language 119, 126, 128, 136, 143, 187; as language of modernization 115

Dutch period (Brazil and Angola) xii, xvi, xx, 158, 160, 163, 180 Dutch West India Company xviii, 33 Dutch, in Angola 161, 164, 167 Ebeling–Koning, Blanche 33 Echteld, Liesbeth 121, 122, 123 Eckhout, Albert 3, 7n14, 19, 20n52 education xv, xxi, 35, 42, 52, 65, 66, 73, 93, 113, 121, 126, 135, 136, 138, 142, 143, 145, 147, 148, 158, 182, 183, 184, 191

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Index

Het eind van de kaart (Helman) 145 Eldorado, concept of 137, 143, 144, 189; legend of 144, 148, 189 Elmina (fortress) 33, 181, 187, 187n29 Emmer, Piet C. xv, xvi, xvii, 4 engenho 4 Enlightenment x, 34, 40, 47, 51, 65, 68, 69, 166, 181; Surinamese xviii España, José María 95, 97, 178 L’Espérance (plantation) 81 Essai historique sur la colonie de Surinam (Nassy) xviii, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, 63, 65, 66, 67, 87 ethnography 11, 42, 72, 73, 78, 79, 148, 189

Exquemelin, Alexandre 177 Fauckenbergh (Surinamese estate) 84 Fensohn, Carmen 123 Ferreira, Lídia do Camo 171 First-Time (Price) 72, 73, 81 Flanders 67, 166 Flemish presence in colonialism 10, 18, 54, 161, 164, 166 Fodeba, Keita 129 De foltering van Eldorado (Helman) 143, 144, 151 Franklin, Benjamin 174, 177 Freitas, Décio 70 French Guiana 52, 151 French Revolution 95, 97, 102 Freyre, Gilberto 32, 158 Friedrich Wilhelm (Elector of Brandenburg) 12, 12n35, 156, 157n5 García Márquez, Gabriel 96, 104, 105, 109, 110, 111; El general en su laberinto 96, 104–105, 110 Garvey, Marcus 147 Genoa 31 Gershwin, George 130 Ghent 54 Gilroy, Paul xvi, 22, 22n57 Glissant, Édouard 184, 186 A gloriosa família (Pepetela) 160, 164

Goa 162, 181 Godefrooy, Mrs 81, 84, 87 Golden Age, Dutch xviii; Spanish 67, 138

Golijath, C.B. 7, 16, 16n42 Goltzius, Hendrick 8 Gomarists 35, 36 Gomarus, Franciscus 35 González Batista, Carlos 178 Graeff, Jacob de 35 El gran dispensador (Trujillo) 96, 103 Grenada 131 Guadeloupe 126, 147, 150 Gual, Manuel 95, 97, 178 Guayana (Venezuelan interior) 99 Guda, Trudi 85, 85n47, 135 Guene (secret slave language) 116, 132, 183

guerrilla warfare 98, 101, 106, 109, 110 Guianas, the 51, 79, 144 Guillén, Nicolás 160 Guinea–Bissau 159, 160 Gullar, Ferreira 171 Guyana, Dutch 56, 140, 151, 155, 159, 185

Haarlem 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15n41, 16, 125

Haiti xix, 97, 98, 101, 147, 149, 159, 191; Haitian Revolution 58 Hals, Frans 21 Hanssen, Susanna Johanna 63 Hardoy, Jorge 30n5 Harmsen, Ton 7 Hartsinck, Jan Jacob 54, 56, 60 Harvard University 66 Heine, Heinrich 123 Heintze, Beatrix 164 Hellinga, Wytze 142 Helman, Albert xx, 89, 135, 136–46, 147, 148, 151, 155, 183, 185, 189; De foltering van Eldorado 143, 144, 151; De laaiende stilte 136, 138, 139, 140; De stille plantage 136, 137, 138, 139, 140; Het eind van de

218

THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º

(Helman, Albert) kaart 145; Hoofden van Oayapok 145; Verdwenen wereld 145; Zuid-Zuid-West 141, 145

Henriquez, May 128, 183n18 Henry (Joanna’s brother) 84, 84n45, 86 Herckmans, Elias 7, 43, 43n40, 44, 44n42, 45 Herkenhoff, Paulo 20 Herrera de Tordesillas, Antonio de 39, 145; Novus Orbis 39, 145 Herrera Luque, Francisco 96, 103, 104, 109, 111; Manuel Piar: Caudillo de dos colores 96, 103 Hobbema, Meindert 4 Hobsbawm, Eric 71 Holloway, Thomas 78 Hoofden van Oayapok (Helman) 145 Hooft, Pieter Cornelis 37 Hoyer, Willem H. 118n14 Huizinga, Johan xvii, xviii, 32 Hussowski, Mikolaj 148 Huygens, Constantijn 23, 37 hydraulic engineering 4, 12, 36, 163 See also water management iconography 5, 7, 76, 156, 157 illustrations, colonial, of New World 3, 5, 11, 18, 32, 78, 81, 82 See also Post, Stedman, Capricorne, Eckhout, Kessel Inquisition 67 intermarriage 65 irmandade (Brazilian slave brotherhood) 162, 165, 170; Brazilian-Angolan 167 Israel, Jonathan 8, 35n20, 49n1, 49, 50, 61n29

Ivens, Joris 138 Jamaica 149, 175 Jefferson, Thomas 174 Jesurun, Benjamin Abraham 123 Jewish Savannah (Joden Savannah) 51, 52, 64, 65, 66, 67 Jews, German, in Suriname 53

Jews, New World influence of xviii, 49– 68, 69, 93, 94, 118, 147, 148, 187, 188

Joanna (female slave in Suriname) 69, 71, 72, 78–85, 86, 87, 105 John Canoe festival 157n5 Johnny (Joanna’s) 81, 85 Joly Coeur (maroon chief) 81 Júdice, Nuno 171 Juliana, Elis 120 Juliet, Edsel 115 Julio Perrenal (Curaçaoan poets’ trio) 125

Kagan, Richard 18, 18n46 Kaplan, Yosef 50, 61, 64, 65, 67, 68 Kersten, Brother (Moravian missionary) 74, 89 Kessel, Jan van 181 The Kingdom of This World (Carpentier) 58

The Kiss of a Slave (Arion) xix, 132, 183 Knopfly, Ruy 171 Kolegio Erasmo 135, 183 Kom, Anton de 188; Wij slaven van Suriname 189 Krempel, León 4, 5, 11n30, 13, 13n36, 14, 15n41, 20, 20n51, 23n61, 156n2 La Guaira (Venezuela) 95, 96, 97, 179 De laaiende stilte (Helman) 136, 138, 139, 140 Latin America xiii, xiv, xix, xx, 31, 99, 107, 110, 111, 113, 155, 189, 191 De laatste vrijheid (Arion) 131, 132, 135, 147–50, 175 Ladurie, Le Roy xxi Lago, Pedro Corrêa de 4, 6, 12–15, 189 landscape xxi, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 20, 21, 22, 148, 149, 155; and Dutch painting 137; Caribbean 111; in Angola 163; in literature of Curaçao and Suriname 151; in writings of Arion 186; of Curaçao 127, 129, 150; of the Guianas 144

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219

Index

Latour, Bruno 6, 9 Lauffer, Pierre 125, 125n38, 126, 128 Lauffer, Pierre, Jr. 125, 125n38 Leerdam, John 115, 116 Leeuwen, Boeli van 96, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 179; Het teken van Jona 96, 105, 106, 107, 110 Leminski, Paulo 158; Catatau, um romance-idéia 158 Lenz, Rodolfo xi, 117, 118, 123 lettered city (concept of Ángel Rama) 31, 115, 155, 157, 190 The Lettered City (Rama) xx, 30, 113 Lettre Politico-Theologico-Morale sur les Juifs (Nassy) 67 Lichtveld, Albert (= Albert Helman) 136, 141, 142, 143 Lienhard, Martin 164, 165; O mar e o mato 165 Lier, Rudolf van 54, 70, 71, 80, 147 Lima 4, 18 Lisbon 31, 33, 50, 51, 147, 159, 160, 162; Africans in 161n18 Lombardi, John 101 Losada, Alejandro ix Lovejoy, Paul 184 Luanda xvi, xx, xxi, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 171, 180 Lucrecia (Joanna’s aunt) 84 Luft, Lya 171 Lula da Silva, Luiz Inacio 163 Luuanda (Vieira) 169 MacClellan, James 58, 65n41, 67 Mackandal 58 McLeod, Cynthia 62, 63n33 macumba 158, 162, 180 Macunaíma (Andrade) 157, 158, 180 Madeira 5, 50n3 Madrid 31 Malouet, Pierre Victor, baron 52 Mander, Karel van 9, 10, 21; Schilderboek 9 Manifesto de Cartagena (Bolívar) 98, 99

mantuanos (white colonial elite) 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 179 Manuel Piar: Caudillo de dos colores (Herrera Luque) 96, 103 manumission 60, 62n32, 63, 64, 70, 77, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87 O mar e o mato (Lienhard) 165 Marcgraf, Georg 7, 8, 41, 155 Marcus, George E. 43, 72 Mariño, General Santiago 98, 99, 100 Maroon Societies (Price) 72 maroons xix, 51, 56, 58, 63, 69, 70, 71, 72, 77, 78, 79, 79n29, 80, 81, 86, 88, 89, 94, 104, 137, 139, 149, 173, 174, 180, 181, 188, 189; modern culture 184, 187 See also quilombo, Saramaka maroons marriage 59, 62, 80, 87; interracial 65, 126, 166 marriage, Surinamese 70, 80, 82, 84, 87 marronage 93 See also maroons Martinique 58, 147, 149, 150, 172; music of 127 Marugg, Tip 96, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 116, 126, 179; De morgen loeit weer aan 96, 107, 108, 109, 116 Masur, Gerhard 101 Matos, Gregório de 55, 170, 181 Maturín (Venezuela) 98 Mauricius, Governor Jan Jacob 86 Maurits van Nassau, Johan: See under Nassau–Siegen, Johan Maurits van Mauritsstad–Recife xxi, 3–28, 38, 39, 49, 55 Mauro, Frédéric xxi medicine 67, 86, 87, 126 Meel, Peter 142n14 Meerkerk, Hannedea van Nederveen 16, 188n32

Melion, Walter 9 Mello, Evaldo Cabral de 14n39, 29 Mello, José Antônio Gonsalves de 32, 39n29, 160, 160n16, 188n34

220

THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º

Menkman, W.R. 119 Mensagem (Angolan literary journal) 159, 182 mercantilism xvi, xvii, xviii, xxii, 9, 13, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 43, 49, 50, 95, 119, 156, 163, 166, 168, 169, 171, 174, 180, 181, 188, 190 Mercier, Louis–Sébastian 172 Messiant, Christine 159 mestizos 19, 64 Mexico City 18 Meyer, Casten David 122 Mignolo, Walter 30 Mijn zuster de negerin (Debrot) 126 Miranda, Francisco de 97, 98 Mitchell, Thomas 78 Mittelholzer, Edgar 185 mocambos (slave shacks) 188 Modernismo (Brazilian) 157, 180 Montanus, Arias 41 Montejo, Esteban 79; Biografía de un cimarrón 79n31, 80n31 Montserrat 147 Moraña, Mabel xxn14 Moravian missionaries 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 76n24, 77, 78, 79, 85, 88, 89, 93 Moreau de Saint-Méry, Médéric 40, 58, 59, 60, 172, 172n37 De morgen loeit weer aan (Marugg) 96, 107, 108, 109, 116 Morro da Barriga (favela in Rio de Janeiro) 163, 168, 170 Morse, Richard ix, 30n5 Most, Mechtild 21n54 Mozambique 159 M P L A (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) 159, 160 mulattoes 59, 60, 64, 101, 104, 130, 141, 166, 167, 182; female 62, 63, 96, 102, 105, 109, 110, 126, 172; Jewish 61, 62, 64, 65; regarded as degenerate 166

Musinga (maroon chieftain) 73, 74

Mussa, Alberto xx, 162, 165, 167, 169, 170, 180, 181; O trono da rainha Jinga 162, 167 M V Bill 171 Naipaul, V.S. 187 Nariño, Antonio 95 Nassau, Prince Maurits van Oranje 4 Nassau–Siegen, Johan Maurits van 3, 7, 11, 12, 15, 15n42, 19, 20, 22, 23n60, 29, 33, 37, 38, 39, 45, 156 Nassy, David Isaac de Cohen xviii, 40, 51–67, 68, 69, 87, 172; Essai historique sur la colonie de Surinam xviii, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, 63, 65, 66, 67, 87; Lettre Político-TheologicoMorale sur les Juifs 67 Nassy, Isaac 51 Nassy, Samuel 56 Nation, Portuguese (Jewish, in Suriname) 49–52, 56, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 93, 188 National People’s Party (N V P , Curaçao) 124, 127, 129 National Synod of Dordtrecht 36 Nederveen Meerkerk, Hannedea van 16n42, 23, 23n61, 30n4 Netherlands Antilles xv, xvn3, xix Netherlands, Antillean migration to 115 Neto, Agostinho 160, 170 New Granada (= Colombia) 98, 101 Nobele Wilden (Arion) 135, 175 North Holland 4, 146 Northeast Brazil xviii, 3, 23, 29, 32, 70, 93

Notas y Letras (Curaçaoan literary weekly) 122 Novus Orbis (Herrera de Tordesillas) 39, 145 N V P (National People's Party, Curaçao) 124, 129, 130, 131, 142, 147, 148 Nzinga Mbandi (Angolan queen) 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 188

¸

Index

Olinda 14, 15, 18, 19, 38, 39, 40, 181 Oostveen, Margriet 115, 116 Orangenburg (Brandenburg) 12, 16, 17, 20, 21, 21n54 Orangestad xxi, 172, 173, 175, 177, 184 Oriente (Venezuelan province) 98, 101 Oroonoko (Behn) 79, 136, 186 Ostendorf, Christoph xii Otrabanda (Caracas, Venezuela) 96, 97, 103

Ouderkerk 65 Paine, Thomas 174 Palm, Edgar 123, 124, 125 Palm, Jules de 125 Palmares 70, 70n3, 94, 163, 165, 168, 188, 189 See also Zumbi Panama Canal 119 Panama City 117 Papiamentu ix, xi, xix, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 151, 174, 179, 182, 183, 184, 186, 188 Paramaribo xxi, 49, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 68, 69, 70, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 135, 136, 137, 141, 146, 155 pardos (free coloured) 97, 100, 101, 103, 104 Peace of Westphalia 9, 12n35 Pée, Willem 142 Pepetela (Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos) xx, 160–62, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 171, 180, 181; A gloriosa família 160, 164 Peres, Phyllis 169 Perrenal, Julio Cancionero Papiamento 125

Perl, Matthias 76, 93, 94, 183n18 Pernambuco 13, 39, 40, 51, 94, 181, 188 Peru 39, 42, 43 Perus, Françoise 113 Pétion, Alexandre 97, 102

221 Philadelphia xx, xxi, 58, 66, 67, 171–72, 177; in Arion’s De deserteurs 171 Phillips, Caryl 186, 187, 189; Strange Fruit 186; The Atlantic Sound 187 Piar, Francisco 103 Piar, Isabel Gómez 96, 97, 103, 109 Piar, Manuel xix, 93–102, 103, 104, 105, 109, 111, 114, 119, 178, 179; in Spanish-American fiction 103–11 picaresque novel tradition 103 Pichot, Samuel 59 Pinto, Tiago de Oliveira 157, 180 Piso, Wilhelm 8 plantation economy xviii, xix, 4, 57, 69, 79, 85, 86, 87, 94, 137 plantations xvii, 49, 60, 61, 87, 110, 126, 143, 149; and fugitive slaves 74; black-owned 62; maroon attacks on 73, 137; Surinamese, interest of Albert Helman in 136–40 Plessis, Salomon de 59 Plessis, Susanna de 59 Poesia negra de expressão portuguesa 159, 160 Pool, John de 98, 105, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 127, 132 port cities (or settlements) xvii, xvii, xix, xx, xxii, 95, 157, 169, 181, 190 port city societies, in South Atlantic xvii, xix, xx, xxii, 49, 95, 96, 99,, 157, 169, 178, 181, 187, 190 Portugal x, xvi, xvii, xx, 14, 15, 18, 29, 32, 33, 39, 42, 50, 52, 53, 54, 56, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 94, 102, 103, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 171, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 190, 191 Portuguese language, influence on creoles 93, 94, 132, 162, 182; in Palmares 94 Post, Frans xviii, xxi, 3–28, 11n29, 17n44, 22n56, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 71n6, 93, 155–57, 161, 188, 189, 190 Post, Pieter 14, 21, 22, 23, 23n60 postcolonialism xi, 60

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THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º

Potosí 42, 43 P R (Progress and Renewal party) 148 Prado Júnior, Caio 158 Pratt, Mary Louise 80 Price, Jacob 177, 178 Price, Richard 63, 63n34, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 79n31, 81, 85, 87, 88, 93, 171, 189; Alabi’s World 71, 72–78, 79n31; First-Time 72, 73, 81; Maroon Societies 72 Price, Sally 71, 82, 189 Princeton University 66, 172 Protestantism 17, 57, 103, 118, 164 Puerto Rico 131, 132 Quakerism 171, 172, 181 Quassi (Surinamese medicine-man) 86, 86n49, 87 Quevedo, Francisco de 44 quilombo (maroon settlements in Brazil) 70, 70n3, 163, 168, 170, 180, 182, 187, 189 Quintero Rivera, Ángel 130, 132 Rademaker, C.S.M. 41 Rama, Ángel ix, x, xx, 30, 30n5, 31, 40, 93, 95, 113, 114, 115, 155, 157, 158, 169, 190; The Lettered City (La ciudad letrada) ix, xx, 30, 113 R C C (Reform and Creole Culture party) 148

rebellions, slave 58, 97 Recife 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 14, 15, 15n42, 17, 19, 21, 25, 26, 32, 41, 42, 43, 45, 50, 155, 156, 158, 161, 163, 165, 166 Reel, Laurens 41 Reiss, Timothy 132, 189 Rembrandt 43n40, 137 Remedi, Gustavo 30n5, 114, 169 The Repeating Island (Benítez Rojo) xvii Rerum per octennium in Brasilia (Barlaeus) xviii, xx, 3, 5, 11, 22, 29, 34, 37, 42, 49, 70, 155, 156, 161 Ricardo, David 98

Ricardo, Mordechay 98 Riemer, Brother (Moravian missionary) 75, 76, 76n24, 77, 78, 85, 94, 137 Rio de Janeiro xx, xxi, xxii, 158, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 180, 181 Risério, Antônio 171 Rodney, Admiral Sir George 177 Röhrig–Assunção, Matthias xii, 93n1 Römer, Ernesto 122 Rooy, René de 125 Rosa, Noel 171 Rosalia, René V. 120, 124 Rutten, A.M.G. 122, 123 Ruysdael, Jacob van 4, 137 Said, Edward W. 151 Sala Catalá, José 18 sala culture (Curaçao) 122, 130–32 Salvador da Bahía 162, 167, 170, 171, 181

Samson, Elisabeth 62, 62n32, 63 Santiago de Chile 117, 117n14 São Paulo vii, xxi, 12, 13, 25, 30n5, 32, 157, 158, 180 São Tomé & Principe 159 Saramaka maroons 63, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 76n24, 77, 78, 79, 81, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 170, 179, 189 Saramakan (maroon creole language) 75, 76, 93, 94, 85, 139, 182 Savannah, Jewish (Paramaribo) 49, 51, 52, 64, 65, 66, 67 Schama, Simon 148, 149n29 Schilderboek (Karel van Mander) 9 Schmidt, Benjamin 29, 44n43 Schorsch, Jonathan 52, 60, 62, 62n32, 69, 69n1 Schouten, Hendrik 63 Senior, Haim 122 senzalas (slave barracoons) 188 Sephardim (Sephardic Jews) xviii, 49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 61, 62, 65, 67, 68, 69, 98, 179, 188; influence on creole languages 94

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223

Index

Seville 31 Seymour, A.J. 185 Shakespeare, William 145 Sillie, Natividad 118 Silva, Leonardo Dantas 5n7, 22, 39n29 slave trade ix, xvi, xvii, xix, 4, 32, 33, 34, 42, 45, 82, 103, 157, 162, 171, 174, 177, 178, 179, 180, 184, 188, 189, 190, 191; Dutch, reparations for xv; in Angola 164 slavery ix, xvi, xix, xx, xxii, 4, 17, 20, 21, 21n56, 32, 33, 34, 42, 45, 52, 54, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 62n32, 64, 69, 74, 76n24, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 88, 93, 95, 97, 101, 103, 105, 107, 116, 120, 121, 132, 136, 137, 138, 141, 142, 147, 156, 157, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 184, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191; and violence 60 slaves, female 59, 63, 69, 71, 87, 139, 173; escaped/runaway 70, 74 See also maroons slaves, uprisings 178 See also Mackandal, Palmares, Zumbi Smith, Norval 94 Society of Suriname (Amsterdam) 63 Sommelsdyck, Governor Cornelis van Aerssen van 56, 136 Soublette, General Carlos 100 South Atlantic trade ix, x, xvii, xviii, xx, xxi, 29, 33, 151, 155, 156, 157, 163, 166, 168, 169, 179, 181, 184, 185, 190 Spain xix, xx, 18, 29, 30, 35, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 52, 54, 67, 95, 97, 98, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 109, 110, 111, 116, 117, 123, 124, 126, 132, 138, 162, 164, 178

Spanish language 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 121, 123, 136 Spillebout, Lodewijk 41n37, 42 Spitta, Silvia 113, 114

Sranan xix, 75, 76, 84, 87, 93, 131, 136, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 146, 147, 151, 182, 183, 183n18; fostering of, by Albert Helman 141–46 St.-Domingue 40, 57, 58, 65n41, 67, 102 St. Eustatius xix, xx, 84, 84n45, 172, 173, 174, 177 St. Kitts 172, 173, 174, 186 St. Lucas guild 7, 21 Stedman, John Gabriel 54, 71, 72, 76n24, 78–85, 76n24, 79n29, 86, 87, 105, 137 Stemmen uit Afrika (Arion) 129 Stevin, Simon 4 De stille plantage (Helman) 136, 137, 138, 139, 140 De Stoep (Curaçaoan literary magazine) 125, 126, 127 Stolkert, Frederik Cornelis 59 Strange Fruit (Phillips) 186 Striep, Margareta van 59 sugar, as plantation crop 4, 38, 40, 45, 51, 55, 57, 79, 81, 124, 138, 147, 149 Suriname ix, xvi, xviii, xix, xxi, 21n56, 40, 49–67, 69, 70, 70n3, 71, 72, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 89, 94, 107, 120, 131, 135, 136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 170, 172, 174, 179, 182, 183, 186, 189; and linguistic creolization 94 Surinamese marriage: See under marriage, Surinamese Tachtigers 137 tambú (popular Curaçaoan musical form) 116–17, 120, 124–25, 127, 129, 132, 189

Teenstra, Maarten Douwes 54 Het teken van Jona (van Leeuwen) 96, 105, 106, 107, 110 Texel 42, 45 The Hague 10, 14, 16, 22, 23n60, 29, 37, 126, 136 Thielemann, Werner xii

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THE ‘AIR OF LIBERTY’ IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC º

Tobago 138 Torres–Saillant, Silvio xii, 63n33, 147, 185

transculturation 113, 114 O trato dos viventes (Alencastro) ix, xxi, 32, 162, 164, 167, 181 Treaty of Münster 10, 29 Trefossa 146; Troki 146 Trinidad 98, 175 Troki (Trefossa) 146 O trono da rainha Jinga (Mussa) 162, 167

Trotman, David 184 Trujillo, Manuel 96, 103, 109, 111; El gran dispensador 96, 103 Tula slave revolt 178 Tulpenburg (plantation) 52, 58 tumba (Curaçaoan musical form in Papiamentu) 115, 116, 117, 124, 125, 126, 127, 132, 133, 189 Udemans, Godfried 164 Valdivia 42, 43, 45 Valkenburg, Dirk 21n56 Velho, Domingos Jorge 70, 163 Veloso, Caetano 171 Venezuela xviii, xix, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 103, 108, 110, 111, 119, 122, 131, 144, 151, 178, 179; slave revolts in 95 Verdwenen wereld (Helman) 145 Vienna 56 Vieira, José Luandino 169; Luuanda 169

Vila, Martinho da 171 Villa Lobos, Heitor 130 Vingboons, Johannes 7, 7n14, 15n42, 16 Voltaire 79

Voorhoeve, Jan 142, 142n14, 143, 143n16, 146 Vossius, Gerardus 34, 35, 41, 41n36 Vrijburg (palace) 11, 12, 17, 158 Wagner, Zacharias 7n14, 30n4 Walcott, Derek 186 Washington, George 174 water management 4, 5, 9, 12, 16, 31, 32n10, 145, 162 See also hydraulic engineering Weber, Max 130 Week-end en Guatemala (Asturias) 173 Wenders, Wim 124 West India Company 3, 14, 29, 33, 43, 155, 174 Whitehead, Peter J.P., & Martin Boeseman 3, 4, 5, 7n14, 11, 11n29, 19, 41, 43n40, 189 W I C (Dutch West India Company) 50, 51

Wichers, Jan Gerhard 52, 66 Wij slaven van Suriname (Anton de Kom) 189 Wild Coast (Dutch Guiana) xviii, 70 Willemstad xxi, 96, 106, 107, 111, 126, 129

Wolf, Tim de 125 Worp, Jan Adolf 39 Woude, Sape van der 35 Wyngaerde, Anton van den 18n46 Zandvliet, Kees 16, 155 Zischler, Hanns 6 Zuid-Zuid-West (Helman) 141, 145 Zumbi (legendary rebel) 163, 165, 166, 171, 188 See also Palmares