Captain and slave trader Jan Menkenveld bought and sold more than 2000 people into slavery. John Gabriel Stedman fought against ‘maroons’ in Suriname. These victims of slavery were able to flee and turned against the plantation owners. He wrote a book about it that became a worldwide bestseller. Cindy de Koning visits Bergen op Zoom for the third episode of the Omroep Brabant podcast ‘Black and white past’.
Bergen op Zoom was an internationally important port city and a garrison town. There was a lot of trade in colonial goods.
Jan Menkenveld was a captain and slave trader. He bought, transported and sold more than 2000 men, women and children from Africa to the Caribbean in seven voyages. After his discharge, he bought a coffee house and lodging house in Bergen op Zoom on the Grote Markt and became an innkeeper.
Who that man was and what life was like during those voyages, tells maritime historian Willem van Rooij. “People lay next to each other in the hold, two on top of each other. The men were chained hand and foot. They stayed on the ship for between six and twelve months. Sixteen hours a day below deck in extremely polluting conditions.”
‘Annoying little man’
The story of John Gabriel Stedman from Bergen op Zoom is also featured. That’s an army captain who, in his younger years, had a ‘nasty little guy‘, says researcher Rochus van den Berg. Stedman went to Suriname to fight the maroons there. These were enslaved people who had fled and attacked the plantation owners.
He chronicled this journey in a book that eventually became a worldwide bestseller. It shows, among other things, what kind of punishments the enslaved had to endure. And so it opened the readers’ eyes about what was happening in the colonies.
In the City Archives of Breda Cindy makes a special find: a first edition of the book ‘Story of a five-year expedition against the rebellious negroes of Suriname’ from 1796.
‘A bizarre life’
The story of Quaco is also passed. He was still a child when he was robbed in Africa and ended up in Suriname as ‘futeboi’, an errand boy. There it was loaned to army officer John Gabriel Stedman who took it with him on his expeditions. Stedman bought the boy and went back to our country with him in 1777.
Quaco is officially declared free in Bergen op Zoom and goes to school here and is raised as a Christian, under a new name Willem Stedman. “In this way he remained forever connected to his former owner,” says historical researcher Ineke Mok. Eventually he ends up at Kasteel Asten, among other things. “A bizarre life, in which he must have been very lonely.”
Six part series
This year we commemorate and celebrate the abolition of slavery on July 1, 1863. It then took another ten years before the enslaved were truly free. In the new podcast Black and White Past, twenty disconcerting stories unfold in six parts. Stories of people who lived and live in Breda, Bergen op Zoom, Tilburg and Helmond.
Cindy de Koning visits places where people lived, delves into archives and learns more about the Brabant of that time and also about the people in question. She visits special places and takes the listener along in her quest and discoveries. All this is framed with an insight into Brabant’s colonial past. Something that more and more cities are now researching or want to do.
Every Wednesday you will find a new episode of the Black and White Past podcast in your favorite podcast app.