Saturday marks 150 years since slavery was definitively abolished by the Netherlands. A special but also sad story from the slavery past in which Brabant was involved is that of Johannes Pauli. As a slave in Suriname he still had shackles on and later in life he sometimes had to put those shackles on others. Because he became a constable in Moergestel and Hilvarenbeek. This wonderful story caught the attention of filmmaker Xavier van Delft and he made an animation film about it.
“A terrible story,” says Van Delft about Pauli’s life. “But it is a story that needs to be told.” Pauli worked on a plantation in Suriname and was taken to the Netherlands by the owner’s son. Because slavery was not common in our country, Pauli became a free man. But that was relative. He entered the service of the Tilburg notary Bles as a servant and still had to provide a master.
Through notary Bles, Pauli got work as a constable in Moergestel and later Hilvarenbeek. Van Delft: “Just imagine. Even now, the number of people of non-European origin in a village like Hilvarenbeek is not very large. But then he was unique. And he got his job through a wealthy notary. So people were also jealous.”
“Eventually he was knocked to the ground.”
Pauli had to ensure authority: that there was no stealing and that people paid their taxes. Van Delft: “If people did something wrong, he handcuffed them. But he had experienced that himself. That’s raw.”
An incident has been kept in the archives. Walking through the center of Hilvarenbeek, Van Delft tells about it: “It must have happened somewhere in one of the pubs around the Vrijthof. There was a party, there was a fight and he had to solve it. He jumped in between, but he was eventually knocked to the ground himself, as a constable.”
Cindy de Koning made a podcast for Omroep Brabant about the traces of slavery in our province. Of course she also discusses Pauli’s story.
How would Pauli have experienced it all? This is known: he was baptized, received an official name, married a Dutch woman and had children. But was he also happy? We do not know. “Everything has been recorded by the white people,” explains De Koning. “The Dutch were very good at writing everything down, everything has been preserved. But the enslaved people themselves could hardly ever read or write. So you have to fill that in part.”
But Pauli did not talk positively about it in his time. De Koning “You can’t trust those Moors, that’s how they talked about it.”
“His descendants have had a miserable life.”
Three of Pauli’s children also became constables: in Hilvarenbeek, Oisterwijk and Udenhout. On paper it sounds nice. But appearances are deceiving. De Koning: “They were children of a color, they were never really accepted and became beggars. His descendants have had a miserable life.” Van Delft: “Even his great-grandchild still lived in a sort of exile, on the edge of Hilvarenbeek.”
De Koning tells twenty stories from Brabant’s slavery past in the podcast series ‘Black and White Past’. From an enslaved child who ends up in a castle here to a former governor of Suriname who went to live in Breda. And so is the story of Johannes Pauli.
The podcast ‘Black and White Past’ can be listened to in every podcast app. You can see the animation film by Xavier van Delft below.
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