A Black African Child Slave in the Seventeenth Century | Clues from Art History

Copyright AndAnotherThing2 2009

Before reading this article in full, please take a long hard look at the painting below.  This is a scene from the seventeenth century.  Gaze into the eyes of the person at its centre – into the eyes of the child.  He is the subject of this article and the first article in the seriesHistory, Truth and Reconciliation. You might ask: what was a child from Africa doing there and then in a northern European landscape?  This essay seeks to answer this and related questions as no other source in the English language has bothered to.  Until now, essays and learned writing about the man who painted the child, one Aelbert Cuyp, have been limited to "our debt to the artist for his advancement of landscape painting in the seventeenth century" and his "treatment of skies". All fail to mention this child - the central figure depicted in this work. It seems, because nothing has been written about him, that the child has been forgotten, overlooked, ignored and presumed unimportant.  This is wrong and this article aims to right that wrong.History, Truth and Reconciliation | Black African Slave Children We do not know this child’s name – it was not recorded.  How did he get there and what happened to him before and after he posed for this painting?  We will never be able to answer these questions completely but that's not sufficient reason to continue ignoring him.  Enough evidence exists to paint another picture, one illustrating the most likely answers.  We know, for instance, why he was dressed in that particular manner.  Also, primary and secondary sources allow us to piece together, at least, the outline of his life.  Together these build a better memorial to his existence.

• His Life as a Fashion Accessory

Such children were slaves and fashion accessories.  The opulence of this child’s attire made from velvets, satins and silks, embroidered and embellished, spoke of the success of his owners.   The child’s unusual origins indicated his owners’ wealth, worldliness and resourcefulness.  The child was a status symbol. So, what was this child doing there in this painting by Aelbert Cuyp?  He was dressed like that and posed in that manner to fulfill a commission from a wealthy family.  The painting when hung would illustrate the child's owner family’s high social position.  He was not there by choice and he had no other alternative but to collaborate with the family who owned him, the artist who painted him and, subsequently to some extent, us who have viewed him ever since.

• His Tenure as a Status Symbol

The child (and others like him) was treated more like a pet, according to various secondary sources.  None however point out the semi-permanent roles of these children.  The fact is/was that, whereas “a dog is for life”, these children held their positions only up until they grew out of their fine costumes or stopped looking so cute.  What happened to the child in Cuyp’s painting when he outgrew his fine clothes or developed the stubble of a young man?  We’ll look at that below.  Firstly, let’s consider how he got from Africa to northern Europe.

• His Experience as the Ship Captain’s Bonus

This child was undoubtedly either captured by slavers or given to them in exchange for goods nowhere else available – guns, ammunitions, pots, pans and alcohol.  Records show that only a very small minority of the 15 million slaves, transported from Africa over the 300 years from the mid-seventeenth century, were children.  Records also show that these children were often given to the slave ship’s captain as a bonus. 

• His Treatment in Transit as Cargo

We do not know if any slaves (women and children for instance) were afforded better or worse treatment than others but – put yourself in the place of the Dutch slave ship captain who owned this or any other Black African Slave child by way of a bonus – you would be mad not to protect your investment.  Sentimentality and decency apart (because we cannot prove either existed) there would be no other reason to treat this or any other Black child any better than the adults.  Let’s be honest:  Slaves on ships were seen as cargo and rendered subhuman in the process. Most of your consideration as ship’s captain would have been to how to pack the slaves in economically (the more the better) and increase the value of the next leg of your “triangular” trading mission.  Perhaps after packing the ship with adults – selected to be slaves on sugar plantations in the Americas – you found there was “room for another little one in here”.  It was all about profit.  This could explain the tiny proportion of children transported and does so much better than the ridiculous theory born of no evidence, namely “to keep families together”.

• His Life Before Enslavement

While this Black African Child worked and played somewhere in the vast continent of Africa, the Dutch trading ship, upon which he would eventually sail, was leaving Amsterdam.  What was he doing up until then?  It is still a vestige of History written by and for ruling elites to assume that the child came from savagery (his life in Africa) to civilisation (as depicted in the painting).  Thankfully modern and better informed perspectives are discrediting such vestiges.  Nowadays it is accepted that the culture in Africa was perhaps different but as highly evolved in a parallel development with that of Europe: witness the libraries of Timbuktu only recently discovered by Western Historians and now being written into mainstream history.  Whatever he was doing it was a world apart from how Cuyp painted him.

• Some Comparison of Dutch and English Ships involved in the “Triangular Trade”

On the first leg of its trading mission the ship’s cargo was the currency it needed to procure slaves: Guineas (the gold currency specially invented for slavers) and the “must have” goods (for exchange with elites or would be elites willing to exchange fellow Africans to the European traders for them).  Leaving Amsterdam it sailed to the Guinea Coast where it dropped anchor, one of several times, and started to “collect” its ship full of slaves for profit. Unlike English trader ships, which picked up full cargoes from fortresses already full of enslaved Africans, the Dutch ships were more likely to spend up to six months anchored off various sections of the Guinea Coast (also known as the Slave Coast) while they collected sufficient slaves from various sources to make their mission viable.  This is not written to uphold the English system in any way but it should be realised that the experience of many Dutch slaves was even worse than that of their English slave peers.  Dutch slaves also (generally) had to be shipped further to be sold to plantation owners in more southern American countries, while the English sold slaves to owners in the Caribbean and Northern America.  These differences apart the “Triangular Trade” of the Dutch and English ran on the same principles: First leg: Both would embark from their home ports laden with goods and/or currency to exchange for or buy slaves on the Guinea Coast of Africa.  Second leg: Their slaves would be shipped to plantations and sold/exchanged for goods such as sugar and rum.  Third leg: Both would return to their home ports where their goods would be sold and the profit from their triangular mission calculated and perhaps reinvested into the next.

• His Two Voyages

Perhaps this Black African child slave was relatively lucky and not shackled and stored for six months before his ship’s second leg (his first) commenced. Maybe he was there, dependent on his captors, dehydrated in the dark, hot, faeces festoon, breezeless below deck storage quarters, only briefly.  His experience would have been more or less that of the adult slaves he travelled with on their voyage to plantation enslavement which was the first of his voyage. Hopefully the voyage was made swift with adequate winds as lulls in wind led to further deprivations for the below deck cargo. The adults were sold into slavery at auctions to plantation owners in the main.  He may or may not have witnessed that.  He may or may not have left the ship and felt earth beneath his feet before his second voyage. The child was not sold here. Where would the little boy have been quartered when the new and final cargo was brought onboard?  Perhaps he was shackled among the rum, sugar and tobacco brought on board once the human excrement had been washed away. His second sea journey took him to Amsterdam and some time after, the Captain’s Bonus, was sold to the household – the animals of which are seen alongside him in the painting by Cuyp.   Quite possibly he had some fun here if he ever came to terms with what happened to him.  As we know from modern experience, people do treat their status symbols with respect and care for their pets as if they were children - but not always.

• His Life After Posing for Cuyp

Other than his image, no records exist about the life of this child from Africa.  Did he die while he still fitted into his costume?  Or did he outgrow it and in so doing his role as status symbol, pet and fashion accessory?  Black people who achieved citizenship after slavery in these times are usually written about at this time so we should discount that happy ending.  Of the 15 million black slaves taken from Africa over 300 years none seem ever to have gone home.  If this Black child survived it would have been as a house-servant or after he had outgrown his costume he’d have joined other Black slaves on a plantation and died there.

• Endnotes

Without time-travel History will never give us the whole truth and nothing but the truth but History’s texts and remnants will supply some truth or clues to it. In so doing History provides the basis of some reconciliation.  Life in the light of History, its truth and reconciliation, is better than without (witness South Africa and Northern Ireland).  This offers current and would-be Historians more reason to practice their craft and, with the rise of the internet and sites such as Xomba, more means to distribute their works. The painting referred to in this article is in the Royal Collection.  It was bought by George IV.    For details about visiting the Royal Galleries CLICK HERE   Another painting by Cuyp, depicting a different Black slave child – who shares this article’s memorial, is in the permanent collection of The Barber Institute of Fine Art, Egbaston, Birmingham, England.  (Entrance to the Barber is free).  For Details CLICK HERE The International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, England holds many original documents pertaining to the city’s past as a major embarkation point for the “Triangular Trade”.  Visit their site to access records and original documents CLICK HERE To comment on this article, add to it, discuss any aspect or write and publish an article with opposing views JOIN XOMBA HERE FREE