Afrika – Toen te zien

Ca. 1875 – 1890 Francis W. Joaque

*Francis W. Joaque,´Sippie of Gabon´, ´zusjes uit Gabon´, ca. 1870. Collectie Nederlands Fotomuseum, inv.nr. WMR-901972.*

De collectie van het Nederlands Fotomuseum omvat vier werken van Francis Wilberforce Joaque (ca. 1845 – 1893). Op drie van deze werken zijn één of meerdere vrouwen uit Gabon geportretteerd. Joaque kwam ter wereld in Sierra Leone en behoort tot de eerste generatie Afrikaanse fotografen. Tot op heden worden rond de tweehonderd foto’s met aan Joaque toegeschreven, mogelijk bevinden zich reproducties in Nederlandse collecties.

Joaque was actief in de periode dat in West-Afrika de transitie plaatsvond van de trans-Atlantische slavenhandel naar de zogeheten legitieme (ruil)handel: Afrikaanse grondstoffen werden geëxporteerd naar het industrialiserende Europa. Gelijktijdig intensiveerde de Europese kolonisatie van het continent, ook bekend als de ‘wedloop om Afrika’. Beide ontwikkelingen zijn vastgelegd in het werk van Joaque.

*Anoniem, portret van Francis W. Joaque, fotograaf in Fernando Po, ca. 1865. Collectie Biblioteca Nacional de España – via Europeana.*

Jörg Schneider, verbonden aan de universiteit van Basel, is gespecialiseerd in Afrikaanse fotografie en onderzocht de levensloop en het oeuvre van Joaque. Hij bezocht musea, bibliotheken en archieven op verschillende continenten die werk bewaren van Joaque. Scheinder spreekt van een ‘sterk gefragmenteerd en slecht gedocumenteerd archief’; uiteenlopende ‘archivale culturen’ bepalen of er toegang wordt verkregen tot fotocollecties, of het maken van digitale kopieën is toegestaan en met welke kosten dit gepaard gaat.¹

Francis W. Joaque, foto gemaakt tijdens de tweede expeditie van Savorgnan de Brazza in Gabon, (1880). Collectie Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, inv.nr. RV-A45-21. Via Gallica is het album met vijf foto’s te bekijken, waar Savorgnan de Brazza met de hand de namen van de afgebeelde Afrikanen heeft toegevoegd. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b7702008h

Schneider slaagde er in verschillende opdrachtgevers in kaart te brengen, waaronder katholieke missionarissen, koloniale overheden en handelshuizen. Zo werkte de fotograaf tien jaar samen met Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (1852-1905), die tussen 1875-1885 drie expedities leidde in Gabon en Congo.²

Joaque’s werkterrein bestreek naast Sierra Leone, ook het eiland Biako (destijds Fernando Po geheten) en Gabon – koloniën van respectievelijk Groot-Brittannië, Spanje en Frankrijk. In de Gabonese hoofdstad Libreville vervaardigde Joaque onder meer een album waarin factorijen van Europese handelshuizen als Hatton and Cookson en Wöhrmann zijn vastgelegd.³

*Francis W. Joaque, groepsportret van zes Mpongwe mannen (ca. 1870). Collectie Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen,inv.nr. RV-A45-119.*

Twee groepsportretten van vier Mpongwe vrouwen en van zes Mpongwe mannen treffen Schneider door Joaque’s spel met symmetrie. Hij wijst op de lijnen en hoeken die de zes mannen creëren door hun geweren in eenzelfde hoek te houden en de kleine afwijkingen van zuivere symmetrie die Joaque zich permitteerde. De compositie met de mannen is, volgens Schneider, hoogstwaarschijnlijk in de vroege jaren 1870 gemaakt in opdracht van de Duitse handelsmaatschappij Wöhrmann.⁴

De beide werken (RV-A45-122 en RV-A45-119) zijn opgenomen in de collectie van het Museum Volkenkunde, onderdeel van het Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen (NMvW). In de digitale catalogus van het NMvW ontbreekt de naam van Joaque. Schneider stelde vast dat Joaque, naar Europees gebruik, de achterzijde van zijn foto’s voorzag van een stempel met het logo van zijn studio. ⁵ Mogelijk zijn de foto’s in de collectie van het NMvW reproducties, waarbij het logo ontbreekt.

Elite

*Francis W. Joaque, Twee vrouwen, ‘Civilized Gabon’, (ca. 1879-1881). Collectie Nederlands Fotomuseum, inv.nr. WMR-901974.*

Een van de werken in het Nederlands Fotomuseum is Joaque’s portret van twee vrouwen in hooggesloten kledij. Ze dragen beiden een volumineuze japon met ruches, sierknopen, strikken en een lange sleep. De kledingkeuze kan bezien worden in het kader van overgang van de trans-Atlantische slavenhandel naar legitieme handel.
De twee vrouwen behoorden tot de Mpongwe, die langs de kust van Gabon een elite vormden. Zij wisten deze status te verwerven door een monopolie op handelsrelaties met de Europeanen, die teruggingen tot de zeventiende eeuw. Aanvankelijk bedreigde de beëindiging van de trans-Atlantische slavenhandel de welvaart en autonomie van de Mpongwe. In de veranderende economische, sociale en religieuze structuur wisten zij evenwel hun positie veilig te stellen. Vanaf de jaren 1840 richtten Amerikaanse zendelingen en Franse missionarissen in Gabon een educatief stelsel in, waarin mannen uit de gemeenschap vaardigheden opdeden die hen in staat stelden in dienst te treden van het Franse koloniale bestuur of de Britse en Duitse handelsondernemingen.⁶

Voor de missie stond een Europese kleedstijl gelijk aan ‘beschaving’ en volgens Rich stonden Mpongwe vrouwen vanaf de jaren 1860 bekend om hun handgemaakte jurken die niet onderdeden voor de mode van Londen en Parijs. Op basis van foto’s, waaronder die van Joaque, concludeert Rich dat Afrikaanse statussymbolen van belang bleven. Een voorbeeld is de traditionele haardracht, de scheiding in het midden was voorbehouden aan gehuwde vrouwen. De Mpongwe vrouwen combineerden zo strategisch Europese en Afrikaanse elementen om hun hoge sociale status en identiteit als toegewijde Christenen uit te dragen.⁷

Souvenir

*Francis W. Joaque, Portret van een Mpongwe vrouw in Libreville (ca. 1875-1882), Collectie Nederlands Fotomuseum, inv.nr. WMR-901973.*

Mpongwe vrouwen die niet tot de elite behoorden, droegen vanaf de jaren 1840 eveneens Europees textiel. Hun lichaam werd van de enkels tot de oksels bedekt door een enkele lap die om het lichaam werd gedrapeerd.⁸ Deze kledingstijl is te zien op een serie van ongeveer vijftig cartes de visite, foto´s op klein formaat. Joaque maakte de serie in Libreville, naar schatting van Schneider in de periode 1875-1882.

In de stad werkten Gabonese mannen als tolken, beambten, arbeiders en ambachtslieden, bovendien ontstond de mogelijkheid voor vrouwen om in hun onderhoud te voorzien als verpleegsters, wasvrouwen, huishoudsters, winkeleigenaren, etc. In Libreville ontstonden vriendschappen en relaties met arbeiders uit andere delen van Afrika, Gabonezen, Europeanen en Amerikanen. Schneider schrijft dat de Mpongwe vrouwen zich lieten fotograferen en hun portret als souvenir schonken aan kennissen, vrienden en geliefden wanneer zij de stad verlieten.⁹

Een luchtfoto van golven die tegen een kust slaan. — Francis W. Joaque, Portret van een Mpongwe vrouw (ca. 1875-1882), Collectie Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, inv.nr. RV-A45-114

Een luchtfoto van een veld. Een weg loopt door de rechterbovenhoek. — Francis W. Joaque, Portret van een Mpongwe vrouw (ca. 1875-1882), Collectie Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, inv.nr. RV-A45-114

Op Joaque’s carte de visite in de collectie van het Nederlands Fotomuseum is de vrouw is gevat in een ovaalvormig venster dat contrasteert met het rechthoekige kader. Op de achtergrond loopt een horizontale lijn, enigszins lijkend op de sierlijst van een muur. Dezelfde elementen keren terug in zeven portretten in de collectie van het NMvW.¹⁰

Schneider concludeert dat de grote kracht van Joaque lag in portretfotografie. Hij beklemtoont daarbij dat naast koloniale opdrachtgevers als overheden en handelshuizen, Joaque een heterogene Afrikaanse clientèle bediende. Naast Mpongwe vrouwen namen lokale leiders, arbeidsmigranten uit West-Afrika en handelaren plaats voor zijn lens. Nader onderzoek naar foto’s uit uit Sierra Leone, Fernando Po en Gabon in museumcollecties kan wellicht leiden tot een toevoeging aan de werken die van Joaque bekend zijn.

1885 Goddefroy’s Angolese collection

L.R. Werner, Ethnological collection of L.J. Goddefroy. Black and white photograph on cardboard. Collection Het Zuid-Afrikahuis, Amsterdam, id.nr 903. https://collecties.zuidafrikahuis.nl/detail.php?nav_id=2-1&index=4&imgid=412468&id=350988

Material description

Black and white photograph on cardboard of a seated Louis Joseph Goddefroy (1843-1921) surrounded by objects he collected in Angola, between September 1884 – June 1885. The photograph was made by Louis Robert Werner (1834-1896) after Goddefroy’s return to the Netherlands, between September and December 1885. Parts of the collection were auctioned in 1887 and 1902. The name of auctioneer Frederik Muller & Cie. is printed on the lower right corner of the cardboard. The firm added the French caption in 1902: ‘Collection ethnologique réunie par m. L.J. Goddefroy à Angola (Afrique) pendant l’expédition scientifique ayant eu pour chef feu m. Daniël Veth.’ (Ethnological collection brought together by mister L.J. Goddefroy in Angola (Africa), during the scientific expedition led by mister Daniël Veth).

Power figure

In 1882 the Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap (Royal Dutch Geographical Society) allotted funds for the first Dutch scientific expedition to Africa. Two years later, civil engineer Daniël Veth (1850-1885) received permission to explore Angola, more specifically the surroundings of southern cities like Benguella and Quillenges (Wentholt 2004). Veth would concentrate on geological research, two other members were to collect: P. Van der Kellen gathered natural specimens, and L.J Goddefroy accumulated man-made objects such as religious carvings, amulets, weapons, and utensils for everyday use (Veth and Snelleman 1887: 124-125). In September 1885 Goddefroy returned to the Netherlands with an estimated 1300 objects (De locomotief 1885).

One of the aims of the expedition was to visit the so-called Trekboeren in the remote settlement Humpata. These were white South Africans of Dutch and German descent who had left the Transvaal in 1874 to escape British rule. The expedition remained six weeks in the settlement, an opportunity for Goddefroy to expand his collection with axes, maces, and arrows (De Locomotief 1885). In the photograph, these can be seen hanging against the wall behind Goddefroy.

Een oude potlood tekening van Don Quixote en Sancho Panza zittend op hun paarden, door Wilhelm Marstrand. — Maternity figure nkisi phemba, 19th century Cabinda (Angola), collected by L.J. Goddefroy, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, RV-1354-47.

The most precious items Goddefroy acquired are grouped in the centre of the photograph. Immediately next to his left elbow, there are two conical dark figures, ornamented with white seashells. According to the Dutchman, these were ‘idols’ made of woven plant fiber and were believed to enhance female fertility. He traded these on his way from Benguela to Humpata, for cotton, beads, a dagger, bracelets, and several mirrors (Veth and Snelleman 1887: 355, 352).
In between the two dark figures sits, elevated on a stool, a wooden statue we now know as a nkisi phemba : a kneeling maternity figure (RV-1354-47) with a child in her lap and another child on her shoulder. Another striking nkisi (‘power figure’) is standing near Goddefroy’s knee( RV-1354-46). A white male with a cocked hat and frack coat, presumably modeled after a European sea captain.

Barter

Goddefroy in a maxilla or hammock. He was carried by serviçais of the Nederlandsche Handelsvennootschap. Source: Plate IV, P.J. Veth & Joh. F. Snelleman, Daniël Veth’s reizen in Angola (Haarlem 1887).

The Dutch expedition coincided with the Conference of Berlin (November 1884 – February 1885), where the African continent was divided between European nations. Although the Netherlands did not lay claim to an African colony, the country did have considerable commercial interests along the west coast of Africa. From 1857 onwards, the Afrikaansche Handels Vereeniging (African Trading Company) and its successor Nieuwe Afrikaansche Handels-Vennootschap (NAHV) (New African Trading Association), had opened trading posts along the coastline of Congo and Angola. In the course of the 1880s, the NAHV came to dominate the Congo trade.
The business of the NAHV was barter trade: European textiles, weapons, and spirits were exchanged for African produce, notably palm oil, gum, copal, and ivory (Wesseling 1981: 496).
The NAHV provided practical support for Veth and his two associates. They could use the vessels of the company and stay at several trading posts, known as ‘factories’. During a sojourn of almost eight weeks in the main NAHV-factory in the port Banana, Goddefroy bartered European textiles, beads, red coral, and mirrors for an array of ethnographic objects (Veth and Snelleman 1887: 120, 151).

Punitive expedition

To journalists visiting the collection in his home in Amsterdam, Goddefroy explained the power figures were gifts from Portuguese and Dutch employees of the NAHV, who had seized them during punitive expeditions to rebellious villages (De Locomotief 1885) In the newspaper report, Goddefroy did not mention the names of the villages where the NAHV carried out the punishment.

Wijs (2014) identified the villages as Futila and M’Buco-M’Bule in Cabinda, north of the NAHV head factory in Banana. Representatives of the NAHV, together with the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Zeemacht (Royal Dutch Navy) arrived in Futila on February 10, 1885. The Dutch indicated a villager was suspected of a plot to kill the Portuguese head agent of the NAHV in Cabinda. Although this suspicion dated from several years earlier, the NAHV demanded an immediate fine of 300 gallons of palm oil and rendition of the suspect. As villagers couldn’t meet these demands, their houses were set on fire two days after the arrival of the NAHV and Dutch navy (Wijs 2014: 16-17).
In her research, Wijs has brought to light other objects in Dutch ethnological museums that were seized from the houses in Futila (Wijs 2014: 12-13). Since Goddefroy’s reference to a punitive expedition is limited to a fleeting remark made to a journalist, it cannot be ascertained with certainty that he acquired the power figures from NAHV-staff who were involved in the penal actions.

Crock with an imprint of the Afrikaansche Handels Vereeniging (AHV). These crocks were used to transport jenever or Dutch gin to Congo and palm oil to The Netherlands. Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, RV-5891-1.

Hundreds of Goddefroy’s objects were sold to the foremost ethnographic institutions of the Netherlands: Artis Natura Magistra in Amsterdam and the Rijks Ethnologisch Museum in Leiden. Initially, he kept the most precious items in his private collection. However, a dire lack of resources compelled him to auction these in 1887. The two power figures remained unsold due to their high price. Consequently, the auction house contacted the ethnological museum in Leiden, which was then able to acquire the nkisi phemba and the power figure in the form of a European captain. Other parts of Goddefroys private collection were bought by a Dutch collector. This unnamed Dutchman sold the objects in 1902; once again it was the Leiden museum that bought the majority of the objects that were collected in Angola, more than seventeen years earlier (Willink 2006: 233).
As a result of fusions of several Dutch ethnological museums between 2014-2017, almost all objects of Goddefroy are now part of one collection that belongs to the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen (National Museum of World Cultures).

Objects

A selection of objects that are discernible in the image:
Bracelet, 19th century, Angola, iron, collected by L.J. Goddefroy, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, RV-594-59.
Sculpture of a European man, presumably a sea captain, 19th century, Lower Congo River, wood, 35,8 x 11,2 cm, collected by L.J. Goddefroy, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, RV-1354-46.
Power figure nkisi phemba, 19th century Cabinda (Angola), wood, pigment, glass, textile, resin, 44 × 14,5 cm, collected by L.J. Goddefroy, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, RV-1354-47.
Seat with a male figure, 19th century, Angola, wood, 64 x 38,5 cm, collected by L.J. Goddefroy, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, RV-1354-48.
Stool, 19th century, Angola, 25 x 22, collected by L.J. Goddefroy, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen , RV-1354-49.
Sceptre, 19th century, Chokwe, Angola, 57,7 x 5,8 cm, collected by L.J. Goddefroy, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, RV-1354-65.
Ceremonial vessel, 19th century, Chokwe, Angola, 7,5 x 22 cm, collected by L.J. Goddefroy, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, RV-1354-103.
Pair of leather sandals, Quillenges, Angola, 24 cm, collected by L.J. Goddefroy, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, RV-2668-241 and RV-2668-242.

References

‘De Nederlandsche Zuid-Afrikaansche Expeditie’, De locomotief : Samarangsch handels- en advertentie-blad. November 12, 1885. Retrieved from Delpher on 13-08-2020, http://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=ddd:010291530:mpeg21:p001

Wentholt, A. 2004. ‘Een Nederlandse expeditie naar Angola 1884-1885’, Nieuwsbrief Vereniging Vrienden van Etnografica 86, 29-42.

Wesseling, H.L. 1981. ‘The Netherlands and the partition of Africa’, The Journal of African history 22/4, 495-509.

Wijs, S. 2014. ‘De collectie Hanken – een bewogen geschiedenis’, Jaarboek van de Vereniging Vrienden Etnografica, 7-32.

Willink, R.J. 2006. De bewogen verzamelgeschiedenis van de West-Centraal-Afrikaanse collecties in Nederland (1856-1889) Ridderkerk: Ridderprint. 222-234.

Veth, P.J. and Snelleman, J.F. 1887. Daniël Veth’s reizen in Angola: voorafgegaan door eene schets van zijn leven. Haarlem: H.D. Tjeenk Willink.

ca. 1880 Kru and ‘Krumanos’

Nineteenth-century European trading factories in Congo and Angola depended on African labour for different tasks. Examples are the Kru, also called Kru-men, and the Krumanos. Both names sound alike, but there was an important difference. The Kru took up paid employment, whereas the Krumanos were forced into labour.

José Augusto. da Cunha Moraes, Portrait of a man from the Kru coast, ca. 1880, Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, id.nr. A45-97 .

Frost explains Kru was the name given by Europeans to inhabitants of communities along the coastline of present-day eastern Liberia. Their highly developed skills in fishing and canoe faring proved and advantage in their interaction with the Europeans. It is believed the development of their maritime skills in the eighteenth century led Kru to be employed on slave ships to the America’s. After Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1808, Kru took up employment on naval ships of the West Africa Squadron; the blockade against illegal ships intent on carrying Africans into slavery in the America’s.¹

Frost writes the mobility of the Liberian Kru increased in the nineteenth century when formerly enslaved people from the United States of America were settled in Liberia, under the auspices of the American Colonisation Society. These so-called Settler Liberians competed with the Kru in trade and land acquisition. Kru men migrated to the coastal cities, where European trading companies were expanding their business. Kru became employed as agricultural labourers. palm oil ships, as shoremen, and construction workers ²

‘Factory slaves’

William Holman Bentley (1855-1905) of the Baptist Missionary Society wrote:

‘When we reached to Congo in 1879 all the labour of the trading factories was performed by slaves. […] ‘Kru boys, from the Kru coast about Libera, were the labourers on the coast steamers and factories higher up the coast: so to throw dust in the eyes of those who would make inquiries, the factory slaves about the Congo were called Krumanos. The average price of a Krumano was £ 5.

[…] I have often seen these factory slaves working in chains, four to six chained together by a ring on the neck. Sometimes there might be among the chain-gangs a rowdy slave or two in the chain for punishment; but as a rule, they would be ordinary Krumanos, new or not trusted, kept in the chains to prevent their flight.³

José Augusto. da Cunha Moraes, Portrait of Krumanos, ca. 1870, Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, id.nr. A274-86.

The word ‘Krumanos’ in the description of the photograph by Jose Augusto da Cunha Moraes might mean the men were unfree labourers. According to Vos, European trading companies used local networks to obtain so-called servicais, or enslaved labourers. They were bought or hired from local chiefs, who supplied them to serve for a short or indefinite time. ⁴ Besides, small numbers of slaves from the interior were a part of ivory caravans to the coast, where they were sold by African middlemen.
Vos cites a report of Onno Zwier van Sandick, (1861-1881), an employee for the Afrikaansche Handelsvereeniging, when he points out the unfree Krumanos received remuneration: they were paid in so-called ‘longs’ (a textile measuring unit of six yards)). They earned two to three longs a month, Vos states this was a reasonable salary compared to Kru ((four longs), canoe men (three longs), female servants (four to six longs) or linguisters (eight to ten longs). ⁵
Zwiers van Sandick explained the reasoning behind the payment of the Krumanos. They were at all times at the disposal of the Afrikaanse Handelsvereeniging, whereas Kru could be employed for a maximum of sixteen months. Zwiers van Sandick ruled out employing other free African labourers: ‘a free negro doesn’t think of working as soon as he has had enough to eat.’ ⁶
Vos includes a citation from the British consul Hopkins about the Krumanos of the Dutch Afrikaansche Handelsvereniging, who in 1877 held about 150 slaves.

‘[…] these people are so well treated that, to all intents and purpose, they are free, and they are never sold or exchanged; in fact, it is their boast that they are the children of the Dutch house.’ ⁷

José Augusto. da Cunha Moraes, Factory of the Afrikaansche Handels Vereeniging seen from the water, in Chissambo (Cabinda, Angola) ca 1870. Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, id.nr.A274-28

However, from the report of Zwier van Sandick, a somewhat different picture emerges. He travelled May 1879 to November 1880 from the headfactory in Banana to smaller factories. The factory in Banana owned fifty slaves, Zwier van Sandick described they were bought at the coast, for about 30 longs, and shipped to Banana. Some ship captains were hesitant to take the Krumanos on board, out of fear for inspections by the British West Africa Squadron. As a solution each Krumano received a contract, the words ‘paid in Banana’ was a code for the AHV these were in fact ‘factory slaves’.
After arrival, Krumanos were immediately chained in a neck collar or libámbo. Zwier van Sandick recalled how the resistance of Krumanos to be chained was forcibly repressed.

‘In October 1879 I witnessed how one continuously yelled: senhór landaáz, grácia-grácia (Sir Dutchman, mercy, mercy). Whereupon the supervisor ordered to lash him into silence – which happened. Completely bloodied he lay numb and had stopped yelling.’

According to Zwier van Sandick these cruelties were persistent in the factories where he was stationed. In case a Krumano died, the costs were debited to the headfactory in Banana.
In the early 1900s, coastal factories would acquire enslaved labourers and traded them illegally or as contract workers.⁸

ca. 1880 ‘Linguister’

In the period 1870-1890 José Augusto da Cunha Moraes photographed European trading posts along the coastline of Congo and Angola. The Dutch National Museum of World Cultures holds several of these images in its collection.

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes , Portrait of a mafuka or linguister with his family, ca. 1880. Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, id.nr. A45-39.

Companies like the Nieuwe Afrikaansche Handels Vennootschap (NAHV) built premises, so-called ‘factories’, on plots of land that belonged to local rulers. In return, the companies were obliged to pay for the use of the land. Furthermore, local rulers provided each factory with a representative, or ‘mafuka’. The mafuka, called ‘linguisters’ by the Europeans, were men of distinct families with in-depth knowledge of local law, politics, and the network of African traders. They negotiated prices between the trading companies and the African traders who brought agricultural produce; thus they were crucial for the profitability of European trade.

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes , Portrait of a mafuka or linguister, ca. 1880. Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, id.nr. A45-38.

All trading companies depended on African labour for an array of tasks, these workers were managed by the linguister. ¹ Men and women from the coastal region Cabinda in particular were recruited as canoe men, cooks, carpenters, and domestic servants. Appreciated by European trading agents, the Dutch NAHV-employee Onno Zwier van Sandick described the men and women from this region as ‘relatively developed’ and ‘with potential to be civilized’, claiming they learned their skills of British and Portuguese ships who patrolled the Congolese coast to prevent illegal transatlantic slave shipments.².

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes, Man and woman from Cabinda, ca. 1870-1889. Collection Nederlands Fotomuseum, id.nr. WMR-902005

1857 – 1868 Kerdijk & Pincoffs

Photographs of José Augusto da Cunha Moraes (1855-1933, in several Dutch museum collections, provide visual information about a Dutch trading firm with settlements along the coastline of Angola and Congo, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Kerdijk & Pincoffs, and its successor ‘Afrikaansche Handelsvereeniging’ (African Trade Association) would come to dominate trade in a region that struggled with the troubled transition from the slave trade to forms of indentured labour.

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes, Office of the Afrikaansche Handelsvereeniging , located at the Largo Tristao da Cunha, Luanda, Angola, ca. 1870. Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, id.nr. RV-A274-6.

Legitimate trade

In 1849 Henry Kerdijk and Lodewijk Pincoffs founded a firm that traded in indigo and madder. Located in the port Rotterdam, shipping was another branch of the company, which gained in importance following the stagnation of the dye trade in the 1850s. ¹ In 1857 Kerdijk & Pincoffs bought the British trading company Horsfall & Co. in the village Ambriz, northern Angola.
Together with the firms Tobin & Co. and Hatton & Cookson, Horsfall was one of the three firms from Liverpool in Ambriz. Historians assume these company premises functioned as barracoons for enslaved Africans up to 1807 – when the United Kingdom prohibited the transatlantic slave trade. ² After 1807 the nature of their business changed to so-called ‘legitimate commerce’ or ‘legitimate trade’: European manufactures, predominantly cotton pieces, weapons and spirits, were traded against African raw materials, notably palm oil, gum copal and ivory. ³

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes, porters of an ivory caravan, Luanda, Angola ca. 1870. Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, id.nr. RV-A45-51.

Ambriz

In 1836 Portugal outlawed the transatlantic slave trade. Nevertheless, the number of illegal shipments of African captives sharply increased between 1830-1865. Whereas Luanda had been the most important port of embarcation in Central Africa during the slave trade, Portuguese-Brazilian merchants and slave smugglers from Spain and Cuba relocated further north to the port Ambriz.⁴ Slave trading firms from Rio de Janeiro organized shipments of enslaved Africans to Brazil, when these were abolished in 1850 they concentrated on Cuba.⁵

Johann Moritz Rugendas, Newly enslaved Africans, Viagem Pitoresca Atravé do Brasil (1835) (Editora da Universidade de Sao Paulo, 1989). Source: Biblioteca Digital Curt Nimeundajú,
https://flic.kr/p/25K8W9D

The illegal slave trade and the legitimate trading companies were connected. In theory, the trading companies strictly limited their activities to lawful barter trade. In reality, the clientele of Cuban and Brazilian middlemen provided the trading companies with cash payments. These slave smugglers bartered the purchased European goods for enslaved men, women and children from the African interior. ⁶ In the first year in Angola, Kerdijk & Pincoffs started trade with Portuguese slave dealers in Ponta da Lenha. ⁷

Christiano Junior, Enslaved African man, born in Cabinda (right) and enslaved African man, born in Angola (left), 1864, Rio de Janeiro. Collection Museu Historicó Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Source: Google Arts and Culture

Advertisements found in the database Delpher show the first shipment of Kerdijk & Pincoffs arrived in May 1858 in Rotterdam from Luanda, the administrative center of the Portuguese.⁸ Within a year of opening a factory in Ambriz, Kerdijk & Pincoffs followed British traders to nearby Kisembo, in order to avoid the high Portuguese custom dues in Ambriz.⁹

Advertisement for the auction in Rotterdam of goods from the first shipment of Kerdijk & Pincoffs from Luanda: dye, gum, wax and 246 elephant tusks. Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant (May 5, 1858).

‘Free emigrants’

In 1860 Kerdijk & Pincoffs opened a factory in Banana, along the Loango coast of Congo. The factory was adjacent to the trading company of Victor and Louis Régis, from Marseille. In the early 1830s, Régis began trading in Senegal, and expanded southwards to Sierra Leone and Angola. In 1841 the French state granted the company permission to open a trading post in Dahomey at Whyda, in the ruins of a fort that had functioned as a depot for enslaved Africans. ¹⁰
Régis became pivotal in a scheme of the French government to procure human labour for the colonies in the Caribbean. In 1831 France ended the slave trade and signed a convention with the British against human trafficking. This convention expired in 1856, which opened the way for France to contract Régis to recruit and transport African labourers for Guadeloupe and Martinique. ¹¹

Lt. Henry Hand, A French Free immgrant on his way to the barracoon of M. Regis.
Source: “Enslaved Africans Sold to French, 1858”, Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed July 27, 2020.
http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/408

Between 1857-1863 Régis purchased enslaved people from African authorities, declared them free and signed them to indentured labour contracts. The French ‘redeemed’ enslaved Africans mostly in Boma, one of the former centers of the Atlantic slave trade, but housed the so-called ‘free emigrants’ (émigrés libres) in newly built factories in Banana and Loango. In each factory up to fourteen hundred people could be housed.¹² The French considered the redemptions as ‘an act of humanity’, yet the mortality on the early voyages was high. At the end of the scheme, Regís had carried around seventeen thousand people to the Caribbean colonies, their properties in Banana were sold to neighbouring Kerdijk & Pincoffs. ¹³

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes, Factory ‘Rotterdam’ at Banana, at the mound of the Congo-river, 1884. Collection Nederlands Fotomuseum, id.nr. WMR-902009.

With the settlement in Banana as the centre of the commercial activities, Kerdijk & Pincoffs expanded further in the Angolan region Cabinda. In 1868 Kerdijk & Pincofss became a limited company under the name of Afrikaansche Handelsvereeniging (African Trading Association – AHV). By 1871 the company had opened thirty-three factories in Angola and Congo, in 1877 this had risen to forty-four. ¹⁴ In 1879, after a financial scandal, the company continued as ‘Nieuwe Afrikaansche Handels Vennootschap’ and traded in Africa until 1982.

ca. 1870-1889 ‘Serviçais’

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes, Two Angolese men carrying a European man in a hammock, ca. 1870-1889, Collection Nederlands Fotomuseum. Rotterdam, id.nr. WMR-902002.

A studio portrait by José Augusto da Cunha Moraes in the collection of the Nederlands Fotomuseum (Dutch Photomuseum) shows two Angolese men carrying a European man in a hammock, locally known as a maxilla. Pictured in Angola at the end of the nineteenth century, the two men were in all probability unfree labourers, or so-called ‘servants’ (serviçais).

Drawing on an extensive range of sources, social historian Roquinaldo Ferreira showed that in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Luanda, the economy was entirely dependent on the enslaved population. They performed a wide array of activities, ranging from menial labour to specialized tasks as carpenter, sailor, blacksmith, and brickmaker. In Luanda, enslaved women and men could be rented out by their owners, or temporarily perform paid jobs. On the streets of Luanda, it was a common sight to see European settles being carried around in a hammock by a myriad of enslaved men.¹

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes, European man in Luanda, Angola, ca. 1970-1915, Collection Rijkmuseum, id.nr. RP-F-W-1975.

Throughout the nineteenth century, consecutive legislative measures led to the Portuguese prohibition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1836 and culminated, in 1869, in the abolition of slavery in the Portuguese African territories. In the words of Angolan historian Maria da Conceição Neto, abolition in Angola was belated and ‘neither immediate nor complete’.²
The decree of 1869 determined that those with the legal status of ‘slaves’ (escravos) were to gain their freedom and become ‘libertos’ before April 1878. However, in 1875 Portuguese legislators annulled the status of libertos and supplanted this with the legal category of ‘servants’ (serviçais).³

Clarence-Smith explained the economic foundations of slavery remained unaltered in Angola until the second decade of the twentieth century. Firstly, every ‘servant’ (serviçal) had to sign a five-year contract with the slaveholder who ‘freed’ him. Although cash wage payments to serviçais were mandatory, the salaries were continuously reduced. Furthermore, it was not uncommon for slaveholders to solely pay in paper bonds, which could only be used in the stores they owned.
A second mechanism was formally illegal. At the end of the initial five-year contract, it was prolonged for another five years, mostly by means of intimidation and corruption. The colonial administration was heavily involved in the third mechanism: the ‘subcontracting’ of serviçais for financial compensation. This led to a continuation of the buying and selling of human beings as if they were commodities.⁴

Clarence-Smith insists slavery continued in an economic sense, whereas in a legal sense the status of ‘serviçal’ ensured fundamental rights to life and property.⁵ In the same vein, Conceição Neto acknowledges the effects of the era slave trade were prolonged through colonial policies, yet she insists historians should carefully distinguish between the different types of unfree labour.⁶

ca. 1870 ‘Angolenses’

The Rijksmuseum and The National Museum of World Cultures (Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen – NMvW) in The Netherlands together hold over more than two hundred photographs by José Augusto da Cunha Moraes (1855-1933) in their collection. His father opened a photography studio in São Paolo de Loanda (now: Luanda) in 1863, and J.A. da Cunha Moraes became a professional photographer in the 1870s. By the 1880s he had produced over four hundred photographs. According to historian Jill Dias (1944-2008), his individual portraits were exceptional, for they captured the social contrasts in the capital of colonial Angola.¹

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes, View of Luanda (ca. 1876-1886), Collection Rijksmuseum, id.nr. RP-F-2001-7-683-1.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, inhabitants of the coastal town Loanda were divided into two categories: civilized and uncivilized.² White Europeans constituted the elite of society, among them were landlords, traders and slave owners. ³ A minority were free Portuguese settlers, the majority came to Angola as convicts (degredados). Since early modern times Portugal had practiced degredo: the limiting or degrading of the legal status of convicts by means of forced exile.⁴ The exiles served a practical purpose: 97% of Portuguese migrants choose Brazil as their new home. The African colonies were no less important in the Portuguese self-perception as an imperial nation. Forced colonization provided the necessary manpower to make the overseas territories profitable. ⁵

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes, portrait of two women, one dressed in Angolan panos the other in a European dress, ca. 1870. Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, id.nr. A274-56.

Since Portuguese settlers and degredados were almost exclusively male, they formed families with local women. Their mixed race descendants were included in the Loandan elite of ‘civilized peope’. ⁶ These Euro-Africans acquired positions in education, in the army, clergy and public offices of the colonial administration – although their main economic occupation remained trade, including slave trade. ⁷

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes, portrait of a Luso-African woman in Loanda belonging to the Gamboa family, ca. 1880, Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, id.nr. RV-A45-52.

Dias stated Da Cunha Moraes preserved the image of this elite, ⁸ but didn’t include any examples. Hitherto I haven’t been able to find other secondary literature on this subject that provides photographs from the end of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately somewhat speculative, I wonder whether some of the photographs in the collection of the NMvW are portraits of women belonging to the Luso-African elite. In some of the captions of the NMvW it is explicitly mentioned the women are of mixed descent. One description (RV-A45-52) contains the family name of the sitter: Gamboa.

Experts emphasize that the Loandan elite of the nineteenth century was culturally and racially mixed.⁹ The category of the ‘civilized’ included Africans of different ethnic groups, who were educated, Christian, cosmopolitan, possessed assets, capital and dressed in a European manner. It might not be impossible that Da Cunha Moraes portrayed African families of the Europeanized elite of his city, who designated themselves as ‘filhos da terra‘, ‘filhos do país‘, (sons of the country) or ‘Angolenses‘.

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes, Portrait of a couple from Loanda, ca. 1870. The woman is wearing Angolese panos, the man is dressed in a European suit and shoes. The appropriate object on the table in the studio was a boat. Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, id.nr. RVA274-67.

Around the turn of the century, social relations in Angola transformed, leading to the subordination of the ‘filhos da terra’. Portuguese planters and administrators who failed to achieve economic and social development ascribed this to the ‘inherent barbarism’ of Africans. In their perspective, modernizing Angola equaled increasing the white population. As a consequence, the white population of Angola tripled between 1900-1930. Furthermore, a new, racially differentiated wage system was established, along with a limit for the number of Africans that could be employed in the civil service. Hence, being white became a prerequisite for positions of authority in the colonial administration. ¹⁰. By 1920 the Euro-African elite had been excluded from the administration of the colony and public life. ¹¹

José Augusto da Cunha Moraes, Portrait of a mother and daughter, ca. 1870. The girl is holding a missal in her hand and wearing shoes, an important marker of ‘civilization’. Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, id.nr. RVA274-64.

2020 Gevangen in de beeldtaal

Professional magazine ‘Theatermaker’, May edition 2020.

The May edition of the Dutch professional magazine for the perfoming arts ‘Theatermaker’, features my article ‘Gevangen in de beeldtaal. Afrikaanse mensvertoningen in Nederland’ (‘Locked up in the imagery. Human exhibitions of Africans in The Netherlands’). Kindly I would like to thank Floortje Bakkeren for initiating this opportunity, Simon van den Berg for his patience and constructive feedback and editor Katharina Veraart.

Delpher Kranten – De Telegraaf (09-03-1893)

Scramble for Africa

In 2009, Bert Sliggers, at the time curator of the Teylers Museum Haarlem, was the first to compose an overview of human exhibitions in The Netherlands. Using posters in city archives and reports in print media, he counted 34 human displays in 46 cities during the years 1825-1913. More than a decade after Sliggers’ publication, online databases allow for an expansion of Sliggers initial overview. Thus far I traced 68 human exhibitions in 366 Dutch cities in the period 1809-1951, mainly through advertisements and reports in the database Delpher.
Almost half of the exhibited groups involved Africans, which is consistent with findings for human exhibitions worldwide. The peak of the human displays coincided exactly with the ‘Scramble for Africa’: between 1880 and 1914, the continent was colonized and divided among European powers.

Zoological garden

In Dutch newspapers the human exhibitions were announced as African villages and ‘ethnographic exhibitions’, implying a truthful representation and educative experience. However, these human exhibitions were first and foremost a construction based on European notions of Africa and therefore staged in minute detail. Stemming from social Darwinism was the persistent conviction that Africans were the most primitive humans on the evolutionary scale. They were perceived to be closer to the animal kingdom and, by extension, very far removed from the apex of human evolution: the Occidental ‘white race’. Consequently, zoological gardens were regarded as a most suitable environment for the exhibitions of Africans.

The zoological garden of The Hague was the location for human exhibitions. In 1889 Dutch journalists described the Angolese women and men that were exhibited by Louis Joseph Goddefroy as “charcoal black creatures with their ape- like movements”, the face of one of the women was compared to that of a gorilla, her baby son to an orangutan.

Roland de Bonaparte, ‘Village angolais”, un album de 36 phot. anthropologiques présenté à l’exposition universelle de 1889 à Paris’, Bibliothèque nationale de France, id.no. , SGE SG WE-330. Lupaca, 10 years old, was property of the Portuguese slave owner De Braga in Angola. Goddefroy traded the boy against a British Bull Dog revolver. Lupaca suffered from hunger edema.

Agency

Some of the people that were exhibited by Goddefroy were serviçais : the property of Portuguese slaveholders. In his memoirs, Goddefroy recounted he bought one of the men after he was imprisoned after he tried to escape. The Angolese exemplify one end of the spectrum: people who were forced, sometimes after kidnapping, to be displayed.

The other end of the spectrum comprises Africans who willingly chose to take part in the exhibitions. A case in point is Sam Emanuels from Sierra Leone. Since 1902 he was a member of the group ‘Mandigo Warriors’, Amsterdam was part of their tour in 1909.
Anne Dreesbach mentions in her dissertation that Emanuel became an organizer of human exhibitions himself. He defined himself as a professional actor and impresario for ‘ethnic villages’ and seemed to have created agency and opportunities for himself and the men, women, and children in his group. Nevertheless, I argue this agency was limited since Emanuel remained chained to deeply rooted European perceptions of Africans as inferior.

Bill , design and print Adolph Friedländer (1905), Theatre Collection Allard Pierson Museum. id.nr. TEY0010000808

As can be seen on the poster for Emanuels’ show. the women wear costumes with uncovered arms and open neck; markers of unrestrained sexuality. The woman in the foreground smiles seductively at the viewer. Moreover, she carelessly holds a spear in her hands, while young children learn to handle the weapons. The combat scenes, ‘martial exercises’ and ‘sacrificial dances’ in the human exhibitions arose from ideas about the innate compulsion to brutality of Africans.

Circus

Bill, design Potter, print Paul Grasnick, Hans Stosch-Sarrasani (ca. 1920-1930), Theatre Collection Allard Pierson Museum. id.nr.TEY0010004288.

The overview of Sliggers ended with the First World War, but in the 1920s elements of human exhibitions remained ingrained in popular culture. A poster from the Theatre Collection of the Allard Pierson Museum shows Hans Stosch-Sarrasani, a legend in the circus world. He is portrayed in the costume in which he, seated on an elephant, made a grand entrance into the arena. The turban, glittering jewellery and the decorations adorning his chest seem to be expressions of the exuberant imagination that made a visit to his circus such a colourful experience. German historians offer a different perspective. They interpret the inclusion of elements of human exhibitions in circus acts as a ‘colonial fantasy’.

Cultural historian Marline Otte (1999) states that Sarrasani dressed as a maharaja because he considered himself the enlightened ruler of a circus empire of native Americans, Arabs and Bedouins, Ethiopians, Indians, Chinese and Japanese. The cultural stereotypes from the human exhibitions thus became interwoven with an ideology based on racial superiority.

Deutsche Afrika-Schau

Dutch collections contain photographs of the 1930 Dutch tour of ‘Capitain’ Alfred Scheider and ‘Dawudu’s’, a prelude to the interweaving of the core ideas of human exhibitions with national socialism.

Fotobureau Gazendam, Alfred Schneider Dawudu’s, Theatre Collection Allard Pierson Museum. id.nr.TEY001008807.

Schneider is still renowned for his lion acts, but since 1921 he was organizing human exhibitions, known in Germany as Völkerschauen. In 1930, the so-called ‘Dawudu’s’ were men who had served in the German military in the former African colonies, African-American Clarence Walton, and women of mixed Afro-German descent. His experience with Völkerschauen made Schneider, an early member of the NSDAP, eligible to briefly become the leader of the Deutsche Afrika-Schau in late 1936. The Deutsche Afrika-Schau was founded around 1934 by Afro-Germans to protect themselves against overt hostilities and racism after the NSDAP came to power.

According to historian Susann Lewerenz (2006), some of the Afro-Germans had worked in theatres and the variety circuit. Initially, they performed cabaret, acrobatics, and vocals in the Afrika-Schau from their own repertoire. Schneider removed their own artistic repertoire and situated the Schau in the familiar setting of an African village: on the one hand to portray perceptions of inferiority, and on the other as propaganda for German colonialism. The photographs in Dutch collections have not yet been included in publications about the Deutsche Afrika -Schau and are thus a visual source of the history of this specific human exhibition.

Sources

Dreesbach, Anne, Gezähmte Wilde: die Zurschaustellung ‘exotischer’ Menschen in Duitschland, 1870 – 1940 (Frankfurt 2005).
Van Laak, Dirk, ‘Der lange Schatten der ‘Tropensehnsucht’’, Tagesspiegel (05.01.2019) https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/deutscher-kolonialismus-der-lange-schatten-der-tropensehnsucht/23825568.html
Lewerenz, Susann , Die Deutsche Afrika-Schau (1935–1940). Rassismus, Kolonialrevisionismus und postkoloniale Auseinandersetzungen im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, (Frankfurt am Main 2006).
Otte, Marline, ‘Sarrasani’s Theatre of the World: Monumental Circus Entertainment in Dresden, from Kaiserreich to Third Reich’, German History 17/ 4 (1999), 527 – 542.
Thode-Arora, Hilke, ‘From Samoa with love? Colonial power displays, commodities and state presents – contextualizing and exhibiting the Samoa collection in the Fünf Kontinente Museum, Munich’, in: Deutschen Museumsbund (ed.) Museumskunde band 81 1/16 (2016) 28-34.
Winkler, Dietmar, “Kapitän” Alfred Schneider : ein Sachse unter 100 Löwen : eine dokumentarische Biografie (Gransee 2014).

ca. 1940-1950 Museu do Dondo

“Museu de Angola 5 aspecto de secçao de Etnografia”.Au centre: “Ediçao do museu de Angola – Luanda”. “Leonar”, collectie Musée du Quai Branly, inv.nr. PP0230365 .

Bovenstaande kaart is afkomstig uit de collectie van het Musée du Quai Branly te Parijs. Op de foto is een deel van een museumzaal te zien met ceremoniële voorwerpen van de bevolkingsgroep Chokwe, uit de regio Lunda in het noord-westen van Angola. Een prominente plaats is weggelegd voor ceremoniële stoelen (ngundja), bestemd voor leiders van de Chokwe. In Nederland is een dergelijke stoel opgenomen in de collectie van het Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen ¹ en ook diverse Amerikaanse musea hebben de ngundja in hun collectie
uitgebreid omschreven. ²

De foto uit de collectie van het Musée de Quai Branly geeft echter geen museumzaal in Europa of de Verenigde Staten weer, maar het Museu do Dondo in Angola – tot 1975 een Portugese kolonie. Het museum werd in 1936 opgericht door de Companhia de Diamantes de Angola (Diamang, 1917-1975), een consortium van investeerders uit Portugal, België, Frankrijk en de Verenigde Staten. ³

Belangrijk in de beginjaren van de instelling was José Redinha (1905-1983). Hij maakte in de periode 1936-1946 diverse verzamelreizen om voorwerpen van de Lund en Chokwe bijeen te brengen. Tot zijn betrokkenheid bij het museum was Ledenha werzaam bij de posterij van het Portugese koloniale bestuur. Redinha werd in 1942 benoemd tot conservator van het Museu do Dondo, drie jaar later begon hij aan een studie etnografie in Lissabon. ⁴

Bij het museum hoorde een ‘village indigène’ (letterlijk: inheems dorp), een formule die sinds het einde van de negentiende eeuw groot succes oogstte op wereldtentoonstellingen. Dit dorp zou het traditionele leven van de Chokwe weergeven, met op de voorgrond een mannenhuis. Collectie Musée du Quai Branly, inv.nr. PP0075605.

Het Museu do Dondo in Angola is slechts één van de musea die in Afrikaanse koloniën als Zuid-Afrika en Senegal werden opgericht. Zowel de architectuur van de gebouwen als de wijze van presentatie waren gebaseerd op Westerse modellen en ideeën. Evenals de volkenkundige musea in Europa weerspiegelde het Museu do Dondo weerspiegelde de relatie tussen kolonisator en kolonie. De keuze van de objecten en de opstelling hiervan werd bepaald door Europeanen – hoewel het museum op Angolese grond stond. Daarnaast wijst het feit dat de instelling werd opgericht door een diamantonderneming die behoefte had aan kennis had aan de lokale bevolkingsgroepen, op de nauwe relatie tussen koloniale politiek en economie en de doelstelling van het museum. ⁵

Rea Brändle (1953-2019)

‘Wie hat man sich eine Völkerschau im Detail vorzustellen? Dabei bemühte ich mich, einen ruhigen, sachligen Ton zu finden. Nicht um wertfrei zu bleiben, eine unaufgeregte Beschreibung schließt Kritik nicht aus, sondern im Gegenteil, die Fokussierung auf die Gegebenheiten mit all ihren Details enthält meines Erachtens mindestens so viel Kritik wie eine wortreiche Entrüstung.’
Rea Brändle, Wildfremd, Hautnah (Zürich 2013), 12.

Duitstalige publicaties overziend, kan gesteld worden dat Rea Brändle de belangrijkste onderzoeker was op het gebied van völkerschauen in Zwitserland. Haar vroegtijdig overlijden is -in alle opzichten- een groot verlies.

In haar eerste werk ‘Wildfremd, Hautnah‘ bracht Brändle een groot aantal volkerenshows in kaart, het werk sloot af met een
gedetailleerde lijst waarin data, locaties, aantal deelnemers en alle Europese steden die de show aandeed zijn samengebracht. Dergelijke lijsten zijn typerend voor het Duitse onderzoek naar volkerschauen, maar Brändle bracht het verhaal achter deze feiten tot leven te brengen op de ‘ruhigen, sachligen Ton’ die zij voorstond. Van grote waarde is haar werk over de Togolees Nayo Bruce, die van 1895-1919 in meer dan 220 steden te zien was in volkerenshows, side shows, variététheater en kermissen.

Delpher – Provinciale Geldersche en Nijmeegsche courant, 4 oktober 1907

Brändle merkte in haar boek op dat het niet mogelijk was alle optredens van het gezelschap in de jaren 1907-1911 te reconstrueren. Via Delpher kon ik achterhalen dat Bruce en zijn groep in 1906-1907 en in 1909 in Nederland te zien waren. In 1906 deden zij de kermis aan van Heerenveen en Etten, in Den Haag en Rozendaal was het huis waar ze verbleven toegankelijk voor bezoekers.

Geheugen van Nederland, omschrijving: ‘HL 3230-2 Surinamer in Amsterdam, 1909.’ Foto uit tijdschrift ‘Het Leven’, waarschijnlijk gaat het om twee leden van de groep ‘Mandigo krijgers’.

In 1909 leidde Bruce de zogeheten ‘Mandigo krijgers’, ze trokken langs vijf Nederlandse steden en waren van 12 september – 10 oktober te zien in het Tolhuis aan het IJ te Amsterdam.Via ‘het Geheugen van Nederland’ vond ik een foto uit tijdschrift ‘Het leven’. In het bijschrift worden twee mannen die door een Amsterdamse straat lopen omschreven als ‘Surinamers in traditionele kleding’. Het tijdschrift heb ik nog niet kunnen inzien, maar de beschrijving spreekt tevens over ‘Een paar negers uit het “kamp” in ’t Tolhuis.’ Het lijkt mij dat op de foto twee leden van de groep van Nayo Bruce zijn vastgelegd. Ik had het willen voorleggen aan Brändle, tot mijn spijt ben ik te laat.

Tag: Afrika