‘Many Shall Come From the East and West’: Baptism Announcements of African and Asian Reformed Christians in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic

Vincent Laarman; Martijn Stoutjesdijk

doi:10.51769/bmgn-lchr.19341

‘Many Shall Come From the East and West’

Baptism Announcements of African and Asian Reformed Christians in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic

Author(s)

Vincent Laarman VU Amsterdam https://orcid.org/0009-0000-6444-3984
Martijn J. Stoutjesdijk Protestant Theological University, Utrecht https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1864-3157

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51769/bmgn-lchr.19341

Keywords:

Dutch Republic, Baptisms, Slavery, Africans, Asians, Dutch Reformed Church, Boekzaal der Geleerde Wereld

Abstract

While baptisms of African and Asian people in the Dutch Republic have been studied on an anecdotal and often very local basis, a systematic analysis of these baptisms presents a gap in the literature. This article seeks to fill that lacuna by taking the announcements of baptisms of African and Asian people in the eighteenth-century Dutch Reformed Church (the public and privileged church of the Dutch Republic), as reported on in the periodical Boekzaal der Geleerde Wereld, as its point of departure. These baptism announcements not only provide valuable information on the distribution and origin of the (formerly) enslaved people who were baptised in the Dutch Republic, but also show a more inclusive and at times even anti slavery theology among the ministers involved in these baptisms.

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Author Biographies

Vincent Laarman, VU Amsterdam

Vincent Laarman studied history at the University of Antwerp and Radboud University and is currently a PhD candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His PhD research focuses on the role and impact of the Dutch Reformed Church on slavery and enslaved people in the Dutch colonial empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This PhD is part of the NWO project ‘Church and Slavery in the Dutch Empire: History, Theology and Heritage’. E-mail: v.laarman@vu.nl.
Martijn J. Stoutjesdijk, Protestant Theological University, Utrecht

Martijn Stoutjesdijk obtained his PhD with a study on slavery in early rabbinic and early Christian parables. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Protestant Theological University (Utrecht), as member of the NWO project ‘Church and Slavery in the Dutch Empire: History, Theology and Heritage’. Within this project he focuses on the use of the Bible in the debate on the permissibility of colonial slavery. Among his publications are: Kerk, kolonialisme en slavernij. Verhalen van een vervlochten geschiedenis (Kok 2023; together with Bente de Leede) and ‘You Are My Slaves’: A Comparative Study of the Slavery Metaphor in Early Rabbinic and Early Christian Parables (Brill 2025). E-mail: mjstoutjesdijk@pthu.nl.

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Published

2025-06-30

Issue

Vol. 140 No. 2 (2025)

Section

Articles

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How to Cite

Laarman, V., & Stoutjesdijk, M. (2025). ‘Many Shall Come From the East and West’: Baptism Announcements of African and Asian Reformed Christians in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic. BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review, 140(2), 6-31. https://doi.org/10.51769/bmgn-lchr.19341