On 24 September 1794, something extraordinary happened in the Remonstrant Reformed Church of Delft, a city in the Dutch Republic. In the presence of a large crowd, Maria Zara Johanna Niabi, an African woman, was baptised (Figure 1). Although rare, it did happen from time to time that men and women originating from Africa or Asia were baptised in Dutch churches.² However, to the best of our knowledge, this is the only instance that an image of such a baptism has been preserved. Moreover, the illustration can be combined with a long and fascinating account of the baptism in the records of the church:

This entry in the church records contains a wealth of information. First of all, it offers a lot of personal details about the names, parents, origins and life course of an enslaved African woman, Maria Zara Johanna Niabi. Secondly, it reveals something about the tensions between the (formerly) enslaved and their (former) enslavers. The power imbalance between Niabi and her enslaver becomes apparent, as the latter, Christoffel Johan Hecke (‘Hekker’), prohibited her to be baptised in his own Dutch Reformed Church.⁴ Thirdly, although the record does not make it very explicit, Niabi’s agency can be seen through her eventually getting baptised after all. Hecke’s refusal did not stop Niabi from putting forward her will to become a Christian. It is unclear whether she turned to the Remonstrant Reformed Church herself or if the Remonstrant minister came to know about her in another way. Irrespective, the minister, Abraham van der Meersch, saw sufficient grounds to baptise Niabi in his church. In doing so, Niabi contested her (former) enslaver. Finally, the anti-slavery stance of Van der Meersch shows clearly in this record: not only does he call slavery an ‘un-Christian state’, he also wishes for other enslaved people to obtain their freedom – criticising his fellow Dutch Christians as barbarians in the process. Given this anti-slavery attitude, one wonders whether Van der Meersch’s baptism of Niabi can be interpreted as an act of criticism, resistance even, directed at the involvement of Dutch society and of his fellow Christians with slavery.

The case of Niabi shows how the baptisms of African and Asian people, as religious rites de passage, form an excellent locus to study on the one hand the agency of (formerly) enslaved people in the Republic, by navigating their complex and oftentimes precarious position vis-à-vis (former) enslavers; and on the other hand the role of churches, ministers, the Bible and theology either critiquing slavery and racialised understandings of the world order, or confirming the status of (formerly) enslaved people as well as the claims of ownership and service made by their (former) enslavers.

With this article we contribute to the field of religious history as well as to the knowledge of the lives of African and Asian people in the Dutch Republic, as part of migration history. Over the past decades the interest in African and lesser so in Asian communities in the Dutch Republic, and Europe at large, has grown.⁵ While baptisms of African and Asian people in the Republic have been studied on an anecdotal – and often very local – basis, a systematic analysis of the data about baptisms of (formerly) enslaved people is missing from historiography so far.⁶ The present article seeks to answer this lacuna by taking the announcements of special baptisms in the eighteenth-century Dutch Reformed Church, as reported on in the periodical Boekzaal der Geleerde Wereld (Reading Hall of the Learned World), as its point of departure. By doing so, we shed more light on, first, the way African and Asian Christians were perceived conceptually in local Dutch Reformed congregations; second, how they were received practically in these congregations (were they welcome, was it possible for them to be educated and baptised?); and, third, what these baptisms show about the attitude of local ministers and congregations with regard to slavery and racial hierarchies.

While the example from Delft pertains to a Remonstrant Reformed church and there were other churches in the Dutch Republic as well, such as the Mennonites and the Roman Catholic Church, we focus in this article on the Dutch Reformed Church because it held a special position as the Republic’s public and privileged church. For this article, we decided to solely focus on the eighteenth century. On the one hand, this is a practical choice, as the religious landscape (including the predominant position of the Dutch Reformed Church) as well as the nature of the baptism announcements changed in the nineteenth century.⁷ On the other hand, this limitation in time also helps to see and acknowledge the specific developments in the eighteenth-century Dutch slavery debate, that witnessed a rise of anti-slavery sentiments, but no serious attempts to abolish slavery.⁸

With respect to nomenclature it is important to note that we regularly refer to African and Asian inhabitants of the Dutch Republic collectively as ‘black’. In doing so, we follow the conceptualisation of these groups by our sources, as the baptism announcements often use the same terms such as ‘Moor’ and ‘zwart’ (black), as well as the same Bible texts for both African and Asian people.⁹ This finding is line with recent studies on nomenclature in other European countries, that show that the designation ‘black’ was used for both African and Asian individuals in the early modern period.¹⁰

After introducing the Boekzaal, we discuss its baptism announcements in two sections. The first section focuses on the geographical origin of the black people being baptised, their location in the Dutch Republic, as well as their motivation and the attention their baptisms drew. The second section elaborates on the Bible texts mentioned in the baptism announcements and their theological ramifications concerning slavery and racism. Taken together, this article aims to shed light on the multivarious relations between the Dutch Reformed Church, theology, baptism, slavery, racism and colonialism.

Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the Boekzaal der Geleerde Wereld was the medium of choice in Reformed Protestant circles to distribute newsworthy occurrences and developments regarding decisions of regional and national church assemblies and events in local churches in the Dutch Republic (Figure 2).¹¹ The title resembles an earlier periodical, namely the Boekzaal van Europe (1692-1700), edited by Pieter Rabus, which was one of the first popular scholarly periodicals in the Republic, and consisted mainly of book reviews. Due to censorship and a dispute with the publisher, Rabus’s periodical would come to an end at the beginning of the new century.

Several periodicals tried to take the place of Boekzaal van Europe, but it is safe to say Boekzaal der Geleerde Wereld (henceforth: Boekzaal) was its most successful successor; Inger Leemans and Gert-Jan Johannes even labeled it as a true continuation.¹² It is true that the periodical still very much focused on book reviews; however, unlike the original periodical, the content was of a far more conservative nature and was primarily concerned with ministers, proponents (ministers in training), and church administrators. Rietje van Vliet would therefore rather see them as separate periodicals. The periodical’s changed nature can also be noticed in its growing attention for church news. Reviews and citations of books, focusing mostly on their theological and religious aspects, dwindled, whilst vacancies for posts as ministers, academic news and updates from local churches occupied more and more space in the periodical. In doing so, the Boekzaal aimed to keep the Reformed Church personnel updated on ecclesiastical life.¹³

As part of this tendency, reports of notable baptism services found their way to the Boekzaal, informing the readers of important or rare baptisms in the Republic. These announcements varied from children of nobility or royalty to Jewish and black people converting to Christianity.¹⁴ These announcements were not limited to the Boekzaal but can be traced in various newspapers and periodicals. Many of these announcements dealt with conversions elsewhere in Europe. The first announcement we have found of a special baptism in the Dutch Republic appeared in the Ordinaris dinsdaeghse courante of 8 April 1670. It concerned the baptism of a man, Jan Willemsz., who was enslaved by stadholder Willem iii:

While the account was given in a newspaper, traces of the baptism service itself surprisingly cannot be found in the baptism register of the Grote Kerk (Great Church).¹⁶ After the baptism of Jan Willemsz., it took fifty years before another case in the Republic was published in the media – which was also the first time such a case was reported in the Boekzaal.

Baptism announcements in the Boekzaal hold unique information, as touched upon with the case of Niabi. Whereas regular baptism registrations in church records rarely go into detail on the services, most of the baptism announcements of black people in the Boekzaal do. Traces of the origin and life course of these persons are sometimes given as background information, making it possible to discover more about their lives in slavery or in freedom. As mentioned before, the announcements often also include the Bible texts that were used during the services, which offers us a look into the theological convictions of the ministers involved.

The Boekzaal has other connections to colonialism and slavery as well. Firstly, it published updates in its church news section on the development of Reformed Churches in the Dutch colonies in Africa, America, and Asia. Apart from announcements of baptisms in the Republic, a few examples of baptised enslaved individuals in the colonies are given. Secondly, the correspondence of the church council of Suriname shows that, at least for the inclusion of their news updates, the Sociëteit van Suriname (Society of Suriname, the private company that ruled Suriname in the eighteenth century) funded the costs.¹⁷

We are aware that the use of Boekzaal as the main source also holds limitations. The reports do not provide an exhaustive image of all cases of black people who were baptised in the eighteenth-century Republic. For example, non-Reformed baptisms were not recorded. In addition, research has shown various other examples of baptisms in the Dutch Reformed Church that were not included in the periodical. However, as it is not feasible to go through the baptism registers of all local churches from the eighteenth century manually, the Boekzaal offers a unique overview of baptisms of African and Asian people in Reformed churches in urban centers and rural villages all over the Republic, over a substantial period of time. Existing and future research on local case studies can complement, nuance, or correct our findings.

A somewhat unexpected case of a Reformed baptism of a black woman took place in the predominantly Catholic city of Venlo in 1767:

From this announcement, we learn a few things: the origin of the black woman, the steps she took before she was accepted into the Reformed Church, and the Bible text that the minister preached about during the baptism service. At the same time, crucial information is lacking, such as the woman’s name and status. This case from Venlo is not only interesting because it took place in the Catholic Generality Lands, but also because it can be traced through multiple sources.¹⁹ The Venlo baptism register gives away the name of the woman: Jacoba Leijlard.²⁰ Her baptism registration does not determine whether Leijlard was free or enslaved. Officially, once enslaved individuals arrived in the Dutch Republic, they became free, as slavery did not legally exist within the European borders of the Republic – the free soil principle. In practice, enslaved people who were entitled to freedom had to take their case to court – something they were not often able to do.²¹

Leijlard is one of the in total 41 black people who feature in baptism announcements in the Boekzaal between 1721 and 1799.²² As indicated above, it should be stressed that this number does not represent the total number of baptisms of Asian and African individuals in that period. Considering the small numbers of announcements, it is hard to distinguish trends over time. With regard to their location of departure, the largest group of baptised individuals (46 percent) came from Dutch colonies in America (Berbice, Demerara, Essequibo and Suriname), as can be seen in Table 1. If we combine the number of individuals from the American colonies with those originating from Africa (as most of the enslaved persons in the American colonies had an African background), their total number forms 68 percent of all mentioned baptisms. Although the announcements do not cover all baptisms of black individuals, it is striking how African Christians are dominating the numbers, while recent studies show that slavery was also omnipresent in the Asian territories of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (voc).²³ However, the greater distance between the East Indies and the Republic, as well as the voc rule against bringing enslaved people to the Republic, might have contributed to this disparity.²⁴

In general, the information in the announcements – including details regarding the backgrounds of enslaved individuals – is similar for people coming from Africa, America, and Asia. Moreover, largely the same racial terminology is used to describe people from Africa, America, and Asia, such as the terms ‘heiden’ (heathen) and ‘Moor’. An exception is the N-word, which appears only once in the baptism announcements to address a person originating from Indonesia, but was often used in other articles and book reviews of the Boekzaal to designate people from the Dutch colonies in the Atlantic Ocean or Africa. This term was also widely used in those colonies at the time to describe enslaved people.

As mentioned before, the announcements cover a wide variety of locations in the Republic. From to-be-expected cities with seaports in Holland to smaller settlements (such as Anjum, Bruchem, St. Andries, Ransdorp, and Ressen) and cities further inland (such as Arnhem, Breda, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Maastricht, and Zwolle). This phenomenon in itself is no surprise since Company personnel came from all regions, and some even from abroad,²⁵ but it clearly shows the widespread presence of black individuals throughout the eighteenth-century Republic. What immediately stands out is the fact that cities in Holland and Zeeland are not overrepresented, while Holland (Amsterdam) and Zeeland (Middelburg and Vlissingen) were the most prominent locations connected to the trading companies. Moreover, we know from studies on baptisms in those cities that black people were also baptised there.²⁶ Since research by Dienke Hondius and Mark Ponte has shown that, at least in Amsterdam, black individuals were present from the early seventeenth century onwards,²⁷ our hypothesis is that the familiarity inhabitants of Amsterdam, Vlissingen, and Middelburg had with their black fellow citizens resulted in less frequent announcements of their baptisms in the Boekzaal than one might expect. Rietje van Vliet explains that the regional church assemblies (called classes, sg. classis) selected ministers that provided the Boekzaal with updates on church news from their region.²⁸ In other parts of the Republic, where the local inhabitants and churches were less used to the presence of black people, these ministers would perhaps have been more likely to report their baptisms in the Boekzaal.

Table 2 shows the geographical distribution of baptisms of black people per current-day province of the Netherlands. The case of Jacoba Leijlard in Venlo has already been discussed, but another Catholic region stands out: Noord-Brabant. Like Limburg, this region was part of the Generality Lands in the south. Assuming that the overrepresentation of Noord-Brabant is not coincidental, an explanation could be that the inclusion of black Christians in these Reformed Churches was more likely because the Reformed congregations in this Catholic province were smaller and would, therefore, perhaps be more eager to include and/or report on new Christians (Figure 3). To better understand this geographical distribution, more research has to be done on local baptisms that are not present in the Boekzaal on the one hand, and local church policies concerning baptisms on the other hand.

We have already discussed some aspects regarding the baptised individuals, but have yet to disclose who these people were and why they did engage with the Reformed Church. Coming from various Dutch colonies, black people accompanied their enslavers to the Republic, where they often remained in servitude. Others were brought over and gifted to kin.²⁹ The baptism announcements are not clear on the exact status of the people being baptised, and slavery itself is rarely mentioned. For example, the ‘Afrikaansche Moor’ (‘African Moor’) Christiaan (last name unknown) seems to have been free at the time of his baptism in ’s-Hertogenbosch in 1757. In the announcement, a brief overview is given of how he had been enslaved in Suriname and was taken to the Republic by his enslaver and eventually freed. After his manumission, Christiaan was taken into the home of Reformed minister Joachim Mobachius. According to the Boekzaal, Mobachius provided a safe home, food, and clothing for him. Christiaan also received schooling and was taught about the Christian faith. After four and half years in the Republic, and being able to speak and read Dutch, Christiaan was baptised. The announcement concludes that afterwards, it would be favourable if Christiaan would go work for another ‘Heer’ (‘Gentleman’).³⁰ The latter implicates that the treatment of Christiaan by Mobachius was not solely philanthropical and that Christiaan most likely had to perform labour for him while he was educated in Christianity. This can also be concluded from the baptism registration itself, that indicates that Christiaan was the ‘knegt’ (‘servant’) of Mobachius.³¹ It remains ambiguous whether or not Christiaan’s former enslaver had to emancipate him due to the free soil principle, but also how free Christiaan actually was after his status had changed. In the case of Jacoba Leijlard, we learn that the free soil principle was not enacted automatically by setting foot on Dutch territory. At the time of her baptism in 1767, she was still enslaved as the correspondence discussed below shows.

Four years after her baptism, when Leijlard was nineteen years old, her mother Marijtje Chriool appealed for their freedom with a letter she sent to the board of the wic. The letter was discussed by the wic board on 11 February 1771. According to the document, Chriool and Leijlard requested their letters of freedom after having experienced ‘the benefits of freedom, that is as precious as life itself, for the brief years they spent here’. If they were to go back to Suriname, they feared to ‘once again be exposed to harsh enslavement […] and be deprived of all freedoms’.³² The conversion to the Reformed faith was used as an argument for their freedom:

The reason why only Leijlard was baptised can be explained by the fact that she was a child of mixed descent, having a black mother and a white father – perhaps Willem Hendrik van Steenberg himself, their enslaver and a member of the government in Suriname.

As remarked above, religion is used in this letter as an argument to pursue freedom. The willingness of Chriool to educate herself in the way of the Reformed Church is an example of that. Besides, the document also highlights that ‘being in a land without slavery, where freedom is the highest joy’, they ‘had acted accordingly’.³⁴ Both Van Steenberg and Smitman were willing to attest to their behaviour. The request ends with the notion of their loyalty and openness towards the Reformed Church, which is why they should be awarded letters of freedom before heading back to Suriname.³⁵ The board of the wic settled on the matter on 9 August 1771: since slavery did not exist in the Republic and Chriool and Leijlard were therefore no longer enslaved, they did not need any letters of freedom.³⁶

To conclude this section, we make some remarks about the audiences of the baptisms of black people, as these services must have been quite the happening. Various announcements mention the great mass of spectators who came to see what was for them an extraordinary event. It is unsure whether these services were announced beforehand, or if those present had heard about the planned baptism of a (formerly) enslaved person through the grapevine and came out of curiosity. The instance of the abovementioned Christiaan, who was baptised in ’s-Hertogenbosch on 13 February 1757, demonstrates the diverse audience that the baptism of a black person could attract. According to the Boekzaal, he was baptised ‘among a large influx of people, both Catholic and Reformed’.³⁷ Apparently, his baptism was so exciting that the religious division between the attendees was irrelevant for a moment. Another example, albeit from a Remonstrant Reformed Church, is the illustration of the baptism of Niabi (see Figure 1). The print depicts a large crowd crammed together for the service – even with people standing on the stairs and people sitting on large cabinets in the back of the church. The announcement of Elizabeth Catharina’s (last name unknown) and Petronella Helena Pijpers’ baptism on 20 March 1796 in Lith and Lithoyen shows some of the sentiments and considerations church officials likely had when organising the baptism of (formerly) enslaved individuals:

The church officials feared mockery amongst the attendees and therefore decided to keep the service out of the spotlight. However, as noted in the Boekzaal, word got out anyway, but the service persisted without any incidents. Did their reluctance come out of fear of the local church or the Reformed religion being ridiculed? Or were they worried for Elizabeth Catharina and Petronella Helena? The baptism announcements do not provide any information on what the experience of the services was like for the baptised individuals. Some might have been overjoyed for finally being accepted in the Reformed Church, whilst others probably felt overwhelmed and uncomfortable, since they had once again been placed in an unfamiliar environment and were put up for display as a curiosity for the local people to witness.

While we have little information on how the baptised individuals experienced their baptisms, we do have some indications of how the involved clergy perceived these special moments. To our surprise, baptism announcements often contain critical notions concerning slavery and, indirectly, concerning racist worldviews, as was the case with the report of Niabi’s baptism.³⁹ Another example is the minister Theodorus Paludanus, who baptised three enslaved individuals from the East Indies in Capelle aan den ijssel on 26 April 1750. The baptism announcement concludes with the possibility of publishing a book on these special baptisms.⁴⁰ Although this work was never finalised, Paludanus shared his views on the dehumanisation of enslaved people briefly in another publication entitled the Kerklyke redevoering (Ecclesiastical address). He argues there that only God should have the power to oppress others. In addition, he reflects critically on the way enslavers and their kin glorified abuse and assaulted enslaved persons.⁴¹ Paludanus was not the only one to write critically about slavery. The following statement was written after the baptism of Filippina Hendrietta van Fortuin on 5 August 1782 in the Grote Kerk (Great Church) in ’s-Hertogenbosch:

After reading this statement one might think the Dutch Republic would abolish slavery way sooner than it actually did. Additional research will have to clarify the different viewpoints of ministers on slavery and the baptism of black Christians, in order to answer questions such as whether certain groups or ‘schools’ of ministers were more inclined to baptise (formerly) enslaved people. However, in general, as researchers have shown, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ministers in the Dutch Reformed Church seem to have accepted slavery and the underpinning racial hierarchies.⁴³ Only in the nineteenth century, ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church such as Nicolaas Beets (1814-1903) began to raise their voice against slavery through the combined impulse of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, slave revolts and British abolitionism. Different from the situation in Great Britain, religious dissenters (those who were members of a church that was not the state or public church) did not form an influential anti-slavery movement in the Netherlands.⁴⁴ Although the baptism of Maria Zara Johanna Niabi happened in a Remonstrant Reformed Church, there is hardly any evidence that Remonstrant (or Mennonite, Lutheran or Catholic) Christians in general were more critical of slavery than Dutch Reformed Christians.⁴⁵ As for Johannes Bruining, the minister who performed the baptism of Van Fortuin, he might have found her baptism a good opportunity to speak out against slavery. Bruining might have simply taken inspiration from the Bible, which is where we turn now.

In Table 3 one finds an overview of all the Bible texts that are referred to more than once in the baptism announcements.⁴⁶ In many cases, not only the reference to the Bible text but also the text itself is fully quoted in the baptism announcements.

From the six texts that are referred to more than once, it is striking that four of them explicitly refer to ‘Moors’. In the Statenvertaling, the official Dutch Bible translation at the time, published in 1637,⁴⁷ the term Moors was reserved for Ethiopians or Kushites (a biblical name for Ethiopians) as a pars pro toto for Africans.⁴⁸ However, in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch, Moor could refer to almost all non-white peoples, in the first place Africans, but also to Muslims or Mohammedans – for example when writing about members of the Islamic community in Batavia, the capital of the East Indies.⁴⁹ This perhaps explains why the Boekzaal speaks about an ‘Afrikaansche Moor’ (‘African Moor’), adding ‘Afrikaansche’ (‘African’) as a specification, in the cases of Christiaan, Daniel Frederik Atrim, Jan van Ransdorp, and Jacob van Hermanstyn.⁵⁰ The series of baptisms on 6 April 1788 shows that Clarinda Mauritia Roedolfina, who originated from Asia, was also characterised as a ‘Moorinne’ (female Moor),⁵¹ and that the biblical story about the Ethiopian Eunuch (see below), or ‘Moorman’ as he was called in the Statenvertaling, was applied to a male ‘mysties’ from Batavia (presumably – as his enslaver worked there), as well as to an adult woman from the East Indies.⁵²

If we look at the content of the six Bible texts above, it is striking how universal or inclusive in character they are. They all emphasise that people shall come from ‘the East and West’ (Matthew), from ‘all the ends of the earth’ (Isaiah), from ‘beyond the rivers of the Moors’ (Zephaniah) and out of Egypt and the land of the Moors (Psalm 68), to bring offerings to God, sit with him, to look unto him, or to stretch their arms out to him. In Psalm 87 the fictive citizenship of Jerusalem (Zion) is extended to Egypt (Rahab), Babylon, the Philistine, the Tyrean, and the Moor – in other words: to all the nations of the world.

Special attention should be paid to the Bible story that is mentioned no less than thirteen times in baptism announcements: the baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch. This Bible story, found in Acts 8:26-40, tells the story of a eunuch from Ethiopia who had visited Jerusalem and returned to Ethiopia while reading a scroll of the book of Isaiah in his chariot. The apostle Philip is sent to the eunuch by an angel to help him understand what he is reading. After hearing Philip’s explanation, the eunuch embraces Christianity and asks to be baptised – which Philip does. So, he becomes the first gentile convert in the New Testament. Understandably, the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch became a popular story with both the enslaved persons and the people converting and baptising them (Figure 4).⁵³ For example, the Dutch Reformed minister Jan Willem Kals (1700-1781) reported how he met an enslaved and converted woman in Suriname, Isabella (last name unknown), who referred to the Ethiopian Eunuch as her role model and inspiration.⁵⁴ There are also troublesome aspects to the interpretation of this story: where a minister such as Casparus de Carpentier (1607-1667) saw the eunuch and his focus on reading the Bible as an example of proto-Protestantism,⁵⁵ others used the story in a racialised discourse, arguing that in the process of conversion and baptism the eunuch actually became white – at least in his soul.⁵⁶ However, as the baptism announcements do not tell us how the ministers preached about Acts 8, we cannot know which turn they took in their sermons.

In an article, Martijn Stoutjesdijk has made a first inventory and analysis of the ways the Bible was used in the Dutch debate on colonial slavery during the seventeenth up until the nineteenth centuries.⁵⁷ According to this research, the focus in this debate was on, first, Bible passages that regulate slavery (such as Leviticus 25:39-46, Deuteronomy 15:12-17, Ephesians 6:5-9, 1 Timothy 6:1-2, et cetera); second, New Testament texts that discuss the relation between physical and spiritual slavery (such as John 8:34 and 2 Peter 2:19); and, third, the Curse of Ham in Genesis 9. As we can see, this list of texts used in the slavery debate is quite different from our list of popular baptism texts (Table 3). This signifies a different focus and occasion when it comes to the baptisms, but might also be indicative of another view on slavery. Bible texts dedicated to slavery laws and regulations do not occur at all in our corpus of baptism announcements and neither does the theme of spiritual versus physical slavery. The Curse of Ham only appears once in the baptism announcements, and is worth discussing at length.

The Curse of Ham refers to a Bible story in Genesis 9:20-27, in which Noah gets drunk after the flood, undresses himself and curses his son Ham (or actually his grandson, Canaan) for not covering him by using the following words: ‘Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.’ In later interpretations – particularly popular in the colonial era, also in the Dutch context – this passage was used to legitimise the slavery of particularly black or African people, as Ham was, erroneously, identified as the ancestor of the Africans.⁵⁸ The announcement in the Boekzaal in which the Curse of Ham is referred to, describes how an African Moor was baptised in Rees (now Germany) in 1756 and given the name Daniel Frederik Atlim, with Atlim being his African city of birth. Atlim was educated by one minister Steffens, who also administered the sacrament of baptism. The announcement explicitly mentions that on this occasion Steffens did not preach, but held a short ‘voorafspraak’ (‘introductory speech’) on Noah’s blessing in Genesis 9:21-27. A summary of this speech is included in the Boekzaal. As it is a unique discussion of the Curse, situated on the level of a local church, we insert the entire quotation below:

This quotation is a strange combination of careful exegesis and a message of inclusivity on the one hand, and derogatory ideas on the other. First of all, Steffens is right to notice that the curse is actually on Canaan, not Ham, his father. However, instead of discussing the curse of Canaan, Steffens debates the ‘non-blessing and non-cursing of Ham’, for which he provides two reasons. First of all, the ‘non-blessing’ part pertains to the fact that this lineage would be the smallest in numbers and that because of their ‘blackness and lack of standing’ the Moors deriving from it would be less esteemed than the ‘white people descended from Shem and Japhet’, thus displaying a clear racial hierarchy with white people above black people. Then, the ‘non-cursing’ part entails that the lineage of Ham would not stay deprived of any blessing, as the many prophecies or promises in the Bible about ‘Moors’ (enumerated at the end of the passage) show that they will ultimately join the true Church. In this way Steffens seems to want to harmonise popular colonial ideas about Africans assumingly having the lowest stature, or even being cursed to serve white people as enslaved persons, with the clear biblical promises on the Moors worshipping the one God. With this reasoning, Steffens comes close to the argumentation of Dutch advocates of slavery such as Godefridus Udemans (1581/82-1649), who legitimised slavery by arguing that for many enslaved people it was a path to spiritual salvation.⁶¹

This article is a first attempt to inventory and analyse the baptisms of black – Asian and African – people in the Dutch Republic systematically. We have used the baptism announcements in the periodical Boekzaal as our main source, as they provide us with a substantial corpus of (Reformed) baptisms that allows us to make provisional statements about the chronological and geographical distribution of the baptisms of black people in the Republic. Based on these data, we have shown that baptisms of black people occurred everywhere in the Republic – in all provinces and in both urban centres as well as small villages. Moreover, we learnt that people from both the East and the West Indies (the latter constituting the majority of cases) were present, and that the ways they were addressed in the baptism announcements seem to have been roughly the same – they were often designated with the same term, ‘Moor’.

While harbouring a great wealth of information, the baptism announcements also evoke numerous questions that this article could not answer, for example why so many baptisms of black Christians in the Catholic Generality Lands were reported on, and what the impact of baptism was on the life courses and status of black Christians compared to those who were not baptised. Also, the issue of agency of these (formerly) enslaved individuals has turned out to be difficult to answer on the basis of the data presented.

Finally, the announcements do not only give information on the distribution, geographies, and life courses of (formerly) enslaved Africans and Asians in the Republic, but also form a unique source to understand the ways early modern Dutch Reformed theologians viewed non-white people and their inclusion in Christianity. These attitudes are expressed through the choice of Bible texts on the occasion of the baptisms, which are in most cases recorded in the Boekzaal. Most of these Bible texts seem to indicate a more inclusive perspective on people with different ethnic backgrounds – especially when compared to the Bible texts that were used in the colonial debates on slavery. These more inclusive Bible texts, combined with incidental explicit anti-slavery statements, leave us wondering whether the baptisms of black people could and should be seen as a form of performative activism, with ministers making clear through the act of baptism that black people too should be seen and treated as humans. To answer that and other questions, more research is needed on the baptisms of black people in the Dutch Republic.