Skip to content
🇭🇹   BETA  ·  Istwanou is free during beta — free access continues until January 1, 2027 or when we reach 100,000 entries, whichever comes first.  ·  5,363 entries published  ·  94,637 entries away from the 100k milestone.       🇭🇹   BETA  ·  Istwanou is free during beta — free access continues until January 1, 2027 or when we reach 100,000 entries, whichever comes first.  ·  5,363 entries published  ·  94,637 entries away from the 100k milestone.       
You are offline — some content may not be available
1644-02

A petition in New Amsterdam wins a freedom children cannot inherit

African

In February 1644 a group of enslaved Africans in New Amsterdam petitioned the Dutch authorities for their freedom. They had served the Dutch West India Company for eighteen years, they said, and they were burdened with so many children that they could no longer support their families while they stayed in the company’s service. The Council of New Netherland granted what historians call half freedom to the named petitioners and their wives. In exchange each man owed the company a yearly payment of wheat and a hog valued at twenty guilders. The council also ruled that their children, those already born and those yet to be born, would serve the company in slavery. The petitioners carried names recording where they had passed through, Paulo Angola, Simon Congo, Anthony Portugis, Jan Fort Orange. They spoke some Dutch and some Portuguese and had stood on two other continents. Their wives appear in the ruling without names.

Source  ·  p. 237 Morgan, 237