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The Traitor to the African People who helped spread the slave trade…
Jacobus Elisa Johannes Captain (born ca. 1717; died 1747) was a Dutch Christian minister of Ghanaian birth who was one of the first known sub-Saharan Africans to study at a European university and one of the first Africans to be ordained as a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. He is credited with spreading the use of the written word in his native Ghana.
Captain did not challenge the general attitude towards slavery in the Dutch republic. In his dissertation De servitude, liberate Christian non-contraria on March 10, 1742, he defended slavery as niet striding Tegen de christlike vryheid ("not in conflict with Christian liberty"
.
He stressed that a slave who becomes a Christian does not need to be freed, and those slave owners, therefore, should allow their slaves to be baptized The primary goal of Captain's thesis was to encourage baptism of Africans by arguing that Africans could be baptized yet remain slaves. Captain thereby presented a counterargument to Godefridus Cornelisz Udemans, a Dutch minister who had argued that slaves should be freed seven years after they were baptized.
This would have effectively rendered baptism a non-option because slave owners were eager to keep their assets and would therefore not have allowed their slaves to be baptized.
His defense of slavery made him popular with the Dutch East India Company, and he was appointed minister of the fort of Elmina, the hub of the Dutch slave trade along the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). After a short tour of the Netherlands, where he was celebrated as the "black minister", he left for Elmina.
However, his duties as minister and missionary proved difficult. The white slave traders did not like him because he was black and because he did not approve of the slave traders' extramarital affairs. Contact with the other Africans was difficult because Captain had become too Dutch, and his efforts to baptize the local population proved fruitless. Embittered and in debt, Captain died on 1st February 1747, aged about 30.
Jacobus Elisa Johannes Captain (born ca. 1717; died 1747) was a Dutch Christian minister of Ghanaian birth who was one of the first known sub-Saharan Africans to study at a European university and one of the first Africans to be ordained as a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. He is credited with spreading the use of the written word in his native Ghana.
Captain did not challenge the general attitude towards slavery in the Dutch republic. In his dissertation De servitude, liberate Christian non-contraria on March 10, 1742, he defended slavery as niet striding Tegen de christlike vryheid ("not in conflict with Christian liberty"
. He stressed that a slave who becomes a Christian does not need to be freed, and those slave owners, therefore, should allow their slaves to be baptized The primary goal of Captain's thesis was to encourage baptism of Africans by arguing that Africans could be baptized yet remain slaves. Captain thereby presented a counterargument to Godefridus Cornelisz Udemans, a Dutch minister who had argued that slaves should be freed seven years after they were baptized.
This would have effectively rendered baptism a non-option because slave owners were eager to keep their assets and would therefore not have allowed their slaves to be baptized.
His defense of slavery made him popular with the Dutch East India Company, and he was appointed minister of the fort of Elmina, the hub of the Dutch slave trade along the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). After a short tour of the Netherlands, where he was celebrated as the "black minister", he left for Elmina.
However, his duties as minister and missionary proved difficult. The white slave traders did not like him because he was black and because he did not approve of the slave traders' extramarital affairs. Contact with the other Africans was difficult because Captain had become too Dutch, and his efforts to baptize the local population proved fruitless. Embittered and in debt, Captain died on 1st February 1747, aged about 30.
