Racism 7

Art. 24. Along the coast or at the fort you should buy as many slaves as are necessary for the work (…).
Art. 25. If there are more slaves than are needed, a store shall be kept of them (for they can be fed with little more than a little rice) to be sent hither or elsewhere as needed. (…)
Art. 26. As soon as we can come to an agreement with the Spaniards or with anyone else for the supply of slaves, you will be informed.

Adam Jones (1985): Brandenburg Sources for West African History, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, p. 75.

Benjamin Raule (1634-1707) was a Dutch shipowner and General Director of the Brandenburg Navy.

This quote comes from the electoral instructions given by Benjamin Raule, a general marine director of the Electorate of Brandenburg, to Joost Van Colster, the first director of Fort Groß-Friedrichsburg, today's Pokesu. Both Fort Gross-Friedrichsburg and Elmina Castle (both located in modern-day Ghana), where Colster was previously involved in the slave trade, were slave forts. Built in 1482, Elmina Castle was the first European slave trading post in all of sub-Saharan Africa. This quote illustrates the dehumanisation of Black people and their treatment as commodities, as animals whose human needs and dignity were utterly discarded through exploitation. People from West Africa were brutally deported to the Caribbean and Brazil. This quote also makes it clear that murder, enslavement and forced labour had taken place under Brandenburg rule long before the genocide of the Herero and Nama from 1904 to 1908.

*Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker (2000): The Many-Headed Hydra. The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. London: Verso. *Olaudah Equiano (1789): The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African.

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