Pre-colonial mise-en-abyme: Focquenbroch and a nonrepublican Baroque

Acting as a sailor on a voc or wic ship, a ship sailing under the flag of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (United East Indian Company) or Westindische Compagnie (West Indian Company) was commonly considered to be shameful, as a result of which many sailors were recruited, or bought, elsewhere. Karel Bostoen, in his short study on the figure of poet, playwright, and medic Willem Godschalck van Focquenbroch (1640–1670), states: ‘Those who went to Africa on behalf of the wic belonged, by and large, to the scum (criminals and beggars)’. This was the company in which said Focquenbroch found himself when, after he had not been able to make enough of a living in Amsterdam, he applied for the job of ‘Fiscaal’ (a kind of public persecutor) with the wic. On 17 July 1668 he set out on a ship named The Gideon which was to bring him to the isle of Sao Jorge da Mina, as it had been named by the Portuguese. What was now St. George d’Elmina had rapidly grown into the most important hub for Dutch slave traders and a key foothold along the coast of Ghana. Expecting easy money, Focquenbroch must have underestimated what he was headed for. As Bostoen notes, the so-called Goldcoast was also known as ‘the grave of the white man’; a study into survival rates of English personnel sent to Africa concluded that 60 % died within eight months.

After a hazardous journey, Focquenbroch landed on 18 September and described his experience in a letter dated 22 September: