ALL OLD MASTER PORTRAITS ARE OVER PAINTS
By Egmond Codfried
COLOFON
Published by Suriname Blue Blood Is Black Blood Museum
Contents:
Introduction: Suriname Blue Blood Is Black Blood Museum
Falsifying Of History
Tortured for discovering the truth
Revolutions
Casts
Blue Blood Is Black Blood (1100-1848)
Racism is an liberation ideology
Isabelle de Charrière
Charlotte Brontë
Virginia Woolf
The Third Estate
Shoe Leather
Jane Austen
The Cult Of Rembrandt
Adolphe Braun
Rembrandt
Van Mierevelt
Mauritshuis
Historical Museum
National Portrait Gallery
RKD/IB
PUBLISHED BY: Egmond Codfried
Eemstraat 36, 2515VS den Haag
First edition March 2013.
The Suriname Blue Blood Is Black Blood Museum
[The Syndics of the Clothes Makers Guild (De Staalmeesters) (1667) by Rembrandt, before and after retouch. Photo by Adolphe Braun, taken before 1880.
Source : Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum (2006)p.208]
I N T R O D U C T I ON
Press Communiqué:
OPENING SURINAME BLUE BLOOD IS BLACK BLOOD MUSEUM
EGMOND CODFRIED (Paramaribo, 1959), writer and publicist, is the inventor of the Blue Blood is Black Blood Theory (2005) that states that Europe between 1100 and 1848, was dominated by an elite, which was described as brown and black of complexion. He exhibits his collection of reproductions from often-unknown historical portraits that makes this museum the only one that concerns itself with the true looks of historical personages. Prince William I of Orange (1533-1518) was described as ‘More brown then white,’ and ‘brown of complexion and the beard.’ (Beresteyn, 1933: 1) Some of them, like William I of Orange, his father-in-law Maurice of Saxony, and Jane Austen (1775-1817) had, next to brown or black skin, also (strong) classical African facial traits: thick prognastic lips, and/or broad noses and frizzled hair; which once stood for pure noble blood: Blue blood. They were the descendents of the Blue Men, the black and brown original Europeans who came 45.000 years ago from Africa (Grimaldi Man). And part of which, between 1100-1200; declared themselves a nobility, and thus true Europeans. Intermarriage to remain black of complexion, and a noble lifestyle were both required. They self-styled as protectors against the Normans, civilised and christianised the white Europeans, who had only 6000 years earlier arrived from Central Asia, and who now became the Serfs which the nobility exploited. Typical for this lordship was the cruel way protest was dealt with, with executions by quartering, breaking of limps and disembowelling, and by throwing the intestines in the fire while still attached to the body. But the cruelest punishment must have been the public, live flaying. Therefore there existed a European trade in human skins till 1848, and these skins were industrially worked into bookbindings, clothing and even shoes for the elite. Church doors were lined with human skin, which fact shows that the exploitation of whites was regarded as the will of god. Theirs was a cast-society with the whites as outcasts. This information illustrates better why there was a need for a Declaration of The Rights of Man (1760), because the white Serfs asked their noble masters to be accepted as human beings. Then the Enlightened, Black high bourgeoisie ‘scientist,’ the intellectual elite, invented human races and placed the whites, the majority of the population, for strategic purposes; at the top of the evolutionary ladder, and the Moor all the way below, just above the great Apes. The Moor (Othello, Mr. Elton, Black Madonna’s, and the heraldic little Moors) symbolized nobility and Black Superiority. With this, they showed their true feelings for the high nobility with their ideas about Black Superiority. The French Revolution (179-1794) initiated a change and brought the middling classes, the capitalist elite to power, but little changed for the poor working class people. Because of restorations like those by Napoleon, it took till the final revolutions of 1848, that the white Europeans were emancipated and the nobility lost it ‘privileges.’ Jane Austen was described as ‘brunette of complexion,’ and ‘a brown, not a pink colour’ and she made all her novel personages light brown, brown, very brown and black of complexion. She wrote against the change of status of the Black Elite. The Surinamese Governors and slave masters were members of this coloured or noble aristocracy. After 1848 history became revisionist, thus painted white. They created a fake, whitened history by using whitened, fashionable and propagandist portraits that were commissioned by the brown and black complexioned elite; who sometimes in real life painted themselves white or bleached their skins. The merit of the Blue Blood theory is deconstructing revisionism in history and deconstruction of Racism against Blacks, which was caused by the cruel, but civilising and christianising, oppression. Whites fear and hate Blacks because Blacks once ruled them. Racism is a liberation ideology. All unscientific theories about race and skull measuring etc. were invented to declare these Historical Blacks to be whites and thus hide Black Supremacy rule. This new museum, in a staircase of his home, with the blessing of Vestia Den Haag Zuid Oost, and only accessible by appointment; welcomes everybody, for which reason the entrance fee is only euro 1. The public can see portraits of Black Rulers and their Black Queens. There are reproductions of portraits of nobles and slave masters, which were never before shown publicly and are hidden in family- or scientific collections because of Black looks. There will be postcards and books for sale. This museum in The Hague will lead to the finding of a Suriname Museum of Black History in Suriname in 2013. bluebloodisblackblood.blogspot.com
Information. Egmond Codfried / 06427799
The Hague, 15 June 2012.
TO THE EXECUTIVE BOARD OF THE DUTCH ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES IN Amsterdam. CC the DA, MIN OF EDUC. On: THE INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST MASS SCIENTIFIC FRAUD, MISREPRESENTATION AND INSTITUTIONAL MISCONDUCT BY FALSEFIED, OVER PAINTED OLD MASTER PORTRAITS PRESENTED TO THE UNWARY PUBLIC
The Hague, 14 March 2013.
Dear Sirs, Hans Chang, and Theo Mulder
This is to inform you about my discovery of a massive scientific fraud and institutional scientific misconduct through the alleged scientific management, the so-called scientific description and by misleading the public by exhibition of falsified old master portraits in all museums. Our restorers, our museum directors and our Directors are therefore criminal organizations at the expense of the taxpayers. All old master portraits and some genre scenes were in the period 1848 -1960 whitened. This followed immediately after the emancipation of the Third Estate in France resulting in universal male suffrage, and our own major constitutional change that took away some privileges of the nobility. To avoid relapse the revolutionary governments decided that all portraits of the Ancien Régime must be painted over with beige and pink paint. They claimed that the paint had darkened, while the painter wanted to depict white people. So all the old master portraits were supposedly restored or whitened. Rembrandt was deliberately, against all evidence proclaimed to be the revolutionary painter of the third estate, while his figures around 1880, were re-painted, as whites. This is evidenced by a photograph of the original Syndics. This can also be derived from photos from 1934 of un-retouched portraits of Van Aerssen-Beyeren collection, the richest family in the Republic. This concerns the true brown and black complexions of the noble, bourgeois or regent Masters (1100-1848) who were using the skin of their serfs as shoe leather. The good news is that this is still highly visible by the naked eye on the faces and hands. The facial hair was re-painted on the false beige face layer, the hair lightened by blonde highlights, the skin layer was re-painted around the pearl necklaces, and that the false face layer is higher than the rest. The hands often look like claws, while the classical African and frizzled hair were maintained. This is even worse than the Professor Diederik Stapel scandal, the Bicycle Sport Doping scandal, the Mad Cow Disease scandal and the present Horse Meat scandal put together and is very damaging to the reputation of the Netherlands, and the majority of the brown and black complexioned world population. Kindly sent your response within two weeks.
Sincerely, Your obedient servant,
Egmond Codfried, Curator Suriname Blue Blood Blood Is Black Museum, Eemstraat 36/2515 VS The Hague. OPEN LETTER
This is to inform you about my discovery of a massive scientific fraud and institutional scientific misconduct through the alleged scientific management, the so-called scientific description and by misleading the public by exhibition of falsified old master portraits in all museums. Our restorers, our museum directors and our Directors are therefore criminal organizations at the expense of the taxpayers. All old master portraits and some genre scenes were in the period 1848 -1960 whitened. This followed immediately after the emancipation of the Third Estate in France resulting in universal male suffrage, and our own major constitutional change that took away some privileges of the nobility. To avoid relapse the revolutionary governments decided that all portraits of the Ancien Régime must be painted over with beige and pink paint. They claimed that the paint had darkened, while the painter wanted to depict white people. So all the old master portraits were supposedly restored or whitened. Rembrandt was deliberately, against all evidence proclaimed to be the revolutionary painter of the third estate, while his figures around 1880, were re-painted, as whites. This is evidenced by a photograph of the original Syndics. This can also be derived from photos from 1934 of un-retouched portraits of Van Aerssen-Beyeren collection, the richest family in the Republic. This concerns the true brown and black complexions of the noble, bourgeois or regent Masters (1100-1848) who were using the skin of their serfs as shoe leather. The good news is that this is still highly visible by the naked eye on the faces and hands. The facial hair was re-painted on the false beige face layer, the hair lightened by blonde highlights, the skin layer was re-painted around the pearl necklaces, and that the false face layer is higher than the rest. The hands often look like claws, while the classical African and frizzled hair were maintained. This is even worse than the Professor Diederik Stapel scandal, the Bicycle Sport Doping scandal, the Mad Cow Disease scandal and the present Horse Meat scandal put together and is very damaging to the reputation of the Netherlands, and the majority of the brown and black complexioned world population. Kindly sent your response within two weeks.
Sincerely, Your obedient servant,
Egmond Codfried, Curator Suriname Blue Blood Blood Is Black Museum, Eemstraat 36/2515 VS The Hague. OPEN LETTER
AAN DE DIRECTIE VAN DE KONINKLIJKE NEDERLANDSE ACADEMIE VAN WETENSCHAPPEN, HET KNAW, Te Amsterdam. CC het OM, MINOV Inzake: DE INTERNATIONALE CAMPAGNE TEGEN MASSALE WETENSCHAPPELIJKE FRAUDE, INSTITUTIONELE GESCHIEDVERVALSING EN MISLEIDING VAN HET PUBLIEK MET VERVALSTE, OVER GESCHILDERDE OUDE MEESTER PORTRETTEN
Den Haag, 14 maart 2013.
Geachte Heren, Doctorandussen Hans Chang, en Theo Mulder
Hierbij informeer ik u over mijn ontdekking van een massale wetenschappelijke fraude en institutioneel wetenschappelijk wangedrag dmv het vermeende wetenschappelijke beheer, de zogenaamde wetenschappelijke beschrijving en de misleiding van het publiek door tentoonstelling van oude meester portretten in alle musea. Onze restaurateurs, onze museum directies en onze raden van bestuur zijn daarmee criminele organisaties op kosten van de belastingbetalers. Alle oude meester portretten en sommige genre stukken werden in de periode 1848 –1960 gewit. Dit volgde meteen na de emancipatie van de derde stand die algemeen kiesrecht in Frankrijk kreeg, en onze belangrijke grondwetswijziging die de adel een aantal privileges ontnam. Om terugval te voorkomen besloten de revolutionaire regeringen om alle portretten van het Ancien Regime met beige en roze verf te laten overschilderen. Men beweerde dat de verf donker was geworden, terwijl de schilder witte mensen wilde afbeelden, dus werden alle oude meester portretten zogenaamd gerestaureerd of gewit. Rembrandt werd doelbewust, tegen alle bewijzen in uitgeroepen tot de revolutionaire schilder van de derde stand, terwijl zijn figuren rond 1880; als witten werden her-geschilderd, zoals blijkt uit een foto van de oorspronkelijke Staalmeesters. Tevens kan zulks afgeleid worden van foto’s uit 1934 van de on-geretoucheerde portretten van de Van Aerssen-Beyeren collectie, van de rijkste familie uit de Republiek. Dit betreft het ware gelaat van de adellijke, bourgeois of regenten Meesters (1100-1848) die de huid van hun lijfeigenen en horigen als schoenleer gebruikte. Het goede nieuws is dat dit nog steeds hogelijk zichtbaar is met het blote oog aan de gezichten en handen. Waarbij gezichtshaar over de valse beige gezicht laag werd her-geschilderd, het kapsel lichter werd gemaakt door blonde hoogsels, de huid werd her-geschilderd rond de parelsnoeren, en dat de valse gezicht laag hoger ligt dan de rest. De handen ogen vaak als klauwen, terwijl de klassieke Afrikaanse en het kroeze haar gehandhaafd bleven. Dit is nog erger dan het Professor Diederik Stapel schandaal, het Rijwielsport dopingschandaal, het Gekke koeien schandaal en het Paardenvlees schandaal bij elkaar en zeer schadelijk voor het aanzien van Nederland, en van de meerderheid van de bruine en zwarte wereld bevolking. Gaarne zie ik uw reactie binnen twee weken tegemoet.
Hoogachtend, Uw gehoorzame dienaar,
Egmond Codfried, Conservator Suriname Blue Blood Is Black Blood Museum, Eemstraat 36/ 2515 VS Den Haag. OPEN BRIEF
Bronnen: Kloek, Wouter Theodoor , Rijksmuseum Bulletin 2006. J. Hernandez, Van Aerssen-Beyeren, Boletin de Artes 1934. D. McRitchie, Ancient and Modern Britons, 1884. A. McQueen, The Rise of the 19th Century Cult of Rembrandt, 2003.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_oUAallrIka_updcxSBuVZVOGuBjwkHUk-BA-_cimYm8GPabi81x8W0u118NA73e2eGUDI78s04WShZiS_twClw3T3dTpSqKL55cd769w1AkvIBkwuHhanpkQLG-PrpGjg4l_M2ux8QsY/s1600/J.+van+Beyeren.jpg
http://img1.liveinternet.ru/images/attach/c/2//69/7/69007175_1294591849_4DPict.jpg
[De Staalmeesters (1662) on-geretoucheerd. Staalmeesters, Gewit. J van Beyeren en W. van Beyeren door v. Mierevelt. W. van Beyeren gewit. Petronella Borre ega van Francois van Aerssen. Willem I van Oranje (1533-1584) ‘meer bruin dan wit, bruyn van verve ende baerbe’(Berest ’33). Maurits van Saxen, Willems schoonvader. Prins Maurits, zoon van Willem I. Dorothea van Denemarken, nicht van Keizer Charles V Habsburg. ]
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Prinsesse_Dorothea_(1504-1547).jpg
WAS WILLEM VAN ORANJE EEN ZWARTE EUROPEAAN?
Voorwoord
Naar aanleiding van de ‘Iconographie van Prins Willem van Oranje; Ter gelegenheid van de herdenking van den vierhonderdsten geboortedag’ door Jhr. Mr. Dr. E.A. van Beresteyn (1933), de beheerder der Afdeling Iconografie van het Rijksbureau van kunsthistorische en iconografische documentatie, kwam ik tot de conclusie dat Willem van Oranje, de stichter van ons Nederlands koningshuis, een ‘zwarte en gekleurde’ persoon was, een Renaissance prins die lid was van de ‘zwarte en gekleurde’ Europese elite tussen ongeveer 1500 en 1764. Zij hadden een ‘zwarte’ identiteit die hen met de Afrikaanse beschaving van de pikzwarte piramide bouwende farao’s verbond. Deze zwarte identiteit werd gesymboliseerd door afbeeldingen van een pikzwarte Moor en klassieke, zwarte keizers op cameo’s en andere kunstwerken. Zoals op afbeeldingen van de geboorte van Jezus en sieraden als de Drake Jewel. Zij hadden een ‘gekleurde’ etniciteit die stond voor adel en beschaving. Willem van Oranje wordt als donkerbruin beschreven en toont deels Afrikaanse trekken. Vandaag zou deze Europese natie als ‘allochtonen’ aan de kant worden gezet.
Inleiding, probleemstelling en definities
In de dertiger en veertiger jaren deed J.A. Rogers, Caraïbische Amerikaan en autodidact, onderzoek naar gemengde afstammelingen van Afrikanen over de hele wereld, maar met name in Europa. Hij was een lichtgekleurde mulat en verwonderde zich waarom hij door witte Amerikanen als zwart werd beschouwd en te lijden had onder de segregatiepolitiek, terwijl hij meer wit dan zwart was. Rogers werkte als bagagedrager op het treinstation en moest zijn ongeschoolde witte collega’s betalen om voor hem boeken uit de belangrijke bibliotheken te lenen. Als zwarte kreeg hij geen toegang tot deze informatie. Rogers baseerde zich op voorgaande deelstudies, monografieën, en opmerkingen van andere onderzoekers. Zodoende bundelde hij aanwijzingen van zwarte en gekleurde Europese vorsten en andere historische personages. Rogers concentreerde zich tijdens reizen door heel Europa op portretten en beschrijvingen van voorname personen die de trekken van de zogenaamde ‘klassieke Afrikanen’ toonden, namelijk kroes haar, brede gezichten met hoge jukbeenderen, brede en stompe neuzen, dikke lippen, subnasale prognastie, een terugwijkende kin en een zwarte huid.
Zijn onderzoek speelde in de tijd van ernstige rassenscheiding in Amerika waar men de ‘één druppel’ theorie volgde, namelijk dat iedereen met één druppel zwart bloed, als zwart werd geregistreerd. Dat betekende in sommige staten dat zij bij wet niet met een witte persoon mochten trouwen of in een bepaald stadsdeel mochten wonen of lid mochten zijn van sommige clubs. President Thomas Jefferson, die zwarte Europese voorouders had, was kennelijk beroemd om zijn witte slaven. De veel gehoorde klacht bij abolishionisten was dat veel slaven er heel ‘blank’ uitzagen. Reden waarom men wil afdingen op de ‘zwartheid’ van zijn kinderen met de slavin Sally, de zwarte halfzuster van Jefferson’s overleden vrouw. Deze rassenwetten werden willekeurig toegepast want veel zwarte Amerikanen die wit oogden, en geen blijk gaven van een zwarte identiteit, uit de zon bleven of hun haar blondeerden, konden voor ‘wit’ passeren. Rogers’ doel was dus om te bewijzen dat zwarten in historische tijden in Europa wel hoge posities hebben bekleed. Hij onthulde ook de zwarte afstamming van vijf Amerikaanse presidenten; eentje zou zelf een gevluchte slaaf zijn geweest. Maar niet elke theorie van Rogers is goed te reproduceren.
De rassenscheiding kwam voort uit de gedachte van een hiërarchie tussen de vijf vermeende mensenrassen: Witten, Aziaten, Arabieren, Eskimo’s of Indianen en Afrikanen. De Witten vormden natuurlijk de hoogste trede van de Schepping, ze waren ‘mooier,’ en het was de ‘godgegeven’ taak aan de witte man, met hulp van de moreel zuivere maar biologisch ‘inferieure’ witte vrouw, om de andere ‘lagere’ rassen beschaving te brengen. De vermeende inferioriteit van vrouwen hangt samen met de functies van de baarmoeder en het vermeende vermogen van menstruerende vrouwen om ingemaakt voedsel te laten bederven. Zwarten zouden echter het meest op mensapen lijken (Virey:1824) en waren tevens afstammelingen van de vervloekte Cham, waardoor zij als ‘mensdieren’ onder aan de ladder hoorden. Rogers ontdekte echter dat er geen sprake is van ‘rassen’ maar dat het uiterlijk van verschillende mensentypen het beste is te verklaren door hen als een mengsel van wit en zwart te beschouwen. Vanuit zijn moderne, Afrocentrische perspectief zag hij bij Arabieren (‘sandniggers’) vele gevarieerde typen die in Zuid en Noord Amerika voor mulatten zouden worden aangezien. Ook stelde Rogers vast dat onder de Arabieren er heel ‘witte’ en heel ‘zwarte’ uitschieters te vinden zijn die vrij met elkaar huwen. Daartoe formuleerde hij de theorie dat Arabieren een ‘gefixeerd mulatten ras’ vormen, om de verschillende Arabische typen te kunnen verklaren. Verder stelde hij dat Arabieren afstammen van de Bijbelse, zwarte Chaldeeën en witte bergvolkeren in Irak die met elkaar vermengd raakten. Men treft ook in Midden Amerika, rond de Zwarte Zee, Azië, Australië en de Stille Oceaan antieke Afrikaanse volkeren aan. Er bestaan daarom geen zuivere ‘mensenrassen.’ De blondste Zweed kan meer genetische overeenkomsten hebben met een pikzwarte Sudanees, dan met zijn eigen Zweedse buurman, omdat volkeren nooit op één plaats zijn gebleven. Zij brachten hun DNA overal naartoe. Net zoals wij dat ook vandaag waarnemen, waar hele volksstammen door honger, oorlog en natuurgeweld op drift raken.
Het nadeel van eurocentrische monografieën over zwarte historische Europese personen zoals de negentiende eeuwse familie Valentijn, is dat zij als curiositeit worden bezien, terwijl men geen acht slaat op de etniciteit van partners, ouders en nakomelingen. Of zich niet afvraagt waar deze gekleurde partners vandaan komen. De veronderstelling dat de kleur reeds na enkele generaties verdween, gaat na bestudering van afbeeldingen van de nakomelingen meestal niet op. Daartoe ontbreekt een oriëntatie op de etniciteit van de partners en de identiteit van deze zwarte personen die vanwege hun historische afstamming, kan afwijken van de witte identiteit. Tevens is de racistische veronderstelling dat de nakomelingen van deze zwarte Europeanen zich zouden distantiëren van hun zwarte roots en ‘wit’ willen zijn. Bij deze studies kiest men het liefst bootmannen en voormalige slaven, geen adel of vorsten en intellectuelen, want die kunnen in een racistisch wereldbeeld natuurlijk niet zwart zijn geweest. Voor de ‘bewijsvoering’ wil men een duidelijk beschreven en onweerlegbare band met Afrika en slavernij zien, of dat een voorvader als ‘Moor’ te boek staat.
Terwijl de meeste zwarte en gekleurde Europeanen geen slaven waren, maar oorspronkelijk vrij naar Europa kwamen als handelaars, migranten, vluchtelingen of veroveraars. Julius Ceasar bracht Nubische Garamantes, Iraniërs en Anatoliërs als strijders naar Europa, die zich naderhand vestigden in zwarte kolonies langs de Rijn, de Donau en in Helvetia, in Pays de Vaud. De veronderstelling dat een familie of persoon zwart was, beschouwd men in Europa als een zware aantijging en eist ‘bewijzen.’ Persoonsbeschrijvingen zijn echter heel schaars, temeer daar deze personen deel uit maakten van een uitgebreide, zwarte gemeenschap. Er was zelden een reden om hun uiterlijk te beschrijven waar men onderling geen waardeoordeel aan kleur verbond. Soms treft men eufemismen als ‘bad complexion’ of ‘van lage geboorte’ of ‘lelijk’ die vandaag verkeerd worden begrepen. Echter wijzen sommige familienamen zoals variaties op: Zwart, Bruin of Moor en morenkoppen en halve manen in familiewapens, op een zwarte en gekleurde origine van het geslacht. Doorgaans kan men de genealogie van de oudste families tot het eind van de Middeleeuwen volgen. Aan de tijd daaraan voorafgaand bestaan er genealogieën die melding maken van afstamming van Romeinen, klassieke volkeren en zelf Bijbelse personen. Genealogen die geen kennis hebben van zwarte en gekleurde volkeren in Europa vanaf het begin der tijden, beschouwen deze genealogieën als fantasieën en wijzen hen van de hand, terwijl zij belangrijke antropologische aanwijzingen kunnen opleveren. Waarom zouden oude Nederlandse families geloven dat zij van Romeinen in Katwijk afstammen?
Aangezien de eerste mens in Oost Afrika ontstond, waar de oudste menselijke botten worden gevonden, en de zwarte huid slechts een aanpassing aan het milieu is, is aannemelijk dat de eerste mens, Adam en Eva zo je wilt, donkerbruine mensen waren. Een deel dat naar de evenaar trok, werd pikzwart en werd in de klassieke tijd ‘zonmensen’ genoemd. Een ander deel trok naar het noorden, naar Europa, en verloor hun pigmentatie omdat een zwarte huid in het hoge noorden leidt tot vitamine D deficiëntie. Deze vitamine wordt in de huid gemaakt onder invloed van zonlicht. Vitamine D is nodig voor de aanmaak van sterke botten. Het ‘wit’ worden van zwarte mensen is slechts mogelijk door een mutatie, zoals wij die kennen bij albino’s, in het handjevol genen die ons uiterlijk en onze huidkleur bepalen. Pure zwarte ouders krijgen soms één kind met een witte huid. Albinisme, doorgaans als een pathologisch fenomeen beschouwt, blijkt tenminste vijf vormen te hebben waarvan ‘Leaky Albinism’ een lichtere vorm is met donker haar, donkere ogen en de beperkte mogelijkheid van aanmaak van melanine door zonlicht. Deze variant lijkt op verschijnselen bij zonnebadende witte mensen, waardoor aannemelijk is dat witte mensen een ‘gefixeerd albino ras’ zijn. De natuur selecteerde de witte typen die het best aan hun zonlichtarme omgeving waren aangepast. Sheick Anta Diop is van mening dat witte mensen niet alleen in Europa en het hoge noorden ontstonden, maar ook in Afrika. Dus als wij in heel Afrika lichtgekleurde volkeren als Berbers, Fulani’s, Bosjesmannen en andere lichtgekleurde Soedanezen aantreffen, zij autochtoon Afrikaans zijn en geen afstammelingen van Europese volkeren. Hun cultuur en taal is Afrikaans. Het is niet mogelijk voor witte ouders om een zwart kind te verwekken, zonder fornicatie met een zwarte partner. Eurocentrische wetenschappers spreken over een ‘throw back’ als een verklaring voor afrocentrische trekken terwijl de ouders wit zouden zijn, en laten zich misleiden door vervalste schilderijen en bewerkte foto’s van de (voor)ouders. Mijn onderzoek wijst namelijk op bewuste vervalsingen van portretten om de gekleurde etniciteit te verbergen.
Wonderlijk genoeg meent de Eurocentrische antropologie dat ook sommige Oost Afrikaanse volkeren ‘wit’ zijn en behoren tot het Europese ras. Men baseert zich daarbij op de smalle gezichten, de smalle neus en de dunne lippen van sommige Nilotische en woestijn volkeren. Dit werkt alleen in theorie stelde Rogers, want als deze Nilotische Ethiopiërs en Somaliërs eenmaal in Amerika aankwamen, werden zij automatisch tot ‘niggers’ bestempeld. Mijn theorie is dat Europese wetenschappers ook zich bewust waren van zwarte volkeren en zwarte heersers binnen Europa, maar door deze ‘Nilotische typen’ tot witten te verklaren, de Egyptische beschaving en de hele Europese beschaving konden claimen als ‘wit.’ Daarmee werd ‘zwart’ Afrika tot onbeschaafd verklaard. Omdat de archeologische bewijzen toch teveel naar zwarten wezen, zoals de pikzwarte mummies van de oudste farao’s, werden afbeeldingen van pikzwarte farao’s en andere elite Egyptenaren van hun verflaag te ontdaan of wit over geschilderd. Ook maakte men valse ‘antiquiteiten’ met sneeuwwitte blauwogige Egyptenaren, die zelf in musea terechtkwamen als authentieke stukken. De rest werd verborgen gehouden, afwijkende wetenschappers werd de mond gesnoerd of werden de zwarte afbeeldingen afgedaan als vervalsingen door één zwarte Nubische dynastie. Men kan deze prachtige, vaak opvallend beschadigde, authentieke afbeeldingen van koninklijke Egyptenaren zien in de Egypte vleugel van het Louvre. In de beschrijvingen gaat men nooit in op de zwarte etniciteit van de oude Egyptenaren, terwijl dit het eerste is wat opvalt: de zwarte huid, een brede neus, dikke lippen en prognastie van de onder helft van het gezicht. Vandaag ogen veel elitaire Egyptenaren door menging met Aziaten, Grieken en Turken; licht gekleurd en kijken vanwege racistische indoctrinatie neer op Nubiërs. Zij willen niets horen van zwarte farao’s.
Vraagstelling en methodiek of werkwijze
Gewapend met deze kennis keren wij terug naar Beresteyn ter beantwoording van de centrale vraag over het zwarte uiterlijk van Willem van Oranje. Eerder verschenen er iconografieën en artikels over de afbeeldingen van Willem van Oranje, maar zijn versie verzamelt de meeste portretten. Namelijk tachtig schilderijen en tweehonderd prenten die gezift, geordend en ook afgedrukt werden. De bronnen voor de kennis van het uiterlijk van de prins zijn tweeërlei, schrijft Beresteyn, namelijk de afbeeldingen en anderzijds de beschrijvingen door tijdgenoten die de prins hebben gezien. Emanuel van Meeteren, een tijdgenoot beschreef de prins als: ‘Hij was een welghemaekte man, wat langher dan een middelbaer man, bruyn van verve ende van de baerde, eerder magher dan vetachtigh, redelijck vroom van lichaem, wat hij inwendich was was, hebben sijne wercken bewesen.’ Een Joseph de la Pise schrijft in 1639 o.a. ‘le visage plus brun que blanc, [..] le nes plu long que court’(het gezicht meer bruin dan wit, de neus meer lang dan kort). Als afbeelding materiaal zijn er schilderijen, tekeningen, glasschildering, prenten, penningen en beeldhouwwerken. Onder de kop: ‘De iconografische waarde van ’s prinsen beeltenis’ stelt de auteur vast welke afbeeldingen een getrouwe beeltenis van de prins kunnen zijn. Daarbij blijkt hoe vaak er grote onzekerheid kleeft aan oude portretten: over de vermeende maker, de herkomst, de datum en over latere toevoegingen van namen, makers, familiewapens etc. Tevens staat vast dat vele portretten kopieën en duplieken zijn van originelen die niet zijn ‘teruggevonden.’ Zoals de originele portretten van Van Mierevelt die naar mijn smaak haast altijd zoek zijn. Enkele authentieke Van Miereveldt portretten, zoals die van Constantijn Huygens en van de moeder van Grotius, lijken beige overgeschilderd. Een vergelijking van twee jeugdportretten van Willem van Oranje levert volgens Beresteyn op: ‘vervolgens de korte afstand van neus tot bovenlip en de ietwat vooruitstekende lippen […] Ook het oor en de kleur der ogen stemmen niet overeen.’ Roger stelde vast dat de kleine ruimte tussen neus en bovenlip het langste zichtbaar is bij nakomelingen van zwarten. Tevens stelt Beresteyn: ‘Op het Haagse portret ontbreekt tenslotte de Orde van de GuldenVlies waardoor onze twijfel aan de identiteit wordt vergroot.’ Over een ander portret schrijft hij: ‘Hij is in harnas gekleed, de commandostaf in de rechterhand. Op het portret staat “Principe de Oranges.” Het is wel eens betwijfeld of wij hier den prins voor ons hebben. Ik meen echter, dat er zoovele portretten aan dit portret verwant, op naam van Oranje staan dat de waarschijnlijkheid groot is, dat ongeveer in 1566 de prins er aldus uitzag.’
Met deze korte samenvatting heb ik willen aantonen dat de iconografie veel speculatie, invullen en inschatting vraagt van de onderzoeker, waardoor de subjectiviteit een grote rol speelt bij wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Het viel mij meteen op dat Beresteyn bij de beoordeling van de portretten geen gebruik maakte van aanwijzingen mbt tot de ‘bruine kleur’ en de ‘vooruitstekende’ lippen van de prins. Zonder verklaring drukte hij ‘witte’ afbeeldingen groot af terwijl prenten die een zeer donkerbruine man met soms krullend haar tonen, slechts op 3x5 cm formaat werden afgedrukt. Alsof zij minder van belang zouden zijn voor de kennis van het uiterlijk van de prins, dan de schilderijen die op 10x15 cm formaat zijn afgedrukt. Gezien de vele onzekerheden in de herkomst van portretten is er geen enkele reden om vanuit te gaan dat ‘grote’ schilderijen in kleur, van nature een getrouwere weergave zouden zijn dan ‘kleine’ gravures. Temeer daar men vaak met geschilderde kopieën of zelf duplieken te maken heeft. Het schijnt dat gravures vaker naar originele schilderijen werden gemaakt, en de beste graveurs maakten de meest authentiek ogende afbeeldingen. Ik tel minstens tweeëndertig van de honderd en drie gravures waarbij de graveur een donkerbruine tot zwarte huidkleur heeft afgebeeld. Het is zeer aannemelijk dat een graveur bij machte was een zwarte huid of een witte huid door middel van arcering, verschillend af te beelden. Men was ook bekend met de uiterlijke kenmerken van etniciteit. Tevens geeft de wijze van afdrukken in het boek de gelegenheid om verschillende variaties van dezelfde gravure naast elkaar te beschouwen. Daarbij ziet men dat op overeenkomstige gravures de prins soms veel donkerder of veel lichter oogt.
De systematiek van Beresteyn gaat echter helemaal mank omdat er sprake is van kopieën, zonder dat te achterhalen is wanneer deze kopieën zijn gemaakt en wat het origineel was. Vooral in de negentiende eeuw had men behoefte om de ‘Vaderlandse helden’ stoer en arisch te maken, waardoor die afbeeldingen volkomen fictief zijn. Mijn grootste klacht is echter dat veel oude en nieuwe afbeeldingen zo ernstig afwijken van de rest dat zij onmogelijk de prins kunnen voorstellen, maar bij Beresteyn kritiekloos blijven. Eerder geloof ik dat kunstenaars in oudere opdracht soms een willekeurige donkerbruine man afbeeldden. Anderzijds wilde men in de achttiende eeuw Willem van Oranje ‘mooien,’ dus wit maken, en gaf de schilder of graveur zijn eigen interpretatie van een ‘gewitte’ Willem van Oranje. In de negentiende eeuw werden alle ‘helden’ en gekleurde Europeanen standaard als blond afgebeeld.
Vanuit mijn andere deelonderzoeken heb ik vastgesteld dat er zowel van de Renaissance vorsten uit de familie Habsburg als de familie De Medici, zowel witte als halfwitte en zeer zwarte portretten bestaan, waardoor ik geloof dat het om gekleurde families gaat. Willem van Oranje werd een opstandige vazal van Filips II. Zijn achterkleinzoon, Stadhouder Willem III had De Medici voorouders. Diens oom, Charles II ‘The swarthy Stuart’ (Boswell), was ook bekend als ‘The Black Boy.’ Sommige van hun portretten tonen zeer zwarte mannen. Bij de familie Habsburg valt steeds de prognastie op, welke ten onrechte als een ‘onderste overbeet’ wordt gezien en een gevolg van ‘inteelt.’ De familie Habsburg was trots op haar prognastische kaken, kinnen en haakneuzen en op de donkere huid. Maximiliaan I Habsburg liet zich als God afbeelden met een bruine huid, om het keizerschap te kunnen veroveren. Leopold I Habsburg, keizer van het Heilige Roomse Rijk (Duitsland, Oostenrijk en Hongarije) werd omschreven als ‘A short, hale black man’(Swinburne). De ‘dansende keizer’ valt op door zijn prognastische lippen, maar muurschilderingen van zijn hele gezin in een kerk tonen personen die niet anders dan als pure Afrikanen kunnen worden omschreven. Dit roept het beeld op van een adellijke, koninklijke en keizerlijke zwarte elite in Europa. Waarvan de familie van Oranje een kenmerkend segment vormde.
Van Leopold valt op dat hij veel Nederlandse families in de adel verhief waarvan blijkt dat zij gekleurd waren. Zoals de families Valckenier en Hoeufft, van de andere oma van Belle van Zuylen. Hetzelfde geldt voor keizerlijke opdrachten en eerbewijzen van Leopold aan kunstenaars en schrijvers, die aannemelijk ook zwarte Europeanen waren. De secretaris van Willem van Oranje en de dichter van het Wilhelmus was Philippe van Marnix van St. Aldegonde, een uitgeweken Belg. Zijn iconografie gaf mij aanleiding hem tot een ‘zwarte en gekleurde’ Europeaan te verklaren. Hetzelfde geldt voor de dominees van de prins en zijn vrouwen. Louise de Coligny, van hugenoten origine, wordt met een Arabische haïk afgebeeld, een zwart, mouwloos overkleed met zonneklep. Willem’s broer Jan de Oude, is de werkelijke voorouder van Beatrix, en hij oogt zeer zwart en zeer prognastisch op enkele gravures. Prins Hendrik van Mecklenburg, de opa van Beatrix , behoorde tot hetzelfde Duitse geslacht als Charlotte Sophie van Mecklenburg, de Britse koningin die een ‘true mulatto face’ had volgens haar lijfarts. Zij was ook de oma van koningin Victoria. In Mecklenburg leefden de Orbotrieten, die ook Wendels genoemd worden, maar die wij kennen als de Vandalen. Blijkbaar hadden al deze antieke volkeren hun eigen contingent zwarte Europeanen die blijkbaar ook een elite vormden.
Conclusie
Concluderend stel ik vast dat wij reeds op basis van eurocentrische studies als die van Beresteyn inconsistenties aantreffen die wijzen op de aanwezigheid van historische, elitaire zwarte Europeanen. En pogingen om dit in twijfel te laten of actief te verhullen. Werken als ‘Black Athena’ wijzen op de Afrikaanse wortels van de Griekse beschaving, waarvan de Grieken geen geheim maakten. De honderden werken van Aristoteles zouden slechts kopieën zijn van leerboeken uit de vermaarde faraonische bibliotheek van Alexandrië. Aristoteles was kennelijk een uitgever en een mythische figuur. Kennis van de Griekse beschaving en haar zwarte wortels overleefde buiten Europa, en werd in de Renaissance herontdekt dankzij zwarte en gekleurde Europeanen, die een elite werden. Vanwege een gedicht van Belle van Zuylen en de make-up en pruikenmode situeer ik een ‘historisch revisionisme’ in de helft van de achttiende eeuw, waarbij men het witte mensentype ‘superieur’ verklaarde. Terwijl de zwarte wortels en voorouders van Europa werden ontkend. Zwarte en gekleurde elite Europeanen waren gedwongen dit in woord en daad te accepteren door witte make-up en blonde pruiken te dragen. Maar ook door onder racistische druk groteske verklaringen tegen het zwarte mensentype af te leggen. Dat zien wij onder andere terug bij de zwarte David Hume en de pikzwarte Voltaire.
Wij leven nog steeds onder dit revisionisme die de zwarte wortels van Europa ontkent en de zwarte Europese elite, waaronder Willem van Oranje verbergt. Dit is zeer ongewenst want het vormt de basis van de waangedachte bij witte Nederlanders dat zij biologisch en intellectueel superieur zijn aan zwarte en gekleurde Nederlanders. Of beschaafder zouden zijn aan gekleurde volkeren. Wij die hier wonen en alles van nabij en tot in detail kunnen observeren, zien geen greintje superioriteit bij witte mensen. Zij zijn niet minder dan zwarten, maar beslist niet beter. Eerder valt hun overheersende genocidale haat op, door onderwijs en media gevoed, tegen ‘de andere.’ In de eurocentrische wetenschap, die vooral uit is op kolonisatie en plundering en ontkenning, is het erg belangrijk om de mensheid te ‘categoriseren.’ Dit heeft slechts als doel volkeren te verdelen en tegen elkaar uit te spelen en te overheersen, te onderdrukken en te exploiteren. Deze politiek geldt voor Afrika en Azië, maar ook binnenlands, waar bevolkingsgroepen worden gescheiden door het accent op etniciteit en religie te leggen. Door de ‘verschillen’ uit te vergroten en te overdrijven. En vervolgens regeringsbeleid en subsidie daaraan op te hangen. In dit kader is de roep om ‘integratie’ slechts een racistische dekmantel om zwarte en gekleurde Nederlandse burgers te onderdrukken, witten en zwarten onwetend te houden over historische zwarte Europeanen en te weren uit posities van gezag en van macht. Om hen zover te krijgen om de kolonialistische en genocidale status quo zonder morren te accepteren en uit te dragen en uit te voeren.
24 januari 2007.
Bron: Egmond Codfried, Belle van Zuylen’s vergeten oma; Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737); Een beknopte studie over zwarte en gekleurde Europeanen en Nederlanders door de eeuwen heen, E.S, Den Haag 2005. ISBN 90-808067-2-2
Pierre-Alexander Du Peyrou (1729-1794)
Een gekleurde, Surinaamse plantage-eigenaar
in Zwitserland
In mijn verhandeling over Maria Susanna Du Plessis (1739-1795) kom ik tot een soort van Salomons oordeel over het geschil tussen de afstammelingen van de Surinaamse slaven en de Surinaamse slavenmeesters. Beide groepen waren Surinamers, met een Surinaamse taal en cultuur en identiteit. Nederlandse schrijvers die begrijpelijk vanuit hun eigen behoeften en wereldbeeld schrijven laten de natievorming van Suriname in 1863 beginnen, tweehonderd jaar na de eerste kolonisatie. Een Surinamocentrische benadering beschouwt de republikeinse opstand van republikeinse planters tegen de Republiek van 1742-1753 als een reëler beginpunt. Ook door een vergelijking met de strijd van de Amerikaanse kolonisten die vanaf het begin van de 18e eeuw zich Amerikaans gingen voelen, in 1760 in opstand kwamen en zich in 1772 onafhankelijk verklaarden van Engeland.[1]
Een niet te negeren aspect van de Surinaamse identiteit was dat de verschillende afkomst van de Britten, Fransen of Duitsers geen belemmering vormde en men enthousiast met elkaar mengde. Ook sloten mannen, waar het bestuur wettige huwelijken verbood, formele gemak huwelijken van overeengekomen tijdsduur met zwarte en gekleurde vrouwen. Zoals wij die bij Sjiieten kennen. Bij deze soort huwelijken kon de man reeds getrouwd zijn in de Republiek of was de vrouw een slavin. Dit is het beroemde Surinaamse Huwelijk waarvan Stedman in zijn manuscript (1792) gewag maakt, maar door de uitgever in de uitgave van 1796 werd verzwegen. Vanwege hem moverende redenen. En dat is een reden waarom ik het begrip surinamocentrisme introduceer. Europese schrijvers en uitgevers hebben, gisteren en vandaag, hun eigen behoeften, obsessies en trauma’s bij het beschrijven van hun eigen geschiedenis. En die hoeven niet dezelfde beweegredenen te zijn voor de personen en volkeren die zij beschrijven.[2]
Modern onderzoek suggereert dat het slechte imago van de katholieke inquisitie waarschijnlijk meer verband houdt met de Nederlandse reformatie die zich afzette tegen Spaanse overheersing en het katholicisme. En om de onderdrukking van katholieken in de Nederlanden te rechtvaardigen. Zo is het aannemelijk dat zowel John Stedman als Voltaire in hun literaire werken een appeltje te schillen hadden met ‘de Nederlanders.’ En daarom een negatiever beeld schilderden van de Surinaamse planters. Zo erg, dat Surinamers vandaag niet voorbij de grafisch verbeelde wreedheden kunnen kijken. In mijn verhandeling geef ik aan dat tenminste twee van de specifieke beschuldigingen van (serie)moord door Stedman aan het adres van Maria Susanna Du Plessis uit andere feitelijke, contemporaine bronnen afkomstig zijn. En niet herleidbaar zijn tot Maria Susanna. Verder stel ik vast dat vanwege de andere omstandigheden rond Maria Susanna, de beschuldigingen tegen deze geëmancipeerde vrouw meer verband houden met haar vader als woordvoerder van de Surinaamse republikeinen en laster door haar gewezen, inhalige, tweede echtgenoot Stolkert (1748-1804). Terwijl latere abolitionisten en nationalisten vanwege hun eigen nobele doelstellingen verder bouwden op de mythen rond deze vrouw.[3]
Emancipatie is al 141 jaar een feit, Suriname is al 29 jaar onafhankelijk: tijd om een streep onder de rekening te trekken en verder te kijken. De vraag dringt zich dan op of stonfutu nationalisme bij de oude generatie nog van deze tijd moet zijn. En of genealogie door nationalisme of etnocentrisme geïnspireerd behoort te worden. In ieder geval zouden echte Surinaamse nationalisten zich niet in Nederland moeten ophouden. Herstelbetaling klinkt redelijk, maar de decennialange praktijk is dat ontwikkelingshulp, zelf via NGO’s, niet verder komt dan het organiseren van de armoede in Suriname. Ik sluit niet uit dat enkele functionarissen er beter van worden, in de zin dat zij aan de bak komen in hun professie, maar niet de massa van de gemarginaliseerde Surinamers om wie het allemaal te doen zou zijn. Reden waarom ik geloof in het verstrekken van tools aan individuen: visnetten in plaats van vissen. Geschiedenis als peptalk, geschiedenis als een vangnet.[4]
Wanneer ik als Surinaamse Nederlander mijn eigen net uitgooi en een verhandeling schrijf over Belle van Zuylen (1741-1804), de Nederlandse schrijfster, vind ik dat zij een gekleurde grootmoeder had: Maria Jacoba van Goor (1669-1737). De origine van haar kleur is echter nog in nevelen gehuld. Maar dat er tussen Suriname en Belle wel een zeer direct verband is in de persoon van Pierre Alexander Du Peyrou (1727-1795). Hij was een tijdgenoot van Maria Susanna Du Plessis en een absente Surinaamse plantagehouder. Maria Susanna was via haar Pichot halfbroers, gerelateerd aan de Coudercs vanwege een groottante Marie Pichot die met Zacharias Couderc huwde. Hun zoon trouwde met…Normaliter zou de belangstelling hier eindigen want wat valt er nog te zeggen over een slavenhouder? Mijn toneelstuk over Maria Susanna Du Plessis waarin ik haar tenminste tot een mens en een persoon in plaats van een ‘hels wijf’ of ‘wangedrocht’ maakte leverde bij sommigen als pedant antwoord op dat ik mij ‘identificeerde’ met de onderdrukker. En daarmee mijn voorouders ‘verloochende.’[5]
Alle Surinamers weten dat de witte meesters zich enthousiast mengden met slavinnen en vrije vrouwen van kleur. Men verhaalt van de mulatten huisslaven die werden voorgetrokken en hun zwarte broeders verraadden. Mulattenslaven waren de kinderen of broers van hun eigen meesters en hadden een gemengde loyaliteit. Een massaal DNA onderzoek zal aantonen dat de Afrikaanse Surinamers, ongeacht hun kleur: onontwarbaar Afrikaans, Indiaans, Europees, joods (als dat bestaat!) en Aziatisch erfelijk materiaal bezitten. Net als hoe hun taal en cultuur Afrikaanse, Indiaanse, Europese en Aziatische kenmerken vertonen. Genealogisch onderzoek wijst uit dat niet al onze eigen familievoorvaders of voormoeders een rechte lijn liepen. Maar dat is geen reden om hen niet als voorouders te erkennen. Of een gat in de genealogie te laten bestaan omdat oma vanwege een zedenmisdrijf werd veroordeeld. De juiste handelswijze is leren van de fouten van voorvaders en er zelf betere soort mensen van te worden. Sommige Nederlanders gebruiken genealogie om adellijke voorouders te ontdekken. Vroeger werden imposante kwartierstaten verzonnen, geretoucheerd en zelf valse portretten geproduceerd om in de adelstand verheven te kunnen worden. Dus was er geen plaats voor een Afrikaanse grootmoeder. En raakten allengs slaven houdende voorvaders in Europa minder in tel.
Dit is de erfenis waarop wij moeten voortbouwen. Ik kies ervoor inspiratie op te doen aan de politieke strijd en het economisch succes van de voorouders. Vooral waar wij moderne, Surinaamse Nederlanders met onze witte aangetrouwde familieleden en mulatten neefjes en frequente trans-Atlantische reizen, meer lijken op de 18e eeuwse Surinaamse families dan ooit. Het enige verschil is misschien de prijs van overtocht, die in 1682 ‘maar’ f 30 per volwassen, en de helft voor een kind bedroeg. In een tijd toen het minimum jaarloon f 100 was.[6]
Omdat Surinamers er nog niet aan toe kwamen hun eigen geschiedenis te schrijven wisten wij niet van het bestaan van Pierre Alexander Du Peyrou of waren wij onkundig van de precieze aard van zijn connectie met Suriname. Ter illustratie van mijn punt dat wij dringend een begin moeten maken ons te verdiepen in onze eigen geschiedenis haal ik een passage aan uit het werk ‘Belle van Zuylen (1741-1804) Leven op Afstand’ (1979) van de Belgische Simone Dubois: ‘Een van de eerste mensen met wie Madame De Charrière in haar nieuwe omgeving kennismaakte was Pierre Alexander Du Peyrou. Hij was van Franse herkomst maar kwam in Neuchâtel terecht na een omweg langs Suriname en Amsterdam. Hij bezat een groot fortuin en regelde vanuit Neuchâtel zijn zaken die op internationale handel gericht waren. Hij was in Paramaribo geboren waar zijn vader en functie bekleedde bij het Gerechtshof en kreeg zijn verdere opleiding in Amsterdam.’ Het feit dat Du Peyrou een Surinamer was, wordt door Dubois afgedaan als een ‘omweg langs Suriname’ en het houden van slaven en handel in door slavernij verkregen producten wordt afgedaan als ‘internationale handel.’ [7]
Belle van Zuylen had een grote vriendschap en professionele relatie met Pierre-Alexander Du Peyrou. Het gezin Du Peyrou bewoonde het fraaiste huis in Neuchâtel te Zwitserland. Ze stuurden elkaar dagelijks een brief. Hij was haar literair adviseur bij de verschillende werken die zij hem ter beoordeling stuurde. Du Peyrou werd in 1729 geboren te Paramaribo en overleed in 1794 te Neuchâtel. Het feit dat Du Peyrou in Suriname werd geboren wordt door de meeste schrijvers genegeerd. Wellicht volgen zij de oude Europese traditie om een associatie met de kolonies en zwart bloed te negeren. Pierre Alexander was de vriend en weldoener van Rousseau. En tevens uitgever van een editie van het gehele oeuvre van Rousseau in vijfendertig delen tussen 1782-1790. Tevens geniet Du Peyrou bekendheid vanwege zijn gepubliceerde correspondentie met J.J. Rousseau, de bekendste filosoof van de Verlichting. Helaas nog niet vertaald uit het Frans. Belle schreef een pamflet ter verdediging van Du Peyrou die aangevallen werd voor zijn uitgave van het werk van Rousseau. Want daarmee sneed hij de pas af van een andere voorgenomen uitgave die zijns inzien niet conform de juiste tekst van het werk van Rousseau was. Verder had Rousseau bevolen dat zijn werk pas na 1800 geopenbaard moest worden. Du Peyrou trouwde met Henriette Dorothée (1751-), de jonge dochter van Rousseau’s vriend, Abraham de Pury.
De naam Du Peyrou kennen wij als een Amsterdams regentenfamilie maar ook uit de Surinaamse geschiedenis. Zijn grootvader Jean was in Bergerac, Frankrijk geboren en vluchtte nog voor de opheffing van het Edict van Nantes in 1683 naar de Republiek en daarna naar Suriname. Plantage Mon Byou in de Cottica heet ook Diperou naar de eerste eigenaar. De Saramaccaanse lo Dipelou verwijst naar afkomst van die plantage. Pierre Alexander was via zijn moeder Lucie Droilhet gerelateerd aan de gekleurde families Couderc en Van Sandick. Wellicht waren ook zijn andere voorvaders en familierelaties als Walraven, Davids en van Susteren aan het begin van de 18e eeuw gekleurde mensen. Hij was een zoon van Pierre Du Peyrou (1702-1742). Zijn ouders werden beide in Paramaribo geboren en huwden daar in 1725. Pierre Du Peyrou’s grafzerk is ingemetseld is in de Hervormde kerk te Paramaribo. Hij was o.a. oud-lid van de Civiele Raad. Na de dood van zijn vader hertrouwde diens jonge weduwe met de Chambrier, de commandeur en vervanger van gouverneur Mauricius. Pierre Alexander vertrok met zijn moeder, de weduwe Chambrier naar Neuchâtel. Belle van Zuylen was in Neuchâtel bevriend met Caroline Chambrier. Er wordt door Courtney echter geen verband gelegd met de weduwe Chambrier. [8]
Biographies neuchâteloises op Internet maakt melding van een slavenopstand die één van zijn plantages gedeeltelijk verwoestte. Wellicht de aanval in 1773 op Le Nouvelle Espérance toen een tiental slaven na plundering de benen nam en brand stichtten in de plantagegebouwen. Tegen die tijd woonde Belle reeds twee jaar in Neuchâtel en waren ze al goed bevriend. Hij trok een jaarinkomen van 10.000-120.000 livres van zijn lusthoven en bewoonde een huis dat een miljoen heeft gekost. In huidige termen was hij een miljardair. Hij leefde nogal teruggetrokken, en was ziekelijk en hardhorend. Het familiefortuin van zijn echtgenote werd verdiend in de handel met Brazilië welke ook geassocieerd kan worden met slavenhandel en slavenarbeid. De relatie tussen de echtelieden was niet altijd optimaal en hij hield zich afzijdig van de grote ontvangsten van zijn vrouw. Hij bezocht Belle geregeld in Le Pontet, het familieverblijf van de Charrière. [9]
Het is aannemelijk dat veel plantage eigenaren waarvan wij de naam kennen, maar portretten ontberen, waarschijnlijk gekleurde personen waren. Er is geen schilderij van Elisabeth Samson opgedoken maar wij weten uit schriftuurlijke aanwijzingen dat ze een pure Surinaams Afrikaanse was. Gouverneur Van Sommelsdijck (1685-16..) die huwelijken tussen witte planters en slavinnen verbood, leefde zelf kennelijk idyllisch samen met een jonge Indiaanse. Hij was gehuwd, maar zijn echtgenote vertikte een reis naar Suriname te maken. Het kan ook zijn dat ze niet werd uitgenodigd! Deze Surinaamse ‘Pocohontas’ werd kennelijk honderd jaar oud en stierf rond 1769. Had zij kinderen van Van Sommelsdijck? Ze bezocht regelmatig mevrouw Audra, die ooit met gouverneur de Cheusses was getrouwd. De Cheusses was een kleinzoon van Van Sommelsdijck. Surinaamse gemak huwelijken waren niet verboden en misschien dat men meteen overging tot erkenning van de gemengde kinderen. Deze kinderen kregen niet de ‘van’ naam of een fantasienaam als ‘Wicherides.’ Waardoor het lijkt alsof wij met witte Surinamers of witte Nederlanders van doen hebben. Wij zien bijvoorbeeld dat Anna Juliën, een mulattin in Suriname geboren werd uit het huwelijk van Bartholomeus Juliën en Elizabeth Dobinson. Elizabeth Dobinson was dus waarschijnlijk een zwarte vrouw. Sommige gekleurde kinderen werden in de Republiek geboren zoals Elizabeth Diderica Baldina de Graaff die een nichtje was van mevrouw Audra. En sommige trouwden daar zoals de mulattin Anna Dorothea van Fredericksdorff met Wolff, vóór zij naar Suriname vertrokken. Waardoor het lijkt alsof wij met witte Nederlanders te maken hebben. Ik associeer, vanwege deze soort van aanwijzingen, familienamen als Bachman, Brethon, Droilhet, Couderc, Pichot, Lemmers, Wilkens, de Bruyn, Swart en de Graaff met gekleurde Surinamers. Etymologie geeft verdere aanleiding om namen als de Bruyn en de Swart ook te onderzoeken op een zwarte voorouder. Tabo Janz, een Afrikaanse bediende van Bredehoff ontving in 1675 een legaat van f12.000 in obligaties en veranderde zijn naam in Adriaen de Bruyn. Helaas zal men tevergeefs naar hun portretten speuren in het Iconografisch Bureau om hun kleur met zekerheid vast te kunnen stellen. De vondst van het portret van Jacobus van der Werff (1761-1807), een gekleurde Surinamer geeft gelegenheid om zowel zijn moeder De Graaff, zijn vader Van der Werff en Maria Susanna Du Plessis als kleurlingen te identificeren. Mogelijk is het ontbreken van een aangemeld portret juist een indicatie dat wij met zwarte en gekleurde voorouders te maken hebben.[10]
Van Du Peyrou’s volle neef Johan Alexander van Sandick (1727-1763) staat vermeld dat hij ‘bruin’ in uiterlijk was. En zijn zoon Onno Zwier van Sandick, een ‘West Indisch’ uiterlijk had. Mocht dat waar zijn dan was ook Pierre Alexander Du Peyrou een gekleurde Surinamer. Lucie en Marie Droilhet (1702-1744), Johan’s moeder, waren namelijk zusters. Dit gegeven behoefde geen nadruk ware het niet dat men zich Europa steeds meer als een witte entiteit ziet en schreeuwt om behoud van de Nederlandse cultuur. Daarmee bouwt men voort op de meest achterhaalde ideeën die leiden tot uitwassen als pogroms, zwarte mensenhandel, slavernij, kolonialisme en Nazisme. Sommige wetenschappers zagen zwarten als een tussenvorm tussen apen en mensen en dat zwarten en apen samen nakomelingen konden krijgen. Het is daarom aannemelijk dat bekendmaking dat een familie zwarte voorouders had, of haar fortuin aan slavernij te danken had, ooit een vorm van smaad en laster was. Zwart bloed als een zware sociale handicap.[11]
Het is duidelijk dat zwarte Nederlanders hierin een taak hebben. Door de mythe van Nederland als een witte entiteit te ontzenuwen met voorbeelden van zwarte en gekleurde Nederlanders die vanaf het begin der tijden hun bijdrage aan Nederland leverden. Als vrijen of slaven. Maar ook als literaire adviseur van Belle van Zuylen en uitgever van het oeuvre van de bekendste filosoof van de Verlichting Jean Jaques Rousseau. Surinaamse Nederlanders dienen in het belang van hun strijd voor burgerrechten gebruik te maken van die rechten door bijvoorbeeld altijd te gaan stemmen. Daarmee gaat de politiek beter rekening houden met Surinaamse Nederlanders. Bijvoorbeeld bij de verdeling van gelden voor wetenschappelijk onderzoek. En door medestanders te zoeken. Ik denk daarbij aan personen van gemengde afkomst die hun zwarte roots zoeken en niet vervreemd moeten worden door de overgeërfde animositeit tegen lichtgekleurde Surinaamse meesters als Maria Susanna Du Plessis of Pierre Alexander Du Peyrou.
BLACKS ARE STILL SOLD OUT BY THEIR LEADERS AND THE INTELLECTUAL ELITE OF HOUSENIGGERS.
To the makers of Hidden Colors
The Hague, 22 January 2013.
Mr. Tariq Nasheed,
After carefully watching your DVD of Hidden Colors (2011) my conclusion is that you must be in league with the enemies of Blacks by presenting the unaware public with wrong and unfinished research, and by promoting further division among Blacks by linking Black History to anti- activism, anti-women liberation and anti-gay emancipation efforts. The divide between men and women is the greatest scorch, while all well thinking people understand that women need to be equal to men, that we need to get rid of the patriarchies of old, for Blacks to exist prosper. By your vulgar gay bashing you have alienated Blacks from at least 20% of their own: patents, children, taxpaying, fellow workers.
And showing how the penal system is working against any Black as you did, is really meant to intimidate any Black in trying to overturn the status quo. The fat cats and bitter, mean spirited women, and obviously closeted hateful gays, you have presented utter old fashioned white solutions to the Black Problem and are basically telling Blacks: Do not bother, there is no use, be like us, join the capitalist system, rape women legally (prostitution) and bash your gays (only the men as women sexuality does not count) and all will be well in the world. The problems are shown as so great and so overwhelming, the whites come off as these immensely powerful creatures who are always ahead, who have always conquered and vanquished Blacks from time immemorial, Blacks should not even THINK of trying to change anything.
The truth and the lies are presented as a mix, so the debunking of your story is made hard, because there is truth is some parts although presented in a terribly wrong context. And you show the dreaded fakes, whitened images that were created to keep us in the dark. You fail to identify whites as albino derived, because this is what whites hate to hear, as it shows they did not come first and that they came out of Blacks, and thus could never ever be superior to Blacks.
I have recognized a few images which I have generally introduced on the web, and they are presented by you without the context of my Blue Blood Is Black Blood (1100-1848 ) research, which basically says that Europe during this time should be regarded as a Black Civilisation, with brown and black complexioned native Europeans dominating, ruling, civilizing and christianising whites who are Asian, and a foolproof albino derived nation, late comers. Part of the brown and black complexioned Europeans declared themselves in 1100-1200 a blue blood nobility and self-identified with heraldic Moors as Blacks. They created the Black King Balthasar, the Black Madonna’s and the numerous Black saints. Together with the bourgeoisie they were the second estate, and both of these Black European ‘tribes’ oppressed the whites who were reduced to serfs. The elite even used their skins for shoe leather. The French Revolution brought the nobility down, but they re-emerged with restorations like the one by Napoleon. Your type of research after all these decades remains patchy and spotty when it comes to the presence of Blacks in Europe and naming names or showing Black portraits. Just like the enemies of Blacks like to keep it.
The end was in 1848 with the final Revolutions when the third estate, the white serfs, were emancipated and got general suffrage for men. Next, in reverse they set out to ‘restore’ the portraits of the ancient regime to what they claimed was the true intention of the painters, and retouched the supposedly ‘darkened’ paint back to white. An old photo of The Syndics by Rembrandt introduced by me on the web shows he made his figures all shades of brown and showed classical African facial traits along with colour.
In spite of this you showed a whitened, fake image of James I Stuart, the grandfather of Charles II Stuart who you did present as a Black person, somehow suggesting that the Nobility and Kingship was instigated by whites who intermarried with some Blacks, resulting in a few Black Kings. This is totally wrong, and this points to your intentionally unfinished research. The image of the Spanish Queen Isabelle shows her with long blond hair, which is totally ridiculous, with the Habsburgs famous for massive prognathism. The rule by Blacks is the cause of racism today, as the bourgeois philosophers had invented Racism against the Black-identified nobility as a liberation ideology. Blacks are thus one step above apes, which were presented to the masses as people who had degenerated because of their immoralness.
There are many genealogies available which show intermarriage between nobles and royals, so with finding one or two Black person with that rank, and comparing images with personal descriptions that say brown or black of complexioned, one can understand the whole elite to have been brown or black and self-identifying as Black. Images of Moors are symbolic and seldom represent real persons. A painter did not need to have a person in front of him to create an image of a Moor. There is no proof of Moorish persons directly from Africa teaching or having any powerful position at courts. The European Blacks are native, they regarded themselves as from the soil, and claimed senior rights over whites. The Islamic Moors that ruled Spain do not show up beyond the South of France, and there is no sign of any Islam among the ruling, brown and black complexioned European elite, after they were driven from Spain. This misinformation all leads to a dead end, and serves the enemy of Blacks.
Because your message is no threat to white supremacy teachings of history which omits Blacks as an elite, and because you present so-called scholars who manage to find Black Emperors sitting on China’s thrones, and Black Kings in Mesoamerica, but cannot find European Emperors like Leopold I Habsburg, or Charles V Habsburg: it seems to me they are working against Blacks Liberation. That’s also why they can be so successful. They represent how the enemy of Blacks has co-opted Black History and has tried to turn it in an instrument of division and oppression. Like how slavery was perpetrated with the help of Blacks to enslave and keep Blacks in slavery. You are not part of the solution, but part of the problem. You are all fat cat sellouts, well ensconced, with a well-feathered nest, but out and out traitors to the Blacks. You bold facedly introduce more and new division between Blacks. Really not better then the Africans who from 1441 sold and the Black Europeans who kept their brethren in slavery.
The only merit from your DVD is that Blacks can come face to face with their direct enemies.
Egmond Codfried
Een gekleurde, drievoudige gouverneurseega:
Charlotte Elizabeth van der Lith (1700-1753)
Charlotte van der Lith werd in Den Haag geboren als dochter van een Duitse predikant, Diderik van der Lith en Elizabeth Baldina Helvetius en kwam waarschijnlijk als gouvernante in het gevolg van gouverneur Temming in 1722 naar Suriname. Na het overlijden van zijn vrouw huwde gouverneur Temming in 1722 met Charlotte. Na zijn dood bleef ze op het paleis wonen en huwde zij in 1729 met de opvolger, de Cheusses. Die een kleinzoon was van Cornelis van Aerssen, de allereerste gouverneur. Na de dood van gouverneur de Cheusses in 1734 stuurde men zijn broer die trouwde met de Catharina Eleonora Temming, Charlotte’s stiefdochter. Hij stierf al vlug in 1735 na een bewind van 45 dagen en Charlotte douairière de Cheusses trouwde toen met Raye in 1737, de volgende gouverneur. Na zijn dood in hetzelfde jaar stuurde men gouverneur van der Schepper (1737 –1742). De weduwe Raye trouwde toen in 1742 met ds. Audra en na zijn overlijden met Ds. Duvoisin in 1748 die zij overleefde. Zij had twee dochters: Johanna Baldina Temming en Henriette Marie de Cheusses en een zoon; Joan Raye heer van Breukelerwaard. (afbeelding) Hij werd edelman bij de Turkse Porte.
Nadat Charlotte geen machtsbasis meer had in het gouvernement, werd ze samen met Pichot de co-leidster van de republikeinse Surinaamse planters, welke gouverneur Jan Jacob Mauricius (1742-1752)(afbeelding) ‘de cabale’ doopte. Uit die periode staan heel wat confrontaties met Mauricius opgetekend, waarbij zij zich ‘gouvernementele macht’ toeeigende. Zoals bij het door Mauricius met tien dagen uitgestelde huwelijk van Cellier met Constace Pichot, welke de weduwe Audra nog dezelfde avond door Ds. Duvoisin liet voltrekken. De vader van Mauricius (= moor) was een Duitse monnik die in de Republiek predikant werd. Mauricius zelf was eerder ambassadeur voor de Republiek in Hamburg. De centrale vraag is wat deze vrouw zo aantrekkelijk maakte als first lady voor drie gouverneurs en domineesvrouw en daarna als plantersleidster in een tijd dat vrouwen zich niet met het bestuur mochten bemoeien of openbare functies mochten hebben.
Dit onderzoek levert heel wat redenen tot bespiegeling op over vraagstukken als de Surinaamse identiteit en de surinamistiek, de studie naar alles wat Suriname en Surinamers aangaat. Vandaag wonen heel veel Surinamers in Nederland en hebben vrij toegang en inzicht in de kennis en machinaties van kolonialisme. Waar de gemarginaliseerde Surinaamse onderzoeker idealiter vanuit een postkoloniaal denken schrijft, lijkt de moderne Nederlandse historicus nog steeds verankerd in het koloniale denken. Er wordt enige lippendienst gegeven aan de raciale schaduwkanten en verschrikkingen van koloniale overheersing voor de overheerste volken, maar de kern van de zaak wordt niet aangetast. Het is business as usual! Nederland als neokoloniale, witte entiteit en superieur aan de onbeschaafde, heidense overwonnen volkeren blijft overeind.
Afrocentrisme, een bedrijving van wetenschap die de Afrikaanse mens en niet slechts de witte mens centraal stelt, leert ons dat er vanaf de oudheid zwarte mensen deel uitmaakten van de Nederlanden en Europa. Hierdoor is het eurocentristische niet meer houdbaar, om alle historische figuren uit Europa automatisch als witten te beschouwen. Of om het succes van de kolonie Suriname slechts als een witte prestatie te zien. Het vergt wat zoeken en puzzelen om gekleurde Europeanen te vinden omdat er ideologische bewegingen zijn om deze zwarte en gekleurde voorouders aan het oog te ontrekken. Zelfs door vervalsing van schilderijen waardoor wij soms alleen de contemporaine penportretten hebben om ons te vertellen dat van Sandick, Du Peyrou of Stolkert, gekleurd waren. Wat natuurlijk ook gevolgen heeft voor de kleur van hun kinderen, ouders, grootouders enzovoorts. Soms ging die zwarte kleur gepaard met een zwart bewustzijn. Vanwege zwarte en gekleurde Surinaamse meesters is het redelijk te stellen dat slavernij niet slechts een kwestie was van kleur want sommige slaven waren misschien lichter gekleurd dan sommige meesters zoals de familie van Elisabeth Samson.
De adellijke Duitse opa van Charlotte Elizabeth was Johannes Frederik Helvetius (1625-1709)(afbeelding), een protestante vluchteling die in Holland een dokter en alchemist werd en beroemdheid verwierf door het veranderen van lood in goud in 1667. Hij was een zoon van Helvetius en Anna Braunin. Zijn portret toont een donker gekleurde man met volle lippen en brede neusvleugels terwijl hij als ‘dwergachtig’ in lichaamsbouw wordt omschreven. Hij werd ook de lijfarts van de prins van Oranje. Zijn kleindochter Geertrui van der Lith, zus van Charlotte, trouwde met van de Graaff. Hun dochter Elizabeth Diderica Baldina van der Graaff (1737-1767) werd de moeder van Jacobus van der Werff (1761-1806). Zijn portret toont sterke Afrikaanse trekken. (afbeelding)
Johannes Frederik’s zoon, Adriaan Engelhart (1662-1727), de oom van Charlotte, vierde als ‘de dikke Hollander’ triomfen in Parijs en maakte zijn fortuin door de succesvolle aanwending van een Braziliaanse wortel tegen dysenterie. Hij werd lijfarts van de broer van Lodewijk XIV: de Zonnekoning. Tevens trad hij op als vertegenwoordiger van Frankrijk in vredesonderhandelingen met de Nederlandse Republiek. Adriaan’s zoon, Jean Claude Adrien (1685-1755)(afbeelding), werd eveneens dokter en schopte het onder andere in 1728 tot lijfarts van de koningin van Lodewijk XV, Marie Lysczinska. Zijn vrouw Anne Catherine (1720-1800) was gerelateerd aan Marie Antoinette en het paar behoorde tot de hoge bourgeoisie. De zoon van Jean Claude Adrien was Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771) (afbeelding) die in 1738 door de koningin benoemd werd tot ‘fermier-general’ en beroemdheid verwierf als grote franse filosoof van de Verlichting. Claude Adrien’s uiterlijk werd vergeleken met de Apollo de Belvedère. Zijn zus Marie Adélaïde Geneviève Helvetius (1754-1817) (afbeelding) werd bekend …Het is niet onwaarschijnlijk dat Charlotte haar gefortuneerde neef Jean Claude Adrien heeft opgezocht in Frankrijk en kennis had van de revolutionaire ideeën van haar achterneef Claude Adrien Helvetius.
Vanwege nog heersende illusies van superioriteit bij onderzoekers die afrocentristische theorieën zondermeer afwijzen, presenteert men de Surinaamse geschiedenis als iets wat zich in isolatie en achterlijkheid afspeelde. Waar men slechts om geld vocht en niet om hogere idealen. Men laat daarbij geen gelegenheid voorbij gaan om Surinamers slechts als slachtoffers en daarmee een onderworpen natie te presenteren. Echter, de werkelijkheid is dat de Surinaamse plantervoorouders vanaf hun aankomst, hun zonen naar hogescholen en universiteiten in de Republiek stuurden. Dochters stuurde men naar speciale kostscholen omdat vrouwen niet aan universiteiten werden toegelaten. Men was hierdoor helemaal bekend met de idealen van de Verlichting tegen despotisme, voor individuele burgerlijke vrijheid en bevrijding van religieuze tirannie en bijgeloof. Men las de verboden werken van Locke, Voltaire en Rousseau. Een vergelijking met de strijd van de Amerikaanse patriotten dringt zich sterk op.
Afgezien van een Surinaamse identiteit hadden de in Suriname geboren kolonisten, afgaande op penportretten en schilderijen, waarschijnlijk vanaf hun aankomst een gekleurde huid. Of werden door integratie met de andere rijke Surinamers gekleurd. Suriname van de eerste helft van de achttiende eeuw was dus een zwarte en gekleurde natie van vrijen en slaven. Wellicht vormden de vrijen, inclusief de rijkste families, een gefixeerd mulatten ‘ras’ welke steeds onderling huwden. Wat resulteerde in kinderen met een hele lichte tot een donkere mulatten teint. Een ‘West-Indisch’ uiterlijk. Status en rijkdom was binnen die families belangrijker dan kleur en kleurnuances. Met hun fortuin trouwden zij gemakkelijk in, in Europese adellijke families.
Vanuit deze resultaten kan men speculeren of naast Charlotte van de Lith’s persoonlijke merites en haar hoge adellijke, politieke en kosmopolitische connecties, ook haar huidkleur haar zo uitzonderlijk geschikt maakte. Waardoor zij tussen 1722-1737 driemaal gouvernante werd van Suriname. Daarna zwaaide zij als domineesvrouw tussen 1742-1753 de scepter als gekleurde leidster van de gekleurde republikeinse planters die Suriname onafhankelijk wilde maken. Het belang van deze zaken is dat Surinaamse Nederlanders van vandaag meer gemeen hebben met die Surinamers van welleer. Met bijvoorbeeld de absente plantersfamilies die woonden in de Republiek en trouwden met witte Hollanders. Zij vormen als zwarte en gekleurde Europeanen deel van de samenleving die Suriname en de Derde Wereld overheerst en zich haar rijkdommen toeeigent. Tevens vinden wij Surinaamse Nederlanders ook (over- of onder vertegenwoordigd) in alle lagen van de huidige Nederlandse maatschappij, net als weleer.
Egmond Codfried
Cumming Ian, Helvetius; His Life and Place in the History of Educational Thought, Routledge en Kegan Paul Limited, London 1955
De zwarte en gekleurde familie van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck
Zoals ik stelde in mijn eerdere bijdrage aan een forum: ‘Oplossingen voor integratie’(oktober 2005) beschouw ik het naar buiten brengen van de zwarte en gekleurde etniciteit van vele Europese en Nederlandse voorouders van naam, de sleutel tot de integratie van zwarte en gekleurde Nederlanders. Want uit onderzoek blijkt dat zij niet als allochtoon kunnen worden aangemerkt als wij zien dat zwarten, gekleurde personen en Aziaten al duizenden jaren en op alle maatschappelijke niveaus deel uitmaken van dit continent. Tevens blijkt dat het idee van een autonoom tot stand gekomen en een superieure witte Europese cultuur door superieure witte mensen een racistische fictie is.
De centrale vraag is hoe men een persoon of een familie als zwart (vanwege een Afrikaans Europese identiteit) en gekleurd (met zwart, wit en Aziatisch bloed) identificeert. Deze problematiek heb ik uitgebreid behandeld, geannoteerd en geïllustreerd in mijn studie over Belle van Zuylen, maar zal ik hier vereenvoudigd weergeven wat betreft de familie van Aerssen.
De Antwerpse familie van Aerssen
De geschiedenis van Suriname als Nederlandse kolonie begint met de komst van gouverneur Cornelis van Aerssen (1633-1688). De eens allerrijkste familie in de Republiek werd met behulp van een lening van de Stad Amsterdam, voor een derde deel eigenaar van Suriname. De eigenaars waren overeengekomen dat het gouverneursambt steeds aan leden van de (gereformeerde) familie Van Aerssen zou worden aangeboden. Wij zien daarom nog twee gouverneurs uit deze familie, namelijk twee kleinzonen van Cornelis, de gouverneurs de Cheusses. De oudste bekende Van Aerssen was een hovenier in Antwerpen. Zijn kleinzoon Cornelis vluchtte vanwege de godsdienstvervolging in de zuidelijke Nederlanden naar Den Haag en werd griffier van de Staten Generaal. Het eerste belangrijke lid van deze familie was diens zoon, de zeer controversiële Mr. François van Aerssen. Die begon als gezant van de Republiek aan het Franse Hof, ambassadeur aan dit hof en daarna veertig jaar lang een belangrijk staatsman en een soort minister van Buitenlandse Zaken van de Republiek. Zijn vele contacten met de hugenoten maakten hem als ambassadeur onhoudbaar aan het hof van Maria de Medici, koningin van Frankrijk en gedoodverfde aanstichtster van de moord op achtduizend hugenoten. François was adviseur van Prins Maurits, de zoon van Stadhouder Willem van Oranje, en werd uiteindelijk genaturaliseerd tot Hollander en in de adelstand verheven.
Zijn zoon Cornelis, vader van de gouverneur, werd de rijkste man van de Republiek. Hij was opgegroeid aan het Stadhouderlijke hof en was een speelkameraad van de jeugdige stadhouder Willem II. Deze krijger-stadhouder wilde in 1650 Amsterdam bezetten en werd daarbij geholpen door Cornelis van Aerssen. De overval mislukte waardoor Cornelis zijn adellijke privileges verloor en uit het Hollandse ridderschap werd gezet. Zijn zoon Cornelis moest daarom elders naar een betrekking zoeken, dus werd hij Suriname’s gouverneur. Hij was gehuwd met een Franse markiezin die niet meeging naar Suriname. Cornelis trouwde in Suriname met een Indiaanse prinses. Een tante trouwde met de zoon van een adellijke bastaardzoon van Willem van Oranje. Veronica van Aerssen (1633- ), een zuster van gouverneur Cornelis trouwde met Lord Kincardine en werd de oma van de schrijver James Boswell (1740-1795). Zijn twee zusters Lucia en Maria behoorden tot de ‘socialistische’ De Labadie sekte die hun broer naar Suriname volgden voor het stichten van een Labadisten kolonie. Na de moord op gouverneur Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck werd het ambt aangeboden aan zijn zoon admiraal François van Aerssen, die weigerde. Daarom ging de functie naar zijn dochterszoon, De Cheusses. Na diens vroege dood werd diens broer gouverneur. De kleindochter van de gouverneur en dochter van François was Anna Margaretha van Aerssen (1713-1803). Zij hertrouwde met Aarnoud Joost baron van der Duyn van Maasdam (1718-1785), een familievriend van barones Belle van Zuylen.
Methode
Een gestudeerde jonge Hollandse zei, kijkend naar ‘De Staalmeester’ van Rembrandt van Rijn (1664), dat de afgebeelde diklippige krullenbollen geen zwarte en gekleurde mannen kunnen zijn ‘want er waren toen geen zwarte mensen in Nederland.’ Anderzijds herkennen sommige Hollanders portretten van zwarte en gekleurde Europeanen als ‘Joden.’ In de onderhavige 17e en 18e eeuw vertoonden de Joodse Nederlanders nog in grote mate uiterlijke kenmerken die samenhingen met hun Afrikaanse origine. Als wij de Bijbel mogen geloven komen Joden immers uit Afrika. Het is goed wel mogelijk dat in de racistische hiërarchie een Joodse origine te prefereren is boven die van ‘Neeger.’ Een schrijver over Rembrandt en de Joden vraagt zich af waar de portretten van de rijke 17e eeuwse Joden in Amsterdam zijn gebleven.
Wij moeten dus eerst vaststellen dat de mensheid in Afrika ontstond en haar weg vond naar alle werelddelen, inclusief Europa. Na de eerste golf is het niet aannemelijk dat Afrikanen Europa verder vergaten. In feite bleven ze trekken naar Afrika en de oudste menselijke resten gevonden in Frankrijk zijn die van de Grimaldi mens en zijn 40.000 jaar oud. De Grimaldi mens vertoont in versterkte mate alle kenmerken die men associeert met de Afrikaanse mens: lange armen en benen, subnasale prognastie en een terugwijkende kin. Er zijn latere aanwijzingen dat de oude Egyptenaren kolonies stichten in Europa om ertsen te exploiteren voor export naar Kemer (=Egypte). Uit het rijkelijk met afbeeldingen van zwarten in de klassieke wereld geïllustreerde werk van Snowden ‘Blacks in Antiquity’ blijkt dat de Griekse, de Romeinse en de vroeg christelijke wereld bekend waren met alle soorten van Afrikaanse en Aziatische volkeren. Men was zeer ingevoerd in de antropologische kenmerken en herkende mengsel van zwart en wit. Maar de klassieke wereld was zonder racistische vooroordelen terwijl westerse onderzoekers twintigste eeuwse racisme aan de klassieken wilden toeschrijven. De klassieken zagen uiterlijke verschillen als gevolgen van klimaat terwijl de huidkleur niets zegt over de persoonlijke merites. Zwarten participeerden in alle geledingen van d samenleving. Verder toont Snowden aan dat men door middel van specifieke namen klassieke personages als zwart en gekleurd kan identificeren. Er zijn dus picturale aanwijzingen en schriftelijke aanwijzingen zoals persoonbeschrijvingen.
Men kan bepaalde periodes en locaties aanwijzen waarin grote groepen zwarte en gekleurde mensen naar Europa kwamen of werden gebracht. Julius Ceasar bracht rond 50 v.Chr Sudanese Garamantes en Iraanse Ashkenazi’s naar Europa om de grenzen van het Germaanse rijk te bewaken. Deze groepen bleven wonen langs de Donau en de Rijn en men vond volgens Mike Nassau nog ver in de Moderne Tijd daar mensen met dik zwart haar en zwarte ogen. Lusane schrijft over zwarte en gekleurde Europese wetenschappers en dichters die vanuit Al Andalus (711-1492), het voormalige islamitische Moorse rijk in het huidige Spanje, naar alle Middeleeuwse Europese hoven werden gezonden. Ze hadden een hoge status en huwden onder andere in de Duitse koninklijke familie. Vanaf het midden van de Middeleeuwen werden de Moren naar Zuid Frankrijk, Italië en Afrika verdreven en werden Europese ridders. Uit de ridders ontstond de Europese en Nederlandse adel. De legers van Alva werden in de 16e eeuw tijdens de Antireformatie gestationeerd rond Antwerpen. Veel manschappen waren Afrikanen en ook zij vestigden zich er permanent. Mogelijk zijn dit de zwarte voorouders van de Antwerpse familie van Aerssen. In de 17e, 18e een 19e eeuw raakten ‘zwarte en gekleurde’ mensen in het grote Nederlandse kolonialistisch imperium op drift en veel kwamen in die periode naar Europa.
Naast deze aanwijzingen kijken wij naar afbeeldingen of portretten en zien personen die met hun zwarte ogen, zwart krullend haar, zwarte of gekleurde huid, dikke lippen en prognastie sterk afwijken van het blauwogige en blonde Europese type.
Zwarte Europeanen
De vraag is waar al deze zwarte en gekleurde mensen zijn gebleven. In Nederland gelooft men dat de kleur van een enkele in Europa verdwaalde bootsman of een eenzame geïmporteerde slaaf al na en paar generaties verdween want men trouwde met witte partners. Echter blijkt dat sommige autochtone families vele generaties lang ‘zwart en gekleurd’ bleven zoals de familie van der Duyn, waarvan barones Belle van Zuylen (1740-1805) ons in haar brieven aan baron D’Hermenches driemaal verzekerd, dat zij beroemd was om hun zwarte kleur. Deze familie was een afsplitsing van de familie Brederode, één van de oudste adellijke families van Nederland. Belle schreef zelf een zeer politiek geïnspireerd gedicht over de zwartbruine kleur van familievriend Aarnoud Joost baron van der Duyn getiteld ‘A son teint noir et basané’ (1764). De uitkomst na het wegen van de verschillende aanwijzingen, is dat gekleurde Europeanen ‘vanwege hun identiteit endogaam waren, onderling trouwden, en veel waarde hechtten aan de kleur welke voor oude beschaving en adel stond. De zwarte en gekleurde natie was geschoold en zeer bekend met de klassieke schrijvers die schreven over de zwarte volkeren wereldwijd en zagen hun wortels bij de oude Egyptenaren, de piramidebouwers. Vanwege verschillende onderzoeken blijken zij pikzwarte, kroesharige mensen te zijn geweest.
Belle van Zuylen noemde zich ten opzichte van haar minnaar, de zwarte D’Hermenches; Agnès. Voor huwelijkskandidaat James Boswell was zij Zelidé, naar een Egyptische prinses uit een tragedie van Voltaire uit 1753. In haar zelfportret ‘Portrait de Zelidé’ informeert Belle van Zuylen ons: ‘Zij heeft niet de witte handen, zij weet het en maakt er grapjes over, maar ziet huidkleur niet als een reden tot spot.’ Kijkend naar sommige schilderijen van bijvoorbeeld koning Carl X van Zweden, zijn nicht Christina van Zweden en zijn schoonbroer Friedrich van Hessen Eschwege ziet men donkere mensen met grote bossen haar, dikke lippen, Arabische neuzen en prognastie wat het meest geassocieerd wordt met de Afrikaanse mens. Friedrich was de achterkleinzoon van Johan de Oudere, de broer van Willem van Oranje. Aannemelijk is dat zij net als de familie De Medici, afstammelingen van de Moren zijn. De Moren waren zwarte en gekleurde moslims die door hun fysieke aanwezigheid in Europa, door middel van de Renaissance de klassieke beschaving herintroduceerde in Europa.
Belle van Zuylen
Deze schrijfster en pamflettist is voorlopig de enige spreekbuis voor ‘de zwarte en gekleurde natie’ in de Republiek. Vanwege haar vrienden en familienetwerk doemt het beeld op van een kosmopolitische zwarte en gekleurde Europese natie die onderling huwde, zaken en vriendschappen onderhield. Het was aannemelijk ‘een endogaam, gefixeerd mulattenras’ van heel lichtgekleurde tot heel zwarte mensen. Een complicatie die zich naar de portretten vertaalde is het esthetische dictaat dat ‘mooi’ gelijk was aan ‘wit.’ Net als hoe een schilder geen schele ogen, flaporen of een bochel afbeeldde, zo schilderde men automatisch een zwart persoon die dus ‘bad complexion’ had wit en roze. Dit dictaat is wellicht ook de aanleiding voor de bizarre Franse make-up en pruikenmode. Als wij ervan uitgaan dat de hugenoten afstammelingen waren van de naar Zuid Frankrijk verdreven Moren, dan begrijpen wij dat het om gekleurde mensen en een gekleurde natie ging. De slachting op de hugenoten had net als de holocaust op de Joden ook een racistische intentie. De hugenoten vluchtten naar heel Europa en gingen via Amsterdam in het gevolg van Cornelis van Aerssen naar Suriname. Evenals veel Joden en zwarte katholieke vluchtelingen uit Duitsland. De Marranen, bekeerde Joden uit Brazilië koesterden in het verborgene hun Joodse identiteit, vertrokken naar Suriname en werden weer openlijk Joods. Als wij de Bijbel mogen geloven komen de Joden dus uit Afrika en Joden vertonen daarom vaak Afrikaanse gezichtstrekken.
James Boswell was één van de vele internationale huwelijksgegadigden van Belle van Zuylen en was in Utrecht bevriend met de broer van hertogin Charlotte Sophie Mecklenburg Strelitz (1744-1818), de koningin van George III of Brittain. Zij was deel van een zwarte en gekleurde familie en toont op verschillende portretten haar zwarte etniciteit. Een later lid van een andere familietak was Prins Hendrik van Mecklenburg Schwerin (18 -19..), de echtgenoot van koningin Wilhelmina en de opa van Beatrix. Belle van Zuylen reisde naar Engeland om aan Charlotte Sophie voorgesteld te worden. Belle van Zuylen schreef haar zelfportret voor Boswell en voor haar kennissenkring. Na haar huwelijk met een huisleraar van verarmde Zwitserse adel Monsieur de Charrière, vertrok Belle van Zuylen naar Neuchâtel in Zwitserland. Daar woonden veel gekleurde personen die afstammen van de Garamantes en de Iraanse Ashkenazies. Zij raakte daar bevriend met de rijke Alexander-Pierre Dupeyrou (1729-1795), een in Suriname geboren en getogen planter die volgens zijn vriend Jean Jaques Rousseau ‘basané’ was, een bruine man was. Hij stamde af van de hugenoten en Nederlanders die naar Suriname vluchtten. Samen met Belle ving hij voor de terreur gevluchte Franse aristocraten op, die aannemelijk zwart en gekleurd waren. Zij vormde het middelpunt van een groep zwarte en gekleurde intellectuelen als barones de Staël (‘bad complexion’) en Benjamin Constant (‘very bad complexion’). Belle van Zuylen bewoog zich verder in een kleine ‘Surinaamse enclave’ van plantagehouders en financiers van slavenschepen..
Een zwarte en gekleurde familie
James Boswell schrijft in zijn journaal over zijn grootnicht Anna Margaretha: ‘Mrs Maasdam black as chimney’ en ‘Her husband chimney sweep.’ Boswell, die zelf gekleurd is beschrijft dus erg zwarte personen. Belle van Zuylen was zo getroffen door Maasdam’s zwarte kleur dat zij daarover een black is beautiful gedicht schreef. Ze schreef dat hij geen behoefte had aan een ‘mooiere’ kleur want slechts zijn merites als gouverneur van Breda gelden terwijl ook de stralend bruine god Mars de liefde had van Aphrodite. Van baron Maasdam is er slechts een witte afbeelding en van zijn vrouw is geen afbeelding aangemeld. Hun dochter Anna van der Duyn en kleindochter Sophie van Bijlandt zien er wel donker gekleurd uit. Evenals zijn kleinzoon Adam François van der Duyn, lid van het Driemanschap 1813, welke Nederland, na de Franse Tijd tot een monarchie maakte. Bij de begrafenis in 1753 van Aarnoud’s vader, Adam van der Duyn hield de dominee een omstreden lijkrede die gelezen kan worden als een bevestiging dat Adam van der Duyn, net als de allereerste Adam, zwart was als de vruchtbare aarde waaruit hij werd geschapen.
Een gravure van François van Aerssen uit 1704 toont een zwarte man met een stompe neus. Tegen een vervalste ‘witte’ afbeelding uit 1754 van François met een lange, spitse neus werd al in 1845 bezwaar gemaakt. De oudste gravure vertoont overeenkomst met een bruine man op een allegorisch schilderij door Rembrandt over de veroordeling en politieke terechtstelling van Van Oldenbarnevelt, waarin Van Aerssen een hand had. Hierom ontstond een vete tussen deze twee families en misschien is deze vete de aanleiding tot de moord op Cornelis van Aerssen in Suriname. De portretten van Veronica in het bijzonder, Cornelis en Lucia sluiten niet uit dat wij met gekleurde personen te maken hebben. Vooral Veronica heeft zwarte krullen, volle lippen en een terugwijkende kin. Haar zoontje Alexander lord Bruce, de oom van Boswell, lijkt etnisch. Gouverneur de Cheusses trouwde met de dochter van gouverneur Temming en stiefdochter van Charlotte Elizabeth van der Lith (1700-1753). Charlotte Elizabeth werd uiteindelijk de weduwe van drie gouverneurs en twee dominees en leidster van de Surinaamse republikeinen die streden voor onafhankelijk van Suriname in 1742-1752. Zij was een kleindochter van Johan Frederik Helvetius (1625-1709), een zwarte Duitse katholiek volgens een portretgravure, lijfarts van de Prins van Oranje, de latere Stadhouder-koning Willem III. De familie Helvetius werd een machtig geslacht van artsen aan het Franse hof en kende een beroemde filosoof Claude Adrien Helvetius.
Conclusie
Wanneer is er voldoende bewijs geleverd dat wij met een zwarte en gekleurde persoon te maken hebben? De tong van de zwarte en gekleurde raadspensionaris Johan de Witt (15..-16..) en de teen van zijn broer Cornelis de Witt in het Museum Gevangenenpoort kunnen eventueel aan een onpartijdig DNA- en melanineonderzoek worden onderworpen. Echter, mensen die geïndoctrineerd zijn om te geloven dat er geen zwarten kwamen naar Europa, laat staan dat zij een intellectuele, regenten en adellijke elite vormden of dat deze feiten naar buiten moeten, zullen misschien nooit overtuigd raken. Zij geloven onbewust dat zwarten inferieure mensen zijn zonder beschaving, met een kleine herseninhoud, lelijke genetische misbaksels zijn en dragers van ziekten. Menging met zwarten zien zij als genetische contaminatie en een gevaar voor de westerse beschaving. Waardoor deze witten er alles voor over hebben zwarten in een onderdanige en behoeftige tweederangs positie vast te houden. Daartoe zullen zij ook bewijzen van zwarte voorouders verbergen en studies als deze afwijzen, afkeuren of doodzwijgen.
De familie van Aerssen kan naar aanleiding van schriftelijke aanwijzingen, persoonsbeschrijvingen, afbeeldingen en hun Antwerpse afkomst als zwart en gekleurd worden geïdentificeerd. Ook vanwege hun huwelijkspartners over meerdere generaties en politieke en sociale relaties doemt het beeld op van een gemeenschap van onderling huwende zwarte en gekleurde Europeanen met een zwarte identiteit. De hugenoten vormden aannemelijk ook deel van deze natie en zij vormden een belangrijk deel van de gekleurde Europeanen die naar Suriname trokken. Deze zwarte identiteit van personen die soms persoonlijk zelf heel licht gekleurd waren, was gebaseerd op kennis van de klassieke schrijvers en verwees naar de beschaving van de pikzwarte piramidebouwers die 10.000 jaar oud is.
Voorzien van deze kennis kan men een afrocentrische analyse maken, die namelijk de zwarte mens en niet de witte mens centraal stelt, van verschillende geschiedenisfeiten zoals de Renaissance, de vervolging van de hugenoten, het uiterlijk, de lokalisatie en geografische verplaatsingen van ‘zwarte en gekleurde’ Europese volkeren verklaren. Veel schilderijen kan men met recht als witte vervalsingen ontmaskeren en literaire aanwijzingen van een zwarte identiteit herkennen en interpreteren. Tevens kan bewezen worden dat zwarten in Europa niet allochtoon zijn en wel degelijk op alle niveaus als kunstenaars, auteurs, filosofen, ontdekkers, handelaren, strijders, wetenschappers, regenten, adel, koningen en keizers hebben bijgedragen aan de Europese beschaving en de grote rijkdom van Europa.
Bronnen:
Alle aangehaalde feiten, onderzoeken en personen kunnen geverifieerd worden in Internet door het intikken in google.nl van de zoektermen. Bijvoorbeeld: Van Aerssen, Grimaldimens, Garamante, Ashkenazie, Carl X, Sfinx, Helvetius, De Staalmeesters, Moren, Adam François van der Duyn van Maasdam etc.
Barendrecht, van, François van Aerssen
Codfried, Egmond, Belle van Zuylen’s vergeten oma, Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737), Een beknopte studie over zwarten en kleurlingen in Europa en Nederland door de eeuwen heen, E.Codfried, Den Haag ‘05.(inclusief bronnenlijst)
Codfried, Egmond, Maria Susanna Du Plessis (1739-1795): Dader of slachtoffer?, E. Codfried, Den Haag 2005 (8e herziene druk)(inclusief bronnenlijst)
Courtney, Cecil, Isabelle de Charrière, Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 1993
Heineman, William, Boswell in Holland (1763-1764), LTD, Surrey 1952
Lusane, Clarence, Hitlers Black Victims, Routledge, London 2003
Snowden, Frank, Blacks in Antiquity, Harvard Univ. Press, Harvard 1970
Archief: Iconografisch Bureau/RKD Den Haag
Falsifying Of History
To The State Council, Raad van State, Mrs. mr. Lilian Goncalves-Ho Kan You, and Board of Trustees of Mauritshuis Museum at The Hague. In regard to: The End of Racism and White Supremacy, Massive falsifying of history, Large-scale scientific fraud, and Institutional scientific misconduct, with the retouched Old Masters portraits on public display to the detriment of yellow, brown, black and especially persons of African descent.
Your Honour mr. Lilian Goncalves,
I kindly inform you that if my research over many years after the ethnicity of the European nobility, royalty and bourgeoisie, the Blue Blood Is Black Blood Theory (1100-1848) is right: all museum directors, restorers and boards of trustees like yourself constitute a criminal organisation that intentionally exhibits falsified, whitened portraits of the Ancien Regime and supposedly upkeep and describe them scientifically while they constitute a horribly faked body of data.
The European whites, the Third Estate, liberated themselves in 1848, perhaps for the second time as the bourgeoisie stole the French Revolution. History was rewritten. Revolutionary museum directors ordered all brown and black faces of the noble and bourgeois elite to be retouched, over painted, under the false pretence that the paint had darkened and the varnish had yellowed, but the painters intention was to depict whites. The revolutionary French insisted Rembrandt was a pure Republican who was free from popish and monarchic tyranny and a painter who depicted the Third Estate, the white serfs. To this purpose a fake biography was concocted and all his figures were unjustly whitened. Restorers like Professor Alois Hauser and J.C.Traas, who were employed by the Mauritshuis Museum, perpetrated this heinous criminal act from 1848 to 1960. (A. McQueen 2003, Epco Runia 2010)
My request to you is to look after my personal safety after years of the most atrocious torture in a refrigerated police cell, stigmatising and prosecution in connection with the discovery of this gigantic fraud. Furthermore I request that you study the Old Master portraits in your Mauritshuis Museum with magnifying goggles, as the alterations are very visible on top of the brown faces: especially as you know what to look for, namely vandalism by ugly, over painted faces and hands. Restorers are instructed not to point these ‘iconographic interventions’ out and to maintain them as much as possible, which resembles the ‘omerta.’ (The Maffia vow of silence)
Because of my research I’m able to understand that the philosophers of the Enlightenment were also members of the brown and black complexioned bourgeoisie and invented Human Races and Racism as a Liberation Ideology to free the third estate from noble Black Supremacy, which was severely maintained by the first estate (the church), and the second estate (the nobility and bourgeoisie), who were 2-3% of the total population. Louis XVI was presented on the eve of the French Revolution with slippers made of human skin. The Declaration of the Rights of Men were the allochtone Asian whites asking the autochtone brown and black complexioned European nobles, to be regarded as humans.
Hereby you are offered an opportunity to help end the grievous racism against Blacks worldwide, and to give this benevolence and a great gift to humanity a Suriname touch.
Your friend, Egmond Codfried, Eemstraat 36, 2515 VS The Hague, The Netherlands
Suriname Blue Blood Is Black Blood Museum. Bluebloodisblackblood.blogspot.com
Open letter. The Hague, 4 January 2013. URGENT.
Aan de Directie van de Kb, te Den Haag
Inzake: een recente bestelling van een kopie van een artikel in een buitenlandse bibliotheek, met door de zender vervalste afbeeldingen
Den Haag, 2 maart 2013.
Geachte heer/mevrouw,
Recentelijk betaalde ik de KB euro 9 voor een kopie van een tijdschrift artikel, maar ontving niet waar ik op hoopte. Ik ben in feite afgescheept met een vervalst vod.
Men heeft in Duitsland het artikel met veel illustraties, gescand en daarbij het contrast op maximum geplaatst waardoor de zwart/wit verhouding geen juiste weergave is van de foto’s van dit artikel, maar eerder wat men wil dat ze zouden moeten zijn.
Ik stuur u een voorbeeld van hoe de afbeeldingen op de kopie eruit moeten zien, met deze brief, en verzoek u of het mogelijk is om de bibliotheek in Duitsland opnieuw te benaderen en hen te zeggen dat ze een gewone, neutrale scan moeten maken.
Wat zij hebben gedaan is, in het kader van mijn onderzoek, een soort vervalsing te sturen en censuur te plegen.
Hoogachtend.
ESR Codfried/ Eemstraat 36/ 2515 VS Den Haag
Artikel: J.Hernandez Diaz, 'Notas de los retratos de la Coleccion del Baron van Aerssen Beijeren', Boletin de Bellas Artes de Sevilla 1 (1934), p. 10, nr. 17, afb. op pl. 8; E. Valdivieso, Pintura Holandesa del siglo XVII en Espana, Valladoid 1973, p. 363;
To Mrs Sabine Craft-Giepmans,
Curator of Portraits Database of the
IB/RKD, The Hague
In Regard To: My research of the ideological inspired over paint/whitening of all Old Master portraits in public collections since 1848.
The Hague, 23 January 2013.
Dear Mrs. Sabine Craft-Giepmans,
We spoke last week as I approached you in search of 19th century photographs of Old Master painted portraits before they were retouched, because the claim was that the paint had darkened and the varnish yellowed, making the persons look dark, while the idea was asserted that the painters intended to make them white. You were not familiar with these photos that supposedly were also collected in albums, so I hope they might still surface at the RKD, and at the other institutes you have suggested. In regard to my questions about old museum exhibition catalogues you referred me to the RKD library, for which I thank you.
So these portraits were all restored to their supposedly original white state. Because of the study by Alison McQueen about The Rise of The Cult Of Rembrandt (2003) in 19th century France, I traced the start of this ideologically inspired practice of retouching all portraits in public collections to the year of 1848. When The Netherlands had it’s important change in the constitution, ending noble privileges, and giving the third estate equality before the law, and political representation. In France the third estate males got universal suffrage. As the political status quo changed, so did views on art and aesthetics. A lot of imagery that symbolised the ruling caste and its principles of noble superiority were destroyed during the French Revolution. What remained were the portraits that showed the true faces of the Ancien Regime, the church hierarchy or first estate, and the nobility and the bourgeoisie who were the second estate.
The newly emancipated third estate consciously settled on Rembrandt and decided to make him a figurehead for the new republican order. They created a fictional biography, and attributed 900 works to him, while today only 300 prevail, and claimed him as a painter of the third estate. As a true republican who lived and created free from Roman Catholic and monarchic tyranny. The final stage was restoring his portraits that originally represented the face of the Ancien Regime to their supposed whiteness, to represent the white third estate, the newly emancipated and empowered white serfs.
In this way all Old Master portraits and many genre pieces were whitened by over paints between 1848 and 1960. At the Mauritshuis Museum this was done by professor A. Hauser and JC.Traas, among others. Restoration reports today like those by Epco Runia (2009) enlist them, but do not specifying what they actually did. Present day restoration reports refer to their questionable practices, which are morally nor aesthetically supported by the professional code today, yet he is not going into detail. But they are clearly referring to the extensive retouches on the faces and hands. Yet restorers are instructed not to point out ‘iconographic interventions,’ not to mention them in their restoration reports and maintain them as much as possible. So the present day restorers maintain, and even restore interventions from 160 years ago that we (they) do not understand nor agree with today. Nor freely discuss as they constitute a falsifying of history to change the complexions of the Ancien Regime from brown and black to white. This constitutes scientific fraud, and institutionalised scientific misconduct as this ‘science’ is based on falsified data and a preconceived conclusion that the ancient European elite was white.
The old photographs from Old Master paintings by Adolphe Braun and Goupils proof this assertion. As well as photos by Nandini made and published in 1934 of the Van Aerssen-Beyeren family Collection. They were exhibited in 1915 at the Gemeente Museum, and now reside at the Del Prado, in retouched, whitened state. A member of this family, the richest in the Republic, was described as ‘Mrs Maasdam black as chimney.’ She was Anna Margaretha van Aerssen (1713- 1803) Baroness Van der Duyn van Maasdam. There is no portrait of hers submitted, but the chief part of the Van der Duyn van Maasdam collection, of one of the oldest nobility, is curiously not photographed nor scientifically described. They are no part of your RKD collection, and I urge you to find out why. An engraving of George Keppel of Albemarle, whose grandmother was a Van der Duyn, shows a very dark skinned person. His uncle Aarnout Joost van der Duyn was described by James Boswell, a cousin of his wife, as ‘Her husband chimney sweeper.’ Isabelle De Charrière (1739-1805) wrote a poem in admiration of his brown black complexion: ‘A son teint noir et basané’(1762) And she claimed in a letter that this family was famous for their swarthiness.(Whatley 2000)(Courtney 1993) The RKD shows a whitened portrait of the Baron by De Spinny. Engravings like those of Keppel were made after a painted portrait. These paintings exist now as over paints, or are kept hidden or were destroyed.
I submit my findings of brown and black complexioned portraits, mostly engravings that show the royal, noble and bourgeois elite were indeed brown and black of complexion, while some like Jochem de Neve, the youngest Syndic and a bourgeois, who shows strong classical African facial traits, next to very dark skin. Those were considered pure of blood, or proof of nobility. This is what all the portraits by Old Masters looked like, as the elite highly valued it’s dark complexions, and even wore the huge white collars to amplify this quality.
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Blue blood is black blood : the iconographical proof of a dominating black and colored European race who were a noble and royal elite (1500-1789) = Blauw bloed is zwart bloed : het iconografisch bewijs van een dominerende zwarte en gekleurde Europese natie die een adellijke en koninklijke elite was (1500-1789) / door Egmond Codfried
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Kind regards.
Egmond Codfried
Curator Suriname Blue Blood is Black Blood Museum
Eemstraat 36/ 2515 VS The Hague
Bluebloodisblackblood.blogspot.com
(1)The Syndics by Rembrandt (1662). (2)George Keppel (black) and whitened. (3,4) J. and Willem van Beyeren by van Mierevelt.
http://www.afrigeneas.com/webbbs/media/history/0/315_1.jpg
The Syndics of The Clothesmakers Guild (1662) (De Staalmeesters) by Rembrandt.
The above image is a photo by A. Braun, made before 1880, before the painting was ‘restored.’ The restoration was a retouch of the faces, to whiten them. It was claimed that the paint had darkened, while it was Rembrandts intention to show different shades of brown faces, as the elite was described as brown and black of complexion.
(Source of photo: Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 2006, p. 208)
To RKD/The Hague
Subject: Massive scientific fraud and institutional scientific misconduct with false, whitened, repainted portraits of all Old Masters in all museums
The Hague, 22 February 2013.
Dear Drs. Michiel Franken, RKD curator of Rembrandt portraits,
By chance I saw your article about ‘The Syndics of The Clothesmakers Guild’ (1662) in the latest RKD magazine. That is why I sent you a print of a photo of the Syndics taken before 1880. It still shows the Syndics as they looked before restoration. Your article does not mention that the Syndics were fraudulently whitened and we are being deceived with a false over painting of originally brown and black complexioned persons.
The famously unscrupulous 19th century restorations were made because it was said that the paint had darkened and the varnish had yellowed. Yet anyone today can see that the painter intended to paint brown and black faces of the members of the bourgeoisie elite. With Jochem de Neve, the youngest Syndic, the second from left, we have the darkest member, and with the strongest classical African facial traits. These facial traits often go together with a brown and black skin. The brown skin is still visible if one views a painting, and the persons who maintain these paintings have to know about this falsehood perpetrated on the unwary public.
So we cannot go on today and maintain the false notion that the paintings were restored because the paint had darkened, or dirtied, but that the painters intended to paint white people. After 1848 when the third estate, who were the white Europeans; were finally liberated they set out to whiten all old master portraits and genre pieces. This was done to ensure that the nobility and bourgeois could not make any historical claims on power or rights.
The study by Alison McQueen about ‘The rise of the cult of Rembrandt in 19th century France’ (2003) shows how history was intentionally, for revolutionary purposes; was falsified, and how they intentionally chose Rembrandt, and provided him with a false biography, to make him a figure head for the revolutionary state. The state needed a new aesthetics, and Rembrandt was made to be the exemplary painter of the third estate. Which he was not, as he painted the brown and black complexioned elite, which he himself also belonged to.
My conclusion is that history was falsified from 1848-1960, and scientists like you are today maintaining this terrible 160 year old fraud. The proof that the noble and bourgeois elite(2-3% of the Europeans) was brown and black of complexion hangs in all museums, and the brown skins are still visible under the often ugly beige defacing over paint. Facial hair is repainted on top of the fake layers, while the hair on the head is lightened with fake highlights.
Kindly inform me what you have found after you did your own investigation of the fraudulent images. Because of these faked images we have white superiority and racism against Blacks.
Egmond Codfried/ Suriname Blue Blood Is Black Blood Museum/ Eemstraat 36/2515 VS Den Haag
http://www.nieuwsdossier.nl/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/alfonso_xiii_van_spanje_overleden.jpg
BECAUSE YOU LIE ABOUT EVERY-THING!
By Egmond Codfried
Foreword:
BECAUSE YOU LIE ABOUT EVERYTHING!
This booklet is made to sent worldwide to all Blacks and their institutions in order to open their eyes about how their legacy has been stolen from them. This is explained in eight illustrated chapters, which provide verifiable sources, mostly from the internet. There is an ongoing process of revisionism of history by whites to exclude Blacks. Why do they hate Blacks so much? In order to answer this we need to search for something Blacks did against whites. And it need to be a recent and acrimonious confrontation between whites and Blacks, for Racism is still very potent and all pervading.
Cover illustration: Elector Maurice of Saxony (1521-1553), of the house of Wettin, father in law of William I of Orange (1533-1584), grandfather to Prince Maurice of Orange.
COLOPHON
Published by Egmond Codfried
APRIL 2011
ORDER: egmondcodfried@hotmail.com
25.73. 84.367
CONTENTS;
I
WHY DO WE HAVE RACISM AGAINST BLACKS?
II
BLUE BLOOD IS BLACK BLOOD; THE EUROPEAN NOBLES AND KINGS WERE BLACK AND COLOURED
III
SKIN BLEACHING AND WHITE FACE PAINT
IV
THE NEED TO FREE BLACKS FROM MENTAL SLAVERY
V
THE EASY TO DISCERNABLE ORIGINS OF WHITES AS DESCENDENTS OF ALBINO’S
VI
AN ASIAN FIXED ALBINO RACE
VII
THE ORIGINS OF THE BLACK NOBILITY
VIII
RACISM AND MENTAL SLAVERY, OPPRESSION INTERNALISED BY BLACKS
BECAUSE YOU LIE ABOUT EVERYTHING!
By Egmond Codfried
Foreword:
BECAUSE YOU LIE ABOUT EVERYTHING!
This booklet is made to sent to all Blacks and their institutions in order to open their eyes about how their legacy has been stolen from them. This is explained in eight illustrated chapters, which provide verifiable sources, mostly from the internet. There is an ongoing process of revisionism of history by whites to exclude Blacks. Why do they hate Blacks so much? In order to answer this we need to search for something Blacks did against whites. And it need to be a recent confrontation between whites and Blacks, for Racism is very potent and all pervading.
Introduction
I
WHY DO WE HAVE RACISM AGAINST BLACKS?
I’m always shocked to see images of American lynching scenes with Black bodies hanging and whites and their small children strolling about, even pointing and laughing; like they are at a fair. This is not natural human behaviour, as parents will always try to screen these things from their young ones. But they bring them along on these killings as an instruction; that Blacks should be viewed and killed as some kind of vermin. This hatred one also encounters in whites that are obsessively hiding the truth about the true ethnicity of many, many historical figures. When presented with proof they feign sudden ignorance, cannot consider a personal description with an image, to conclude that a person described as black or brown should look black or brown on a drawing or painting. Denying that they see any Blackness or even worst, accusing the researcher of racism by talking about race. Because they claim; not to be interested in a persons race.
Method of identifying historical Blacks
II
BLUE BLOOD IS BLACK BLOOD; THE EUROPEAN NOBLES AND KINGS WERE BLACK AND COLOURED
This booklet is a very condensed version of my Blue blood is black blood (1500-1789) theory, that explains how Europe between 1500 and 1789 should be considered a Black Civilisation because it was ruled by a Black and brown looking, Black identified noble and royal elite. The Ancien Regime was Black identified, because they symbolised their identity with images of Moors in art, literature, heraldry, family- and geographical names. The little Moor next to a noble or royal person, was not a servant nor even a real person; but a symbol of the persons Blue blood. If this little Moor, just a figure whipped up by a skilled painter, offers pearls, he is indicating that the sitter is from pure noble birth. His blood is not deluded with that of whites. The withes were called Pink or Grays, (‘t Grauw) and were their serfs. As an indication of how the Black and coloured nobility considered whites, some used white skins to bind books, make clothing and even shoes. Some of these practices explain the ferocity of the revolutionary masses against the nobility, by paying them back in kind. The period leading up to the end of this Black rule saw the invention of Race, in order to make a hierarchy between the Races. This was necessary to explain to whites that the Black and coloured noble beings, the Sun People, they worshipped as superior, were in fact low animals, ugly, stupid, cruel and closer to apes. Scientific racism can now be understood as a liberation ideology to liberate Europeans from a Reversed Apartheid oppression.
III
SKIN BLEACHING AND WHITE FACE PAINT
Yet whites as we know them today are so only since 1848 when the nobility was finally stripped from their privileges. They could survive as a nobility by biological integration with whites, thus marrying whites. Still some nobility kept their dark colour and Black features way into the 20th century. But only after 1848 whites came into power, rewrote history, and turned all the historical figures white. To have a history, without the humiliation of talking about being farmed by their Black rulers for their white skins, they simply made all of them white. This was somehow facilitated by the Blacks nobility who had fashions and traditions of bleaching their skins and painting their faces white. While sporting powdered hair or blond wigs. There is no accounting for strange fashions and beauty ideals, but its quite clear they were not white and did not want to be whites. They would not marry whites. But today these whitened painting are exhibited in European museums to show that these persons were whites. The images, which show them as Black, as they were described; are not put in front of the public. Some of these whitened paintings are authentic, others are over paints; the brown under paint sometimes still visible. Some over paints are done professionally, others in a hurry and look more like a crude defacement. Like as if families were under some strain to have the family portraits amended. Some paintings are therefore outright fakes, anonymous portraits bought at auction and then family arms added.
IV
THE NEED TO FREE BLACKS FROM MENTAL SLAVERY
The Blue blood is black blood theory is to free Blacks from mental slavery and expose white supremacy as a sham. To help Blacks not longer to view themselves as perpetual victims or descendents of slaves. Black civilisation already exists 10.000 years, while Black slavery only 500 years. Which was also started when the Black and coloured elite ruled Europe. The slave owners and colonial governors were members of the European elite and were not white. Perhaps ‘fair’ in comparisons with some African, but not white.
V
THE EASY TO DISCERNABLE ORIGINS OF WHITES AS DESCENDENTS OF ALBINO’S
Finally, part of the ongoing deception about the roll of Blacks as finders of the European civilisation is hiding the origins of whites. What are whites, where did they come from? In the whole of nature all white life forms are a result of albinism. And a white cat is never considered less then a Black cat simply based on the colour of its fur. Nor is a white rose valued more over a red rose, again just because of its colour. So why should this be so keenly felt among humans? What momentous events lead to this strange outcome? Whites, as we know them today are clearly descendents of albino’s, with some staying closer to the true albino type, while others are more mixed with darker people. Some whites can tan extensively, other burn within seconds in the sun; just like some albino’s do. Albino’s are in no way less then normal people. And albinism, which comprises many variations, on its self cannot be considered a disease. Albino’s can function on all levels, just like normal persons. They only need to take some precautions before venturing into the sun, to prevent skin cancer or irreversible harm to their eyesight. These days, parents of albino children are more informed and use sunscreens and eyeshades for their children, and keep them as much as possible out of the sun. Inn this way younger albino’s today show less scarring or poor eyesight.
VI
A CENTRAL ASIAN FIXED ALBINO RACE
Apparently African albino’s got organised and moved out of Africa to Central Asia, where in geographical isolation they became a fixed albino race. Human albinism is hereditary, as two albino parents have a 25% change of albino off spring. In horticulture, to arrive at pure white flower seed, white seedlings are over many generations interbred. The same can be stated for the animal world. Why should it suddenly be different for humans? Instead of this easy to verify explanation, eurocentrism states that 6000 years ago, European Blacks suddenly became white. They were already 43.000 years in Europe but their ability to make melanin, just an adaptation to climate, suddenly gave way. On the other hand in The Netherlands they claim that ‘our ancestors’ came 6000 years from the Middle East. This is another example of half-truths, which comprises eurocentrism. The whites came from Central Asia in great numbers, were somewhat better adapted to a cold, sunless climate and overwhelmed the original Black Europeans. These became more or less mixed with whites.
VII
THE ORIGINS OF THE BLACK NOBILITY
But many still remained pure African. From Antiquity (acht 00BC-300AD) remains many images and leads about Blacks and coloureds, in Europe. In the Medieval period (500-1500) they were even observed among the Vikings, and even as leaders. The European Blacks were called Blue Men. Next in 1120 something changed and the Blacks began to assert their Blackness when Saint Maurice was depicted as a Moor, a Classical African. Africa has many faces, but the Classical African Type symbolises the whole of Africa. Between 1200-1300 the Black King Balthazar in the Adoration scenes was invented to show that Blacks can be good Christians too, and were not only Muslims or heathens. By 1500 the Black King at the birth of Jesus was universally adopted in the whole of Europe, which coincides; more or less with the Renaissance. And the oldest noble families can be traced to 1100-1200, when descendents of European Blacks claimed to have Blue blood and were ‘edel’ which means ‘true’ Europeans. The European Blacks had military power and scientific knowledge, perhaps their numbers were reinforced by descendents from the Crusaders who left the crumbling Latin Empires they had founded in the Arab lands and returned to Europe. They might have mixed with eastern (Armenians) and Arab Christians, as one encounters Middle Eastern dress in some nobles. European universities were found on the need to translate Arabic text, the translations of Greek science, which had been lost to Europe for many ages, keeping Europe backward.
VIII
RACISM AND MENTAL SLAVERY, OPPRESSION INTERNALISED BY BLACKS
So especially educated whites are somehow thought to hide traces of Blackness, by not using Black images or feigning not to recognise blackness in images, or descriptions. Or are made to understand that Blacks are forever to be kept out of positions of power and authority. This indoctrination is so powerful that even educated Blacks fall under its spell. They are admonished to view themselves as descendents of slave, like slavery has became imprinted in their Black DNA, and not to research whites. Like a Black person is unable to look at a Rembrandt painting and has to say something worthwhile to white ears. Many educated whites simply do not speak to blacks nor do they use scientific studies by Blacks for research purposes. Blacks are nothing to them. In this a group code is enforced and a white that is perceived as a ‘Negro lover’ will soon be treated as a ‘Negro’ too. Blacks who dare to research anything, just as whites research anything, can get abused as ‘wanting to be white.’ Or ‘identifying with the oppressor.’ This shows how some Blacks have internalised their own oppression and keep each other locked in mental slavery. Doing the white man’s bidding, by even acting as envoys to attack a Black researcher who does not conform to the ‘Negro-as-slave’ behavioural code. Like how oppressed women will feel threatened by and will attack a liberated woman among their own community. This is because the whole of society conspires to lie to the oppressed and even gets them to perpetuate their own oppression themselves.
Chapters: illustrations and sources
I
WHY DO WE HAVE RACISM AGAINST BLACKS?
II
BLUE BLOOD IS BLACK BLOOD; THE EUROPEAN NOBLES AND KINGS WERE BLACK AND COLOURED
III
SKIN BLEACHING AND WHITE FACE PAINT
IV
THE NEED TO FREE BLACKS FROM MENTAL SLAVERY
V
THE EASY TO DISCERNABLE ORIGINS OF WHITES AS DESCENDENTS OF ALBINO’S
VI
A CENTRAL ASIAN FIXED ALBINO RACE
VII
THE ORIGINS OF THE BLACK NOBILITY
VIII
RACISM AND MENTAL SLAVERY, OPPRESSION INTERNALISED BY BLACKS
Paul Kaplan’s (1995):
THE RISE OF THE BLACK MAGUS IN EUROPEAN ART
According to this detailed and heavily illustrated work the iconography of the Black Magi or Black King started between 1300-1400. But it really took off during the rule of Charles IV of Luxembourg ( ) who followed Hohenstaufen imagery. In a JSTOR book review by… Kaplan is criticized for never really explaining what the symbolism of the African King, present at the birth of Jesus Christ, really means.
EUROCENTRISM AS A STIFLING FACTOR
My research aims to prove that in most eurocentric works, like Kaplan’s, there is an invisible, paradigmatic line which cannot be crossed and this line is the acceptance of the presence of Blacks in Europe, long before the Slavery and Colonial era. Usually the researcher ignores, and cuts away from anything Black. I could, for instance, not find on the Internet, any of the six, mysterious images mentioned by Kaplan showing many Blacks in ‘Les heures très riche de Duc de Berry’ by the Limbourg Brothers. But if this cannot be avoided the Black ‘thing’ is wrapped in mysticism, in any preposterous mysticism, as long as it not represents a Black person. Hence works like Kim Hall’s ‘Things of Darkness’ (…) and Alisson Blakely’s ‘Blacks in the Dutch World,’( ) both Black writers, who for possible career motivated reasons, go out of their way to exclude Blacks from European history. Hall claims, in overwrought language that calls all attention to itself, that references to Black women in Jacobean and Tudor literature should be seen in a feminist way as comparing a White woman to a Black slave, illustrating their low status. Blakely claims that racist attitudes in The Netherlands could develop without a lot of Black people being present.
OF NIGHTEN COLOUR
Well, this research finds and names historical African Europeans and understands Shakespeare’s line about Hamlet ( ), asked by his mother Gertrude to throw off his ‘Nighten Colour,’ as a witty stage direction that Prince Hamlet of Denmark himself was the ‘Colour of Night.’ Next to his mourning dress, sombre by its nature. This research also shows that Black Nobels and Royalty were present and were despotically dominating White’s, which resulted in eighteen and nineteen century racist theories, to get rid of them. Another taboo is discussing Blacks yielding power in Europe, in their own right, not as a representative of a White master. Thus we always seem to assume that every artists and their clients are White. And, as if all Black images are really for the benefit of White patrons. Like the whole of creation itself revolves around White people. Kaplan describes high placed Black officials at Charles IV of Luxembourg’s court and its use of propagandistic Black imagery but shies away from simply stating that Charles IV must have been Black as well. Blacks are today only acceptable as subject people, not power brokers or figures of authority. So this work says aloud what eurocentrism shies away from, that from 1500 to 1789 Europe was despotically ruled by a Black and coloured noble, royal and intellectual elite, giving Europe some kind of civilisation.
RENAISSANCE
Kaplan study ends with 1500, the beginning of The Renaissance, when the Black Magi or Black King imagery was being used in the whole of Europe, and not only Germany, or Bohemia where it originated. Reflecting Black domination of Europe. We can combine this information with Mike Nassau’s study about ‘Black Dutch.’ Of Black Europeans arriving in America in the seventeenth century who did not descent from enslaved Africans, but from Nubian Garamantes, and originating in the German Black Forest. A picture emerges of this part of Europe as a centre of Black peoples and Black European kingship. The religious imagery Kaplan relies on can only be a reflection of a society, where Black Kingship became or was a reality. He does not speak about secular art, although this should also have shown Black Royalty in secular pursuits. Like images, which show the marriage of Charles IV with Marie of Luxembourg in ???, another showing his crowning as Holy Roman Emperor in ??? and a miniature in ‘Les heurs très riches’???? showing a Black army behind the Crucifixion scene. The crucifixion shows Jesus and his attendants as Whites. A Black crowd attends the marriage, and the church officials who perform the marriage ceremony are Black. The King and his new wife appear White. But at the crowning he has a brown contour to his face, with white hands. We thus witness the struggle between traditions of depicting Christians as Whites and heathens or Muslims as Blacks. Kaplan wonders if the colour on some figures with brown or black faces and white hands are later additions. He notices that even Queen Sheba sometimes appears with blond locks and a pitch-black face, as if she was first depicted as White, with the Black face added later. This might be possible, but I would say that there still was a need to show Christians as Whites, so known Blacks who were in someway christianised should at the same time project both their Christianity and their Blackness.
THE CONCEPT OF BLACK KINGSHIP
There was a need to craft the concept of Christian Black Kingship on the European concept of European Christianity, which was also the concept of Europe to begin with. An Afrocentric retrace of the eurocentric research by Kaplan should show that the imagery of Blacks as good and pious Christians was needed to convince the White majority, the subjects of Black rule, that a Black King and a Black court was okay. Just what ailing and stagnant Medieval Europe needed. The pre-Renaissance Black rulers ordered propagandistic literary and art works, which stressed the role of known Blacks in the Bible, namely the Queen of Sheba, the Black Magi or King at the birth of Jesus Christ and the christening of an Ethiop by the apostle John. Soon, the Early Christian era martyr, St. Maurice (= Moor) was discovered to be Black, as he was born in Thebes, Egypt. So his cult was heavily promoted, and many new churches were named after him, to firmly show Blacks as part of Christianity. Even giving rise to imagery where he and his disciples, shown as pitch-black, are violently killed by heathen White soldiers of the White, heathen emperor Maximillian. So did the frequent discussion of the Ethiopian Christian Church, represented by Prester John, the imaginary Ethiopian ‘pope,’ to fix Blacks at the centre of Christianity.
THE BLACK MAGI
Kaplan researches religious art, mostly seen in churches and monasteries and religious works. They were out of the public space, the Church being a Law in it’s own right, so perhaps safer from iconoclastic wrath. He states that a lot is destroyed or altered, so we can never be totally sure about the whole body of this art. The imagery of a Black Herald to the White Magi preceded ones that have the White Magi turn Black Magi and named Balthasar (or Casper or Jasper). At that time it was perhaps understood that the Black Herald heralded the Blackness of the Magi or King, still Christianised, thus White. As was the ‘White’ depicted Queen of Sheba escorted by Black courtiers, who symbolised her Blackness. It could be that older White images, which actually depicted Black historical persons, were ‘restored’ after 1300 to show the real ethnicity of the depicted persons; once the concept of Blacks as good Christians was (re) established (1300-1400). Then also the fictional story arises about the lands ruled by this Black King Balthasar. A miniature of a White Charles de Great violently plunging his sword in the chest of a Muslim Prince, in ‘Spiegel Historeal by Jacob van Moerlant (1325-1335)(=Moor Land!), therefore does not signal the eternal hatred of White’s against Black’s. It shows Christianities conquest of Islam. At the time of early Christianity (0-500) the black colour was not stigmatised, and did not need to be stressed in art or other works. It was also well understood that Christianity first took off with Africans and Asians, not with the White’s, as F. Snowden shows in ‘Blacks in Antiquity’ (1971).
BLUE MEN
However, during the era of the Crusades (1000-1492) and the occupation of Muslim lands by European Christians, the enemy needed to be colour coded and the artists settled on black. Perhaps European and Christian Blacks were then also shown as white or blue, to distinguish them from ‘bad’ Blacks. A poem ‘Cursor Mundi’ ( ), that commemorates the baptism of four Saracens (Muslims), talks of them as ‘Black and blue as lead’ but ‘turning white.’ A Book of Seasons (1490-1500) shows a blue Magi in miniature (KB 133D18fol93v). Several Medieval texts, like …??? speak of European Black peoples as Blue Men. Thus Blue Men as a euphemism for Black Men. To avoid the identification of these European Blacks with the devil, or as enemies of Christian Europe, they were turned blue. But in reality some truly pitch-black Africans show a blue-ish tinge. So with the idealisation of Blackness as the preferred colour of a European elite, the standard was set at blue tinged, Black people; hence Blue Blood
THE BLACK PAGE
The Black Page or erroneously named Black Servant on seventeen and eighteen century portraits of the Nobility, seems to be a throw back to this older imagery, showing a Noble person who was actually black of skin, as a White person, with a Classical African at his or her side, to announce his Black credentials. His claim to Nobility and all the power, positions and wealth connected with Nobility. The marriage procession of John Wolver van Brederode (1599-1655) and Louise Christina van Solms (1600-1660) was lead by two Black drummers, to symbolise their high nobility. Poet Jan Vos, the Black theatre regent and organiser of the procession, was criticised for leading this procession into Amsterdam by himself on horseback, of the Electress of Brandenburg, the Princess of Orange and her mother Amalia van Solms,. William of Orange entrance into Exeter( ), the first Orange March, was lead by a group magnificently attired Blacks from Dutch Guyana, heralding the Blue blood of the King. The Black Page should correctly be viewed as a symbol of Blue Blood, and not as a real servant. However, people in public functions are in the ‘Public Service’ and Kings and Nobles always claim that they ‘serve’ the people, they represent. ‘Adel, verplicht.’ But this does not mean waiting on their subjects, hand and foot, as a true house servant would. This later imagery even shows Nobles intimately ‘leaning’ on the symbolic Moor or being served with flowers, white pearls, coral or other riches by him. Which again explains the Nobles claims as served and honoured by his Blue Blooded rank. Kaplan repeats claims that Moors in heraldry represents the conquest of Moors. Still these heraldic Moors always appear armed, proud and dominant, so I doubt this explanation. They just represent Blue Blood. Hence Blue Blood as a euphemism for Black Blood which represented the concept of hereditary, old European Nobility (1500-1789). A high and independent status that one ideally was born too, and was not bestowed by Kings on any, mere mortals. Perhaps ennobled commoners strove to proof that they originally came from born nobility, and that the diplomas of ennoblement just stressed what was already present in their veins. That is perhaps where al the fake genealogies make their entry.
EUROPEAN BLACK ROYALTY (1500-1789)
Esaias Tule’s print of a ‘Moorish Dance’ or ‘The Dance of Nations’ (1617) shows the young King Johan Frederick van Wurttemberg as a Moor, doing a cartwheel jump. Which reminds us of ‘The Masque of Blackness,’ costume design for the daughter of the Niger River, which depicts Queen Anne of Denmark (..) as a slender, tall and pitch-black woman. We normally see her as blindingly White; with blond, curly and upswept hair by, Paul van Somer (1617). Yet from her mother in law Maria of Scots, her husband James I Stuart, her son Charles I, her daughter Elizabeth of Bohemia and grandson Charles II Stuart; we see engravings which show black skinned Royal persons. Charles II was named The Black Boy and described as ‘a tall Black man,’ in a wanted poster issued by Parliament. James Boswell, self-described as ‘Black,’ calling the British King ‘The Swarthy Stuart.’ From Elizabeth and Frederick of Bohemia, the Winter Queen and Winter King, the NPG site shows a black engraving. She was a daughter of James I and Anne of Denmark, and he was the grandson of William of Orange (1533-1584), who was described as ‘More brown then white’ and ‘Brown from complexion and the beard.’(Beresteyn 1933). As all the European monarchs were related by blood, many more black portraits should have existed but were probably destroyed in the iconoclasm connected with the French revolution, spoken of by Lundgren in ‘Blacks in the European Art ( ), p.
Tortured for discovering the truth
Torture By A Refrigerated Policecell In The Hague In The Netherlands
To The High Commissioner
of Human Rights in Geneva
Regarding: Torture in Holland by a ‘refrigerated police cell’
The Hague, 22 October 2006.
Sir,
I Egmond Codfried, a writer and a fighter for Civil Liberties and Human Rights, has only recently discovered that the Police Station Hoefkade 350 in The Hague, 0900-8844, in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, has a building locked ‘refrigerated cell’ to torture citizens. The police in Holland are licensed to detain citizens up to six hours, without charging them with a crime. These six hours are then used to punish and harass a citizen who does not minutely follow any policeman’s (Hogeboom) orders.
At this modern police station a so-called ‘Haagse crisisdienst’ is imbedded. They are the torturers who have to make sure that the victimized citizen is properly harassed, degraded and intimidated. They come prepared and wear winter clothes in summer as they spent some time in this refrigerated cell. After the verbal harassment, the temperature takes a serious dip and the prisoner starts to suffer the effects of hypothermia. He starts urinating incessantly, fearing for his health. I suspect that a superficial examination of the police station might not show anything peculiar. Presumably, they employ the normal cooling system, but systematically. They might be lowering the temperature to the extreme in certain cells to achieve their aim. I’m also looking for conformation that racist white ‘Suidafrikaner’ persons (R. B. of Vestia, Policemen Vl., Kr.), who fled post apartheid South Africa, are employed at the police to teach the Dutch how to humiliate and beat Black citizens. This might be the reason why we are not finding coloured or Muslims policemen in this most multiethnic Dutch society. After I made information, Station Hoefkade told me that a locked up person might have been ‘shaken, upset, stoned or drunk’ so his statement about a ‘refrigerated cell’ cannot be believed.
The ‘Haagse crisisdienst,’ the crises team, is part of Parnassia, a mental facility in The Hague. The eleven member’s team consists of licensed workers, but also unlicensed and deformed persons who illegally pass for ‘psychiatric nurses,’ by order off the director and the police. At this police station a policeman (H.), who is not a doctor, makes a medical diagnosis. This is then spun out to the absurd and submitted to official paper, by the torturers. This false document is a ‘semi-certification’ and is then freely circulated to embarrass and harm the victimized citizen’s rights. The use of psychiatry as a means of torture and punishment is explicitly forbidden by several international treaties which The Netherlands is party to. By leaking this false document, the victimized citizen is prevented from complaining and will be met with great disbelieve and ridicule. These documents can be used to facilitate forceful committing in a psychiatric hospital, as in ‘three strikes your out.’ These complaints were sent to the Health Inspector Office in Rijswijk ZH with the names of these alleged Parnassia torturers: Doctors R.van Beest, M.ter Velden, A.van Hemert, M.de Kruiff, R.de Winter, Nurses M.Visser, I.de Rijke en unlicensed toilet lady C.M.ter Horst.(see google.nl)
These practices have started in 1996 with Dr Paul Selten who did all of his preliminary Nazi styled research on Surinamese Blacks, Antillean Blacks and Berber Moroccans at the Parnassia facilities. The 1933 Nazi Nuremberg Race Laws, which deal with the biological inferiority of certain human races, who had to be exterminated in Europe in order to not defile the white race, are reinstated in Holland. The Dutch government has decided that only ‘white, blond and bleu-eyed’ citizens are the true Dutch. The rest is second-class citizens who are horded up in black neighbourhoods and go to black schools for inferior ‘Bantu’ education. This doctor has declared Blacks and Moroccans in Holland, of the second generation, to be biologically inferior to their white peers. With whom, I might ad; they successfully compete for elite and prestigious positions. Selten states that these peoples are 2-5% more susceptible to ‘schizophrenia’ with ‘paranoid coloured thinking’ as its main symptom. As white Dutch society rejects the existence of racial discrimination in Holland, so any person who dares to complain of racism must be crazy.
This kind of torture and ‘semi-certification’ go hand in hand. It strongly reminds one of the practices in Sovjet-era and present Russia and China which the recently murdered Anna Politovskaja had reported. Political dissidents were pronounced mentally ill and were locked up and starved in special mental institutes to cure them. Only this month president Bush, who has Dutch ancestry, was licensed to employ refrigerated cells to torture captured Muslim fighters, as a mean of distracting information. The police in The Hague might as well have inspired him! The police in The Hague are perpetrators in a staggering 10% of the known complaints by coloured citizens of racially motivated violence. Nationwide the figure is 6%. The police complaints board rejects 99,99% of all cases. The OM, the District Attorney or State Prosecutor does not earmark such cases as racially motivated crimes and doing so encourages mistrials and withholding of justice. Recent events show that Blacks and Coloureds in Holland are either burned to a crisp, as in the Shipholprison fire where eleven Blacks and Muslims perished; or are refrigerated to death as I have brought to your attention, today.
of Human Rights in Geneva
Regarding: Torture in Holland by a ‘refrigerated police cell’
The Hague, 22 October 2006.
Sir,
I Egmond Codfried, a writer and a fighter for Civil Liberties and Human Rights, has only recently discovered that the Police Station Hoefkade 350 in The Hague, 0900-8844, in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, has a building locked ‘refrigerated cell’ to torture citizens. The police in Holland are licensed to detain citizens up to six hours, without charging them with a crime. These six hours are then used to punish and harass a citizen who does not minutely follow any policeman’s (Hogeboom) orders.
At this modern police station a so-called ‘Haagse crisisdienst’ is imbedded. They are the torturers who have to make sure that the victimized citizen is properly harassed, degraded and intimidated. They come prepared and wear winter clothes in summer as they spent some time in this refrigerated cell. After the verbal harassment, the temperature takes a serious dip and the prisoner starts to suffer the effects of hypothermia. He starts urinating incessantly, fearing for his health. I suspect that a superficial examination of the police station might not show anything peculiar. Presumably, they employ the normal cooling system, but systematically. They might be lowering the temperature to the extreme in certain cells to achieve their aim. I’m also looking for conformation that racist white ‘Suidafrikaner’ persons (R. B. of Vestia, Policemen Vl., Kr.), who fled post apartheid South Africa, are employed at the police to teach the Dutch how to humiliate and beat Black citizens. This might be the reason why we are not finding coloured or Muslims policemen in this most multiethnic Dutch society. After I made information, Station Hoefkade told me that a locked up person might have been ‘shaken, upset, stoned or drunk’ so his statement about a ‘refrigerated cell’ cannot be believed.
The ‘Haagse crisisdienst,’ the crises team, is part of Parnassia, a mental facility in The Hague. The eleven member’s team consists of licensed workers, but also unlicensed and deformed persons who illegally pass for ‘psychiatric nurses,’ by order off the director and the police. At this police station a policeman (H.), who is not a doctor, makes a medical diagnosis. This is then spun out to the absurd and submitted to official paper, by the torturers. This false document is a ‘semi-certification’ and is then freely circulated to embarrass and harm the victimized citizen’s rights. The use of psychiatry as a means of torture and punishment is explicitly forbidden by several international treaties which The Netherlands is party to. By leaking this false document, the victimized citizen is prevented from complaining and will be met with great disbelieve and ridicule. These documents can be used to facilitate forceful committing in a psychiatric hospital, as in ‘three strikes your out.’ These complaints were sent to the Health Inspector Office in Rijswijk ZH with the names of these alleged Parnassia torturers: Doctors R.van Beest, M.ter Velden, A.van Hemert, M.de Kruiff, R.de Winter, Nurses M.Visser, I.de Rijke en unlicensed toilet lady C.M.ter Horst.(see google.nl)
These practices have started in 1996 with Dr Paul Selten who did all of his preliminary Nazi styled research on Surinamese Blacks, Antillean Blacks and Berber Moroccans at the Parnassia facilities. The 1933 Nazi Nuremberg Race Laws, which deal with the biological inferiority of certain human races, who had to be exterminated in Europe in order to not defile the white race, are reinstated in Holland. The Dutch government has decided that only ‘white, blond and bleu-eyed’ citizens are the true Dutch. The rest is second-class citizens who are horded up in black neighbourhoods and go to black schools for inferior ‘Bantu’ education. This doctor has declared Blacks and Moroccans in Holland, of the second generation, to be biologically inferior to their white peers. With whom, I might ad; they successfully compete for elite and prestigious positions. Selten states that these peoples are 2-5% more susceptible to ‘schizophrenia’ with ‘paranoid coloured thinking’ as its main symptom. As white Dutch society rejects the existence of racial discrimination in Holland, so any person who dares to complain of racism must be crazy.
This kind of torture and ‘semi-certification’ go hand in hand. It strongly reminds one of the practices in Sovjet-era and present Russia and China which the recently murdered Anna Politovskaja had reported. Political dissidents were pronounced mentally ill and were locked up and starved in special mental institutes to cure them. Only this month president Bush, who has Dutch ancestry, was licensed to employ refrigerated cells to torture captured Muslim fighters, as a mean of distracting information. The police in The Hague might as well have inspired him! The police in The Hague are perpetrators in a staggering 10% of the known complaints by coloured citizens of racially motivated violence. Nationwide the figure is 6%. The police complaints board rejects 99,99% of all cases. The OM, the District Attorney or State Prosecutor does not earmark such cases as racially motivated crimes and doing so encourages mistrials and withholding of justice. Recent events show that Blacks and Coloureds in Holland are either burned to a crisp, as in the Shipholprison fire where eleven Blacks and Muslims perished; or are refrigerated to death as I have brought to your attention, today.
ACHTERVOLGD DOOR DE AIVD?
Sinds men mij op 27 september 2011 dwong een reisverbodclausule bij het huurcontract uit 1990 te ondertekenen, onder dreiging van ontruiming binnen drie dagen uit de woning die ik al 22 jaar huur, en ik redres zocht voor het reisverbod, wordt ik achtervolgt door CBS/Binnenlandse Zaken; dat ik herken als de AIVD, de Nederlandse Sicherheidsdienst.
Eerst ontving ik drie maal een brief over een internet enquête met de dreiging dat ik persoonlijk bezocht zou worden. Natuurlijk gaf ik geen gehoor aan de oproepen want een persoon als ik doet geen zaken met de AIVD. Nadat ik naar het stadhuis was geweest om te informeren waarom de wethouder Marnix Norder niet reageerde op mijn brieven: ze waren naar zeggen van de secretaresse niet aangekomen; hoewel ik ze persoonlijk in de brievenbus in de stadhuis hal had gestopt, vond ik een kaart van een CBS medewerkster op de mat die daadwerkelijk bij mij aan de deur is geweest. Na een maand hoorde ik van mijn nieuwe buren, die ik toen pas ontmoette, dat deze mevrouw ook bij hen had aangebeld, om hun te informeren dat ik geacht wordt mee te doen aan een enquête.
Tijdens deze brievenkanonnade zag ik op een dag een vreemde witte vrouw in het café van de Openbare Bibliotheek mij van een naburig tafeltje te observeren en aantekeningen te maken in haar agenda. Daarna was er in hetzelfde café een bijzonder eng uitziende witte man, type vooroorlogse huurmoordenaar, die mij van onder zijn tafeltje zat te filmen tot ik hem mijn wijsvinger toonde en hij schielijk ophield en vertrok. Tussendoor had hij een stuk appelgebak gegeten.
Deze brief werd mij driemaal toegestuurd
[quote]
Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek . statistics Netherlands
De heer E.S.R Codfried
Xxxstraat xx
Xxxx xx ’s Gravenhage
Correspondentienummer DDV-2012-S-H0157/WoON
Onderwerp CBS-onderzoek
Datum Heerlen, januari 2012
Geachte heer Codfried
Enige tijd geleden hebben wij u in een brief uitgenodigd mee te doen aan een onderzoek van het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) en het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties (BZK). Het gaat om een onderzoek naar de woonwensen en woonsituatie. Het onderzoek levert belangrijke informatie over wonen in Nederland. De resultaten kunnen leiden tot maatregelen of voorstellen voor een aantrekkelijk woningaanbod en een goed leefmilieu in de toekomst.
De meeste mensen hebben de vragenlijst inmiddels op internet ingevuld. Daar ben ik blij mee, want het is belangrijk dat zo veel mogelijk mensen meedoen. Hoe meer mensen aan het onderzoek meedoen, hoe beter de kwaliteit van de uitkomsten is. Van u hebben wij de vragenlijst nog niet ontvangen. Mogelijk kunt u de vragenlijst niet invullen omdat u geen internet heeft. Om een goed beeld te krijgen van hoe mensen in Nederland denken over hun woonsituatie en welke woonwensen zij, is het belangrijk dat ook mensen zonder internet kunnen meedoen. Daarom zal een medewerker van het CBS u over een aantal weken bezoeken of bellen, mocht u de vragenlijst nog niet ingevuld hebben.
Als u wel internet heeft, dan wil ik u overhalen om alsnog via internet mee te doen. Wij hopen dat u de komende dagen tijd zult vinden om de vragenlijst in te vullen. U helpt ons daar erg mee.
U vindt de vragenlijst op https://xxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx/xxxxxxb
Om uw gegevens tegen misbruik te beschermen, gebruiken we een beveiligde verbinding. U dient daarvoor niet het gebruikelijke ‘http’ maar ‘https’ in te typen. Invoeren in google of een andere zoekmachine werkt niet. Vul daarom het adres in in de adresbalk boven in uw scherm. Als u op onze website bent, vragen wij u om een gebruikersnummer en een toegangscode in te vullen
Uw gebruikersnummer is: xxxx xxx xxx
Uw toegaqngscode is: xxxxxx
Na het invullen van uw gebruikersnummer en uw toegangscode komt u in de vragenlijst. Wij willen graag nog een keer benadrukken dat bij het onderzoek uw privacy volledig gewaarborgd is. Op de achterzijde van deze brief leest u daar meer over.
Als u vragen of problemen heeft die samenhangen met het gebruik van het internet, dan kunt u onze helpdesk e-mailen: contactcenter@cbs.nl onder vermelding van WoON. Mocht u vragen hebben naar aanleiding van deze brief of over het onderzoek dan kunt u telefonisch contact opnemen met het CBS Contact Center te Heerlen: (045) 570 64 00.
[…]
U doet mij een groot plezier als u een van de komende dagen de vragenlijst invult.
Graag dank ik u bij voorbaat voor uw medewerking.
Met vriendelijke groet, het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek
Mw.drs. A.C.E.Wilms
Sectormanager Dataverzameling
Bij al onze onderzoeken is privacy gewaarborgd. […] CBS verzamelt maar krijgt ook informatie van de bevolkingsadministratie, sociale diensten, salarisadministraties. Met deze gecombineerde informatie stelt het CBS statistieken samen.
[/quote]
[quote]
Correspondentienr DDV-2012-S-H0156/WoOn
Onderwerp CBS-onderzoek
Datum Heerlen, januari 2012-06-12
Geachte heer Codfried,
Vorige week hebben wij u in een brief uitgenodigd om mee te doen aan een onderzoek naar uw woonwensen en woonsituatie dat door het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek en het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijkrelaties (BZK) wordt uitgevoerd. Als u de vragenlijst op het internet al heeft ingevuld, willen wij u daar hartelijk voor danken. Mocht u nog niet in de gelegenheid zijn geweest om de vragenlijst in te vullen, willen wij u vragen dit alsnog te doen. De internetvragenlijst vindt u op
Om uw gegevens tegen misbruik te beschermen, gebruiken we een beveiligde verbindin.
U dient daarvoor niet het gebruikelijke ‘http’ maar ‘https’ in te typen. Invoeren in google of een andere zoekmachine werkt niet. Vul daarom het adres in in de adresbalk boven in uw scherm.
Als u op deze website bent, vragen wij u om een gebruikersnummer en een toegangscode in te vullen.
Uw gebruikersnummer en uw toegangscode staan op de voorzijde van de kaart. Ook als u geen internet heeft, zijn uw gegevens van belang voor ons. Daarom zal een medewerker van het CBS u over een aantal weken bezoeken of bellen, mocht u de vragenlijst nog niet ingevuld hebben. Wij hopen dat u dan bereid bent om via een gesprek met onze medewerker aan het onderzoek mee te doen.
Als u vragen heeft kunt u ons altijd bellen. Onze helpdesk is telefonisch te bereiken van maandag tot en met vrijdag tussen 9.00 en 17.00 uur. Het telefoonnummer is (045) 570 64 00.
U doet ons plezier een groot plezier als u een van de komende dagen de vragenlijst invult.
Graag danken wij u bij voorbaat voor uw medewerking.
Met vriendelijke groet, het Centraal Bureau voor Statistiek
Mw. drs.A.C.E.Wilms
Sectormanager Dataverzameling
[/quote]
Adressen ontvangers brief aan UNHCOHR d.d. 22 Oktober 2006.
Gemeente Den Haag: w.j.deetman@bsd.denhaag.nl,
Nationale Ombudsman: bureau@nationaleombudsman.nl
Raad van State, VNG: informatiecentrum@vng.nl,
Wethouder Integratie Den Haag: r.baldewsingh@bsd.denhaag.nl
Gemeentelijke Ombudsman: gemeentelijke.ombudsman@omb.denhaag.nl
SP: tribune@sp.nl, sp@sp.nl, onderzoek@sp.nl, i.gyomorei@tweedekamer.nl, i.gyomorei@denhaag.nl, GL: info@groenlinks.nl, groenlinks@den haag.nl
LBR: lbr@fbu.uu.nl, VK: lezersservice@volkskrant.nl, Groene Amsterdammer: groene@groene.nl, Elsevier: redactie.elsevier@elsevier.nl
Drenthe: redactie@rtvdrenthe.nl, Friesland: redactie@dvhn.nl, info@midfrieslander.nl, rtv@omroepgelderland.nl
Flevoland: redactie.secretariaat@destentor.wegener.nl, NOS, NRC, Trouw, AD, BBC, Nouvel Observateur: r.backmann@nouvelobs.com, h.guirchoun@nouvelobs.com, Spectator : spectator@cisubs.co.uk
Ministeries van Justitie, Algemene zaken, Binnenlandse zaken, Buitenlandse zaken
OM ’s Gravenhage, Gemeente Amsterdam
Gemeente Nijmegen: gemeente@nijbegen.nl, griffie@nijmegen.nl, hetarchief@nijmegen.nl, marketing@rtbkan.nl(VVV Nijmegen)
Clingendael: info@clingendael.nl, Amnesty International: Amsterdam, London: sct@amnesty.org.uk, Ierland: nireland@amnesty.org.uk
Tweede Kamer: k.arib@tweedekmarer.nl, n.azough@tweedekamer, F.weekers@tweedekamer.nl, a.wolfsen@tweedekamer.nl,
Eerste Kamer: a.meulenbelt@eerstekamer.nl, post@eerstekamer.nl,
Camiel Eurlings CDA Europarlement : www.camiel.com
Ayaan Hirsi Ali : EBowen@aei.org,Vrodman@aei.org, Fatima Köser-Kaya, Ayhan Tonca. Afshin Elian, Alexander Pechtold, Gerard Spong, Britta Böhler
info@internationalesocialisten.org
Revolutions
UNDERSTANDING WHITE PEOPLE
This piece could have also been titled: Understanding Black People as there is no real difference between these two entities. Still I stubbornly insist there should be something like common courtesy, something that sets us apart from animals.
Although I again realise that a Lion who is hunting and next devouring an antelope, is not behaving much differently towards his prey as when we eat a delectable piece of roasted chicken. Neither the Lion nor we show any common courtesy towards the chicken or the antelope. Among humans, we know not to discuss politics or religion with strangers. As a stranger in a land, we understand not to criticise the country, its government, its customs, or its history. These are things that are held sacred by the inhabitants, no matter how much they might disagree among themselves about the state of their nation. As a visitor, you need to keep clear, no matter how good your relation with some of the natives might be. The problem now is how to behave if you are living in a foreign country for 33 years, like I’m living in The Netherlands. I’ am a Dutch national, I was born in Suriname during Dutch rule, my first language is Dutch. So, I’m destined by my history to be part Dutch and have the right to speak about things Dutch. By researching Suriname history one is immediately plunged headlong in Dutch history because of the Dutch colonists and their governors. The Van Aerssen family was part owner of Suriname. This however is disputed by many Dutch I encounter because of my research and campaign against scientific fraud, with the falsifying of Old master Portraits at the core of this scientific misconduct.
When I claim that Blacks ruled and civilized Europe whites are visibly horrified, stupefied and resentful. They often change colour about four times. They next talk about the many barbarous traditions in Africa. Like them, I’m equally appalled at the perennial African inter-tribal violence, the hacking to dead, and the burning of ethnic opponents. Yet, the supposedly civilised Europeans used to do the same in Europe, to each other, just 65 years ago. Now they have exported this bloodletting to Africa and Asia. Even torture which supposedly ended with the French Revolution (1789-1794), is now outsourced by the USA to Arabic, Asian and poor European states. As if all the gains of the French Revolution have evaporated, leaving us only with Racism, which was invented a liberation ideology not to revere and promote the former oppressor (the Black Nobility) to positions of power. When I talk about prostitution as modern slave trade and legal rape with the blessing of the Dutch state, they tell me about how many Africans are involved in the business of trading in young African women. Of African women who play a major role in deceiving and inducting the young unfortunate African women into this system that has no escape. I have seen a documentary about a nation in South Kenya where woman are beaten, whipped by men as a sign of endearment. Women of this nation proudly show the welts and cuts cause by the fine whips all over their body, inflicted by men that love them. We know about female circumcision, perpetrated on young girls, some even dying in the process and women claiming that those were witches anyway. Somali women talking proudly of the cleanliness of women who’s clitoris were cut away, and they vagina being sown closed. We have seen little, innocent African children being branded and persecuted as witches in West Africa. The Suriname newspapers write in great detail about the evils the brown and black Surinamese do to each other and to their children. So, the Dutch claim I have no right, no authority to speak against whites.
On 15 May 2005 I was taken by force out of my house. A policeman had been called and had witnessed a large leakage in the house below me, while I did not see any leakage in my home. And I was kept for six hours in a refrigerated police cell at the Hoefkade police bureau in The Hague. Afterwards I was free to leave. This and further stigmatisation, harassment and prosecution, I now understand, was my reward for publishing my first study about historical Blacks in Europe. This was not a new subject, but I was the first to also identify Blacks among the royalty, the nobility, the bourgeoisie and the intellectual elite. First, I thought they were just a part of this elite, now I realise the entire Noble and Bourgeois elite was brown or black of complexion, and they were 2-3% of the population. This fact got confused because I did not realise that all Old Master portraits were altered, whitened from 1848 –1960 during the infamous restorations of the 19th century. Scientific restoration reports and handbooks refer to these questionable practices, but do not go into detail. So we do not know they have repainted the faces and hands, claiming the paint had darkened. This was part of the revolutionary process, and the newly emancipated third estate, which was the white Europeans, had all the old master images of the Ancien Regime elite, amended. This was to insure that this brown and black complexion elite could not turn back any revolutionary gains. Both Rembrandt and Shakespeare were inducted into the third estate, and chosen as figureheads for a new artistic policy. They were improbably declared to be members of the third estate after being whitened. I stumbled on a Adolphe Braun photograph taken before 1880 of the Syndic of the Clothesmakers Guild (De Staalmeester)(1662), Rembrandt’s second most famous painting after the Nightwatch: showing the syndics with brown and black faces. Today they are whitened, though the classical African facial traits and the frizzled hair are still visible. These traits go together with dark skin and then stood for purity of blood and proof of noble blood.
Can the supposed perfidy of Blacks be a reason to not pay any attention to my research? Am I to be prevented to do this research because I’m Black? We now have yet another food scare and a scandal about fraud with cheaper horsemeat mixed with cow neat, without mentioning this on the frozen meals sold in supermarkets and fast-food restaurants. A few years ago there was research after game meat, being just cow or chicken but sold as wild boar, deer meat and wild fowl. I feel that the museums are equally conning their visitors, by showing them falsified images of the historical elite. A fact that is known by restorers today, although they might not know the whole history.
This week at the RKD/IB, where they study and keep records of all Dutch derived artistic images; I was refused a photocopy of a photocopy of an article in a Spanish Art Magazine. Published in 1934, with photo’s of the Van Aerssen-Beyeren portrait collection. They show these paintings by Van Mierevelt, Van Dijck and Fournier before they were restored or whitened. A member of this family, the richest family in the 17th century and part owners of Suriname: was described as ‘black as chimney.’ I had recently ordered a copy, and it came from a German institute but to my dismay the scans were whitened by using the contrast function to its maximum, making everything light white and anything dark jet black. So I wanted a copy of their more normal version but was refused out of privacy regulations. I have asked them to enlarge on this in writing as it’s akin to censorship. These historical persons, have been dead for 400 years, will somehow be hurt by me studying these images. More disturbingly, the catalogue of the exposition of this collection in 1915 in The Hague could not be retrieved at the RKD library. As if Mrs. S.G. who advised me to look for this museum catalogue at the RKD library has also disabled the system. So, even today, not really knowing that the elite was brown and blacks, institutes like the RKD and museums maintain this 160-year-old fraud. As if this is part of their DNA. This lead me earlier to ask if the hatred of Blacks is the essence of whiteness, as if its at all times in the front of their mind.
It recently occurred to me how dysfunctional the life of some royals was, as if we are dealing with members of less privileged social classes who live in low income ghetto’s instead of royal palaces. Many intellectual elite members also had difficult beginnings, as in the case of encyclopaedist D’Alembert de Ronde who was a foundling, laid at the stairs of De Ronde church, yet having noble parents. Rousseau saw it fit to give away all his children, who were his natural children, as orphans to insure they had some kind of future. Reading his books, I notice some simple meddling with history and politics: nothing very striking or major. Rousseau’s famous feud with Hume is just pitiful: a strange misunderstanding between otherwise intelligent and civilized persons. Yet these men are the fathers of the French revolution, the end of the Ancien Regime. I thus realised there is nothing that should keep me from dreaming bigger dreams, and claiming my own role in history. I have given my research papers to the Suriname Archives, for study by others and to insure my research is not lost with my death. And I work the internet which gives me a larger audience then my books would give. If things proceed as I have envisioned I’m destined to be a Great Man, in spite of many faults, a manifold of weaknesses, inadequacies, and imperfections. I have by the grace of god stumbled in 2005 at the RKD on a great secret when I saw Maria Jacoba van Goor (1689-1738) by Harmen Serin (1736), and found out that this Classical African, extremely rich regent class lady was Baroness Isabelle de Charrière’s (1740-1805) grandmother. It was this change finding which launched the Blue Blood is Black Blood (1100-1848) research that states that Europe was a Black Civilization. The Ancien Regime elite was described and depicted as brown and black of complexion. The Old Dutch masters that are the pride and joy of the white Dutch today are falsified and fraudulently whitened images of brown and black persons who were their masters.
By listening to whites, by listening to Blacks: I understand there is no use in talking to whites about revisionism as a cause for white supremacy and racism. They never acknowledge racism; they show no regret for slavery and colonialism, and the wholesale killings in Dutch Indonesia when they declared themselves an independent nation in 1945. Anytime there is a report of some injustice in the former Dutch colonies it is loudly broadcasted to show that the Dutch cannot be faulted for their own questionable role in controlling these beastly peoples. Desiree Delano Bouterse is perceived as the antichrist, and any Suriname Dutch showing admiration is shunned. Yet I have to insist that fraud is fraud, selling horse as cow meat is a crime, is financial fraud, no matter if ‘the people in Malawi do not have any fodder to eat,’ or the Hutu’s and Tutsi’s murdered each other. This does not change the fact that the RKD and the Dutch Museums, and all other museums that possess Old Masters are perpetrating a fraud to the great detriment of brown and black people, but especially Blacks.
Egmond Codfried
The Hague, 1 March 2013.
Casts
IMAGERY, PORTRAIT RETOUCH AND THE NOBILITY OF EUROPE (1100-1848)
This essay attempts to show how imagery reflects political changes, and that brown and black complexioned Europeans were at the centre of European history. They were the first Europeans from Africa, and saw this as a right to rule and oppress the white serfs that came much later from Central Asia. The history of the old nobility is about Blacks while the history of the Great Peoples migrations is that of the whites.
Any revisionist research about the nobility offers vague explanation of its beginning, with the usual infantile explanation for the origins of the phrase blue blood. Revisionist sources written by the people who monopolise power and money is like reading a biography of Barack Obama which fails to mention he was a Black man, who self-identified as Black; with a Black wife. The oldest, scientific noble genealogies go back to 1100-1200, and there is no link to older nobilities. The modern nobility styled themselves after the ancient Greek nobility which saw itself as from the soil of Greece compared to the barbarians who came from elsewhere. They had the right of seniority to rule. Blacks in Antiquity by Frank Snowden shows many Blacks and images of Blacks in Greece and the Roman world yet he does not fully identify them as Europeans, not gives a clear view of where they derived from. What he offers mostly are images of Classical Africans, and this is linked to modern race thinking, a unscientific concept with a too narrow and strict view of who or what is black. Jane Austen’s novels offers a different taxonomy: she divides her subjects in light brown or sallow, brown, very brown and black persons. The ones with classical African facial traits, that come as we know in all shades, have ‘distinguished’ looks and are ‘pure of blood.’ They resemble the Moor, the classical symbol for the blue blooded nobility and Black Superiority.
The blue blood nobility, the true or old nobility was called blue blood because they were descendents from the blue men, as how brown and black complexioned Europeans were known. Part of these native Europeans, who had come from Africa, 45.000 years earlier elevated themselves into a nobility, to rule over the bourgeoisie who was equally brown and black of colour, and the serfs who were the Asian derived whites. The whites started coming to Europe about 6000 years ago, but the greatest mass seems to have arrived only around 400 AD. Ancient and Modern Britons by D.McRitchie discusses the different brown and black complexioned European nations, as how they were perceived by their contemporaries, and how they survived in tales, myths and topographic and family names. It seems these black nations merged in a nobility and a bourgeois casts, which ruled over the white serfs. JA. Rogers in Sex and Race traces the classical African types among the nobility and royalty, since James I Stuart, showing Blacks sitting on the thrones of Europe.
Brown and black complexioned were always seen in leadership positions but after 1100 the noble faction set up fortified towers, donjons amid rural societies like conquerors and extracted taxes and labour from the populace in exchange for protection. In the cities the equally brown and black complexioned bourgeoisie became a regent or gentry cast and made their fortunes with trade and manufacture. The nobility and bourgeoisie intermarried to maintain colour. They had military power and classical scientific knowledge from the Middle East. Protestantism seems to be influenced by Eastern Christianity, with its strict rules about depicting god, brought back by Crusaders after their Eastern Kingdoms collapsed. They might have brought their easternized off spring and allies with them. The bourgeoisie ruled the cities while the nobility ruled the countryside. There was intermarriage between these castes as nobles craved the money from trade and the bourgeoisie craved the aristocratic titles. But the nobility looked down on both the bourgeoisie and the serfs.
This can be understood when Emma Woodhouse tries to marry the black Mr. Elton to the white Miss Harriet Brown. With Emma (1816) Jane Austen (1775-1817) wrote an allegory, and her vision of a post revolutionary Britain. She favoured Black Superiority and numbered the giving of education to whites, giving whites notions of equality, and giving whites positions of authority, and diluting their pure blood with whites as the reasons for the downfall of Blacks, and their total annihilation. By tradition the bourgeoisie was against noble domination. It was as if the second estate consisted of two black European tribes fighting for domination. The aristocrats and royals presented themselves as divine beings, and claimed that god had willed their position. The Virgin Mary and Jesus were hence depicted as Black. Hand in hand with the founding of the nobility the image of the Black King Balthasar was introduced as well as St. Maurice, and the Black Madonna’s. Paul Kaplan collects images of the Balthasar in The Rise of the magi, but fails to link this imagery with the emerging Black Christian Kingship. All imaginary divine and religious personages were classical Africans in looks and thus resembled the heraldic Moor, which was used to symbolise nobility and Black Superiority.
The struggle to end the noble domination, is the stuff of the Enlightenment, as the nobility had become an obstacle for progress. The bourgeoisie forged an alliance with the whites that were the serfs. Their skins were used to make book covers, clothing and shoes; which is an indication of their status and rights. And shows why there was a need for a Declaration of Human Rights. The brown and black Europeans totalled only 2-3% of the population, as Austen writes about ‘two and three families in a country town as just the thing to work with.’ In order to overthrow the nobility first the unscientific concept of Human Races was invented. Next whites were elevated into human hood, and given a superior position over Blacks who were positioned just above the Apes. Apes were presented as humans who were degenerated because of their evil morality. This newly invented Racism against was thus a rational liberation ideology to wean away whites from their devotion to the nobility who self-identified as Black with heraldic Moors. This Black Superiority was supported by the church and for some time church doors were lined with human skin. Life flaying was a common form of execution. At the eve of the French Revolution the French King was presented with slippers made of human skin. Human leather and flaying are found in google, and discussed in digitalized books. The first estate was the church, which was also dominated by the nobility. The Enlightenment managed to bring about the French Revolution (1789-1794), with the nobility and kingship abolished, and the Declaration of Human Rights instated. But the bourgeoisie betrayed the whites. But the third estate, the whites finally managed in 1848, after the restorations like those by Napoleon, with the Final Revolutions to liberate themselves.
Mindful of the betrayal by the Bourgeoisie they set out to rewrite history and eliminated all reference to blackness and Black superiority. Always a highly controversial concept that was only discussed in hushed language. Religious imagery of Black Madonna’s were destroyed. They had all personal and genre portraits altered from brown and black to a white complexion. There is a sense of reversal when the emerging nobility created black religious imagery, and next victorious whites whitening black portraits and images. Alison McQueen wrote about the cult of Rembrandt, which was conscious choice to create a whitened history through whitened images. Unfortunately there is not a word about the retouch of portraits in her revisionist study. But the new professional restorers were instructed to ‘restore’ portraits and images back to what the painters were supposed to have intended, namely showing whites. Instead of being vandalised, the choice was made to alter the offending images. This practice went on till 1960. The pretence was that the paint had only darkened and the varnish yellowed. Of course darkening of paint or dirt does not explain away the classical African looks and frizzled hair, which are quite common among Rembrandts figures. Rembrandt was chosen as a master painter who depicted and favoured the third estate and was thus given a fake biography, to become the revolutionary, republican ideal. As the nobility from 1100 on used imagery with Blacks to establish its rule and its superiority, so whites also began their domination in 1848 with the whitening of the portraits of their former brown and black complexioned oppressors. However, these retouches are still very visible on top of the brown faces and hands and are maintained by present day restorers. White supremacy is based on fake, whitened images of the brown and black elite; the ancien regime.
Early photographs of Old master paintings like those by Adolphe Braun before 1880 show the brown faces, as can be seen on a photograph of The Syndics of the Clothmakersguild, or De Staalmeesters, by Rembrandt. As well as photographs of the Van Aerssen-Beyeren Collection that were photographed by Nandini as late as 1934. These are the un-retouched portraits by Van Mierevelt, Van Ravesteyn, and De Vries, showing a variety of brown skin colours among the richest 17th century, Dutch family. This collection is today also retouched, and the sitters appear white, some still with their frizzled hair that is now blond. In Isabelle de Charrière by Courtney (1993) a member of the Van Aerssen family, Anna Margaretha van Aerssen, was described as: ‘Mrs. Maasdam black as chimney,’ by her cousin James Boswell. His grandmother was Veronica van Aerssen, and he self-describes as ‘black.’ His biography says he was ‘swarthy, with black eyes and dark hair.’ Baron Aarnoud Joost van der Duyn van Maasdam of the oldest nobility was Van Aerssens husband and described by Boswell as ‘her husband chimney sweeper.’ De Charrière wrote a poem about his brown black complexion. These descriptions can be applied to some of the portraits in this collection as well, and cannot be attributed to darkened paint Petronella Borre by Van Mierevelt, the wife of Francois van Aersen (..) shows the strongest classical African facial traits.
Restorers today like Epco Runia (2008) who study and describe these altered works know about this practice; they often mention that 19th century restorers practiced their craft differently, but without going into specifics. As the instruction to restorers is not to point out these types of ‘iconographic interventions.’ But to maintain these type of retouches as much as possible. Their restoration reports usually only mention retouches in the background and clothing, as if only the faces and hands seem to have escaped degradation. This is scientific misbehaviour, and constitutes scientific fraud as the data is falsified and altered to conform to a preconceived conclusion. There is often a discontinuation in craquelé on face and hands, or they both show the same but a different type of craquelé. The brown face underneath remains visible, and the skin treatment is often crude. Beige over paint is often spilled on the hair framing the face, as if done in haste. Facial hair and ponies are over painted and next retouched back on top of the over paint layer. Viewed from an angle, the faces show a elevated paint layer. Beige skin paint is worked around colliers and pearls, while we should have expected them to be painted on top of the skin paint layer. Hair and beard is lightened by way of highlights. The Mauritshuis catalogue mentions brown-like underpaintings that are a detailed face but says not to know what this means. X-ray can be informative, as they may show the thickest paint layers, which can be the retouched faces and hands. But the research question should first be about facial retouches to be able to identify them, and this is where these revisionist investigations fail. According to …before and after photo’s are doctored to conceal the extends of retouches made. And according to Knut…restorers often act differently from what they claim principle wise, but he does not go into details.
The question remains if these alterations were made to be reversible; on top of an isolating varnish layer and with water soluble paints or dry pigments, or if they were irreversibly made on top of the original paint layer with oil paints. There are some pieces that show solid pink faces on top of masterly painted harnesses, as if the family itself took to over painting and whitening of their ancestral portraits. As if they were under some pressure or deadline to alter the portraits. They might otherwise have been perceived as anti-revolutionary. But the cult of Racism might have convinced later generations that Black was inferior, so they voluntarily decided to alter their ancestor’s portraits. The gist of Austens letters point to fear to be identified as the writer of those books, with Austen not publicising her image, and her family failing to submit her true image. There remain un-retouched portraits in private collections, and some are to be seen on the web, or are to be found at the IB/RKD. There is secrecy about the Van der Duyn van Maasdam Collection. The House van Zuylen catalogue, Op stand aan de wand, shows double anonymous half-whitened portraits that seem to depict the Van Goor family, who look classical African like Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737). But the un-retouched portraits are not displayed on their online database, as there still seems to be a need or a motivation to hide blackness by the present day white Dutch. They do not seem to know the whole story, but prefer to keep the black portraits out of sight. Some even deny noticing any blackness, but still will go on hiding these images. Like the un-retouched very black portrait of Maria de Lange that is not on the web database next to her husband Van Sypesteyn, while the IB keeps a photo on file, next to her husbands.
We need to ask ourselves if this practice of falsifying history that started 160 years ago for revolutionary, political reasons should still be enforced by scientific fraude, to the detriment of present brown and black complexion tax-paying citizens. Who also study history and art, and visit our museums. Should the State of The Netherlands still maintain these faked, over painted portraits in their present incarnation as a type of State Racism and institutional scientific misconduct against the Blacks today?
19 januari 2013.
Blue Blood Is Black Blood (1100-1848)
THE FAMILY VAN AERSSEN’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE BLUE BLOOD THEORY
The Blue Blood is Black Blood Theory (1100-1848) research started in 2004, spawned a museum dedicated to the true looks of historical persons, and with the discovery of photos of un-retouched portraits (1934) from the Van Aerssen-Beyeren Collection: came full circle.[i] The first realisation that members of the European nobility and bourgeoisie were described as brown or black of skin came with the description of Anna Margaretha van Aerssen (1713-1803)). [ii]She was a daughter of Francois van Aerssen (1669-1740) the son of Cornelis van Aerssen (1637-1688), governer and part owner of Suriname. The Van Aerssen family were the richest family in the Republic in the 17th century. Originating from the southern parts of the Low Countries, the most important member was Francois van Aerssen (1598-1613) who served the Republic for 40 years as an ambassador at the French Court of Henry IV, and as a Minister of State in charge of the foreign policy for the Republic. He married Petronella Borre (1578-1653) in 1…and was the father of Willem, Jehan and Cornelis van Aerssen. They founded their own family branches. Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdijk was the father of the governor Cornelis van Aerssen who married Margeurite Du Puy. After his murder in Paramaribo the position was offered to his son Francois van Aerssen who declined. Instead a cousin, a son of his sister, became governor. This was Charles Emilius de Cheusses. After his dead his brother succeeded him as governor.[iii] He then married the widow of two governors: Charlotte van der Lith (1700-1753) who had remained living at the governmental palace.
The blue blood research is based on personal descriptions of complexion. Anna Margaretha van Aerssen was described by her cousin, the Scottish noble James Boswell as ‘black as chimney.’ She had married a noble man of old nobility baron Aarnoud Joost van der Duyn van Maasdam (1718–1785) who was the governor, the highest military leader of the south of The Netherlands. Boswell described him as ‘Her husband chimney sweeper.’ This was enforced by a poem by Isabelle de Charrière ‘A son teint noir et basané’(1764) (about his brown black complexion) which compares the baron with the brown and sunburned war god Mars, who has the love of Aphrodite, and who prefers him over the blond Apollo.[iv] Yet a portrait by De Spinny shows a white man with light eyes, and a powdered wig.[v] In a letter to her lover D ‘Hermenches about the failed elopement of a son of Baron Maasdam with an unsuitable blond woman, De Charrière writes that the Van der Duyn family is famous for being ‘swarthy.’[vi] This is borne out by an engraving of George Keppel, the grandson of a sister of baron Maasdam, who looks very dark of skin. This portrait matches the description of the family as very brown and black of skin.[vii]
The questions that arise are: where does the colour come from, why do we think of these persons as whites, why are they also depicted as whites? Are they Blacks?
The genealogical tree of the grandson of Baron Maasdam: Adam Francois Jules van der Duyn van Maasdam (1771-1848) shows sixteen great-great grandparents who are all Europeans from noble families, who all married noble partners.[viii] None of them appears to be an African or a slave. We think of them as whites by the whitened portraits and the idea there were no Blacks in Europe. Or that brown and black-skinned persons could never have been nobles or members of the bourgeoisie as we ‘know’ Blacks from history only as lowly slaves. Ancient and Modern Britons by David McRitchie collects studies which talk about brown and black complexioned ancient European nations that in antiquity settled in all parts of what we today call Great Britain. Literature, tales of battles, family names, nicknames, and geographical names: speak of brown and black complexioned noble rulers, noble families and black communities. He proposes that Gypsies are in fact descendents of these ancient noble families who had lost their lands and castles but carried on as if taxes, levies and tributes of goods and hunting rights were/are still their due. They also share the traditional hatred and loathing of traders and farmers with the nobility. Their strange and colourful dress is connected to the colourful and luxurious modes of fashion among the old nobility. The personal look of gypsies is the look of these ancient nations, surviving until today.[ix]
The modern nobility came into existence around 1100-1200, as the oldest, scientific genealogies go back to this period. This went together with the appearance and the subsequent rise of the Black King Balthasar [x] in a dominating position in nativity scenes, splendidly dressed and youthful: he offers gold. Combining these two sources, of the founding of the nobility and the propaganda with a Black King, leads to the further realisation that the nobility was brown and black of complexion. The Black King as a good Christian. The nobility called itself Blue Blood, and this harks back to Blue Men, as how brown and black complexioned Europeans during 500-1500 were called. [xi] By 1500 the popular concept of a Black King Balthazar prevailed in the whole of Europe, which signalled that the whole of Europe was under noble rule. Next to Balthazar; Black Madonna’s, Saint Mauritius and little heraldic Moors entered imagery, and symbolised the Black Superiority rule. Blacks thus ruled the whites, which had come later to Europe. The period of 400 AD shows the greatest influx of whites, Asians into Europe. Greek and Roman images, names and hero stories show Blacks in Europe from 800 BC.[xii] It was thus the native Europeans Blacks who started the nobility and modern Kingship, not the whites who were there subjects.
The word ‘edel’ means true, thus the nobility saw itself as true Europeans. They were from the soil, and had therefore the right to rule and oppress the whites, which came much later from Central Asia. The oldest human remains are found in Africa. Humanity comes from Africa and peopled the whole earth. The oldest European human remains, the 45.000-year-old Grimaldi Man, two skeletons, show classical African skulls and body proportions. According to McRitchie the Australian type prevailed, which is of interest as they combine black skin with blond hair. Some miniatures show black skinned youths with blond hair, as well as descriptions of blonds among person who we would expect to be black. From Jane Austen (1775-1817) survive about ten personal descriptions by family and friends which say she was a brunette of complexion, a brown not a pink colour.[xiii] She wrote during a period of transition when the lower order of society, the third estate, was being emancipated. The fact that some books from royal collections were bound with human leather and that Louis XVI was presented at the even of the French Revolution with slipper made of human skin, show that whites were kept as a kind of cattle.[xiv] Public live flaying as an unusual and cruel punishment shows that the Declaration of Human Rights was about whites asking their Black noble masters for acceptance as humans and for political equality.
Her highly allegorical novel Emma (1816) is Austen’s vision of a post revolutionary Britain. She remained a staunch believer in Black Superiority and blames the folly of Blacks to give whites notions of equality, to educate whites, to give them positions and to dilute their pure blood with whites as causes of the downfall of Blacks and their total annihilation. All her novel personages are light brown or sallow, brown, very brown or black of complexion. Those who share classic African facial traits with Austen, were considered pure of blood, distinguished in looks, signalled nobility. She belonged to the gentry; the bourgeois cast, and expresses the traditional disdain for the nobility that in its turn looked down on both the gentry or bourgeois, and the whites. This she dramatised by having Emma Woodhouse, a Queen-like personage, who tried to have the white Miss Harriet Smith marry the black Mr. Elton, a church minister who came from trade. Both Mr. Elton as the noble Mr. Knightly were horrified. Emma rejected Elton’s proposal of marriage because of his lower status by coming from trade, and because he new only the strata below him, but not those above him. His personage was both a blameless heraldic Moor and a failing person.[xv]
This article closely follows the given sources and shows the all-important methodology of comparing personal descriptions with portraits. And shows how religious imagery and heraldry reflects the rise of Black Superiority. The novels of Jane Austen reflect the prevailing ideas among the brown and black complexioned noble and bourgeois elite who were losing their social pre-eminence. Mostly new information is synthesised by combining sources, like the establishment of the Blue blood nobility and the imagery with a Black Balthasar, explaining the function of Moors as symbols of blue blood. This short expose of the blue blood research, prepares us for the right appreciation of the photo’s of the un-retouched Van Aerssen portraits by Van Mierevelt, Van Ravesteyn or others from the most important Dutch family from the 17th century.
The fate of these particular portraits is emblematic for all Old Master portraits in public collections. They were retouched after 1934 to make them resemble whites. This practice that had started in 1848 can be deduced from the study of Alison McQueen (2003) who studied the rise of the cult of Rembrandt as a supposed painter who depicted the third estate. He was extolled as a pure republican free from Popish and monarchic tyranny. Towards this purpose 900 paintings were attributed to Rembrandt, while today only 300 prevail. A fake biography was concocted enhanced with new images to depict crucial invented scenes from his life. It was decided he depicted whites, and because it was asserted that the paint had darkened and the figures appeared brown and black, while it was Rembrandts intention to paint whites. By this revolutionary reasoning painting were retouched, repainted with beige and pink to make the figures whites. Yet a photo of The Syndics (De Staalmeesters) by Firma Braun, from before 1880 shows the figures as brown in many shades while today they are whites.[xvi] McQueen does not mention retouch, but his study is a template for the falsifying of history for revolutionary purposes. The retouching of portraits were part of the revisionism and acts as a strong means to make us falsely believe the Ancient regime was white. The third estate, the white serfs were emancipated in 1848 with general suffrage for men and immediately set out to obliterate Blacks from history, and disposes remnants of the Ancien Regime of any moral rights and material means to reclaim power.
Today we propose that museums and scientist, but mostly the people who actually suffer from white supremacy and racism based on falsified, repainted, retouched portraits of the brown and black complexioned elite: to loudly and vehemently discredit these fakes. Europe was civilized and christianised by Blacks. Racism was invented along with the unscientific concept of human races as a liberation ideology to free Europe from noble domination. The philosophers of the Enlightenment were members of the brown and black complexioned bourgeoisie, who hated noble rule by these other Blacks. To overthrow the nobility they forged a coalition with the white serf majority, and self-identified as Caucasian or black Caucasian. Also leading to the present confusion if these black skinned persons were whites. The attack by haters of Racism on the veracity of these over paints in all our museums will end white supremacy and Racism against brown and black persons, and peoples of African descent.
Sources:
Adelsboek
C. Courtney, Isabelle de Charrière, Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 1993
A. McQueen, The Rise Of The Cult Of Rembrandt, Amsterdam Universi. Press, A’dam, 2003
F. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity, Harvard University Press, Harvard, 1970
J.Austen, Emma
The rise of the magi
D.McRitchie, Ancient and Modern Britons; Vol. II: A Retrospect, African Tree Press, 1996
J. Whatley, There are no letters like yours, University of Nebraska Press, Lincolm 2000
Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, 2006, page
Blog: bewijsvoering Black Dutch
THE BLACK BOY
Several internet site’s mention that king Charles II Stuart (1633-1702 ?) was affectionately named The Black Boy, and that several pubs and restaurants were named The Black Boy in his honour.
My assertion is that he actually was a black skinned person and that parliament did not fool around when they issued a wanted-poster describing him as ‘A tall, black man.’ Author James Boswell mentions him in a short poem as ‘The swarthy Stuart.’ Boswell call’s himself ‘black’ and is described as ‘swarthy.’
Interesting is a play ‘The Masque of Blackness’ (1602) written by order of Charles II grandmother Anne of Denmark. This play was performed for the royal family and courtiers, sets out to explain why black people came to Britain and declares that black is beautiful, blacks were created first and black beauty does not fade.
As with other aristocratic Europeans who are described as brown or black, there are many portraits, paintings that show them as white, with blond hair and bleu eyes. In this case Charles is shown as a white man with jet-black hair and moustache. But if one persist and studies all the portraits, which are listed on the site of The National Portrait Gallery, the black portraits appear. We find Charles as a little black boy and a grown up pitch black skinned man.
Anne of Denmark is shown as a blond woman but the NPG site refers to some portraits of which ‘no image’ is available. I think that these are black portraits. Maria of Scots was the mother of James I who succeeded her niece Elizabeth I as monarch of Britain. James was the grandfather of Charles II and the NPG and other site’s that sell old engravings show a dark skinned person. I have found one black engraving of Mary of Scots and other that suggest a black skin. The Winter Queen, Elizabeth of Bohemia was a daughter of James I who married a grandson of William I of Orange, the founder of the Dutch dynasty. The NPG site shows both her white and black portraits. William of Orange was described as ‘More brown then white’ and ‘brown of complexion and the beard.’ There are many of his black brown portraits collected in an Iconography by Beresteyn (1933). There are portraits of his sister Maria Henrietta Stuart who married a grandson of William I, Stadholder William II; which show her as black of complexion. As does their mother Queen Henrietta Maria, a daughter of Maria de Medici, Queen of France. The family De Medici was black. Louis XIII was Henrietta Maria’s brother, and he was Louis XIV, The Sun king’s father. All these persons were black skinned people.
All the European kings were related by blood and there is no one higher then the king and the nobility. This led me to define the period of the Renaissance to the French Revolution 1500-1789 as a period of Reversed Apartheid. In contrast to South African Apartheid, there was a black European elite that despotically ruled the white majority. The iconographic proof leads me to define this group as ‘a endogamous, fixed mulatto race of person which looked more African, more Asian or white, but they all shared a black identity. In the Renaissance some cameos, as The Drake Jewel, were created which show the profiles of a black king eclipsing a white women’s, which symbolises Africa dominating Europe and black supremacy.
We are all Africans as the first humans originated from East Africa. In Europe they eventually lost their melanin sun protection, as white skin is better to produce vitamin D for strong bones in a sunless north. Historiography shows that Julius Caesar brought Nubian, Iranian and Anatolian warriors to Europe in 50 BCE to fight the Germanic tribes. These people stayed on and founded their own communities. Their descendents were kwon as The Black Dutch when they arrived as immigrants in the seventeenth century America. They were treated as whites and not as the enslaved Africans. Later on coloured Americans escaped slavery and segregation by claiming descend of the Black Dutch.
I assume that the Franks, a Latin-speaking nation, were not Germanic but the descendents of these Nubians and Iranian warriors who became knightly conquerors from 325, and became an aristocracy in France (Land of the Frank’s), the Netherlands and Germany. There are thousand of portraits and Adoration scenes in Europe, from the Modern Era, which show a centrally placed Moor, a black child or a young handsome, black king. This symbolise Bleu Blood. The nobility informs us with the symbol of The Moor that they descend from classical Africans and were themselves of colour. But they would let themselves also be shown as white for propagandistic reasons. To resemble the people they conquered. These facts are obscured by the use of the whitened portraits, which might be authentic but show faked, white skin colour. Just as leading to the French Revolution; the black nobility used white make up and blond wigs to hide their ethnicity, which increasingly came under fire. But some white portraits were created later, sometimes by crudely over painting black portraits. Museums invariably show only the white fakes, and hide the history of the black supremacy. This is part of an revisionism. This era of black domination and the fight against this I consider as the root of racism, which directed Scientific Racism against the symbol of Black Blood and Black Supremacy and oppression: the image of The Moor. My research deconstructs the source of black and white racism in order to end racism and discrimination.
PERSONAL DESCRIPTIONS
The Blue Blood is Black Blood (1100-1848) Theory (2005) is primarily based on biographical, personal descriptions of members of the European elite that say they were brown or black of complexion. Next there are portraits, which do show the black and brown complexions. Besides the dark complexion some individual persons and complete families had classical African facial traits, like broad noses, thick and prognastic lips and/or frizzled hair. Today we call them Blacks, and they were considered pure of noble blood. They were looked upon as proof that such a family had blue blood as they resembled heraldic Moors. A few famous cases were Alessandro de Medici, Charles V Habsburg, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Sophie of Mecklenburg. This theory offers a deconstruction of racism against Blacks by stating that Europe was once ruled by a Black identified, Black and coloured noble and royal elite, and scientific racism should be regarded as a liberation ideology to wean oppressed whites, the Serfs away from their fascination with their Black and brown oppressors. Part of the liberation ideology was also the revision of history to turn all the Great Men into white men. Human Races (1760) were invented to raise whites to the level of humans, and put whites at the top of a fictional evolutional hierarchy, with Blacks at the bottom, nearest to apes. While The Declaration of Human Rights should rightly be understood for the whites Europeans, serfs, to gain equal rights, to be respected as humans by their black and coloured noble and royal masters. Racism against the nobility, they were also pictured as apes; was used to end the Ancien Regime.
Racism was invented around 1760, according to Appiah (1975), when nations were hence identified by skin colour. The French Revolution (1789-1795) was the first wave of the ideological war for liberation of whites. Before this there were Farmer Revolts in the 15th and 16th centuries against the nobility and the church that were bloodily put down. Due to restorations whites were only finally emancipated after the revolutions from 1848. As these Black nobles had issued fashionable and propagandistic, whitened portraits; these pieces were used for revisionism to hide this bitter and traumatic historical episode. Black portraits were repressed or over painted or copied as white portraits. Some authentic black portraits are still languishing in secret family faults. Whites seem to still be vehemently reacting to these acrimonious happenings, and still fear Black domination; even if most of them do not know the European elite was Black.
There has to be a factor in the raising of white children to make around 10% hard-line racists, who are able to intimidate non-racist whites as well as Blacks. Still it can be noticed that the historical Black portraits are consciously neglected or overexposed to appear lighter in reproduction. There have to be people in the know. Like when they talk about Black Caucasians or African Caucasians, to explain away Black European royalty. Or people are told that blue blood refers to blue veins, or black refers to black hair or even that portraits do not show ethnicity, which some less able people repeat over and over. Claims are made that fungi altered ‘woodcuts’ or that paper is oxidised to make whites appear like Blacks. This fungi or oxidation only seems to attack the faces and hands and leaves the white lace collars, white. Yet the biggest group that permits this revisionism to continue are Blacks themselves, with their intellectual leaders still selling them for personal gain, career purposes and safety. Some Blacks are strangely taken aback, by the liberating idea that Blacks are not the eternal victims of whites. There are Black researchers who conveniently only find Black civilisations in China, Japan and Mesoamerica, but not in Europe; on Africa’s doorstep, so as not to upset whites and threaten racist status quo. The truth is that Blacks were the first Europeans, saw themselves as true Europeans and civilized and Christianised the pagan hell out of whites.
These personal descriptions are found in biographies. Next the Blue blood theory asks why then are they portrayed as whites. But there are also drawings and prints to be found, which show their dark complexions. Some show ethnic facial traits. The personal descriptions are also called pen portraits, and they can be autobiographical as well. Isabelle de Charrière (1740-1805), known also as baroness Belle van Zuylen, wrote about her self in ‘Portrait of Zélide’(1767) to James Boswell : ‘She does not have the white hands, she knows this and even jokes about it; but it’s not a joking matter.’ (1)Yet all her known portraits show a white woman with dark hair. A portrait of her grandmother, Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737) however shows a regent woman with marked African facial traits, yet with white skin. Van Goor’s mother, Elizabeth Schrijvers, was a niece of Rembrandt’s. he showed his mother as black complexioned, and himself with African looks and frizzled hair.
James Boswell, a Scottish noble and a candidate for marriage to De Charrière, calls himself ‘black’ as he jokes about his yet unborn natural child, that should be called ‘The Black Prince,’ as both his parents are ‘black.’(2) He writes in his journal about his niece: ‘Mrs Maasdam black as chimney.’ (3)And about her husband: ‘Her husband chimney sweeper.’ (4) She was Anna Margaretha van Aerssen, a granddaughter of the Surinam governor Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdijk(1637-1688). Lady van Aerssen married baron Aarnoud Joost van der Duyn van Maasdam (1715-1785) a member of the oldest noble families. De Charrière wrote a poem about the barons complexion: ‘A son teint noir et basané.’(1767) (About his brown black complexion)(5) The Van Aerssens Family was the richest family in the 17 century and owned a third part of Surinam. The governor’s grandmother, Petronella Borre (1578-1653) shows frizzled hair.
There is no portrait issued of Mrs. Maasdam, but of her husband there is portrait by De Spinny, which shows a white man, with light eyes. Their daughter Anne van der Duyn (1747-1798) looks dark, and granddaughter Sophie Countess of Bylandt (1778-1841) shows Classical African facial traits. In a letter to her lover Constant D’Hermenches de Rebeque, De Charrière writes that the Van der Duyn family was famous for their swarthiness. From his features, mentioned in the poem, we can conclude that the portrait shows baron Maasdam. He has probably ordered the whitened portrait himself. Which leads to the next question as why did the brown and black elite have themselves portrayed as whites? An engraving of his cousin George Keppel, Earl of Albemarle, shows the very dark colouring of this family that De Charrière writes about. A portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1761) of his sister, Elizabeth Keppel, the Marquise of Tavistock, shows a white woman aided by a Black woman; a Moorress. The Moorress is not a real person, but symbolises blue blood, and inform us of the high birth of the Marquise. Moor is the name for the Classical Africans we find in European art and heraldry. The Marquise of Tavistock is an ancestor of The Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla Parker Bowles. Portraits with Moors should be regarded as self-identification as Black.
A later lover of De Charrière was Benjamin Constant, a nephew of D’Hermenches de Rebeque, is described as having: ‘very bad complexion.’(6) Like his lover Germaine baroness de Staël-Holstein, wife of the Swedish ambassador to the French King: ‘an amplitude of form, good features, bad complexion’ and she was ‘too swarthy.’ (7)Her marriage contract was co-signed by Louis XIV and his wife Marie Antoinette. The French Queen was a daughter of Empress Maria Theresia of Habsburg, the granddaughter of Leopold I Habsburg, Emperor of The Holy Roman Empire. He was described as ‘a short, hale black man.’ (8) Portraits and coins show a very prognastic man, with extremely thick lips. Another famous Hapsburg Charles V’s mummy is described and shows very black and very prognastic on a 19th century photograph. The African man by Mostaert may be Charles V Hapsburg. Especially when compared with his niece Dororthea of Denmark. He might have inherited his large lips from his grandfather Ferdinand of Aragon. Louis XIV mummy was viewed in the 18th century and was deemed well preserved and ‘black as ink.’(9) His cousin Charles II Stuart (1630-1685) was named The Black Boy and described by a wanted poster as ‘a tall black man.’ (10) Several prints show a very dark skinned man. As does his mother, Henrietta Maria de Bourbon, a daughter of Maria de Medici and Henri IV de Bourbon. Louis XIV, The Sun King who was followed by his great-grandson Louis XV, was the great-great grandfather of King Louis XVI. All royals intermarried with other royal families and all were blue blooded. The wives of Louis XIV and Leopold I were sisters, daughters of the King of Spain.
By the above method we can identify many other relatives as brown or black of complexion. The description mentions skin colour, which mattered, as it was proof of blue blood. Their complexion and facial traits show them to be descendents of Blacks, Africans. As does the little Moors, which depiction can also be regarded as mythical forefathers or forefather spirits. We also notice that the same person is shown in many different ways, to the point that portraits do not match. This can be understood as every painter imposing his own sense of beauty on persons who might not have classical good looks. Yet there also seems a need to play up the Classical African traits, from which we can conclude they were valued as proof of pure blue blood. The Classical African features were thus highly prized as further proof of blue blood in the family bloodlines, when not every member showed these facial traits. The whitened portrait seems to be propagandistic, as they ruled whites and wanted to legitimise their rule by looking white. In real life this was often achieved with white face paint and bleach, together with blond wigs. But this make up was also part of their aesthetics, like whites today do not seem to like their natural milky colour and tan on beaches, use self-browning crèmes and have themselves sprayed brown. But this does not mean they want to be blacks or marry blacks. It’s a status symbol and makes the person look rich and sporting, to be able to travel to sunny beaches. This also goes for hair structure or hair colour which individual are forever changing according to fashion. Africans might have been bleaching and painting up white for centuries and this has nothing to do with whites, but evoking the ancestors by appearing as skeletons. Neither bleaching nor straightening should be cause for infighting, as the person remains black looking and a Black.
The European Black noble and royal elite were descendents of the first Europeans who were Africans. They did not become whites 6000 years ago, but were forcibly assimilated in the late 19th century, yet some managed to remain Black far into the twentieth century. Queen Alexandra of Britain, wife of Edward VII, a great-grandson of Charlotte of Mecklenburg, was still painting herself pink by 1910. From the start there was admixture with whites and Asians, although Africa also has fair peoples, thus they can be defined as ‘an intermarrying, fixed mulatto race, with some looking more African, Asian or white.’ In their aesthetics some followed the classical Greek ideal, which favoured a small facial angle and white skin.Yet in real life they intermarried and considered Black looking individuals as of pure blood and more noble. The Black Europeans considered themselves the true Europeans, and ruled and oppressed the white majority. Other Blacks who were not noble, were also considered inferior, but were favoured in a system that can be described as reversed Apartheid. This practice explains why the not noble and intellectual elite was also Black and brown in looks. There seems to be a need with some parts of the nobility for using the skins of their white subjects, serfs, as leather for bookbinding’s, clothing and shoes. This explains some of the fury of the French Revolution. The regent class Blacks were an permanent opposition against the nobility and they forged a alliance with whites to overthrow the nobility. This strategic and political alliance describes why Blacks were considered Black Caucasians and lumped together with white Caucasians. Today many Indians in Suriname and The Netherlands feel themselves closer to the white Dutch, then the similarly brown or black complexioned African Surinamese. Discrimination by the whites does not alter their views on their Black co-patriots, and they rather have a white in-law then a Black one. So we should not feel to bewildered by the fact that Black Europeans used the force of racism against the nobles who identified as Blacks. But it’s only after whites were emancipated racism took its ugly turn and was directed against all Blacks. As it still is, with whites acting as if they could still be oppressed by Blacks, thus refusing them any positions of power or authority.
MORE DESCRIPTIONS
Edward of Woodstock: The Black Prince.(11) He has, just like his mother, Marguerite de Hainaut, Asian facial traits; perhaps derived from their Mongol ancestors. Revisionist explanations claim he was called black because of his suit of armour, which was black. But others wore the same black suits as he did. Images of his son show a dark skinned person.
Charlotte Sophie of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of King George III and mother of George IV. She was Queen Victoria’s grandmother: ‘a true mulatto face, brown, yellow.’(12)Her portraits often show her classical African features with frizzled hair. It is claimed that she shows Vandal facial traits.
William of Orange (1533-1584), founder of the Dutch dynasty: ‘more brown then white, brown of complexion and the beard.’ (13) Some prints show strong prognatism and curly hair. His brother Count Johan of Nassau shows strong subnasal prognatism and dark complexion as well.
Ludwig von Beethoven: The Black Spaniard. Several paintings testify to his black complexion.(14)
Bernd Hayden: the little Blackamoor. An oil portrait shows his black skin.
Anna Boleyn: very dark, with black eyes and dark hair. An engraving remains. These were taken after black painted portraits no longer around or over painted.
Elizabeth I: dark She was famous for painting up white. Shakespeare writes about god giving one face and people making another.
James Boswell: dark and swarthy, with black eyes.
Lorenzo the Medici: dark and swarthy, with a flattened nose.
Pierre-Alexander Du Peyrou: son teint noir et basane, his dark brown complexion.
Jean Paul Bernadotte: semitic origins.
Thomas Fairfax: nicknamed ‘Black Tom.’
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: a gentle black man in an Armenian coat.
Elizabeth Barett Browning: very brown complexion.
Johan van Sandick: self described as ‘brown, with brown hair.’
Jane Austen: rich brown, not a pink colour.
Eliza de Feuillide: the native brown of my complexion heightened with a tan. (17)
BLACK PORTRAITS
Next there are very black engravings, but no description found, yet.
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector: an equestrian portrait shows a truly black man.
John Deveraux was a descendent of Anna Boleys sister Mary, and became Elizabeth I’s lover: looks extremely black of complexion. He was called The Gypsy.
François de la Noué: Huguenot leader looks very black with strong subnasal prognathism.
Henri IV; black prints and a painting. His son Duc D’Anjou described as swarthy. His grandson Charles II Stuart was The Black Boy.
Catharine de Medici: black print by Francois Clouet.
Anthony van Leeuwenhoek: very black drawings.
Jan Vos: described as “ugly’ because with very Classical African facial traits with Black skin. Alexander Pushkin called himself The Ugly Negro, due to his marked prognatism. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy was inspired by Pushkin’s oldest daughter Marya Pushkina.
Shakespeare looks Black. His plays have many black characters: Othello, Hamlet
Brederode: looks black.
Fillips II Habsburg: a very black engraving, prognastic. His father, Charles V’s mummy was black and very prognastic. Niece Dorothea of Denmark looks very black on a miniature.
Martin Luther: a black drawing
Alessandro de Medici: looks like a true mulatto. This is often explained away because his mother was servant. He succeeded however to the title and ruled as Duke of Florence.
Gustaaf IV Adolf: the African facial features of his alleged father baron Munck of Fulkila.
Gustaaf X of Sweden: dark, prognastic. The successor and cousin of Christina of Sweden.
Voltaire: several black drawings, a broad nose.
David Hume: classical African looks on Ramsay portrait, dark skin on engraving. His shocking remarks against Blacks were in context regarding the nobility who claimed superiority.
Immanuel Kant: several dark drawings all the philosophers of the Enlightenment show up with black portraits, which indicates the elite was black and brown. The blacks and browns were member of the casts and whites were the outcasts.
Mary of Scots: very dark. Her great-grandson was Charles II Stuart and named The Black Boy. Her niece Elizabeth was shown with her pearl necklace of black pearls, after she had her beheaded.
Baron Onno Zwier van Haren; has Indonesian looks, just like his daughter baroness Caroline van Haren, who married J. van Sandick, and their son: Onno Zwier van Sandick. (22)
About the Blue Blood is Black Blood Theory (1100-1848)
This historical theory, based on research started in 2005, sets out to explain the great number of things of blackness in Europe by viewing them as interconnected and as remains of a Black European civilisation. Europe was ruled by a black and brown complexioned elite, and dominated by a black and brown complexioned nobility and royalty; who identified as Blacks. Among the brown and black complexioned elite, persons with classical African looks were regarded as pure of blood. The theory is based on personal descriptions of elite persons, which say they were brown or black of complexion and regarded themselves as the true Europeans. Whites were immigrants from Asia. Yet they are portrayed as whites, and today thought of as whites. But of the same persons there are also portraits, mostly prints, that show the dark colouring, and in many cases: classical African facial traits. By identifying the elite as Black and Black identified, there emerges a system were European whites were ruled, oppressed and exploited by Blacks, which explains why there is racism against Blacks. Racism and revisionism emerges as a liberation ideology to prevent Blacks for gaining power to rule over whites again.
Things of blackness
The personal descriptions like:
William I of Orange (1533-1584): more brown then white, brown of complexion and beard,
Charles II Stuart: the black boy, a tall black man, the swarthy Stuart,
Isabelle de Charrière (1740-1805): not the white hands,
Pierre-Alexander Du Peyrou (1727-1794): son teint basané,
Aarnoud Joost van der Duyn van Maasdam: a son teint noir et basane,
James Boswell: very dark and swarthy with black eyes and dark hair.
Anna Boleyn: very dark, with black eyes and dark hair,
Elizabeth I: dark
Jane Austen (1775-1817): brunette complexion, brown-not a pink colour
Black images;
Maria van Goor (1687-1737); classical African, whitened skin
William of Orange: with classical African facial traits and curly hair
Charles II Stuart: very black engravings
Anne of Denmark
Mary of Scots
Anna Boleyn
Leopold II Habsburg; dark, strobg prognathism
Johan de Witt
Maurice of Saxony: very black, strong prognathism
William IV of Orange-Nassau: dark, with strong prognathism
Moors;
Many images, and artefacts of Moors. Mostly of the heraldic type on family arms, buildings. But the word Moor as root for family names and geographical names. Noble and royal persons, whitened, are shown with a little Moor, symbolising their blue blood. Moors offering pearls symbolise pure noble blood.
Classical cameos like The Drake Jewel, with a Black King who’s profile eclipses a white woman profile; which signifies black superiority. The same symbol on a Medici candelabrum (1630) in the Louvre Museum. There are about thirty pieces with this symbolism.
Moors in literature, like Othello. Jane Austen writing about black and brown skinned personages. The Moors symbolising black superiority.
Moresca;
A dance and pageantry with Moors, still to be seen in Europe.
Black Madonna’s;
Images of Maria and infant Jesus found all over Europe in churches. Often displayed in richly decorated chapels, statues are golden, dressed in precious robes and jewels.
Black Saints;
The statue of St. Maurice (25-281)(1120), regarded as the first statue of a Moor in Europe. The veneration of the Black St. Maurice coincides with the beginning of the nobility (1100-1200).
Blue Blood;
Blue Blood, the identity of the intermarrying high nobility, refers to Blue Men, how black and brown Europeans were called, and often depicted, during the Medieval Era. Saracens were described as ‘Black and blue as molten lead.’ Blue blood is black blood, symbolised by images of classical Africans.
King Balthasar:
Between 1100-1300 the image of the Black king at the birth of Jesus emerges, is common in the whole of Europe by 1500. This shows the Black king as a good Christian. Blacks not as heathens or Muslims, but as Christians. The Black domination also promoted Christianity. The queen of Sheba was shown as Black.
Black elite;
Black and brown skinned persons were regarded as superior, as a system of reversed apartheid. But there was no social mobility, as there prevailed a cast system, with the coloured Europeans as members of the casts, while whites were the outcasts, the serfs. Like the Indian caste system, also linked to religions. Persons who opposed the rule of the nobility were branded un-Christian as this system was presented as instilled by god. The Indian cast system is linked to issues of ritual purity. Yet high caste men can sleep with outcast women, as how the noble lords had first right on newly married brides among their lowest subjects.
Trade in human leather;
As there was a European trade based on a industry in human skins; to be used as book coverings, clothing and shoes, it seems that whites were regarded as less then human. The invention of human races was then to give whites human status and to declare them as superior over Blacks. This invention was necessary to liberate Europe from the colour based, aristocratic domination. The French revolution freed the citizens, not the serfs.
1848
The white’s; serfs were only emancipated during the great revolutions in 1848, which finally curtailed the privileges of the nobility. This meant the serfs were freed from bondage and presumably being kept to provide shoe leather. From this date history was painted white, making use of whitened images of the black elite. In real life some bleached their skin and painted themselves white. Whitened portraits were for reasons of traditional aesthetic ideas and propaganda.
Racism;
Was used as an answer against the Black superiority. For the citizen class to be free, everyone should be freed. Blacks were a minority, and Black citizens were privileged because of their resemblance with the nobility. Nobles marrying rich heiresses from the citizenclass, as the noble men conveyed nobility: not the women. Hence the declaration of human rights to instil equality among all humans. After whites were emancipated in 1848 the Dutch Sinterklaasfeest was enriched with the frightening Black Pete, Pieterbaas, the symbol of the Moor, to initiate white children in whiteness.
Whiteness exists in contrast to blackness. There was a need to define whiteness as whites were oppressed and exploited, and used as shoe leather. To create whites as superior and bringers of civilisation, the existence of black Europeans had to be denied. This revisionism still prevails, is still strictly enforced, even if persons don’t know why blackness should be denied or hidden. Usually white scientist says they do not know what the many images of Moors really mean. They say that these are the conquered Spanish Moors, as eurocentrism, only allows Spanish Moors, Muslims, as existing for some time on European soil. Strange that the supposed Muslim enemies’ likeness should be taken in gold and exhibited. Black Madonna’s are explained as statues being blackened by candle soot. Yet no explaining why this affects only the faces and hand, not the clothes or haloes. Black religious persons on icons are explained away as paint oxidising, while again the ‘oxidation’ only affects faces and hand, not the robes or background.
In general educated whites show great distress, embarrassment, anger, and hatred when these things are discussed with them. As if the hatred of Blacks is a permanent state of mind. The arguments they use sound the same in The Netherlands, Belgium, England or the USA. There is an unwillingness to discuss this matter point by point, they do not acknowledge or comment on all the arguments or images, offer no credible explanations, and show a great need to ridicule the Black researcher. They say he wants to be white, or does not want to accept his descent from slaves. Whites also claim that ‘nobody’ is interested in the ethnicity of the nobility. Even accusing the Black researcher of racism by researching ethnicity. This shows that the ill feeling and the fear of Blacks, the former oppressor, is still much alive, kept going by State racism. Anti-racist bureau’s are part of State racism, and not out to stop racism, but stop victims from taking real action against racism. The system to keep Blacks down is the same as how men keep women down, not hearing arguments, intimidating women to keep silent While woman in Europe are traded and held as sex slaves, unwilling prostitutes, to be legally raped, with no recourse to the police. But at the same time the Dutch state insist that men and woman are equal, and why Dutch society is critical against headscarves and burqa’s.
4 January 2012
Racism is an liberation ideology
Comparing Blacks to Apes has a long history.
Racism against Blacks did not drop from heaven, nor were the whites at it since primordial times. Frank Snowdon’s, Blacks in antiquity (1971) shows there was no racism in ancient times (800 BC-300 AD) It all started around 1760. Racism was a means to an end. It was invented along with the un-scientific concept of human races, to free Europe from noble rule and oppression. The philosophers of the Enlightenment all said nasty tin about Blacks, meaning the hated nobility.
The nobles identified as Blacks by means of little heraldic Moors. But like the bourgeoisie they were also brown and black of complexion. The ones with classic African facial traits were considered pure of blood and proof of noble blood. Europe was a Black civilization, with Blacks Superiority at its core.
Apes were presented as degenerated humans, who were morally evil. The nobility was morally evil, and they were just a step above apes. Whites who were the third estate, were their victims. The bourgeoisie, though brown and black of complexion, was also looked down upon on by the nobility, though acted as a buffer between the nobility and the common people, the whites. ‘Emma’ by Jane Austen is much about this fact.
The bourgeoisie linked forces with the white majority, launched the French Revolution, but stole it from the whites: they had to wait till 1848 to be emancipated, the men getting universal suffrage. From that moment they whitened history, changed the portraits, so there was no way back.
If we challenge the portraits today, we will be free from white supremacy and racism. It’s the portraits that maintain the lie. The portraits are our proof, and they are all over the world.
To this final phase of my 8 years long research, I have based my own finding on the study by Alison McQueen: the rise of the cult of Rembrandt (2003). Without knowing it she described how and why history was falsified. She did not know about the retouch of Rembrandt paintings to conform to his newly invented position as the painter of the third estate, which he was not. But they needed him as a figurehead. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/university_of_toronto_quarterly/v077/77.1.dickey.html
http://api.ning.com/files/5nfVGJ02rIOzWkGv1TR5ZBzQnzDiTlxKuXEwVDtJfvxl*sIrAYugPbaEn6pBJoalhz9*vvb1rS8dy3-AT4LeLK46qzPs3pt0/apes
http://api.ning.com/files/5nfVGJ02rIPFBFXU-GkjM1pf9vW3uziMQM1QQynhbDHcOsen8I0fdHLR5ifHIKQlSlXwb0-d1q*8D7lvadd0CBSb9HQZgb-i/apes.jp
http://api.ning.com/files/FZ-xP1EYfFbKlpCsxSHsSEL5bTd6LhpS86q*4YEIO4qVTx1AiU2s1BKMa5-oEg1vzC85463R-pkR5Zuw05NEmJHq-pGcvPqd/Monkeysdrinkingandsmoking.jpg
http://www.canvaz.com/d/David-Teniers-the-Younger/Tenniers_the_Younger_David_Apes_in_the_Kitchen.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Teniers_the_Younger
http://www.wikigallery.org/paintings/385001-385500/385497/painting1.jpg
http://venetianred.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/fvankessel2.jpg
http://venetianred.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/fvankessel2.jpg
http://venetianred.net/2010/05/04/monkey-business-the-paintings-of-ferdinand-van-kessel/
Racism against Blacks did not drop from heaven, nor were the whites at it since primordial times. Frank Snowdon’s, Blacks in antiquity (1971) shows there was no racism in ancient times (800 BC-300 AD) It all started around 1760. Racism was a means to an end. It was invented along with the un-scientific concept of human races, to free Europe from noble rule and oppression. The philosophers of the Enlightenment all said nasty tin about Blacks, meaning the hated nobility.
The nobles identified as Blacks by means of little heraldic Moors. But like the bourgeoisie they were also brown and black of complexion. The ones with classic African facial traits were considered pure of blood and proof of noble blood. Europe was a Black civilization, with Blacks Superiority at its core.
Apes were presented as degenerated humans, who were morally evil. The nobility was morally evil, and they were just a step above apes. Whites who were the third estate, were their victims. The bourgeoisie, though brown and black of complexion, was also looked down upon on by the nobility, though acted as a buffer between the nobility and the common people, the whites. ‘Emma’ by Jane Austen is much about this fact.
The bourgeoisie linked forces with the white majority, launched the French Revolution, but stole it from the whites: they had to wait till 1848 to be emancipated, the men getting universal suffrage. From that moment they whitened history, changed the portraits, so there was no way back.
If we challenge the portraits today, we will be free from white supremacy and racism. It’s the portraits that maintain the lie. The portraits are our proof, and they are all over the world.
To this final phase of my 8 years long research, I have based my own finding on the study by Alison McQueen: the rise of the cult of Rembrandt (2003). Without knowing it she described how and why history was falsified. She did not know about the retouch of Rembrandt paintings to conform to his newly invented position as the painter of the third estate, which he was not. But they needed him as a figurehead. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/university_of_toronto_quarterly/v077/77.1.dickey.html
http://api.ning.com/files/5nfVGJ02rIOzWkGv1TR5ZBzQnzDiTlxKuXEwVDtJfvxl*sIrAYugPbaEn6pBJoalhz9*vvb1rS8dy3-AT4LeLK46qzPs3pt0/apes
http://api.ning.com/files/5nfVGJ02rIPFBFXU-GkjM1pf9vW3uziMQM1QQynhbDHcOsen8I0fdHLR5ifHIKQlSlXwb0-d1q*8D7lvadd0CBSb9HQZgb-i/apes.jp
http://api.ning.com/files/FZ-xP1EYfFbKlpCsxSHsSEL5bTd6LhpS86q*4YEIO4qVTx1AiU2s1BKMa5-oEg1vzC85463R-pkR5Zuw05NEmJHq-pGcvPqd/Monkeysdrinkingandsmoking.jpg
http://www.canvaz.com/d/David-Teniers-the-Younger/Tenniers_the_Younger_David_Apes_in_the_Kitchen.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Teniers_the_Younger
http://www.wikigallery.org/paintings/385001-385500/385497/painting1.jpg
http://venetianred.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/fvankessel2.jpg
http://venetianred.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/fvankessel2.jpg
http://venetianred.net/2010/05/04/monkey-business-the-paintings-of-ferdinand-van-kessel/
RACISM IS AN OVERWROUGHT LIBERATION IDEOLOGY
There are many forms of racial hatred, with divers causes. Like the deadly hatred between Tutsi’s and Hutu’s, because colonialism forced two distinct nations to exist in one state, while the coloniser made the Tutsi the elite to help oppress the Hutu’s. In Europe the hatred of Jews is longstanding, resulting in several pogroms and expulsions, culminating in the Holocaust. This hatred is religiously based, but Jews were invited and used to provide financial services forbidden for Christians. But when they achieved success and became financially powerful, the State turned against them, robbed them of their riches before expulsion or murder.
The Racial hatred that concern this article is that from whites against Blacks. We all know about the American colourline since 1691, the one-drop-rule, Jim Crow, Kukluxklan and Segregation; culminating with the Civil Rights struggle. South African Apartheid is another controversy surrounding Blacks, more or less ending with the release of Nelson Mandela, who became President of State. Still racism remains a daily scourge for Blacks living in Europe or the United States, in spite of anti-racism legislation, and antiracism bureaus.
Sources which explain the causes of racism remain elusive, even claiming that racism is natural. But what should concern us is the question why racism against Blacks, like the oppression and trade in women, and the hatred against gays, does not show signs of eradication. The reason is that Racism is not properly defined, because states find Racism a useful tool in controlling population, by divide and rule. Any kind of discrimination is instilled and kept going by a conscious indoctrination by the State, the church or powerful organisations. As some groups benefit from Racism, they will be less interested in finding causes or solution. So the many antidiscrimination bureaus in the Netherlands should be approached as part of State Racism, to study and control the effects of Racism instigated and maintained by the State.
To get a handle on racism we can ask: what did Blacks do against whites for them to hate them so much? If we realise the acrimonious nature of Racism, we should think of a recent confrontation. When was there a recent confrontation between Black and white? But before get to that we can ask: why were human races invented around 1760? To answer that we need to realise that races were invented to create a hierarchy and declare whites the summon of creation, and Blacks at the bottom of the ladder, just above the apes. Why was such a destructive system ever introduced and still enforced, although the existence of human races has long ago been discredited. Why do we have Racism?
There are many unsolved questions about the origins of whites, and why Europe is associated with whites. Looking for the simplest explanation Blacks easily see similarities between whites and albino’s. Both have milky white skins, and both burn in the sun. Whites vehemently deny this comparison on the basis that Human Albinism is a disease. But once all women were declared sick, hysterics, crazy, and gays were defined as mentally ill. Even Blacks were viewed as riddled with diseases, genetically defective and on the brink of extinction. Viewing a few word famous albino’s, and other albino’s we can notice that they are not sick, they can function. If precautions are taken, as we see with young albino’s, there eyesight is not permanently impaired by sunlight, nor do their smooth skins show any sign of lesions caused by unrestricted exposure to the sun. They look normal, but super white. And all white lifeforms like white flowers, birds, cats and horses are based on albinism. Human albinism is hereditary, and somehow became equally genetically dominant as other fenotypes, showing up in mixed off spring.
The first human was East African, so black and brown of complexion. From Africa they inhabited the whole world. The first Europeans were Africans. And they did not automatically become white 6000 years ago. But 6000 years ago a fixed albino nation: whites, invaded Europe from Central Asia, where whites came out of albino’s who left Africa as a group, in search of a milder climate. In geographical isolation they became whites, who show more or less admixture with their more coloured neighbours. Along the Silk Route mummies were found of white, blond, European looking peoples who differed from they more Asian and Chinese looking peoples from that region.
In Europe they settled among or apart from the Black and brown Europeans, who were known as Blue Men. There was some mixing, as the whites came in great numbers. But at the end of the Middle Ages some of the original black and brown Europeans declared themselves the true Europeans and became a noble elite, ‘Blue Blood’which put great value on endogamy, as the base of their power. They did not mix with whites, because their status was based on their Black and brown looks.
The Modern Era started with this Black and coloured elite, who were enforced by fleeing crusaders and their eastern Christian allies, who saw their Latin Monarchies overtaken by Muslims. They brought with them the hatred for cut images, which let to iconoclasm and Protestantism. But mainly they brought with them scientific knowledge, lost during the middle ages. So the Black elite had military prowess and scientific knowledge and set out to dominate and civilise the white nations among them. From all these nations the Black and coloureds became the elite, in a system that can be compared to a reversed apartheid. The noble master lived in the middle of his fiefdom, in a castle, which came out of a Donjon, a fortified tower. The stronghold was necessary to impose a ruthless exploitation of the whites who became their serfs. They had to work for their noble masters who they were taught to revere as godlike figures. Their rule was by divine law, so also the church helped to enforce this order. From this time Black Madonna’s and Black Jesusses were worshipped in European churches, as Black was superior. The view of their white subjects was best expressed in the use of their skins to bind books, make clothing and fashion shoes by the noble elite.
The white Europeans fought this oppression and the establishment of noble rule went accompanied with farmer revolts, which were bloodily put down. The Enlightenment originated with the Black and coloured citizens class, who were getting better educated and richer because of trade, which was forbidden for the nobility. But by 1760, when races were invented it were whites asking for equality to their Black and brown noble and royal masters. Human races were thus invented to give white human status, and nations were defined by the skin colour. The French revolution was the temporary culmination of the liberation struggle of whites. Because of restorations, Napoleon alienated the results from the French Revolution reinstated aristocratic rule, it took more uprisings, until in 1848 till European whites were finally emancipated.
The trade in human skins was ended. History was revised, and the Great Men from the 19th century were the newly whitened kings, scientist, philosophers and writers from the Black Ancien Regime. Blacks were pressured into biological assimilation, and married whites. The nobility was able to extent its new role as the keepers of the heritage and traditions, by becoming whites. The writings of Jane Austen are the result of the resistance to the new order and revisionism, as well to protest against racism against Black Europeans. Austen saw the causes of the downfall of blacks in their lack of accomplishment, taking praise as their natural due. And the folly of race mixing and elevating whites to their own eloquent level, giving them notions of equality. But Blacks hastened their lost of power because of not paying attention and a resistence against change. The case of Jane Austen is marked by the absence of an authenticated portrait of this most famous writer. She was richly brown, not pink of complexion, like most of her heroines, and had a ‘peculiar beauty, ‘a distinguished’ look that should be understood as having Classical African facial traits. These looks were always considereds as proof of pure blood by the aristocracy who symbolised their blue blood, their distinguished birth, by images of Moors: Classical Africans. Austen herself did not
Isabelle de Charrière (1740-1805)
Baroness Belle van Zuylen (1740-1805) named herself ‘Zélide,’ after a fictional Egyptian princess and described herself as: ‘She does not have the white hands, she acknowledges this and even jokes about it: but being coloured is not a joking matter.’ She went on to write a powerful afrocentric ‘Black is Beautiful’ poem ‘A son teint noir et basané’ about her friend, the Black baron van der Duyn, and surrounded herself with other people of colour. Some were even European nobility. All her fictional characters were Black and coloured. Unfortunately, there is even today a great and persistent consensus among Dutch officials, museum staffs and scholars to hide and suppress any mention of the whole mass of Black and coloured Dutch who lived in the Netherlands from the classical era onwards. Many were descendents of the Moorish (Blacks and Berbers) and Sudanese (Garamantes) occupying Roman troops and anti-reformation Spanish troops, who eventually settled in the whole of Europe. In Swiss, Belle van Zuylen (Madame de Charrière) befriended the wealthy, brown Surinamese plantation owner Pierre Alexander Du Peyrou, the publisher and friend of the most famous philosopher of the Age of Reason, Jean Jaques Rousseau. Du Peyrou (1729-1794) was a descendent of the powerful, first Surinam colonist families and slave owners since 1683 that were Black and Coloured Huguenots. This ‘fixed mulatto race’ accepted only coloured governors. In 1742-1753, these colonist rose in a republican inspired, legalistic uprising and a bloodless coup to secure Surinam’s independence, which failed.
This groundbreaking study names many coloured Dutch families and uncovers many paintings. The problems and methods of identifying these black Europeans are discussed. Such as the fake pictures and the ‘whitened’ pictures for public display. Many ‘black’ paintings are kept hidden in private collections and museum vaults because the present descendents are apprehensive about association with African ancestry. Belle van Zuylens life and work is analysed from a black consciousness perspective, as well as the origin of her family’s fortune from slave trade. The Dutch are kept completely ignorant about these facts. So they are most shocked to learn that many other people of great merit as Queen Charlotte Sophie, Ludwig von Beethoven, Alessandro de Medici, Elisabeth Barrett, Robert Browning, Alexander Dumas, Alexander Pushkin, Sidonie Colette: all had black ancestors, just as Belle van Zuylen.
Barones Belle van Zuylen (1740-1805) noemde zich Zélide, naar een fictieve Egyptische prinses en beschreef zichzelf als: ‘Zij heeft geen witte handen, is zich daarvan bewust en grapt erover, maar een gekleurde huid is geen reden voor spot.’ Daarna schreef zij een krachtig afrocentrisch ‘Black is Beautiful’ gedicht ‘Over zijn zwartbruine teint’ over haar vriend, de zwarte baron van der Duyn en omringde zich met zwarte en gekleurde personen. Sommigen behoorden tot de Europese adel. Al haar fictionele personages waren zwart en gekleurd. Helaas is er zelf vandaag een hardnekkige consensus onder Nederlandse bestuurders, stafleden van musea en wetenschappers om alle aanwijzingen van massale historische zwarte Nederlanders vanaf de klassieke tijd te verbergen. Het betreft afstammelingen van Moorse (Zwart en Berbers) en Sudanese (Garamantes) manschappen van de Romeinse en Spaanse contrareformatie bezettingslegers, die zich uiteindelijk overal in Europa vestigden. In Zwitserland was Belle van Zuylen, bevriend met Pierre-Alexander Du Peyrou (1729-1794), een schatrijke, bruine Surinaamse plantage eigenaar. Hij geniet bekendheid als de vriend en uitgever van de beroemdste filosoof van de Verlichting: Jean Jaques Rousseau. Du Peyrou stamde af van de machtige eerste Surinaamse kolonistenfamilies en slavenhouders vanaf 1683, die zwarte en gekleurde Hugenoten waren. Dit ‘gefixeerd mulattenras’ was marginalisatie ontvlucht en accepteerden daarom slechts gekleurde gouverneurs. In 1742-1753 kwamen zij in een legalistische opstand en pleegden een bloedeloze en republikeins geïnspireerde coup, om Suriname onafhankelijk te maken, maar faalden. Deze vernieuwende studie noemt namen van gekleurde families en onthult vele portretten. De problemen en methoden bij de identificatie van gekleurde Europeanen worden besproken. Zoals de vervalste of de ‘gewitte’ portretten voor het grote publiek. Terwijl de ‘zwarte’ portretten verborgen blijven in familiecollecties en museumkluizen, omdat de huidige nazaten beducht zijn voor een associatie met Afrikaanse voorouders. Belle van Zuylen’s leven en werk wordt geanalyseerd vanuit een zwart bewustzijn, net als de herkomst van haar familiefortuin uit slavenhandel. De Nederlanders worden compleet in het duister gehouden over deze feiten. Daarom zijn ze meestal geschokt te horen dat vele personen van grote verdienste als Queen Charlotte Sophie, Ludwig von Beethoven, Alessandro de Medici, Elisabeth Barrett, Robert Browning, Alexander Dumas, Alexander Pushkin, Sidonie Colette: allen zwarte voorouders hadden, net als Belle van Zuylen.
A son teint noir et basané
Afrocentrisme in het leven en werk van Belle van Zuylen
De vaststelling dat Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737), de vergeten oma van Isabella Agnetha de Charrière- barones van Tuyll van Serooskerken(1740-1805), Afrikaanse gezichtstrekken had, biedt 200 jaar na Belle van Zuylen’s dood, eindelijk gelegenheid om haar etniciteit als functionele informatie te betrekken in het onderzoek naar deze unieke Nederlandse auteur. Belle’s leven en werk kan nu ook vanuit een afrocentrisch perspectief bezien worden.[xvii] Deze tak van wetenschapsbeoefening begon met Joel Alexander Rogers die vanaf 1916 de Afrikaanse mens in de diaspora, over de hele wereld opspoorde. Inclusief in Europese adellijke kringen en in koningshuizen. Sheik Anta Diop (1941) schreef over de zwarte wortels van de 10.000 jaar oude Egyptische beschaving.[xviii] In het afrocentrisme staat in tegenstelling tot het eurocentrisme, de eerste mens, de Afrikaan centraal en niet de witte mens. Een oppervlakkige oriëntatie op Belle van Zuylen’s oeuvre levert meteen een aantal sterke aanwijzingen van haar zwart bewustzijn op die even krachtig was als haar overtuiging dat vrouwen en mannen gelijkwaardig zijn. Belle propageert dat mannen en vrouwen even capabel zijn zolang vrouwen dezelfde rechten als mannen krijgen en meisjes net als jongens, toegang hadden tot goed onderwijs.[xix] Maar zij gaat daarin nog verder want Cécile uit ‘Lettres écrites de Lausanne’ (1785) wordt beschreven als:
[…] des yeux noirs […] les lèvres un peu grosses & très-vermeilles, […] une belle peau de brune […] une gorge qui seroit belle si elle étoit plus blanche […]
Belle beschrijft Cecile als een gekleurde vrouw met zwarte ogen, een beetje dikke rode lippen en een bruine huid. Zij is het evenbeeld van haar hartsvriendin Caroline de Chambrier in Neuchâtel.[xx] In haar penportret ‘Portrait de Zélide’ (1764), welke zij voor James Boswell (1740-1795) schreef, merkt Belle over zichzelf op:
[…] Elle n’a pas la main blanche; Elle sait aussi; et un badine; maïs elle voudrait bien n’avoir pas ce sujet de badiner.[…]
Een niet-witte huidkleur is voor Belle dus geen reden voor spot. Wij zien dat Belle tijdens haar hele leven connecties had met personen die eveneens zwart bloed in hun aderen hadden. Zoals de Brit David Hume (1711-1776) wiens Sir Allen Ramsay (1713-1784) portret hem duidelijk als een gekleurde persoon toont. Belle schreef na haar bezoek aan Engeland dat de Engelsen, ondanks hun vele minpunten, ‘opmerkelijk vrij van vooroordelen waren.’[xxi] In haar Neuchâtel periode had Belle intensieve contacten met personen die uit Suriname afkomstig waren of soms daar ook plantages en slaven bezaten. Zoals de Zwitserse families Chaillet en de gekleurde Europese families de Chambrier en Du Peyrou, plantagehouders. Pierre-Alexander Du Peyrou (1729-1795), was haar grote vriend en literaire adviseur in Neuchâtel. Niet alleen was hij een absente en zeer rijke in Suriname geboren en getogen plantagehouder, maar hij was ook ‘basané,’ dus bruin, afgaande op de verschillende schriftuurlijke aanwijzingen.[xxii] Hij geniet verder grote bekendheid als de vriend en uitgever van de beroemdste filosoof van de Verlichting Jean Jaques Rousseau (1712-1778). Belle van Zuylen schreef een pamflet ‘Éclaircissement relatifs à la publication des Confessions de Rousseau’ (1790) ter verdediging van Du Peyrou vanwege zijn uitgave van het volledige werk van Rousseau waarmee hij de plannen voor een niet geautoriseerde uitgave tegenging. Rousseau schreef in zijn autobiografische ‘Confessions: Livre XII’ (1782-1789 ) een penportret van zijn vriend Du Peyrou:
[…]M. du Peyrou* était américain fils d'un commandant de Surinam dont le successeur M le Chambrier de Neuchâtel épousa la veuve. Devenue veuve une seconde fois elle vint avec son fils s'établir dans le pays de son second mari. Du Peyrou, fils unique, fort riche, et tendrement aimé de sa mère avait été élevé avec assez de soin, et son éducation lui avait profité. Il avait acquis beaucoup de demi-connaissances, quelque goût pour les arts, et il se piquait surtout d'avoir cultivé sa raison : son air hollandais, froid, philosophe, son teint basané, son humeur silencieuse et cachée favorisaient beaucoup cette opinion.[…]
De verstandige, creoolse Constance uit de roman ‘Trois femme,’ ‘Suite des Trois Femmes’ en ‘Histoire de Constance’ (alle drie 1795) zou best geïnspireerd kunnen zijn door de Surinaamse weduwe Chaillet née Lijnslager die zich in 1776 met haar nieuwe Zwitserse echtgenoot E. J. Perret-Gentil in zijn geboorteplaats Neuchâtel vestigde. Of de rijke moeder van Du Peyrou, Madame le Commandante, Lucie Droilhet (1702-1762) die met Commandeur Philippe De Chambrier (-1752) hertrouwde en zich samen in 1747 in zijn geboorteplaats Neuchâtel vestigden. De republikein de Chambrier was tussen 1742-1747, de vervanger en latere tegenstander van gouverneur J.J Mauricius. Rousseau noemde deze donker gekleurde Surinaamse vrouw ‘de koningin der moeders.’ Het woord ‘creoolse’ is een erg verwarrend en onprecies begrip. Temeer als wij vaststellen dat ook gekleurde Europeanen naar de kolonies trokken, en hun bruine ‘creoolse’ kinderen; zoals Du Peyrou en zijn ouders, daar geboren werden. Anderzijds was Joséphine de Beauharnais, keizerin van Frankrijk, kennelijk een witte vrouw en ook een Haitiaanse creoolse. Belle noch haar oma zou ik een creoolse noemen daar zij afstammen van witte en zwarte oude Nederlandse families en in de Republiek waren geboren en getogen.
Sprak Belle als ‘ijdele vrouw’ of refereert ze aan een serieuzere zaak; namelijk haar eigen zwart bloed, wanneer zij schrijft over haar ‘niet-witte handen.’ Ze suggereert dat een donkere huid controversieel kan zijn. Belle leefde midden in de slavernijperiode, haar familiefortuin was gebaseerd op aandelen in de WIC en de OIC, dus op slavenhandel, slavernij, kolonialisme en de Aziatische opiumhandel. Slavernij was reeds toen zeer omstreden met Voltaire die in ‘Candide’ de Surinaamse slavernij veroordeelt. Ook De Condorcet keerde zich fel tegen slavernij. In zuidwest Frankrijk en Engeland hield men op Europese bodem zwarten als slaven. Toch noemt Belle zich in 1764 in een penportret voor Boswell ‘Zélide,’ naar een personage uit ‘Tanis et Zélide’ (1753),een opera door Voltaire. Zélide is een dochter van de koning van Memphis en een Egyptische prinses. Egypte is Afrika en Afrika is wijd geassocieerd met zwarte en gekleurde mensen. Belle bezocht in 1763 een feest ter gelegenheid van de kroning van George III van Engeland. Boswell was in Utrecht bevriend met de prins von Mecklenburg Strelitz, de broer van Charlotte von Mecklenburg Strelitz (1744-1818), die de koningin werd van George III. Er zijn overweldigende bewijzen dat deze Duitse hertogin een ‘waar mulattengezicht’ had en daarmee zwart bloed. Op haar kroningsportret door Sir Allan Ramsay (1763) is dit feit heel goed zichtbaar. Boswell was een kleinzoon van Veronica van Aerssen, één van de zeven zusters van Cornelis van Aerssen, de gouverneur en deeleigenaar van de kolonie Suriname. Anna Margaretha van Aerssen (1713-1803), een kleindochter van de gouverneur, wordt door Boswell als een zwarte vrouw beschreven: ‘[…] Mrs Maasdam black as chimney.[…].’ Voorzien van deze functionele informatie, gecombineerd met een jeugdportret van Cornelis waarop hij donkere, dikke lippen en lang donker haar heeft, mogen wij aannemen dat ook de familie van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck gekleurde Europeanen waren. En dat deze gekleurde rijke en adellijke mensen ook met elkaar huwden en sociale contacten hadden. Maar ook de kolonie Suriname uitkozen, als een plek voor vrijheid van vervolging.
De familie van der Duyn, met wie Belle en haar familie goed was bevriend, was volgens haar beroemd om hun zwarte kleur.[xxiii] Het jeugdportret van Adam François van der Duyn van Maasdam (1771-1848), lid van het Driemanschap 1813 en kleinzoon van Generaal Aarnoud Joost van der Duyn van Maasdam (1718-1785), toont een gekleurde jongeman met brede neusvleugels. Zijn opa’s ware portret is echter niet aangemeld bij het Iconografisch Bureau. Men toont in het Adelsboek (1992) een portret van een witte man welke door moet gaan voor dat van de zwarte Aarnoud Joost.[xxiv] Anna Margaretha van Aerssen (1713-1803) was hertrouwd met deze Aarnoud Joost van der Duyn. Belle van Zuylen zag Generaal Maasdam op een joodse bruiloft in Den Haag. Zij was getroffen door zijn ‘teint noir et basané’ welke ze in dichtvorm vergeleek met de even zwartbruine huidkleur van het joodse bruidspaar De Pinto. Dit is de meest afrocentrische tekst van Belle, die ik kon vinden en verdient onze aandacht. Vanwege haar zwart bewustzijn, gebaseerd op haar eigen fysieke afkomst en familiefortuin, plaats ik daarmee vraagtekens bij de bevinding van Courtney en de Whatley’s dat het een satirisch gedicht betreft.[xxv]
A son teint noir et basané
Comme á ses traits et son air sombre
Je crus Maasdam être du nombre
Du peuple élu jadis, aujourd’hui dispersé
On nomma Général le minois judaïque
Mais un titre plus magnifique,
A mon opinion, n’aurait pu changer rien
Et j’aurais cru plutôt toute la république
Conduite par des Juifs, que ce Maasdam chrétien.
Nadat het door een vriend was uitgelekt, circuleert het gedicht achttien maanden als een satire, zoniet als onderdeel van een lasterlijk geschrift. Belle schrijft dan een vervolg, waarin ze haar bedoelingen verdedigt en een ‘stukje wijsheid’ toevoegt, welke als zeer afrocentrisch mag worden aangemerkt.
Après dix-huit mois de mystère
Quelque ami, lassé de se taire,
A publié certain écrit
Qui, ne parlant du cœur ni de l’esprit,
Attaque un peu de Maasdam le visage.
On le dit courroucé, mais moi je n’en crois rien,
Je le tiens de moitié trop sage.
Qu’importe un minois juif quand on est bon chrétien?
Et quand on n’a pas l’esprit sombre
Quand le cœur est exempt de ténébreux soucis,
Qu’importe si d’épais sourcils
Sur les yeux jettent un peu d’ombre?
Contre Apollon ce beau blondin
Mars, quoique brun et halé, j’en suis sure,
N’aurait changé d’air ni de chevelure,
Et qu’eut-il fait d’un plus beau teint?
Une histoire bien avérée
Dit qu’il ne plut guère à Vulcain,
Mais beaucoup trop à Cythérée[xxvi]
Dennis Wood schrijft (1993: 95) :
[…] Isabelle de Charrière reasoned invariably in moral terms […] To view her as an idle persifleuse, mocking merely for the sake of mocking […] would be unjust […].
Ik ga anders wel akkoord met Courtney en Whatley in de zin dat Maasdam er als vanzelfsprekend geen aanstoot aan nam. Hoe kan immers een redelijk denkend en een succesvolle persoon met een zwart gezicht en zwarte ouders, boos worden als iemand zijn zwart gezicht en zijn persoon in prachtige taal verheerlijkt. En én passant aangeeft dat huidkleur niet van belang is want ook Venus gaf de voorkeur aan de stralende, bruine Mars boven de blonde Apollo en Vulcanus. Temeer daar Belle van Zuylen zelf een zwarte grootmoeder had. Kennelijk bleef de adellijke familie van der Duyn generaties lang puur Afrikaans en trouwden dus uitsluitend met donker gekleurde adellijke personen.
Belle refereert aan de klassieke oudheid toen men sommige Olympische goden als zwart en Afrikaans zag. Volgens Herodotus begaven de goden zich regelmatig naar Afrika om twaalf dagen te feesten met de van zonde vrije Ethiopiërs, de zwarten.[xxvii] Belle maakt referenties aan de kroeze haardos van Maasdam. Maar ook vergelijkt zij het zwarte volk in de diaspora met het Verkozen Volk der Joden welke eveneens verstrooid is over de hele wereld. Belle raakt aan de theorieën dat het joodse volk, gevlucht uit Egypte, ook een zwart aspect heeft. En zwart bloed in het hart van Europa bracht. Belle bevond zich op een joodse bruiloft in een tijd toen er in de Republiek nog officiële vooroordelen tegen joden golden en zij niet mochten deelnemen aan het bestuur. Een aantal Haagse, Sefardische joodse families, waarvan sommigen donker gekleurd, bevorderden de muziek en theater. Belle schrijft dat zij nog liever kiest voor een joodsbestuur daar Maasdam als zijnde een goede christen toch het ‘snoetje’ van een jood heeft. Wat moet van Maasdam met een ‘mooiere’ teint, dus waarom zou hij wit moeten zijn.[xxviii]
Belle van Zuylen was echter niet de eerste die zich liet inspireren door de kleur van de familie van der Duyn van Maasdam, die zou afstammen van de familie Brederode. Volgens van der Aa nam een zoon van Diederik Brederode de naam van zijn vrouw aan, maar behield het familiewapen. Adam Adriaan baron van der Duyn (-1753), de vader van Aarnoud Joost inspireerde na zijn dood ene Ds. Johannes Balthazar Bennet tot een ‘zonderlinge’ lijkrede (1753) die volgens van der Aa (1852) ‘met regte een voorbeeld is van de 18e eeuwse kanselontluistering.’
“Adam was uit de aarde, Adam Adriaan van der Duyn insgelijks. Adam onze stamvader was uit het alleroudste geslacht, Adam Adriaan was uit een zeer oud geslacht. Adam was uit het edelste geslacht, en als de eerste edele der wereld, Adam Adriaan niet alleen uit een edel geslacht, maar van God vervaardigd en verheven tot eerste Edele van Holland en West-Vriesland […]”
Van der Aa verwijst naar ‘Hollandse roem in kunsten en wetenschappen,’(1830) door Hendrik baron Collot d’Escury. Het lijkt dat de omstreden dominee Bennet als een 18e eeuwse activist, midden in een kerk vol Hervormden in Sassenheim roept: ‘Black, is Beautiful!’ Ds. Bennet probeerde de Bijbel en het geloof aanschouwelijk te maken en dat werd gezien als kanselontluistering. Black is not beautiful! Dit is natuurlijk in de 19e eeuw met zijn wetenschappelijk racisme, een vreselijke ‘godslastering’ die niet eens geanalyseerd en schriftuurlijk weerlegd mag worden. Net als Belle van Zuylen kwam deze nog onbekende Bennet door nuchter denken en misschien vanwege enige betrokkenheid, tot de conclusie dat de eerste mens uit vruchtbare, zwarte aarde werd gemaakt. En dat wij niet ver hoeven te zoeken om te weten hoe Adam eruit zag en wat zijn verdiensten waren. Wij hoeven slechts naar Adam Adriaan van der Duyn’s gezicht te kijken. En naar zijn persoonlijke kwaliteiten en naar zijn diensten en verdiensten aan de Republiek. Belle kan als ‘afvallige’ bekend zijn geweest met deze lijkrede. De ware portretten van de familie van der Duyn werden niet aangemeld en zijn nog steeds niet openbaar te zien.
Volgens Courtney was Maasdam onmiskenbaar donker gekleurd was. Maar het gedicht leest ook als een spel op de woorden die geassocieerd worden met donker: somber, melancholie, een schaduw. Deze woorden leven een eigen etymologisch leven en de betekenissen worden weer geprojecteerd op mensen met deze donkere huidkleuren. Belle weerlegt dit. Wij kennen echter helaas zwart geld, zwart werk, zwarte dood, zwarte dag, zwart circuit etc. als intens negatieve begrippen. Maar gelukkig, ook een woord als ‘morellen’ verwijst vanwege de donkere kleur van deze kersen naar ‘moren.’ In de oudheid vergeleek met de zwarte huidkleur met de pracht van de blauwe hyacint. Deze van kleur verzadigde, welriekende bloemen bloeien soms in de besneeuwde tuin. Echter zijn er nog steeds ideologische overwegingen om het zwart bloed van Belle te verbergen.
De woorden van Belle over Maasdam doen daarom ook denken aan een gedicht van Agrippa d’Aubigné (1552-1630) uit ‘ L’ Hecatombe à Diana.’ Hij liet zich voor dit ‘Offer van honderd stieren’ inspireren door zijn afgod en minnares, ene Diana de B. Wiens zeer witte huidkleur hij contrasteerde met dat van de witte zwaan en de witte lelie. Maria Wilhelmina barones van Tuyll van Serooskerken schreef in 1931 een biografie over deze strijder voor de zaak der hugenoten waardoor het nog aantrekkelijker wordt zijn gedicht bij Belle van Zuylen te betrekken. Haar familie was immers een kampioen voor het protestantse geloof. Zou dit gedicht Belle hebben geïnspireerd tot het werkje over Maasdam? Zij verwijst in een brief aan d’Hermenches naar Francoise d’Aubigne markiezin de Maintenon (1635-1719). De kleindochter van d’Aubigne, die als opvoedkundige en oprichtster van een meisjesschool als een voorbeeld voor Belle gold.
Auprès de ce beau teint, le lys en noir se change,
Le lait en basané auprès de ce beau teint,
Du cygne la blancheur auprès de vous s’éteint,
Et celle du papier où est votre louange.
Le sucre est blanc, et lorsqu’en la bouche on le range
Le goût plaît, comme fait le lustre qui le peint.
Plus blanc est l’arsenic, mais c’est un lustre feint,
Car c’est mort, c’est poison à celui qui le mange.
Votre blanc en plaisir teint ma rouge douleur,
Soyez douce du goût, comme belle en couleur,
Que mon espoir ne soit démenti par l’épreuve,
Votre blanc ne soit point d’aconite noirci,
Car ce sera ma mort, belle, si je vous treuve
Aussi blanche que neige, et froide tout ainsi.
Le lait en basané auprès de ce beau teint,
Du cygne la blancheur auprès de vous s’éteint,
Et celle du papier où est votre louange.
Le sucre est blanc, et lorsqu’en la bouche on le range
Le goût plaît, comme fait le lustre qui le peint.
Plus blanc est l’arsenic, mais c’est un lustre feint,
Car c’est mort, c’est poison à celui qui le mange.
Votre blanc en plaisir teint ma rouge douleur,
Soyez douce du goût, comme belle en couleur,
Que mon espoir ne soit démenti par l’épreuve,
Votre blanc ne soit point d’aconite noirci,
Car ce sera ma mort, belle, si je vous treuve
Aussi blanche que neige, et froide tout ainsi.
De overeenkomsten en verschillen zijn duidelijk. D’Aubigné was verliefd op Diana. Hij schrijft dat een witte zwaan zwart lijkt naast Diana’s blankheid. Dat melk bruin lijkt naast de witte kleur van zijn geliefde. Hij vindt arsenicum toch witter doch zonder schittering omdat arsenicum de dood is. Associaties van het woord wit met sneeuw, de smaak van witte suiker en de dood. Wij weten dat Maasdam ook een vriend was van d’Hermenches en hij was tevens aangetrouwde familie en een vriend van Boswell. James Boswell, een dwangmatige libertijn, was een jaar in de running als Belle’s huwelijkskandidaat. Het is beslist niet aannemelijk dat Belle voor het eerst een zwart mens zag. Belle was zeer politiek geëngageerd. Daarom stel ik dat zij wilde aantonen dat er in dezelfde lyrische termen over een zwarte huidkleur als over een witte huidkleur gesproken kan worden. Tevens dat zwarten en joden niet onderdoen voor witten.
De auteur Alexander Pushkin (1798-1831), een aristocratische Rus die als één achtste zwart kan worden beschreven, noemde zichzelf een ‘arap’ dus een neger. Hij had een meer uitgesproken zwart aspect dan Belle van Zuylen. Zij geeft in tegenstelling tot haar geschilderde portretten aan dat zij niet-wit was. Wellicht leek zij het meest op de bruine Cécile uit haar later werk ‘Lettres ecrites à Lausanne.’(1795) in dit werk legt zij de schuld voor slavernij ook bij de zwarte die de andere zwarte verkocht aan een witte, christelijke slavenhaler. Dat is zuur om te slikken, vooral voor zwarte mensen, maar het is een waarheid als een huis. Toch redt zij zichzelf door positief te schrijven over een slavin Bianca, een hoofdpersonage in Histoire de Constance (1795):
La jeune Bianca son esclave favorite, la plus belle et la mieux faite de celle, de sa Nation qu’on eut vu jamais á la Martinique. Noire comme de l’Ebène par plaisanterie on’ avoit nommée Bianca e le nom lui etoit resté.’
Voor Belle zullen wij uiteindelijk allemaal moeten buigen voor de dood, welke de grote egaliseerder is tussen koning of slaaf. Eerder had Belle al gezegd dat ze niet kon geloven dat zij een Hollandse was, dat ze van alle landen wilde zijn, geen talent had voor onderdanigheid en niet wilde trouwen met de graaf van Anhalt Dassau vanwege zijn meester Frederik de Grote, wiens onderdanen allemaal als slaven waren. Nu weten wij eindelijk dat onze aller Belle van Zuylen niet alleen filosofisch en overdrachtelijk sprak, maar ook streed vanuit een diepgeworteld zwart bewustzijn.
Egmond Codfried
[de auteur (Paramaribo 1959) schrijft o.a. toneelstukken en een verhandeling over Maria Susanna Du Plessis (1739-1795), een onterecht beruchte plantagehoudster. Dit artikel bouwt verder op zijn nieuwe publicatie over Europese zwarten en Maria Jacoba van Goor]
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Braasem, W, Een rebelle aan de Vecht: Slot Zuylen en zijn bewoners, Nijgh en Ditmar, Den Haag 1984
Codfried, Egmond, Belle van Zuylen’s vergeten oma, Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737), Een beknopte studie over zwarten en kleurlingen in Europa door de eeuwen heen, Egmond Codfried, Den Haag 2004.
Codfried, Egmond Wi Rutu (Pierre-Alexander Du Peyrou (1729-1794); Een Surinaamse plantagehouder in Zwitserland), jaargang 3 nummer 1 juni 2005 p. Amsterdam.
Codfried, E, Maria Susanna Du Plessis: dader of slachtoffer, E.C, Den Haag 2003
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Condorcet M.J., Beschouwingen over de negerslavernij, (1781)(M. Fennema) Heureka, Weesp 1989
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Lusane, Clarence, Hitler’s Black Victims, Routledge, London 2003
Nederveen Pieterse J., Racisme en beeldvorming:Afrika door westerse ogen, KPC, Den Bosch 1994:10
Rogers Joel A, Sex and Race, Negro-Caucasian Mixing, in all ages, J.A.Rogers, New York 1940
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Sandick J.C. van, Het geslacht van Sandick, (niet voor de handel)1961
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Whatley, Janet, There are no letters like yours, The correspondence of Isabelle de Charièrre and Constant d’Hermenches, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 2000
Wood, Dennis, Benjamin Constant: a biography, Routledge, London 1993
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Charlotte Brontë
JANE EYRE, A PEACE OFFERING AND A TRIBUTE TO WHITENESS
The visionary novel Jane Eyre (1847) was published ahead of the revolutions of 1848 when all Europeans were liberated from institutionalised servitude. In most of the colonies slavery prevailed, but in Europe there were the serfs, who were legally bound to the master and his lands, and they are the ancestors of the present whites. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) is considered political in her writings and aristocratic in her views. Yet in early thundering reviews, also one by Elizabeth Rigby (an alias, later Lady Eastlake), Jane Eyre was renounced as ‘anti-Christian’ referring to that ‘every page burns with moral Jacobinism.’ Rigby saw Brontë’s visionary expressions of these sentiments as ‘dangerous’ for it ‘might feed the social unrest that already threatened to erupt in England and on the Continent as rebellion or even revolution.’ In England, a ‘Chartist movement’ was campaigning to extend the vote to working-class men and to democratise the entire political process. Brontë was viewed as ‘antichristian’ because her ‘murmurings against the comforts of the rich […] is a murmuring against God’s appointment.[xxix] Yet today we have access to Brontë’s juvenilia about Angria, an aristocratic England-like state in West Africa were rebellions against the ruler, race wars and rebellious women were the order of the day. Jane Eyre often compares the position of woman with that of slaves, through history, as she does not assume, as most writers today do, that through the ages only Blacks were held in servitude. She ironically compares Rochester both to a Roman slave master and a Turkish despot who kept his women in a harem. And there are Blacks in Jane Eyre. Was Brontë both aristocratic and Chartist? The answer should be found in her copious descriptions of complexion of the personages. Meyer notices these description, which should be regarded as a great triumph of perception by scholars who are really blind to brown and black complexions in European literature. My previous study is titled: ‘The Eloquence Of Her Blood; Was Jane Austen Black?’(2011) is based on the same descriptions of visages as light brown or sallow, brown, very brown and black by Jane Austen (1775-1817) in her books and letters and paves the way to a similar analysis of Brontë.[xxx]
What does the discussion of complexions by Brontë and Austen convey to her contemporaries? According to Austen in Northanger Abbey (1817) the Tilney’s who for many generations lived in an old Abbey were ‘brown’ and ‘handsome’ and ‘superior.’ Mr. Elton, the vicar in the novel ‘Emma’ (1816) is described as ‘Mr Elton, black, spruce and smiling.’ His beauty is repeatedly discussed, ‘because he does not have his equal in beauty.’ Elton is also a beacon of moral superiority as he is held to be a good example for every young man. Although he holds ‘an independent fortune’ and has no ‘low connections’ yet Emma, who he proposes to, does not consider him worthy and as noble as Mr. Knightley, Frank Weston Churchill or his father Mr. Weston. But Austen and Brontë are of two different generations, when the views on complexion and physiognomy changed. Austen talks about Jane Fairfax ‘peculiar beauty’ where Brontë talks about Mrs. Reed’s physiognomy as: ‘the under-jaw being much developed and very solid.’ Brontë provides detail about a Black physiognomy in terms which have then become commonplace, and rendered these facial traits as ‘ugly.’ Where Austen subversively wrote against the gaining notions that black skin and a Black physiognomy were objectively ugly. Brontë has Jane Eyre notice these things, but leaves it to the reader to surmise whether this woman was objectively ‘ugly.’ Miss Scatcherd: ‘the little black one,’ a teacher at the Lowood educational institution is also cruel, like Mrs Reed.[xxxi]
In this former study I have made a connection between the old artistically tradition of placing a Moor in the middle of a scene to inform us of the blue blood credentials of the depicted company. And of the persons who bought and exhibits this scene. The Moor was always a pitch black skinned African with classical African facial traits. Africa has many complexions and types but when an artist wants to symbolise Africa, he will always use the visage of a Classical African: The Moor. I had collected about twenty-five pen portraits, personal descriptions, physical descriptions of Kings, Queens and nobles who we today consider whites, but were described by their contemporaries, who were quoted in their scientific biographies; as brown and black of complexion. William I of Orange (1533-1584), the founder of the Dutch royal dynasty, was described ‘More brown then white,’ and ‘Brown of complexion and the beard.’ Some had nicknames, like Charles II Stuart’s (1630-1685) The Black Boy that describes their personal appearance. His cousin, Louis XIV’s mummy was viewed in the eighteenth century and described as ‘black as ink.’ Madame de Staël was described as ‘too swarthy’ and ‘good features, bad complexion.’ Brontë enforces this information with her own Zenobia, the ‘Madame de Staël of Glascity’ (Angria), named Zenobia, and who was very dark of complexion. What interests us here is that these persons are portrayed as whites, but also as Blacks: but are today considered whites. Although there contemporaries made a connection between there dark, black complexion and their exalted status as members of the highest nobility. Black and brown skinned nobles sat on European thrones, and this is the ‘aristocratic’ part of Brontë’s political identity, as she was also dark of complexion, with ‘a large nose’ and ‘too large a mouth.’ According to her publisher she had ‘beautiful eyes,’ but her face was ‘marred’ by ‘her complexion’ and ‘the shape of her mouth.’ She might have been prognastic, with large protruding lips, which made her during her age automatically ‘ugly.’ We might take a different look today, but still the idea that Charlotte Brontë was not pretty, nor handsome: underdeveloped, small, thinning hair, with a ‘crooked mouth;’ even in spite of her good eyes.
Like Jane Austen Brontë speaks irreverently of the true aristocrats, which is historically correct as the Ancien Regime, which was Black identified, was first brought down by the educated middling classes who were equally brown and black of complexions. The European caste system can also be described as Reversed Apartheid, and brought the educated and newly enriched black bourgeoisie in collision with the nobility. Yet in order to be free, every citizen of a State must be free. This meant that the majority of white serfs should be given equal rights before the Law: hence they formulated The Declaration of Human Rights, which should be understood as white serfs asking for equality with black nobles. The French Revolution was a bourgeois and capitalist revolution. The Third Estate did not benefit from the change. Napoleon even restored the black and brown skinned elite and nobility to their former glory. Only the revolutions of 1848 emancipated the serfs, the whites and also ended the trade in their skins. There cannot be any doubt that there was a trade in human skins, which were used to bind books, make clothing and fashion shoes for the elite. Unclear is how this human leather was harvested: did they wait for a person to die naturally, or were people killed to harvest their skins? Were people bought, sold and moved about like cattle to be skinned? Undoubtedly this was a potent means to terrorise and demean whites, and I consider this practice as the greatest motivation of the revisionism to hate Blacks, to consider them as Apes and inferior beings. Austen cries out in a letter to her sister: ‘If I’m a wild beast, I cannot help it.[…] It’s not my fault,’ and she might be referring to this revolutionary view of Blacks. The revisionism still prevails and gathers strength where scholars do not mention these descriptions of brown and black complexion in biographies or literary works by Brontë and Austen.
The profusion of complexions in Jane Eyre can thus be demonstrated. By looking at them as one body so we can evaluate Susan Meyer’s contention that ‘race is used metaphorically.’ Meyer refers to ideas that women were treated as slaves, also based on ‘science’ by misogynists like Charles White who discovered areas of brown and black skin on white women’s bodies, in nineteen out of twenty obstetrician cases: black nipples and aureoles, black pudenda, black verges of the anus, and a dark stripe running from the navel to the pudenda area. But most effectively he described the phenomena of Malisma or Chloasma, where in the final stages of the gestation period white women faces get a brown colouring. This was used to rationalise women’s inferior position on the ladder of creation. The superiority of the white race did not reside in the white woman. Her parts of black skin, the small size and the shape of her skull made her more akin to Blacks, who were considered less intelligent then whites. The supremacy of the white race was represented in the white male. We will see that Jane Eyre shows Brontë waging battle on all these frontlines of Colonialism, slavery, Race, gender, feminism, and social justice.[xxxii]
John Reed ‘sometimes reviled her [his mother] for her dark skin, similar to his own,’ observes the narrator, who is the white Jane Eyre.(27) Brontë is referring to ‘colorism’ when black and brown skinned persons revile black skinned members of their nation, and how this is perceived by white skinned people who, given the context of white or black supremacy, do not functionally rate brown higher then black skinned. Jane Austen is most of the time arguing against colorism, as whites are not really presented as a looming force in her universe. Here is the greatest difference with Brontë who presents us the world from the viewpoint of a lowly white girl, ‘with a white face,’ (26) who was maligned by Blacks, but joined them and forgave and forgave. Mrs. Reed functions as ‘The Moor’ to show that the environment was that of the superior class. Yet as there are family relations between Jane and Mrs. Reed, who was her father’s brother’s wife, we should examine Jane’s whiteness. As the Rivers cousins are absolutely white, St. John even resembles a Greek statue, we find out that their mother’s brother, and their uncle in Madeira was an Eyre. Another brother and uncle married Mrs. Jane Reed of Gateshead who we rather puzzling know as Mrs. Reed. So apparently Jane’s uncle, who married Miss Reed was white and married a black woman. His brother, Jane’s father, married white. Jane Eyre was pure white. Strangely her tragic cousin John Reed was dark as his mother, while his sisters were blond, fair, with blue eyes. He perhaps represents prevailing ideas that the mulatto combines all the ‘worst racial traits of blacks and whites.’
The child Jane Eyre observes her aunt, Mrs. Reed: ‘her under-jaw being much developed and very solid […] her skin was dark and opaque.’ We already saw that the much-developed under-jaw was regarded as a classical African trait, and thus a mark of blue blood. Persons with these marks of distinction were considered as ‘pure of blood.’ At Lowood Jane observes that ‘Rasselas’ by Samuel Johnson does have ‘nothing about fairies and genii.’ (60) Brontë seems to identify Romantism with whites, and Rationalism, symbolised by Dr Johnson, with Blacks. Yet writes a novel with all the usual symbolism and themes of the Romantic Novel. ‘Do you like the little black one’ Jane asks Helen Burn about Miss Scatcherd. (61) She turns out to be extremely cruel, continuing the theme of whites menaced by black superiority. The kind housekeeper of Thornfield is Mrs. Alice Fairfax, who was distantly related to her master Edward Fairfax Rochester, which informs us of her dark colourings. She tells Jane Eyre about the other habitants: ‘Leah is a nice girl to be sure, and John and his wife are very decent people; but then you see they are only servants, and one can’t converse with them on terms of equality: one must keep them at due distance, for fear of losing one’s authority.’ (104) We may assume that these persons are whites. When he finally arrives at Thornefield she observes her new Master, Mr. Rochester: ‘he had a dark face.’(120) Brontë does not identify Adele Varens who is his ward, as Rochester’s own off spring. His apparent fiancée Miss Blanche Ingram is the daughter of Baroness Ingram of Ingram Park. She has: ‘olive complexion, dark and clear[…] eyes[…] large and black […] hair raven black.’(163) We later find out that Miss Bertha Mason was beautiful along the same type as Miss Ingram. Her brother: ‘his complexion was singularly sallow.’ (192) while their mother was described in the marriage contract as ‘a Creole.’ And the Mason family considered Mr. Rochester as of ‘a good race.’ Mr. Rochester has also large and black eyes and is referred to, by himself as: ‘her [Blanche Ingram] blackaviced suitor.’(203) Blanche Ingram is seen by Rochester as: ‘big, brown and buxom; with hair just as such of the ladies of Carthage must have had.’(220) Rochester confirms the notion that blackness is Africa derived. As we later find out he used Miss Ingram to make Jane Eyre jealous.
The Rivers siblings are whites. Brontë literally refers to the invention of the white race, which is distinguished by its beauty, and several times compares St. Johns beauty to that of a Greek statue. She even is faithful to the point that the white man is the symbol of beauty, not the woman, his sisters. Her repeated descriptions of his physical appearance as a walking Apollo indicate that she could have married him for her want of physical pleasure, or that she does not spurn his marriage proposal because she finds him on attractive or repulsive. Brontë shows that woman can desire men for their looks alone, as how men may take a woman for her beauty. This might have given substance to the notion that Currer Bell, the supposed author of Jane Eyre, was a man. Mr. St. John Rivers: ‘He was young, - perhaps from twenty-eight to thirty – tall, slender, his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in outline; quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom indeed, an English face comes near the antique models as did his.’ (338) The white ideal was defined by measuring Greek statues, not humans, and Brontë - not Jane Eyre -, seems to subserviently point this out. ‘His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead, colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair.’ (339) We can surmise that again the writers asserts herself as Black as one does not expect a white to show so much awe and detailed and scientific wonder at the whiteness of another white.
Then the woman who loves him appears. The tone of her greetings are perceived by Jane Eyre as ‘musical accents.’ ‘A vision as it seemed to me, had risen at his side. There appeared within three feet of him, a form clad in pure white – a youthful form: full, yet fine in contour: and when, after bending to caress Carlo, it lifted up its head, and threw back a long veil, there bloomed under his glance a face of perfect beauty. Perfect beauty is a strong expression; but I do not retrace or qualify it: as sweet features as ever the temperate clime of Albion moulded; as pure hues of rose and lily as ever her humid gales and vapoury skies generated and screened, justified, in this instance, the term. No charm was wanting, no defect was perceptible.’ (355) This is quite over the top. And quite strained and artificial too, as anything connected with the Rivers siblings. We find the happenings of her life before she arrived at the Rivers being revisited, but in a white environment, where colourful feelings and exuberance is missing. But whites, away from the gaze of their brown and black superiors are thoroughly decent, proper, hard working and good Christians. In Mr. Charlotte Brontë is mentioned how Charlotte on her honeymoon in Ireland wondered at the proper ness of the Irish in laws, as the British were used to think meanly of them. This passages remind again of Emma (1817) by Jane Austen were she describes a few decent, hardworking whites, who almost overcame their natural vulgarity, yet makes it clear that they have to remain at they own, lower station. Which was deemed natural by Mr. Knightley, or as Mrs. Rigby might have it: as ordained by god.
After the disastrous fire and his maiming and degradation, Eyre observes Rochester in his blindness as: ‘this shaggy black man […] like a brownie.’ (427) but she proceeds to describe St. John as : ‘He is handsome man: tall, fair, with blue eyes and a Grecian profile.’(430) On the eve of their rightful marriage; ‘We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane: there is but the license to get - then we marry,’ Mr. Rochester observes: ‘Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment fastened round my bronze scrag [neck] under my cravat? I have worn it since the day I lost my only treasure: as a memento of her.’ This was after he gave her his gold watch, ‘Fasten it into your girdle, Janet, and keep it henceforward: I have no use for it,’ which due to his blindness he could not use. The pearl used to symbolised purity of blue blood, not diluted with white blood. And Jayne Eyre will never wear it, as she did not desire it and there are no notions of inferiority or superiority or patriarchal rule by the man over the woman between them anymore. This is the final description of complexion towards the end of Jane Eyre. (441)
CONCLUSION
From the beginning reviewers noted the improbability of the events, especially the family connection with the Rivers family. The supposed coarseness of the novel is less visible to us now. We are not so much attuned to the oppression of woman today as we are told women and men in Europe are equal. Perhaps Victorians were not yet made blind or intimidated in order not to see how in every European city women are sold and bought and are kept into forced prostitution, while Europe claims to put the equality of men and women first. They make a big show of repressing the wearing of the hijab or the burqa. What would Charlotte Brontë make of this spectacle? We are also rendered blind by some force, which forbids us to see the abundance of colour in the European history.
When discussing these matters with whites they respond with fear and anger. It’s the same as with discussing the blatant pornographic passages in Ezekiel chapter 23 verses 1-23.with Christians. There are forces at work which prevent us from seeing or discussing what we see. We rather kill the person that point these things out to us, then acknowledge them. It's like the fact that Poles and Rumanians are imported in West Europe, to be exploited as virtual slaves. The problems that force these young, educated and modern Poles to leave their land and families, are not addressed, so the rich European countries can exploit their want of work and income. All the time our governments give us false information about the numbers and the conditions these Poles and Rumanians are working and living under. Care is taken to isolate them geographically from the rest of the Netherlands.
This study wants to show that the use of race is not only used metaphorically by Charlotte Brontë or her sister Emily who proposes Heathcliff as a force to take back what was stolen from his race. A kind of restoration, like Napoleon brought when he reinstalled the nobility and even created new members, but again fatally falling into the same mistakes. Brontë makes amends to whites that were mistreated and exploited by Blacks. She entreats whites to forgive. The blind and unhanded Mr. Rochester appears as a new version of the elite, sufficiently humbled and reduced in means and power to share power with the whites; the meaning of the rightful marriage between Edward Rochester and Jane Eyre. They are equal partners and even brought gender barriers down by her wearing his watch, and he her pearl necklace. The outcome is not a totally egalitarian society; there remain vestiges of rank and wealth. The rustic whites remain servants for the educated and rich whites. Although Rochester had often threatened to share his wealth, he is never called upon. Jane gives five pounds to the servant couple that takes care of them, after the wedding, but she is not thinking of giving them an egalitarian share as she did with her Rivers cousins. But by a pared down lifestyle the servants have less to do, and because the lifestyle is simple, less wasteful, the rich need less money, so they need not exploit the peasantry and labourers too much. The next generation will be borne into this austerity and would not suffer the same pain and disappointments that come with marrying for rank and money. And all the deceits and manipulations; deemed necessary to be able to keep social prestige.
You can see only what you know. This I saw called mental aphasia. Europeans are told that there were no Blacks in Europe. And they have learned that Blacks are inferior, mostly because of slavery. So the aspect of backwardness because of slavery has become a fixed trait with Blacks compared to whites. But when one discusses these things with whites, there also seems to be an aspect of hatred against Blacks. Blacks should be oppressed, and generally firmly dealt with because with their ugliness also comes bad morals and behavioural traits. The bad behaviour of a person is linked to his ugliness. The Black is bad because he is ugly, and he is ugly because he is bad. This begs the rational question: what did Blacks do to whites for whites to hate them so much. The novel by Charlotte Brontë answers this by showing how a white girl is raised and educated by Blacks, civilised by Blacks, which entails also severely mistreatment and torture, to be falsely accused, given a stigma.
This is what the Black European nobility did with its white serfs. After their emancipation in 1848 they did not look back, they wiped out the remembrance of the existence of Blacks among them. They would feign ignorance when confronted with all the imagery with Blacks, Moors, Classical African. The Blacks were somehow under pains not to do and say things that showed Black superiority. They had to remain silent and watch how history was white washed. Images of Black kings were substituted by whitened versions or fake images; whitened images of family members or complete strangers. Black families bought anonymous portraits on auctions and put their family arms on them. Then next there was a strange definition of who was Black. whites were never comprehensively defined. The Black European elite did not all resemble the Moor, the standard of blackness, but they kept aloof of whites, which were the serfs. The Blacks intermarried, and thought of pure blood, not mixing with the lower orders. So even the light brown ones, or those with non-classical African looks, were considered part of the Black nation. Blackness was also an identity and not only the sum of ones facial features. The system was like the Indian cast system, but that the higher cast were brown and black, while the lower casts were whites. There lower status made them eligible to be used as shoe leather. They were not humans. So until today, 163 years after there emancipation, descendents of European serfs cannot make out blacks or blackness in their art or even more: in their literary works. If they still happen to see race, it’s deemed metaphorically used. So there is no secondary literature available to bolster this analysis. And I have to address readers of colour and Blacks who are able to read the references to dark skin and a Black identity in Brontë and Jane Austen.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre; Case Studies In Contemporary Criticism (series), edited by Beth Newman, Bedford Books, 1996(1847)
Meyer, Susan, Imperialism At Home; Race and Victorian Women’s Fiction, Cornell University Press, London, 1996
Codfried, Egmond, The Eloquence Of Her Race; Was Jane Austen Black?, Egmond Codfried, 2011
Virginia Woolf
[Virginia Woolf. Vanessa bell]
VIRGINIA WOOLF’S INDIAN ROOTS
Virginia Woolf –Stephen must have been half or quarter Indian, her grandma was born in India, and she married an Ashkenazi Jew, Leonard Woolf, who has Dutch and German sounding ancestors. And he worked eight years in Ceylon, before he married Virginia Stephen. Virginia Woolf’s ancestors were named Pattle, clearly an Anglicization of Patel. She was clearly very dark complexioned, with full lips and thick Black hair twisted in a very Indian looking bun. Part of the fierce allure of Indian women is how they raise their arms, frame their bosom, and violently tie their beautiful locks in a bun. Her portraits which show a white skinned woman are whitened fakes, to hide her darkness. I wonder if there is any reference to India in her books, or that part of her personality can be understood as reflecting an Indian Identity. She is always shown wearing the latest flapper fashions so she and Vanessa, her even darker sister must have been a true traffic
stopping spectacle to behold.
[Vanessa Bell]
[Virginia Pattle Somers-Cocks (1827-1910]
There is reference to incest in her youth, starting at 14 by one or two step-brothers, who were the sons of the widow her father married, after Virginia’s mother died. He is supposed to also have molested her sister Vanessa Bell. But Virginia is also supposed to have had an intimate relation with her sister Vanessa. I need to read more to understand if she was a victim, and if this episode made her more disturbed then she already was. Somehow the fact that she took her life at an age when many people die anyway, makes it less significant to me.
I compare her to Eliza Comtesse de Feuillide, the cousin of Jane Austen. She was born in India and I suspect her father Tysoe Hancock to be (part) Indian, as her sole miniature shows her slanted oriental eyes. She also brags about ‘heightening the native brown of her complexion with a tan,’ to her niece James, by staying two years in the country. Which shows that some nobles did tan, as the brown skin stood for high birth, and nobility. Yet others also bleached their complexion, or used white make up, called ‘rouging.’ She talks with admiration of how white Marie Antoinette’s hands and arms are, while it’s clear that this was achieved by ‘art.’ She spent some time at Versailles and moved in the highest circles.
[Eliza de Feuillide]
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-IdZqH1Jp1SCJGpF5Ejh2523bpxNo-iCmXNDcp3Vxxyl7W9QCLX48w6cPsv-AD0IFhDEGch5cY2t0DuxCGI4ugzxtlrDGrth-DoXfhC1jdynwn80-ff1ia4ma0I0ZVE-tzmNlJYZhJfvP/s1600/book+cover+A5.jpg
De Feuillide also mentions that a the sister of a sister-in- law of The Austen’s married an Indian, with a British sounding name. My ‘Was Jane Austen (1775-1817) Black?’ publication already deals with the brown and black complexions of the Austens, as being part of the 2-3% brown and black Europeans who ruled the white Europeans, or the third estate. It’s highly improbable that all these rich persons managed to live with only one portrait made, so when we are told there is only one known portrait, we can be sure the others are too black to be shown.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning befriended an Anglo- Indian poet, who was a lesbian, writing how two women can make each other very happy, during a time we think such a thing could not be discussed. Virginia had lesbian relations with Vita Sackville, a noble women. She was very dark skinned and had a moustache. Woolf based Orlando on her, as it talks of how a young noble man suddenly turned into a woman.
[Merle Oberon. Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger]
[Merle Oberon]
Actress Merle Oberon was half Indian, and looks quite dark skinned in later photographs; so during her former film career was considerably whitened in some way. She is supposed to have been a lover of Prince Philip, who visited her in Mexico, where she had n estate. I also think about Johanna van Gogh- Bonger, who was the painter Vincent van Gogh’s sister in law. We have her to thank for his fame, as she managed and prudently exhibited his collection, inherited by her’s and Theo van Gogh’s son: Vincent van Gogh. She was a very dark skinned Indonesian or part Indonesian (?) women, described as ‘a distinguished, great lady.’
[Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger]
[Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737)]
It troubles me that these persons are whitened, even today, and no mention is of their roots. Bonger’s brother collected art as well, and helped her to manage the Van Gogh Collection, and his taste seems to me reflecting the love for a magical reality of Indonesians. As these persons mingled with the brown and black complexion European elite, I also wonder how strong the non-European influence really was. This we can only find out if today persons from these same back grounds start sifting through the sources. In this way even many known quotes become different and more significant to a person’s life, identity and work. When Isabelle de Charrière says ‘she does not have the white hands,’ she does not say her hands were ugly, but she confirms she was a brown skinned noble woman. As her rich, regent class grandmother Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737) looks classical African on a whitened Herman Serin portrait. It was this change finding that lead me to discover the blue blood is black blood theory (1100-1848), that the nobility was brown and black, and that all old master portraits are whitened since 1848-1960.
Egmond Codfried
Curator Suriname Blue Blood Is Black blood Museum
The Hague
http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/rarebook/exhibitions/stephen/24a.htm
The Third Estate
THE THIRD ESTATE (1100-1848 ) WERE THE WHITES
In this thread, I will present three main reasons why I think the third estate were the whites. They were ruled and oppressed by the first and second estates, who were respectively the church, and next the Nobility and the Bourgeoisie. The first and second tier did not pay taxes. The French Revolution (1789-1794) brought the Bourgeoisie to power, after they stole the revolution from their partner, the third estate. Restorations like the one by Napoleon brought the nobility back into power. The third estate was mostly the serfs, and they were only emancipated in 1848 during the final revolutions when all men got suffrage.
1
The general accepted version of history could be read in encyclopaedias and in wikipedia, and soon one discovers that the beginning of the nobility is always kept in doubt. Yet in science we need to establish facts, to built a theory on. In general, it is accepted that the first humans appeared in Africa and the first Europeans came from Africa when the ice melted 45.000 years ago. Africans have many complexions and facial types. Next we learn in general that these Africans became whites about 6000 years ago. Also that ‘our’ ancestors came from the Middle East 6000 years ago. We know about the so-called Ice-Mummies, found in Central Asia, who show blond types with white facial traits. We know about the Great Peoples movements around 400 AD, which brought great numbers of these white Asians into Europe.
Can Blacks become white? Rather Europe became white because whites from Asia poured in, where they met the native brown and black complexioned Europeans that David McRitchie writes about in ‘Ancient and Modern Britons’ (1884). He also assumes that the gypsies are remnants of these brown and black nations he calls Picts, Danes, Moors, and Tinklers. Gypsies show great disdain for the farmers and other settled folks, like nobles would. He says that gypsies are descendents of ancient noble and royal families who lost their castles, positions and rights, but act as if they still have these prerogatives. They still hunt and still collect goods from their former subjects, but which is now regarded as poaching and stealing. In looks they resembled native Australians and among those we find blond persons. These types we also see among modern dark skinned gypsies with blond hair. So, a historical person described as blond could still be very dark or black of complexion.
2
Jane Austen (1775-1817) wrote six (finished) historicize
novels and was described as a ‘brunette of complexion,’ and ‘brown, not a pink colour.’ That according to her John Donne quoting brother Henry Austen: ‘her eloquent blood shone in her modest cheeks.’ This can be understood as her having classical African facial traits, and being dark brown. Her father had frizzled hair, with ‘curls close to the head.’ And her mother’s complexion was ‘without any brightness,’ so she was very dark indeed. Austen’s mother descended from nobility. Fanny Price of ‘Mansfield Park,’ was based on the life of Elisabeth Dido Langsay, a beloved niece of Lord Mansfield, who was born from a slave woman. Austen wrote about the gentry and the nobility, and all her personages were ‘sallow or light brown, brown, very brown or black.’ But to her ‘the lower orders’ were the whites, also called Pinks.
They were the ‘two and three families in a country town as just the thing to work with’ Austen writes, and can be understood as 2-3% of the population. Mr. Elton in Emma (1816) is ‘black, spruce and smiling.’ In Mansfield Park her very rich Mr. Henry Crawford is ‘absolutely plain, black and plain; but still the gentleman.’ They were the heraldic Moor, like Othello, or any Moor at the centre of a noble portrait or genre piece, conveying blue blood, or Black superiority. Her cousins husband, Comte de Feuillide, was beheaded during the French Revolution, which must have devastated the Austen family, and this was her motive for writing against the fact that the Ancien Regime lost power. Her cousin Comtess Eliza de Feuillide described herself as ‘the native brown of my complexioned heightened with a Tan.’ She discusses the skin bleaching and whitening practices of the nobility, discussed as ‘face enamelling’ in internet. Austen’s father, Reverend George Austen, was nevertheless a trustee of an Antigua plantation owned by Mr. Nibbs, who was also Austen’s godfather.
Austen states in so many words that it is ‘natural’ to have whites as servants, that it was a great folly of Blacks to give whites notions of equality, and educate them or give them positions over Blacks. Finally, she wrote against Blacks diluting their pure blood with whites. From Jonathan Swift, and web-articles and books about flaying, books bound in human skin, clothing from human leather, and Louis XVI being offered slippers made from human skin, we understand that whites, the third estate were hardly seen as people. They were the outcasts from society. This is the evil the historical ‘Declaration of Human Rights’ seeks to address. All this was preceded by the invention of human races (1760), to raise whites to human level, and to invent racism against Blacks as a liberation ideology. The nobility, different then the equally brown and black complexioned bourgeoisie who had politically sided with the majority whites: self-identified as Black, with heraldic Moors and Black Madonna’s. Blue blood, the highest nobility, was Black blood and they were descendents of Blue Men, the brown and Black Europeans (500-1500). There were even brown and blacks among the Vikings who invaded all of Europe.
3
After the third estate won their freedom in 1848 they settled on Rembrandt to make him their figurehead to build a new, revolutionary aesthetic on. We learn from Alison McQueens study, ‘The Rise of The Cult Of Rembrandt, in 19th century France’ (2003) that the revolutionaries consciously invented a fake biography. And 900 works were attributed to Rembrandt, while today only 300 prevail. He was now declared to be a painter of the third estate. However, McQueen fails to understand that the high point of this history falsifying cult was mostly about amending all his figures as the paint was supposed to have darkened. To prevent any return to power of the first and second estate all old master portraits that showed a brown or black complexion, were ‘restored’ to whiteness, to reflect the supposed ‘intentions’ of the painters.
This can be seen on the fifteen offered old photos as sources, of portraits by Rembrandt, Van Mierevelt, Van Ravesteyn, and De Vries before the retouch era (1848 –1960). Most of these portraits belong to the Van Aerssen-Beyeren Collection, the richest family in The Netherlands, and Anna Margaretha van Aerssen was described as ‘black as chimney’ by her cousin James Boswell. A Scottish noble who in his journal self-described as ‘black.’ Boswell also tells us that King Charles II Stuart, who was known as ‘The Black Boy,’ was ‘The Swarthy Stuart.’ His teacher, the French philosopher J.J. Rouseau, was “A genteel black man in an Armenian coat.’ In his biography Boswell is ‘swarthy, with dark hair and black eyes. Yet the portrait offered shows a white man, with fair hair and very pink cheeks.
We are thus shown falsely, whitened portraits, and on inspection, the brown skins underneath face and hands are still visible. The restorers today, who are trained not to point this out, know about this. In their so-called scientific restoration reports, they often complain about the practices of 19th century restorers but never go into detail. Here we have a clear case of major scientific fraud and institutional scientific misconduct. This is to the detriment of brown and black complexioned persons, but mainly against the Blacks.
12 February 2013.
Shoe Leather
This part of my research, just found lurking on the web, caused some ruckus, as if I propagated this practice. This new discovery synthesised the idea that whites were kept as no more than shoe leather cattle by the nobles and bourgeoisie, and the Declaration of Rights of Men was to elevate whites into human hood. It was whites who were asking their noble masters to be accepted as humans. Some writers want to pass this off as blacks asking for equality, but then the question arises: who were the Blacks asking for this in 1760? There were none, as the slaves were in the colonies making their owners richer.
“A Brief History of Human Leather Trade in Europe
A Brief History of the Human Leather Trade, 1903
Ogden Standard, Ogden City, Utah25 April 1903
TANNING HUMAN SKIN
Happening to come across the other day the catalogue of a book auction in 1864, when a book on the Constitution of the French Republic, bound in human skin in the year 1793, was offered for sale, a book lover was prompted to inquire whether the human skin had ever been put to such a use before or since.
The inquiry led to a number of surprising revelations. It was not merely during the excesses of the French Revolution that such things were done, but as long ago as the thirteenth century he found there were in existences several such books, including a Latin Bible very handsomely engrossed upon a woman’s skin. In 1765 the “French Encyclopaedia” gave a recipe for tanning human skin, and stated that M. Sue, a surgeon in Paris, had presented the King with a pair of slippers made of human skin, according to this prescription.
During the reign of Napoleon III, a copy of the Decretals, written on human skin, was found in the library of the Sorbonne and transferred to the Tulleries. John Ziska, the one-eyed chief of the Hussites, ordered in his will that his skin should be tanned and made into a drum. “The noise which my skin will make,” said he, “will frighten away all our enemies and put them to flight.”
It was, however, at the time of the French Revolution that this art was developed to its greatest extent. A man presente himself one day at the bar of the Convention and announced that he had devised a simple and original scheme for procuring leather in abundance. The Committee of Public Safety granted him a concession of the Castle of Meudon, where he carried on his work with a certain amount of secrecy. In return for the concession of the members of the committee were privileged to be among the first to wear top boots made of human skin.
The tannery of Meudon acquired considerable notoriety. A great number of books were bound with the leather turned out there, and Phillipe Egalite, Duke of Orleans, encouraged the tannery by wearing a pair of breeches made there with human skin at a ball in Palais-Royal. The republican General Beysser, who made himself a name by his ferocity in the wars of La Vundee, set the fashion of wearing similar trousers in the army, always wearing a pair at battles and at reviews.
An old soldier who had taken part in most of the campaigns of the French Revolution, told a writer of memoirs in the middle of this century that he had owned a specially fine garment of this kind, made entirely of one piece. An architect, who was one of the leaders of the infamous Black Band of France in 1823, which for a long time terrorized the country districts in the West of France, wore a jacket made of human skin, comely and exceedingly comfortable.
The infamous Saint-Just, when at the height of his power during the Reign of Terror, caused a young and beautiful girl, who had refused his advances, to be arrested and sent to the scaffold. After the execution he obtained possession of the body, flayed himself and had the skin tanned and made into a waste coat, which he wore till the day of his death. The tannery of Meudon and its imitators carried on the process on an extensive scale, and must have made a good deal of money by tanning the skins of the victims of the Revolution for every sort of commercial purpose.
Oil extracted from human bodies was also placed upon the market and sold.
Since those days the process has naturally become much rarer, but Dibdin relates how at a comparatively recent date a collector possessed a treatise on sport bound in stag’s skin; a copy of Fox’s “History of James II.,” bound in fox’s skin and a book on anatomy bound in human skin. In 1837 the narrative of the adventures of a highwayman was bound in his own skin at Boston, Mass., with inscription in Latin outside, “This book was bound in the skin of Walton.”
For more, see:
http://www.devilspenny.com/2010/07/a-brief-history-of-the-human-leather-trade-1903/
http://www.devilspenny.com/2010/05/human-leather/
http://www.devilspenny.com/2009/08/bound-in-human-skin-1902/
http://www.devilspenny.com/2010/01/shoes-of-human-skin-1879/
http://www.devilspenny.com/2009/05/human-skin-strops/
http://www.devilspenny.com/2009/08/has-grewsome-taste-1900/”
Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Mr Elton, black, spruce, and smiling.
Such is the magic of Jane Austen that things only interest me if they remind me of her. I gave myself the task to analyse Emma, her best and most complicated novel. In this work she is at the height of her prowess and exhibits pure virtuosity in manipulating the readers mind. It should be approached as an allegory, but then what does everything symbolise? Austen uses what I call double purpose chapters. It’s like those drawing which show one thing viewed from above, and another thing when viewed from below. One rereads her work and discovers new insights each and every time. How does she do this? By providing you with just enough material to help construct the story in your mind, but by using your own recipe. Which might change from reading to reading. Austen warned that Emma’s heroine will be only liked by Jane Austen herself. And she might be right, because to think of it, Emma is really not a nice person. That she is imagining things, might be forgiven, but the way she consciously uses people is terrible. Mr. Elton is a wonderful man, and she never stops singing his praise as she tries to broker a wedding between him and her best friend Miss Smith. But when he mistakes her attentions to him, for an invitation, and he actually proposes marriage to her, all hell breaks loose. Only then we find out in how low esteem she holds him, yet he is good enough for her best friend. Her only saving grace is her patience with her ailing father. Perhaps we should not ask for more. And she is loveliness itself. Another part of Austen’s magic is her impeccable use of mise-en-scene. She truly knows the power of a gesture, how posture conveys meaning, directs the gaze of the viewer. Mansfield Park has many layers, but its really a kind of play, and we are prepared for the final scene, of the first act, when Sir Bertram is almost ejected onto the make shift podium. Almost landing on the readers lap. Her stories are very three dimensionally set.
EMMA: AN ALTERNATIVE READING
Emma (117) by Jane Austen is clearly an allegory for the history of Britain and cannot be read as a mere, realistic romantic story. The publisher John Murray must have actively sought the Royal dedication as the story satirises royalty and The Prince Regent’s father who was suffering from madness. All characters are black, very brown, brown or light brown; also referred to as sallow. These are Austen’s famous 3 and 4 families in a Country Village, who are in fact the only gentle Black families of Austen’s interest. So far, all scholars have chosen to ignore the concept of colour and race in Austen’s novels. They stopped short at noticing slavery, but ignoring the fact that Fanny Price is a mulatto, like most house slaves were, and related to their owners. Nor do they pay any notice to problems of Blacks living among whites that consider a brown skin ‘the annihilation of every grace.’ Or to Blacks related issues in Persuasion, like skin bleaching by Gowland’s, and painting oneself whites as proposed by Sir Walter Elliot to Lady Russel. This provides a further subtext to understand what colour a person is, and also when race mixing occurred. A practice frowned on by Austen, as the cause of the downfall of Blacks. Emma’s name was possibly inspired by Emma Hamilton’s fame, notoriety and great beauty. Emma was also the name of the ‘nut brown’ baron’s daughter from an adaptation, Henry and Emma, of the original poem The Nut-Brown Maid. She has the same hazel eyes like Austen herself and her rich brown if not a black skin. Emma’s vow not to marry, yet her welcoming of romantic interest, reminds us of Queen Elizabeth. Her loveliness refers to the ‘lovely’ Queen Mary Stuart, Austen’s favourite. Another subtext is Black History, which teaches us that blue blood was black blood and Blacks were despotically ruling European whites till the French Revolution. Emma deals realistically with the causes and effects of the French Revolution and its ideals, as they were felt in Britain. Austen writes didactic novels towards self-improvement, shows her strong engagement with the question of survival of Blacks, and presents her historical point of view and her political solutions to a new and uncertain stability.
The key to the allegory is Mr. Elton’s charade that identifies Emma as a Queen. Mr. Woodhouse and Emma are the same person as they are never in opposition with each other. It’s one part, which calms the worries of the other part of the institution. On another level he resembles the ailing King George III who imagined himself to be married to a lady-in- waiting and the mad King subsequently sexually harassed her. Mr. Woodhouse great dislike for marriage comes across as a deliberate reversal. He is also mentally ill, as we read about recurring fits of irrational agitation, as when the gruel is brought in. His constant references to people catching colds are never more conspicuous as when they are at the base of his opposition to having a ball at the Crown Inn. Catching colds means people having liberal ideas about freedom and human rights of men and women. The ball can only be held under supervision of Mrs Weston, a scrupulously loyal follower of the monarchy, who will supervise this experiment with liberalism, with all the classes of society communicating on equal footing. But the plan is shot down when Frank Churchill, who is not aware of the importance of rank, is obliged to pull out. At the second staging of this ball, other forces replace Emma, the monarchy, which has lost its chance to make a change towards freedom. Mrs. Elton who now leads the social parade, represents an independent and aggressive new class, coming out of trade, but setting itself up as a class above tradesmen.
Royalty had, for blameless motives, but against its own interests, tried to elevate whites into privilege, race-mixing in fact, with disastrous results. Emma lost Mr. Elton’s good opinion forever by even imagining him to be in love with Harriet Smith, a poor and illegitimate white woman. Knightly lives at Donwell Abbey and owns the whole of Highbury. He represents morality, but also The Church, The Justice System. The church is the richest landowner, but they actually work and improve the land. Where they constantly give moral judgement of the behaviour of royals, Mr. Perry follow the royals in their fear and hatred for ‘sickness,’ which are tendencies and movements striving for political changes towards greater democracy and social mobility. He might be the conservative press, the mouthpiece and watchdog of the King. Even Emma, the Kings successor was taken ill, but visited four times a day by Mr. Perry, and it was Mrs. Weston who healed Emma from the measles, which could have killed her. The successor was involved in leftist politics.
Jane Fairfax represents Jane Austen, the arts; and weak, pale and evasive because she is maligned and distrusted by the monarchy. So she even she ‘catches cold’ and has to live from the kindness of others. To a point she has to sell her services as a teacher and cannot practice her talents as an independent artist.
UPDATE ON THE ‘WAS JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817) BLACK’ RESEARCH
Today, the 17th of December we celebrate Jane Austen’s two hundred thirty-fifth birthday. A great writer who is celebrated for having done for the novel what Shakespeare did for playwriting. Her wit and her innovative, ‘realistic’ dealings with lifelike situations and a psychological insight in the workings and failings of the human mind; with believable characterisation, has stood the test of time and we can still readily understand her personages and their true motives. Yet what has been missing in all the many analyses by eurocentric scholars, the TV series and movies of her books as well as her biographical films and documentaries, is any reverence to her deep brown complexion and the ‘light brown, brown, very brown and black complexions’ of her central characters. This innovative research has already bloomed into about sixty pages, coming from the initial article, and is still growing, as there are still new insights to be found. The brochure, awaiting publishing, offers a foreword, introduction, definitions, methodology, conclusion, notes, many illustrations and a bibliography.
My own reading of Jane Austen, based on who I am and what I know from years of research after native Black Europeans, compared to the general and scholarly portrayal of Jane Austen, her personages, political views and motives; has thrown up some serious problems that need solving. Amazingly, the many great scholars who analysed the lady’s life and her works to the hilt; choose as one body to disregard all the insistent and ample descriptions of complexion in her novels. Even when they are discussing her own looks, they often do not quote the ten or so detailed pen portraits by her family and friends, which speak of a pretty, rich brown complexioned woman. They sometimes print the quotes and her pen portraits but let the brownness remain unanswered. Why is Henry Austen quoting poet John Donne (1572-1634) when he speaks of his own sisters ‘pure and eloquent’ blood. Which pureness is he speaking of; to what distinctive nation did Jane Austen belong to? When they discuss her so called portrait by Cassandra Austen, which shows a nasty looking white woman, there is never any comparison made with how her own good, separate features and pleasant looks were described in real life. Or that Henry insisted to a publisher that ‘the family was not aware’ of any portrait, when this unlikely portrait later surfaced. That Austen herself did not issue a portrait when she debuted in 1811, and her insistence on secrecy about her authorship; adds to this mystery. So the big question is: why is there no authenticated portrait of Jane Austen? And why do white scholars disregard the abundance of colour.
But first we need a rationale and workable definition of Black, which in my understanding of blackness; is a quality best discussed and analysed in terms of a person’s identity and history then actual skin colour or facial features. Or scull measurements or DNA. A Black person should next be considered as a functional part of a social and political group. A group who has experienced a common history, made certain geographical movements around the globe, has certain common cultural elements as in the general way of doing things, that creates a bond between the Blacks across oceans and across time. A Black identified writer, like Jane Austen will mainly talk about issues regarding Blacks, like how we expect a Jewish identified writer to write mostly about Jewish things, from a Jewish viewpoint. The shape of his nose does not inform us of his identity. And Blacks come in many shapes and nuances of colour, as Austen herself painstakingly points out with her novelistic pen portraits and letters.
The idea of human races, as a predictable biological and a psychological phenomenon has long ago been discredited, yet is today still in full swing. Especially when it comes to identifying Blacks, in order to exclude Blacks from history. Like how pharaoh’s, Africans, are improbably turned into blue eyed, white potentates ruling over Blacks and overseeing the building of the pyramids! This makes one wonder why they did not built pyramids in Amsterdam, London or Paris; but in Africa? All studies and exhibitions about WWII routinely omit any discussion of Hitler’s Black victims. Like the so-called ‘Rhineland Bastards,’ the off-spring of French-Senegalese soldiers, part of the occupational army after WWI, and white German women. And other Blacks who were native German. Or the Black American soldiers who helped to fight fascism, ethnic cleansing and mass murder during WWII. All are curiously missing from the numerous and most recent studies about the Holocaust. These are some of the facts and questions that inform my approach. Can we disregard the colour of Hitler’s 50.000 Black victims, even when we know he had a special hatred for the Black, mixed-race Germans. He accused the allies that they had deliberately brought in Africans to defile the German race with inferior blood. And do we agree when Black blood is spoken of as inferior? The Nazi’s sterilized or simply murdered these Blacks and used some as camp overseers before all were gassed themselves. Now can we still disregard colour when Jane Austen herself dwells on and amplifies this quality in all her writings? And even her circle of family and friends cared to point out that she was not pink but brown.
Her deliberate descriptions of her personages as Black or brown is needed to make any sense of her Black oriented themes, and they must be taken into account to understand her identity and her intentions for writing her layered stories: when she did, and in the way that she did. The novel Emma (1816), in a Dutch translation falsely presents the key-line: ‘Mr. Elton, black, spruce, and smiling.’ as ‘Ds. Elton, keurig in het zwart, kwam glimlachend te voorschijn.’ (Reverend Elton, neat in black clothes, appeared smiling). Mr. Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park is definitely not a minister but is ‘absolutely plain, black and plain; but still the gentleman.’ His sophisticated, lovely sister Mary is brown, with a lively black eye. By not accepting the fact that Mr. Crawford and Mr. Elton are Blacks, we totally miss the true depth of Emma’s folly when she tries to marry Elton off to her friend Harriet Smith who is a blue-eyed blond. Or when Emma, as a Black woman, so deprecatingly and foolishly compares the white gentleman farmer who loves Miss Smith to the Black, Mr. Elton. Then we truly understand why the immensely wise Mr. Knightley is so upset with Emma, and why Mr. Elton was so offended by Emma’s wish. And why he, and the vigorous and malicious wife he eventually married, went out of their way to insult poor, white Miss Smith. Who eventually marries the more suitable white gentleman farmer. Yet all these persons symbolise historical events, emerging social groups and institutions under siege. And suddenly Emma as a novel does not resist analyses, as is usually claimed.
Jane Austen is actually talking about the emerging, Regency Era race relations and about race-mixing, which she was against, derived from her letters. Broad faced Mrs Blount with ‘her pink husband & fat neck,’ from her letter to Cassandra, should be understood in this context. As should Mrs. Price in Mansfield Park who deeply offended her family, by probably marrying a white Mr. Price who had ‘no education, no means and no prospects.’ Making Fanny Price, like Miss Lamb from Sanditon, a mulatto. A sensitive fact pounced on by her cruel aunt, Mrs. Norris. In Sense and Sensibility ‘Golden Mohrs’ are mentioned, pointing to the role of blackness in the founding of the European civilisation. But the novel Emma is all about 10.000 years of Black Civilisation, the history about Blacks who brought civilisation to Europe and became a noble and royal elite at the end of the Medieval period. So Austen’s deeper reasons only emerge after a colour-conceptual reading of Emma; that by elevating whites to their high level of civilisation, and to actually dilute their pure blood with whites; European Blacks have lost their power and were even losing more power if they did not change their ways. If they do, they could still prevent to be at the total mercy of whites. This would be the total annihilation of Blacks. Austen satirises the then current Hanoverian, German-British royal family with the sickly George III’s fear of his daughters marrying and his hysterical hatred of new ideas and social change, represented as catching dangerous ‘colds.’ In this way Austen’s cautions Blacks not to be afraid of change.
Emma herself is probably named after the then popular adviser and paramour of Horatio Nelson: Emma Hamilton, a nut-brown beauty. And presents an amalgam of the ‘lovely and elegant’ Queen Mary of Scots as well as her niece, the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I. Emma’s preference for Miss Smith’s blond looks reminds us of King James I Stuart too, who had a equal preference for young, blond men. So I also agree with a ‘queer reading’ of Jane Austen, based on her many, mischievous but empowering reverences to gayness. James was Queen Mary’s son and the grandfather of Charles II Stuart who was called The Black Boy. These were all native Black, British and Scottish royals and Jane Austen was very aware of these rapidly disappearing historical facts due to revisionism. The beheading of her niece’s husband, the Comte the Feuillides during the French Revolution (1789-1795) gave the horrified Austen’s there personal experience with the revolutionary hatred against the Black nobility. That is why she took to writing these allegorical novels. Jane Austen was an activist to the cause of European Blacks based on her knowledge of Black History and her own experiences as a native Black Britton.
By following this reconstruction of the past we can now easily understand that her famous line about a preference for ‘four or five families in a country town to work with’ only refers to the four or five gentle Black families, who socialise, help each other to advance economically and intermarry. We can also see that she includes all types of Blacks in her group, the fair ones she describes as sallow and the black ones. But the fair ones seem to flock towards the truly black skinned ones, if we notice in Northanger Abbey the preference of the sallow Catherine Morland to Mr. Tilney who was brown, and of the fair Bertram siblings of Mansfield Park towards the very dark Crawfords. Austen proposes blackness as an expression of health and beauty. Churchill teased Jane Fairfax for her pale skin, but afterwards he concluded that she had ‘just enough colour for beauty’ and had a ‘distinguished’ complexion. Her Classical African features made her looks ‘peculiar’ in Austen’s parlance. And unlike what we were told; part of the elite enjoyed ‘heightening the native brown of my Complexion’ with a tan, as her niece, Eliza Comtesse de Feuillide proudly describes her own looks. Yet another part bleached and painted their faces white, which practices Austen deplored in Persuasion and her letters. Eliza Bennet’s unspoken but inferred advantage over her rival, Miss Caroline Bingley; is her brown and tanned complexion, which is much admired by the rich Mr. Darcy. Yet to some in The Watsons, Emma Watson’s very brown complexion was ‘the annihilation of every grace.’ Racism?
With the Black History approach and giving due attention to the abundance of blackness in Austen’s life and her novels; we can now evaluate the rich subtext and understand Jane Austen’s dedication to the plight of her Black nation. And why the early dead of ‘the purple flowerette of the vale’ was so sincerely bemoaned by her clan. As they were fiercely protective of her image. Her books are actual comical, self-help books, allegories that present an idealised black gentry, in order to empower and urge improvement Blacks. To better themselves at a personal level. But also reminding them as a group of their history and to warn about the changing times. And that they should start paying attention, stop the foolish race mixing and assisting whites to advance and encroach upon their own positions; for they will face total annihilation as a culture and a people. They will be completely rewritten and whitewashed out of history. Her visionary fears for her Blacks are proven real today if we view the eurocentric reading of Jane Austen, after 235 years, by the total exclusion of Blacks we have already descended to.
Paramaribo-Suriname
17 December 2010
LOST IN JANE AUSTEN
‘Lost in Austen; Same Story different Centuries’ (2011) is one of the best TV series based on the novels and the live of Jane Austen (1775-1817). Every adaptation is also a new reading of her novels and adds to our appreciation, and scientific knowledge of the art, the live and times of Austen. This is more a rewrite, a new novel based on an Austen novel. To me it fails to present the true and strong historiographical aspect of Austens highly allegorical, and political novels who self-identified as black. This version adds a new and very vocal character to Pride and Prejudice (1814), one Amanda Price from present day Hammersmith, London, who symbolises everybody who during the last two hundred years came under the enduring spell of Jane Austen’s novels. She so strongly dreams of living at Longbourn, the Bennets home, has been in love with Mr. Darcy for most of her live; she thus naturally finds his great love Elisabeth Bennet from the Regency Era roaming her bathroom, where a mystical door opens into the Longbourn attic.
The filmmakers decided that we are not to be seduced by the beauty of the Era that could deflect from Austens great genius. The period costumes lack glamour, colour and richness, they often look like drab sleeped in, sleep dresses. Filmmakers can never agree on how Regency England really dressed. How deep the necklines were, how sumptuous the fabrics, how brilliant the colours. Woman wearing deep bonnets indicating modesty, at variance with the décolletage we associate with period Empire dress, but which titillation is here cruelly kept from us. The hair work on Jane Bennet and her Mr. Bingly looks poor and fake, and Elisabeth Bennet’s modern bobbed wig gapes at the back. The cramped period sets never come to live, they remain back drops, museum period rooms rather, with modern actors milling about. The casting is forgettable and only roommate Piranha and Charlotte Bingly are absolute beauties. No male beauty on display and Darcy is ugly, evoking a gaunt Count Dracula with his huge sweeping coats. Jane Bennet is played sensitively, giving more flesh to her feminine goodness, just as she is already written. Both mother and father Bennet’s personages are less altered but rather our consensus justified, deepened, by them comprehensively acting out their motivations, rational convictions, powers, frustrations and character. The bounds of family and duty are more forcefully acted out for us, as we today live different, individualistic, affluent and easier lives. Elisabeth Bennets discovers the bathroom light switch cord and says she would play with it the whole day, as she only knew cumbersome candles. The heritage factor of the Jane Austen mania is evident in the display of gardening, landscaping, stately, historical castles, and even in showing natural ways of mouth hygiene with fresh birch twigs, salt and chalk, and old fashion foods as calf feet in cream, Mispel jelly and deep fried larks.
The casting is of interest to me as I did a research titled Was Jane Austen Black? (2010), which states that she was described as a ‘brunette of complexion,’ and ‘a brown, not a pink colour.’ Her first cousin Baroness Eliza de Feuillide self-describes as ‘the native brown of my complexion, heightened by a Tan.’ All of Austens novel personages are either ‘light brown or sallow, brown, very brown and black’ of complexion. In Northanger Abbey Austen states: ‘The Tilneys are brown and superior.’ In Emma we have: ‘Mr. Elton, black, spruce and smiling,’ while in Mansfield Park, Mr. Henry Crawford is ‘absolutely plain, black and plain, but still the gentleman’ while his lovely sister Marie Crawford, is ‘very brown with a dark lively eye.’ Till now white actors played all these persons, so we do not see what Austen was really talking about. She protested the lost of power of the brown and black complexioned European elite, who oppressed their white serfs. In Austens world the ‘lower ranks’ are the whites. Her mulatto Fanny Price was modelled after the historical Dido Elisabeth Langsay, the mulatto niece of Lord Mansfield. Austen was against educating whites, giving them notions of equality, giving them positions, and diluting the noble blood by marrying whites. Reason why in the highly allegorical and political novel Emma (1816), Mr. Knightley as a noble man is so upset when Emma Woodhouse tries to have Mr. Elton marry the blond, blue eyed Miss Harriet Smith. Who is also from unknown birth, symbolising the mysterious origins of whites.
In this movie, Amanda Price’s lovely roommate is one Piranha, played by a British African Actress Gugu Mbata Raw. She resembles the African type known as African Caucasian, without prognatism and a narrow nose. She is very brown with curly brown hair, and her casting seems to point to how Austen herself was described by friends and family. Yet Austen seems to have had the classical African facial traits, next to her deep brown complexion; so she did not resemble an African Caucasian, but a ‘True Negro.’ In her times her look spelled ‘pure blood’ or pure noble blood, according to her brother Henry, as she resembled a heraldic Moor, symbol of blue blood, high birth and Black Superiority. As she and her family were very proud of their noble ancestors, represented by her looks, she was never depicted as white. This is the reason we are not shown her true portrait, as anybody would notice the blackness of the world greatest novelist. It never ceases to amaze me that a Black Activist like Jane Austen is turned into a white woman, totally obliterating her timing, true motivations and intentions to write, and the enormous worth of her novels to reconstruct history. She seems to be the most explicit writer about Black Superiority, as she lived in the times that spelled the lost of power of Blacks in Europe by their own folly. So lovely Piranha is like Jane Austen’s alter ego, yet slightly revised to suit prevailing racist notions about Blacks and beauty. Her name seems to refer to Austen’s forbidding personality, which might be part of her stated and practiced feminist persona, as she was also described as a sharp tongued ‘poker.’ All modern movies gingerly refer to her lesbianism, yet only noticed by the connoisseurs, and that makes this series the most explicit in highlighting this recurring Austen theme. Kitty Bennet innocent sexual awareness and need to cuddle, and her waking up Amanda Price with her embraces, with Price in a rage showing her her artfully shaved pubic hair; recalls the puzzling sleepovers of Harriet Smith at Heartfield, the home of her lover Emma Woodhouse. Price wants to deflect Mr. Bingley’s romantic attachment away from her, to Jane Bennet, and thus tells him she prefers women to men. This news he tells his sister Caroline Bingley, who then comes out to Amanda Price as a complete, yet untried lesbian. But says she will marry Mr. Darcy anyway, as women always adapt and conform. Price is mostly the fierce, cold water throwing, feminist Austen who in movies is often buried by the wrong interpretation of her romances, sexual wooing and the deplored female submission.
The sensitive writing by Guy Andrews skirts the time travel movie aspect, the funny business around people from a technically more advanced age travelling back to an unenlightened time. Price uses a few modern expressions, one connected with landing a jumbo jet, parroted by the Bennet sisters, which is very funny. Some playing with the expression ‘abroad,’ which meaning changed from ‘being outside’ to ‘being in a foreign country,’ to present-day audiences. Price refers to Darcy’s mien as ‘aristocratic languor’ and that he has nothing at hand, which is a wrong understanding of Austen’s world view. She identified as gentry and thus anti aristocracy, of persons being praised who’s only merit is high birth, but not accomplishments. Darcy was to her an ideal hero and ideal member of the gentry, coming from trade, but who took care of the land and looked after the tenants of his lands to who he was ‘the best master.’ Lady de Bourgh, who remained the staunch feminist but silly aristocrat, befriends Charlotte Bingley in the end, suggesting they are lovers. Darcy, her cousin, had decided not to marry Charlotte Bingley as he does ‘not love her.’ Earlier he rejected Price after she confessed she was not a ‘maid’ anymore after living a year with Michael, her boy friend. Michael projects modern male cute looks and prowess, but expresses the beer drinking uncouthness and beastly aspects like peeing in the sink, of contemporary modern mans vulgar behaviour in the eyes of women. Michael symbolises the noisy, ill mannered, unstructured, alienating, lonely urban mess we live in today. Still in Persuasion Austen astonishingly writes about permanent alienation, which again violates our views of her world as emotionally fulfilling, polite, decorative and well ordered. His only saving grace is his willingness to commit, to marry Amanda Price, although he had cheated on her. On this head the ending, a fantasy in the story, is romantically pleasing with Amanda Price and Mr. Darcy kissing as lovers, but morally ambiguous as she already decided to return home. If this means settling down with highly unsuitable, unchangeable Michael remains unclear to me, as her reading Austen was a way of escape from a live where she says she only tried to cope. She exhorted the Bennets not to cope. Elisabeth will learn to love Darcy; ‘the love comes from the talking,’ Amanda instructs her. Which reminds me of the need of people to wanting to change the person they love. But Amanda has also hindsight, yet to communicate is a good thing, especially as men are not raised to communicate their feelings. No guarantees offered.
How does a person who does not read Austen view such a movie? They are familiar with science fiction, time travel, and different historical mœurs, yet incomplete and cliché like. The Amanda Price personage refers constantly to the book, and carries the book with her, and explains how the persons ought to behave according to the book, and who they should fall in love with or marry. Next almost everything is overturned, and even the books wicked, baddy Wickham turns out to be a paragon of virtue and male honour. Elisabeth Bennet exchanges place with Amanda Price, and we thus see Price’s point of view as she has to recount, direct and comment on the story. Finding her own role, but with hindsight, yet the fellow personages are not as she knew and likes them to be. She is prejudiced, but is set right in the end about their true characters. Her own character is revealed and the tender merits of old fashioned ideas about the best type of intercourse between men and women. Elisabeth Bennet who strikes today readers with her rationalism, and her Modernity, takes with avidity to the modern feminism and the prevailing energy preservation ideals of today. She retrieves and embraces the maligned purple Teletubbies figure, which was seen outside with the trash. In a way this movie offers us a complete different story, a complete different psychology and different prides and prejudices. The movie’s concept is cultural comparison, a highly intellectual and sophisticated and elitist pursuit as one needs to rise above and criticise ones own culture and background. But presented as mass entertainment to introduce Austen to the masses. Like Austen’s own concept, which lived as a member of a bohemian tribe, outside the world she described, satirised and criticised. Austen found the novel shined too bright, perhaps referring to its non-problematic, perfect novelistic structure. The movie is much like the novels and offers with every viewing new aspects. Knowing who you are today, what you should aspire to, where you belong, who and what you love, who you should marry.
Egmond Codfried
The Hague
10 October 2012
AISHA
The timing could not have been better for me as I’m presently surrounded by scholarly books about author Jane Austen (1775-117). I’m writing a research ‘Was Jane Austen Black?, based on her personages who all are Blacks, and her own personal description as a dark brown woman, with African facial traits. All of these works are seriously flawed, and ideological racist, as they never touch on the insistent skin colour schematics Austen offers. She even talks about problems around the concept of race and race mixing. But these works have an analysis of Emma (116), which is Austen’s final novel, and is credited as her most accomplished and cynical; but the hardest to analyse. Aisha (2010) is an Indian, movie adaptation of Emma and there is no colour subtext. To me Emma resist analysis because it should not be read as a straight romantic story, but as an allegory about Black History, the causes of The French Revolution and the new political realities the classes must accept. It’s a novel about self-knowledge, self-improvement and a warning to Blacks to pay attention and not to be afraid of change.
The movie treats the book as a straight romantic story, without any attempt at historification. There are a few faint references to her other novels and scholarly approaches. In a sense a picaresque story, with things just happening to the protagonist; Aisha/Emma. A rich, wilful girl who takes up the business of matchmaking with disastrous results. Hurting the ones she sets out to help. It takes a long time before she discovers how wrong she is. Finally at the brink of self-annihilation her instincts kick in. Throughout she is questioned and scolded by her livelong friend Arjun, the Mr. Knightley of the novel. The film writers carefully preserved the basic storyline, asking themselves; what makes Emma, Emma? A true cinematographic tour de force. Any adaptation is a new reading, an experiment and a comment on the original. Emma is much about class and rank, which does not translate well to the merotocratic and cosmopolitan world in which we live today. So the makers omitted these two major forces, which in the novel work on Emma. Aisha now only belongs to metropolis Mumbai, not a country village, and the thickly peopled, moneyed higher classes. There is no threat to her social position, which is really the greatest driving force and the danger in Emma. Aisha is not the dominating presence, nor is she a queen to be dethroned. Just someone who manages to be the centre of attention. And this she does most beautifully in a stunning Dior wardrobe.
The white Miss Harriet Smith, Shevaly in the movie, is a middle class girl from the village who, even worse, does not accept being perceived as socially inferior. Miss Smith from the novel is acutely aware of her inferiority to Emma, which makes Emma’s attention to her so remarkable. Gear is of great importance, also cars and houses which today only screams money and not class and breeding. The outings to Donwell and Box-Hill are represented by a trip to a white water rafting resort, where the company indulges in some weed smoking. It’s a nice touch to be alerted to the fact that Emma and her set would today be knocking about in Dior, Chanel, Ferragomo and Louis Vuitton, but I ‘am not prepared to have them smoking pot! Austen’s books express her love for her Black nation and are about self-improvement; so taking drugs would be wholly contra productive. Perhaps this shows too much realism, even to the point of showing them sitting on toilets; as a device of verisimilitude. However, we should not forget that Austen’s father, reverend George Austen, used to have a little side trade in Indian goods and opium. But opium was generally used and not an illegal drug. The concept of drug addiction as a disease was not yet established. He was also a trustee for a plantation on Antigua, belonging to Jane’s godfather, Mr. Nibbs. The unity of place is however less enforced as it is in Emma because we actually get to see the places outside Highbury, where Emma as a novel is situated.
It’s hard. How would the movie have satisfied me if I did not know the story beforehand? What about the folks who don’t know Jane Austen? The look is very modern and contemporary. The main characters are dressed in European stile. Stylish, elegant and very skimpy. Only Shefaly wears some traditional sjalwaars, off and on. In the hospital where Aisha visits her sister who gave birth, we notice how short a dress Aisha wears, as the camera catches her panties. The women are young but at times appear disturbingly like pre-teenagers, children really, even sitting in a dollhouse. Perhaps this is a pointed reference to Austen’s fierce feminist criticism of how society looks at women? We also see Aisha standing outside the hospital in her short dress with two fully dressed Indian ladies in the background. As if Aisha escaped the movie set, to symbolise how detached she has become from reality.
The personal struggle she has to face when she realises how lost she is, is symbolised by her binging on desserts and Haagen Das ice cream. She then applies for a job and quitting Mumbai, like Aarti/ Jane Fairfax, but is somehow saved from this somehow wretched fate by Arjun who finally states his love for her. They had loved each other for a long time but did not think themselves worthy. She was distracted by her misguided projects and was not really thinking. He because he watched her only to find fault and keep her from harm.
The question is: does the movie convince on its own merits? Perhaps the story needed to be watered down, because we live in more complicated but less trying times. There is less a climate of change and uncertainty, then when Emma was written. We are however never more in need of a global revolution, to eradicate the last vestiges of colonialism. India has fully outgrown its status as a former British colony and matches or even exceeds anything perceived as western and thus forward. An Indian producer can even do a better Emma adaptation then a western filmmaker and sets a hard act to follow. The choice was made to take the major incidents from Emma out of context and given another, less dire meaning. The ill-judged, untimely and unforeseen marriage proposal by Mr. Elton is an error of manners and high comedy, but becomes in Aisha an ironic ‘joke’ about sexual harassment. Without understanding of the underlying story about revolution and change, a full strength presentation would have been too long, complicated and bewildering with the many twists, to a movie audience. Austen’s contemporary readers would readily understand her references to the outside world, while we would first need a long history lesson. It’s a very satisfying movie because of the visual spectacle it offers, as we may expect from any Indian movie. There is some alluring, but functional dancing and singing, that don’t put the plot on hold. All in keeping with the novel, too. The exceedingly handsome characters have the unusual appearance of purpose, although we have no clue where all this leads. So this movie version is a string of unrelated incidents, which yet give some measure of gravity to the characters, but only the final denouement is what really ties them together. This can also be said of the book version, which keeps us guessing with its many false leads. Aisha has given clues of little jealousies toward Arjun and Aatri, Knightley and Jane Fairfax, but nothing major. And towards the end she agonises over the idea that Arjun and Shewaly are united, while they are not. All the while Arjun is like a big brother, all about solicitude and criticism. Yet from these disparate feelings, intensified by the incidents; love grows.
It’s because of this strange story, told with great and unfaltering authority, we are forced to ask; what is the story Miss Austen really wants to tell us? How would I go about making a movie adaptation? It would have to be a two-teired affair. Two stories, simultaneously told. An overpoweringly, romantic one with magnified bucolic charms and a fairy tale like air, commenting on itself. And a totally newly created, relentless and harsh story of civil war and terror, set around the French revolution, with the same players, doubling. The themes would be the corruption, inherent to class and rank without true personal merit. But seen from the bottom up. Upsetting the natural order by elevating a conquered people and imposing equality on two disparate nations, which goes against historical truth. Both storylines singing the praise of decency and benevolence, a true love of humanity under pressure. These war-like themes would find their counterpart in her indolence and the race-mixing practises Emma indulges in. It has to be historical because of the central role of rank and class, which are alien to us today. The players would have to be as Austen decreed. Mr. Elton, spruce, black and smiling. Jane Fairfax would be a light skinned Black and Harriet Smith; a blue eyed blond. While Emma and Frank, who used to tease her for her paleness would indeed be extremely dark skinned, like all the characters from Paradise by Toni Morrison. As would Mr. Weston and his wife, Mr. Knightley; and Mrs. Augusta Elton are. She soon dethrones Emma to become a vigorous surrogate but vulgar replacement. Gentleman farmer Martin, the proper partner for Miss Smith who really loves her, is off course white.
Mijn nieuwste verhandeling is getiteld: ‘The Purity and Eloquence of her Blood; Was Jane Austen Black?’ en betreft een wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar het verschijnsel huidkleur in het leven en werk van Jane Austen (1775-1817). Dit werk is zowel gebaseerd op de talrijke beschrijvingen van Jane Austen’s eigen persoon, als haar beschrijvingen van haar hoofdpersonages als Emma Woodhouse, Emma Watson, Henry Crawford, Marianne Dashwood en Anna Eliot. Hierbij gebruik ik mijn eigen onderzoek, Blue Blood is Black Blood (1500-1789), als theoretische basis. Door Austen te vergelijken met Belle van Zuylen (1740-1805), Isabelle de Charrière, krijgt men meer oog voor de wijze waarop deze tijdsgenoten, op overeenkomstige wijze met het verschijnsel kleur omgaan en wordt de symbolische werking van gekozen bewoording beter onderstreept.
De nogal cryptische beschrijvingen vormen namelijk een weerspiegeling van de tijd waarin beide schrijfsters leefden; de tijd leidende naar de Franse Revolutie, tijdens de Franse Revolutie (1789-1795) en de eerste periode na de Franse Revolutie die in 1848 eindigde. Toen was het voorgoed gedaan met de despotische macht van de Europese vorsten. Mijn Blue Blood Theorie voegt de component kleur toe aan de bestaande kennis over de Franse Revolutie en verklaart de periode daaraan voorafgaand als die van een Omgekeerde Apartheid, met een zwarte en gekleurde adellijke en koninklijke elite die de witte meerderheid despotisch onderdrukte. De gekleurde burgerij profiteerde van deze systematiek en alle kansen op opleiding en de toegang tot hoge posities waren aan hen voorbehouden. In hun uiterlijk waren het bruine en zwarte Europeanen, ‘een endogaam, gefixeerd, mulattenras met een zwarte identiteit.’ Zowel Van Zuylen als Austen schreven over de lotgevallen van deze groep, waartoe zij ook behoorden. Hun beschrijvingen van de uiterlijke verschijning en huidkleur volgen de literaire conventies, waarbij de beschrijving van een personage ook informeert over karakters. Van het personage, als van de waarnemer. Maar door kennis over de rol van kleur, geven deze beschrijvingen informatie over de kleur en de daaraan gekoppelde maatschappelijke positie van het hele gezelschap. En geven in code ook de acute, veranderende opvattingen over kleur weer.
In Persuasion is er geen beschrijving van kleur te vinden, hoewel dit boek heel veel over schoonheid praat. Sir Walter Eliot: ‘Was handsome with the blessing of beauty.’ Wat was de ‘blessing of beauty’? ‘Handsome’ zou toch genoeg moeten zijn, temeer daar het woord ‘beauty’ gereserveerd is voor de schoonheid van vrouwen en niet van mannen. Maar hij was ook een ‘failing father’ en ‘silly and conceited.’ Pas op pagina 44 vernemen wij zijn schoonheidsregime, welke gebaseerd is op het gebruik van Gowland’s Lotion gedurende ‘de hele lente.’ Austen gebruikt de naam van een bestaand product en vanwege de populariteit en bekendheid bij haar publiek voldeed alleen het woord Gowland’s. Dat is ‘the blessing of beauty’ waaraan Austen refereert, en betreft een ‘satiriserende’ benadering van de ideeënstrijd over kleur.
Gowland’s betrof een controversieel product welke zich onderscheidde door de ‘corrosieve’ werking van de toegevoegde Lood en Kwik zouten. Loodacetaat, loodwit, is een dekkende, witte kleurpigment met een blekende werking. Kwikzouten hebben een verlammende werking op de gezichtsspieren en de toepassing in een gezichtslotion wordt vergeleken met het gebruik van Botox in onze tijd. Gowland’s Lotion had dus een drievoudige werking. Namelijk cosmetisch: door de toevoeging van loodwit was het een dekkende make-up die de gebruiker een wittere kleur gaf. Ten tweede had Gowland’s een sterke blekende werking, waardoor hij slechtst enkele maanden per jaar kon worden toegepast. En tenslotte werkte deze lotion verjongend door het elimineren van rimpels door het verlammen van de gelaatsspieren.
Door de verwijzing naar Gowland’s Lotion heeft Austen de beschrijvende woorden bruin of zwart voor huidkleur bewust omzeild. Zij komt daarmee terug op de meer openhartige beschrijvingen uit eerdere werken en kiest de weg van de metafoor voor het geven van een cryptische beschrijving. Tegelijk geef zij daarmee op satirische wijze haar eigen visie op schoonheid weer door het gebruik van deze blekende gezichtscrème toe te schrijven aan de persoon van Sir Walter Eliot, die zij eerder als een falende vader en een dommige en pretentieus personage opvoerde.
Bronnen:
Egmond Codfried, Belle van Zuylen’s vergeten oma, Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737), Een beknopte studie over zwarte en gekleurde Nederlanders en Europeanen door de eeuwen heen. Uitgeverij Egmond Codfried, Den Haag (2005)(2009) ISBN 90-0067-2-2
Egmond Codfried, Blue Blood is Black Blood;The Iconographical Proof of A Dominating Black and Coloured European Race Which Was A Noble and Royal Elite (1500-1789), Uitgeverij Egmond Codfried (2009) ISBN 978-90-71452-06-2
Egmond Codfried, The Purity and Eloquence Of Her Blood; Was Jane Austen Black? Manuscript (2010)
The Cult Of Rembrandt
Adolphe Braun
Rembrandt
Van Mierevelt
Mauritshuis
To The State Council, Raad van State, Mrs. mr. Lilian Goncalves-Ho Kan You, and Board of Trustees of Mauritshuis Museum at The Hague. In regard to: The End of Racism and White Supremacy, Massive falsifying of history, Large-scale scientific fraud, and Institutional scientific misconduct, with the retouched Old Masters portraits on public display to the detriment of yellow, brown, black and especially persons of African descent.
Your Honour mr. Lilian Goncalves,
I kindly inform you that if my research over many years after the ethnicity of the European nobility, royalty and bourgeoisie, the Blue Blood Is Black Blood Theory (1100-1848) is right: all museum directors, restorers and boards of trustees like yourself constitute a criminal organisation that intentionally exhibits falsified, whitened portraits of the Ancien Regime and supposedly upkeep and describe them scientifically while they constitute a horribly faked body of data.
The European whites, the Third Estate, liberated themselves in 1848, perhaps for the second time as the bourgeoisie stole the French Revolution. History was rewritten. Revolutionary museum directors ordered all brown and black faces of the noble and bourgeois elite to be retouched, over painted, under the false pretence that the paint had darkened and the varnish had yellowed, but the painters intention was to depict whites. The revolutionary French insisted Rembrandt was a pure Republican who was free from popish and monarchic tyranny and a painter who depicted the Third Estate, the white serfs. To this purpose a fake biography was concocted and all his figures were unjustly whitened. Restorers like Professor Alois Hauser and J.C.Traas, who were employed by the Mauritshuis Museum, perpetrated this heinous criminal act from 1848 to 1960. (A. McQueen 2003, Epco Runia 2010)
My request to you is to look after my personal safety after years of the most atrocious torture in a refrigerated police cell, stigmatising and prosecution in connection with the discovery of this gigantic fraud. Furthermore I request that you study the Old Master portraits in your Mauritshuis Museum with magnifying goggles, as the alterations are very visible on top of the brown faces: especially as you know what to look for, namely vandalism by ugly, over painted faces and hands. Restorers are instructed not to point these ‘iconographic interventions’ out and to maintain them as much as possible, which resembles the ‘omerta.’ (The Maffia vow of silence)
Because of my research I’m able to understand that the philosophers of the Enlightenment were also members of the brown and black complexioned bourgeoisie and invented Human Races and Racism as a Liberation Ideology to free the third estate from noble Black Supremacy, which was severely maintained by the first estate (the church), and the second estate (the nobility and bourgeoisie), who were 2-3% of the total population. Louis XVI was presented on the eve of the French Revolution with slippers made of human skin. The Declaration of the Rights of Men were the allochtone Asian whites asking the autochtone brown and black complexioned European nobles, to be regarded as humans.
Hereby you are offered an opportunity to help end the grievous racism against Blacks worldwide, and to give this benevolence and a great gift to humanity a Suriname touch.
Your friend, Egmond Codfried, Eemstraat 36, 2515 VS The Hague, The Netherlands
Suriname Blue Blood Is Black Blood Museum. Bluebloodisblackblood.blogspot.com
Open letter. The Hague, 4 January 2013. URGENT.
Aan de Raad van State, ter attentie van Mr.Lilian Goncalves Ho Kam Young
Raad van Bestuur Mauritshuis Museum te Den Haag. Inzake: Einde van Racisme en Witte Suprematie: Grootscheepse geschiedvervalsing, Massale wetenschappelijke fraude en Geïnstitutionaliseerd wetenschappelijk wangedrag met geretoucheerde portretten van Oude Meesters in openbare collecties ten nadele van gele, bruine, zwarte en vooral mensen van Afrikaanse origine.
Geachte Mr. Lilian Goncalves,
Gaarne maak ik u erop attent dat als mijn jarenlang onderzoek naar de etniciteit van de Europese adellijke en bourgeois elite, de Blauw Bloed is Zwart Bloed Theorie (1100-1848) juist is, dan zijn alle museumdirecties, restaurateurs en Raden van Bestuur waartoe ook uw persoon behoort, criminele organisaties die bewust vervalste, verwitte portretten van de oude elite tentoonstellen en wetenschappelijk zouden beheren en beschrijven terwijl het gruwelijk vervalste data betreft.
De witte Europeanen, de derde stand bevocht in 1848 haar vrijheid, wellicht voor de tweede keer nadat de Bourgeoisie de Franse Revolutie had gestolen. De geschiedenis werd herschreven. Revolutionaire museum directeuren gaven toen opdracht de bruine en zwarte gezichten van de adellijke en bourgeois elite te retoucheren, wit te maken, onder het valse voorwendsel dat de verf donker was geworden en het vernis vergeeld, maar de schilders de intentie hadden witte mensen af te beelden. De revolutionaire Fransen stelden vast dat Rembrandt als zuivere republikein die vrij was van Roomse en monarchale tirannie een schilder was die de derde stand afbeeldde, de witte lijfeigenen en horigen. Daartoe verzon men een fictieve biografie en werden ten onrechte al zijn figuren gewit. Wellicht vond dit vanaf 1848 tot 1960 plaats door o.a A.Hauser en J.C Traas die werkzaam waren in het Mauritshuis Museum. (A.McQueen 2003, Epco Runia 2010)
Mijn verzoek aan u is toe te zien op mijn persoonlijke veiligheid, na jaren van de meest verschrikkelijke foltering en vervolging die samenhangt met de ontdekking van deze gigantische fraude. Verder wil ik u verzoeken de Oude Meesters in uw Mauritshuis met vergrootglas goggles te bestuderen, want deze vervalsingen boven op de bruine gezichten zijn zeer zichtbaar, en beslist zo als men weet waar men naar zoekt: namelijk vandalisme dmv lelijke, overgeschilderde gezichten en handen. De algemene instructie aan restaurateurs is om geen melding van deze ‘iconografische interventies’ te maken, en zoveel als mogelijk te handhaven, een soort ‘omerta.’
Vanwege mijn onderzoek begrijp ik dat de filosofen van de Verlichting, die ook leden waren van de bruine en zwart gekleurde Bourgeoisie de Menselijke Rassen en Racisme tegen Zwarten verzon als een Bevrijdingsideologie, bijna een religie, om de derde stand te bevrijden van Zwarte Suprematie, welke zeer streng werd gehandhaafd door de eerste stand (de kerk) en de tweede stand (de adel en bourgeoisie): 2-3 % van de bevolking. Lodewijk XVI ontving aan de vooravond van de Franse Revolutie een paar slippers gemaakt van menselijke huid. De Verklaring van de Rechten van de Mens was vanwege de allochtone witte Europeanen die als mensen gezien wilden worden door de autochtone, adellijke bruine en zwarte, elite.
Aan u is hierbij de mogelijkheid geboden een einde te helpen maken aan het hemeltergend Racisme tegen Zwarten wereldwijd, en om deze nobele weldaad en geschenk aan de hele mensheid van een Surinaams randje te voorzien.
Egmond Codfried,
Eemstraat 36, 2515 VS Den Haag
Suriname Blue Blood Is Black Blood Museum
Den Haag, 4 januari 2013.
TO THE DIRECTOR OF THE MAURITSHUIS MUSEUM AT THE HAGUE
TO THE ATTENTION OF MR. ERPCO RUNIA
Subject: White superiority is based on whitened, fake portraits of the European noble and bourgeois elite, described as brown and black of complexion, which your museum exhibits as authentic portraits.
December 9, 2012.
MANUSCRIPT OF A NOT POSTED LETTER
Dear Mr. Erco Runia,
Although I have been researching the ethnicity, looks and nature of the European elite (1100-1848 ), and published several works and articles on this head, and opened a museum dedicated to their looks: its only recently I started with researching the process of whitening the portraits. A process I came to regard as scientific misconduct.
The book edited by you: ‘Conservering, restauratie en onderzoek; Bewaard voor de eeuwigheid. (Zwolle ) I read as a half confession which one only understands if one knows that under the guise of restoration, your old masters were over painted, repainted by staff members A.Hauser and J.C Traas, till far into the twentieth century in order to make the brown and black faces pink and beige, in order to present a fake European history by fraudulently turning the historical elite white.
Your Mr. Hauser and Traas can be compared to professor Diederik Maas who as we speak is being prosecuted for scientific misconduct, by fraudulently adapting research data and inventing data to conform to his preconceived scientific conclusions. The original portraits, before they were meddled with, tell a complete different story of the Ancien Regime, and its white serfs, the ancestors of the present whites. And proofs there were brown and black complexioned persons pesent in Europe, but sitting on thrones and ruling as a bourgeois, regent class elite. Even the painters belonged to the brown and black complexioned bourgeois elite.
On page ..Mr. Traas is seen in his studio in front of a very blackened painting. One can see a person with a white millstone collar and a black complexion. Beside this photo I present photos from a 1915 exhibition in The Hague of Van Mierevelts and Ravesteyns from the Van Aerssen-Beyeren Collection; which show the authentic brown and black complexions. I also present photos of De Nachtwacht and De Staalmeesters by Rembrandt which were photographed and exhibited during 1880-1887 at the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam.
By doing so I have proofed that the several restorations, which the literature informs us about and are offered as restoration report, only tell half the story in order to hide the true purpose of these intrusive operations. There is much talk about the yellowed varnish, and its decay, offering more opportunity for soot and dirt to attach itself. Much is said about the darkening of paints. But these facts are exaggerated in order to explain away the original dark skin colours and to hide the grave iconographic intervention to make these persons white.
If yellowed varnish and darkened paints were the culprits, this should also have altered and covered the white collars and cuffs, while also the white girl in the middle of De Nachtwacht, who is a mascot, should have been darkened while she is still the lightest spot on this sooty canvases. If soot was the reason Black Pete looks black, soot does not explain his frizzled hair and thick red lips and his pristine white collar, and that he does not represent a Moor, a Black. Black Pete is a heraldic Moor that was only in 1848 added to the Sint Nicolaas celebration. Which since then functions as a racist initiation, during a period of national hysteria, to teach little children they are white and the Black is ‘the other’ and their enemy.
The faking and presentation of these whitened portraits in Europe are the aftermath of the French Revolution (1789-1794) and the final revolutions of 1848 that liberated Europe from the Ancient Regime and noble oppression, which identified itself as Black and superior with heraldic Moors. Museums are churches of this revisionism and the keepers of the collections practice scientific misconduct. Their ‘conservation’ and ‘research’ is even after two hundred years only meant to maintain these fakes. God forbids they will be able to perpetuate this evil for eternity.
This type of science builds on race science, which perpetuates the unscientific concept of Human Races and its negative results for Blacks. These results still prevail as white supremacy and anti-Black or anti-brown racism in Europe and does worldwide. My researches also reveals that we again have social isolation of allochtones, much like 1933-1945 when European Jews were thus isolated. As if states are again planning a Holocaust by stigmatising allochtonen and accusing them for every wrong and thus creating a base among the population to make violence, driving away, robbing and murder of allochtones acceptable.
Your actions and those of your staff I perceive within this context, and your attempt to deny this deceit, to appear less culpable does not convince me. In general I have experienced that a rational discussion with the Dutch of these matters was not possible.
Your friend,
Egmond Codfried
Curator Suriname Blue Blood Is Black Blood Museum
Eemstraat 36
2515 VS Den Haag
National Portrait Gallery
RKD/IB
To Mrs. Sabine Giepmans,
Coordinator portraits database
IB/RKD, The Hague
In regard to: My research of the ideological inspired over paint/whitening of all Old Master portraits in public collections since 1848.
The Hague, 23 January 2013.
Dear Mrs. Sabine Giepmans,
We spoke last week as I approached you in search of 19th century photographs of Old Master painted portraits before they were retouched, because the claim was that the paint had darkened and the varnish yellowed, making the persons look dark, while the idea was asserted that the painters intended to make them white. You were not familiar with these photos that supposedly were also collected in albums, so I hope they might still surface at the RKD, and at the other institutes you have suggested. In regard to my questions about old museum exhibition catalogues you referred me to the RKD library, for which I thank you.
So these portraits were all restored to their supposedly original white state. Because of the study by Alison McQueen about The Rise of The Cult Of Rembrandt (2003) in 19th century France, I trace the start of this ideologically inspired practice of retouching all portraits in public collections to 1848. When The Netherlands had it’s important change in the constitution, ending noble privileges, and giving the third estate equality before the law, and political representation. In France the third estate males got universal suffrage. As the political status quo changed, so did views on art and aesthetics. A lot of imagery that symbolised the ruling caste and its principles of noble superiority were destroyed during the French Revolution. What remained were the portraits that showed the true faces of the Ancien Regime, the church hierarchy or first estate, and the nobility and the bourgeoisie who were the second estate.
The newly emancipated third estate consciously settled on Rembrandt and decided to make him a figurehead for the new republican order. They created a fictional biography, and attributed 900 works to him, while today only 300 prevail, and claimed him as a painter of the third estate. As a true republican who lived and created free from Roman Catholic and monarchic tyranny. The final stage was restoring his portrait that originally represented the face of the Ancien Regime to their supposed whiteness, to represent the white third estate, the newly emancipated white serfs.
In this way all Old Master portraits and many genre pieces were whitened by over paints between 1848 and 1960. At the Mauritshuis this was done by professor A. Hauser and JC.Traas, among others. Restoration reports today like those by Erco Runia (2009) enlist them, but not specifying what they actually did. Present day restoration reports refer to their questionable practices, which are morally nor aesthetically supported by the professional code today, yet not going into detail. But they are clearly referring to the extensive retouches on the faces and hands. Yet restorers are instructed not to point out ‘iconographic interventions,’ not to mention them in their restoration reports and maintain them as much as possible. So the present day restorers maintain, and even restore interventions from 160 years ago that we (they) do not understand nor agree with today. Nor freely discuss as they constitute a falsifying of history to change the complexions of the Ancien Regime from brown and black to white. This constitutes scientific fraud, and institutionalised scientific misconduct as this ‘science’ is based on falsified data and a preconceived conclusion that the ancien regime elite was white.
The old photographs from old master paintings by Adolphe Braun and Goupils proof this assertion. As well as photos by Nandini made and published in 1934 of the Van Aerssen-Beyeren family Collection. They were exhibited in 1915 at the Gemeente Museum, and now reside at the Del Prado, in retouched, whitened state. A member of this family, the richest in the Republic, was described as ‘Mrs Maasdam black as chimney.’ She was Anna Margaretha van Aerssen (17..- 18.., Baroness Van der Duyn van Maasdam. There is no portrait of hers submitted, but the chief part of the Van der Duyn van Maasdam collection, of one of the oldest nobility, is not photographed nor scientifically described. They are no part of your RKD collection, and I urge you to find out why. An engraving of George Keppel of Albemarle, whose mother was a Van der Duyn, shows a very dark skinned person. His uncle Aarnout Joost van der Duyn was described by James Boswell, a cousin of his wife, as ‘Her husband chimney sweeper.’ Isabelle De Charrière (1739-1805) wrote a poem in admiration of his brown black complexion: ‘A son teint noir et basané’(1764) And she claimed in a letter that this family was famous for their swarthiness.(Whatley …)(Courtneu 1993) the RKD shows a whitened portrait of the Baron by De Spinny. Engravings like those of Keppel were made after painted portraits. These paintings exist now as over paints, or are kept hidden or were destroyed.
I submit my findings of brown and black complexioned portraits, mostly engravings that show the royal, noble and bourgeois elite were indeed brown and black of complexion, while some like Jochem de Neve, the youngest Syndic and a bourgeois, who shows strong classical African facial traits, next to very dark skin. Those were considered pure of blood, or proof of nobility. This is what all the portraits by Old Masters looked like, as the elite highly valued it’s dark complexions, and even wore the huge white collars to amplify this quality.
Kind regards.
Egmond Codfried
Curator Suriname Blue Blood is Black Blood Museum
Eemstraat 36/ 2515 VS The Hague
Bluebloodisblackblood.blogspot.com
To the Board of Directors of RKD/IB,
Mr. Chris W.M. Stolwijk, director
Drs. Bert Warmelink, commercial deputy director
In case: Verbal refusal of request for a copy of a copy of a Spanish magazine article in the Van Aerssen –Beyeren Dossier
The Hague, 27 February 2013.
Dear Sirs,
I was today at the RKD and requested a photocopy of a photocopy of an article in a Spanish art magazine of 1934, about the Van Aerssen-Beyeren Collection, which was exhibited in 1915 in the Gemeente Museum in The Hague.
I’m doing research after the Van Aerssen family. They owned part of Suriname where I originate and Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck (1657-1688) was a Governor of Suriname.
Be so kind to enlarge on this refusal and explain how the privacy of these long dead people can be violated, if I get to study the collection pictures.
This looks also like censure, while in Holland we favor openness and freedom of scientific research.
I have already seen the copy version of the article at the RKD in 2005, but now I understand better what I saw then and want to include this in the study I’m writing at present.
Hope to hear from the RKD soon.
Kind regards,
Egmond Codfried
Eemstraat 36
2515 VS Den Haag
Source:
J. Hernandez Diaz, 'Notas para la formacion del catalogo de los retratos existentes en la coleccion del baron van Aerssen-Beyeren', Boletin de Bellas Artes de Sevilla 1 (1934),
Notes to : THE FAMILY VAN AERSSEN’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE BLUE BLOOD THEORY
[1] Codfried, Egmond, Maria Susanna Du Plessis 91739-1795); dader of slachtoffer?, Uitg. Egmond Codfried, Den Haag 2003
[2] Het nieuwe begrip Surinamocentrisme is geinspireerd door erkende termen als eurocentrisme en afrocentrisme. De Surinaamse natie kan ook bezien worden als beginnend met de ‘prehistorische’ Surinaamse Indianennaties en dat de kolonisatie door Europeanen slechts een cesuur in de ontwikkeling van de natie was. Het manuscript van John Stedman werd in 1988 van een inleiding voorzien en uitgegeven door Price.
[3] Voltaire 1756. Codfried 2003. Stedman 1988:
[4] Nciow, lezing van…
[5] Codfried 2004: 22
[6] Oudschans Dentz 1938: 25
[7] Dubois, Simone, Belle van Zuylen (1740-1805) Leven op Afstand, Europese Bibliotheek, Zaltbommel 1979 p. 153
[8] Elias, Het vroedschap van Amsterdam, 1903: .Courtney, C, Madame de Charriere,..,
[9] Hoogbergen, Wim, De bosnegers komen, slavernij en rebellie in Suriname, Prometheus, Amsterdam 1992: 129-131
[10] Codfried, E, Belle van Zuylen’s vergeten oma: Maria Jacoba van Goor (16-1737), Een beknopte studie over zwarten en gekleurlingen in Europa en Nederland door de eeuwen heen, Uitg. Egmond Codfried, Den Haag 2003
[11] Halbertsma, van Sandick 1963:
[i]Article by … Arte
[ii] Isabelle de Charrière, 2006, p.
[iii] van Brabant François van Aerssen
[iv] Isabelle de Charrière, p
[v] adelsboek, internet google
[vi] There are no letters like yours
[vii] google.nl.
[viii] Genealogisch tijdschrift
[ix] D. McRitchie, Volume I
[x] The rise of the magi, Kaplan
[xi] Blue Men, old texts
[xii] F. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity, 1971
[xiii] JASA site
[xiv] internet articles about human leather
[xv] E. Codfried, Was Jane Austen Black?, 2010
[xvi] Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, 2003 p.209
[xvii] Codfried 2004: Belle van Zuylen’s vergeten oma; Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737); Een beknopte studie over zwarten en kleurlingen in Europa en Nederland door de eeuwen heen.
[xviii] Rogers: 1941. Jennings 2002
[xix] v. Strien, Madeleine (Lettre de Zuylen et Pontet) 2004
[xx] Smith, Paul (Lettre de Zuylen et Pontet) 2004: 13-15
[xxi] Courtney 1993: 225-227
[xxii] Guyot 1958. Codfried (Wi Rutu) Een Surinaamse plantagehouder in Zwitserland, Pierre Alexander Du Peyrou (1729-1795), jaargang 3 nummer 1 juni 2005 p. Amsterdam .
[xxiii] Whatley 2000:68, 476
[xxiv] Vanwege zijn dikke wenkbrauwen en sombere air kan het portret wel Aarnoud Joost voorstellen
[xxv] Courtney 1993: 65-66. Whatley 2000: 63-64
[xxvi] Courtney 1993: 65-66
[xxvii] Blakely 1972:
[xxviii] Whatley: 63, n63
[xxix] Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Case Studies In Contemporary Criticism (series), edited by Beth Newman, Bedford Books, 1996(1847):
[xxx] Codfried, Egmond, The Eloquence Of Her Race; Was Jane Austen Black?, Egmond Codfried, 2011
[xxxi] Brontë: 46, 61
[xxxii] Meyer, Susan, Imperialism At Home; Race and Victorian Women’s Fiction, Cornell University Press, London, 1996: 1, Introduction: Race as a Metaphor. Chapter 1; ‘Black’ Rage and White women: Charlotte Brontë’s African Tales. Her Angrian tales shows a complete identification of Brontë with Africa as the origins of the European Blacks. The fairness of some members of the historical European elite could also be explained by the ‘fair’ Africans among the Berbers, and the light skinned West Africans Peuls: the fair Africans are never isolated from their darker group members or darker neighbouring nations. Both persons with dark skin or white skin and classical African features can also identify as Berber. Going by descriptions, I believe there was also a historical European type, that was akin to fair haired and blond but black skinned Australian Aboriginals. The description of brown and black skinned persons as pale or blushing seems more a literary device to convey emotion, and can confuse the present reader, a victim of revisionism, who takes a realistic view to these matters.
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