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- .CLAAS GERRITS(Z) VAN BENGALE
An important stamvader to many South Africans, together with Claas Mallebaar, he shares the rare distinction of being one of the very few non-European stamvaders to have founded a family that became an integral part of the indigenous white Afrikaans-speaking community in southern Africa.
A freed slave from Bengal, his descendants came to bear the patronymic Claesz and also use the surname Claassen. A major portion of his descendants in the male line has been incorrectly ascribed in published works to another stamvader Cornelis Claesz van Utrecht (alias Kees de Boer). Claas Gerritsz has also been ignored in virtually all major genealogical publications and compilations of South African families. This publication hopefully sets the matter straight.
Historian Anna Böeseken equates him with Gerrit van Bengale who was freed by his owner (patron) the free burgher Jochum Marquart on 23 December 1676. He was already at the Cape in 1671. He appears in the Opgaaf Rol for the year 1682 as single adult male free burgher resident in the Cape District owning the following: 3 male slaves, 1 horse, 35 oxen, 650 sheep, 3 flintlocks and 1 dagger (degen). He was baptised as an adult at the Cape’s Groote Kerk on 10 February 1686 (no witnesses being recorded). The baptismal entry reads as follows:
Claes van Bengale beiaerde
Slavery and Bengal
Bengal is the present-day Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). By 1718 the Dutch already had long since established six trading settlements in Mughal-occupied Bengal: Bellesoor (Balasore), Ballouwa or Volta (Falta), Bernagoor (Baranagar), Houghlij (Hug(h)li or Hoogli), Cossema Besaar (Kazimbazar) and Patana (Patna). Then there were also trading posts or factories manned by the English, Danes and French. Baranagar (which was also Danish-controlled) is singled out by Johan Daniel Buttner for its carnal pleasures:
The Dutch Company has a pleasure-garden, although it is now in a desolate state. This is a place where dwell none but whores, of all sorts of peoples, such as Portuguese, Jentiven [ie Hindus] etc, and here prostitution is no disgrace, nor reckoned as any sin. Anyone who desires a whore can rent such a female and use her as long as he will; everywhere he goes he can take her with him, and when he will have her no longer nor desires her, he lets her go off again, and pays her so much as he thinks fit. This is called here ‘keeping a female’...
Buttner’s description of the local Hindu population (the Jentives) is worth quoting:
The Jentiven, inhabitants of the lands of Bengal, have been here since antiquity, but are not under the rule of the Great Mogul. They offer their services to the Europeans who arrive by ship, to serve them as attendants or servants, since the custom here is that anyone may take a servant to serve him so long as he remains here, for which he pays him nothing except that he has the ‘Costumada’, that is to say when he buys anything [for his master] he receives from the merchant one rupee for each 100 rupees, and this is his pay. In addition, he gets Costumada from everything, although one must beware of such, since they are very deceitful...The inhabitants of the country are called Jentiven, although all the country is occupied and inhabited by the Moors. The Jentiven dress like the Moors or Turks, all in white linen, with a turban on the head. They live very frugally and eat little. They may not kill nor eat any living animal, but nourish themselves with milk, butter, roots, rice etc. They are very deceitful, and everyone must have a care of them lest he be deceived, and especial care of the merchants, who are called Benjanen [Banians], who are very sly and clever in trading. As regards language, they speak a distinct tongue which is not the same as Arabic, and this is called here the Bengal language, although Arabic is also in use and both are spoken...When the rich die they are burned. The wife also lets herself be burned with him, and leaps into the fire to the sound of many instruments. If she will not do this, her hair is cut off and she is chased away. Such a woman may not marry again, but must live by prostitution, and this they call ‘Pousseraun’, chasing away. Dead poor are usually thrown into the water. They take old men who can no longer walk or work to the bank, set a funnel in their gullet or neck and pour into the throat a mixture of sand and water so that they suffocate, and are then thrown into the water...
The origins of slavery in Bengal are steeped in antiquity. It is unlikely that Claes Gerritsz would have been Hindu or even Muslim, but not unlikely that he could have originally been sold by Moors. The existence of so-called tribal and mountain peoples (indigenes or aborigines) on the fringes of Muslim and Hindu society cannot be disregarded and also the abduction of people from places further afield such as Assam and Arakan (situated in the present-day Burma).
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Bef 1656 - 1697 (~ 41 years)
