History
written by supporters would glorify Tigers & Jackals – not only as powerful
but as kind and merciful too .. .. .. British East India came to India as
traders, raised their relationship with Kings, made the Nation a colony and
treated Kings as vassals – and domineered major part of the world – traded not
only species but ‘humans’ as well – treating people as slaves.
Meermin was an
18th-century Dutch cargo ship of the hoeker type, one of many built and owned
by the Dutch East India Company. She was laid down in 1759 and fitted out as a
slave ship before her maiden voyage in 1761, and her career was cut short by a
mutiny of her cargo ! They had been sold
to Dutch East India Company officials on Madagascar, to be used as company
slaves in its Cape Colony in southern Africa. Half her crew lost their lives in
the mutiny; the mutineers deliberately allowed the ship to drift aground off
Struisbaai, now in South Africa, in March 1766, and she broke up in situ.
The Malagasy are an
Austronesian ethnic group native to the island country of Madagascar. Traditionally
the population have been divided by subgroups (tribes or ethnicities).
Between 1658 and 1799 the
Dutch East India Company bought and transported approximately 63,000 enslaved
people to its Cape Colony in southern Africa, now part of South Africa. In
Dutch, the company's name was Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie: abbreviated
as VOC, the company's initials were used
in a monogram which appeared on company materials as a logo. Meermin was a 480-ton square rigged ship with
three masts, built in 1759 in the Dutch port of Amsterdam for the VOC's African
trade. From Dec 1765 she was working the coastline of Madagascar, under Captain
Gerrit Muller and a crew of 56, taking Malagasy men, women and children to be
enslaved in the Cape Colony. Carrying about 140 Malagasy, she set sail from
"Betisboka Bay" on the north-western coast of Madagascar.
The Meermin slave mutiny
took place in February 1766 and lasted for three weeks. Thus Meermin’s final voyage was cut short by the mutiny of
the Malagasy captives onboard, who had been sold to Dutch East India Company
officials on Madagascar to be enslaved by the company in its Cape Colony in
southern Africa. During the mutiny half the ship's crew and almost 30 Malagasy
captives lost their lives.
Meermin set sail from
Madagascar on 20 January 1766, heading to the Cape Colony. Two days into the
trip, Johann Godfried Krause, the ship's chief merchant, persuaded the captain,
Gerrit Cristoffel Muller, to release the Malagasy slaves from their shackles
and thus avoid attrition by death and disease in their overcrowded living
conditions. The Malagasy were put to working the ship and entertaining the
crew. In mid-February, Krause ordered the Malagasy to clean some Madagascan
weapons, which they used to seize the ship in an attempt to regain their
freedom; Krause was among the first of the crew to be killed, and Muller was
stabbed three times but survived.
The crew negotiated a truce,
under the terms of which the Malagasy undertook to spare the lives of the
surviving crew members. In exchange it was agreed that Meermin would return to
Madagascar, where the Malagasy would be released. Gambling on the Malagasy's
ignorance of navigation, the wounded Muller instead ordered his crew to head
for the coast of southern Africa. After making landfall at Struisbaai in the
Cape Colony, which the Malagasy were assured was their homeland, 50 to 70 of
them went ashore. Their intention was to signal to the others still on board
Meermin if it was safe for them to follow, but the shore party soon found
themselves confronted by a militia of farmers formed in response to Meermin's
arrival; the farmers had understood that as the ship was flying no flags, it
was in distress.
Meermin's crew, now led by
Krause's assistant Olof Leij, managed to communicate with the militia on shore
by means of messages in bottles, and persuaded them to light the signal fires
for which the Malagasy still on board were waiting. On seeing the fires, the
Malagasy cut the ship's anchor cable and allowed the ship to drift towards the
shore, after which she ran aground on an offshore sandbank. The Malagasy could
then see the militia on the shore preparing to come to the ship's assistance,
and realised that their situation was hopeless; they surrendered and were once
again enslaved. Muller, the ship's mate Daniel Carel Gulik and Krause's
assistant Olof Leij were tried in the Dutch East India Company's Council of
Justice; all three were fired from the company, while Muller and Gulik were
also stripped of their rank and wages. The enslaved Malagasy were not tried,
but the two surviving leaders of the mutiny, named in Dutch East India Company
records as Massavana and Koesaaij, were
sent to Robben Island for observation, where Massavana died three years later;
Koesaaij survived there for another 20 years.
Johann Krause was
probably the most experienced merchant trading in Madagascar, to avoid the loss of profit caused by enslaved
Malagasy dying while at sea, Krause convinced Captain Muller, who was in his
first command and was unwell at the time, to unshackle some of them and make
them work on deck. Disease was spreading
among the Malagasy in the unsanitary conditions below deck, and the ship's
surgeon had reported that, while there were no suitable medicines on board,
disease was spreading to the crew. VOC
regulations did permit them to be released onto the deck from time to time,
under careful supervision; the chief concern was that they might jump overboard
to escape, rather than that they might mutiny, despite a mutiny by the slaves
occurring on the VOC ship Drie Heuvelen in 1753.
Though a pact was arrived on
the ship between the crew and its captors, who had once been chained and
enslaved – the owners betrayed, took them to a different shore, the vessel was
grounded and people got killed.
On 30 October 1766 the VOC's
Council of Justice found Captain Muller and the surviving ship's mate, Daniel
Carel Gulik, guilty of culpable negligence and sentenced them to demotion and
dismissal from the company; they lost their rank and their pay was docked. They
were also ordered to pay the costs of the case and were sent home to Amsterdam,
having to work their passage; Muller was banned from the Cape Colony and was
banned for life from working for the VOC. Other
rulings made in this case represented a "huge step in the recognition of
oppressed people [such as slaves] as free-thinking individuals". The VOC's normal punishment for a slave who
attacked an owner or overseer was "death by impalement", but none of
the Malagasy were tried. For lack of
sufficient evidence it was decided that the remaining mutiny leaders Massavana
and Koesaaij should be "put on [Robben Island] until further
instructions". The purpose of this
was for observation of their behaviour, in the hope that Massavana and Koesaaij
might shed further light on how the mutiny had arisen. Massavana died on Robben Island after 3 years ;
Koesaaij survived there for another 20 years.
The most merciful
Britishers who traded slaves, enchained people, treated humans cruelly,
colonized lands, grabbed wealth, brought in laws stating that those kingdoms
without heirs would become their domain, crushed people uprising, went on to
rule the World for couple of hundred years .. ..
With
regards – S. Sampathkumar
18th
Feb 2022.
