The discovery, nature, and implications of a Papiamentu text fragment from 1783 (2)
by Bart Jacobs & Marijke J. van der Wal
2. The Letters as Loot research programme
The Letters as Loot research programme, conducted at Leiden University, concentrates on a recently rediscovered collection of Dutch documents from the second half of the 17th to the early 19th centuries, comprising over 38,000 letters, both commercial and private ones (cf. Van Gelder 2006).
These documents were confiscated during the frequent warfare of England and the Netherlands in the past, when no fewer than four Anglo-Dutch Wars (cf. Table 4) were fought, apart from the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic period in which both countries stood on opposite sides.
1st Anglo-Dutch War 1652 – 1654
2nd Anglo-Dutch War 1665 – 1667
3rd Anglo-Dutch War 1672 – 1674
4th Anglo-Dutch War & American War of Independence 1776 – 1784
Napoleonic period 1793 – 1813
Table 3. Chronology of Anglo-Dutch Wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
This warfare involved privateering, a longstanding legitimate activity, performed by all seafaring European countries and regulated by strict rules. When private ships (privateers) authorized by a country’s government, attacked and seized cargo from enemy ships, the conquered ship and all its cargo were considered as loot for the privateer, if rules had been followed scrupulously (Van Gelder 2006:10). In England, it was the High Court of Admiralty (HCA) that had to establish whether the current procedures had been properly followed. In order to be able to decide whether the ship was a so-called lawful prize, all the papers on board, both commercial and private, were confiscated. After the legal procedure, the confiscated papers stayed in the High Court of Admiralty’s Archives, gathering dust for centuries; nowadays, they are stocked in a thousand boxes in the British National Archives (Kew, UK). To fully appreciate the huge number of letters in these boxes it is important to note that in very many cases the ships’ cargo contained a lot more mail than the crew’s own correspondence. Ships often took mailbags on board and thus functioned as mail carriers between the Netherlands and remote regions such as the Caribbean and East India (Van Gelder 2006:10-15). The largest share (62%) of the more than 38,000 Dutch letters, sent from the Netherlands all over the globe and vice versa, was found to be confiscated on ships to and from the Caribbean, many of them sailing in the period of the 4th Anglo-Dutch war (Van Gelder 2006:31). Thus we find letters, for instance, to and from St Eustatius, Curaçao, Surinam, Essequibo (present Guyana) and Demarara (present Guyana).
Een wisselbrief uit de slaventijd
Among the whole collection it is the number of about 15,000 private letters that are priceless material for scholars from various disciplines. These private letters report, for instance, on singular events such the Great Hurricane of 1780 in the Caribbean and more generally on daily life, hardship, joy and sorrow at home and abroad. For historical linguists in particular, interested in the scarcely documented daily language of the past, their value cannot easily be overestimated. As the letters were written to and by spouses, children, relatives and friends, they represent the so-called language of proximity, characterized by informality and a degree of orality (cf. Koch & Oesterreicher 1985). The relative proximity to authentic speech or the ‘speech-like’ nature of such private letters has been stressed by among others Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg (2003:29) and Elspass (2012:162). What makes the Dutch letters even more attractive and most suitable for historical sociolinguistic research is that the writers were people from all social ranks, men and women alike. Thus the letters are a highly valuable linguistic source that allows us to fill gaps in the history of Dutch (cf. Van der Wal, Rutten & Simons 2012). Although in our Letters as Loot research programme we mainly focus on phenomena and issues related to the history of Dutch, we regularly come across surprising finds that are relevant for the history of other languages. Such an intriguing find is a late-eighteenth-century Papiamentu letter and three Dutch letters with Papiamentu words and phrases, all dating from 1783. They originate from the network of the Charje family, living on the island of Curaçao in the last decades of the 18th century.
3. Socio-historical context of the Papiamentu letters
The Letters as Loot corpus contains ten letters, dating from January and February 1781 and January 1783, that were written by members of the Dutch Charje family. February 1781, from Curaçao, both Jacob Charje (married to Anna Sophie Charje) and his eldest son Pieter Andries write to ‘sister’ and aunt Dorothea Boufet in Amsterdam. At the beginning of 1783, Pieter Andries once more writes to his aunt and Jacob Charje writes two letters to his son-in-law Dirk Cornelis Schermer in Rotterdam. Dirk Cornelis, born 22 April 1759, started his career as a sailor as constable’s assistent on the East India Company ship Diana at the age of sixteen. From his letter of January 1781 written to his brother-in-law Jan Spruit in Rotterdam, we know that he by then had obtained the attractive job of mate on the warship De Arend that lay in the roadstead of St Eustatius with destination Curaçao. On Curaçao he must have met Jacob Charje’s daughter, Anna Elisabeth, to whom he is married by January 1783, when she writes two letters (one of which contains a short, annexed letter) to her husband Dirk and one to her mother-in-law, widow Elisabeth Schermer-Pipardus, who both stay in Rotterdam. At the same time mother Anna Sophie Charje sends a letter to her son-in-law Dirk which, apart from the signature, is not an autograph, but was written by her daughter Anna Elisabeth.
Table 4. The Charje family
Jacob Charje x Anna Sophie Charje
Pieter Andries Anna Elisabeth x Dirk Cornelis Schermer Benjamin
Jan Boufet Schermer
The letters comprise some information about the social rank and the occupations of the family members. As a mate, and later captain, Dirk Cornelis Schermer belongs to our category high middle class. Jacob Charje’s occupation is not quite clear from the letters. We may assume that he was a merchant, as he apologizes for not being able to sell goods for Dirk Cornelis due to his old age and illness. His wife explains that he can neither help with financing, because he spent much money on a country-seat. As Dutch ‘colonizers’ we may assume that the family belonged to the upper class of 18th-century Curaçao.
One may notice that Charje is not a Dutch family name and neither is Boufet. In the 18th century, the name of Boufet regularly occurs in the DTB registers (baptism, marriage and burial registers) of the town of Amsterdam, the name of Charje (Charie, Charié) only occasionally. The families may have descended from French Huguenots, many of which fled France in the 16th and 17th centuries not rarely seeking refuge in the Netherlands. Moreover, although we lack concrete numbers, it is historically documented that some French Huguenot families who had previously lived in the Netherlands resettled on Curaçao in the 18th century. Clearly, Dorothea Boufet and her husband, captain Jan Boufet lived in Amsterdam. From the letters by Pieter Andries Charje, it also appears beyond any doubt that the Charjes had Dutch roots and had lived in the Netherlands prior to moving to Curaçao: Pieter Andries refers to an earlier stay in the Netherlands and expresses his wish to return to Patria. In the remainder of this article we will therefore consider the Charje family as representatives of the Dutch Curaçaoan upper class.
Comparing the letters sent by members of the Charje family, the three letters by Anna Elisabeth stand out remarkably. Much to our surprise, one of them contains as appendix another, brief letter fully in Papiamentu, addressed to Dirk Cornelis Schermer and sent by his newly-born son Jan Boufet Schermer (image 1). Furthermore, these three Dutch letters comprise Papiamentu words and phrases which do not occur either in mother Anna Sophie’s letter (written by Anna Elisabeth, as noted previously) or in any of the other letters.
Image 1. Jan Boufet’s Papiamentu letter. National Archives (Kew, UK), HCA30-370, pictures taken by the Letters as Loot/ Brieven als Buit-project, Leiden University.
We give a brief impression of the letter that Anna Elisabeth wrote to her mother-in-law, Elisabeth-Schermer-Pipardus, widow with five under-age children when her husband Jan Schermer died (7 June 1775). Anna Elisabeth had not met her yet, but she knew the art of tactful and cordial letter writing when addressing her mother-in-law who was surprised by the unexpected marriage of her son Dirk. She explains that it was neither her own intention to marry so soon, but that ‘her beloved Dirk did not want to wait so long’. It clearly is a love marriage: Anna Elisabeth is fond of her husband to whom she repeatedly refers as mijn lieve man ‘my dear husband’ (one instance) and mijn (lieve) doesje ‘my sweetheart’ (three instances). Her mother-in-law may have guessed what the Papiamentu doesje meant.
Whereas there was only one Papiamentu hypocorism in the letter to her mother-in-law, in her two letters to her husband Anna Elisabeth employs a more elaborate repertoire of Papiamentu words and phrases. On 6 January her letter begins with Mie Alma dousje & Mi Courasson ‘my soul, darling & my heart’ and ends with Mi alma dousje die mi Courasson ‘my soul, darling of my heart’ and on 8 January her letter both begins and ends with Mi dousje, Mi bieda & Mi courasson ‘my darling, my life & my heart’. In the longest letter, dating from 6 January, two other instances of (mij) bieda lief ‘my beloved life’ and four instances of doesje occur alongside Dutch names of endearment such as mijn hartje lief (twice), mijn lief, mijn zieltje lief (twice), mijn tweede ziel, mijn (lieve) ziel(tje) (eight instances). Dirk must have understood them, whether they were Dutch or Papiamentu, just as he must have grasped the meaning of the New Year’s greeting at the end of the lettter: boon anja nobo ‘happy new year’. There is even a strong indication that he was familiar with Papiamentu beyond a few words and phrases. Why would Anna Elisabeth otherwise include a letter almost fully written in Papiamentu and express her affection towards Dirk in that same language?
The Papiamentu letter is presented as being written by Dirk’s son Jan Boufet Schermer who was born during his absence and who must have been a few months old at the time of writing. He undoubtedly was named after uncle Jan Boufet at mother’s side and grandfather Jan Schermer at father’s side. Dit heeft uw Jantje geschreven ‘Your Jantje has written this/ This has been written by your Jantje’ features at the end of the Papiamentu letter in Anna Elisabeth’s handwriting. The child’s letter offers us a new 80-words long Papiamentu text from the late eighteenth century (image 1).
[wordt vervolgd/to be continued, klik hier]
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