Fumus gloria mundi

Willem Godschalck van Focquenbroch, or Focq as he sometimes called himself, was a popular Dutch writer of burlesque plays and poems in the 17th century. Educated as a doctor, in 1668 he joined the West India Company as a fiscaal, to be stationed in the fort of Elmina on the Gold Coast. A fiscaal had an important job. Van Focquenbroch was responsible for monitoring trade and finance in the most important Dutch trading centre in West Africa. He considered himself "the second person in a small kingdom".

Four of Van Focquenbroch's letters have survived. Mail was censored as a measure against fraud and corporate spying. In the 17th century letters were a literary genre and these letters are full of Biblical and literary connotations. In the letters Van Focquenbroch sees himself more and more imprisoned in a barbarian, depressing, barren land. The "white palace" of Elmina in the first letter becomes a "melancholic castle" in the next one. Van Focquenbroch fights his depressions with alcohol, tobacco and above all gold, following the best practice of his age as defined by the physicians Robert Burton and Johan van Beverwijck. He only abstains from sex, disliking the black and mestizo prostitutes of Elmina and keeping up his standing as one of the fort's dignitaries. Luckily gold is "the most powerful balm for the soul".

Van Focquenbroch expresses a view of the locals typical for his day and age. He dislikes their music and sees them having inherited many practices if the "old Hebrews". He describes among others circumcision, polygamy, the impurity of menstruating women, and voodoo offerings of animals. The priests have a good life eating all these animals, Van Focquenbroch concludes.

He also gives some burlesque descriptions of animal life. Van Focquenbroch's last letter is a poem for a friend he misses. Van Focquenbroch would die within two years of his arrival in this most unhealthy of places for Europeans.

This is not a text to learn about Africa. Thanks to the excellent introduction the booklet is entertaining nonetheless. ( )