The Elmina Java Museum is a museum in

Elmina Elmina ( Fante: ''Edina'') is a town and the capital of the Komenda/Edina/Eguafo/Abirem District on the south coast of Ghana in the Central Region. It is situated on a bay on the Atlantic Ocean, west of Cape Coast.Straight line distances ...

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

, dedicated to the history of the so-called

Belanda Hitam Belanda Hitam ( Indonesian; "Black Dutchmen") was an Indonesian language term used to refer to Black soldiers recruited by the Dutch colonial empire for service in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL), the colonial army of the Dutch E ...

; soldiers recruited in the 19th century in the

Dutch Gold Coast The Dutch Gold Coast or Dutch Guinea, officially Dutch possessions on the Coast of Guinea (Dutch language, Dutch: ''Nederlandse Bezittingen ter Kuste van Guinea'') was a portion of contemporary Ghana that was gradually colonized by the Dutch (et ...

to serve in the

Royal Netherlands East Indies Army The Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (; KNIL, ; ) was the military force maintained by the Kingdom of the Netherlands in its colony of the Dutch East Indies, in areas that are now part of Indonesia. The KNIL's air arm was the Royal Netherl ...

. The museum is funded by the Edward A. Ulzen Memorial Foundation.

History

Since

Arthur Japin Arthur Valentijn Japin (b. Haarlem, 26 July 1956) is a Dutch novelist. He has won almost every prestigious prize in Dutch literature, including the Libris Prize for his 2005 novel ''Een Schitterend Gebrek''. Biography Arthur Japin, son of a teach ...

published his ''

The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi ''The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi'' ( , "The black with the white heart") is the 1997 debut novel by Dutch author Arthur Japin. The novel tells the story of two Ashanti princes, Kwame Poku and Kwasi Boachi, who were taken from what is today Ghan ...

'' (1997), the history of the Belanda Hitam has attracted renewed attention. Ineke van Kessel, professor at the Centre for African Studies of

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

had met the late Edward Ulzen during her research of the history of the Belanda Hitam. This meeting brought her into contact with his son Prof. Thaddeus Patrick Manus Ulzen, who attended the tenth biennial reunion of Belanda Hitam descendants in

Schiedam Schiedam () is a large town and municipality in the west of the Netherlands. It is located in the Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area, west of the city Rotterdam, east of the town Vlaardingen and south of the city Delft. In the south, Schi ...

in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

in September 2000, and announced on that occasion the decision of his family to provide a permanent site for a museum to preserve the history of the Belanda Hitam. In 2003, the Elmina Java Museum was opened to honour the history of the Belanda Hitam at large, and the Ulzen family in particular. His 2013 book "Java Hill: An African Journey" details 10 generations of the Ulzen family history from Brielle, Netherlands to present day Elmina and the story of the founding of the museum, which is the first private museum in Ghana.

The Ulzen family

The Ulzen family traced its origins to Jan Ulsen, a Dutchman from

Brielle Brielle (), also called Den Briel in Dutch and Brill in English, is a town and historic seaport in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland, on the north side of the island of Voorne-Putten, at the mouth of the New Maas. The for ...

, who came to the

in 1732 as an employee of the

Dutch West India Company The Dutch West India Company () was a Dutch chartered company that was founded in 1621 and went defunct in 1792. Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647), and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was gra ...

. A year later, Jan Ulsen died, leaving his son Roelof Ulsen, whom he had taken with him from the Netherlands, an orphan. Roelof Ulsen is then raised on the Gold Coast by personnel of the Dutch West India Company, and makes a career in local government, eventually serving as acting governor of the Gold Coast between 1755 and 1758. In 1765, Roelof Ulsen sailed to the Netherland after 29 years of service, together with his Euro-African son Hermanus. In a rather sad recurrence of history, Roelof died on ship during his voyage to the Netherlands, leaving his son an orphan as well. After graduating in the Netherlands, Hermanus sails back to the Gold Coast in 1779, and it his grandson Manus Ulzen who was recruited for the Dutch East Indies Army.

Notes

References

* * {{cite journal , last=Van Kessel , first=Ineke , year=2005 , title=The tricontinental voyage of Negro Corporal Manus Ulzen (1812-1887) from Elmina , journal=Afrique & Histoire , volume=4 , pages=13–36 , url=https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/4759 Museums in Ghana Elmina 2003 establishments in Ghana Museums established in 2003