About thirty-seven miles north of Chennai, on the southern edge of an eponymous lagoon, lies the historic sea resort of Pulicat. This lagoon is India’s second largest after Chilika. Pulicat’s prime location on the Coromandel Coast, adjacent to this vast body of inland water, has always positioned it for maritime prominence. Its significance in global trade dates back to the earliest days of Indian Ocean commerce. For the longest time it had been a bustling entrepôt for Arab merchants and settlers who first arrived as refugees in the years following Muhammad’s death. The first Europeans to take note of the port were Portuguese. They established a trading outpost at the beginning of the sixteenth century when the area was under Krishnadeva Raya of the Vijayanagara Empire. They lasted a little over half a century before entering decline and by the turn of the century, a new European power had established itself as the new local overlord—the Dutch East India Company or VOC, short for Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie. They would eventually build a fort and rule the place for about two centuries before giving way to the British.
Business was brisk, for the Dutch enjoyed a near monopoly over all maritime lines between India and Southeast Asia. On the Indian side, they had Pulicat, on the other side it was Batavia, today’s Jakarta. And between the two ran a thriving trade in pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, tea, silk, cotton, porcelain—and humans. While India or Indian Ocean rarely feature in conversations on slavery, which almost always confine themselves to the Trans-Atlantic trade, the Dutch shipped no fewer than 38,000 Indians as slaves from their Coromandel ports between 1621 and 1665 alone. Among them was a young Tamil girl of whom we know neither name nor religion. We do know the name her Dutch masters gave her though—Catrijn or Catherine. It was a common practice among Europeans to give their slaves Christian names once in their possession. History would later record our girl as Groote Catrijn or Great Catherine. This is her extraordinary story.
Pulicat Fort
The best contemporary description of the Pulicat fort comes from a man named Johan Nieuhof. His first overseas stint was as an officer of the Dutch West India Company in Brazil where he spent about a decade before finally joining the East India Company. With VOC, Nieuhof spent several years in China, Batavia, Ceylon, and India where he visited several chiefs of indigenous tribes to secure trade relations with them in the second half of the seventeenth century.
In 1662, Nieuhof visited Pulicat and wrote a detailed description of the fortified, cosmopolitan VOC trading base and its inhabitants. He noted that the Dutch East India Company had established a strong fort there, named Geldria, featuring four bastions made of stone, which they had possessed since 1619. Outside the castle was a plantation which faced the sea on one side and skirted an earthen wall that was not well-maintained on the other. The houses within the wall, however, were closely built and well-constructed. The town was inhabited by both Hollanders and native pagans, the latter of whom primarily engaged in trades involving painted and white calicoes and linen.
Nieuhof mentions that the region produced rice in great abundance, along with other grains, which were brought to the market weekly. He describes the fort as being situated next to a river that swelled significantly during the wet season, allowing goods to be unloaded with the help of lighters. In contrast, during the summer season, when the river dried up, goods had to be carried ashore manually. The river, he notes, was rich in fish during the winter, most of which died in the summer. Which is why the inhabitants would catch and dry them in the sun for transportation to other places. Nieuhof further tells us that the northern Monsoon began in October and lasted through December with such intensity that ships struggled to stay anchored in the roadstead. In January, the Monsoon changed, bringing a return to fair weather.
Regarding the city of Pulicat, which he refers to as Paliakatte, he described its inhabitants as mostly Mestices and Kastices. Mestices were the offspring of mixed marriages between Dutch and Indian individuals, while Kastices were the children of Mestices. A great deal of marital admixture between the natives and the Dutch had resulted in a large mixed-race population. There were also a large number of Brahmins, Baniyas, Syrian Christians, and Jews who were involved in significant trade activities. A caravan of merchants from a faraway Agra visited the town once every month. The Banyans and Jews were highlighted as the primary traders, with the city serving as a hub for merchandize from Golconda, Surat, and Cambay by land, and from the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Surat, Goa, Malabar, Sumatra, and Malacca by sea. In summary, Pulicat was a bustling city with a diverse population and a flourishing, multifaceted trade industry. It’s against this backdrop that many young Indians got uprooted from their native confines and shipped away to a faraway Batavia as chattels. As already noted, when Nieuhof visited, an average of more than eight hundred were being taken as Dutch slaves every year. Much of this slave trade took place from the Pulicat harbor. Much of this was facilitated by upper caste Indians, such as Brahmins or Baniyas, who saw members of the lower caste as disposable chattel already.
Shipped to Batavia
Catrijn or Catherine—again, not her original name—was born in Pulicat as either a first-generation slave or in a family of slaves. We know little about her life in Pulicat besides the fact that she was born there. From here, she was sent to Batavia on a Dutch vessel where she became the property of a free woman locally called mardijcker but documented as Maria Magdalena. Let’s dwell on this lady a bit before we return to Catrijn. Mardijcker is not really a name, even though it looks like one in Dutch. It’s just the Dutch rendition of a local Bahasa term merdeka which means independent or free. Merdeka itself derives from Sanskrit maharddhika which is a combination of mahā (great) and ṛ́ddhi (growth, prosperity), and means very prosperous. Mardijcker was most certainly a free and very prosperous lady, anyway obvious from the fact that she could afford a slave. The woman is documented as Maria Magdalena. The fact that she did not have a last name is indicative of her being of a non-European stock. Which is probably why her status as a “free” woman was particularly highlighted in the way she was locally known. Another epithet accorded to her was vrije vrou ende juvrouw ten desen stede, i.e. “free woman and lady of this place,” in yet another attestation to her status as a well-respected free woman. Now back to our Indian.
Despite her Indian origins, the first records of her existence come to us not from India but across the ocean in Batavia. But before we discuss the circumstances of this discovery, let’s meet another Indian slave by the name of Claes van Mallebaerse. Of course, Claes was a name given to him by his Dutch owner, a VOC stablemaster named Sieur Hendrick Christoffel Loser. The van Mallebaerse signifies his Malabar origins. It’s in Batavia that Catrijn from the Indian east coast came in contact with Claes from the Indian west coast. And fell for each other. The two were recorded to have entered a carnal relationship or vleeschelijcke conversatie sometime in the middle of 1654. This relationship would come to an abrupt and tragic end a little over two years later.
Sieur Loser’s estate, Rijswijck Fortress, was located just outside Batavia. That’s where Claes lived too. On October 8, 1656, probably on his request, Catrijn brought to him a pot of cooked pork. But she got late and by the time she reached, Claes had already had his lunch. So, he refused. A blow-by-blow account of what followed is hard to give but we know that they ended up in a violent physical fight, likely over the delay. It’s in this struggle that she wound up hitting him in the abdomen with a wooden trestle. This proved fatal, for the impact burst open his bladder and he succumbed to the injury four days later.
A murder had been committed. By a slave, no less. Those days, the penalty was death. A trial was brought to the Batavian Council of Justice and a little over a month later, the girl was sentenced to be tied to a stake and garroted to death. It is through this trial that we first learn of her existence. Her name was entered in court records as Catharina geboortich van Paliacatte. With this conviction, as per Dutch laws, she also ceased to be her owner’s property and her ownership moved from Maria Magdalena to the VOC. As fate would have it, however, Catrijn would not die.
Two days after her sentencing, on November 16, 1656, Catrijn’s death sentence was commuted by Governor-General Joan Maetsuycker. The pardon document referred to her as Catharina van Mallebaer and noted that she had acted in self-defense. But a life had been lost nevertheless, so she was not exactly exonerated. Instead, the sentence was reduced to banishment. To another faraway Dutch colony on the African continent called Caep de Boa Esperance or Cape of Good Hope. She was to serve for the remainder of her days as a slave of the Dutch East India Company. The Sententiebouck or Sentence Book recorded her age at the time as twenty-five and place of birth as Pulicat which is how we know she was Indian.
Exiled to Africa
On December 4, 1656, a VOC fleet set sail from Batavia on its way to Africa. Part of this fleet was Prins Willem, the ship that carried what was by now being referred to as Groote Catrijn or Great Catharina, “great” most likely being a reference to her physical stature. But she wasn’t alone, for with her was yet another Indian slave and a close friend, Mooij Ansela van Bengale, who was being shipped to Africa to be sold to Commander van Riebeeck. As the name suggests, the latter was from Bengal where the Dutch had a strong presence with a number of factories in Hugli-Chuchura, Dacca, Pipely, Malda, and even Patna. She was variously called Ansla, Angela, and Ansela, with the name likely being a distortion of ancilla, the Latin term for slave or maidservant.
After about three months of sailing across the Indian Ocean, the fleet finally arrived at the Cape Colony on February 21, 1657. In these new environs, Catrijn was both a slave and a convict. Since she belonged not to an individual but the Company, she was sexually free. But since she was a convict, she was not legally free at the same time. She was one of seven imported females who were accorded this peculiar status. The Cape Colony had a rapidly growing male population, both Whites and Blacks, and women like Catrijn served as the most freely available sexual receptacle for it.
Van Riebeeck’s tenure came to an end in 1662 and the following two decades saw a series of commanders in quick succession. With each change in command, memories of Catrijn’s status as a convict suffered a degree of erasure. Until such a point where the only recollection anyone had of her status was that of a Company slave. Her conviction, for all intents and purposes, had disappeared from the Cape’s collective memory. With the conviction gone, so were her old appellations of van Paliacatte and van Mallebaer. Instead, she was now Catharina van Bengalen.
Pieter Everaerts
Pieter Everaerts was a VOC militiaman who started his career in India but later moved to South Africa. His arrival at the Cape Colony was about two years after that of Catrijn. He’d come in the capacity of a corporal in command of a Company vessel with a monthly salary of twenty florijnen or guilders. Everaerts quickly made a name for himself as an intrepid explorer and vigilant commander, and as a result grew rapidly up the ranks to become first the wachtmeester, then the head of an entire garrison. During his stint here, he also served as a distinguished member of the two highest governing bodies of the Colony, the Council of Policy and the Council of Justice. After only six short but eventful years at the Colony, Everaerts succumbed to a fatal bladder stone in 1664. He was buried with full military honors. During those six years, he entered a carnal relationship with none other than Groote Catrijn, and even left her an unborn child when he died.
Goes without saying, the relationship was not exactly legal since he already had a family back home. Besides, he and Catrijn never really married. Again, they couldn’t, given he was already married to someone else, besides the fact that she was a slave. But he did leave her and the unborn baby a generous allowance of 150 florijnen in his will. The will was drawn just three days before his passing. The illicit status of the relationship notwithstanding, a mere acknowledgment of his paternity for Catrijn’s baby on Everaerts’ part was a big social boost to the slave girl. Not only did it indicate a stable relationship, but it also elevated her in the eyes of other colonists thanks to Everaerts’ own high standing in the Dutch society.
The will, however, did not and could not provision for Catrijn’s or the baby’s manumission and that’s because she was not Everaerts’ property. She belonged to the Company, remember? And since slaves could not themselves own any property, the willed amount automatically reverted to the Company where it was set aside for the upkeep of Catrijn’s child as per the wishes of the father. The unborn child in question would show up a year and a half later on September 6, 1665, in the Cape’s first baptismal register as a girl named Petronella, likely named thus in honor of her father Pieter. The same register also shows a boy named Anthony as the child of Catharina. Since Catrijn was the only slave recorded by that name in all of Cape Colony at the time, it’s presumed that both children belonged to her.
Two years later, Catrijn baptized two more children, a girl named Susan and a boy named Louis. We know nothing of the father though. Petronella herself would live to the age of eighteen when she died giving birth to a girl child also named Petronella and fathered by a Dutch soldier.
The Nightly Recreations
As a Company slave, Catrijn was assigned various menial tasks in the Colony’s public service. Among these duties, she worked as a washerwoman for the fort. As a sexually liberated slave, she had several lovers in addition to Everaerts. One such lover, revealed through court records, was a sentry named Hans Christoffel Snijman. Tasked with keeping the night watch over the fort, Snijman’s role required constant vigilance with no breaks allowed. Despite this, he occasionally left his post to visit Catrijn. His absences went unnoticed until one day, when he was discovered in the washerwoman’s quarters during work hours.
Originally from Heidelberg in what’s today Germany, Snijman had started his career as a soldier under the Chamber of Rotterdam in 1665 along with one Arnoldus Willemsz, who’d later marry Ansla, the close friend of Catrijn’s whom we just met earlier. Contemporary records show that he was always at odds with the law and had several close shaves since his arrival at the Cape. The indiscretion with Catrijn resulted in trial and conviction, and on July 30, 1667, Snijman was sentenced to flogging and banishment to Robben Island for two years. With this conviction, he also forfeited two month’s salary. Catrijn was once again left carrying her lover’s baby in her womb, this time a boy.
Church records from the following year show this boy’s baptism as Christoffel with a manumitted Ansla as the witness. This was the first pivotal moment in Catrijn’s story, for it saw not just her child’s baptism but also her own. Catrijn and Ansla both received their Holy Communions and got formally inducted to Christianity. The boy and his progeny would continue to take the banished father’s last name although we know nothing of the latter’s fate after the banishment. Ansla’s manumission likely came from her new Dutch husband. Unfortunately, such privilege remained elusive to her friend because she did not belong to an individual.
The Untouchable
Less than two months after Snijman’s conviction, Catrijn again found herself at the heart of a trial, this time for gambling. The woman’s nocturnal recreation had made her immensely popular with the Colony’s menfolk which would prove both good and bad for her. This time, she was caught gambling in a game of cards with two Company officers, Cornelius van Benthem and Aurelius Probenius. The woman ended up losing eighty rixdollars. How the matter became public, we don’t know, but since gambling was illegal in the regime, a trial followed. The men were each ordered to pay Catrijn twenty-five rixdollars each, which brought her loss down to thirty rixdollars. And this is where her popularity with the administrators helped. Although the men pleaded that the game was at Catrijn’s behest, she was let off without any penalty.
Catrijn had grown practically untouchable to the law, and this would be demonstrated with sufficient clarity in two more incidents, both with potential to land her heavy sentences. One was in the March of 1668 where a free Black man from Japan named Anthony was involved in a judicial enquiry against a VOC officer. Although from Japan, Anthony is recorded in court documents as Anthonij de Chinees. The officer in question was one Hendrik Lacus who was charged with corruption and embezzlement of public funds based on a sworn affidavit by Anthony. When asked about his source, Anthony named three individuals, two slaves from the Lacus household named Zara and Marij, and Catrijn. The latter was never summoned to verify her source.
About three years later, history kind of repeated when once again, a sentry was sentenced to two years on Robben Island for deserting his post and being caught in Catrijn’s quarters. This time, however, it was not a sexual escapade but theft. Nicolaas Phlegel was a recruit from Basle and was stationed on guard duty at the entrance of the living quarters of the Fort’s Commander. The charge against him was threefold, dereliction of duty, forced entry, and theft. He had stolen two freshly baked loaves from Catrijn’s kitchen and later shared with two of his friends. It was later learned that the loaves did not belong even to Catrijn but stolen from the Commander’s kitchen. How bread from Commander’s kitchen ended up in Catrijn’s, one can only speculate. But Catrijn was never summoned for interrogation, no trial was ever brought against her for the theft. As for Nicolaas, he was sentenced to not just banishment to Robben Island but also forfeiture of one month’s wages. Besides, he was also made to sit on a wooden horse with weights tied to both feet for two days as part of the punishment.
Emancipation
By 1670, Catrijn began appearing in official records alongside a newly baptized free Black burgher named Anthony, documented as Anthonij Jansz van Bengale. Their first recorded appearance together was as witnesses at the baptism of Maria, daughter of Elisabeth van Bengale, on September 14, 1670. Anthonij had been baptized just two days earlier. The couple married in December of the following year. The man is also referred to as Anthonij de Later and Anthonij de la Terre in some records.
This marriage was the second pivotal moment in Catrijn’s story, the first being her baptism. As per Dutch laws of the day, marrying a free man officially made her a free woman. Her status as a convict was already long forgotten. Now her slavery too was a thing of the past. But why was the Company so generous to her? Was it all just down to her sexual promiscuity? Yes and no. It’s true that she had a large number of Dutch sexual partners, including soldiers and administrators. But this in and of itself did not mean much. What this did, though, was produce several halfslag or illegitimate children. As per Dutch laws, since they had no legal father, supporting such offsprings was the responsibility of the Company or State. And that was quite the drain on the coffers. So when Catrijn formally married a free burgher, the Company was no longer responsible for the children’s upkeep. Now they had a father.
In a way, by getting married, Catrijn freed not just herself from slavery but also her owners from the financial obligation toward her illegitimate children. And that’s why the Company was more than glad to overlook her convict status and allow her a free pass to get married and break free. Catrijn’s promiscuity was her ticket to freedom. The move, unconventional as it was, proved prudent. Catrijn’s manumission and pardon was finally put out in writing for the first time in a 1672 letter to Batavia. It is understood that arrangements for this pardon and manumission were made personally by none other than Governor-General Joan Maetsuycker who, if you’d recall, had commuted her death penalty sixteen years earlier.
The couple later acquired livestock and land in Table Valley and Zeestraat. The family advanced in wealth and status. With the support of the new stepfather, the illegitimate half-siblings Petronella and Christoffel received quality Christian education and established successful lives. They were not wealthy but lived a fairly comfortable life in their modest Zeestraat dwelling. The couple even went on to acquire three slaves of their own, a Maria and a Paul from Malabar and a Baddou from Bali. Over time, though, the family amassed too much debt and found it impossible to square them off. Unable to face the creditors, they requested permission to emigrate to Batavia which was promptly granted. Catrijn was a slave when banished for life from Batavia. Now she was able to a slaveowner, her lifelong banishment nowhere in consideration.
But she wouldn’t. Perhaps because at some point her past as a perpetual exile returned to haunt her. Or, more likely, because the family’s fortunes improved with the acquisition of an orchard and a distillery and leaving it all behind to start a new life in a faraway Batavia seemed a less attractive idea.
Catrijn and Anthonij appeared as a married couple once again as witnesses in the baptismal ceremony of their slave Maria’s daughter Elisabeth on April 7, 1680. Two years later, the entire family appeared together in that year’s Muster Roll. This would be their last documented appearance as a family. On December 17, 1682, Anthonij’s inventory was drawn up signifying the possible death of both him and Catrijn shortly before. Petronella died shortly thereafter in labor.
And thus comes to an end the extraordinary saga of a most ordinary girl from Pulicat who rose from oblivion to travel across two seas, become a slave, then a slaveowner, and leave behind little in the way of evidence of her remarkable adventures. She broke all taboos of not one but two worlds to tell us without much fanfare the forgotten history of the slave trade in India.
Further Reading
Upham, Mansell George. “Groote Catrijn: Earliest Recorded Female Bandiet at the Cape of Good Hope—a Study in Upward Mobility.” In Hevigen Woede, part 1, LibraryThing.
Upham, Mansell George. “Unfurling the Cape of Good Hope’s Earliest Colonial Inhabitants (1652-1713).” Uprooted Lives, edited by Delia Robertson, 2012.
Worden, Nigel. “Slavery at the Cape.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia. African History, edited by Thomas T. Spear, Oxford University Press, 2016.
“7. Snyman, de Savoye and Catharina van Paliacatta.” Down Rabbit Holes and up Family Trees, 27 May 2019, downrabbitholes.com.au/stevens/ancestors/snyman/. Accessed 29 July 2024.
Wow, the story is worthy of a movie or even better a series. Thanks for sharing, enjoyed reading it!