Dirck WILRE
Dirck Dircksz. Wilre was a Dutch smuggler and slave trader who joined the Dutch West India Company in 1662, and who quickly climbed the ranks to become acting Director-General of the Dutch Gold Coast in 1662. He eventually was installed as full Director-General in 1668. (Wikipedia)
Painting "Dirck Dircksz WILRE in Elmina" (Gold Coast/Ghana) (1669) by painter Pieter de WIT (1646-16XX). Person depicted on the right is most probably Willem Godschalck van FOCQUENBROCH (1640-1670).
"In many other letters and reports, too, the silence about the life of the slaves in the castle is so egregious that the question arises as to whether the WIC servants and other eyewitnesses witnessed the slave trade and brutal treatment of Africans so common, or so unimportant, that they didn't think to write about it. Or did other things play a role?
Was there perhaps shame? Was the desire to keep things too shocking a secret? (van Engelen 125–6)"
'Intellectual Appropriation and Discursive Violence in Focquenbroch's African Thalia (1678)'- Tom Laureys
Links:
V., W. H. Dirck Wilre in Elmina. Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, 7-12. www.jstor.org/stable/40382263
Binder, Franz, and Norbert Schneeloch. “Dirck Dircksz. Wilre En Willem Godschalk van Focquenbroch(?), Geschilderd Door Pieter de Wit Te Elmina in 1669.” Bulletin van Het Rijksmuseum, vol. 27, no. 1, 1979, pp. 13–29. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40382264. Accessed 2 Sept. 2024.
