Mediating Displacement in an African Landscape: The Rijksmuseum’s Box of the Dutch West India Company

In 1749 the Dutch West India Company (WIC) presented a lavish gold box to Stadholder Willem IV (1711-1751), a stunning embodiment of the wealth that could be realized in transatlantic trade. On the lid of this box sits a large nugget of unrefined gold ore, around which are arranged three figures: an African man holding an elephant tusk; an African woman panning for gold; and Mercury, god of trade, who supports a cartouche containing the insignia of the Company. To the right of the woman, African figures extract gold from the earth, while on the left a Dutch merchant holds a small bag of gold, with which he negotiates the purchase of enslaved people. The sides of the box picture the Dutch forts in Africa and Curaçao through which these commodities circulated, while the bottom of the box contains a map of West Africa, the coastline inlaid with gold. This paper will consider the ways in which the traditional conventions of Dutch landscape—the land and its natural elements, the built environment, and even the cartographic outline of the African coast—are transformed into sites for the extraction of wealth in the name of the Company. As I will argue, the landscapes pictured on this box played a critical role in mediating the geographical displacements initiated by WIC trade, setting into motion narratives contingent upon closeness and distance, presence and absence, translocation and dislocation.