Jacob Huydecoper

Jacob Peter Huydecoper (11 November 1811 – 12 February 1845) was an important mulatto civil servant and diplomat on the Dutch Gold Coast in the early nineteenth century.

Biography

Jacob Huydecoper was born in Elmina to Willem Huydecoper and local woman Akosewa Kombati.^[1] He was a member of the prominent Afro-European Huydecoper family, which traces its ancestor to Jan Pieter Theodoor Huydecoper, a Director-General of the Dutch Gold Coast in the eighteenth century.

Huydecoper started his career in the colonial administration of the Dutch Gold Coast in July 1832, when he was installed as a provisional assistant at Elmina. He became a regular assistant on 15 December 1836. Huydecoper was charged with the recruitment of the so-called Belanda Hitam, black recruitments for the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army, at the Ashanti capital of Kumasi, between 1838 and 1842.^[1] With this move, he followed in the footstep of his father, who also was the Dutch envoy at the Ashanti court between 1816 and 1817.

Huydecoper returned from Kumasi on 1 February 1842, and was honourably discharged of all his duties on 31 March 1842. Three years later, Huydecoper died in Elmina at the age of 33.^[1]

Huydecoper is considered the initiator of the Methodist mission in Elmina, established in 1842, after Huydecoper himself was converted to Christianity by Reverend T.B. Freeman when he was stationed in Kumasi in 1839.^[1]

References