Product Code Database
Graman Quassi ( – 12 March 1787) was a Surinamese physician, botanist and planter. Born in present-day Ghana, Quassi was taken to the Dutch Empire of Surinam via the Atlantic slave trade, where he was initially enslaved on a sugar plantation before managing to Emancipation himself. Assisting the Dutch colonial authorities in suppressing the activities of local maroons, he managed to rise to the top of the colony's small community of free people of color and eventually became a plantation owner himself. He gave his name to the plant genus Quassia.R. Price. Kwasimukambas gambit. In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 135 (1979), no: 1, Leiden, 151-169
Quassi participated in the colonial wars against the Saramaka maroons as a scout and negotiator for the Dutch. He lost his right ear during the fighting. For this reason the Surinamese Maroons remember him as a traitor.First-time: the historical vision of an African American people. Richard Price. University of Chicago Press, Sep 15, 2002 In the late 1760s, he was owner of a slave plantation.
In February 1772, he visited the Netherlands, and was given an audience by William V, Prince of Orange. He returned to Suriname in September 1772.
On 12 March 1787, Governor Jan Wichers announced that Quassi had died in Paramaribo at the age of at least 95. He was buried by the Free Negro Corps.
|
|
