Kwasi Boakye

Kwasi Boakye
Kwasi Boakye in 1899.
Born	24 April 1827 Kumasi, Kingdom of Ashanti
Died	9 June 1904 (aged 77) Bogor, Dutch East Indies
Other names	Aquasie Boachi
Occupation	Ashanti prince raised in the Netherlands

Kwasi Boakye (24 April 1827 – 9 June 1904), sometimes archaically spelt as Aquasi Boachi, was a Dutch mining engineer who was born a Prince of the Ashanti Empire. Together with his cousin Kwame Poku he was sent in 1837 by King Kwaku Dua I to the Netherlands to receive education, as part of larger negotiations between Ashanti about the recruitment of Ashanti soldiers for the Dutch East Indies Army.^[1]

Although Kwame Poku did return to the Gold Coast as planned, Kwasi Boakye stayed in the Netherlands. He was trained as a mining engineer at the fore-runner of Delft University, where he graduated in 1847. In 1850, he was sent to the Dutch East Indies. There he was discriminated by his superior Cornelius de Groot van Embden, for which he received financial compensation in 1857. As part of the compensation, he was awarded an estate in Bantar Peteh, south of Buitenzorg. He died on this estate in 1904.

Dutch writer Arthur Japin wrote a novel based on the brothers' lives, De zwarte met het witte hart (1997), translated in English as The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi.^[2]

Publications

• Boachi, Aquasie (1855) Onderzoek naar de kolen, gevonden langs het strand der Meeuwenbaai, residentie Bantam. Natuurkundig Tijdschrift van Nederlands-Indië, IX, p. 49
• Boachi, Aquasie (1856) Onderzoek naar het aanwezen van steenkolen in het terrein aan de Tjilaloekbaai (Preanger Regentschappen). Natuurkundig Tijdschrift van Nederlands-Indie, XI, p. 461
• Boachi, Aquasie (1856) Mededeelingen over de Chinezen op het Eiland Java. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Volume 4, nr 2, pp. 303–307.

Gallery

• 

  Painting of Kwasi Boakye and Kwame Poku by J.L. Cornet.

• 

  Painting of Kwasi Boakye, when he was a student at Freiberg University of Mining and Technology

• 

  Kwasi Boakye with two of his children on Java in 1900.

See also

• Dutch Gold Coast

Further reading

• Anne-Sophie Arnold: Fremde Heimat, heimatliche Fremde: Kwasi Boakye in Deutschland, in Fremde Erfahrungen. Asiaten und Afrikaner in Deutschland, Österreich und in der Schweiz bis 1945. ed. Gerhard Höpp. Das Arabische Buch, Berlin 1996 ISBN 3860931113 pp. 259 – 274 (in German)

References

1. Ineke van Kessel - The Black Dutchmen: The Story of African Soldiers in The Netherlands East Indies
2. Michael Pye - "Displaced Person", New York Times Book Review