‘Many Shall Come From the East and West’: Baptism Announcements of African and Asian Reformed Christians in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic

While baptisms of African and Asian people in the Dutch Republic have been studied on an anecdotal and often very local basis, a systematic analysis of these baptisms presents a gap in the literature. This article seeks to fill that lacuna by taking the announcements of baptisms of African and Asian people in the eighteenth-century Dutch Reformed Church (the public and privileged church of the Dutch Republic), as reported on in the periodical Boekzaal der Geleerde Wereld, as its point of departure. These baptism announcements not only provide valuable information on the distribution and origin of the (formerly) enslaved people who were baptised in the Dutch Republic, but also show a more inclusive and at times even anti slavery theology among the ministers involved in these baptisms.