Tabo Jansz

Adriaan de Bruin, earlier called Tabo Jansz, was an enslaved servant (kammermohr) of Dutch politician . Born in Africa and enslaved, he got to the Dutch Republic by way of either the Dutch Caribbean or in Dutch Surinam, and ended up a free man in Hoorn, North Holland. De Bruin and van Bredehoff stood for a portrait (1727) by Nicolaas Verkolje, now in the Westfries Museum in Hoorn.

Biography Little is known of de Bruin's life before adulthood. Originally kidnapped from Africa and enslaved, he had been brought to the Dutch Republic from either Dutch Suriname or the Dutch Antilles, and became a "servant" to Adriaan van Bredehoff, a politician who had a house in Oosthuizen and was schout of Hoorn. A harbour town in North Holland, Hoorn was the seat of the Dutch West India Company (WIC), which (in its second incarnation) had begun to focus on the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery was illegal in the Dutch Republic itself and so nominally de Bruin was a servant, though practically speaking his freedom must have been very limited. ). Young de Bruin is holding a musket in one hand, and with the other restrains a dog with a leash.