Balthazar-Pascal Celse

Balthazar-Pascal Celse (* 1737 on the Lesser Sunda Islands , † 1791 in Paris ) was a topasse . In France he was called the Black Prince of Timor .

Life

Balthazar was the son of Gaspar da Costa , a ruler of the Topasse. The Topasse were a mixed European-Malay population who were nominally vassals of Portugal , but actually ruled over larger areas of Flores , Solor and Timor . In 1749 Gaspar tried at the Battle of Penfui , together with allied locals and Portuguese troops, to drive the Dutch from the island of Timor. Topasse and Portuguese were defeated, however, and Gaspar himself fell in the battle. It was the end of the Topasse's supremacy over West Timor .

The Dominican Convention in Macau in the early 19th century

Balthazar came to Macau via Batavia (now Jakarta) , where he spent five months in the school of the Dominican Convention. After a short time in Guangzhou , Balthazar went with his teacher, the Portuguese Dominican priest Inácio and two "black" slaves on board the French ship Duc de Béthune . Balthazar was to continue his education in France. But when he arrived in the port of Lorient on July 13, 1750 , the priest disappeared with all the boy's belongings. Balthazar couldn't make himself understood, so he was helpless. The ship's cook took care of him and made him his assistant cook. The boy now went to sea for a while, partly on corsair ships that operated off the Netherlands, England , Scotland and Québec . After the death of the old ship's cook, Balthazar knew enough French to assert his claims against the Dominican, documented among other things by two petitions to the king.

Balthazar was born as Prince of Timor and Solor at the court of King Louis XV. presented. During this time there were also “princes” from other exotic countries at the royal court, such as Angola and Macau, who competed for the attention of the wealthy patrons. The international press reported on Balthazar between 1760 and 1770. There are articles from Paris, Bratislava , Italy and England . In 1778 he was registered in the Rue d'Enfer in the Hôtel de Chavigny , the famous Parisian residence of various French nobles. Balthazar frequented many intellectual circles of clergymen, scientists, alchemists, encyclopedists and Freemasons . The philosopher Voltaire was one of the personalities he met . Otherwise he was part of the community of blacks and Asians in Paris. In the 1780s, storytellers and poets from the great Parisian society took up the story of Balthazar, but in 1789 the French Revolution destroyed the world of Balthazar. He eventually died impoverished in the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris .

literature

• André Lethinois: Requête au roi, pour Balthazar-Pascal Celse, fils ainé du roi et héritier présomptif des royaumes de Timor et de Solor, dans les moluques. Paris 1769 ( digitized ).
• Frédéric Durand: Balthazar. Un prince de Timor en Chine, en Amérique et en Europe au XVIIIe siècle. Les Indes savantes, Paris 2015, ISBN 978-2-84654-408-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Exposition: Balthazar, Prince Noir de Timor et de Solor en Chine, en Amérique et en Europe au XVIIIe siècle: Balthazar: Prince Noir de Timor et de Solor en Chine, en Amérique et en Europe au XVIIIe siècle , accessed on May 24, 2017.
2. ^ ^{A b c} Geoffrey C. Gunn: History of Timor. ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 40, Technical University of Lisbon (PDF; 805 kB) 
3. ^ ^{A b} Anne Lombard-Jourdan: Du nouveau sur Balthazar, prince de Timor , 2001.