One of the beverage world’s favorite plants is named for the slave who discovered its promise

THOMAS COX

If you are a Ghanaian boy of Akan origin who was born on a Sunday, it is very likely that you are named Kwasi. You share the same name as a bitter medicinal plant whose importance in the food and beverage industry is unrivaled as far as bitters go. The plant is a bitter agent as well as treating malaria and fevers. It has largely replaced quinine in the beverage industry over the years, as it contains nature’s most bitter substance Quass in which is.

In 1762, a Swedish botanist named Quassia Amara, the Latinized name for Quassi bitter, in honor of a former African from Suriname, whom the Europeans described as Graman Quassi (hereafter Quassi).

The tonic became a popular bitter in the Caribbean and Europe soon after Linnaeus named the plant, and the bark of the plant became a significant export to Suriname in the 1780s. Quassia became a popular bitter in Europe as a cheaper and bitterer substitute for hops in beer production.

The historical satirical painting, by James Gillray in 1805, shows how important quassia was in England of the time as well as the racist viewpoints. Its main objective is to be quassia, a tropical plant used as a digestive, that in some way competes with British beer while not paying taxes, said George P. Landow, a professor of English and Art History Emeritus, at Brown University.

Who was Kwasi?

Kwasimukamba is now thought to be his father’s name (or the name of his father’s clan or tribe) by Professor Richard Price, who conducted extensive research on Saramaka’s oral history.

Unfortunately the Saramakas remember Kwasimukamba as a traitor who gained knowledge from them and later led Europeans to destroy their villages.

Kwasi is still used to describe the plant and things made from it, including water or alcohol. Generally speaking, the name was derived from the wood of the plant for medicinal purposes; a cup carved out of the wood of the plant is called “Kwasi bita beker” (Kwasi bitter cup).

The passage of names of enslaved Africans and places in Africa during colonization has contributed to the erasure of the cultural identities and history of many people and places.

Kwasi was enslaved and transported to Suriname (Dutch Guiana) where he was trained to harness spiritual and medical knowledge for personal use. He is known to have intricate knowledge of herbs and poisons that enabled him to accumulate power and respect that sometimes rivaled with those of European plantation owners.

Kwasi, faithful to the whites

Kwasi has a huge influence on the colony of Blacks and Indians, but also among the European colonists, says Richard Price, a professor of Anthropology.

He accumulated wealth and power from selling medicine and other healing services, but also from military and espionage services that involved finding and prosecuting enslaved people who violated their masters, and runaways, and spying on the maroons.

“He was the colony’s key intermediary in dealing with runaway slaves, serving first as a scout, then as a negotiator, and finally as the spiritual and tactical advisor of the specially selected black troops who fought alongside European mercenaries in the 177Os and 1780s,” Price wrote.

Kwasi was honoured for his exceptional service to the colony in 1762, receiving a golden breastplate engraved with Quassie, faithful to the whites. After receiving his manumission letter in 1755, he was given the privilege of being a free man.

In the 18th century, it was. Modern historians have shown that Black people contributed significantly to modern science but were either not given credit, their identities kept anonymous or their contributions never mentioned.

Where references are made, their identities are limited to terms such as for the Black man from whom European explorers received the antidote to a deadly Indian poison in the West Indies 1743, and for the person from whom Europeans purchased the poisonous Casca bark in Angola in 1877.

Charles Darwin, the British naturalist credited for the theory of evolution by natural selection, did not mention the name of the Black man who tutored him in taxidermy in 1826, but only referred to him as a blackamoor. Historians suggested the man was the formerly enslaved.

After a Black person became a synonym, Naming a plant was unusual.

Linnaeus’s naming of a plant following a Black formerly enslaved person may have been frowned at by many Europeans at the time, such as Carl Gustav Dahlberg, the plantation owner in Suriname. Dahlburg was the one who gave Linnaeus a specimen of the tree which Linnaeus used in the same year to prepare a dissertation to share with the community about the plant.

“Dahlberg was dismayed when Linnaeus suggested Quassi be given his name; he had hoped for this honor himself. “No one at the time considered naming the plant for the Amerindians from whom the cure seems to have originated,” said Londa Schiebinger, a professor of history of science at Stanford University.

Kwasi did not discover the remedy, but only notified the “learned Europeans.”

Given the importance of Kwasi’s tonic and bitter remedy in 1756, Daniel Rolander may have learned about the tonic and Kwasi the year before he was born.

If Linnaeus would follow his own criteria, Kwasi would not have qualified as a recipient of botanical fame, according to Schiebinger.

“I might conjecture that it was for him to serve as a combatant in supplying troops to Dutch colonists and quelling rebellions among his own people as much as his commitment to his mission, and that it was his priority in discovering that Quassi was eventually rewarded with immortality in the European system of botanical nomenclature.”

Kwasi’s history is one that gives him an example of a man’s meat and another man’s poison. The white slavers recognize him as a great man (Graman) and being faithful to the whites, but his own people consider him as a traitor.

Kwasi, who became a plantation owner in 1776, continued to work with the colonial government, who had given him a good house in the country’s capital complemented by two slaves.

Before his death in 1787, he had leprosy, but his medical knowledge enabled him to stop making progress.