Vermeer's Hat

In his analysis of The Card Players, a mid-17th century Dutch painting by Hendrik Van der Burch, Brook focuses on a young Black servant who looks out of the painting, holding the viewer’s gaze. Brook uses the presence of this boy in the Netherlands to consider the various ways people moved around the world at that time, whether voluntarily or not. Movement took place at all levels of society and included the wealthy and the poor.

Brook lists four categories of movement. Some, like the 10-year-old servant in The Card Players, were forcibly removed from their home countries. While people from Africa had been traveling to Europe since the 15th century, Europe’s lust for forced labor intensified the flow of enslaved African workers, many of whom ended up in the Low Countries. Likewise, enslaved labor was key for the development of colonies in the Americas; most of the enslaved workforce that ended up there was part of the forced movement of people from Africa.

Others had to abandon their home countries to survive. For example, poor Chinese migrants from Fujian and other areas fled the constant threat of war with and conquest by the Manchus, and the inability to make a living due to strict regulations.