Pieter Woortman

Pieter Woortman served as an official of the Dutch West India Company on the Dutch Gold Coast in Africa and was engaged in private slave trade of Africans. He started his career as a soldier and ended it as general director and one of the longest governing director-generals of the Dutch company. From the 1740s he became involved in profitable slave trade operating in Apam, and later in Accra and Elmina. He runned that business with the local African woman, named Afodua or Aphodewa, with whom he would have six children. He made a fortune by advancing through the company’s hierarchy and was able to provide lucrative positions for his family. Woortman died in 1780, at the age of 80.