User:Brixtonite/Aniaba

Aniaba (Anabia, Anniaba) was a prince of Assinie (south of present-day Côte-d'Ivoire), from the Ehotilé people who was sent to France in may 1688, at the time of the arrival of the French on this West African Coast.

Converted to catholicism, with Louis XIV himself as his godfather, he spent over a decade in France before returning to Africa. Aniaba had come to France to learn all the necessary sciences, arts and manners for his future role as a king, he became in a short span of time an emblematic personnality of the Versailles court.^{[dubious – discuss]} He would have even been named cultural council to Louis XIV.^{[dubious – discuss]} He was also taught classical languages and excelled in Latin. Presumed to be endowed with the gift of healing, he was nicknamed « the black sorcerer of Versailles ».

In novembre 1687, the knight of Amon and Jean-Baptiste du Casse were received by king Zena Krindjabo in Aboisso, capital of the Sanwi Kingdom. Aniaba is brought back to France with them as a valet by a tradesman, alongside one of his compatriots named Banga. Of alleged noble blood, he enters the Notre-Dame de Paris' catherdal following the advice of one Hyon, pearls trader on the Petit-Lion street of Paris and would have been seazed by a very strong religious emotion which attracted the interest of the Court to whom he presented himself as the presumptive heir of the Assinian crown, probably encouraged by his entourage, knowing that it aligned with several strategic goals of the French monarch.

Presented to the Bishop of Meaux, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, he would have claimed being from a Christian family from Isfahan having fled social unrest thanks to his mother's jewels, some of which he displayed, rumor which earned him the nickname of Tartar knight. He was baptised on 1st August 1691 by Bossuet in the Church of the Foreign Missions, godfathered by Louis XIV of whom he received the first name (complete baptism name Louis-Jean Aniaba).^[1] According to liturgist Claude Chastelain and others, alongside the best cathechist the Kingdom of France could offer, he benefited from the best teachers in several arts and sciences whose knowledge and expertise is required of noblemen, is made musketeer and officer of cavalry, captain of a regiment in the Hainaut with an annual pension of twelve thousand francs, becoming « the first black officer in the French army» according to Frédéric Couderc.

Debate over first black officer or first black musketeer in the French Army claim

This claim is belied by the reported existence of another character of XVII century France with a similar life story as Aniaba, that of Machicor, a young cornet or flag-bearer in the guards of the Armand Charles de La Porte, 2nd Duke of La Meilleraye, Duke of Mazarin - nephew by marriage of the infamous Cardinal who had been made governor of Alsace where Machicor, originally from Madagascar, was known as Königssohn (son of a king) as reported by Lazare de la Salle de l'Hermine following a face-to-face encounter at a local festival in Altkirch on 25th July 1675 during his chronicled travels.

Moreover, due to the similarity of their two life stories and the strategic implications they reveal in the Kingdom of France's taking or exchanging young Africans and islanders of local noble lineage or key importance as hostages or commercial guarantees back to France to secure the fate of their local outposts or trade alliances on foreign coasts, it is plausible that more cases that would be less documented would have existed, alongside several documented others serving as pages or valets and not in the military.

Nonetheless, Aniaba may well be the first black musketeer in History and the first one from Africa whereas Machichor would be the first documented Merina and thus Austronesian officer in the French army if not in a Western army altogether. There are less sources on Machicor than Aniaba, logically, considering the proximity of the first with the king.

It is also highly likely that despite neither of them being a member of the Maison militaire du roi de France's Musketeers of the Guardrendered famous by Alexandre Dumas , which explains why the term "musketeer" is now wrongly interpreted more or less as "soldier working in the protection services of the monarchy" by the general public, Machicor would also have technically been a "musketeer" (infanteryman purveyed with this weapon when at war) in Alsace, just like it was documented that Aniaba was musketeer in a regiment in Picardy, which he captained during wars in the Hainaut. In which case Machicor (documented as such as early as 1675) would trump Aniaba by a minimum of 16 years for the honorary informal title of the first documented black musketeer in the French Army and probably in Western History, whilst Aniaba would have to contend with being the first black African in this position between 1691 and 1701. The second black African to reach this rank in a European Army is the infamous Abram Petrovich Gannibal, who was an engineer-sapper in the Army of Louis XV of France during his formative years and was made captain after his service in the War of the Quadruple Alliance and completeing his studies at the Mililary Academy of La Fère in 1723.

A religious order of chivalry named Order of the Star-Notre-Dame was even created at his intention in 1701 when he put his lands in Africa and his mission before sailing back to them under the protection of the Virgin Mary. On this occasion, Aniaba gifted Notre Dame de Paris with a painting made by the king's own Augustin-Oudart Justinat, where he is represented by the sides of the King and Bossuet. He also gave the painter a diploma which would be collected by Baron de Joursanvault . The painting got subsequently lost.

At the death of king Zena, the Court resolved to send Aniaba back to take possession of his States, helped by the Compagnie de Guinée which hoped to benefit from it. Accompanied by missionaries and merchants from the Company, he left on 19th April 1701, arriving on July 5th^[2]. On their arrival, they were received by the new king Akasini, and Aniaba did not benefit from any sign of respect. After explanations, the merchants were however able to obtain from the king his agreement to the construction of a fortress, Fort Saint-Louis, and permission to the Dominican Father Godefroy Loyer, apostolic prefectto evangelize. He drew from it a travel report published in 1714.

Several sources explain differently why Aniaba would have ended up with absolutely no power once he made it back to Assinie :

• The official version was that he was the male heir from a power whose transmission line was matrilineal, as was the case in Krindjabo, center of the Sanwi Kingdom. He could therefore in no case inherit any ruling power.
• Agreeing that he was particularly gifted, some claim that he would have been however of a very low social status, perhaps even a slave, driven to present himself in France in the best light, in order to push her king to invest this part of Africa or take advantage of his aim to do so. In support of this hypothesis, the Dutchman Willem Bosman, whose point of view is potentially tainted by anti-French sentiment, in his Voyage in Guinea of 1705 advances that Aniaba would only have been the slave of a Kabaschir (county chief on the Slaves' Coast ), and would have been recognised upon his return to Assinia, thus losing all his acquired prestige. It is important to state that the status of prince and of slave were not mutually exclusive at all in this time and place and even common in times of tensions between kingdoms leading to brutally bartered alliances or the exchanges of key personalities or artefacts for safekeeping as commercial guarantees.
• An intermediate possibility suggests that, although related to the royal family, he was too far from the throne to have any right to rule.

Subsequently, great uncertainty hangs over his fate:

• Having therefore no right to succession, he would nevertheless have been adopted by the new Essouma sovereigns of his village, but without gaining any ruling power.
• According to the article, History of Ivory Coast, after having returned to Animism and leaning in favor of the Dutch and the English , in 1704 he would have become advisor to the king of Quita (present-day Togo), or else Keta, in Ghana whilst calling himself Hannibal.
• The most documented possibility is that he returned to France, in Libourne, in 1703.
• More marginally, according to the article Education in Ivory Coast, he would have ended up stuck blind.

Finally, as early as 1740, a romanced version of his story was told in an anonymous work, History of Louis Anniaba: King of Essenie in Africa on the Guinea Coast , making of him the first Black hero of a French novel.

Quite puzzingly, the exact same year of 1740 a competing alleged apocryphal account of a very similar life story to Aniaba's and in which the narrator claims the hero's story was mixed up with that of Aniaba's was also published anonymously: Histoire de Moulay Abelmeula : Le Triomphe de l’amour et de la vertu, dans l’esclavage et sur le trône (The History of Moulay Abelmeula: The Triumph of love and virtue, in slavery and on the throne) or Histoire de Moulay Abelmeula, écrite sur ses propres mémoires (History of Moulay Abelmeula, written from his own memoir). It could be a second romanesque Middle Eastern avatar for Aniaba with a different name - most likely - or the story of a contemporary from the Orient with a similar life path - no concordant sources to confirm this.

In addition to this first fictionalized account by an anonymous author published in 1740, mentioned above, Aniaba and his life have inspired many modern authors, playwrights, historians and screenwriters producing the following representations:

• The book Aniaba, Un Assinien à la cour de Louis XIV (Aniaba, an Assinian at the court of Louis XIV), published in 1975 by historian, university teacher and Ivory Coast politician Henriette Diagri Diabaté (co-author: Gilles Lambert) is one of the very first modern written works spotlighting this unique character shared between Ivory Coast and France's histories^[3].

• The short theater play Le Prince d'Assinie, drame historique en 3 actes (The Prince of Assinie, historical drama in three acts), from Ivorian dramaturgist Anoma Kanié, which came out in 1977, is inspired from his life^[4].

• The book Prince ébène (Ebony prince) by French writer Frédéric Couderc, published in 2003, narrates in details the extraordinary life of Aniaba whom the author calls the first black officer in the French Armed Forces^[5] and potentially the first and unique black African musketeer in History^[6].

• The 10th tome in the historical fiction novel series for children (ages 9 - 13) Les Colombes du Roi-Soleil (The Sun King's Doves) called "Adélaïde et le Prince noir" (Adelaide and the black prince) by French novellist Anne-Marie Desplat-Duc, published in 2011, stages a romance between a seventeen-year-old Aniaba and a young Norman noble, Adélaïde de Pélissier, the titular "dove" of this particular tome, boarder at the Maison royale de Saint-Louis^[7],^[8].

• A chapter of the historical vulgarisation book Les Enfants de l'Histoire - 16 destins exceptionnels, de l'Antiquité à nos jours (The Children of History - 16 exceptional destinies, from Antiquity to our time), co-written by historians Céline Bathias-Rascalou and Dimitri Casali, published in 2019, is centered on Aniaba^[9],^[10]

• Another historical vulgarisation book by Franco-Ivorian journalist Serge Bilé, Prince Aniaba, Le mousquetaire ivoirien de Notre-Dame de Paris (Prince Aniaba, the Ivorian musketeer of Notre-Dame of Paris) came out in March 2023^[11].

The character of the black musketeer Hannibal prominently seen during the scenes at the Siege of La Rochelle, inspired by Aniaba, who existed about 60 years after the time of the action, is played in the second part of the diptych of films The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan and The Three Musketeers: Milady, produced by Pathé (2023), by actor Ralph Amoussou^[12].

• The character of the Prince of Assinie, Anniaba, played by British actor Marcus Griffiths, is introduced in episode 3 of the first season of Belgian-Canadian-French series Versailles (2015).

• Disney+ France is working on a serie whose working title is Black Musketeer, a spin-off from the Pathé diptych of movies The Three Musketeers : D'Artagnan and Milady freely adapted from Ebony prince by Couderc.^[13]

[[Category:18th-century French military personnel]] [[Category:17th-century French military personnel]] [[Category:18th-century African people]] [[Category:17th-century African people]] [[Category:History of Ivory Coast]] [[Category:WikiProject Ivory Coast articles]] [[Category:History of France]] [[Category:Ancien Régime]] [[Category:African diaspora in France]]