Between 1686 and 1689 the glassmaker and alchemist Johann Kunckel produced coloured glass beads in his glassworks on Peacock Island. The deed from the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, which granted Kunckel the entire island, states that these glass beads could only be sold to the Elector himself and his Brandenburg African Company (BAC). Fort Groß Friedrichsburg on the West African coast in present-day Ghana served as a trading post for the BAC.
The Brandenburg African Company used the glass beads produced on the idyllic Peacock Island as a medium of exchange and payment. Numerous documented shiploads to Groß Friedrichsburg list glass beads of various sizes and shapes. Glass beads were one of the best-selling commodities on the West African coast. African traders paid for the beads not only with gold, but also with ivory as well as pepper - and with people, who were enslaved and transported to the Caribbean and the Americas.
The glass beads from Kunckel's laboratory on Peacock Island therefore played an important role in the cruel slave trade. From West Africa, the beads made their way to the Caribbean and the Americas, along with the enslaved people.
