The Abolition of the Danish Atlantic Slave Trade.

328 Pages·2017·12.82 MB·English

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LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School
1977
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Joseph Evans Loftin Jr
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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LOFTIN, Joseph Evans, Jr., 1942-
THE ABOLITION OF THE DANISH ATLANTIC SLAVE
TRADE.
The Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College,
Ph.D., 1977
History, modern
Xerox University Microfilms,
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106
© 1977
JOSEPH EVANS LOFTIN, JR.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THE ABOLITION OF THE DANISH ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
The Department of History
by
Joseph Evans Loftin, Jr.
B.A., Louisiana State University, 1966
M.A., Louisiana State University, 1968
May, 1977
EXAMINATION AND THESIS REPORT
Candidate: Joseph Evans Loftin, Jr.
Major Field: History
Title of Thesis: THE ABOLITION OF THE DANISH ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
Approved:
Major Professor and Chairman
Dean of the Gradu^e School
EXAMINING COMMITTEE:
Qjhr*
(XyJifa Q^cf
Date of Examination:
Moa^? JJP /f?7
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank Professor Robert B. Holtman,
his major professor, and Professors Sidney L. Cohen and Patrick C.
Lipscomb, III, for their assistance. The moral support of his
parents was also invaluable. Of particular importance, however,
was the assistance and, occasionally, the prodding of his wife,
Linda, to whom this dissertation is dedicated.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii
ABSTRACT i v
CHAPTER
I. Introduction: The Danish West Indies
and Slave Trade to 1784 1
II. Ernst Schimmelmann and the Prelude
to Abolition 40
III. The Report of the Committee on
the Slave Trade 66
IV. The Abolition Edict 131
V. The Colonial Response to the Abolition
Edict, 1792-96 160
VI. The Abolition Edict Preserved 206
VII. Conclusion 280
BIBLIOGRAPHY 286
APPENDICES 295
VITA 320
iii
ABSTRACT
In the seventeenth century Denmark-Norway joined other
north European states in building forts on the Gold Coast of Africa
and in seeking islands in the Caribbean on which to cultivate tropical
products. The Danish West India Company, established in 1671,
permanently occupied the uninhabited island of St. Thomas in 1672.
In 1718 the Danish company settled St. John, and in 1733 Denmark
purchased St. Croix from France. St. Croix developed into the
principal supplier of raw sugar for Denmark, where sugar refining
became an important industry. The export of surplus sugar from
Denmark to Baltic countries comprised an important part of the
nation's foreign trade in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Initial attempts at using indentured servants from
•• r*r
Scandinavia as agricultural laborers failed, and by the early
eighteenth century African slaves formed the source of labor for
the island's sugar and cotton plantations. Foreign slavers as well
as Danish ships supplied slaves to the Danish West Indies, though the
Crown frequently sought to restrict the trade to Danish slavers.
The slave trade on Danish vessels thrived when France and England
were at war, for Danish ships then supplied the French sugar islands
with slaves. But in peacetime the trade languished. By the late
1780s the slave trade stood condemned on humanitarian grounds in
the eyes of thoughtful Europeans, including prominent members of the
iv
V
Danish government.
In August 1791 the Danish Crown, at the request of Finance
Minister Ernst Schimmelmann, appointed a committee of government
officials to investigate the slave trade. The Committee on the Slave
Trade, guided and dominated by Schimmelmann, decided that the slave
trade should be abolished after a ten-year transition period. In
the meantime, the Crown encouraged a rapid increase in the slave
population and urged the planters to improve the treatment of their
slaves in hopes that the labor force would become self-perpetuating by
1803. Schimmelmann knew that no Caribbean sugar island had yet been
able to sustain its slave population without access to the Atlantic
slave trade. But he and the committee hoped that the planters, faced
with the prospect of abolition, would adopt amelioration out of a
sense of enlightened self-interest. The planters, however, maintained
their traditional interest in short-term profits and apparently did
not take the threat of abolition seriously. Slave deaths continued
to exceed births, and in 1802 the planters asked for a continuation of
the slave trade.
In May 1804 Schimmelmann, with strong support from Johan Philip
Rosenstand-Goiske, a member of the government agency in charge of West
Indian affairs, got the Council of State to postpone a decision on the
planters' appeal. The delay thus obtained proved permanent, and
Denmark became the first European slave-trading nation to outlaw the
slave trade.
CHAPTER I
Introduction: The Danish West Indies and Slave Trade to 1784
Denmark-Norway was the first European slave-trading power
to abolish its slave trade from Africa to its possessions in the
Americas and to prohibit its subjects from participating in any
aspect of the Atlantic slave trade. It did so by means of a royal
edict issued on March 16, 1792, which stated that the trade in slaves
between Danish Guinea and the Danish West Indies was to cease on
January 1, 1803. In the meantime, the slave trade to the Danish West
Indies was to be encouraged so as to provide the plantations with a
labor force large enough to enable the islands to prosper after 1802
without reliance on further slave importsJ Despite opposition in
Copenhagen and in the West Indies, participation in the trade became
illegal for Danish subjects in 1803.
The kingdom of Denmark-Norway began trading with Asia, the
Guinea Coast of Africa, and the West Indies in the seventeenth
century, inspired by the success of the Dutch and the proposals of
Dutch merchants resident in Copenhagen.^ The Danish East India
^Danish State Archives, Copenhagen, Vestindisk-guineisk Rente
samt Generaltoldkammer, 0m Negerhandelens Afskaffelse, Forordning
om Negerhandelen, March 16, 1792, p. 2.
^Georg N0rregaard, Guldk.ysten: de danske Etablissementer
i Guinea, Vol. VIII of Vore gamle Tropekolonier, e3. by Johannes
1
Company, established in 1616, grew out of a plan of two Dutch
merchants who arrived in Copenhagen in 1615.3 j igl8 the company
n
sent its first expedition to Ceylon, and in 1620 the Danes took
possession of Tranquebar on the southeast coast of India; for more
than two centuries Tranquebar served as headquarters for Danish
Asian trade.^
Competition with the Swedes, long intense in the Baltic,
encouraged Danish trading ventures to Africa and the New World.
In December 1624 Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden granted a Dutch
merchant the privilege of establishing a Swedish company to conduct
such overseas trade; in January 1625 Christian IV of Denmark (1588-
1648) did the same.^ Nothing came of this Danish project, however,
mainly because of the impoverishment of Denmark resulting from
£
Christian IV*s intervention in the Thirty Years' War.
Only in the early 1650s did Danish efforts at trade with
Africa and the New World revive. In 1651 the Glueckstadt Company w<
established at Glueckstadt, a town on the Elbe founded in 1615 by
Br0ndsted (8 vols., 2d. ed.; Copenhagen: Fremad, 1966), p. 12. In
the eighteenth century Denmark-Norway, hereafter referred to as
Denmark, also included Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, the
duchy of Schleswig and parts of the duchy of Hoi stein.
3Gunnar 01s en, Dansk Ostindien 1616-1732: de Ostindiske
Kompagniers Handel paa Indien, Vol. V of Vore gamle Tropekolonier,
pp. 3b and 49.
4Ibid., pp. 76-78.
^N0rregaard, Guldk.ysten, pp. 19-21.
*\J. 0. Bro-Jorqensen, Dansk Vestindien indtil 1755:
Kolonisation og Kompagnistyre, Vol. I of Vore qamle Tropekolonier,
p. 12.