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ABSTRACT
This study discusses Swiss industrial pioneer and entrepreneur Alfred Escher (1819–1882) from Zurich in the context of Switzerland’s rising awareness of colonial entanglements. When it became known in 2017 that Escher’s uncle Friedrich Ludwig had owned the Cuban coffee plantation “Buen Retiro” near Artemisa, including 87 enslaved men and women, it launched a public debate that was intensified and broadened in the summer of 2020 by the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter movement. The statue of Alfred Escher in front of Zurich's main railway station has become a symbol not only of Switzerland’s complicity in the crimes of colonialism, but also of the debate over representations of the colonial in public spaces.
Acknowledgements
This article and my work in general owe a great deal to – among others – Michael Zeuske, Brigitta Gomringer, Caroline Arni, Hans Barth, Henry Désir, Ibrahima Seck, Jeannot Hilaire, Kanyana Mutombo, Klaus Weber, Paola Iten, Sasha Huber, Thomas Späth, and Yvonne Apiyo Brändle-Amolo. Special thanks to Heike Raphael-Hernandez and Pia Wiegmink for their support in improving and completing this text.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Brun, Schiffarten, 39; Wanner, “Sklavenhalter”; research by Brazilian-Swiss scholar André Paiva de Figueiredo.
2 Fässler, “Sklavenhändler.”
3 Bonorand, “Hieronymus Sailer,” 103–125.
4 In the context of colonialism, the terms “Switzerland” and “Swiss” are problematic both in academic texts and for the general public. Strictly speaking, one can only refer to “Switzerland” as a nation state after 1848, when the Swiss federal constitution was adopted in a popular referendum.
5 Mahlke and Beck, Stoff, Blut, Gold.
6 For more information on the Fugger and Welser’s involvement in the slave trade, see also the conversation between Veronica Jackson and Heike Raphael-Hernandez in this issue.
7 Hoffmann, Kunstdenkmäler, 344.
8 Others banks located at the Paradeplatz include Bank Hofmann, IG Bank SA, Private Client Bank, Bank J. Safra Sarasin AG, Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd., Dreyfus Söhne & Cie AG Banquiers, One Swiss Bank, and Banque Internationale à Luxembourg.
9 Jung, Escher.
10 What is often forgotten in this idealised Swiss Gotthard narrative is that the railway tunnel workers were mostly from Italy and went on strike in 1875. This labour conflict, which was violently suppressed by the local police force and left four workers dead and 13 wounded, even received attention in the European press.
11 Strehle, “Geheimnis,” 8–14.
12 When African-American writer James Baldwin spent two winters in 1951/1952 in the Alpine village of Leukerbad (Canton of Valais) to work on his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, it was exactly this mixture of peculiarly Swiss innocence, naiveté, and racism built on attitudes of exoticism and exclusion that he reflected upon in his 1953 essay “Stranger in the Village.” Baldwin returned to Leukerbad in 1962 for a documentary film about his stay there. Today, a shutter on the house where he stayed as a guest of the Happersberger family bears the stapled portrait of Baldwin by Swiss-Haitian-Finnish artist Sasha Huber (2018). See Huber, “The Firsts – James Baldwin.”
13 Haller, Restauration der Staatswissenschaft, 206–229.
14 Jung, “Friedrich Lochers Pamphlete ‘Die Freiherren von Regensberg’ und das liberale System Alfred Eschers” (translated from the German by the author).
15 See seminar programme under: Universität Bern. “Münchenwiler Seminar.”
16 For more information on the history of Münchenwiler Castle, see the castle's website: Schloss Münchenwiler, “Schlossgeschichte.” For more information on the plantation ownership of the von Graffenried family, see Fässler, “CARICOM Compilation Archive (CCA),” section “3.1. North America (the Thirteen Colonies and the United States).” In historical sources, von Graffenried sometimes occurs with alternate spellings, such as “Graffenreid,” “Graffenreidt,” “DeGraffenreid” etc.
17 Zeuske, “Tod,” 6–26.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 17, 23.
20 Lang, “Sklavenhalter.”
21 Müller, Sezessionskrieg, 103, 114.
22 Müller, Sezessionskrieg.
23 Lang, Demokratie, 32–34.
24 Gemeinderat Zürich, “Postulat 2017/246.”
25 Brengard, Schubert, and Zürcher, Beteiligung Zürich.
26 Tribelhorn, “Dunkle Geschichte.”
27 Brengard, Schubert, and Zürcher, Beteiligung Zürich, 4, 24f., 33.
28 See the vessel Olympe [Voyage Id. 31698] in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.
29 See the entries “Zollikofer,” “Zollicoffer,” “Solicoffre,” and “Zollicoffre” in Fässler, “CARICOM Compilation.”
30 Brengard, Schubert, and Zürcher, Beteiligung Zürich, 4, 22f., 30, 31–35.
31 Schmid, Der junge Escher, 37; Fredriksen, The War, 124; Jung, Briefedition.
32 Brengard, Schubert, and Zürcher, Beteiligung Zürich, 35 (translated from the German by the author).
33 In 1803, the Haitian Slave Revolution was in its final phase, and on 19 November, after their defeat at the Battle of Vertières, the French left the island.
34 As Sven Beckert and Pepijn Brandon observe, “In the 19th century, the Swiss Escher family owned a coffee plantation in Cuba where slaves had to toil. This gave the Eschers a considerable part of their fortune. Alfred Escher inherited the money and used it to build the Gotthard railway” (translated from the German by the author). Beckert and Brandon, “Blut und Schweiss.”
35 Several deaths related to police interventions have been recorded and debated nationwide: Hervé Mandundu in Bex (2016), Lamin Fatty in Lausanne (2017), Mike Ben Peter in Lausanne (2018), and Roger Nzoy Wilhelm in Morges (2021). Most media attention has been given to the case of Mike Ben Peter, whose dying has often been compared to that of George Floyd in Minneapolis (2020). See Farge, “Swiss court.”
36 See Purtschert, “Schorsch.” and Fässler, “Mitteilungen.”
37 Dos Santos Pinto et al., Un/doing Race.
38 In the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, numerous articles on Switzerland’s slavery past were published in widely-read national newspapers and magazines, such as Cavelty, “Die Sklaverei gehört zur Schweizer Geschichte,” Zaugg, “Historiker zum Schweizer Sklavenhandel,” Ogul, “Auf den Spuren der Sklaverei,” or Hosp, “Der unmenschliche Handel.”
39 Prominent representatives of a new (and also of an older) generation of decolonial/postcolonial activists and artists are, for example, Felicia Afriyie, Joshua Amissah, Yvonne Apiyo Amolo-Brändle, Izabel Barros, Manda Beck, Laura Flórez Casteliar, Serena Dankwa, Ashkira Darman, Martin R. Dean, Halua Pinto de Magalhães, Jovita dos Santos Pinto, Rahel El-Maawi, Carmel Froehlicher, Anja Glover, Jeannot Hilaire, Sasha Huber, Danielle Isler, Rohit Jain, Laura Arminda Kingsley, Mira Koch, Chonja Lee, André Loembe, Noemi Michel, Mohamed Mahmoud Mohamedou, Nayansaku Mufwankolo, Kanyana Mutombo, Tarek Naguib, Pamela Ohene-Nyako, Roger Buangi Puati, Mandy Abou Shoak, Ana Sobral, Damir Skenderovic, Marilyn Umurungi, and Mohamed Wa Baile.
40 Barth and Fässler, “Louis Agassiz”; Barbash, Legacy.
41 Mattioli, Burckhardt.
42 Forel, Rückblick, 158 (translated from the German by the author); Küchenhoff, “Forel.”
43 Guyot, Earth, 274 and 343.
44 Morgan, “Jung”; Gray, Physiognomic Thought.
45 Vogt, Vorlesungen, 242; Hurst-Majno, “Les universités.”
46 Fässler, Reise, 67–77; Barth, 1864.
47 Figure according to Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.
48 French population in 1800: 29 million, according to O’Neill. “Population.” Swiss population in 1800: 1.5 million, according to census of the Helvetic Republik, Schluchter. Bevölkerung.
49 Eltis, Atlas, 23; David et al, La Suisse, 47.
50 Baumann, “Joseph Jung.”
51 “Nebelspalter.”
52 Somm, Warum? Chapters “Triumph der Baumwolle”, “Die dunkle Hinterlassenschaft der Sklaverei”, and “Bilanz”.
53 Fässler, “Denkmäler.” Apart from the debate about Zurich’s Escher statue, there are – to name just a few – controversies over the statue of David Pury (1709–1786) in Neuchâtel, the monument for Johann August Sutter (1803–1880) in Rünenberg BL, an Alpine peak named after Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) on the border between the cantons of Berne and Valais, the bust of Carl Vogt (1817–1895) in Geneva, and numerous buildings bearing the name “Mohr” or “Mohrenkopf” (German for “blackamoor”).
54 Exit Racism Now, “Forderungen.”
55 Conseil communal, “Marques mémorielles.”
56 Pfund, "Concrete.”
57 It is estimated that Edward Colston (1636–1721) was responsible for the enslavement of over 80,000 men, women, and children through his involvement in the Royal African Company. On 7 June 2020, his Bristol statue was toppled and pushed into the harbour basin.
58 The brutal regime of Belgian King Leopold II (1835–1909) in his privately owned “Congo Freestate” resulted between 1 and 13 million victims of forced labour, violence, diseases, and man-made famines. His over 20 statues, busts, and memorials have been called into question by Black and PoC communities and some have been removed.
59 However, when the monument was inaugurated in 1889, Zurich workers protested against what they saw as a symbol of bourgeois arrogance. See Kreis, Denkmaltopografie, 45.
60 See Louverture, “SCORES Signatories.”
61 See committee website, Louverture, “SCORES.”
62 Trouillot, “Rituals.”.
63 After a number of video-conferences, I was invited in 2019 by the CARICOM Reparations Commission to participate in their Antigua and Barbuda symposium on “Western Banking, Colonialism and Reparations.” See also CARICOM, “Ten Point Plan” and Dunkley, “List.”
64 Wälti, “Reparationen”; Louverture, “Interpellation Tabea Rai/Eva Gammenthaler (AL)” (translation from the German by the author).
65 Projektgruppe Rassismus im öffentlichen Raum (PG RiöR), Möglichkeiten zum Umgang.
66 Leitner Verhoeven. “Offenlegung der Verbindungen eines Unternehmens zur Sklaverei bei Geschäftsbeziehungen mit der Stadt Zürich.”
67 Exhibition “Blinde Flecken. Zürich und der Kolonialismus,” Stadthausquai Zurich, 20 January–2 September 2023.
68 Museum für Gestaltung, Talking Bodies; Landesmuseum, "kolonial – Globale Verflechtungen der Schweiz."
69 Credit Suisse, “Merge”; Finanzdepartement, Übernahme. The take-over by UBS was finalised on 12 June 2023, when Credit Suisse shares vanished from the financial markets.
70 For an overview, see Makortoff, “Crooks.”
71 Credit Suisse, “Merge”; Public Eye, “Money Laundering.”
72 Quoted in Merkofer, Apartheidgold, 141; see also Kreis, Südafrika, 309ff.
73 Credit Suisse, Who.
74 On Hirzel, see Wehrli, “Zürich,” 212 and Hürlimann, “Hans Caspar Hirzel”; Jung, Briefedition; “Carlowitz & Co.,” Studienwerk Deutsches Leben in Ostasien e.V.
75 SVP, “10-Millionen-Schweiz.”
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Hans Fässler
Hans Fässler (born 1954) is a Swiss historian, politician, satirical revue artist, political activist, and retired teacher of English. He studied English Literature and Language, General History, and British-American History at Zurich University and completed his studies in 1982 with a Master's Degree and a paper on Shelley’s imagery of revolutionary change. His 2003 satirical one-man show “Louverture stirbt 1803” on the relations between Switzerland, slavery, and the Haitian Revolution turned into his book Reise in Schwarz-Weiss. Schweizer Ortstermine in Sachen Sklaverei (Zurich 2005), which was one of three publications that set the agenda for the debate on Switzerland's colonial history. In the context of Swiss involvement in slavery, anti-Black racism, and other colonial crimes, he has launched a number of campaigns: “Démonter Louis Agassiz” (demanding the Alpine peak Agassizhorn BE/VS to be renamed “Rentyhorn”), SCORES (Swiss Committee on Reparations for Slavery), and “On the Traces of Racism” (guided postcolonial tours through his hometown of St.Gallen and other cities). Political and research journeys have taken him to Haiti, the Senegal, French Guiana, and Antigua.