http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4233-3527
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ABSTRACT
In her 1883 collection of biographies of the most famous conquistadores of the Americas, Colombian writer Soledad Acosta de Samper noticeably included two German representatives of the Augsburg-based Welser trading company. Her depictions demonstrate that German finance and investment has been constitutive for the early colonial endeavor in the Americas of which the enslavement of Amerindians and the trade in enslaved Africans formed an integral part from the outset. This essay pursues a twofold aim: Firstly, it employs Acosta de Samper’s account of the Augsburg traders as a lens for elaborating on the little-studied German activities in the Spanish colonies. Secondly, the essay is interested in how early colonial endeavors such as the Welser’s have been serving as a showcase example for German colonial fantasies ever since. Both arguments refute the dominant discourse of the “late” or “insignificant” German role in the colonial enterprise, the transnational slave trade, and the trade in enslaved Amerindians. This essay will pursue and promote a perspective that focuses on the entangled histories and processes of conquest and colonialism, thus broadening the claim of the structural involvement of German-territorial actors such as the Welser company whose activities were transnational in scale to begin with. A relational entanglement perspective brings into view the transnational flows of capital, goods, people, and ideas; the essay thereby raises questions concerning the acknowledgement and confrontation of a German responsibility for colonization and enslavement.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank a number of people for ongoing discussions about the topic of colonial entanglements, slavery, and Germany, especially Sabine Broeck, Manuela Boatcă, Claudia Rauhut, Carsten Junker, Gabriele Dietze, Alanna Lockward, Walter Mignolo, Roberto Zurbano, Anke Lucks, and Thomas Krüger, as well as Annika McPherson for accompanying me to the Welser museum in Augsburg. I am also grateful to the BMBF project “The Americas as Space of Entanglements” at the Center for InterAmerican Studies at the University of Bielefeld, which has supported my research abroad, part of which served as the basis for the current article, to the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin for providing important sources and library space, and to the editors of this volume for the opportunity of being part of this necessary project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Julia Roth is a post-doctoral researcher at the research project “The Americas as Space of Entanglements” at the Center for InterAmerican Studies at Bielefeld University in Germany. Her research focuses on feminist and gender studies, decolonial thinking, postcolonial studies, critical race studies, global inequalities, transnational entanglements, and interdependencies, currently with a focus on the Caribbean. She has carried out research in Argentina, the United States, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. After studying American Studies, Hispanic Studies, and Political Science at Humboldt University Berlin, in London and Madrid, she was post-doctoral researcher at the network “desiguALdades.net. Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America” at Freie Universität Berlin and lecturer at the Gender Studies Department of Humboldt University and the Latin American Institute of Freie Universität. Alongside her academic work, she organizes cultural-political events.
ORCID
Julia Roth http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4233-3527
Notes
1 Acosta de Samper, Biografías de hombres ilustres ó notabes, 79. My translation.
2 The Welser was an important trading house provided with international links and lots of capital. The company was therefore involved in political contexts and provided for example public housing in Augsburg. The Welser and Fugger families developed the first balance sheet and used their expertise to oversee the financial transactions for the Roman Curia, or Council, gaining the family increasing political power. These activities in combination with maintaining strong business relations to the Habsburg Royal Family and owning trading centers in Venice and Nuremberg helped to further increase the family’s wealth and political influence. Over time, the Fuggers functioned as bankers for popes, emperors, and kings while maintaining their interests in the trade of goods, such as copper and newspapers.
3 While the English translation uses the singular form (Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation), in German, “nations” is used in the plural form (Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nationen).
4 See for example Las Casas’ account from 1542 who uses the term “German” in a general, all-encompassing way, referring to the conquerors (particularly Alfinger) from the German-speaking regions. See also the section on Las Casas in this essay.
5 Randeria, “Entangled Histories.”
6 Mintz, Sweetness and Power.
7 Zeuske, Handbuch Sklaverei, 508.
8 The Fugger, another wealthy Augsburg-based trading enterprise, received contracts securing them the use of the American colonies and the rights to exploit the Spanish copper and quicksilver mines as an insurance and acquittance for their credits. Products from the transnational slave trade entered the trading network of the Fugger and the Welser alike. However, unlike the Welser, the Fugger’s actual time in the Americas was limited: their endeavor to conquer what is today Chile was soon abandoned due to the region’s less central geographical position and Pizarro’s influence in the Andean region. Denzer, Die Konquista, 55.
9 Denzer, Die Konquista, 28.
10 Ibid., 12.
11 Ibid., 14–15.
12 Ibid., 20–24.
13 Ibid., 26.
14 Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 19–20.
15 Denzer, Die Konquista, 53.
16 Lieberknecht, “Der Sklavenhandel.” The original reads: “Wir geben euch Erlaubnis, dass ihr oder wer eure Vollmacht hätte, 4000 Negersklaven (aus Afrika), davon wenigstens ein Drittel weiblichen Geschlechts, nach den genannten Inseln (Haiti und Puerto Rico) und dem Festland bringen und dort verteilen könnt.” [We give you permission that you, or who might have the letter of attorney, to bring 4000 negro slaves (from Africa), of which at least one third female, to the mentioned islands (Haiti and Puerto Rico) and the mainland and distribute them there.]
17 See, for example, Otte, “Die Welser;” Schmitt, Konquista als Konzernpolitik; Simmer, Gold und Sklaven; Denzer, Die Konquista. For a particular focus on the enslavement of Amerindians, see Schmitt, Konquista als Konzernpolitik and Simmer, Gold und Sklaven.
18 Otte, “Die Welser,” 128; footnote 85. My translation.
19 Mintz, Sweetness and Power; Ortíz, Cuntrapunteo Cubano.
20 Arroba (from Arabic al-rub) is an old Spanish weight unit still used in Mexico equal to about 25 pounds (or 9.5 kilograms). It is also an old Portuguese unit of weight still used in Brazil equal to about 32 pounds or 12 kilograms (“Arroba,” Merriam Webster; “Arroba,” Dictionary.com).
21 Otte, “Die Welser,” 126.
22 The following numbers are based on the list elaborated on by Otte (“Die Welser”). Otte points out that the original price was “16 enslaved Africans” (“Die Welser,” 126).
23 See Otte’s transcript in “Die Welser,” 153. My translation.
24 Ibid., 154. My translation.
25 Ibid., 132. According to Otte, the Welser were already involved in the slave trade, when Charles V. offered them to take over the commerce. The first transport in enslaved Africans reached Santo Domingo in December 1528 with 250 enslaved Africans on board.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid., 133. Otte elaborates on the “advantageous sales and payment conditions” for the German traders, for instance, the highest price per enslaved. He mentions acts of resistance by the American subjects against the privileges for the Welser.
28 Denzer, Die Konquista, 53.
29 Otte, “Die Welser,” 139. Otte’s study demonstrates that the trade in enslaved Africans formed an integrated part for the German traders’ colonial conquest. According to Otte, Lazarus Nürnberger also traded in slaves and at the end of 1544 bought a license for 25 enslaved Africans whom he thought to deliver to America from the entrepreneurs Jácome and Juan Bautista Botti. In April 1544, Nürnberger let the register of the Casa de la Contratación confirm him to buy twenty male and five female slaves at the Cape Verde Islands and ship them to the Americas.
30 Ibid. My translation.
31 Ibid. The almorjarifazgo was a tariff applied to exports and imports of goods imposed by the governor Lope García de Castro.
32 Ibid. Otte emphasizes that these numbers do not coincide with the declaration of the Audiencia Real of Santo Domingo from the end of July of 1535.
33 Ibid., 140. My translation. Following Otte, the fiscal of the Indian Council, Juan de Villalobos, criticized the quality of the enslaved Africans delivered by the Germans.
34 Ibid., 143.
35 Denzer, Die Konquista, 50.
36 Werner, Das Kupferhüttenwerk, 20.
37 Ibid., 19.
38 Ibid., 317. The asiento in the history of slavery refers to the permission the Spanish government gave to other countries between the years 1543 and 1834 to sell people as slaves to the Spanish colonies.
39 Ibid., 471–472.
40 Álvarez Estévez and Pascual, Alemanes en Cuba, 23.
41 Ibid., 24, 25.
42 Ibid., 44.
43 Werner, Das Kupferhüttenwerk, 465.
44 Zeuske, Handbuch Sklaverei, 504.
45 Ibid., 512.
46 Ibid., 514.
47 The German administration of the island of Tobago from the 1630s until 1659 and a commercial settlement in St. Thomas from 1685 until 1731 provide further examples of German activities in the colonies worth mentioning. Other endeavors, such as the attempt of Friedrich Wilhelm and his successors to purchase or occupy islands like Tobago, St. Croix, or St. Eustache for their trade in enslaved workers, failed. The Bavarian-Dutch and French-Bavarian joint colonial projects in Guyana (1664) were not concluded, neither was the colonial contract between the Duke of Hanau and the Dutch West-Indian Compagnie over a colony referred to as “Hanau-Indien” (Hanau-India, 1669), located between the Orinoco and Amazonas rivers (Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 33). In the seventeenth century, inspired by Dutch traders, the elector of Brandenburg Friedrich Wilhelm participated in colonial endeavors on the African West coast. An expedition in 1681 to the so-called Gold Coast resulted in the foundation of the Brandenburg-African Compagnie (brandenburgisch-afrikanische Kompagnie) for the triangular overseas trade with West Africa, which held the Brandenburg monopoly over the African trade in pepper, ivory, gold, and enslaved Africans for 30 years. In 1687, the Compagnie built the fort Groß-Friedrichsburg and a settlement in Arguin, both of which primarily served for the trade in enslaved Africans. During its existence (between 1450 and 1867), the company sold about 19,000 enslaved Africans who had survived the Middle Passage from Africa to America. Over 17,000 enslaved Africans per year were sold to the Caribbean (Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 38).
48 Ibid., 19. Cuba provides numerous examples of how, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, German capital was regularly invested in the Americas. Since slavery in Cuba was only abolished in 1886, German investments on the islands usually included the exploitation of slave labor, and German merchants continued to be actively involved in the trade in enslaved African workers. Tellingly, the German sugar export association (Deutscher Zuckerexportverein) existed until 1886, the very year when slavery was finally abolished in Cuba (Álvarez Estévez and Guzmán, Alemanes en Cuba, 30). See in this context also the study by Schulte Beerbühl and Frey on the cigar merchant Uppmann from Bielefeld, “Die H. Upmann Zigarre.”
49 Wallenta, “Die Handelsgenies,” 11–15.
50 Kluger, The Wealthy Fuggers, 7, 13.
51 Denzer, Die Konquista, 26.
52 See, for example Arciniegas, Germans in the Conquest.
53 Brog, In Defense of Faith, 101.
54 Denzer, Die Konquista, 22.
55 Las Casas, An Account, 68. Las Casas engages in some wordplay in Spanish, irreproducible in English: Germans (alemánes) are paraphrased with the similar sounding term for animals (animales), he thus speaks about “these German, or beastly, tyrants.” For more information on the German black legend, see Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 24.
56 Las Casas, for instance, refers particularly to Alfinger whom he holds to be a Lutheran; therefore, he as a Catholic has to denounce him (“The German governor, this tyrant and also, we believe, heretic, for he neither heard mass nor allowed many others to hear it either, with other signs of Lutheranism that we found out)” (Las Casas, An Account, 66). However, Las Casas originally did not “single out” the Germans, since he stated that they were just as bad as other conquerors:
[S]ince they entered into these lands […] they have sent many ships loaded and shipped with Indians over the sea to be sold for slaves in Santa Marta and on the island of Hispaniola and Jamaica and the island of San Juan. […] There is no reason to make all these Indians into slaves save perverse, blind, and stubborn willfulness, in obedience to the insatiable greed for gold and those exceedingly avaricious tyrants, like all others in all the Indies have always done, taking and sizing those lambs and sheep from their homes and taking alike their women and children in the cruel and nefarious ways that we have spoken of, and shackling them in the king’s irons to sell them for slaves. (Las Casas, An Account, 68)
57 In the appendix to her biographies, titled “Otros conquistadores de segundo y tercer orden” (Other conquerors of second and third order), Acosta de Samper lists Juan Nicolás de Aleman without further detail than the note that he came to the Americas with Federmann and established himself in Tocaima, and that one of his daughters was later married to a Flame called Matías Esporquil (Acosta de Samper, Biografías de hombres ilustres ó notabes, 393).
58 Ibid., 83. My translation.
59 Ibid., 4. My translation. Emphasis in the original.
60 Ibid., 97. My translation.
61 Ibid. Acosta de Samper even depicts Federmann as physically attractive, which is an unusual perspective for a woman of her time: “He had a white and beautiful face, was of elevate stature, a red and thick beard and was skilled in all physical exercises.”
62 The only account by a German conqueror himself is the Indianische Historia by Nicolas Federmann which he wrote about his trip in 1531. Federmann’s main interest was to find gold, and he justified the submission of the Amerindians through the endeavor to bring them the Christian faith and baptize them and to either make them become his “friends” and be exploited as guides and carriers or destroy their lands, capture them, enslave them, and rob their children and wives. In his introduction to the 1965 edition to Federmann’s account, anthropologist and historian Juan Friede describes the practice of literally enslaving Amerindians as follows: “Above all prisoners were used as carriers. They were forged iron rings around the neck, which were then connected through a chain. This system allowed them to be used as baggage carriers and avoid their escape” (Friede, “Einführung,” xvii). The German original reads: “Als Träger wurden vor allen Dingen auch Gefangene benutzt. Man schmiedete ihnen eiserne Ringe um den Hals, die dann durch eine Kette verbunden wurden. Dieses System erlaubte es, sie als Troßträger zu benutzen und ihre Flucht zu verhindern.” Federmann, Indianische Historia, 23. Federmann’s account also provides evidence of what Rubin has referred to as the “traffic in women” practiced between colonizing and colonized men. Rubin, “The Traffic in Women.” At one instance, Federmann describes a “dwarf woman” he is given by a cacique (indigenous leader or noble man in Caribbean Taíno language). Federmann, Indianische Historia, 30.
63 The works by Zimmerer and Zeller, eds., Völkermord in Deutsch-Südwestafrika; Zimmerer and Peraudin, eds., German Colonialism; Zimmerer, ed., Verschweigen–Erinnern–Bewältigen and Von Windhoek bis Auschwitz?; Eckert, Kolonialismus; Conrad, Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte; Randeria, Römhild, and Conrad, Jenseits des Eurozentrismus, the recent (2016–2017) exhibition “German Colonialism: Fragments Past and Present” shown at the German History Museum in Berlin, etc., indicate a slow change of discourse. Numerous interventions and studies by People of Color have for decades been claiming a critical revision of Germany’s colonial past and its present continuities, see Eggers et al., Mythen, Masken und Subjekte; Guitiérrez-Rodríguez and Steyerl, Spricht die Subalterne Deutsch?; Ha, Lauré al-Samarai, and Mysorekar, Re/Visionen. For an early account of German colonial history and the Welser, see also Opitz, Oguntoye, and Schultz, Showing Our Colors.
64 Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 2.
65 Ibid., 16.
66 Ibid., 31–33.
67 Ibid., 209.
68 Federmann, Deutsche Konquistadoren, 7.
69 Ibid., 7–8.
70 Ibid., 9.
71 Ibid.
72 Kommunikation und Kaffee Augsburg quoted in Rauschnig, Gespräche mit Hitler, 61.
73 Federmann, Deutsche Konquistadoren, 23. My translation.
74 Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 10. According to Fernando Coronil, the concept of Occidentalism describes
the ensemble of representational practices that participate in the production of conceptions of the world, which (1) separate the world’s components into bounded units; (2) disaggregate their relational histories; (3) turn difference into hierarchy; (4) naturalize these representations; and thus (5) intervene, however unwittingly, in the reproduction of existing asymmetrical power relations. (Coronil, “Beyond Occidentalism,” 57)
75 The period of the brandenburgisch-afrikanische Kompagnie or the Berlin-based so-called Africa Conference (or Kongo Conference) of 1884 is also inadequately studied and taught.
76 See, for example, the Kreuzberg Museum in Berlin, which dedicates part of a room of its permanent exposition to the brandenburgisch-afrikanische Kompagnie as part of the city’s history. In 2014, several subcultural Berlin institutions like the “post-migrant” theater Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and the art space “Savvy Contemporary” organized events memorizing the Berlin-based Africa conference of 1884 during which the European colonial powers divided the African continent among themselves. The project “Denkwerk” in Bremen, initiated by university professor Sabine Broeck, makes high-school students research the city’s slavery past. Furthermore, there are numerous “postcolonial” city tours organized by initiatives like “Bielefeld postcolonial” or “Hamburg postcolonial.”
77 Lieberknecht, “Der Sklavenhandel.”
78 Namibian, Afro-German, and international activists are claiming financial, cultural (e.g., turning back a collection of skulls from the genocide on the Nama and Herrero), and intellectual (re-writing of history, canons, school curricula) reparation for the crimes committed in the colonies.