From abolition of the slave trade to protection of immigrants: Danish colonialism, German missionaries, and the development of ideas of humanitarian governance from the early eighteenth to the nineteenth century

ABSTRACT

The focus of the essay is the emergence in the eighteenth century of discourses of abolition in the context of bonded labour and the trade in slaves from India. It relates this to the development in forms of unfree labour from slavery to indenture, and to the travels of abolitionism from the Indian Ocean world into that of the Atlantic. The study examines multinational dimensions of this early history of abolition and discusses more particularly how missionary enterprises based in Danish colonies in India contributed to the development of ideas of education, enlightenment, and natural rights that fed into emerging discourses of abolitionism. Further, the essay links eighteenth-century debates around abolition to discourses of protection and humanitarianism that became prominent in the last half of the nineteenth century in the context of imperialist competition and campaigns against the illegal slave trade.

KEYWORDS:

• Slave trade
• abolition
• Danish colonialism
• missionaries
• humanitarianism

Acknowledgements

Most of the essay was written while I was a fellow during the academic year 2017–2018 at re:work – the Research Centre for studies on “Work and Life Cycle in Global Historical Perspective” at the Humboldt University in Berlin. It was finished during my fellowship at STIAS – the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study – from February to May 2019. Comments, criticisms and inspiration from re:work and STIAS colleagues are gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Preben Kaarsholm is Professor of Global and International Development Studies at Roskilde University and a Research Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) and at the Humboldt University’s International Research Center “Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History” in Berlin. Recent publications include “Transnationalism, Islam and Public Sphere Dynamics in KwaZulu-Natal: Rethinking South Africa’s Place in the Indian Ocean World,” Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, 81, no. 1 (2011); “Zanzibaris or Amakhuwa? Sufi Networks in South Africa, Mozambique and the Indian Ocean,” Journal of African History, 55, no. 2 (2014); and “Indian Ocean Networks and the Transmutations of Servitude: The Protector of Indian Immigrants and the Administration of Freed Slaves and Indentured Labourers in Durban in the 1870s,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 42, no. 3 (2016).

Notes

1 Chatterjee and Eaton, Slavery and South Asian History; Major, Slavery, Abolition and Empire; Allen, European Slave Trading.

2 Chatterjee, “Renewed and Connected Histories”; Major, Slavery, Abolition and Empire; Allen, European Slave Trading, 206–220.

3 Tinker, A New System of Slavery; Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers.

4 Heartfield, The Aborigines’ Protection Society; Heartfield, The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society; Lester and Dussart, Colonisation and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance.

5 Kaarsholm, “Indian Ocean Networks and the Transmutations of Servitude.”

6 Gøbel, The Danish Slave Trade, 57.

7 Bredsdorff, The Trials and Travels of Willem Leyel, 148–149.

8 Ibid., 96.

9 Struwe, Dansk Ostindien 1732–1776, 59

10 Ibid., 59–64.

11 Harries, “Middle Passages of the Southwest Indian Ocean”; Harries, “Mozambique Island, Cape Town and the Organisation of the Slave Trade.”

12 Worden, “Indian Slaves in Cape Town,” 396. Cf. Datta, From Bengal to the Cape.

13 Olsen, Dansk Ostindien 1616–1732, 223–224.

14 Larsen, De Danske Ostindiske Koloniers Historie, Vol. 1, 35–37 and 56; Vol. 2, 19.

15 On the cosmopolitanism of the Indian Ocean trade, see Thiebaut, “The Role of ‘Brokers’’ and “Pre-19th Century Slave Trade” as well as Mbeki and van Rossum, “Private Slave Trade in the Dutch Indian Ocean World.”

16 See Allen, European Slave Trading, 140, and Machado, Ocean of Trade.

17 Olsen, Dansk Ostindien 1616–1732, 207–212.

18 Hjejle, “Slavery and Agricultural Bondage.” Cf. Allen, European Slave Trading, 195.

19 Tinker, A New System of Slavery, 39–60.

20 Cf. Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers, 1–2, 35–36; Allen, European Slave Trading, 138–140, 177.

21 Major, Slavery, Abolition and Empire, 52.

22 Cassels, The Social Legislation, 178; Cf. Tinker, A New System of Slavery, 44; Major, Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire. 53; Allen, European Slave Trading, 185; see further below.

23 British Parliamentary Papers PP 1828 XXIV (125) on “Slavery in India,” 13–21, quoted in Major, Slavery, Abolition and Empire, 54–55 and also in Allen, European Slave Trading, 311, n. 22. Cf. ibid., 185 and 207.

24 Allen, European Slave Trading, 188–189.

25 Major, Slavery, Abolition and Empire, 59, 234.

26 Chatterjee, “Renewed and Connected Histories,” 20, 31.

27 Røge, “Why the Danes Got There First,” 588.

28 Ibid., 577.

29 Struwe, Dansk Ostindien 1732–1776, 59.

30 Ibid., 62.

31 Ibid.; Mentz, “Handelsstationen Tranquebar,” 109.

32 Larsen, “Danmark og Slavehandelens Ophævelse,” 108; Cf. Krieger, “Der dänische Sklavenhandel,” 21; Gøbel, The Danish Slave Trade, 57.

33 Larsen, “Danmark og Slavehandelens Ophævelse,” 107 – my translation. The Danish original reads: ’Da paa det nu saadant hos Christne saavel som hos Hedninger høyt forbudne og intollerable Handel og Tilverkgaaende med uskyldige og fribaarne Mennisker, tvertimod ald Natur og Folcke Rætt, kand for Fremtiden blive forebygt og aldeles afskaffet …  forbyder [vi] alle og enhver her paa Stedet enten directe eller indirecte ved sig selv eller ved Andre, at tilkiøbe sig nogen Slaver, for samme igien her eller paa andre Steder at selle, under hvad Navn det have kand … ’

34 I am grateful to Simon Rastén for alerting me to these proclamations, and for sending me a copy of Kay Larsen’s article in Historisk Tidsskrift from 1937, which contains the full text of the 1745 proclamation, and has a complete reference to the primary source used by Larsen (the 1744–1745 “Rapportbog” from Tranquebar in the Danish National Archives). The importance of the Proclamation is discussed in Krieger, “Der dänische Sklavenhandel,” 21–22).

35 Neue Hallesche Berichte 29. St, 531, quoted in Liebau, Cultural Encounters, 155.

36 Allen, European Slave Trading, 211.

37 Ibid.

38 Major, Slavery, Abolition and Empire, 251.

39 Lauritsen, Serampore. Cf. also Staffolani, Denmark by the Ganges – a recent film about the National Museum of Denmark’s “Serampore Project,” which emphasises the alternative and benevolent nature of Danish colonialism in India.

40 Rasch, Dansk Ostindien 1777–1845; Rastén, “Serampore, det nye handelscentrum”; Rastén, “Serampore i briternes skygge.”

41 Rasch, Dansk Ostindien 1777–1845, 168–182; Mentz, “Britisk ekspansion og dansk tilpasning,” 207.

42 Nørgaard, Mission und Obrigkeit; Liebau, Cultural Encounters in India; Liebau, ed., Geliebtes Europa; Gross, Kumaradoss and Liebau, eds., Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India, I–III.

43 Rastén, “Den umulige kolonisering,” 340.

44 Brimnes and Jørgensen, “Lokalsamfundet i Tranquebar,” 150f.

45 Brimnes and Jørgensen, “Tranquebar under forandring,” 244.

46 Beautiful colour prints from the Halle missionary reports from Tranquebar of “Portugisische Sklaven” and “Sklavinnen” and “Portugisische Schulknaben” and “Schulmädchen” are reproduced in Brimnes and Jørgensen, “Lokalsamfundet i Tranquebar,” 143 and 150. I include two of them as examples in Figure 1 and Figure 2 below.

47 Brimnes and Jørgensen, “Lokalsamfundet i Tranquebar,” 151.

48 Olsen, Dansk Ostindien 1616–1732, 231–239; Struwe, Dansk Ostindien 1732–1776, 113–116.

49 Nørgaard, Mission und Obrigkeit, 159–161. The translations from German into English are mine. Cf. Liebau, Cultural Encounters, 153.

50 Nørgaard, “Die Anfänge der Mission,” 16–17.

51 Scherer, “Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg,” 490.

52 Sames, “Beziehungen zwischen Halle, Kopenhagen und London.”

53 Ibid., 31. Cf. Liebau, Cultural Encounters, 311; Scherer, “Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg,” 492.

54 Liebau, Cultural Encounters, 70–71.

55 Ibid., 24, n. 45.

56 Quoted in Liebau, Cultural Encounters, 86.

57 Ibid. Cf. Jeyaraj, “Missionsalltag,” 78.

58 Liebau, Cultural Encounters, 66.

59 Ibid., 179.

60 Ibid., 136, 142.

61 Ibid., 340.

62 Ibid., 143.

63 Ibid., 152.

64 Quoted in Liebau, Cultural Encounters, 152.

65 Liebau, Cultural Encounters, 148–149; Scherer, “Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg,” 492.

66 Liebau, Cultural Encounters, 148–154.

67 Quoted in ibid., 154.

68 Ibid., 154–155.

69 Ibid., 155.

70 Ibid., 90, 102.

71 Scherer, “Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg,” 492; Liebau, Cultural Encounters, 311.

72 Scherer, “Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg,” 492.

73 Nørgaard, “Die Anfänge der Mission,” 21.

74 Liebau, Cultural Encounters, 71.

75 Ibid., 72.

76 Ibid., 73.

77 Ibid., 312–313.

78 Ibid., 313–314.

79 Ibid., 314–315, 320.

80 Ibid., 317.

81 Ibid., 321.

82 Røge, “Why the Danes Got There First.”

83 On the links between Halle Pietism, the DEHM Mission, and German enlightenment, see Jensen, “The Tranquebarian Society,” 547–548.

84 For an effective and well-informed literary account of this, see Hansen, Islands of Slaves.

85 Rastén, “Serampore i briternes skygge,” 333.

86 Metcalf, Imperial Connections.

87 For the notions of “slave trade diplomacy” and “humanitarian imperialism,” see Heartfield, The Aborigines’ Protection Society, 6 and 303.

88 Stanziani, Labor on the Fringes of Empire, 317–323.

89 See Lester and Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance, 23 and 269ff. For the further development of notions of ‘the right to protection’, see also Benton and Cludow and Attwood, “Introduction: The Long, Strange History of Protection,” 1–9.

90 Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa, 126; Dooling, Slaves, Emancipation and Colonial Rule, 85ff.

91 Tinker, A New System of Slavery, 14.

92 Ibid., 74f.; Allen, European Slave Trading, 193–203.

93 Cf. Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers, 45–46.

94 Anderson, The Indian Uprising, 85–86.

95 Rastén, “Den umulige kolonisering,” 356.

96 A similar ban was placed in 1865 by the Government of India on exports of indentured labour to plantations in St. Croix in the Danish Virgin Islands, following reports on the first group sent there of high mortality, and that “[a]lmost all the terms of the Indians’ indentures had been broken by the planters” (Tinker, A New System, 104). This ban was never lifted. The Danish colonies in the West Indies in the aftermath of the Civil War also tried unsuccessfully to recruit labourers from among freed slaves in the American South (Rasmussen, I krig for Lincoln).

97 Kaarsholm, “Indian Ocean Networks,” 445–446, 451.

98 Stanziani, Labor on the Fringes of Empire, 254–257. On French abolitionism, see ibid., 178–181. Cf. Kaarsholm, “Review of Labor on the Fringes.”

99 McLeod, Travels in Eastern Africa; McLeod, Madagascar and Its People; Elton, Travels and Researches; Palmer and Newitt, Northern Mozambique in the Nineteenth Century.

100 See Horace Waller’s “Preface” in Elton, Travels and Researches, v–xii

101 Hofmeyr, Gandhi’s Printing Press, 25–29; Vahed and Bhana, Crossing Space and Time, 31–79; Desai and Vahed, The South African Gandhi.

102 Kaarsholm, “Zanzibaris or Amakhuwa?” 209–210.