Finnish Colonial Encounters: From Anti-Imperialism to Cultural Colonialism and Complicity (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies) 303080609X, 9783030806095

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Finnish Colonial Encounters From Anti-Imperialism to Cultural Colonialism and Complicity Edited by Raita Merivirta · Leila Koivunen · Timo Särkkä

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series Editors Richard Drayton Department of History King’s College London London, UK Saul Dubow Magdalene College University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK

The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a well-­ established collection of over 100 volumes focussing on empires in world history and on the societies and cultures that emerged from, and challenged, colonial rule. The collection includes transnational, comparative and connective studies, as well as works addressing the ways in which particular regions or nations interact with global forces. In its formative years, the series focused on the British Empire and Commonwealth, but there is now no imperial system, period of human history or part of the world that lies outside of its compass. While we particularly welcome the first monographs of young researchers, we also seek major studies by more senior scholars, and welcome collections of essays with a strong thematic focus that help to set new research agendas. As well as history, the series includes work on politics, economics, culture, archaeology, literature, science, art, medicine, and war. Our aim is to collect the most exciting new scholarship on world history and to make this available to a broad scholarly readership in a timely manner. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/13937

Raita Merivirta  •  Leila Koivunen Timo Särkkä Editors

Finnish Colonial Encounters From Anti-Imperialism to Cultural Colonialism and Complicity

Editors Raita Merivirta Department of European and World History University of Turku Turku, Finland

Leila Koivunen Department of European and World History University of Turku Turku, Finland

Timo Särkkä Department of History and Ethnology University of Jyväskylä Jyväskylä, Finland

ISSN 2635-1633     ISSN 2635-1641 (electronic) Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies ISBN 978-3-030-80609-5    ISBN 978-3-030-80610-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 Chapters 1, 7 and 8 are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see licence information in the chapters. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Unknown photographer, “Vid Lunga Kafue bifold” (At a tributary of the Lunga Kafue River), 1902. The Finnish Heritage Agency, Picture Collections, C. T. Eriksson’s photographs, VKK95:31 This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

In 2006 I was invited to a tantalizing workshop, focused on the “Nordic Colonial Mind”, held at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden. It was organized by the Institute’s formidable director, Mai Palmberg, a Swedish-speaking Finn, outspoken, dedicated, and perseverant. Her long stint as director of the joint Nordic Africa Institute had alerted her to the deep, ongoing, and at times contentious relationship between the Nordic region and countries on the African continent. Such relationships ranged from Nordic missions to European colonies and Nordic participation in colonial expeditions and wars to contemporary development aid projects and engagement by civil society in political issues such as apartheid in South Africa. In all these, Mai Palmberg detected a strong presence of colonizing ideas and practices amid an overt Nordic rhetoric that opposed colonialism and its divisive heritage and assumed that the Nordic North (including the five nation states that funded the Institute: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) had never participated in European colonial expansion. She connected this notion of a lack of engagement in colonial ventures with a Nordic exceptionalism, an exceptionalism that has enabled Nordic nations to take on a role as a “modern conscience of the world”, and act as mediators and champions of small nations and minorities, without being hampered by a history of colonial empires.1

1  Mai Palmberg, “The Nordic Colonial Mind,” in Suvi Keskinen, Salla Tuori, Sara Irni, and Diana Mulinari, eds., Complying with colonialism: gender, race and ethnicity in the Nordic region (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2009), 35–50; Sunniva Engh, “The Conscience of the

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Mai’s workshop crystallized and energized scattered projects and ideas that had been brewing in various disciplinary contexts and for my own part it sparked an engagement in questions of Nordic involvement in colonialism that later grew into a central component in the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies.2 When I wrote my dissertation on Sweden as a colonial agent in North America and in Northern Scandinavia in the early 1990s there were precious few publications that specifically dealt with Swedish early modern expansion as colonialism, and even fewer that interpreted the relationship between early modern kingdoms and Sami peoples as colonial.3 The growth of new scholarship has been tremendous, and it is now time to collect this into coherent arguments about how the Nordic region was involved in, benefited from, related to, and critiqued European colonial expansion. No less than three scholarly journals have recently focused exclusively on the topic, and several anthologies contain chapters that provide perspectives on Nordic colonialisms.4 This book is the latest, but certainly not the last, to do so. It is also a first, the first book in English, to focus on the history of colonialism and Finns. Finnish historians may be latecomers to this field of inquiry, but the impressive and analytical depth demonstrates just how far this scholarship has come. It provides nuanced, reflective perspectives on Finnish perceptions of and encounters with colonial and imperial expansion at home and abroad from a broad range of directions. To my knowledge, there are no books that take such a comprehensive look at this issue from within the other Nordic countries, but I expect they will follow. The comfortable notion that the Nordic countries had no stake in European colonialism has been thoroughly debunked from various angles. But a more complex question remains to be explored. What did it mean that the Nordic North also shared in colonial mindsets, economies, and practices? Nordic involvement in European colonialism is complex and World? Swedish and Norwegian Provision of Development Aid,” Itinerario, 33:2 (2009): 65–82. 2  https://lnu.se/en/research/searchresearch/linnaeus-university-centre-for-concurrences-in-colonial-and-postcolonial-studies/. 3  Gunlög Fur, Colonialism in the Margins. Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland, Brill, 2006, 1–9. 4  Johan Höglund & Linda Andersson Burnett, eds., “Nordic colonialisms,” Scandinavian Studies, vol. 91, No. 1–2 (Spring/Summer 2019); Gunlög Fur & John Hennessey, eds., “Svensk kolonialism,” Historisk Tidskrift, Vol.140, N0. 3 (2020); Janne Lahti & Rinna Kullaa, eds., “Kolonialismi ja Suomi,” Historiallinen Aikakauskirja, Vol. 118, No. 4 (2020).

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while in many ways easy to spot it does not simply follow a template set by the experiences of Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, or even the Netherlands, and thus it has been easy to miss and dismiss. In the introduction Pernille Ipsen and I wrote to the first, to my knowledge, special journal issue on colonialism in Scandinavia we suggested that “Scandinavian colonial history is not only about colonies, but also the development and movement of ideas, networks, groups, and individuals” and thus “focusing on Scandinavian colonialism modifies the perspective by insisting that we turn attention from a history of colonies to a history about colonialism”.5 So what do we learn about how colonial practices and ideologies saturate societies by looking at the Nordic examples? And what does looking at Nordic histories through a lens focused on colonial perceptions and practices add to understandings of the Nordic region itself and its relationships with the rest of the world? This anthology offers a variety of responses that taken together form a powerful argument for the value of these studies. The nuanced arguments in the different chapters tease out Finnish involvement in and grappling with colonialism, colonial and imperial expansion, and ideologies of domination and usurpation in a wide variety of contexts and source materials ranging from the quotidian to the unusual, from parliamentary debates to photographic collections. The contributions demonstrate that commonplace words and artifacts are not innocent, that activities like traveling and migration are not value-neutral, and that entertainment whether it is watching exotic people on display or reading children’s literature structures the world. Taken together, these studies expand the notion of boundaries and challenge the balance of influence between centers and peripheries. What is Finland? Where is it located, and how is Finnish identity formed and formulated in relation to perceived borders and differences? How do writings from a brief spell of Finnish control over Petsamo, or a Finnish mercenary soldier’s memoirs from southern Africa offer perspectives on political debates utilizing concepts of colonialism and imperialism? What do Finns see when looking through a missionary’s camera or at a Skolt Sami village, and what does that reveal about colonial desire? A particular ambivalence surrounds the seemingly disparate claims that the Nordic countries were never part of colonialism proper, and the willingness to participate in projects of expansion and the hierarchical division of humanity and human collectives into stages of development. On the 5

 Gunlög Fur & Pernille Ipsen, “Introduction,” Itinerario, 33:2 (2009): 9, 12.

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one hand, it appears attractive to side with the victims, and preferable to identify as a victim of other nations’ oppressive measures, rather than to be a colonizer oneself. On the other hand, there are powerfully attractive aspects of colonialism that include access to material resources, such as the settler colonial control over nickel mines or arable land. But there is also the immaterial allure, “the seduction by the hegemonic”—the inclusion of one’s person and nation in the circle of those deemed to have the ability to display masculine agency. It is enough, it seems, to make a nation forget the “wisdom of the oppressed” as argued in the opening chapter of the collection. The invigorating passage from civilization to wilderness, the test that empowered travelers of which Lahti writes, earned explorers the right of territorial claims. “Empty lands could justifiably be taken; they had no rightful pre-existing owner”.6 In writing about how the colony of New Sweden has been remembered in historical scholarship and popular commemorations, I found a thread connecting the seventeenth century with the present in that the “proper company for Swedish history is still firmly located within a European sphere of dominance […] Sweden belonged among those for whom the world opened and who deserved to benefit from its bounty”.7 As Koivunen argues in this volume, the spectacle of human displays “became a means to express membership in a western, allegedly superior civilization, with its rationality, its practices of overcoming and mastering other human populations, and its privilege of being entertained by those very populations”.8 Aligning oneself, or one’s country, with colonial power, I argue, is to claim agency, masculine prowess, and enlightened intellect.9 That is why attachment to colonialism and imperialism is so attractive. It affords “us” agency and individuality. At its heart lay the conviction that what was universal was associated only with those people deemed modern, rational, free, and fully human. These convictions enabled the making of fine distinctions, which led to exclusions from the realm of universal emancipation and ultimately to the naturalization of unequal political, cultural, and economic relations. Thus, when Billy, the Indigenous Australian man from Queensland who is part of the human display of which Leila Koivunen  Lahti, in this volume.   Gunlög Fur, “Colonialism and Swedish History: Unthinkable Connections?” in Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin, eds., Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity. Small Time Agents in a Global Arena (New York: Springer, 2013), 30. 8  Koivunen, in this volume. 9  Fur 2013, 30, 32. 6 7

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writes, slaps a spectator for touching his hair, he asserts his individuality.10 He asserts that he is a person, not an object, a person with feelings, deliberations, and agency. Ultimately, that is one of the most devastating legacies of colonialism—the systematic and pervasive theft of personhood of indigenous, racialized, sexualized, othered peoples across the globe. I applaud the volume’s focus on transnational mobility and its emphasis on “the reciprocity of colonial links”.11 A particular strength is its insistence on including and juxtaposing events and processes that are often treated in isolation, such as migration—in the nineteenth and early twentieth-­century context often discussed primarily as emigration—and settler colonialism. Wittingly, or not, migrants became “intricately bound up in processes of empire-building and colonialism”, as Aleksi Huhta argues.12 And while traveling, and travel writing, has long been analyzed as powerful tools of expansion, connecting it with the relatively novel concept of settler colonialism provides a refreshing look at the Nordic context. Likewise, discussing how notions of race and practices of racialization became entangled with the reception and practice of colonialism in the Nordic space is illuminating through the widespread impact of children’s books and missionary narratives and photographs. The volume’s contributions offer convincing arguments that specific locations also change the shape of colonial interactions. Place matters and thus we need more scholarship from more concurrent spaces. They will not only reiterate a well-­ known story but also alter it and add nuance and breadth to how we understand the present through the past. Växjö, Sweden 

 Koivunen, in this volume.  Introduction, in this volume. 12  Huhta, in this volume. 10 11

Gunlög Fur

Acknowledgments

Various individuals and institutions have contributed to the making of this volume. The editors wish to thank their home institutions, the School of History, Culture and Art Studies at the University of Turku and the Department of History and Ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä, for their support and encouragement. We are also grateful to Professor Gunlög Fur (Linnaeus University) and Professor Teivo Teivainen (University of Helsinki) and two anonymous referees who have kindly shared their expertise in colonial questions. Thanks are due to Dr. Ellen Valle and Mr. Roger Noël Smith who have polished the language of the chapters. By financing research projects, the Academy of Finland has supported investigating questions of colonialism and enabled the writing of many of the chapters (1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12) in this volume. Finnish Heritage Agency, Finnish National Library, Finnish National Archive, Nordregio have kindly provided illustrative material for this volume.

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Contents

1 Finns in the Colonial World  1 Raita Merivirta, Leila Koivunen, and Timo Särkkä Part I State, Nation, and Colonialism in Finland  39 2 Wisdom of the Oppressed: Finnish Colonial Complicities in the Age of the Russian Empire 41 Pekka Rantanen, Petri Ruuska, and Timo Särkkä 3 Finnish Parliamentarians’ Conceptions of Imperialism and Colonialism, 1917–1995 67 Mika Suonpää and Matti Välimäki 4 Settler Colonial Eyes: Finnish Travel Writers and the Colonization of Petsamo 95 Janne Lahti 5 Nation-Building and Colonialism: The Early Skolt Sami Research of Väinö Tanner121 Jukka Nyyssönen

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Part II Colonial Encounters in Finland 145 6 “Queensland Cannibals” Encountered in Finland (1886): Locally Rooted Visions of Exhibitions of Colonized People147 Leila Koivunen 7 Colonialism, Race, and White Innocence in Finnish Children’s Literature: Anni Swan’s 1920s’ Serial “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”171 Raita Merivirta 8 Encountering Colonial Worlds Through Missionary Maps in the Late-Nineteenth-­Century Grand Duchy of Finland199 Johanna Skurnik Part III Finns’ Colonial Encounters Abroad 223 9 From the Eastern Front to the Western Frontier: The Transimperial Life of a Finnish Worker During the First World War225 Aleksi Huhta 10 Photography and the Religious Encounter: Finnish Missionaries’ Representations of the Owambo, Namibia249 Napandulwe Shiweda 11 “Did You Really Have a Place in the Boer War?”: Colonial Conflict and the Contested Production of “Finnish” Nationality, 1899–1908277 Wm. Matthew Kennedy and Chris Holdridge 12 The “Pioneer Men”: Making of Finnish Settler Identity in Southern Africa Pre-1914303 Timo Särkkä Index331

Notes on Contributors

Gunlög  Fur  is a Professor of History at Linnaeus University, Sweden. Her research focuses on colonial encounters, indigenous history, gender, and colonialism and history. Chris  Holdridge is a Senior Lecturer in History at North-West University, South Africa. His research interests include global history and British imperialism, especially the South African War of 1899–1902 and nineteenth-century settler colonialism in South Africa and Australia. Aleksi  Huhta is an Academy of Finland postdoctoral fellow at the University of Helsinki’s Department of Cultures. He studies Finnish migration history in the context of late nineteenth and early twentieth-­ century global imperialism. Wm. Matthew Kennedy  is an international, imperial, and legal historian of European colonial worlds in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sussex. His research focuses on the intersections of international law and ideas and practices of governance in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century European empires in Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific Ocean world. Leila  Koivunen is Professor of European and World History at the University of Turku. Her research interests include the history of European imagination and representation of the non-Western world, the culture of display, and the processes of knowledge formation.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Janne Lahti  works at the University of Helsinki as an Academy of Finland Research Fellow. His research focuses on global and transnational histories of settler colonialism, borderlands, the American West, and Nordic colonialism. Raita Merivirta  is an Academy of Finland postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku. Her research project focuses on colonial discourse in (Finnish) children’s and youth literature. Merivirta’s other research interests include Indian English literature, Irish cinema, and representations of British colonialism. Jukka Nyyssönen  works as a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research. The research done for this article was undertaken at the UiT—The Arctic University of Norway, the Arctic University Museum of Norway. Nyyssönen has studied Sami history from several angles, including environmental history, history of science, and educational history. Pekka  Rantanen has a Master’s in Social Sciences degree from the University of Tampere, Finland. His research interests include history and nationalism, temporary migration, sport pedagogy, and sport coaching. Petri Ruuska  holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Tampere, Finland. He is an independent scholar whose main research interests are globalization and nationalism. Timo  Särkkä  is a Docent in Economic History at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and a visiting professor (2021–2022) at the Global History Division, Institute for Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives (OTRI), Osaka University, Japan. He specializes in global history with an emphasis on economic imperialism. Napandulwe Shiweda  is a senior lecturer and researcher in public and visual history/culture at the University of Namibia (UNAM) in Windhoek. She heads the Social Sciences Division in the Multidisciplinary Research Centre at UNAM. Her recent research has focused on photography in the making of Omhedi, colonial collections in museums, and the return of two sacred stones from Finland to Namibia, reflecting on the cultural impact of their return. Johanna  Skurnik  is an Academy of Finland postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. She specializes in the history of (geographical)

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knowledge, history of science, map history, and colonial history, especially in the nineteenth century. Mika Suonpää  works as University Lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Turku. His major research interests include intelligence history, international history, and British history. He is working on a monograph on European anticommunism during the interwar period and the Second World War. Matti Välimäki  is a postdoctoral researcher at the Contemporary History at the University of Turku. His research focuses on the historical development of political parties’ immigration policy outlooks, public discussion on immigration and immigrants, and populist political communication.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 3.1

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 5.1

Fig. 6.1

Fig. 8.1

“Ryssän tanssi”, Helsingin Sanomat, 62, 14 March 1907 50 “Kristitty Europa valistamassa pakanoita”, Ihanne, 3, 1 March 1908, 18–19 59 Number of mentions of imperialism/empire and colonialism/ colony in the Finnish Parliament, 1910–1999. (Source: Finnish Parliament, Plenary session minutes, 1907–2000. Finnish search terms were imperi* and kolonial*/siirtoma*)69 “Suomen käsikartta—Handkarta öfver Finland”. Rosberg 1921 102 It was also possible to transport your craft by rail pass the most perilous rapids on the Paats River. Photo by Sakari Pälsi, 1929, CC BY. SUK1966: 65. Sakari Pälsi, Finnish Heritage Agency 106 The village of Parkkina, Petsamo. Photo by Sakari Pälsi, 1929, CC BY. SUK317: 1. Sakari Pälsi, Finnish Heritage Agency 111 Skolt Sami Sijdds before 1920. (Source: Nordregio, Cartographer Linus Rispling, https://nordregio.org/ maps/saa′mijannam-the-community-location-of-the-skoltsami-sijdds/)128 Exhibition advertisements were based on text templates provided by Cunningham. Some newspapers also took the opportunity to use the wood engraving plate to print an illustration of a cannibalistic scene. Wyborgsbladet, 6 July 1886, frontpage157 The world map published by the Finnish Missionary Society beginning in 1859 became a popular print product in the Grand Duchy of Finland, going through several editions both in Finnish (pictured here) and in Swedish. Maailman kartta lähetys-toimesta, Finnish Missionary Society, circa 1860, Map xix

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List of Figures

Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 10.3 Fig. 10.4 Fig. 10.5 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2 Fig. 12.1

Fig. 12.2 Fig. 12.3 Fig. 12.4 Fig. 12.5 Fig. 12.6

Collection of the National Library of Finland. Published by permission of the National Library of Finland 200 “National costumes.” Image collection of the Finnish Missionary Society, Finnish Heritage Agency. (Photograph: August Pettinen) 263 “National costumes.” Image collection of the Finnish Missionary Society, Finnish Heritage Agency. (Photograph: August Pettinen) 264 “Water carriers.” Image collection of the Finnish Missionary Society, Finnish Heritage Agency. (Photograph: August Pettinen)265 King Martin Eliphas of Ondonga. Image collection of the Finnish Missionary Society, Finnish Heritage Agency. (Photographer: August Pettinen [1912]) 267 Roofing the school building at Ondangaua station. Image collection of the Finnish Missionary Society, Finnish Heritage Agency. (Photographer: Hannu Haahti [1911]) 272 “Urhoolliset Skandinaavialaiset” [Brave Scandinavians], Suomen Kansa, 14 September 1901, page 3 285 K. Korhonen, “Finnish and Scandinavian prisoners-of-war at Napoleon’s grave in St. Helena”, Uusi Kuvalehti, 31 May 1902, p. 115 292 Unknown photographer, CTE. Courtesy of Roger and Joan Eriksson. This and other similarly composed field photographs are prominently featured in Eriksson’s picture collections. For further information, please refer to FHA, PC, VKK95; VKK542; VKK871 314 “Trade Routes & Railways Connecting the Mineral Concessions of the TANKS Group of Companies, 1909”, GL, SE, CLC, Tanks, B/004/F/01/MS18000/129B/277 316 C. T. Eriksson, “Några av detvångsrekvirerade Ba-ilabärarna, på vilka håruppsättningen opererades bort”, 1902. FHA, PC, VKK871:176318 Unknown photographer, “Vid Lunga Kafue bifold” (At a tributary of the Lunga Kafue River), 1902. FHA, PC, VKK95:31319 Unknown photographer, “Fundi-Wa-Kali själv, i Kazempa 1901”, 1901. FHA, PC, VKK871:48 320 C. T. Eriksson, untitled, 1901–1906, FHA, PC, VKK871:133 322

CHAPTER 1

Finns in the Colonial World Raita Merivirta, Leila Koivunen, and Timo Särkkä

Colonialism is often understood as control of a geographical area overseas obtained by invasion or settlement. As Finland only gained independence in 1917 and never held any overseas colonies, Finns have been able to claim innocence and non-involvement in colonialism and colonialist practices. The Finnish nation has historically been positioned in Europe between western and eastern empires. Finland was part of the Swedish Realm1from c. 1150 to 1809 and occupied a subordinate position as the Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire from 1809 until 1917, when Finland declared itself independent. This subordinate position has contributed to the commonly held view that the Finns have been victims of colonization, rather than colonizers or even beneficiaries of colonial practices. Vocal criticism of Russia’s imperialist policies did arise within Finland under the 1

 Known in 1611–1721 as the Swedish Empire.

R. Merivirta (*) • L. Koivunen Department of European and World History, University of Turku, Turku, Finland e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] T. Särkkä Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_1

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policy of Russification in 1899–1905 and 1908–1917—a policy which many Finns regarded as a direct threat to the Finnish nation and culture.2 These views grew into broader criticism of imperialism and global inequality. However, the Finnish relationship to colonialism, was a complex one: Finns were not merely victims of Swedish or Russian imperial rule but also in many ways involved in colonialism. The chapters of Finnish Colonial Encounters demonstrate that Finns have not only engaged in colonial projects with regard to Sápmi3 and the Sámi people in the North, which is a more familiar claim to Finns, but also produced and circulated colonial knowledge and constructed racial hierarchies. Furthermore, this volume shows how some individual Finns were caught up in colonial conflicts or actively sought out employment in colonial contexts. The main focus of Finnish Colonial Encounters is on the wide acceptance and active involvement in the production of European colonial knowledge. We argue that colonial ways of knowing were also produced, developed, and circulated in those European regions that did not have formal colonies and that their inhabitants, by consuming, applying, and replicating these knowledges, participated in the processes, whereby Western epistemology and ideas of modernity became hegemonic. There has been a strong tradition in Finnish historiography of investigating the position of the region that came to be known as Finland as part of the Swedish and Russian empires.4 In contrast, until now, there has been very little research concerning potential linkages of Finland or Finns to western colonialism prior to the twenty-first century; a gap resulting in part from the dominant idea that Finland itself struggled and negotiated over its position within these empires, but did not play a role in other western colonial activities. For instance, an increasing number of scholars took part in writing the history of Finnish overseas migration from the

2  See Rantanen and Ruuska (2009). To maintain that the consciousness of Finland was predominantly Finnish at this period is not to deny an enhanced sense of difference within the different ethnicities and language groups of Finland. 3  We use the Sámi term Sápmi, or Sámiland, to refer to the entire Sámi area in northern Fennoscandia. The part of Sápmi under Swedish and later also under Finnish sovereignty is referred to as Lapland. The latter term thus refers to an administrative area, while Sápmi refers to the actual area across state borders where the Sámi live in the North. 4  See, for example, Juva (1951), Klinge (1987), Karonen (1999), and Fogelberg (2011).

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1960s onward, but their focus was not on encounters of these mobile individuals with colonial powers or colonized people, on the similarity of their activities to settler colonialism, or on their responses to colonial thought. Colonialism was typically depicted as a self-evident circumstance in foreign countries, but its many connections to the lives of Finnish immigrants, or Finns at home, evaded scrutiny. Finnish participation in European colonialism was largely left uncharted until quite recently. The last two decades have witnessed an increasing historical interest in Finns’ relationship to colonialism,5 and several new openings have been made and projects begun in the last five years.6 This new awareness of the need to reconsider and examine Finnish connections to the colonial world has been a result of many simultaneous developments. It has been influenced by contemporary Euro-American discussions on colonialism and its different legacies, most recently raised by Black Lives Matter, movements to topple colonial statues and questions of repatriation of various ethnographic collections, as well as increased immigration to Finland and the rest of Europe from non-European countries. Furthermore, the strengthening conceptualization of colonialism as a transnational phenomenon that affected the globe in its entirety has also widened the idea of its influence outside the primary domains. The research done on the colonial history of the other Nordic countries—Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland—together with the impetus given by the recent decolonizing movements has given rise to increasing discussions on the question of colonialism in the Finnish context in seminars, scholarly publications and newspapers, radio programs, and other media. Despite this recent historiographical and media interest in colonialism, a book-length study aimed at international audience has thus far been lacking: Finnish Colonial Encounters is the first volume written in English on the topic. Literary and cultural scholars began addressing Finnish colonial encounters somewhat earlier than historians. Influenced by postcolonial theory and its key texts, many of which were translated into Finnish in the 1990s, they questioned the alleged Finnish exceptionalism and outsider 5  For example, Gustafsson (2003), Kuokkanen (2007), Särkkä (2015), Koivunen (2015), Lehtola (2015), Weiss (2016), Rabow-Edling (2017), Groop (2017), Aaltonen and Sivonen (2019), and Kokkola and Merivirta (2020). 6  The main Finnish historical journal, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja, for instance, published a theme issue on Finland and colonialism in December 2020 and an anthology in Finnish,  Kolonialismi  Suomen rajaseuduilla (“Colonialism in Finnish Border Areas”) is expected to come out in 2022. Many more projects are on the way.

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status and examined the entanglement of contemporary popular culture with (the history of) colonialism.7 The volume entitled Complying with Colonialism: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region (2009) was an important opening in the field of Finns and colonialism. It introduced the concept of “colonial complicity”, which has been used in the past decade to describe participation in overseas colonialism by a country which “has neither been historically situated as one of the colonial centres in Europe nor has it been an ‘innocent victim’ or mere outsider of the colonial projects”.8 The Finnish social anthropologist Ulla Vuorela discusses the attraction behind the complicity “for those of us who are not quite situated in the centre”: it is the “seduction by the hegemonic” that lures those off-center.9 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Finns desired to belong, to be Europeans, “civilised”, modern—and White. Although noting the usefulness of the concept in analyzing certain types of Finnish involvement in colonialism, Suvi Keskinen has recently raised the question, in the light of work by Sámi and other indigenous scholars, of the adequacy of the concept “colonial complicity” to cover all forms of Finnish or Nordic colonialism, especially the continued colonialism in Sápmi. She suggests that the concept introduced by Anibal Quijano (2000), “coloniality of power”, should be applied to amend the idea of “colonial complicity” in order to better grasp the complexities of Finnish involvement in European colonialism, especially in the Arctic.10 Another possible way to broaden the scope of “colonial complicity” is to apply the concept “colonialism without colonies”, developed in the context of Switzerland by Purtschert, Falk, and Lüthi; this concept in some ways resembles that of “colonial complicity”.11 The framework of “colonialism without colonies” addresses “the persistence of colonial structures and power relations” in countries that have not been regarded as actual or official colonial powers.12 Through the lens of “colonialism without colonies”, one can dismantle the prevalent ideas of “colonial innocence”13 and “Nordic exceptionalism”. Kristín Loftsdóttir and Lars Jensen argue that “Nordic  For example, Kuortti et al. (2007) and Rossi (2009).  Vuorela (2009, 19) and Keskinen et al. (2009). 9  Vuorela (2009, 20). 10  Keskinen (2019, 164, 179). 11  Purtschert et al. (2015) and Lüthi et al. (2016). 12  Lüthi et al. (2016, 2–3). 13  Purtschert and Fischer-Tiné (2015). 7 8

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exceptionalism” can be taken to refer either to the belief that the Nordic countries have been peripheral in relation to European colonialism or to the difference in self-perception of the citizens of these countries from the rest of Europe “as global ‘good citizens’, peace-loving, conflict-resolution oriented”.14 As a case in point, Bjørn Enge Bertelsen has discussed how many Norwegians perceive their country as a “benign global influence”. For the most part of the post-World War II era, Norwegian past has been constructed through the international lenses of humanitarianism and peace-making. Bertelsen notes that Norway has, in fact, actively branded itself “as a nation of benevolence and peace”, which includes claims of “colonial nonpresence and nonparticipation”.15 Kirsten Alsaker Kjerland and Bertelsen’s edited collection Navigating Colonial Orders: Norwegian Entrepreneurship in Africa and Oceania (2015) challenges this interpretation in their examination of Norwegians’ colonial business ventures. Kjerland and Bertelsen’s volume can be seen as perhaps the closest preceding parallel project to Finnish Colonial Encounters in Scandinavian context.16 As in Finland, discourse on colonialism in the context of Norwegian national history has largely been non-existent until very recently. In addition to the country’s rather self-conscious agenda of building an image of a benevolent and peaceful nation, Norway, too, has been seen as a country, which has, in fact, historically suffered from its subjugated colonial relation to its much stronger neighbors—first as a part of Denmark-Norway (1521–1814) and then in union with Sweden from 1814 to 1905 when the country gained full sovereign independence. However, despite the apparent similarity of Kjerland and Bertelsen’s edited collection to this volume, there are major differences as well. The most notable of these is that Navigating Colonial Orders focuses on Norwegian “non-colonial colonials” in the specific African and Oceanic maritime context, whereas the case studies of Finnish Colonial Encounters range from global north to global south, examining Finnish involvement in colonialism both at home and overseas. Finnish Colonial Encounters, like many other recent studies in the emerging field of Nordic colonialism, is based on the broadening definition of colonialism, on the concept of “colonialism without colonies”. In an anthology of articles on Scandinavian colonialism, the editors Magdalena  Loftsdóttir and Jensen (2012, 2).  Bertelsen (2015, 4, 1). 16  Kjerland and Bertelsen (2015). 14 15

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Naum and Jonas M. Nordin point out the need to move beyond the “narrow definition of colonialism, which reduces it to the possession of colonies in the far corners of the world” and has facilitated the claim “of minimal or non-involvement in colonial expansion” in Scandinavia.17 They note that colonialism is a much broader phenomenon than just territorial expansion; it includes exploitative economic practices, the appropriation of material culture, and the production of racial hierarchies and ideologies of difference, which, in turn, are used to justify conquest and subjugation of peoples, along with “civilising” and missionary activities among those classed as Others. The volume edited by Naum and Nordin invites its readers “to rethink the definition of colonialism” and consider “economic strategies and appetites for exotic commodities, political and cultural aspirations and ideologies as a part of colonial politics and imperial mindsets”.18 In the same vein, the Swedish historian Gunlög Fur has argued as follows: If colonialism is limited to the study of overseas holdings, structures and sentiments that influence people’s lives and relations today become difficult to understand. It supports the argument that the Nordic countries were no real colonial powers and therefore stood apart from the history of global-­ wide inequality and distrust.19

Fur recommends directing “attention to the many curious ways in which the Nordic north was caught up in European expansion and how this expansion was brought into the weave of local and regional social polities”.20 Finnish Colonial Encounters follows this line of investigation and examines the hitherto understudied question of the colonial involvement of Finns. Though perhaps more easily recognized as colonial practices, overseas adventures and settler colonialism in Sápmi are not the only or even the most common forms of Finnish encounters with colonialism. Much of Finns’ involvement in colonialism, we argue, took place at home, in everyday situations. Finns circulated, shared, adopted, adapted, and created colonial discourses: texts, scientific studies, objects, imagery, and artifacts. Influenced by wider western aspirations to document and arrange the world in its entirety, numerous Finnish individuals and organizations  Naum and Nordin (2013, 4).  Naum and Nordin (2013, 4–5). 19  Fur (2016, 13). 20  Fur (2016, 13). 17 18

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brought ethnographic objects and botanical and zoological samples to Finland from the early nineteenth century onward. The ethnographic collection at the University of Helsinki, which formed the basis for the later National Museum, received objects from mission workers, seafarers, migrant workers, and scholars who had traveled in various parts of the world and now wished to contribute to the development of academic collections and research in Finland. In the museological context, objects brought from Sápmi, Siberia, Congo, Owambo, Melanesia, and numerous other places were organized to provide a contextualizing narrative for the display of the Finnish national collection and to suggest the progress and superiority of the Finnish culture and population.21 Finnish business companies benefited from colonial trade, ranging from iron and timber to sugar and cotton, and when Finns consumed colonial goods, they became exposed to stereotypical visual imageries closely connected to colonialism and its worldviews. Rather than merely circulating foreign advertising material, Finns made use of similar visual tropes and racialized characters in designing wrappings and packages for locally produced sweets and other commercial goods. Leena-Maija Rossi has shown that such visual representations became incorporated in Finnish national imageries to such an extent that their removal has raised criticism. Rossi refers to visual or representational complicity in colonialism, which she considers to be still vibrantly alive.22 Finns were also entertained by colonial literature, exhibitions, and films, encountering foreign material cultures, for instance, at temporary exhibitions arranged by mission and geographical organizations. In 1911–1912, a touring exhibition of the Finnish Missionary Society visited fifteen Finnish towns, informing large audiences of the ostensibly low stage of development among African peoples.23 As discussed by Leila Koivunen in this volume, several live ethnographic exhibition groups of colonized people also visited and performed in Finland in the late nineteenth century, en route to St. Petersburg, Stockholm, or venues in northern Germany. Colonial forms of knowledge were transferred to new generations of Finnish children, as evidenced by textbooks, teaching materials, and children’s literature (as shown by Raita Merivirta in this collection), particularly at a time when a Finnish national

 Harju (2018) and Koivunen (2020).  Rossi (2009). 23  Koivunen (2015, 171–172). 21 22

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identity was being constructed and a “civilised” and modern Finnish nation created, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Finnish Colonial Encounters applies the concept of colonialism in this broad cultural sense as well and examines the many ways in which colonialism and colonial ideas have been present in Finnish lives. Here we follow in the footsteps of recent studies on imperialism and (cultural) colonialism that have challenged the traditional notion of imperialism and colonialism, as primarily political and economic phenomena taking place “out there”, beyond the seas; we focus equally on their various cultural and ideological implications “at home” in Europe24 and extend this perspective beyond the main colonizing metropolitan centers. We argue that Finns adopted ideologies and identities that are not easy to disentangle from the more typical trajectories of colonialism. They contributed to common European knowledge about colonized areas, cultures, and people; sent out missionaries to spread ideas of Western/White/Christian superiority; and participated in the construction of racial hierarchies. Arguably also the construction of Finnish national identity was in many ways connected to colonial endeavors. The Finnish case has many similarities with the Swiss. Patricia Purtschert, Francesca Falk, and Barbara Lüthi have noted that Switzerland and the Nordic countries, including Finland, have shared “an explicit self-­ understanding as being outside the realm of colonialism, but nevertheless [they have] engaged in the colonial project in a variety of ways and benefitted from these interactions”.25 The construction of national identity in Finland and Switzerland has included the idea of being exceptional in the European context, of being innocent of colonialism. Yet, in both countries, the construction of national identity and nationhood in the latter half of the nineteenth century was interlinked with missionary workand the production of (colonial) knowledge of Africa that was then circulated in the home countries. Historian Patrick Harries has written about the significance of Swiss mission work in South-East Africa on the home community in Switzerland in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Missionary work, images and knowledge of Africa influenced life in the home country and unified the Swiss, divided by language, religion, and region, as a community. Evangelical Christianity, universal compassion, and the idea of neutrality were elements that bound the Swiss together as  See Studies in Imperialism series (Manchester University Press); Howe (2010).  Lüthi et al. (2016, 1).

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a nation.26 Harries notes that “Switzerland was a nation without colonies, but its very sense of nationhood emerged just as Swiss evangelists, traders, scientists and soldiers spread into the peripheries of their world”.27 The image of Africa as the dark continent “served as a foil against which the Swiss could measure the evolution of their own society […] Institutions such as the Sunday school, the museum and the botanical garden introduced the Swiss—a people without colonies or a population of slave-­ descent—to this exciting new world”. He notes that these elements were crucial in normalizing imperialism in Swiss culture.28 Like the Swiss sense of nationhood, the Finnish national identity was being constructed as the intense period of the formation and circulation of European colonial knowledge of Africa took place, and it can be argued that these two processes were to some extent interlinked, and “Africans” constructed as the ultimate Other to the Finns. The Finnish Missionary Society began its work overseas in Owambo29 in South-West Africa in 1870. The Owambo region (in present-day Namibia) became an especially meaningful place for Finns. Approximately 500 Finnish missionaries have spent varying periods of time in the region since 1870. At first, Finns were the only people of European origin staying in the area; even under the German regime, starting in 1884, the grip of colonial administration in this provincial region was weak or non-existent. Yet, the Finnish presence in the region resulted in activities and long-lasting effects similar to those that were typical in a colonial relation. The Finns introduced the Owambos, the main ethnic group in the area, to Western modes of education, medicine, material culture, and social practices, in particular, the Evangelical Lutheran faith and a written language.30 Thus, in seeking to transform the Owambos’ ways of being in the world, Finns played an active role in advancing informal Western empires. In the early twentieth century, the Finnish Missionary Society began its work in other parts of the world, especially in China. Due to a strong xenophobic sentiment in China and its own long imperial history, Western mission workers, including the small group of Finns, encountered entirely different challenges than elsewhere in the world. Rather than attempting  Harries (2007, 4, 35–66).  Harries (2007, 35). 28  Harries (2007, 4). 29  To refer to this region (and its inhabitants), we use the local, present-day term Owambo instead of the colonial designation Ovamboland. 30  Eirola (1992); Miettinen (2005); Löytty (2006). 26 27

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to change the society, they were themselves forced to adopt local customs to approach Chinese people.31 Therefore it is debatable whether Finnish missionary work in China was colonial in nature. Scholars have long discussed whether Christian missionaries who lived and worked in colonized countries assisted consolidating empires or whether they served to weaken the colonial rule. The extent and character of the missionary participation in colonial projects has also divided scholars who, as Karen Vallgårda points out, may have actually based their arguments on fundamentally different conceptions of colonialism.32 Missionary work and colonialism have often intertwined and both have indisputably created structures that benefited or sustained the other. Yet, as Vallgårda reminds, to avoid dichotomous descriptions and to achieve a more nuanced understanding of the complex connections between missions and colonialism, new historical examples that evade fixed categories, such as colonizers and colonized, should be brought to scrutiny.33 Lüthi, Falk, and Purtschert note that the continuities of colonial structures and power relations are interlinked with the persistence of racial notions central to colonialism. People in European countries without colonies “frequently participated in colonialism through the replication of a racist and dehumanizing worldview, thereby complying with one of the most effective means of colonial power”.34 To disseminate information about their progress, the Finnish Missionary Society published a variety of reading materials: mission journals, novels, and other promotional material in Finland. Information was also transmitted in educational materials and schoolbooks, photographs, postcards, and graphs. A map of the world published by the Society in 1870, portraying the global advance of the Christian mission, was so widespread that it was said to be found in almost every household in Finland (the map is discussed in detail by Johanna Skurnik in this volume).35 Knowledge about Owambo, which was mostly colonial in nature, and its position as part of the colonial quest, spread widely in Finland, creating long-lasting representations and imagery of Africa and Africans that were passed on to several generations of Finns.

 Juntunen (2012, 20–21, 23).  For an overview to these discussions, see Vallgårda (2016, 866, 868–870). 33  Vallgårda (2016, 868, 870). 34  Lüthi et al. (2016, 2). 35  Paunu (1909, 14). 31 32

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In short, Finns were complicit in colonialism, where complicity implies “participation in hegemonic western discourses and their universalistic modes of thought and practices of dominance”.36 This approach emphasizes transnational movement and the reciprocity of colonial links rather than focusing on national histories. It also includes a great variety of actors: from explorers to missionaries and scientists to settlers and their role in negotiating colonial meanings and creating imaginaries, in addition to examining their activities as such.37 Finnish Colonial Encounters engages with this framework and examines Finnish transnational experiences in colonial contexts as well as the transnational flow of colonial ideas and knowledge to and from Finland, shedding light on the connectedness of Finnish people to a global phenomenon. In addition to “colonial complicity” and “colonialism without colonies”, we refer to “cultural colonialism”, a concept we apply in examining the creation, circulation, and consumption of colonial(ist) ideas, knowledge, and imagery in Finland. In Finnish Colonial Encounters, we examine the phenomenon of colonialism and—where applicable—anti-colonialism (Suonpää and Välimäki’s and Rantanen, Ruuska and Särkkä’s chapters) in the context of Finnish history, offering a more nuanced understanding of colonialism and its global mechanisms and effects on those previously regarded as colonial “outsiders”. The contributors discuss ways in which Finns took part in various undertakings led by colonial powers in different parts of the world, as well as how they engaged in colonial activities and knowledge production close to home, in Sápmi; in counterbalance, they also examine forms of Finnish anti-imperialism. In addition, articles in the volume explore Finnish cultural colonialism at home as well as abroad, for example, in Finnish missionaries’ photographic representations of the Owambo (Shiweda). Rather than offering an all-encompassing account of the Finnish relationship to colonialism, the articles included in the volume shed light on a variety of topics and perspectives so as to open up new approaches in the field of “colonialism without colonies”. This introduction, however, offers a brief overview of some of the overseas colonial activities of Finns not discussed in the individual chapters so as to provide a fuller idea of the phenomenon. The individual articles in the volume cover a time-span ranging from the era of high imperialism in the late

 Purtschert et al. (2015, 4).  Lüthi et al. (2016, 2–3).

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nineteenth century to post-World War II decolonization and beyond, with the primary focus on the early twentieth century. In the following sections, we contextualize the chapters in the volume by providing background information on the construction of Finnishness and Finland within the Russian Empire, as well as on Finns’ colonial relationship to the Sámi. The discussion of Finnish (settler) colonialism vis-à-­ vis the Sámi—a discussion which began among activists and some researchers already in the late 1960s—has recently become more mainstream.38 The Professor of Arctic Indigenous Politics Rauna Kuokkanen, for instance, has recently argued that Finland has a history of (settler) colonization in Sápmi.39 We are not suggesting that all aspects of the Finnish-Sámi relationship have been colonial; as the Sámi historian Veli-­ Pekka Lehtola has argued, nuanced interpretations are needed to uncover the complexity of Finnish-Sámi relations, although the concepts of colonialism and oppression may serve as fruitful starting points. The relationship between the groups has always been complex, and has included intermarriage and other forms of proximity as well as shared goals. Moreover, neither the Sámi nor the Finns are a homogenous group.40 The historian Jukka Nyyssönen, one of the contributors to this volume, has argued that while the Finnish-Sámi encounter has included many colonialist policies and practices, the multiplicity of the encounter is lost if it is interpreted solely through the lens of colonialism.41 The sections on Finnishness and colonial Finnish-Sámi relations is followed by an overview of Finnish colonial activity overseas. The introduction ends with brief introductions of the individual chapters.

 The Construction of the Finnish Nation and State Within Imperial Russia Finnish Colonial Encounters is informed by the realization that an analysis which engages with questions of colonialism also potentially illuminates questions of Finnish national identity and self-understanding.42 We 38  For example, Kuokkanen (2007); Nyyssönen (2013); Lehtola (2015); Ranta and Kanninen (2019). 39  Kuokkanen (2018). 40  Lehtola (2012, 15–17, 20). 41  Nyyssönen (2013, 104). 42  We include the Swedish-speaking minority as “Finns”, although, as discussed later in this chapter, the Finnish language became a central element in the construction of Finnish

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t­ herefore briefly examine the history of the Finnish nation and state, which emerged through a conflict between the authoritarian tradition characteristic of the late-nineteenth-century Russian Empire and the constitutionalism which began to emerge in Finland. The proximate area now known as Finland was ceded by Sweden to Tsar Alexander I in the aftermath of the Russo-Swedish War of 1808–1809. In the centuries preceding 1809, Finland had formed roughly one-third of the kingdom of Sweden. In the multinational Russian Empire, Finns composed about 2% of the population. However, the transition from constituting the eastern part of Sweden to forming a Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire included becoming a political unit and gaining autonomy. The Grand Duchy of Finland remained an autonomous polity within the Russian Empire for over a hundred years.43 This “imperial century” has been at the heart of various attempts to conceptualize Finland as a nation in relation to the Russian Empire and its imperial power and to the idea of empire-building in political theory.44 In these conceptualizations, Finnish ethnic affiliations and racial origins, as well as the role of language, occupy a significant place. Finnish had been a minority language in the Swedish realm, but in the new Grand Duchy of Finland, four-fifths of the population spoke (though did not write) Finnish.45 The educated, ruling élite were all Swedish speakers in the early nineteenth century. The Grand Duchy was a self-governing polity within the Empire, but its autonomy was achieved by avoiding any challenge to the Russian Government and by working for the extension of national rights and privileges rather than for guarantees enshrined in law. The Act of Assurance, framed in Porvoo national identity in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1809, the Russians tended to use a person’s place of birth to classify a person as a Finn. Those born in Finland were “native Finns”. Some officers born on the Swedish side of the new border but residing in Finland were also included as Finns and stayed on. Those who wanted to stay had to give up lands they possible owned in Sweden by 1817. Engman (2018, 33). 43  Engman (2009, 9–10). 44  See, for instance, Luntinen (1985); Polvinen (1995); Jussila (1999). 45  Engman (2009, 10). On the other hand, Engman has noted that early on, the language of the Finns was not considered to be a significant societal question—the first reliable statistics was put together as late as 1880. At that time, there were 294,000 Swedish-speaking Finns, which was about 14.3% of the population. Most of them lived in municipalities where Swedish was the majority language. Since then, the proportion of Swedish-speaking Finns to Finnish speakers has steadily declined. It is noteworthy, however, that these statistics do not take into account bilingualism but record only a person’s main language. Engman (2018, 35–37).

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in March 1809 and solemnly and formally promulgated by the Governor-­ General in the presence of the Tsar, placed Finland “in the rank of nations, under the empire”, but left the Tsar the possibility of issuing a wide range of prerogatives that would interfere with the country’s affairs.46 The Swedish constitutional statutes—the Form of Government from 1772 and the Acts of Union and Security from 1789—were championed as the Fundamental Laws and Constitution of the Grand Duchy. As a result, the Grand Duchy of Finland was governed under the eighteenth-­ century constitutional principles of Sweden, which, in practice, ensured that Finnish subjects alone could enter the service of the State by reserving the right to Lutherans. These administrative principles kept the Swedish administrative system, legislation, and language alive in the Grand Duchy and simultaneously safeguarded Finnish autonomy from Russian administrative principles.47 In addition to earlier Swedish legislation and the Lutheran Church of Finland, the chief safeguards against the Russian Government’s supremacy over the Grand Duchy were the Diet and Senate, as bodies of national self-government, the Finnish conscription army (raised from 1878 onward), and a gold-based currency, the Finnish Mark, minted from 1863 onward. More importantly, Finland had a growing, liberal-minded middle class, who felt a greater affinity with Western European countries, especially Sweden and its history, language, and culture, than with Russia, its own history, language, and culture, as well as its authoritarian tradition. The ethnographic cohesion of the Finns, their genetic affiliation, and the origins of the Finnish language were subject to speculation throughout the nineteenth century; for most of Europe, however, the Finns remained remotely situated and scarcely known subjects of the Tsar. There was no clear perception of a “Finnish race” in the nineteenth century. Some philologists treated “Sueco-Fennic” inhabitants and “Finns” or “Finlanders” as identical, while to others the latter two terms described the inhabitants, who specifically belonged to the “Ugrian race”. In the first half of the century, the study of comparative philology, especially as connected with the migrations of the human race, was still in its infancy. It was not until the 1840s that the noted Finnish ethnolinguist M. A. Castrén, 46  For the various interpretations of the autonomous status of the Grand Duchy, see Mechelin (1889); Danielson-Kalmari (1891); Fisher (1899); The Reply of the Finnish Estates (1900). 47  Ihalainen (2014).

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who traveled among the easternmost Finno-Ugric peoples in Siberia, shed new light on the origins of the Finns. By comparing the linguistic peculiarities of Finnish and the mythological conceptions of the Finnish epic Kalevala, first published in 1835, Castrén determined that Turkish and “the Mongolian tongues” were related to Finnish; he concluded, conflating language and race, that they thus belonged in the same “Turanian” linguistic family as the Sámi and other Finno-Ugric races, scattered through the western parts of the Empire.48 From the 1840s onward, numerous Finnish archaeologists, ethnologists, and linguists traveled across wide areas in Central Russia and Siberia to discover the assumed original prehistoric home of the Finno-Ugric language family in the region between the Ural and Altai Mountains. In his study of the development of Finno-Ugric scholarship, Timo Salminen suggests that Finns regarded Russia and Siberia as lands of scientific conquest. They aimed at taking a leading position in this field of research over other, allegedly less developed Finno-Ugric populations, some of which were expected to become extinct in the near future. Large amounts of archaeological and ethnographic material were brought back to Finland, and a debate evolved over the question of a Finnish obligation to establish a central Fenno-Ugrian museum in Helsinki.49 European theories of the inequality of the human races, most notoriously advanced by the French aristocrat Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau in the mid-nineteenth century, classified Finns as belonging to the “yellow race”, and thus occupying a rank in the racial hierarchy somewhere between Indo-Europeans and Blacks.50 According to Aira Kemiläinen, until the early twentieth century, Finns largely accepted being categorized as Mongols. However, the belief in racial hierarchies and in the superiority of the White race in many European countries prompted some Finns to pay more attention to these racial classifications. From the first decade of the century onward, the issue of race was discussed by experts in Finland and the Mongol theory was challenged and criticized as unscientific.51 After independence, Finns increasingly desired to formulate a Finnish national identity and to resolve the question of the relation of Finno-­ Ugric peoples to other Europeans. Studies in physical anthropology  Castrén (2016). See also Halmesvirta (1993).  Salminen (2003, 63–65, 271, 276–277). 50  Kemiläinen (1993, 57–62, 139–144). 51  Kemiläinen (1985, 306). See also Tallgren (1985, 395–398). 48 49

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increased the certainty that the Central European classification of Finns as Mongols was erroneous.52 Racial theories, and the origin of the Finns, were discussed outside expert circles as well.53 The Finnish newspaper Ilkka, for instance, reported in 1925 on an article written by one Johs Ubbesen and published in one of Copenhagen’s biggest newspapers. The title of the article had been “Finland—Mongolia in Europe”, and it had described the Finns as Europe’s Mongols. The writer of the Finnish report highly disapproved of this, calling it slander.54 The educated élite in Finland was working toward linking Finns with Europeans and Whiteness.55 According to Maija Urponen, the 1952 Summer Olympics, held in Helsinki, played a significant role in achieving this goal.56 The Helsinki Olympics, along with the crowning of a Finnish young woman, Armi Kuusela, as Miss Universe in the same year, were seminal events in the process whereby Finland became a modern, Western nation, Urponen notes. Both these events, and the public discussion around them, offered points of comparison for the construction of a national identity. The public debate over (possible) relationships between Finnish women and (southern) visitors to the Olympics, together with the representation of a racialized Orient in the publicity surrounding Armi Kuusela’s travels, her marriage to the Filipino businessman Virgilio Hilario, and their subsequent move to the Philippines, placed Finland and Finns firmly within the fold of Western Europe. The representation of these events marked a “Whitening” of the Finns, and distanced them from their earlier place in racial hierarchies.57 The Finns’ interest in their origin and racial make-up are explicable at least in part by the emphasis on racial qualities, together with the cultural achievements of the inhabitants of Finland, which had been decisive in estimating their capacity for a (limited) political freedom. At the close of the nineteenth century, the discourse of nationality was no longer linked solely to the collective identity of an ethnic group, but came to refer more broadly to the principles of national sovereignty. Such a drastic change in  Kilpeläinen (1985, 193).  Tallgren (1985, 398–405). 54  “Suomen solvaamista Tanskassa”, Ilkka, September 16, 1925, 2. The piece was also mentioned in another Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, on 18 September 1925, “Suomen tunnetuksi tekemistä Tanskassa”. 55  Jokisalo (2010, 9, 21). 56  Urponen (2010). 57  Urponen (2010). 52 53

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perception is traceable to the rise of the idea of the nation in Europe in general58 and in Finland in particular. Following the French historian Ernest Renan’s Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation? (1882), Peter Kropotkin, a Russian emigrant anarchist living in London, analyzed the question “what is a nation?” in his 1885 article “Finland: A Rising Nationality”. This was the first straightforward political statement published in English supporting a separate and specifically Finnish national entity. Kropotkin writes: With the perseverance, however, that characterises the men of the North, and particularly those of Finland, this small yet rising nationality has within a short time achieved results so remarkable that it has ceased to be a Swedish or a Russian province more or less differing from its neighbours: it is a nation.59

Since the 1860s, language had become the main criterion used to define nationality in Finland—a political arena divided by a language issue, with separate parties, societies, clubs, and newspapers attracting supporters of Finnish or Swedish language and culture. According to Kropotkin, the watchword of the Fennomans, the proponents of the Finnish language—yksi kieli, yksi mieli (one language, one spirit)—was an example of the common aspirations and conceptions to which Renan was referring in his definition of a nation. In addition to language, Kropotkin considered the ethnographic cohesion of the Finns to be a decisive factor in defining a nation. The Finns comprised three different ethnic “types” or “tribes”, Karelians, “Sawos”, and “Tawastes”, each with distinct anthropological features. The three ethnic types—speaking the same language, living in the same manner, and having so much in common in their national characteristics—merge together into a single ethnic group—the Finns.60 The Finns thus had ethnographic cohesion, which according to Renan is the first condition for constituting a nation. They possessed the historical inheritance of shared struggles on the battlefields, a shared glory, and shared misfortunes, which were to be found in a shared repository of folklore and literature, such as Zacharias Topelius’ Boken om vårt land (The Book of Our Land). Topelius’ book, published in 1875, has been seen as

 Baycroft and Hewitson (2006, 2).  Krapotkin (1885, 528) (Kropotkin’s italics). 60  Krapotkin (1885, 529). 58 59

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the supreme definition of the Finnish race and nation for much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Topelius’ national-romantic view emphasized the Finns’ connection to the rest of Europe but also noted the role played by the country’s natural environment in creating Finnishness, as opposed to the Fenno-Ugric heritage pointed out by philologists: The fact that the Finns still exist, that they have preserved their national individuality and succeeded in attaining to European civilization, is in great part due to the peculiar nature of their country, which is so bleak and cold, but at the same time so sunny, so enclosed and yet so open, so sheltered, yet so accessible to European influences.61

The above quotation is from Finland in the Nineteenth Century, published by Topelius and other Finnish intellectuals in 1894 to describe the Finns to an international audience. It tells the myth of the creation of a nation as an independent, self-governing State, to which accident, or rather the arbitrariness of history, had given a sovereign monarch, the Tsar—who happened to be at the same time the imperial and absolute ruler of all the Russians. In the course of the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire was increasingly being transformed into a multinational state. Along with its chief national group, the Great Russians, the Empire included Ukrainians, Belorussians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns and other Finno-Ugric peoples, Germans, Jews and Romanians, as well as numerous other nationalities and ethnic minorities. Attitudes toward ethnic minorities shifted over time. Before the reform era of Peter the Great (reigned 1682–1725), religion had played a central role and the primary aim had been the conversion of non-Christians to the Orthodox faith. With the secularization of the monarchy, religious concerns gave way to more explicit political and economic interests, with the purpose of unifying the Empire under a single administrative standard.62 The principal catalyst for the period known as the “attempted Russification of Finland, 1899–1905” was Tsar Nicholas II’s Imperial Manifesto of February 1899 (a new Army Bill, aimed at assuming direct control over the Finnish conscription army). This was followed by a series  Quoted in Finland in the Nineteenth Century (1894, 81–82).  Jussila (1999, 3–91).

61 62

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of repressive measures, aimed at bringing the Grand Duchy into closer union with the Empire. The Manifesto and subsequent repressive measures largely unified the Finnish people, who saw Russification as an erosion of their national privileges that had been granted by Alexander I in 1809 and confirmed by Alexander II in 1863. The new Imperial policy gave rise to social unrest and political violence, which dominated the Finnish political scene until the restoration of Finland’s privileges as a separate constitutional entity by Tsar Nicholas II’s Imperial Manifesto of 4 November 1905.63 Finns did not widely regard Russia as a colonizer until the late nineteenth century, when some liberal-minded intellectuals started to openly express anti-imperialist attitudes. The attempted Russification of Finland created a sensitivity toward those who were subjugated under colonial rule; this reaction has been dubbed “the wisdom of the oppressed” by Pekka Rantanen, Petri Ruuska, and Timo Särkkä in this volume. This wisdom, however, was lost after independence, when Finland embarked on its own programs of unification and integration based on race, class, and ethnicity. These hierarchies were at the heart of the unification policy of the sovereign Finnish State, which impacted Finland’s own ethnic minorities, including the Sámi—as shown by Janne Lahti and Jukka Nyyssönen in their respective chapters in this volume. In the early twentieth century, the political sphere developed in ways unacceptable to liberal-minded intellectuals. To them, the Russian Government’s repressive measures were yet another illustration of the indifference of colonial empires to their relations with imperial minorities. Simultaneously, various attempts emerged to conceptualize Finland as a nation in relation to the Russian Empire, to its imperial power, and to the idea of empire-building in political theory. The birth of the fully sovereign Finnish State on 6 December 1917, however, was not a direct consequence of this subjugation of Finland, but the result of a power vacuum created by the collapse of the Empire. Finally, the vulnerable social and economic condition of the landless class resulted in 1918 in a Civil War, thus bringing Finland’s imperial century to a close.

 Polvinen (1995, 17ff).

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Colonialism and the Sámi

The Sámi have been oppressed by Finns since at least the eighteenth century, especially through legislation concerning the use of natural resources, the Church, and the school system.64 The competing Scandinavian kingdoms encroached on the territories inhabited by the Sámi from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. A special Lapland border had officially prevented Swedish settlement from spreading to the territory of Sámi villages, but this protection was broken by the Crown’s settlement decrees of 1673 and 1692, which made settlement free.65 Lehtola notes that the Finnish population differed from Scandinavians in their relation to the Sámi in that early on Finns did not treat the Sámi as a special group but utilized the same “ecological niches as the Sámi”.66 Specifically, Finnish settlement spread to the north after the fourteenth century and Finns also utilized areas extending to Sámi territory. The decrees of 1673 and 1692 had an effect also in Kemi Lapland, where the “village system collapsed quickly under the pressure of Finnish colonization”. Subsequently, Fennicized Sámi families took part in expanding settlement.67 The major impact of the Swedish colonization of the Sápmi was felt from the late eighteenth century onward, when a growing amount of land was granted to non-Sámi farmers after the Lapland Regulations of 1749. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Lapland was surveyed, mapped, and subsequently divided into units and areas for administrative purposes, including taxation. Sámi siida or village systems were replaced with Nordic administration and settlement, which guaranteed possession of Sámi lands. The Sámi people were “domesticated” (to use Lindmark’s phrase) as well through missionary activities and social control.68 The sociologist Vesa Puuronen has noted that the Swedification of the Sámi was not voluntary; conversions to Christianity and the destruction of the traditional Sámi religion, for example, took place through force and violence. These religious activities continued when Finland became a Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire.69 The frontier zone between the Finns and the Sámi was one of two-directional influences but it kept moving to the north  Puuronen (2011).  Lehtola (2015, 25). See also Enbuske (2006, 65–72). 66  Lehtola (2015, 27, 25). 67  Lehtola (2015, 28). See also Enbuske (2008, 154–170). 68  Lindmark (2013, 131–133); Lehtola (2015, 25). 69  Puuronen (2011, 113). 64 65

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and became Fennicized. While some Finnish settlers took up reindeer husbandry—in contrast to other Scandinavians who left this occupation to the Sámi—the late-nineteenth-century legislation regulating it was built on the basis of Finnish-style, small-scale reindeer husbandry rather than the large-scale, nomadic reindeer husbandry of the Sámi.70 A way of life based on permanent settlement, a stationary livelihood, and agriculture was an ideal in Finnish society, consistent with the aim of efficient utilization of regions and land.71 This Finnish lifestyle was valued more highly than the semi-nomadic life of the Sámi. It also served as a point of difference between Finns and Sámi, with the latter placed lower in the cultural hierarchy. The historian Pekka Isaksson has noted that in the latter half of the nineteenth century, all the “great men” of Finnish culture, from J.  V. Snellman to Zacharias Topelius, were in agreement over the idea that it was the duty of Finns to extend cultivation as far north as possible.72 These Finnish ideals were promoted by legislation, whereby some Sámi in fact became settlers in the nineteenth century. The change of some of the Sámi into settlers was largely forced as settlers received significant benefits, whereas the hunting population’s way of life was not supported. In Inari, for example, the Sámi lost court disputes over fishing waters and meadows in the late nineteenth century. The establishment of a new farm was required for right of possession—the continued use of traditional territories was not sufficient grounds. Furthermore, becoming a settler often Fennicized the Sámi’s culture from clothing and customs to language and names.73 According to Lehtola, “the way the original lifestyle of the hunting population, based on seasonal migration, changed into settlement is fully consistent with the characteristics of colonialism”, especially since this change was directed by the authorities.74 The demarcation of the boundary between Finland and Norway in 1896 ended centuries of free movement throughout Sápmi, thus further regulating reindeer husbandry and making it more complicated. The Sámi culture was seen as being frozen in time, having stopped evolving beyond a hunting culture. It was considered to be incapable of evolving to the next level, that of agriculture; in any case, such “progress” was perceived as leading  Lehtola (2015, 28).  Lehtola (2012, 443). 72  Isaksson (2001, 204–205). 73  Lehtola (2015, 25, 28). See also Nahkiaisoja (2006, 88–90). 74  Lehtola (2015, 25). 70 71

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to cultural degeneration and abandonment as well as inauthenticity. The Sámi were thus deemed to be a vanishing race.75 In the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, when the Finnish nation-building project was at its height and its shared Finnish language, history, and culture were foregrounded, the Sámi became defined as an Other to Finns.76 The nature and people of Sápmi were seen as differing from the idea of “the ideal Finn” in direct relation to their Northernness.77 According to Lehtola, this image of the Sámi was created as a by-product of the construction of Finnishness, thus much of “Sámihood” in the Finnish imaginary came to be constructed as a sort of flip side to Finnishness. In the early twentieth century, the educated Finnish élite saw the Sámi as differing racially from Finns and considered that this “racial retardation” would lead to their destruction. Various leading Finnish researchers suggested that the Sámi—rather than the Finns, as had been argued earlier in Continental Europe and Sweden— were Mongols.78 The international relations scholar Vilho Harle and the geographer Sami Moisio have pointed out that the Finns wanted to distinguish themselves from the Sámi, especially when they themselves were regarded as Mongols and thus placed lower in the racial hierarchy than Western Europeans.79 Vesa Puuronen has written that the small minority of the Sámi has been a significant Other to Finns, who have constructed their identity as against them as well as other Others.80 The status of the Finnish language in Lapland was strengthened after World War II, when the municipal administration and welfare services from Southern Finland were extended in the region. The status of Finnish was also strengthened by the building of (residential) schools in the North. According to Nyyssönen, the two post-war decades can be regarded as the most extensively assimilationist period in Finnish-Sámi history.81 The Education Act of 1921 had made education compulsory, but its remit had not covered the peripatetic schools of the far north, where teachers had traveled along with the Sámi. An amendment to the Education Act in 1947 made education compulsory for all children up to the age of thirteen  Lehtola (2012, 182, 191).  Isaksson (2001, 197); Puuronen (2012, 231). 77  Päivärinne (2010, 65). See also Lehtola (2012, 186–195). 78  Lehtola (2012, 111, 114, 180, 184). 79  Harle and Moisio (2000, 121). 80  Puuronen (2012, 229–243). 81  Nyyssönen (2014, 70). 75 76

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(raised to fifteen a decade later). This amendment also applied to sparsely populated areas, which meant that residential schools were built for children living relatively far from villages in Lapland, and the peripatetic schools were discontinued.82 These residential schools were not exclusively for Sámi children; they were mixed schools “for anyone living too far to be able to attend school from home”.83 The impact of the residential schools on the Sámi, however, was very different from that on Finnish pupils. Sámi scholar Minna Rasmus has written that very few Sámi children born in the 1950s spoke Finnish before going to school. As the teachers often did not speak Sámi, the Sámi children had to learn a new language, Finnish, before they could follow the teaching.84 While the 1921 Act had permitted minority language education, the 1957 Education Act restricted even voluntary education in Sámi, a practice that continued until the 1970s, as the Act only mentioned oral teaching of the Sámi language. Under the 1921 Act, minorities had the possibility of being taught in their first language, even if this did not always happen in practice.85 The language and cultural heritage of the Sámi were also not included in the curriculum, which was based totally on Finnish educational ideals.86 Kuokkanen mentions the “indoctrination of values of the dominant society, including the notion of Sami inferiority” in the residential schools.87 Subsequent research has shown that pupils in residential schools were punished for Sáminess at many levels,88 and that depending on the (residential) school, speaking Sámi could be forbidden under pain of punishment from the 1950s onward.89 Finnish culture and values prevailed in the residential schools; due to spending much of the year in them, many Sámi children lost contact with their home language, traditional handicrafts, and reindeer-herding skills. Lehtola argues that many Sámi internalized a belief in Finnish superiority.90

 Lehtola (2018, 273–274).  Kuokkanen (2003, 706). 84  Rasmus (2014, 254). 85  Lehtola (2012, 411, 415). 86  Lehtola (2018, 274). 87  Kuokkanen (2003, 706). 88  Nyyssönen (2014, 70). 89  Rasmus (2014, 254). 90  Lehtola (2018, 276). 82 83

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Harle and Moisio argue that attitudes toward the Sámi became more positive in all the Nordic countries in the 1950s after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the discarding of racial theories. While Finnish respect for the Sámi increased, however, they were not granted any special status; Sámihood was in fact expected to gradually disappear as a separate identity as the Sámi became integrated with Finns.91 This approach can be seen, for example, in Finnish textbooks, which have very little to say about the Sámi. In her study of the Sámi as represented in Finnish textbooks from the 1990s, Kuokkanen found that the Sámi were often described in the past tense, very briefly, and in stereotypical ethnographic terms. A more comprehensive description of the Sámi—their history, social structures, and ways of life—is still absent from textbooks.92 Today, Finnish Lapland includes a special Sámi Homeland area, within which the Sámi have cultural autonomy, as legislated by the Sámi Act; the area is governed by a Sámi Parliament, established in the 1990s. Of the approximately 10,000 Sámi in Finland, the majority live outside the Sámi Homeland, often in large southern cities. Only some 1950 people consider Sámi as their first language. To date, Finland has not ratified the ILO 169 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention; it has been debated in Finland and Lapland since it was drafted in 1989. The official reason given for failing to ratify the Convention is that some of the Articles of the Convention are inconsistent with national Finnish legislation. The bone of contention involves the articles on land rights.93

Finnish Colonial Activity Abroad Finns, as members of or participants in Swedish, Russian, and other European empires, have been involved in colonial endeavors across the globe. Some of the chapters in this volume (Huhta, Shiweda, Kennedy and Holdridge, Särkkä) examine Finnish colonial encounters overseas; here we discuss some other notable examples so as to give a wider account of Finnish colonial complicity. The Swedish colony on the Delaware River in North America was established in 1638. A number of the people settling in New Sweden

 Harle and Moisio (2000, 126).  Kuokkanen (2007, 152). 93  See Joona (2020). 91 92

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(1638–1655) on the Delaware River were of Finnish origin.94 To increase interest in migrating to New Sweden, the Crown offered petty criminals a reduction of their sentence to a few years of indentured labor in the colony. In 1641, a group of 57 such settlers and their family members arrived in New Sweden, the majority of them Finns from Värmland in Sweden.95 Many of the Finnish settlers in New Sweden were Forest Finns from central Sweden and used to clearing forests.96 Although the Dutch took over New Sweden in 1656, the emigration of Forest Finns continued until the 1660s. During the Dutch era of 1656–1664, some 53% of the population in Delaware were Finns.97 The area of New Sweden occupied by Swedish, Finnish, and Dutch settler-colonialists had originally been inhabited by Native Americans, the Lenapes, and the Susquehannocks, with whom the immigrants came into contact. The Swedish Crown was keen to have the settler-colonialists spread European culture and Christianity.98 People of Finnish origin were also involved in Swedish attempts to establish colonies in West Africa—where Sweden had already briefly held a trading post and a fort at Cabo Corso in the 1650s—in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The brothers Ulrik and August Nordenskiöld, born to a Swedish family in Southern Finland, were active in planning these endeavors. In 1776, Ulrik Nordenskiöld, a lieutenant in the Nyland Brigade in southern Finland, wrote a treatise on the benefit to Sweden of trade and colonies in the West Indies and Africa, pointing out, in particular, how England had benefited from its colonies. Nordenskiöld argued that the best option for Swedish colonizing endeavors was on the Guinea Coast. The historian Holger Weiss suggests that Nordenskiöld’s treatise can be seen as one starting point of Swedish colonial interest in Africa, the West Indies and the Indian Ocean.99 Ulrik Nordenskiöld’s brother August drafted a plan in 1778 to set up a trading company that was to operate on the Guinea Coast and establish a colony in the area between Cape Palmas and Cape Mesurado. Its purpose was not to trade slaves or gold but farm produce—such as pepper, cotton, ginger, sugarcane, indigo, rice, and coffee—bought from local farmers or grown by Swedish settlers in the new colony to be established. Slaves, however, were to be used as a labor force  Ekengren et al. (2013).  Ekengren et al. (2013). 96  Ekengren et al. (2013); Aaltonen and Sivonen (2019, 26). 97  Herou (2001, 255). 98  See e.g. Ekengren et al. (2013, 174). 99  Weiss (2016, 25–26). 94 95

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in the colony.100 Neither the Guinea company nor the colony were ever established, but it was only six years later that Sweden acquired a colony in the West Indies. Sweden held the colony of St. Barthélemy in the Lesser Antilles from 1784 to 1878. The newly acquired colony did not attract great numbers of Swedes, but Finns, who had suffered from recurrent crop failure and famine, were enthusiastic about the Crown’s proclamation of freedom of occupational choice on the island in 1785. The Finnish “Barthélemy-­ fever” was suppressed by a new proclamation by the Crown, explaining that there was no real possibility of large-scale migration to the colony.101 The first Governor of St. Barthélemy, Major Salomon Mauritz von Rajalin, was of Finnish origin; Rajalin declared in 1785 that St. Barthélemy was to become a free port, and promoted the idea of developing the colony into a hub of the international slave trade. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Sweden, including its eastern province (i.e. Finland), was involved in global trade, including that in slaves. As the documentary filmmaker Jouko Aaltonen and the historian Seppo Sivonen have emphasized, Finns were no outsiders or bystanders, but instead benefited directly from global trade and slavery; the profits flowed both to the Swedish State Treasury and to individual investors.102 The renowned British navigator and cartographer James Cook, who claimed and named New South Wales for the British Crown, also had a Finn aboard his vessel Endeavour during his first Pacific expedition in 1768–1771. That Finn was Herman Dietrich Spöring (1733–1771) who studied first at the Academy of Turku and then in Uppsala, where he was inspired by Carl Linnaeus to focus on the natural sciences. Spöring then worked as a sailor and later as a clocksmith in London, where he met and was hired as a scribe by Daniel Solander, the well-known Swedish botanist and student of Linnaeus. Solander had befriended the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, who was now joining Cook on his voyage; upon hearing this, Solander signed up for the voyage too and invited Spöring to come along as his secretary. Spöring had skills and knowledge that were useful to the expedition: he had studied natural science and was a skilled clocksmith and draughtsman. When one of the expedition’s two artists passed away in Tahiti, Spöring took over his job, producing drawings and notes that are  Weiss (2016, 28–30).  Weiss (2016, 141–142). 102  Aaltonen and Sivonen (2019, 10–13, 91–98, 118–119); see also Weiss (2016). 100 101

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now held in the British Library and the British Museum. From Tahiti, The Endeavour sailed to New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, where Cook claimed land for the British Crown. (Southeastern) Australia was occupied and turned into a British penal colony only eight years after Cook’s claim.103 The period from the 1830s to the 1890s in Finnish history has been described by the historian Max Engman as the “imperial decades”; the growth of imperial Russia provided the Finnish population with numerous new career opportunities in various parts of the empire. Individual Finns held positions in the Russian administration and in academia, the army, and the navy, bringing them into contact with imperialist thought and with newly colonized regions and populations.104 Finns played especially important roles in developing a Russian America in Alaska. Here the leading figure was Arvid Adolf Etholén, born to a Swedish-speaking bourgeois family in Helsinki; he served the Russo-American Company as a naval officer, rising eventually to the position of Chief Manager of the Company. This was the highest administrative position in the Russo-American Company, and meant that Etholén was de facto governor of the colony of Alaska. During the years he served in Sitka or Novo Arkhangelsk (1840–1845), Etholén was in key position in building and consolidating Russian rule over Alaska. He was involved in establishing new trading posts and organizing scientific expeditions. Numerous islands, bays, straits, and other geographical landmarks were named after him, following the Russian form of his name, Etolin. Etholén also promoted the adoption of Christianity and a western educational system in the area. He was accompanied by a number of other officials and scientists of Finnish origin, including a young clergyman, Uno Cygnaeus, who later came to be known as the creator of the Finnish system of public education.105 Empire-building was typically a highly transnational enterprise, engaging large numbers of workers, military, and other officers, as well as a labor force from outside the main colonializing countries. For instance, King Leopold II’s personal colony, the Congo Free State, which later became the Belgian Congo, actively recruited workers from around Europe in order to be able to control a region that was nearly eighty times the size of the mother country. Young men with training in engineering or with  Leikola and Löytönen (2009, 21–27).  Engman (2000). 105  Varjola (1990) and Lepola (2002). 103 104

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experience as mariners were especially sought after to work as river-boat machinists and captains on the Congo River. Between the 1880s and 1930s, some 2000 individuals were recruited from the Nordic countries,106 approximately 200 of whom were Finns.107 One of these Finns was Akseli Leppänen (1879–1938), whose story has been documented by Jouko Aaltonen in his film A Man from the Congo River (2009). The French Foreign Legion has also been a transnational enterprise involved in colonial encounters, and has admitted some 500 to 600 Finns into its ranks since its founding in 1831. It is estimated that dozens of Finns fought in the Indochina War in 1946–1954 in the ranks of the Foreign Legion used by France in the war to maintain its hold over its colonies.108 The cases and phenomena discussed here are by no means an exhaustive catalog of Finnish colonial involvement abroad, but they serve, together with the individual chapters, to give an idea of the wide variety of Finnish colonial complicity. Even without holding any formal (overseas) colonies, Finns have demonstrably participated in multifarious colonial activities across the globe.

Structure of the Book and Chapter Division The volume is divided into three sections, each of which sheds light on different aspects of Finnish colonial encounters. The first section, State, Nation, and Colonialism in Finland, focuses on internal political and ideological developments and debates over colonialism in the Grand Duchy of Finland. In the opening chapter, Pekka Rantanen, Petri Ruuska, and Timo Särkkä analyze the diversity of attitudes toward Russian imperial politics that developed in the Grand Duchy of Finland (1809–1917). While the Grand Duchy was an integral part of the Russian Empire, it also enjoyed a remarkable degree of autonomy owing to its self-governing status. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, when the Russian state-­ building process began to intensify, the majority of the Finns resisted the empire-led policy of homogenization. The authors argue that the experience of political oppression, in the form of the attempted Russification of  Tygesen (2006, 6). See also Eroma (2011, 15, 17, 33).  Estimations on the exact number of Finns in Congo are complicated by the fact that many Finns were categorized as Swedes because of their names. See Uola (1979, 12); Eroma (2011, 17–18). See also Koivukangas (1998, 51–52). 108  See Kallonen (2020). 106 107

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Finland, offered a real possibility of developing an equality-driven political insight and understanding. But this understanding was largely lost when Finland’s own nation-building process got fully under way. In their chapter, Mika Suonpää and Matti Välimäki discuss the operationalization of the concepts of imperialism and colonialism in Finnish parliamentary debates from Independence (1917) to EU accession (1995). They show that Finnish parliamentarians viewed imperialism and colonialism mainly from a perspective of outside observers, and portrayed them almost exclusively in negative terms. In their self-perception, Finland was not complicit in past or present global, colonial, or imperial structures. The concepts of empire, imperialism, colony, and colonialism entered the parliamentary vocabulary almost exclusively in reference to international developments and events, and reflected transnational intellectual currents and debates. Finnish politicians also perceived imperialism and colonialism as an ever-present danger threatening small nations, and as ideas that had shaped the characteristics of international institutions from the League of Nations to the EU. The next two chapters focus on the Finnish colonization of Petsamo and attitudes toward the local Skolt Sámi people. Connecting Finnish Petsamo to histories of settler colonialism and colonial travel writings, Janne Lahti looks at four Finnish travelogues through the settler colonial lens. He argues that these Finnish travel writers looked at Petsamo through settler colonial eyes: in other words, they made claims for Finnish settler colonization, promoted the idea, and assessed its feasibility. They commented on the nature of the region and its potential riches; described the villages, homes, and domestic customs; and commented on the outlook and habits of the people. The travelogues thus made the colonized land familiar to their Finnish audience and occupied it in language that combined views of its past with its new reality as a Finnish space. Jukka Nyyssönen examines early Skolt Sámi research by the geologist Väinö Tanner (1881–1948) in the context of nation-building and colonialism. In 1929, Tanner published an extensive study in human geography on the economic and social adaptation of the Skolt Sámi. He aimed at an understanding and respectful approach, and today he enjoys the reputation of a culturally sensitive scholar: one who tried to see the Skolt Sámi culture from within and who wrote against the most aggressive discourses of his time. There are indications, however, that the relationship between Tanner and the Sámi was more complex than previously assumed. Nyyssönen examines Tanner’s book in the light of recent theorizing on

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colonial knowledge production, revealing aspects of his relation to the object of study that can be seen as colonialist. The second section, Colonial Encounters in Finland, focuses on the cultural effects of colonialism for Finnish home audiences. In the first chapter of this section, Leila Koivunen examines the visit of a live ethnographic exhibition group of Australian Aboriginals in Helsinki and Vyborg in 1886. This exhibition, together with others of the same genre that followed a few years later, became an influential new means for Finns to encounter ideologies, imageries, and individuals closely associated with colonialism. Koivunen demonstrates that the highly standardized exhibition concept did not ensure uniformity of either performance or reception. The Finnish example illustrates how the meaning of an exhibition was always locally embedded and thus subject to new interpretations. In the Finnish context, the visit by the Aboriginals became a means to express membership in a western, allegedly superior civilization, with its rationality, its practices of overcoming and mastering other human populations, and its privilege of being entertained by those very populations. Raita Merivirta focuses in her chapter on colonialism, race, and White innocence in Finnish 1920s’ children’s literature, arguing that children’s literature was an influential channel through which colonial discourse and public colonial imagination were created, consumed, and circulated in Finland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As an example of such literature, Merivirta examines the Finnish children’s author Anni Swan’s serial “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa” (“Living as Settlers in Australia”, 1926). The serial depicts a Finnish settler family’s life in Queensland, focusing on their encounters with First Nations people . The chapter explores how colonialism and race in the Australian context are depicted and racial and cultural hierarchies constructed in Swan’s text. Merivirta shows that Swan’s text circulates a number of common European and American colonial tropes, as well as portrays Finnish settler colonialism in Australia as innocent and non-colonial. In her chapter, Johanna Skurnik examines how the Finnish Missionary Society made use of mass-produced maps and related reading materials to fuel geographical imaginations concerning non-European populations and lands to gain support for the missionary cause between 1859 and the mid-1890s. Skurnik shows how the maps and texts entangled Finnish audiences with the processes of colonization in complex ways: they reproduced discussions concerning human difference, generated geographies of cannibalism, and entwined Finnish missionary work with a discourse of

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colonial philanthropy. Once the Finnish Missionary Society started its own mission in Owambo in present-day Namibia, the maps were used to bridge the geographical distance and make the colonial space of “Ovamboland” their own. The third section turns to Finns’ Colonial Encounters Abroad, examining ways in which Finns were involved in or influenced by diverse colonial activities. In the first chapter, Aleksi Huhta investigates Finnish encounters with imperial and colonial powers during the World War I through a biographical and microhistorical analysis. He explores the experiences of a Finnish metalworker during the war and the immediate post-war years, charting the protagonist’s trajectory from a volunteer in the Russian imperial army to life as a mineworker and Communist radical in Canada. By exploring the protagonist’s encounters with different imperial powers— Russian/Soviet, British/Canadian, German, Belgian, and American—the chapter highlights the trans-imperial character of the Finnish encounter with colonialism and imperialism. The writer pays particular attention to the role of the Russian Empire in shaping Finnish colonial and imperial encounters. In her chapter, Napandulwe Shiweda provides a critical analysis of photographs taken by Finnish missionaries in the Owambo region in present-­ day Namibia, highlighting their different intentions and photographic practices. It addresses their various genres of photography, especially ethnographic scenery and group and individual portraits, which missionary photographers used to document life in Owambo, and interrogates not simply what these photographs represent, but how, where, when, by whom, and why they were taken. Shiweda shows that the photographs were deliberate constructions of the missionary experience, along the lines of a prevalent reference to a missionary conversion narrative signaling modernity and development. She further concludes that Finnish missionaries’ photographs should be seen in relation to how colonial photographs were constructed and supported, through labeling, marginalization, and other techniques, contributing to the way the Owambo were represented in a colonial context. The chapter by Wm. Matthew Kennedy and Chris Holdridge examines the colonial encounters of Finnish emigrés in the South African War (1899–1902) in terms of the experiences of Finnish volunteers during mobilization and combat, and nuancing Finnish “adventure stories” by including a discussion of how the Boer high command actually used foreigners in their combat operations. The authors also discuss Finnish

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experiences of military internment as prisoners of war, during which they were subject not only to detention but also to political surveillance, intended to structure the process of post-war colonial reconstruction in Southern Africa by preventing foreigners or intransigent Boers from returning there. Such experiences contributed significantly to the construction of “Finnishness” as a national identity pursuant to the needs of Britain’s apparatus of imperial security. In the final chapter, Timo Särkkä approaches the origins of Rhodesian settler identity from the perspectives of Finnish ethnicity and migration. According to the author, Finns formed a defined group of settlers that has been ignored as a social variable in the study of colonial identities in general and in colonial Southern Africa in particular. In the forefront of the analysis are the life and times of one particular Finnish-born settler, Carl Theodor Eriksson, whose life in Southern Africa is exceptionally well documented thanks to the survival of his diary, letters, and photographs. In the case of Eriksson, identification as a Rhodesian settler also seemed to provide a space within which national identity building could be manifested, for instance, through language and photography.

References Aaltonen, Jouko, and Seppo Sivonen. 2019. Orjia ja Isäntiä: Ruotsalais-­ suomalainen siirtomaaherruus Karibialla. Helsinki: Into. Baycroft, Timothy, and Mark Hewitson. 2006. What Was a Nation in Nineteenth-­ Century Europe? In What Is a Nation? Europe 1789–1914, ed. Timothy Baycroft and Mark Hewitson, 1–13. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bertelsen, Bjørn Enge. 2015. Introduction: Norwegians Navigating Colonial Orders in Africa and Oceania. In Navigating Colonial Orders: Norwegian Entrepreneurship in Africa and Oceania, ed. Kirsten Alsaker Kjerland and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Castrén, M.A. 2016. Luentoja suomalaisesta mytologiasta. Edited by Joona Ahola. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. Danielson-Kalmari, J.R. 1891. Finland’s Union with the Russian Empire. With Reference to M.  K. Ordin’s Work “Finland’s Subjugation”. Borgå: Werner Söderström. Eirola, Martti. 1992. The Ovambogefahr. The Ovamboland Reservation in the Making. Political Responses of the Kingdom of Ondonga to the German Colonial Power 1884–1910. Rovaniemi: Pohjois-Suomen historiallinen yhdistys. Ekengren, Fredrik, Magdalena Naum, and Ulla Isabel Zagal-Mach Wolfe. 2013. Sweden in the Delaware Valley: Everyday Life and Material Culture in New

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PART I

State, Nation, and Colonialism in Finland

CHAPTER 2

Wisdom of the Oppressed: Finnish Colonial Complicities in the Age of the Russian Empire Pekka Rantanen, Petri Ruuska, and Timo Särkkä

The process of European overseas colonial expansion can be considered to have begun in the fifteenth century when the Portuguese began to actively explore the West Coast of Africa. During the first phase of colonial expansion that lasted until about the mid-nineteenth century, the European worldview expanded mainly as a result of the conquests of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British.1 In the second phase, from 1  Imperial and postcolonial studies are no longer confined to dealing with the history of the overseas expansion of Europe alone, but include the process of colonialism seen as an intrinsic part of Western, or even human history as a whole. If one scratches the surface of the extensive and prodigiously cumulating literature of imperial and postcolonial studies, it soon

P. Rantanen (*) • P. Ruuska Tampere, Finland T. Särkkä Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_2

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around the mid-nineteenth century up to the outbreak of the First World War, a novel concept “imperialism” emerged in the political vocabulary of several European languages.2 Soon after its first appearance in the mid-­ nineteenth century, colonial conquest developed into a form of aggressive expansion where colonies were consciously acquired for economic, strategic, and political reasons—as historian Eric Hobsbawm has pointed out: “emperors and empires were old, but imperialism was quite new”.3 At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, imperialism was named the most powerful Western political movement.4 At its peak in around 1900, 60% of the earth’s landmass was ruled by imperial or colonial empires, but in a matter of only few decades, a large number of fully sovereign nation-­ states were born to replace the rule of empires.5 The period from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, which sociologist Roland Robertson has called the lift-off phase of globalization6 and Hobsbawm as “the Age of Empire”,7 left a deep mark on political thinking globally. Thus, the race for world power manifested itself not only in the rationale of the colonizers but also in the minds of those who were colonized and subjugated under foreign colonial rule. Hobsbawm also maintains that the age of the empire paved the way for anti-imperialist modes of thinking and action.8 As imperialism grabbed hold of the world and became a topic of political discourse, novel ways of understanding the world emerged, and ultimately these new ways of thinking anti-imperially would challenge the old colonial mode of rule. These thought-processes were by no means unknown in the global north—the Finns, for instance, experienced shifting centers of power from Sweden to

becomes evident that even the countries without formal colonies or possessions, let alone empires, were intertwined with the complex processes of colonialism—be it in the form of mobile individuals, global trade, or simply in terms of the flow of goods, information, and ideas. For a recent discussion, refer, for example, to Cooper (2020). 2  Used either to proclaim or to denounce imperial rule, the concept of imperialism is known to communicate notoriously poorly both temporally and spatially. On English language definitions of “imperialism”, refer to Koebner and Schmidt (1964); on German language definitions of “Imperialismus”, refer to Walther (1982). 3  Ashcroft et al. (1998); Hobsbawm (1994). 4  Hobsbawm (1994, 60). 5  Wimmer and Min (2006, 870). 6  Robertson (1992). 7  Hobsbawm (1994). 8  Hobsbawm (1994, 78, 276–301).

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Russia, from Russia to Western Europe, and from the age of empires to the emerging of its own national political order. In this chapter we will investigate how globalization, colonialism, and the state-building process, with its rationale of administration, manifested themselves in the imagining of the nation in late-nineteenth and early-­ twentieth-­century Finland. There is a growing body of research addressing colonial complicity in the Scandinavian countries, and by following in the footsteps of this genre of research, we examine how colonialism was present in Finnish society in the age of the Russian Empire. The research materials include various printed ephemera as well as several personal archive deposits in order to locate diversity of voices in society. In the process of consulting the materials, issues of colonialism entangled with Finnish political setting surfaced in a manner that called for further investigation.9



Shifting Centers of Power

The proximate area now known as Finland was subjugated under the rule of the Swedish Realm from the mid-twelfth century onward10 and remained so until 1809, when Finland was incorporated within the Russian Empire as an autonomous Grand Duchy in the aftermath of the Russo-­ Swedish War of 1808–1809. By that time, the Russian Empire had grown into a formidable political and military power, which had expanded from the early fifteenth century to the late eighteenth century, especially in the East. In the West, the Empire expanded at the expense of the Swedish Realm from the early eighteenth century, but after the Napoleonic Wars, Russia was mainly interested in maintaining law and order in its new western border, so the annexation of Finland was done sensitively. The Grand Duchy was permitted to keep its old Swedish legislation and was later allowed to form its own postal services, mint its own currency, and even to raise its own conscription army, which was not designated to serve in Russia’s imperial ventures. In other words, many elements of a modern 9  Research materials for this chapter were originally collected in a project that was centered on the Great Strike of 1905 (funded by Kone Foundation). The research results were originally published in Rantanen and Ruuska (2009), and updated and enlarged for this volume (with the support of the Academy of Finland Grant 343605). All translations are by the authors. 10  Harrison (2005).

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nation-state were emerging in Finland under the benevolent rule of the Tsar. For much of the nineteenth century, Russia was not regarded as a malicious conqueror in Finland. Quite the contrary, Finnish political, economic, and cultural elites praised the Tsar who had, according to the dominant Finnish interpretation, lifted Finland in “the rank of nations, under the Empire”.11 When Finland was incorporated into the Empire, it was a peripheral and poor eastern province of the Swedish Realm. There were no significant raw materials to be won in Finland, but its geographical location on the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia, and particularly its close proximity to St. Petersburg, made the occupation of its hinterland a lucrative venture for military and strategic reasons.12 The new western borderland was Russia’s gateway to Western Europe, and this fact granted the Finns unthinkable political liberties, which later were even thought to serve as a model to reform administration in the rest of the Empire.13 During the latter part of the nineteenth century, the industrialization process got underway in Russia with the help of western capital and partly at the expense of agriculture, the consequence of which was that the emphasis on industry impoverished the landed gentry and had a negative effect on the living standards of the landless poor. The Trans-Siberian railroad was constructed to bind the vast Empire together, and the administrative machinery became standardized and streamlined, but, as a by-­ product, the surveillance of ethnic minorities and political dissenters intensified.14 The uneven distribution of wealth and the violent subjugation of any signs of social unrest sustained dissatisfaction among those who saw modernization processes as restrictive rather than liberating. The end of the nineteenth century was a time of capital accumulation in Finland too. Industrial output grew and exports to Russian markets created new business opportunities for local and foreign entrepreneurs alike due to the preferential treatment of Finnish commodities in the imperial markets. Exports into Germany and England also developed, mainly in terms of sawnwood, dry pulp, and roundwood, and in these respects, the Finnish economy and society became attached to the West. From the Russian point of view, the commercial and industrial growth of Germany  Jussila (2004); Klinge (1997).  Munck (1905, 327–328). 13  Kappeler (2001, 247). 14  Jussila (1979, 27–28). 11 12

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and the integration of the Finnish economy into the West was regarded as a harmful and potentially dangerous development, and it intensified demands for the unification of the Empire.15 In the course of the nineteenth century, non-Russian national movements in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, for example, as well as diverse interpretations of nationality by some Great Russians, challenged the legitimacy of the multiethnic Empire and its imperial order. At the same time, the need to modernize Russia in terms of its administration, legal system, and economy was asserted, and that often conflicted with the interests of the landed aristocracy. Russia was also influenced by the idea of a homogeneous nation-state, which was emerging elsewhere in Europe. This idea, in the context of the unification of AustriaHungary into the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the 1860s and Germany into the German Empire at the start of the 1870s, no longer seemed an unattainable dream but an achievable political reality. As a result of these developments, the quest for administrative, legal, and economic integration intensified, and by the close of the nineteenth century, the developments culminated in a policy of “Russification”, which for some ethnicities denoted a meaningful form of integration, but for the rest meant repression and discrimination.16 Herein lies the historic paradox of Russia as both a nation-state and a colonial empire.17 So in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the Russian Government and specially the Tsar had gained the trust of the Finns, but this faith was lost by the close of the century when the government intensified pressure on many ethnic minorities. According to historian Andreas Kappeler, the turning-point in the relationship between the Grand Duchy and the Russian Government dates from 1889, when the Russian press began to question and undermine the Grand Duchy’s political and economic liberties. Onslaughts on the Grand Duchy were especially prevalent in the most jingoistic section of the Russian press, which even accused the Finns of provoking racial animosity toward the Russians.18 Historian Osmo Jussila has also located the turning-point in the Finno-Russo relationship to 1889 when Tsar Alexander III had become increasingly irritated by separate Customs and Excise duties as well as by the monetary  For further information, see Klinge (1997).  Kappeler (2001). 17  Khodarkovsky (2020). 18  Danielson (1891, 16). 15 16

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system and postal services in Finland, to the extent that he began to wonder if the Imperial Senate of Finland was handling the day-to-day government of a province of the Empire or a fully sovereign Finnish State.19 On 15 February 1899, Tsar Nicholas II’s Imperial Manifesto interfered with many of the “constitutional rights” that had been granted to the Finns by Tsar Alexander I and reconfirmed by Alexander II.  Soon after issuing the Manifesto, the Grand Duchy was brought step by step to a closer union with the rest of the Empire by dismantling some of her separate administrative bodies. In the eyes of some Finns, Tsar Nicholas II was regarded as an oath breaker, and forms of passive resistance in terms of nonmilitary struggle began to occur, and later came forms of active resistance, culminating in 1904 in the assassination of the Governor-General Nikolai Bobrikov (1898–1904), the figurehead of the policy of Russification. Some activists began to speak arrogantly of the era after the “Nicholas the Last”.20 These events were a prelude to the General Strike of 1905, the most far-reaching consequence of which was the adoption of the principle of universal and equal suffrage in Finland in 1906.21 The appointment of F. A. Seyn as Governor-General of Finland in 1909 signified the restoration of the Russian imperial power usurped by the Finnish “separatist” constitutionalists in 1906–1907.22

Resistance Against Russification When the Russian Empire launched its policy of Russification in earnest in the late 1890s, it was met with defiance in both words and actions. Since the first Diet in Porvoo in 1809, the chief safeguard against the Russian Government’s supremacy over the Grand Duchy had been national representation. The liberal-minded Tsar Alexander II summoned Finnish representatives in September 1863 for the first time since the 1809 Diet. Annual sittings were never the rule but a five-year period was established in the Law of the Diet of 1869 as the maximum interval that should elapse in future between successive meetings of the Estates. The Diet provided an opportunity to negotiate with the Russians over which administrative branches remained under the control of the Russian Government and  Kappeler (2001, 260–261); Jussila (2004, 530–533).  Anttila et al. (2009, 9). 21  Haapala et al. (2008). 22  For further information, see Luntinen (1985). 19 20

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which belonged to the sphere of Finnish authorities. One question that came to challenge this harmony was the issue of military service in the Grand Duchy, which according to the Military Service Law of 1878 was placed under the direct control of the Finnish conscription army. But Tsar Nicholas II’s February Manifesto revoked this law, and a new Army Bill placed the Finnish conscripts under the direct control of the Imperial Russian Army, stirring resistance which culminated in strikes and boycotts of conscription.23 Violent suppression of conscription strikes prompted several authors to express their sympathy with the cause of the Finnish people and to point out the inconsistency of liberal principles with imperialism. V.  I. Lenin protested against violations against “the Constitution of Finland” in the social-democratic Iskra (Spark) as follows: We, all Russian citizens, should ponder over the shame that falls upon us. We are still such slaves as can be employed to reduce other tribes to slavery. We still tolerate a government which, with the ferocity of an executioner, suppresses every aspiration towards liberty in Russia, and moreover, employs Russian troops for the purpose of violently infringing on the liberties of others!24

It was preventive censorship that more than anything marred Finnish passive resistance against Russification. The situation shifted throughout the nineteenth century. After the introduction of censorship regulations in 1846 and 1850, the Russian Government increasingly controlled the distribution of information. A short-lived liberal period followed in the 1860s. From 1863, the Empire tolerated the rise of many cheap and widely read papers in the Grand Duchy if they did not criticize the government or print in Russian. Press freedom was introduced in 1865 but remained in force for only two years. After 1867, the situation became worse, and by 1891, it was intolerable when publication of several newspapers was either delayed or permanently suppressed by the Governor-­ General, who had the power to temporarily suspend or entirely suppress any paper and to demand the dismissal or even imprisonment of editors.25 Although law defined the supervision of anti-empire expressions in publications, in reality, this was a very broad field to be supervised. Not  For further information, refer to Huxley (1990).  Lenin (1929, 64). 25  For further information, refer to Leino-Kaukiainen (1988, 421–629); Polvinen (1995); Huxley (1990). 23 24

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only was banned literature being smuggled to the Grand Duchy but the numerous guidelines also made interpretation hard for the staff of the Board of Censors. One indication of mounting Finnish resistance against the new Army Bill is the critique of a provocative book entitled Soldier’s Service to the Ruler and the Fatherland (1904). The book describes the Grand Duchy as a mere province and the Finns as only one ethnic minority within the vast Empire, whose sense of common aspirations and conceptions were constructed to accord with the Tsar and “the will of God”.26 A critique, written in the context of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), published anonymously in Emilia magazine in 1904 with the title “Bobrikoff as a Novelist” suggests that Governor-General Bobrikov himself might be the author of the controversial book: Bobrikov knows that a conscientious Finn, who loves his country, will never voluntarily join in the ranks of the mighty and renowned Imperial Russian Army. Therefore, we must be robbed from our homeland; we must become Ruskies and recognise vast Russia as our fatherland before we can be content with the idea of being Russian soldiers. Only then we will be dragged with the mighty and renowned the Imperial Russian Army into the Far East, and get beaten by the Imperial Japanese Army, or to any other place on the globe where the ruthless conquest policy of the Russian Government demands us to be slaughtered.27

Finnish resistance saw the new Army Bill as a symptom of the erosion of Finland’s constitutional status as a self-governed polity. The critique was particularly directed toward a formulation in the renewed military oath which upheld that “Finland is no longer a country, a State in itself”.28 For the resistance, this formulation conveyed a message that “the Finns no longer have a fatherland to love and defend” and that this “policy of violence” will lead to “the complete destruction of the [Finnish] people as a nation”.29 The military oath was considered to support the Tsar’s “autarchy”, which bore no relation to “the people’s rights” and which would therefore ultimately enslave the Finns “under the yoke of Russian despotism”.30 Earlier it was observed that the initial motives for the  See Pollari et al. (2008, 51); Huxley (1990, 193–201).  “Bobrikoff som författare,” Emilia, 19 May 1904, 3–4. 28  Den nya krigsmannaeden (1903). 29  “Åtalet mot V.N.”, Salomon, 19 May 1904, 1. 30  Toivo (1903). 26 27

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Russian occupation of Finland were military, not colonial in the economic or political sense. The turn-of-the-century crisis over the new Army Bill, however, was no longer confined to the domain of military strategy.31 The critique of the formulation of the new military oath can also be interpreted as an indication of rising anti-imperialism in Finland since the concept’s traditional pejorative connotations were closely connected to despotism.32 One major aspect of the power negotiation between the Grand Duchy and the Empire was the discussion on the legality of Russian rule in Finland. The legal battle culminated in the defense of the old Swedish constitutional statutes or the so-called fundamental laws, granted by Tsar Alexander I in 1809 and reconfirmed by Alexander II in 1863. Violations against these constitutional statutes—the policy of Russification—were interpreted as a battle between despotism in Russia and emergent constitutionalism in Finland. The argument over legality was also hoped to moderate those Finnish activists who were willing to resist Russification by acts of violence. Supporters of passive resistance insisted that the enforcement of the new Army Bill had to be followed, since failure to comply with the law would ultimately result only in the destruction of the legitimacy of the constitution.33 Finnish activists, on the other hand, regarded passive resistance as a submission to despotism.34 The February Manifesto and the fundamental statutes it contained were regarded as a coup d’état, since the Tsar had broken his promise to the Finnish people and thus violated their liberties.35 The legal battle culminated in the first Finnish Parliament Election Campaign of 1907, in which the Russian Government sided with the Finnish Party, the so-called Old Finns, with their pro-Finnish sentiment, by using them as a bulwark against the Swedish Party or supporters of “Scandinavism”, which was seen by the Russian Government as a threat to imperial unity. The campaign is depicted in a cartoon (Fig. 2.1) published in the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat. The leaders of the Finnish Party, including J.  R. Danielson-Kalmari cheering in the background, are depicted as subjugating themselves to “the Ruskies’ dance”, the traditional

 Huxley (1990, 129–132).  Koebner and Schmidt (1964). 33  Fria Ord, 14 January 1903, 1. 34  Fria Ord, 18 February 1903, 1; 20 May 1903, 5. 35  Fria Ord, 25 January 1903. 31 32

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Fig. 2.1  “Ryssän tanssi”, Helsingin Sanomat, 62, 14 March 1907

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Trepak, under the command of Governor-General Bobrikov and von Plehve, the Minister-Secretary of State for Finland (1899–1904).36 After the February Manifesto, activists founded the so-called Literary Committee, the purpose of which was to promote the cause of the Finnish people in foreign press. Especially important was the liberal London press, which was a channel through which to challenge some older interpretations of political thinking and concepts as well as to start a debate without distortion or manipulation by censors. In London, the representatives of the Literary Committee included Docent Julio Reuter, an organizer of the Finnish passive resistance movement Kagal, and Edvard [Edward] Westermarck, anthropologist, sociologist, philosopher, and one of the first two professors of Sociology at the London School of Economics (1907–1930).37 Westermarck’s article “Finland and the Tsar”, published in the Contemporary Review, and Reuter’s article “Russia in Finland”, published in the Nineteenth Century, were both issued in May 1899.38 The articles illustrate strikingly the Literary Committee’s efforts. Their purpose was to explain the nature of Finnish self-government to the international audience and the fundamental unease the Manifesto had provoked about the status of that autonomy.39 The case of Finland had wide implications for international diplomacy, since the coinciding debate over Irish Home Rule and the mounting colonial problems in South Africa prompted several authors to express their sympathy with the cause of the Finnish people, and also to point out the inconsistency of liberal principles with imperialism.40 Besides, in the dawning twentieth century, the questions of nationality and ethnicity were acute in many other colonial domains within the Russian Empire, including Ukraine.41 Common to these expressions of sympathy to the Finnish people is that Russia and its authoritarian tradition was seen as a threat to the emerging constitutionalism in Finland.42 For instance, writing under a pseudonym “Toivo” (Hope) in Berlin, one author saw Finland as a nursery of Western culture within the vast Russian Empire and argued that  Refer also to Bhabha (1994).  Reuter (1928). See also Zilliacus (1920). 38  Westermarck (1899, 652–659); Reuter (1899, 699–715). 39  Rantanen (2014). 40  Särkkä 2022. 41  Kotenko (2021, 17–31). 42  Fria Ord, 9 February 1903; 18 February 1903, 10; 20 May 1903; Moab i sin örtagård! 1901. 36 37

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Russification meant an assault on the idea of Finland as an upholder of Western civilization.43 Publicly, a fully sovereign Finnish State was not yet openly an aspiration, although the Russian press frequently accused the Finns of expressing such separatist notions. One exception to this general trend is the Active Opposition Party, which utilized the general mayhem created by the Russian Revolution of 1905 to emphasize the need of a revolutionary resistance.44 Gunnar Castrén was commissioned by the Active Opposition Party to write a draft for the first Finnish Constitution. It based its claim to national self-determination on the liberty of the whole body of the people, with the Finns ruled by a president as the constitutional ruler of Finland. According to Castrén’s proposal, the constitution could be amended only by means of a referendum.45 In practice, this would have meant that only the will of the Finnish people would decide if Finland would declare herself a fully sovereign state, thereby radically altering her relationship to the Empire. This resistance against Russification emerged from the subjugated position of the Finns and created what is termed here a “wisdom of the oppressed”, which rejected discourses of colonial “othering” and conquest. This sensibility toward unjust power relations was manifested in a critique of economic, social, and gender inequalities of the society and created the foundation for the strikingly modern and even revolutionary Finnish Suffrage Reform of 1905–1906, which for the first time in Europe recognized the universal right to vote for women. It was also the setting for the introduction in 1906 of very liberal regulation of press freedom, which removed press censorship in Finland, but which was never put in force until the collapse of the Empire.



Slavelands—in Finland?

Until the last decades of the nineteenth century, Russia was not a colonial Empire, nor did it integrate its ethnic minorities with the same determination as France and England for instance.46 Nevertheless, in the  Toivo (1903).   Protokoll fördt at Finska Aktiva Motståndspartiets ordinarie årsmöte av 18 nov. 1906, VP, KA. 45  Castrén (1905). 46  Kappeler (2001); Hechter (1975, 10). 43 44

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course of the nineteenth century, Russia also crystallized its imperial mission and subjugated new territories and peoples in the East under its expanding Empire. The Russian novelist and philosopher Feodor Dostoyevsky was one of those who were inspired and excited by the prospects presented by expansion in the East: “In Europe, we were only poor recipients of charity and slaves, but we come to Asia as masters. In Europe we were Tatars, but in Asia we are also Europeans”.47 But annexation of Finland was morally more difficult to justify as a righteous and humane act since the Grand Duchy was widely considered to be more advanced territory than the Empire proper at large, as exemplified by the following extract from a conversation between Aleksei Kuropatkin, the Russian Minister of War, and Bobrikov, the Governor-General: When we meet, each time I urged him [Bobrikov] not to touch local institutions, to maintain the system of governance and to respect local customs. I have shown him, on the basis of my long-term presence in Finland (18 years I have lived in Terijoki), that Finland is a more civilized country than we are, and that we should not try to impose our own values there, and that we ourselves have a lot to learn from them in many respects. Bobrikov agreed this, but apparently he is furious.48

The origins of the Finnish race and their place in the racial hierarchy was under speculation at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the fading century, the ethnic and linguistic origins of the Finns had been associated with the “Mongolian” and “Touranian” families, but toward the end of the century, views which held the Finns as a subject race were challenged by some liberal-minded intellectuals, who maintained that throughout the Empire there did not exist a more culturally advanced and prosperous race than the Finns. For them, the place of the Finns on the lowest strata of racial hierarchy was intolerable because it implied that Finland was not necessary fit for its limited political freedom.49 Debate on freedom and oppression of the people presupposes that there existed a sphere of politics, which was national, valuable, and worthy of protection when threatened.50 Such debate existed in Finland at the beginning of the twentieth century, so the violations by the Russian  Quoted in Kappeler (2001, 208).  Quoted in Polvinen (1984, 167–168). 49  Kemiläinen (1998). 50  Anttila et al. (2009); Pollari et al. (2008). 47 48

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Government against the granted political freedoms were interpreted as unjust. But ethnic and social inequalities were also emerging inside the Grand Duchy, where the political arena was divided by strife between the “Fennomans” (the supporters of Finnish language and culture) and the “Svecomans” (supporters of Swedish language and culture). In this context, the victories won over the attempted Russification of Finland were met with irony by one commentator: And now we are insisting, that our country’s old Swedish population and the intelligentsia that represents it, gives up, abandons, forgets its mother tongue. All I can see in this is nothing more than a brave demand by the stronger that the weaker must merge with him, give up his right to live. […] We felt bitter over recent attempts for us to be Russianized. But now, in almost the same spirit, we would be prepared to unjustifiably attack our Swedish-speaking brothers.51

The right to cultural self-determination was not considered natural in this political discourse but varied according to the evolving standards of the time. Sometimes Swedish language and culture were being defended as more civilized and developed than its Finnish counterparts,52 while at other times the opposite argument was considered to be true. This debate about cultural self-determination is closely linked to the term “internal colonialism”, which refers to a tendency to transform an ethnically heterogeneous population into a homogeneous nation.53 For many Finnish thinkers, an uneven distribution of wealth between nations was yet another defining feature of the colonial world. For instance, Santeri Alkio, the leading politician and thinker of the Union of the Rural Population, later the Centre Party of Finland, thought that the relationship between capitalist nations and colonies was based on an uneven distribution of wealth: “International business has made some into capitalist nations, while others are poor nations”.54 This discourse on the wealth of nations was also applied to defining the relationship between Finland and Russia, since the accumulation of wealth was believed to interfere with the free and friendly intercourse between different nations. From the Finnish  Sarvi (1906, 34–35).  Sundberg (1985, 38–39). 53  For a classical definition of the concept “internal colonialism”, refer to Hechter (1975). For a recent discussion, refer to Kumar (2020). 54  Alkio (1919, 23–24). 51 52

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point of view, Russian intervention in her economic autonomy was seen as “plundering of the Finnish State treasury”, as an article published in Emilia in 1904 highlights. The Finnish State Treasury was “robbed”, and those resources were then directed toward militaristic purposes for expanding Russian territory. This allocation of public funds from Finland to Russia was interpreted as part of the Russification policy as it was carried out in secret and without the consent of Finnish “citizens”.55 By identifying certain entities as part of their own domain in the sphere of economics or of politics, Finnish critics could turn attention to a critical evaluation of the imperial relationship between the Grand Duchy and the Russian Government. On the other hand, from the Russian point of view, it was argued that Finland as a province of the Empire should also contribute to Russia’s national economy.56 Therefore, the economic autonomy of Finland was also a genuine problem for Russia’s unification policy. Issues of economic autonomy and inequality were topical, especially in terms of capitalism, socialism, and as “the question of the working class”, a term that was used in Finland in such debates at the time. Therefore, both economic autonomy and issues of ownership were entangled together in debates that addressed acute problems of the day such as poverty, unemployment, the condition of the people, and other social problems. As in the Empire at large, social and economic inequality was a growing social problem in Finnish society as well. The landed peasantry formed its own social class and also an Estate in the Diet, but economically the most vulnerable social class in the agrarian society, domestic servants and farm workers, lived without representation and a source of subsistence, the land. Matti Kurikka, a Socialist author and activist, pointed out that the landless class, domestic servants, farm workers, and tenant farmers, the crofters, would hardly consider Finland as their homeland since they did not own a single acre of it. In Kurikka’s socialist rhetoric a sense of national imagining is closely connected to land ownership, which is considered as an important aspect of citizenship and a sense of belonging to a nation. Similarly, socialists argued, the vulnerable social and economic condition of the landless class was a direct result of domestic economic exploitation. Such areas which were largely populated by the landless class were referred to as “African slavelands”,57 bringing colonial tones into their rhetoric.  Plundering af den finska statskassan. Emilia, 19 May 1904, 1–2.  Engman (2009, 142–149); Haapala (1995). 57  Peltonen (1895); Rasila (1961, 177). 55 56

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For instance, a Socialist writer A.  B. Mäkelä demanded that the land controlled by the Swedish-speaking nobility must be returned to its former rightful owners, that is, the Finns.58 In the Russian press, similar arguments could be voiced by claiming that the unification politics of the Russian Empire in reality meant the liberation of “the Finnish race” from the yoke of the Swedish minority.59 As the metaphor of “African slavelands” suggests, for political reasons, some commentators analyzed social problems in a manner which resembled a structural critique of imperialism. For instance, domestic class distinctions could be analyzed by using anti-imperialist vocabulary which stemmed from experiences of oppression. The opposition to the Russification policy constituted the notion of the right to self-­ determination, but the same notion could also justify the cultural strife within the nation between Finnish and Swedish language and culture. As historian and journalist Pekka Isaksson has noted, the Sami too were subjected to Finnish expansionist ambitions that ideologically resembled the policy of Russification in structure if not in content.60

Criticism of Imperialism Attitudes to imperialism that developed in Finland from the mid-­ nineteenth century onward did not praise conquest policy. When, for example, in Britain it was not unusual to treat imperialism synonymous with imperial pride,61 similar notions were unusual in Finnish public discourse, where discussants were more inclined to point out the inconsistency of liberal principles with imperialism. One of the earliest critics of imperialism was Johan Vilhelm Snellman, Finland’s most renowned political philosopher and theorist of the State, whose cultural relativism was based on the ethical idealism of Hegel, classical liberal economics, and European liberal thought in general.62 Although the Swedish constitutional statutes and cultural heritage that the Grand Duchy embraced were generally regarded as beneficial for the development of the country, 58  Rasila (1961, 191); M.A.B., “Tauti on parannettava, ei salattava. Vaaraa katsottava suoraan silmiin I-II,” Työmies, 82, 11 April 1899; 83, 12 April 1899. 59  R. N., “Suometarianismens frukter,” Fria Ord, 26 February 1903, 1. 60  Komitealta Lapinmaan taloudellisten olojen tutkimista varten 1905; Isaksson (2001, 202–203). 61  See, for example, Curzon (1906, 107). 62  Huxley (1990, 24–29).

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Snellman—writing already in the mid-nineteenth-century context—saw that the era of Swedish rule in Finland had been in fact an expression of colonial conquest and oppression.63 In the early twentieth century, politics developed in ways unacceptable to liberal-minded intellectuals. To them, the Russian Government’s repressive measures aimed to bring the Grand Duchy into a closer union with the Empire were yet another illustration of the indifference of colonial empires to their relations with colonized peoples. For instance, Kaarlo Blomstedt, the editor-in-chief of the radical magazine Nuori Suomi (Young Finland), who in 1911 wrote the entry “imperialism” for Tietosanakirja, the major Finnish-language encyclopedia, defined imperialism as a form of conquest policy, which aimed at: “Achieving the widest possible influence in the civilized world [and] that seeks to extend the influence of the empire to foreign countries by acquiring colonies”.64 Blomstedt saw the race for territorial aggrandizement as a driving force behind imperialism instead of Christianity or a philanthropic civilizing mission which were also sometimes cited as legitimizing territorial expansion.65 In Blomstedt’s definition, imperialism denoted the desire to incorporate colonies more closely to empire and “under the rule of the central government”. This latter tendency of imperialism, that sought to bring the Grand Duchy under the direct administration of the central government, was the sore point of Finnish-Russian relations. The experience of repressive measures that aimed to bring the Grand Duchy into a closer union with the Empire influenced Blomstedt’s seemingly neutral definition of imperialism. Owing to preventive censorship, privately circulated criticism provided an easier channel for airing ideas that could not enjoy the freedom of political life in the Grand Duchy—not only in terms of supporting Finnish national interests but also for criticizing despotic forms of government in Russia and the setbacks of Russian imperial endeavors. In the context of the Russo-Japanese War, an author and historian Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä interpreted Russia’s losses in the Battle of Tsushima against the Imperial Japanese Navy in his diary in June 1905 in the following manner:

 Engman (2008, 136–138).  Blomstedt (1911, 927–928). 65  See Ashcroft et al. (1998). 63 64

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According to the latest reports, the Russians have lost 22 ships in a sea battle! […] This shattering defeat has taken away all the hope [for the Russians] of winning the war. There has rarely been a war of a greater importance in history. As far as Russia is concerned, we can already predict that it [the war] will be a failure for the autocratic and bureaucratic form of the government that has held back the development of this country [Russia] for so long, so, perhaps, this is the beginning of freedom for the Slavic world. But the same war has also been a merciless blow to all the great powers of the world and to imperialism that is their guiding principle. From now on, perhaps Germany and England, to say the least, would treat smaller nations and overseas countries more sensitively. Who has given the right for the great European powers to be rulers over overseas territories? Higher culture is said to be a defence of that right, but it has been for long recognised that the penetration of white races into the lands of yellow, red and black races is more destructive than constructive. From a humane point of view the yellow rule of East Asia is quite legitimate, whatever consequences it may cause to European industry, etc.66

Aspelin-Haapkylä’s private reflections in the aftermath of the Battle of Tsushima considered the loss of Russia’s naval might as a culmination point in its imperial endeavors and a lesson for imperialists in general. For the Liberals, the war also offered an opportunity to point out the inconsistency of liberal principles with imperialism. Finland, an English journal devoted to the cause of the Finnish people, saw that Finland was an example of a nation that had cultivated its inner national interests instead of setting out to colonize: “[…] it is the small states alone who, unable to attempt to compete in the race for territorial aggrandizement, are capable of developing their own countries unburdened by the crushing expense of an army out of proportion to their resources”.67 The Tsar’s repressive measures in Finland offered the critics of empire an opportunity not only to express their sympathy for the Finns’ national struggle but also to point out the inconsistency of liberal principles with imperialism. For the Finnish Socialists, Russia’s imperial expansion and the war was nothing more than the latest stage of capitalist competition for markets. Imperialism was understood as an economic project where one country grabbed markets and raw materials from the others. Writing under the acronym “HR” in the Sosialistinen aikakauslehti (Socialist Magazine) in  Saarenheimo (1980, 29).  Finland, 7, January 1900, 5.

66 67

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Fig. 2.2  “Kristitty Europa valistamassa pakanoita”, Ihanne, 3, 1 March 1908, 18–19

1906, one author saw the colonial politics of “superpowers” as the primary cause of wars and also the root cause of the existence of militarism in general. Russia’s imperialism in East Asia was therefore a colonial form of warfare, in which the Finns did not wish to take any part whatsoever.68 Early-twentieth-century Finnish anti-imperialism was refined in the context of a global colonial discourse and imagery, which criticized not only imperial ventures of the Russian Empire but modes of expansion in colonial Africa too. In a Finnish Socialist journal called Ihanne (The Ideal)—a magazine for working-class children—a cartoon captioned “Christian Europe Enlightening the Gentiles” (Fig. 2.2) depicts almost all the main stereotypical tropes of colonial exploitation: forcibly annexing new tropical countries with the help of gunboat diplomacy in order to acquire raw materials and to push cheap spirits on half-naked natives. All

68  H.  R. “Suomen tuleva sotalaitos,” Sosialistinen aikakauslehti, 15–16, 1 September 1906, 365–372.

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this work of mercenary exploitation was done in the name of the Bible and of a philanthropic civilizing mission. An anonymous writer in Nuori Suomi magazine used almost identical figures of speech as the above cartoonist in relation to the subjugation of the revolt of the Herero and the Nama against German imperialism in Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia), implying that Finnish turn-of-­ the-century radicals and progressive thinkers used very similar anti-­ imperialism discourse to other critics of empire, for example, in Britain69 or Germany.70 In recent years, the Germans have been fighting fiercely against the “rebels” in Southwest Africa […] Nowadays, natives already know how to distil intoxicating beverages, which only accelerate the extinction of these former absolutists. Here again, the old formula is repeated: a “civilization” is spread among the “pagans”, the distinctive tools being the Bible, the spirits, and the cannon.71

These examples highlight the above point that Finnish anti-imperialism was refined in the context of a global colonial discourse and imagery. Firstly, they portray the general malady of imperialism and, secondly, defend indigenous inhabitants against aggressive, expansive, and illiberal empires. The first tendency is vividly illustrated in the above cartoon “Christian Europe Enlightening the Gentiles”, which highlights the aggressive and militaristic nature of colonialism. The above-quoted entry from Aspelin-Haapkylä’s diary analyzes the world order through a racialized but not racial-hierarchical world view. In this instance, anti-­imperialism is based on moral and constitutional arguments of the national sovereignty of the people: aggression and militarism by powerful states violated the natural rights of the races of mankind. This latter tendency in Finnish critical attitudes to imperialism was adopted by the Finnish passive resistance movement against Russification, which based its claim to national self-­ determination on the natural rights theory. But self-determination based on natural rights was meaningless if society itself was not capable of self-­ determination, which is why the cultural achievements of the “Finnish nation” were at the heart of the rhetoric of Finnish passive resistance.  See, for example, Porter (2008).  See, for example, Drechsler (1980); Scheulen (1998). 71  Lisänen kristillisen kulttuurityön historiaan. Nuori Suomi, 8, 23 February 1906, 64. 69 70

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Conclusions

This chapter has analyzed the diversity of attitudes toward Russian imperial politics that developed in the Grand Duchy of Finland, particularly in its later years. While the Grand Duchy was an integral part of the Russian Empire, it also enjoyed a remarkable degree of autonomy owing to its self-­ governing status. The political freedoms granted and the form of self-­ government allowed political structures to be built that developed to resemble those of a fully sovereign nation-state. When toward the end of nineteenth century the Russian empire-building process intensified, the Finns found themselves in a position familiar to many other colonized minorities within the Empire. While the majority of the Finns resisted the empire-led homogenization policy, it is also true that Finland’s own nation-making process was to some Finns as disturbing as Russian empire-­ building. As the demands for the unification of the Empire grew in Russia, so did the expressions that either demanded or resisted the homogenization of society in Finland. The experience of the attempted Russification of Finland offered a real possibility to develop the equality-driven political insight and understanding which emerged from the experiences of political oppression. The wisdom of the oppressed also created or reinforced practices which were the building blocks for the idea of a fully sovereign Finnish nation, which was regarded by the Finns as their own birthright. At first, this notion was liberating and empowering. But when Finland’s own nation-building project got fully underway, another vision of this exceptionalism emerged. A nation was considered as a homogenous entity, in which internal differences in terms of race, class, gender, religion, and language became a problem for some, and therefore called for action. The wisdom of the oppressed was largely ignored when Finland’s own nation-­ building process intensified. While the experience of oppression produced radical suffrage reform, for example, it did not manage to overcome the mounting social problems which culminated in Finland’s Civil War of 1918. The nature of the Russian rule in Finland brings us back to the question of imperialism as the politico-theoretical dimension of the idea of colonial empire-building. The Sociologist Risto Alapuro has pointed out that political and social upheavals in early-twentieth-century Finland,72 and, more generally, in the empire-dominated territories of Europe, cannot be  Alapuro (1988, 2).

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directly compared with colonialism in overseas territories, since in many respects the Grand Duchy was more developed than the Empire proper, was located in relatively close proximity to the center of power, and was immediately affected by the collapse of the heart of the Empire.73 So was the Russian Empire’s expansion in the West “colonialism”? Finland was not colonized in the way meant by colonial rule in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. Some of the political, economic, and cultural exploitative mechanisms normally associated with colonialism did apply to Finland, but not all of them. As the diversity of Finnish attitudes toward Russian imperial politics has clearly demonstrated, Finns widely regarded themselves oppressed and subjugated under a foreign imperial rule. It is also worth remarking that Finnish anti-imperialism was refined in the context of a global colonial discourse and imagery, which criticized not only imperial ventures of the Russian Empire but modes of expansion in East Asia and colonial Africa too. Therefore, the application of the standard definitions of colonialism to political, economic, and cultural relationships between Russian “colonizers” and “colonized” Finns should be analyzed in the context of these early discourses of colonial “othering”.74 While direct comparisons of colonial power structures between the Grand Duchy and overseas territories under colonial rule reveal clear differences and a desire to distinguish “genuine” colonialism from the policy of Russification, it is also true that the Finnish critique of imperial rule resembled the method of understanding and analyzing political, economic, and cultural power relationships that later emerged within postcolonial theory.75 But it seems that research of colonialism—which in today’s political parlance is almost synonymous with racism, exploitation, and oppression—is necessarily fraught with ethical and political concerns. So, in analyzing comparisons and parallels between various colonial situations, one should note that Finns were not just passive victims of imperial rule but, in various other colonial contexts, also active participants in the creation of colonial vocabulary, as discussed in the subsequent chapters of this volume.

 Wesselink (1991, 71–96).   Young (2001, 27, 57–58, 73–84, 98–99, 383–389). See also Khodarkovsky (2020, 287). 75  For further information, refer to Said (1995). 73 74

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Haapala, Pertti. 1995. Kun yhteiskunta hajosi. Suomi 1914–1920. Helsinki: Valtion painatuskeskus. Haapala, Pertti, Olli Löytty, Kukku Melkas, and Marko Tikka, eds. 2008. Kansa kaikkivaltias. Suurlakko Suomessa 1905. Helsinki: Teos. Harrison, Dick. 2005. Gud vill det. Nordiska korsfarare under medeltiden. Stockholm: Ordfront. Hechter, Michael. 1975. Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1994. The Age of Empire. London: Abacus. Huxley, Steven Duncan. 1990. Constitutionalist Insurgency in Finland. Finnish “Passive Resistance” against Russification as a Case of Nonmilitary Struggle in the European Resistance Tradition, Studia Historica 38. Helsinki: SHS. Isaksson, Pekka. 2001. Kumma kuvajainen. Rasismi rotututkimuksessa, rotuteorioiden saamelaiset ja suomalainen fyysinen antropologia, Pohjoiset historiat 1. Inari: Kustannus Puntsi. Jussila, Osmo. 1979. Nationalismi ja vallankumous venäläis-suomalaisissa suhteissa 1899–1914. Helsinki: SHS. ———. 2004. Suomen Suuriruhtinaskunta 1809–1917. Helsinki: WSOY. Kappeler, Andreas. 2001. The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History. Harlow: Longman. Kemiläinen, Aira. 1998. Finns in the Shadow of the “Aryans”. Race Theories and Racism. Helsinki: SHS. Khodarkovsky, Michael. 2020. A Colonial Empire Without Colonies: Russia’s State Colonialism in Comparative Perspective. Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 30 (3): 285–299. Klinge, Matti. 1997. Keisarin Suomi. Helsinki: Schildts. Koebner, Richard, and Helmut Dan Schmidt. 1964. Imperialism. The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 1840–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Komitealta Lapinmaan taloudellisten olojen tutkimista varten. 1905. Komiteamietintö 3. Helsinki: Edlundin kirjakauppa. Kotenko, Anton. 2021. An Inconsistently Nationalizing State: the Romanov Empire and the Ukrainian National Movement. In The Tsar, the Empire, and the Nation. Dilemmas of Nationalization in Russia’s Western Borderlands, 1905–1915, ed. Darius Staliūnas and Yoko Aoshima, 17–31. Budabest: Central European University Press. Kristitty Europa valistamassa pakanoita. 1908. Ihanne, 3, 1 March, 18–19. Kumar, Krishan. 2020. What’s in a Name? Should We Distinguish Colonialism and Imperialism? Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 30 (3): 236–247. Leino-Kaukiainen, Pirkko. 1988. Kasvava sanomalehdistö sensuurin kahleissa 1890–1905. In Sanomalehdistön vaiheet vuoteen 1905. Suomen sanomalehdistön

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historia, 1, ed. Päiviö Tommila, Lars Landgren, and Pirkko Leino-Kaukiainen, 421–629. Kuopio: Kustannuskiila Oy. Lenin, V.I. 1929. The Protest of the Finnish People. In Collected Works of V. I. Lenin, Vol. IV, The Iskra Period 1900–1902, vol. II, 61–64. London: Martin Lawrence. Lisänen kristillisen kulttuurityön historiaan. 1906. Nuori Suomi, 8, 23 February, 64. Luntinen, Pertti. 1985. F.A. Seyn. A Political Biography of a Tsarist Imperialist as Administrator of Finland. Helsinki: SHS. M.A.B. 1899. Tauti on parannettava, ei salattava. Vaaraa katsottava suoraan silmiin I-II. Työmies, 11 April, 82; 12 April, 83. Moab i sin örtagård!. 1901. Ekenäs: Ekenäs Tryckeri Aktiebolag. Munck, L. 1905. M.  Borodkins minnesruna öfver general Bobrikoff. Finsk Tidskrift 4: 326–338. Peltonen, Vihtori. 1895. Orjia I-IV. Uusimaa, 3 December, 94; 10 December, 96; 13 December, 97; 20 December, 99. Plundering af den finska statskassan. 1904. Emilia, 19 May, 1–2. Pollari, Mikko, Petri Ruuska, Anu-Hanna Anttila, Ralf Kauranen, Olli Löytty, and Pekka Rantanen. 2008. Alamaisjärjestyksen konkurssi ja avoin tulevaisuus. In Kansa kaikkivaltias. Suurlakko Suomessa 1905, ed. Pertti Haapala, Olli Löytty, Kukku Melkas, and Marko Tikka, 43–73. Helsinki: Teos. Polvinen, Tuomo. 1984. Valtakunta ja rajamaa. N.  Bobrikov Suomen kenraalikuvernöörinä 1898–1904. Helsinki: WSOY. ———. 1995. Imperial Borderland. Bobrikov and the Attempted Russification of Finland, 1898–1904. London: Hurst. Porter, Bernard. 2008. Critics of Empire. British Radical Attitudes to Colonialism in Africa 1895–1914. 2nd ed. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Protokoll fördt at Finska Aktiva Motståndspartiets ordinarie årsmöte av 18 nov. 1906. Helsinki, Archives of the Active Opposition Party (Suomen Aktiivisen vastustuspuoleen arkisto, VP). The National Archives of Finland (Kansallisarkisto, KA). Rantanen, Pekka. 2014. Edward Westermarck as a Finnish patriot abroad. In ed. Westermarck and David Shankland, 67–79. Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing. Rantanen, Pekka, and Petri Ruuska. 2009. Alistetun viisaus. In Kuriton kansa. Poliittinen mielikuvitus vuoden 1995 suurlakon ajan Suomessa, ed. Anu-Hanna Anttila, Ralf Kauranen, Olli Löytty, Mikko Pollari, Pekka Rantanen, and Petri Ruuska, 33–56. Tampere: Vastapaino. Rasila, Viljo. 1961. Suomen torpparikysymys vuoteen 1909. Helsinki: SHS. Reuter, J.N. 1899. Russia in Finland. Nineteenth Century 45: 267; May 1899, 699–715. ———. 1928. Kagalen. Ett bidrag till Finlands historia 1899–1905. Helsingfors: Mercator.

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Robertson, Roland. 1992. Globalization. Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage. Ryssän tanssi. 1907. Helsingin Sanomat, 14 March, 62. Saarenheimo, Eero, ed. 1980. Kirovuosien kronikka. Otteita Eliel Aspelin-­ Haapkylän päiväkirjasta vuosilta 1905–1917. Helsinki: SKS. Said, Edward W. 1995. Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin Books. Särkkä, Timo. 2022. Pienet kansat suurten imperiumien rajaseuduilla. Suomen autonomia ja Venäjän imperialismi viktoriaanisessa aikakauslehdistössä. In Kolonialismi Suomen rajaseuduilla, ed. Rinna Kullaa, Janne Lahti, and Sami Lakomäki. Helsinki: Gaudeamus. Sarvi, Antti. 1906. Pois kieliriita, kilpailu sijaan! Nuori Suomi 5 (2): 34–35. Scheulen, Peter. 1998. Die “Eingeborenen” Deutsch-Südwestafrikas. Ihr Bild in deutschen Kolonialzeitschriften von 1884–1918. Köln: Rudiger Köppe Verlag. Sundberg. 1985. Svenshetens dilemma i Finland. Finlandssvenskarnas samling och splittring under 1900-talet. Helsingfors: Societas Scientiarum Fennica. Toivo. 1903. Några tankar om det närvarande sakläget, Fosterländsk läsning No: 2. Berlin: G. Th. Jacob. Walther, Rudolf. 1982. Imperialismus. In Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-socialen Sprache in Deutschland, vol. 3, 175–181. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Wesselink, Henk. 1991. Overseas History. In New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke, 2nd ed., 71–96. Cambridge: Polity Press. Westermarck, Edward. 1899. Finland and the Czar. Contemporary Review 75: 652–659. Wimmer, Andreas, and Brian Min. 2006. From Empire to Nation-State: Explaining Wars in the Modern World 1816–2001. American Sociological Review 71 (6): 867–897. Young, Robert J.C. 2001. Postcolonialism. An Historical Introduction. Malden, Oxford, and Carlton: Blackwell. Zilliacus, Konni. 1920. Sortovuosilta. Poliittisia muistelmia. Porvoo: WSOY.

CHAPTER 3

Finnish Parliamentarians’ Conceptions of Imperialism and Colonialism, 1917–1995 Mika Suonpää and Matti Välimäki

In this chapter, we examine uses of the concepts of imperialism and colonialism in Finnish parliamentary debates in the period extending from the country’s independence in 1917 to accession to the EU in 1995. The conceptions held by Members of Parliament (MP) concerning imperialism and colonialism were strongly linked to international developments and events as well as transnational intellectual and ideological traditions. In addition to commenting on political conditions in the present, these conceptions at times revealed the ways in which Finnish politicians understood Finland’s national past. Our primary sources consist of the plenary session minutes of the Finnish Parliament (Eduskunta/Riksdagen). We utilize the parliament’s open-access online archive, which enables searches down to the year 2000.1 We use  stem forms of the Finnish words for “imperialism”,  Finnish Parliament, Plenary session minutes, 1907–2000. Finnish Parliament’s online archive. Available at: https://avoindata.eduskunta.fi/#/fi/digitoidut/search (accessed 9 1

M. Suonpää (*) • M. Välimäki Contemporary History, University of Turku, Turku, Finland e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_3

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“empire”, “colonialism”, and “colony” (imperi*, kolonial*, and siirtoma*) as search terms.2 References to both imperialism and colonialism surfaced especially in parliamentary discussions over revenue and expenditure estimates, annual government reports, development aid policy, foreign policy, and trade policy. We explore the use of the above-mentioned concepts by focusing on discourses, in other words, on recurrent representations of these terms rather than on individual and separate mentions.3 Using the search terms listed above, we located the most significant periods of discussion between 1917 and 1995 (see Fig.  3.1). In total, the words “imperialism” and “empire” were more common (n = 734) than “colonialism” and “colony” (n = 448). In the early decades of independence, and again from the 1970s onward, a political vocabulary utilizing the words “imperialism” and “empire” was more prominent. The words “colonialism” and “colony”, on the other hand, were used rather rarely in parliament before the 1970s. The Finnish party system as a whole has been relatively stable during the period under review, especially after the Second World War. Rauli Mickelsson identifies several ideological groupings within the Finnish party system,4 but in our case, the most significant dividing line was seemingly between the so-called bourgeois parties and leftwing parties. During the 1920s, MPs from the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Socialist Workers and Small Croppers Electoral Organisation (STPV) most vocally used the concepts of imperialism and colonialism in their political rhetoric. Although both of them operated in the left of the political spectrum, they November 2020). Finnish Parliament also has a separate online search service for twentyfirst-century documents, but we do not consider the word search results it provides reliable. For this reason, we have not included those search results in our analysis. See Finnish Parliament, Plenary sessions and minutes. Available at: https://www.eduskunta.fi/FI/ search/Sivut/Vaskiresults.aspx (accessed 9 November 2020). 2  The Finnish search term imperi* covers English equivalents for both “empire” and “imperialism”. The search terms kolonial* and imperi* cover not only Finnish word but also Swedish words for colonialism (kolonialism) and imperialism/empire (imperium/imperialism) which is relevant since large part of the parliamentary debate is in Swedish. 3  According to Norman Fairclough, discourses are “ways of representing aspects of the world”, including social, material, and mental “processes, relations and structures”. Fairclough (2003), 124. 4  These groupings are communists, left-socialists, post-communist, and the new left parties; social democratic parties; center, agrarian, and agrarian populist parties; populist parties; anti-EU parties; liberal and Swedish-speaking parties; conservative and Finnish-language parties; nationalist-radical and far-right parties; and ecological parties. Mickelsson (2015).

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200 180

Number of Mentions

160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

imperialism/empire

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

colonialism/colony

Fig. 3.1  Number of mentions of imperialism/empire and colonialism/colony in the Finnish Parliament, 1910–1999. (Source: Finnish Parliament, Plenary session minutes, 1907–2000. Finnish search terms were imperi* and kolonial*/siirtoma*)

were intensely divided on numerous issues. SDP’s ideology was composed of socialism, and later, reformist socialism; the STPV’s ideology fused socialism, bolshevism, and communism. During the Cold War, politicians representing the Finnish People’s Democratic League (SKDL) were the most outspoken ones with regard to using colonialism and imperialism as part of their political vocabulary in parliament. Ideologically, the SKDL rested on the Popular Front and left-socialism.5 On the bourgeois side, MPs from the Conservatives (Kokoomus), the Agrarian League/Centre Party (Maalaisliitto/Keskustapuolue), and the Progressive Party (Edistyspuolue) at times (but not nearly as often as those on the left) expressed views on imperialism and colonialism. Although we describe these parties as “bourgeois”, their views and ideologies differed from each other. The Conservatives was traditionalist, nationalist, and emphasized individualism; the Agrarian League/Centre Party was rooted in agrarianism and it stressed regional equality; the Progressive Party was liberal.6 It  Mickelsson (2015), 395–396. See also, Saarela (2008).  Mickelsson 2015, 397, 400–401. In 1965, the Agrarian League (Maalaisliitto) changed its name to Centre Party (Keskustapuolue), which at the same time reflected the party’s transformation from a voice of agrarian policy to a general and national party. 5 6

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should be noted, however, that in the diverse Finnish multiparty system, numerous other parties have also been represented in parliament. Traditional political disputes in Finnish party politics have focused among other things on rural-urban disparities, on language issues and on class division. Since the 1960s, issues such as peace, human rights, the environment, and climate have become more prominent.7 Both imperialism and colonialism are difficult to define and are controversial in both academic and non-academic settings. The term “empire” usually refers to an entity with a status of political, cultural, and/or economic hegemony. Alan Knight defines imperialism as “the practice (or ideology) associated with building and maintaining an empire”.8 However, as Dominic Lieven points out, over the last 2000 years the word “empire” has meant “many different things to different people from different countries at different times”. Both, politicians and political thinkers have noted the word’s ambiguity, while “themselves deliberately using it in different contexts to convey a variety of meanings”.9 There is no consensus on the definition of colonialism either. It has been characterized by academics, for example, as “the implanting of settlements on distant territory”10 and as “the permanent occupation of a patch of someone else’s land while retaining a continuous connection with the mother country”.11 In 1923, a former Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Rudolf Holsti, defined colonies as “less developed transmarine territories under the sovereignty or protection of a highly developed mainland”.12 This characterization, however, excludes empires that are predominantly land empires, such as the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Romanov dynasties. Nor would subsequent definitions of colonialism, based, for example, on postcolonial research, uncritically accept the patronizing aspect of “protection” or the hierarchy of levels of development implied in Holsti’s definition. Definitions are to the utmost extent time- and context-specific. The chapter is divided into five thematic sections. The first two sections consider uses of the term “imperialism” during the interwar period, in the  Nousiainen (1997), 19–48; Karvonen (2014), 10–41.  Knight (2008), 24. 9  Lieven (2003), 3. For a review of discussions on the meaning of “empire” since the seventeenth century, see, for example, Lieven (2003), 17–26. 10  Said (1993), 8. 11  Darwin (2013), 33. 12  Holsti (1923). 7 8

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contexts of the regime change in Russia, the increasing dissemination of anti-imperialist ideas, and the establishment of the League of Nations. The third section deals with transtemporal uses of “colonialism” in the 1920s and during the Cold War, as a metaphor representing regional inequality. The fourth section examines New Left anti-imperial and anticolonial narratives which originated in the 1970s and endured to the subsequent decades. Finally, the fifth section considers how Finnish parliamentarians sought to portray Finland’s position within the framework of European integration and the fall of the Soviet Union using the imagery of empire.

Imperial Amalgamation and the Capitalism-Imperialism Nexus During the interwar period, references to the concept of imperialism emerged in discussions relating to the future of Russia and the international system, Finland’s membership of and participation to the activities of the League of Nations, and the development of the Finnish armed forces. These larger themes contained ideas of lingering European imperialism, the capitalist foundation of imperialism, an imperial synthesis of Romanov and Bolshevik Russia as well as reflected domestic political disputes within the workers’ movement, and class divisions. From 1917 to the mid-1920s, Finnish politicians depicted Tsarist Russia as a declining empire and Bolshevik Russia as an emerging one. At the beginning of this period, MPs across the political spectrum agreed that although Tsar Nicholas II had been overthrown and executed (July 1918), Russian imperialism had not fallen and could return, in some form, at any moment.13 Throughout this period, Social Democratic MPs articulated fears of a lingering European (not just Russian) great-power imperialism that threatened the newly acquired independence of small states.14 Some of these MPs, including the future leader of the Terijoki government,15 13  Kuusinen (SDP) 16 May 1917; Wiik (SDP) 29 June 1917; Mäkelin (SDP) 2 July and 10 July 1917; Wuolijoki (SDP) 11 April 1919; Keto (SDP) 11 April 1919; Vennola (Progressives) 14 June 1919; Hultin (Cons.) 20 June 1919. 14  See, for example, Keto (SDP) 28 May 1920; Reinikainen (SDP) 12 October 1922; Aalto (SDP) 4 October 1924; Voionmaa (SDP) 24 October 1924. 15  The Terijoki government was a Soviet-backed government-in-exile during the Winter War (1939–1940), which the Soviet Union intended to treat as the new government of the prospective Soviet-occupied Finland. At the beginning of the Winter War, the Terijoki government asked for the support of the Soviet Union to establish the People’s Republic of Finland.

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Otto Wille Kuusinen, regarded “Russian imperialism” as the root cause of “long-term oppression in Finland”; he also maintained that the periods of Russification (1899–1905 and 1908–1917)16 had been instigated by the rise of a monetary economy in the Russian Empire in the 1880s and the 1890s, resulting in the intensification of Russian finance capitalism and concluding with oppressive and imperial policies toward Finland.17 These Social Democrats shared V.  I. Lenin’s idea of capitalism as the primary social formation of the Romanov Empire, which he had communicated in Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899).18 These views also coincided with ideas expressed elsewhere during the first two decades of the twentieth century, when European imperialism came under increasing criticism.19 Written during the South African War (1899–1902), a work by the British bourgeois liberal economist, J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (1902) first described the link between capitalism, imperialism, and militarism.20 The impact of Hobson’s work on the thinking of the Finnish left remains to be studied.21 At the time of the book’s publication, Hobson and his ideas were mentioned only in two Finnish newspaper articles concerning the future of free trade.22 Viewed against this background, it is likely that his impact on the ideology of the Finnish left may not have been very significant either. This would not have been surprising given that Hobson’s book became influential only during the Great War and its aftermath.23  For the periods of Russification, see Jussila et al. (2004), 68–96.  Kuusinen (SDP) and Rantanen (SDP) 16 May 1917; Mäkelin (SDP) 2 July 1917. 18  Howard and King (1988), 498. Lenin did not initially make the connection between capitalism and imperialism. It was only after reading the works of J. A. Hobson and visiting London in the early part of the twentieth century that Lenin’s analysis took an anti-imperialist turn. 19  Early-nineteenth-century English radicals were the first critics of imperialism, followed by Karl Marx in the 1850s. See, for example, Steadman Jones (2016), 356. 20  See Cain (2002). Hobson contended that the capitalists’ political power had grown so strong that they had acquired the means to influence the colonial and imperial polices of the great powers. In Hobson’s understanding, the South African War was a capitalist-imperialist war, aimed at safeguarding the flow of global investments and the gold mines in southern Africa. 21  For a brief discussion of the comparison between the Grand Duchy of Finland and the Boer States in the British liberal press, see Särkkä (2009), 125–126. 22  See Suomen Kansa and Åbo Underrättelser on 24 March 1902. 23  See Cain (2002). Hobson’s views on the South African War, global trade relations, and the Great War did receive some publicity in the Finnish- and Swedish-language press in Finland. Hobson was often portrayed as “the famous English economist”, and his ideas 16 17

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Felix Schnell has suggested that over the course of its existence, the Soviet Union developed into “a body politic that differed from its predecessor in many ways, yet sharing an imperial structure” in terms of geographical reach, multiethnic diversity, expansionist aspirations, and center-periphery relations built on “inequality, subordination and exploitation”.24 To an extent, these characteristics were present in Finnish politicians’ analyses of the Soviet Union during the 1920s. In addition to the “old” Russian imperialism of the Romanovs, some of them portrayed bolshevism as equally imperialist. Bourgeois politicians argued that “the current Russian Bolshevism has formed into the world’s most notable imperialism”, and that it had emerged in response to “European great-­ power imperialism and militarism”. They depicted Leon Trotsky as “the creator of the current Russian imperialism” and maintained that Bolshevik Russia’s “imperial aims” were exposed, for example, in their desire to strengthen the presence of the Red Navy in the Baltic Sea.25 Trotsky had been one of the leading Bolsheviks throughout the October Revolution and the ensuing civil war; in a work entitled Terrorism and Communism (1920), he advocated violence and terrorism as important means of revolutionary change. Trotsky had written the book in response to a work by the Social Democrat Karl Kautsky by the same title, in which Kautsky had denounced the violent methods used by the Bolsheviks during the revolution. Kautsky also clashed with Lenin, after criticizing the latter’s interpretation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the aftermath of the revolution.26 The Red Army’s conquest and annexation of Georgia (1921)27 and the Soviet-sponsored communist revolt in Estonia (1924) transformed the Finnish Social Democrats’ conceptions of the Soviet Union.28 Such tactics entered the Finnish public sphere through references to his articles in British journals, including the Fortnightly Review. See, for example, Hufvudstadsbladet 27 December 1899, 22 April 1900, 31 July 1909, 6 August 1911; Wasa Nyheter 19 January 1900; Wiborgs Nyheter 6 July 1910; Uusi Suometar 5 August 1911; Tammerfors Nyheter 18 March 1912; Åbo Underrättelser 27 July 1915; Björneborgs Tidning 30 July 1915; Aamulehti 18 February 1916; Maaseudun Sanomat 7 May 1921; Hangö 6 May 1922. 24  Schnell (2015), 203. 25  Alkio (Agrarian League) 16 December 1919; Vennola (Progressives) 17 October 1922; Paavolainen (Cons.) 13 November 1925. 26  Primoratz (2004), xiv; Gronow (2016), 192. 27  Jonkari (2008), 143–144; Lieven (2003), 289. 28  Saarela (2008), 167.

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had been the Comintern’s key method ever since its creation in March 1919. The idea was to engage local communists in different countries for political subversion and to organize a coup d’état or civil war to solidify the communist seizure of power.29 The Social Democratic politician Jaakko Keto argued that the “Bolsheviks’ subjugation of the Georgians to Russian rule after long and bloody fighting” had nothing to do with “social revolution” and that the “action was purely imperialistic”; its sole purpose had been to realize “Russian imperial aims” at the expense of “Georgia’s nationhood”. Another Social Democrat contended similarly that the current Russian state was “an imperialist empire”, as evidenced by “the sad fate of Georgia … and recent events in Estonia”. Finnish politicians did not usually explain what they meant by “imperialism” in using the concept in political debate, but on this occasion, Keto defined it: “imperialism signifies specifically the great powers’ aspirations for world domination”.30 According to Dominic Lieven, empires are great powers that leave “a mark on the international relations of an era”, rule “over wide territories and many peoples”, and without “the explicit consent” of the people in question. Moreover, empires are polities that have “a major impact on the history of world civilisation”.31 Finnish politicians’ perceptions of the declining Romanov empire, and of the emerging Bolshevik one, identified many characteristics that appear in modern scholarly definitions of empire: their oppressive and exploitative nature, expansionist drive, and aspiration toward global dominance. In the case of 1920s Finland, these perceptions emerged at the intersection of several areas: domestic party politics, a growing transnational anti-imperial intellectual tradition, the rift within the workers’ movement between the Social Democrats and the communists (both Finnish and international), the continuing uncertainties over Russia’s future form of government, and the heightening geopolitical tensions in the Baltic Sea. Finnish politicians were not concerned with the multiethnic features of empires; instead, they chiefly perceived empires as expansionist oppressors. The writings of Karl Kautsky influenced the Social Democrats’ views in general32 as well as their attitudes to the imperialism-capitalism-militarism 29  Hiio (2018), 129. In 1928, the Comintern adopted the class-against-class policy “that no longer sanctioned political collaboration with parties, organisations or associations outside the Communist movement”. See Petersson (2016), 238. 30  Keto (SDP) 20 October 1922; Leino (SDP) 9 December 1924. 31  Lieven (2003), xiv. 32  Saarela (2008), 13–14; Ihalainen (2019), 28

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nexus.33 In parliamentary debates, they began to emphasize this linkage increasingly from about 1920 onward. Referring to Kautsky as “a famous socialist theoretician”, Keto argued that “financial capitalism and imperialism” had been the most serious threats to world peace, and that capitalism had created the conditions for imperialism.34 It was, however, the MPs who operated within the sphere of Finnish communism—that is, everyone to the left of the Social Democrats35—who most vociferously advanced this idea in Parliament. Although Finnish communist circles and Social Democrats were bitterly divided in their views with regard to the means of achieving the transformation from a capitalist to a socialist society—along the lines of the Trotsky/Lenin versus Kautsky dispute—both recognized the capitalist foundations of imperialism and used the idea as part of their political rhetoric. At the center of the communist camp’s argument was the Hobsonian-Leninist interpretation of the Great War as an “imperial war”, caused by the “imperial rivalry” of the great powers for global economic resources and financial markets. Later in the 1920s, MPs within the Finnish communist circle connected these ideas to domestic policy issues, including defense spending and the development of the Finnish armed forces. They argued that the Finnish army was modeled on the “imperial armies”, and thus served the class interests of capitalist oppressors; like all bourgeois armies, the Finnish army was “tangled up with the aspirations of the imperial powers”.36 During the 1920s, competing assessments of imperialism, expressed in relation to perceptions of social class, emerged as an important discursive setting in debates on defense spending, the armed forces, border policy, and strategic developments in the Baltic Sea region. A Social Democrat, J. F. Aalto, captured the essence of the Left’s view in 1920, arguing that “domestic imperialists aspire to form a Greater Finland” and to build an alliance with “one of the imperial bourgeois powers”.37 During the course 33   For Kautsky’s view on capitalism-imperialism connections, see Gronow (2016), 151–156. 34  Keto (SDP) 28 May 1920. 35  Saarela (2008), 22; Siltala (1985), 41. 36  Vainio (Finnish Socialist Workers’ Party, SSTP) 1 June 1920; Kulmala (Socialist Workers and Small Croppers Electoral Organisation, STPV) 7 December 1927, 26 November 1928, 14 December 1928, 4 December 1929; Rosenberg (STPV) 7 September 1928, 21 November 1928, 22 March 1929. 37  Aalto (SDP) 7 May 1920. According to the Greater Finland ideology, “the Finnish nation had a natural geopolitical right based on linguistic and cultural kinship to aspire terri-

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of the 1920s, however, it was again the politicians representing Finnish communism who accused the Finnish bourgeoisie of nursing “imperial dreams” of territorial conquest, flirting with “English imperialism”, cooperating with fascists, driving Finland toward an “imperial war” against the Soviet Union, and jeopardizing Finland’s independence, “self-­ determination”, and “freedom”. From the mid-1920s onward, communist politicians positioned Finnish social democracy within the bourgeois ideological and political camp, which in their view consisted of the acceptance of imperialism, militarism, capitalism, fascism, and activism (expansionist rightwing extremism).38 This shift in Finnish communism’s attitudes toward social democracy was connected to the Comintern’s decision—taken in the autumn of 1923—to label international social democracy as a “wing of fascism”.39 During the same period, Conservative, Agrarian League, and Progressive MPs at times defended themselves against accusations of imperialism, contending that the Finnish army was not imperialist because it was designed for defensive operations only. They also argued that the purpose of Finnish border policy was not to “oppress” or “amalgamate” foreign nationalities.40 Social Democrats tended to maintain that their party had “throughout the ages” advocated defensive warfare alone, and condemned the great powers’ “imperial policies of oppression”.41

tory far outside the country’s actual borders”. These ideas were particularly powerful during 1918–1922. See Stadius (2016), 142–144. 38  Rosenberg (STPV) 28 November 1924, 9 December 1924, 3 September 1925, 30 September 1927, 9 December 1927, 5 February 1929, 1 March 1929; Kulmala (STPV) 9 December 1924, 10 November 1925, 30 November 1925, 26 November 1928, 14 December 1928, 18 October 1929, 12 November 1929, 19 November 1929; Latva (STPV) 30 September 1927, 8 November 1927, 7 December 1927, 28 February 1928, 29 March 1928, Nurminen (STPV) 3 September 1925; Jokela (STPV) 4 September 1925; Tabell (STPV) 23 September 1927; Virta (STPV) 25 November 1927; Kallio (STPV) 25 October 1929; Meriläinen (STPV) 26 November 1929. 39  Saarela (2008), 165. 40  Ingman (Cons.) 4 October 1924 and 9 December 1924; Junes (Agrarian League, ML) 12 February 1925; Vennola (Progressives, EP) 30 September 1927. 41  Ryömä (SDP) 16 December 1924; Tolonen (SDP) 14 December 1928.

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The League of Nations, the Åland Question, and Imperial Continuities The formation of the League of Nations in 1919 marked the beginning of the institutionalization of Wilsonian liberal internationalism. The purpose of the League was to create a diplomatic framework based on a multilateral treaty system, whereby all signatories promised to seek a peaceful resolution to conflicts and to abstain from aggression. This idea was weakened considerably when the United States failed to ratify the treaty or join the League.42 Finland became a member of the League in 1920. After the conflict between Sweden and Finland over the Åland Islands was resolved, this membership became an important component of Finland’s new international position.43 The Åland Islands had been incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1809 along with the rest of “Finland” in the aftermath of the Russian-Swedish War (1808–1809); from 1918 onward, however, the islands’ population had entertained ideas of amalgamation as part of Sweden, on grounds of geographical proximity and language kinship. This idea received backing from Sweden.44 The Åland question immediately drew Finland into the realm of the “new diplomacy”, which nevertheless retained many features of the “old” one: while small nations and former colonies (categorized as “mandated territories”) now had a voice in the international arena, the great powers continued to wield significant influence over the practical conduct of international relations.45 The British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, submitted the Finnish-Swedish territorial dispute to be settled by the League, partly as a result of criticism leveled at him over the crisis in Persia.46 This was the only time in the history of the League when a dispute was submitted by a party that was not directly involved in the matter.47 In 1920, when the islands’ constitutional position was debated in the Finnish parliament, some bourgeois politicians argued that Swedish diplomacy on this question was driven by “imperialist principles” because Sweden was seeking to acquire Finland’s “historic lands”. Others maintained that Åland’s pursuit of wider self-governance was the work of  Pedersen (2015), 34–35.  Jonkari (2008), 82–83. 44  Jonkari (2008), 71–82; Vares & Vares (2019), 179–182. 45  Pedersen (2015). 46  For the “Persia question”, see Ross (2009), 385–411. 47  Yearwood (2010), 163. 42 43

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“Swedish imperialist diplomats” and their “Swedish-speaking cronies” in Finland. The rhetoric on the issue of self-governance used by one prominent Agrarian League MP, Santeri Alkio, echoed an imperial-type mindset: “I’m certain that if we let the people of Åland toy with the idea of [self-­ governance], they will soon enough quietly succumb to the vassalage of the Finnish Republic”. Despite this, he advocated broader self-governing powers to prevent more bad blood developing between Finland and Sweden.48 Throughout the dispute, the Agrarian League, and especially Alkio, displayed rather uncompromising attitudes toward making concessions to the Ålanders or the Swedes, as well as toward settling the conflict via international mediation. The League’s Commission completed the final report on the question in the winter of 1921. The report concluded that the Åland Islands were a natural geographical extension of continental Finland, that they had belonged to Finland since 1809, and that the de jure recognition of Finland’s independence had been completed in accordance with the borders of the Grand Duchy of Finland. Moreover, although the islands’ population aspired to be incorporated into Sweden, Finland had never oppressed the population; thus, the islands could not be attached to Sweden. On 1 January 1922, the League’s Council accepted the settlement of the Åland question.49 In addition to the specific Åland question, the establishment and the activities of the League gave rise to more general views of imperialism and the enduring presence of imperial practices in the conduct of international affairs. Social Democrats and some Progressive Party politicians largely agreed that although the League was built on imperial foundations, the organization nevertheless represented the best security for small nations against oppression and chauvinism on the part of the great powers.50 MPs representing Finnish communism approached the issue from a completely different angle, perceiving the League and the International Tribunal at the Hague as part of the “imperialist fabric” and as organs of the “imperial powers”. They regarded Finland’s election to the League’s Council in 1927 as particularly dangerous because it tied the country directly to “English 48  Erich (Cons.) 15 April 1920; Alkio (Agrarian League) 15 April 1920; Piitulainen (Agrarian League) 21 April 1920. 49  Jonkari (2008), 71–72, 78–79, 82. 50  Keto (SDP) 23 May 1920, 28 May 1920, 24 October 1922; Vennola (EP) 28 May 1920; Reinikainen (SDP) 17 October 1922; Voionmaa (SDP) 24 October 1922; Sventorzetski (SDP) 29 November 1927.

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imperialism”. They also argued that when Finland became a member of the League, it also became part of the hostile and militaristic “imperialist chain” that was forming around the Soviet Union. In March 1929, one of them, Mauritz Rosenberg, described the League as “an alliance of European imperialism led by England”.51 Far-left politicians had expressed such views in Parliament ever since Finland’s accession to the League in 1920.52 These negative views of the League carried on into the new decade. In March 1939, a Social Democratic MP criticized the League for failing to achieve its key objectives—peace building, disarmament, and equal distribution of natural resources. Instead, the League’s activities had focused on “exploitation of the former colonies” by means of the “mandate system”, which meant that the “colonial question” now presented itself in a “frightening fashion”. In the same debate, a far-right MP also condemned the mandate system, arguing that the League had served the interests of the “victorious powers”: “in the guise of the mandates” they transformed the former German colonies into colonies of their own, thereby transgressing against “Woodrow Wilson’s idea”.53 These criticisms were heard at the time in different parts of the world, and were later repeated by historians. Although the aim of the system was to encourage political, economic, and institutional development in the mandated territories, both the system itself and the concurrent ideology of “trusteeship” have been interpreted as extensions of the colonialist-imperial mentality.54

Colonial Metaphors of Regional Inequality In comparison to imperialism, the concept of colonialism was much less visibly present in interwar parliamentary debates. During the 1920s, allusions to colonialism related specifically to the transfer of the Petsamo region to Finland from Soviet Russia in the Treaty of Tartu (1920).55 In this context, some politicians represented Petsamo as Finland’s “new colony”. The main concern for the MPs rested on the extent to which the Finnish state should finance services and development projects in the 51  Rosenberg (STPV) 3 September 1925, 21 November 1928, 22 March 1929; Kulmala (STPV) 7 December 1927, 14 December 1928, 4 October 1929; Latva (STPV) 30 September 1927; Virta (STPV) 28 November 1927; Pekkala (STPV) 22 November 1928. 52  Ihalainen (2019), 27–28. 53  Svento (SDP) and Kares (IKL) 23 March 1939. 54  Pedersen (2015), 77. 55  For details, see Kuisma (2010), 247–250.

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area.56 Conservatives tended to oppose state intervention, fearing tax increases, while Social Democrats perceived colonial endeavors as undesirable per se.57 In this case, the politicians attached mainly economic and commercial meanings to the concept of colonialism: it was understood either as a burden or as a stimulus to state finances. Despite the generally negative views toward colonialism, soon after the acquisition of Petsamo, the Finnish government started to develop the new “possession”. In 1921, after a survey of natural resources in the region directed by the University of Helsinki, the state authorities began the geological mapping of the region. These activities continued the nineteenth-century work of the Finnish Geographical Society in charting natural resources and cultural heritage.58 Indeed, as Ojala and Monié Nordin have argued, “map-making has played a central role in processes of exploration and colonization around the world, and in the interactions with indigenous peoples in the lands being colonized”.59 This was also seemingly the case with the Finnish state’s endeavors in Petsamo. During the 1920s, the concept of colonialism was also used to highlight regional inequalities within Finland. These ideas emerged especially in discussions concerning seasonal work, land ownership, and over regional policy in general. In these portrayals, the negative perception of the north and east of the country prevalent in southern Finland was expressed in terms of metaphors of colonial-type regional inequality.60 During the early Cold War, such representations of regional inequality reappeared, now further intensified by the confrontation between the socialist and capitalist blocs. In particular, MPs representing the SKDL used the concept of colonialism to oppose “regional exploitation” and “big capital”.61 In the 1960s and 1970s, “rural

56  Tanner (SDP) 19 December 1922; Bryggari (SDP) 3 December 1924; Svento (SDP) 9 December 1930; Pulkkinen (Cons.) 19 December 1922; Ikonen (Agrarian League) 16 March 1923; Puhakka (Cons.) 21 March 1930. 57   See, for example, Pulkkinen (Cons.) 19 December 1922; Bryggari (SDP) 3 December 1924. 58  Moisio (2012), 67. 59  Ojala and Monié Nordin (2019), 101. 60  Jussila (Conservatives) 16 February 1923; Brander (Progressives) 21 April 1923; Oulasmaa (STPV) 13 December 1935; Allila (STPV) 12 February 1925; Rötkö (STPV) 11 March 1930. 61  See, for example, Friman (SKDL Finnish People’s  Democratic League, SKDL) 20 December 1948; Sormunen (SKDL) 16 November 1948; Tauriainen (SKDL) 13 June 1951.

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MPs”62 defended the interests of northern and eastern Finland using the metaphor of colonialism. The focus on these issues was related to the profound transformation of Finnish society at the same time, through processes of urbanization and modernization; these in turn led to a significant decline in the share of agriculture and an increase in the service sector and heavy industry. The end result was a mass migration of hundreds of thousands of Finns from the northern and eastern parts of the country to southern Finland and to Sweden.63 “Rural MPs” argued that Finland’s remote regions had been and still were in the role of “colonies”, whence “raw materials” were transported for “processing to factories in the south”.64 At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, the language of colonial exploitation in the context of Finnish regional politics took a slightly different form mostly in connection with debates over mining. MPs from the Lapland constituency evoked colonial metaphors in criticizing the idea of transporting raw materials from Lapland to refineries outside Finland. Such a move was portrayed as a “return to the time of colonial masters” and as “glaring colonialism”.65 In these debates, large-scale energy-related projects in northern Finland, driven by state-owned companies, evoked images of a north-south divide, of colonial ill-treatment, and of regional inequality.66

New Left Anti-Imperialism During the Cold War, the concept of imperialism was applied almost exclusively by socialist and communist parliamentarians. It was also common in the socialist discourse of the Cold War to link colonialism and imperialism and to oppose both. At the heart of the convergence lay support for the sovereignty of those who had been subjugated by “capitalists” 62  This refers to the Agrarian League/Centre Party politicians and those of the Finnish Rural Party. In 1965, the Agrarian League (Maalaisliitto) changed its name to the Centre Party (Keskustapuolue), which at the same time reflected the party’s transformation from a voice of agrarian policy to a national general party. 63  Mylly (2008), 156–161, 167–169. 64  Volotinen (Finnish Rural Party) 22 September 1970. See also, Holopainen (Agrarian League) et  al. 5 February 1960; Kortesalmi and Vennamo V. (Finnish Rural Party) 8 October 1975. 65  Pokka (Centre) 17 December 1987; Tennilä (SKDL) 17 December 1987, 18 December 1987, 16 March 1988. 66  Tennilä (SKDL) 1 June 1988 and 17 January 2007; Haavisto (Greens) 5 June 1991; Vähänäkki (SDP) 5 June 1991; Näsi (Centre) 8 April 1992.

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or “imperialists”, as well as opposition to economic dependence. The confrontation between market-economy and socialist countries was the main interpretative framework within which the concepts of imperialism and colonialism were evoked.67 Moreover, in their critical discourse of imperialism and colonialism, SKDL MPs rather ambiguously referred to the “imperialist circles” or “imperialist forces” that they believed had an impact either in Finland or abroad.68 During the 1960s and 1970s, certain influential international trends, including opposition to racial discrimination, support for decolonization, and aid for developing countries, also experienced a breakthrough in Finnish politics, especially in socialist and communist organizations.69 Finland’s 1969 adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was an important threshold, after which the concepts of colonialism and imperialism began to be used more regularly in parliamentary debates. Indeed, the Convention, which originates from 1965, expresses condemnation of “colonialism and all practices of segregation and discrimination associated therewith, in whatever form and wherever they exist”.70 At this critical juncture, official Finnish development aid policy began to expand to new countries and modes of operation, and the new policies were widely discussed in Parliament, government departments, and civil society at large.71 In the 1970s, resistance to colonialism, imperialism, and neo-­colonialism became part of the development aid debate. In particular, leftwing politicians (SDP and SKDL) turned to colonial metaphors in parliamentary debates, condemning continued colonial and imperialist repression and calling for more “moral” and “financial” support for national liberation movements, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa but also in Latin America.72 Both “moral support” and “financial support” were also mentioned in the 67  See, for example, Sinisalo (SKDL) 1 June 1971; Räsänen (SKDL) 23 October 1973; Mattsson (SKDL) 22 March 1978. 68  See, for example, Saarinen (SKDL) 28 November 1975; Rekonen (SKDL) 11 May 1978. 69  Soiri and Peltola (1999, chapter 2); Rentola (2005), 57, 124, 128–130. 70  United Nations, International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Adopted and opened for signature and ratification by General Assembly resolution 2106 (XX) of 21 December 1965 entry into force 4 January 1969. 71  For details, see Soiri and Peltola (1999, chapters 2, 3, and 4); Soikkanen (2003), 299–308. 72  See, for example, Perheentupa (SDP) 5 November 1970; Tuominen (SKDL) 11 January 1973; Suonio (SDP) 21 March 1978.

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1965 UN Convention.73 From 1973 onward, Social Democrat and Centre Party-led74 governments actively supported national liberation and anticolonial movements, particularly in the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique but also in Namibia, Southern Rhodesia, and South Africa.75 This was anti-colonialism proper: in addition to discursive anti-­colonialism, national liberation movements were directly supported by Finnish government policy. Furthermore, US actions in the former colonies were judged by emphasizing their imperial character: the Arab-Israeli conflicts of the 1970s were referred to as “an Israeli attack on Arab peoples with the help of American imperialists”.76 US actions in South-East Asia (especially Vietnam) were often described as “imperialist assaults” against the struggles of “people’s liberation movements”.77 For some politicians, the ongoing process of decolonization also represented a national opportunity. In the late 1970s, the possibilities of Finland’s new policy of development cooperation and trade with countries moving toward independence were justified by some MPs in terms of Finland’s perceived noncolonial history, which was regarded as causing “no burden” for the country.78 Throughout the 1970s, representatives of leftwing parties had condemned this thinking as a form of “export capitalism” or “Finnish imperialism”.79 The 1970s Finnish parliamentary debates transmitted preponderantly positive views of decolonization, as evidenced by the numerous judgmental remarks to “colonial oppression”, “imperial wars”, and “colonial wars”,80 and sympathetic allusions to “the peoples’ justified strive for liberation”.81 73  United Nations, International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. 74  For example Prime Minister Kalevi Sorsa’s (SDP) government, 1972–1975. 75  For details, see Soiri and Peltola (1999, chapters 5 and 6). 76  Rekonen (SKDL) 7 January 1974. See also, Tuominen (SKDL) 15 January 1975. 77  Taipale (SDP) 7 January 1972; Tuominen (SKDL) 7 January 1972; Juvela (SKDL) 16 May 1972, 9 January 1973; Alenius (SKDL) 9 January 1974; Mattsson (SKDL) 12 December 1979. 78  Matikkala (Christians) 13 September 1977; Sorsa (SDP) 12 December 1979. 79   See, for example, Tuomioja (SDP) 11 January 1971; Tuominen (SKDL) 18 October 1972. 80  See, for example, Kuusinen (SKDL) 19 September 1969; Tuomioja (SDP) 27 April 1971; Tuominen (SKDL) 3 January 1974. If some of the MPs viewed colonialism in positive terms, they did not use the words empire, imperialism, colony, or colonialism to describe their posture. 81  Tuominen (SKDL) et al. 28 September 1977.

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Finnish leftwing politicians exploited these discourses at least partly in order to oppose neo-colonialism, global capitalism, and imperialism, as well as to connect this opposition to the Cold War confrontation. SKDL MPs leveled criticism at the international economic system and its alleged beneficiaries— intergovernmental organizations, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the International Development Association, and multinational companies, as well as specifically the United States.82 In 1977, an SKDL MP captured the thinking of many of his parliamentary group colleagues in describing the Inter-­American Development Bank as “an intermediary of imperialist politics” and “a distinct supporter of brutal military dictatorships and multinational syndicates that impoverish developing countries”.83 The activities of the above-mentioned institutions were depicted equally critically if their activities were perceived as impacting the development of Finnish society or economy: International imperialist circles are taking advantage of the situation that has arisen in our country, seeking to influence our country’s domestic and economic policies and to subordinate Finland more closely to their own plans, and in this activity the influence of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank is very significant.84

We refer to these censorious leftwing assessments of international structures, common in the 1970s, as critical internationalism and define it as apprehension expressed toward colonialism and imperialism-derived global inequality, together with criticism directed at the ability and/or willingness of post-1945 international institutions to combat such inequalities. These stances represented transnational discourses of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, typical of the Western European and North American “New Left”.85 In their reading of the international system—to cite John Darwin—“colonialism had imposed a cruel yoke of economic dependency”, locking much of the so-called third world into “a cycle of growing impoverishment”.86 Furthermore, the concurrently emerging 82  See, for example, Kuusinen (SKDL) 18 December 1968; Tuominen (SKDL) 29 November 1974, 12 January 1977; Sinisalo (SKDL) 8 November 1977. 83  Björklund (SKDL) 24 May 1977. See also, Tamminen (SKDL) 1 June 1977. 84  Sinisalo (SKDL) 8 November 1977. 85  See Kalter (2016); Parrott (2016). 86  Darwin (2013), 3.

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Non-­Aligned Movement supported the restructuring of global economic, political, and cultural relationships of power.87 The criticism of Finnish parliamentarians was directed especially at neo-colonial practices and structures in the newly independent African states.88 During the 1980s and early 1990s, a variety of politicians representing different parties argued that although Finland had not been a colonial power, the country’s material welfare and high standard of living depended to a considerable extent on the historical exploitative imperialist and colonialist structures of international trade, and that Finland thus had a moral obligation to help the developing countries through aid programs.89 In this analysis, opposition to colonialism assumed an ethical dimension; the material well-being of a perceived noncolonial actor (e.g. Finland) was attributed partly to the discriminatory historical patterns of international trade produced by exploitative colonial and imperial structures, which in turn created an obligation for Finland to provide assistance to the victims of colonialism and imperialism. A slightly different approach to moral obligationism, advocated mostly by Social Democratic MPs, warned against aid programs becoming a system of neo-colonialism. In this scenario, aid programs were criticized for boosting Finland’s economic development at the expense of democratization and progress in the developing world.90

European Integration, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, and Imagery of Empire From the 1960s onwards, some MPs applied the concept of colonialism in representing Finland as a deprived periphery in the context of the different stages of European integration. Certain MPs also expressed a fear that integration would limit national sovereignty and situate Finland in the  See Dinkel (2019, especially chapter 4).  See, for example, Perheentupa (SKDL) 5 November 1970; Pursiainen (SKDL) 5 November 1970; Suomi (SKDL) 29 November 1977. 89  P. Vennamo (Finnish Rural Party) 28 December 1984; Hirvelä (SKDL) 2 January 1984; Almgren (Christians) 6 February 1984, 6 March 1984; Jokinen (SKDL) 14 June 1986; Alppi (SKDL) 19 December 1986; Laine (SDP) 2 November 1987; Paasio (SDP) 14 November 1989, 18 September 1990, 14 December 1990; Kuuskoski-Vikatmaa (Centre) 12 December 1990; Laakkonen (Christians), 15 January 1992. 90  Alho (SDP) 2 February 1984; Karkinen (SDP) 23 October 1990. Similar arguments was sometimes used in the 1990s and 2000s, see, for example, Kiljunen (SDP) 14 March 1996; Kontula (Left Alliance) 2 September 2014. 87 88

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position of a colony. Some SKDL MPs linked this discourse to decolonization and the confrontation of the Cold War in the 1960s, arguing that instead of strengthening Western European integration by joining the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), there should be more cooperation with countries liberated from colonial rule and with the Soviet bloc.91 Moreover, in the context of Finnish negotiations during the 1970s over accession to the European Economic Community (EEC), MPs representing the SKDL depicted Finland as being under a negative influence or even in danger of being “trampled into a helpless colony of the EEC’s great monopolies”.92 They also argued that the “most enthusiastic on the EEC front are those who have always done their utmost to tie our country politically and economically as far as possible to the political groupings of the imperialists and big business”.93 This referred to supranational decision-­making and centralized bureaucratic procedures and to the leading European powers—Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.94 In 1976, an SKDL MP argued that “overall, foreign economic agreements have greatly increased the right-wing danger” and Finland’s “commitments to imperialist countries”. He went on to predict that “if the trend continues along the current path, in a few years’ time our affairs will be very much dictated at EEC centres”.95 According to another MP, “it is in the interests of the Finnish people to remain completely separate from the economic-political and military alliances of the imperialist countries”.96 Some SKDL MPs suggested increasing trade with the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries, rather than promoting Western European economic cooperation.97 This negative attitude toward Western European integration in the 1960s and 1970s, in terms of the economy, politics, and defense, illustrates an interesting continuity in the discourse against imperialism and colonialism. During the 1990s, similar arguments continued. The Left Alliance, the Rural Party, and Green MPs expressed fears of the European Community (EC) becoming an empire similar to the Soviet Union. Characteristics attached to an imagined “EC empire” included “federalism” as well as  Kuusinen (SKDL) 29 March 1960, 16 May 1961.  Tuominen (SKDL) 23 April 1974. 93  Sinisalo (SKDL) 18 September 1973. 94  See Tuominen (SKDL) 16 November 1973, 23 April 1974. 95  Rekonen (SKDL) 15 January 1976. 96  Sinisalo (SKDL) 7 January 1972. 97  See, for example, Aitio (SKDL) 16 November 1973. 91 92

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“undemocratic”, “bureaucratic”, and supranational decision-making structures that harmed the nation-states’ sovereignty.98 Green MPs, in particular, articulated deep-seated suspicions toward the EU’s operational culture and the “democratic deficit”. In these analyses European colonialism emerged as a symbol, signifying an analogous relationship between Europe’s colonial past and the EU present; historical colonialist Europe and the present-day EU were both perceived as dictatorial, paternalistic, and militaristic.99 Finnish parliamentarians also portrayed the dissolution of the Soviet Union as the “end of empire”. Social Democrats represented the Soviet Union as an “eastern ideological empire” which had been built on violence and a single-party command economy that had isolated itself from the international community.100 Green MPs emphasized the Soviet Union’s multinational character, central planning, state intrusion into citizens’ daily lives, and a “Tsarist” and “Brezhnevesque” “father knows all” mentality.101 Some MPs highlighted the importance of the Soviet military elite in safeguarding the survival of the imperial state and stressed that Soviet “imperial ambitions” had only reached as far as the Eastern European satellite states.102 These views gained more weight compared to previous decades of Finnlandisierung,103 when there were few direct references, mainly by MPs on the right of the political spectrum, to Finland’s eastern neighbor as an “empire”.104 These conceptions interlocked in the West’s Cold War narrative, which had portrayed the Soviet Union as an empire.105 Since its collapse, a significant number of historians and political scientists have made the same point. In these studies, the break-up of the Soviet Union has been 98  Laukkanen (Left Alliance) 19 November 1991; Tennilä (Left Alliance) 16 January 1992; Pykäläinen (Greens) 7 September 1994; Mäkipää (SMP) 2 November 1994. 99  Pulliainen (Greens) 13 June 1994 and 6 September 1994; Pykäläinen (Greens) 8 May 1996; Hassi (Greens) 10 October 1996. For Green attitudes to European integration, see Johansson and Raunio (2001), 225–249; Bomberg (2002), 29–50. 100  Tuomioja (SDP) 19 November 1991; Liponen (SDP) 9 January 1992. 101  Hassi (Greens) 15 January 1992; Pykäläinen (Greens) 16 January 1992. 102  Aittoniemi (SMP) 14 November 1991; Donner (RKP) 16 June 1992. 103  The period from the 1950s to the 1980s, when Finnish political discourse emphasized good relations with the Soviet Union; this also led to some degree of self-censorship. See Forsberg and Pesu (2016). 104  See, for example, Ehrnrooth (Constitutional Right-Wing Party) 5 November 1970; Junnila (Cons.) 14 December 1977. 105  Lieven (2003), 3.

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compared to the dissolution of other land empires: the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Romanov.106 Robert Strayer has argued that the dissolution of the Soviet Union can be interpreted from three perspectives: it can be seen as “an ‘end of empire’ story”, “a democratization narrative”, and as “a communist reform process gone awry”. In his view, the Soviet dissolution can fruitfully be compared to those of the three land empires mentioned above: all of them “were conditioned” by growing “anticolonial nationalism”, “each of them … possessed a supra-national ideology”, and all of them “moved closer to the imperial model of Europe’s overseas empires”, in which “a distinctly national and racially defined core exercised control while nationalist responses emerged in the peripheries”. Despite these similarities, the Soviet collapse was much speedier than Romanov, Ottoman, and Habsburg downfalls and involved less violence.107 In any case, in referring to the break-up of the Soviet Union as an “end of empire”, Finnish politicians positioned themselves firmly in line with the decades-long Western Cold War narrative, which had portrayed the Soviet Union as an empire.

Conclusion In the new millennium, Finnish politicians have occasionally referred to colonial history and used images of empire as metaphors in discussing international crisis management operations in Rwanda, the Central African Republic, and Afghanistan. These debates were marked by two competing assessments of colonial and imperial history. According to the first, armed conflicts in Africa stemmed directly from the mistakes of nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonialism—divide-and-rule policies, the creation of artificial national borders, draining of resources, backing of dictatorships as well as foreign cultural and administrative influences; thus the former colonial powers alone should bear responsibility for dealing with colonial mistakes.108 The second approach emphasized that, given their lack of any 106  See, for example, Rudolph and Good (1992); Dawisha and Parrott (1997); Barkey and von Hagen (1997); Plokhyn (2014). 107  Strayer (2001), 376–382. See also Lieven (2003), 378–411. 108  Soini (Finns) 20 December 2004 and 25 March 2014; Tiusanen (Left Alliance) 14 September 2005; Laakso (Left Alliance) 17 January 2007; Kiljunen (SDP) 12 December 2007; Yrttiaho (Left Group) 11 March 2014; Jääskeläinen (Christians) 11 March 2014; Mustajärvi (Left Group) 25 March 2014; Kiuru (Centre) 25 March 2014; Mäkipää (Finns) 25 March 2014.

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colonial history, small neutral countries had a significant responsibility to act as impartial negotiators and mediators in international crisis management.109 These contradictory attitudes illustrate well the ambiguous nature of the concepts of imperialism and colonialism. They also show that Finnish politicians regularly contemplated imperialism and colonialism as innocent bystanders; in their self-perception, Finland was not complicit in either past or present global colonial or imperial arrangements. Notwithstanding the far-left antibourgeois narratives and the more moderate views of the New Left, Finnish politicians rarely saw Finland as an active agent in global imperialism and colonialism. In the case of Finland, “imperialism” and “colonialism” entered the parliamentary vocabulary almost exclusively in reference to international developments and events and as a reflection of transnational intellectual currents and debates. These included Soviet Russia’s annexation of Georgia (1921), the Soviet-backed coup attempt in Estonia (1924), the mediation of Finnish-Swedish territorial dispute at the League of Nations at the instigation of the British Prime Minister, the increasing emphasis placed on development aid/cooperation from the 1970s onward, the critical internationalism of the New Left, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and Finland’s position in the European integration process. The only clearly domestic contexts were related to the class conflict (imperialism) and representations of intra-state regional inequality in debates concerning the exploitation of natural resources (colonialism). From the 1970s onward, imperialism and colonialism converged and began to be used synonymously. In the earlier period this was not the case. During the interwar period, Finnish parliamentarians’ representations and understanding of “imperialism” quite strictly followed certain modern definitions,110 which portray imperialism as the practice and ideology connected to the construction and maintenance of an empire. One of the most persistent ways in which imperialism manifested itself in parliamentary debates was the leftwing view emphasizing the capitalist foundations of imperialism. In some cases, this association was extended to include militarism. The idea was rooted in the turn-of-the-century analyses of Hobson and Lenin, who had argued that imperialism had been 109  Cronberg (Greens) 14 September 2005; Packalen (Finns) 11 March 2014; Sinnemäki (Greens) 25 March 2014; Kääriäinen (Centre) 25 March 2014. 110  Such as Knight (2008), 24.

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made possible by finance capitalism, which led to imperial competition between the Great Powers, and ultimately to the development of modern armed forces and large-scale wars. Connected to this was another perception of imperialism and colonialism on the part of Finnish politicians, as an ever-present danger threatening the small nations and predefining the foundation of international institutions from the League of Nations to the EU. Finally, both during the interwar years and in the context of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Finnish parliamentarians represented imperialism as an important component of the “Russian mind”, as evidenced, for example, by the blending of Romanov and Bolshevik Russia in terms of their expansionism as well as their use of oppressive measures and violence. Representations of the Soviet Union as an empire were notably absent from Cold War parliamentary discussions, perhaps owing to the massive influence of the Soviet Union in Finland’s domestic and foreign affairs. However, along with the general Western Cold War perception, Finnish politicians widely represented the break-up of the Soviet Union as an end of empire. In these portrayals, the darkest periods of Tsarist Russia were equated with those of the Soviet Union within a framework of imperialism. Although Finnish parliamentarians rarely defined imperialism and colonialism, they certainly attached numerous meanings to these concepts. The most enduring of them were the following (mostly expressed by leftwing politicians): dangerous, capitalist, oppressive, militaristic, bourgeois, costly, harmful, exploitative, violent, undemocratic, and bureaucratic. In terms of modern definitions of empire, the multiethnic dimension of an empire was missing from the views of the Finnish parliamentarians. Moreover, imperialism and colonialism were portrayed almost exclusively in negative terms.

References Aamulehti. 18 February 1916. Åbo Underrättelser. 24 March 1902 and 27 July 1915. Barkey, Karen, and Mark von Hagen, eds. 1997. After empire: Multiethnic societies and nation-building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg empires. Boulder: Westview Press. Björneborgs Tidning. 30 July 1915. Bomberg, Elisabeth. 2002. The Europeanisation of Green Parties: Exploring the EU’s Impact. West European Politics 25 (3): 29–50.

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Cain, Peter. 2002. Hobson and Imperialism: Radicalism, New Liberalism and Finance, 1887–1938. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Darwin, John. 2013. Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain. London: Penguin Books. Dawisha, Karen, and Bruce Parrott, eds. 1997. The End of Empire? The Transformation of the USSR in Comparative Perspective. Armok: M.E. Sharp. Dinkel, Jürgen. 2019. The Non-Aligned Movement: Genesis, Organization and Politics (1927–1992). Leiden and Boston: Brill. Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. Finnish Parliament. Plenary Session Minutes, 1907–2000. Finnish Parliament’s Online Archive. Accessed 9 November 2020. https://avoindata.eduskunta. fi/#/fi/digitoidut/search. Forsberg, Tuomas, and Matti Pesu. 2016. The ‘Finlandisation’ of Finland: The Ideal Type, the Historical Model, and the Lessons Learnt. Diplomacy & Statecraft 27 (3): 473–495. Gronow, Jukka. 2016. On the Formation of Marxism: Karl Kautsky’s Theory of Capitalism, the Marxism of the Second International and Karl Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. Leiden: Brill. Hangö. 6 May 1922. Hiio, Toomas. 2018. The Communist Coup Attempt in Estonia on 1 December 1924: The Last but One Attempt at World Revolution? Fra Krig Og Fred 3: 113–160. Holsti, Rudolf. 1923. Kolonialismi. In Valtiotieteiden käsikirja III, ed. Leo Harmaja. Helsinki: Tietosanakirja-osakeyhtiö. Howard, M.C., and J.E. King. 1988. Lenin’s Political Economy, 1905–1914: The Prussian and American Paths to the Development of Capitalism in Russia. Historical Reflections 15: 497–521. Hufvudstadsbladet. 27 December 1899, 22 April 1900, 31 July 1909, 6 August 1911. Ihalainen, Pasi. 2019. Internationalization and Democratization Interconnected: The Swedish and Finnish Parliaments Debating Membership in the League of Nations in 1920. Parliaments, Estates and Representation 39: 11–31. Johansson, Karl Magnus, and Tapio Raunio. 2001. Partisan Responses to Europe: Comparing Finnish and Swedish Political Parties. European Journal of Political Research 39: 225–249. Jonkari, Jaakko. 2008. Kansainliitto Suomen turvallisuuspolitiikassa ja kansainvälisissä suhteissa: vastaanotto ja vaikutus julkisessa sanassa ja yhteiskunnassa vuosina 1919–1936. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Turku. Jussila, Osmo, Seppo Hentilä, and Jukka Nevakivi. 2004. Suomen poliittinen historia 1809–2003. Helsinki: WSOY.

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Kalter, Christoph. 2016. The Discovery of the Third World: Decolonization and the Rise of the New Left in France, c. 1950–1976. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Karvonen, Lauri. 2014. Parties, Governments and Voters in Finland: Politics under Fundamental Societal Transformation. Colchester: ECPR Press. Knight, Alan. 2008. Rethinking British Informal Empire in Latin America (Especially Argentina). Bulletin of Latin American Research 27: 23–48. Kuisma, Markku. 2010. Sodasta syntynyt: Itsenäisen Suomen synty Sarajevon laukauksista Tarton rauhaan 1914–1920. Helsinki: WSOY. Lieven, Dominic. 2003. Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals form the Sixteenth Century to the Present. London: Pimlico. Maaseudun Sanomat. 7 May 1921. Mickelsson, Rauli. 2015. Suomen puolueet: Vapauden ajasta maailmantuskaan. Tampere: Vastapaino. Moisio, Sami. 2012. Valtio, alue, politiikka. Tampere: Vastapaino. Mylly, Juhani. 2008. Asutuspolitiikasta suureen muuttoon: pientila-Suomen kuihtuminen. In Suomalaisen yhteiskunnan poliittinen historia, ed. Ville Pernaa and Mari K. Niemi, 150–170. Helsinki: Edita. Nousiainen, Jaakko. 1997. Suomen poliittinen järjestelmä. Helsinki: WSOY. Ojala, Carl-Gösta, and Jonas Monié Nordin. 2019. Mapping Land and People in the North: Early Modern Colonial Expansion, Exploitation, and Knowledge. Scandinavian Studies 91 (1–2): 98–133. Parrott, Raymond. 2016. Struggle for Solidarity: The New Left, Portuguese African Decolonization, and the End of the Cold War Consensus, PhD diss. Austin: University of Texas. Pedersen, Susan. 2015. The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Petersson, Fredrik. 2016. Anti-Imperialism and Nostalgia: A Re-Assessment of the History of Historiography of the League Against Imperialism. In International Communism and Transnational Solidarity. Radical Networks, Mass Movements and Global Politics, 1919–1939, ed. Holger Weiss, 191–255. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Plokhy, Serhii. 2014. The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union. New York: Basic Books. Primoratz, Igor. 2004. Introduction. In Terrorism: The Philosophical Issue, ed. Igor Primoratz, x–xxiv. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Rentola, Kimmo. 2005. Vallankumouksen aave: Vasemmisto, Beljakov ja Kekkonen 1970. Helsinki: Otava. Ross, Christopher N.B. 2009. Lord Curzon and E.  G. Browne Confront the ‘Persian Question’. The Historical Journal 52: 385–411. Rudolph, Richard, and David Good, eds. 1992. Nationalism and Empire: The Habsburg Empire and the Soviet Union. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

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Saarela, Tauno. 2008. Suomalainen kommunismi ja vallankumous 1923–1930. Helsinki: SKS. Said, Edward. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Chatto & Windus. Särkkä, Timo. 2009. Hobson’s Imperialism. A Study in Late-Victorian Political Thought. PhD diss. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Schnell, Felix. 2015. Empire in Disguise: The Soviet-Russian Imperial Metamorphosis after World War I. Journal of Modern European History 13: 203–225. Siltala, Juha. 1985. Lapuan liike ja kyyditykset 1930. Helsinki: Otava. Soikkanen, Timo. 2003. Presidentin ministeriö 1956–1969: Ulkoasiainhallinto ja ulkopolitiikan hoito Kekkosen kaudella. Helsinki: Ulkoasiainministeriö. Soiri, Iina, and Pekka Peltola. 1999. Finland and National Liberation in Southern Africa. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute. Stadius, Peter. 2016. Petsamo: Bringing Modernity to Finland’s Arctic Ocean Shore 1920–1939. Acta Borealia 33: 140–165. Steadman, Jones Gareth. 2016. Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion. London: Penguin Books. Strayer, Robert. 2001. Decolonization, Democratization, and Communist Reform: The Soviet Collapse in Comparative Perspective. Journal of World History 12: 375–406. Suomen Kansa. 24 March 1902. Tammerfors Nyheter. 18 March 1912. United Nations. n.d. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Adopted and Opened for Signature and Ratification by General Assembly Resolution 2106 (XX) of 21 December 1965 Entry into Force 4 January 1969. Uusi Suometar. 5 August 1911. Vares, Mari, and Vesa Vares. 2019. Valmis valtioksi. Suomi ja eurooppalainen itsenäistymisaalto. Helsinki: Docendo. Wasa Nyheter. 19 January 1900. Wiborgs Nyheter. 6 July 1910. Yearwood, Peter. 2010. ‘A Genuine and Energetic League of Nations Policy’: Lord Curzon and the New Diplomacy, 1918–1925. Diplomacy & Statecraft 21: 159–174.

CHAPTER 4

Settler Colonial Eyes: Finnish Travel Writers and the Colonization of Petsamo Janne Lahti

“We are venturing to Petsamo for great deeds, as if travelling abroad far away. We imagine heading to a distant colony, as our friends wish us a safe journey and good health. … This Petsamo awakens great hopes in us … And even if those dreams should prove utterly implausible, we have no shame in having them, because all the other travellers to Petsamo have dreamt them too. Petsamo is the great colony for Finnish hopes and dreams”.1 These lines, from a travel account published in 1931, were written by the Finnish ethnographer Sakari Pälsi. They offer a glimpse of the Finnish colonial mindset, while demonstrating some of the tensions embedded in territorial expansion and land grabbing. Pälsi, along with other Finnish travel writers, produced narratives explaining spatial expansion and integration, as they gazed at Petsamo through settler colonial eyes. 1

 Pälsi 1931, 9, 11. All translations from Finnish to English in this article by the author.

J. Lahti (*) University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_4

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In this chapter, I present a close reading of a selection of Finnish travel writings about Petsamo in relation to the analytical framework of settler colonialism. I interpret four travelogues: Ernst Lampén’s Jäämeren hengessä (1921), Armas Launis’ Kaipaukseni maa (1922), Matti Olin’s Petsamon muistoja (1921), and Sakari Pälsi’s Petsamoon kuin ulkomaille (1931), with the purpose of locating and analyzing settler colonial tendencies and connotations in these texts. While the analysis connects Finnish Petsamo to histories of settler colonialism, it should be noted at the outset that this essay does not pretend to do justice to the complexities of Finnish-­ Sami encounters, or examine the Skolt Sami or their views of these encounters.2 My claim, rather, is that these Finnish travel writers looked at Petsamo through settler colonial eyes: in other words, they made claims for Finnish settler colonization, promoted the idea, and assessed its feasibility. This chapter looks at what kind of narratives they produced, and places those texts in a settler colonial framing. The four travelogues represent some of the popular writings that played a significant role in the promotion and “branding” of Petsamo for Finnish audiences in the 1920s and 1930s. Situated at the polar margins of Europe, hugging the Arctic Ocean, Petsamo changed hands from Russia to Finland in the Treaty of Tartu in 1920. This treaty affirmed the border between the newly independent Finland and post-revolutionary Russia, following the Finnish Civil War and Finnish volunteer expeditions in Karelia. It proved a brief interlude of colonization: the Russians retook Petsamo at the end of the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1944. At the time of annexation in 1920, Petsamo was a relatively unfamiliar area among the Finnish public, although ice-free seaports and the lure of the fishing and mining industries attracted attention from industrialists and expansionists. It was landscape painters, together with travel writers, many of whom were experienced and popular writers and/or held scientific backgrounds—Launis, Lampén, Olin, and Pälsi all fit the bill— that actively created imaginaries of Petsamo for the masses.3 These travelers defined Petsamo as a multiethnic borderland, including Sami, Norwegian, Russian, Karelian, and Finnish ethnicities and cultures, and 2  More on Sami histories and Sami-Finnish colonial encounters, see Nyyssönen in this volume, and especially Lehtola 2012, 2015; Nyyssönen 2013. 3  On Finnish painters making and creating Petsamo as part of Finland through their works, see Hautala-Hirvioja 2016, http://tahiti.fi/01-2016/tieteelliset-artikkelit/petsamo%E2%80%93-miehinen-ja-karu-eldorado/ (accessed June 1, 2020).

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subject to the Finnish settler colonial project. They commented on the nature of the region and its potential mineral riches, described the villages, homes, and domestic customs, and commented on the outlook and habits of the people. In other words, the travelogues made the colonized land familiar to their Finnish audience and occupied it, in language that combined views of its past with its new reality as a Finnish space. These four Finnish travelogues of Petsamo inhabited a shared shape and used methods similar to those of other colonial travel writers around the world. For one thing, they existed in connection with territorial expansion. As suggested by Mary Louise Pratt, travel writings made expansion meaningful and desirable to the citizens of the expanding countries, stimulating curiosity and excitement, and offering a sense of ownership, entitlement, and familiarity with respect to the distant lands being colonized.4 They also made sense of encounters with and possible incorporation of “new” peoples resulting from territorial expansion: new in the sense that these populations had not previously been part of the same polity. Sharing a common ground in their methods and repertoire, colonial travelogues also grasped for authority in relation to colonized places: the power to determine what the place stood for, what it had been, and what it should become. They judged the land and its peoples through the eyes of the colonizing regime and culture, while simultaneously constructing specific identities for themselves. As Sara Mills has noted, travel accounts were “an instrument within colonial expansion”, serving to impose and reinforce colonial rule.5 Travelers typically tended to represent themselves as superior, innocent, and objective, rather than as subjective voices in the service of foreign invaders. They also tended to view the processes of colonization as beneficial and progressive, the indigenous peoples as vanishing races, and landscapes as obstacles to progress: till then wild and underutilized, but soon to be tamed and made productive by the incoming settlers. Not all travel writers, of course, shared such views, or produced uniform narratives; many of them also vocally criticized the actions of colonial powers.6 Nevertheless, they shared contexts, the things they wrote about, and often 4  Pratt 2007, 3. On colonialism and travel writings, see also Hulme and Youngs 2002; Edwards and Graulund 2011. See also the special issue on colonial travel writing and the Maghreb, in Studies in Travel Writing 21.3. (2017). 5  Mills 1991, 2. 6  See, for instance, Wrobel 2013.

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the ways they approached them: travel writings operated within an interlinked analytical field and circulating colonial threads, intertwining the local with the global. Many travel accounts were translated into various languages worldwide, thus disseminating information and techniques of representation.7 Some, like Henry Stanley’s account of his Congo expedition, were immediately translated into Finnish.8 Finland, Petsamo, and the Finnish travel writers formed part of this layered and complex global phenomenon, whereby regions facing colonialism were introduced to wider audiences in the colonizing countries by way of travelers and their texts. In this chapter, I first discuss settler colonialism as an analytical framework and how it fits the history of Petsamo, while also briefly introducing Lampén, Launis, Olin, and Pälsi. I then examine settler colonial eyes at work, first in terms of their travel experiences and their encounters with nature: how travelers made sense of the place they entered by portraying their entrance as a passage from the civilized realm to the wilderness. Finally, I focus on travelers’ narratives of Petsamo’s settlements, ethnicities, and replacement.

Settler Colonialism, Petsamo, and the Travelers As a global historical development, settler colonialism has not usually been associated with Finnish history, and to date hardly any scholars have approached Finnish northward expansion through the lens of settler colonialism.9 Perhaps they have not seen this relatively new field as an appropriate framing for the analysis of Finland’s past; it is also possible that Finnish scholars have consciously rejected all colonial connotations in the national historiography. “Settler colonialism” refers to a distinctive form of colonialism: one centered on replacement and on the land itself, the processes whereby incoming settlers arrive in lands belonging to other people, with the intention of replacing the indigenous/previous residents and capturing terrestrial and maritime spaces, and making them their own. According to its principal theorist, the anthropologist Patrick Wolfe, 7  Translations included the works of travelers such as Ida Pfeiffer, Richard Francis Burton, and Friedrich Gerstäcker. 8  Stanley 1885; from the original The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State (New York: Harpers & Brothers, 1885). 9  Some scholars in Sami and Indigenous studies have applied the term settler colonialism in Finnish context. See Kuokkanen 2017. https://politiikasta.fi/syntymapaivalahjasuomelle/; Kuokkanen 2020; Magga 2018.

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settler colonialism is driven by the logic of elimination, which can entail a range of policies: from cultural assimilation to extermination, as it “destroys to replace” and introduces “a zero-sum contest over land”. Wolfe argues that since “settlers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event” or a series of isolated events.10 While Wolfe’s interpretation of settler colonialism is overtly mechanical, and applies best to Australia and North America, it remains the standard definition of the concept. Still there should be room within settler colonial studies to recognize the historical diversity of settler colonial situations. Settler colonialism, like any other historical form of rule, can certainly be overturned (as indicated by the decolonization of French Algeria and German Southwest Africa/Namibia, for example), nor is it limited to the Anglo-World. Indeed, recent literature identifies settler colonialism, for example, in Japanese Hokkaido and Korea, Chinese Manchuria and Taiwan, Hawaii (subject to both American and Asian settler colonialism), French Algeria, many Latin American countries, Portuguese Mozambique, and the Russian Caucasus and Siberia.11 Settler colonialism can basically take place at any geographical location and can involve any racial or ethnic group. It can even apply to Finnish history. What is relevant is a combination of conquest, replacement, and permanent settlement (or at least intent of such), and the reproduction of one’s own society on what used to be other people’s lands. Indicating an enthusiasm for expansion, a large influx of Finnish travelers, researchers, government officials, and others ventured to Petsamo during its first Finnish summer in 1921. Among the first to inspect the newly acquired lands was also Finland’s Head of State, President K. J. Ståhlberg. While the President was journeying toward Petsamo, his newly independent nation was badly torn as a consequence of the bloody Civil War fought in 1918 between two political factions, the Reds and the Whites. The Finland of 1921 was poor, divided, and embittered. It also had a vocal minority of expansionist-minded activists, bent on creating a “Greater Finland” reaching into East Karelia and toward the Arctic Ocean.

 Wolfe 2006. See also Veracini 2010; Lahti 2017.  On settler colonialism as a global historical phenomenon, see, for example, Belich 2011; Zu Lu 2019; Uchida 2014; Fujikane and Okamura 2008; Cavanagh and Veracini 2017; Jacobs 2009; Lahti and Weaver-Hightower 2020. 10 11

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For their purposes, Petsamo marked the first step in the process of Finnish expansion.12 Yet, if there were ethnic and linguistic ties between the Finns and the peoples of East Karelia, Finland had little historic or cultural claim to the mainly Orthodox and Russian-speaking Petsamo, although some Finnish settlers had spread across the Arctic coastlines of Norway and Russia decades earlier. Despite this lack of legitimate claim, in 1918, a Finnish expeditionary force, raised through voluntary enlistment, invaded Petsamo in the hope of securing the area for themselves. The British, entangled in the Russian Civil War and supporting the anti-Communist Whites against the Communist Reds, quickly deterred the Finnish raiders. This was soon followed by a second Finnish attempt to gain Petsamo by force, when expansionist-minded volunteers occupied the area for a month in 1920. They were again driven back, this time by Russian Communists. It is worth noting that both Finnish expeditionary forces met with very little local support; the inhabitants of Petsamo did not welcome the attempted Finnish annexation, but viewed it as an unwanted colonizing effort by an expansionist foreign power. The common local expression, in fact, referred to living “under Finnish rule”, rather than as “part of Finland”, showing the resident mindset during the years of actual Finnish annexation.13 Yet, while the armed annexation failed, diplomacy triumphed as Communist Russia conceded Petsamo to Finland in the Tartu Peace Treaty. Now Finnish settler colonization got underway: it was rather tentative in practice yet loaded with conviction, as Petsamo was reimaged by Finns as a peripheral yet attractive wilderness set to be penetrated, tamed, and made anew by Finnish civilization; by industry (fishing, mining), transports (Arctic Ocean Highway), settlers, and culture. Colonization involved an attempt to create and enlarge permanent Finnish settlements. Petsamo attracted Finns from all over the country, and its Finnish population grew from approximately 600 people in 1920 to 4000  in 1940. While in relative terms this was a serious population increase, in that it made Finns the majority nationality in Petsamo, it was still relatively modest in scope. There was no massive settler rush to Petsamo. For instance, the town of Rovaniemi, the municipal center of Lapland, which grew in part owing to its position as a gateway for traffic 12  The Finnish research literature here is rather extensive. See, for instance, Roselius and Silvennoinen 2019; Näre and Kirves 2014; Manninen 1980. 13  Paasilinna 1984, 280.

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from southern, more populous, Finland to Petsamo, had some 20,000 residents in 1940. This mid-size town thus had four times as many Finns as all the settlers in the Petsamo area put together.14 As Finnish administrators and settlers entered Petsamo, the local populations had to either assimilate or leave. Some Russian residents crossed the border into Soviet Russia, while the new international border cut off the Skolt Sami communities from each other and from their winter villages. The new border also disrupted Skolt mobility, which revolved around fishing, reindeer herding, hunting, and kinship and social networking. Incoming settlers competed for access to fish and game, and captured land through the 1925 Homestead Act. Finland also asserted sovereignty over the Skolts by making them Finnish citizens but treating them as a second-class people, subject to cultural assimilation. Schools, run by the government, were designed to disseminate Finnish culture, while excluding local Skolt and Russian customs and languages. Teaching took place in Finnish, even in municipalities that had few or no Finnish speakers, as in the fully Skolt village of Suonikylä, where a Finnish school was set up in 1928. Finnish officials also wanted all Petsamo residents to take a public loyalty oath to the Finnish state, and thus at least symbolically to abandon and suppress their other loyalties.15 The mining industry also took off, altering the landscape in the 1930s and linking Petsamo more effectively to the Finnish and global economy. Finns also built the Arctic Ocean Highway. Fully opened in 1931, the roadway physically connected Petsamo to the Finnish heartlands. One could take a car from the capital, Helsinki, on the Gulf of Finland, and in a matter of days drive some 1600 km to Petsamo. Mining, coupled with the modern highway, brought in more Finnish settlers, tourists, and money. Other industries were established, and agriculture extended to new lands. There were also plans to extend the Finnish railroad network to Petsamo—railways having proved to be a powerful tool of territorial incorporation in India, Canada, the United States, Southern Africa, and elsewhere—but these plans were never implemented before Finland had to cede the area back to the Soviet Union in World War II (Fig. 4.1).16

 Suomen Tilastollinen Vuosikirja (Statistical Yearbook of Finland) 1940, 1941, 42–43.  Paasilinna 1984, 288–289. 16  Lähteenmäki 2017, 77–81; Onnela and Vahtola 1999; Petsamo 1920–1944: Suomi Jäämeren rannalla, 2018. 14 15

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Fig. 4.1  “Suomen käsikartta—Handkarta öfver Finland”. Rosberg 1921

The first of our four travel writers to reach Petsamo was Matti Olin. He did so in 1916, thus arriving at a time when Petsamo and Finland were both still part of the Russian Empire. Heading a road survey crew, Olin, by profession an architect, was charting a new route from Inari, Finland, north to the village of Petsamo. Traveling with his newlywed wife as well as four workmen (loggers), he remained in Petsamo for over a year. He wrote and published his travel book, however, only in 1921, after Petsamo had become officially Finnish. While Olin claimed in the preface to have written the book “for fun”, he also considered descriptions of the area to be of national importance, now that Finnish interests in Petsamo were, in his words, “rapidly growing”.17 Likewise in 1921, as Olin was publishing his work, Ernst Lampén (1865–1938) and Armas Launis (1884–1959) were touring Petsamo. This was the region’s first summer as part of Finland. Lampén, an author  Olin 1921, 5.

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and a teacher, had published a number of literary works, including several travelogues of his journeys in different parts of Finland; he was an active promoter of tourism, and in his time was a widely read travel writer in Finland. If Lampén was a romanticist and a nationalist, intent on promoting Petsamo, Launis was much the same in the interest he took in the national character. As an ethnographer and composer, Launis pursued several research trips into and beyond the Finnish borderlands to study the music of the Karelians and the Sami. Venturing into Petsamo in 1929, Sakari Pälsi (1882–1965) was likewise a man of many talents and interests. He gained fame as a novelist, folklorist, archaeologist, ethnographer, explorer, journalist, photographer, and documentary filmmaker. Traveling extensively in Europe, Asia, and North America, Pälsi produced numerous books based on his travels, including his explorations in Mongolia and Northern Siberia, where he traveled in search of Finnish roots and to study the lives of the Arctic peoples. Petsamo was in many ways a logical extension of these expeditions to remote, exotic places in the name of science and exploration. He went to Petsamo to observe it, to see the colony with his own eyes, and to endorse it to Finnish audiences—the area’s potential settlers.18 Thus, all our four travelers were middle-class, educated men; except for Olin, they were also experienced authors and men of science, versed in the dissemination of knowledge to the reading masses. Skilled writers, and used to the public spotlight, they shared an interest in national identity, ethnography, exploration, and foreign lands. They were also men in search of marking and defining Finnishness, along with its “others”.

A Wild and Empty Land “By testing himself against the deprivations, dangers, and delirium of Africa’s uncharted interior, the explorer laid claim to the status of national hero, an avatar of progress, reason, empire, and civilization”.19 This is how the historian Dane Kennedy writes of the representational strategies of British explorers in Africa. While circumstances in Petsamo were different from tropical Africa, Olin, Lampén, Launis, and Pälsi did see themselves as representatives of progress and civilization, and painted their journeys as transitions from the familiar to the unknown. Their narratives read as  Metsola & Relas 2017. On Pälsi’s earlier travel writings, see Pälsi 1919, 1927.  Kennedy 2005, 93.

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passages from the Finnish heartland to its margins and beyond, to a remote, uncivilized land of wild yet fascinating nature. Reaching Petsamo in 1916, Matti Olin’s journey took him by train from Helsinki to Archangel via St. Petersburg. From there he boarded a boat for the final section of the journey toward the Petsamo fjord. It was at that point, as Olin put it in his travelogue, that he started the transition from the civilized world and its comforts into an uncivilized terrain and its demands. Comfortable hotels and cozy trains, with their salon cars, were soon but a distant memory. Olin narrates this transition with a change in emphasis and tone. He comments only briefly on his train journey, indicating that it was a normal, civilized means of travel and thus a mere prelude for the settler colonial eyes of the colonial traveler. In contrast, he dwells on the final stage to Petsamo, representing it as a perilous boat trip into untamed domains. Olin pens a series of obstacles and challenges, of a horrid journey by sea, “constant storms”, giant waves hitting the deck and freezing immediately into thick ice, of sick passengers forced to live “in horrid filth” on the overcrowded boat. The expedition experiences a momentary setback when Olin’s wife, unaccustomed to the hardships of the Arctic Ocean, had to be left behind to recuperate with a Norwegian settler family in Vaitolahti, at the northern tip of the Petsamo landmass on Kalastajasaarento. Olin goes on to describe how his wife, after resting and regaining her strength, struggled onward, joining her husband in the village of Petsamo.20 After reaching Petsamo, more perilous natural environment awaits Olin. He describes experiencing a blinding snowstorm on the Petsamo-­ Norway border, during which, he writes, people dared not leave their houses, some perishing in the streets, just a few meters from dwellings and safety. Houses also had their roofs blown off by the sheer force of the storm and were buried in the snow.21 Storms at sea and on land were a virulent testament to the force of Arctic nature, humbling any traveler daring to enter it. In a colonial reading, Olin’s depictions can be interpreted as a test, measuring the civilized traveler’s vitality, his ability to cope with the uncivilized colonial terrain and establish his superiority in relation to it. The journey is the obstacle the courageous Olin needs to overcome, to prove himself as a man and as a Finn. And in fact he succeeds, making it to Petsamo and back.  Olin 1921, 7–25, quotes from 10.  Olin 1921, 81–85, see also 77–79 for depictions of wild, perilous nature.

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For Lampén, Launis, and Pälsi, the journey also signified a crossing from the familiar to the unfamiliar; from civilization to a terrain facing colonialism. Lampén and Pälsi (and possibly Launis too, although his narrative begins when he is already in the North) headed northward from Helsinki to Petsamo by taking the train to Rovaniemi, where they switched to a car or “mail car” (a minibus used by the Post Office) to take them to Ivalo and the Petsamo border.22 While they penned plenty of their Lapland experiences prior to reaching their destination, their entrance into Petsamo still represented a transition. Like Olin’s, it also involved boats. All three authors spent several pages describing their journey down the Paats River (Paatsjoki), a form of passage to Petsamo itself soon to be eclipsed by the Arctic Ocean Highway. While for Olin it was the mighty Arctic Ocean, for Lampén, Launis, and Pälsi, it was the Paats River that signified a ritual obstacle the traveler needed to confront and master. Engulfed by a vast wilderness, the river was swift and turbulent, and its current actually perilous. Pälsi noted how locals and travelers warned his party beforehand: “There was lots of talk about the dangers of rapids in the Paats”, but “to hell with them” as “I rowed” and “still rowed” against a mighty headwind. He went on: “We toiled and struggled on this route, becoming frustrated and exhausted, but also empowered and liberated and cured of the idleness of civilized cultural life”.23 The mighty Paats River thus empowered the travelers, making them feel as if they were masters of this untamed land, while also increasingly becoming part of it. They asserted their superiority as civilized men and took possession of the landscape, much as white colonial travelers did in Australia, Africa, or the North American West.24 One did not even necessarily need to face dangers personally to master the terrain. Launis felt empowered and inspired by his sense of roughing it, even though he had in fact outsourced the thrills to his local native guide. Launis describes encountering the perilous rapids in gazing at them from the safety of the shoreline, while his hired Skolt guide took all the risk steering Launis’s craft onward (Fig. 4.2).25 Much like Lapland in general, Petsamo held the exotic attraction in Finnish eyes of vast spaces and untamed nature.26 But Petsamo, unlike  Lampén 1921, 9–28; Pälsi 1931, 9–25.  Pälsi 1931, 27–33, quotes from 28–29, 95. 24  Kennedy 2013; Lahti 2010, 349–374. 25  Launis 1922, 12–16. 26  On Finnish perceptions of Lapland, see Lehtola 1997. 22 23

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Fig. 4.2  It was also possible to transport your craft by rail pass the most perilous rapids on the Paats River. Photo by Sakari Pälsi, 1929, CC BY.  SUK1966: 65. Sakari Pälsi, Finnish Heritage Agency

Lapland as such, also had a more foreign feel to it. Travelers emphasized the potent scenery, teeming with game and fish. Olin, for example, repeatedly remarks on the abundance of fish, while Lampén and Launis frequently note the profusion not only of fish but of other wildlife as well. Pälsi witnessed “plenty of fresh air, beautiful scenery”. All depict the abundance of water—lakes, rivers, and the sea—flowing freely, exempt from human control. While some forms of wildlife, such as the fish, attracted the travelers, others, including the reindeer, mystified them; yet others simply frustrated them immensely, such as the ubiquitous mosquitoes that came in their thousands to buzz around one’s head. All in all, it was an invigorating transition: a test that made the travelers, in Pälsi’s words, feel “empowered … physically and mentally”.27 Settler colonial domains are usually seen not merely as wild places before being “tamed” by colonizers but as mostly empty before being  Quote from Pälsi 1931, 95.

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settled by them. According to Lampén, the Paats River was full of fish; except for isolated houses scattered across the vast land, however, few or no fishermen or anyone else lived on its banks. There was not even a single Sami to be found for tens of kilometers at a time, he claimed.28 Olin also writes of the emptiness of the land during his road survey operations, while drafting the line from the village of Petsamo toward that of Töllevi, north of Salmijärvi. Olin portrays the surroundings he was working in as “hopelessly deserted; not a sign of any living creature seen for weeks, with only the dreary howling of the wolves heard at night from a far distance”. Adding to the imagery of an untouched emptiness, of this virgin land, Olin notes how “at the base of the mountain lies [Lake] Maajärvi, on the banks of which hardly any man has ever fished”.29 In depicting Petsamo as an empty space, these travelers were employing a popular colonial trope to assert that the land was not used by its current residents and was thus available for civilized peoples looking to settle there. Empty lands could justifiably be taken; they had no rightful pre-existing owner. But, of course, the land was not actually empty. In addition to its numerous Skolt communities, by the time Launis and Lampén were on their journeys during the first summer of Finnish Petsamo in 1921, they confronted, in the latter’s words, a “flood” of traffic and what was practically a Finnish “pilgrimage”, destined for Petsamo. Lampén described a motley crew of Finnish families, prospectors, businessmen, and government agents on the move, blocking the arteries leading to the north, and employing a mix of automobiles, boats, wagons, and their own feet to reach it.30 Government-built travel huts also soon dotted the routes along the Paats River, offering places for the weary traveler to rest. These huts, built by the Finns, became focal points for trade and social exchange, drawing Sami and other locals to interact with the incoming travelers. One such place was the Fatherland Hut (Isänmaan kämppä) on the upper reaches of the Paats River. As Lampén wrote, the lodge teemed with men of diverse occupations and from all reaches of Finland. “This human mass was dense and impenetrable”.31 In colonial travel narratives, the act of travel itself becomes a vehicle through time. It means transcending the limits of the known world toward  Lampén 1921, 81.  Olin 1921, 36. 30  Lampén 1921, 58. 31  Lampén 1921, 71–72. 28 29

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the exotic, moving beyond the familiar, from a civilized to a more primitive realm. It is the powerful natural environment and the emptiness of the landscape that facilitate and mark the transition. As Launis put it, in Petsamo, the “environment transfers us back in time”.32 Pälsi could not agree more, in describing the Paats River route as “an old highway, used from primordial times”.33 Our four travelers perceived Petsamo as pre-­ modern, situated in an imagined past, when the land was empty and nature wild and challenging. Their narratives abound with traits common to colonial travel narratives around the globe.34 The landscapes, as Leila Koivunen has noted in reference to the British African travel experience, were often represented without their unique local features.35 Instead, the representations adhered to romanticized ideas and tropes, frequently reaffirming the writer’s—and readers’—expectations. This took place in Petsamo as well. If Petsamo was the colony of Finnish hopes and dreams, as attested in Pälsi’s words quoted at the beginning of this chapter, then that Finnish gaze romanticized the mountains, rivers, and lakes, the fish, the reindeer, and—perhaps more rarely—even the mosquitoes. It was through these imageries that the site could be objectified by the Finnish viewer. By the time Pälsi returned from Petsamo, the road Olin had helped build was nearly completed, changing both travel and representations. The Arctic Ocean Highway, as the route came to be known across Finland, brought Petsamo to modernity, or at least closer to it. The sense of emptiness was disrupted when the silence was broken by the noise of automobiles. The road insulated travelers from the environment. They could still marvel at mountains and rivers, capture them with their paintbrushes or cameras, but without having to engage head-on, spilling sweat and possibly blood in the process. Then again, the highway also bypassed this splendid nature. The new road, as Pälsi writes, “is good as a road, even unbeatable as a highway, being the only one in the world to reach the Arctic Ocean. But it is terribly ugly. It bypasses all the rivers, rapids, lakes, and other spectacular points in the landscape”. Pälsi feels that by taking the new highway travelers get no idea of the magnificence of Petsamo’s

 Launis 1922, 21.  Pälsi 1931, 95. 34  See Kennedy 2013; Youngs 1994; Reimann-Dawe 2016, 99–116. 35  Koivunen 2008, 209. 32 33

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nature. They get no proper sense of the wonderful place the Finns were colonizing.36

Ethnic Spaces Escaping hunger and in search of a better livelihood, Finnish settlers, known as Ruijan suomalaiset, or Kvens, had penetrated the Arctic coastline of northern Norway already since the 1700s. Others had ventured to Petsamo from the mid-1800s onward, bringing their cattle and their farming cultures. They had settled amid the Skolt. Russians and Karelians had also settled in Petsamo, leading to a multicultural and multilingual society. By 1920, Petsamo was dotted with ethnic enclaves; trade and personal connections crossed ethnic lines. During the following two decades, a more or less syncretic world of multiethnic coexistence gradually gave way to replacement and assimilation. Finnish settlers brought their own judicial system and land ownership regime, their healthcare, their schools, and their Lutheran faith; Russians and Skolts were usually Orthodox. In 1920, Lutherans represented a minority faith; by 1940, they had come to account for 75% of the Petsamo population. If they found room in the schools at all, children of other ethnic groups were forced to learn Finnish and conform to the Finnish culture.37 “The first idea that inevitably came to mind was the question of what had driven people to live here, such a harsh place, when the world had space elsewhere”. This is Matti Olin’s summing up of his first Petsamo experience in the village of Vaitolahti (Vaidaguba). Here, at the northernmost tip of Petsamo’s landmass at Kalastajasaarento, he encountered a treeless, wind-beaten landscape. The village “made a desolate impression on us”, he wrote. There was “a relentless wind nearly all year round”; “not a single tree” in sight, only a few scattered “grey houses” peopled by a mix of Norwegians, Finns, and Russians. The people were silent, hard, and withdrawn, made that way, according to Olin, by their unforgiving environment.38 Five years later, Armas Launis also noted the harsh environment, the wind, the treeless tundra, and the bleak-looking houses at Vaitolahti. However, he also observed how “clean and cosy” the houses  Pälsi 1931, 95–96.  Petsamo 1920–1944, 82–83, 114. On Petsamo’s population, see also Suomen tilastollinen vuosikirja, 42–43. 38  Olin 1921, 16–17. 36 37

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were on the inside, some arranged with “meticulous cleanliness and order”. He did find it both practical and peculiar that wells, barns, and domestic spaces were all under the same roof because the harsh winters kept people confined inside their houses for days. And it was almost too much of a “pursuit of cleanliness and homeliness that some homes had carpets even in the barn” where the cows were kept.39 While Olin’s description of Vaitolahti signified Petsamo as a land of forlorn settlements in the middle of nowhere, Launis indicates that civilization—cleanliness and order—had made inroads even at the furthest corners of Petsamo, albeit in somewhat peculiar fashion, such as carpets in the barn. It is worth noting that all four travel writers paid attention to the multiethnic demographic makeup of the settlements. Throughout his narrative, Olin lists the number of houses and marks the ethnic majorities of the different villages. Russian and Karelian settlements were concentrated on the banks of the Petsamo fjord, while more Finns were found up north at Kalastajasaarento (especially at Vaitolahti) and around Salmijärvi, on the lower Paats River. In Olin’s account, Trifona village (Trifonoff-Rutshei), on the fjord, had fifteen small houses, mostly occupied by Karelians and Sami, while “Iivananmutka” (Porovaara, Olenja gora), on the other side of the fjord, had ten houses and an exclusively Karelian populace. Further inland, Olin wrote, was Parkkina village (Barkino) and its thirty houses, occupied mostly by Russians and to a lesser extent Karelians (Fig. 4.3).40 In listing the small settlements and their ethnicities, Olin was paying attention to the ethnic character of the residents, but he did not resort to the same type of racialization as the other travelers. The depiction Launis gave of his Skolt guide, who led him down the Paats River, reveals tellingly how Finnish travelers othered non-Finns, especially the Sami, as lesser humans. Launis summed up his Skolt guide as a “man of the wilderness”, an “incurable reindeer thief”, and “a child fond of trinkets”, thus creating a distance between himself, as a civilized man of education, rationality, and manners, and the barbaric, inferior racial Other. He presented this Skolt as a creature of nature: a man who would leap from rock to rock in swift rapids, foolhardily and impulsively risking his neck without much rational thought. The condescending Launis had much more to say, employing an array of discursive tools—tools common across the colonial theaters of the world—in othering this Skolt, a man whom he had actually depended on  Launis 1922, 57–60, quote 58.  Olin 1921, 25.

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Fig. 4.3  The village of Parkkina, Petsamo. Photo by Sakari Pälsi, 1929, CC BY. SUK317: 1. Sakari Pälsi, Finnish Heritage Agency

in getting through the rapids. In this process of othering, Launis more particularly referred to physical characteristics. Although he was “enduring and tireless”, this Skolt was “incapable of regular work” and “naturally lazy”, he wrote. Unable to work, the Skolt was also dressed in “all sorts of garments” a civilized person would never be seen in. Moving from the body to the character, Launis described this man as selfish and ungracious. Upon receiving a Red Cross clothing package, the Skolt did “not give thanks for the gifts he had received, but being used to such handouts wanted to know when the next shipment would arrive”. He was also, as was typical of savages, irresponsible and impulsive, Launis wrote. Upon receiving money from selling his small craft to Launis, the Skolt spent it on “a nice felt hat and silk scarf”, rather than, as Launis had assumed, buying food for his nearly starving family, who supposedly had endured the whole winter without bread. Thus, the Skolt did not have the common sense to provide for his own family, but was driven by impulse. To Launis, this was

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yet another indicator of the child-like, foolish, and reckless character of the Skolt man, as the Other.41 In his description, Launis resorted to typical colonial tropes used by white colonizers in differentiating themselves from indigenous peoples. Colonizers used the body and habits as markers of difference, creating discourses of natives as indolent and lazy creatures of nature. It was, for example, common in the North American mindset to claim that Native American men on the Great Plains and in the US Southwest were impulsive, irrational, child-like lazy loafers who did not work, and who in fact were racially wholly unsuited for work.42 Lampén did much the same. Observing one Sami couple who dressed like Finns and spoke fluent Finnish, he claimed he could recognize their true, inferior ethnic identity from the “different gleam in their eyes”. This couple, while acting like Finns, were not equal to Finns.43 Paying further attention to both bodily character and intellectual features as markers of difference, Lampén wrote at length of a Sami youngster he met and claimed was called Sammeli Morottaja. Sammeli’s bodily features, Lampén commented, were “pure, unmixed” Sami; he was gaunt, lean, bent, and small, and thus physically inferior to the Finn. But Sammeli could whistle the tunes of European songs, and even uttered a few words in Swedish and German. These Lampén identified as markers of a higher degree of civilization, and considered them out of place. Lampén, in his own words, “could not comprehend” that any Sami boy could be so “highly civilized”. Lampén described questioning Sammeli until the boy supposedly confessed he had been brought up in Germany. Sammeli, Lampén asserts, had lived as part of Carl Hagenbeck’s Völkerschau (ethnographic exhibition), or “zoos”, as Lampén dubbed them.44 The German Hagenbeck was famous across the world as an organizer of zoos and human exhibitions—for importing exotic animals and peoples for the entertainment of the European masses. He had brought Sami, with reindeer, to perform in Germany from the 1870s onward.45 Lampén, like many Finns, knew of this connection. However, as noted by the Sami scholar Veli-Pekka Lehtola, “Lampén’s story is amusing, but false”. While  Launis 1922, 8–18, quotes from 9, 11, 16, 18, 29.  For the colonial tropes used against Native Americans, see Littlefield and Knack 1996; Jacobs 2009; Lahti 2012. 43  Lampén 1921, 72. 44  Lampén 1921, 78–79. On ethnographic exhibitions, see also Koivunen in this volume. 45  Ames 2008, esp. 18–19; Thode-Aroa 1989; Kivekäs 2016. 41 42

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the presence of Sami individuals in German Völkerschau was true, Sammeli, according to Lehtola, had never been to Germany. Lehtola suggests that Lampén embedded the two—Sammeli and the Völkerschau—for narrative purposes, to embellish his travel account.46 Lampén may have written of Sammeli the way he did in an effort to attest to the racial superiority of Finns, as settlers taking over, as compared to the Sami, as natives being replaced. Perhaps he needed to confirm this racial hierarchy, which at the time was far from self-evident. Lampén was certainly aware that Finns were often seen in racial science, popular in many Western European countries, as less than fully white, as belonging to the Asiatic races.47 In these hierarchies, the Finns occupied a place below “proper” whites, like the Germans or Swedes, and were in fact close to the Sami. Thus, when Lampén rebuked Sammeli, who showed attributes signifying a higher degree of civilization, he interpreted these traits as an insult to Finnish superiority over the Sami. Lampén thus produced a narrative where the best the Sami could do was to mimic real whiteness. As Homi Bhabha writes, “colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite”. It is defined by ambivalence, the desire to see oneself in the Other, but it also signifies out-of-placeness and rejection, as the Other is not the same and equal.48 Lampén suggested that through his Völkerschau experience Sammeli had acquired some of the external traits of civilized peoples, but that he was unaware of their deeper meaning, context, or connotations: rather, he uttered them like a mocking bird, ignorant of what he was doing. While drawing attention to these civilized markers in Sammeli’s behavior, Lampén thus explains that Sammeli can act almost like “us”, but is actually nothing more than a deformed, repulsive imitation of true civilized people. The mimicking Sammeli is still very much the ethnic Other.

Replacement on the Settler Frontier Marking and creating difference, Lampén also contrasts the Finnish Salmijärvi (located on the Paats River) with the village of Petsamo (located on the fjord), with its strong Russian influence. Salmijärvi was a civilized  Lehtola 2009, 338.  See, for instance, Isaaksson & Jokisalo 2005; Kemiläinen 1998. 48  Bhabha 1984, 126. 46 47

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place, in Lampén eyes, because of its Finnish influence. It had the largest, most prosperous settlements, a restful inn, “an impressive school”, and border patrol barracks. The village also had a “Finnish feeling” and its residents included “pure-blooded” Finns. Lampén stressed his astonishment at “how truly Finnish the settlers” he encountered “were in their talk, vocabulary, and settler enterprises”. They know “all the Finnish proverbs, the decent and the less decent ones, know Martin Luther’s catechism, know the Bible as any Finnish man or woman should”.49 For Lampén there were two “settlement groups” in Petsamo; the Finnish-European one, located along the Paatsjoki and on Kalastajasaarento, and the Russian-Karelian one, inhabiting the area of the Petsamo fjord. Petsamo was thus a colonial world split in two, divided between the civilized Finns and the barbarous others. The former, he deemed, were progressive, rational, serious, and hard-working, “fully Finnish in race”. The latter were “Asiatic”: emotional, coarse, and simple, fond of food and drink, and hardly concerned about their souls. Once more Lampén assured his readers that the Finns were true whites, in contrast to Asiatic Russians and Karelians. Thinking of future settler colonization, Lampén did not champion the forceful conversion of Orthodox believers to Lutheranism, of turning Russians and Karelians into Finns. Quite the contrary, he advocated tolerance and coexistence, albeit with a twist of settler colonial replacement. Lampén firmly believed that the Karelians, who wanted to learn civilized ways, were naturally inclined and willing to learn Finnish in schools, and thus over time to voluntarily assimilate to the Finnish culture. As for the Russians, Lampén did not much care for them or find a place for them in the developing Petsamo: “No cultural influences reached Petsamo from Russia, just savagery”, he claimed. Indeed, he also wrote that the only fully Russian individuals in Petsamo were the monks at the old Petsamo monastery; there was no danger of their populating the land as they were not allowed to have families. Even if the monks did father illegitimate offspring, as occasionally happened, the children, Lampén assured his readers, would be raised by their mothers and would become Finns in language and custom. Russians would thus eventually vanish altogether from Petsamo.50 Sakari Pälsi, in just a few sentences, created similar epistemologies of otherness, expansion, and replacement, scripting a narrative of how  Lampén 1921, 106–107, 110.  Lampén 1921, 152–157, quotes from 152–153, 93.

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Finnish settler civilization was taking over Salmijärvi and thereby all of Petsamo. He described a process whereby, following the original prehistoric hunters, the Skolts arrived with “their villages [and] worshipping” of pagan gods. Then the “Finnish settlers discovered the rich fishing waters and bird-life of Salmijärvi, and ploughed its fields. With them new technologies were taking over in Salmijärvi, bringing a highway and prospectors, traffic and trade”. Pälsi was essentially narrating a straightforward story of progress, with Finnish colonization both representing modernity and working as its engine. Making certain his readers would realize the profound transformative impact of the Finns, he resorted to dynamic language, writing of “the frantic search for ore on the slopes of the mountain”, and of the bustle of Finns “coming and going, settling down, working hard” in creating a new and prosperous Salmijärvi.51 By 1930, Salmijärvi was by far the largest settlement in Petsamo, and it would continue to attract young Finns, drawn by the nearby nickel mines; thus by 1940, only 27% of the 1500 residents there had been born in Petsamo. Finnish settlers had taken over Salmijärvi.52 There can hardly be a clearer link drawn, associating Finnish colonization with improvement and civilization, than that created here by Pälsi. The Finns were an unstoppable, all-encompassing force that remade Petsamo. Their coming “harvests the forests, slices into the mountains and tames the waters”. The indigenous peoples, Pälsi asserts, were also “drawn into the vortex” of “this new lifestyle”, but only “if they can hold on to it”.53 And usually they could not hold on, or so the travelers suggested. Launis referred to the Skolts as “living relics”, a dying race “with Stone-­ Age habits”, who cannot survive when forced to share space with more civilized peoples. While of interest to scientists or artists, he considered the Skolts so far behind the Finns in development that they didn’t even realize their destiny was sealed. This was an “undeniable fact”, Launis claimed.54 Lampén concurred: the Skolts are “children of nature, untouched by civilization” and “in twenty years’ time Lapland has become fully Finnish, the Lapps [Sami] being assimilated and absorbed into the Finnish population”.55 Rather than calling for the wiping out of the Sami, these  Pälsi 1931, 52–53.  Onnela, ”Petsamon väestöhistoriaa,” in Onnela & Vahtola 1999, 108, 119. 53  Pälsi 1931, 53–54. 54  Launis 1922, 21, 24–25. 55  Lampén 1921, 72–73. 51 52

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travelers believed in natural disappearance and assimilation. Encountering many interethnic couples, they depicted these unions as a way of fueling Finnish hegemony and advancing the vanishing of the Sami, rather than seeing a danger of miscegenation. Take, for instance, the way in which Lampén resorts to stark dichotomies when describing his encounters with a local farming couple on the Paats River. Lampén is describing a marriage between a dominant Finnish woman in her prime, Anna Kaisa Sarre, married to a submissive “much older” Sami husband, Martti Sarre. Anna Kaisa is tall and lean, built “like a logger”. She is self-confident and assertive, the kind of person, Lampén thinks, who gets things done. Not only physically strong, Anna Kaisa is also “ladylike”, knowledgeable about local history, and an able storyteller and conversationalist. “What a wonderful person that Anna Kaisa was”, Lampén assures his readers of this embodiment of Finnish frontier womanhood. The husband, Martti—or “old man” as Lampén typically refers to him—was “made” humble and obedient by Anna Kaisa. The emasculated Martti was “like a Christmas elf”, a scrubby, gray-haired and black-­ eyed creature, deaf and dumb.56 Lampén sees in the Sarre couple a prime example of settler colonial replacement through intermarriage, the Finns taking over and the Sami making way. Bidding farewell to the couple, Lampén once more stresses the dynamics of replacement for his readers: Anna Kaisa stands as “a slightly self-conscious representative of a progressive, forward-looking nation”, that is, the Finns, while Martti is “a submissive member of a dying nation”, the Sami.57 Advocates of peaceful settler colonial replacement via assimilation and a “natural vanishing”, the travelers rejected violence. They even criticized the way some Finnish settlers treated the Skolts. Launis places part of the blame here on the Skolts’ supposed “tribal vice”, reindeer thievery, but also shows sympathy for their plight. He even compares the fate of the Skolts to that of other colonized peoples, who have had to step aside in the face of settler civilization: “The Skolts, much like the American Indians, have been pushed out of their vast ancient lands into ever tighter spots. The Finns who moved in were capable people, and their abilities and actions had elevated them to a position of wealth and standing in this game-rich country… [yet] It is not pleasant how these settlers, especially  Lampén 1921, 89–105, quotes 89, 91, 94.  Lampén 1921, 105.

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in larger groups, treat the Skolts”. Launis thus recognizes racism in his fellow Finns, but not in himself. He harbors particular resentment against Finnish settlers originating from the Ostrobothnia region, viewing them as “haughty people” who “only flatter themselves”.58

Conclusion Olin ends his book describing his wife’s encounter with some ladies wearing hats of the latest fashion in Rovaniemi, the Finnish commercial center several hundred miles south of Petsamo in Lapland. “Then I also realized that this was true, we were no longer in Petsamo. There was never a question of new hats there; now we were back in the civilized world and Petsamo lived only in our memories”.59 A decade later, Pälsi wrote something similar. Back in Sodankylä, Lapland, he felt good about being back in civilization, in Finland proper. In Petsamo, “out there far away we had witnessed something special and interesting, but also strange and exotic”.60 Petsamo had signified a journey beyond the bounds of civilization, into the wilderness, where the settler frontier remained active and dynamic, an ongoing process that was changing Petsamo, replacing the old with the Finnish. These authors had measured the present and imagined the future through Finnish settler colonial eyes. They had compared, contrasted, and appraised Petsamo’s landscapes and peoples, constructing a difference between what came before and the new reality: between, in their view, an uncivilized multiethnic past and a civilized Finnish future. In colonial texts, a settler invasion was often made to appear not merely beneficial to the place being invaded, but as natural, even predestined. Part of the process of making Petsamo Finnish were claims that this connection was somehow self-evident or preordained, as if meant to be by some higher force. Finnish civilization simply took over Petsamo, and non-Finnish residents there could cope the best they could, if they could. Some might assimilate, others would vanish. In reality, of course, there was nothing organic or fated about this in multiethnic borderlands like Petsamo. In the preface to his book, written in 1921, Olin acknowledges that much, saying that when he entered the area in 1916 “nobody knew

 Launis 1922, 24, 29.  Olin 1921, 98. 60  Pälsi 1931, 101. 58 59

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that Petsamo would be part of Finland”.61 History has shown that Finnish settler colonialism turned out to be just a short phase in Petsamo’s history. Based on these four travelers’ narratives, it represented an energetic vision of a permanent Finnish settlement and replacement, making the conquered land one’s own. But it would last a little more than two decades. With Russian settler colonization taking over and remaking Petsamo once again during the Cold War, there are no Finnish settlers left in Petsamo.

References Ames, Eric. 2008. Carl Hagenbeck’s Empire of Entertainments. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Belich, James. 2011. Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bhabha, Homi. 1984. Of Mimicry and Man. October 28. Cavanagh, Edward, and Lorenzo Veracini, eds. 2017. The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism. New York: Routledge. Edwards, Justin D., and Rune Graulund, eds. 2011. Postcolonial Travel Writing: Critical Explorations. London: Palgrave. Fujikane, Candace, and Jonathan Y. Okamura, eds. 2008. Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawai’i. Honolulu: Hawai’i University Press. Hautala-Hirvioja, Tuija. 2016. Petsamo  – miehinen ja karu Eldorado. Tahiti 1/2016. http://tahiti.fi/01-­2016/tieteelliset-­artikkelit/ petsamo-­%E2%80%93-­miehinen-­ja-­karu-­eldorado/. Hulme, Peter, and Tim Youngs, eds. 2002. The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Isaaksson, Pekka, and Jouko Jokisalo. 2005. Kallonmittaajia ja skinejä. Rasismin aatehistoriaa. Helsinki: Like. Jacobs, Margaret D. 2009. White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880–1940. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kemiläinen, Aira. 1998. Finns in the Shadow of the “Aryans.” Race Theories and Racism. Jyväskylä: Finnish Historical Society. Kennedy, Dane. 2005. The Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 2013. The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

 Olin 1921, 5.

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Kivekäs, Juha. 2016. Lapista Saksaan: Lappilaiset näytillä Saksassa 1800 ja 1900-lukujen vaihteessa. Helsinki: Books on Demand. Koivunen, Leila. 2008. Visualizing Africa in Nineteenth-Century British Travel Accounts. New York: Routledge. Kuokkanen, Rauna. 2017. Syntymäpäivälahja Suomelle. Politiikasta–verkkolehti, October 12. https://politiikasta.fi/syntymapaivalahja-­suomelle/. ———. 2020. Pohjoismainen Asuttajakolonialismi ja vuoden 2017 Tenosopimus. Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 118: 4. Lähteenmäki, Maria. 2017. Jälkiä lumessa: arktisen Suomen pitkä historia. Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kanslia. Lahti, Janne. 2010. Journey to the ‘Outside’: The U.S. Army on the Road to the Southwest. New Mexico Historical Review 85 (4). ———. 2012. Cultural Construction of Empire: The US Army in Arizona and New Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ———. 2017. What is Settler Colonialism and What it has to do with the American West? Journal of the West 56 (4). Lahti, Janne, and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, eds. 2020. Cinematic Settlers: The Settler Colonial World in Film. New York: Routledge. Lampén, Ernst. 1921. Jäämeren hengessä. Jyväskylä: Gummerus. Launis, Armas. 1922. Kaipaukseni maa, Lapinkävijän matkamuistoja. Jyväskylä: Gummerus. Lehtola, Veli-Pekka. 1997. Rajamaan identiteetti: Lappilaisuuden rakentuminen 1920- ja 1930-luvun kirjallisuudessa. Helsinki: SKS. ———. 2009. Lappalaiskaravaanit harhateillä, kulttuurilähettiläät kiertueella? Saamelaiset Euroopan näyttämöillä ja eläintarhoissa. Faravid 33. ———. 2012. Saamelaiset suomalaiset: kohtaamisia 1896–1953. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. ———. 2015. Sámi Histories, Colonialism, and Finland. Arctic Anthropology 52 (2). Littlefield, Alice, and Martha C. Knack. 1996. Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Magga, Anne-Maria. 2018. Ounastunturin Terrori ja Uudisasutus Enontekiöllä: Saamelainen Poronhoito Suomalaisen Asuttajakolonialismin Aikakaudella. Politiikka 60 (3). Manninen, Ohto. 1980. Suur-Suomen ääriviivat. Helsinki: Kirjayhtymä. Metsola, Mirja, and Jukka Relas. 2017. Sakari Pälsi-elämä ja työt. Helsinki: Into. Mills, Sara. 1991. Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism. New York: Routledge. Näre, Sari, and Jenni Kirves, eds. 2014. Luvattu maa: Suur-Suomen unelma ja unohdus. Helsinki: Johnny Kniga. Nyyssönen, Jukka. 2013. “Sami Counter-Narratives of Colonial Finland: Articulation, Reception, and the Boundaries of the Politically Possible.” Acta Borealia 30 (1).

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Olin, Matti. 1921. Petsamon muistoja, sekä kuvia niiltä mailta. Helsinki: Otava. Onnela, Samuli, and Jouko Vahtola, eds. 1999. Turjanmeren maa: Petsamon historia 1920–1944. Rovaniemi: Petsamo-seura. Paasilinna, Erno. 1984. Kaukana maailmasta: Historiaa ja muistoja Petsamosta. Helsinki: Otava. Pälsi, Sakari. 1919. Pohjankävijän päiväkirjasta: matkakuvauksia Beringiltä, Anadyriltä ja Kamtshatkasta. Helsinki: Otava. ———. 1927. Suuri, kaunis ja ruma maa: kuvia ja kuvauksia Kanadan-matkalta. Helsinki: Otava. ———. 1931. Petsamoon kuin ulkomaille. Helsinki: Otava. Petsamo 1920–1944: Suomi Jäämeren rannalla. 2018. Espoo: The Regional Museum of Lapland. Pratt, Mary Louise. 2007. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Reimann-Dawe, Tracey. 2016. Time and the Other in Nineteenth-Century German Travel Writing on Africa. Transfers 6 (3). Roselius, Aapo, and Oula Silvennoinen. 2019. Villi itä: Suomen Heimosodat ja Itä-­ Euroopan murros, 1918–1921. Helsinki: Tammi. Stanley, Henry. 1885. Kongo, uusi vapaavaltio mustien maanosassa. Porvoo: WSOY. Suomen Tilastollinen Vuosikirja (Statistical Yearbook of Finland), 1940, 1941. Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino. Thode-Aroa, Hilke. 1989. Für fünfzig Pfennig un die Welt: Die Hagenbeckschen Völkerschauen. Frankfurt: Campus. Uchida, Jun. 2014. Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876–1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Veracini, Lorenzo. 2010. Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. New York: Palgrave. Wolfe, Patrick. 2006. Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native. Journal of Genocide Research 8 (4). Wrobel, David. 2013. Global West, American Frontier: Travel, Empire, and Exceptionalism from Manifest Destiny to the Great Depression. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Youngs, Tim. 1994. Travellers in Africa: British Travelogues, 1850–1900. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Zu Lu, Sidney. 2019. The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and the Trans-Pacific Migration, 1868–1961. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 5

Nation-Building and Colonialism: The Early Skolt Sami Research of Väinö Tanner Jukka Nyyssönen

Introduction After Finland gained independence in 1917, Finnish aspirations of eastern expansion were fulfilled when the Pechenga region, in Finnish Petsamo, was annexed to Finland in the Tartu Peace Treaty of 1920. As a result, Finland hosted a “new” minority, the Skolt Sami, an Eastern Sami group. The Skolt way of life was based on a mixed economy, combining small-­ scale reindeer herding and fishing. Due to subsequent encroachments on Skolt Sami fishing rights and the introduction of industry and modern infrastructure, their traditional sources of subsistence were in crisis, and as one option the Skolt Sami began increasingly to enter modern forms of economic activity. This aroused the interest of numerous scholars in the

J. Nyyssönen (*) High North Department, Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, Tromsø, Norway University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway, The Arctic University Museum of Norway, Tromsø, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_5

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human sciences, inspired by evolutionist ideas; a Sami culture in its “most original stage” was about to vanish.1 The Geologist Väinö Tanner (1881–1948) was among the many scholars who had already made extensive field trips to Eastern Sami areas while Finland was still a Grand Duchy of Russia (1809–1917). In 1929 Tanner published the work which forms the main focus of this chapter: an extensive study in human geography, entitled Antropogeografiska studier inom Petsamo-området: 1, Skoltlapparna (Studies in the human geography of the Petsamo district: 1, The Skolt Lapps). The study covered numerous aspects of the economic and social adaptations of the Skolt Sami. Tanner was aiming at an “understanding” and respectful approach, and he enjoys the reputation of a culturally sensitive scholar: one who tried to see the Skolt Sami culture from within and who wrote against the most intrusive discourses of his time.2 There are, however, indications that the relationship between Tanner and the Sami was more complicated than has previously been assumed. Here I examine his scholarly work on the Skolt Sami in the light of recent theorizing on colonial knowledge production. This approach reveals certain aspects of his relation to the object of study that, I claim, can be labeled as colonialist. The analysis reveals his hierarchization of the study object; it also displays the interplay of contexts and sources of discourses, national or colonial, which caused him to write about the Skolt Sami the way he did. The term “colonial science”, which has many disciplinary branches and functions, here refers to scholarly production directly or indirectly contributing to, justifying, and/or participating in colonial efforts and empire-­ building. Colonial science has been stereotypically portrayed as derivative, instrumentalist, and extractive and has been criticized as an instrument of imperial control, rather than as a key to the development of the target societies. Colonial science has often had the utilitarian, mercantilist goal of charting the availability of profitable raw materials.3 To achieve these goals a number of discursive means were employed, “othering” or even dehumanizing the colonized subjects. The colonial discourses thus articulated in knowledge production included the inability of the indigenous population to govern themselves, or the resources found in the lands to be colonized. These scholarly works aired a need to improve or displace the  Harlin and Lehtola 2019, 45–49.  Susiluoto 2000, 14–15. 3  Cañizares-Esguerra 2005, electronic material, accessed 13.11.2012; Said 1995, passim; Wu 2019, passim. 1 2

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indigenous population, based on the naturalized superiority of the ­colonizing power and on the goal of utilizing resources.4 In addition, geographers were quick to take on board the discourses of social evolution, and subsequent racial ideas and discourses, on the basis of which they constructed hierarchies supporting nations and empires.5 Seen as a whole, all the science of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was (framed by the) colonial: for historical subjects, scholars included, the imperial was the subjective, or, for many, the native category. In the age of empire, it was the dominant mode of fathoming contacts between peoples near and far. In colonial science, however, the national and the global were closely intermingled. The aims of nation-building could end up building colonial hierarchies, by echoing those constructed on a global scale in the empires. And it was scientists who—not alone, but to a significant extent—introduced global/imperial discourses within the national (e.g. Finnish) frame, and created cross-border systems of understanding colonial rule by means of knowledge circulation.6 As a decidedly noncolonial nation,7 Finland is a good example of the intermingling of the two categories, the involvement of colonial discourses in knowledge production, framed by national goal settings. My purpose here is to not merely to label Tanner as a colonialist scholar, but to study him critically, to determine whether some aspects of his knowledge production qualify as colonial. I claim no full explanatory power for the term “colonial” in explaining an activity of such complexity as scholarly knowledge production, with all its social and ideological connections. What I do claim, however, that this same complexity, with its multiple contexts, social dependencies, and impulses (including colonial ones), had an impact on Finnish knowledge production. The historical and geographical context of the article is the period during which Petsamo, located in the border regions of Finland, Norway, and Russia on the coast of the Arctic Sea, was a Finnish province (1920–1921) and municipality (1921–1944). During this era, the extractive aspects of Finnish scientific knowledge production (especially mineralogy) became blatant. Here I address three interrelated questions: (1) in what manner did Tanner encounter and treat the Skolt Sami in the course of his research?  Dale 2009, 79 et passim; Danielsson 2009, 64–66.  Wu 2019, 68; Nyyssönen 2017, passim. 6  Adelman 2019, 3, 9. 7  For example, Airaksinen 2008, passim. 4 5

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(2) What were his views as to colonial policies and the colonization of Petsamo? And (3) were the discourses that gave rise to or inspired his research colonial and metropolitan, or just national?8 The sources, consisting of relevant published texts, manuscripts of the 1929 publication and some correspondence,9 are read qualitatively and discursively, in search of discursive similarities to colonial science/knowledge production10 and of influential contexts and discourses. The conceptual frame involves studying Tanner’s scholarly production in the light of colonialism as a discursive undertaking: reading scholarly texts as attempts to construct a moral superiority and a socio-cultural difference. The focus of study is on the naturalizing and objectifying grids through which Tanner observed and hierarchized the Skolt Sami.11 The chapter is organized chronologically, I first briefly introduce Tanner and his early career, after which I discuss his activities in Petsamo and his scholarly production concerning the region and the Skolt Sami. I conclude with a discussion of Tanner’s response to Finnish perception of the colonization of Petsamo.

Tanner’s Early Career and His First Field Trips Väinö Tanner (1881–1948) was born in Hämeenlinna to a family belonging to the Swedish-speaking middle class.12 In 1905 he graduated from the Polytechnic, with a diploma in chemical engineering. In 1914 he defended a doctoral thesis on quaternary geology at the Imperial Alexander University in Finland (from 1919 the University of Helsinki). During his early career, through his involvement in the Geological Commission of Finland, he took part almost annually, from 1903 to 1913, in geological expeditions to Lapland. In 1909 he visited the Skolt Sami regions Njuõ’ttjäy’rr13 (Finnish Nuortijärvi) and Suõ’nn’jel (Finnish Suonikylä).  Compare Adelman 2019, 10.  Tanners personal archives are located at the Arctic University Museum of Norway, in Tromsø. 10  Compare Lehtola 2015, 22–36. 11  Cooper and Stoler 1997, 3–4; Thomas 1994, 38–40. 12  Lundqvist 1968, 143–144. 13  I write the Skolt Sami sijdd toponyms in the most recent orthography of the Skolt Sami language, and provide a Finnish translation. Toponyms are otherwise written in the language of each respective country. Where possible, I use ethnonyms indicating the sijdd-belongingness of the individual. On most occasions, this is not possible, since they are not explicated in the sources. 8 9

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He taught and did research at the Geological Commission, the Polytechnic, and the Imperial Alexander University.14 During the years of 1918–1921, Tanner served at the Finnish Ministry of Foreign affairs, whence he was recruited to the Geological Commission. From 1921 to 1930, he served as State Geologist.15 Tanner was appointed professor of Geography at the University of Helsinki in 1931. During the rest of his career he did not return extensively to Sami topics. Tanner is best known for his geological studies but also for his extensive work on Labrador.16 He took voluntary exile to Sweden in 1944; as a Swedish-speaking Finnish scholar, he experienced conflicts with the Finnish-speaking staff and with pro-Finnish policies at the University during the language disputes in Finland. Tanner was known for his anti-“True Finn” political stance.17 Tanner became closely acquainted with the Sami regions in Sweden and Norway due to his involvement in the international Commissions working on the reindeer herding crisis in Torne Lappmark, in the northernmost part of the province of Norrbotten (chairmanship in 1910–1912 and 1914–1917). The Commissions were meant to resolve the protracted impasse in the negotiations over the pasturing rights of the nomadic Sami from Sweden in the summer pastures in the Troms county in Norway. The Commissions produced reports focused chiefly on biological information as to the condition of the pastures in Norrbotten and Troms, and ended up suggesting the removal of groups of nomads to southern pastures; today this outcome is seen as a great failure, resulting in chaos in pasturing.18 The fieldwork was conducted according to the scientific standards of the time. The scientists and officials were guided by local Sami, who nevertheless appear only seldom in the sources, providing information as to choice of fodder and some social aspects of herding.19 The botanical and 14  CV, Box 18, Folder 10a, Private documents, Archive of Väinö Tanner (AVT), Archive of Arctic University Museum of Norway (AUMoN), Tromsø, Norway; Rantala 2008, 45–46. 15  CV, Box 18, Folder 10b, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway; Susiluoto 2000, 12. 16  Tanner 1944. 17  “Aitosuomalaiset” was an extreme right-wing patriotic political movement, which in its early phase, in the 1920s, focused on the ongoing language dispute, with the aim of suppressing the linguistic rights of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. The group was most visible at the University of Helsinki, Tanner’s place of work, where he did have to unwillingly conform to the demands of the Finnish nationalists. Jutikkala and Pirinen (1996) 2003, 414–415; Lundqvist 1968, 215–217. 18  Broderstad, Niemi and Sommerseth (eds.) 2007, passim. 19  Nyyssönen 2015a, 172–173 et passim.

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phenological fieldwork was carried out according to scientific principles; the use of the Latin names of plants, and the classification of vegetation into different categories in a scientific manner, served as a way of identifying oneself as a scientist. The reports estimated the carrying capacity of the pastures, based on the growth of lichen and other types of vegetation suitable for pasturing,20 and the area requirement per reindeer.21 The situation was in crisis and natural resources were in danger of being destroyed. Tanner became familiar with both aspects in relation to pastures: as a natural resource, as in colonial science, and as the context of Sami social organization. In his fieldwork, Tanner showed an inclination, on the one hand, toward sensitivity toward the Sami, especially as informants, on the other, toward colonial arrogance. The sources contain indications that Tanner, along with the Swedish and Finnish Commission members, reacted to and resisted Norwegian doubts as to the moral condition of the Sami; the Norwegians claimed that the Sami were unsuited to serve as informants due to their alleged bias.22 Tanner’s application for a “personal (Sami) assistant” in the final Commission expedition in 1914 was turned down.23 The hierarchies between the Sami and the scholars were also sustained by the use of titles, signifying the social standing of each participant and guide.24 Whether some aspects of this engagement qualify as colonial is debatable. The Swedish motivation for preserving the pastures in Sami usage was based on an economic rationale, but suggestions of a colonial power of definition can be perceived in the Commission’s work as well: the Swedish Sami, according to many scholars, became victims of a physical form of science-based “social engineering” in the forced removals that followed, even if it cannot be directly credited to the Commissions. Tanner supported the idea of cutting the number of reindeer and removing some Sami groups to “new” pastures. In spite of this enforced social engineering, in the course of his fieldwork, he recognized and stressed the  Minute, Vuoskoaivi, 13 August 1910, Box 1, Folder 1, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway.  Climatic factors causing a deterioration of pasture conditions were also discussed. Undated protocol, Box 1, Folder 1, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway. 22  Transcript, Instructions for the commission, 1913, Box 1, Folder 6, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway; Renbeteskommissionens af 1913 handlingar, I:1,13. 23  Correspondence from Kristian Nissen to Tanner, 20.2.1914, Box 17, Folder 9, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway. 24  Nyyssönen 2015a, 170–171. 20 21

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indigenous rationality of the Sami organization of herding, expressed in their social and even their political organization.25 The Commission showed a preference, typical of the time, for an intensive form of herding, based on strict control of the herds, and considered more “original”. The shift observed toward extensive, less stringent herding, however, was explained differently: Tanner and the Commission listened to their Sami informants and blamed external factors, including the border closure of 1889 between Finland and Sweden, increased settlement in the summer pasture areas, restrictions on pasture access, and the unruly, large Kautokeino stocks causing chaos in pastures in Troms and Norrbotten.26 Explanations by Swedish officials, in contrast, were based on near-­ racializing characterizations of the mental attributes of the Sami: the “good” way of herding was in a process of “degeneration” due to Sami laziness and carelessness.27 In the end, the Commission members had the final say on the matter, which was resolved on the basis of scientific knowledge concerning pasture resilience and productivity; this resonated well with the Sami informants who were hoping for a reduction in the number of reindeer as well.28 This was the Sami voice allowed to surface in the reports. Tanner effortlessly embraced the role of an expert on Sami issues, a stance which he continued to lay claim to in his future research, and which affected the way the Skolt Sami were positioned and hierarchized in his studies.29

Summers in Petsamo and the Main Work on the Skolt Sami The sijdd,30 the Skolt Sami word for “village”, was a demarcated administrative region, divided into kin and family areas; it maintained annual cycles of utilization and had ritual, judicial, and economic functions.31 In 1920 in Petsamo, three sijdds were annexed to Finland (see Fig. 5.1.). At  Nyyssönen 2015a, 174 et passim.  Renbeteskommissionens af 1913 handlingar, I:1, 184–185, 189–190 (see also footnote 3), 191–199, 205–209, 232, 241. 27  Lantto 2012, 101. 28  Nyyssönen 2015a, 179. 29  Nyyssönen 2015a, passim. 30  The more widely known north Sami variant of the term is siida. In his book, Tanner used the term sijt. Porsanger 2007, 109. 31  Enbuske 2008, 71ff; Tanhua 2020, 30. 25 26

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Fig. 5.1  Skolt Sami Sijdds before 1920. (Source: Nordregio, Cartographer Linus Rispling, https://nordregio.org/maps/saa′mijannam-the-communitylocation-of-the-skolt-sami-sijdds/)

the time the Skolt Sami were undergoing catastrophic difficulties, which had begun half a century earlier. Recent scholarship has attributed the subsistence and social crisis in the sijdds to external factors. For example, sedentary settlement of the Petsamo fjord had made fishing of the Peaccham (Petsamo) increasingly difficult. The demarcation of the national border cut off several sijdds from their resource zones: Peaccham from a summer pasture area, Suõ’nn’jel from their winter village, and Pačcǰ okk (Paatsjoki) from their coastal fisheries. Industrial forms of

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economic activity entered Peaccham and Pačcǰ okk.32 The crisis was accelerated during the Finnish era, with continuing encroachment on the remaining Skolt Sami subsistence rights. From early on, the state of Finland had high hopes concerning the establishment of fisheries and a fishing industry in the region. Summer fishing places and the exclusive fishing rights possessed by the Peaccham-Sami in Liinahamari were lost to the Finnish fishing industry and fisheries when the road reached the new harbor in 1930. The Peaccham-Sami received no compensation for the intrusion. Finnish fishing in the fjord, which extended over a longer period, reduced the salmon catch in the Petsamo River and the fjord, and the settlers began to herd their own reindeer stocks in the pastures belonging the sijdd. The Peaccham-Sami had to resort to occasional paid labor, for example, in the fish processing factories.33 In the 1920s, as this process, close to a land-grab, went on, Tanner visited Petsamo numerous times. Officially, he was in Petsamo because of the search for nickel ore, in his capacity as State Geologist for the Geological Commission. The quest came to a halt, to Tanner’s disappointment, when due to lack of state funds he had to recommend to the Geological Commission that prospecting be given over to an international actor.34 Here we see him in perhaps his clearest extractive-colonial moment. The nickel mine and refinery was established on the lands of the Pačcǰ okk sijdd, some years after Tanner’s work. As a byproduct of these expeditions, he issued several publications on Petsamo, including the classic 1929 study on the Skolt Sami. Antropogeografiska is a multidisciplinary study, with a theoretical frame in human geography. Tanner’s aim was to survey the people, their semi-­ nomadic adaptation, history, politics, viability and administration, along with the socio-economic crisis of the three Skolt Sami sijdds now belonging to Finland. The political agency of the Skolt Sami was constructed in a groundbreaking way with Tanner’s analysis of the Norráz/Sobbar, the organ responsible for the Skolt Sami sijdd administration, which allocated  Lehtola 2012, 166; Tanner 1929, 152–157.  Lehtola 2012, 170, 258–259. 34  PM. on Petsamo 1928, Box 3, Folder 1g, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway; in 1934, the English affiliate of International Nickel Company Ltd., The Mond Nickel Company received the concession to utilise the nickel in Petsamo. Vahtola 1999, 287. 32 33

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usage rights to fishing waters and lands to the families. This was one of the culturally most sensitive contributions for which Tanner is credited: a functionalist perception of the sijdd, as an entity of a people defined by kinship ties and by the terrain they utilized, and within which they allocated resource zones in an orderly manner.35 Tanner wrote decidedly against the Finnish public discourse on the Skolt Sami, which accused them of merely wandering aimlessly in the mountains and in general perceived their culture as less valuable. In addition, Tanner wrote against “Lappologist” research, which to a great extent was aimed at Finnish nation-building; it applied diffusionist hierarchies of culture, which showed the lower position of the Sami in socio-cultural hierarchies.36 One clear agenda of Tanner’s work was to reveal many Finnish policies in Petsamo to be inadequate and ill-advised. Due to this take on the Sami, the book enjoys a good reputation among scholars, to a great extent deserved. The book has a programmatic aim of presenting the Skolt Sami as they appeared to him: as “the most gifted, and in terms of their moral frame of mind … the most developed population element we met up there”; ravaged, however, by external conditions and thrown into poverty. The book’s aim was further elaborated, as being “to promote the happiness of a people of nature” by producing objective, factual knowledge of forces at the extreme north, and how to operate with these forces to the benefit of a “people of nature”.37 Among the forces impacting the North was modernity, which resulted in the immediate hierarchical positioning of the Skolt Sami, even in the very motivation of the book. The book contains an unresolved tension between, on the one hand, the idea of the inevitability of modernization, leading to the crisis and the loss of a traditional form of subsistence, on the other, Tanner’s “purist” view of the rightfulness of semi-nomadic reindeer herding as the original, most appropriate and “correct” form of herding. Tanner tried in earnest to understand the internal rationale of a folk living in interaction with their surroundings, as is evident from his meticulous depictions of the annual cycle of the sijdds. He did not refer to stereotypical descriptions of the Skolt Sami according to the majority of scholars and authors in the Finnish public sphere, as lazy, listless drunkards (see Chap. 4 by Lahti in this volume). He also avoided taking a position in  Susiluoto 2003, 82, 97; Tanner 1929, passim.  Nyyssönen 2015b, 151–153. 37  Susiluoto 2003, 98; Tanner 1929, 7–9. 35 36

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terms of contemporary racial categories: he does not use the terms “Aryan” or “Germanic”, but once refers to the “Nordic” race. He thus avoided the crudest forms of typification in the human sciences.38 In spite of this, in numerous passages in the book Tanner relied on hierarchizing discourses. He relied uncritically on local Norwegian officials, such as teachers, ending up echoing their aggressive Social Evolutionist views of the Njauddam Sami (Näätämö, a Skolt Sami sijdd in easternmost Norway). Typically of the time, he blamed the Skolts for their “wrong” subsistence choices, aired doubts as to their capacity for paid employment,39 and predicted the “natural death” of the Pačcǰ okk sijdd after witnessing their “apathy” in a time of crisis.40 In these passages, the scholarly discourses of evolutionary identity, caught up in the framework of progressive developmental stages, are aggressively audible in the text.41 The Skolt Sami are in a liminal state: authentic children of nature, paralyzed in passivity and incompetence and bypassed by modern times, which they have to be helped to enter. At the time this was a very typical, indeed colonial view of a “primitive” people.42 It is in these aggressive and racializing ruptures that colonial discourses show their force. The book is burdened with inconclusive vacillation between, on the one hand, the idea of the innate capacities of the Skolt, on the other, that of the external forces affecting them. Tanner is inconsistent in pointing the blame, for example, in encountering people showing symptoms of cultural trauma or colonization. Tanner’s perception of history was framed by social evolutionism, locating different nationalities along an evolutionary scale. He also applied this hierarchizing evolutionist perspective to historical encounters along the Arctic coast, which he depicted as taking place between the Skolt Sami, who had arrived earlier, and the more powerful Norse and Finnish population groups.43 Somewhat inconsistently, he entertained ideas of the simultaneous coexistence of overlapping cultural spheres, not necessarily engaged in mutual conflict or competition.44 In contrast, for Professor Väinö Voionmaa, one of the few historians to show an interest in the  Thomas 1994, 97.  Tanner 1929, 155. 40  Tanner 1929, 157–159. 41  Helander-Renvall 2011, 8–9. 42  Compare Mathiesen 2004, 24. 43  Tanner 1929, 11–22. 44  Manuscript «Lapparna inom Petsamoområdet», Box 6, Folder 1a, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway. 38 39

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Petsamo question, the struggle was taking place between two unequal races.45 Tanner had ideas that place him in the colonial flank, as well as less aggressive ideas of ethnicities in history. The book was unfinished and hastily edited, and therefore contains numerous and sometimes contradictory opinions on a range of issues. Tanner does not use terms originating in a colonial discourse/terminology as such; they tend, rather, to be derived from the Nordic political context and terminology. When he uses such terms as “kolonist” or “kolonisation”, he attaches to them the sense of a cultural loss of the most authentic forms of subsistence, adding to them a hierarchical tone. In a brief remark on Russian “kolonisation” (from the 1870s onward), the tone is different: he refers to the active Russian policy of settling the peripheries, “dissociating” the original nationalities, and annexing the territories to the Russian “folk region”.46 Finnish settler activity in the eighteenth century in the Kemi Lappmark, and the “vanishing” of the old siidas after the shift to agriculture, was of lesser aggressive force. This perspective echoed the historical understanding typical of his time, but can also be seen as a sign of Tanner’s hidden agenda, pointing to the general weakness of the Finns as historical actors, as well as a reluctance to see the process in terms of the parameters of colonialism, which would have been ahistorical and anachronistic.47 Tanner credits the sijdds/siidas to a varying extent with socio-cultural and economic agency and a robustness in encountering actors from the south, but ultimately the forces of settlement, colonization, and modernization stand stronger. After the Skolt Sami had given up independent and systematic reindeer herding, Tanner observed a material and intellectual transformation. He also noted that the lure of trade and goods had revealed an “Epicurean weakness”, a proclivity typical of “children of nature”, among the Skolt Sami. The earlier paternalistic family structure had given way to a more individualistic approach—members had begun to tear themselves away from their families in search of subsistence elsewhere; this brought about a loosening of group sentiment within the sijdd, which then broke up under the strain of the “Europeanizing” form of culture invading the region from sea and land.48 As inevitably as in these socio-cultural  Voionmaa 1919, passim.  Tanner 1929, 62, footnote 1. 47  Tanner 1929, 403–404. 48  Tanner 1929, 230–232. 45 46

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hierarchies, the racial categories employed in the book place the Skolt Sami on the lowest rung in the stereotypical stages of development; notably, however, and unlike numerous other scholars, Tanner saw the Skolt Sami as a viable people, capable of development and adapting to the modern.49 The text contains numerous descriptions of the Sami “character”, and advice as to how the Sami could best maintain their “happiness”. Although Tanner did collect information from his Skolt Sami guides, and included Sami voices in his book (though in a controlled manner), he found satisfaction in a prescriptive position as well. He avoided the typical Finnish form of power of definition, which imposed the idea of a “higher” form of subsistence, primarily agriculture, on the Sami; what he was aiming at was a relativistic gaze, acknowledging the intrinsic value of the Sami culture as such. The tension arises from the power of definition inherent in the culturally relativistic and positive scholarly gaze as well, if and when one sets down a specific ideal, a particular “correct” subsistence form; in Tanner’s case, this meant semi-nomadism, which the Skolt Sami sijdds were then in the process of gradually abandoning.50 This gaze was purist and normative, and contained numerous colonial tropes, though in mild form. On a positive note, Tanner used reindeer and reindeer herding as a tool to endow the Sami with cultural potency and agency,51 and praised them for their successful adaptation to their environment.52 At the same time, Tanner’s conception of the Skolt Sami culture as a reindeer-herding culture, an idea contested by subsequent research,53 became a cultural straitjacket in the book and a source of vulnerability,54 binding the Sami unavoidably to the lowest position, both socio-­ economically and culturally. It can also be argued, from the book’s general anti-Finnish agenda (along with certain brief passages where Finnish settlers are compared unfavorably to the Sami), that Tanner used his book to convey a politics of identity; the passages where the Sami are elevated in status within the book’s hierarchies may in part have served the purpose of

 Tanner 1929, 329.  Undated notes on Albin Neander, Box 6, Folder 1a, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway. 51  Tanner 1929, 25–27. 52  Handwritten notes on Petsamo-Sami, Box 5, Folder 3, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway. 53  Nickul 1948, 60. 54  Tanner 1929, 27. 49 50

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showing the Finns their lowly place along the Arctic coast.55 The context of the identity politics expressed in the book is thus national, not colonial.

Tanner Explicates His View on Colonialism Tanner seldom expressed any views concerning colonialism. In 1927, in an article on the economic potential of Petsamo which has received perhaps the greatest scholarly attention, he presented the idea of the cultural integration of Petsamo as desirable and advocated for the introduction of agriculture as a means to prevent the feared pauperization. When it came to the actual colonization of the region, Tanner preferred not a “plunder economy”, but a mild, Finnish variant of colonization, whereby the Skolt Sami were to be treated as equals. Tanner uses the term “our ‘colonial policy’” only once, in the context of the need for the state to take an expert and guiding role in Petsamo. Otherwise the region is referred to in the text by its new name, Petsamo, or is described as a new part of the country, at the far fringe of the land (maanääri) or as a “Finland of the Arctic Ocean” (Jäämeren Suomi), pointing to the recent annexation and relative foreignness of the region, but not necessarily to a colonial relationship as such. The region to be annexed was part of the state.56 The lecture on which the 1927 article was based was addressed to a Finnish audience consisting of agricultural scientists; hence the agriculture-friendly stance. Rather than going into this widely studied article in depth, I take up a less familiar example from the 1929 book: a brief reference to the colonial dynamic of the Finnish annexation and of Petsamo as a colony. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was some reluctance in Finland over representing the country as a colonial power.57 One exception is a little-­ known article by Ilmari Laukkanen (1926), which Tanner had read; I use it here to identify the elements of the idea of Finland as a colonial power to which Tanner was reacting in the 1929 book. According to Laukkanen, Petsamo could be characterized as a colony (alusmaa), but did not fully qualify as one. This was because Petsamo had been annexed to the state as an equal territory: first as a province, then as a jurisdictional district (kihlakunta). What lent legitimacy to speaking of Petsamo as a colony, according to Laukkanen, was the educational level and nationality of the  Tanner 1929, 25–27.  Susiluoto 2000, 13; Tanner 1927, 6, 109 et passim. 57  Airaksinen 2008, passim; also Tanner himself is an example of this, Tanner 1927, 6. 55 56

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population, along with the prior societal, economic, religious, and administrative conditions of the region. There were many alien features, due to which a “sibling relationship” between Petsamo and rest of the country was “unnatural”, and which made for a colonial relationship between colony and “mother country” (emämaa). Laukkanen coded the region as non-western, evident, for example, in the vague and unclear legislation regulating land ownership. The fact that the land of the region was declared to be state (owned) land was represented as “conquest-like” attitude on the part of the Finnish state. The act was legal, in the sense that it had been carried out according to existing Finnish legislation; the forms of private land ownership were formalized and given to those who had the right to them, and land was leased to the settlers. A special Petsamo settlement law, regulating the land and its leasing, was enacted in 1925 (“naturalising” the situation in Finnish legal reasoning). One (unintended) aspect of cultural colonization is found in Laukkanen’s text as well: the “persevering” and “skilled” Finnish settlers were to serve as an example to the Orthodox population. For Laukkanen, the Skolt Sami did not fulfill the parameters of “Finnishness” due to their wandering way of life; hence, they did not qualify for inclusion in the state system. Laukkanen expressed suspicions as to whether the Skolt Sami wished or were capable of becoming sedentary farmers or fishermen, with rights identical to those enjoyed by Finns, and whether they would give up their preferred “forest-dweller freedom” (metsäläis-vapautensa), with its connotations of primitivism.58 Provoked by Laukkanen’s demeaning ideas of the Skolt Sami and of Finnish natural superiority, Tanner included a critical reference to the article. The passage, which once again draws in numerous directions, deals with the misery of the Pačcǰ okk Sami, opening with a long list of positive depictions of their ability to contribute in numerous areas of economic activity beneficial to society as a whole. Surprisingly, Tanner goes on to say that the Skolt Sami were so deep in misery that it would be highly risky to leave them to rely on their own resources, as suggested by Laukkanen. In addition to being provoked by Laukkanen’s doubts as to the personal capacity of the Pačcǰ okk Sami, Tanner appears to be most critical of the idea of uncontrolled sedentarization, which they were in the process of being sucked into, on their own, Skolt Sami initiative, which Laukkanen at

 Laukkanen 1926, 129–136.

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least implicitly had described as a desirable policy.59 In Tanner’s view, this was not a desirable solution for the Skolt Sami. Knowledge production in a colonial/imperial setting has been seen as meaning the creation of intelligible spaces, over which mastery was possible,60 and the introduction of European conceptions of territoriality at the periphery.61 Both Laukkanen and Tanner integrated Petsamo into Finnish administrative territoriality, Laukkanen in a highly formalist manner; both were constructing an extension of the mother country, the colonial features of which were somewhat defective. It was not the idea of Petsamo as a colony as such that bothered Tanner this time; it was his resistance to pronouncements expressing Finnish superiority that prevented him from adopting the most aggressive or arrogant colonial rhetoric. This would have demonstrated the imperial potency of the state he wrote against, and its capacity to bring the Skolt Sami into the modern era. While this stance on the poorly hidden contemporary agenda was what partly motivated his culturally sensitive take on the Skolt Sami, it had other roots as well; these included the friendly relationships he enjoyed in the field,62 and the turn in the scientific paradigm toward placing a value on indigenous sources of knowledge.63 For both men, however, the place of the Skolt Sami in the quasi-colonial setting was the same: the lowest. In 1931 Tanner attended an international geography congress in Paris; on the occasion, he took part in an expedition to Algeria. Tanner praised French colonial policies as economically and politically elevating, as well as promoting socio-cultural and national assimilation.64 His harsh criticism of the native tribes of Labrador adopted a similar, matter-of-fact manner.65 When not provoked by Finnish paternalist voices, such as that of Laukkanen, boasting of Finnish superiority, he aired effortlessly pro-­ colonial sentiments; it was the national context that was the provoking factor, while colonial discourses provided him with additional tools enabling him to locate the natives on the hierarchical ladder. In any case, the fixed position for the Skolt Sami was the lowest, which the destabilizing weakness of the (“colonizing”) potency of the Finns could not shake.  Tanner 1929, 159–161.  For example, Skurnik 2017, 9–10. 61  Wu 2019, 64. 62  Susiluoto 2000, passim. 63  For example, Lagerspetz and Suolinna 2014, 15–17, 52–53. 64  Tanner 1932, 35–36. 65  Tanner 1944. 59 60

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I have found only one indication, in a draft letter found in his correspondence, of Tanner airing and showing an awareness of the anti-­ imperialist attitudes of the times. In the draft, Tanner writes with reference to an unspecified text by Professor Friedrich Ratzel, a pioneer in the field of human geography, in which Ratzel speaks of the “killing race”, that destroys “nature folk” by barbarically colonizing them. Tanner lists the victims of this onslaught, specifically mentioning “[American] Indians, Tasmanians and the Eskimo”. Diseases are imported and new temptations are introduced to “children of nature”, at the same time that they are robbed of their resources and their socio-political structures. Some of these processes were visible in Petsamo too, but Tanner suggests there is no cause for despair (this is where the draft ends).66 Tanner was aware of contemporary anti-imperialist critique and logic; in the 1929 book, however, no such stance was adopted.

Conclusions Tanner acted in Petsamo in numerous capacities: as a state official in search of nickel ore, and as a self-proclaimed expert on the Sami. He asserted the typical colonialist presumption of (scholarly) authority, resulting in asymmetric and conflicting representations of the Skolt Sami. On the one hand, his 1929 book is among those sympathetic and relativistic colonial representations which were critical of the writer’s own society: Tanner was definitely critical of the state of Finland. On the other hand, he failed in his quest to produce a consistently sympathetic report on the Skolt Sami.67 He found this people in the midst of an accelerating process of change in their form of subsistence, something that intrigued Tanner and led him to write about them in various ways, implicitly dependent on international colonial discourses. The general tendency in the book is to be incapable of presenting the Skolt Sami as anything other than on the lowest developmental rung and weakest of the peoples struggling to survive and adapt. Tanner escapes full-blown colonialism only by crediting the Skolt Sami with aptitude to adapt, though only under his guidance. The subsistence crisis of the Skolt Sami and their apparent poverty led Tanner to describe a society at risk of disappearance, which had chosen the wrong path. The 66  Undated draft and an outline titled “Bidrag till Petsamo-områdets antropogeografi”, Box 18, Folder 6, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway. 67  Thomas 1994, 19, 26.

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“happy” life of the Sijdd-society was beginning to be a lost option; herding had adopted the “wrong” practices and the modernization occurring in the region appeared to him as threatening to the Skolt Sami. To be fair, Tanner cannot be accused of seeing only a cultural desert, a territory awaiting industrial utilization; he also recognized a landscape of meaning and function.68 This was the picture conveyed by his informants, and was another central point in the book he produced. The book was not merely an ill-advised or ignorant example of the colonial encounter.69 The 1929-­ piece took part in what the global knowledge regime was concerned about: discussions and debates on modernity,70 but the last-mentioned taints the book in a partially uncontrolled manner and results in numerous contradictions. Both contexts—the national and the imperial/colonial—carry a risk of reductionism. The relationship between scholarship and nationalism, industrialism and imperialism is sometimes presented as organic, whereby scientists saw themselves as serving the nation and its expanding empires. This image is true to some extent and is an apt description of some parts of the sciences in Finland as well. In the true imperial centers, the motives of scientists entering academia varied tremendously: sometimes they were openly hostile to the imperialist industrialism many thought they were meant to serve or to the conquest of different parts of the Empires.71 The motives of a scientist or scholar might originate from their personal values and include moral motivations and agendas connected both to nation-­ building and to a broader, personal world-view.72 As a Swedish-speaking Finn, Tanner is a good example of a scholar who was troubled by the Finnish nationalistic perspective in scholarship, which he found inappropriate to be advocated in his writings.73 The same goes for the idea of Finnish colonial superiority, which he could not align himself with. The national and colonial do intermingle in his book, but in a way that forced Tanner to downplay the colonial rhetoric. The 1929 book contains aspects of discursive colonialism—the construction of moral superiority and cultural difference are present, but the  Pyenson 1982, 27.  See, for example, Dathan 2012, passim. 70  Compare Adelman 2019, 2–7. 71  Bowler 1997, 189, 202; Skurnik 2017, 3–4. 72  Jalava, Kinnunen and Sulkunen 2013, 13. 73  Nyyssönen 2017, passim. 68 69

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level of symbolic violence is relatively low;74 residual signs of symbolic and discursive violence are observable in the rejection of indigenous rationales of adaptation, for example, in (according to Tanner) the key cultural marker, reindeer herding. The book does not contain explicit colonial framing or the crudest colonial characterizations of the natives, and Skolt Sami citizenship meant that the relationship could not be articulated purely as colonial, since the colonial subject was not formally subject to tutelage of any sort. The tools for hierarchizing, based on race and source of subsistence, were derived from the Social Evolutionist arsenal—which, to be sure, were also to be found in the discursive toolbox of actual settler colonies. The 1929 book lacks the most aggressive colonial discourses: the inevitable destruction of a people in a racial struggle, the displacement of a people due to the need for colonies and resources, the idea of natives as a threat to the rightful colonizer, or a regressive and degenerate people populating valuable resource areas.75 This relative mildness applies to most Finnish science concerning the Sami, where the disappearance of the Sami was inevitable and regrettable, but not something actually advocated. It is tenable to propose a totally new interpretation of Tanner as a colonial scholar, but mostly because of the large and inclusive capacity of the definition of the scientific colonialism, embracing both nationalist and evolutionist aspects. We find a man suggesting the forced re-location of reindeer-herding Sami southward from their villages of origin;76 operating on the naturalized scales and parameters of Eurocentric cultural hierarchies, and categorizing Sami handicrafts as “primitive”;77 leading the search for nickel ore, for mines that would soon destroy the traditional way of life of one Skolt Sami sijdd; contemplating French colonial policies in a positive light; and reporting condescendingly on the “degeneration” of native groups in Labrador. This would be as reductionist as to rely solely on the previously reigning interpretation of Tanner as a benign and sensitive scholar, who “understood” the Sami. He has both sides to him. At his finest, he managed to lift himself above the dominant colonial tendency of Nordic research, the discourse of the Sami as a dying and

 Compare Cooper and Stoler 1997, 3–4.  Danielsson 2009, 59–65; Thomas 1994, 44. 76  Manuscript «Talma byalag», Box 1, Folder 2b, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway. 77  Third version of the manuscript «Könkämä byalag», Box 1, Folder 2b, AVT, AUMoN, Tromsø, Norway. 74 75

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disappearing, inferior culture, by acknowledging the viability of Skolt Sami society. Epilogue  The fate of the Skolt Sami and that of Tanner’s 1929 book reveal some unexpected twists to be encountered in trying to apply colonial terminology to the Finnish case. It was the great powers of the time, Germany and the Soviet Union, declaring themselves as anti-imperialist at the time,78 whose war machinery made it impossible for the Skolt Sami to continue their form of subsistence in their traditional lands. After the Second World War, the Finnish scholarly community, out of necessity and an aversion toward the two dictatorial powers, launched an anti-imperial project of their own, meant to cleanse the human sciences of aggressive nationalism. In this project, specific readings of Tanner’s work were available; the long-term effect of the reception of the 1929 book was mostly positive, as sustaining a sense of knowledgeable people living close to nature and mastering their environment; an image that resonated well in the Finnish scholarly and literary public sphere after the war, and was repeated in numerous studies. The colonial scientist became emblematic of a prolonged and more sensitive anticolonial take on the Sami in Finnish scholarship, making the idea of a “colonial Finland” increasingly alien.

References Primary Sources

Manuscripts Archive of Väinö Tanner (AVT), Archive of the Arctic University Museum of Norway (AUMonN), Tromsø, Norway. Official publications Renbeteskommissionens af 1913 handlingar, I:1, 13.

Secondary Sources Adelman, Jeremy. 2019. Introduction: Social Science and Empire  – A Durable Tension. In Empire and the Social Sciences, Global Histories of Knowledge, ed. Jeremy Adelman, 1–14. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 78  This was one of the arguments in favour of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939. Rentola 1994, 139–145.

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Airaksinen, Tiina. 2008. Kiinalaisuus Suomessa. Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 106 (3): 241–254. Bowler, Peter J. 1997. Ympäristötieteiden historia. Trans. Kimmo Pietiläinen. Helsinki: Art House. Broderstad, Else Grete, Einar Niemi, and Ingrid Sommerseth, eds. 2007. Grenseoverskridende reindrift før og etter 1905. Tromsø: nr. 14 i Skriftserie for Senter samiske studier, Universitetet i Tromsø, Senter for samiske studier. Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. 2005, March. Iberian Colonial Science. Isis 96 (1): 64–70. Cooper, Frederick, and Ann Laura Stoler. 1997. Between Metropole and Colony, Rethinking a Research Agenda. In Tensions of Empire, Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, 1–56. Berkeley, London and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Dale, Richard. 2009. Reconfiguring White Ethnic Power in Colonial Africa: The German Community in Namibia, 1923–1950. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 7 (2): 75–94. Danielsson, Sarah K. 2009. Creating Genocidal Space: Geographers and the Discourse of Annihilation, 1880–1933. Space and Polity 13 (1): 55–68. Dathan, Wendy. 2012. The Reindeer Botanist: Alf Erling Porsild, 1901–1977. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Enbuske, Matti. 2008. Vanhan Lapin valtamailla, Asutus ja maankäyttö Kemin Lapin ja Enontekiön alueella 1500-luvulta 1900-luvun alkuun. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Harlin, Eeva-Kristiina, and Veli-Pekka Lehtola. 2019. Skolt Sámi Heritage, Toivo Immanuel Itkonen (1891–1968), and the Sámi Collections at the National Museum of Finland. Nordic Museology 27 (3): 45–60. Helander-Renvall, Elina. 2011. Paradigm Shift on Indigenous Research in the Arctic. In Histories from the North: Environments, Movements, and Narratives, ed. John P. Ziker and Florian Stammler, 281–292. Boise and Rovaniemi: Dept. of Anthropology, Boise State University and Arctic Centre, University of Lapland. Jalava, Marja, Tiina Kinnunen, and Irma Sulkunen. 2013. Johdanto, Kansallinen historiakulttuuri – näkökulmia yksiäänisyyden purkamiseen. In Kirjoitettu kansakunta, Sukupuoli, uskonto ja kansallinen historia 1900-luvun alkupuolen suomalaisessa tietokirjallisuudessa, ed. Marja Jalava, Tiina Kinnunen, and Irma Sulkunen, 7–30. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Jutikkala, Eino, and Kauko Pirinen. 2003. A History of Finland. 6th ed. Helsinki: WSOY. Lagerspetz, Olli, and Kirsti Suolinna. 2014. Edward Westermarck: Intellectual Networks, Philosophy and Social Anthropology. Helsinki: Commentationes Scientiarium Socialium 77, The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.

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Lantto, Patrik. 2012. Lappväsendet, Tillämpningen av svensk samepolitikk 1885–1971. Umeå: Miscellaneous publications no. 14, Publications from Vaartoe – Centre for Sami Research, Umeå University. Laukkanen, Ilmari. 1926. Petsamon asuttaminen. Maanmittaus 1 (3): 129–139. Lehtola, Veli-Pekka. 2012. Saamelaiset suomalaiset, kohtaamisia 1896—1953. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. ———. 2015. Sámi Histories, Colonialism, and Finland. Arctic Anthropology 52 (2): 22–36. Lundqvist, Gösta. 1968. Väinö Tanner: f. d. professor i geografi vid universitetet i Helsingfors: geolog hos Skånska Cement AB i Malmö. Stockholm: Levnadsteckningar över Kungl. Svenska Vetenskapsakademiens ledamöter 9, Nr. 150. Mathiesen, Stein R. 2004. Hegemonic Representations of Sámi Culture, From Narratives of Noble Savages to Discourses on Ecological Sámi. In Creating Diversities, Folklore, Religion and Politics of Heritage, ed. Anna-Leena Siikala, Barbro Klein, and Stein R.  Mathiesen, 17–30. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. Nickul, Karl. 1948. The Skolt Lapp Community Suenjelsijd During the Year 1938. Stockholm: Acta Lapponica V, Nordiska Museet, Hugo Gebers förlag. Nyyssönen, Jukka. 2015a. Väinö Tanner in the Field  – The Early Encounters Between a State Official and Sami Herders in the Field During the Reindeer Pasture Crisis in Torne Lappmark. In Transcultural Encounters, ed. Kari Alenius and Veli-Pekka Lehtola, 163–184. Rovaniemi: Studia Historica Septentrionalia 75. Pohjois-Suomen Historiallinen Yhdistys. ———. 2015b. Väinö Tanners uförutsedda karriär – från statsexpert till emigrerad professor. In Historiska och litteraturhistoriska studier 90, Årsbok för Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 135–170. ———. 2017. Väinö Tanner and the Discourse on Racial Difference. Arctic and North 7 (27): 127–146. Porsanger, Jelena. 2007. Bassejoga čáhci, Gáldut nuortasámiid eamioskkoldaga birra álgoálbmotmetodologiijaid olis. Karasjok: Davvi Girji. Pyenson, Lewis. 1982, March. Cultural Imperialism and Exact Sciences: German Expansion Overseas 1900–1930. History of Science 20 (1): 1–43. Rantala, Leif. 2008. Kuolaan, Venäjän vallan aikana Kuolan niemimaalla käyneet suomalaiset tiedemiehet ja heidän kirjoituksensa. Rovaniemi: Lapin yliopiston kasvatustieteellisiä raportteja 5, Leif Rantala ja Lapin yliopisto. Rentola, Kimmo. 1994. Kenen joukossa seisot? Suomalainen kommunismi ja sota 1937–1945. Helsinki: WSOY. Said, Edward W. 1995. Orientalism, Western Conceptions of the Orient. 4th impression, London: Penguin Books.

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Skurnik, Johanna. 2017. Making Geographies: The Circulation of British Geographical Knowledge of Australia, 1829–1863. Turku: Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, B 444. Susiluoto, Paulo. 2000. Suomen ajan ihmismaantiedettä Petsamossa. In Tanner, Väinö: Ihmismaantieteellisiä tutkimuksia Petsamon seudulta, 1 Kolttalappalaiset, ed. Paulo Susiluoto, 9–32. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. ———. 2003. Two Skolt Geographies of Petsamo During the 1920s and 1930s. In Encountering the North, Cultural Geography, International Relations and Northern Landscapes, ed. Frank Möller and Samu Pehkonen, 75–101. Aldershot: Ashgate. Tanhua, Sonja. 2020. Kolttasaamelainen kyläkokousjärjestelmä muutosten keskellä. Ennen ja nyt 19 (1): 29–49. Tanner, Väinö. 1927. Voidaanko Petsamon aluetta käyttää maan hyödyksi? Keinoja ja tarkoitusperiä. Fennia 49 (3): 1–122. ———. 1929. Antropogeografiska studier inom Petsamo-området 1, Skolt-­ lapparna. Fennia 49 (4): 1–520. ———. 1932. Den internationella geografkongressen i Paris 1931. Terra 44 (4): 30–38. ———. 1944. Outlines of the Geography, Life and Customs of Newfoundland-­ Labrador (the Eastern Part of the Labrador Peninsula). Helsinki: Societas geographica Fenniae. Thomas, Nicholas. 1994. Colonialism’s Culture, Anthropology, Travel and Government. Cambridge: Polity Press. Vahtola, Jouko. Kaivostoiminta Petsamossa. In Turjanmeren Maa, Petsamon historia 1920–1944, edisted by Jouko Vahtola and Samuli Onnela, 285–310. Rovaniemi: Petsamo-Seura, 1999. Voionmaa, Väinö. 1919. Suomi Jäämerellä. Helsinki: Edistysseurojen kustannusosakeyhtiö. Wu, Shellen. 2019. Geography and the Reshaping of the Modern Chinese Empire. In Empire and the Social Sciences, Global Histories of Knowledge, ed. Jeremy Adelman, 63–78. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

PART II

Colonial Encounters in Finland

CHAPTER 6

“Queensland Cannibals” Encountered in Finland (1886): Locally Rooted Visions of Exhibitions of Colonized People Leila Koivunen

Mysterious announcements appeared on the pages of daily newspapers in Helsinki in late June 1886. “Cannibals are coming!” they stated, without any further explanation.1 More information was received a couple of days later, when Robert A.  Cunningham, an impresario of Canadian origin, arrived in town with an exhibition group of three indigenous people—a woman, a man, and a boy—from northwest Australia. The troupe performed for a week in Helsinki and then for two days in Vyborg, before continuing to nearby St. Petersburg.

 See advertisements, Nya Pressen, Folkwännen, Hufvudstadsbladet, and Uusi Suometar, June 26, 1886. 1

L. Koivunen (*) Department of European and World History, University of Turku, Turku, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_6

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Itinerant artists, musicians, and circus groups were not an uncommon sight in the late-nineteenth-century Russian Grand Duchy of Finland,2 but the visit of the Australian troupe was something completely new. In addition to bringing individuals of indigenous Australian origin to the country for the first time,3 it exposed Finnish people to an exhibition genre, images, and conceptions closely connected to the Western colonial world. The brief visit of the group aroused general astonishment among exhibition visitors in Helsinki and Vyborg; the extraordinary show was widely discussed in  local newspapers, and articles were also reprinted in the press elsewhere in Finland. Information about the “cannibals” thus reached a wide Finnish audience. This exhibition, together with others of the same genre that followed a few years later,4 became an influential new means for Finns to encounter ideologies, imageries, and individuals closely associated with colonialism. The focus in this chapter is on that first exhibition of 1886 so as to illuminate some of the ways in which its content was made intelligible in a Finnish context. While living human beings had been brought to Europe from faraway countries since antiquity, more organized attempts to display them for a mass audience were connected to the late-nineteenth-century colonial quest. The phenomenon of live ethnographic exhibitions, also sometimes referred to as “exotic exhibitions” or “human zoos”,5 developed and matured in a pressure field between various forces. In addition to the deepening colonial involvement of European countries in Africa, Asia, and Oceania, and the need to legitimize and glorify these endeavors in the eyes of the home audience, the concept of the exhibition was affected by the evolving study of anthropology and race. As Volker Barth puts it, at these live ethnographic exhibitions, three different factors—popularization of knowledge, colonial indoctrination, and entertainment—went hand in hand.6 Displays of living colonized people soon became a massive business and a commonplace part of metropolitan entertainment. Exhibitions played a significant role in making abstract empires manifest and

 Hirn 1982, 1986, 2007; Halén 1986; Nevala 2011.  Leitzinger 2008, 294, 296. 4  These included Ashantis from West Africa, “Sinhalese” from Ceylon, and indigenous people of North America. 5  See Blanchard et al. 2011, 46. 6  Barth 2011, 189. See also Blanchard 2011, 184, 206, 213, 216, 220. 2 3

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imaginable and in turning the public opinion favorable to colonial maneuvers overseas.7 The exhibition business grew during the latter part of the nineteenth century, and displays of living people, whether recently colonized or soon to be so, became a standard part of world fairs, where they were witnessed by millions of westerners. They also became institutionalized in botanical gardens and zoos, such as Carl Hagenbeck’s Tierpark in Hamburg, which displayed exotic animals together with peoples brought from all over the world.8 Previous research has emphasized the development of a specific format for the profitable organization and transportation of live ethnographic exhibitions between ever-changing venues. In her study of the history of “Völkerschauen” in Germany, for instance, Anne Dreesbach suggests that each of the approximately 400 exhibitions arranged between the 1870s and the 1930s followed a tightly organized model. Certain generic and standardized patterns thus developed to select and recruit individuals, promote exhibitions, choose venues, and structure the performance.9 Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boëtsch, and Nanette Jacomijn Snoep go so far as to argue that ethnographic exhibitions became an international mechanism, or even a global system, which functioned similarly in various cities and towns around the world.10 While recognizing the existence of these generic structures and practices, the focus here is on an aspect that has received less attention: namely, the adaptability of ethnographic exhibitions to various cultural settings, especially in regions falling outside the strongest impact of colonialism. Ethnographic exhibitions took shape in a metropolitan context, and were primarily directed to the home-country inhabitants of empires. A show’s reputation was often built in large metropolitan cities, especially London, Paris, or Berlin; in order to reach larger paying audiences, however, they often toured widely within and between empires.11 In the course of their long journeys, performing troupes thus crossed multiple political, cultural, and linguistic borders. They traversed peripheral, sparsely populated regions and arrived in numerous smaller towns, such as Helsinki and  Qureshi 2011, 2; MacKenzie and McAleer 2015, 7, 13.  Ames 2009. 9  Dreesbach 2012, section “Völkerschauen” and the Display of the “Other”. 10  Blanchard et al. 2011, 20, 22. See also Lemaire et al. 2011, 292, 295, 298. 11  Qureshi 2011, 2. See also Lemaire et al. 2011, 292–297, 312. 7 8

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Vyborg, where they halted and performed before continuing toward their primary destinations. While live ethnographic exhibitions were designed to be transferable and repeatable, the very aspect of mobility involved an inevitable element of change. The visit of the Aboriginal groups in the two Finnish towns, as well as in many other places along the route, are revealing: they show how regional understandings of colonialism took shape and how local responses were affected by prevalent cultural and societal aspects.12 Rather than highlighting the sameness of displays and reactions, an analysis of colonial peripheries thus sheds light on the versatility, particularism, and even originality of responses to phenomena attached to colonialism. Cunningham’s troupe offers a case in point with regard to the global mobility inherent in the exhibition business. It was originally composed of nine Manbarra and Biyaygirri Aboriginals, whom Cunningham had taken to North America from two separate islands in the British colony of Queensland in 1883. Similar to many other contemporary examples, the process whereby the individuals became attached to the troupe is largely unknown; however, rumors about Cunningham as “man-hunter”, and stories about attempted escapes of the members of his group, were repeated—and denied—throughout the tour. The Aboriginals are known to have received a small payment for their work as performers.13 The group first became part of the touring circus of the legendary P. T. Barnum. Fascinated by the idea of displaying living exotic curiosities and creatures of all kinds, Barnum is known to have attempted to procure a “Fijian Cannibal Chief” already in the 1840s.14 As Raita Merivirta and Johanna Skurnik discuss elsewhere in this volume, the cannibal trope was also commonly attached to Australian Aboriginals as part of a well-­ established stereotype of savagery. By way of a contract with Cunningham, Barnum obtained a group of individuals that could be immediately presented to the audience as “cannibals”. The concept of “Queensland cannibals” was soon established by making use of popular descriptions and imagery found in earlier publications. In early 1884 Cunningham brought the group to London, and a European tour with the same concept followed. The group traveled through Belgium, Germany, and France to  Cf. to Filipová 2015, 2–4.  Poignant 2004, 14–15, 67–72. For the description of recruitment in the Finnish press, see “Kannibaler I Helsingfors,” Nya Pressen, June 30, 1886. 14  Poignant 2004, 83. 12 13

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Scandinavia and as far East as Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, and Constantinople, before returning to Britain by way of Austria and Italy. Roslyn Poignant, who has done detailed detective work in tracing the story of this particular troupe, suggests that it had visited approximately forty venues before arriving in Finland and performed in another ten towns afterward. These figures, however, may reveal only a fraction of the total.15 Vyborg, for instance, is not mentioned in the study. The worldwide tour lasted over four years, during which the original group of nine shrunk to three due to illnesses and deaths along the way. The remaining three—Billy, Jenny, and Little Toby, as they were known—were the ones also seen in Finland.16 Here I argue that the standardized and repetitive mode of presentation, with its inherent references to the colonial world order and assumed racial hierarchies, did not guarantee the identical and controlled transfer of an exhibition. Helsinki and Vyborg provide examples of small towns at the same time forming part of the Russian Empire, albeit located at its fringes, and situated within the sphere of influence of the Western colonial world. The concept of live ethnographic exhibitions had developed in the West, but troupes also visited Russia, especially St. Petersburg and Moscow.17 Ethnographic exhibitions were also arranged in Russia to demonstrate the potential of the newly acquired territories of the empire.18 The focus was on Central Asia; the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland did not take part in these events. It nevertheless hosted several exhibitions displaying colonized peoples of the Western empires. Obviously, the Finns were not exposed to the Western imperial ethos in the same way as those living in the main imperial centers and did not share the cultural knowledge and assumptions prevalent there. Some practical arrangements related to the exhibition were also different. For instance, unlike some other European venues,19 there were definitely no colonial soldiers present in the Finnish towns to ensure that the content of the show was in line with state colonial policy. In Finland, as in many other regions, an exhibition genre that had 15  According to a recent documentary film, Barnum’s circus alone visited approximately 130 towns in the United States and Canada. Sauvages, au coeur des zoos humaines (2018). 16  Their fate is uncertain. Poignant (2004, 186–188) suggest that Cunningham returned them to Queensland in 1888, while according to a French documentary film at least Jenny and Toby also died of tuberculosis. See Sauvages, au coeur des zoos humaines (2018). 17  This field is still understudied; see Lemaire et al. 2011, 292. See also Poignant 2004, 181–184. 18  Knight 2006; Kouteinikova 2020. 19  Barth 2011, 186, 194, 197.

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originated and developed in close connection with colonialism thus now encountered a different audience. Here I examine the ways in which the late-nineteenth-century Finnish cultural setting challenged the logic of live ethnographic exhibitions and the messages involved. By analyzing how the performance was made comprehensible to a Finnish audience, and how visitors described what they had witnessed, I show that the meaning of an exhibition was always locally embedded and thus subject to change and new interpretations. In theoretical terms, the analysis leans on recent studies highlighting the idea of knowledge formation as a dynamic process, whereby knowledge takes shape gradually as it moves between various places and actors. As emphasized by Christian Jacob, knowledge is never simply transferred from one place to another; it is always rooted in specific places, and in the cultures prevalent in those places. As it moves, knowledge encounters new, unexpected horizons of reception that can affect its form, meaning, and function. In Jacob’s words, there is “no transmission of knowledge without changes, loss, gain, new perspectives, mistakes, reappropriation, and anachronistic interpretations”.20 Roger Chartier has also reminded us of the significance of the intellectual and cultural environment at the receiving end: the act of reception is always active and creative.21 This resonates with classic studies of museum and exhibition reception, emphasizing the active and decisive role of individual visitors in determining the meanings of a display.22 My analysis builds on these considerations in order to make the obvious local influence visible, and to highlight the fact that a single exhibition resulted in a variety of responses. Nineteenth-century touring exhibitions were ephemeral events that were hoped to cause instant and strong sensations among visitors. As the organizers did not usually consider documenting these reactions, or for that matter their own work, of any particular significance, newspaper resources are especially valuable in shedding light on past exhibitions. Journalists played a key role in informing audiences about forthcoming shows, and describing them to those unable or unwilling to attend. The present discussion refers to occasional archival findings, but leans primarily on the rich press resources, from both Finnish- and Swedish-language newspapers. The material analyzed consists of advertisements and press  Jacob 2017, 96, see also 90–94.  Chartier 1984, 233–235. See also Gavroglu et al. 2008, 159–160. 22  See Kirchberg and Tröndle 2012. 20 21

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releases provided by exhibition organizers, exhibition reviews by journalists, and comments by readers.

The Exhibition Arrives: Pride in Being Entertained At the end of June 1886, the Nya Pressen newspaper informed its readers in Helsinki that after visiting numerous big cities, such as London, Cologne, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, the troupe of Australians had “now found its way as far as our northern Helsinki”.23 Promotional material of exhibitions typically included long listings of previous venues, and this information was often copied in local newspapers. These lists documented the history and international popularity of specific performing groups, and was intended to convince the ever-changing audiences of their merits. Mentioned last in the list, Helsinki also seemed to be linked with major Western metropolises, and was represented as an important place, attracting internationally famous performing groups. The visit of an unusual group was thus welcomed with a sense of pride at being part of a modern, global phenomenon. The exhibition was a way for a town to position itself among those privileged to be entertained and to express affiliation with the practices of the “civilized” world.24 In the late nineteenth century, alarming signals of the tightening political situation of the Grand Duchy within the Russian empire turned Finnish elites toward Western Europe. For example, Leo Mechelin, a Senator and leading defender of Finnish autonomy, published a treatise, entitled Précis du droit public du Grand-Duché de Finlande, in which he formulated and justified his views on Finland’s legal position and rights as regards Russia. After the first version in French in 1886—the same year as the Aboriginals visited Finland—the treatise was circulated in many European languages across the continent to disseminate information among Western countries and to appeal for support for the Finnish cause.25 Affiliation to the West was also expressed in other kinds of texts and cultural products, including exhibition reviews on the Aboriginal troupe. Even if Helsinki was rhetorically linked to Western metropolitan centers, 23  “Kannibaler i Helsingfors,” Nya Pressen, June 30, 1886. See also “Kannibalit tulewat,” Kotkan Sanomat, June 30, 1886. 24  Similar comments were heard in Copenhagen, even though various shows visited the town much more frequently. Henningsen 2010, 5. 25  Jussila 2004, 541–550.

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both Helsinki and Vyborg were far from being among the main destinations of the exhibition tour. The reasons for stopping in these towns were more or less practical: both were located conveniently between two more important venues, Stockholm and St. Petersburg. Similar to other impresarios, Cunningham made use of global communication and transportation networks, and his arrival in Finland was facilitated by a regular steamship connection between Stockholm and Helsinki.26 With a population of some 40,000, Helsinki was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland and the largest town within this autonomous part of Russia. From the perspective of the contemporary international entertainment business, both Helsinki and Vyborg—with less than 20,000 inhabitants—must have seemed rather unattractive. The potential audience was further diminished by the fact that many town dwellers had left town for their summer homes in the countryside. Newspapers reported that Helsinki was “empty”.27 When the group appeared with Barnum’s circus in Baltimore in May 1883, some 30,000 people saw the group on the first evening alone,28 and since then it had performed in front of large audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Compared to more metropolitan venues, the expected profit from the two Finnish towns was infinitesimal. When a troupe of West Africans visited Helsinki three years later, it was said to have left town with only the flu and a minimal profit.29 An entrance fee of one Finnish Mark was charged both at the Hesperia Park in Helsinki and at St. Anna’s, where the troupe performed in Vyborg. This was a standard admission charge for various entertainments.30 In Helsinki it was reduced for the last two days to fifty pennies for children, workers, and servants.31 This suggests a very small audience, even though according to the newspapers there was a large crowd present every day.32  “Hesperia,” Folkvännen, June 29, 1886. Poignant 2004, 13, 113–114.  Nabo, “Våra sommarnöjen,” Finland, July 7, 1886; W-r-m, “Sommarkåseri från hufvudstaden,” Fredikshamns Tidning, August 18, 1886. 28  Poignant 2004, 90. For the size of audiences in Europe, see Blanchard 2011, 229. 29  “Singhaleserna,” Nya Pressen, September 29, 1889. 30  This was also the price of the display of West African Ashantis which, however, was criticised as expensive. Nya Pressen, September 11, 1889. 31  See “Hesperia,” Hufvudstadsbladet, July 3, 1886. See also “I S:t Annæ park,” Östra Finland, July 7, 1886. 32  “Hesperiassa,” Uusi Suometar, June 30, 1886; “Kannibalerna,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30, 1886; “Kannibalerna,” Finland, June 30, 1886; “Kannibaler i Helsingfors,” Nya Pressen, June 30, 1886; “Kannibalerna,” Folkwännen, June 30, 1886; “På Hesperia,” Nya Pressen, July 5, 1886; “Bref från Helsingfors,” Åbo Underrättelser, July 31, 1886. 26 27

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Precise numbers remain unknown, but according to a contemporary estimate, Hesperia Park was typically visited by 200–400 persons on weekdays and 1000–2000 on Saturdays and Sundays.33 If this was the case during the visit of the Australian Aboriginals as well, the total audience in Helsinki may have reached approximately 5000 visitors, that is, 8% of the town’s population. Cunningham was aware of the economic forces that made his enterprise possible, and he is known to have studied American and European population statistics.34 Yet, neither the smallness of the expected audience and profit nor the fact that the spectators did not represent the intended target audience prevented Cunningham from unpacking the entire exhibition package in Helsinki and Vyborg. An organized advertising campaign for the group begun three days before the arrival of the group.35 This demonstrates that the visit to Helsinki had been planned in advance—even though the audience in Stockholm had been informed that the next venue would be St. Petersburg.36 Cunningham must have negotiated the use of the premises with the Hesperia management, but otherwise he evidently organized everything himself, without engaging local people. During the days when the forthcoming event was advertised, the newspapers also published brief news items about it. Some articles referred to descriptions that had been published in the Swedish newspapers,37 while others were clearly based on promotional material that the journalists had been given. The items included classic assurances as to the authenticity of the individuals on display, as well as elevating comments on Cunningham’s merits as an impresario.38 Increasingly detailed announcements, based on  Esa, “Kirje Helsingisä,” Oulun Lehti, September 14, 1887.  Poignant 2004, 13–14. 35   Announcements were published in the pages of Nya Pressen, Hufvudstadsbladet, Folkwännen, and Uusi Suometar, June 26, 1886. For practices of promoting an exhibition group, see Qureshi 2011. 36  “Hvad nytt från Stockholm,” Åbo Tidning, July 14, 1886. Similarly, first announcement appeared in Vyborg at the time when the troupe was still in Helsinki. “Restaurant St. Annæ,” Wiborgsbladet, July 4, 1886. 37  “Mr Cunningham och hans kannibaler,” Nya Pressen, June 27, 1886; “Ett sällskap Australnegrer från Queensland,” Finland, June 29, 1886. See also “Kannibaler I Köpenhamn,” Åbo Tidning, May 11, 1886. 38  “Tre australier eller kannibaler,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 27, 1886; “Kannibalit tulewat,” Uusi Suometar, June 27, 1886; “Hesperiassa,” Uusi Suometar, June 29, 1886. Some excerpts from the brochure were reproduced; see “Krönika,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30, 1886. For the practice of sending material to journalists, see Poignant 2004, 269 note 20. 33 34

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the same text template that had been used in Stockholm a few days earlier, appeared in Swedish-language newspapers in Helsinki on the first exhibition day.39 Finnish newspapers translated the Swedish texts independently of each other so that within a few days different variants and expressions appeared in Finnish as well.40 In addition to the text template, newspapers had access to a wood engraving plate that Cunningham had had made in London, reproducing an illustration of a cannibalistic scene (Fig. 6.1).41 In addition, “cruel and cannibalistic” exhibition posters, undoubtedly identical to the colorful lithographs that had been printed for the group in Frankfurt and used in subsequent venues,42 were attached to “every street corner” in Finland.43 A Swedish-language version of the original exhibition brochure was also used in Finland.44 Indeed, the possibility of using existing Swedish-language promotional materials may have contributed significantly to Cunningham’s decision to present his troupe in Helsinki and Vyborg. From the exhibition reviews and other descriptions, it is evident that the performance included all the principal elements that had been regularly repeated in previous venues. The repertoire consisted of singing, dancing, playing of instruments, and the display of tools and weaponry, including boomerang throwing, the last-mentioned clearly being the main attraction in Finland and elsewhere.45 In addition to these elements, the three indigenous Australians wandered among the audience, selling brochures and carte-de-visite–sized photographs depicting themselves, taken by the firm Negretti and Zambra in London two years earlier.46  “Hesperia,” Hufvudstadsbladet, Finland, Folkwännen, Nya Pressen, June 29, 1886.   See, for example, “Hesperia,” Uusi Suometar, June 30, 1886; “Kanibalit owat Helsingissä,” Tampereen Sanomat, July 2, 1886. 41  See, for example, “Hesperia,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30, 1886. Cf. Poignant 2004, 27. 42  Poignant 2004, 173; Snoep 2011, 119. 43  W-r-m, “Sommarkåseri från hufvudstaden,” Fredikshamns Tidning, August 18, 1886. Also see “I S:t Annæ,” Östra Finland, July 6, 1886. 44  Poignant 2004, 16, 171, 258 note 1. 45  “Kannibalerna,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30, 1886; “Kannibalerna,” Finland, June 30, 1886; “Kannibaler i Helsingfors,” Nya Pressen, June 30, 1886; “Hesperiassa,” Uusi Suometar, June 30, 1886; “På Hesperia,” Nya Pressen, July 5, 1886; W-r-m, “Sommarkåseri från hufvudstaden,” Fredikshamns Tidning, August 18, 1886. 46  “Kannibalerna,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30, 1886; “Hesperiassa,” Uusi Suometar, June 30, 1886; “I S:t Annæ park,” Östra Finland, July 7, 1886. One promotional photograph has survived in Finland, 961.4., Picture Collections, Finnish Heritage Agency, Helsinki. See Poignant 2004, 17, 29. 39 40

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Fig. 6.1  Exhibition advertisements were based on text templates provided by Cunningham. Some newspapers also took the opportunity to use the wood engraving plate to print an illustration of a cannibalistic scene. Wyborgsbladet, 6 July 1886, frontpage

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Cunningham directed the show; according to one local newspaper, however, he was accompanied by “another European”, whose identity remains unknown.47 Together they narrated the show to the audience; as in previous venues,48 they also arranged special presentations for invited journalists.49 While exhibitions were set up in their entirety even in small provincial venues, and visitors were exposed to promotional materials that had been produced for metropolitan audiences, performances and responses were nevertheless not uniform but also integrated local elements. In the next sections, I take a closer look at the local reception of the performance: how it was perceived and explained in Finland.

Language Barrier and Lack of Words Since exhibition announcements repeated textual elements copied from a standard template, Finnish audiences were informed that the exhibited individuals were “Austral negroes”, “cannibals from Queensland”, and “Bushmen from the continent of the Southern Hemisphere”. From the Finnish point of view, these vague geographical references were not particularly helpful in understanding where exactly the foreigners came from. Australia was familiar as a place-name from schoolbooks, newspapers, and translated travel and adventure literature, but only a very few Finnish sailors and gold prospectors had personal experience of the continent and its indigenous populations.50 More information became available only at the turn of the century, with the rise of Finnish long-distance seafaring and migration from Finland to Australia.51 At this point, the British colony of Queensland also became better known, as it sought to attract newcomers especially from the Nordic countries by offering free voyages. These extensive publicity campaigns reached Finland a few years after the visit of the Australian troupe.52

47  “Kannibalerna,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30, 1886. Cunningham is known to have hired assistants during the tour, see Poignant 2004, 121, 156, 161. 48  “Mr Cunningham och hans kannibaler,” Nya Pressen, June 27, 1886. 49  “Bumerangkastning,” Hufvudstadsbladet, July 1, 1886. 50  Koivukangas 1998, 87–92. 51  For the Australian ports frequented by Finnish sailing ships, see Kaukiainen 2008, 233, 261. 52  Koivukangas 1998, 92–94.

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Africa, however, was better known, as a number of Finnish missionaries had been working in the Owambo region in South-West Africa since 1870. They had actively disseminated information about their work in order to ensure the moral and economic support of the home audience. The recent Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, and the subsequent colonial division of Africa, had also been reported in the Finnish press. Finnish people had also had some opportunities to see entertainers of African or African American background.53 This previous knowledge of Africa, combined with vague references to “negroes” and “Bushmen” in the advertisements, explains why Cunningham’s group was first mistakenly connected to Africa. On the day when the troupe had already arrived but had not yet been seen performing, the Folkwännen newspaper informed its readers that in addition to “wild people from Australia” the troupe consisted of “Bushmen from South Africa”.54 This was obviously a mistake that was not later repeated. However, as journalists kept on referring to “Austral-negroes”, and in everyday language the “n-word” was primarily associated with Africans, many Finnish readers and exhibition visitors may have made the same erroneous connection to Africa as the reporter in question. In addition to making use of press releases, Finnish journalists formulated descriptions of their own on the basis of their visits and observations. A closer examination of these texts suggests that the ability of journalists to describe what they had seen was significantly affected by the language barrier. Helsinki and Vyborg were the most multilingual towns in Finland. In addition to native Finnish and Swedish speakers, one or the other of these towns were home to most of the foreigners in the country, as well as to aristocratic and educated families who might be proficient in other languages.55 As garrison towns, they also had many Russian speakers, especially in multiethnic circles of military officers and civil servants, while German was needed in commerce and trade relations. It is nevertheless likely that the majority of journalists and exhibition visitors did not have a language in common with Cunningham and his troupe. Cunningham and his assistant are known to have explained aspects of the show to the

53  Kaartinen 2004; Jonasson 2004, 127; Hirn 2007, 83; Rastas and Peltokangas 2018. See also Nabo, “Våra sommernöjen,” Finland, July 7, 1886. 54  “I Hesperia,” Folkvännen, June 29, 1886. 55  Wolff 2016, 105–127.

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audience,56 but no evidence can be found of the presence of an interpreter. Only one journalist referred to Cunningham’s accounts in detail.57 It seems that most of the others had only a vague—if any—idea of what was being explained. This poor knowledge of English reduced the specificity of exhibition reviews in Finnish newspapers. Compared to their colleagues in Britain or France, Finnish journalists were much less precise or detailed in describing, for instance, the meaning of the different dance routines. The Finnish press might refer to them merely as “some sort of a primitive dance” or “national dance”,58 whereas in many other countries they were described in detail and specified, for instance, as funeral or war dances. We know from a report by the French anthropologists Emile Houzé and Victor Jacques that a war dance performed by members of the Aboriginal troupe consisted of several consecutive stages, and could take up to an hour.59 In addition to language problems, the thinness of Finnish descriptions can be connected to the fact that sources describing exotic foreign cultures were not widely available in Finland. The vocabulary used to describe the outward appearance, character, and customs of colonized people was less extensive or generally established than in colonial centers. That vocabulary spread and became stronger only gradually, with the increase of translated juvenile literature, books on adventure, travel and geography, and school textbooks.60 At times, this lack of precise understanding was compensated for by careful observation. This is especially evident from the descriptions of boomerang throwing and of the object itself. While there had been occasional references to boomerangs from the 1850s onward in the Swedish-­ language press in Finland, the 1886 exhibition brought the actual object to Finland for the first time and prompted the adoption of the word in

56  Poignant 2004, 121, 156, 171. See also “Kannibalerna,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30, 1886. The three indigenous Australians are known to have learnt some words of English, French, and German during the years of travel. Poignant 2004, 7, 95, 125–126, 142–143, 151, 156, 184. See also “Kannibaler i Helsingfors,” Nya Pressen, June 30, 1886. 57  “Kannibaler i Helsingfors,” Nya Pressen, June 30, 1886. 58  “Tre australier eller kannibaler,” Hufvudstandsbladet, June 27, 1886; “Kannibalerna,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30, 1886. 59  Poignant 2004, 29–30, see also 123. 60  See Chap. 7 by Merivirta in this volume.

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Finnish (bumerangi).61 Following careful observation of the object and its handling, journalists often wrote long and detailed descriptions, characterizing the size and shape of the artifact as well as its movements in the air. Boomerang descriptions are also illustrative of the inclination of journalists to resort to familiar words and analogies in trying to explain what they had witnessed. Due to the lack of exact words, aspects of the show were typically described by referring to artifacts and other things familiar to Finns. Thus, a boomerang was said to move through the air like an arrow or bird, and its shape was compared to that of the sickle blade.62 The Ilmarinen newspaper called it “boomerang-sickle”.63 Another tool on display at the exhibition was said to resemble the hammer of Tor,64 the god associated with thunder in old Norse mythology and often depicted with a sledgehammer—an object familiar to every Finn. Journalists also resorted to analogies in their attempts to describe the performers’ appearance. Their hair was described as “woolly” or “bush-­ like”; their skin was characterized as “dark olive”, and was said to feel as soft as velvet—a comment revealing that the journalist had probably touched one of the performers.65 An interesting new word was also introduced in translating promotional materials from Swedish into Finnish: in one of the advertisements the latter part of the word “Queensland” was translated into Finnish to produce a new combination: the calque form “Queenmaa”.66 Even if “Queenmaa” included a familiar element, it probably made as little sense as the original word: most visitors could undoubtedly not situate Queensland on the map of Australia, and none of the journalists took the trouble to explain its location in their articles. Unlike the new Finnish word for boomerang, “Queenmaa” did not became a permanent part of Finnish lexicon. As Päivi Laine has shown in her 61  Donations received by the ethnographic collection at the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki included some objects of Oceanian origin already in the mid-nineteenth century, but the first boomerangs were received only in the early 1910s, as part of a collection purchased from the Ethnographic Museum of Leipzig. Koivunen 2015, 52, 222. 62  “Kannibalerna,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30, 1886; “Kannibalerna,” Finland, June 30, 1886; “Kannibaler i Helsingfors,” Nya Pressen, June 30, 1886; “Bumerangkastning,” Hufvudstadsbladet, July 1, 1886; W-r-m, “Sommarkåseri,” Fredrikshamns Tidning, August 18, 1886. 63  “Ihmissyöjiä,” Ilmarinen, July 6, 1886. 64  “Kannibaler i Helsingfors,” Nya Pressen, June 30, 1886. 65  “Kannibalerna,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30, 1886; “St. Annan,” Wiipurin Sanomat, July 9, 1886. 66  “Hesperia,” Uusi Suometar, June 30 and July 1, 1886.

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research, the Finnish geographical lexicon was actively developed during the nineteenth century as part of more general attempts to create a versatile and sophisticated literary language. In the process, new words were created mainly through translation, but most of the new variants disappeared soon after they were first introduced.67 The Finnish examples also demonstrate how standard exhibition components were adopted as such, even if they did not make much sense in this particular context. An article published in Hufvudstadsbladet, for example, mentions that the individuals on display belonged to an “ugly negro type”.68 This brief reference was connected to the French anthropologist Paul Topinard’s recent report, Présentation de trois Australiens vivants (1885), based on his examination of the group in Paris in November 1885. In his treatise, Topinard had reaffirmed a contemporary assumption of the connection between the alleged stage of development and outward appearance, arguing that the indigenous population of Australia was composed of two different racial types: one tall and handsome, the other small and ugly.69 He placed the individuals in Cunningham’s group in the latter category. A brief extract from Topinard’s report was inserted in the group’s promotional material and copied from there by journalists. In Finland, the idea of “ugliness” was repeated without reference to Topinard or his report. The ugliness of the people on display was thus presented as a self-­ evident fact, rather than as one recent anthropological hypothesis. The Aboriginal performers were commonly referred to using words adopted from the promotional materials, such as “savages”, “cannibals”, “primitives”, or “wild people”. At the time of the exhibition, the Finns were struggling with the question of their own racial identity; many nineteenth-­century racial theorists had suggested that rather than being racially European or Caucasian, Finns actually belonged to the Mongolian or Asiatic racial stock.70 Pekka Isaksson and Jouko Jokisalo have suggested that these claims restricted the general adoption of racial thinking in Finland: the association with Mongols locked Finns up in a “glass case”, from which it was deemed unwise to suggest strong racial assessments of other populations.71 However, it is also evident that the assumed link with  Laine 2007.  “Kannibalerna,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30 1886. 69  Anderson 2008, 233, 240–243. Also see Snoep 2011, 114, 120. 70  Kemiläinen 1998, chapter IV; Isaksson and Jokisalo 1998, 151–156. 71  Isaksson and Jokisalo 1998, 156. 67 68

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East Asia encouraged Finns to defend and emphasize their European identity. Thus, the use of relatively harsh language in the context of the visit of the Australian Aboriginals can be seen as part of more general Finnish efforts to be associated with western Europeans and the civilized world in general. This also meant distancing themselves from populations regarded as primitive and racially inferior.

Amalgamating the Foreign and the Familiar It is known that when visiting Berlin in the summer of 1884, the male performers carved new boomerangs out of birch. As boomerangs were a central attraction, presented on a daily basis, it is obvious that the ones brought from Australia had long ago split or broken into pieces. New objects were constantly needed and produced for performances, and, as Poignant suggests, for sale to exhibition visitors as exotic souvenirs.72 These local reproductions of boomerangs combined traditional craftsmanship, design, and decoration with whatever kind of wood was available in a given locale. In a similar vein, the entire idea of the exhibition was constantly influenced by various local elements, which affected its contextualization and interpretation. The Finnish sources are illustrative, demonstrating how certain details of an international exhibition could become especially interesting and important simply because they included elements that happened or seemed to be familiar and recognizable from the local point of view. One day in Helsinki, for example, the older male of the troupe, Billy, happened to slap an exhibition visitor who had touched his hair. This unexpected event was reported in the press. Rather than describing the aggression as evidence of savagery, one local newspaper associated it with a recent event in the town of Vaasa on the west coast, where a certain army captain had hit a man in his regiment. The journalist also referred to another captain, who had accidently shot a man, and whose skills in handling weaponry were therefore described as inferior to those of the “cannibals”.73 The article thus ridiculed the idea of savage violence associated with the display, suggesting that equal—and worse—examples could  Poignant 2004, 135–138. For objects brought from Australia, see page 29.  “Helsingistä,” Matti Meikäläinen, July 10, 1886 (no 14), 3. For a description of events in Vaasa, see “Vaasasta,” Uusi Suometar, June 27, 1886. See also “På Hesperia,” Nya Pressen, July 5, 1886; “På gatan,” Spets, July 10, 1886 (no 8). 72 73

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easily be found at home. Visitors in other venues also wished to touch the Aboriginals, with the same consequences. It is known that earlier, in Copenhagen, Billy had hit a Danish visitor who had pulled at his nose-­ bone ornament.74 After years of touring, the Aboriginals had became increasingly aware of their status as professional performers; rather than simply accepting intrusive behavior on the part of the audience, they protected their physical integrity. Cultural knowledge formed an obvious background against which information about the exhibition was reflected. Finnish journalists were less well equipped to criticize the staged authenticity of ethnographic exhibitions than their colleagues in countries where such displays were more commonplace, and where discussion of their authenticity had been going on already for years.75 The assumed cannibalism of the Aboriginals, for instance, which Cunningham highlighted in all his promotional material to attract potential visitors, was met with suspicion all over North America and Europe. The increasing critique eventually made him shift the emphasis away from cannibalism and instead turn attention to the “Anthropological Wonders of the World”, as the exhibition was advertised in London in April 1887.76 When visiting Finland in the previous summer, the exhibition still focused heavily on the idea of cannibalism; this, however, did not evoke much attention or debate among local journalists. Most of them did not deal with the question of cannibalism at all, while some implied they did not believe it by joking about the topic.77 Although Finnish journalists were not knowledgeable about the earlier wide-ranging discussion of cannibalism, or of the authenticity of the exhibition in general, they also commented critically on the basis of their own observations. A journalist in Vyborg, for example, wrote that he did not see the Australians as hardy and persevering, as asserted by the impresario, but on the contrary regarded them as small in stature and of weak physique.78 Cultural expectations, combined with sensationalist advertising, also confused other observers: the Australians’ singing was reported not to sound

 Poignant 2004, 174, 180.  See, for example, Qureshi 2011, 166, 169. 76  Poignant 2004, 139, 143, 151, 175, 185. 77  “På Hesperia,” Nya Presen, July 5, 1886; W-r-m, “Sommarkåseri från hufvudstaden,” Fredrikshamns Tidning, August 18, 1886. 78  “I S:t Annæ park,” Östra Finland, July 7, 1886. See also W-r-m, “Sommarkåseri från hufvudstaden,” Fredrikshamns Tidning, August 18, 1886. 74 75

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like singing at all, and the female member of the group was said to be less beautiful than she had been described.79 One highly critical observation was published in Helsinki under the pseudonym “Nabo”, a neighbor, after the troupe had already left the town. The writer felt sorry for the performers: they were “poor cannibals”, “ripped from the forests of their home country”. Nabo argued that this form of entertainment was morally dubious, and that Finns should keep their distance from such dangerous and empty amusement.80 The writer clearly found the concept of the exhibition, and its embedded values, indefensible as such, but he or she also emphasized its foreignness and inappropriateness in the Finnish cultural context. The exhibition was associated with a world and worldviews that were regarded as alien and inadvisable for the Finns, who therefore should not partake in such imported entertainment. Peculiar amalgamations of the foreign and the familiar emerged when the concept of the exhibition came in contact with concrete physical features and other aspects of local venues. For instance, the boomerang-­ throwing performance, repeatedly referred to as the most authentic part of the show, was constantly adapted to changing spatial conditions. It is known that boomerangs were thrown on baseball fields in North America, in the park adjacent to the Crystal Palace in London, and around the Nelson Column in Glasgow and factory chimneys in German industrial towns.81 In Finland, the natural environment played a role in the arrangements. Densely growing large trees in Hesperia Park prevented the boomerang performance, forcing it to move to an open lawn. This park environment was far from authentic, but many spectators were impressed by the scene. One journalist poetically described the fascination of observing a picturesquely dressed “little cannibal”, absorbed in his favorite occupation on a green lawn in the afternoon sun.82 In Vyborg, a different natural condition, namely a strong wind, affected the boomerang show by preventing it altogether.83 79  W-r-m, “Sommarkåseri från hufvudstaden,” Fredrikshamns Tidning, August 18, 1886. See also “Kannibalerna,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 30, 1886. 80  Nabo, “Våra sommernöjen,” Finland July 7, 1886. Cf. “Kirje Helsingistä,” Oulun lehti, September 14, 1887. 81  Poignant 2004, 104, 122–123, 149, 169. 82  “Bumerankastning,” Hufvudstadsbladet, July 1, 1886. 83  “I S:t Annæ park,” Östra Finland, July 7, 1886; “P. Annan,” Wiipurin Sanomat, July 9, 1886.

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Another local peculiarity in Finland had to do with music. Exhibition advertisements reveal that the Helsinki and Vyborg shows actually consisted of two elements: In addition to the performance of the Australian troupe, a military band played music for the audience. In Helsinki it was the orchestra of the local Uudenmaa Battalion, while in Vyborg the band had arrived from as far away as the Yenisei region in Central Russia.84 Military orchestras were a common sight in Finland at various public events and entertainments. Neither advertisements nor exhibition reports show how exactly the military music was combined with the display of the indigenous Australians. One Vyborg-based newspaper commented on the simultaneous presence of these different entertainments, saying that since the orchestra of the Yenisei regiment was present at the event, visitors should feel safe in meeting the “cannibals”.85

Conclusion While Cunningham’s troupe was being examined by the anthropologist Topinard in Paris in 1885, one of the performers, Billy, begin reciting the places he and his companions had visited since their removal from Queensland.86 This was a global extension of the traditional Aboriginal practice of conceptualizing and remembering past time and places. Undoubtedly, the two small northern European towns called Helsinki and Vyborg also came to be included in Billy’s ever-growing list. Global mobility was fundamental to the success of ethnographic show business. It also carried groups of colonized people to somewhat unexpected corners of the world, outside the borders of the main colonizing countries and the sphere of colonialism. By repeating standard performances that had developed hand in hand with the advance of colonialism, living ethnographic exhibitions played a major role in familiarizing wide populations in Europe and elsewhere with the western colonial mindset. This chapter, however, has demonstrated that the highly standardized exhibition concept did not 84  For example, “Hesperia,” Hufvudstadsbladet, June 29, 1886; “Restaurant S:t Annæ,” Wiborgsbladet, July 4, 1886. 85  “I S:t Annæ,” Östra Finland, July 6, 1886. See also “Å Hesperia,” Huvudstadsbladet, July 3, 1886. 86  Poignant 2004, 164.

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ensure uniformity of either performance or reception. The Finnish example shows that the local response could consist of a relatively strange mixture of elements, and one which from the organizers’ point of view was quite unpredictable. Roslyn Poignant presents an interesting argument on the differences in the way the exhibition of the Australian troupe was described in metropolitan cities, as compared to more peripheral and provincial regions. She suggests that journalists in imperial centers writing about the group were inclined to emphasize the sensational and employed racist language, along with stereotypes strongly associated with colonialism; the descriptions produced in the provinces, in contrast, were more moderate, perceptive, and critical.87 The Finnish material discussed here does not offer support for Poignant’s argument. Rather, it seems that since previous knowledge of Australia and its indigenous populations was sparse and fragmentary, Finnish journalists found the promotional material provided helpful and made use of it in a more or less straightforward and uncritical manner. Thus, the scarcity of previous information, firsthand experience, or contrasting opinions could also lead to a situation where the racist, stereotyped, and sensationalistic promotional material provided was copied and recycled without much hesitation or alteration. Yet, it is equally significant that the narratives that emerged to describe the exhibition could also become highly individual in their emphasis and interpretation. Finnish journalists applied their creativity and their interpretive and descriptive skills in making an unprecedented exhibition concept, and the foreigners showcased in it, intelligible to the local audience. They employed analogies and familiar concepts, translated and invented words, and made connections to events and phenomena that happened to be topical and meaningful from the local point of view. Descriptions of the exhibition were intertwined with discussion of the status of Finns in terms of racial categories, culture, and nationhood. Thus, the brief visit by the Aboriginals became a means to express membership in a western, allegedly superior civilization, with its rationality, its practices of overcoming and mastering other human populations, and its privilege of being entertained by those very populations.

 Poignant 2004, 119, 143, 174.

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Isaksson, Pekka, and Jouko Jokisalo. 1998. Kallonmittaajia ja skinejä. Rasismin aatehistoriaa. Helsinki: Like. Jacob, Christian. 2017. Lieux de savoir: Places and Spaces in the History of Knowledge. Know. A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge 1 (1): 85–102. Jonasson, Maren. 2004. Åbogubbarna och reflexionskulan – det åttonde allmänna finska landbruksmötet I Åbo 1881. In Allt af jern : texter kring en järnmanufakturs och ett industrikvarters metamorfoser, ed. Maren Jonasson, Maren, and Ann-Catrin Östman, 108–130. Åbo: Humanistiska fakulteten. Jussila, Osmo. 2004. Suomen suuriruhtinaskunta 1809–1917. Helsinki: WSOY. Kaartinen, Marjo. 2004. Neekerikammo. Kirjoituksia vieraan pelosta. Turku: k&h. Kaukiainen, Yrjö. 2008. Ulos maailmaan! Suomalaisen merenkulun historia. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Kemiläinen, Aira. 1998. Finns in the Shadow of the “Aryans”. Race Theories and Racism. Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society. Kirchberg, Volker, and Martin Tröndle. 2012. Experiencing Exhibitions: A Review of Studies on Visitor Experiences in Museums. Curator 55 (4): 435–452. Knight, Nathaniel. 2006. The Empire on Display. Ethnographic Exhibition and the Conceptualization of Human Diversity in Post-Emancipation Russia. Washington, DC: NCEER. Koivukangas, Olavi. 1998. Kaukonaiden kaipuu. Suomalaiset Afrikassa, Australiassa, Uudessa-Seelannissa ja Latinalaisessa Amerikassa. Turku: Siirtolaisuusinstituutti. Koivunen, Leila. 2015. Eksotisoidut esineet ja avartuva maailma. Euroopan ulkopuoliset kulttuurit näytteillä Suomessa 1870–1910-luvuilla. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Kouteinikova, Inessa. 2020. Tashkent in St. Petersburg. The Constructed Image of Central Asia in Russia’s Nineteenth-Century Ethnographic Exhibitions. In À L’orientale. Collecting, Displaying and Appropriating Islamic Art and Architecture in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, ed. Francine Giese, Mercedes Volait, and Ariane Varela Braga, 151–162. Leiden, Boston: Brill. Laine, Päivi. 2007. Suomi tiellä sivistyskieleksi. Suomenkielisen maantieteen sanaston kehittyminen ja kehittäminen 1800-luvulla. Turku: University of Turku. Leitzinger, Antero. 2008. Ulkomaalaiset Suomessa 1812–1972. Helsinki: EastWest Books. Lemaire, Sandrine, Guido Abbattista, Nicola Labanca, and Hilke Thore-Arora. 2011. Travelling Villages or the Democratization of the ‘Savage’. In Human Zoos. The Invention of the Savage, ed. Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boëtsch, and Nanette Jacomijn Snoep, 292–313. Arles: Actes Sud. MacKenzie, John M., and John McAleer. 2015. Cultures of Display and the British Empire. In Exhibiting the Empire. Cultures of Display and the British Empire, ed. John McAleer and John M.  MacKenzie, 1–17. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Nevala, Heikki. 2011. Silmänkääntäjiä, konstiniekkoja ja loihtutaiteilijoita. Taikurien vaiheita Suomessa 1800-luvulta 1960-luvulle. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Poignant, Roslyn. 2004. Professional Savages: Captive Lives and Western Spectacle. New Haven: Yale University Press. Qureshi, Sadiah. 2011. Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth Century Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rastas, Anna, and Leena Peltokangas. 2018. Rosan jäljillä kolmella mantereella. Tulkintoja ylirajaisuudesta ja muuttuvasta suomalaisuudesta. In Satunnaisesti Suomessa, ed. Marko Lamberg, Ulla Piela, and Hanna Snellman, 86–103. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Sauvages, au coeur des zoos humaines. 2018. Documentary film directed by Pascal Blanchard and Bruno Victor-Pujebet. Bonne Pioche. Snoep, Nanette Jacomijn. 2011. Savage Imagery. In Human Zoos. The Invention of the Savage, ed. Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boëtsch, and Nanette Jacomijn Snoep, 102–126. Arles: Actes Sud. Wolff, Charlotta. 2016. Elitinvandring och kosmopolitism i 1800-talents Finland. In Mångkulturalitet, migration och minoriteter i Finland under tre sekel, ed. Mats Wickström and Charlotta Wolff, 105–127. Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland..

CHAPTER 7

Colonialism, Race, and White Innocence in Finnish Children’s Literature: Anni Swan’s 1920s’ Serial “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa” Raita Merivirta

In this chapter, the focus is on cultural colonialism in Finland. I explore one particular influential channel through which colonial discourse, the public colonial imagination, and colonial imagery were created, consumed, and circulated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: literature addressed to children and young readers. As an example of such Finnish children’s literature, I examine the text “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa” (“Living as Settlers in Australia”, 1926) by the seminal Finnish children’s and youth writer Anni Swan (1875–1958). The focus in the chapter is on the question of how colonialism and race in the Australian context are depicted in Swan’s text. A number of studies have shown that (British) children’s literature was an effective means of disseminating imperialist ideology in the late

R. Merivirta (*) Department of European and World History, University of Turku, Turku, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_7

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nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 The period of 1860–1930 is known as the “Golden Age” of British children’s literature; not insignificantly, that Golden Age coincided with the period of high imperialism. Imperialist and colonialist children’s literature normalized and naturalized an imperialist world order and colonialism, encouraging readers to accept this ideology and the values that came with it. While British children’s literature of the Golden Age was a special case, in that it spread around the world in works ranging from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) to J.  M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (1911), the phenomenon itself was not restricted to Britain: the age of high imperialism saw the development of publishing for children in other European countries as well.2 From the late nineteenth century onward, British children’s literature was also the most important source of translations of children’s literature into Finnish, having surpassed translations from German, which dominated earlier.3 Perhaps unavoidably, then, imperialist and colonialist discourses crept into the pages of children’s literature in Finland as well, where a literary culture in Finnish was being created in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I suggest that although Finns, in most cases, did not become “active colonisers” in the narrowest sense of the term, Finnish (children’s) minds were “colonised” by the imperialist and colonialist ideology running through a great part of European children’s literature at the turn of the twentieth century.4 Educating and civilizing Finnish children and young people was a central element in the project of creating an enlightened Finnish nation. As literature in Finnish was still taking its baby steps, translations from other (Western) European languages played a significant role in developing Finnish children’s literature, and functioned as a writing school for Finnish writers at the time.5 Anni Swan, for instance, translated Grimm’s fairy-tales, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and H.  Rider Haggard’s adventure novel King Solomon’s Mines. Translations from other European languages influenced children’s stories 1  For example, Richards (1989); Castle (1996); Kutzer (2011); Singh (2004); Smith (2011); Bristow (2016). 2  Bradford (2010), 39. 3  Ihonen (2003), 16. For example, German author Karl May’s (1842–1912) adventure novels remained popular in Finland. 4  See, for example, social anthropologist Ulla Vuorela’s reminiscences of her own childhood reading in the 1950s. Vuorela (2009). 5  Kuivasmäki (2007), 280.

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written in Finnish,6 yet this territory of literary studies remains largely uncharted. Perhaps because Finns tend to claim exceptionality and innocence with regard to colonialism and imperialism, the colonialist aspects of Finnish children’s literature have remained understudied. By means of an examination of Swan’s “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”, this chapter shows that Finnish children’s literature as well was influenced by colonial discourses and the colonial imaginary: Swan’s text circulates a number of common European and American colonial tropes in its attempt to portray Finns as White and European. Anni Swan is known as the Finnish “Queen of fairy-tales” but she was also one of the first youth novel writers in Finland. In fact, she is considered to be the writer who started the genre of youth novel/young adult fiction in Finnish,7 or at least created the Finnish girls’ novel.8 Anni Swan’s parents were Swedish-speakers, but her Fennoman father Carl Gustav Swan, appreciative and supportive of Finnish language and culture, made Finnish the family’s home language. Swan and her eight sisters were highly educated, and many of them, Anni included, became teachers. Anni Swan worked as a teacher for a decade and a half in Helsinki, where she also ended up spending time with the Finnish cultural élite. The Swans’ extensive network of relatives, friends, and acquaintances included a great number of notables from the Finnish cultural élite, including many writers and painters, from Eino Leino and Juhani Aho to Axel Gallén and Pekka Halonen. Anni’s sister Saimi married the painter Eero Järnefelt; another sister, Nelma, married Professor Christian Sibelius, brother of the composer Jean Sibelius. Anni herself married the Finnish poet, translator, and professor Otto Manninen in 1907 and they had three sons together. Swan and Manninen read and commented on each other’s manuscripts.9 In addition to writing fairy-tales and translating children’s stories into Finnish, Swan also edited the children’s magazine Pääskynen (“The Swallow”) from 1907 to 1917, and then another children’s magazine Nuorten Toveri (“Young People’s Companion”; renamed Sirkka in 1926), which Swan had co-founded, from 1919 until 1945. “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa” was originally published in 1926 as a serial in Sirkka. Swan’s biographer Maija Lehtonen has noted that Nuorten Toveri/Sirkka  For example, Ihonen (2003), 16.  For example, Kivilaakso (2009), 233. 8  Lappalainen (1976), 129. 9  Lehtonen (1997). 6 7

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originated from the situation of 1918; Swan wanted to participate in the healing process of the nation after the Finnish Civil War, and thought that the work should begin with the younger generation.10 The magazine’s target audience was young readers, from children to teenagers. Swan became the sole editor of Nuorten Toveri in 1920, when the ownership of the magazine changed. As editor, Swan needed to acquire a serial for the magazine every year; sometimes she wrote the narratives herself, sometimes she resorted to translating abridged versions of stories from other languages. Many of Swan’s youth novels had originally been published as serial in the magazines she edited. “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa” seems to have been a minor work for Swan, who did not even endow it with her name.11 The serial was slightly revised and more significantly amended before it was published as a book in 1949. The revised version, entitled Arnellin perhe (“The Family Arnell”), was Swan’s last published novel and is included in the eleven-­ volume serial of Swan’s youth novels (Kootut kertomukset, “collected stories”) published by the Finnish publishing house WSOY. In the year of its publication, the novel received an honorable mention from the youth writers’ association Nuorten Kirja. Its narration was lauded as “warm” and “understanding”.12 Swan’s children’s stories and translations of fairy-tales, stories, and youth novels are still in print; Arnellin perhe is widely available in Finland and has been issued as an e-book in 2020, making the text doubly relevant for our purposes. All of Swan’s other youth novels were set in nineteenth- or early-­ twentieth-­century Finland, making “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa” with its setting (as indicated by the title) in Australia, an exception. It depicts a Finnish settler family’s life in Queensland, focusing on their mostly troublesome encounters with First Nations people.13 The Finnish family is  Lehtonen (1958), 72–73.  Lehtonen (1958), 77. 12  Kivilaakso (2009), 230. 13  I use the terms First Nations People, Aboriginal person, Aboriginal people/s and Indigenous Australians interchangeably in this chapter. I am aware that the acceptance of some of these terms varies but to my understanding these terms are quite widely accepted. I have tried my best to consult guides for appropriate terminology. Furthermore, the Aboriginal people of Swan’s text are imaginary rather than a representation of a specific Aboriginal people and therefore I had to use a more general term, while at the same time acknowledging that Indigenous Australia is multicultural and that there are a great number of separate Aboriginal nations. 10 11

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portrayed as minding their own business and working hard, while the Aboriginal characters—except for one good servant, Cobi—cause them harm by lying, holding a young Finnish boy captive, violently attacking the farm and its inhabitants, and finally kidnapping the family’s youngest child.14 Race and racialization become key issues in the story, in which the word “negro” is frequently in reference to the Aboriginal characters. The social anthropologist Anna Rastas has demonstrated in her study of the use of the “n-word” in older Finnish texts that negative and derogatory depictions of Black people, which nowadays are seen as manifestations of colonial knowledge and deemed “racist according to any possible criteria”, are also texts in which the word is typically used.15 Turning this the other way round, the word is typically used in colonialist and racist texts. The focus in this chapter is on the use of the word in “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”, and its implications for the worldview and the racial and cultural hierarchies constructed in the story and their connection to cultural colonialism. As Pramod K. Nayar has argued, “[r]ace is the key prism through which all postcolonial analysis is refracted”16; it is also the key prism through which I analyze the colonialist nature of Swan’s text. Since the Whiteness of the Finnish characters is emphasized in contrast to the Blackness of the Aboriginal characters and since the innocence of the Finnish settler family in Queensland and of Finns in general in regard to colonialism become points in themselves, I apply the concept of “White innocence”17 as an analytical tool. Gloria Wekker has discussed the concept of White innocence in a Dutch context, noting that innocence is often associated with smallness: a small nation, a small child. Being a small child is associated in the European cultural understanding with a state of innocence and goodness,18 and many small European nations, such as the Nordic countries and Switzerland, seem to apply the same analogy in describing themselves.19 In another context, Robin Bernstein has argued that “childhood innocence”, itself racialized as White, helped Americans 14  These particular twists in the plot seem to have been fairly common in Australian (children’s) adventure novels in the nineteenth century, for example, Richard Rowe’s The Boy in the Bush (1869). Rowe was an Englishman but spent fourteen years in Australia. See Bradford (2001), 35–41. 15  Rastas (2009), 93. See also Rastas (2007). 16  Nayar (2010), 1. 17  Wekker (2016); for “racial innocence”, see Bernstein 2011. 18  Wekker (2016), 16–17. 19  See, for example, Purtschert et al. (2015), 4–5.

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in the nineteenth and early twentieth century to assert “not only whiteness but also racial difference constructed against whiteness”.20 I suggest that Bernstein’s notion of racialized childhood innocence is useful in analyzing racial relations in “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”. As this chapter will show, Whiteness, innocence, and smallness (whether of a child or of the Finnish nation) are interconnected in Swan’s text and are used to portray Finnish settler colonialism in Australia as noncolonial.

Finnish Settlers in Queensland “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa” is the story of a Finnish family that travels overseas to settle in Queensland after experiencing some hardships in Finland. The father, Mr. Arnell, has left Finland after serving three years in prison for allegedly embezzling money from the bank where he worked, while the rest of the family, that is, the mother and four children—Mauri, 13; Mirkka, 11; Erkki, 8; and little Laura (age unspecified)—have stayed behind in Helsinki and have had to get by with very little money. The mother, Mrs. Arnell, maintains that there is no “better or nobler man” than her husband, no matter what people might say, and that he has done nothing wrong.21 In Queensland, the father has bought a small farm and misses his family. When the manager of the bank where he used to work offers to loan the family money for the voyage to Australia, they are excited and hope to earn enough in Australia to return to Finland and clear his name. It is thus emphasized that the family’s motivation for emigrating and trying to raise money overseas is well-justified and “pure”. Mauri’s classmate Heikki, an orphan who has run away from his aunts, joins the Arnell family during the voyage to Australia. Heikki has plans to search for gold and dreams of striking it rich, but he is also drawn by the promise of adventure. This boy’s dreams are more obviously colonial, and inspired by nineteenth-century history. Some 200 Finns may have moved to Australia during 1851–1869, the early years of the Gold Rush, in “the hope of sudden riches”, and settled there permanently.22 According to the historian Olavi Koivukangas, Finnish prospecting in Australia seems to have been just a brief episode, eclipsed by California. Finnish newspapers

 Bernstein (2011), 8.  Sirkka no 11926, 3. 22  Koivukangas (1986), 64–71; Koivukangas (1998), 89. 20 21

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stopped writing about the Australian gold fields in the 1860s.23 In Swan’s story, Heikki fails in his efforts to find gold near the farm, and the Arnells move from farming to prospecting only after a drought has killed all their sheep. Living in poverty and searching for gold two years after their arrival in Australia, the Arnells meet another Finnish man, who eventually confesses that he is actually the nephew of the Finnish bank manager and the one who had embezzled the money. He has now made a fortune in Australia and promises to clear the father’s name. The family can thus return to Finland. Furthermore, the other man has found a promising prospecting place and hands it over to the Arnells, who find enough gold to buy a big farm near Helsinki. This happy ending reinforces the view of the “pure” and noble motives of the Finnish family. The other man buys the Arnells’ Australian farm and plans to take up large-scale sheep husbandry; Heikki and Cobi, the Arnells’ servant, stay with him. In the 1920s, Queensland attracted migrants, mostly men, from central Ostrobothnia. The peak year of immigration was 1924. The Australian economy developed rapidly after World War I and the country’s labour legislation attracted people to a “workers’ paradise”. Reports of the high wages available in Northern Queensland’s sugarcane fields, along with news of the success of Finnish immigrants in Australia, also encouraged more people to migrate. Koivukangas notes that “the overwhelming reason on the personal level was the aim of building up capital in as short a time as practicable, in order to buy a farm back in Finland”. Many only meant to go for two to five years. New immigrants could expect to get almost exclusively agricultural work, which was not better paid than in Finland. By 1925 over a hundred Finns had settled in the area near Cairns, and some 1000 more arrived in Australia during the 1920s. A frequent route from Finland to Northern Queensland was from Hanko to Sydney via England and the Suez Canal—which took fifty days—and from Sydney to Northern Queensland via Brisbane.24 This is also the route taken by the Arnells. The serial offers very little in the way of dating the story but the events presumably take place in the 1920s, since there is no indication that this would not be a contemporary narrative set in the time of its writing. In the novel,  Arnellin perhe, the children get excited about Sydney’s Harbour Bridge, constructed between 1923 and 1932, which thus dates the story.  Koivukangas (1998), 89.  Koivukangas (1986, 109–125; 1998, 95–99).

23 24

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A farm called Suomi (“Finland Farm”) was established near Cairns in Northern Queensland. Nestori Karhula, a well-known man in the Ostrobothnian district of Lohtaja, moved to Australia in 1921 and acted as a trailblazer. Working as a foreman on the “Suomi Farm”, Karhula penned descriptions of life in Queensland for Finnish newspapers without hiding the fact that making it there required hard work and sacrifice.25 A pair of Ostrobothnian brothers also sent accounts of their migrant experiences in Queensland to the newspaper Ilkka in 1924. They recounted the story of Karhula and the beginnings of Suomi Farm in 1923, adding that by August 1925 Karhula and other Finnish workmen had cleared sixty acres of forest for farming and were now growing sugarcane.26 One Finnish newspaper, Karjala, published a piece on Finnish migrants’ journey to Australia in November 1924. The article, written by “A.E.L.” in Northern Queensland, mentions Suomi Farm—describing it almost as the Finnish headquarters in the area—and adds a few lines about the work of Nestori Karhula. A.E.L. also notes that there are very few Black people in the area, adding that larger communities of natives are still living beyond the nearby mountains, where they live a free, natural life in large forests. The writer explains that they do not often encounter Aboriginal people because the latter hate White people so much that they stay away.27 This is one of the few instances in which Indigenous Australian people are mentioned in Finnish immigrant stories published in the newspapers. These reports in the press on the Suomi Farm, and on Finnish immigration to Queensland more generally, were probably a factor contributing to Anni Swan’s decision to set a story there. While living on the farm, Swan’s Finnish settler family comes into contact with Aboriginal people, some of whom work as their servants while others attack their farm. As the immigrant letters published in the Finnish press did not say much about Aboriginal people, Swan’s decision to cast them as violent must have been inspired by other sources. Swan never visited Australia, but Lehtonen mentions that Swan drew on the reminiscences of her brother-in-law Heikki Manninen.28 Manninen had served as a sailor from 1911 to 1919, and had visited Australia. Within the literary world, Swan drew inspiration  Koivukangas (1998), 95.  “Matkalla Austraaliaan.” Ilkka 1 November 1924. 27  “Kuvauksia suomalaisten siirtolaisten Australian matkalta.” Karjala 2 November 1924, No. 256, p. 9. 28  Lehtonen (1958), 104. 25 26

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from British and American children’s and youth stories she read and sometimes translated.29 Swan may have also read Australian colonial texts, which were dominated, in the words of Clare Bradford, by a “discourse of savagery”, describing “indigenous peoples as uncivilized, located on the very border between men and animals”.30 At least one of the characters in Swan’s novel Arnellin perhe (1949) reads books by the Australian children’s writer Ethel Turner to acquaint herself with the continent.31 In Swan’s story, the Arnell family settles in Queensland in an unproblematic manner, without any discussion of land-owning rights or colonial relations in the area. The father had informed his family of his purchase of a farm in a letter before they left for Australia. Mauri’s schoolteacher tells his class that Queensland is a large and thinly populated region, where workers are sorely needed. When the family is reunited in Sydney, the father is described as a man who has lived for years among strangers, first in prison and then in Australia, working hard. The mother takes in her husband’s transformed appearance, and senses that he has suffered a lot. The sympathies of Swan’s young readers are thus directed toward the respectable but wrongly treated and hardworking Finnish family, who are settling in Australia only to try to right the wrong done to them. In this project, the small farm purchased by the father is instrumental: they need to make it sufficiently profitable to pay to clear his name. Colonialism is not something that is discussed or acknowledged in the serial; neither the word nor the idea is ever actually mentioned. However, in the revised version of the text, Arnellin perhe, published as a novel in 1949, colonialism is briefly referred to. The original story gives no explanation as to whom the father bought his farm from, but in the novel he explains that he bought it for next to nothing from Tom Kelland, an Englishman who had returned to his country after inheriting from his uncle.32 After a violent attack on the farm by some Aboriginal men, the father explains that such incidents are unusual, but that there are reasons for them. He refers to the brutal treatment of Black Australians by Whites,  Kivilaakso (2009), 198.  Bradford (2001), 15. 31  Ethel’s Turner’s novel Seven Little Australians (1894), the work that is seen “as the first authentically Australian work for children” (Bradford 2001, 5), was translated into Finnish in 1896 by Antti Rytkönen. 32  All references to the novel are to the following edition: Anni Swan: Arnellin perhe. Porvoo: WSOY 1992 (orig. 1949), here 74. All translations from the original are by the author. 29 30

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noting that Kelland had been a representative of the old, merciless generation that treated Aboriginal people like slaves and flogged them. Kelland had had the brother of an Aboriginal leader badly beaten, thus crippling him; the leader, Gilba, had probably sought revenge and attacked the farm, thinking that it was inhabited by Kelland’s relatives. The father adds that had he known this history beforehand, he would not have bought the farm33—thus absolving himself of any guilt. In the later text, British colonialism in Australia is thus condemned and the brutal treatment of Aboriginal people acknowledged, although the father does not want to go into detail as to what happened.34 This acknowledgment and condemnation, however, do not extend to Finns, who throughout the text clearly remain outsiders and innocent of colonialism. If anything, the Arnells are presented as victims themselves: first Mr. Arnell is framed for a crime he did not commit, and when he tries to create a new life for himself in a foreign country through hard work, he and his family are attacked by First Nations people for no fault of their own.

Racialization of Aboriginal People The Aboriginal people in the story—most of them men—are the Other to the Finnish family. From the first encounter, Aboriginal people are racialized by the use of the “n-word”, which is frequently employed—along with “savage” or “native”—in place, for instance, of the neutral “man” when referring to an Aboriginal character otherwise than by his name. While not stated explicitly in the serial, it is quite evident that the family could not survive on the farm without their Aboriginal servants, of whom there seem to be several. They provide the labour that allows the farm to be viable. Yet, the servants are described as “so unusually lazy that they seemed to be competing over who managed to do less work”,35 thus conforming to the usual colonial stereotypes of active White and passive Black people. The focus in the serial is on the hard work the family does on the farm, along with the adversities they encounter. After the hot weather and consequent drought, Aboriginal people represent the greatest threat to the endeavours of the Finns; this has been the case ever since Heikki, who has left the others to go in search of gold, has encountered and been captured by Dvinda,  Swan (1992), 130.  Swan (1992), 130. 35  Sirkka no 111926, 110. 33 34

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an Aboriginal man residing with his people in the forest into which Heikki has ventured. Dvinda’s people are led by Snoki (renamed Gilba in the novel); after his people release Heikki he is assumed to be friendly, only to betray this trust and attack the family farm when an opportunity presents itself. Snoki’s plans are thwarted by a rival group of Aboriginal people, led by Waibu. At first the family distrust Waibu, but with his help they are able to defend their farm. The Arnells are always afraid of the First Nations people, who “smile cunningly”; when Heikki disappears, for example, the family is worried that the “savages” may have taken him, the children concerned specifically that they may also have “roasted him”.36 The only Aboriginal child in the story, a girl who remains nameless, is encountered by Heikki while he is being held by Dvinda’s people. The girl is described as having “a cunning expression on her ugly face” when she looks at him and wonders what to give him to eat. When Heikki, who is described as “a white stranger”, is offered a frog and a snake to eat, he remembers that in Australia “not only wild natives but even white-skinned bushmen gladly eat both snakes and frogs”.37 Whiteness here, unlike so often in Western culture, is not invisible or a non-race.38 Whiteness is something that definitely sets the Finns apart from First Nations people in the story and confirms that they belong among other White Europeans. First Nations people, on the other hand, are categorized as “Black”, which in the story and probably in the Finnish imaginary of the time means being a “negro” as the repeated use of the word in the story indicates. The background of the story may have been affected by the search for a Finnish racial origin in the 1920s, when Swan’s serial was originally published, and its connection to the Finnish national identity. European racial theories of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century classified Finns as “Mongols”, and they were thus placed somewhere between Indo-Europeans and Blacks in the racial hierarchy.39 Finns had largely accepted this categorization, until at the turn of the twentieth century, the belief in racial hierarchies and in the superiority of the “White race” in many European countries led Finns to debate the matter and challenge the “Mongol” theory.40 After gaining independence in 1917, there  Sirkka no 81926, 74–75.  Sirkka no 91926, 83. 38  See, for example, Dyer (2017 [1997]); Wekker (2016). 39  Kemiläinen (1993), 57–62, 139–144. 40  Kemiläinen (1985), 306. 36 37

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was an increased desire to formulate a Finnish national identity, and studies in physical anthropology were a part of this quest. This led to an increasing certainty as to the erroneousness of the Central European categorization of Finns as Mongols.41 One prominent theory in the 1920s was that of an East-Baltic race, comprising Finns and their Eastern and Southern neighbors.42 An interest in racial theories and in the origin of Finns grew outside expert circles as well, and related issues were discussed in the periodical press.43 The anthropologist Kaarlo Hildén, for instance, wrote about “Finns in the light of racial research” in 1928, noting that it can be said with certainty that Finns are not Mongols and that they differ greatly in their anthropological qualities from representatives of the “Yellow race”. In conclusion, he wrote that based on their racial constitution, “Finns are equally ‘good Europeans’ as for instance the cultural nations of Central and Northern Europe”.44 The goal of the educated Finnish élite, who had an interest in constructing a Finnish national identity, was to link Finns with Europeans and Whiteness and to deny the Mongol theory.45 Africans and/or Blacks played a central role in the construction of Finnish Whiteness. Mari Lyytikäinen, in a study of the representation of “Negroes” in Finnish geography textbooks of the 1920s, notes that the image constructed of Africans was used to confirm the place of Finns beside other Europeans. Africans were represented as the opposite and negation of Finns; this would help in constructing Finns as White Europeans, since Africans were presented as the common Other of Finns and (other) White Europeans.46 In Swan’s “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”, the same dichotomy appears to apply to Australian First Nations people as well. A significant racial difference is constructed between Blacks and Whites, and it is this division that matters in the serial. The use of the racializing n-word blurs and even eradicates cultural and racial differences between African, African American, and Indigenous Australian peoples; their cultures and perceived “characteristics” are then treated interchangeably, with all “Black” people across the world collapsed into a single  Kilpeläinen (1985), 193.  See Kemiläinen (1985), 318–344. 43  Tallgren (1985), 398–405; Kemiläinen (1985), 380. 44  Hildén (1928), 282–291. See also Tallgren (1985, 401–405), who discusses Hildén. 45  Jokisalo (2010), 9, 21. 46  Lyytikäinen (2003), 84–86. As a case in point of the othering, stereotyping and derogatory depiction of Africans, see Favorin (1925). 41 42

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category under the racializing word. One of the Aboriginal servants in “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”, for instance, is called Sambo, which is also the name of one of the slave overseers who work for the cruel slave-owner Simon Legree, in Harriet Beecher-Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Swan has probably borrowed the name from the novel, although “Sambo” was also a popular American stereotype of a child-like, happy, contented slave, lazy, but devoted to music and dance. Swan’s Sambo does have some of these characteristics, including laziness, but he is not a “fool or jester”.47 An abridged version of Beecher-Stowe’s novel was published in Finnish as early as 1856, as one of the first American novels to be translated into Finnish; this was followed by several other translations and adaptations for young readers, testifying to its popularity. Furthermore, in the serial, Cobi calls Mr. Arnell “massa”, indicating that Swan may have confused (or even deliberately used) African American vernacular English with the English used by Aboriginal people in Queensland. Swan was familiar with African American vernacular English from her translation of Joel Chandler Harris’ Tales of Uncle Remus (Jänis Vemmelsäären seikkailuja) fifteen years earlier. This collection of Black American folktales in a Southern plantation context was originally written in a dialect devised by Harris to represent a Black vernacular of “the deep south”; it may well have influenced Swan’s text. In Swan’s revised 1949 novel, Arnellin perhe, the American-derived name Sambo has been changed to Woomera,48 and the word “massa” has been replaced with “master”. In addition to Anglophone children’s and young adults’ literature, one can surmise that Swan’s description of Australian Aboriginal people was influenced by Finnish geography textbooks. One such textbook, published in 1925 in its sixteenth edition, includes the following description: Australian natives have weak mental abilities and are ugly in appearance. Their cheekbones are pronounced, the forehead is low and sloping. Big, bushy eyebrows, broad nostrils, a large mouth and black, glittering eyes make them look wild. […] In their wild state an Australian wears no clothing but if they get their hands on some rags, they will wear them, more out of vanity than of necessity. Birds’ down is used as decoration. […] The Australian’s only domesticated animal is the dog, and farming is wholly unknown to them. What they need, they get from the forest. Ants, snakes,  Pieterse (1992), 152–154.  Woomera is actually an Aboriginal word in the Dharug language of the Eora people, the traditional custodians of the Sydney area. It refers to a traditional spear-throwing device. 47 48

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lizards and even maggots do for food for him. Some tribes even eat human flesh.49

The textbook goes on to comment that Aboriginal peoples possess no cooking utensils, and only very simple weapons. Such racist and essentializing descriptions of non-European and particularly Black people were common in Finnish geography textbooks from the late nineteenth century down till at least World War II, in some cases even until the 1960s. The authors of these textbooks drew on European geographical and travel literature.50 Anni Swan was a former teacher and had three sons (born 1907, 1909, and 1915), who would have been going to school in the 1910s and 1920s, so Swan herself was probably familiar with the kind of geography textbooks cited above; thus, she may have simply drawn on these textbooks for her story. A geography lesson is actually included in the story, where Heikki and Mauri tell their teacher of Mauri’s plans to travel to Australia. Australian geography and animals are then discussed in class, although no Aboriginal or other people are mentioned. In keeping with the above, forest-dwelling First Nations people are portrayed in “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa” as ignorant savages, whom Finnish children can teach a thing or two about European civilization. While at Snoki’s abode, Heikki is “gripped by a burning desire to show these natives products of European culture”51; in practice, this means he lights a match, thus astonishing the women watching him. In the novel, the same incident is described as Heikki’s “burning desire to show these primitive beings products of white culture”,52 and thus display his superiority. Heikki had noticed that a nameless Aboriginal girl lit a fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together, which makes him say: “The natives of Queensland do not commonly use fire sticks, unlike the negroes of Western Australia”.53 Heikki also gifts the women with a piece of a mirror, a broken comb, and a shiny button, which they appear to be seeing for the first time: “the women’s joy was great and sincere”.54 Later at the Arnell house, Dvinda, who has assaulted and tied up Mauri, is frightened out of the house by the light of two suddenly lit torches. The narrator explains that  Favorin (1925), 141. Translation by the author.  Paasi (1998), 226, 230–232. 51  Sirkka no 91926, 83. 52  Swan (1992), 91. 53  Sirkka no 91926, 83. 54  Ibid. 49 50

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“the superstitious native” was scared by “the quality of the incredible magic light”, as he had not seen “such witchcraft before”.55 The Aboriginal people of the story are constantly described as superstitious, and their culture comes across primitive in comparison to European culture, testifying to the circulation of European colonial discourses in Swan’s story. Moreover, whereas Gilba’s people are amazed by Heikki’s Western products, Heikki is amused by the state of dress—and undress—of some of the members of the group. One of the men is wearing Heikki’s felt hat around his neck with the top of the hat cut off and Heikki’s coat inside out, while the others are “stark naked”. Furthermore, Dvinda is so “funnily dressed” that it is all Heikki can do to stop himself from laughing out loud. Dvinda’s dress includes an old felt hat with a red feather, a bright yellow scarf around the neck, and various bangles on his wrists and adornments around the waist. The scene created out of these “strange” forms of attire, and the inducement for readers to laugh at the men along with Heikki, point to Western civilizing discourse and help readers to label First Nations people as “savages”. As Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff put it in the context of missionary work, “Christian cultures put clothedness next to godliness”; learning to wear (Western) clothes was part of the “civilizing” project, although one also had to remain modest and show restraint in the selection of these clothes.56 Western missionaries attempted to determine the proper attire for their converts, with varying rates of success. Western garb was sometimes worn as “prescribed”, but local people could also wear them in their own, innovative ways, which the missionaries often found ridiculous—or transgressive.57 In Australia, as in Africa, missionaries and anthropologists had definite ideas about the clothedness/nakedness of Aboriginal people, and tried to impose these views on the latter. Peggy Brock notes that “Aboriginal people were attracted to clothing and sought it out, but experimented with garments in ways which both missionaries and anthropologists found disconcerting”.58 European clothing was not always practical to wear or manage in Australia. Some Aboriginal people also “adapted European goods to their own cultural requirements”.59 The attitude of finding  Sirkka no 121926, 119.  Comaroff & Comaroff (1997), 223. 57  Huuhka (2019), 183; Comaroff & Comaroff (1997), 236. 58  Brock (2007). 59  Ibid. 55 56

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idiosyncratic ways of wearing Western clothes ridiculous and/or transgressive is apparent both in the Finnish geography textbook’s description of First Nations people and in “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”. In Swan’s serial, Dvinda is presented as someone who mimics Euro-Australians but does it badly, appearing ridiculous. Young Finnish readers are invited to laugh at this figure and feel superior to him: even (Western) children know that this is no way to wear Western clothes. Interestingly, Swan may have used an actual photo of an Aboriginal man as her model, as there is a photo of a man with the caption “Dvinda” (no other details given) in Sirkka.60 Dvinda’s amusing clothes are not the only feature that makes the White Heikki seem superior to him. Dvinda speaks broken English; while it is noted in the text that the Finnish children, including and especially Heikki, cannot speak English that well either, the language they use when talking to Aboriginal people is always correct and proper Finnish, standing in for English. In contrast, the language used by Aboriginal people is always “bad Finnish”. The Aboriginal characters in Swan’s serial conform to negative colonial stereotypes and caricatures: they are repeatedly depicted as ugly, often grinning maliciously, with (unnaturally) white, gleaming teeth; superstitious, unreliable, cruel, and greedy. At one point after the attack on the farm, Mauri sees “Black, greasy, shining bodies sneaking like snakes among the plants”,61 revealing yet another colonialist trope in Swan’s text. Comaroff and Comaroff note that the image of “the greasy native” had appeared in late-eighteenth-century Dutch depictions of the Khoisan people, as well as in other accounts of Southern African people in Western, for example, British, literature and periodical press. By the mid-nineteenth century, the figure of “the greasy native”, associated with dirtiness and ugliness, had become common in popular literature.62 The emphasis on the perceived ugliness of the White Finns’ Other is particularly interesting; one of the qualities linked to the Mongol race was ugliness, whereas beauty was considered a quality belonging to the Aryan or Nordic race. Furthermore, outward beauty had been traditionally connected with moral goodness.63 Swan’s text seems to be trying to prove that it is Black

 Sirkka no 111926, 110.  Sirkka no 151926, 152. 62  Comaroff & Comaroff (1997), 224. 63  Kemiläinen (1985), 381. 60 61

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people who are ugly; the Finns in the story are their opposite and are therefore to be considered White and European, not Yellow and Asian.

Cannibal Cruelty and White Innocence One of the defining characteristics of the First Nations people in the serial is cruelty—often connected with cannibalism—whereas the Finns in the story are characterized as innocent. The cruelty of the Aboriginal people in the serial is apparent from the beginning. Travelling from Sydney, where their ship has arrived, to the farm in Queensland, the children spot a koala on a tree and look at it, amazed. But while the children admire the animal, Cobi takes a bow and arrow and shoots the koala dead. He then tells the father happily: “It died, mister. Cobi shoot it”. He is then reprimanded by Mirkka, who wants to adopt the koala’s joey.64 Cobi, representing First Nations people more generally as the first First Nations person the children encounter, is thus described from early on in the narrative as a cruel man, capable of senseless acts of violence. In many ways, he is like a child, who acts on impulse and needs reprimanding by a Finnish teenager. Furthermore, without any prior contact with First Nations people, the family seem to possess all sorts of knowledge about their cruelty. It is noted, for instance, that Heikki “knew how bloodthirstily and deeply the different tribes could hate each other”.65 The father explains to his family—and to the serial’s young readers—that “an Australian negro doesn’t feel affection towards anyone—and s/he can never be entirely trusted”. He goes on to give an account of a situation where an Aboriginal servant of ten years’ standing suddenly tried to hit his master over the head with a club, which would have killed the master, had he not moved away quickly. The father then says that “we Europeans are unable to understand to what extent Australians are slaves to their dark basic instincts”.66 Swan may or may not have been aware of the “Queensland Cannibals”, discussed by Leila Koivunen in this volume; at the time of the troupe’s visit, Anni Swan would have been eleven years old. Be that as it may, the idea of cannibalism, “the capital sin of otherness”,67 is strongly connected to Queensland’s Aboriginal people in the story. When a group of Aboriginal  Sirkka no 51926, 42.  Sirkka no 151926, 155, my emphasis. 66  Sirkka no 171926, 172. 67  Schaffer (1995). 64 65

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people attack the family’s farmhouse, Mauri “knows what a terrible death awaits them. There were still many cannibal tribes among Australian savages”.68 The belief that (some of) Queensland’s Aboriginal peoples were cannibals was common enough “knowledge” in Finland in the early twentieth century to be printed in geography schoolbooks,69 and as a schoolteacher and a mother, Swan would have found textbooks an accessible source of information about faraway countries for her children’s stories. She may also have been imbibing information from British sources, such as travel literature. Kay Schaffer notes that the British assumed that indigenous peoples (in the South Seas) were cannibals and “took this ‘knowledge’ with them on their voyages of discovery”, with explorers, travellers, and seamen all reporting on such practices even “in locations where it was not known to exist”.70 The question of cannibalism is raised a number of times in the texts. The children in particular wonder about “savage tribes” that might catch, kill, and eat them, and their parents say nothing to alleviate this fear. Swan’s readers were inclined to believe this oft-repeated claim. When the Arnell children encounter an Aboriginal person for the first time, Erkki immediately asks: “Does it eat children?”71 Later, Heikki imagines meeting a “wild Black tribe” on his trip to search for gold, a “tribe” that would at first plan to kill and eat him, but which would then adopt him as their leader. In his vision, the “tribe” would attack the Arnells and scare them, only to be saved by Heikki himself, who would step up with a boomerang in his hand and calm things down.72 While this flight of the imagination is not realized, the Aboriginal characters in Swan’s text are represented as treacherous and dangerous, inclined to kidnapping and even threatening to eat children. Although not overtly stated, this idea justifies the White European settlement of the Aboriginal lands in “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”. The connection between colonialism, (rumours of) cannibalism, and the gold rush evident in Swan’s story is familiar from Australian history. Kay Schaffer has noted that during the first decades of colonialism there were no mentions of Aboriginal people’s cannibalism in the local Australian  Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa Sirkka no 151926, 152.  See, for example, Favorin (1925), 141. 70  Schaffer (1995), 110–111, drawing on Gananath Obeyesekere’s “British Cannibals” in Critical Enquiry 18 (1992). 71  Sirkka no 51926, 42. 72  Sirkka no 721926, 64. 68 69

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press. From the late 1820s onward, the Sydney Gazette began to publish settlers’ letters describing scenes of cannibalism. These stories “helped to justify colonial practices of extermination. […] The stories of native cannibalism became more bizarre in time and with further white settlement”.73 Yet, there is no evidence of Aboriginal people consuming the flesh of Europeans, even if violent frontier conflicts caused fatalities on the European side as well. After the 1870s gold rush in Queensland, however, there were rumours about Aboriginal people eating the flesh of Europeans, but particularly favouring that of the Chinese. As Schaffer explains, these rumours would discourage the Chinese, thus “reducing competition for the Europeans”.74 The frequently mentioned cannibalism of the First Nations people in “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa” serves to carry the othering process to its extreme, especially when contrasted with the innocence of the Finns. As Kay Schaffer writes, “[w]ithin a colonial mentality, cannibalism represented the ultimate denial of a common humanity, the ultimate sign of depravity, the ultimate mark of savagery and, above all, a guarantee of European superiority”.75 The accusation of cannibalism has been commonly explained by its use to justify conquest and colonization, as well as to amplify the value of Christian civilization. What was at question was “a moral hierarchy in cultural models”.76 The first tales of cannibalism outside Europe were circulated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the word “cannibal” being derived from “Carib(al)s”, residents of the Caribbean islands.77 Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) set the example of a White man’s encounters with non-European cannibals; the canonical status of the novel probably contributed to the popularity of the theme (and may have inspired Swan as well). Several features of the novel’s depiction of cannibalism are, as Patrick Brantlinger points out, “frequently repeated in later colonial discourse”, including the notions that “cannibalism is the absolute nadir of human behavior” and that “it is practiced by black or brown savages but not by white Christians, who are horrified by it”.78 In Swan’s colonialist text, the cannibalism of Aboriginal people also  Schaffer (1995), 118, 120.  Schaffer (1995), 120–122. 75  Schaffer (1995), 108. 76  Pieterse (1992), 115–116. 77  Pieterse (1992), 114. 78  Brantlinger (2011), 2–3. 73 74

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affirms the superiority, Europeanness, and Whiteness of the Finnish characters. The threat that Aboriginal people pose to the Finns in the story, and the treachery of even their own servants, culminates in the attack of Snoki’s men on the farm, while the father is away with Cobi on a trip to the market and their home defended only by teenage boys. The family do not trust their servant Sambo, the only grown man in the house, whom they deem cowardly and untrustworthy. A group of six or seven men are camping out close to the farm after the father has left. Their “devious-looking” chief, Waibu, explains that they are there to protect the family from the “bad fellas”, that is, Snoki and his men, who had beaten Waibu’s people and driven them away from their village. Dvinda tricks the family by coming to ostensibly warn them off and telling them that Waibu and his people have killed the father and are planning an attack on the farm. That turns out to be a lie, part of Dvinda’s design to gain the trust of the family, kill both Waibu’s people and then the father when he returns, and steal the farm’s sheep for his own people. The violent attack—in the course of which Mauri is throttled, hit over the head, and tied up by Dvinda and Sambo, who has also turned against the family—comes to a halt when the men see an extraordinary sight: A small white being sat kneeled in the middle of the floor. Her hair shone like the silver moon, her face radiated with whiteness, and her dress was like silver. […] The white being had clasped her hands, her lips were moving silently and her gaze was raised upwards. There was a moment’s silence. One of the savages raised his head when he saw what he perceived to be a supernatural spirit, let out a low groan and left crawling towards the broken window. Without daring to glance back, he climbed out the window. And as if transported by a secret power, the others left after him, shaking.79

As Laura finishes praying, there is more noise and fighting outside the house: the two groups of Aboriginal people are now fighting each other. Little Laura’s Whiteness and innocence are central motifs in “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”. They are constantly set against the Blackness and superstition of Cobi, who says early on to the father: “Cobi take massa home. Cobi loyal black man. Good spirit is with us. Evil spirit cannot approach”. The father then explains that “Australian natives are  Sirkka no 151926, 152.

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very superstitious. Our daughter’s blonde curls and blue eyes have apparently bewitched him”. To this Laura adds: “perhaps Cobi sees Laura’s guardian angel. Mother has said that little children have their guardian angels”.80 Laura’s words, together with subsequent events at the farm, seem to confirm the angel-like status of the little White girl. After the attack is over, Heikki reflects that he had had to rely on his own fists and resourcefulness but that the family members would all have perished if “the appearance of innocent little Laura had not bewitched those superstitious negroes”.81 In her book, Racial Innocence, Robin Bernstein notes that by the mid-nineteenth century the previously prevailing doctrine of infant depravity (children were born with original sin) was inverted and children were no longer seen as sinful but innocent; “not depraved souls risking hellfire but holy angels leading adults to heaven. […] Childhood was then not understood as innocent but as innocence itself; not as a symbol of innocence but as its embodiment. The doctrine of original sin receded, replaced by a doctrine of original innocence. This innocence was raced white”.82 Bernstein notes that Little Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, with her blonde curls and blue eyes and her habit of dressing all in white, is an emblematic innocent White child. Little Eva was not a unique character but an archetype of White and sinless young heroines in nineteenth-century sentimental fiction. In Bernstein’s words, “Little Eva was a hub in a busy cultural system linking innocence to whiteness through the body of the child”.83 I argue that the exact same thing happens with Laura in “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”. Throughout the text, the little blonde Laura embodies innocence; furthermore, in that she is constantly mentioned in conjunction with Cobi’s superstition and Blackness, she also embodies Whiteness, confirming the Whiteness of Finns and distinguishing them from the Blackness of the First Nations people. Significantly, as Bernstein argues, “[t]he white child’s innocence was transferable to surrounding people and things, and that property made it politically usable”. Little Eva’s hugging with Uncle Tom in various images extended the White child’s aura of innocence to the enslaved African American, and made not only Tom, but by extension also abolition, seem righteous. The inverse was also possible:  Sirkka no 71926, 62.  Sirkka no 161926, 166, my emphasis. 82  Bernstein (2011), 4. 83  Bernstein (2011), 4–6. 80 81

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a White child was used three decades later to transfer innocence from a White child to a happily enslaved Uncle Remus in Joel Chandler Harris’s story to romanticize slavery.84 This works two ways in Swan’s text: Cobi is indeed the loyal and trustworthy servant he says he is, happy—seemingly due to Laura’s influence—to serve his “massa”, while the innocence of the White and shining Laura is transferred to her family, who become innocent White settlers in Australia. The innocence radiating from Laura to her family is apparent in several ways. The teenage boys in the family have had to defend their home and family, but do not have blood on their hands: they remain innocent children, even in the aftermath of the attack, when the children encounter the treacherous Sambo once more in the nearby woods. Sambo pretends to be ill and get the children to help him. He says: “White man be good and beautiful. Sambo be mean man. Need lots of whip”85—a statement with which young readers are intended to agree. Sambo then proves his treacherousness again when he kidnaps Laura and is about to take her to Snoki. When Erkki resists, Sambo threatens to eat him: You’ll make “a good roast”.86 Erkki overcomes his enemy without resorting to violence: he climbs a tree, where he finds a stretcher on which a deceased Aboriginal person’s body has been laid to rest. He shoves the stretcher, which falls down, landing on and killing Sambo, with Erkki’s innocence still intact. The innocence of the little Laura extends to her parents as well. In the novel (though not in the serial), the mother says: “I could not have imagined that the Australian natives would attack innocent white people like this. Now we can never live in peace again”.87 Mrs. Arnell is a White settler who has probably settled on Aboriginal land; her family views Aboriginal people as cruel savages and employs them as servants (almost slaves); but she nevertheless considers herself and her family innocent and victims of inexplicable attacks. This is followed by the father’s explanation of British colonialism (discussed above) and his reluctance to even talk about it: “I don’t want to repeat that dark account”.88 As Bernstein notes, “[t]o be innocent was to be innocent of something, to achieve obliviousness. This obliviousness was not merely an absence of knowledge, but an active state  Bernstein (2011), 4–6.  Sirkka no 181926, 183. 86  Sirkka no 191926, 193. 87  Arnellin perhe 129, my emphasis. 88  Arnellin perhe 130. 84 85

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of repelling knowledge”.89 The father here repels knowledge: he does not want to tell his family or the young readers of the novel about the colonial history of Australia or the brutality of the treatment of First Nations people by European settlers. He, his family, and the young Finnish readers of the story are thus cocooned in obliviousness and innocence. This is in line with Gloria Wekker’s point about the claim of innocence being a double-­ edged sword, also containing “not-knowing” and “not wanting to know”, which in itself is an expression of White “privilege, entitlement, and violence that are deeply disavowed”.90

Conclusion As this chapter has shown, Finns cannot be regarded as having been outsiders to European colonialism, even if Finland did not have any formal overseas colonies. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Finnish culture was influenced by European colonial discourse, which was adopted, adapted, and circulated by Finns through various cultural products, including children’s literature. As an editor of a well-known children’s literary magazine and a celebrated children’s writer, Anni Swan was an influential figure in the emerging field of Finnish children’s and youth literature in the early twentieth century. The fact that she was a teacher may have even added to the didactic potential of her children’s stories and helped disseminate the notion of racial hierarchy evident in “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa” among her young readers. Moreover, Swan was also a member of the Finnish cultural élite. She was in a prime position to contribute to the contemporary discussion and thinking concerning the nature of Finnish culture, national identity, and even race. I have argued that constructing Finnishness as White and European is at the heart of “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”, with the (intended or unintended) consequence of a colonialist and racist portrayal of First Nations people. The negative stereotypes of Black people in Swan’s text, themselves influenced by many European and American colonial texts, are constructed by circulating popular colonial tropes and by juxtaposing innocent, White Finns with superstitious, untrustworthy, and dangerous Aboriginal people. This is further proof of Lüthi, Falk, and Purtschert’s suggestion that “colonial images and perspectives influenced and still do  Bernstein (2011), 6.  Wekker (2016), 17.

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affect political, popular as well as scientific discourses in countries without formal colonies”.91 Furthermore, as Wekker notes, through colonial/ist texts, “racial notions […] have been transmitted to following generations, sometimes above, often below the level of consciousness”.92 As is the case with Anni Swan’s Arnellin perhe, the reincarnation of “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa”, many such colonialist Finnish texts are still in circulation and being read by new generations of Finns, White Finns as well as Finns of colour, with possible and frightening implications for their identity formation. By acknowledging the colonialist and racist nature of such writings, we can begin the work of dismantling their legacy.

References Bernstein, Robin. 2011. Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. NYU Press. Bradford, Clare. 2001. Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children’s Literature. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. ———. 2010. Race, Ethnicity and Colonialism. In The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature, ed. David Rudd, 39–50. London and New  York: Routledge. Brantlinger, Patrick. 2011. Taming Cannibals: Race and the Victorians. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Bristow, Joseph. 2016. Empire Boys: Adventures in a Man’s World. Originally Published in 1991. London and New York: Routledge. Brock, Peggy. 2007. Nakedness and Clothing in Early Encounters between Aboriginal People of Central Australia, Missionaries and Anthropologists. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 8 (1). https://doi.org/10.1353/ cch.2007.0015. Castle, Kathryn. 1996. Britannia’s Children: Reading Colonialism through Children’s Books and Magazines. Manchester and New  York: Manchester University Press. Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. 1997. Of Revelation and Revolution: Vol. II: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Dyer, Richard. 2017. White. Originally Published in 1997. London and New York: Routledge. Favorin, Hanna. 1925. Maantiede. Kansakoulun oppi- ja lukukirja. Porvoo: WSOY.

 Lüthi et al. (2016), 5.  Wekker (2016), 20.

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Hildén, Kaarlo. 1928. Suomalaiset rotututkimuksen valossa. Valvoja (July– August): 282–291. Huuhka, Essi. 2019. Alastomat ja puetut. Ambojen pukeutuminen suomalaisten lähetystyöntekijöiden huolenaiheena 1800–1900-lukujen taitteen ­Lounais-­Afrikassa. In Säädyllistä ja säädytöntä. Pukeutumisen historiaa renessanssista 2000-luvulle, ed. Arja Turunen and Anna Niiranen, 179–204. Helsinki: SKS. Ihonen, Markku. 2003. Suomalainen lastenkirjallisuus 1800-luvulla. In Pieni suuri maailma. Suomalaisen lasten- ja nuortenkirjallisuuden historia, ed. Liisi Huhtala, Karl Grünn, Ismo Loivamaa, and Maria Laukka, 12–19. Helsinki: Tammi. Jokisalo, Jouko. 2010. Rotuteorioiden suomalaiset—olkaamme mongoleja. In Kulttuurisia kohtaamisia, ed. Jouko Jokisalo and Raisa Simola. Helsinki: Like. Kemiläinen, Aira. 1985. Mongoleista eurooppalaisiksi 1900-luvun rotuteorioissa. In Mongoleja vai Germaaneja?—rotuteorioiden suomalaiset, ed. Aira Kemiläinen. Helsinki: SHS. ———. 1993. Suomalaiset, outo Pohjolan kansa: Rotuteoriat ja kansallinen identiteetti. Helsinki: SHS. Kilpeläinen, Jouko I. 1985. Rotuteoriat läntisistä suomalais-ugrilaisista kansoista Keski-Euroopan antropologiassa 1800-luvulla ja suomalaisten reaktiot niihin. In Mongoleja vai Germaaneja?- rotuteorioiden suomalaiset, ed. Aira Kemiläinen. Helsinki: SHS. Kivilaakso, Sirpa. 2009. Satukuningatar Anni Swan. Jyväskylä: Atena. Koivukangas, Olavi. 1986. Sea, Gold and Sugarcane: Attraction versus Distance: Finns in Australia, 1851–1947. Turku: Turun yliopisto. ———. 1998. Kaukomaiden kaipuu. Suomalaiset Afrikassa, Australiassa, Uudessa-­ Seelannissa ja Latinalaisessa Amerikassa. Turku: Siirtolaisuusinstituutti. Kuivasmäki, Riitta. 2007. Lainalla täytyy alottaa’—nuorisokirjallisuuden suomennokset. In Suomennoskirjallisuuden historia 1, ed. H.K. Riikonen, Urpo Kovala, Pekka Kujamäki, and Outi Paloposki. Helsinki: SKS. Kutzer, Daphne M. 2011. Empire’s Children: Empire and Imperialism and Classic British Children’s Books (Children’s Literature and Culture). London and New York: Routledge. “Kuvauksia suomalaisten siirtolaisten Australian matkalta.” Karjala 2 November 1924 No 256, p. 9. Lappalainen, Irja. 1976. Suomalainen lasten- ja nuortenkirjallisuus. Espoo Weilin & Göös. Lehtonen, Maija. 1958. Anni Swan. Porvoo: WSOY. ———. 1997. Swan, Anni. Kansallisbiografia-verkkojulkaisu. Studia Biographica 4. Helsinki: SKS. http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:sks-­kbg-­004840. Lüthi, Barbara, Francesca Falk, and Patricia Purtschert. 2016. Colonialism without Colonies: Examining Blank Spaces in Colonial Studies. National Identities 18 (1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2016.1107178.

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Lyytikäinen, Mari. 2003. Tuntematon Musta Afrikka—‘neekerit’ kansakoulun maantiedon oppikirjoissa 1920-luvulla. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, University of Jyväskylä. https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/12125. “Matkalla Austraaliaan.” 1924. Ilkka 1 November 1924. Nayar, Pramod K. 2010. Postcolonialism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury. Paasi, Anssi. 1998. Koulutus kansallisena projektina. ’Me’ ja ’muut’ suomalaisissa maantiedon oppikirjoissa. In Elävänä Euroopassa: Muuttuva suomalainen identiteetti, ed. Pertti Alasuutari and Petri Ruuska. Tampere: Vastapaino. Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. 1992. White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Purtschert, Patricia, Francesca Falk, and Barbara Lüthi. 2015. Switzerland and ‘Colonialism without Colonies’: Reflections on the Status of Colonial Outsiders. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 18 (2): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2015.1042395 Rastas, Anna. 2007. Neutraalisti rasistinen? Erään sanan politiikkaa. In Kolonialismin jäljet. Keskustat, periferiat ja Suomi, ed. Kuortti, Joel, Mikko Lehtonen ja Olli Löytty, 119–141. Helsinki: Gaudeamus. ———. 2009. Reading History through Finnish Exceptionalism. In Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region: Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities, ed. Lars Jensen and Kristina Loftsdottir, 89–103. Farnham: Ashgate. Richards, Jeffrey. 1989. Introduction. In Imperialism and Juvenile Literature, ed. Jeffrey Richards. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Schaffer, Kay. 1995. In the Wake of First Contact: The Eliza Fraser Stories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singh, Rashna B. 2004. Goodly Is Our Heritage: Children’s Literature, Empire, and the Certitude of Character. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press. Smith, Michelle J. 2011. Empire in British Girls’ Literature and Culture: Imperial Girls, 1880–1915. Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. Swan, Anni. 1926. Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa. Sirkka. ———. 1992. Arnellin perhe. Originally Published in 1949. Porvoo: WSOY. Tallgren, Vappu. 1985. Rotuopeista roduntutkimukseen Suomen ”älymystön” aikakauslehdistössä (Arvi Grotenfeldin, Tor Karstenin ja Kaarlo Hildénin käsityksiä). In Mongoleja vai germaaneja? Rotuteorioiden suomalaiset, ed. Aira Kemiläinen, 391–405. Helsinki: SHS. Vuorela, Ulla. 2009. Colonial Complicity: The Postcolonial in a Nordic Context. In Complying with Colonialism: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region, ed. Suvi Keskinen, Diana Mulinari, and Salla Tuori, 19–33. Abingdon, Oxon: Ashgate. Wekker, Gloria. 2016. White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

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Open Access  This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

CHAPTER 8

Encountering Colonial Worlds Through Missionary Maps in the Late-Nineteenth-­ Century Grand Duchy of Finland Johanna Skurnik

The Finnish Missionary Society (FMS), founded in Helsinki in 1859, quickly made its presence known in different parts of the country through its printed materials. These included the publication of two periodicals, in Finnish and in Swedish, as well as two missionary world maps in Finnish (Maailman kartta Lähetys-Toimesta, Fig. 8.1) and in Swedish (Werldskarta öfver hedna-missionen). These maps visualized differentiations among peoples according to religion, with white areas marking Christians, gray Muslims, and black “heathens”. Due to their wide circulation, affordable price, and bilingual capacity, these maps provided new means of engagement with world geographies for Finnish audiences. Moreover, they formed part of the cultural labor performed by Western missionary societies “at home”, through writing, exhibitions, and public lectures; these

J. Skurnik (*) Department of Philosophy, History and Art Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_8

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Fig. 8.1  The world map published by the Finnish Missionary Society beginning in 1859 became a popular print product in the Grand Duchy of Finland, going through several editions both in Finnish (pictured here) and in Swedish. Maailman kartta lähetys-toimesta, Finnish Missionary Society, circa 1860, Map Collection of the National Library of Finland. Published by permission of the National Library of Finland

helped generate, as Karen Vallgårda puts it, “an obligation towards the supposedly backward and uncivilised world” and “nurtured ideological justification of colonial rule”.1 Considering that Western missionary enterprise combined aspects of spreading the gospel and civilizing the “heathens” in regions which were under the influence of various European colonial projects, it is pertinent to ask what kind of colonial encounters were facilitated by the maps and periodicals for Finnish audiences: how and why? 1

 Vallgårda 2016, 875–76.

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While existing scholarship on the FMS has identified the popularity of the maps in the Finnish context, they have not received in-depth critical attention.2 In this chapter I examine ways in which the FMS made use of the maps and other published materials to fuel “geographical imaginations” which were entangled with the colonial order. I conceptualize “geographical imaginations” as the ability of individuals and groups to define and imagine spaces and places and to relate to them. It is concerned with peoples’ ideas of spatial and social reality that intertwine with the material world—in essence their mental images of the world.3 The FMS’s conceptualization of the world as a space for missionary work was built into the maps, and the FMS utilized them to gain support for their cause. Simultaneously, the FMS operationalized the geographical imaginations to generate a sense of shared social identity in the world. Consequently, the FMS’s publishing practices shaped the cognitive processes which affected how Finnish audiences encountered colonial worlds and colonial forms of knowledge through print. In this chapter I show how this occurred as the FMS adapted the map to a Finnish context and translated material from foreign periodicals that reported the proceedings of mainly British and German missionaries in colonial contexts. In so doing, the FMS was participating in the transnational circulation of forms of knowledge that can be conceptualized as “colonial”. These were knowledges that Tony Ballantyne has defined as ones that were “produced out of and enabled resource exploitation, commerce, conquest and colonization”, and had cultural, political, and economic significance.4 I also consider the implications of sending the first foreign mission to present-day northern Namibia in 1868; in that it allowed Finns to participate in the construction of “Ovamboland” as a space for European action. The publication of missionary world maps was not unique to Finland. Throughout the nineteenth century, similar mass-produced maps reached the hands of readers in the Nordic countries as well as in central Europe, Great Britain, and North America. Maps visualizing the geography of the missionary field were published as portable sheet maps, bound up with booklets and as large wall maps. They decorated the meeting rooms of missionary societies and were used in Sunday schools. The maps shaped  Paunu 1909, 14; Remes 1993, 33; Löytty 2006, 42; Löytty 2007, 266.  My definition of “geographical imaginations” is based on Gregory 1994; Massey 2005; Gieseking 2017. 4  Ballantyne 2007, 177. 2 3

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and conditioned the missionary outlook on the world and helped identify and dream of new fields for missions. Despite their prominent position, systematic research on this type of missionary cartography is only beginning.5 These maps warrant our attention because—together with other promotional materials directed at home audiences—they were part of the transnational construction of a shared moral responsibility for distant strangers.6 The maps’ meanings were furthermore constructed in tandem with the ethnographic knowledges that the missionaries from different countries transmitted “home” from their fields of work, and which were often among the earliest ethnographic and geographical accounts of the still relatively unknown non-European world.7 The circulation of these knowledges entangled Finnish missionaries’ imaginaries of the world with those of colonial philanthropists.8 In essence, the FMS materials sold Finnish audiences an idea of the potential progress of European civilization across the globe, not only by juxtaposing the “Self” against exotic and racialized “Others” but also by spatializing these encounters, thus effectively participating in what Edward Said has famously termed the “struggle over geography”. Here peoples’ relationships with land are not only about “soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings”.9 The missionaries made use of cartographic techniques to solidify their ideas as to how human variety, global geography, and spaces of concern were intertwined. In this sense, the Finnish printed materials made them an intrinsic part of the globalization of ideas of Western modernity, in which the missionary societies also shared.10 The initial lack of missionary fields of their own (or of overseas subjects in need of conversion), however, meant that Finns relied on communicating (colonial) knowledges gathered by other actors and relaying them to Finnish audiences in adapted forms. In my exploration of the lifespans and functioning of the FMS maps, I pay close attention to their position in the transnational missionary 5  See thematic issue of Cartographica Helvetica, “Missionskartographie” 2019; Onnekink 2020. The only extensive analysis of Finnish Missionary Society’s cartographic activities remains Kokkonen 1993. 6  For the other materials see Barringer 2004; Brewer 2005; Johnston 2005; Jensz and Acke 2013. 7  Johnston 2005, 42; Nielssen et al. 2011, 6. 8  For colonial philanthropists, see Lambert and Lester 2004. 9  Said 1993, 6. 10  Dunch 2002.

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networks. As noted by Hilde Nielssen, Inger Marie Okkenhaug, and Karina Hestad Skeie, the “mobilisation of Christians across national borders and continents” was “unified by a common vision of a Christian empire”.11 In analyzing the uses and purposes of the maps in a Finnish context, however, I also consider the local meanings and effects of the maps. In what follows, I critically compare the Finnish maps to their international counterparts. I focus on the years 1859–1895, during which the maps were published, and seek to understand the maps’ intended uses through the relevant textual material, including the FMS’s monthly missionary periodicals published in Finnish and Swedish (Suomen Lähetyssanomia (SL) and Missions-Tidning för Finland (MT)). The content of the periodicals was similar but not entirely identical, as they had different editors and were printed in different locations.12 During the first years the circulation of the periodicals varied between 2000 and 3000, which was enough to place them among the biggest magazines published.13 I also analyze the booklets which were published specifically to explain the maps. These included a booklet, the “explanation” of the map, which described the content and symbols of the maps one place at a time.14 They also included another booklet, titled Ewankelinen Lähetys, which connected the map to the aims and means of missionary work and explained the state of religion in different parts of the globe.15 By focusing on materials widely available in the public sphere, I explore the different types of meanings the FMS communicated in placing the maps in the hands of its Finnish audiences.

Touring the World for Transformation The Finnish Missionary Society was established at a time when the missionary cause was transforming from sporadic efforts into a global endeavor. The production of the map immediately after establishment of the FMS, and its extensive distribution across the Grand Duchy, evince the  Nielssen et al. 2011, 1.  Klemens J. G. Sirelius edited the MT until 1877, and Gustaf Dahlberg the SL until 1876, followed by Carl G. Töttermann for both periodicals. 13  Gustafsson 2003, 78. 14  The first editions of Selitys Lähetys-Toimen Kartalle and Beskrifning till Karta öfwer Hednamissionen were published in 1859 and the last, the fourteenth edition of the Finnish version, appeared in 1894. 15  Ewankelinen Lähetys: Huutawa Ääni Kristikunnalle 1861. 11 12

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world maps’ instrumentality in procuring funds for Finnish missionary work. The first editions of the maps added up to a total of 10,000 and 5000 maps, the Finnish edition being the larger. They were sold for the price of ten silver kopeks, subsequently for 40 or 50 Finnish pennies. The maps could be obtained across the Grand Duchy through post offices, through FMS agents, or by ordering them from a bookstore in Helsinki. The maps quickly gained popularity and proved to have a long life cycle. The Finnish map had to be reprinted already the following year; some thirty years later, in 1894, a revised edition was still being printed. In total, between the first edition and those printed in the 1890s, the FMS put in circulation approximately 78,000 copies of the map. This occurred during a time the Finnish population was growing rapidly: from 1.7 million in 1859 to 2.7 million in 1900.16 Compact in size, the maps could easily be pinned to a wall or unfolded even on a small table. With only the key place names visible and most printed in a relatively large font, these maps provided an ideal form of visual engagement even with illiterate people. The maps thus helped their users in “denying space” and—almost literally— holding the world in their hands.17 The origins of the use of a cartographic medium to depict the global scope of the mission charge are not entirely clear, but a popular account of the first map of this type refers to William Carey, who founded the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792 in Britain. Carey, an English shoemaker and a teacher, is said to have drawn a map of the world on several sheets of paper, and—on the basis of quantitative information concerning the religions of different populations—to have colored heathen lands black.18 Carey also published a treatise discussing the Christian obligation for missionary work, which relied extensively on statistics and demographic argumentation and connected the idea of populations and religions. Martin Petzke has suggested that this marked a quantification of “heathens” as countable individuals, which helped fuel Christian missions into a global project.19 The thematic mappings used by many missionary societies proceeded along similar lines: the maps portrayed the geographical extent of different religions and plotted the positions of missionary stations. By the 16  The numbers for the copies printed derive from the FMS’s annual reports, published in the FMS periodicals between 1859 and 1895. 17  Compare Edney’s conceptualization of the act of reading maps of distant places. Edney 2003. 18  Onnekink 2020, 4. 19  Petzke 2018, 190–92.

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time the FMS map was published in Finland, many versions of maps showing the extent of the missionary field were in circulation, for the use of children, adults, and specialists.20 The maps produced for Finnish audiences resembled those produced for children: they were plain in style and included illustrations. As an illustrated map the missionary map of the world stood out from other world maps available in Finland at the time, and the Finnish map was also a rarity due to its language: the first Finnish-language map of the world had been published (as a newspaper supplement) only a little over a decade earlier, in 1845.21 Popular missionary maps, especially those used for promotional purposes, routinely included illustrations. The model for the FMS map was a similar map published by the Basel Mission (Die Evangelische Missionsgesellschaft in Basel) circa 1845.22 The Basel map had been created by Godefroy Engelmann, a pioneer of lithography and chromolithography, a technique that allowed printing multi-color prints from stone. The FMS map and the Basel map resemble each other in their general layout, in the design of the cartouche, and in some of the illustrations.23 The FMS was not alone in following the model set by the Basel Mission; In the Swedish town of Lund, for example, the lithographer Magnus Körner printed maps that followed that of the Basel Mission in all its details.24 The main difference between the Basel map and the FMS map is in the illustrations bordering the map. The Finnish map includes four scenes relating to Asia, one in each corner; a kneeling African man, his hands crossed in prayer, is depicted at the bottom, between the two hemispheres. Above the African man we find an open Bible, with references to the 20  Children’s missionary map of the world, 1844, Maps CC.5.a.161, British Library map collection, The British Library, London, UK; Missions-Weltkarte für Jung und Alt, 1845, GE D-12545, département Cartes et plans, Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter BnF), Paris, France, https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb407532349; Weltkarte mit Angabe der protestantischen Missions-Anstalten und der Wichtigsten Schiffuhatscourse, 1852, GE C-8714, BnF. https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb407532391. 21  The map accompanied an article on world geography published in Lukemisia Kansan Hyödyksi 1845, edited by Paavo Tikkanen. 22  “Kotomaalta,” SL, 1869, no 10, 148. See Remes 1993, 33. 23  Weltkarte der Mission, 1845, KARVAR-31.082, BMArchives, Basel Mission/Mission 21, Basel, Switzerland. https://www.bmarchives.org/items/show/100204633. 24  Compare Weltkarte der Mission, 1845, KARVAR-31.082, BMArchives and Missions-­ karta öfver werlden, n.d., Blm 4567 2, Blekinge Museum, Karlskrona, Sweden. https://blm. kulturhotell.se/items/show/25159.

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proselytizing charge in the Gospel of St. Matthew, along with a cross beneath the cartouche. The geographical focus of the illustrations thus differs from that of the Basel map, which depicts a variety of peoples from across the world (North America, northern Scandinavia, China, India, Africa).25 The FMS may have used the Basel map as the model for the African man, an image also printed in British maps.26 The other illustrations were probably made following other foreign models; two of them coincide with illustrations on John Gilbert’s Pictorial Missionary Map of the World, and on the Swedish adaptation of the same map. These are the top-right “Chinese scene”, showing people burying a baby alive, and the bottom-left scene from India with people pouring water into the mouth of a man in the river Ganges. However, as Gilbert’s map was published only in 1861, the illustrations must have been copied from elsewhere, perhaps a periodical; I have not been able to identify the specific source.27 The two other scenes, the origins of which are likewise unknown, show people worshiping idols—a snake and a statue of Ganesha, the Hindu god. The illustrations remain the same throughout the nineteenth century, although in the 1870s a change of printer caused some minor changes in their finer details.28 The illustrations asserted demonized ideas of the lives of people inhabiting the areas colored black: they sacrificed their children and worshiped idols. All the illustrations operated to create the spiritual distance needed to justify the need for missionary work and European presence in Asia. This idea was enforced textually in published articles. An article published in 1860, for example, included a wide-ranging discussion of the “barbarous” and “savage” traditions of the peoples in question, pointing out that the reader could see on the map one example of the “appalling crimes” committed by the “blind slaves” of idolatry: how “Chinese mothers 25  Weltkarte der Mission, 1845, KARVAR-31.082, BMArchives; Selitys Lähetys-Toimen Kartalle 1878, 20–22. 26  Compare Weltkarte der Mission, 1845, KARVAR-31.082, BMArchives and Children’s missionary map of the world, 1844, Maps CC.5.a.161, BL; Maailman kartta lähetys-toimesta, circa 1859, Map Collection of the National Library of Finland (hereafter MCNLF), Helsinki, Finland. 27  The Pictorial Missionary Map of the World, 1861, Maps 950.(53.), BL. Illustrerad missions charta öfver werlden, n.d., Evang. Fosterlands Stiftelsens Förlags Expedition, n.d., UM23462, Upplandsmuseet, Uppsala, Sweden. https://digitaltmuseum.se/021025683956/skolplansch. 28  The first editions were drawn by an anonymous artist at the lithographic printing house of Fredrik (Rietrikki) Polén in Helsinki. In the 1870s, they derived from Ferdinand Tilgmann’s lithographic print.

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joyfully take their small babies to be buried alive”.29 The illustrations thus acted as symbols of othered non-European cultures of the East: they were markers of cultural and ethnographic difference, functioning as building blocks for geographical imaginations where Asia emerged as a morally inferior space, in need of European guidance. The two booklets—the “explanation” and the Ewankelinen Lähetys— provided by the FMS to accompany the map explained how the human geography of the world justified the expansion of missionary work. The first editions of both were published in 1859, and the “explanation” went through fourteen editions. The Ewankelinen Lähetys was a translation from German, taken almost verbatim from a pamphlet by the Basel Mission.30 Both texts offered their readers a tour across the different lands and had a pedagogical function, familiarizing Finnish audiences with world geography. The FMS even advertised the Ewankelinen Lähetys as a geography and history lesson for ordinary Finns, who had started to enjoy slowly growing access to geography books in Finnish only since the 1840s.31 Together, the accompanying texts unfold as a series of ontological claims about the geographies of civility and morality: they highlight the distance between European civilizations and those of the “heathens”, and proclaim the potential of various peoples for transformation. Importantly, both texts implicitly distinguished between the expansion of the European missionary field and the formal processes of colonization; thus they informed readers of what it meant that the current expansion of European empires coincided with the expanding empire of God. This occurred especially through comments relating to the “settler revolution” underway in the British Empire, and the treatment of Indigenous peoples.32 Indeed, in Ewankelinen Lähetys, the urgent need for missionary work in Australia, New Zealand, and the rest of the Pacific Islands is explained by referring to the threat posed to the survival of Indigenous populations both by the “land-grabbing settlers from Europe” and by “the heathenish conflicts and murderous nature of the inhabitants”.33 The same ideas are repeated in the “explanation”: here the Europeans inhabiting New Holland are referred to as “greedy gold prospectors who ‘call  “Heillä on silmät huoruutta täynnä,” SL, 1860, no 3, 42.  See Die Evangelische Mission: Ein Ruf an Das Christenvolk 1844. 31  “Lähetys-Kirjallisuutta,” SL, 1860, supplement no 1, 15; Laine 2007, 30–33. 32  Belich 2009. 33  Ewankelinen Lähetys 1861, 16. 29 30

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themselves Christians’”.34 This critical stance toward settler colonialism in the Pacific and its implications for missionary work resonates with the representation of experiences derived from North America. Here the assumed inevitable disappearance of the Indigenous peoples—who are prominently identified on the map as “Indians”—is noted, but the need to convert these populations is stressed: then “they would not curse the Christians that have driven them away from their lands”.35 The immorality of the “Christians in America” was further emphasized by way of notions concerning their involvement in the slave trade, the process of which was discussed at length; here Africans were portrayed both as victims of enslavement and as guilty of it themselves.36 These notions contrast with the way in which the benefits of colonial administration were portrayed— and consequently justified—in India. Here colonial legislation was an ally in the battle for the progress of Christianity, in that the “missionaries have persuaded the English administration to prohibit murdering children and burning widows”.37 These ideas as to the negative effects of unregulated colonial expansion within the confines of the British Empire echo British colonial philanthropic debates from the 1830s onward over the morality of colonial governance, which had popularized the idea of settlers as immoral, “aberrant Britons”.38 These commentaries highlight the paradox which underpinned the remaking of global mobilities in the nineteenth century. The abolition of the slave trade and the idea of protecting Indigenous populations occurred simultaneously, as British and by extension other Europeans were encouraged to move and populate the lands that would constitute Britain’s empire in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and southern Africa.39 The texts accompanying the map informed Finnish audiences about topical questions connected to European colonial expansion in their own mother tongues: forced mobilities of people and the evils of slave trade, questions of land use, and the expansion of the settler colonies. They helped their readers to view specific types of colonizers as  Selitys Lähetys-Toimen Kartalle 1878, 13, 17.  Ewankelinen Lähetys 1861, 27; Selitys Lähetys-Toimen Kartalle 1878, 17. 36  Ewankelinen Lähetys 1861, 22–26. See Gustafsson 2003, 78–79. 37  Ewankelinen Lähetys 1861, 19. 38  Lambert and Lester 2004, 330. The debates culminated in the published report of the Aborigines Select Committee in 1837 which received “emblematic status” in humanitarian debates in Britain concerning colonization. Lester 2001, 105–23. 39  Lester and Dussart 2014. 34 35

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reprehensible but also highlighted the support that colonial administrations could offer missionary work, for example, through legislation. Importantly, even though both the FMS and the evangelical missionary movement more broadly were critical of some of the ways in which Europeans were remaking the global space, they nevertheless considered the transformations introduced by the growing Christian empire to be justified.

Constructing Colonial Spaces Now, dear reader, take the missionary map in your hand. Lay your eyes on the western hemisphere. All of the western parts of this half is covered in water. It is slightly bigger than the lake or river in your village. It is a grand sea. It is called Open or Still Sea … in the middle of the wide open sea and just below the line that is drawn from the western side of the map straight to the east, and which is also called the equator, there is printed in big letters Australia. Now, if you go an inch below the letters s and t, you will come to the archipelago of Fissi. Fissi is the same as Fegee.40

In addition to the separately published booklets, the missionary maps were designed to be read together with the periodicals. On many occasions, the articles published contained explicit references to the map, instructing the reader to locate the region discussed on the map. In the above quotation, published in Suomen Lähetyssanomia in 1860, the step-­ by-­step instructions lead the reader to the Fiji Islands. Similar references, directing the reader to fix their gaze on the space and place discussed in the article, are common in FMS periodicals, especially during the 1860s and 1870s, after which they diminish. Some of them position Finland as the area of reference, urging readers to “depart from Finland towards the southeast” or informing them that the islands of New Guinea, Greenland, or Borneo are, respectively, two, three, and four times bigger than Finland.41 These were additions that contextualized the texts for a Finnish audience and taught them to understand other regions in relation to their own sphere of life. The strong links between the periodicals and the maps 40  “Fegee luodot,” SL, 1860, supplement no 5, 118. The bolding is original. The spelling of “Fissi” and “Fegee” follows the Finnish original. 41  “Borneo,” SL, 1860, no 1, 10; “Weljekset lewittäwät ewankeliumia Eskimo-kansalle Gröönlannissa ja Labradorissa,” SL, 1860, no 7, 104; “Uusi Guinea,” SL, 1862, no 8, 125; “Taka Aasian luodot,” SL, 1867, no 10, 150.

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was not unique to the Finnish context, but rather a typical feature of missionary periodicals; in Britain, for example, the illustrated version of the Children’s missionary map of the world refers to specific volumes of the Childrens Missionary Magazine.42 Indeed, one might note that this type of publication often assumed that their readers would be able to read the texts together with the maps and vice versa. In these moments of instructing the readers of the periodical to travel the contours of the world with the help of the map, the FMS’s educational power is at its most concrete. Usually, after positioning the reader, the articles proceed to discuss the cultural practices of a particular group of people, describe their ethnic characteristics, and narrate the history of missionary work in the area. Here the map served to guide the reader, as it contained the names of certain peoples identified by Europeans: for example, “Hottentots”, “Bechuans”, “Kaffers”, and “Namaquas” in sub-­ Saharan Africa and “Indians” in North America. In the Finnish context, many of the articles published by the FMS were either wholly or partly translations of those printed elsewhere, although the source used cannot always be directly identified. The FMS relied particularly on periodicals published by German missionary societies but also translated material from British and American periodicals as well as from colonial and British newspapers. The Finnish and Swedish versions of the FMS periodicals also translated each other’s articles, and made use of material produced by Swedish missionary organizations.43 As part of the transnational missionary network which produced knowledge of the missionary field, the editors printed articles which relayed European interpretations of the meanings of colonial encounters in different parts of the world to Finnish readers. One example testifying to the FMS’s channeling of colonial knowledges relates to Australia, which the British invaded and colonized during the nineteenth century. An article printed in 1861 relied on claims derived from Wesleyan and Gossner missionaries in describing the Aboriginal peoples as “stiff and stupid in their minds”, since they were not receptive to God’s word. The editor, Gustaf Dahlberg, explained this by noting how the “Papuas”, as they referred to the inhabitants of the continent, were the “most depraved and beastly of all peoples”. At the same time, the reader was informed of the colonial

 Children’s missionary map of the world, 1844, Maps CC.5.a.161, BL.  Remes 1993, 28.

42 43

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violence that had created hatred toward Europeans and was guided to locate some of the events described on the world map.44 The description of the challenges faced in Australia continued five years later with an account of the work of the Scot John Green, whom the Victorian government had in 1861 appointed “general inspector” to examine the condition of the Aboriginal population living within the confines of the colony. This measure followed the termination of the Aboriginal Protectorate system in the area at the end of the 1840s, and the recommendation issued in 1858 as to the benefits of forming reservations for the Aboriginal population. The article was a translation from the periodical published by the Berlin-based Gossner Mission; it summarized the way in which Green’s position in the colony had enabled him to successfully pursue evangelical missionary work. At his Aboriginal station, Coranderrk in Healesville, Green had converted twenty-seven individuals: fields were plowed, European clothing was introduced, children were attending school, and goods were manufactured for sale to the white settlers.45 The article thus described the consequences of colonial administrative policies, which were entangled with the evangelical missionary work that Green was interested in. The FMS’s editor positioned the article as testimony to the success that persistent work would bring among even the “most wretched of all peoples”, thus channeling the widely shared discourse promoting a stadial understanding of human progress.46 Ian Clark and Fred Cahir, however, note that Green’s trusted position in the eyes of the Aboriginal families, especially their willingness to surrender their children to Green’s care and his success in evangelical work, may have been due to their perception of Green as a black man who died but was resurrected, a ngamadjidj. The Aboriginal populations’ willingness to engage with Green’s preaching might thus be an indication of the reinforcement of Aboriginal cosmology, rather than their embrace of Christianity.47 Together these articles relating to Australia both contributed to the construction of an epistemology that grounded rather than disputed the colonial world order. They relied on racialized explanations to display how  “Weljesten menestyksestä Australiassa,” SL, 1861, no 1, 2–8, at 8.  “Australia,” SL, 1866, no 9, 139–41. The periodical is Die Biene auf dem Missionsfeld. For Green, see Clark and Cahir 2014, 130. 46  “Australia,” SL, 1866, no 9, 139. 47  Clark and Cahir 2014. 44 45

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differently these peoples lived, thus exploiting their otherness to evoke readers’ compassion toward the “heathens”. Simultaneously, they referred to the idea of a Christian family who had all been saved by Christ.48 In this assemblage of material, the map allowed the reader to cross geographical distance: first to imagine these “wretched” peoples and then to note the impact that missionary work had in advancing civilization even in the most distant parts of the Earth. In these articles, the British colonial space unfolds as a space of possibilities, provided that the evangelical missions could take the lead in intercourse with the Indigenous populations. Another prominent form of colonial knowledges enforced by the FMS, through its world map and the texts linked to it, involved the conceptualization of geographies of cannibalism. The discourse of cannibalism formed an intrinsic part of nineteenth-century European accounts, more specifically those concerning the South Pacific. As multiple scholars have noted, this discourse is exemplary of the type of social constructions which fueled the missionary enterprise and served more generally as effective tools of European colonial projects since the conquest of South America.49 Indeed, if we return to the article on the Fiji Islands referred to in the beginning of this section, we see that after the editor has helped the reader locate the islands on the map, he then proceeds to discuss the a­ dvancement of Christianity there. According to the author, this transformation was striking, considering that the inhabitants had been known for their cruel cannibalism. Even though some rebelled against Christianity and persecuted those who had converted by burning the churches or killing people, they were a minority. The recent news from the Wesleyan missionaries had been encouraging: “60,000 people have given up the cruelties of paganism, the filthiness and shame, and are now waiting for teachers here … who could teach them about God’s grace”.50 The veracity of missionary testimony like these has been extensively debated by scholars; it is beyond the scope of the present chapter to evaluate the credibility of the multiple testimonies printed in the Finnish periodicals.51 Rather, my point here relates to the critical role played by the FMS articles, together with the world map, in spatializing cannibalism in the nineteenth century. Cannibalism was a relatively frequently revisited theme,  “Weljesten menestyksestä Australiassa,” SL, 1861, no 1, 8.  Brantlinger 2006; Banivanua-Mar 2010; Davies 2016. 50  “Fegee luodot,” SL, 1860, supplement no 5, 118–19. 51  See Brantlinger 2006 for a review of the debate. 48 49

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with multiple articles referring to the practice in different geographical contexts ranging from South America and Southeast Asia to Africa, but focusing, in particular, on the Pacific.52 The Pacific was also pinpointed as the region of cannibals in the reading materials designed to accompany the map.53 By reprinting translated articles of missionaries’ “eye-witness accounts” describing the horrors they had seen or by providing Finnish audiences with “news” of missionaries killed and eaten by the cannibals here and there, the FMS taught its readers to conceptualize the world in terms of these spaces. In so doing, the FMS was continuing the ancient Western tradition, tracing back to Ptolemy’s Geography, of mapping different types of “monstrosities”. While the FMS map does not explicitly place cannibals anywhere specific, as was common in sixteenth-­century maps, the accompanying reading materials ensured that the black spaces of the “heathens” came to be associated with cannibalism.54 By channeling knowledges which fueled geographical imaginations of barbarism and savagery, the FMS was making clear the urgency of missionary work. Simultaneously, however, the Society imposed knowledges used to justify colonial violence.

Eyes on Africa The FMS’s relationship with the geographies of the global mission field altered once it was confirmed that they could send out their first missionaries to Owambo, in present-day northern Namibia, in 1868. The missionaries had been trained in Helsinki at the missionary school which had opened in 1862. The site was chosen with the help of German missionary Carl Hugo Hahn, who had been working close by in “Hereroland” with the Rhenish Missionary Society. The Finnish presence in Owambo marked the start of complex processes of cultural changes on the ground. In 52  See “Heillä on silmät huoruutta täynnä,” SL, 1860, no 3, 42; “Ihmissyöjät Basutot,” SL, 1866, no 12, 181–83; “Taka Aasian luodot,” SL, 1867, no 10, 152; “Ewankeliumin julistamisesta ihmissyöjille Uusseelannissa,” SL, 1868, no 2, 17–24; “Kuningas Thakomban ja Lähetys Fissin saarilla,” SL, 1873, no 2, 24–31; “Witit (Fidschi) ennen ja nyt,” SL, 1881, supplement no 6, 43–45; “Australian alku-asukkaat,” SL, 1881, supplement no 7, 53–54; “Erään Bassutowaimon elämänvaiheet,” SL, 1881, supplement no 8, 62–63; “Lähetyksestä Etelämeren saarilla,” SL, 1882, supplement no 3, 20–21; “Kuningas Takomban Fidschi-­ saarilla,” SL, 1884, no 5, 72–74; “Lähetys tarpeellinen ja hedelmällinen työ,” SL 1887, supplement no 12, 90; “Riippuwa silta Sumatran saarella,” SL, 1890, supplement no 4, 30; “Meriroswojen keskellä Uudella Guinealla,” SL, 1892, no 9, 138–40. 53  Ewankelinen Lähetys 1861, 15–16. See Selitys Lähetys-Toimen Kartalle 1878, 19–20. 54  For the early modern practices, see Van Duzer 2013, 421–29; Davies 2016.

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addition, the establishment and existence of Finnish missionary stations across the seas materialized in the hands of Finnish audiences as various types of maps, texts, and illustrations; these helped them navigate the distant terrain and shaped Finns’ understanding of Africa more generally. The material published by the FMS differed from the type of news items already in circulation in Finland, which mainly focused on reporting the feats of European explorers and the slave trade.55 The dominance of material relating to Africa, and especially the reports of Finnish missionaries once their work started in Owambo in 1870, shadowed accounts concerning other regions of the world. They transformed the periodical in the 1870s and 1880s into a teleport to “Ovamboland”. To enable readers to navigate Owambo, the FMS updated its cartographic materials. The new edition of the world map, published in 1871, included the significant ethnic groups and some place names. Thus, the map was transformed into a tool by means of which the reader at home could locate the overseas “outposts” and the groups of people they worked with.56 The additions included placing Walvis Bay, Cunene river, and the Rhenish missionary station Otjimbingue. Importantly, the map was filled in with the names of the Aawambo groups: the “Oukounyama”, “Ongandyera”, “Oukuambi”, and “Ondonga”. In addition, the names “Ovambo” and “Herero” were inscribed on the map. The small white dots inform the viewer as to the number of working Finnish missionary stations.57 Judging by the numbers of maps printed during the 1870s, the establishment of the first Finnish mission increased the popularity of the world map: approximately 44,000 copies were printed, in contrast to the 26,000 printed in 1859–1869.58 At the same time, “Ovamboland” developed into the “apple of one’s eye” in Africa, as one Finnish newspaper phrased it.59 As Olli Löytty has argued, Finns participated in the Eurocentric production of “Ovamboland” as a geographical space. “Ovamboland” was a German designation, referring to the tract of land south of the Cunene River where people spoke Owambo languages; it derived from European needs and practices, rather than from the local conceptualization of  For example, Gustafsson 2003; Groop 2018.  “Tillkännagifwande,” MT, 1871, no 7, 120; “Ilmotuksia,” SL, 1871, no 8, 128; Maailman kartta lähetys-toimesta, FMS, circa 1871, MCNLF. 57  Selitys Lähetys-Toimen Kartalle 1878, 15. 58  This estimation derives from the FMS’s annual reports published in the periodicals. 59  “Tampere,” Tampereen Sanomat, 5 January 1874. 55 56

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space.60 Indeed, when read together with the periodicals, the world map became a convenient instrument for holding the missionary field in one’s hands, and linked the names of the Aawambo inscribed on the black space with existing ideas of spiritual and ethnic otherness. The editors, Gustaf Dahlberg and Klemens Sirelius, constructed articles which enforced these ideas. In 1870, for example, an article drawing heavily on a travel account by the Swedish-born explorer Charles John Anderson narrated what the Aawambo were like and how they lived. It is significant that since the excerpts derived from Anderson’s account painted a relatively positive idea of these peoples, Dahlberg supplemented this with a description emphasizing their “wildness”: [E]ven though their [the Aawambo] honesty has been praised, we must remember that they are fully wild and we also want to mention that the same Anderson has during his later travels encountered these peoples many times and has fully experienced their cruelty and dishonesty as well.61

In relaying this type of description, Finns made use of the same language, especially during the early years of the mission, as that used by colonial observers in portraying African people as wild, lazy, weak, and dishonest. Africa also became the preferred focus of illustrations. They helped imagine what Finnish work in the field would be like, for example, by showing missionaries entering an African village, an African house, or a landscape possibly like that encountered in Owambo.62 Whenever feasible, the FMS printed “accurate” images, received from the location or created by those who had returned to Finland.63 In 1887, for example, the missionary Tobias Reijonen relayed an image of the mission field in Omulonga, signaling how he had “civilised” the landscape with the houses he had built during his time in Owambo in 1870–1885:  Löytty 2006, 62–63.  “Owambomaa,” SL, 1870, no 3, 34–41, at 40. 62  “Selitys kuwalle,” SL, 1870, 33–34; “Selitys kuwasta,” SL, 1871, no 5, 65–66; “Selitys kuwalle,” SL, 1874, no 6, 85–86; “Kuwa,” SL, 1876, no 4, 61–63; “Afrikalainen kylä,” SL, 1886, no 3, 41–42. 63  “Beskrifning till bilden,” MT, 1873, no 8, 128; “Owambolandet,” MT, 1873, no 12, 191; “Owambomaa,” SL, 1874, no 1, 14–15; “Otyimbingue,” SL, 1883, no 5, 73–75; “Afrikalaisia lapsia lähetysalaltamme,” SL 1886, no 6, 87–89; “Kirkko Olundassa,” SL, 1891, no 3, 42–44. 60 61

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Dear reader! When you look at this illustration … remember that it is like a small rift in the large monstrous darkness of heathenism.64

Here Reijonen was partly channeling the iconography of the world map, which was known for its small dots of white spread across the black continents. This symbolic is known to have impacted Reijonen during his childhood, growing up in Northern Karelia, in the eastern parts of the Grand Duchy. An account of his life records the effect the map had on him: When Tobias was young, the missionary map was published, where the heathen lands were coloured black and the Christian lands in white … When Tobias gazed upon the map, he wept and hoped that he could do something for the beloved Saviour. It was thus he gained the desire to work as a missionary.65

To provide Finnish audiences with a more detailed understanding of the terrain that the missionaries were walking and to “awaken a love towards Africa and its black children”, in 1879, the FMS published separate maps of Africa as a whole and of part of the southwestern coast. The maps were probably the work of Pietari Kurvinen, one of the first missionaries in the field, who had returned from Africa in 1875, published a four-­ part book of his experiences in the field, and authored a multi-part article about Africa and the Aawambo “for the ordinary Finns”.66 The maps combined information obtained on the spot and gleaned from foreign maps.67 They were bound into a tiny booklet, which explained the contents of the small foldout maps to the reader. A second edition of 5000 copies appeared only two years later in 1881, and the map continued to be sold throughout the 1880s as a useful resource in following events in the Finnish mission field.68 The maps taught people to understand the contours of the Owambo space and helped them recognize the Finnish influence there. They thus  Tobias Reijonen, “Omulongan lähetys-asema,” SL, 1887, no 7, 102–4, at 104.  “Lähetyssaarnaaja Tobias Reijonen,” Kotilähetys, 1 December 1905, 3. 66  Missionskarta öfwer Afrika och Owambolandet jemte besrifning, 1879, MCNLF; Kurvinen, 1877–1880. The article was published in 1876 in SL and MT. 67  Missionskarta öfwer Afrika och Owambolandet jemte besrifning, 1879, MCNLF, 3–4; Kokkonen 1993. 68  “Suomen Lähetysseuran kahdeskymmeneskolmas vuosikertomus,” SL, 1881, no 8, 119; “Kirjoja myytävänä,” SL, 1887, no 11, 175. 64 65

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offered Finns a further means of “discovery” and “taking possession” of Africa and Owambo. Kurvinen’s map of Owambo displays the toponyms that Finns inscribed on the Owambo space, that is, the missionary stations Elim, Rehoba, and Bethel, founded in the 1870s.69 The map of Africa differed in its outlook, as its purpose was to provide a general view of the continent. This did not mean depicting merely the recently discovered physical features or the toponyms. Rather, the map displayed an Africa divided according to religion into morally differentiated spaces: green coloring identified heathens, gray Muslims, and white Christians. The continent was described as “the long-forgotten, greatly spacious land savaged and demolished by slave traders, cannibals and human sacrifice”.70 This description reinforced the idea given by Kurvinen in his previous writings concerning the prevalence of cannibalism in Africa, even among some of the Aawambo.71 In dividing up the continent this way, Kurvinen was following the model set by the world map and other more detailed maps available at the time, such as in Reinhold Grundemann’s multivolume Allgemeiner Missions-Atlas nach Originalquellen (1867), used in Finland as well.72 Together, these resources—the updated world maps, Kurvinen’s maps accompanying the texts, and the illustrations—all contributed to shaping Finnish geographical imaginations of the Owambo space and the meanings of Finnish work there. At least in the minds of some, the Finnish presence in Africa—and the missionary project more broadly—resonated with colonialism. In 1873, soon after Finnish missionaries had entered Africa, the FMS board published a polemical text in response to a letter received from a reader of Suomen Lähetyssanomia. The author of the letter, who had signed it as “an informant of people’s thoughts”, criticized missionaries for robbing Native Americans of their lands and for being involved in the slave trade. Importantly, the author argued that Finnish missionaries had traveled to Africa to conquer the Owambo lands. The writer questioned the validity of choosing Africa as a site for missionary work, noting that the only reason for not choosing Russia for fieldwork must be that in Africa the 69  Afrikan ja Owambomaan Lähetyskartta selityksineen, 1881, MCNLF, 21; Paunu 1909, 150, 180. 70  Afrikan ja Owambomaan Lähetyskartta selityksineen, 1881, MCNLF, 6. 71  Pietari Kurvinen, “Sananen Afrikasta Suomenkansalle,” SL, 1876, no 8, 127–28; Pietari Kurvinen, “Nägra ord om Afrika till Finlands folk,” MT, 1876, no 9, 142–43. 72  Grundemann 1867; Missionskarta öfwer Afrika och Owambolandet jemte besrifning, 1879, MCNLF, 4.

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missionaries could acquire land and power.73 It was true that Russia had been one of the original targets of the FMS, but the Tsar had prohibited these plans.74 However, as the board put it, colonizing the Owambo land “had not crossed the minds” of the missionaries, “nor had Christian missionaries anywhere taken lands or power from kings or heads of states”: those criticisms applied perhaps to the Catholics and “especially to the Jesuits”. Similarly, they posited that in the seventeenth century it was “Englishmen … who acquired new homes in North America”, not missionaries, who arrived later.75 This view concerning the missionaries of previous centuries coincided with the stance taken in an article on South America, published in 1868, where Portuguese and Spanish missionaries were described as ineffective due to their close connections to colonization.76 The FMS thus presented other missionaries, especially the actions of the Jesuits during the conquest of America, as reprehensible, but refused to see the evangelical mission in a similar light. The printing of sections of the letter with a detailed response to these accusations shows that the FMS was eager to dispel all rumors concerning their colonial ambitions, however marginal these rumors may have been.

Conclusions In this chapter I have examined the mass-printed map products of the FMS, which formed the core of their promotional materials, to critically enquire how and why they enabled Finnish audiences to engage with European colonial realms. In the 1860s, before the FMS had started any work abroad, the world map, the reading materials accompanying it, and the periodicals functioned as means to publicize the diverse work that other societies had already done in different parts of the world. They taught Finns to see these areas as legitimate fields for Christian action and were designed to shape their ideas of the colonial realms. The texts guided their readers to locate different peoples on the map, and to perceive them with cultural characteristics mediated in terms of Western ideas of civility, religion, and moral codes. They communicated information about past and present power relations in colonial contexts, discussed the continuing  “Wastausta ‘kansan ajatusten ilmoittajalle’,” SL, 1873, no 2, 22–23.  Paunu 1909, 21–22. 75  “Wastausta ‘kansan ajatusten ilmoittajalle’,” SL, 1873, no 2, 23. 76  “Intianein kääntämisestä Etelä-amerikassa,” SL, 1868, no 5, 68–74. 73 74

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trade of enslaved peoples, criticized the consequences of the settler expansion, and conceptualized missionary work as a separate project, in contrast to the processes of formal colonization. The FMS also participated in reproducing the discourse of cannibalism, which the maps helped spatialize in specific parts of the world, including the Finns’ own area of fieldwork in Africa. The maps provided the FMS with a powerful means to disseminate missionary imaginaries of the world, and to fuel geographical imaginations that intertwined with Finnish identity formation. The maps reinforced the arguments at the core of missionary endeavors: they served as analytical tools helping to create target communities for missionary work and aiding in conceptualizing human diversity in the world. When the editors of the periodicals of the Finnish Missionary Society directed their readers to turn their attention to the missionary map of the world while engaging with an article reporting the feats of German, English, American, and later Finnish missionaries in different parts of the world, they were simultaneously asking them to position themselves in the world. By contributing to the transnational production of hierarchical conceptualizations of “heathenism” and racialized bodies, the FMS was directly inviting their prospective audiences to imagine where they themselves fit in these hierarchies, and what this position meant. They urged Finns to take part in the transnational project of helping “Others”. In so doing, they were effectively advancing a colonialist outlook on the world, by domesticating a discourse regarding many areas outside Europe as uncivil spaces in need of European—including Finnish—action. Acknowledgments  The research for this contribution has been carried out with the generous support of the Academy of Finland, grant number 331899.

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Kokkonen, Pellervo. 1993. Religious and Colonial Realities: Cartography of the Finnish Mission in Ovamboland, Namibia. History in Africa 20: 155–171. Kurvinen, P. 1877–1880. Seitsemän Ensimmäistä Vuotta Lähetyssaarnaajana Eli Iloja Sekä Suruja Afrikassa, Vihkot 1–4. Helsinki: Suomen Lähetysseura. Laine, Päivi. 2007. Suomi Tiellä Sivistyskieleksi: Suomenkielisen Maantieteen Sanaston Kehittyminen Ja Kehittäminen 1800-Luvulla. Turku: Department of Finnish and General Linguistics of the University of Turku. Lambert, David, and Alan Lester. 2004. Geographies of Colonial Philanthropy. Progress in Human Geography 28 (3): 320–341. Lester, Alan. 2001. Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain. Routledge. Lester, Alan, and Fae Dussart. 2014. Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines Across the Nineteenth-Century British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Löytty, Olli. 2006. Ambomaamme: Suomalaisen Lähetyskirjallisuuden Me Ja Muut. Helsinki: Vastapaino. ———. 2007. Kun Ambomaa Tuli Suomeen. In Suomalaisen Arjen Historia 3: Modernin Suomen Synty, ed. Kai Häggman, 263–277. Weilin+Göös. Lukemisia Kansan Hyödyksi. 1845. Helsinki. Massey, Doreen B. 2005. For Space. SAGE. Missionskartographie. 2019. Cartographica Helvetica 58: 1–71. Nielssen, Hilde, Karina Okkenhaug, and Inger Marie Hestad Skeie. 2011. Introduction. In Protestant Missions and Local Encounters in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Unto the Ends of the World, ed. Hilde Nielssen, Inger Marie Okkenhaug, and Karina Hestad Skeie, 1–22. Leiden: Brill. Onnekink, David. 2020. Kingdom Come: The Eschatology of Missionary Maps. International Bulletin of Mission Research: 1–9. Paunu, Uno. 1909. Suomen Pakanalähetystoimi II: Suomen Lähetysseura Vuosina 1859–1876. Helsinki: Suomen Lähetysseura. Petzke, Martin. 2018. The Global Bookkeeping of Souls: Quantification and Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Missions. Social Science History 42 (2): 183–211. Remes, Viljo. 1993. Sata Vuotta Suomalaista Lähetystyötä I:2: Siemen Kasvaa Puuksi 1859–1895. Helsinki: Suomen Lähetysseura. Said, Edward. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books. Selitys Lähetys-Toimen Kartalle. 1878. 11th ed. Helsinki: Suomen Lähetysseura. Vallgårda, Karen. 2016. Were Christian Missionaries Colonizers? Reorienting the Debate and Exploring New Research Trajectories. Interventions 18 (6): 865–886. Van Duzer, Chet. 2013. Hic Sunt Dracones: The Geography and Cartography of Monsters. In The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle, 387–435. Abingdon: Routledge.

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Open Access  This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

PART III

Finns’ Colonial Encounters Abroad

CHAPTER 9

From the Eastern Front to the Western Frontier: The Transimperial Life of a Finnish Worker During the First World War Aleksi Huhta

Introduction In 1920, two metalworkers in Helsinki were discussing labor conditions in the Belgian Congo. One of the men had secured a work visa to the Belgian colony, but the other, who had recently returned from the Congo, warned his friend against going. The recent returnee told of malaria, wild beasts, and terrifying black men, who killed white men with their arrows if they saw them getting too intimate with black women. Instead of the Congo, the man opined, his friend should go to Canada. It was a land just as rich as the Congo, but without the conflicts between nationalities, and with a more hospitable climate to boot. After this discussion, the man with the

A. Huhta (*) University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_9

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visa to the Congo decided against using it, and instead sought out Britain’s consulate in Helsinki to apply for a visa to Canada.1 This conversation, recorded in a handwritten autobiography at the Labour Archive of Finland’s collection of Finnish labor tradition, tells an interesting story about the relationship between labor and empire in post-­ First World War Finland. Traditional Finnish labor history has been embedded in the context of the nation-state and has emphasized the labor movement’s role in the nation-building process. In recent years, these nation-centered accounts have been increasingly supplemented by transnational analyses, with particular focus on the transatlantic interconnectedness of the Finnish and Finnish-American labor movements.2 Yet, this laudatory effort to connect Finnish labor history with broader global networks has rarely made room for empires, arguably the most powerful shapers of globalization in the world of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.3 To be sure, the Finnish labor movement’s intimate connection to the Russian Empire has been thoroughly analyzed, especially with regard to the time of Finland’s gaining of independence from Russia in 1917 and the subsequent Civil War of 1918.4 The connections of the labor movement—and of ordinary workers—to the broader world of empires have attracted less attention.5 The 1920 conversation between the two Helsinki workers with which this chapter began offers a glimpse of how imperial networks of information, labor recruiting, and transportation reached working-class people, even in the new, purportedly post-­ imperial nation-state of Finland. In this chapter, I explore Finnish encounters with this new imperial order, and participation in its shaping, by means of microhistorical analysis. The focus is on one particular life—that of Kalle Koskinen, the author of the autobiography referred to above—and follows its trajectory through the convulsions of the First World War into the early 1920s. I track Koskinen’s complicated journey, from a volunteer in the Tsar’s army to a 1  Labour Archive of Finland, the Finnish Labour Tradition Collection (hereafter LA-LT), Kalle Koskinen’s handwritten autobiography [1964], binding 74, item 1423, pp.  2–3. Hereafter the autobiography is referenced with binding, item and page number (e.g. 74/1423/3–5). 2  See, for example, Beaulieu et al. 2011. 3  Magee and Thompson 2010. 4  See, for example, Upton 1980. 5  On recent scholarship on labour and empire, see, for example, Zimmerman 2010; Bender and Lipman 2015; Greene 2020.

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Red insurgent in the Finnish Civil War in 1918, and thence to life as a refugee Communist in early 1920s Canada. The chapter highlights the transimperial character of Koskinen’s life. Focusing merely on his encounters with a single empire would not fully capture the power dynamic that shaped his life choices in the course of these years. To fully understand his decision to apply for a Canadian visa at the British Consulate, for instance, we also need to take into account, for example, the tightening immigration restrictions of the United States, the descent into fratricidal chaos in Russia, and the trouble Belgians had in making their Congolese colony more attractive to European workers. The present analysis draws on the emerging transimperial scholarship, which invites “investigation into border-­crossing relationships in which imperial formations figure prominently” and in which “mobility, connectivity, exchange, and adaptation” blur official state boundaries.6 The chapter highlights, in particular, the key role played by Finland’s administrative, economic, and cultural connection to the Russian Empire in Finns’ participation in the colonial projects of other empires. A burgeoning literature places the history of the Russian Empire within the broader story of European colonial expansion,7 and scholars have started to connect the collapse of the Romanov Empire during the First World War to the broader global history of decolonization.8 For Joshua Sanborn, the World War was “a war of European decolonization”.9 Finland’s declaration of independence from Russia in December 1917, and the subsequent Finnish Civil War between the Reds and the Whites in early 1918, can be seen as part of this broader history of Russia’s decolonization.10 The mobility of millions of uprooted Russian subjects—reservists, refugees, deportees, deserters—formed a key dynamic in the collapse of the empire.11 In this chapter, I connect this intra-Russian wartime mobility to the transatlantic mobility of settler colonialism. Kalle Koskinen’s mobile biography brings into stark relief how Finnish complicity in overseas colonial projects was connected to Finland’s history within the Russian Empire. The primary source material for this study consists of Kalle Koskinen’s autobiographical texts, which he sent to the Labour Archive of Finland in  Hoganson and Sexton 2020, 7.  Darwin 2008; Burbank and Cooper 2010. 8  Sanborn 2014a, 2014b; Miller 2018; Mark and Slobodian 2018. 9  Sanborn 2014a, 3. 10  Sanborn 2014a, 211–214, 229–230. 11  Sanborn 2014a, 256–257; Gatrell 1999; Stockdale 2016. 6 7

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the late 1950s and early 1960s. The material consists of some 3800 pages of text, contained in dozens of notebooks. Koskinen’s voluminous autobiographical writing was a response to the Labour Archive’s call to collect oral histories and autobiographies of Finnish working-class experience.12 Most of the notebooks are not dated, but the archive has dated their reception. Some of the text might thus actually have been written well before its arrival in Finland, but it is likely that Koskinen wrote at least most of it quite soon before sending it. Koskinen, or Victor Koski, as he called himself in Canada, also recorded his memories for other archival projects in both Canada and Finland.13 In following the life trajectory of a single individual across imperial and national borders, the study draws on biographical and microhistorical methodologies. Rather than focusing on biographical detail, these approaches turn the spotlight outward: to the contexts within which the individual in question thought and acted. Individual lives in their complexity and contingency can offer valuable insight into the dynamics of empire.14 The recent scholarship on global microhistory offers especially relevant insights for a study that follows an individual’s life across a transimperial terrain. Global microhistory aims at connecting the micro-scale of an individual life to macro-scales that expand beyond a nation or another singular polity. Following an individual’s crossings of borders, as well as her failures to do so, can allow for unique insights into the on-the-ground practices of transimperial interactions.15 It is important to avoid the romanticizing of mobility and border-hopping that can mar studies of cosmopolitan individuals.16 The focus in the study is not only on Koskinen’s movement across imperial borders but also on barriers against movement, such as passports and border controls. I first explore Koskinen’s journey to Russia during the First World War, followed by his attempts to find political refuge after the war in America, Russia, and Congo, and finally his immigration to Canada.

 Peltonen 1996.  Salmi-Niklander n.d. 14  Norris and Sunderland 2012. 15  Ghobral 2019. 16  De Vries 2019, 28. 12 13

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“The Greatest Mistake of My Life”: Volunteering for the Tsar At the turn of August 1914, news of the Great War’s outbreak began to reach the diverse subjects of the Russian Empire. In its early stages, the war was experienced as a moment of unprecedented imperial patriotism, transcending political, social, and ethnic divisions.17 Like some other minorities of the empire, Finns were exempt from imperial conscription, but many prominent Finns vouched for “their” nationality’s loyalty to the empire in its moment of direst need. They saw the war as an opportunity to disprove Russian nationalists’ misgivings about their loyalty, and to regain their liberties in a reformed empire. Reflecting this wave of loyalty, some 700 Finns volunteered for the Russian army.18 In other empires, too, the diverse minorities and colonized populations were harnessed for the war effort, and many nationalist leaders, like Mohandas Gandhi in India, supported their empire’s military mobilization in the belief that the metropolis would reward the colonized subjects’ wartime loyalty.19 At the outbreak of the war, Kalle Koskinen worked at the Helsinki Fire Department. Born in Lahti in 1880 to a poor farm-laborer’s family, he had worked in the town’s emerging metal industry, and at the turn of the 1910s had participated in the construction of the town’s Russian army garrison. He had also studied horse husbandry in Lahti before migrating to Helsinki, where he found work tending the fire department’s horses. During the war, the Helsinki Fire Department was a scene of continuing labor troubles. Martial law gave the department’s leadership strict authority over the rank-and-file, causing discontent among workers as wages and working conditions deteriorated.20 Koskinen wrote in his autobiography that he resigned from the department because of the management’s despotic rule. Together with two of his colleagues, he then marched to the central Helsinki police station, made a military salute and declared: “Mister Chief Inspector—could I get assigned to the Russian Army’s Technical Department”. The police inspector instructed the men to apply in St. Petersburg, but issued them a permit for train travel to the imperial capital.21 Most Finnish volunteers signed up for regular military service or for  Stockdale 2016, 22–31.  Hoppu 2012. 19  See, for example, Fogarty 2014; Garton 2014. 20  Härkäpää 1961, 179. 21  LA-LT Koskinen [1964], 74/1423/12–13; [1965] 78/1454/10; 78/1456/64–65. 17 18

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officer training, but some, like Koskinen, requested special assignment to support duties.22 Koskinen was not a devout tsarist but a socialist, with at least latent antipathy toward the conservative monarchy. At the same time, Koskinen could apparently reconcile his ideological beliefs with serving the Russian Empire. The historian Tuomas Hoppu has studied the motives of Finnish volunteers for joining the Russian army, and much of his analysis can be applied on this particular case. Koskinen was in many ways a typical Finnish volunteer. His home province of Tavastia (Häme) contributed proportionally the most men to the volunteers, which is partly explained by the inhabitants’ relatively neutral or positive attitude toward Russia. In rural Tavastia, positive attitudes toward Russia were sometimes a form of social protest: landless agricultural workers identified anti-Russian nationalism with the oppressive bourgeoisie and hoped that closer alignment of Finland with Russia would lead to the redistribution of land. Few volunteers were devout tsarists, but a neutral or positive predilection toward Russia was at least a necessary factor in the decision to enlist.23 Koskinen made his decision to volunteer in the context of a labor dispute at the fire department. The fire department’s chief, Gösta Wasenius, was privately a supporter of the anti-Russian “Jäger” movement,24 which in 1915 had started to recruit young Finnish men for military training in Germany. The nationalist activists who organized this movement hoped that the Jägers would become the core of a broader armed insurrection against Russian rule in Finland. It was part of Berlin’s broader attempt to incite nationalist rebellions among its enemies’ minority populations, for instance, in Poland, the Caucasus, Turkestan, Flanders, and Ireland.25 Koskinen asserts that he too almost left for Germany to become a Jäger; his socialist colleagues dissuaded him from going, claiming that the project was anti-worker and pro-German. Some Finnish socialists in fact supported the Jäger movement, especially in its early stages, while others opposed it as a rightwing scheme.26 In his autobiography, Koskinen frequently invokes Wasenius’ pro-German sympathies—and his German  Hoppu 2006, 61–62.  Hoppu 2006, 77. 24  Härkäpää 1961, 179. Wasenius was sent to Siberia for his pro-German activism in August 1916. 25  Strotmann 2016. 26  Lackman 2000, 205–208. 22 23

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wife—as evidence of his treacherousness and his despotic personality.27 After Wasenius threatened to reveal Koskinen as a vagrant to the police department, risking his being sent into forced labor service, Koskinen retorted: “How does it feel to serve Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas at the same time?” Koskinen then marched to the central police department to volunteer in the Russian army. Before he left for St. Petersburg, Koskinen paid a visit to the fire department to tell chief Wasenius that by making him resign, he had contributed a soldier to the Tsar’s army. To Koskinen’s disappointment, Wasenius was not present to hear the news.28 For Koskinen, the anti-Russian underground movement in Finland was thus tarnished by its connection with the pro-German bourgeoisie. This made military service in the Tsar’s army appear as a form of social protest. To be sure, Koskinen did not volunteer for the Russian army merely to spite his former employer. Like Koskinen, most volunteers came from modest social backgrounds; they included crofters, agricultural laborers, and unskilled industrial workers. As unemployment became an increasing threat during the war, many workers saw military service as a way to secure regular food and shelter.29 As unemployment soared in Finland, thousands of Finns left voluntarily for Russia to build the Murmansk railroad or to work in the imperial capital Petrograd. Even the labor movement was active in recruiting lumbermen to Russia. Rumors also circulated that the military would forcibly recruit the unemployed to labor service.30 Koskinen refers to the threat of becoming “a vagrant” as a significant reason for his enlistment. He was especially afraid of being forcibly sent to the fortification construction sites operated by the Russian army in Finland.31 These projects employed tens of thousands of Finnish workers, but labor was also imported from other parts of the empire. During the war, 30,000–50,000 Russian soldiers were stationed at the construction sites, and in 1916, the army augmented the labor force with some 3000 Chinese workers.32 Chinese migrant workers had long worked in Asian parts of Russia, but the Russian government permitted their entry into European Russia only in mid-1915, as the labor shortage was becoming untenable.33  LA-LT, Koskinen [1961], 72/1406/17–18; 72/1408/2–3.  LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 78/1454/10. 29  Hoppu 2006, 103–104. 30  Engman 1992, 257–258. 31  Hoppu 2012, 156–157. 32  Halén 2004, 107–108. 33  Alexeeva 2018, 48–52. See Xu 2011. 27 28

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In Finnish public discourse, the fortification construction sites were viewed as troublesome and dangerous places.34 It is evident from his autobiography that Koskinen shared this view of fortification construction as denigrating work, a perception which mixed fears of dwindling social status with racial anxieties. In a text that he sent to the Labour Archive in 1965, Koskinen specifically recorded his recollections of Chinese migrant workers in Finland. Drawing on common anti-­ Chinese tropes, he dwelt on the long-haired Chinese workers’ purported femininity, their disgusting eating habits, and their perverted sexuality. He also recounted an odd story about Chinese men stealing silk decorations from a cemetery and wearing them as personal ornaments35 that had been widely circulated in Finnish newspapers in November 1916.36 Clearly, Koskinen’s recollections of the Chinese were based on contemporary rumors and press coverage, not on personal encounters. Indeed, he reflects in his autobiography that he did his utmost to avoid such contacts, even enlisting as a volunteer in the Russian army to avoid labor service at the fortification construction sites.37 The social stigma of a vagrant as well as fears of being associated with the purportedly uncivilized Chinese and other “lesser peoples” in fortification work made volunteer service in the army seem preferable to Koskinen. In his autobiography, Koskinen frequently laments that enlistment as a volunteer was “the biggest mistake of his life”. It is also evident, however, that he did not leave for Russia with an entirely pessimistic frame of mind. He recalled how a socialist friend had encouraged him to go to Russia, since it was thence that a revolution was to spread to Finland.38 Melissa Stockdale has noted that due to the universal disparagement of the First World War in Soviet historiography as an “imperialist war”, it has been difficult to recall how broadly the war was initially embraced in Russia— not only by avowed conservatives but also by many liberals, socialists, and representatives of national minorities.39 It is thus not far-fetched to believe that Koskinen saw the war as a chance not only to improve his personal position in the post-war world but also to work toward a more equitable  Upton 1980, 65–66.  Koskinen [1965], 79/1458/1–2. 36  See, for example, “Kiinalaisen kaulahuivi,” Uusi Suometar, November 24, 1916; Ilkka, November 30, 1916. The story was published in seventeen newspapers. 37  Koskinen [1963], 72/1415/36–37. 38  LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 78/1454/11. 39  Stockdale 2016. 34 35

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empire. These imaginings were probably reinforced by strict press censorship and the lack of information in Finland as to the scale of the carnage on the Eastern Front. Indeed, it was only after conversing with Finns in St. Petersburg, Koskinen recalled, that he realized the error of his decision. The St. Petersburg Finns were closer to the war and knew more about it. “No matter whom I talked to, they all lamented that I had taken this journey”, Koskinen reminisced.40 Koskinen served first in Orsha and Vitebsk in Belarus, where he constructed cannon supports, then in Minsk repairing Red Cross carriages, and finally in Brusilov in the Ukraine, where he repaired train cars. That Koskinen was kept on the move reflects the highly mobile character of the Eastern Front, where offensives and retreats kept the front lines in flux. The so-called Great Retreat, in the summer of 1915, was especially dramatic in this respect, with a torrent of refugees and deportees from Western Russia flooding the country’s interior.41 In Minsk, Koskinen observed the constant movement of multiethnic throngs of soldiers, laborers, refugees, and prostitutes. “People were walking in masses, different races and nationalities, men and women, first everybody went to Minsk and from there to other places”, Koskinen reminisced.42 Observing the war-ravaged lands around him, he saw the poverty and dereliction around him as not only an effect of war but also as a sign of rural Russia’s backward conditions. “We were transferred to another Central Russian place, which was one of those places in Old Russia that we had read about in books and learnt in school”, he recalled regarding a transfer from Vitebsk to Orsha in present-day Belarus. The town had only one road, the livestock roamed free, and houses had just one room, where family members lived and slept together.43 When he later visited an Ingrian Finnish village near St. Petersburg, he recalled noticing how these Finns living in rural Russia “seemed to be in a much more primitive state” than their co-ethnics across the border in the Grand Duchy.44 The Ukraine was more amicable. Serving near Kiev, he could agree with a sentiment he had often heard from other Finns who had been to the Caucasus or Crimea: “the farther south you went, the better the places become”.45  LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 78/1454/11.  Sanborn 2014b, 97–98. 42  LA-LT, Koskinen [1961], 72/1406/27. 43  LA-LT, Koskinen [1964], 73/1416/4. 44  LA-LT, Koskinen [1961], 72/1416/13. 45  LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 78/1454/17. 40 41

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Koskinen’s observations concerning the ethnic diversity around him testify to the war’s character as a colonial conflict. The war on the Eastern Front pitted Russia against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Yet, none of the major battles on the Eastern Front were fought in present-day Russia, Germany, Austria, or Hungary, and only a few in modern Turkey. Instead, the war was mainly fought in the ethnically diverse borderlands between the imperial cores, in the “colonized spaces” of Poland, the Baltic countries, Belorussia, the Ukraine, and the Caucasus. Moreover, the armies fighting these battles reflected the power imbalances of the empires. The Russian draft excluded Asian and Caucasian Muslims, discriminated against the Jews, and relied heavily on Russian peasants and the minorities of European Russia.46 Adding to the colonial element of the war was the Russian government’s near-complete confiscation of its German citizens’ lands, and its plans to distribute this bounty among Russian soldiers. Many German Russians fled the persecution, some joining established German-Russian communities in Canada.47 The redistribution of land was propagated by the Tsar’s opponents as well. The imperial army, composed mainly of Russian peasants and with a strong element of national minorities, became a hotbed of revolutionary activity. Koskinen was not an active revolutionary, but he came in contact with revolutionary ideas through other minority servicemen. In Belorussia, he met another Finnish volunteer profoundly disillusioned with the war.48 He also met Finnish women in Minsk, who had been lured to Russia with false promises of domestic work but who were now afraid of being forced into prostitution. One of the women vowed to join the revolutionaries, who she trusted would help people in dire situations like her own.49 When he was assigned to repair train cars west of Kiev, Koskinen met an Estonian soldier who had learned Finnish while serving in Finland. Koskinen had asked the Estonian about the revolution’s meaning, to which the latter had replied: “there will come a time when we all get land, you get land and I get land, and we all get land”. The land question was the key theme of the revolution, Koskinen surmised.50

 Sanborn 2014b, 93–94.  Stockdale 2016, 152–153, 198–202. 48  LA-LT, Koskinen [1961], 72/1406/28 49  LA-LT, Koskinen [1961], 72/1616/6–7. 50  LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 79/1457/90. 46 47

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When the revolution did come in February 1917, however, Koskinen did not stay in the Ukraine to await the redistribution of the land. He sided with the revolutionary workers in their brief battle with Brusilov’s tsarist loyalists. While minorities played a prominent role in the revolution, Koskinen felt like an outsider since he understood Russian only haltingly. His sense of being an outsider culminated in a ceremony in which soldiers symbolically pledged their allegiance to the revolution and released themselves from their former status as subjects of the Tsar. The ceremony was overseen by Orthodox priests and included a ceremonial kiss of an image of the Virgin Mary. Koskinen pledged allegiance to the revolution, but refused to kiss the image of Mary, citing his Lutheran beliefs. He was almost denounced as a counter-revolutionary, before he could explain that he had merely rejected the embrace of Orthodoxy, not of the revolution.51 The revolutionaries were apparently convinced, but the incident further strengthened Koskinen’s sense of alienation. The Orthodox Church had a strong position in the Russian army, and its power did not evaporate in the February Revolution. It quickly recognized the Provisional Government, and continued to administer loyalty oaths to servicemen, merely replacing the oath’s tsarist symbolism with allusions to civic patriotism.52 This new oath was probably the one Koskinen took in Brusilov. That his Lutheranism singled him out for suspicion was not coincidental. In 1916–1917, the anti-German ethos of Russian war propaganda took an increasingly broad anti-Protestant bent, targeting not only Germans but also Latvians, Estonians, and other “Germans by faith” for their purported disloyalty.53 Koskinen’s trouble with the oath foreboded the larger problems the Russian government soon confronted: the revolution did not break the Russian state’s imperial character and its willingness to hold on to its subject peoples, setting the stage for increasingly radical minority demands for decolonization and the Bolsheviks’ shrewd exploitation of anticolonial nationalism.54 Koskinen took advantage of the opportunity presented by the revolutionary chaos to desert from the army, participating in “the largest episode of mass desertion in military history”.55 As he joined the throngs of men  Koskinen [1961], 72/1406/30.  Stockdale 2016, 91–93, 100–101, 216. 53  Stockdale 2016, 202–206. 54  Sanborn 2014a. 55  Sanborn 2014a, 257. 51 52

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fleeing the army ranks, Koskinen contributed to the process that led ultimately to the collapse of the Russian army in 1917. Koskinen purchased civilian clothing “at a Jewish clothing market”, discarded his technical corps’ uniform, took a train north to St. Petersburg, and proceeded onward to Helsinki. Helsinki was alive with revolutionary fervor, and Koskinen found employment in the Helsinki militia, which had been organized to replace the now discredited tsarist police.56 He also participated in political meetings and protests during the heady days of the autumn of 1917. Yet, he claims to have opposed the armed revolution that broke out in January 1918, when the Red Guards took control of the industrial south of Finland. A friend in the Red Guard, however, talked him into joining the Reds, appealing to Koskinen’s military knowledge from his time serving in the Tsar’s army. He worked for the Red intelligence in Helsinki and then fought at the front south of Tampere, one of the main theaters of the war. In April 1918, he surrendered to a German expeditionary force in Helsinki, along with the rest of the capital’s Red defenders.57

Failed Migrations: America, Russia, Congo After surrendering to German forces in Helsinki, Koskinen for a short while managed to evade capture as the vindictive white conquerors of Red Finland were rounding up Reds for prison camps. After a brief period of freedom, however, he was arrested and sent to the Suomenlinna prison camp, which the whites had haphazardly established at a former Russian naval base. A military court released Koskinen from the prison camp in the fall of 1918, but he was afraid that his freedom would again prove temporary. Over 10,000 Red refugees had fled to Soviet Russia during and after the civil war, but hundreds also headed to Sweden.58 Koskinen joined them; in late 1918, he crossed the border in Tornio and headed south to Gothenburg. He enjoyed his life in Sweden—the country was a “promised land for political refugees”—but he was constantly afraid that the Swedish government’s hospitality would have its limits.59

 LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 79/1457/91.  LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 78/1454/113. 58  Näsman 2004, 107. 59  LA-LT, Koskinen [1961], 72/1406/66–67. 56 57

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Working at Gothenburg’s large harbor, Koskinen could observe the revival of transoceanic trade and travel after the world war. These reviving shipping links opened up new opportunities for refugees to gain greater distance from the feared Finnish authorities. Koskinen recalls how one Red refugee, who had found a job at a “colonial merchandise store” in Gothenburg, made a failed attempt to escape extradition to Finland by stowing away in a ship bound for China.60 A more popular emigration option for many refugees, as well as for other contemporary Finns, was North America. Koskinen too wanted to get to America, “which has always been the land of political refugees,” but without a Finnish or Swedish passport, he could not join the growing throngs of America-­ bound emigrants in Gothenburg harbor. During the world war, the United States had started to require government-mandated passports from all incoming travelers, and it continued the practice in the post-war era.61 Koskinen attempted to get to America bypassing the formal immigration control. A Swedish seaman, who was sympathetic to Koskinen’s politics, agreed to arrange a job for him on a New York-bound ocean liner. In New York, the seaman told him, Koskinen could leave the ship with the other seamen and then simply not return to the ship. However, the seaman was apparently well aware of the tightening of immigration control at the U.S. borders; he instructed Koskinen to leave part of his personal belongings behind in Gothenburg in the event of a return.62 The ship Koskinen boarded made its first call in France, where it picked up demobilized American soldiers, among them many Finnish Americans. In New York, Koskinen attempted to disembark with the other seamen, but was pulled aside by immigration inspectors. Unable to answer their questions satisfactorily, the officials sent him to Ellis Island, where he was locked up with other apprehended aliens. Here he met Finnish immigrants who were members of the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or “Wobblies,” and were awaiting deportation. In 1917 and 1918, the U.S.  Congress had passed laws expanding the government’s ability to use political radicalism as grounds for deportation. The IWW, a popular organization among immigrant Finns, was the target of particular repression.63 The Wobblies among the Ellis Island deportees belittled the  Koskinen [1961], 72/1406/81.  Torpey 2000, 116–121. 62  Koskinen [1961], 72/1406/74–75. 63  Hester 2017, 114. 60 61

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national provincialism of Koskinen’s brand of socialism. “They placed no value on the revolution that had taken place in Russia and that had been tried in Finland”, Koskinen recalled. “They said they were going to bring about an Industrial Revolution, and it would take place all over the world”.64 That these cosmopolitan revolutionaries were currently under arrest by the US government and awaiting expulsion to their purported homelands seems like an apt metaphor for the increasing power of states to control people’s domicile, irrespective of their personal identification. Yet, this capacity to control individual mobility had its limits, especially as many states were still reeling from the impact of the world war. When US immigration inspectors presented Koskinen with a map of Europe, asking him to point to his place of birth, he put his finger on Northern Sweden. He told the authorities that he belonged to Sweden’s Finnish-speaking minority, and was put on a ship to Gothenburg.65 After his failed attempt to reach America, Koskinen next attempted a return to Russia. He had been devastated by Russia’s backwardness during his service on the Eastern Front, but he still saw Finland’s future intimately tied to that of its eastern neighbor: “We became convinced that if Finnish workers got help, it could only come from the East—from Soviet Russia”.66 The Stockholm office of the Moscow-based Communist Party of Finland organized his clandestine travel route through Northern Finland. Near the Finnish-Soviet border, however, Koskinen heard about an impending raid by the Finnish authorities against illegal border crossers. Fearing capture, Koskinen and his travel companion decided to abort their journey and head south to Helsinki.67 Koskinen spent five months in Helsinki, working for a large foundry, but kept looking for a way to get out of Finland. This was difficult without a passport, and as a former Red and someone who had not done his military service, he would not be able to obtain one. In this impasse, he received help from recruiters who were apparently working for Belgian mining companies in the Congo. The men were recruiting Finnish metalworkers for the Congo, and promised to arrange Koskinen’s travel there. “Belgium was now settling the Congo, which previously had been inhabited by only wild blacks”, Koskinen recalled, “and this was why they were  LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 77/1449/40.  LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 78/1451/90. 66  LA-LT, Koskinen [1958], 26D/454/89–90. 67  LA-LT, Koskinen [1961], 72/1406/84–85; [1965], 78/1455/132. 64 65

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bringing men there”.68 Belgian labor recruitment had a long history in Scandinavia and Finland. From the 1880s onward, around 1500–2000 Scandinavian men, and over 100 Finns, had served as machinists on ships operating on the Congo River. After the First World War, Belgian investors’ interest in the Congo grew with the development of the Katanga mining industry. Many of these new investors brought their capital to Africa from Russia, which had been the main focus of Belgian foreign investors’ attention before the war. The Bolshevik revolution forced Belgian investors out of Russia, which might explain their activity in post-­ war Helsinki.69 Yet, the Congo allured few Finnish settlers. The reasons were many, but Koskinen’s autobiography gives an interesting account of his personal motivation for ultimately abandoning the idea of going to Africa. A fellow-­ member of the metalworkers’ union, who had recently returned to Finland after a three-year stay in the Congo, warned him against going. A hardworking man could enrich himself in Africa, but only half of the men ever made it back from Africa. The rest succumbed to the many dangers of tropical Africa: malaria, wild animals, or hostile natives. According to this man, the native hostility to Europeans—or, as Koskinen refers to it, “arrows thrown by black men”—was the result of African men’s antipathy toward interracial sex. Black women walked around almost naked, Koskinen recalls his friend recounting, and were drawn to white men. Most white men could not resist the temptation but engaged in sexual encounters with the African women, resulting in hostile attacks from the black men.70 This sexualized reading of Congolese-European relations obviously papered over the colonial violence perpetrated by the latter against the former. The World War had been particularly brutal in the Congo. The forced labor system originally instated by King Leopold became increasingly gruesome, thousands of Congolese men were conscripted to wage war on German East Africa, and disease and famines ravished the

 LA-LT, Koskinen [1964], 76/1445/100–101.  Vanthemsche 2012, 167. Of the c. 2200 Belgians living in Russia at the turn of the century, around thirty lived in Finland. Leitzinger 2008, 193–194. For Finland and the Congo, see also Koivunen 2015 and Särkkä 2020. 70   LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 79/1461/23. See also LA-LT, Koskinen [1958], 26D/454/65; [1961], 72/1406/86; 73/1418/6–7; [1964], 74/1423/3–4; [1965], 79/1455/54; 79/1461/22–23. 68 69

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population.71 It is noteworthy that the violence Koskinen’s friend spoke of was solely that of Africans against Europeans, and that the only motives he invoked were sexual in nature. Clearly, Congolese violence against Europeans was for him of a different kind than that of the oppressed of Europe against their oppressors. The Africans’ violence was interpreted as an instance of the “wild black men’s” atavistic territoriality, an apolitical threat of the same order as tropical disease or wild beasts. This interpretative frame shows that Eurocentrism and a fixation on the standard of civilization were not merely a feature of European colonialism but were shared by many of its purported opponents. The cultural logic that separated the experiences of the Congolese and the Finns prevented the latter from recognizing the actual commonalities between these distant lands. Koskinen trusted his friend and abandoned his Congo plan. The friend recommended that he instead leave for Canada, “a land just as rich as the Belgian Congo,” but lacking in conflicts between nationalities and with a climate more suitable for Finns. Koskinen was intrigued and went to the British Consulate in Helsinki to apply for a visa, since “there was not a Canadian consulate in Finland at that time.”72 That Koskinen first encountered the Canadian state through British mediation reflected the Dominion’s still intimate ties to the empire.

A Refugee Colonist By 1919, transatlantic immigration to Canada had started to recover from its wartime slump. Yet, the wartime paranoia about “enemy aliens”, and fears of the spread of revolution across the Atlantic, made many Canadians wary of increased immigration. Nationalities of the former tsarist realm seemed especially suspect, among them the Finns, who had been implicated with anti-war radicalism during the war. In August 1919, Canada’s Assistant Deputy Minister of Immigration Frederick Blair commented on Finnish immigration: I am sorry to say that a number of Finnish people seem to be very busy spreading I.W.W. propaganda and occasionally one is found doing something much worse. We are not, under the circumstances, taking any steps to encourage Finnish immigration, especially of the labouring classes. There  Hochschild 2012 [1999], 278.  LA-LT, Koskinen [1964], 73/1418/8.

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are some excellent Finnish settlers, especially those who are taking up farming. It is expected that very shortly there will be plenty of unskilled labour in the country and the general policy now, as in the past, is to encourage only the immigration of agriculturalists.73

This policy of preferring farmer settlers to troublesome laborers was reflected in the practices of the British Consulate in Helsinki, which was in charge of issuing Canadian visas in Finland. From the late nineteenth century onward, the United States and Canada had sought to transfer the control of immigration away from their own borders to the point of immigrant origin. This policy of “remote control” empowered consular officials and medical authorities to act as de facto immigration agents.74 Koskinen too encountered the Canadian border already in Britain’s Helsinki consulate. When he went to apply for a visa, a Swedish-speaking consular official interviewed him about his willingness to work in agriculture and mining. He was then sent for a medical examination administered by Dr. Laitinen, a Helsinki physician. The doctor did little of a medical examination, Koskinen recalled, but spoke much about Canada “as if he knew the land”. He surmised that Koskinen would make “a fine farmer for Canada”, where he would obtain land inexpensively.75 The idea struck Koskinen as odd: I laughed and asked why was this so? I told Doctor Laitinen that in Finland I had wanted to get land for myself, but did not get it, and now they promise me land in a country where I am going and I have no idea what kind of land it is or where it is. It is north of the United States and belongs to the American continent, said Doctor Laitinen.76

That Doctor Laitinen talked more about farming than about health is illustrative of Canada’s immigration policy preoccupations. Canada was particular as to the kind of occupational skills it required of its immigrants; from the nineteenth century onward, it had been mostly interested in acquiring settlers on the land rather than manual workers. Europeans were preferred over Asians, Protestants from northern Europe over eastern or

 Blair 1919.  Young 2019. 75  LA-LT, Koskinen [1961], 72/1406/87; Koskinen [1965], 77/1449/102. 76  LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 79/1461/24–25. 73 74

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southern European Catholics, Orthodox, and Jews.77 Finns, along with Scandinavians, were included among the nationalities that the government considered best suited to Canada’s settlement and development. This intra-European racial privileging was not a formal feature of immigration legislation, but was part of informal practices; ships sailing from Nordic ports were subject to less strict scrutiny than those departing, for example, from Riga, Hamburg, or Rotterdam. Koskinen had not done his compulsory military service, and therefore could not receive a passport from an official passport office. Instead, he had a passport secured from a private agency, but he had to pay a hefty additional fee for the service.78 He left for Canada in August 1920,79 and was surprised how easy it was to pass through immigration control in Quebec.80 Despite his dreams of a farm of his own, Koskinen found his first jobs in unskilled mining and construction work. He first worked at a mine operated by the International Nickel Company near Sudbury, and in the construction of the Welland Canal between Lakes Erie and Ontario. He then found work on a railroad near Lake Kipawa, on the southern border between Quebec and Ontario, before finally settling in Timmins, where he worked at one of the Porcupine region’s gold mines. Here he also managed to fulfill his old dream of owning a piece of land. “I always had a desire in Finland to get land, but it was impossible without money”, he reflected. “Here it came as if by itself”.81 The land that he acquired had originally been granted by the Canadian government to veterans of the Boer War, and the title to the land included the right to its woods and minerals. He took part in a government-sponsored training course on the search for minerals.82 This relative ease in the acquisition of land seemed to Koskinen to reflect the core character of Canada: “Everyone here has started from nothing, you only had to know how to make a claim”, he noted. He insisted that this “was possible for everyone, no matter what country you were from or what your nationality was”.83 Of course, the land on which Koskinen settled in Ontario had not been empty before the arrival of European settlers. The European population of  Thompson 2020.  LA-LT, Koskinen [1961], 72/1406/86. 79  Emigrant Register 2021. 80  Koskinen [1961], LA-LT 72/1406/90. 81  Koskinen, LA-LT, 72/1406/107. 82  LA-LT, Koskinen [1958], 26D/454/102. 83  LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 78/1451/13. 77 78

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Timmins had grown from the early 1910s onward, but the land had for centuries been populated by Ojibwe, Cree, and other indigenous peoples.84 Koskinen writes extensively about the cordial relations between the Finnish immigrants and the Ukrainians, but does not refer to the region’s indigenous peoples in the present tense. They come up only in Koskinen’s narration of the Porcupine region’s “early” history in the 1910s, when the first Europeans began to settle there. The first “white man” who built a house in the region, and the first “white child” born there, were both Finnish, Koskinen insists. Before them, “only Indians lived there”, he notes.85 It thus seems that Koskinen had internalized the colonialist ideology that saw the indigenous population as part of the pre-cultural “nature” of America. Elsewhere in his autobiography he recounts the story of a plan to marry an “Indian girl”, whom he had met while working on railroad maintenance in southern Ontario. The story is somewhat disconnected from the rest of his autobiography, and includes details that do not come up elsewhere—most significantly, Koskinen’s claim that his father had lived in Canada as a young man and that he had fathered a child with an Indian woman. Whatever the story’s connection to “reality”, it provides an interesting insight into Koskinen’s views concerning white-indigenous relations in Canadian history. When the country “was still primitive”, he notes,” “relations between inhabitants and Indian women were common. They were considered inferior people, and were treated as such”. Only later had laws started to require that white men treat Indian women as the equals of white women. Yet, attitudes had remained much the same, “since many still try to hunt Indian women to take advantage of them”. Finnish men, however, were an exception: many of them had “voluntarily taken an Indian woman as a wife, and no complaints have been heard about it”.86 By cordoning off Finnish men from the broader category of white men, Koskinen could avoid a more profound reckoning with Finnish complicity in Canadian settler colonialism. To be sure, immigrant workers in Canada faced government hostility in the interwar years, including deportation campaigns during the Great Depression. Some of Koskinen’s comrades escaped this oppression to

 Jorgenson 2018, 24.  LA-LT, Koskinen [1963], 72/1411/1; [1963], 72/1409/1. Italics added. 86  LA-LT, Koskinen [1964], 76/1447/33–40 84 85

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South America, where governments offered land to European settlers.87 Far more, however, opted to try their luck in a more familiar land, Soviet Russia. In the early 1930s, some 6000–6500 Finns in the United States and Canada migrated to Soviet Karelia, on the eastern Finnish border. Over 700 American and Canadian Finns perished in Stalin’s Great Terror in 1937–1938, and more suffered in the displacements and violence of the Second World War.88 Koskinen notes that many of his friends emigrated to Karelia, but is silent about the victims. He notes that some Finns returned from Karelia disillusioned, but put their tales of horror down to a lack of preparation. The only Finnish-Canadian victims in Russia he mentions are men who died in the war against Finland during 1941–1944. Post-war Finnish immigrants to Canada had told Koskinen stories of Finnish occupiers in Eastern Karelia’s executing Finnish-Canadian migrants as suspected communists.89 Koskinen’s inability or unwillingness to consider the human toll of Stalinist imperialism, while fully alerted to Finnish atrocities in the same Karelian space, highlights the profound contradictions inherent in his brand of anti-imperialism.

Conclusions This chapter has followed the trajectory of a working-class man’s life during the First World War and its immediate aftermath, with particular focus on the protagonist’s encounters with empires. Three key arguments are especially relevant to a broader discussion of Finnish encounters with colonialism. First, the study highlights the fruitfulness of a transimperial perspective in understanding Finnish participation in colonial history. Koskinen’s life was shaped by encounters not with a single state actor but with a multitude of contesting and overlapping powers. Second, the analysis calls attention to the difficulties inherent in reducing the thinking and behavior of past actors to such ideological abstractions as “imperialism” or “anti-imperialism”. To be sure, Koskinen would probably have considered himself an anti-imperialist, although he never used the term explicitly. Yet, his life was intricately bound up in processes of empire-building and colonialism. His decision to volunteer for the Russian army to protest against the pro-German imperialism of the Finnish bourgeoisie is a particularly  LA-LT, Koskinen [1965], 79/1457/78.  Golubev and Takala 2014, 143, 162–164. 89  LA-LT, Koskinen [1961], 72/1412/31. 87 88

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poignant example of the interconnectedness of “imperialism” and “anti-­ imperialism”. Koskinen testifies to Ian Tyrell and Jay Sexton’s contention that “anti-imperialists, far from opposing all forms of empire, were inextricably bound up in imperialist processes and structures”.90 Finally, the analysis emphasizes the intimate connection between geopolitics and histories of mobility. Historians of Finnish emigration have rarely considered Finns’ decisions to emigrate, or their immigrant lives, from the perspective of power politics. Yet, the global histories of immigration and imperial politics are inseparable. Following Koskinen’s migration journey by highlighting its imperial context fleshes out ways in which immigration was not a simple story of individuals responding to economic incentives but a thoroughly political process, with complex mechanisms of gatekeeping and selection. Well into the twentieth century, these mechanisms were tied to racial and colonial ideologies. However, Koskinen’s migrant trajectory also points to the limits of the power of states to control the lives of the people they put on the move. In Koskinen, Canada did not get an independent farmer-settler in the wilderness but an obstinate Communist activist, who remained in many ways a product of his formative experiences in Tsarist Russia. Together with other refugees from Russia’s imperial collapse, he continued to struggle over the meaning of those evocative events. The 3800 pages of handwritten autobiographical material that he sent to a Finnish archive were very much part of that struggle, testifying to the profound and continuing role played in his life by the collapse of the Russian Empire.

References Alexeeva, Olga V. 2018. Experiencing War: Chinese Workers in Russia During the First World War. Chinese Historical Review 25 (1): 46–66. Beaulieu, Michel S., Ronald N.  Harpelle, and Jaimi Penney. 2011. Labouring Finns: Transnational Politics in Finland, Canada and the United States. Turku: Institute of Migration. Bender, David, and Janet Lipman, eds. 2015. Making the Empire Work: Labor and United States Imperialism. New York: New York University Press. Blair, F. 1919. Extract from a Letter from F. Blair to Messrs. M. Fadden & McMillan, August 27. Library & Archive Canada, RG 76 Immigration Branch Records, vol. 25, file 651 (part 1).

 Tyrell and Sexton 2015, 7.

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Burbank, Jane, and Frederick Cooper. 2010. Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Darwin, James. 2008. After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400–2000. New York: Bloomsbury. De Vries, Jan. 2019, November. Playing with Scales: The Global and the Micro, the Macro and the Nano. Past & Present 242 (Supplement_14): 23–36. Emigrant Register. 2021. Online Database of Passenger Lists. Migration Institute of Finland. Accessed 21 February 2021. Original Reference in the Archive of the Institute of Maritime History, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Steamship Company (SHO/FÅA) Archive, Lists of Departing Passengers 1892–1960, list 105, 11. https://siirtolaisrekisteri.siirtolaisuusinstituutti.fi/ passenger_list/246476/. Engman, Max. 1992. Helt åt skogen. Sågarbetarförbundet i österled 1915. Historisk tidskrift för Finland 77 (2): 251–283. Fogarty, Richard S. 2014. The French Empire. In Empires at War, 1911–1923, ed. Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela, 109–129. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garton, Stephen. 2014. The Dominions, Ireland, and India. In Empires at War, 1911–1923, ed. Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela, 152–178. Oxford: Oxford University Pres. Gatrell, Peter. 1999. A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ghobral, John-Paul. 2019, November. Introduction: Seeing the World like a Microhistorian. Past & Present 242 (Supplement_14): 1–22. Golubev, Alexey, and Irina Takala. 2014. Searching for a Socialist Eldorado. Finnish Immigration to Soviet Karelia from the United States and Canada in the 1930s. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Greene, Julie. 2020. Entangled in Empires: British Antillean Migrations in the World of the Panama Canal. In Crossing Empires: Taking U.S.  History into Transimperial Terrain, ed. Kristin Hoganson and Jay Sexton, 222–240. Durham: Duke University Press. Halén, Harry. 2004. Kiinalaiset linnoitustyöläiset vuosina 1916–17. In Venäläissurmat Suomessa 1914–22, ed. Lars Westerlund, 107–114. Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kanslia. Härkäpää, Nils. 1961. Helsingin palotoimen historia. Helsinki: Paasipaino. Hester, Torrie. 2017. Deportation: The Origins of U.S.  Policy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hochschild, Adam. 2012 [1999]. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Basingstoke: Pan Books. Hoganson, Kristin, and Jay Sexton. 2020. Introduction. In Crossing Empires: Taking U.S. History into Transimperial Terrain, ed. Kristin Hoganson and Jay Sexton, 1–24. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Hoppu, Tuomas. 2006. Historian unohtamat. Suomalaiset vapaaehtoiset Venäjän armeijassa 1. maailmansodassa 1914–1918. Helsinki: SKS. ———. 2012. Les débuts de la Première Guerre mondiale en Finlande: loyauté et separatisme. Revue d’Histoire Nordique (15): 153–174. Jorgenson, Mica. 2018. ‘Treasure House to the World’: A Global Environmental History of the Porcupine Gold Rush, 1909–1929. PhD diss., McMaster University. Koivunen, Leila. 2015. Eksotisoidut esineet ja avartuva maailma. Euroopan ulkopuoliset kulttuurit näytteillä Suomessa 1870–1920. Helsinki: SKS. Koskinen, Kalle. 1958–1965. Autobiographical Manuscripts. Bindings 26D, 72–79, the Commission of Finnish Labour Tradition Collection, the Labour Archives (Helsinki). Lackman, Matti. 2000. Suomen vai Saksan puolesta? Jääkärien tuntematon historia. Keuruu: Otava. Leitzinger, Antero. 2008. Ulkomaalaiset Suomessa 1812–1972. Helsinki: East-­ West Books. Magee, Gary, and Andrew Thompson. 2010. Empire and Globalization: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c. 1850–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mark, James, and Quinn Slobodian. 2018. Eastern Europe in the Global History of Decolonization. In The Oxford Handbook on the Ends of Empire, ed. Martin Thomas and Andrew S. Thompson, 351–372. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Miller, Alexey. 2018. The Collapse of the Romanov Empire. In The Oxford Handbook on the Ends of Empire, ed. Martin Thomas and Andrew S. Thompson, 179–194. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Näsman, Jan-Olov. 2004. De röda Finlands-flyktingarna i Sverige i 1918–1921. In Norden och krigen i Finland och Balticum 1918–19, ed. Lars Westerlund, 83–126. Helsingfors: Statsrådets kansli. Norris, Stephen, and Willard Sunderland, eds. 2012. Russia’s People of Empire: Life Stories from Eurasia, 1500 to the Present. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Peltonen, Ulla-Maija. 1996. Punakapinan muistot. Tutkimus työväen muistelukerronnan muotoutumisesta vuoden 1918 jälkeen. Helsinki: SKS. Salmi-Niklander, Kirsti. n.d. Crooks and Heroes, Priests and Preachers. Religion and Socialism in the Oral-Literary Tradition of a Finnish-Canadian Mining Community. Accessed 24 November 2020. http://lepo.it.da.ut.ee/~lehti/ Oralhistory/1.8.Kirsti.htm. Sanborn, Joshua. 2014a. Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2014b. The Russian Empire. In Empires at War, 1911–1923, ed. Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela, 91–108. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Särkkä, Timo. 2020. Kolonialismin toiseus ja kamera – C. T. Erikssonin valokuvat ja Katangan kuparikenttien suomalaiset ‘pioneerit’ 1901–1906. Historiallinen aikakauskirja 118 (4): 521–533.

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Stockdale, Melissa Kirschke. 2016. Mobilizing the Russian Nation: Patriotism and Citizenship in the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strotmann, Christine. 2016. The Revolutionary Program of the German Empire: The Case of Ireland. In Small Nations and Colonial Peripheries in World War I, ed. Gearóid Barry, Enrico Dal Lago, and Róisin Healy, 19–36. Leiden: Brill. Thompson, Graeme. 2020. Upper Canada’s Empire: Liberalism, Race, and Western Expansion in British North America, 1860s–1914. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 48 (1): 39–70. Torpey, John. 2000. The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, State. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Tyrell, Ian, and Jay Sexton. 2015. Introduction. In Empire’s Twin: U.S. Anti-Imperialism from the Founding Era to the Age of Terrorism, ed. Ian Tyrell and Jay Sexton, 1–20. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Upton, Anthony. 1980. The Finnish Revolution 1917–1918. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Vanthemsche, Guy. 2012. Belgium and the Congo, 1885–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Xu, Guoqi. 2011. Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Young, Elliott. 2019. Beyond Borders: Remote Control and the Continuing Legacy of Racism in Immigration Legislation. In A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered: US Society in an Age of Restriction, 1924–1965, ed. Maddalena Marinari, Madeline Y.  Hsu, and Maria Cristina Garcia, 25–44. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Zimmerman, Andrew. 2010. Alabama in Africa: Booker T.  Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 10

Photography and the Religious Encounter: Finnish Missionaries’ Representations of the Owambo, Namibia Napandulwe Shiweda

Introduction My purpose in this chapter is to analyze the complex picture of ethnographic photographic work by Finnish missionaries in Owambo from 1890 to 1930. Based on the manner and extent to which Finnish missionaries participated in the colonial photographic practice of producing images of the “other”, I argue that they were participating in the establishment of colonial concepts of Owambo history and traditions, and of widespread ideas as to how they lived. I substantiate this claim by focusing on the wider frame of colonial photographic practice of constructing knowledge about the “other” in pictorial form that perpetuates and reinforces colonial stereotypes. Christraud Geary argues that this is because missionary photography in Africa in general falls within the larger framework of

N. Shiweda (*) University of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_10

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colonial discourse about the “Other”,1 a discourse that was pursued in the West in many different forms of cultural production. Finnish missionary societies and missionaries actively participated in and shaped this discourse in popularizing their achievements in word and image. Missionaries in Owambo were dedicated first and foremost to the dissemination of Christianity, but had parallel ideals of the colonial framework for the expansion of civilization. In this chapter, I argue that although Finnish missionary writing and the collection of cultural objects have been widely studied,2 the stereotypical and conventional characters of missionary photography, and its role in the colonial construction of the “other”, have not received sufficient attention. Studies have been carried out dealing with Finnish missionaries’ photography of the Owambo, for example, by Vilhunen et al. and Musta Taide Photo Magazine (referred to in this chapter),3 but both tend to present Finnish missionaries as compassionate and sympathetic in their photographs of the Owambo. In contrast, here I provide a more critical analysis of the same photographs, presenting a more complex overall picture highlighting the different intentions and photographic practices of Finnish missionaries, who sought to visualize the Owambo in a certain manner that complemented their civilizing enterprise. A large body of historical scholarship on the Owambo has repeatedly shown how missionaries collected Owambo material culture and focused on religion and magic, proverbs and folktales. Here I show that photographic works have to be treated as cultural and historical artifacts of the missionaries’ encounters in Owambo and as documents of the construction/depiction of the “other”. The analysis further illustrates the missionaries’ collaboration with colonial officials and highlights the information pertaining to a specific time and place contained in the images. Colonial officials circulated photographs of the Owambo in official reports to the League of Nations; as part of the Mandate created by the stage of its bid to gain the League of Nations’ mandate to rule Namibia and to control Namibians, photography was crucial to the politics of representing the place and its peoples.4 Drawing on collaboration with colonial officials, this chapter

 Geary (1991).  See, for example, Vilhunen et al. (1995); Harju (2018); Harju (2019); Miettinen (2005). 3  See Harju (2018); Miettinen (2005); Koivunen (2019); Tuomo-Juhani (1994). 4  Hartmann et al. (1998a), 3. 1 2

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deepens our understanding of photographs taken by various missionaries of the Owambo through different time frames. It also addresses their various genres of photography, ranging from landscapes, expedition photographs, and ethnographic scenery to group and individual portraits, which missionary photographers used to document life in Owambo, and interrogates not simply what missionary photographs represent but how, where, when, by whom, and why they were taken. This critical interpretation and the use of missionary/colonial photographs will reveal how their content is affected by racist misconceptions, gender and social biases, stylistic genres, and colonial agendas.5 This is because many missionaries took extensive ethnographic notes and photographs as part of their documentation and interpretations of Owambo life which contributed to the way Owambo were represented in the colonial context. This photographic practice was a product of western technology and a means to categorize and analyze nature and to portray and document different races and types of people. There was also an increasing concern at the time with the accuracy of human classification systems and a fascination with the “other”. In the chapter, I consider a selection of images and revealing archival reports and correspondence concerning mission work in Owamboland dating to the years between 1890 and 1930, combining sustained visual analysis with archival research. The chapter thus critically examines how Finnish missionary photographs in Owamboland were framed and analyzes the many different meanings the images accrued, depending on how they were used and displayed. Given that there is a degree of homogeneity in photographs taken by missionary photographers, this chapter will analyze some of them individually where necessary. The historical analysis here is focused on the various genres of photography employed by the missionaries.

Finnish Missionaries and Photography in the Owambo Region In recent years there has been an increasing interest in missionary work on the African continent, as it is seen as one of the main forces in the opening up of direct western influence.6 In the southern part of Namibia, missionary activity started at the beginning of the nineteenth century, organized 5 6

 For a similar analysis of colonial photographs, see Shiweda (2019).  See Keskinen (2019); Kokkonen (1993).

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by the London Missionary Society (LMS) and the English Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. The Rhenish Missionary Society took over the LMS mission in Namaland in 1840; after a few attempts, it managed to monopolize the area by establishing a string of stations in Hereroland in central Namibia, Windhoek in 1842, Otjimbingwe in 1849, and Omaruru in 1870.7 In northern Namibia, in Owamboland, Finnish missionaries arrived in 1870 following the proposition of the German missionary Carl Hugo Hahn of the Rhenish Missionary Society.8 Hahn was influential in the choice of the Finnish mission, as he had worked for years among the Herero people and had visited Finland to speak about missionary work. In 1866, he issued a fervent appeal to the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission to begin work among the northerly Owambo “tribes”.9 A memorandum from the mid-1930s written by the Finnish Mission states: “The Finnish Mission has been working in Ovamboland since 1870. In the following year, four Ovambo ‘tribes’ were ‘occupied’, viz. Ondonga, Uukuambi, Ongandjera, Uukuanyama”.10 Mission work was gradually established in almost all Owambo polities. Consequently, Finnish missionaries used objects as concrete illustrations of Owambo life, their own experiences, and the need for Christianity in Owamboland.11 This allows for some general conclusions to be drawn concerning the agendas involved in missionaries taking photographs of the Owambo, which may have contributed to the collection and distribution of information on the Owambo. While a quick survey of the photo collection on Finna12 reveals that missionaries did not necessarily employ a naive or instrumental “colonial gaze”, seeking to objectify their subjects, they still conformed to particular colonial stereotypes, although some of the subjects themselves participated in the photographic practice. Examples of how subjects (especially noble men and kings) were able to control the production of their own  Hakosalo (2015).  Hakosalo (2015), 305; Löytty (2012), 31–32. 9  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 155. 10  Finnish Mission General—Memorandum of Finnish Mission, Ovamboland, (NAO) [11]6/2/1 Vol 1. Native Affairs Ovamboland, National Archives of Namibia. 11  Harju (2018), 11. 12  Finna is a project that combines the collections of several Finnish organisations; created as part of the National Digital Library project, conducted in 2008–2017 by the Ministry of Education and Culture. For more information, see https://www.finna.fi/Content/ moreaboutfinna. 7 8

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images will be discussed below. Geary, in her analyses of missionary photography from Central Africa, has demonstrated that missionaries would carefully select what they sent to their mission societies, as they were aware of the official character of the archives. For example, they would choose the “best” in terms of subject and quality.13 The missionary Emil Liljeblad is said to have amassed some 200 photographs, along with his extensive collection of Owambo ethnographic objects.14 He was not the only one; there are a number of photographs taken by other missionaries, including (to name but a few) Martti Rautanen, August Pettinen, Hannu Haahti, Emil Paavo Huttunen, Selma Rainio, and Maria Wehanen. Owing to the special focus on missionaries’ framing of colonial photographic practice, not all available photographs will be examined here.

Missionary Photography in Context As noted above, Geary argued that in popularizing their achievements in word and image, both missionary societies and individual missionaries actively participated in and shaped the “Other” discourse. The depiction of constant progress, and their perpetual need to prove (to home audiences and sponsors) that their work was needed and worth the money, was at the heart of missionary writing and image production.15 As noted above, many scholars have studied missionaries’ collections of Owambo objects, but photographs taken by missionaries in Owamboland have been neglected. That is because objects served “as sufficient ‘objective’ proof of the inferiority of other cultures; they could also be displayed in museums and exhibitions propagating Eurocentric images of Africa and Africans as being less developed”.16 According to Leila Koivunen, as one component of broader missionary-based knowledge about Owamboland the Finnish missionary collections were no exception—they had an impact on Finnish images and conception of Africa.17 She further points out that Finnish missionaries not only had Owambo artifacts in their homes but also sold them to raise money, and staged lectures and missionary exhibitions about them. In this way, they raised support for the mission in the early t­ wentieth  Geary (1996), 49.  Harju (2018), 7. 15  Geary (1996), 48. 16  Koivunen (2011), 14–16, 152–153; Harju (2018), 2. 17  Koivunen (2011), 14–16, 152–153. 13 14

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century by portraying Owambo people as heathen and backward compared to Finns.18 It may, however, be noted that these Finnish missionary images of the Owambo, in the form of missionary postcards and lantern slides for lecture series, formed part of the public or official record, and were published in missionary journals and books. As Geary argues, in terms of what these images tell us, they represent a valuable source for the perceptions of missionary producers themselves and of contemporary readers/viewers, but they give fewer clues about the Africans pictured in them.19 The above observation is consistent with the findings of Johannes Seroto, who discusses the way in which the Swiss Mission Society, as an example of Protestant evangelism in South Africa, used colonialism to undervalue indigenous people’s culture, mind, and imagination.20 Seroto argues that when missionaries came to Africa, they consciously or unconsciously used conversion to Christianity to colonize the consciousness and mind of the indigenous people to accept a Eurocentric hierarchization of power. Religion was used as a marker of social hierarchy.21 He further concludes that missionaries were unique in the role they played in influencing and shaping the minds of indigenous people. Missionary education operated within the colonial discourse, which corroborated the notion that indigenous people were undeveloped and of low intellectual standing.22 Although Finnish participation in overseas colonialism is not commonly recognized, the writings of Finnish missionaries in Owamboland were similar to those alluded to above by Seroto with regard to the Swiss Mission Society in South Africa. With this context in mind, it is important to discuss the extent to which Finnish missionaries differed from others, considering their peripheral status in relation to the broader range of European colonialism. From the seventeenth century to the early twentieth century, individual Finns, as well as enterprises, trading companies, and missionary organizations based in Finland, took part in overseas colonial ventures.23 Olli Löytty suggest that when the overseas colonies of Germany were divided up among other European nations after World War  Koivunen (2011), 24–46.  Geary (1996), 48. 20  Seroto (2018), 2. 21  Seroto (2018), 6. 22  Seroto (2018), 11. 23  See Keskinen (2019). Also see Purtschert et al. (2016). 18 19

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I, certain groups in Finland considered Owamboland a suitable colony for Finland and organized a delegation to suggest this to the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.24 Obviously that did not happen; nevertheless, in the light of the correspondence discussed below, Löytty’s perspective makes it possible to see how Finnish missionaries could be implicated in colonial systems. This is evident in the correspondence between the Director of the Finnish Mission Society and the SWA Administrator, which shows clear marks of collaboration: the Administration of South West Africa paid attention to the education of the “natives” in the most remote northern parts of the country, and it was anticipated that it would bring good results in raising the “natives” to a higher cultural level.25 Furthermore, with regard to the education provided for the Owambo, mission schools reportedly also had another and wider aim. The Reverend Paunu indicated that the intention of the mission schools in Owamboland was to confer the elements of civilization on the children of Christians, as well as to the children who would then be their pupils. The mission schools, which originally aimed only at teaching the “Word of God”, had thus developed into proper primary schools, whose teaching now included, in addition to religious subjects, aspects of general culture and “civilization”.26 Soiri and Peltola argue that the impact of the schools can be linked to the history of colonialism, as practiced by the European superpowers on the African continent. When the new religion was introduced, the cultural environment of the local people was generally not thoroughly explored, and people were exposed to new cultural settings. This process involved not only clear Christian propaganda but as a side-effect the inculcation of various European traditions attached to the primary message.27 Another key argument marking the relationship that existed between Finnish missionaries and the colonial administration is evident in the spheres of operation in Owamboland in the 1930s. The Secretary for SWA  Löytty (2007), 277.  Finnish Mission General (letter dated 14/4/1936, by Reverend U Paunu, Mission Director of the Finnish Mission Society in Helsinki, Finland to the Administrator of South-­ West-­ Africa, Windhoek), NAO [11] 6/2/1  Vol. 1, p.  1, Native Affairs Ovamboland, National Archives of Namibia. 26  Finnish Mission General (letter dated 14/4/1936 by Reverend U Paunu, Mission Director of the Finnish Mission Society in Helsinki, Finland to the Administrator of South-­ West-­ Africa, Windhoek), NAO [11] 6/2/1  Vol. 1, p.  2, Native Affairs Ovamboland, National Archives of Namibia. 27  Soiri and Peltola (1999). 24 25

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sent an official memorandum to the presiding missionary of the Finnish Missionary Society, stating that they may feel free to preach the gospel whenever they consider it necessary, subject to specific conditions. According to those conditions, the missionaries were expected to act as follows: to assist the Union Government in its administration of Owamboland; to encourage all “natives” under their influence to seek employment in the Police Zone, as it should be remembered that Owamboland is the main source of labour for the Mines and Railways, and nothing must be done to interfere with the free flow of labour; to instil into all “natives” under their influence a sense of loyalty to the administration; and that the bulk of education imparted by them will be of a practical nature, and that the curriculum will be decided upon after consultation and in conjunction with the Director of education, who will also be consulted with regard to the teachers appointed.28

It is apparent from this memorandum that missionary activities drew their meaning from this relationship between the missionaries and the colonial administration, which was well documented in annual reports and correspondences. This collaboration is quite revealing in several ways; as many scholars have argued, missionaries were often the first to engage intensely and for a sustained period with local indigenous populations, whose languages they learned in the regions in which they settled.29 This was probably because even though German colonial rule had been established on paper in 1884, and the Germans had made their presence felt in the southern and central parts of South West Africa since the 1890s, Owamboland had no German settlers and very few administrators. It was only in 1922 that Owamboland came under direct colonial rule.30 Thus, like missionaries elsewhere—often among the first outsiders to enter and settle places still being “discovered” by Europeans—they employed photography not only to support the mission project but also to contribute to the “science of 28   Finnish Mission General (letter dated 24/3/1927 titled Missionary Activity in Owamboland, by the Secretary for South-West-Africa, Windhoek to the Presiding Missionary, Finnish Mission Society in Ondangwa), NAO [11] 6/2/1 Vol. 1, Native Affairs Ovamboland, National Archives of Namibia. 29  See Lübcke (2019), 1; Harju (2018), 14. 30  Hakosalo (2015), 305.

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man”.31 It was in this manner that missionaries supplied photographs for their mission societies in Finland to be reproduced in mission periodicals, fundraising exhibitions, and lantern-slide lectures, as well as in the secular press.

Photographs of the Owambo by Finnish Missionaries According to Killingray and Roberts, between the 1890s and the First World War, photographs of Africa were published profusely to promote a variety of imperial, commercial, missionary, and scientific enterprises.32 They further argue that for missionaries, photographs were an obvious way to arouse interest and support mission work at home.33 Patricia Hayes in a number of works focuses on various subjects tied to colonial and documentary photography in Namibia and southern Africa more generally.34 Hayes’ work gives a critical interpretation and the use of colonial photographs to reveal how racist misconceptions, gender and social biases, stylistic genres, and the colonial agendas affect content.35 In line with these assertions, the photographs taken by Finns in Owamboland also sometimes represented adaptations of colonial visual genres, for example, in the form of anthropological (anthropometric) photography. Finnish missionaries feature among a group of colonial photographers who significantly shaped how the Owambo were seen by Finns more generally and represented in Finland. Their photography in Owambo was published in mission publications and museums in Finland.36 It is not known whether missionaries’ photographs were seen outside Finland; as noted by Robert Gordon, however, important changes were occurring in Europe in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, including changes in print technology and lithography, which made the printed (and illustrated) word much accessible for the lower-middle classes, the classic recruiting grounds for missionaries.37 German colonial photographs in then German South West  Lübcke (2019), 16.  Killingray and Roberts (1989), 201. 33  Killingray and Roberts (1989), 202. 34  Hayes (1998; Hayes et al. 2002; Hayes and Gary 2019). 35  Hayes (1998), 181. 36  According to Åsa Bharathi Larsson (2016, 13–18), visual representations of the colonial world were not bound to stay in one place, but could be seen in the Nordic region (and globally). 37  Gordon (2006). 31 32

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Africa and, indeed, general colonial photographic representations of “the other” before the First World War constituted ethnography where local people were reduced to representatives of their “tribal type”. As Harris asserts, in a similar way, missionary photography was juxtaposed with a discursive narrative in which the colonial “other” was assigned a particular role.38 Some of the missionaries’ photos under discussion here belong to this period. In the wake of the German’s defeat in the First World War and during the South-African occupation of Namibia from 1915 to 1990, large numbers of photographs were created by South-African colonial officials, and many of them were published.39 Over a decade, from 1929 to 1939, each Annual Report40 sent to the League of Nations was supplemented by a photographic appendix. These appendices tended to represent the administration itself as part of a civilized, modernizing project, whereas the areas beyond the so-called Red Line (or Police Zone) were represented as primitive and backward.41 There is a connection here with regard to the Finnish missionaries’ photographic style, in that photographs were crucial in representing place and people as an aid to support and justify colonial enterprises. Powerful stereotypes of Africans as “primitive” tended to prevail, affecting the expectations of Europeans as to what they would see. This meant that sometimes “the primitive” had to be invented in order to conform to such expectations.42 This is consistent with how the image of Owamboland in Finland was similarly “represented as a standard example of an ‘uncivilised backward’ country, to which the missionaries had been sent to preach the gospel and bring the light of God and civilisation to the heathen”.43 It is thus an interesting framework within which to examine the genres of photography employed by Finnish missionaries in their goal of contributing to this colonial discourse of primitiveness and backwardness.

 Harris (1998), 22.  See Hartmann et al. (1998b), 15. 40  The colonial South African government was given the right to administer South West Africa/Namibia under a Class C Mandate from the League of Nations. The mandate purported to safeguard the rights and interests of the indigenous people. It was obligated to submit Annual Reports to the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission. 41  Miescher and Rizzo (2000), 22. Also see Miescher (2012). 42  Shiweda (2012), 41. 43  Soiri and Peltola (1999), 9. 38 39

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For the purposes of this chapter, I examined a number of images taken by missionary photographers based in Owambo. I particularly chose images that would allow me to use methodological approaches to reading historical photographs based on the different photographic genres and motivations that informed their production.44 This chapter highlights the different intentions and photographic genres of photographers; that includes identifying the provenance of the image and the context in which the image appears, and establishing the meaning of a photograph, largely through contextual information about the image, its making, its different uses, and its distribution. It is also important to consider how meaning is established in relation to other photographs or texts (i.e. through intertextuality).45 A close reading of these photographs and of associated writings in the archive is critical to exploring the wider frames of Finnish missionaries’ photographic practices, and their implications for creating alternative histories and forms of knowledge, in colonial and postcolonial contexts. In most instances, the images were selected to depict Owambo people’s civilizational difference, in line with the colonial administration’s project of authority and control alluded to above. The missionary postcard genre, which tended to be narrow and based on an ideological representation of the “Other”, was also similar to the colonial discourse, which focused on subject composition and illustrated styles of hair, dress, and personal ornamentation. Before we can even begin to consider how the Finns subscribed to these photographic genres, or if they had seen other mission photographs and postcards prior to traveling to Namibia, we should consider the fact that various visual representations of the colonial world were circulating in the Nordic countries; it has been argued that these representations created a mutual vision of the European colonial project and its civilizing mission.46 On the issue of genres and how Finnish missionaries were directly influenced and familiar with them could be described in relation to their need to perpetuate phenomena never experienced before. Photographs thus captured their gaze at the “Other” as a way of looking at something culturally different. This is how the missionaries became familiar with the genres; their reports also included more elaborate ethnographic descriptions, backed up by photographs detailing their daily lives as well as of local people, who were an  See Morton and Edwards (2009); Geary (1986); Edwards (1992).  See Gordon and Kurzwelly (2018). 46  See Larsson (2016), 14. 44 45

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object of astonishment.47 Paul Jenkins tells us of the potential of historical/missionary photography to enrich our understanding of the “other”, to reveal something of the quality of missionary relations with the environment on the field and to indicate the quality of missionary administration and communications at home. He further posits that visual sources are not merely to be treated as illustrations of truths established by documentary sources, they are multivalent, and a major source in their own right.48 It is methodologically pertinent to explore the manner in which different Finnish missionaries framed the content and constructed the elements of their photographs of Owambo. A careful study of the photographs reveals that missionaries’ photographs conformed to various genres and themes characteristic of their visual narratives; these genres and themes are analyzed below. In this, I follow Gordon’s and Kurzwelly’s important methodological perspectives to be considered in using a photograph as a source for African history. They argue that the use of photographs as historical sources relies on contextual information concerning an image or collection, which conditions how they can be interpreted and used. Among the many issues to be taken into account are the following: who the photographer was and when a given image was taken; for what reason and purpose; what technology was used; how it was shared and disseminated; what was the truth value assumed about the image; what audiences it was made for; what ideological practices it was related to; how it related to different social, governmental, or colonial institutions; what were the intersubjective relations and structures of power it represented or reproduced; and what ethical issues are raised by the image.49 As Jenkins argues of the two photographs discussed in his article, on the one hand, they present us with contrasting methodological problems—as photographs, as documented photographs, and as images related to an institution-based genre of photographs.50 Toward that end, I provide some context for the missionaries’ photographs and compare them to the work of other photographers, for whom such contextual information is available.

 See Finnish photographs of Africa (1890–1990), 72.  Jenkins (2002), 45–46. 49  Gordon and Kurzwelly (2018). 50  Jenkins (2002), 46. 47 48

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August Pettinen’s Photographs of the Owambo August Pettinen (1857–1914) is described as the first known exceptionally proficient photographer, and the most important camera operator among the early missionaries. He arrived in Owamboland in 1886 immediately after graduating from mission school, and at first worked at the Omandongo and Olukonda mission stations. In 1890, he built the Ondangwa mission station, in the western part of Ondonga, which became his base.51 Pettinen began taking photographs with a camera brought by a fellow missionary, Karl August Weikkolin in 1890, but he received instruction in photography from August Wulfhorst of the German Rhenish Missionary Society, who had arrived in Ovamboland in July 1891. Pettinen is said to have acted as a guide for the Germans when they arrived in Owamboland; it was thus that he became acquainted with Wulfhorst.52 According to Vilhunen et al., four of Pettinen’s photographs were published in the Kyläkirjaston Kuvalehti (Village Library Illustrated Magazine) in November 1892; this, however, angered the leadership of the FMS in Helsinki, who wanted to control all public information regarding missionary work. Vilhunen et al. argue that Pettinen had sent the photographs to his relatives and friends, who without requesting permission had sent them on for publication.53 It is not known whether what angered the FMS leadership was merely an issue of control, or whether the published photos were of “the wrong kind”. However, the FMS itself also used a fair amount of photographical material in its publications, Suomen Lähetyssanomia (Finnish Mission News), and its associated Swedish-language publication Missionstidning för Finland. Both publications, established in 1859, also provided materials to other Finnish publishers to illustrate textbooks and reference books.54 A careful study of Pettinen’s photographs published in Finna and in Vilhunen et al., East and South: Missionaries as photographers 1890–1930, reveals that he conformed to particular photographic genres. According to Vilhunen et al., Pettinen’s pictures manifest a determination to produce a collection of photographs which would give a comprehensive picture of people, national life, artifacts, and work. Of special interest in Pettinen’s pictorial collection are photographs of mission stations and group  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 157; Finnish photographs of Africa (1890–1990), 72.  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 157. 53  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 158. 54  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 158. 51 52

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photographs. Vilhunen et al. also suggest that the composition of portraits and group photographs shows not only knowledge of contemporary ethnographic photography but also a sound mastery of the subject and medium. For Pettinen, photography was thus a means of expression that was of personal value to him, as testified to by the signature “AP” on almost every print.55 I argue that while Pettinen’s photography may have achieved mastery of the subject and medium, it is still important to explore the manner in which he framed and constructed the elements of his photographs. His use of photography as a means of self-expression suggests that, consciously or unconsciously, he interpreted reality and proposed his own version of it through his photographs. In the context of perpetuated and reinforced colonial stereotypes, however, Pettinen’s photographs illustrate a variety of perspectives and arrangements; many of his photographs taken between 1893–1896 and 1893–1908, for example, depict their subjects as anthropometric specimens. I further argue that photographs such as those seen in Figs. 10.1 and 10.2 served a largely ethnographic illustrative purpose. What can be observed in both images are standing Owambo men (Fig. 10.1) and women (Fig. 10.2) in traditional attire. Although Pettinen’s perspective and focus was on the traditional attire, the subjects were deliberately posed to showcase front, back, and side views. Pettinen’s arrangement of his photographic subjects suggests the influence of an anthropometric mode in a genre of physical anthropology, but also appears to highlight the way bodies serve as bearers of predominantly cultural traits (see especially Fig. 10.2).56 The argument that Pettinen’s photographs served an illustrative purpose is further emphasized by the fact that although these photographs were captioned, the subjects are not named and their identification is restricted either to broad ethnic classification or to subject matter, such as national attire/costumes. This indicates that to some extent Pettinen’s photographic work had to do with the representation of “Otherness”, as embodied in the photographed subject. Similar images taken in the same manner abound in Finnish missionaries’ photo collections. Hannu Haahti’s images, taken in the same manner as Pettinen’s, will be discussed below. Pettinen’s other photographs point to what Geary refers to as a ‘powerful “savage”/“civilized” dichotomy, often expressed in temporal terms “the before and after” photographs of the missionized. The depiction of  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 158.  See Shiweda (2019), 188–196.

55 56

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Fig. 10.1  “National costumes.” Image collection of the Finnish Missionary Society, Finnish Heritage Agency. (Photograph: August Pettinen)

“unenlightened heathens” contrasts with images of “advanced Africans”.57 This dichotomy is seen in Fig. 10.3, where two women are photographed together: one in the traditional attire, the other in a long dress, familiar among female converts in Owamboland, to show her growth in Christianity and civilization. This is in line with what Norwegian missionaries in South Africa did in creating colonial images and texts from Africa for Norwegian society, portraying a more realistic picture of “progress” as seen by the  Geary (1996), 49.

57

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Fig. 10.2  “National costumes.” Image collection of the Finnish Missionary Society, Finnish Heritage Agency. (Photograph: August Pettinen)

missionaries. Although this act does not necessarily set the missionary texts apart from other colonial texts, we must bear in mind that the missionaries shared the European view of the superiority of their own civilization and the need to “uplift” the “heathens”.58 In the case of the Finnish missionaries in Owambo, some of their photographs can be seen in relation to how colonial photographs were constructed and supported, through labeling, marginalization, and other techniques, to suggest  Mellemsether (2001), 186.

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Fig. 10.3  “Water carriers.” Image collection of the Finnish Missionary Society, Finnish Heritage Agency. (Photograph: August Pettinen)

particular ways of reading or interpreting the region. Similarities existed in the photographic practices of both colonial officials and missionaries, portraying the land as barren and devoid of “civilization” so as to justify their colonial and missionary enterprises. Missionaries often juxtaposed photographs of the Owambo in traditional attire with those in European clothing, sitting or standing at mission stations, as proof of their successful “civilizing” mission.

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As mentioned earlier, missionary photographers created other popular genres, ranging from landscapes, expedition photographs, and ethnographic scenery to group and individual portraits depicting people in activity; sometimes at work—in domestic, industrial, and agricultural contexts—and sometimes in recreational activities around the mission stations and churches. These photographs represented the advancement of Christianity and material progress, as did equally common photographs of baptisms, weddings, and preaching to the “heathens”. Photographs of schools and the teaching of particular crafts denote the instilling of proper skills, such as reading and arithmetic, into young men and women. It is evident that published and unpublished images were deliberate constructions of the missionary experience, especially if the missionary left extensive notes with the materials. If not, it is often impossible to explore meanings and retrieve detailed information about the subject matter of the images.59 It is apparent that some of these photographs document the growth of congregations and missionary activities in Owamboland and are similar in their emphasis on the standard missionary narrative. As Vilhunen et al. point out, many missionaries preserved what they saw and experienced in the photographs they took, and understood the significance of photography in portraying exotic conditions and preserving knowledge for future generations.60 Among the plausible explanations for the Finnish photographic project is that it was intended to imagine, for a mission and for the public, a Christian future for the Owambo: one that signaled “modernity” and development, and which underpinned an argument for colonial welfare as a responsibility and a necessary stepping-stone to the future. This is particularly clear in the photographs of familiar missionary tropes of schools and hospitals. The politics of representation of the Owambo, however, is not restricted to the realm of these images alone but also emerges from the ways in which they were circulated. It is important to note that missionaries did not simply take photographs of the Owambo, but that they took them with a specific audience in mind. It has been shown conclusively that missionary photo collections in general share an emphasis on depictions of chiefs, on whose graces the missionaries depended if they wanted to carry out their work successfully. Finnish ethnographic and missionary collections likewise included a number of photographs of chiefs and members of their families (see Fig. 10.4).  Geary (1996), 50.  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 155.

59 60

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Fig. 10.4  King Martin Eliphas of Ondonga. Image collection of the Finnish Missionary Society, Finnish Heritage Agency. (Photographer: August Pettinen [1912])

The Secretary for SWA stated in his official memorandum to the presiding missionary of the Finnish Missionary Society that they should feel free to preach the gospel whenever they may consider it necessary, as long as “each denomination shall make its own arrangements with native chiefs and headmen for establishing itself in any particular area”.61 Formal 61   Finnish Mission General (letter dated 24/3/1927 titled Missionary Activity in Owamboland, by the Secretary for South-West-Africa, Windhoek to the Presiding Missionary,

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portraits of Owambo chiefs were thus apparently taken based on relationships established between the chiefs and missionaries. In some instances, these are accompanied by written accounts of their support for the missionary cause. Terence Ranger argues, in an interesting discussion of the role of photographs in the study of colonialism in general, that in different parts of Africa colonized peoples have been turning photography to their own use since before the end of the nineteenth century, and were able to control the production of their own images.62 This was done through imposing upon white photographers by taking up the pose which they themselves wished to project; later on, when photographic studios opened, African photographers began to take studio portraits themselves.63 Similar to adoption and self-fashioning by African chiefs, Geary describes the astonishing appropriation of German-style military costumes by the Bali-Nyonga and Bamum courts in Cameroon Grassfields at the turn of the century. She reveals how the struggle for power inherent in the relations between the early German administration and its chosen middlemen in the region was physically negotiated by means of the appropriation of the uniforms of colonial officers or local reinventions of them. Geary compellingly contextualizes the collection of these unusual costumes within Grassfields systems of accumulation and redistribution of objects of material culture from foreign kingdoms. She further highlights the ways in which the gifts of military regalia the Germans made to Bamum eventually threatened to backfire on them as the Bamum, having literally incorporated this new source of external power, gained influence in the region.64 In a similar fashion, Maria Wehanen’s picture of Kambonde ka Ngula, the Ndonga chief, who interestingly also dons European clothing, assumes a formal symmetrical and frontal pose. This is not quite unique among Finnish frontal portraits; the photo collections include this photographic convention, whereby even members of the general public present themselves to the camera in a formal pose, not necessarily adhering to the conventions of the missionary narrative. Finnish Mission Society in Ondangwa), NAO [11] 6/2/1 Vol. 1, Native Affairs Owamboland, National Archives of Namibia. Also see Weiss (2000) on the constrained relationship between the Owambo kings and the Finnish missionaries. 62  Ranger (2001), 206. 63  Ranger (2001), 206. 64  Geary (1996).

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Wehanen took numerous photographs of the Ondonga chief Kambonde ka Ngula and members of his family. Like both Pettinen and Haahti, Wehanen also signed most of her photographs by marking the glass negatives in ink with her initials, “MW”. Wehanen’s fine portraits testify to close and confidential relations between the photographer and her subjects, and people were evidently happy to pose for photographs.65 What lies at the core of these ethnographic photographs is the phenomenon of the subjects’ reinvention through a process of self-identification. This processes of self-identification is visible in Wehanen’s photographs of the Owambo because the subjects also participated in the production of the photographs. Although Wehanen also took photographs that can be classified as ethnographic, her photographs of the Ondonga Royal family can be distinguished from the anthropometric photographs discussed earlier. The main distinguishing denominator is that here the subjects are named and not restricted to broad references (such as “national/traditional attire”), ethnic classifications, or the role and status of those photographed. With these photographs, Wehanen intended to show individual characters and their style of dress and body adornments. I argue that Wehanen took these specific photographs because, as Vilhunen et al. point out, it was her “task to take special care of relations with the then King, Kambonde III kAngula, and his relatives”.66 It is said that Maria Wehanen was an educator and friend of numerous Ovambos at the mission station, hence, winning the trust of the local people. It was not only Wehanen who photographed the Ndonga kings and their families; other missionaries did so as well. Pettinen, for example, had an impressive series of portraits of the Ondonga royal family, as seen in Fig. 10.4 below.67 I believe that the different poses assumed by kings and noblemen being photographed by the Finnish missionaries indicated some level of control over how they wished to be represented, contributing in part to the construction of their self-image.

 Vilhunen et al. (1995), 158.  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 163. 67  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 158. 65 66

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Hannu Haahti’s Photographs of the Owambo Hannu Haahti’s photographs of a woman at Oniipa and another of Uukolonkadhi women are good examples of ethnographic photography, published in Vilhunen et al.68 Like Pettinen, Hannu Haahti is described in Vilhunen et al. as one who took an expressive and comprehensive set of photographs. He traveled to Ovamboland in 1911–1912 on a tour of inspection as vice-director of the FMS,69 where he used his camera like a modern photographer.70 In his photographs, Haahti searched for the decisive moment, which later photojournalists made into a guiding principle and considered the most profound substance of a photo. Haahti was described as being ahead of his time, as he captured the critical moment, and he wrote the date on the negatives to show his awareness of time. Haahti’s photos are further described as expressing the encounter of two different cultures in a fascinating way.71 Haahti’s photographs show full body images of women, one of an Ndonga woman and another of Uukolonkadhi women. His focus seems to have been on the differences in costumes and adornments worn by local women and hairstyles according to their ethnic classification and status. Haahti’s interest seemed drawn by the women’s hairstyles, particularly the Ndonga woman’s, which similar to Uukwaluudhi, Ongandjera, and Uukolonkadhi hairstyles was conventionally significant in Ondonga.72 The Ndonga woman’s hairstyle involved stretched hair plaited with arranged animal sinews in preparation for a wedding. The plaits were usually thin and long, reaching down to the heels.73 However, again like Pettinen, Haahti’s photographs also followed the approach of physical anthropology, with subjects often placed in line side by side, some with their side or back toward the camera. It is said that his curious glance adjusted the models.74 There is also a slight difference between Pettinen and Haahti in their approach to ethnographical photography. Although Pettinen’s composition of portraits and group photographs shows his knowledge of contemporary ethnographical photography, the breadth of Haahti’s photographs  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 40 and 63.  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 158. 70  Finnish photographs of Africa (1890–1990), 72. 71  Finnish photographs of Africa (1890–1990), 72. 72  Nampala and Shigwedha (2006), 144. 73  Nampala and Shigwedha (2006), 145. 74  Finnish photographs of Africa (1890–1990), 72. 68 69

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are filled with a style, even if an unconscious one.75 Haahti maintained a certain distance with his subjects—as though they were captured unaware, or he seemingly made it look so. In this way, he preserved the personal dignity of those he photographed.76 The arrangements in some of his photographs clearly indicate an effort to record individual traits, and although deliberately posed, many of the subjects are not facing the photographer. This created a sense of the subjects being in control in the production of their own images.77 The images also in their own way confirm the original relation of the photographs to time, their ability to turn his audience into eyewitnesses.78 Most of the Finnish photographs of the Owambo also depict a wide range of topics, from everyday activities of men and women at work in the fields to their involvement in the mission. This photographic convention points to an effort to document Owambo culture. It can be argued that missionaries focused on Owambo culture in order to understand which elements would facilitate or stand in the way of conversion. This is suggestive of an observation concerning missionary photography in general, that some missionaries did not aspire merely to effectively express their observations in the missionary context. Obviously there were aspirations to produce official ethnographic accounts, among them images of life at the mission station and the beginnings of new congregations, such as the construction of houses and churches.79 Hence, building photographs are common in many of the Finnish missionary photographic collections (see Fig.  10.5). As with many Finnish missionaries’ photographs, mission building projects were documented to showcase the western-style architecture and Finnish wood-framed building techniques that had supposedly been brought to the region. For the missionaries, these photographs of buildings in progress, intended to serve as churches, educational centers, and homes, were thus a symbol of achievement in their civilizing mission.

 Vilhunen et al. (1995), 158.  See Shiweda (2019), 239–268 for similar analysis of colonial photographs in Owambo. 77  Ranger (2001), 206. 78  Vilhunen et al. (1995), 158. 79  See Shiweda and Nghitevelekwa (2019), 45–52. 75 76

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Fig. 10.5  Roofing the school building at Ondangaua station. Image collection of the Finnish Missionary Society, Finnish Heritage Agency. (Photographer: Hannu Haahti [1911])

Conclusion The photographic work of Finnish missionaries in Owambo from the time they arrived in 1870 was implicated in cultures of colonialism, as it offered a new form of knowledge about Owambo people. I have argued that they participated in the establishment of colonial concepts of Owambo history and traditions and produced widespread ideas about how the Owambo lived. The Finnish Mission Society actively participated in and shaped this discourse in popularizing their own achievements in word and image. Although missionaries in Owambo were dedicated to the dissemination of Christianity, they had parallel ideals of the colonial framework for the expansion of civilization. I also found that missionaries collaborated with colonial officials based on interactions with potential and actual converts.

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This allowed for some general conclusions to be drawn about the Owambo, which may have contributed to the collection and distribution of information on them. The depiction of progress, along with a constant need for Finnish missionaries to prove (to home audiences and sponsors) that their work was needed and worth the money, was at the heart of missionary writing and image production. How the Owambo were seen and represented was shaped by mission publications published in Finland. I have argued that missionaries nevertheless also tried to provide outward and visible signs of conversion to Christianity in their photographs. This is because there was obviously some overlap between missionaries’ ethnographic genres and the photographs they took based on certain subject areas and aesthetic styles. I conclude that the photographs were deliberate constructions of the missionary experience along the lines of a prevalent reference to a missionary conversion narrative that signaled modernity and development—from the missionaries’ point of view, decency and civilization. Their photographs further illustrate the variety of perspectives and arrangements, with the subjects depicted as anthropometric specimens. I argue that photographs such as these served a largely ethnographic illustrative purpose. Finnish missionaries’ photographs should be seen in relation to how colonial photographs were constructed and supported, through labeling, marginalization, and other techniques, to suggest particular ways of reading or interpreting the region, contributing to the way the Owambo were represented in a colonial context. However, the politics of representation of the Owambo is not restricted to the realm of representation but rather emerges from the ways in which these images were circulated. I conclude that some of the subjects (kings and noblemen) were able to influence how they were photographed and depicted by the Finnish missionaries, and could have had a say in the latter’s photographic practice. This suggests a successful assertion of the individual within a vibrant context of photographic practice of producing images of the “other”. I believe that Finnish missionaries also saw it as important to selectively allow kings and noblemen to impose control over how their images were produced. This could be attributed to the fact that they relied on traditional leaders for support for their mission. Archival Sources National Archives of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia: Native Affairs Ovamboland (NAO).

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References Edwards, Elizabeth, ed. 1992. Anthropology and Photography 1860–1920. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Geary, Christaud M. 1986. Photographs as Materials for African History: Some Methodological Considerations. History in Africa 13: 89–116. ———. 1991. Missionary Photography: Private and Public Readings. African Arts 24(4). Special Issue: Historical Photographs of Africa 48–59, 98–100. Geary, Christraud M. 1996. Political Dress: German-style Military Attire and Colonial Politics in Bamum. In African Crossroads. Intersections between History and Anthropology in Cameroon, ed. Ian Fowler and David Zeitlyn. New York: Berghahn. Gordon, Robert J. 2006. Reviewed Work(s): Le Malentendu Colonial (Colonial Misunderstanding) by Jean-Marie Teno: On the Way to Whiteness: Christianization, Conflict and Change in Colonial Ovamboland, 1910–1965 by Kari Miettinen: Hues between Black and White: Historical Photography from Colonial Namibia 1860s to 1915 by Wolfram Hartmann: Histories of Namibia: Living through the Liberation Struggle by Colin Leys and Susan Brown. The International Journal of African Historical Studies 39 (1): 125–133. Gordon, Robert, and Jonathan Kurzwelly. 2018. Photographs as Sources in African History, Cultural History, Historiography and Methods. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (July). https://doi.org/10.1093/ acrefore/9780190277734.013.250. Hakosalo, Heini. 2015. Modest Witness to Modernization. Scandinavian Journal of History 40 (3): 298–331. Harju, Kaisu. 2018. Mission, Relationships and Agendas Embodied in Objects Formation of the Karl Emil Liljeblad Collection of Ovamboland (1900–1932). Nordic Journal of African Studies 27 (1): 1–26. ———. 2019. A Joint Effort: Owambo Agency in the Karl Emil Liljeblad Collection. In Intertwined Histories: 150 Years of Finnish–Namibian Relations, ed. Marjo Kaartinen, Leila Koivunen, and Napandulwe Shiweda, 74–84. Turku: University of Turku. Harris, Brent. 1998. Photography in Colonial Discourse: The Making of ‘the Other’ in Southern Africa, c. 1850–1950. In The Colonising Camera: Photographs in the Making of Namibian History, ed. Wolfram Hartmann, Jeremy Silvester, and Patricia Hayes. Cape Town: UCT Press. Hartmann, Wolfram, Hayes Patricia, and Silvester Jeremy. 1998a. Photography History and Memory. In The Colonising Camera: Photographs in the Making of Namibian History, ed. Wolfram Hartmann, Jeremy Silvester, and Patricia Hayes. Cape Town: UCT Press. ———. 1998b. This Ideal Conquest: Photography and Colonialism in Namibia History. In The Colonising Camera: Photographs in the Making of Namibian

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History, ed. Wolfram Hartmann, Jeremy Silvester, and Patricia Hayes. Cape Town: UCT Press. Hayes, Patricia. 1998. Northern Exposures: The Photography of C. H. L. Hahn, Native Commissioner of Ovamboland 1915–1946. In The Colonising Camera: Photographs in the Making of Namibian History, ed. Wolfram Hartmann, Jeremy Silvester, and Patricia Hayes. Cape Town: UCT Press. Hayes, Patricia, and Minkley Gary, eds. 2019. Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History. Ohio University Press. Hayes, Patricia, Jeremy Silvester, and Wolfram Hartmann. 2002. ‘Picturing the Past’ in Namibia: The Visual Archive and Its Energies. In Refiguring the Archive, ed. Carolyn Hamilton, Verne Harris, Michèle Pickover, Graeme Reid, Razia Saleh, and Jane Taylor. Springer Science & Business Media. Jenkins, Paul. 2002. Everyday Life Encapsulated? Two Photographs Concerning Women and the Basel Mission in West Africa, c. 1900. Journal of African Cultural Studies 15 (1): 45–60. Keskinen, Suvi. 2019. Intra-Nordic Differences, Colonial/Racial Histories, and National Narratives: Rewriting Finnish History. Scandinavian Studies 91 (1–2): 163–181. Killingray, David, and Andrew Roberts. 1989. An Outline History of Photography in Africa to ca. 1940. History in Africa 16: 197–208. Koivunen, Leila. 2011. Terweisiä Kiinasta ja Afrikasta. Suomen Lähetysseuran näyttelytoiminta 1870–1930-luvuilla. Helsinki: Suomen Lähetysseura. ———. 2019. Martti Rautanen’s Collection of Aawambo Artefacts in Finland. In Intertwined Histories: 150 Years of Finnish–Namibian Relations, ed. Marjo Kaartinen, Leila Koivunen, and Napandulwe Shiweda, 68–75. Turku: University of Turku. Larsson, Åsa Bharathi. 2016. Colonizing Fever: Race and Media Cultures in Late Nineteenth-Century Sweden. Mediehistoria Lunds universitet. Löytty, Olli. 2007. Kun Ambomaa tuli Suomeen. In Suomalaisen arjen historia. 3. Modernin Suomen synty. Helsinki: Weilin + Göös. Löytty, Sakari. 2012. People’s Church—People’s Music Contextualization of liturgical Music in an African Church. PhD Diss. Sibelius Akatemia. Lübcke, Antje. 2019. Making the Visual Record of New Guinea: William G. Lawes’s Photographic Encounters. History and Anthropology. https://doi. org/10.1080/02757206.2019.1610403. Mellemsether, Hanna. 2001. Gendered Images of Africa? The Writings of Male and Female Missionaries. In Encounter Images in the Meetings between Africa and Europe, ed. Mai Palmberg. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Miescher, Giorgio. 2012. Namibia’s Red Line: The History of a Veterinary and Settlement Border. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Miescher, Giorgio, and Lorena Rizzo. 2000. Popular Pictorial Constructions of Kaoko in the Twentieth Century. In New Notes on Kaoko: The Northern Kunene

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Region (Namibia) in Texts and Photographs, ed. Giorgio Miescher and Dag Henrichsen. Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien. Miettinen, Kari. 2005. On the Way to Whiteness. Christianization, Conflict and Change in Colonial Ovamboland, 1910–1965. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Morton, Christopher, and Elizabeth Edwards, eds. 2009. Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Nampala, Lovisa T., and Vilho Shigwedha, eds. 2006. Aawambo Kingdoms, History and Cultural Change: Perspective from Northern Namibia. Basel: P. Shlettwein Publishing. Kokkonen, Pellervo. 1993. Religious and Colonial Realities: Cartography of the Finnish Mission in Ovamboland, Namibia. History in Africa 20: 155–171. Purtschert, Patricia, Francesca Falk, and Barbara Lüthi. 2016. Switzerland and ‘Colonialism without Colonies’. Interventions 18 (2): 286–302. Ranger, Terence. 2001. Anthropology and Photography, 1860–1920 by Elizabeth Edwards: Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire by James R. Ryan. Past & Present, No. 171 (May). https://www.jstor. org/stable/i282769. Seroto, Johannes. 2018. Dynamics of Decoloniality in South Africa: A Critique of the History of Swiss Mission Education for Indigenous People. Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 44 (3). https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-­4265/3268. Shiweda, Napandulwe. 2012. Omhedi: Displacement and Legitimacy in Oukwanyama politics, Namibia, 1915–2010. PhD Diss. University of the Western Cape. ———. 2019. Images of Ambivalence Photography in the Making of Omhedi, Northern Namibia. In Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History, ed. Patricia Hayes and Gary Minkley, 239–268. Ohio University Press. Shiweda, Napandulwe, and Romie Nghitevelekwa. 2019. The Architectural Designs of Finnish Missions in North-Central Namibia. In Intertwined Histories: 150 Years of Finnish–Namibian Relations, ed. Marjo Kaartinen, Leila Koivunen, and Napandulwe Shiweda, 45–52. Turku: University of Turku. Soiri, Iina, and Pekka Peltola. 1999. Finland and National Liberation in Southern Africa. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitute. Tuomo-Juhani, Vuorenmaa, ed. 1994. Suomalaisia valokuvia Afrikasta 1890–1990. Musta Taide Photo Magazine, 4. Vilhunen, Tuulikki, Tuomo-Juhani Vuorenmaa, Hans von Schantz, and Jorma Hinkka. 1995. To the East and South: Missionaries as Photographers 1890–1930. Helsinki: Suomen lähetysseura. Weiss, Holger. 2000. The Beginning of Finnish Missionary Activity in Northern Namibia and Its First Setbacks, 1869–1872. In Mission und Gewalt, ed. Ulrich van der Heyden and Jürgen Becher. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

CHAPTER 11

“Did You Really Have a Place in the Boer War?”: Colonial Conflict and the Contested Production of “Finnish” Nationality, 1899–1908 Wm. Matthew Kennedy and Chris Holdridge

Several hundred people from Finland emigrated to southern Africa in the late nineteenth century, yet few as fully enfranchised subjects or burghers (citizens). In the age in which they moved, questions around the nation as well as empire were hardly “settled” at the turn of the twentieth century. For settlers on the make, the future shape of empire was never certain, but this uncertainty and promise was part of its appeal for European migrants. The South African War of 1899–1902 between the Boer republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, and the British Empire exacerbated

W. M. Kennedy (*) University of Sussex, Brighton, UK e-mail: [email protected] C. Holdridge North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_11

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the Finnish experience of unsettlement even further. Yet, in Finland, as we argue in this chapter, the South African War informed the development of nationalist cultural projects, albeit in competing visions. To metropolitan audiences, the war served as a testing ground for imagining nations, even if fellow nationals inhabited the furthest reaches of the colonial world.1 Perceptions of nationality were forged in propaganda on the South African War published in the Finnish press and by selectively mobilizing commemorative experiences of Finns who fought in southern Africa. Both war and the Finnish colonial experience offered tales of a performance of national identity idealized in the acts of valorous martial masculinity.2 The Finnish public avidly consumed this image, even if the harsh realities faced by their compatriots on the African veld did not match such romantic visions. Arguably, colonial states did not lend themselves to nationalist imaginings. Among their inhabitants were thousands of Europeans who had come to seek their fortunes from states considered to be small powers not engaged in imperial projects. As Lorenzo Veracini has written, “settlers are founders of political orders” and, indeed, settlers from all backgrounds in southern Africa created new and different polities organized not around a principle of nationality but around taking land and extracting labor from black Africans.3 A late-nineteenth-century patchwork of settler colonial polities in southern Africa relied on a violently maintained white colonial order.4 This order was administered prior to the war either by the British colonial governments in the Cape Colony and in Natal, or by Boer officials in the South African Republic (later the Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. In addition to maintaining strict racial divides, the Boer governments, mostly that of the South African Republic, attempted to maintain a political divide between full citizens, or burghers, and uitlanders, those mostly white male laborers who had come to make their fortunes on the goldfields of the Witwatersrand. The few hundred Finns who resided in southern Africa largely fell into this last category. These “imperialists without an empire”, in Timo Särkkä’s words, were facilitated increasingly (but not always) by their status as racial allies in the ongoing compact inherent to the white colonial order.5 This  Anderson (2016, 74–75) and Kemiläinen (1964).  Horne (2004). 3  Veracini (2010, 3). 4  See Lake and Reynolds (2008). 5  Särkkä (2015). 1 2

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was a colonial order that “placed a premium on accommodating aspects of imperial and national sentiment and loyalty”.6 As such, Finns regularly took part in the practices of “becoming” within a colonial polity—laboring, exploring, trading, and fighting alongside white settlers in colonial policing and war-making—even if they were not considered “full” members of that polity. This kind of involvement in imperial projects leads one to question why “small states” in Europe are still understood as spectators and participants of colonialism only “from the margins”, as Harald Fischer-­ Tiné and Patricia Purtschert challenge us all to do.7 After all, as Kirsten Alsaker Kjerland and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen show, Norwegians, having no “empire” of their own, facilitated European colonial trade in Africa and Australasia.8 Bernhard Schär’s work exploring the case of the Swiss shows quite clearly how Switzerland, a state with no formal colonies, became “one of the main suppliers of ‘foreign’ European troops” to the Dutch Colonial Army.9 Likewise, far from being “exceptional” non-participants in European colonialism, Finns actively helped create the colonial world, as Suvi Keskinen argues in a special issue of Scandinavian Studies interrogating Nordic colonialism.10 As she claims, any effort to understand the “colonial and racial histories of Finns and Finland” is hampered without an understanding of Finns’ colonial encounters and how they were represented in the Finnish political imaginary. Our chapter extends these critiques of Finnish “exceptionalism” and “[mere] complicity” by investigating the constructions of nationality and experiences of Finns in the South African War of 1899–1902. The war occupied a unique position in European political imaginations. Although fought on colonial soil, it was understood to be a “white man’s” war between Boer and Briton, temporarily suspending attention on black Africans and their exploitation, even as “silenced” participants in the conflict.11 Conceptualizing the South African War as a war between “civilized” national states translated those “imperialists without an empire” into a new category: “foreigners”. Interrogating the “nationalisation” of Finns in the colonial world further, Timo Särkkä, Jussi Jalonen, Christian Gerdov, and Frederick Hale have examined the war as a signal moment in  Dubow (2011, 33).  Fischer-Tiné and Purtschert (2015). 8  See Palmberg (1999); Särkkä (2015); Kjerland and Bertelsen (2015). 9  Schär (2019). See also a self-published volume on Swiss participation: Linder (2012). 10  Keskinen (2019, 163). 11  Warwick (1983). 6 7

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the construction of Finland’s own burgeoning nationalism, and with good reason.12 At this time, Finland itself was an autonomous duchy within the sprawling Russian Empire. Beginning in earnest in 1899 with Tsar Nicholas II’s February Manifesto, Russification (a series of Russian policies designed to erode the autonomy previously granted by the Tsar to Finland) prompted many in Finland to consider their political struggle in similarly “national” terms. Many Finns saw the South African War as an analogy for their own struggle for national recognition against a larger imperial juggernaut. We build on these foundations to examine how Finnish “foreigners” became “Finns”—how Finnish colonial encounters during the South African War became national encounters. We examine the contexts and contours of Finnish imaginings of the South African War, sourced from Finnish newspapers serving readers of several classes and region as well as from Finnish participants in the war. But, as we also show, the war shaped Finnish nationality in another way, as a result of the military-­organizational context that framed the experiences of Finns in the South African War, a point not explored in the Finnish historiography. And finally, while much of the literature on the South African War accepts national categories of foreign volunteers uncritically as fixed or uncontested, we show that the Finnish case helps to correct that historiographical oversight.13 We argue that the colonial experiences that accompanied the South African War contributed to reifying the idea of Finnish nationality itself. Finnish “nationality” was not a stable concept by 1900. Most Finns who had relocated to the colonial world were equally if not more invested in the colonial polities and politics of their new homes than in a faraway Finland. Many of those who came from Finland would have described themselves as Ostrobothnians, or Swedish-speaking inhabitants of a rural province in western Finland.14 Likewise, Finnish “nationalism” proceeded unevenly across the globe and certainly within colonial spaces where racial identities held primacy. Some “Finns” arrived in southern Africa from other colonial frontiers in the Americas or Oceania, with their own unique but comparable settler colonial experiences. They therefore came to southern Africa equipped with multiple conflicting concepts of political identity,  Särkkä (2013); Gerdov (2016); Jalonen (2006).  On problems of nationality during the war, see Bridge (2001); On Russia and its nationalities (including Finns), see Davidson and Filatova (1998). 14  Särkkä (2015, 22); see also Olin (2000). 12 13

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whether they were included as settler colonial insiders or outsiders, often mediated through their status not as citizens or subjects, but as “foreigners”.15 Some were more “at home” in colonial spaces than in Finland itself. And anyway, Finland’s government did not care much to count these Finns as part of the “nation” before 1900. Finnish government’s relationship with those it considered Finns abroad was practically nonexistent, only relayed through the consuls of Russia, Germany, Norway, or Sweden.16 Thus, Finnish encounters of colonial southern Africa before 1900 were unique in that they were not constructed as “Finnish” either by participants or the government of Finland in the way that those of itinerant Frenchman or Germans were more likely to be. We also discuss the experiences of Finnish volunteers during mobilization and combat, demonstrating the stark differences between the lived Finnish colonial encounter, and its representation in Finland. We investigate Finnish experiences of military internment, during which Finns were subject not only to detention and political surveillance but also to the entrenchment of Finnish nationality as an imperial administrative category used to control prisoners of war. Here the war contributed to the production of Finnish nationality in another, underexamined way—through the British imperial bureaucracy created to manage the South African War. “Imperial formations are not steady states”, as Stoler has argued, and the South African War of 1899–1902 demonstrated this clearly.17 Even if they did not identify as “Finns”, many of their war experiences were bounded by serving as part of a specially organized Scandinavian Corps, divided into component Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish “nationalities”. It was also this national categorization that formed the basis of British efforts to control, surveil, and deport military prisoners to prisoner-­ of-­war camps established throughout Britain’s colonial empire as part of a global military intelligence apparatus that James Hevia has called Britain’s “imperial security state”.18 As a testament to the persistence of these categories, much of the historiography on foreign fighters in the war has been divided into studies according to similar “national” divides. Only recently has scholarship on the experience of “foreigners” in warfare assessed with greater nuance both of these assumptions, demonstrating that nationality  “Pikku uutisia,” Uusi Suometar, 16 November 1900, 5.  Angell (2015). 17  Stoler and McGranahan (2007, 8). 18  Hevia (2015). 15 16

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was equally as important as an imposed category of political and military bureaucracy intended to normalize warfare as the domain of the nation-state.19 Lastly, we show that it was only late in the war and afterward that Finnish periodicals and public commemorations began to claim these experiences as part of the collective memory of the Finnish nation. Understanding the fuller picture of the Finnish experience of the South African War allows for a recontextualization of well-trodden moments of the “invented traditions” honored in national commemoration immediately after the war up to 1908, when a monument to Scandinavians killed in the South African War was completed at Magersfontein. Such invented traditions served two purposes: the first was to reify an important mental icon of the national state; the second, as Terence Ranger has argued, to reinforce white settler colonial hegemony and cooperation in Africa, a process deemed necessary to maintain settler states.20

The Imagined South Africa in Finland Initially, it was the South African War itself, and not the colonial encounter shared by faraway Finns, that captured the imagination of so many in Finland. This was partly because of the analogous geopolitical situation that some in Finland perceived between their country and the Boer republics. Britain maintained the position that the Boer republics, much like Finland, were suzerain states by the treaty of peace ending the first Anglo-­ Boer War of 1881.21 But such a notion was contested by pro-Boer propaganda circulated by the former Transvaal Attorney-General Willem Leyds. Acting as a representative for the Boer republics, Leyds waged a years-long public diplomacy campaign across European capitals attempting to win international support for recognition of the Boer republics.22 The international analogy with the idealized Boer cause in particular drove Finnish curiosity about the conflict, and reports of the campaigns filled Finnish newspapers in cities, towns, and regions throughout the war and beyond.23 Periodicals were themselves blooming in cities and regions  On foreign fighters in broader context, see O’Connor and Piketty (2020).  Ranger (2012). 21  Smith (1996). 22  Kuitenbrouwer (2012). 23  Despagnet (1901, 3). 19 20

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across Finland because of resurgent pushes for Finnish language adoption amid the Swedish-Finnish language struggle raging at the time.24 Some even credited the Finnish press coverage of the South African War with the rise of widespread newspaper consumption in the first place.25 By the end of the war in May of 1902, most Finnish-language newspapers published lengthy articles recalling key events, analyzing British and South African politics, and extracting broader lessons about the nature of the war. Although these accounts were largely aimed at men, women and children were also among the readership.26 Not everyone in Finland with an interest in the war identified with the Boer cause. Occasionally, Finnish newspapers featured pro-British voices, those of anti-war advocates, or criticism of idealistic representations of the Boer struggle.27 But these accounts were largely omitted from the general coverage of the war, and featured as asides buried with other newsworthy ephemera. Among the reportage and literary offerings detailing events of the war came notices that, in South Africa, there were also Finns, or, specifically, Ostrobothnians, fighting, dying, and being interned as prisoners in remote outposts of the British Empire.28 These notices were rarely integrated into wider coverage of the war in Finland. However, these mediated experiences would prove instrumental in creating an important component of the imagined “Finnish“ experience in South Africa: the heroic sacrifice of the Scandinavian Corps at the Battle of Magersfontein in December of 1899. The first news of Finns as “Finns” in this engagement appeared in April of 1900.29 It would take several more months for readers in Finland to receive further notice of the conduct of their fellow countrymen, now represented as fellow nationals, at Magersfontein. A letter written by a Danish prisoner of war (POW), smuggled out in a soap dish and then 24  For the language struggle and its effects on methodology, see Marjanen et al. (2019). We thank Johanna Skurnik for this resource. 25  “The newspaper as daily Bread,” Perä-Pohjolainen, 12 March 1901, 3. 26  Some women satirized male concern with “serious business” while social inequity still reigned at home, see “Uskottu leiviskä,” Koti ja Yhteiskunta [Home and Society], no. 6, 15 May 1902, 59. 27  See an essay by Finnish Senator Alfred Oswald Kihlman, “Cultural Expectations,” Valvoja, 1 November 1902, 673; and a pamphlet by Lonnbeck (1900). 28  “Vasa Postenista,” “The Adventures of a Finn in the Transvaal War,” Suomalainen, 17 January 1901, 2. 29  “Finns in the Boer War,” Kaiku, 21 April 1900, 2.

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published by a Danish newspaper before being reprinted in Finland, contained praise (perhaps invented) from various Boer commanders: In a speech at Johannesburg train station, General Lucas Meyer called the Scandinavians heroes of the country. General Cronje himself, who is otherwise a harsh, somehow indiscriminate man, … said [to a Scandinavian he encountered]: Take my greetings to your comrades and tell them that there are not five hundred men among my burg[h]ers who could do what you did…. Those words were also heard in Finnish ears.30

While other notes about “Finnish” experiences of the war were also published in newspapers, they were never as fully integrated into the dominant narrative of reportage in Finland. Scandinavian defeat at Magersfontein quickly became vicarious victory for all of Finland, not just Ostrobothnia. As it became more and more clear that the Boers would lose the war throughout 1900, lamentations filled Finland’s newspapers and journals. Pretoria fell in June of 1900, signaling the end of the conventional phase of the conflict. A particularly affected Danish article reprinted in Finland’s Työmies (Worker) captured the depth of disappointment shared by some. Pretoria has fallen. Everything is over. The Boer War is over … The vast majority of Danes … have followed the fate of the Boers with the deepest sympathy. We, who ourselves belong to the little ones and who ourselves have been able to taste the fate of the little ones, must naturally feel a perfectly instinctive sympathy for those faraway inhabitants … who fought for their home against their numerous and awesome foes.31

The fighting would last for another two years, characterized by a violent counterinsurgency campaign and the creation of the world’s first global mass internment system for both military prisoners32 and civilian populations.33 Yet, “even if national passions—such as e.g. the Boer War shows—have risen to the extreme peak of brutality, we must not doubt that a turnaround is coming”, in the world’s tolerance of the rule of empires over nations, argued Eemil Nestor Setälä, a future president of the  “Recognition for the Scandinavians” Uusi Suometar, 3 October 1900, 5.  “Ohitse,” Työmies [Worker], 14 June 1900, 2. 32  Kennedy (2016). 33  van Heyningen (2013). 30 31

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Fig. 11.1  “Urhoolliset Skandinaavialaiset” [Brave Scandinavians], Suomen Kansa, 14 September 1901, page 3

Senate and Foreign Minister, in an article in the journal Valvoja.34 Here too the imagined South African War became an analogy for the project of Finland’s nationalism. “One has to wonder about the resilience of that little Boer people, now in their third year of battle”, went another article in the Lappeenranta Itä-Suomen Sanomat [Eastern Finland Dispatch] at the end of 1901. “It has given all peoples a clear testimony and an example of what the fear of God, the love of the fatherland, and freedom will bring to the fight”.35 As this new heroic narrative was crafted in response to the later phases of the war following the defeat of the Boer armies, lengthier pieces on the “Brave Men of Magersfontein” began to appear as well.36 One such article came complete with an engraving of an imagined Finnish colonial encounter (Fig. 11.1), featuring an unlikely savanna amid what was really arid, kopje-dotted Magersfontein: A remnant of the Scandinavian corps that has fought in the ranks of the Boers. As foreigners, they gave themselves to defend freedom and justice.

 Valvoja, 1 January, 1902, 4.  “Thoughts on the Boer War,” Itä-Suomen Sanomat, 28 December 1901, 2. 36  On the “Magersfontein Men,” see Jalonen (2006). 34 35

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They have come together in their defeat and heartbreak … [and] have shown that “manhood, courage and uprightness live on” in Scandinavia.37

If the South African War had not proved that small nations committed to the ideal of freedom could defeat large armies compensated only in money, the men of Magersfontein had at least shown that “Finnish” martial masculinity at least passed muster, and could again in the ongoing fight for national existence.

Finnish Realities in South Africa The narrative of Scandinavian involvement in the South African War has received extensive scholarly attention.38 But this work has been marked mostly by either a focus on military heroism or by an empiricist description of events. Hale’s conclusion that “the Nordic pro-Boers left their mark on the ethnic and military history of the pluralistic society of which they chose to be a part” is no doubt a necessary assessment,39 but one that does not adequately account for the complex and competing narratives of war that survived the conflict and which obscured the lived reality of Scandinavian volunteers. This section considers the complexities of Finnish volunteers’ experiences and to compare and contrast these within the timeline of mythmaking and reception by the Finnish public that followed in the months and years that followed the war. Among the most egregious fantasies of the literature on foreign volunteers in the South African War has been that Finnish volunteers were indeed “Finnish” in that they either identified with this burgeoning national identity, or that they came from Finland to join the war with the specific intent to support the cause as the international brigades would do in the Spanish Civil War.40 As both Hale and Eero Kuparinen suggest, based on figures taken by a local Norwegian authority and published in October of 1899 in the Natal Mercury, there might have been up to 3000 Scandinavians in southern Africa on the eve of war.41 Other figures from a Finnish newspaper claimed that there were “about 500 Finns probably there [in the Transvaal] already, some came 37  “Urhoolliset Skandinaavialaiset” [Brave Scandinavians], Suomen Kansa, 14 September 1901, 3. 38  Hale (2000a, 2000b). 39  Hale (2000a, 236). 40  See Kennedy and Holdridge (2020). 41  Hale (2000a, 221); Kuparinen (1991).

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from Finland, others from America, Australia, and other places across the world”.42 That article also claimed that up to 4000 Norwegians and Swedes were in the Transvaal by that time.43 These are plausible figures given that Särkkä estimates that about 1200 Finns had emigrated to southern Africa between 1886 and 1914.44 The pro-Boer attitude in Finland was not matched among Finnish settlers in southern Africa. The majority of Scandinavians in southern Africa either supported the British position or wished to remain neutral instead of pledging support to Boer republics that had withheld burgher rights from them as uitlanders (foreigners), affording them only a “secondclass status”.45 Likewise, not all Scandinavians who participated in the war did so on the Boer side. For instance, one of Finland’s most prominent colonial adventurers, Carl Theodor Eriksson, traveled from Rhodesia to serve with the British imperial forces.46 Others returned to Europe in the opening months of the war, several of whom left behind their possessions and livelihoods on the goldfields. Many foreigners found themselves unwillingly in non-combat positions because of the South African Republic’s interpretation of international legal authorities. According to these authorities, foreigners could not be compelled to join their host country’s combat forces in times of “war between states”, but there were other loopholes that could be exploited. Maintaining good relations with European states was a diplomatic priority for the Boer republics, but matters of military necessity often overruled finer points of international law during warfare, especially in colonial spaces like southern Africa.47 On the outbreak of war, the South African Republic’s Secretary of State F. W. Reitz called up resident Europeans for police duty.48 Mobilizing foreigners in this way allegedly avoided violating the neutrality of foreign states. More notably, it included foreigners within the settler colonial project of violence through the sanitized language of maintaining “social order”. Reitz’s understanding was strongly opposed  “Pikku uutisia,” Uusi Suometar, 16 November 1900, 5.  Ibid. 44  Särkkä (2015, 7). 45  Hale (2000a, 222). 46  For Eriksson’s wider story, see Särkkä (2015), especially 25–26 for Eriksson’s differences with Finnish pro-Boer attitudes. 47  See Kuss (2017); Hull (2008). 48  Archives des Affaires Étrangères, Paris, France (AAE), Transvaal-Orange (TO), Nouvelle Série (NS) 28, f. 133, F. W. Reitz to French Consul-General, Pretoria, 16 Nov 1899. 42 43

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by the French government, but they recognized the practical reality that they as neutral powers thousands of miles away could do little to prevent foreigners from being drafted into service.49 One of those was Kaapro Korhonen, who was called up for non-combat service in the South African Republic’s “civil guard”.50 Of those Finns who decided to join the Boer war effort freely, many came together with fellow Scandinavians into one of the so-called national corps that offered their services to Boer leadership. Such offers were not received enthusiastically.51 The Boer Krijgsraad (war council) viewed these corps as liabilities, and certainly a drain on resources distributed through the highly decentralized veldkornet system, which organized supply around the various districts from which a commando was raised. National corps had no natural supply base and their recruitment was limited by the Krijgsraad to the miners’ shantytowns to avoid competing with other legitimate commandoes.52 Furthermore, national corps were generally regarded as ill-suited to the hit-and-run tactics favored by Boer commanders. Boer soldiers themselves typically regarded foreign volunteers as untested novices who had no idea how to live off the veld, much less handle firearms effectively.53 Lone volunteers integrated into Boer commandoes faced more pronounced challenges. Some, such as Matias Gustafsson (an Ostrobothnian from Uusikaarlepyy) and his unnamed companion, had emigrated to the Transvaal, had found work on a farm, and joined up directly with the De La Rey and De Wet commandoes.54 Their experience paralleled that of Norwegian land surveyor Ingvar Schrøder-Nielsen, who served in a Boer commando rather than the Scandinavian Corps and was later interned as a POW in Bermuda. All three faced similar problems familiarizing Boers with Europe’s ethnicities and geographies.

49  AAE, TO, NS 29, Foreign Minister, Paris to Aubert, Consul-General, Pretoria, 8 Jan 1900, 13. 50  “Suomalaisia buerivankina St. Helenan saarella. [Finnish/Boer prisoners at the St. Helena camp.],” Uusi Kuvalehti, 31 May 1901, p. 3. 51  Seiner (1902, 71). 52  Kennedy and Holdridge (2020, 114). 53  Kennedy and Holdridge (2020, 117). 54  “Suomalainen sotavanki [Finnish prisoner of war],” Raahen Lehti, 30 December 1902, p. 2.

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I had not been able to explain to them what my nationality was. I had told them a hundred times in English, Dutch and Norwegian that I was a Norwegian from Norway, but nobody had heard such names before. In order to give them an idea of where Norway was situated, I could only say that it was so far north you could get on the other side of England; “Allemachtig! [Good Gracious]” they then said, “On the other side of England? That is terrible!” After that I always told them I was a Scandinavian. Someone would still ask what kind of a nation that was, but often there was someone present who would say: “Yes, they are good people! It was they who helped us so much at Magersfontein.” Before that most of them had probably thought that I was some kind of Englishman.55

Ultimately, most Finns participated in the war as part of a national corps, even if it meant violating the neutrality of their “home” governments. This service was an important catalyst in the production of Finnish nationality. The corps created a space for solidarity and a unified articulation of various complex identities. Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnian Finns, having wider access to capital and migration, meant that they accounted for a large share of Finnish migrants in southern Africa. Unlike their Norwegian, Danish, or Swedish counterparts, Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnian Finns were often labeled as “Swedes” or more broadly as Scandinavians. Yet, as part of the Scandinavian Corps, all Finnish volunteers formed their separate “Finnish” platoon within the Scandinavian Corps under Nils Viklund’s command. The Scandinavian Corps consisted of 114 out of approximately 3500–4500 Scandinavians in southern Africa. Eighteen of these men were from Finland. Of those eighteen, all but three departed from Swedish-­ speaking Ostrobothnia.56 The majority were men who until the commencement of the war in October 1899 worked on gold mines in the Witwatersrand surrounding Johannesburg, although there were also several (mostly Norwegian) sailors. Most had no prior military experience, compelling the only trained officer—the Swede Erik Ståhlberg—to provide basic instruction in weapons and equestrian training over the space of only a week. On 16 October 1899, fifty men of the Corps paraded before Transvaal President Kruger, where they thereafter proceeded to the front, initially focusing on sabotage operations (a task given to many “national corps” to keep them away from real battles), particularly targeting the  Schrøder-Nielsen (2012, 66–67).  Bojerud (2009), further addendum.

55 56

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railway supply lines during the early days of the siege of Mafikeng. They soon after played a prominent part in the Battle of Magersfontein on 11 December 1899, suffering heavy losses where only eight of forty-nine members of the Corps present at the battle survived. Although around eighty reinforcements consolidated the decimated Scandinavian Corps in Bloemfontein, before they proceeded under Boer General Cronje’s command until their capture alongside 5000 Boer soldiers at the Battle of Paardeberg on 27 February 1900. Most of those captured, including Scandinavian volunteers, were soon sent down by rail as prisoners of war to temporary sites of internment near Cape Town, and then on to military camps on St. Helena Island in the south Atlantic. These experiences would directly contribute to sharp divisions between the imagined colonial encounter produced and consumed by literary minds in Finland, and the very real colonial encounter in South Africa, and for some subsequent POW exile, endured by Finns. Letters smuggled out of prisoner-of-war camps in St. Helena provided some of the first eyewitness accounts of the fighting at Magersfontein. Simo Backman’s widely republished letter from internment in St. Helena spoke of men “cut down by bullets like a scythe through hay”. He confided to his wife that “there are many things I would like to tell you so that you can understand how horrible war is … but I have too little space to do that here”.57 In Viklund’s memoirs published a decade later, he recalled these privations of a long campaign camped overnight, then on horseback over long distances, but most viscerally he remembered the smell and terror of close-quarter battle with Gordon Highlanders.58 In contrast to the clear pathos shorn of heroic detail in his letter written from St. Helena, Viklund’s memoir is punctuated both with romanticized appeals about the battle as “a wonderful spectacle” and of “courageous” men willing to “stay and fight until the last man”, itself a fantasy around martial valor particular to Scandinavian national virtues but also with unflinching descriptions of bodies torn apart by cannon and rifle fire.59 With the Scandinavians wounded all around, including Viklund who was shot through his hand, and despite men like the young Baron von Hostein providing water for the wounded as a “rain of bullets” cascaded around, Viklund described how they were soon outflanked and bayonetted or shot  “Suomalais-buuri [A Finnish Boer],” Uusi Suometar, 10 April 1901, p. 4.  Gustafsson and Viklund (1910), in de Jong (1983, 79). Our translation. 59  Gustafsson and Viklund (1910, 81–82). 57 58

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from behind.60 A further letter from Ståhlberg, himself now prisoner in the British colony of Ceylon after the battle of Paardeberg in 1900, described how chaos reigned in the tense aftermath of fighting, in which the Boers had fled and a combat-high British soldier had bayonetted and killed one wounded Finn, Erik Lindström, and taken Lindström’s hat as a souvenir.61 This was not the same glorious war as reported to the public. Consequently, these accounts were generally not integrated into the wider appreciation of the war in Finnish reportage during the actual conflict. The harrowing experience of battle was followed by the anxiety and idleness of internment and exile across the British colonial world. For most Finns, this meant detention with other prisoners of war on St. Helena at either Deadwood or Broadbottom camps. Matts Gustafsson found the barbed-wire fencing and gun-toting sentries at the camp to be intimidating at first but was mostly struck by the initial “boring and monotonous” inactivity. Labor for local farmers offered one respite, but so too did an emerging trade in crafts and artisan activity, ranging from carpentry to landscape painting, shoemaking to blacksmiths, of which Scandinavians took a notable lead. For instance, Viklund established a smithy and was praised by the camp officials. Other Scandinavians used their ingenuity to bootleg the production of alcohol.62 Whether through tradeable items created in the makeshift workshops of the camp, or through ten to twelve hours’ labor elsewhere on the island, POWs earned income for the purchase of minor luxuries, such as tobacco, to make life more bearable. Labor and the inevitable contact this afforded with St. Helenians also allowed for traffic in the most valuable commodity: news smuggled back to the camp and beyond the censor’s reach in the form of pamphlets and the local newspaper in which the latest telegrams were printed.63 Many meetings between foreigners and Boers revolved around reading by the former of the latest developments in the war, and in turn to much speculation and debate.64 In a letter dated December 1901 from Ernst Lindberg to a C. Holberg in Finland, and published in the Finnish press,  Gustafsson and Viklund (1910, 83).  “Suomalainen tapettu buurisodassa” [Finn killed in the Boer War], Työmies, 15 August, 1901, p. 4. 62  Gustafsson and Viklund (1910, 106). 63  Gustafsson and Viklund (1910, 106–107). 64  The National Archives, United Kingdom (TNA), CO 247/157 (St. Helena), no. 16353, Report of the Chief Censor, Baron von Ahlefeldt, to the Officer Commanding the Troops, St. Helena, 3 April 1902. 60 61

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“the actions of the Finns in captivity” on St. Helena were most admirable in celebration to mark the joint birthdays of President Steyn of the Orange Free State and President Kruger of the Transvaal. Held in “a meeting room built of iron sheets”, Lindberg’s portraits of both Boer leaders took pride of place among the craftwork of his compatriots.65 In the microcosm of the camp, Finns like Lindberg found solidarity with imperiled Boer nations occupied by Britain. The parallels between the situation of the Boers and the search for sovereignty by the Finns in the midst of Russification back home was possibly also on Lindberg’s mind (Fig. 11.2). But camp life was more than supervised recreation. To British officials, it served a vital role in gathering political intelligence on those who, soon, were to become colonial collaborators in the post-war British order in southern Africa. That process relied on a sophisticated system of surveillance, the bureaucracy of which was designed around nationality as the defining feature of colonial security threats. Three categories of prisoners of war existed on St. Helena: A for foreigner, B for rebel, and C for

Fig. 11.2  K.  Korhonen, “Finnish and Scandinavian prisoners-of-war at Napoleon’s grave in St. Helena”, Uusi Kuvalehti, 31 May 1902, p. 115

 Ernst Lindberg to C. E. Holmberg, Kansalainen, 20 November 1901, p. 3.

65

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burgher.66 Rebels were British colonial subjects who had cast their lot with Boer citizens, or burghers. But category A, the foreigner, remained a challenge to establishing order and the longer-term aim of British loyalism from the Boers in post-war southern Africa. Some foreigners, such as “a Line Captain at Deadwood, a Norwegian or Swede” officials, claimed, wished to “conceal his identity” as a result. Other foreigners goaded the British through encouraging Boer nationalism and suspicion of their captor’s aims.67 Norwegian shipping passed St. Helena frequently, but, after the attempted escape of a Dutch prisoner of war Smorenburg secreted in a box of cargo, no foreign shipping was allowed to dock. Toward the end of the war in the spring of 1902, surveillance was mobilized to serve the aims of political reconstruction. A statement from the British colonial secretary spelled out this policy, the crux of which was to be physical sequestration of all prisoner classes deemed subversive or resistant to future British rule. Foreigners were explicitly targeted: The first to be segregated should be all foreigners, without exception, including naturalised burghers who decline to take the oath of allegiance. Of course genuine foreigners have no claim to be sent back to Africa…. The reasons for the segregation of the hostile and foreign elements should not be disclosed.68

By March 1902, all foreigners on St. Helena had been moved to a separate camp. British officials increasingly considered any contact with foreigners to be a grave security risk. Through this process of sifting out political undesirables (short-lived as the war ended on 31 May 1902), the British state classified most Finns as enemy aliens “warned not to return” to South Africa.69 By virtue of being categorized as Finns, some of these class A prisoners were to be repatriated not to their colonial “homes” in southern Africa, but to their national homes, as Matias Gustafsson was at the end of 1902, seven months after 66  TNA CO 247/155 (St. Helena), no. 1292, Robert Sterndale, Governor of St. Helena, to Joseph Chamberlain, British Colonial Secretary, confidential, 19 December 1901. 67  Ibid. 68  British Library, London, United Kingdom (BL), Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/172, Cypher Telegram, Secret, Colonial Secretary to Viceroy Lord George Curzon, 8 February 1902. 69  BL, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/172, Cypher Telegram, Secret, Indian Secretary to Curzon, 9 July 1902.

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the end of the war.70 Others had found a new life in the British colonial world and did not wish to leave, but, as foreigners, they were not allowed to return to South Africa. Thus, two Finns remained on St. Helena after the war. Thirty-eight-year-old Matts Nielsen eventually received p ­ ermission to marry and settle on the island, while Simo Backman stayed as a carpenter.71 For the majority of repatriated foreign POWs, their return was less than triumphant. The fluidity of being an “imperialist without an empire” that existed before the war was rendered impossible, at least for those who had fought on the Boer side, by a British security state increasingly concerned with national categorization. Finnish immigration to southern Africa would fall by nearly 50% after the war.72

Contesting Finland’s South African Encounter Initially, the colonial experience of Finns in the South African War lent itself to the production of Finnish nationality only to the extent that it was useful to British imperial authorities. Nevertheless, back in Finland, accounts of Finnish colonial experiences were pruned and grafted onto the heroic narrative of the Boer fight for freedom in Finnish newspapers and publications. By late 1903, a contest of interpretations of the war’s meaning had been set up between those in Finland who wished to memorialize their expatriates’ colonial encounters in South Africa as part of a broader struggle of small nations against large powers, and the volunteers whose experiences seemed to find no expression in such representations. The main impetus for Finland’s participation in the first monument project was the suggestion to erect a memorial to the Scandinavian Corps on the site of the battle of Magersfontein.73 However, as one Finnish paper reported, “Nordic people in South Africa [were] unable or unwilling” to contribute to such “national” efforts that subverted their “Afrikanerdom” by highlighting their “Scandinavian-ness”.74 The Scandinavian memorial erected in 1908 would therefore be led, funded, and supported almost exclusively

70  “Suomalainen sotavanki [Finnish prisoner of war],” Raahen Lehti, 30 December 1902, 2. 71  TNA CO 247/157 (St. Helena), no. 30585, Sterndale to Chamberlain, confidential, 27 June 1902. One wonders what his wife made of this decision. 72  See Kuparinen (1991) for fuller figures. 73  Gerdov (2016). 74  “Pohjoismaalaisten hauta Magersfonteinin Iuona,” Uusi Suometar, 29 April 1903, p. 3.

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by Scandinavians in Europe. Moreover, those who attended its inauguration were, apparently, mostly Afrikaners.75 Public discourse regarding memorializing Magersfontein in Finland ran afoul of the opinion of those few whose experiences it meant to appropriate for nationalist aims. By 1908, several volunteers had published their own accounts of their experiences of the South African War. Most took matter-of-fact approaches in their treatment, some choosing to criticize efforts to elevate their colonial encounters into heroics. Lindberg’s memoir, published in 1904, appeared as one of the first of this genre. He wrote memorably and scathingly of the “poets and songwriters who so charmingly tell the story of a soldier’s work and life”, writing that they “should have a bullet put in them, better yet, they should be seriously wounded; perhaps the hospital would take away their admiration for the hero’s death”.76 Others challenged the emerging popular narrative of the Finnish colonial experience in South Africa as a truly “national” one. Jacob Näs’ piece in the Swedish-language Vasa student journal Valan shared his “Ostrobothnian” (and not “Finnish”) experience of Magersfontein in a realist tale of fear and confusion that ended with vivid (and anti-heroic) descriptions of the corpses of the dead hanging in wire entanglements that seem to presage the carnage of the First World War.77 The memoirs of two Ostrobothnian members of the Scandinavian Corps and survivors of Magersfontein, Matt Gustavsson and Nils Viklund, whose letters featured in some Finnish papers during the war, followed in 1910.78 Their descriptions of war spared little of the mundanities of prolonged warfare, interrupted by moments of terror and violence. Hence, Lindberg’s barb aimed directly at home audiences: “Whoever sees [these stories of death and suffering] and still promotes war must be heartless, for the cry of the dying and wounded is truly heartbreaking”.79 The contest over what meaning to make of the Finnish colonial encounter in the South Africa War would continue up until and after the inauguration of the monument in 1908 by none other than Louis Botha, former Boer general and future prime minister of the Union of South Africa. Clearly, the monument commemorated the imagined Finn and an  Gerdov (2016, 69).  Lindberg (1904, 102). 77  Jakob Näs, “Österbottningarna i Boerkriget,” Valan, no. 2, 1 January 1906, 109–110. 78  Gustafsson and Viklund (1910). 79  Lindberg (1904, 64). 75 76

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equally imaginary colonial encounter in South Africa. In any case, Botha’s commemoration stoked much public interest, leading other literary figures to criticize what seemed to be an ongoing public fixation with South Africa. In July of 1908, Miina Sillanpää, the dynamic worker’s advocate and the first female minister in Finland’s new parliament, published in the Social Democratic Children’s Magazine Ihanne (The Ideal) the third installment of a fictional adventure story about two schoolboys, Kalle and Heikki, who attempt to join the fight in the South African War. However, because their destination may prove too frightful, Kalle and Heikki resolve to stay at home where they endure the taunts of their peers who ask them, mockingly, “did you really have a place in the Boer War?”80

Conclusion Finns did indeed have a place in the South African War. But it was not a place that readily lent itself to Finland’s burgeoning nationalism until it was translated by imperial bureaucracy, stripped of its coloniality, and selectively repackaged by Finnish nationalists. It was far more complex, far less concrete, and, ultimately, a colonial, imperial, and international encounter all at once. The Finnish colonial encounter in the South African War lent itself to two, conflicting statemaking projects. To Finns who fought with Boer armies, the war was a crucible of colonial identity formation, a whole family of nations coming together for the common defense of a specific colonial order in which they had a stake too. To some, that meant protecting hard-won material wealth and social privilege. To others, that meant a promissory political equality as burghers. In contrast, to those in Finland who increasingly read periodicals about the war and Finnish heroism at key battles, these men were cast as brave volunteers who were fighting for the rights and freedoms of small nations such as Finns in Finland itself could not (yet) do. The experiences of Finns in South Africa, both in the field and during and after internment, was not as clearly defined nor as glorious as its post-­ war representations claimed. To some in Finland, the South African War as a noble example of a small nation fighting an imperial juggernaut was first supplanted by other more consequential conflicts, such as the Russo-­ Japanese War, or rebutted by new interpretations of the conflict. By 1907, 80  “Kun Kalle ja Heikki menivät Buurisotaan,” Ihanne: Sosialidemokratinen Lastenlehti, 1 July 1908, 50.

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some had even come to view the South African War as a failure of a new, modern, European-led internationalism that had descended into a brutal “racial war” because of the failure to adhere to new international customs and conventions respecting “civilized” war-making.81 While few on the settler colonial frontier in pre- and post-war southern Africa would have seriously challenged this interpretation, to metropolitan Finns, it ­contributed to the efforts to “nationalise” the colonial encounter and therefore translate it into a more useful example of Finnish national honor. Even as these lived experiences were muted or revised in Finnish popular and heroic imaginaries, representations made more alluring with the passage of time, the intentional translation of such experiences from “colonial” into “national” codes ensured that, at its heart, Finnish nationalism had imperial origins. Even though Finns themselves were “imperialists without an empire”82 the Finnish colonial encounter in the South African War by no means informed the creation of “Finnish” nationality from the margins only.

References Primary Sources

Newspapers Ihanne: Sosialidemokratinen Lastenlehti, 1 July, 1908. Itä-Suomen Sanomat, 28 December 1901. Kaiku, 21 April 1900. Kansalainen, 20 November 1901. Koti ja Yhteiskunta, no. 6, 15 May 1902. Perä-Pohjolainen, 12 March 1901. Raahen Lehti, 30 December 1902. Suomen Kansa, 14 September 1901. Suomalainen, 17 January 1901. Työmies, 14 June 1900, 15 August 1901. Uusi Kuvalehti, 31 May 1901, 31 May 1902. Uusi Suometar, 3 October 1900, 16 November 1900, 10 April 1901, 29 April 1903. Vainamoinen, 15 January 1907.  “International language,” Vainamoinen, 15 January 1907, 13.  Särkkä (2015).

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Valan, no. 2, 1 January, 1906. Valvoja, 1 January 1902, 1 November 1902.

Manuscripts No. 1292, Robert Sterndale, Governor of St Helena, to Joseph Chamberlain, British Colonial Secretary, confidential, 19 December 1901. CO 247/155 (St Helena), The National Archives, United Kingdom. CO 247/157 (St Helena), The National Archives, United Kingdom. Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/172, British Library, London, United Kingdom. F.W. Reitz to French Consul-General, Pretoria, 16 Nov 1899. Transvaal-Orange, Nouvelle Série 28, f. 133. Archives des Affaires Étrangères, Paris, France. Foreign Minister, Paris to Aubert, Consul-General, Pretoria, 8 Jan 1900, 13. Transvaal-Orange, Nouvelle Série 29. Archives des Affaires Étrangères, Paris, France.

Secondary Sources Anderson, Benedict. 2016. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. ed. London: Verso. Angell, Svein Ivar. 2015. The Consular Affairs Issue and Colonialism. In Navigating Colonial Orders, ed. Kirsten Alsaker Kjerland and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, 153–172. New York: Berghahn. Bojerud, Stellan. 2009. Scandinavian Volunteers in the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902. Military History Journal 14 (5): 169–171. samilitaryhistory.org/ vol145sb.html. Bridge, F.R. 2001. Austria-Hungary and the Boer War. In The International Impact of the Boer War, ed. Keith Wilson, 79–96. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Davidson, Apollon, and Irina Filatova. 1998. The Russians and the Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau. Despagnet, Frantz. 1901. La question finlandaise au point de vue juridique. Paris: Libraire de la Societe du Recueil General et des Lois et des Arrets. Dubow, Saul. 2011. South Africa and South Africans. In Cambridge History of South Africa, ed. Robert Ross, Anne Kelk Mager, and Bill Nasson, vol. 2, 17–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fischer-Tiné, Harald, and Patricia Purtschert, eds. 2015. Colonial Switzerland. Rethinking Colonialism from the Margins. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gerdov, Christian. 2016. A Scandinavian ‘Magna Charta’? The Scandinavian Corps and the Politics of Memory in South Africa (1899–1927). Historia 61 (2): 54–78.

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Gustafsson, Matts, and Nils Viklund. 1910. Boere och Engelsman, Skildringar ur det sydafrikanska kriget 1899–1900 (Helsingfors, 1910). In Skandinawiers in die Tweede Anglo-Boere-Oorlog, ed. and trans. into Afrikaans by Cornelis de Jong. Amsterdam: Nederlands-Zuidafrikaanse Vereniging, 1983. Hale, Frederick. 2000a. The Scandinavian Corps in the Second Anglo-Boer War. Historia 45 (1): 220–236. ———. 2000b. Norwegian Prisoners in the Second Anglo-Boer War. South African Journal of Cultural History 14 (2): 1–12. Hevia, James. 2015. The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-Building in Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horne, John. 2004. Masculinity in Politics and War in the Age of Nation-States and World Wars, 1850–1950. In Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, ed. Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann, and John Tosh, 22–40. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hull, Isabel. 2008. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jalonen, Jussi. 2006. Magersfonteinin miehet. Skandinaviska Kåren -komennuskunnan suomalaisvapaaehtoiset buurisodassa 1899–1902. Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 1: 38–55. Kemiläinen, Aira. 1964. Nationalism: Problems Concerning the Word, the Concept, and Classification, Studia Historica Jyväskyläensia, no 3. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän kasvatusopillinen korkeakoulu; Jyväskylän yliopistoyhdistys. Kennedy, Wm. Matthew. 2016. The Imperialism of Internment: Boer Prisoners of War in India and Civic Reconstruction in South Africa, 1899–1905. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 44 (3): 423–447. Kennedy, Wm. Matthew, and Chris Holdridge. 2020. ‘The Recognized Adjunct of Modern Armies’: Foreign Volunteerism and the South African War. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 27 (1–2): 111–133. Keskinen, Suvi. 2019. Intra-Nordic Differences, Colonial/Racial Histories, and National Narratives: Rewriting Finnish History. Scandinavian Studies 91 (1–2): 163–181. Kjerland, Kirsten Alsaker, and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, eds. 2015. Navigating Colonial Orders: Norwegian Entrepreneurship in Africa and Oceania. New York: Berghahn. Kuitenbrouwer, Vincent. 2012. War of Words: Dutch Pro-Boer Propaganda and the South African War (1899–1902). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press. Kuparinen, Eero. 1991. An African Alternative: Nordic Migration to South Africa, 1815–1914. Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society. Kuss, Susanne. 2017. German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

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Lake, Marilyn, and Henry Reynolds. 2008. Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lindberg, Ernst. 1904. Suomalaisen seikkailuja buurisodassa ja muistoja vankeudesta S:t Helenan saarella. Helsinki: Otava. Linder, Adolphe. 2012. The Swiss and the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902. Cape Town: Adolphe Linder. Lonnbeck, Francis Waldemar. 1900. Pro-Britannia. Ekenas. Marjanen, Jani, Ville Vaara, Antti Kanner, Hege Roivainen, Eetu Mäkelä, Leo Lahti, and Mikko Tolonen. 2019. A National Public Sphere? Analyzing the Language, Location, and Form of Newspapers in Finland, 1771–1917. Journal of European Periodical Studies 4 (1): 55–78. O’Connor, Steven, and Guillaume Piketty. 2020. Introduction: Foreign Fighters and Multinational Armies: From Civil Conflicts to Coalition Wars, 1848–2015. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 27 (1–2): 1–11. Olin, K.G. 2000. Afrikafeber. Jakobstad: Ab Olinex Oy. Palmberg, Mai. 1999. From Masters to Minorities: The Swedish-Speaking Finns and the Afrikaans-Speaking Whites. In National Identity and Democracy in Africa, ed. Mai Palmberg, 203–230. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute. Ranger, Terence. 2012. The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa. In The Invention of Tradition, ed. Terence Ranger and Eric Hobsbawn, 211–262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Särkkä, Timo. 2013. Two Small Nations in between Two Great Imperial Powers— The Boers and the Finns in the Late-Victorian Liberty Discourses. In Small Nations on the Borderlines of Great Powers, ed. Attila Bárány and Satu Matikainen, 171–186. Debrecen: Kapitális Kft. ———. 2015. Imperialists Without an Empire?: Finnish Settlers in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Rhodesia. Journal of Migration History 1 (1): 75–99. Schär, Bernhard. 2019. Introduction: The Dutch East Indies and Europe, ca. 1800–1930. An Empire of Demands and Opportunities. BMGN—Low Countries Historical Review 134 (3): 4–20. Schrøder-Nielsen, I. 2012. Among the Boers in Peace and War. Edited by Ione Rudner and Bill Nasson, trans. Jalmar and Ione Rudner. Cape Town: Africana Publishers. Seiner, Franko. 1902. Ernste und heitere Erinnerungen eines Deutschen Bürenkampfer. Vol. 1. Munich: CH Bek’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Smith, Iain R. 1996. The Origins of the South African War 1899–1902. London: Harlow.

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Stoler, Anne Laura, and Carole McGranahan. 2007. Introduction: Refiguring Imperial Terrains. In Imperial Formations, ed. Anne Laura Stoler, Carole McGranahan, and Peter C.  Purdue, 3–44. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press. van Heyningen, Elizabeth. 2013. The Concentration Camps of the Boer War: A Social History, 2013. Cape Town: Jacana. Veracini, Lorenzo. 2010. Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Warwick, Peter. 1983. Black People and the South African War 1899–1902. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 12

The “Pioneer Men”: Making of Finnish Settler Identity in Southern Africa Pre-1914 Timo Särkkä

This research1 emerges from the recent realization that Finnish settlers have thus far formed a neglected social variable in the study of colonial identities in general and in colonial Southern Africa in particular.2 It approaches the origins of Finnish settler identity formation from the specific perspectives of ethnicity and migration, and is motivated by an attempt to highlight Finnish history within the framework and forming a part of the development of European and global colonialism. The research is also informed by scholarly discussions relating to Finnish national history and questions of Finnish identity. The idea of the Finnish nation, like those other imagined communities, is based on the idea of exceptionalism3—that is, the notion that the Finnish nation is regarded by  The research was supported by the Academy of Finland (Grant Number 343605).  For further information, see Särkkä (2020, 521–533). 3  For further information, see Anderson (1991). 1 2

T. Särkkä (*) Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_12

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the Finns as their own birthright. In Chaps. 4 and 5 of this volume, this notion took the form of expansion into the farthest northern reaches of the newly born Republic that the Finns set to colonize in words and actions in the early 1920s. But it also could accommodate similar ideas in the minds of those who migrated to search for a new life and its opportunities in the most southern reaches of the African Continent  as already discussed in Chap. 11. White settlers in colonial Southern Africa have typically been categorized as “Europeans” partly because of their shared sense of representing a generalized idea of “Western civilisation” in Africa and partly in order to underline contrasts between black and white experiences in the history of colonialism.4 In its place, this chapter suggests that by focusing on the more specific provenance of the settlers (their ethnicity  and country of origin), it is possible to reveal idiosyncrasies (e.g. in terms of language) through which we can appreciate settler identity formation more precisely. To the fore of the research is the life and times of one particular Finnish-­ born settler, Carl Theodor [Charles Theodore] “Teko” Eriksson (1874–1940), who in Rhodesiana was known by such epithets as “Pioneer Smelter Man” and “He who commands with a firm hand” owing to his many capacities in the mining industry in Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia) and the Katanga region of the Congo Free State (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the first years of the twentieth century. Eriksson is also known for being a sometime Rhodesian soldier (in the South African War and later in the First World War), a big game hunter, and an amateur photographer,5 who was among the first settlers to adopt photographic technology alongside travel writing for recording his experiences in the lands beyond the Zambesi River. It has been said that identities are constructed within specific discursive formations and practices, and thus need to be understood in specific historical contexts.6 This means that while individuals might define their identities in particular ways, researchers may impose on them different social variables. For a researcher of colonialism, these questions of definition form a perplexing problem. How should we refer to this Finnish-born settler, if the term “Finnish settler” alone will not suffice? Those Finns  Gann and Duignan (1978, ix–x).  On Eriksson’s many capacities in colonial Southern Africa, see Särkkä (2015, 75–99, 2016, 318–341, 2018, 141–160). 6  Hall (1996, 4–5). 4 5

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who migrated to the colonial world had multiple, often overlapping identities based on factors such as gender, race, language, and profession, as well as ethnicity. Besides, in different colonial settings, the same individuals may have had numerous, often conflicting identity labels.7 For the present purposes, a settler is defined as being someone who migrated with the intention of establishing a permanent home in a new environment. Thus, a settler was also someone who was in the process of acquiring a new identity, at least in part. The term “pioneer”, on the other hand, is a term used to refer to the settlers in colonial Southern Africa’s age of pioneering, exploration, and adventure (c. 1870 to 1914). It can still be seen in use in museums and exhibitions in South Africa and beyond but rarely in rigorous academic research,8 which is why I have chosen to put it in quotation marks. Outside the scholarly field of imperial and colonial studies, a study of Finnish settler identity runs the risk of being considered old-fashioned. The reputation of emotive terms such as “pioneer” has declined sharply since the age of empire and imperialism. Heroic tales of these Boys’ Own heroes in exotic environments and the perceived romantic glamour that surrounded them persisted well into the late 1950s, but today the same accounts are often considered out-of-date. New historical works emerging within a global history framework typically site notions of empire and imperialism (including the question of colonial identity) squarely within networks of migration, mobility, race, class, and gender among others, and tend to adopt longitudinal analysis informed by datasets rather than microhistorical case studies within a relatively condense temporal framework.9 Therefore, any attempt to emphasize a Finnish involvement in the process of colonialism runs the risk of becoming a heroic tale of forgotten “Finnish imperial grandeur” in a colonial context. This is clearly contrary to the intention of the present study, which seeks to examine Finnish migrant identity in colonial Southern Africa, as well as to detail the life and times of Eriksson and assess his capacities and limitations as a colonialist in the age of imperialism, pioneering, exploration, and adventure. 7  It is nearly axiomatic that these questions over definitions emerge once an analysis informed by datasets is complemented with microhistorical case studies within a relatively condensed time framework. See, for example, Frigren’s conclusions in (2019b, 192). 8  See, for instance, various plaques commemorating pioneers in the Mining District Walk in Johannesburg. For further information, see Gann and Duignan (1962). 9  On discussion of this point in the context of Southern Africa history, see Parsons (2014, 222–223).

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The research is based on Eriksson’s African collections, which comprise a diary published in 1932,10 photographs,11 and various unpublished ­ ersonal miscellanea.12 The publisher of Eriksson’s diary selected ninetyp seven prints for the travelogue, most of which can be attributed to Eriksson himself, but it also includes reproductions from commercial photographers and even hand-drawn pictures when suitable photographs for the storyline had not been available. The diary commences with Eriksson’s arrival at Cape Town in 1895 and highlights his position as a prospector in a mine and mineral seeking Expedition undertaken by Tanganyika Concessions Limited in Northern Rhodesia and Katanga (1901–1906). There is a wide range of subject matter depicted in Eriksson’s African collection, ranging from various aspects of the early colonial economy (including the organization and processes of the early mining work, modes of communication, and relations between the mining company’s white management and the African labor) to scenes of daily life in Northern Rhodesia and Katanga, documentation of “natives” and “wildlife”, portraiture, and hunting scenes. Most of the information than can be conveyed from Eriksson’s materials stems from a cultural assumption that they are written and visual records of his experiences and achievements. But his diary and photographs can also be examined from the perspective of how they shape new meanings in understanding the process of colonization. The quotations and images selected for this chapter to illustrate Eriksson’s colonial encounters cannot represent the full range of these collections, but their particularity in style and subject matter allows us to draw conclusions about what the generic category of “pioneer” represented to Eriksson. The main focus of attention will be the circumstances of the production of the diary and the photographs as well as their circulation and reception by audiences past and present. Taken together, the diary and the photographs give us means by which to analyze theoretical and conceptual definitions of the term colonialism, which I have employed here as a pragmatic analytical tool rather than as a

10  The diary hereafter cited as Eriksson (1932). All quotations from Finnish into English by the author. 11  FHA, PC, VKK95; VKK542; VKK871. The image captions are reproduced, where possible, with their original Swedish. 12  CTE, in possession of Roger Eriksson, the custodian of the collection.

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theoretical term per se, and as such it provides us with a descriptive framework for analyzing Eriksson’s colonial encounters. How do Eriksson’s diary and photography reflect the larger dynamics governing the categories of “colonizer” and “colonized” and the relationship between them? Eriksson’s photographs can serve as ideal lenses through which to map these interactions, for rather than being representations of either “them” or “us”, the photographs illustrate the advantages of a dialogic, discursive approach. Such an approach reveals the complexities of Eriksson’s colonial encounters within a wider and more nuanced field. Field photography, still a relatively new practice at the time, would have been an intrinsic part of these emerging, blended cultural practices. At the same time, the act of photographing not only creates images of people, cultures, and practices encountering one another but images of the encounter itself. The result of this encounter, the image we see when looking at a photograph, therefore, has to be regarded as a product of a multitude of actors. From this perspective, interpreting Eriksson’s diary and photographs as encounters and as expressions of multiple meanings and interpretations becomes an inescapable necessity.

The Mineral Revolution and Finnish Settlers in Colonial Southern Africa The Finnish migratory movement to South Africa can be traced back to the mid-1890s, when references to prospecting for gold in Southern Africa started to appear in regional newspapers of Ostrobothnia (Pohjanmaa),13 a poor riparian Western coastal province of Finland, where most of her Southern African emigrants were born. The fact that most newspaper correspondents knew absolutely nothing about local conditions and probably had not even set their feet in the African soil did not deter them from issuing glowing mine reports and estimates of the profits waiting to be won. Newspapers were not the only or even the prime means of generating gold fever. In small rural villages, rumors of those who had struck gold spread fast and provided the necessary impetus which set new waves of emigrants on the move. Although no statistics of the immigrants who landed to the Cape before 1914 were compiled by local officials, it is 13  For example, Östernottniska Posten 31 July 1895; 7 March 1896; Svenska Österbotten 25 October 1895; 10 March 1896; Norra Posten 14 March 1896; Vasabladet 5 February; 12 October 1895; Wasa Tidning 5 March; 27 July 1895.

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possible to obtain information about the development of the passenger traffic through the port records of the UK. It has been estimated that 1200 Finns boarded passenger and cargo ships from the UK to South Africa between 1886 and 1914.14 C. T. Eriksson was by outlook largely indistinguishable from the rest of the Finnish migrants who became subsumed in colonial Southern Africa before 1914. His father, Isak Johan Eriksson Mattlar, had been born on 4 July 1844 in Malax (Maalahti), Ostrobothnia and his mother, Maria Holm (b. 19 January 1849), was from the nearby village of Munsala. From 1866 to 1868, Ostrobothnia was badly ravaged by a famine caused by exceptionally cold weather and the loss of several subsequent harvests, which forced large crowds of landless poor to seek their fortunes overseas. Isak’s and Maria’s first destination was the nearby provincial capital, Nikolaistad (Nikolainkaupunki, present-day Vaasa), but already in about 1870, the newlyweds transferred to Helsinki, where they lived on the southern outskirts of the capital in a makeshift shanty house with poor sanitary conditions. In these environs, Maria gave birth to two sons, Johannes, born on 26 September 1871, and Karl Theodor, born on 19 March 1874, both baptized in the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which dominated the Grand Duchy’s religious life.15 Only scattered evidence remains on C.  T. Eriksson’s upbringing or education in Helsinki. He seems to have enrolled in Helsingfors Lyceum whose classical curriculum included the literary, historical, and philosophical study of the civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome and lessons in German, French, and Russian as well as Latin. So it is possible to state that the young Eriksson belonged to the relatively educated social class of late-­ nineteenth-­ century Finnish society. In 1893, without taking his final exams, the seventeen-year-old decided to enlist in the Merchant Navy.16 Seafaring was economically important within the western and southern regions of the country bordered by Finland’s long coastline, so it offered a natural way for the poor to alleviate their poverty.17 Seafaring expertise is also a noticeable feature of Finnish colonial encounters, just as it was of Scandinavian engagement in general with the colonial world.18  Emigration and Immigration (1876–1912); Kuparinen (1991, 22–30).  Särkkä (2010); NA, HEL, Christening Records of the family Eriksson. 16  Eriksson (1932, 8, 10). 17  Kuparinen (1991, 118–120); Ojala et al. (2017, 598–599). 18  Frigren (2019a, 13–18); On Norwegian colonial encounters, see Bertelsen (2015, 1–22). 14 15

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In October 1895, Eriksson was on board a Norwegian barque Record on her regular sail from Australia via Cape Town to Scandinavia, with her freight of wheat for the European markets that would be replaced by a return cargo of bales of dry pulp and pitprops. The magnificent view opening from the Victoria and Albert Waterfront, where the tree-mast sailing ship was docking, to Cape Town rising in the foothills of Table Mountain must have been alluring after months of hard labor and strict discipline on the high seas, tempting the young deck boy to break his bond with the sea.19 Heroic adventure tales of the hazard-filled frontier existence of pioneers whom Eriksson had read about from Alfred Wilks Drayson’s Among the Zulus (1868) and the romantic glamour that surrounded frontier existence were the sort of the adventures Eriksson yearned for when he decided to seek his fortune in South Africa.20 Cape Town had emerged from a small VOC colony (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie [Dutch East India Company]) at the tip of Southern Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, and was a city of social turmoil. At the end of the nineteenth century, new social and political identities were developing in the Cape, building on those that had emerged before emancipation from slavery in 1834. Most ex-slaves and their descendants continued to live in poverty, the lives of black people not having altered much materially since emancipation. There were few property owners or merchants among the blacks, and the bulk of wealth and power lay in white hands.21 When Eriksson settled in Cape Town, segregation was already being enforced in many public domains, in churches, hotels, hospitals, restaurants, sport grounds and clubs, and even in prisons. Segregation between those who were identified as “Coloured” (i.e. descendants of Afrikaans-speaking freed slaves and the indigenous San and Khoe language groups) as distinct from Bantu-speaking “Blacks” was also emerging, indicating a far more stringent form of economic and social control that was in the process of developing at the time.22 Being categorized as a “White”, plucky, young lad came with certain natural benefits, which secured Eriksson’s first employment, apprenticeship with James Torrance, Electrical and Mechanical Engineer.23 How this  Eriksson (1932, 7–10).  Eriksson (1932, 13–14). Eriksson refers here to the Swedish edition, Elefantjägaren Hans Stark. Jagtäfventyr i boernes och zulukaffrernes land. 21  Bickford-Smith (1994, 292, 308). 22  Bickford-Smith (1989, 48). 23  Eriksson (1932, 10). 19 20

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employment exactly materialized is unknown but Eriksson asserts that he was part of a work crew that put in electric bells at Groote Schuur, an estate which belonged to Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and the paragon of an imperialist, who has been both idealized and vilified in the history of Southern Africa. In Eriksson’s diary, his mythologizing of this first encounter with Rhodes and later with Rhodesia takes a form of colonial nostalgia which romanticizes the thrill of colonial conquest and looks back at these encounters in terms that could be described as love at first sight. A belief in Rhodes and Rhodesia arguably became a substitute for Eriksson’s Lutheran religion and the core of his ethic as a pioneer.24 While working with James Torrance, Eriksson supervised the operation and acted as a liftboy in the Royal Hotel, Plein Street, where the firm installed the first electrically operated lift in the town. The assignment as liftboy must have been rather sought after, and perhaps indicates a position of trust the young Finnish apprentice had achieved in the firm. A confirmation of this comes from a handwritten Letter of Reference, signed by James Torrance on 15 April 1896, to use when Eriksson was job hunting. It states that Eriksson is “a most steady & intelligent workman”, and that James Torrance recommends him “to anyone who may require his services”.25 A bright future could have awaited Eriksson in Cape Town, but where gold is concerned emotion rather than logic tends to prevail.26 The discovery of a hitherto unknown gold-bearing formation in the Witwatersrand in the mid-1880s had generated an unprecedented rush of settlers to the Transvaal, which attracted ever-growing numbers of petty prospectors, traders, and hunters who were driven by gold fever.27 The discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand was of profound importance, not least because it formed a decisive part of what is sometimes called the Mineral Revolution in Southern Africa. Within a few years, Witwatersrand became the world’s greatest single source of gold and in the process Africa’s biggest employer of African and European labor. It has been estimated by V. L. Allen in his seminal Mining in South Africa (1992) that in just eight years from the

 Eriksson (1932, 10–12). See also Gann and Duignan (1962, 9); Thomas (1997).  CTE, Letter of Reference. Courtesy of Roger and Joan Eriksson. 26  Green (1982, xiv). 27  Thompson (1995, 115–117). 24 25

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discovery of gold there were already as many as 42,500 Africans and 5500 Europeans employed in the Rand mines.28 In 1896, lured by the opportunities presented by gold discoveries, Eriksson journeyed to Johannesburg, then a booming gold mining settlement built adjacent to the mines. This encounter with the mining industry came to define much of the rest of his over 40-year life in colonial Southern Africa. Johannesburg was just a small mining camp when prospectors started to mine outcropping gold reefs near the town in 1886. In just few years , extracting this low-grade ore had developed into deep-level mining, which called for both capital and labor. This was facilitated by the arrival of a railway, which enabled the establishment of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the lavish hotels as well as gambling saloons and music halls. Soon a hearty devil-may-care attitude prevailed, characterized by drinking, dancing, gambling, and speculating in mining stocks.29 The first Census of Johannesburg was made in 1896, and it reveals that “Europeans” were young bachelors from Britain, with young men from Cornwall and from Scotland making up more numerous single groups than men from other parts of the UK and from Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Romania. There were prominent numbers of Americans and of Chinese, as well of British “colonials” from Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. Those born in the Russian Empire numbered 3335  in total, but the number of immigrants from the Grand Duchy is unknown.30 According to one Finn residing in Johannesburg, there were as many as 500 Finnish-born settlers in the “city of gold” in 1900.31 Most of them were Ostrobothnians, who made a precarious living from mining, prospecting, trading, and stock-jobbing penny stocks.32

Emergence of the Rhodesian Settler Identity After working about a year in the Rand mines, Eriksson was lured by the popularized myths of the exotic highlands of central Southern Africa and expectations of bonanza profits from alluvial gold extraction, which did  Allen (1992, 132).  For further, see, Rosenthal (1970); Van Onselen (1982). 30  Report of Director of Census 15 September 1896, VIII; see also Kuparinen (1991). 31  “Johannesburg i Transvaal”, Österbottniska Posten, 24 November 1900. 32  Kuparinen (1981, 279–287). 28 29

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not call for much capital or skill.33 At the time, the commonly accepted notion was that “the gold of Ophir” came from “Havilah”, the ancient Kingdom of Zimbabwe, which was mythologized by novels such as Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and travelogues such as F. C. Selous’ Travel and Adventure in South-East Africa (1893), replete with exciting romances.34 Fueled by these popularizations, the quest for gold spread beyond the Limpopo River in the Highveld that was to become Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), where the early prospectors met with moderate success as they systematically pegged the ancient workings.35 In 1897, together with a party of three Norwegian settlers, Eriksson set off on an epic bicycle journey from Johannesburg toward a settler community in Bulawayo, which had been founded “in the barren dreariness of the high veld” in “Lobengula’s country” (Matabeleland) in 1894.36 In his diary, Eriksson describes the romance of prospectors’ and hunters’ camps, the romance of the transport rider and of the trooper, the romance of gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, of cloudless skies, and of the Southern Cross, unknown to his Finnish eyes. On the veld, there was also the romance of attacks by lions, the chance of meeting huge pythons in the grass, the romance of shooting one’s first buck, the romance of living on short-­ commons, and the general sober romance of being “bushed”.37 After three months of trekking and encountering some of the hazards of the Highveld—water shortage, becoming stuck fast in drifts, malarial fever, and wild beasts—the party finally reached Bulawayo, just before the ceremonial opening of the Bechuanaland Railway on 4 November 1897.38 The wet season was just underway, and Eriksson was looking very pasty and unhealthy, suffering possibly from blackwater fever, a particularly virulent form of malaria. But the young Finn recuperated and found employment as an Electrical Engineer with the Bulawayo Electric Light Works.39

 Green (1982, 15–6, 18).  Hall and Neal (1904, x, 3). 35  For a literary review, see, for example: Phimister (1988); Chikuhwa (1998, 43–45, 123–144); Zvobgo (2009, 11–32); Mlambo (2014). 36  Ranger (2010, 14–17). 37  Hall and Neal (1904, 3). 38  Eriksson (1932, 22–28). 39  CTE. As stated in his Certificate for the Marriage at the Register Office, Epsom, Surrey, 3 February 1910. Courtesy of Roger and Joan Eriksson. 33 34

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The Census Records reveal that the population of Bulawayo was 1537 in 1895. Settlers from the UK were by far the largest group (1017), followed by various British “colonials” from not only South Africa but also Australia, New Zealand, and Canada (299). Those from Germany (108) and the USA (33) were considered sufficiently numerous to be counted separately. The remaining settlers were bluntly designated as “others”,40 who included at least three men with Finnish provenance, as can be determined from the Finnish Migration Records.41 Although the white settlers in Rhodesia did not establish a volk like the Afrikaans-speaking Boers in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, they did develop a strong sense of being first and foremost Rhodesians.42 This acquired identity emerged during the Ndebele uprising of 1896, when Bulawayo itself was besieged by the Ndebele army and brought to the brink of destruction,43 and it was later enforced during the South African War of 1899–1902, when antiAfrikaner feeling emerged as a feature of Rhodesian identity.44 Eriksson too considered Rhodesia a polity worth fighting and dying for, similarly as he did the dawning Finnish nation: “If you decide to fight, I am willing to sacrifice myself for Finland”, he flamboyantly wrote to his family in Helsinki at the height of anti-Russian sentiment in March 1899.45 It could be interesting to analyze such a strong expression of masculinity and honor in the context of late-nineteenth-century Finnish society, where levels of violence were staggeringly high by Northern European standards.46 But violence and asymmetrical power relations took many forms in the early Rhodesian settler culture as well. They reflect Eriksson’s moral objections to both the Russian Government’s violations of the Finns’ “constitutional rights” and “Dutch racial superiority” in South Africa.47 In August 1899, at the height of the rising tensions between the Boer Republics and the British South African colonies, Eriksson listed in the 40  LSE, BSAC, Report on the Company’s proceedings and the condition of the Territories within the sphere of its operations (1894–1895, 71, 78). 41  FMR, MIF, Papers of Axel and Oscar Boijer and Johan Gabriel Österlund (John Gabriel Austen). 42  Lowry (2010, 118). 43  For further information, see Ranger (1967, 2010). 44  Lowry (2010, 124–125). 45  Eriksson (1932, 44). 46  As recorded in juridical proceedings of violent crime and domestic violence. For further information, see Ylikangas (1976, 81–103). 47  Eriksson (1932, 46, 65).

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Rhodesia Regiment, and on the outbreak of the South African War in October, he served and fought under Major Duly in the Cycle Corps which took part in the legendary “relief” of the besieged South African settlement of Mafikeng in May 1900. Three months later, Eriksson, now a combat-hardened twenty-five-year-old veteran, was discharged from active service on medical grounds.48 A carefully composed photograph (Fig. 12.1) depicts a group of Rhodesian militia, Eriksson (sitting center front), Frank Adkins (sitting right), and four unknown troopers, all ­wearing their makeshift uniforms and posing with their assigned service rifles. On the back of the photo there is a handwritten inscription “Teko 5/11.00”.

Fig. 12.1  Unknown photographer, CTE. Courtesy of Roger and Joan Eriksson. This and other similarly composed field photographs are prominently featured in Eriksson’s picture collections. For further information, please refer to FHA, PC, VKK95; VKK542; VKK871

 Eriksson (1932, 20, 45–65).

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Great care has been bestowed on the photograph. Besides being interesting from a historical and documentary standpoint, the photograph gives us information about Eriksson’s family connections. The photo was sent to Frank Adkins’s sister, Miss Annie Florence Adkins (b. 9 July 1873) of Waverley, Surrey, England, who was married to Eriksson in 1910. This information and the careful composition of the photograph suggest that the visual arrangement is not accidental but expresses the dreams of Eriksson and his brothers-in-arms and also their reality: the props, poses, and aesthetic models were adopted from the visual conventions of the colonial world. Eriksson takes a formal seated pose, appears soberly serious-­minded, and wears a wide-brim fedora hat and a pair of chaps. Despite his modest provenance and almost certainly imperfect English language skills,49 Eriksson seems to be a ranking trooper of the party as indicated by his clothing and central position.

Being a Pioneer in Northern Rhodesia and Katanga After a delay caused by the ongoing South African War, the quest for precious metals extended beyond the Zambesi River to the “North Zambesia” that was to become Northern Rhodesia. To exploit the mineral resources of the new colony, countless speculative, undercapitalized exploring companies began to mushroom across Rhodesia. The most successful of them all proved to be Tanganyika Concessions, which was responsible for the far-reaching effort to set up a European mining industry in the mineral-­ rich region that became later popularly and loosely known as the “Copperbelt”. The best part of the Concession was situated on the Congo side of the border, in Katanga, meaning “The Land of Smelted Copper”, an area of ancient copper mines known for centuries by African miners.50 (Fig. 12.2) The company organized its first considerable expedition to its concession during the dry season of 1901. The purpose of the expedition was to survey, for the railways and mining developments, the seemingly empty lands, and to promote colonial settlement schemes. The expedition’s prospectors were carefully selected from a pool of around 400 settlers who had 49  Email communication with Joan and Roger Eriksson, 4 June; 9 June; 13 July; 26 July 2017. 50  GL, SE, CLC, Tanks, B/004/F/01/MS18000/62B/419, Certificate of Incorporation, 1 May 1899.

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Fig. 12.2  “Trade Routes & Railways Connecting the Mineral Concessions of the TANKS Group of Companies, 1909”, GL, SE, CLC, Tanks, B/004/F/01/ MS18000/129B/277

notified the company of their interest. Those selected included two men of Finnish provenance, thirty-one-year-old Oscar Johannes “Job” Boijer (1868–1943) and twenty-six-year-old Eriksson.51 Despite having immigrated only in the mid-1890s, both men could present impressive 51   “Mr. George Grey’s Expedition to North-west Rhodesia”, Bulawayo Chronicle, March 1901.

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testimonials as Rhodesian settlers. In Boijer’s case, he had experience of railway engineering in the Cape; he had served in Gifford’s Horse, a mounted infantry formed by the settlers at the height of the besieged Bulawayo during Ndebele uprisings of 1896; and he had been prospecting in Matabeland where he and his brother Axel had trekked in 1895.52 In Eriksson’s case, his service record in the South African War, his vocation as an Electrical Engineer, as well as his skills as an amateur photographer seemingly made an impact on George Grey, the expedition leader. Initially the lack of rail transport was the main obstacle to more intensive development of the mineral resources of Katanga. As there were, of course, no roads, but only paths, it was necessary to trek a distance of nearly 300 miles by ox-wagon across veld and bush to reach the Victoria Falls. The goods were taken across the Zambesi at the Old Drift and then to Kalomo and Nkala after which animal transport became impossible due to the prevalence of tsetse fly. For the rest of the journey of another nearly 300 miles to the Kansanshi mining camp, situated about six miles south of the Congo border, the only possible means of carrying loads was by human back, so tents, beds, furniture, cooking utensils, provisions, and the prospecting and mining equipment were carried by local African porters, even if they undertook it unwillingly.53 In his diary, Eriksson details an incident with the Ba-Ila, who refused to carry loads on their tall head-dress, called impande. The problem was resolved with the stereotypical calm rational superiority of the white settler: the perceived excuse for laziness, impande, was cut off.54 A photograph (Fig.  12.3) titled “Some of the forced Ba-Ila carriers whose hair-dresses were cut off” records the incident.55 There is an apparent discrepancy between Eriksson’s diary entries and his visual representations of the expedition, which depended upon the skills, knowledge, and labor of scouts, translators, escorts, messengers, carriers, “houseboys”, and other casual labor in the field. Most photographs focus on the central actors of the storyline, the prospectors, and overlook the requisite Africans involved in the expedition. It is the prospector—with much the same tools and methods as mine seekers for

 For further information, see Särkkä (2015).  Gelfand (1961, 121–122). 54  Eriksson (1932, 163–164). 55  For further information, see Särkkä (2018, 153–154). 52 53

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Fig. 12.3  C. T. Eriksson, “Några av detvångsrekvirerade Ba-ilabärarna, på vilka håruppsättningen opererades bort”, 1902. FHA, PC, VKK871:176

centuries past—who took charge in the quest for metals and minerals in colonial Southern Africa. In a photographic print pasted on a sheet of cardboard Boijer and Eriksson take a seemingly informal seated pose on a leopard skin (Fig.  12.4). Here the subject commands the portrait. Their choice of clothes for the portrait and physical appearance speaks of self-assurance. The primary function of the leopard skin is to suggest the “exotic” but it may also emulate portraits of African royalty or title-holders seated on a leopard skin.56 The prospectors’ ability to locate different ores by the very appearance of terrain was mythologized for much of the colonial era: the varied colors of the rocks, the kind and characteristics of the vegetation in the area, and even the taste and odor of the water were sometimes telling to the prospectors.57 From June to October 1902, the prospectors managed to peg  For further information, see Haney (2010).  Lonn (1966, 9).

56 57

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Fig. 12.4  Unknown photographer, “Vid Lunga Kafue bifold” (At a tributary of the Lunga Kafue River), 1902. FHA, PC, VKK95:31

fifty-two mining areas in Katanga. Commercially, the most significant proved to be a native working called “Karukaruko”, which was renamed “the Star of the Congo” (present-day Lubumbashi). The find has been credited to Eriksson, who received 5% of everything he managed to peg.58 The discovery of the Katanga copper deposits was not the exciting discovery it might be assumed to have been because, instead of using scientific exploration methods to discover previously unknown ore bodies, prospecting in Katanga was reduced to locating ancient workings. The strategy of Eriksson and his party was to use inducements for information: “We just asked if the natives knew where we could find makuba [copper] and 58  MU, JRL, TANKS, TC, 146, Kambove Accountant, Eric Douglas, Kambove, 31 July 1906.

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in exchange for the information we gave the negroes a few metres of cotton-textile [calico] or a cheap blanket, and the deal was done”.59 Although the age of the pegging of outcropping deposits did not last long, the prospector, with his crumpled clothes, battered wide-brimmed hat and sturdy pair of veld boots, has ever since been a source of fascination. A self-portrait (Fig.  12.5) depicts Eriksson himself in Kasempa, North Western Rhodesia, in 1901. Instead of facing the camera in a carefully composed formal pose and adopting the accepted portrait

Fig. 12.5  Unknown photographer, “Fundi-Wa-Kali själv, i Kazempa 1901”, 1901. FHA, PC, VKK871:48

 Eriksson (1932, 142).

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convention of the carte-de-visite format, wearing gentleman-like clothing, Eriksson presents himself as a paragon of the pioneer. The self-assured portraits of the prospectors were records of their existence, accomplishments, and survival. Eriksson’s diary and expeditionary photographs align well with this narrative. In 1932, the image took on another documentary function in Eriksson’s diary, where it was reproduced as the frontispiece and titled: “He who commands with a firm hand” (Fundi-Wa-Kali).60 The caption provides us with further indication of the audience for which the diary was intended. References to behaving like masters and frustration toward black workmen and personal servants are to be found in a wide range of travelogues situated in early colonial Rhodesia.61 Eriksson’s diary diverges little in this respect: it was aimed at gratifying audiences living in the pioneering days of imperialism. The photograph captures the spirit of the age of mining in colonial Southern Africa pre-1914. For the employees of European descent, the photograph depicted their much-venerated colleague doing an important job for the company and the Empire in one of the remotest parts of the world, though the degree of a sense of imperial duty could vary. From its very inception, the mining industry in Northern Rhodesia and Katanga attracted a motley of nationalities and ethnicities from diverse social and professional backgrounds which determined their positions in the company hierarchy. The directors looked to their own social class for managers who were all “English”, albeit sometimes in a modified form. The expedition leader, Mr. Grey, was characterized by the authority vested in him by Head Office. His senior staff, sometimes called officers, were bound to the manager by ties of camaraderie and the distinction of military rank. A strict ethnic division was a feature not only between the local population and the class- and race-conscious European settlers but also between various interest groups in the service of the company. “Ericson” and “Boyer” as they appear in the English sources of the time were not labeled by their provenance, possibly owing to the relative unfamiliarity of their descent or perhaps because of their Swedish mother language, but rather by their occupational acumen as being the “Pioneer Smelter Man” (Eriksson),62 and a “very masterful” labor recruiter who uses his sjambok freely (Boijer).63  Eriksson (1932), frontispiece.  Clark (1936, 158). 62  “Charles Eriksson—Pioneer smelter man” (1959, 24–26). 63  Gelfand (1963, 52), diary entry 22 December 1901. 60 61

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The early settlers in North Western Rhodesia and Katanga worked in relative solitude in remote lands and amid alien peoples. These circumstances, coupled with a strict racial division and the absence of labor regulations, led to a situation in which the employees of African descent were governed through blows, shouts, and insults.64 The job of compound (derived from the Malay kampong, village) managers and the supervisors (foremen) was to impose strict discipline on the constantly changing and mostly unskilled labor force, who invariably occupied the lowest rank in the hierarchy. Their work included the sinking of simple shafts; extracting the ore with picks, sledgehammers, and crowbars; clearing the bush; or carrying materials. The day-to-day lives of workers were a far cry from those who occupied the boardrooms in Johannesburg or London. In general, the mining work was hard and characterized by scant use of machinery and frequent stoppages caused by accidents. An untitled photograph (Fig. 12.6) depicts three African workers at a shaft-head, which was sunk with a windlass made of branch trees and with

Fig. 12.6  C. T. Eriksson, untitled, 1901–1906, FHA, PC, VKK871:133  Gann (1964, 106–107).

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a natural double crook to serve as a handle, and with ropes made from local fibers. Although it has not been possible to locate this previously unpublished picture to a specific working, it gives a good impression of the initial stages of the mining industry on the Copperbelt. In its early mining operations, Tanganyika Concessions was heavily reliant on African manual labor. The company’s need for labor was fulfilled with indiscriminate mobilization of largely unskilled Africans, who carried out the site installation by wielding axes, picks, and shovels. Assimilation into civilization here meant docile black bodies as a labor force for the mining industry. Those who had difficulties in work relations posed a threat to colonial society. Without machinery and sufficient working capital, all operations had to be stopped at the onset of the rains in November. From the perspective of Head Office, mine development in Southern Africa required a unique set of skills. Success meant an ability to manage both labor and the investments required to develop the necessary infrastructure. This gave rise to an important economic process during the pre-1914 era of mining: the forced introduction of a sterling-based cash economy in the form of the so called “hut tax”. It persuaded African men to leave their families in rural homes to earn tax money on the mines for several months at a time and to live in male-only compounds owned by the company they worked for. The low cost of African labor was the major asset of mining in colonial Southern Africa. African labor was kept in unskilled employment at a permanently low wage while being permanently denied access to any skills. This racial segregation encouraged mining companies to use African workers indiscriminately and wastefully,65 a state of affairs which was to become the hallmark of the mining industry in South Africa and beyond. This phenomenon is arguable one of the most lasting legacies of the colonial encounters detailed here.

The Pioneer Men in Retrospect This chapter has maintained that Finns formed a distinct group of settlers that has been a neglected social variable in the study of colonial identities. It maintains too that identification as a settler also seemed to enable national identity-building to be manifested, for instance, through language and photography. Those Finns who migrated to colonial Southern  Allen (1992, 147).

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Africa pre-1914 had multiple, often overlapping identities based on factors such as gender, race, language, and profession as well as nationality. In different theoretical settings, the same individuals may have had numerous, often conflicting identity labels, such as immigrant, colonizer, pioneer, or settler. By focusing on a smaller and less studied group of settlers—in this case, Finnish—it is possible to add to our understanding of the colonial world, particularly when focusing on material written in languages—in this case, Swedish—that have as yet rarely been heard in accounts of the colonial experience. The concern posed by researchers of colonialism is that surrendering to the ambiguous language of identity of settlers may obscure certain details of colonial history and the experience of indigenous peoples in making their own history.66 The advice given has been to avoid sticking too mechanically to overly fixed collective categories of identity to explain away the complexity of the past, but to focus instead on categories that bind people together rather than divide “us” from some constructed “others”.67 Why then, given this advice, does this chapter highlight the identity categories of ethnicity and provenance (i.e. the category of “Finnish settler”)? Why not focus instead on categories shared by settlers of various nationalities? The first argument is that, even if we oppose the reduction of history to language, it is difficult to escape the fact that history cannot be grasped without reference to language. Historical concepts such as “nation”, unlike mere historical words, have the capacity to carry several meanings across time and place. These concepts confer explanatory power not simply because they are generalizable but because they are also generative.68 In the case of the Finns, ethnicity and nationality have themselves become motivations for groups of people rallying behind various political interests and ideological principles, as discussed in Chap. 2 of this volume. The second argument is practical rather than methodological. While European settlers in colonial Southern Africa represented several nationalities and ethnic minorities, this ethnic diversity is not always reflected in the field of scholarly research, which has thus far largely concentrated on the more typical ethnic categories or national entities in the study of settler colonialism, say, British or French. By focusing on a smaller and less studied group  Cannadine (2013).  Cooper (2005, 59–90). 68  Koselleck (1979, 107–129). 66 67

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of nationals, we can discover new sources which are written in languages that have as yet rarely been heard in accounts of the colonial experience. Admittedly, a study organized according to a settler’s nationality and provenance has potential drawbacks as well. It seeks to focus both on a nationality and to explore networks and connections (and connectedness) to the colonial world. Clearly, a study exploring, say, professional groups, social classes or gender would also add much to our understanding of the processes of colonialism.69 While the study of colonial identities provides the theoretical framework through which analysis of Finnish settler identity in colonial Southern Africa can be developed, methodologically the research is a historical study of imperialism, defined as the politico-theoretical dimension of the idea of empire-building. The main question posed by this chapter is whether one needs to be a full-fledged citizen of an empire-owning state in order to be an imperialist. In its attempt to answer this question, the chapter has explored Eriksson’s life and times in colonial Southern Africa, his involvement in colonial practices, and his limitations as a colonialist. The case study of Finnish settler identity discussed here seems to diverge from the existing literature on colonialism in the sense that the conventional image of Finland does not fit well with the traditional image of European Great Power colonialism in Africa. But a closer examination reveals that even European countries that never had overseas colonies, such as Finland, were involved in the colonial world: Finns migrated to the colonial world and produced images of colonized “others”. Certain beliefs and perceptions expressed by the Finnish settlers reflected their ethnicity and national concerns in ways that perhaps distinguished their colonialism from the more typical trajectories of colonialism. Colonial identity-building was a complex process, marked by geographical and temporal variations, and its study requires localizing theories and historically specific accounts of various colonizing and counter-colonial theories and practices.70 It is therefore imperative that colonial identities should also be approached through localized microhistorical case studies, which allow us to discern the specific nuances of Finnish colonial encounters.

 For further information, see Särkkä (2015) and Chap. 1 of this volume.  Thomas (1996, 3).

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References Allen, V.L. 1992. Mining in South Africa and the Genesis of Apartheid. The History of Black Mineworkers in South Africa. Volume I: 1871–1948. Keighley, West Yorkshire and London: The Moor Press and Merlin. Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised Ed. London and New York: Verso. Bertelsen, Bjørn Enge. 2015. Introduction. Norwegians Navigating Colonial Orders in Africa and Oceania. In Navigating Colonial Orders: Norwegian Entrepreneurship in Africa and Oceania, ed. Kirsten Alsaker Kjerland and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, 1–22. New York: Berghahn. Bickford-Smith, Vivian. 1989. ‘Special Tradition of Multi-racialism?’ Segregation in Cape Town in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries. In The Angry Divide: the Social and Economic History of Western Cape, ed. Wilmot James and Mary Simons. Cape Town: David Philip. ———. 1994. Meaning of Freedom: Social Positions and Identity among Ex-slaves and their Descendants in Cape Town, 1875–1910. In Breaking the Chains: Slavery and Emancipation in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony, ed. C. Crais and N. Worden. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. The British Library of Political and Economic Science (LSE), London, the British South Africa Company (BSAC). Report on the Company’s proceedings and the condition of the Territories within the sphere of its operations 1894–1895. Bulawayo Chronicle, March 1901. C. T. Eriksson’s papers (CTE), in possession of Roger Eriksson. Cannadine, David. 2013. The Undivided Past. History Beyond Our Differences. London: Allen Lane. Charles Eriksson—Pioneer Smelter Man. 1959. Horizon: The Magazine of the Rhodesian Selection of Trust Group of Companies, Vol. I. November, 24–26. Chikuhwa, Jacob W. 1998. Zimbabwe. The Rise to Nationhood. Central Milton Keynes: AuthorHouse. Clark, P.M. 1936. Autobiography of an Old Drifter. London, Bombay and Sydney: George Harrap. Cooper, Frederick. 2005. Colonialism in Question. Theory, Knowledge, History. Berkley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Emigration and Immigration. 1876–1912. Statistical Tables relating to Emigration and Immigration from and into the United Kingdom, 1875–1911. London: Board of Trade. Eriksson, C.T. 1932. Seikkailujeni Afrikka. Jyväskylä: Gummerus. The Finnish Heritage Agency (FHA), Picture Collections (PC), C. T. Eriksson’s photographs, VKK95; VKK542; VKK871.

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Index1

A Aawambo, 214–217 Aboriginal people/s, 174n13, 178, 180–190, 192, 193, 210 Africa, v, 8–10, 25, 59, 62, 82, 88, 103, 105, 148, 159, 185, 206, 210, 213–219, 239, 249, 253, 254, 257, 263, 268, 279, 282, 293 African, v, 5, 7, 9, 10, 85, 108, 159, 182, 182n46, 205, 206, 208, 215, 239, 240, 251, 253–255, 258, 260, 268, 278, 279, 304, 306, 307, 310, 311, 315, 317, 318, 322, 323 African-American, 159, 182, 183, 191 Åland (Islands), 77, 78 Alaska, 27

Analogies, 87, 161, 167, 175, 280, 282, 285 Anticolonialism, 83 Anti-imperialism, 49, 59, 60, 81–85, 244 Arctic, 4, 100, 103, 104, 109, 131, 134 Arnellin perhe, 174, 179, 179n32, 183, 194 Australia, 27, 30, 99, 105, 147, 158, 159, 161–163, 167, 171, 174, 174n13, 175n14, 176–181, 184, 185, 192, 193, 207–211, 287, 309, 311, 313 Australian aboriginals, 30, 150, 155, 163, 183 Authenticity, 155, 164

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Merivirta et al. (eds.), Finnish Colonial Encounters, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80610-1_9

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332 

INDEX

B Barnum, P. T., 150, 151n15, 154 Battle of Magersfontein, 283, 290, 294 Beecher-Stowe, Harriet, 183 Bernstein, Robin, 175, 176, 191, 192 Biography, 227 Black/ness, 58, 175, 178–184, 186, 189–191, 193, 199, 204, 206, 211, 213, 215, 216, 225, 238, 239, 279, 304, 309, 321, 323 British Empire, 207, 208, 277, 283 Bulawayo, 312, 313, 317 C Cabo Corso, 25 Cannibalism, 30, 164, 187–189, 212, 213, 217, 219 Cape Town, 290, 306, 309, 310 Capitalism, 55, 72, 72n18, 74–76, 84, 90 Cartography, 202 Censorship, 47, 52, 57, 233 Children’s literature, vii, 7, 30, 171–194 China, 9, 10, 206, 237 Christianity, 8, 20, 25, 27, 57, 208, 211, 212, 250, 252, 254, 263, 266, 272, 273 Civilisation, 74, 258, 304 Colonial complicity, 4, 11, 24, 28, 41–62 Colonial discourse, 6, 30, 59, 60, 122, 123, 131, 132, 136, 137, 139, 171, 173, 185, 193, 250, 254, 258, 259 Colonialism, v–ix, 1, 2, 20–24, 41–42n1, 43, 60, 62, 67–90, 97n4, 98, 105, 118, 121–140, 148–150, 152, 166, 167, 171–194, 217, 240, 244, 254, 255, 268, 272, 279, 303–305

Colonialism without colonies, 4, 5, 11 Coloniality, 4, 296 Colonial knowledge, 2, 8, 9, 30, 122, 175, 210, 212 Colonial science, 122–124, 126 Colonial trope, 30, 107, 112, 133, 173, 193 Colonial warfare, 59 Colonized peoples, 3, 7, 57, 116, 147–167, 268 Comintern, 74, 74n29, 76 Congo, 7, 28n107, 98, 225, 226, 228, 236–240, 304, 315, 317, 319 Cook, James, 26, 27 Copperbelt, 315, 323 Critical internationalism, 84, 89 Cultural colonialism, 8, 11, 171, 175 Cunningham, Robert A., 147, 150, 151n16, 154–160, 162, 164, 166 D Decolonization, 12, 82, 83, 86, 99, 227, 235 Delaware, 25 Denmark, v, 3, 311 Development aid/assistance/ cooperation, 68, 82, 83, 85, 86, 89, 282 E Entertainment, vii, 112, 148, 154, 165, 166 Entertainment, Australian aboriginals, vii Environment/wilderness, viii, 18, 70, 98, 100, 104, 105, 108, 109, 117, 133, 140, 152, 165, 245, 255, 260, 305

 INDEX 

Eriksson, C. T., 32, 304–321, 309n20, 325 Ethnicity, 2n2, 19, 32, 45, 51, 96, 98, 110, 132, 288, 303, 321, 324 Ethnography, 103, 258 European integration, 71, 85–89 European Union (EU), 29, 67, 87, 90 Expansion, v–vii, ix, 6, 41, 41n1, 42, 53, 57–59, 62, 95, 97–100, 114, 121, 207, 208, 219, 227, 250, 272, 304 F Fennomans, 17, 54, 173 Finland, 1, 43, 52–56, 67, 96, 121, 147167, 171, 199–219, 226, 252, 277, 282–286, 307, v Finnish, 1, 41–62, 67–90, 95–118, 121, 148, 171–194, 199, 225–245, 249–273, 277–297, 303–325, vi Finnish children’s literature, 171–194 Finnish Civil War, 96, 174, 227 Finnish Missionary Society (FMS), 7, 9, 10, 30, 31, 199–207, 202n5, 204n16, 209–219, 214n58, 250, 256, 261, 263–265, 267, 270, 272 Finnish Parliament, 29, 49, 67, 67–68n1, 69, 77 Finno-Ugric, 15, 18 Finns, vi, vii, 1–32, 42, 44, 45, 81, 100, 101, 132, 134–136, 148, 151, 161, 162, 172, 173, 175, 201, 207, 214–217, 227, 229, 254, 257, 278, 279, 303, 304, 308 First World War, 42, 225–245, 257, 258, 295, 304 Foreign volunteers, 280, 288 French Foreign Legion, 28

333

G General Strike of 1905, 46 Geographical imaginations, 30, 201, 207, 213, 217, 219 Gobineau, Joseph Arthur Comte de, 15 The Grand Duchy of Finland, 13, 14, 28, 61, 72n21, 78, 148, 151, 154, 199–219 Guinea Coast, 25 H Haahti, Hannu, 253, 262, 269–272 Harris, Joel Chandler, 192, 258 Heathens and heathenism, 199, 200, 204, 207, 212, 213, 216, 217, 219 Helsinki, 15, 16, 27, 101, 104, 105, 147–149, 151, 153, 154, 173, 176, 177, 199, 204, 213, 225, 226, 229, 236, 255n25, 255n26, 261, 308, 313 Helsinki Olympics, 16 Hobson, J.A., 72, 72n18, 72n20, 72n23, 89 Human geography, 29, 122, 129, 137, 207 Human zoos, see Live ethnographic exhibitions I ILO 169 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 24 Imperialism, vii, viii, 2, 8, 9, 11, 29, 31, 42, 42n2, 47, 51, 56–61, 67–90, 138, 172, 173, 244, 245, 305, 321, 325 Imperial security, 32, 281 Impresario, 147, 154, 155, 164 Innocence, 1, 4, 30, 171–194

334 

INDEX

International crisis management, 88, 89 International Monetary Fund, 84 J Johannesburg, 284, 289, 305n8, 311, 312, 322 K Karelians, 17, 96, 103, 109, 110, 114, 244 Katanga, 239, 304, 306, 315–323 Kautsky, Karl, 73–75, 75n33 L Labor history, 226 Lampén, Ernst, 96, 98, 102, 103, 105–107, 112–116 Language skills/language barrier, 158–163, 315 Lapland, 20, 22–24, 81, 100, 105, 106, 115, 117, 124 Launis, Armas, 96, 98, 102, 103, 105–112, 115–117 League of Nations, 29, 71, 77–79, 90, 250, 258, 258n40 Lehtola, Veli-Pekka, 12, 20, 22, 23, 96n2, 113 Lenin, V.I., 47, 72, 72n18, 73, 75, 89 Leopold II, King, 239 Liberation movements, 82, 83 Linnaeus, Carl, 26 Live ethnographic exhibitions, 7, 30, 148–152 M Manifesto of February 1899, 18 Maps/ mapping, 10, 30, 31, 80, 161, 199–219, 238, 307

Martial valor, 290 Mechelin, Leo, 153 Metropolis, 153, 229 Microhistory, 228 Migration, vii, ix, 2, 14, 21, 26, 32, 81, 158, 245, 289, 303, 305 Militarism, 59, 60, 72, 73, 76, 89 Mining industry, 96, 101, 239, 304, 311, 315, 321, 323 Missionaries, vii, ix, 6, 8, 159, 185, 199–219, 249–273 Missionary periodicals, 203, 209–210 Missionary work, 8, 10, 30, 185, 201, 203, 204, 206–213, 217, 219, 251, 252, 261 Missionary world maps, 199, 201 Mission station, 261, 265, 266, 269, 271 Mongol, 15, 16, 22, 162, 181, 182, 186 Moral obligationism, 85 N Namibia, Owamboland, 9, 31, 60, 83, 99, 201, 213, 249–273 National identity, 7–9, 12, 13n42, 15, 16, 32, 103, 181, 182, 193, 278, 286, 323 Nationalism, 138, 140, 230, 280, 285, 293, 296, 297 Neo-colonialism, 82, 84, 85 New Sweden, viii, 24, 25 Nordic colonialism, vi, 4, 5 Northern Rhodesia, 304, 306, 315–323 Norway, v, 3, 5, 21, 100, 109, 123, 125, 129n34, 131, 281, 289, 311 O Olin, Matti, 96, 98, 102–110, 117 Ondonga, 214, 252, 261, 267, 269, 270

 INDEX 

Ongandjera, 252, 270 Orange Free State, 277, 278, 313 Othering, 52, 110, 111, 122, 182n46, 189 Otherness, 114, 187, 215, 262 Owambo, 7, 9–11, 9n29, 31, 159, 213–218, 249–273, 268n61 P Pälsi, Sakari, 95, 96, 98, 103, 103n18, 105, 106, 108, 114, 115, 117 Passive resistance, 46, 47, 49, 51, 60 Petsamo, vii, 29, 79, 80, 95–118, 122–124, 127–137 Pettinen, August, 253, 261–270 Photography, 31, 32, 249–273, 307, 323 Postcolonial theory, 3, 62 Pratt, Mary Louise, 97 Prisoners of war, 32, 281, 290–292 Q Queensland, viii, 30, 147–167, 174–180, 183, 184, 187–189 R Race, ix, 4, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 30, 42, 53, 56–58, 60, 61, 97, 113–115, 131, 132, 139, 148, 171–194, 233, 251, 305, 324 Racial hierarchy, 2, 6, 8, 15, 16, 22, 53, 113, 151, 181, 193 Racial identity of Finns / Finns as Mongols, 16, 182 Racialization, ix, 110, 175, 180–187 Religion, 8, 18, 20, 61, 199, 203, 204, 217, 218, 250, 254, 255, 310 Renan, Ernest, 17 Replacement, 98, 99, 109, 113–118 Residential school, 22, 23

335

Robinson Crusoe, 189 Russia, 12–19, 27, 43–45, 47–49, 51–55, 57, 58, 61, 71, 90, 96, 100, 114, 122, 151, 153, 154, 217, 218, 226–228, 230–234, 236–240, 244, 245, 280n13, 281 Russian Empire, 1, 2, 12, 13, 18–20, 28, 31, 41–62, 72, 77, 102, 153, 226, 227, 229, 230, 245, 280, 311 Russians, 13, 13n42, 14, 17, 18, 24, 27, 28, 31, 44–49, 52, 53, 55–58, 61, 71–74, 90, 96, 101, 109, 110, 113, 114, 118, 132, 159, 227, 229–232, 234–236, 244, 280, 308 Russification, 2, 18, 19, 28, 45–52, 54, 56, 60–62, 72, 72n16, 280, 292 S St. Barthélemy, 26 St Helena Island, 290 St. Petersburg, 7, 44, 104, 147, 151, 154, 155, 229, 233, 236 Sámi, vi, 4, 12, 56, 96, 96n2, 113, 121–140 Sápmi, 4, 6, 7, 11, 12, 20–22 Savagery, 114, 150, 163, 179, 189, 213 Settlements, 1, 20, 21, 70, 78, 98–100, 110, 114, 115, 118, 127, 128, 132, 135, 188, 189, 242, 311, 314, 315 Settler colonialism, ix, 3, 6, 12, 29, 30, 96, 98–103, 118, 176, 208, 227, 243, 324 Settlers, viii, 11, 12, 21, 25, 29, 30, 32, 95–118, 129, 132, 133, 135, 139, 174–180, 189, 192, 193, 207, 208, 211, 219, 239, 241, 242, 244, 256, 277–282, 287, 297, 303–325

336 

INDEX

Siberia, 7, 15, 99, 230n24 Siida, 20, 127n30 Sirkka, 173, 186 The Skolt Sami, vii, 29, 96, 101, 121–140, 124n13 Snellman, J. V., 21, 56, 57 Solander, Daniel, 26 South Africa, v, 51, 83, 159, 254, 263, 282–296, 305, 307–309, 313, 323 South African War, 31, 72, 72n20, 72n23, 277–283, 285, 286, 294–297, 304, 313–315, 317 Southern Africa, vii, 32, 72n20, 101, 186, 208, 257, 277, 278, 280, 286, 289, 292–294, 297, 303–325 Southern Rhodesia, 83, 312 South-West Africa, 9, 159, 255n25, 255n26, 256n28, 267n61 Soviet Union, 71, 71n15, 73, 76, 79, 85–90, 87n103, 96, 101, 140 Spöring, Herman Dietrich, 26, 27 Stereotypes, 150, 167, 180, 183, 186, 193, 249, 252, 258, 262 Suffrage Reform of 1905–1906, 52, 61 Swan, Anni, 30, 171–194 Sweden, v, vi, viii, 3, 5, 13, 13n42, 14, 22, 25, 26, 42, 77, 78, 81, 125, 127, 236, 238, 281, 311 Switzerland, 4, 8, 9, 175, 279, 311 T Topelius, Zacharias, 17, 18, 21 Torne Lappmark, 125 Translation, 43n9, 95n1, 98n7, 124n13, 162, 172, 174, 179n32, 183, 207, 210, 211, 297

Transvaal, 277, 278, 286, 288, 289, 292, 310, 313 Travellers, 95 Travel writings/writers, ix, 29, 95–118, 97n4 See also Travel authors Trotsky, Leon, 73, 75 Tsar, 13, 14, 18, 44–49, 51, 58, 71, 218, 226, 229–236, 280 Tsarist Russia, 71, 90, 245 U Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 183, 191 United Kingdom (UK), 86, 308, 311, 313 United States (US), 77, 83, 84, 101, 112, 151n15, 227, 237, 238, 241, 244 Uukolonkadhi, 270 Uukwaluudhi, 270 “Uutisasukkaana Austraaliassa,” 30, 171–194 W Wehanen, Maria, 253, 268, 269 Wekker, Gloria, 175, 193, 194 West Indies, 25, 26 White innocence, 30, 171–194 White/ness, 4, 8, 15, 30, 58, 99, 100, 105, 112–114, 171–194, 199, 211, 214, 216, 217, 225, 227, 236, 239, 243, 268, 278, 279, 282, 304, 306, 309, 313, 317 Wolfe, Patrick, 98 World Bank, 84 World War (WWII), 5, 22, 68, 101, 140, 184, 244