277 71 5MB
English Pages 502 [504] Year 2020
Locating the Global
Dialectics of the Global
Edited by Matthias Middell
Volume 6
Locating the Global Spaces, Networks and Interactions from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century Edited by Holger Weiss
Funded with the support from Åbo Akademi University, Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, and Theology.
ISBN 978-3-11-067066-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-067071-4 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-067075-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020941070 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. Chapter “Russia in the Global Parliamentary Moment, 1905–1918: Between a Subaltern Empire and an Empire of Subalterns” © Ivan Sablin © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: View from Cape Coast Castle, Ghana, © Holger Weiss Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com
On the Series Ever since the 1990s, “globalization” has been a dominant idea and, indeed, ideology. The metanarratives of Cold War victory by the West, the expansion of the market economy, and the boost in productivity through internationalization, digitization, and the increasing dominance of the finance industry became associated with the promise of a global trickle-down effect that would lead to greater prosperity for ever more people worldwide. Any criticism of this viewpoint was countered with the argument that there was no alternative; globalization was too powerful and thus irreversible. Today, the ideology of “globalization” meets with growing scepticism. An era of exaggerated optimism for global integration has been replaced by an era of doubt and a quest for a return to particularistic sovereignty. However, processes of global integration have not dissipated and the rejection of “globalization” as ideology has not diminished the need to make sense both of the actually existing high level of interdependence and the ideology that gave meaning and justification to it. The following three dialectics of the global are in the focus of this series: Multiplicity and Co-Presence: “Globalization” is neither a natural occurrence nor a singular process; on the contrary, there are competing projects of globalization, which must be explained in their own right and compared in order to examine their layering and their interactive composition. Integration and Fragmentation: Global processes result in de- as well as reterritorialization. They go hand in hand with the dissolution of boundaries, while also producing a respatialization of the world. Universalism and Particularism: Globalization projects are justified and legitimized through universal claims of validity; however, at the same time they reflect the worldview and/or interests of particular actors.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-202
Contents On the Series
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Part I: Translocality Edgar Pereira and Kaarle Wirta 2 A Forgotten Emporium: Commercial Aspirations and Transnational Mercantile Networks in Seventeenth-Century Glückstadt 17 Måns Jansson 3 Global Materials, Contact Zones, and Imitation: The Making of Metal Commodities in Eighteenth-Century Sweden 41 Hanna Hodacs 4 Coffee and Coffee Surrogates in Sweden: A Local, Global, and Material History 73 Kalle Kananoja 5 Circulating Heterodox Medicine: Globalizing and Localizing Naturopathy in Interwar Finland 95 Göran Rydén and Chris Evans 6 Stocktaking at Christiansborg: Metals and Slaves in the Danish Atlantic Trade at the Mid-Eighteenth Century 117 Sven Olofsson 7 Copper on the Move: A Commodity Chain between Sweden and France, 1720–1790 147
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Part II: Identity, Globalities, and their Local Articulations Emil Kaukonen and Mats Wickström 8 Encountering Mid-Eighteenth Century Morocco from Below: Slavery, Race, and Religion in two Scandinavian Captivity Narratives 177 Patrik Hettula 9 Eurafrican Mobility and Encounters with Race, ca. 1880–1920
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Holger Weiss 10 Muslim Scholars Living in Three Worlds: West African Muslims and the Imposition of the European Colonial Order 231
Part III: Spatial Approaches to Politics Ivan Sablin 11 Russia in the Global Parliamentary Moment, 1905–1918: Between a Subaltern Empire and an Empire of Subalterns 257 Fredrik Petersson 12 A Neutral Place? Anti-Colonialism, Peace, and Revolution in Stockholm, 1917 283 Lars Folke Berge 13 Ethiopia in Swedish Press in the Run-up to the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935/36 315
Part IV: Temporal and Spatial Forms of Knowledge Organization Johanna Skurnik 14 Cartographic Histories of the Western Territorialization of Northern Australia, 1840s–1900s: Global Circuits of Knowledge and the Mapmakers’ Craft 331 Laura Hollsten 15 National History and Big History: Väinö Auer, the Finnish Nationalist and the Global Environmentalist 359
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Part V: The Construction of Temporary and Permanent Representational Spaces and Memory Spaces Taina Syrjämaa 16 Global Hubs on the Move: Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs as Spaces of Imagining the World 381 Christina Romlid 17 Visualizing Sweden at the 1937 World Fair in Paris
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Leila Koivunen 18 National Museums and the Wider World: The Exclusion of Non-Western Collections at the National Museum of Finland Jon Olav Hove 19 A Contested Global Memory Space: The Establishment of the National Museum of Ghana 449 List of Contributors Index
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1 Locating the Global: Articulations, Encounters, and Interactions Backdrop or Starting Point: Where to Locate the Global? The “global” constitutes an implicit selection bias in favour of an increasingly interconnected world whose pasts were compounded to form one historical process. Global history is one of the products of the process of global interrelatedness it traces, re-inscribes, and conceptually sustains.1
Franz Fillafer’s account on global history could continue singing praise about globalism and the ambition of global historians to transcend borders and places. However, like Jeremy Adelman, Fillafer holds a critical view on the “global” in global history as it is not a neutral planetary container of the movement of ideas, goods, and people. Already in the late 1990s, Arif Dirlik criticized the difficulties of overcoming the hegemony of a Eurocentric metanarrative,2 and one generation later it seems as if global historians have not done much better, as Jeremy Adelman critically observes: “It is one of the paradoxes of global history that the drive to overcome Eurocentrism contributed to the Anglicising of intellectual lives around the world.”3 But with the rise of nationalism, populism, traditionalism and neo-fascism, the once cherished praise of globalism by global historians has come under attack and global history seems to be facing a backlash: “place” and “the local” seems to matter more than “far-flung neighbours of the global
1 F. L. Fillafer, “A World Connecting? From the Unity of History to Global History”, History and Theory 56 (2017) 1, p. 26. 2 A. Dirlik, “Is There History after Eurocentrism? Globalism, Postcolonialism and the Disavowal of History”, Cultural Critique (1999), pp. 1–34; A. Dirlik, V. Bahl and P. Gran (eds.), History after the Three Worlds. Post-Eurocentric Historiographies, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000; A. Dirlik, “History without a Center? Reflections on Eurocentrism”, in: E. Fuchs and B. Stuchtey (eds.), Across Cultural Borders: Historiography in Global Perspective, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002, pp. 247–284. 3 J. Adelman, “What is Global History now?”, Aeon 2 (2017), https://aeon.co/essays/is-globalhistory-still-possible-or-has-it-had-its-moment. Note: We would like to thank Forrest Kilimnik, who checked all contributions for their English correctness and supported us with his long experience in copy editing. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-001
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cosmopolis.”4 Neither Fillafer nor Adelman declares the end of global history. On the contrary, Fillafer calls for a critical interrogation and scrutinization of “the global” and makes a plea for a “decentred” history.5 Adelman, in turn, calls for a resignifization of the place of local attachment and meanings, and points towards the plurality of global histories. Adelman’s and Fillafer’s comments about the future of global history is part of an ongoing critical discussion about scale and space as well as aim and purpose concerning global historians conducting research. Sebouh David Aslanian notes that global history as a research field “has not, to date, come up with a compelling agenda for how world historians can and should conduct research” and further claims that “the greater the scale of analysis (temporally or spatially), the less room is left for accounts of human agency”.6 However, this might not necessarily be a challenge for global historians, especially if one follows Sebastian Conrad’s as well as others’ position about what global history could be all about. As Conrad and other global historians highlight, there is no single definition of global history, neither is there a single method on how to research and write global history.7 According to Adelman, “what was global was not the objects of study, but the emphasis on connections, scale and, most of all integration”.8 Therefore, global history is hailed as a universalist approach to historical globalization by conceptualizing it as the interconnectedness of all aspects of social life.9 Historical events, structures, and systems are not global by default. What makes them part of globalization is the intensity, extensity, velocity, and impact of connections and synergies. It is a process rife with contrasts and contradictions, including opposites such as inclusion/exclusion, hybridization/
4 Adelman, “What is Global History now?” 5 Fillafer, “A World Connecting?”, pp. 34–35. 6 S. D. Aslanian, J. E. Chaplin, A. McGrath and K. Mann, “AHR Conversation: How Size Matters: The Question of Scale in History”, The American Historical Review 118 (2013) 5, p. 1444. 7 D. Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011; A. Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; M. Berg (ed.), Writing the History of the Global: Challenges for the 21st Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press and The British Academy, 2013; J. Belich, J. Darwin and M. Frenz (eds.), The Prospect of Global History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016; S. Conrad, What is Global History?, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. 8 Adelman, “What is global history now”. 9 S. Beckert and D. Sachsenmaier (eds.), Global History, Globally: Research and Practice around the World, London: Bloomsbury, 2018.
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diversification, tolerance/intolerance, and structure/agency.10 Key areas of investigation have concerned interdependence(s), interruptions, and connections on a global scale,11 generating new approaches to the history from below and global microhistory.12 A challenging call for new approaches to write and research global history was recently made by Angelika Epple. In her mind, the very centre of global history should be relational history and especially focus on the spatial and temporal “relationing” and “making of” entities. Entities come into existence through relations, but both are in constant flux. However, relations are not abstract and “out there” but made by actors. Thus, global historians should bridge the gap between the microlevel of individual actors and the macrolevel of global structures.13 Fillafer urges global historians to focus on the co-production and coemergence of “globalities”, that is to say the multiple forms of innovations, institutions, and cultural forms that existed parallel to the Western ones as well as various forms of resistance to growing interconnectedness.14 According to Robertson, globality is the general condition that has facilitated the diffusion of “general modernity”.15 Jan Nederveen Pieterse, on the other hand, identifies plural or multiple globalizations and argues that “globalization is the conceptualization
10 C. Antunes and K. Fatah-Black (eds.), Explorations in History and Globalization, London: Routledge, 2016. 11 To list a few examples: M. van der Linden, Workers of the World: Essay toward a Global Labour History, Leiden: Brill, 2008; J. L. A. Webb, Humanities Burden: A Global History of Malaria, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; D. Armitage and S. Subrahmanyam (eds.), The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760–1840, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; J. R. McNeill, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010; D. R. Gabaccia and D. Hoerder (eds.), Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s, Leiden: Brill, 2011; S. Desan, L. Hunt and W. M. Nelson (eds.), The French Revolution in Global Perspective, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013; S. Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History, New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 2014; S. Berger and H. Nehring (eds.), The History of Social Movements in Global Perspective: A Survey, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 12 A. Mah, Port Cities and Global Legacies. Urban Identity, Waterfront Work, and Radicalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; A. Eckert (ed.), Global Histories of Work, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016; Ch. G. De Vito and A. Gerritsen (eds.), Micro-Spatial Histories of Global Labour, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 13 A. Epple, “Calling for a Practice Turn in Global History: Practices as Drives of Globalization/s”, History and Theory 57 (2018) 3, pp. 390–407. 14 Fillafer, “A World Connecting?”, pp. 29–30. 15 R. Robertson, “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogenity”, in: M. Featherstone, S. Lash and R. Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities, London: Sage, 1995, pp. 15–30, at 27.
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of a phase following an existing condition of globality and part of an ongoing process of the formation of worldwide social relations”.16 In Walter D. Mignolo’s perspective, globality is articulated in local histories in their complexity: the local interacting with the global and vice versa. Mignolo stresses the need to focus on “the darker side” of “modernity”, namely “coloniality”, and calls for the need to build macro-narratives told from the historical experiences of multiple local histories of modernity/coloniality.17 Critical discussions about a transnational approach have highlighted the connections and flows of ideas and networks between spatial scopes such as the local and the global.18 Similar to Sinah Theres Kloß’ definition of the “Global South”, globalities are “embraced as a process or practice through which new modes of knowledge production are created and learned.”19 Taken together, one could argue for the existence of multiple globalities or the simultaneousness and parallel forms of global networks and flows and their local articulations.
Global Histories: Local Articulations of the Global Following Richard Drayton and David Motadel, global history provides a change in the explanans of history.20 Their perspective is a comment on Adelman’s reflections on global history and his call for “global histories”. Drayton and Motadel, as well as Conrad and the majority of global historians, are indeed conscious of
16 J. Nederveen Pieterse, “Globalization as Hybridization”, International Sociology 9 (1994) 2, pp. 161–184. 17 W. D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012 (2000), pp. 22, 77. 18 R. Loimeier, D. Neubert and C. Weißköppel (eds.), Globalisierung im lokalen Kontext. Perspektiven und Konzepte von Handeln in Afrika [Globalization in a local context. Perspectives and concepts of action in Africa], Münster: LIT, 2005; D. Sachsenmaier, “Searching for Alternatives to Western Modernity. Cross-Cultural Approaches in the Aftermath of World War I”, Journal of Modern European History 4 (2006), pp. 241–259; M. Middell and K. Naumann, “Global History and the Spatial Turn: From the Impact of Area Studies to the Study of Critical Junctures of Globalization”, Journal of Global History 5 (2010) 1, pp. 149–170; J. Fronczak, “Local People’s Global Politics: A Transnational History of the Hands Off Ethiopia Movement of 1935”, Diplomatic History 39 (2015) 2, pp. 245–274; C. Baumann, A. Dietze and M. Maruschke, “Portals of Globalization – An Introduction”, Comparativ 27 (2017) 3–4, pp. 7–20. 19 S. Th. Kloß, “The Global South as Subversive Practice: Challenges and Potentials of a Heuristic Concept”, The Global South 11 (2017) 2, pp. 1–17. 20 R. Drayton and D. Motadel, “Discussion: The Futures of Global History”, Journal of Global History 13 (2018) 1, pp. 1–21.
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multiplicity and the impossibility of a global history in the singular. Echoing the reflections of Diego Olstein, global history adopts the interconnected world created by the process of globalization as its larger unit of analysis, providing the ultimate context for the investigation of any historical entity, phenomenon, or process. The “world” in global history is a historical unit that globalization created, with focus being placed on the interplay or dialogue between a specific subject of study and a globalizing world, and the specific subject of study can be defined very narrowly and specifically or very broadly and generally.21 The intimate connections between global history and the study of past and present forms of globalization(s) was already highlighted over a decade ago by Antony Hopkins: “Globalization involves the extension, intensification and quickening velocity of flows of people, products, and ideas that shape the world. It integrates regions and continents; it compresses time and space; it prompts imitation and resistance.”22 Global history, therefore, places emphasis on the historical agents, forces, and flows at scales above and below those of the nation or region; it is an invitation to the historian to be selfconscious of the interdependence of the scale of space and time through which historians explore and explain the past.23 Finally, as Lynn Hunt argues, the challenge of global historians in the twenty-first century is therefore to map the human past from and for a view on humanity as a whole. In effect, global history provides a bottom-up perspective on globalization, modernization, and glocalization while tackling conceptual Eurocentrism.24 The challenge for global historians – as well as for the authors in this anthology – is both how to define the global as well as where to locate it. As Andrew Herod notes in his discussion of scales, it is by focusing on the local that the global – however we define it – can be studied and examined. The framework of analysis for global history does not necessarily have to be the global but rather
21 D. Olstein, Thinking History Globally, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 22 A. G. Hopkins (ed.), Global History. Interactions between the Universal and the Local, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 23 See, e.g., C. A. Baily, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004; D. Featherstone, Resistance, Space and Political Identities. The Making of Counter-Global Networks, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008; J. Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt. Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Munich: C. H. Beck, 2009 (English version: The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); J. Osterhammel, Die Flughöhe der Adler: Historische Essays zur globalen Gegenwart [The altitude of eagles: Historical essays on the global present], Munich: C. H. Beck, 2017. 24 L. Hunt, Writing History in the Global Era, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2014; R. Wenzlhuemer, Globalgeschichte schreiben. Eine Einführung in 6 Episoden [Write global history. An introduction in 6 episodes], Constance: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2017.
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searching for its traces and articulations on a local level.25 Similarly, Bernhard Struck, Kate Ferris, and Jacques Revel’s discussion of conducting research on transnational actors, groups, organizations, or institutions by zooming in on a small-scale local or individual level, such an approach enables an investigation of the spatial multiplicities of individual actors.26 Such an approach can focus on different scales of interconnections and entanglements, be it a micro-, meso-, or macrolevel, as well as zoom in on translocal/-regional/-national/-continental transfers.27 Such an approach has also inspired global historians in their search for adequate scale(s) for their analysis.28 Indeed, before historians took up a “spatial turn”, there had been a long deliberations in the social and geographical sciences on a topological analysis of globalization.29 Ronald Robertson’s and Alan Latham’s early reflections on glocalization highlighted the ways in which everyday life practices are intertwined with the local and the global.30 Critical discussions on scales and dimensions as well as spatial and temporal frameworks of historical agency made scholars such as Doreen Massey, Philip J. Ethington, Edward S. Casey, and Ato Quayson to emphasize the role of place/location (the local) and its role in the making of the global.31 An example of such an approach is Andrew Herod’s on the spatial practices of labour solidarity as an
25 A. Herod, Scale, London: Routledge, 2010; A. Herod, “Scales of Globalization”, in: The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. 26 B. Struck, K. Ferris and J. Revel, “Introduction: Space and Scale in Transnational History”, The International History Review 33 (2011) 4, p. 577. 27 D. Rothermund, “Globalgeschichte und Geschichte der Globalisierung”, in: M. Grandner, D. Rothermund and W. Schwentker (eds.), Globalisierung und Globalgeschichte, Vienna: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2005, pp. 12–35. 28 U. Engel and M. Middell, “Bruchzonen der Globalisierung, globale Krisen und Territorialitätsregimes – Kategorien einer Globalgeschichtsschreibung”, Comparativ 15 (2005) 5–6, pp. 5–38; Middell and Naumann, “Global History and the Spatial Turn”. 29 J. Döring and T. Thielmann, “Einleitung: Was lesen wir im Raume? Der Spatial Turn und das geheime Wissen der Geographen”, in: J. Döring and T. Thiemann (eds.), Spatial Turn. Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften, Bielefeld: transcript, 2008, pp. 7–46. 30 R. Robertson, “Glocalization”; A. Latham, “Retheorizing the Scale of Globalization: Topologies, Actor-Networks, and Cosmopolitanism”, in: A. Herod and M. W. Wright (eds.), Geographies of Power: Placing Scale, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002, pp. 115–144. 31 D. Massey, For Space, London: Sage, 2005; Ph. J. Ethington, “Placing the Past: ‘Groundwork’ for a Spatial Theory of History”, Rethinking History 11 (2007) 4, pp. 465–493; E. S. Casey, “Boundary, Place, and Event in the Spatiality of History”, Rethinking History 11 (2007) 4, pp. 507–512; A. Quayson, Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism, Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. See also A. Fischer-Kattner, M. Knopf, E. Spies and M. Holtz, “Introduction. Rooms for Manoeuvre: Cultural Encounters and Concepts of Space”, Comparativ 28 (2018) 2, pp. 7–21.
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active process of overcoming the “frictions of distance”.32 Nevertheless, critical reflections on time and space were not disregarded by historians, an early example being Reinhart Koselleck’s reflections on space(s) created by human beings.33 Put in other words by Karl Schlögel: time can be “read” (analysed) in particular places or locations yet “there are as many spaces as there are fields of study, topics, media or historical agents”.34 Similarly, Kapil Raj’s comments on the transformative aspects of circulation serves as an inspiration for “locating the global”. His insights on the global circulation of science and the local construction and reconstruction of knowledge highlights the cross-cultural aspects of interaction and transformation of knowledge, practices, instruments, techniques, and services as well as the processes of encounter, power, resistance, negotiation, and reconfiguration in specific locations. In turn, he is inspired by the ethnographic method of “grounded globalization” proposed by Michael Burawoy, which, in Raj’s words, “constantly changes scales, places, and territories, venturing out into spaces with uncertain or moving boundaries, creating or using networks”.35 Consequently, as Angelika Epple notes, one can only understand the global while studying the local. She makes a powerful plea for applying a translocal approach to global history: “If we study the local by studying translocal relations with a microhistorical approach, we get to global history through the sum of all translocalities.” However, as this sum is never fixed and always in motion, the global changes in time and space and turns out “to be an entity in constant flux that cannot be studied as a whole by one single scholar”.36
32 A. Herod, Labor Geographies: Workers and the Landscapes of Capitalism, New York: Guilford, 2001; A. Herod, “Organizing Globally, Organizing Locally. Union Spatial Strategy in a Global Economy”, in: J. Harrod and R. O’Brien (eds.), Global Unions? Theory and Strategies of Organized Labour in the Global Political Economy, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 83–99. 33 R. Koselleck, “Raum und Geschichte” [Space and history], in: R. Koselleck, Zeitschichten. Studien zur Historik, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1986, pp. 78–96. See further H. SchulzForberg, “The Spatial and Temporal Layers of Global History: A Reflection on Global Conceptual History through the Expanding Reinhart Koselleck’s Zeitschichten into Global Spaces”, Historical Social Research 38 (2013) 3, pp. 40–58. 34 K. Schlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik [We read time in space. About civilization history and geopolitics], Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2003, p. 69. 35 K. Raj, “Beyond Postcolonialism . . . and Postpositivism: Circulation and the Global History of Science”, Isis 104 (2013), pp. 343, 347; M. Burawoy, J. A. Blum, Sh. George, Zs. Gille and M. Thayer (eds.), Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 36 A. Epple, “The Global, the Transnational and the Subaltern: The Limits of History beyond the National Paradigm”, in: A. Amelina, D. D. Nergiz, Th. Faist and N. Glick Schiller (eds.),
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Further theoretical insights about analysing spatial transformations are presented by Bob Jessop, Neil Brenner, and Martin Jones, with their focus on polymorphy, that is to say the organization of sociospatial relations in multiple forms. Following their framework, the key dimensions of sociospatial relations are territories, places, scales, and networks, which are mutually constitutive and relationally intertwined.37 Following Lefebvre, Harvey, and Soja, space and spatiality are actively produced and the interaction between space and social relations are inherently dynamic as space is constantly configured and reconfigured through social and political economic processes and struggles.38 Or, as Courtney Campbell concludes in her analysis of articles on space, place, and scale in the journal Past and Present, historians, too, have started “to consider how we relate to space around us, how we make of it our own place, what hierarchies we create within it, how we imagine and relate it to other places, and how we represent it to others”.39 Still, as Leif Jerram warns historians, there is much confusion over what is meant by “space”, “place”, and “location” within the humanities and calls for a critical reflection on if space matters at all: “people are doing things, not things doing
Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Research Methodologies for Cross-Border Studies, London: Routledge, 2012, pp. 169–170. See also A. Epple, “Lokalität und die Dimension des Globalen: eine Frage der Relationen” [Locality and the dimension of the global: A question of relations], Historische Anthropologie 21 (2013) 1, pp. 4–25. On translocality and the socio-spatial dynamics and processes of simultaneity and identity formation that transcends boundaries, see further U. Freitag and A. von Oppen (eds.), Translocality: The Study of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective, Leiden: Brill, 2010; C. Greiner and P. Sakdapolrak, “Translocality: Concepts, Applications and Emerging Research Perspectives”, Geography Compass 7 (2013) 5, pp. 373–384. 37 B. Jessop, N. Brenner and M. Jones, “Theorizing Sociospatial Relations”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26 (2008), pp. 389–401; also B. Jessop, “Spatiotemporal Fixes and Multispatial Metagovernance: The Territory, Place, Scale, Network Scheme Revisited,” in: S. Marung and M. Middell (eds.), Spatial Formats Under the Global Condition, Berlin: De Gruyter 2019, pp. 48–77. For an application of the TPSN framework, see, e.g., M. G. Allen and S. Dinnen, “Is the ‘Hybrid Turn’ a ‘Spatial Turn’? A Geographical Perspective on Hybridity and State-formation in the Western Pacific”, Third World Thematics: A TWO Journal (2017), pp. 1–18. 38 H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, D. Nicholson-Smith (trans.), Hoboken: WileyBlackwell, 1991; D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 1990; E. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. Illuminating are also the spatial perspectives in L. Jerram, Streetlife: The Untold History of Europe’s Twentieth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011; and Quayson, Oxford Street Accra. 39 C. J. Campbell, “Space, Place and Scale: Human Geography and Spatial History in Past and Present”, Past and Present 239 (May 2018), p. 45.
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things.”40 Nevertheless, Jerram stresses that space “offers a way of understanding relationships that opens up the particular and the peculiar” as space is how taxonomic categories like class, race, gender, sexuality, state, expertise, or law come into relationship with one another.41 Following Jessop, Brenner, and Martin, a multidimensional perspective on spatiality enables one to overcome a “flat ontology”, methodological territorialism, place-centrism, scale-centrism, and networkcentrism. Roland Wenzlhuemer therefore underlines that global history, too, needs to deal with a plurality of spaces. According to him, not least the study of complex processes of global communication, transfers, and interactions requires an abstract, multilayered, and strictly relativistic concept of space that goes beyond a unidimensional approach.42 Thus, according to him, “the globe is merely a sort of container unit that hosts all possible overlapping and co-existing ‘worlds’ which require their very own spatial frameworks. Therefore, space is both an object as well as an observational framework within the historian delineates his field of study.”43 Finally, as Antje Dietze and Katja Naumann recognize, actors – whom we might define as “global” or at least “transnational” or “translocal” actors participating in archaic, protomodern, or modern globalization projects (Middell) or globalizations (Osterhammel) – play multiple roles on different spatial scales. The authors’ insights are based on theoretical reflections on space(s) and spatial configurations as being socially constructed by individuals and social groups and serve as a starting point for investigating historically multi-scalar spatial orders. These “complex spatializations” or interactions and linkages between different spatial realms are dynamic and in flux but not instable as they are constantly transformed by interactions and external developments.44 In theory, in a threedimensional space, there exists an unlimited number of spaces. From the historian’s perspective, the spatial approach addresses the multiple spaces being in flux in a specific place at a specific moment. Some of these spaces are produced by actors in location A, others in location B, C, or D; some of the spaces produced in location A have only a local outreach but others may cross place and territorial 40 L. Jerram, “Space: A Useless Category for Historical Analysis?”, History and Theory 52 (2013), p. 419. 41 Ibid., p. 401. 42 R. Wenzlhuemer, “Globalization, Communication and the Concept of Space in Global History”, Historical Social Research 35 (2010) 1, p. 25. 43 Ibid., p. 22. 44 A. Dietze and K. Naumann, “Revisiting Transnational Actors from a Spatial Perspective”, European Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire 25 (2018) 3–4, pp. 415–430. See also S. Marung and M. Middell (eds.), Transnational Actors – Crossing Borders. Studies in Transnational History, Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2014.
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borders while some of the spaces produced in B, C, or D may be present in A, either overlapping or in competition with spaces produced in A. Similarly, spaces produced and existing in A are all relative or in relation with each other. The amount of complexity increases when a scalar framework is added. If complexity is already an issue on a local level, it increases with the total number of existing localities at a specific time at the global level. This insight, therefore, poses a challenge for global history and can best be solved by “localizing the global” or to focus on the local articulations and manifestations of spatialities, circulations, networks, border-crossings, and/or territorializations. In theory, the sum of these global histories or global history in the plural could eventually come close to global history in the singular.
Many Localities, Multiple Globalities: Local Articulations of the Global The history of this volume reflects the critical discussion above on the state of global history, hoping to add to the plurality of global histories. Each of the participants were engaged with individual research projects: some defined it as global history, others not. The initial challenge was to find a common ground – what could be used as an analytical starting point for the team? It turned out that it was not the global but rather a spatial approach to the global. Thus, the aim of the participants in this volume is to locate the global through interlinked case studies by analysing various temporal and spatial dimensions of the global in the local and the interactions between the local and the global. The first section of the volume addresses translocality. In chapter 2, Edgar Pereira and Kaarle Wirta focus on the global ambitions of long-distance traders and Jewish merchants in the seventeenth-century Danish trade emporium of Glückstadt. This chapter shows how political decision makers, entrepreneurs, and businessmen were directly responsible for and took conscious steps towards turning local port towns into places where goods, people, and knowledge were brought from far away and exchanged with distant regions and other continents. In chapter 3, Måns Jansson discusses knowledge circulation and the making of metal commodities in eighteenth-century Stockholm, thereby locating the global in cutlery workshops in Stockholm, in the goods made and used in these spaces, and in the interaction between people involved in the Swedish metal trade. Parallel to the case of business entrepreneurs in Glückstadt, the transportation, use, and combination of imported materials show how workshops, metal works, and urban shops were parts of wide-ranging – indeed global – circulatory
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processes. Jansson adds a multidimensional perspective, accentuating the connections amongst practices of making, using, trading, and policing. Hanna Hodacs focuses on the material history of coffee and coffee surrogates drawing on Swedish accounts of the look, scent, and taste of coffee from the mid-eighteenth century and onwards. She shows that the increasingly diverse global coffee production ended up being used to categorize consumers of coffee into different taste communities. Local coffee surrogates were selected and processed with the aim to produce a brew that corresponded to a generic idea of what coffee tasted, smelled, and looked like. Coffee was a dark and hot brew, but in other respects it was a highly diverse and often composite drink (chapter 4). A further example of translocalism and the global circulation of knowledge systems is provided by Kalle Kananoja, who discusses the challenges of introducing a new medical system in the Finnish society by using the example of Hans Kalm, a naturopathic healer who had studied different forms of heterodox healing in the United States in the 1920 and 1930s. Although Kalm’s heterodox healing system was met with criticism from medical doctors, it was accepted and welcomed in the local community where Kalm had established his sanatorium (chapter 5). The following two chapters uses translocality to discuss the Nordic metal trade in the Atlantic world. Chris Evans and Göran Rydén analyse the Danish export of iron to West Africa during the latter part of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries. They start their investigation in Europe, with the Danish ships being loaded with a wide assortment of goods in Copenhagen and proceed to the African coast, and then on to the unloading of these wares in the Danish headquarters of Christiansborg castle. The fort in present-day Accra became a kind of depot for trading goods, waiting to be exchanged for slaves as well as gold, ivory, and foodstuff; the castle became something like a hinge between European and African interests (chapter 6). Sven Olofsson analyses the Swedish copper commodity chain, emphasizing the export of copper and brass to France and the links between the Swedish copper trade and the French Atlantic trade system. The chapter sheds new light on the connections between French merchants and the producers at the Swedish copper works and suggests that certain goods produced in Sweden were intended for the slave trade and that some deliveries could be linked to several French merchants active in the French Atlantic trade system (chapter 7). The next section discusses identity, globalities, and their local articulations. Emil Kaukonen and Mats Wickström locate the global in the local space of enslavement in the Moroccan city of Fez between 1748 and 1756, when two Scandinavian captives, sea captains Lars Diderich and Marcus Berg, inhabited this spatial nexus of proto-globalization and used it as a vantage point for making observations about captivity as well as Moroccan society. Diderich and Berg
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experienced a violent transition from agents of commerce to human commodities as their sovereigns had not yet established a system of protection to safeguard their liberty and the commercial interests of their home nations; so when the Scandinavian seamen were caught in the corsairs’ web, they were left to navigate the space of captivity as best they could (chapter 8). In the following two chapters, actors in the Gold Coast reflect upon European colonization in West Africa from two different locations around the same time. In both cases, the role of translocal connections of these actors greatly influenced their reflections upon temporal and spatial changes. Patrik Hettula highlights the translocal networks of the Eurafrican educated elite in Accra as well as their expatriate experience in London in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Sojourns and journeys from the Gold Coast resulted in mental transitions of the identity of Eurafrican Gold Coasters. In London, Eurafricans developed a sense of being part of a larger global community. Networks, ideas, and movements could be discussed at formal meetings by African societies as well as at informal dinner parties. These meetings encompassed very broad spatial orientations and perspectives and were channelled back to the Gold Coast press, which started to report on increasingly diverse issues around the globe (chapter 9). Holger Weiss localizes the global by identifying parallel globalities in the Voltaic Basin during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Resident and itinerant Muslim scholars lived in Muslim communities in the Voltaic Basin, which were part of the Muslim oecumene or Muslim globality. The Muslim communities were located amongst precolonial non-Muslim polities and societies. Muslim settlements were established within the realms of the non-Muslim polities but were regarded as stranger communities, and Muslims constituted a minority of the population of a political entity. Both Muslim and non-Muslim communities were affected when a new global order – the European one – forcefully integrated the region into the Atlantic world economy (chapter 10). The next set of chapters focus on politics and use a spatial approach to analyse imperialism, parliamentarism, and anti-colonialism during the first decades of the twentieth century. Ivan Sablin analyses the debate in Russia on the introduction of parliamentarism during the early twentieth century. The arguments in favour of parliamentarism were context-specific but rooted in two major global developments – the attempts to either modernize empires or establish post-imperial nation-states. In contemporary debates, Russia was understood as both a “subaltern empire” and an “empire of subalterns”. Although the interpretations of subalternity and the suggestions on how to escape it differed greatly, parliament, as a globally circulating concept, and the State Duma, as its concrete institutional form, became an assemblage point for imperial nationalism, a heterogeneous discourse, and a political programme on how
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the imperial society could improve the performance of the imperial state (chapter 11). Fredrik Petersson locates the global in the encounters by non-Western participants at the 1917 planned peace conference in Stockholm. Although the peace conference eventually never took place, it initiated in its planning phase a spatial and temporal setting for anti-colonialism, a point of departure that encouraged anti-colonial activists at a moment when nothing and, at the same time, everything seemed possible. However, this would continue in Stockholm after 1917, as several anti-colonial activists decided to remain in the city (chapter 12). Lars Berge traces the roots of popular solidarity with Africa in Sweden to the campaign against Italian imperialism in Ethiopia in 1935. Throughout the world, it ignited a broad public opinion in solidarity with Ethiopia against fascism, racism, and colonialism. Berge demonstrates that the run-up to the war was a major turning point in Swedish history as it brought Sweden into a new, international, and global community, challenging a prevailing worldview and thereby contributing to a new self-image of Sweden as a modern and democratic society (chapter 13). The next section focuses on temporal and spatial forms of knowledge organization. Johanna Skurnik locates the global in the mapping of British North Australia during the second half of the nineteenth century. She directs attention to the circuits of territorial knowledge and the materiality of mapmakers’ craft, which both underpinned the production of maps. Consequently, a focus on the mobility of knowledge, the places in which the maps were produced, and the temporal patterns of cartographic territoriality help us understand the history of the Western territorialization of Australia as a global phenomenon (chapter 14). Laura Hollsten studies the spatial scales that can be observed in the Finnish geographer and geologist Väinö Auer’s writings and considers them in relation to the discussion of scales in global history. While doing so, she explores the conflicting ways in which Auer relates to various scales, namely the regional (Patagonia), the national (Finland), and the global (which in Auer’s case is the Earth in its totality). As Hollsten demonstrates, Auer must be regarded as the first Finnish scholar to foster a global consciousness and to develop what can be termed as a “global gaze” (chapter 15). The last section of the volume discusses the construction of temporary and permanent representational spaces and memory spaces. Taina Syrjämaa focuses on the production of global spaces at the world fairs during the latter part of the nineteenth century. She applies a spatial approach to analyse the intersecting flows of things and people that worked together in order to assemble, perform, and eventually dismantle the fairs. On the one hand, fairs had a limited temporal and spatial existence and were fluid spaces. On the other hand, they were locations of globality where the globe and global connections
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could be imagined at a time of rapid change (chapter 16). Christina Romlid examines the self-representations of Sweden at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1937 by scrutinizing the various internal and external factors that influenced the planning of the design of the Social Section in the Swedish pavilion. Using David Harvey’s typology of abstract, relative, and relational space in the “representations of space”, the first one includes the three design plans for the Social Section of the Swedish Pavilion. The relative space is established by Marquis Childs’s book Sweden: The Middle Way, which was published in 1936, while the relational space are the forces that created the space-time that dominated the World Fair in Paris 1937, that is to say fascism and communism (chapter 17). The last two chapters focuses on the establishment of a national museum in Finland and Ghana. National museums are seldom perceived as global spaces, rather playing an instrumental role in negotiating, articulating, promoting, and preserving identities, values, and material evidence that are considered essential to a given nation-state and its citizens. the national museum was regarded as being an essential part in the nation-building process. However, as both Leila Koivunen’s chapter on the exclusion of the “other” in the National Museum of Finland and Jon Olav Hove’s chapter on the contested memory of space in the National Museum of Ghana highlight, the establishment of a national museum is part and parcel of translocal and cross-border transfers and the appropriation of knowledge, ideas, and practices as well as artefacts. Koivunen’s chapter examines the ways in which the National Museum of Finland took the wider world into consideration at the time of its establishment. The Finnish example represents one extreme: when the museum was opened to visitors in 1916, after decades of waiting, its departments showed no sign of the large non-Western collections that the museum held. Thus, the construction of a national narrative meant silencing other voices, especially those associated with non-Western cultures. This represented a significant break with an older tradition of collecting and displaying artefacts of foreign cultures (chapter 18). Hove explores how the National Museum of Ghana was intended, since its inception in the late 1940s, as a global as well as a national space, and discusses the implications and consequences of this on commemorative activities, both in terms of collecting and displaying. The creation of the museum was not consensual but strongly influenced by contemporary political and social processes, thereby being shaped by struggles and contests focusing on the purpose of and control over the new museum. The opening exhibition in 1957 presented a narrative of Ghana’s global past characterized by ordered and peaceful coexistence and development, whereas narratives of colonial conflict and exploitation were absent (chapter 19).
Part I: Translocality
Edgar Pereira and Kaarle Wirta
2 A Forgotten Emporium: Commercial Aspirations and Transnational Mercantile Networks in SeventeenthCentury Glückstadt In the mid-1640s, Diogo Teixeira de Sampaio, a wealthy merchant-banker of the Portuguese community of Antwerp, left the entrepôt by the river Scheldt for Hamburg. Having resided in Antwerp since the 1610s, Teixeira de Sampaio had amassed a fortune through the trade of sugar from Brazil and São Tomé; commerce in Asian luxury goods like spices, textiles, and gems; and participation in all manners of financial operations. He served as the consul of the city’s Portuguese nation on several occasions, and also served as the correspondent of the Portuguese bankers at the royal court of Madrid, which bankrolled the Habsburg armies in Flanders and central Europe.1
1 On Diogo Teixeira de Sampaio’s multifaceted business endeavours in Antwerp, see E. Stols, De Spaanse Brabanders of de handelsbetrekkingen der Zuidelijke Nerderlanden met de Iberische wereld, 1598–1648 [The Spanish people from Brabant and the trade relations of the Southern Netherlands with the Iberian world], Brussels: Palais der Academiën, 1971, pp. 329, 330, 348, 367; H. Pohl, Die Portugiesen in Antwerpen (1567–1648). Zur Geschichte einer Minderheit [The Portuguese in Antwerp (1567–1648). The history of a minority], Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1977, pp. 71, 86, 158, 180, 347; J. Boyajian, Portuguese Bankers at the Court of Spain 1626–1650, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1983, pp. 32, 74, 79, 80, 82, 84, 150, 151; F. Frade, As Relacões Económicas e Sociais das Comunidades Sefarditas Portuguesas. O Trato e a Família, 1532–1632 [The Social and Economic Relations of the Portuguese Sephardic Communities: Trade Notes: We would like to thank Dr. Christian Boldt, Glückstadt’s city archivist, for opening the doors of the local archive. Not only did he grant us access to the local archive, he was also kind enough to guide us through the city’s museum and to show us some scholarly works on Glückstadt, which we would not have otherwise come across. Finally, he generously shared his knowledge about the history of the city and the surrounding region with us. Without his help our understanding of Glückstadt and its merchant community would have been much more superficial. After we returned from our trip to Glückstadt, a provisional version of this chapter was discussed during the course “Portals of Globalization: Exchanging Money, Goods and Ideas in Early Modern Port Cities (1500–1800)”, which we taught together at Leiden University in the first semester of the academic year 2016/17. There is no doubt that this chapter was much improved by their input. Needless to say, we alone are responsible for any mistakes that remain. A large part of this research was funded by the European Research Council and developed within the project “Fighting Monopolies” at Leiden University, (ERC-2012-StG-312657-FIGHT). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-002
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Shortly after his arrival in Hamburg, Abraham Senior Teixeira, as Diogo Teixeira de Sampaio renamed himself after coming out publicly as a Jew, was caught in the crossfire between Emperor Ferdinand III and the local city council. The emperor demanded that Hamburg’s authorities arrest the PortugueseSephardic parvenu and hand him over to the Iberian Inquisition, along with his estate. However, the Hamburg city council refused to imprison and extradite Teixeira, being afraid this would lead to the departure en masse of the foreign business communities. Fearing for his possessions and his freedom, Teixeira left Hamburg and decamped to the city of Glückstadt in the Duchy of Holstein. He did so in order to take advantage of the privileges that the city’s sovereign, the Danish King Christian IV, was offering to foreign traders in an effort to convince them to settle there.2 Teixeira de Sampaio is a striking but far from unique example of the foreign merchants who settled in Glückstadt due to the city’s mild religious climate, investment-friendly atmosphere, and respect for the property rights of immigrants. Glückstadt, like other emporiums and trading hubs of the era, attempted to attract foreign merchants, often with distinct religious and cultural backgrounds, as a means to launch itself into international commodity and financial circuits as well as to stimulate the economy both at a local and state level.3
and Family, 1532–1632], unpublished PhD thesis, University of Lisbon, 2006, pp. 297–299. For an all-encompassing overview on the transnational networks of Portuguese-Sephardic diaspora, see D. Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea. Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492–1640, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; J. Israel, “Jews and CryptoJews in the Atlantic World Systems, 1500–1800”, in: R. Kagan and Ph. D. Morgan (eds.), Atlantic Diaspora: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500–1800, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, pp. 3–17. 2 A. Cassuto, Elementos para a História dos Judeus Portugueses de Hamburgo [Elements for the history of the Portuguese Jews of Hamburg], Hehaber: no date, pp. 21, 22. 3 Amongst a vast literature focusing on the interplay between states and minority merchant collectives and the latter’s role as connectors between distant regions, see M. Herrero Sanchez and K. Kapps (eds.), Merchants and Trade Networks in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1550–1800: Connectors of Commercial Maritime Systems, London: Routledge, 2017; F. Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012; I. Baghdiantz McCabe, “Global Trading Ambitions in Diaspora: The Armenians and their Eurasian Silk Trade, 1530–1750”, in: I. Baghdiantz McCabe et al. (eds.), Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History, Oxford: Berg, 2005, pp. 27–49; A. Reid, “Entrepreneurial Minorities, Nationalism and the State”, in: D. Chirot and A. Reid (eds.), Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997; S. Subrahmanyam, “Iranians abroad: Intra Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern State Formation”, Journal of Asian Studies 51 (1992) 2, pp. 340–363.
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International port cities like Glückstadt tend to be overlooked in mainstream international historiography, which devotes more attention to those urban centres of greater economic stature, size, and population that rose to prominence at the turn of the sixteenth century, such as Hamburg, Amsterdam, or London.4 By way of correction, this chapter argues that it is worth paying attention to lesser known, smaller, or “unimportant” port towns while considering their involvement in international and maritime trade and other forms of interconnectedness between regions and even continents.5 For the purpose of our analysis, we see the port city of Glückstadt less as a physical location and more as a conduit or an enabler, a stage for the individual agents and forms of collective organization it sheltered. Rather than looking into the city itself, its infrastructures, and its economic and demographic evolution, we instead focus on its function and explain what drove socioeconomic agents involved in global trade to Glückstadt.6 At the centre of our analysis are the ways in which certain agents seized the opportunities that this river port provided them, thereby “consuming” the “space” of the city. From the moment that it was founded, Glückstadt was shaped by multifaceted political and economic forces. In order to grasp the true complexity of these formative influences, this chapter alternates between two different scales of analysis.7 First, a bird’s-eye view maps out the geopolitical ambitions, diplomatic manoeuvring, and internal power dynamics that took place at the level of the state(s). Second, a grass-roots perspective focuses on the pursuits of the city’s trading communities.
4 G. Nørregård, Danish Settlement in West Africa 1658–1850, Boston: Boston University Press, 1965; H. Sieveking, “Die Glückstädter Guineafahrt im 17. Jahrhundert. Ein Stück deutscher Kolonialgeschichte” [The Guinea trip to Glückstadt in the 17th century: A piece of German colonial history], Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 30 (1937) 1, pp. 19–71. 5 G. Jackson, “The Significance of Unimportant Ports”, International Journal of Maritime History 13 (2011) 2, pp. 1–17. 6 C. Antunes and A. Polónia, “Introduction”, in: C. Antunes and A. Polónia (eds.), Seaports in the First Global Age: Portuguese Agents, Networks and Interactions (1500–1800), Oporto: U. Porto Edições, 2016, pp. 26, 27. 7 Some of the most stimulating reflections on how to juxtapose different scales of analysis were made by A. Gerritsen, “Scales of a Local: The Place of Locality in a Globalizing World”, in: D. Northrop (ed.), A Companion to World History, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, p. 214. For another approach that posits a juxtaposition of micro with macro scales, see the contributions of S. Aslanian, J. Chaplin, A. McGrath and K. Mann to “AHR Conversation: How Size Matters: The Question of Scale in History”, American Historical Review 118 (2013) 5, pp. 1431–1472, particularly pp. 1443–1446, 1452–1456, 1467.
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Christian IV: War and Politics from a Bird’s-Eye Perspective Created in March 1617, Glückstadt, which in English translates to the “Fortunate City”, was a political project enthusiastically sponsored by the Danish King Christian IV (1596–1648) and continued by his successor, Frederick III.8 Aside from being the sovereign of Denmark and Norway, Christian IV was also the lord of Schleswig and Holstein, the region in which Glückstadt was located.9 From a political perspective, the creation of the city came about in the context of a complex rivalry between Denmark and Sweden as well as of the period’s international conflict par excellence, the Thirty Years’ War, and internal tensions within the Danish monarchy. Economically, the birth and growth of Glückstadt were profoundly shaped by competition for colonial trade. Amongst the most influential factors in the city’s trajectory were the rivalry between the two Scandinavian monarchies as well as the attempts by networks of private merchants in Demark and the Netherlands to bypass the de jure monopolies of chartered companies. Finally, a desire to access the consumption markets of the old Hanseatic towns and to increase Denmark’s stake in the North Sea trade and Baltic Sea trade also helps to explain both political decision-making and the actions of economic actors.
8 In line with his epithet as “architect king”, Christian IV established several other cities during his reign: Christianshavn, Kristianstad, Kristianopel, Kristiansand and Christianspris. See O. Feldbæk, Danmarks Historie [History of Denmark], Copenhagen: Gyldendals Fagbogsredakation, 2010, p. 92. This period also saw the foundation of several towns in Scandinavia. Amongst them were Friedrichstad, Gothenburg, and Helsinki. See K.-J. Lorenzen-Schmidt, “Glückstadt im Rahmen der Städtegründungen König Christians IV” [Gluckstadt as part of the founding cities of King Christian IV], Vorträge der DetlefsenGesellschaft 5, Glückstadt, 2002, pp. 15–24; S. Heiberg, Christian IV – En europæisk Statsmand [Christian IV – A European ruler], Copenhagen: Gyldendals fagboksredaktion, 2006, p. 210; H. Kellenbenz, The Rise of the European Economy: An Economic History of Continental Europe from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1976, p. 21. 9 Sieveking, “Die Glückstädter Guineafahrt im 17. Jahrhundert”, p. 22; G. Köhn, Die Bevölkerung der Residenz, Festung und Exulantenstadt Glückstadt von der Gründung 1616 bis zum Endausbau 1652 [The population of the residence, fortress, and exultant town of Glückstadt from its foundation in 1616 to its final expansion in 1652], Neumünster: Karl Wachholtz Verlag 1974, pp. 22–25; S. Bitsch Christensen and J. Mikkelsen (eds.), Danish Towns during Absolutism: Urbanization and Urban Life 1660–1848, Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2008, p. 158; L. Jespersen, A Revolution from Above: The Power State of 16th and 17th century Scandinavia, Odense: Odense University Press, 2000, p. 23; P. Lockhart, “Denmark and the Empire: A Reassessment of Danish Foreign Policy under King Christian IV”, Scandinavian Studies 64 (1992) 3, pp. 390–416, 413.
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From a bird’s-eye perspective, the main international political concerns of Christian IV were Denmark’s long-standing rivalry with Sweden and the rising religious tensions that were occurring throughout the Germanic world.10 For the Danish king, who was also a German prince and a champion of the Lutheran cause, there was a clear need to assert his dynastic claims in northern Germany and to counter those of his opponents. In particular, Christian IV had his eyes set on the Saxon bishoprics of Osnabrück, Bremen, and Verden and also vied for control of the waterways of the rivers Weser and Elbe. The mouths of these two rivers not only were geostrategically important, but could also provide a major boost to Christian IV’s finances through the levying of tariffs on the flow of goods moving along these waterways. At the same time, Christian IV’s reasons to extend his influence in the region were also defensive. From the 1630s onwards, the Swedish inroads into Lower Saxony posed a clear threat to the Danish king’s German territories as they became exposed to attacks from both north and south.11 The creation of garrison towns to support Danish expansion into northern Germany was a touchstone of Christian IV’s reign, and with the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, just one year after the first stone of Glückstadt was laid, the city’s fate as a military stronghold seemed to be sealed. Shortly after the city was founded, the king ordered the construction of a fort, the Glücksburg. Its purpose was to provide military protection for the people living in the surroundings of the city and to repel enemy assaults against Danish positions in the area. In addition to a fortified outpost for overland warfare, Christian IV wanted to make the city the operational headquarters for the Danish military fleet and thus the epicentre of his North Sea strategy. In order to pursue his naval goals, he required a shipping hub with a direct connection to the Elbe and the North Sea as well as a harbour in which larger vessels could dock and manoeuvre.12 Glückstadt’s predicament was also shaped by the internal politics of the Kingdom of Denmark proper. During the seventeenth century, the kings of Denmark were by no means absolute monarchs, ruling more like primus inter pares vis-à-vis the aristocracy and the state bureaucracy. Their limited authority was especially clear in foreign affairs, since the king could not declare war without the consent of Denmark’s Council of the Realm. One of the ways in
10 Denmark-Norway and Sweden were at war with each other at several points throughout the seventeenth century (1611–1613, 1643–1645, 1657–1658, 1658–1660, and 1675–1679). 11 About the Christian’s foreign policy, see Lockhart, “Denmark”. 12 M. Bellamy, Christian IV and his Navy. A Political and Administrative History of the Danish Navy 1596–1648, Leiden: Brill, 2006.
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which the king could break free from the constraints imposed by the council and the upper nobility was by securing some degree of financial autonomy. To bankroll his dynastic wars and his construction projects, such as the military industrial sites and garrison towns, the king relied primarily on his patrimonial revenues. The advantage of these sources of income was that they were not subject to scrutiny by and approval from the Council of the Realm, thereby exempting the king from having to haggle with Danish institutions and corporate bodies for funds as well as granting him greater control over how they were spent.13 Indeed, this is the reason why tolls and tariffs, which made up the bulk of his patrimonial income, were instrumental to the king’s geopolitical strategy. The establishment of Glückstadt allowed the king to set up a fiscal agency, the Elbetolde, to collect customs duties from ships sailing along the Elbe.14 The fact that the Danish king was simultaneously the duke of SchleswigHolstein granted him room for manoeuvre with regard to the Danish ruling bodies and elites. Whereas Iceland, Norway, the Faroe Islands, and certain provinces in present-day southern Sweden were under Danish jurisdiction – and therefore subject to the scrutiny and consent of Denmark’s established corporate bodies – Schleswig-Holstein was not. The duchy was administered by the so-called German Chancery, which answered directly to the king-duke and, consequently, not to the Council of the Realm.15 In addition, supervisory powers over towns such as Glückstadt were a royal prerogative, meaning that the king appointed town councillors and burgomasters without input or interference from Denmark’s upper councils.16 With this political framework and geopolitical context in mind, it is not hard to understand why the foundation of Glückstadt was a project worth pursuing for the monarch. The “Fortunate City” enabled the Danish kings to strive
13 Ibid., pp. 7, 13. 14 Lockhart, “Denmark”, pp. 393–394. 15 F. Jørgensen and M. Westrup, Dansk Centraladministration i tiden indtil 1848 [Danish central administration until 1848], Copenhagen: Dansk historisk Faellesforening, 1982, pp. 20–21; Jespersen, A Revolution, p. 72. 16 Jørgensen and Westrup, Dansk Centraladministration, p. 79. On the jurisdictionally complex and institutionally diverse nature of state formation in early modern Europe, see the pioneering article by J. H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies”, Past & Present (1992) 137, pp. 48–71. For a recent reappraisal with special reference to the Iberian world, see P. Cardim et al. (eds.), Polycentric Monarchies. How did Early Modern Spain and Portugal Achieve and Maintain a Global Hegemony, Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2012. For a Scandinavianfocused approach, aside from Jespersen’s work, see H. Gustafsson, “The Conglomerate State: A Perspective on State Formation in Early Modern Europe”, Scandinavian Journal of History 23 (1998) 3–4, pp. 189–213.
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for financial autonomy and provided them with a base of operations for pursuing their geopolitical agenda, in turn strengthening their domains commercially and granting them political leeway vis-à-vis the established powers in Copenhagen. However, a series of military setbacks beginning in the late 1620s proved to be major blows to Denmark’s aims in Northern Europe. Following four years of campaigns in support of the Lutheran princes of Lower Saxony against the imperial army and the Catholic League, the Treaty of Lübeck (1629) put an end to what has been called the “Danish Intermezzo” of the Thirty Years’ War.17 Christian IV held on to the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein, but he was forced to withdraw his support from the Protestant German states. To add insult to injury, Denmark’s desire to expand its area of influence in northern Germany had been eclipsed by its biggest rival, Sweden, whose “Stormaktstiden” (Age of Greatness) was now in full swing.18 The city was also shaped by broader political processes that originated from outside the Danish territories and areas of military intervention. Of particular importance was the commercial war waged by Spain against the Dutch Republic, which provided the backdrop for the treaty negotiated in October 1630 between the Hispanic and the Danish-Norwegian monarchies. With Sweden suddenly entering the Thirty Years’ War in 1629 and the resulting retaliation by the Catholic League, Denmark was forced to come to an understanding with the Habsburgs, even though the latter were the staunch advocates of Catholicism in a confessionally fragmented Europe and up until then Christian IV’s antagonist in Saxony. The treaty negotiations were brokered on the Habsburg side by Gabriel de Roy, the Walloon envoy of Philip IV to the Hanseatic towns and Poland, and on the Danish side, strikingly, by one of the scions of the Portuguese-Sephardic communities in the lower Elbe, Álvaro Dinis (also known as Samuel Jachia).19
17 G. Parker (ed.), The Thirty Years’ War, 2nd edn, London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 49, 57; C. Hill, The Danish Sound Dues and the Command of the Baltic: A Study of International Relations, Durham: Duke University Press, 1926. 18 Lockhart, “Denmark”, pp. 410–411. 19 On Dinis’s life and career, see A. A. Marques de Almeida, Dicionário Histórico dos Sefarditas. Portugueses. Mercadores e Gente de Trato [Historical dictionary of the Portuguese Sephardim: Merchants and tradesmen], Lisbon: Campo da Comunicação, 2009, pp. 227, 228; M. StudemundHalevy and J. Poettering, “Étrangers Universels: Les Réseaux Séfarades à Hambourg” [Universal foreigners: Sephardic networks in Hamburg], La Diaspora des Nouveaux-Chrétiens. Archives du Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkien 48 (2004), p. 141; M. Studemund-Halevy, “Senhores versus criados da Nação: Portugueses, Asquenasiés y Tudescos en el Hamburgo del siglo XVII” [Gentlemen versus servants of the nation: Portuguese, Ashkenazy and Germans in seventeenthcentury Hamburg], Sefarad 60 (2000) 2, pp. 357–358.
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The treaty was signed while Spain was attempting to implement its comprehensive embargoes on Dutch shipping and trade with the Iberian Peninsula. The severing of all commercial ties with the Dutch Republic was central to the plans of the count-duke of Olivares, Philip IV’s privado, that is to say his double-edged strategy of undermining the economy of the United Provinces while simultaneously overcoming Spain’s dependency on the maritime sector of its sworn enemy. To substitute the latter, the Hispanic authorities turned to Hanseatic and Southern Netherlands skippers and traders, who would henceforth become the leading carriers of the trade between the Iberian Peninsula and the North Sea and Baltic Sea.20 Spain’s greatest fear was that, even in the midst of a full embargo, Dutch merchantmen and cargoes could still slip past into Iberia by disguising themselves as Hanseatic, Flemish, or even Scandinavian.21 As part of the crackdown 20 J. Elliott, El conde-duke de Olivares. El político en una época de decadencia [The count-duke of Olivares. The statesman in an age of decadence], 3rd edn, Barcelona: Crítica, 2009, pp. 250–252; J. Israel, “A Conflict of Empires: Spain and the Netherlands, 1618–1648”, in: Israel, Empires and Entrepôts: The Dutch, the Spanish Monarchy and the Jews, 1585–1713, London: The Hambledon Press, 1990, pp. 1–41; J. Alcalá-Zamora, España, Flandes y el Mar del Norte (1618–1639) [Spain, Flanders and the North Sea (1618–1639)], Barcelona: Planeta, 1975; R. Ródenas Vilar, La política europea de España durante la Guerra de Treinta Años (1624–1630) [Spain’s European policy during the Thirty Years’ War (1624–1630)], Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1967. 21 Dutch voyages to the Iberian Peninsula were also disguised as Danish trade expeditions. For example, it is known that the capital needed to fit-out the merchants and to acquire cargoes, as well as the crews who manned those ships, actually came from the republic. The difficulty in ascertaining the true origins of an expedition often caused diplomatic incidents. For instance, in 1624 a Danish ship was seized in the southern Portuguese port of Portimão after the skipper had sold it to a local merchant. The local authorities suspected that the ship actually hailed from the United Provinces, despite the papers claiming otherwise. Their suspicions were confirmed. Fortuna had been chartered in Amsterdam and had made its way to the Danish port of Elsinore, where a cargo of timber was embarked, after which it carried on to Portugal. The skipper Cornelis Jacques and the crew all hailed from the “rebellious” northern Low Countries, notwithstanding the fact they were now operating from the Danish port and were thus under the protection of Christian IV. Upon hearing about the arrest, the Danish king instructed his ambassador in the Iberian Peninsula to ensure the return of the ship, or at least to retrieve the proceeds of the sale as well as the return of the cargoes kept onboard (Rigsarkivet Copenhagen 301, Tyske Kancelli, Udenrigske Afdeling, 1602–1767, Portugal: Akter vedr. det politiske forhold, 72–2). On the anticontraband operations carried out in Portugal, see Ángel Alloja Aparicio, “Portuguese Contraband and the Closure of the Iberian Markets, 1621–1640: The Economic Roots of an Anti-Habsburg Feeling”, E-Journal of Portuguese History 7 (2009) 2, pp. 1–18; J. F. Schaub, Le Portugal au temps du Comte-Duc d’Olivares (1621–1640). Le conflit de jurisdictions comme exercice de la Politique [Portugal at the time of the count-duke of Olivares (1621–1640). The conflict of jurisdictions as an exercise of the policy], Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2001, pp. 285–327.
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on contraband orchestrated by the northern Low Countries, the Hispanic authorities had, since the end of the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–1621), consistently striven to persuade the imperial port cities to adhere to a tight system of controls on all merchant vessels bound for Portugal and Spain. In particular, the Olivares cabinet hoped to achieve this goal by stationing residents in the major non-Dutch Northern European ports that would be responsible for issuing certificates on German and Flemish cargoes. Any ships arriving at an Iberian port without the compulsory paperwork or whose bottoms did not correspond in content and tonnage to what was written in the certificate would see their cargoes confiscated by the officials of the almirantazgo, which was both a chartered company for the convoyed trade between Spain’s allied or neutral ports in Northern Europe and a semi-governmental agency responsible for the surveillance of foreign vessels making their way to the Iberian ports.22 However, to the dismay of the king’s privado, the almirantazgo project encountered hostility from the northern German towns under imperial rule, which refused to accept the Spanish residents in their ports, partly in order to preserve the opportunities for trade with both sides that their diplomatic neutrality afforded. In the face of this setback, the treaty with Denmark served as something of a consolation prize to the Spanish authorities, since the Scandinavian monarchy accepted what the old Hanseatic towns, zealously committed to their commercial and political autonomy, had resolutely denied. As part of the treaty, a Spanish Habsburg superintendent was appointed to Glückstadt, where he would oversee the inspection of all incoming cargoes that had been dispatched from the Elbe ports upstream, other German towns, and the Baltic Sea. The “Fortunate City” thus became the operational headquarters from where the commerce between the North Sea and Baltic Sea and the Iberian Peninsula would be monitored. From Christian IV’s standpoint, there was certainly no better way to put Glückstadt on the map and to ensure a steady flow of vessels and maritime professionals into the town.23
22 J. Israel, “The Politics of International Trade Rivalry during the Thirty Years’ War: Gabriel de Roy and Olivares’s Mercantilist Projects, 1621–1645”, in: Israel, Empires and Entrepôts, pp. 213–247; A. Domínguez Ortiz, “El Almirantazgo de los países septentrionales y la política económica de Felipe IV” [The almirantazgo of the northern regions and the economic policy of Philipp IV], Hispania XXVI (1947), pp. 272–290. 23 Israel, “The Politics of International Trade Rivalry”, pp. 213–247; Hill, The Danish Sound Dues, p. 104; O. A. Johnsen, “Les relations commerciales entre le Norvège et l’Espagne dans les temps modernes” [Trade relations between Norway and Spain in modern times], Revue Historique clxv (1930), pp. 77–82.
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How to Bring an Emporium to Fruition, or “GrassRoots” Merchant Networks at Work Aside from being a military stronghold and, in more than one sense, a frontier town located at the fringes of the Danish political system, Glückstadt came to be known primarily for its maritime function.24 More often than not, the “Fortunate City” was not the final destination of the cargoes that reached it from the North Sea via the Elbe. At its core, the city was a transhipment point, where an assortment of raw materials, semi-manufactured, and fully finished products were disembarked and temporarily stored, until they were ready to be redistributed to consumption markets elsewhere.25 Although the town certainly had infrastructures through which raw materials, especially colonial cash crops, could be transformed into manufactured articles, the city was by no means an industrial powerhouse. It also lacked an agricultural hinterland that could ensure a steady supply of foodstuffs for local consumption as well as surpluses for export.26 On account of its small population and its political insularity, it was far from being a consumption centre in which imports or locally produced manufactures could be marketed on a large scale.27 Instead, the entrepôt was intended to cater to the consumption needs of nearby urban centres – first and foremost Hamburg, the
24 Similar port cities can be found elsewhere, and a particularly fitting comparison could be made with the free port of Livorno. Aside from being a free port, historians like Trivellato, Fusaro, and Nadalo consider early modern Livorno to be a frontier town, on account of its institutional insularity vis-à-vis the central government and its military vocation, something that brings it close to Glückstadt (Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers, p. 10; M. Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Decline of Venice and the Rise of England 1450–1700, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 102; S. Nadalo, “Populating a ‘Nest of Pirates, Murtherers, etc.’: Tuscan Immigration Policy and Ragion di Stato in the Free Port of Livorno”, in: T. G. Fehler et al. [eds.], Religious Diaspora in Early Modern Europe: Strategies of Exile, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014, pp. 31–45). On a theorization of the role of port cities at the periphery of central governments from the late Middle Ages into the early modern period, see C. Antunes and L. Sicking, “Ports on the Border of the State, 1200–1800: An Introduction”, International Journal of Maritime History 19 (2007) 2, pp. 273–286. 25 The entrepôt of Glückstadt resembles, in this regard, the port towns of maritime Asia (M. Pearson, The Indian Ocean, London: Routledge, 2003, p. 31). 26 G. Köhn, “Zur Geschichte der Glückstädter Handwerksämter” [On the history of the Glückstadt craft offices], in: Glückstadt im Wandel der Zeiten, vol. 2, Glückstadt: Verlag J. J. Augustin, 1966, pp. 54–79; H.-R. Möller, “Geschichte des Gemüseanbaus im Lübschen Recht und in den Wildnissen”, Vorträge der Detlefsen-Gesellschaft 5, Glückstadt, 2002, pp. 75–83. 27 Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers, p. 106; Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire, pp. 103–109.
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pre-eminent commercial and industrial metropolis of the region – and their respective hinterlands. On account of its very generous fiscal regime regarding shipping and import-export trade, the city could accurately be described as a free port. The “Fortunate City” was defined by the low tariffs levied on commodities in transit, by the minimal fiscal duties paid for storing goods, and by all manner of tax exemptions, all of which were put in place in order to spark the interest of investors and professionals in maritime traffic.28 The creation of this type of fiscally generous and religiously tolerant town, geared towards international merchant networks, was a relatively common feature, not only in the urban landscape of Europe’s northern seaboard and Scandinavia but also in that of the western Mediterranean. These towns accommodated an array of foreign communities, whose members tended to specialize in maritime trade and shipping, as well as manufacturing and money lending. A select few, usually the most affluent in their respective communities, were actually employed by the host authorities in the local bureaucracy, and some even became influential at court.29 By design, free ports were utterly dependent upon their foreign trading communities. This rule applied even more strongly to places like Glückstadt or the Mediterranean hub of Livorno, which were created ex novo and entirely populated from origin. Since these port towns lacked a pre-existing maritime sector – that is to say, their own merchants, shipowners, captains, port workers, and innkeepers – the necessary staff had to be recruited entirely from the outside. It was this demand for human capital that explains the generous concessions bestowed upon newcomers as well as the leverage that expatriate merchants often gained over the local government.30
28 These same features have been highlighted in early modern Italian free ports: see M. Fusaro, “After Braudel: A Reassessment of Mediterranean History between the Northern Invasion and the Caravanne Maritime”, in: M. Fusaro et al. (eds.), Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Braudel’s Maritime Legacy, London: I. B. Tauris, 2010, pp. 21, 22; Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers, p. 108. 29 For a recent treatment of the concept of “court Jew” and its opposition to another ideal social type, that of the “port Jew”, see B. Ravid, “The Sephardic Jewish Merchants of Venice, Port Jews, and the Road to Modernity”, in: F. Francesconi et al. (eds.), From Catalonia to the Caribbean: The Sephardic Orbit from Medieval to Modern times. Essays in Honour of Jane S. Gerber, Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 115–135; D. Cesarini (ed.), Port Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550–1950, London: Routledge, 2002. 30 Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire, pp. 98–102; Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers, p. 74.
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In order to entice deracinated and dispersed communities of merchants and maritime professionals into the newly erected city, Christian IV and his successor Frederick III advertised Glückstadt both as a “city of tolerance” (Toleranzstadt) and as a place of economic opportunity.31 By granting the freedom to practice one’s religion without fear of public scrutiny, tax breaks, secure property and inheritance rights, and permission to engage in businesses that were illegal elsewhere, the king hoped to attract savvy and well-connected merchants.32 These freedoms also offered shelter and a clean slate to anyone who had fallen into disgrace or been convicted of crimes in their previous place of residence.33 In Glückstadt, these religious and secular policies of attraction were summarized in the following phrase: “to trade and to settle without hindrance”.34 However, even when such policies succeeded, they often created new problems and uncertainties. As Niels Steensgaard points out, the interactions between the emporium’s trading communities and the host authorities were characterized by structural tensions, which had the potential to undermine the city’s commercial
31 J. Jacobs, “Der Jüdische Friedhof von Glückstadt” [The Glückstadt Jewish cemetery], in: C. Boldt et al. (eds.), Erinnerungsorte – Im Auftrag des Heimatverbandes für den Kreis Steinburg, Itzehoe: Steinburger Jahrbuch, 2014, p. 67. 32 The same combination of material opportunities and spiritual concessions was equally instrumental to the success of Livorno (see Nadalo, “Populating a ‘Nest of Pirates, Murtherers, etc.’”; Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers, chapter 3). 33 In 1620, a sworn statement was made before a public notary that the Portuguese merchant from Amsterdam Simão Vaz Silva had been declared insolvent. However, by that point, he had already relocated to Glückstadt in order to escape his creditors (E. M. Koen, “Notarial Records Relating to the Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam up to 1639”, Studia Rosenthaliana VIII (1984) 2, deed no. 2375). The same principle was true in Livorno (Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers, p. 78). 34 “Ungehindert negotiieren handeln und wandeln”: the privileges extended to citizens/residents in the Dutch Republic have been printed in G. Köhn, Die Niederlande und der Europäische Nordosten: Ein Jahrtausend weiträumiger Beziehungen [The Netherlands and the European northeast: A millennium of extensive relationships], Neumünster: Karl Wachholtz Verlag, 1992, p. 303. Privileges were issued numerous times: to the Portuguese Sephardim in 1619, followed by Netherlanders in 1624. In 1630, the Dutch and Sephardic collectives in Glückstadt were promised tax rebates and tariff exemptions for the following 25 years, which were subsequently renewed in 1656. See “Der Portugysen in der Glückstadt Privilegium, vom 3. August 1619” [The Portuguese in the Glückstadt Privilegium, dated 3 August 1619], printed in Köhn, Die Bevölkerung der Residenz, p. 165, Annexe 3. See also Kellenbenz, The Rise of the European Economy, p. 245. In Hamburg, letters of privileges were extended to Jews of Iberian background in 1612, 1617, and again in 1623, see J. Poettering, “The Economic Activities of Hamburg’s Portuguese Jews in the Early Seventeenth Century”, Transversal. Zeitschrift für Jüdische Studien 14 (2014) 2, pp. 12, 20.
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prosperity if left unresolved.35 The relations between the Glückstadt authorities and the resident or visiting merchants followed this pattern. As a result, the city came to be defined by a process of back-and-forth negotiation for privileges in exchange for fiscal and economic returns as well as by recurring attempts by one side to extract concessions from the other. In the “Fortunate City”, like in other emporia, precariousness was the order of the day; this meant that even when compromise between the local authorities and the mobile merchants and skippers was achieved, it could also be reversed in the blink of an eye. Even if investors moved with their families to the city and a communal life was established there, this was no guarantee that they would put down roots and remain for generations to come. Indeed, the government could rescind economic and legal privileges if the parvenus failed to deliver on their side of the bargain, or due to the pressure by local stakeholders who were not particularly welcoming towards the alien merchants. For instance, the city’s immigrant communities toyed with the possibility of relocating their investments from Glückstadt to one of the neighbouring port cities, especially Hamburg, and they frequently used this threat in order to gain leverage in negotiations with the authorities.36 As Steensgaard puts it, in such urban settings “[b]oth parties could withdraw their support with short notice, and both would find it to their interest to negotiate institutional arrangements which did not tempt the other party to withdraw”.37 The two most influential groups to answer the invitation of the Danish monarchs to conduct their business from Glückstadt were the Portuguese Jews and an array of Dutch merchants and seafarers. What type of activities did the local Sephardic community and the visiting or residing Dutch traders carry out? How did they help to put the Danish-Holstein emporium on the map? Glückstadt’s Iberian Jews were appreciated by the authorities mainly because of their background in colonial trade and for their vast network of contacts in markets that the emporium wanted to access. These included the Iberian kingdoms and their overseas holdings as well as several commercial hubs in Northern Europe, in which goods could be redistributed, capital pooled, and logistics for the city’s
35 N. Steensgaard, “Emporia: Some Reflections”, in: R. Ptak et al. (eds.), Emporia, Commodities, and Entrepreneurs in Asian Maritime Trade, c. 1400–1750, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1991, pp. 9–13. 36 The reverse was also true, as Jorun Poettering recalls: “Several times they [the Portuguese Sephardim] threatened to leave the city [Hamburg], which as they reminded the Council, would have meant a great loss to its commerce. It was no idle threat, because the neighbouring towns of Altona, Stade and Glückstadt offered better privileges, especially concerning their religious freedom” (Poettering, “The Economic Activities”, p. 14). 37 Steensgaard, “Emporia: Some Reflections”, p. 10.
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maritime sector arranged.38 For their part, skippers and businessmen of Dutch origin were directly involved in the genesis of the Danish overseas trade and the charting of its first trading companies. Businessmen who had gained experience in the Dutch Republic knew the production outlets of many Northern European commodities as well as the ins and outs of consumption markets, both for commodities from Southern European and the Levant and from the overseas colonies.39 These two groups of émigré traders were involved in numerous commercial circuits and the voyages they organized and helped to finance could be launched from the “Fortunate City” or alternatively equipped somewhere else, in which case they would either call at Glückstadt on their way to other destinations or finally end their journeys there. Although the two groups were distinct in their cultural and religious makeup and the orientation of their investments was somewhat different, they nonetheless interacted with each other and, on occasion, even collaborated. The first of these maritime circuits connected the Danish emporium by way of the Elbe to the Iberian Peninsula. The 1630 treaty between Spain and Denmark, which had resulted in the appointment of a Habsburg resident responsible for inspecting all ship bottoms en route to the Iberian Peninsula, opened the door for Glückstadt merchants to take part in this trade.40 To illustrate the Danish emporium’s determination to trade with Iberia, its merchants were given permission to freight ships in the United Provinces for a period of four years, a privilege that was denied to the Hanseatic port cities. This had been one of the contested topics in the negotiations between the German urban republics and Gabriel de Roy, Spain’s envoy to the Hansa, Poland, and Denmark. In particular, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Danzig claimed that they were unable to meet the commercial
38 M. Grunwald, Portugiesengräber auf deutscher Erde. Beiträge zur Kultur und Kunstgeschichte [Portuguese tombs on German soil. Contributions to culture and art history], Hamburg: Alfred Janssen, 1902, pp. 128–141. 39 Das Stadtarchiv Glückstadt, Germany, Bürgerbuch. However, it must be noted that the Bürgerbuch gives only the names of those who had sworn an oath to settle permanently in the city, meaning that an unspecified number of individuals operated from the city without burgher rights, that is to say as temporary residents. This was the case, for instance, of skippers from the Netherlands (G. Köhn, “Ostfriesen und Niederländer in der Neugründung Glückstadt von 1620 bis 1652” (East Frisians and Dutch in the newly founded Glückstadt from 1620 to 1652), Hansische Geschichtsblätter 90, pp. 81–83; Köhn, Die Niederlande, p. 310). 40 Köhn, Die Bevölkerung der Residenz, pp. 52–53.
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demands of the Spanish Empire without the input of Dutch shipping.41 This concession to Glückstadt’s merchants, although generous, was fundamentally pragmatic: for how could the newly constructed hub possibly ensure carriage between Portuguese and Spanish ports and the North Sea and Baltic Sea, when the larger and more established Hanseatic towns could not?42 Another caveat of the treaty concerned the absence of any proscriptions (as a matter of fact, of any references whatsoever) regarding the participation of the Sephardim of northern Germany in the trade between the two countries. In view of the fact that the Spanish monarchy championed Catholic orthodoxy and harboured reservations regarding its diasporic crypto-Jewish minority, such an absence is noteworthy.43 The most plausible explanation is that Olivares and his cabinet knew all too well that the Sephardic merchants played an important part in Glückstadt’s trading scene and that, as such, their involvement in trade with Iberia was a foregone conclusion. The fact that the treaty was negotiated by a communal leader of the diaspora is itself revealing. On the one hand, this negotiation shows how certain Sephardim (in this case, Álvaro Dinis) would serve as brokers, both commercial and diplomatic, between the two monarchies, and, on the other, it demonstrates how the religious and ethnic prejudice displayed by the Hispanic monarchy regarding the Jewish converts living in its territories and the Sephardim living outside its borders took a back seat to political and economic pragmatism. But the predictable involvement of the Portuguese Sephardim was not the only ambivalent outcome of the treaty. By bringing their commercial operations to Glückstadt, individuals from the Netherlands could exploit a legal loophole to participate in the Iberian trade. The diplomatic agreement granted protection to those sailing between Glückstadt and Spain, which implicitly included the Dutch investors and carriers that Christian IV had attracted to his free port. Even though the treaty was signed with the aim of putting an end to all Dutch trade with Spain and its empire, the protection provided by the Danish monarchy enabled the United Provinces to continue its involvement in the commercial exchanges between Iberia, Northern Europe, and the Scando-Baltic
41 De Roy’s attempts to recruit the merchants and skippers of Antwerp to the convoyed trade of the almirantazgo, and the endeavours of the urban authorities to set up inspection checkpoints also failed (Elliot, El conde-duque de Olivares, p. 253). 42 Israel, Empires and Entrepôts, pp. 238, 239. 43 Israel draws attention to the fact that in the previous treaty between the Duchy of Holstein and the Hispanic monarchy, signed in 1627, the Sephardim had been expressly forbidden from engaging in trade between the two polities. The 1630 treaty made no mention of them (Israel, “The Politics of International Trade Rivalry”, pp. 239–240).
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regions.44 For any merchant operating from the Dutch Republic who wished to bypass the embargoes and continue trading with their country’s sworn enemy, relocating to Glückstadt, or alternatively finding an agent on commission in the “Fortunate City”, could offer a low-risk and straightforward solution. Despite the Habsburgs’ best efforts to push trade away from the United Provinces and towards neutral or allied ports such as Glückstadt, evidence confirms that the Dutch staple market successfully integrated itself into the commercial exchanges between Iberia and the Danish-Holstein emporium. As described above, merchants operating in the Dutch staple market established agents at Glückstadt in order to continue forwarding Scandinavian and Baltic goods from the republic to Iberia and the Mediterranean regions. Furthermore, via representatives operating in the “Fortunate City”, Dutch businessmen could export goods brought from Portugal and Spain into the markets of the Elbe region. For example, in 1642, Isaac van Nut, an Amsterdam merchant, hired the skipper Jansen van Amsterdam and his ship de Liefde to sail from Amsterdam to the salt-exporting hub of Setúbal, and later to Glückstadt, where the cargo loaded at the Portuguese port would be disembarked.45 With Baltic and Northern European commodities being exported to Iberia through the Danish emporium, Portuguese colonial staples like sugar also found their way to Glückstadt. Following the end of the Twelve Years’ Truce, a merchant vessel laden with this commodity was seized by Dutch men-of-war, and the proprietors of the cargo were forced to appoint agents to retrieve it from the authorities in the Netherlands. According to powers of attorney issued on 23 September 1622 in Glückstadt, Gonçalo Lopes Coutinho entrusted his brother, Francisco Coutinho,46 a Portuguese merchant in Amsterdam, with the task of reclaiming from the Admiralty of Zeeland the 45
44 About the protection provided by the Danish monarchy for trade ventures, see K. Wirta, “Dark Horses of Business: Overseas Entrepreneurship in Seventeenth-Century Nordic Trade in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, Unpublished”, PhD thesis, Leiden: Leiden University, 2018. 45 Stadssarchief Amsterdam (SAA) Notarieel Archief (NA): SAA NA: 1569, fol. 493, 17 December 1642. 46 Another close relative of Lopes Coutinho, his brother-in-law, Álvaro de Azevedo, was a prominent business entrepreneur in Portugal. A native of Oporto, Azevedo traded extensively in Brazilian sugar, and, following his move to Lisbon, he later became a state contractor in the Portuguese capital, which was a sign of considerable business savvy. Among the contracts he secured from the state was the farm of the royal brazil wood monopoly, which he exploited between 1632 and 1637. Since many of the tropical commodities that Álvaro de Azevedo traded in were primarily sold in export markets in Northern Europe, it is not a surprise that he relied on his relatives in the North Sea and Baltic Sea regions to receive and market the cargoes he shipped from Portugal and its empire.
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boxes of sugar that had been dispatched to him from Oporto on board the ship King David.47 Although the end of the Eighty Years’ War, in 1648, and the lifting of the Spanish Habsburg embargos ended much of Glückstadt’s competitive advantage as far as the Iberian trade was concerned, the “Fortunate City” continue to serve as a hub for the shipment of goods between the Dutch staple market and Iberia. For instance, in 1665, Jerónimo Nunes da Costa, the famous agent of the Portuguese crown in Amsterdam, hired the ship Copenhagen and its skipper Jacob Erasmus for a voyage from Amsterdam to Glückstadt, where a series of merchandises were brought on board, and from there to Lisbon.48 The contents of the cargo are unclear, but the possibility that naval wares, arms, and ammunition were to be found in the ship’s bottoms cannot be ruled out, since Nunes da Costa, in his capacity as diplomatic and commercial agent, was often involved in the procurement of military equipment for the Portuguese Crown.49 The operations of the Dutch merchant community of Glückstadt extended from the Iberian Peninsula through Schleswig-Holstein and the Elbe to the Baltic Sea and Arkhangelsk in Russia, where tar, timber, and furs were acquired.50 In June 1628, the notorious Dutch wholesaler, Balthasar de Moucheron, fitted-out the ship Sint-Pieter for a voyage between Arkhangelsk and Sanlúcar de Barrameda,
47 SAA NA: 5579, fol. 48–48v., 3 February 1623. For more deeds involving Lopes Coutinho from Glückstadt, see E.M. Koen, “Amsterdam Notarial Deeds”, Studia Rosenthaliana 33 (1999) 1, deed no. 3596. One of Glückstadt’s earliest Sephardic entrepreneurs, Lopes Coutinho or Jacob Coronel, was responsible for setting up several manufacturing sites in the city, amongst which a sugar refinery (F. Frade, As Relações Sociais e Económicas [Social and economic relations], p. 305). On members of Amsterdam’s Portuguese nation claiming prizes of war before Dutch admiralties, see C. Antunes, J. Roitman, “A War of Words: Sephardic Merchants, (Inter) national Incidents, and Litigation in the Dutch Republic, 1580–1640”, Jewish Culture and History 16 (2015) 1, pp. 1–23. 48 J. Israel, “The Diplomatic Career of Jeronimo Nunes da Costa: An Episode in DutchPortuguese Relations of the Seventeenth Century”, in: Conflicts of Empires. Spain, the Low Countries and the Struggle for World Supremacy. 1585–1713, London: The Hambledon Press, 1997, p. 171. The Nunes da Costa family’s links to the “Fortunate City” harkens back to the 1620s, when Jerónimo’s father, Duarte Nunes da Costa, resided for a period in Glückstadt before settling in Hamburg. In 1639, he arranged for a sizeable shipment of gunpowder to be moved from the emporium to Spain. He would continue to supply the Portuguese crown with arms and munitions after 1640 (J. Israel, “Duarte Nunes da Costa (Jacob Curiel) of Hamburg, Sephardi Nobleman and Communal Leader, 1585–1664”, in: Israel, Empires and Entrepôts, pp. 341–342). 49 SAA NAA: 1543, fol. 7. 15 October 1665. 50 J. W. Veluwenkamp, Archangel: Nederlandse ondernemers in Rusland, 1550–1785 [Arkhangelsk: Dutch entrepreneurs in Russia, 1550–1785], Amsterdam: Balans, 2000.
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the seaport that served the city of Seville. Because the Spanish embargoes were in full effect by this point, the ship was registered as having sailed from Glückstadt under the skipper Cornelis Lutssen, who appeared as a resident of Glückstadt.51 Five years previously, in May 1623, Blauwe Druijf (with a capacity of 60 last), under the command of skipper Cornelis Mieussen, set sail from Zaandam for a voyage between Arkhangelsk and Glückstadt.52 One of the most revealing examples of trading expeditions to Arkhangelsk were those involving the notorious Dutch merchant Gabriel Marselis, who settled in Denmark and became an influential figure in the country’s mercantile scene. In 1658, he fitted-out a ship for a voyage from Amsterdam to Arkhangelsk with a stopover in Glückstadt, entrusting the skipper Jacob Ijsbrants and his ship de Oyvaer (with a capacity of 200 last) with a large quantity of rye. The returning cargo was to be unloaded in Glückstadt and in all likelihood repackaged and forwarded elsewhere.53 The case of Gabriel Marselis is worth mentioning because it unveils the extensive political clout that affluent businessmen from the United Provinces could gain in the Danish monarchy, together with the role that the city of Glückstadt played in their upward trajectory. Gabriel, who represented the interests of the Marselis family in Denmark, became one of the crown’s main creditors and one of the wealthiest merchant dynasties in the Scandinavian realm. In Glückstadt, the Elbe customs duties were farmed out to him and he also secured contracts from the government to build a cannon factory and supply the city’s arsenal with arms and munitions.54 Moreover, along with another entrepreneur, Albert Baltser Berns, he was hired to run the Glückstadt shipyards built for Christian IV’s fleets.55 The Dutch merchants in the city also received patents to launch voyages to Finnmark (present-day northern Norway), Greenland, and Iceland.56 Iceland, in particular, was one of the most common destinations for trading voyages undertaken from the Holstein river port.57 In 1670, skipper Pouwel Andriez of the ship Ruyte was dispatched by the Amsterdam freighter Theodor van der Meijden to
51 SAA NA: 636, fol. 76, 22 June 1628. 52 SAA NA: 220, fol. 193, 01 May 1623. 53 SAA NA: 1539, fol. 221, 23 July 1658. 54 Jespersen, A Revolution, p. 105; Köhn, Die Niederlande, p. 311. 55 Bellamy, Christian IV and his Navy, pp. 119–120, 123, 131. 56 Rigsarkivet (RA), Copenhagen (C) (henceforth RAC), 276 Regeringskancelliet i Glückstadt, 1630–1703 Akter. Vedr. Glückstad by og fæstning, 146, file, 2 Nr 3 Conv. 4. 57 SAA NA: 1522, fol. 58, 17 March 1672; SAA NA, 3042, fol. 82, 21 March 1670.
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Iceland, where he would pick up an unspecified cargo that he would subsequently disembark at Glückstadt before returning to the republic.58 Dutch ship captains were similarly important in the emporium’s trade with European entrepôts like Hamburg and London, For example, in 1639, Balthasar and Jan Coymans, from another well-known Dutch merchant house, hired skipper Aldert Rijnders to carry a cargo of pepper from Hamburg down the Elbe to Glückstadt.59 In 1659, the Amsterdam merchant Jacob Marchant sent skipper Sibolt Andriez with the ship de Liefde to Glückstadt and from there to London.60 These examples of trading ventures involving Glückstadt show how the emporium’s foreign communities made use of the legal and diplomatic framework put in place by Christian IV and maintained by Frederick III in order to continue and even to expand their international trade ventures. Through the savvy of these merchants (trading on their own account and serving as correspondents for investors based elsewhere), the newly founded “Fortunate City” quickly became part of the commercial mechanism that ensured that goods flowed from the Baltic region and Scandinavia to Iberia and the Mediterranean. This included not only European commodities but also colonial produce. With regard to the latter, synergy between the political authorities and businessmen would assume yet another feature, since Glückstadt was also a cradle of Denmark’s first efforts into colonial company charting.
Glückstadt’s Corporate Trade and the Transnational Composition of the Danish Overseas Ventures The opportunity to settle and conduct business from Glückstadt was an asset because it provided immigrant merchants from the northern Low Countries with diplomatic protection in the event that they were caught breaching the laws of the Dutch Republic. This type of protection was particularly welcome since Denmark planned to launch several voyages from Glückstadt to Lower Guinea Coast and Gold Coast, two areas that were included in the charter of the Dutch West India Company (West-Indische Compagnie, WIC). The Danish administration knew all too well that the WIC would consider such expeditions as
58 SAA NA: 3043, fol. 79. 18 March 1670. 59 SAA NA: 682, fol. 314, 11 November 1639. 60 SAA NA: 1540, fol. 105, 18 November 1659.
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breaches of its monopolistic rights of trade and settlement in those regions and therefore would punish Dutchmen sailing under a Danish flag as interlopers.61 Thanks to the privileges extended to visitors and émigrés from the northern Low Countries in 1657, the crews of these overseas voyages were placed under the diplomatic protection of the Danish state, something that required the WIC to abide by a different jurisdiction whenever it caught them trespassing on the western coast of Africa.62 The reliance on Dutch skippers and traders as well as credit to enhance Glückstadt’s maritime trade was not unique, conforming to a broader Nordic trend. The overseas ventures of the two Nordic monarchies during the early modern period depended extensively on Dutch input, particularly those during the seventeenth century, when entrepreneurs knowledgeable of the Dutch staple market began to take on roles as as directors, ship crews, and administrative officials. This phenomenon is hardly surprising, considering the degree of cross-migration between the Netherlands and Scandinavia. If Dutch capital and know-how were behind the first colonial voyages and chartered trading companies of both Denmark and Sweden, Scandinavians were equally to be found in great numbers throughout the hierarchies of the United East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC) and WIC.63 Glückstadt was closely linked to the early days of Denmark’s overseas and colonial ventures. After a few promising voyages to the western coast of Africa in the late 1640s, financed in part with Dutch capital, the charting of a regular
61 The charter of the WIC banned residents in the republic from investing in, being involved in the organization of, and seeking a job in any foreign colonial enterprises that stood at odds with the commercial and political interests of the United Provinces. On interloping in the WIC jurisdiction, see R. Paesie, Lorrendrayen op Africa. De illegale goederen- en slavenhandel op West-Afrika tijdens het achttiende-eeuwse handelsmonopolie van de West-Indische Compagnie, 1700–1734 [Interlopers in Africa: The illegal trade of goods and slaves in West Africa during the eighteenth-century trade monopoly of the Dutch West India Company, 1700–1734], Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 2005. 62 Wirta, Dark Horses of Business, chapter 2. 63 E. Gøbel, “Danes in the Service of the Dutch East India Company in the Seventeenth Century”, International Journal of Maritime History 16 (2004) 17, pp. 77–94; K. Glamann, “The Danish East India Company”, in: M. Mollat (ed.), Societés et compagnies de commerce en orient et dans l’océan indien, Paris: SEVPEN, 1970, pp. 472–473; O. Feldbæk, “No Ship for Tranquebar for Twenty-Nine Years. Or: The Art of Survival of a Mid-Seventeenth Century European Settlement in India”, in: Ptak et al. (eds), Emporia, pp. 30–31; G. Nováky, Handelskompanier och kompanihandel – Svenska Afrikakompaniet 1649–1663. En studie i feodal handel [Trading companies and company trade: Swedish Africa Company 1649–1663: A study in feudal trade], Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1990; Wirta, Dark Horses of Business.
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trading company began to be discussed, with the “Fortunate City” being considered as a location for its headquarters.64 At first, the crown opted, however, not to charter a company, but rather to license a series of overseas voyages from several ports that were in both Denmark and the monarchy’s German territories, Glückstadt being one of them.65 In September 1656, a sea-pass was issued for the ship die Blind Fortuna, which was fitted-out by three residents: the brothers Henry and Martin Baers and Gerhard Bremer.66 One year later, it was Gabriel Marselis’ turn to receive permission to equip four vessels and set sail from the emporium to the western coast of Africa.67 It was not until 20 May 1659 that Frederick III issued a charter to an African company. This was the first corporate trading entity in the Danish Atlantic, coming to be known as the Glückstadt Company, after the city in which its operations were based. The company received the right to trade, to appoint administrative personnel, and to manage the fort of Carolusborg on the western coast of Africa as well as to establish diplomatic relations with autochthonous powers. Although at this time one-third of the capital came mainly from Hamburg and Copenhagen, the company still relied extensively on Dutch skills and expertise.68 A perfect example of the international makeup of Glückstadt’s corporate Guinea trade was the company ship Fortuna. The cargo was owned by Jürgen Busch and Martin Rolant, two Dutchmen, while the co-captain of the ship was Peter Diercks, a Swede, and the shipowner was Frantz Gieselbrecht von Parchen, from Mecklenburg.69 Throughout the 1660s, the Glückstadt Company sent annually two to three ships to the coast. These numbers were more modest than those of their English and Dutch counterparts, but they show how the Danes were slowly, but steadily, consolidating their presence.70 However, the good fortune of the 1660s did not last. Despite some initial promise, the Glückstadt Company fell prey to its high fixed operational costs while struggling to raise capital and broaden its 64 For the original plans of Denmark’s Atlantic expansion, see Nørregård, Danish Settlement, pp. 11–15; Sieveking, “Die Glückstädter Guineafahrt”. 65 Nørregård, Danish Settlement, p. 13. 66 RAC, Tyske Kancelliet Indenrigske Afdeling (TKIA), A10, Patenten 1655, 56: 340; Nørregård, Danish Settlement, p. 13. 67 Ibid., p. 15. 68 Ibid., pp. 21–28. 69 Bürgerbuch, 4 August 1660. 70 The Bürgerbuch shows that several ships were equipped and licensed in Glückstadt during that decade.
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pool of investors. The construction and maintenance of the company’s forts, the payment of annual tribute to the local African rulers, and the expenses of fitting-out armed ships and acquiring cargoes all contributed to the depletion of the company’s finances.71 By the 1670s, it was clear that the company was not profitable for its shareholders. It is not the purpose of this chapter to revisit the causes of the demise of the first Danish chartered company for the overseas Atlantic trade. Suffice to say that, in 1672, the Glückstadt Company was dissolved and subsequently relocated to Copenhagen, where a new West IndiesGuinea trading corporation was established.72 Despite the operational and financial problems that plagued the Glückstadt Company, it succeeded in providing Denmark with a permanent foothold on the western African coast. With forts in West Africa and plantation colonies in the Caribbean (Saint Thomas and Saint John, acquired in 1672 and 1675 respectively), Denmark became a player in the transatlantic commerce of slaves and cash crops. For the city of Glückstadt, the relocation of the eponymous company proved less significant than one might think. This was mainly because the merchant networks operating through Glückstadt were more interested in making a quick profit with bartering expeditions than maintaining expensive forts and settlements on the coast.73 Since the new Copenhagen-based company also suffered from the same financial and operational problems, the crown was forced to return to the regime of voyage licensing. Upon paying fee, privately fittedout vessels were allowed to sail to the Guinea coast from several Danish ports, Glückstadt amongst them.74 In 1689, the Danish king appointed a Portuguese Sephardic émigré from Amsterdam, Moses Joshua Henriques, as the person responsible for the operations of the new Danish West India Company in the city of Glückstadt.75 This
71 Nørregård, Danish Settlement, pp. 22, 23. 72 Ibid., pp. 25–28. 73 Sieveking, “Die Glückstädter Guineafahrt”, p. 25. 74 O. Feldbæk and O. Justesen, Kolonierne i Asien og Afrika [Colonies in Asia and Africa], Copenhagen: Politiken, 1980, p. 334. For example, on 4 April 1679, a ship fitted-out by members of the Portuguese and Dutch “nation” bound for the Guinea Coast and then Saint Thomas set sail from Glückstadt (Bürgerbuch, 4 April 1679). In the 1680s, the governor of the Copenhagen-based company complained that Hamburg merchants sailing with Glückstadt licences appeared regularly on the coast, harming the company’s interests (O. Justesen [ed.], Danish Sources for the History of Ghana 1657–1754, vol. 1, Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2005, pp. 59–60). 75 The appointment letter, RAC, TKIA, 1670–1770 – Inländische registratur 1685–1686, B 12.10; the petition by Moses RAC, Regeringskancelliet i Glückstadt, 1630–1703, Akter. Vedr. Glückstad by og fæstning 146.
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appointment was the corollary of Henriques’ ongoing commitment to the Glückstadt-based Africa trade, which he supported ever since he had first settled in the city during the 1650s.76 Already during the 1660s, he had established a partnership with the Amsterdam skippers Adrian Thuersen, Peter Diedricksen, Friedrich Eyman, and Jacob Jansen to send several ships from Glückstadt to the Guinea coast and to the Portuguese island of São Tomé, using passports he had secured from the crown.77 The condition of the Danish overseas trade at the turn of the century demonstrates the persistence of two trends that had begun with the creation of the city of Glückstadt almost three-quarters of century previously: the importance of Dutch expertise and the Portuguese-Sephardic contribution to the commercial expansion of Denmark. At the same time, it also exemplifies the existing potential for cross-cultural engagements in the emporiums of the North Sea as well as the ways in which cooperation across religious and national boundaries was crucial to the business life of such port towns.78
Conclusion Contrary to the claim of Maria Fusaro, Livorno was not a “unique experiment in early modern Europe: a city populated with foreigners and designed to cater to them”. In fact, a similar experiment was conducted at the Danish-Holstein emporium of Glückstadt.79 The half-forgotten “Fortunate City” was a multifaceted space that was set up in order to perform different roles within the Danish king’s dynastic ambitions. The city was simultaneously a customs collection post, a garrison town, and a trading emporium. It was the latter function, however, that
76 H. Kellenbenz, Sephardim an der unteren Elbe. Ihre wirtschaftliche und politische Bedeutung vom Ende des 16. bis zum Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts [Sephardim on the lower Elbe. Their economic and political importance from the end of the 16th to the beginning of the 18th century], Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1958, p. 161. 77 Bürgerbuch, 17 August 1677, 4 July 1679, 10 September 1679 and 30 October 1682. 78 On the frequency and importance of cross-cultural trade in Western European port cities during the early modern period, see, e.g., C. Antunes, “Cross Cultural Business Cooperation in the Dutch Trading World, 1580–1776: A View from Amsterdam’s Notarial Contracts”, in: F. Trivellato et al. (eds.), Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000– 1900, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 150–168; M. Fusaro, “Cooperating Mercantile Networks in the Early Modern Mediterranean”, The Economic History Review 65 (2012) 2, pp. 701–718; Pottering, “The Economic Activities of the Portuguese”, pp. 12–14. 79 Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire, p. 99.
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best showcased Glückstadt’s outward-looking character and that truly placed the city on the map. By luring some of the most dynamic merchant communities of the day to this maritime hub, successive Danish kings sought to use the networks and know-how of these businessmen to further their own political and commercial designs, both in Denmark and the upper Elbe as well as in the Baltic and overseas. Through a combination of fiscal and religious policies, together with the input of entrepreneurs from different backgrounds, a small town – created ex novo and deeply embedded in a local and regional context – could launch itself into international commodity chains and claim a stake in Europe’s international and colonial trade. Despite being established from above by a founding father-like figure, Christian IV, the city was quickly appropriated from below and was progressively reshaped by religious refugees and scattered communities of traders, financiers, and seafarers. Although this river port never reached the economic and demographic heights of the major Atlantic entrepôts of the age, it was undoubtedly relevant to affluent and well-connected merchant houses and networks. High-profile figures such as the Marselis, the Nunes da Costa from Holland, Teixeira de Sampaio from the Sephardic community of Hamburg, and Álvaro Dinis not only were aware of the small hub’s existence, but also made use of the advantageous conditions that it offered them. In the process, these figures and many anonymous individuals contributed to the strengthening and of the commercial outreach of the Duchy of Holstein and Denmark as well as to the overseas expansion of the monarchy. Ultimately, Glückstadt shows how cross-regional and transcontinental connections can be found even in the unlikeliest of places, such as a relatively small maritime emporium with no previous experience of world trade. In this half-forgotten hub, the global can truly be seen in the local. Additionally, this chapter has shown how political decision makers, entrepreneurs, and businessmen were directly responsible for transforming local port towns into places where goods, people, and knowledge were brought from far away and exchanged with distant regions and other continents. Contrary to conventional historical accounts of urban development, especially of port cities, those who lived and conducted their business there were not simply at the mercy of larger economic forces. Instead, they were able to study and understand the geopolitical and commercial circumstances before them and to actively devise and pursue strategies for amassing wealth and political capital.
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3 Global Materials, Contact Zones, and Imitation: The Making of Metal Commodities in Eighteenth-Century Sweden In March 1755, the state-appointed supervisor (Directeur) for the Swedish metal trades, Samuel Schröder, received a case sent from London by his travelling colleague Reinhold R. Angerstein. As noted in Schröder’s diary, it contained “folding-knife models, as well as tortoise- and nacre shells”. He reported this delivery to his employer, the Swedish Board of Trade (Kommerskollegium), also mentioning that one additional case with “models and tools” was left in Gothenburg pending the further transport to Stockholm.1 These goods were not for Schröder’s private use, however, but intended for provincial cutlery workshops. A few weeks later, while touring central Sweden, Schröder visited the Tunafors knife works in Eskilstuna, where he inspected one folding-knife workshop that had been set up for two hired British workers. In order to promote the “English manner of work”, Schröder promised the proprietor, Johan Hallenius, to procure yet other materials from London. New merchandise arrived from England in September, including polishing materials, grindstones, and about half a ton of “cocoa wood”. Hallenius was quickly provided with the wood, as was his competitor, Eric Westerberg, at the Gusum works in Östergötland. Schröder noted that this wood was to be “used for inferior table-knife hafts of the English taste”.2 The Directeur repeatedly described similar episodes in his diaries during the following two decades. He often referred to imported artefacts as “models” that were to be “imitated” (eftergöras) in order to supply the domestic market with metal commodities and craft utensils as well as to promote exports. In line with this protectionist ambition, Schröder was also assigned the task to found a “model house” (modellkammare) in Stockholm for the growing collections of metalwares.3
1 Samuel Schröder, “Dagbok rörande Directeurs-Sysslan öfver Jern- Stål- och Metall-Fabrikerne i Riket af S. Schröder. Åren 1753–1771” [“Diary Regarding the Supervision of the Kingdom’s Iron-, Steel-, and Metal Works, 1753–1771”], (vol.) I, 1755, pp. 15–16, Handskriftssamlingen, X.283, 1–3, Kungliga biblioteket (KB) Stockholm. 2 Ibid., pp. 27–38, 139–141. 3 Ibid., 1754, pp. 178–179. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-003
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Examples like these point to the importance of both mobility and intermediary local spaces in a changing European production landscape. This was a period when craftwork and manufacturing were increasingly affected by intensifying commerce, the influx of colonial goods, and growing demand for both fashionable luxuries and cheaper substitutes.4 The comprehensive effects of a “consumer revolution” and globalizing trade were also noticeable in Scandinavia.5 On this subject, Leif Runefelt emphasizes the persistent debates on consumption that spanned the “long eighteenth century” in Sweden.6 Less is known about the everyday use of new commodities and the usage of imported materials and devices in the Swedish manufacturing trades. This chapter focuses on the latter aspect, but the intention is also to give insights into the circulation of ready-made products, which were often “global” in their material structure.7 A few studies have indeed addressed these matters. Marshall Lagerquist’s exploration of the furniture trade in Stockholm is one early and important contribution,8 while recent investigations have discussed the importation of raw materials for the primary Swedish manufacturing sector: the textile trades.9 The practical procedures of using and combining materials
4 See, e.g., J. Brewer and R. Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods, London: Routledge, 1993; M. Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; J. Styles, “Product Innovation in Early Modern London”, Past & Present 168 (2000), pp. 124–169. 5 L. Müller, “Kolonialprodukter i Sveriges handel och konsumtionskultur, 1700–1800” [“The Consumer Revolution and Colonial Goods in Eighteenth-Century Sweden”], Historisk Tidskrift 124 (2004) 2, pp. 225–248; K. Rönnbäck, “An Early Modern Consumer Revolution in the Baltic?”, Scandinavian Journal of History 35 (2010) 2, pp. 177–197. 6 L. Runefelt, Att hasta mot undergången: anspråk, flyktighet, förställning i debatten om konsumtion i Sverige 1730–1830 [Rushing towards the Downfall: Pretension, Volatility, and Dissimulation in the Swedish Consumption Debate, 1730–1830], Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2015. 7 On this matter, see especially A. Gerritsen and G. Riello, “The Global Lives of Things: Material Culture in the First Global Age”, in: A. Gerritsen and G. Riello (eds.), The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World, London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 1–28. 8 M. Lagerquist, Den yrkesmässiga möbelhandeln i Sverige intill år 1780: studier i Rokokotidens möbelhantverk och möbeldistribution [The Professional Furniture Trade in Sweden until 1780: Studies of the Making and Distribution of Furniture during the Rococo Period], Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1981. 9 L.-A. Aldman, En merkantilistisk början: Stockholms textila import 1720–1738 [A Mercantilistic Beginning: The Import of Textiles to Stockholm 1720–1738], Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2008; K. Nyberg (ed.), Till salu: Stockholms textila handel och manufaktur 1722–1846 [For Sale: The Textile Trade and Manufactures in Stockholm 1722–1846], Stockholm: Stads- och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2010.
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are, however, largely uncharted, as is the associated diffusion of skills and “mediating devices”10 such as tools. An exploration of the eighteenth-century metal trades enhances our understanding of these processes and of the ways in which they interacted with an economic context in flux. This orientation suggests a bridging of the domains of policy making and manufacturing. The use of imported commodities was a matter of thorough regulation in early modern Europe, so also in Sweden, where the state took numerous active measures from the 1720s and onwards. A Swedish-style Navigation Act (Produktplakatet) was issued in 1724, and it was followed by a series of import bans, tax duties, and decrees targeting “luxury” consumption. One manifest purpose with these policies was to strengthen the domestic industries, an alignment favoured in groups united by the protectionist agenda of the Hat Party (Hattarna). The manufacturing sector was given a boost during the midcentury with the issuing of new regulations in 1739 and the creation of a supervising institutional network. The Board of Trade was complemented by an Office of Manufacturing (Manufakturkontoret) and by local judicial bodies (Hallrätter).11 The metal trades were increasingly affiliated to this “System”, as Schröder later referred to it, during the 1740s and 1750s. Two supervisory offices were instituted in 1753, and Schröder was authorized to oversee the fine metalworking (finsmide), which comprised both provincial manufactories and urban workshops not tied to the jurisdiction of guilds.12 As illustrated by the introductory examples, the Swedish state was also involved in everyday trading and manufacturing. Besides, the authorities had interests in the construction of workshops, the European journeys of artisans, and the recruitment of skilled foreign workers. Subsidies were made available through a special fund (manufakturfonden), but decisions were often preceded by long discussions in various political bodies. On the flip side of the coin, it can be noted that artisans were active in promoting their experience and technical know-how to the authorities, especially during the lengthy diets held in 10 On “mediating devices” and manufacturing, see K. Alder, Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763–1815, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, pp. 139–153. 11 P. Nyström, Stadsindustriens arbetare före 1800-talet [Workers in the Urban Industry before the 19th Century], Stockholm: Tiden, 1955, pp. 99–137, 188–219; Aldman, En merkantilistisk början, pp. 43–59. Hallrätter were established already in 1722. 12 Schröder, “Dagbok”, III, 1767, pp. 43–51; S. Schröderstierna, Berättelser över de finare järnstål- och metallfabrikerna i Sverige åren 1754–1759, I, II [Reports about the Fine Iron-, Steel-, and Metal Works in Sweden, 1754–1759], ed. G. Malmborg, Stockholm, 1925, introduction by C. Sahlin, pp. V–XII; M. Jansson, Making Metal Making: Circulation and Workshop Practices in the Swedish Metal Trades, 1730–1775, Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2017, pp. 86–114.
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Stockholm.13 This negotiation and its relation to a changing materiality of manufacturing has featured to a much more limited degree in Swedish historical research. Again, the metal trades offer revealing cases which make it possible to jointly discuss practices of policing, knowledge making, and artisanal work, in line with several studies of other contexts in early modern Europe.14 In this respect, two concepts stand out as particularly relevant: imitation and circulation.
Imitation, Circulation, and the Metal Trades Imitation (imitation) was a term that was used in eighteenth-century Sweden as in other European countries and that did not always carry positive connotations. As shown by Runefelt, it can be found with similar terms in texts that criticized the spread of “luxury” and “superfluity”, above all in lower standing social groups. Still, Runefelt also distinguishes between the terms efterapa (aping) and efterfölja (following). The latter was used to describe the more “active and virtuous” imitation in arts and sciences.15 Schröder’s use of the word eftergöra (do/make after16) can be seen as bridging the spheres of policy making, consumption, and production. Eftergöra not only highlights political ambitions of import substitution, but also draws attention to activities of making and using as well as to associated endeavours of experimentation, adaptation, and exhibition.17 In keeping with recent research, the essence of imitation must be
13 Jansson, Making Metal Making, pp. 57–63, 176–181. 14 See, e.g., L. Hilaire-Pérez, “Technology as a Public Culture in the Eighteenth Century: The Artisans’ Legacy”, History of Science 45 (2007) 2, pp. 135–153; P. O. Long, Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400–1600, Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2011, pp. 94–126; P. Bertucci, Artisanal Enlightenment: Science and the Mechanical Arts in Old Regime France, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017, pp. 17–23, 79–103, 145–175. 15 Runefelt, Att hasta mot undergången, pp. 54–64. 16 According to Svenska Akademiens ordbok (Swedish Academy Dictionary), the words eftergöra and imitera can be used synonymously – regarding both artistic and literary work and manufacturing. See https://www.saob.se/artikel/?seek=efterg%C3%B6ra&pz=1; https:// www.saob.se/artikel/?seek=imitera&pz=1 (accessed 17 August 2018). 17 On this subject, see, e.g., M. Berg, “From Imitation to Invention: Creating Commodities in Eighteenth-Century Britain”, Economic History Review 55 (2002) 1, pp. 2–3, 15–26; L. HilairePérez, “Diderot’s Views on Artists’ and Inventors’ Rights: Invention, Imitation and Reputation”, British Journal for the History of Science 35 (2002) 2, pp. 134–143; L. Pérez, “Technology, Curiosity and Utility in France and in England in the Eighteenth Century”, in: B. Bensaude-Vincent and C. Blondel (eds.), Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment, Farnham: Ashgate, 2008, pp. 25–42.
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sought in the nexus of institutional arrangements, creativity related to manufacturing processes and products, and new trends in trading and consumption.18 Such an approach also benefits from exploring various interrelated movements: travels, workforce mobility, and the transportation of objects and materials.19 Imitation, in this sense, has more to do with “circulation” than with one-way transfers. It involved numerous intermediaries, multiple forms of “embodiment”, and varieties of “learning, knowing and doing”.20 In line with Kapil Raj, I am interested in how the negotiation and reconfiguration of knowledge, practices, and things on the local level was related to wider – sometimes global – circulatory processes. This is done by tracing the developments in several metalworking “contact zones”.21 Investigations of the Swedish iron trade undertaken by Chris Evans and Göran Rydén demonstrate how Swedish metal-making practices were integrated into a global economy during the early modern period.22 As indicated above, the ample export of bar iron (and copper) was accompanied by attempts to improve the domestic metal refinement during the eighteenth century. These efforts were related to European “study tours” undertaken by junior officials and entrepreneurs with connections to the state apparatus. Impressions were
18 H. Clifford, “Concepts of Invention, Identity and Imitation in the London and Provincial Metal-working Trades, 1750–1800”, Journal of Design History 12 (1999) 3, pp. 241–255; Styles, “Product Innovation”; M. Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century”, Past & Present 182 (2004), pp. 85–142; Berg, Luxury and Pleasure, pp. 44–45, 79–84, 105–110; L. Pérez, “Inventing in a World of Guilds: Silk Fabrics in Eighteenth-Century Lyon”, in: S. R. Epstein and M. Prak (eds.), Guilds, Innovation, and the European Economy, 1400–1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 232–263. 19 See, e.g., L. Hilaire-Pérez and C. Verna, “Dissemination of Technical Knowledge in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era: New Approaches and Methodological Issues”, Technology and Culture 47 (2006) 3, pp. 536–565; G. Riello, Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 160–184. 20 See L. Roberts, “The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Embodiment, Mobility, Learning and Knowing”, in: I. Inkster (ed.), History of Technology, vol. 31, London: Bloomsbury, 2012, pp. 50–64. 21 K. Raj, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 9–22. A similar perspective, building on the exploration of the global itineraries of people, materials, and objects, and their “convergence” in specific “nodes”, is proposed by Pamela Smith; see P. H. Smith, “Nodes of Convergence, Material Complexes, and Entangled Itineraries”, in: P. H. Smith (ed.), Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019, pp. 5–24. 22 Ch. Evans and G. Rydén, Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, Leiden: Brill, 2007; Ch. Evans and G. Rydén, “‘Voyage Iron’: an Atlantic Slave Trade Currency, its European Origins, and West African Impact”, Past & Present 239 (2018), pp. 41–70.
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taken from Germany, France, and, above all, from Britain.23 In an article on the creation of a free town (fristad) for metalworking artisans in Eskilstuna during the 1770s, Rydén emphasizes the significance of Schröder’s journey in England 1748/49, with visits to Birmingham and Sheffield. Instead of speaking about one single transfer, however, he relates the “corrections” suggested by the Directeur to “a long sequence of translations”.24 Other investigations have added more layers to these discussions, by accentuating the impact of artisans’ journeys and the spread of craft techniques and ideas related to production.25 Still, our knowledge about these processes (in their different concrete forms) is partial: how were new techniques adapted and reconfigured in different localities? In what ways were practices of imitation influencing, and influenced by, the changing relations between authorities and artisans? Starting from questions like these, this chapter explores the making of metal commodities in mid-eighteenth-century Sweden, by following the circulation and local interaction of people, materials, devices, and skills. In doing this, one aim is to show how manufacturing workshops were “contact zones” in their own right. In agreement with Pamela Smith’s findings, they are understood as spaces for collaboration and encounters, where knowledge “was transmitted by means of observation, imitation and discussion”.26 Workshop-based activities must, however, also be related to a larger “economy of imitation”,27 which comprised urban shops, ports, and the premises of state boards. In order to make
23 S. Rydberg, Svenska studieresor till England under Frihetstiden [Swedish Students in England during the Swedish Era of Liberty, 1718–1772], Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1951; G. Rydén, “The Enlightenment in Practice: Swedish Travellers and Knowledge about the Metal Trades”, in: Sjuttonhundratal 10 (2013), pp. 63–86. 24 G. Rydén, “Eskilstuna Fristad: The Beginnings of an Urban Experiment”, in: G. Rydén (ed.), Sweden in the Eighteenth-Century World: Provincial Cosmopolitans, Farnham: Ashgate, 2013, pp. 141–142. Schröder travelled in Europe between 1748 and 1751. 25 See, e.g., O. Amelin, Medaljens baksida: instrumentmakaren Daniel Ekström och hans efterföljare i 1700–talets Sverige [The Reverse of the Medal: The Mathematical Instrument-Maker Daniel Ekström and his Followers in 18th century Sweden], Uppsala: Institutionen för idé- och lärdomshistoria, Uppsala universitet, 1999; Jansson, Making Metal Making, pp. 141–172. 26 P. H. Smith, “In a Sixteenth-Century Goldsmith’s Workshop”, in: L. Roberts, S. Schaffer, and P. Dear (eds.), The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention from the Late Renaissance to Early Industrialisation, Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2007, pp. 37–44, quotation from p. 37. The understanding of workshops as important spaces for collective knowledge making is also inspired by Pamela Long’s discussion of “trading zones” in early modern Europe – “middle grounds” for the constructive interaction between “learned and skilled individuals”; see Long, Artisan/Practitioners, p. 96. 27 For the quoted term, see Pérez, “Inventing in a World of Guilds”, p. 261.
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arguments clear, my focus is on one specific trade: cutlery making. The manufacturing of cutlery wares diversified during this period; new material combinations and processing techniques were put to use alongside the development of new divisions of labour. Moreover, it covered multiple layers of consumption, ranging from fashionable items to mundane devices.28 The discussion on imitation in early modern Europe has been centred on European “leaders”, notably so Britain, and linked to an increasingly innovative context that contributed in setting the foundations for later industrial growth.29 The making of metalwares is no exception. Maxine Berg points out how metalworking in Birmingham and Sheffield comprised a growing emphasis on skills and flexibility in adapting to changing demands.30 Also highlighting demand, Chris Evans and Alun Withey suggest a “multi-centered” perspective in discussing the British steel trades.31 Such an approach can preferably include other European regions. Imitation in the Swedish metal trades involved circulatory processes, which inform us about intersecting movements and connections between rural and urban practices of work. The discussion below highlights the role of Stockholm, but it also shows how workplaces in the capital were linked to provincial communities and to towns all over Europe. This is made evident by exploring the trajectories of domestic metals, exotic materials, and imported “models”, which were jointly used in cutlery workshops. Some of these objects not only embodied new skills but also state-supported plans to organize work in line with the perceived utility of piecework (styckearbete) – often referred to in Sweden as the “English way” (Engelska sättet).32 The first section functions as an introduction to the metal trades, and it does so by accentuating activities at the ports in Gothenburg and Stockholm.
28 See S. Moore, Cutlery for the Table: A History of British Table and Pocket Cutlery, Sheffield: Hallamshire, 1999, pp. 195–200; B. Brown, “An Introduction to Evolution and Design”, in: P. Brown (ed.), British Cutlery: An Illustrated History of Design, Evolution and Use, London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2001, pp. 14–16; Berg, Luxury and Pleasure, pp. 162–163; J. Unwin, “The Versatility of Bone, Ivory and Horn – their Uses in the Sheffield Cutlery Industry”, Anthropozoologica 49 (2014) 1, pp. 121–132. 29 D. S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 25–33; J. Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1850, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, pp. 99–123. 30 Berg, Luxury and Pleasure, pp. 154–179. 31 Ch. Evans and A. Withey, “An Enlightenment in Steel? Innovation in the Steel Trades of Eighteenth-Century Britain”, Technology and Culture 53 (2012) 3, p. 541. See also Hilaire-Pérez and Verna, “Dissemination of Technical Knowledge”, pp. 543–544. 32 Jansson, Making Metal Making, pp. 127–131.
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Moving on, I discuss imitation and cutlery making in Stockholm during the 1740s and 1750s. The third section focuses on one provincial knife works (knivfabrik) while also exploring the links between urban and provincial practices, the increasing state interest in metalworking, and the export of cutlery wares. I conclude by discussing the rise of new practices of imitation, following on from the economic crisis in Sweden during the 1760s.
Entering the Manufacturing Economy Numerous metal-manufacturing workshops were founded in Swedish provinces and in Stockholm during the mid-eighteenth century. Some produced consumer goods like table cutlery and trinkets, while others were specialized in making items such as instruments, tools, and pins. The common denominator for these crafts was the use of metals, of which there were ample domestic supplies. However, when studying the making of ready-made metalwares closely, it can be noted that many craftsmen used a variety of materials of different origins: hardwood and ivory, nacre, and tortoiseshell. The global context of material supplies also caught the attention of state agents and individuals who favoured expanding the domestic industries. The first professor in economics at Uppsala University and also a former official at the Board of Trade, Anders Berch, managed to put together a large quantity of material specimens (see Figure 1) to be used for
Figure 1: Ebony sample from Anders Berch’s Theatrum Oeconomico-Mechanicum. Source: Nordiska museet, NM.0017648B:1004. Photo: Mats Landin, Nordiska museet.
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educational purposes – a collection named Theatrum Oeconomico-Mechanicum.33 The growing interest in new products and material combinations also gave rise to special “recipes” and instructional texts. Hans Reinhold Gyllenhaal’s “Descriptions in Painting, Lacquering, and Tortoiseshell”, from 1741, included accounts on craftspecific methods, finishing techniques, and the mimicking of exclusive materials: inferior wood could be made “black and shiny like ebony”, iron could be gilded by the use of a curious mixture, and horn could be processed to look like tortoiseshell.34 Berch’s and Gyllenhaal’s undertakings point to the intensifying links among learned associations, state authorities, and artisanal workshops during the period of interest here, often with a mutual focus on various forms of imitation,35 but they do not tell us much about the wide networks involved in the making of new commodities. For example, the trajectories of materials such as ivory and hardwood were integrated into an economic system that connected European trading nodes, West African communities, and Caribbean plantations – that is to say, practices of work and consumption on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.36 This commerce was also commented on by travelling Swedes. In 1741, naval
33 See A. Glöde, Svenska 1700-talsnamn på utländska träslag – artbestämning via jämförelse med samtida träprovssamlingar och mikroskopisk vedartsanalys [18th-century Swedish Names on Foreign Wood – Identifications based on Comparisons with Contemporary Collections of Wood Samples and Microscopic Wood Analysis], MA thesis, Linköping: Tekniska högskolan, Linköpings universitet/Carl Malmsten Centrum för Träteknik och Design, 2002, pp. 13–19, https://docplayer.se/13238979-Svenska-1700-talsnamn-pa-utlandska-traslag.html (accessed 25 September 2019). On Berch’s collection, see also G. Berg, “Anders Berch – en forskar- och lärargestalt i 1700-talets Uppsala” [“Anders Berch – An Outstanding Figure in the Scientific and Teaching World of Eighteenth Century Uppsala”], in: E. Stavenow-Hidemark (ed.), 1700-talstextil: Anders Berchs samling i Nordiska museet [18th Century Textiles: The Anders Berch Collection at the Nordiska museet], Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1990, pp. 9–27. 34 Hans Reinhold Gyllenhaal, “Någre Målnings, Lackwärcks och Skylpadderings-beskrifningar” [“Descriptions in Painting, Lacquering, and Tortoiseshell”], 1741 (with additions by Johan Abraham Gyllenhaal), Handskriftssamlingen, D:1621, Uppsala universitetsbibliotek (UUB). On written “recipes” and craftwork, see also P.H. Smith, “Making things: Techniques and books in early modern Europe”, in: P. Findlen (ed.), Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500–1800, London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 173–203. 35 See R. Benhamou, “Imitation in the Decorative Arts of the Eighteenth Century”, Journal of Design History 4 (1991) 1, pp. 1–13; Hilaire-Pérez, “Diderot’s Views”; Bertucci, Artisanal Enlightenment, pp. 79–103. 36 H. M. Feinberg and M. Johnson, “The West African Ivory Trade during the Eighteenth Century: The ‘ . . . and Ivory’ Complex”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 15 (1982) 3, pp. 435–453; J. L. Anderson, “Nature’s Currency: The Atlantic Mahogany Trade and the Commodification of Nature in the Eighteenth Century”, Early American Studies 2 (2004) 1, pp. 47–80.
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officer Claës Didrik Breitholtz reported about a three-year journey through the Caribbean Sea. Concerned with domestic manufactories, he described goods from the island of Tobago that could be of interest for Swedish traders, including “rare sorts of wood” like ebony, cedar, and mahogany.37 Other materials arrived at Swedish ports through the chartered journeys of the Swedish East India Company (Svenska Ostindiska Companiet, SOIC), founded in 1731. Ships returning to Gothenburg from India and China were not only loaded with tea and porcelain, but also with goods used in the metalworking sector such as nacre and tutanego (crude zinc).38 The Asian trade also offered possibilities for export and re-export. When the ship Prins Carl set off for Surat in 1753, it was loaded with a large selection of iron, steel, and copper goods as well as with merchandise brought to Sweden from London, Amsterdam, and Hamburg, including 676 pieces of “elephant teeth” (ivories).39 These movements highlight the intermediary positions of the ports in Gothenburg and Stockholm. The latter, located in the “middle” of the Swedish realm, which at that time also included Finland, had a particularly favoured position regarding foreign trade.40 Still, the importation of materials was – just like that of finished commodities – subjected to regulation. The activities in the ports were hence also a matter of negotiation and conflict. Petitions submitted by Stockholm craftsmen and manufacturers to the authorities during the 1730s often focused on the need to encourage the domestic production of sought-after commodities. In 1734, the cutlers’ guild complained to King Frederick I about imported knives being sold illegally by grocers, steel-grinders, hucksters, and sailors. The situation was further aggravated by the tolls and duties on
37 Frihetstidens utskottshandlingar (FUh), R. 2766 (1740–41), no. 9, Riksarkivet (RA) Stockholm. 38 Kommerskollegium, handlingar från företag och enskilda, 31:2, RA. 39 Christopher Henric Braad, “Handlingar rörande Swenska handelen til Ost Indien” [“Documents related to the Swedish trade in the East Indies”], no. 3, “Factura öfver Sk:t Pr. Carls ladning til Surat 1752” [“Invoice for Prins Carl, 1752”], Handskriftssamlingen, L:185, UUB. The year given in the original invoice is incorrect. Prins Carl did not leave Gothenburg (on its second voyage to the East Indies) until 1753; see T. Frängsmyr, Ostindiska kompaniet: människorna, äventyret och den ekonomiska drömmen [The Swedish East India Company: People, Adventure, and the Economic Dream], Höganäs: Bra böcker, 1976, pp. 111–118. On SOIC’s trading activities during the eighteenth century, see also L. Müller, Sveriges första globala århundrade – en 1700talshistoria [Sweden’s First Global Century – An 18th-Century History], Stockholm: Dialogos, 2018, pp. 85–153. 40 Finland was part of the Swedish realm until 1809, when it was lost to Russia. The old trading regulations, which favoured Stockholm, were largely repealed during the Diet of 1765/66; see E. F. Heckscher, An Economic History of Sweden, G. Ohlin (trans.), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954, p. 73, 144.
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decorative materials: Swedish knives became more expensive than foreignmade ones despite the good access to steel and iron.41 The updated import bans from 1739 included not only “fine goods of iron and steel” (like cutlery) but also semi-processed ebony and ivory.42 This did not mean that imports ceased, but the regulations still had an effect, according to Lagerquist, with decreasing quantities of ready-made goods and continuing import of raw materials. Compiling data from the Customs Chambers (Sjötullkammare), he notes the links between Stockholm, Gothenburg, and the ports in Rouen, Amsterdam, and London. Materials, like hardwood and ivory, were also imported from Mediterranean and Baltic ports during the mid-century.43 Many of these goods were used in manufacturing workshops and combined with various types of metals and alloys, with the diversification of metal qualities being particularly evident regarding the making of steel.44 The port in Stockholm was a hub in the Swedish and Baltic metal trade, and much of the everyday commerce took place at the iron weighyard (järnvågen), south of the town centre.45 While it was certainly a nexus for the bar iron export, the iron weighyard was also a place for the selection of materials for domestic workplaces. Metals from provincial works could also be bought at warehouses and shipyards in the capital. During his 18 years as Directeur, Schröder often referred to these spaces when promoting the idea of supplying metalworking craftsmen in Sweden with materials of similar qualities as the ones shipped to Britain.46 Moreover, plans were made to export fine iron and steel goods in exchange for exotic commodities. A memo from 1741 discusses the potential to create trading houses in several Levant towns for this purpose.47 These ambitions gained further momentum during the following decades. The making of metal commodities during the mid-eighteenth century thus involved wide social networks of intermediary actors and the circulation of materials and objects, which embodied a variety of skills. It is in tracing these movements that the art of imitation really can be grasped. Moving on from the port into a changing urban context will make evident how metalworking was 41 Skrivelser från Kommerskollegium till Kungl. Maj:t, 1134:9, vol. 37 (1734), RA. 42 Kongl. Maj:ts nådige förordning, angående the utrikes wahror och persedlar, hwilka skola hädanefter til införsel här i riket aldeles wara förbudne [Royal ordinance regarding foreign goods which are henceforth banned from import in this kingdom], Stockholm, 1739. 43 Lagerquist, Den yrkesmässiga möbelhandeln, pp. 156–160, 222–247, 262–275. 44 See Evans and Withey, “An Enlightenment in Steel?”; Jansson, Making Metal Making, pp. 131–138. 45 Evans and Rydén, Baltic Iron, pp. 96–99. 46 Jansson, Making Metal Making, pp. 104–106. 47 FUh, R. 2766, no. 8.
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influenced by journeys and experiences of foreign manufacturing while drawing attention to interactions among spaces for making, using, and trading.
Creativity, Cooperation, and Imitation in Mid-Century Stockholm Privileges awarded to metalworking artisans in Stockholm during the midcentury often mentioned new types of commodities or material combinations; in several cases, where the techniques had been acquired were specified. In offering this information, the authorities attempted to draw clear lines between manufacturing enterprises and the metal guilds.48 The imitation of foreignmade metalwares comprised alterations related to both products and processes. Contemporary descriptions of the “English way” or the “French way” referred not only to the mimicking of imported manufactures, but also to the enlargement of workforces, the application of mechanical devices, and the subdivision of craft procedures in tasks according to a piecework model.49 Some manufacturers relied on the importation of goods and the employment of skilled foreign artisans. Still, these movements must be understood as being connected to regional and local forms of mobility, such as domestic workforce migration and the transportation of metals. Urban workshops were truly “contact zones” where people with different experiences met and where new skills and work methods were adapted and combined. These processes also reveal insight about the fluctuating relations between artisans and supervising authorities: imitation was just as much about promoting oneself in service of the “public” as it was about making solutions in everyday work.50 In line with recent discussions on craftwork and artistic work in early modern European towns, it can be noted that Stockholm was a space for creative encounters and innovation related to metalworking.51
48 See also Nyström, Stadsindustriens arbetare, pp. 264–266. 49 See Hall- och manufakturrätten (Hmr), E3:1–3, Stockholms stadsarkiv (SSA). 50 See also Hilaire-Pérez, “Technology as a Public Culture”, pp. 139–146; Pérez, “Inventing in a World of Guilds”, pp. 242–248; Bertucci, Artisanal Enlightenment, pp. 21–23, 145–175. 51 See, e.g., K. Davids and B. De Munck (eds.), Innovation and Creativity in Late Medieval and Early Modern European Cities, Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. On the processes discussed in this section and the next one, see also Jansson, Making Metal Making, chs. 6–7.
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The Making of English-style Cutlery This dynamic context of manufacturing is well illustrated by the undertakings of cutler Eric Engberg. Supported by public means, he travelled abroad during the late 1730s. He practised cutlery making in London, Sheffield, and Birmingham and afterwards extended his tour to include communities on the European continent. In Solingen, in the western parts of Germany, he was introduced to the making of two types of welded knife steel (Backstoff-steel and Butscher-steel).52 Returning to Stockholm in 1738, he initiated the construction of workshops on Norrmalm for the making of table cutlery in the “English way”. In order to do this, Engberg was in need of imported materials and devices. In 1740, he verified a consignment from London, including 41 pieces of “elephant teeth”, one large piece of “black ebony”, 55 steel bars, grinding and rolling devices, and various tools. These goods had been ordered by Engberg’s patron, commerce councillor Jonas Alströmer, with a letter to the Office of Manufacturing in September 1739. The office contacted Alströmer’s brother-in-law, the London-based merchant Johan Clason Jr., who procured the cutler’s requests and arranged for their freight.53 Some of the goods turned out to be of less use, however. In January 1740, Engberg told the office that the rolling machine was not properly adapted for the making of (silver) hafts. Later, he complained about the ebony: it was “not black enough, but brownish” and therefore unfitting for fine varieties.54 Despite this setback, constructions proceeded during the 1740s. Engberg’s intention was to set up several associated workshops, each staffed by a group of workers who focused upon their particular skills (handlag). Writing to the Diet in 1756, after a second tour in England, the cutler noted that this organizational model – with workers passing on pieces “from and into the hands of each other” – was the reason for the “perfection and lower price” of British metalwares.55 The Hallrätt’s report from 1740 depicted the production at Engberg’s cutlery works as being divided between small teams: some made blades, others made hafts or forks, and one man worked solely with the making of silver ferrules.56 A growing number of workers were recruited during the following years, many of whom came from rural areas or provincial manufactories. Some apprentices were registered at the Hallrätt, to be trained in specific tasks, like
52 On Engberg’s journeys in England, see Jansson, Making Metal Making, pp. 141–172. 53 Manufakturkontoret, Huvudarkivet (ManHuv), D3, vol. 165 (1739–40), no. 71, RA; Manufakturkontoret, Kamrerarekontorets arkiv (ManKam), C3, vol. 284 (1740), fols. 71–72, RA. 54 ManHuv, A1, vol. 46 (1740), fols. 36–37, 136–137, RA. 55 FUh, R. 3077 (1756), fols. 371–383, RA. 56 Hmr, B3:1 (1740), pp. 125–126, SSA.
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finishing or the making of forks.57 This organization of work was put into practice alongside the continuous import of mechanical devices. Again, using his connections with Alströmer and Clason, the cutler imported a grinding machine from London in 1741. When completed, the grinding mill was “powered by horse”, according to the “English manner”, compensating for the poor supply of water power in the capital.58 Schröder later referred to Engberg’s two-floor works as the first of its kind in Sweden.59 The making of English-style cutlery was, however, not bound to the urban context. Engberg’s European journey had been funded by public funds, and he was therefore expected to share his newly acquired skills with other artisans. Some were instructed on a temporary basis in the capital, but the cutler was also ordered to make several journeys to the Vedevåg manufactory in Västmanland. Before his second visit at the large works, he was commanded by the Office of Manufacturing to “instruct the craftsmen in the English way to make knives”. He was also expected to teach the smiths how to make welded knife steel and cutting implements. In return, Engberg was promised the right to take steel, tools, and some workers with him back to the capital. When later questioned by the Board of Trade about the advances made at Vedevåg, he exhibited sawblades and tobacco tools, “steeled in the English way”.60 Some years later, in 1745, a comprehensive inventory listed all the Vedevågmade items that were sold in Stockholm. A large number of tools and household utensils were enumerated, together with fine cutlery wares such as table knives and forks with hafts of hardwood, ivory, and various metal compounds.61 The links between the Stockholm cutlery works and Vedevåg remained strong, regarding both material supplies and the circulation of workers. The two junior officials Daniel Falck and Eric Magnus Wetterblom, who had been instructed by Engberg, left to work at Vedevåg in 1751. One year later, they sent back to the capital jointly made items to be sold by shopkeeper Magnus Wahlbom, including knives finished with ebony and silver.62 By then, other workers had already left Engberg for provincial towns. Johan Zihlfeldt, who had worked both at Vedevåg
57 ManHuv, A1, vol. 50 (1744), pp. 824–828, 1498–1502, RA; ManKam, C3, vol. 313 (1748), fol. 704, RA. 58 ManKam, C3, vol. 288 (1741), fols. 81–87, RA; FUh, R. 2766, report by the Office of Manufacturing to the Diet’s Secret Committee (Sekreta utskottet), p. 162. 59 Schröderstierna, Berättelser (part) I, pp. 39–40. 60 ManHuv, B1, vol. 122 (1739–1740), pp. 667–676, RA; Kommerskollegium, Huvudarkivet (KomHuv), AIaa:110 (1740), pp. 2586–2587, RA. 61 FUh, R. 2901 (1746–1747), fols. 447–463, RA. 62 ManKam, C3, vol. 327 (1752), fol. 588, RA.
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and in Stockholm, was granted the privilege to set up a cutlery-making establishment in Gränna (Småland) in 1747. Schröder visited the works in 1754 and noted that Zihlfeldt made folding knives and pen knives, scissors, and table cutlery with ivory handles, which he sold at local market fairs.63 Additional workplaces were created by manufacturers who instituted the same organizational principle as the one put into practice by Engberg. In Norrköping, Jacob Schmals founded a metal works in 1746, recruiting workers to be employed with specific “skills”, like forging, filing, and grinding (see Figure 2). Some tasks, including the making of hafts, were even further divided according to the varying techniques required in everyday production. The artisans worked with similar material combinations as at Engberg’s and Zihlfeldt’s works. An inventory from 1747 listed ivory, ebony, boxwood, and nacre shells as well as special tools for the processing of these materials, such as two “artist lathing chairs” to be used by the turners. Nonetheless, Schmals struggled with his business, forcing him to make several journeys to Stockholm during the late 1740s, where he exhibited cutlery “made in the English way” to the state authorities in hope of getting supported with money advances.64 These attempts were less successful. Still, as will be discussed below, the “English way” of making cutlery expanded in the provinces during the 1750s – again with close connections to workshops in Stockholm.
Networks of Imitation: Intermediaries and Urban “Contact Zones” The metal trades expanded in Stockholm during the 1750s, and Schröder was a busy man inspecting workplaces, making deals with traders, and handing out materials and “models”. Among the new workshops were several dedicated to the making of trinkets, with artisans who used new alloys and metal compositions to manufacture fashionable goods like snuff boxes, buckles, and buttons.65 The cutlery trade also saw new workplaces being founded in the capital – despite a growing competition from provincial manufactories. Some enterprises, like the one managed by Johan Erland Schnack, developed around the integration of crafts and the innovative combination of finishing techniques, but they often also depended on collaborative arrangements involving other craftsmen and traders.
63 Schröder, “Dagbok”, I, 1754, pp. 274–276. 64 FUh, R. 3076 (1756), fols. 44–45, 49–50, RA. 65 See Schröderstierna, Berättelser, II, pp. 64–78.
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Figure 2: Jacob Schmals’ cutlery workers (1748). Source: FUh, R. 3076 (1756), fol. 46, RA. Photo: Emre Olgun, Riksarkivet. This list includes smiths and grinding workers as well as a special group of “folding-knife makers” (fällknifsmakare). The making of hafts at Schmals’ cutlery works was divided between one “handle maker” (skaftmakare) and one benskaftmakare och swarfware, who made hafts of bone (probably including ivory) and carried out the turning. The filing work, in turn, was divided between one “filer of blades” (bladfilare) and one “filer of forks” (gaffelfihlare).
Schnack became a certified manufacturer of “French table-clocks” in 1745. The business was enlarged, and when Schröder visited the workshop on Norrmalm in 1753, he noted that the metalworker produced fine knives,
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toothbrushes, and metal trinkets.66 One year later, the Directeur made the first order from Schnack: four-and-a-half dozen dessert knives with silver blades and letterwood hafts, which were to be manufactured according to a “Parisian sample”. In return, Schröder promised to assist in recruiting apprentices and to procure silver and a grinding and polishing machine.67 During the following years, Schnack was hired to produce yet other fashionable goods. He also utilized his skills in making these items when promoting his case to the authorities. In 1756, he asked the Diet for a loan to buy a larger house. In doing this, he let the Hallrätt submit a list of goods made by him and his six workers during the past year. After discussions in different political bodies, the application was approved and Schnack could begin with setting up new workshops.68 Still, again, the imitation of metalwares was not limited to one workplace. Schnack was involved in several arrangements during the late 1750s, which illustrate how networks of joint production were put into practice in the capital. In January 1757, a deal was made between Schnack and Jacob Christopher Ketscher regarding the making of surgical instruments and razors. Ketscher, who had just returned to Stockholm from a longer tour in France and England, was going to “forge, sharpen, and polish” the blades, and Schnack’s task was to provide them with handles. Later the same year, Schnack took part in an even larger collaborative endeavour, organized by Schröder, aiming at precluding the import of French and English opera binoculars. A bookbinder made the tubes and two metalworking brothers provided them with gilded fittings. Glasses were then ordered from instrument maker Carl Lehnberg. The work of finishing the casings was also divided: a turner made the woodwork, the bookbinder performed the coating, and Schnack equipped them with fine hinges. After paying everyone involved, Schröder handed the lorgnettes on to a trinket shop at the square Riddarhustorget.69 Similar examples – although in some cases reflecting more persistent subcontracting arrangements – can be found in other trades such as watchmaking.70 For Schnack, engagements like these occasionally resulted in goods being exported, for example, to Denmark and to Turkey.71 More often, however, his metalwares
66 ManHuv, D3, vol. 170 (1745), no. 87, no. 205, RA; Schröder, “Dagbok”, I, 1753, p. 13. 67 Ibid., 1754, pp. 163–165. 68 FUh, R. 3075 (1756), fols. 1098–1099, RA; Schröder, “Dagbok”, I, 1756, pp. 151–155. 69 Ibid., II, 1757, pp. 1–2, 248–249. 70 Schröderstierna, Berättelser, II, pp. 36–37. See also B.J. Ronnestam, Fredmans tid: frihetstiden – guldåldern för Stockholms urmakare [In Fredman’s Days: The Age of Liberty – the Golden Age for Clockmaking in Stockholm], Stockholm: Carlsson, 2013, pp. 110–114. 71 Schröder, “Dagbok”, II, 1757, pp. 245–246; 1759, pp. 133–134.
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were sold by local traders like Josef Schürer Sr., who had a well-situated shop on Storkyrkobrinken (a street) in the town centre. An agreement was made between Schürer and Schnack in 1757, with the merchant promising to sell “all that Schnack can make” according to Schröder.72 When advertising in the newspaper Stockholms Posttidningar in July of the same year, Schürer referred to the manufacturer’s produce as “various beautiful trinket-items”.73 As evidenced by later records, this diverse collection included commodities to be used at dinners, worn at finer events, or otherwise exhibited in urban social life. In June 1760, Schnack submitted another proof of his production in order to be awarded with premiums. During the preceding nine months, he had let hallmark goods with a total value of 3,660 copperdaler, including knives and scissors, spectacle frames, umbrellas, binocular tubes, casings, and much more. Many of the listed items were made by combining steel, silver, nacre, and tortoiseshell.74 These materials were frequently used in the manufacturing of fashionable products during the period in question, like matching sets of knives and forks with decorative handles (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Eighteenth-century knife and fork with pistol-shaped handles, fitted with tortoiseshell scales and silver ferrules. Source: Nordiska museet, NM.0118317AB. Photo: Ulf Berger, Nordiska museet.
72 Schröderstierna, Berättelser, II, pp. 46–47. 73 Stockholms Posttidningar, 11 July 1757, p. 4. Online from Kungliga biblioteket at: https://tid ningar.kb.se/ (accessed 23 September 2019). 74 ManKam, C3, vol. 346 (1760), fols. 913–915, RA.
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Schnack’s and Engberg’s workshops can be understood as “contact zones”: spaces for encounters, training, and knowledge making, where the trajectories of materials and devices intersected. In a somewhat different manner, this idea also applies to merchant Schürer’s shop. Except for Schnack’s trinkets, he sold gadgets produced by other Stockholm artisans, such as watchmaking tools made according to “English samples” by the instrument maker Anders Wahlbom.75 When Schürer died in 1770, the business was continued by his son, Josef Jr.76 An inventory of the shop, made after the successor’s death in 1785, reveals an enormous quantity of metal goods: razors, table cutlery, and scissors; casings and snuffboxes; instruments and spectacles. On top of this, Schürer Jr. traded with semi-processed metals and imported materials, including kingwood, boxwood, ebony, ivory, and nacre.77 Father and son also advertised the imported goods in the newspaper Inrikes tidningar during the 1760s and 1770s.78 A wide network of creditors and debtors also appear in Schürer Jr.’s inventory, comprising manufacturers and guild craftsmen as well as commercial contacts in Hamburg, Wismar, Amsterdam, and Bordeaux.79 The shop on Storkyrkobrinken was a global microcosm made up of diverse layers of work, consumption, and credit arrangements, but it was not the only one of its kind in Stockholm. Lagerquist stressed the clustering of furniture retail shops in the central parts of the capital. Some of these traders also sold products like clocks, tableware, and trinkets.80 When adding examples from Schröder’s diaries, a picture emerges that resembles the conclusions made from surveys on shopkeeping and on the exhibition of metal commodities in other European towns during the same period.81 Metalwares were sold not only by ironmongers and in shops linked to large works like Vedevåg, but also by grocers and hatters. Some shops belonged to networks, comprising
75 Schröderstierna, Berättelser, II, p. 37, 66–67. 76 Justitiekollegium, F1A:219 (1770), vol. 2, fols. 11–14, SSA. Online from Riksarkivet at: https://sok.riksarkivet.se/nad (accessed 9 October 2019). See also Lagerquist, Den yrkesmässiga möbelhandeln, pp. 136–138. 77 Justitiekollegium, F1A:284 (1786), vol. 1, fols. 246–272, SSA. Online from Riksarkivet at: https://sok.riksarkivet.se/nad (accessed 20 August 2018). 78 See Inrikes tidningar, 28 September 1761, p. 4; Inrikes tidningar, 28 July 1777, p. 4. Online from Kungliga biblioteket at: https://tidningar.kb.se/ (accessed 5 May 2017). 79 Justitiekollegium, F1A:284, vol. 1, fols. 285–288. 80 Lagerquist, Den yrkesmässiga möbelhandeln, pp. 90–132. 81 See, e.g., C. Walsh, “Shop Design and the Display of Goods in Eighteenth-Century London”, Journal of Design History 8 (1995) 3, pp. 157–176; Berg, Luxury and Pleasure, pp. 182–188, 247–278; Pérez, “Technology, Curiosity and Utility”.
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both provincial and urban workplaces. At Slottsbacken (a street), merchant William Maister vended files and cutlery made at his manufactory in Tyresö, south of the capital; he also sold metalwares delivered from a handful of Stockholm workshops. One of the workshops was located in the same quarter as the shop.82 In 1760, Maister submitted a list to the Office of Manufacturing, noting all cutlery wares made at Tyresö during the 1750s, including table knives with handles of boxwood, brazilwood, ivory, and lignum vitae. Other batches of blades and forks had been sent to the workshop at Slottsbacken, where they were “finished [with] metal hafts and assembled” by the English smith Edward Marridon.83 Still, urban metalworking and practices of imitation not only gave rise to new divisions of labour and business arrangements, but they were also characterized by tensions and conflict. Engberg was forbidden to interfere with the goldsmiths’ trade and specifically denied to recruit goldsmith journeymen (probably with the intention to make silver details).84 Conflicts could also involve a complex array of social and financial relations. Schnack was imprisoned two times during the early 1760s, after falling into disfavour with his creditors. In 1762, Schröder noted that the manufacturer had died while held in custody.85 All the same, conflicts in the metalworking sector often brought about everyday creativity and innovative reconfigurations of techniques and work spaces.86 They were thus integral parts of the processes by which knowledge and skills were disseminated, negotiated, and put to use. Taking the differences regarding scale and scope into consideration, these examples demonstrate similar features as the ones highlighted by Giorgio Riello in an article on subcontracting in the London trades: “the variegated nature of metropolitan manufacturing, based on widely different commodities, consumer needs, skills, and technologies”.87 Merchants Maister and Schürer, like Directeur Schröder, were important go-betweens in a diversifying manufacturing economy. Such intermediary positions can also be attributed to artisans like Engberg and Schnack. The broad set of individuals involved in processes of
82 Schröderstierna, Berättelser, II, pp. 31–33, 45–46. 83 ManKam, C3, vol. 347 (1760), fols. 1368–1371, RA; Schröderstierna, Berättelser, I, pp. 42–43. 84 KomHuv, AIaa:112 (1741), pp. 2454–2455, RA; Hmr, E3:1 (1620–1753), fols. 456–460, SSA. 85 Schröder, “Dagbok”, II, 1760–61, p. 45; III, 1762, p. 17. 86 See Jansson, Making Metal Making, pp. 177–188. 87 G. Riello, “Strategies and Boundaries: Subcontracting and the London Trades in the Long Eighteenth Century”, Enterprise & Society 9 (2008) 2, p. 249. See also M. Sonenscher, Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012 (1989), pp. 22–29, 130–149.
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imitation is further evident when considering the expansion of cutlery making in the Swedish provinces during the 1750s. In more than one way, the creation of provincial knife works was connected to practices of craftwork and trade in Stockholm. New work methods and finishes, accompanied by plans to increase the output, resulted in a demand for skilled workers as well as for quality tools and metals. The knife works also illustrate a growing emphasis on export: “models” and finished items were increasingly sent back and forth between Stockholm traders, supervisory authorities, and proprietors. As suggested in the introduction, Schröder often had a hand in these processes as well.
To the Provinces and Back Some of the metalworking trades that expanded in Stockholm during the midcentury saw a continued concentration in the capital. This applies to the manufacturing of fashionable trinkets as well as to watchmaking and instrument making.88 The cutlery trade saw a different development, with larger works being created in the Swedish provinces. Three applications regarding the founding of knife works were handed in to the Diet in 1752, by Johan Hallenius at Tunafors, by merchant Petter Hall in Borås, and by Eric Westerberg at Gusum. The latter, who also owned a brass works and a pin works, promised to “arrange the making of knives in the French or English way”. The Diet’s Secret Committee (Sekreta utskottet) eventually approved all three applications and the expansion of domestic cutlery manufacturing had begun.89 As noted above, these workplaces were not the first provincial cutlery-making establishments. Still, the knife works in Tunafors, Viskafors (outside Borås), and Gusum contributed to something new, in that they were all involved in farther reaching plans to organize the production according to the “English way”. This development illustrates the state’s growing interest in work procedures and manual skills, and it also shows how urban and provincial work practices were affected – in different ways – by the circulation of skills, materials, and objects related to the imitation of metalwares. The Gusum works is used as the main example here.90
88 On the latter two crafts, see Ronnestam, Fredmans tid, pp. 218–264; Amelin, Medaljens baksida, pp. 105–142. 89 FUh, R. 2963 (1751–52), fols. 386–393, RA. 90 On cutlery making at Gusum, see also K. Forsberg, Gusums bruks historia 1653–1953 [The History of Gusum Bruk, 1653–1953], Stockholm: no publisher available, 1953, pp. 107–122.
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Creating a Knife Works: Skilled Workers and the Supply of Materials and Tools In equipping and staffing the cutlery workshops at Gusum, Eric Westerberg relied on connections in Stockholm. Two journeymen, the Wittenberg brothers, were recruited from Engberg in the summer of 1752, and, when writing to the manufacturer, Westerberg described how they had been put to work – making table knives and forks with ebony hafts and silver ferrules.91 Nevertheless, the recruitment of skilled workers was a challenging task, especially when competing with other potential employers. In a letter to one of his Stockholm agents, Westerberg expressed his worry about journeyman Petter Malineus, who had not arrived at Gusum even though signing a contract as the grinding and polishing master. Later, Westerberg found out that Malineus had left his employment with Engberg, making the goal of getting him to Gusum ever more distant. The procedure was later repeated with another of Engberg’s workers, Carl Frisk. Behind Westerberg’s back, Frisk and Malineus were instead hired by Hallenius at Tunafors.92 Others of Engberg’s trainees were recruited for the works in Viskafors.93 Westerberg was, however, persistent in his quest for new workers. Journeyman Georg Qvarnström arrived from Engberg and one metalworker, Mörling, was recruited from the rifle factory in Norrköping.94 When Schröder inspected the Gusum works for the first time, in January 1754, he noted that the cutlery production was divided between six workshops. Anders Wittenberg supervised the forge where all blades were made, while his brother Olof and journeyman Qvarnström worked together in a finishing workshop. The filing workshop was staffed by four local youngsters, while master Mörling made cast pieces and details of nacre and silver in a “metal workshop”. He shared this work space with a turner, who made hafts of ebony, boxwood, and pear wood. Other, “round wooden” handles were delivered from a workshop located outside the works. Finally, Schröder inspected one grinding and polishing mill by the Gusum stream, which was equipped with “English grindstones”.95
91 Gusums bruksarkiv (GbrA), B:1478 (1752–56), letter dated 20 August 1752, Vadstena landsarkiv (VLA). Thanks to Sven Olofsson who has let me use this material. All letters from Eric Westerberg in this volume, and the volume referred to below from the same archive, are in copied form (letter copies). 92 GbrA, B:1478, letters dated 29 December 1752 and 1 May 1753. 93 See Jansson, Making Metal Making, pp. 202–203, 215–217. 94 GbrA, B:1478, letter dated 6 July 1753; Schröder, “Dagbok”, I, 1754, p. 68. 95 Ibid., pp. 63–73.
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Supplying the works with all the materials and devices needed in these interconnected processes was not easily done. Westerberg frequently communicated with merchants and shopkeepers during the 1750s, in search of wood, steel, and tools. He ordered several batches of ebony – occasionally complemented by ivory – from traders in the capital. Similar orders were made from a trade agent in Amsterdam.96 The proprietor also made enquiries about qualities and prices. In January 1753, he queried two London merchants about “the best price for ebony, brazilwood, boxwood and other sorts of dark wood, as well as for ivory”.97 In other cases, he was assisted by intermediary contacts in finding the right materials. In November 1756, he asked Schröder to inform one merchant about places in Stockholm where he could buy ebony.98 The following year, Westerberg ordered hardwood and tortoiseshell from Amsterdam via his brother, Johan, in Norrköping, who received exact instructions: “make sure it is ebony of the black sort, because otherwise it is unusable at my works”.99 These types of goods often arrived at Gusum, together with consignments of steel. The irregular quality of steel was, however, one other major concern for the proprietor. In August 1752, he asked ironmonger Anders Öhrnbeck in Stockholm to send him “the best blister steel” together with files and rasps. Later writing to merchant Maister, Westerberg complained over the fact that Öhrnbeck had sent him “old scrap that he found in his shop”. He ordered new blister steel from Maister and also asked him to make enquiries about two types of “table knife steel”, which could be bought at the iron weighyard and should be “of the same sorts that Engberg has bought”.100 When Schröder inspected the forge at Gusum in 1754, he was met with additional complaints about the steel. For this reason, the Directeur arranged sending new assortments to the knife works, including both welded knife steel (Backstoff-steel and Butschersteel) and blister steel.101 The supply of steel and tools further illuminates the links between Stockholm workshops and ones at provincial works. Most notably, this is evident regarding steel tests and the making of files, two complementary practices connected to the imitation of cutlery wares. Some metalworking craftsmen in the capital were involved in testing steel of different qualities during the mid-century, often on Schröder’s commission. On several occasions, the Directeur later
96 See GbrA, B:1478. 97 GbrA, B:1478, letter dated 2 January 1753. 98 GbrA, B:623 (1756–1760), p. 55, VLA. 99 GbrA, B:623, pp. 66–67. 100 GbrA, B:1478, letters dated August 1752 (day unknown) and 14 December 1752. 101 Schröder, “Dagbok”, I, 1754, pp. 65–66, 293.
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supplied provincial manufactories with similar varieties. Johan Friedrich Roth, who supervised a large file-making workshop on Norrmalm, was involved early on in such “tests”. He also made journeys himself to steelworks near the capital in order to sort out the high-quality blister steel needed in his production.102 The filemaker’s business was in turn promoted by the demand for tools at the expanding knife works. In 1754, Schröder noted that Roth’s files were used at Tunafors and Gusum, which both had filing workers who were engaged with particular tasks.103 The making and using of steel and files show how practices of work and imitation were integrated through the circulation of objects and materials, which embodied certain ideas and skills. These processes also show how artisans were key intermediaries in a diversifying context of metalworking. In the course of the 1750s, the links between the capital and the provinces intensified.
Plans for Piecework and the Circulation of “Models” When Schröder visited Gusum in March 1757, he noted that improvements had been made in several of the workshops and that the workforce was enlarged. The forge was equipped with a new hearth, and the forging work had been divided into specific tasks. These advances had been facilitated by installing stamping devices and using dies. The filing and finishing workshops, in turn, had been moved to another building and were staffed by a dozen employees. Polishing and lathing devices had been installed to promote these processes, and Schröder noted how work was now “as much divided between the workers as it possibly could be, so that each and every one has his specific skill to practise”. Still, the Directeur also commented on the need to “improve the grinding”, and for this reason, he offered Westerberg a design of a an English mill.104 The reorganization of work was accompanied by the increased use of “models” at Gusum. Already during his first inspection at the knife works, Schröder provided Westerberg with French and English “knife samples”, marked with numbers, and the proprietor promised to let these be “imitated and sent back”. When Schröder returned to Gusum, pen knives had been made according to the English prototypes. The Directeur now took them with him to Stockholm, along with table knives, in order to investigate the possibility for export. Before 102 Ibid., pp. 292–293; FUh, R. 2993 (1752), no. 226, RA; Schröderstierna, Berättelser, II, pp. 39–40. 103 Schröder, “Dagbok”, I, 1754, pp. 67–69, 99–100. 104 Ibid., II, 1757, pp. 48–54.
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leaving, he offered Westerberg yet more “model knives”, this time from Rouen.105 In 1756, Schröder presented cutlery from Gusum, Tunafors, and Viskafors to the Delegacy of Trade and Manufacturing (Handels och manufakturdeputationen). These items were part of the model-house collection kept on the Board of Trade’s premises, which also comprised metalwares sent from Swedish consuls in France and Portugal. The collection was later complemented with samples from Levant towns and from Amsterdam.106 The main purpose of the model house, according to Schröder, was to offer “necessary information” to both foreign and Swedish traders.107 To this end, he also encouraged proprietors to send specimens and product lists themselves to the capital. In 1757, Westerberg was requested to send a “sample card” with numbered cutlery items to a Stockholm agent, something that Schröder thought would promote new orders.108 The proprietor had, by then, initiated similar attempts himself, with varying results. In many cases, the circulation of artefacts involved the grocer Eric Norman. Writing to Norman in March 1753, Westerberg expressed his delight about the commenced sales of Gusum cutlery in the capital and promised to “observe the things people have complained about, the ferrules will be made broader and the polishing as good as the English”.109 Like Schürer, both the father and the son, Norman sold a variety of goods – including trinkets and cutlery – in a shop located in the central parts of Stockholm.110 Numerous batches of cutlery – often accompanied by pins – were sent from Gusum to the capital during the following years. Attempts were also made to send smaller consignments, often transported by local peasants, to provincial towns and market fairs. Still, the interest in the Stockholm market is evident in Westerberg’s letters. In 1753, he pointed out that he could undersell Engberg’s table knives with “ebony and silver ferrules” and ones with handles of “the rounded or French fashion”.111 The preceding example indicates that the foreign influences that formed an important part of the imitative work varied, as did the perceptions of the finished objects. In May 1756, the Gusum proprietor sent table cutlery with hafts of ebony and “coco wood” to Eric Norman and
105 Ibid., I, 1754, p. 81, 278–279. 106 Ibid., 1756, pp. 26–31; Schröderstierna, Berättelser, I, p. 50; II, p. 84. 107 Schröder, “Dagbok”, I, 1755, pp. 136–138. 108 Ibid., II, 1757, pp. 53–54. 109 GbrA, B:1478, letter dated 3 March 1753. 110 See Justitiekollegium, F1A:193 (1763), vol. 1, fols. 739–781, SSA. Online from Riksarkivet at: https://sok.riksarkivet.se/nad (accessed 20 August 2018). 111 GbrA, B:1478, letter dated 7 November 1753.
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Nathanael Westerberg, noting that these sorts were “most in demand” in the capital. The agents were also asked to advertise in the “weeklies and newsletters”.112 The creation of these “new” types of commodities was closely related to changes in workshop practices at the knife works, including the use of “models”, stamps, and dies. When visiting the forge at Tunafors in 1754, Schröder described how the installation of similar equipment had improved the forging process. The making of forks and blade ornaments was now “better and more consistent, because all pieces are, one could say, shaped in one form”.113 These “mediating devices” went hand in hand with the plans to institute piecework. They embodied new techniques and also ideas about the “correct” ways of organizing work, including aims to substitute imported manufactures with domestic produce.114 The efforts made to implement the “English way” also entailed an increasing focus on manual “skills” and the training of apprentices. During the 1750s, both Hallenius and Westerberg hired large numbers of young men, who were to be employed with meticulously specified tasks. These recruitments also gave the proprietors rights to special apprenticeship premiums. In 1758, a group of inspecting deputies from the Office of Manufacturing counted a considerable number of “skills” being practised in the Gusum workshops – notably so in finishing and fork making. Westerberg’s intention was, however, to divide the work processes even further, telling the deputies that such improvements were necessary in order to promote a “widespread sale”.115 Advocating these types of measures, both Westerberg and Schröder aimed far beyond Stockholm.
Exports and the Economic Crisis of the 1760s Despite Schröder’s efforts during the 1750s, the shipping of ready-made manufactures – above all to Baltic and Mediterranean ports – remained insignificant when compared to the export of bar iron and copper. Still, the trajectories of exported cutlery wares illustrate the comprehensive networks involved in the imitation and circulation of metal commodities. Moreover, these processes highlight connections among everyday practices in various European towns: the production, transport, and handling of objects that were often truly “global”. 112 GbrA, B:623, pp. 17–21. The Gusum works also had a shop of its own at Riddarhustorget for “wholesale and retail trade” in cutlery wares; see Forsberg, Gusums bruks historia, p. 121. 113 Schröder, “Dagbok”, I, 1754, pp. 95–96. 114 See also Alder, Engineering the Revolution, pp. 139–153; Berg, Luxury and Pleasure, p. 177. 115 ManHuv, D5, vol. 176, no. 18, RA.
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As noted above, Schröder had already encouraged the export of Gusum cutlery during his first visits to the knife works. These attempts became more pronounced during the latter half of the 1750s, in line with a development where export premiums were increasingly emphasized at the expense of other types of rewards. In April 1757, Westerberg started to make enquiries about the possibilities of exporting goods to Riga, and an agreement was soon made with the skipper Johan Ström. A total of 23 dozen knives, including table cutlery with hafts of silver, ebony, and coco wood, were sent to Norrköping to be inspected at the Hallrätt and the Customs Chamber. Westerberg stressed that the skipper, besides arranging the sales in Riga, needed to get a certificate from the Swedish consul. Such a proof was key when applying for premiums at the Office of Manufacturing.116 Similar exports were made during the following years. In 1760, skipper Jonas Brauner brought a variety of cutlery and pins with him from Västervik on the ship Christina Margaretha, intended for sale at Mediterranean ports. The goods were eventually sold in Livorno (see Figure 4).117 Batches of cutlery and pins were also shipped to Lübeck, via contacts in Wismar, to Danzig, and to Saint Petersburg (from Stockholm).118 The attempts made to export cutlery show how Swedish metal works belonged to large networks of trade; they can also be said to reflect the limits of the far-reaching plans in the metalworking sector. In 1760, Schröder recounted that the import of metalwares from England and Germany was nearly supplanted by domestic production, although not in all cases accompanied by better “quality and prices”.119 Similar comparisons featured in a series of accounts from various European towns, written by the travelling official Johan Westerman. Reporting from Rome in 1760 about the Levantine export, he raised doubts about the potential for Swedish metalware traders to compete with ones in Britain, France, Holland, and Venice. Despite this, Westerman suggested some “fine” products that he thought could be exported to Izmir. To this end, he had sent home a collection of “models”, from Marseille, to be imitated at Swedish manufactories. This consignment included folding knives with tortoiseshell handles of the “French” and “English” fashions, knives with hafts of Caribbean hardwood,
116 GbrA, B:623, pp. 89–91, 92–93; ManKam, C3, vol. 339 (1757), fol. 1241, RA. 117 ManKam, C3, vol. 349 (1761), fols. 112–114, RA. The porto franco of Livorno attracted an increasing attention from the Swedish authorities during the 1760s and 1770s, as the attempts to export Swedish metal products intensified; see B. Boëthius and Å. Kromnow, Jernkontorets historia, D.2.1, L’ancien régime [The History of Jernkontoret, Part 2:1, L’Ancien Régime], Stockholm: Jernkontoret, 1968, pp. 347–360. 118 ManKam, C3, vol. 349, fols. 1188–1194, 1562–1565; Schröder, “Dagbok”, II, 1759, p. 188. 119 Schröderstierna, Berättelser, II, p. 85.
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Figure 4: Attestation of Gusum cutlery and pins exported to Livorno (1760). Source: ManKam, C3, vol. 349 (1761), fol. 113, RA. Photo: Emre Olgun, Riksarkivet.
fine scissors, and various other cutting items.120 When writing to the Diet in 1765, however, the official noted that the quest to ship fine metal goods overseas had been less successful despite the generous premiums given to Swedish manufacturers.121 By the time of Westerman’s later report, the manufacturing sector was also wrestling with a turbulent economic situation, largely rooted in the policies pursued during the previous decades. The possibility of getting premiums and public loans was significantly restrained after the Diet of 1765/66, which saw
120 Johan Westerman, “Anmärkningar uti Handels- Oeconomie- och Finance-Saker, Sammanfattade i anledning af en Åren 1758, 1759 och 1760, på Publique Bekostnad förrättad Utrikes Resa, Första delen” [“Remarks about commercial and financial matters, made during a publicly funded journey 1758–1760”], pp. 326–345, Manuskriptsamlingen, vol. 46, RA. Online from Riksarkivet at: https://sok.riksarkivet.se/nad (accessed 26 September 2019). 121 FUh, R. 3338 (1765), fols. 18–28, RA.
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the Hat Party lose its ruling position and the Office of Manufacturing being closed. The crisis further deepened during the latter half of the 1760s, and this resulted in even harder times for previously favoured metal works.122 In 1766, Schröder noted that Eric Westerberg had closed the Gusum knife works and dismissed his workers. The two large manufactories in Eskilstuna also struggled; employees had to be sacked due to the problems with ensuring inventories were sold.123 These crisis years also saw plans to reorganize the metal trades. Rydén emphasizes how the steps towards a “free town” for metalworkers in Eskilstuna were influenced by ideas of “liberty”. Both Schröder and Westerman came to promote a move towards a concentration of “free artisans” in one urban area.124 According to Westerman, this would also create a potential for improvements by introducing “mechanical machines” and a “rational economy and division of labour”, all according to the “method” being used in England.125 Expanding during the late eighteenth century, the free town of Eskilstuna certainly became an important “contact zone” for the metal trades, especially for cutlery making.126 Still, many other communities and urban manufacturers managed to get through the turbulent years of the 1760s, in some cases by introducing new techniques based on continuous imitation.
Concluding Remarks: A Final Stop in the Capital In 1759, Schröder noted that cutlery making in Stockholm, especially the business of the cutlers’ guild, was well-nigh obliterated by the competition from provincial metalworking communities.127 Some five years later, he inspected new workshops in the capital, though being operated on a smaller scale when compared to Engberg’s English-style works. The mid-1760s also saw skilled workers from troubled large manufactories returning to the capital to find employment. New cutlery-making enterprises took shape in the urban context,
122 Rydén, “Eskilstuna Fristad”, pp. 138–139; Jansson, Making Metal Making, pp. 75–78. See also Heckscher, An Economic History of Sweden, pp. 187–188, 197–199. 123 Schröder, “Dagbok”, III, 1766, pp. 11–13, 23. 124 Rydén, “Eskilstuna Fristad”, pp. 137–144. 125 FUh, R. 3338, fols. 8–9. 126 See B.-E. Ohlsson, Eskilstuna fristad: fristadsinrättningen i Eskilstuna före sammanslagningen med gamla staden 1771–1833 [Eskilstuna Fristad: The Free Town before the Unification with the Old Town of Eskilstuna 1771–1833], Eskilstuna: Eskilstuna kommun, 1971. 127 Schröder, “Dagbok”, II, 1759, pp. 2–5.
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often through the creative accomplishments of artisans who employed new techniques. This notion of emerging new metalworking businesses in Stockholm adds another dimension to the largely synchronic presentation offered in the sections above: imitation needs to be understood from a perspective of historical change. One of the workers who made his way back to Stockholm during the crisis years was the former forging master at Gusum: Anders Wittenberg. After leaving the closed knife works, Wittenberg operated a small workshop in the capital. For some years during the late 1760s, he was also contracted by the manufacturer Isac Trybom to make knife blades.128 Originally a maker of clock casings, Trybom had expanded his business to include, amongst other things, silver hafts for table cutlery. As noted by Schröder in 1763 and 1764, Trybom used one imported rolling device and a special “model” to finish the hafts in the “English way”.129 The “model” referred to was probably a die into which silver was pressed with the use of lead, which made the bipartite handles extra thin and presumably cheaper than the cast ones made by Stockholm goldsmiths during the same period.130 The hiring of Wittenberg likely reflects the fact that the manufacturer also relied on collaborative efforts in his production: the silver hafts needed to be equipped with blades in order to be marketed as readymade consumer items (see Figure 5). Trybom and Wittenberg were active in an urban context where many of the possibilities for financial support, premiums, and privileges – previously available for manufacturers in both Stockholm and the provinces – had been withdrawn. Still, their cases illustrate how manufacturing processes were continuously influenced by mobility, the local adaptation and combination of skills and work methods, and new forms of imitation. This development was not restricted to the making of table cutlery. It included the manufacturing of tools, instruments, and household utensils as well as the making of trinkets based on the use of new alloys or special casting techniques. Some manufacturers specialized in one type of product, while others developed more diversified production. Urban metalworking practices were also characterized by continued negotiation and conflict, often centred on concrete issues related to the materiality of work. Trybom was in a protracted dispute with the goldsmiths’ guild during the mid-1760s about the pressing technique, which he referred to as his “invention” 128 FUh, R. 3600 (1771–72), fols. 132–139, RA. 129 Schröder, “Dagbok”, III, 1763, pp. 9–10; 1764, pp. 6–7, 10–11. 130 See K. Holmquist, “Matbestick i Rokoko” [“Rococo Table Cutlery”], in: E. Andrén (ed.), Fataburen: Nordiska museets och Skansens årsbok 1952 [Fataburen: Yearbook of Nordiska museet and Skansen 1952], Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1952, pp. 144–146.
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Figure 5: Dessert knife made by Isac Trybom (1780). Source: Nordiska museet, NM.0137610c. Photo: Ulf Berger, Nordiska museet.
as the result of several “costly tests”. In spite of these difficulties, the manufacturer succeeded in keeping his business going and the technique was later disseminated to other Stockholm workshops.131 Trybom’s quarrel with the goldsmith masters was far from the only conflict of such kind that took place in the capital during the 1760s and 1770s. The tensions between the perceived order of a regulated manufacturing sector and modifications in everyday work processes continued to be a tangible element in a changing “economy of imitation”.132 In this chapter, I have explored the making of metal commodities in mideighteenth-century Sweden by tracing the developments in several metalworking “contact zones”: spaces for innovative encounters where new manual techniques, “mediating” objects, and exotic materials were jointly put to use. Stockholm was one such important node, but the discussion above has also revealed the exchanges among urban and provincial practices. Moreover, the transportation, use, and combination of imported materials show how workshops, metal works, and urban shops were parts of wide-ranging – indeed global – circulatory processes. These spaces can indeed be regarded as “contact zones” in their own right. My intention has been to highlight a context that has featured, to a limited extent, in recent debates on imitation and
131 Skrivelser från Kommerskollegium, 1134:9, vol. 128 (1763); vol. 137 (1765), RA; Holmquist, “Matbestick i Rokoko”, pp. 151–152. 132 On this matter, see also Pérez, “Inventing a World of Guilds”, pp. 253–257, 261.
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innovation in the early modern manufacturing trades. Although the discussion has largely focused on impressions taken from Britain, the sections above have also shown the impact of various movements that linked together towns and manufacturing communities in Sweden and other parts of Europe. In this respect, the use of a “multicentred” perspective is very promising when combined with an approach that brings to the fore the interrelated trajectories of people, ideas, artefacts, and materials.133 I have also demonstrated the need to complement such a perspective with a multidimensional one, accentuating the connections among practices of making, using, trading, and policing. The imitation of cutlery wares in mideighteenth-century Sweden reflects ambitions of control. This is most evident in the state-supported attempts to introduce piecework at large metal works, with a growing interest in the use of mechanical devices and “models” and the division of work processes in specific “skills”.134 Rather than stressing a one-way, top-down initiated influence, however, I have sought to emphasize processes where diverse experiences and ambitions came together. Schröder was indeed an important intermediary, acting on the state’s behalf, as were many of the artisans, proprietors, and shopkeepers discussed above. Not only did these actors play key roles in the circulation of skills, objects, and ideas, but they also actively partook in debates on “taste” and on the “utility” of certain work methods, material combinations, or specific types of commodities, which contributed to shaping the relations between consumers, producers, and authorities. In this sense, this chapter has “located the global” in cutlery workshops, in the goods made and used in these spaces, and in the interaction between people involved in the Swedish metal trades. It has thus contributed results to current discussions on the complex spatial layout of eighteenth-century European manufacturing. By tracing the trajectories of artefacts – “models” as well as knives hafted with exotic hardwood – and materials, the sections above have also added insights into previous work done on the interrelatedness of various forms of mobility, broader economic and social developments, and a mutable materiality of work and consumption during a dynamic historical period.
133 In a similar way, Smith discusses the importance of tracing the formation and movement of particular “material complexes” and, by extension, “the interaction among materials, human making, and the formation of knowledge systems over long spans of distance and time”. See Smith, “Nodes of Convergence”, p. 8. See also Gerritsen and Riello, “The Global Lives of Things”. 134 For a similar discussion on French manufacturing, see Alder, Engineering the Revolution, pp. 233–240.
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4 Coffee and Coffee Surrogates in Sweden: A Local, Global, and Material History Introduction Coffee began its global expansion in the early modern period. Originating from the Horn of Africa, it first became a commercial product in the Middle East, from where cultivation spread to Southeast Asia and then westwards to the Caribbean and to mainland Latin America. The diffusion of coffee production intersected with the European expansion in the Atlantic and Asian worlds, changing early modern European consumption patterns while spreading from cosmopolitan Europe outwards. The diffusion of coffee suggests a pretty simple dispersal process that coincides with global developments. What insight then can a local perspective provide? As we shall learn below, brewed coffee in Sweden in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries was made from numerous ingredients, some of which were coffee beans shipped from the Asian and the Atlantic worlds, while others were local to the Northern European flora. Roasted and ground, these components were sometimes blended with imported coffee beans, sometimes substituting them altogether. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the link between local, material, and global historical processes by focusing particularly on Swedish coffee from the mid-eighteenth century to the 1930s.
The Global Rise of Coffee Numerous explanations have been given for the global diffusion of coffee, some of which touch upon aspects common to all of mankind. The intrinsic quality of coffee as a caffeinated drink and the invigorating effects it has on the human body provides a universal explanation for the dispersion of coffee consumption.1 An explanation that is similarly universal in its application, although focusing
1 R. Matthee, “Exotic Substances: The Introduction and Global Spread of Tobacco, Coffee, Cocoa, Tea, and Distilled Liquor, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries”, in: R. Porter and M. Teich (eds.), Drugs and Narcotics in History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 24–51. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-004
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on the exact opposite reaction, is that the consumption of a cup of coffee offers time to sit down and relax.2 More specific historical explanations for the rise of early modern European coffee drinking frame it as being part and parcel of a broader change in European consumption, which involved the introduction of a range of new tropical groceries, foremost sugar, tea, and cacao. It was particularly in Britain, the Low Countries, and France that these groceries became available to a broader social spectrum. In this context, the increasing popularity of hot, sweet, and caffeinated drinks reflected changes to both supply and demand. The growing supply of tropical groceries mirrored the expansion of European power in the Atlantic world and in Asia as well as the growth of plantation economies. Like sugar, coffee was grown on large-scale plantations in the West Indies and in mainland Latin America, foremost in French, Portuguese, and Dutch colonies. The Dutch also controlled the production of coffee in the East Indies; the production in Java is the most well-known. Sri Lanka, under British rule, was also an important coffee-growing area in the nineteenth century. The real take off in coffee production is, however, primarily associated with the introduction of coffee plantations in Brazil, which, in the second half of the nineteenth century, became the main planter of coffee in the world. Its output represented up to 80 per cent of the world production of coffee by the early twentieth century.3 Turning to the demand side, social historians who studied the French, Dutch, and British consumption patterns point to the connection between the rise of the middle class and the development of new consumer habits in urban and affluent parts of Europe, from the eighteenth century onwards. Not only coffee but also tea were new fashionable drinks; sold at coffee houses, they soon became part of a distinct cosmopolitan culture. They competed with alcohol, beer, and wine as the favourite drinks accompanying enlightened and political discourses.4 Other historians focus on the development of mass markets and consumer habits amongst the broader population, claiming that the consumption of coffee and tea as well as sugar reflects fundamental changes to
2 P. Lundqvist, “Taste for Hot Drinks – The Consumption of Coffee and Tea in two Swedish Nineteenth-Century Novels”, History of Retailing and Consumption 2 (2016) 3, pp. 171–192. 3 K. Pomeranz and S. Topik, The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2006; W. D. Smith, “Complications of the Commonplace: Tea, Sugar, and Imperialism”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1992) 2, pp. 259–279. 4 W. D. Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 1600–1800, London: Routledge, 2002; B. W. Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005; E. Markman, R. Coulton and M. Mauger, Empire of Tea: The Asian Leaf that Conquered the World, London: Reaktion Books, 2015.
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work habits and household organization – the “industrious revolution” of the eighteenth century.5 Coffee arrived in Sweden in the late seventeenth century; by 1728, Stockholm had 28 coffee houses.6 While reliable information about coffee imports is missing before the late 1760s, figures from between 1769 and 1771 suggest that the Swedish coffee import equalled 2.2 per cent of the total value of Swedish import.7 Studies of traces of coffee consumption – in the form of ceramic coffee cups and kettles as well as mills for grinding coffee, registered in Swedish inventories – suggest a limited diffusion of coffee consumption, particularly outside urban areas before the nineteenth century.8 However, the numerous bans on coffee consumption from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards (1756–1761, 1766–1769, 1794–1796, 1799–1802, and 1817–1822) do offer an alternative history of a possibly more widespread habit of drinking coffee, perhaps explained by coffee smuggled into Sweden.9 In contrast to France, Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Denmark, Sweden had no direct access to a coffee-producing area in the Atlantic basin. The West Indian colony of Saint Barthélemy, a Swedish colony from 1784 to 1878, was not a coffee-growing island. It is only in the second half of the nineteenth century, and with the growing Swedish participation in the Atlantic trade, that it is possible to link significant increases in the supply of cheap Latin American coffee to a definite growth of Swedish consumption.10 Focusing on the demand side in Sweden, economic historians have argued that it was only in the nineteenth century that the consumption of exotic goods, including coffee, changed in a way similar to earlier developments in
5 J. De Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Demand and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 6 R. Hutchison, “Exotiska varor som förändrat vardagen. Kaffe och te i Norden, 1750–1850” [Exotic goods that changed everyday life. Coffee and tea in the Nordic countries, 1750–1850], in: L. Müller, G. Rydén and H. Weiss (eds.), Global historia från periferin: Norden 1600–1850 [Global history from the periphery: The Nordic countries 1600–1850], Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2010, p. 123. 7 L. Müller, “Kolonialprodukter i Sveriges handel och konsumtionskultur, 1700–1800” [Colonial products in Swedish trade and consumption culture], Historisk tidskrift 124 (2004) 2, pp. 224–248. 8 Ch. Ahlberger, Konsumtionsrevolutionen. 1, Om det moderna konsumtionssamhällets framväxt 1750–1900 [The consumer revolution. I, on the development of the modern consumer society 1750–1900], Gothenburg: Humanistiska fakulteten, Göteborgs universitet, 1996, pp. 90–99. 9 A. Knutsson, Smuggling in the North. Globalisation and the Consolidation of Economic Borders in Sweden, 1766–1806, PhD dissertation, European University Institute Florence, 2019, pp. 282–286. 10 M. Essemyr, “Prohibition and Diffusion – Coffee and Coffee Drinking in Sweden 1750–1970”, in: D. U. Ball (ed.), Kaffee in Spiegel europäischer Trinksitten/Coffee in the Context of European Drinking Habits, Zurich: Johannes Jacobs Museum, 1991, pp. 83–91.
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more prosperous parts of Europe. A connected economic process was the proletarization of the rural population, something that promoted the expansion of a market economy.11 The rise of coffee drinking in the nineteenth century has also been connected to the rise of the Swedish temperance movement, a movement in which coffee typically was regarded as an alternative to brandy and other alcoholic drinks.12
Material and Local History as an Alternative Approach The above explanations suggest a process by which the universal appeal of coffee, in combination with global and cosmopolitan developments, dictated the spread of coffee consumption to Sweden. My aim in this chapter is not to overturn any of these explanations but to broaden the perspective by focusing on local developments – not as a history of demand but as a material history, zooming in on the substances that made up coffee and coffee surrogates. Material history and the history of import substitution have played an important role in explaining globalization; nevertheless, the focus has generally been on durable goods such as ceramics or textiles. The long history of attempts to replace Chinese porcelain with European substitutes, such as Delft and Majolica ware, illustrates the tradition of European traders interpreting exotic goods through local resources. Egg whites, for instance, were added to ceramic mixtures in the Middle Ages because it reminded those seeking to re-create Chinese porcelain of the translucent shiny white quality of the original goods. This example demonstrates how tactility and other sensory experiences directed processes of imitation. It was only in the beginning of the eighteenth century – in Saxony, with its long tradition of mineralogy and mining – that Europeans first managed to make true hard-paste porcelain, using kilns able to reach very high temperatures. This reminds us that efforts to copy and substitute goods from abroad sometimes became parts of wholly new sets of technologies and fields of knowledge.13 Attempts to replace exotic and expensive textile dyes with
11 J. Ljungberg and L. Schön, “Domestic Markets and International Integration: Paths to Industrialization in the Nordic Countries”, Scandinavian Economic History Review 61 (2013) 2, pp. 101–121. 12 Ahlberger, Konsumtionsrevolutionen, p. 91. 13 M. Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; see also Måns Jansson’s contribution to this volume.
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dyes based on components that could be found at home, another example of import substitution in early modern Europe, eventually became successful largely as a result of the development of nineteenth-century chemistry.14 Similarly, chemists, in the 1820s, eventually identified the active ingredient in coffee – caffeine – although the specifically refreshing qualities of coffee and tea had been remarked upon for centuries. These examples serve to remind us of how perception and investigation of exotic and domestic goods, together with their properties, changed over time as well as how these processes engaged different groups. Foodstuff has also a history of substitution. For instance, sugar made from beets grown in Europe started to compete with cane sugar in the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the wake of Napoleon’s continental blockade, which stopped the import of cane sugar from the western Atlantic world.15 To think of goods as being solely made from one raw material or another risks simplifying our understanding of the historical processes of substitution, though. A good example is tobacco, which, while originally from the Americas, by the seventeenth century was grown on both sides of the Atlantic, including in Scandinavia. Nevertheless, the tobacco that was consumed, sniffed, or smoked was often a composite product. It was generally made up of a blend, ranging from highquality American and West Indian tobacco to home-grown tobacco to various substances that could be made to look like tobacco.16 Tobacco was not the only product that, in its consumed or retailed form, could easily be counterfeited with the addition of other cheaper but visually similar materials. Here, tea can serve as an illustration. All tea consumed in Europe before the mid-nineteenth century was imported from China. The Chinese leaves were, however, expensive, which attracted fraudsters who dried, roasted, rolled, and coloured leaves from various European shrubs and herbs to make them look like Chinese tea. Another trick was to recycle used tea leaves. These tea leaves could be dried and sold again, rebranded as fresh tea.17 This was, of course, fraudulent behaviour; still, a too strict legal dichotomy risks distracting us from the complexity of early modern and modern consumption, not least amongst
14 A. Engel, Farben der Globalisierung: Die Entstehung moderner Märkte für Farbstoffe 1500– 1900 [Colours of globalization: The emergence of modern markets for dyes 1500–1900], Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2009. 15 J. H. Galloway, “Sugar”, in: K. F. Kiple and K. C. Ornelas (eds.), The Cambridge World History of Food, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 437–449. 16 M. Kwass, Contraband. Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014, pp. 59–63. 17 H. Hodacs, Silk and Tea in the North: Scandinavian Trade and the Market for Asian Goods in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 49–50.
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poorer groups. The recycling of tea leaves was a well-established practice in Britain and the Dutch Republic. It was very common that servants recycled the tea leaves of their mistresses and masters; likewise, it is easy to see that blending supplies of imported tea with the leaves of domestic plants could be part of the same strategy of “eking out” amongst the less well-off consumers of tea.18 The examples of tobacco and tea demonstrate that visual aspects as well as taste and scent experiences generated by exotic goods in Europe need to take into account not only the economic status of the consumer but also different traditions of eking out supplies and substituting the imports with recycled goods and domestic surrogates locally available. Furthermore, this distinctly local perspective implied here needs to take into account global diversity. Neither tea, not tobacco, nor coffee were in and of themselves identical products. These goods arrived in Europe in a great assortment of different qualities and types, assortments that shifted in the wake of expanding global trade and production. The working assumption of this chapter is that the taste, look, and smell of what generally was called coffee varied greatly depending on both local context and global diversity. Such changes reveal changes in global supplies; as Steven Topik argues, coffee was not a homogenous product, but rather the opposite.19 The complex global history of trade – together with how the local and social history of consumption influenced the taste and scents of many exotic products – is one way of framing the history of coffee. Another frame, which also came to influence the development of coffee consumption, evolved from within the political economy context and the natural history context of the early modern state. The eighteenth century saw numerous attempts to replace the import of exotic goods with home-grown products as a mean to promote a positive balance of trade. Natural historians were particularly engaged in the work of identifying domestic substitutes on behalf of the state they operated in.20 Naturalists across Europe, for example, searched for substitutes for exotic dyes at home. Tea substitutes were also sought. Here the case of the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus serves as a good illustration. The latter tried to both grow Chinese tea scrubs in Sweden and find substitutes for the Chinese leaves at home. Oregano – dried, roasted, and rolled – was almost identical to
18 A. McCants, “Poor Consumers as Global Consumers: The Diffusion of Tea and Coffee Drinking in the Eighteenth Century”, The Economic History Review 61 (2008) 1, pp. 172–200. 19 On the changing global supply of coffee, see S. Topik, “The Integration of World Coffee Market”, in: W. G. Clarence-Smith and S. Topik (eds.), The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 1500–1989, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 21–49. 20 L. Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
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the Chinese product, at least to the consumers less accustomed to the Chinese brew. While Linnaeus’s scheme was part of a patriotic economic programme, he had a fraudster’s understanding of some consumers’ rudimentary knowledge of tea.21 The top-down approach of the naturalist, working on behalf of a mercantilist state, and local and popular traditions of eking out supplies with domestically grown plants were not necessarily separate. Naturalists who followed Linnaeus’ lead were encourage by him to inform themselves of local practices involving the use of plants, animals, and minerals as they were compiling inventories of domestic resources.22 As we shall see below, while naturalists were amongst the first scholars to contribute to the discussion on the materiality of coffee, they were not alone. Chemists followed suit in the nineteenth century, providing a universally applicable definition of coffee and highlighting caffeine content and other aspects relating to the chemical component of coffee. Other means promoted by new groups of scientists, such as using microscopes, opened up further discussion of what was coffee and what was not.
Follow the Materiality: Method and Materials Taking local and global aspects into account, the working assumption of this chapter is that the taste of coffee changed radically over time. By mapping changing descriptions of coffee; paying attention to tastes, looks, scents, and textures; and focusing on changing understandings of the global production of coffee and its chemical composition as well as local production of coffee surrogates, my aim is to develop a more complex understanding of the interplay between the global and the local in establishing a new consumer habit in Sweden. The material history of coffee presented here has been reconstructed, drawing from a wide range of printed sources in Swedish that in one way or another contain descriptions of coffee. The first set of sources is natural history accounts of coffee. The second set is trade dictionaries, mapping the origins and qualities of coffee beans from across the world. The third set is different information on coffee surrogates, including single-word lists of a wide variety of sources as well as long descriptions of not only what to use as substitutes but
21 Hodacs, Silk and Tea, pp. 151–156. 22 L. Koerner, “Daedalus Hyperboreus. Baltic Natural History and Mineralogy in the Enlightenment”, in: W. Clark, J. Golinski and S. Schaffer (eds.), The Sciences in Enlightened Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 389–422.
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also how to process the raw material to produce something that was reminiscent of imported coffee. And the fourth set is different forms of advertisements and retail information on coffee products. These types of materials belong to a wide range of discourses relating to orientalism, natural history, political economy, trade, public health, or temperance, which fed into campaigns advising consumers to buy different coffee products.23 In that respect, the sources are disparate. What they do have in common is that they describe in different ways the materiality of coffee. Analysed in chronological order, they provide a way by which we can grasp how coffee was perceived, looked, tasted, smelled, and felt from the middle of the eighteenth century until the interwar period.
The Diversity of Coffee Production and Consumption: The Global Perspective As Emma Spary points out in her study of the early modern French reception of coffee, separate groups of Enlightenment scholars added to the discourse on coffee during different periods. The contributions, as well as when they were produced, by orientalists, individuals with interest in the East Indian trade, and naturalists engaged in plant transfer reflect the geographical and social diffusion of coffee consumption and production from the seventeenth century onwards.24 The first Swedish writing on coffee dates back to the 1650s, with Swedish diplomats to the Ottoman Empire reporting negatively about the taste of the brew.25 However, it was, in no small degree, continental discourses, particularly French voices, that shaped the Swedish eighteenth-century debate, and it was, in no small degree, Swedish naturalists who reproduced descriptions of coffee drinking
23 Coffee was also discussed in numerous medical treaties, particularly during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, which – in order to keep the amount of sources manageable – have not been taken into account. Another topic left out is the recycling of ground coffee, again a topic too complex to cover together with the main aspects focused upon in this chapter. 24 E. C. Spary, Eating the Enlightenment: Food and the Sciences in Paris, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012, pp. 51–95. 25 S. Westerberg, “Claes Rålamb: Statesman, Scholar and Ambassador”, in: K. Ådahl (ed.), The Sultan’s Procession: The Swedish Embassy to Sultan Mehmed IV in 1657–1658 and the Rålamb Paintings, Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 2006, pp. 26–57.
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first formulated in cosmopolitan parts of Europe.26 The naturalists were also the first to communicate on the materiality of coffee beans as well as their look, smell, and taste to a Swedish audience.27 An early contribution, published in an Almanach för Åhret 1747 (Almanac for the year 1747), was written by Carl Linnaeus.28 Almanacs were one of the few types of early modern printed material that reached a broader audience, and Linnaeus’ text primarily engaged in issues concerning consumption and public health.29 Nonetheless, the Asian and Atlantic worlds provided a global context for Linnaeus’ arguments. The materiality of coffee is only touched on briefly; Linnaeus singles out the “Levantine coffee bean” as the most “powerful”, although the bean itself was “small”.30 As we shall see below, geographical areas became the predominant structure under which descriptions of the size, look, scent, taste, and potency of different coffee beans were organized. An example of this can be found in the 1755 dissertation Enfaldige tanckar om caffé (Simple thoughts on coffee), published at the University of Åbo. The author was Pehr Kalm, one of Linnaeus’ students, who had taken up the position of professor of natural history after his journey to North America from 1747 to 1751.31 His student, Elias Granroth, defended the dissertation, which is one of the earlier more extensive studies on coffee surrogates. We shall return to this study below; what makes it relevant here is the extent to which the quality of different coffee beans is understood from the perspective on their geographical origin. Again, it was coffee beans that originated in the Middle East and Horn of Africa that were regarded as the best. The price these beans fetched were so high that American coffee, imported to Alexandria, was sold as Arabic coffee 26 See, e.g., C. Linnaeus, Kaffedrycken: (Potus coffeæ): akademisk avhandling under Linnés presidium Uppsala 1761 [The coffee drink: (Potus coffeæ): An academic thesis presented under the presidency of Linnaeus], Uppsala: Svenska Linnésällskapet, 1966, p. 4. 27 On the historical studies on quality and coffee, see also M. Samper, “The Historical Construction of Quality and Competitiveness”, in: W. G. Clarence-Smith and S. Topik (eds.), The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 1500–1989, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 126–128. 28 The long title of the publication is Almanach för åhret, efter wår Frälsares Christi födelse, 1747 [Almanac for the year after the birth of our saviour Christ, 1747]. The text is reproduced in “Linnés Almanacksuppsatser” [Linnaeus’ almanac essays], Svenska Linnésällskapets årsskrift, 1928, pp. 137–140. 29 T. Levenstam, Almanackan som kulturbärare [The almanac as a harbinger of culture], Malmö: Liber Förlag, 1984. 30 “Linnés Almanacksuppsatser”, p. 138. 31 P. Kalm, Enfaldige tanckar om caffé och de inhemska wäxter, som pläga brukas i des ställe [Simple thoughts on coffee and the domestic plants that can be used in its place], Åbo: Jacob Merckell, 1755.
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across the Middle East, Kalm claimed; this comment, which as well singled out Jewish merchants as the culprits, is the first of many that addressed coffee and fraud.32 Next in line in terms of quality, according to Kalm, was the Dutchproduced coffee from Java, with coffee from French Martinique ranking the highest amongst the “American” types, although American coffee at large was presented as being inferior to Asian and Arabic ones.33 Another dissertation on coffee, published in the mid-eighteenth century, is Linnaeus’ Potus Coffeæ, printed in 1761 in Latin.34 It provides a botanical description of the coffee plant, which Linnaeus named Coffea Arabica and which is still the dominant coffee species worldwide. The content of the Potus Coffæ overlap to a large extent with Linnaeus’ earlier writing in the Almanach. New, however, was a reference to an article from 1757, “Beskrifning på Café-trädet i Suriname” (Description of the coffee tree in Surinam), written by Johan Silander and published in the Handlingar (proceedings) of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences.35 In the article, Silander describes his experiences with coffee production in the Dutch colony. Drawing on the latter’s article, Linnaeus remarks that young coffee trees produced “larger, but less well tasting beans”.36 Judging by mid-eighteenth-century naturalists’ descriptions, the material knowledge of coffee was limited. This is probably true for the public at large – but it was a soon to change. A type of source material that allows us to follow the development of material knowledge is trade dictionaries. Such a dictionary, although very rudimentary, is Kort ansvisning på in- och utrikes handelswahror
32 Kalm, Enfaldige tanckar, p. 4. On the mixing of American and Arabic coffee beans, see W. Neuhof, Kaffe och te [Coffee and tea]. Öfversättning från andra upplagan, Allmänna handbiblioteket, Nr 20, Stockholm, Sigfrid Flodins förlag, 1868, p. 5. On anti-Semitism in eighteenthcentury explorations of the Middle East, see J. M. Hess, “Carsten Niebuhr, Johann David Michaelis, and the Politics of Orientalist Scholarship in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany”, in: I. Friis, M. Harbsmeier and J. Bæk Simonsen (eds.), Early Scientific Expeditions and Local Encounters. New Perspectives on Carsten Niebuhr and ‘The Arabian Journey’. Proceedings of a Symposium on the Occasion of the 250th Anniversary of the Royal Danish Expedition to Arabia Felix, Copenhagen: Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2013, pp. 78–84. 33 Kalm, Enfaldige tanckar, p. 4. 34 A description of the content of the dissertation also reached a broad audience via an article, probably written by Linnaeus and published in the Swedish newspaper Lärda tidningar, 1762, issue 45, p. 179–180, also reprinted in O. Hagelin (ed.), Herr archiatern och riddaren Linnæus i Lärda tidningar 1745–1780 [Lord, physician to the court, and knight Linnaeus in Lärda tidningar 1745–1780], Stockholm: Hagströmer biblioteket, 2007, pp. 306–307. 35 J. Silander, “Beskrifning på caffe-trädet i Suriname” [Description of the coffee tree in Surinam], Kungliga Vetenskapsakademins handlingar [Proceedings of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences], 1757, pp. 236–244. 36 Linnaeus, Kaffedrycken, p. 10.
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(Short instructions on the import and export of trade goods), compiled by Carl Magnus Könsberg and published in 1768, which contains information on nine types of coffee. Again, the Arabic coffee is ranked the highest in quality, followed by coffee from the French colony of Île Bourbon (La Réunion) in the Indian Ocean. Coffee from Surinam and Martinique are grouped together, branded as inferior coffee.37 Könsberg, additionally, makes the point that coffee traded in Mocha, Yemen, once it was brought across the Arabian Peninsula to Egypt and Asia Minor, was called “Levantine” coffee.38 By the early nineteenth century, the dictionary entries on coffee had changed dramatically. The broad categories of “Arabic”/“Levantine”, “East Indian”, and “West Indian”/“American” coffee had become cemented as the main categories from which qualities could be delineated.39 Names of specific trading points in coffee-producing areas were also added to distinguish coffee beans of different qualities. For example, in Swenskt waru-lexicon (Swedish trade dictionary), published in 1815, L. N. Synnerberg lists the big markets on the Arabian Peninsula as Beit al Fakih, Aleppo, Cairo, Dschedda (Jeddah), and Mocha, the latter which is as well used as a generic name for coffee from this region.40 Mocha coffee is further described as coming in three quality types: Bahouri, Saki, and Salibi. While the East Indian coffee falls into two simple categories – that produced in Java and Île Bourbon – the West Indian/American coffee production in Synnerberg’s dictionary are grouped together under different colonial powers – French, Dutch, English, and Portuguese. Quality characteristics are linked to the areas of production, mainly islands ruled by the European states. Amongst the French coffee products, Martinique coffee is again listed as the “best”.41 Martinique coffee, as well as Java and Bourbon coffee, are generally used as a benchmark to evaluate the quality of the other beans. Compared to Könsberg’s work, Synnerberg’s dictionary is notably more detailed when it comes to describing the size, colour, and taste of different coffee beans.42 Handelsvaru-kännedom (Commodity knowledge) – a trade dictionary from 1845 compiled by Per Olof Almström – categorizes the world’s coffee production in
37 C. M. Könsberg, Kort anvisning på in- och utrikes handelswahror [Short instructions on the import and export of trade goods], Norrköping, Johan Benjamin Blume, 1768, pp. 16–17. 38 Könsberg, Kort anvisning, p. 17. 39 African coffee is also occasionally mentioned, see references to coffee from Mozambique and Sanquebar in L. N. Synnerberg, Swenskt waru-lexicon [Swedish trade dictionary], Gothenburg: Sam. Nordberg, 1815, p. 58. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., pp. 58–59.
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a similar way to Synnerberg, yet with more attention being paid to the grouping and ranking of coffee from specific areas – Martinique coffee is described, for instance, as having seven different qualities from “fin vert” to “bas ordinair” – and to differences in regard to the colour and shape of coffee beans.43 Most important perhaps, and mentioned in the beginning of Almström’s article on coffee, is the new chemical understanding of coffee: what marked out coffee, and tea, was caffeine.44 As other mid-nineteenth-century publications on coffee show, chemistry was progressively becoming more prevalent in describing the materiality of coffee.45 The geographical divisions changed too, demonstrating the increasingly dominant part played by Latin America coffee producers. In J. J. Åstrand’s trade dictionary – Universal-lexikon (Universal dictionary), published in 1855 – the geographical division is altered to reflect this. West Indian coffee production is separated from the American production, the latter largely referring to the quickly expanding Brazilian production, which was further distinguished by the regions “Rio Janeiro, Maranjo, Santos, Bahia”.46 As we shall see below, these categories, particularly Rio coffee, was soon to become a shorthand for quality discussions amongst Swedish retailers. Another new feature in Åstrand’s work is the extent to which plant geography started to shape the understanding of the quality of the coffee beans.47 This was in line with European nineteenth-century scholarly developments; information on altitude and soil were added to taxonomic description of plants, helping to provide more complex analyses about crop varieties, useful not least to colonial powers.48
43 P. O. Almström, Handelsvaru-kännedom eller underrättelser om de förnämsta handelsartiklars ursprung, produktionsställen och beståndsdelar [Commodity knowledge or information on the main articles of commerce, their origin, places of production and main constituents], Stockholm: P. G. Berg, 1845, pp. 227–230. 44 Almström, Handelsvaru-kännedom, p. 227. 45 C. J. Grafström, Kaffe och Choklad [Coffee and chocolate], Stockholm: Alb. Bonniers förlag, 1855, pp. 16–20. By the late nineteenth century, the chemical understanding formed a dominant means of understanding coffee, see, e.g., M. Ekenberg and J. Landin (eds.), Illustreradt varulexikon [Illustrated trade dictionary], Stockholm: Gustaf Chelius, 1894, pp. 467–476. 46 J. J. Åstrand, Universal-lexikon för köpmän, fabrikanter, konsuler och alla, som stå i närmare beröring med handeln [Universal dictionary for merchants, manufacturers, consuls, and those in close contact with trade], Förra delen. A–K, Stockholm: Philipp J. Meyers Förslag, 1855, p. 317. 47 Åstrand, Universal-lexikon, p. 318. 48 For a general discussion of plant geography and colonial botany see, e.g., R. Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
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The organization of labour involved in coffee production provides an additional level of explanation that also came to inform quality discussions. Coffee from Ceylon, as an illustration, fell into two categories: “plantation” coffee and “native” coffee. The former was “fine” and “colourful”, the latter “worse, pale and more yellow, brownish and green”.49 By the 1890s, “plantation”-coffee from Java had even surpassed Levantine or Mocha coffee, at least according to the author, a certain Constantin, who compiled and published a 15-page long Swedish pamphlet on coffee in 1895.50 Constantin claims it was the West Indian method of separating the shells from the beans that gave plantation coffee a better taste than the “government” coffee also produced on Java.51 In other words, work orders exhibiting the nineteenth-century European colonialization of Asia and crop-processing methods from across the globe had started to impact discussions of the taste and look of coffee beans. As Kalm’s example of West Indian beans being falsely branded as products of the Middle East suggests, coffee trade was associated with falsification and alteration from early on. By the mid-nineteenth century, fraudulent trade became a common trope in studies concerning the materiality of coffee.52 Multiple authors warned traders, retailers, and consumers of the colouring of low-quality yellow and brown beans blue or green, colours associated with Java coffee bean crops.53 Beans were occasionally also fabricated.54 The Illustreradt varulexikon (Illustrated trade dictionary), edited by Martin Ekenberg and John Landin and published in 1894, contains an account of two German factories solely set up to assemble machines able to produce “fake ‘coffee beans’”, using clay, chicory,
49 Åstrand, Universal-lexikon, p. 318. 50 Några korta utdrag från olika författare om kaffe, dess egenskaper, bruk och missbruk samt hur det bör användas [Some brief excerpts from various authors on coffee, its properties, uses and addictions and how it should be used], Upptecknade af Constantin, Landskrona: Österbergs boktryckeri, 1895, pp. 4–5. 51 Några korta utdrag, p. 5. 52 On public health and control of food in Sweden, see P. Eriksson (ed.), Mot ett modernt livsmedelssystem: livsmedelshygien och livsmedelskontroll i Sverige och Norden 1850–1950 [Towards a modern food system: food hygiene and food control in Sweden and the Nordic Countries 1850–1950], Stockholm: Kungl. Skogs- och lantbruksakademien, 2015. 53 Åstrand, Universal-lexikon, p. 318; Grafström, Kaffe och Choklad, pp. 12–13; Några korta utdrag, p. 6; Carl Edmund Lennmalm, Handbok i handelsvarukännedom eller kunskap om de förnämsta handelsvarors ursprung, egenskaper, förfalskningar [Manuel for commodity knowledge, or knowledge of the origins, properties, and counterfeits of the most prominent trade goods], Stockholm: Zacharias Hæggström, 1868, p. 37; Neuhof, Kaffe och te, pp. 10–11; Ekenberg and Landin, Illustreradt varulexikon, pp. 472–473. 54 Grafström, Kaffe och Choklad, p. 13.
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and fat as raw material.55 This dictionary is the first found example that details (in millimetres) the width, length, and thickness of different coffee beans.56 By the late nineteenth century, coffee was traded not only unroasted and as whole beans but also ground. Ground coffee was as well much easier to counterfeit by adding other substances; consequently, a range of different means to detect false ground coffee evolved. Traders and consumers were encouraged to feel the structure of the ground coffee by pressing and rubbing it and immersing it in water and studying the colours it produced. The illustrated trade dictionary also encouraged the use of microscopes; it even provided images of cellular structures of true and counterfeit coffee for comparison.57 To visualize what was “true” coffee in this way corresponded with contemporary scholarly developments and the growing use of images to support ontological claims.58 According to the Swedish trade dictionaries, Swedish consumers were slow in picking up the habit of buying ground coffee. Åstrand, in 1855, made the point that while ground coffee was a common retail good in France and England, Swedes continued to ground coffee themselves, something the widespread ownership of coffee grinders demonstrate.59 The fact that roasted and ground coffee did become more common, particularly in urban areas of Sweden, is widely exhibited in advertisements from the late nineteenth century onwards.60 The new way of retailing coffee, moreover, opened up new ways of targeting different consumer groups by selling them blends of coffee. Labelling coffee blends could involve references to the origin of the bean, invoking quality by mentioning areas such as Java, as well as to different aspects of the roasting process.61 The label “Skånerost”, referencing Sweden’s most southerly landscape, Skåne, was first introduced by the firm Zoega in the early twentieth century. Over time, it has become a generic name used by several Swedish coffee
55 Ekenberg and Landin, Illustreradt varulexikon, p. 472. 56 Ibid., p. 470. 57 Ibid., p. 473–475. 58 On the rise of images in nineteenth-century science and changing notions of objectivity, see L. Daston and P. Gailson, Objectivity, New York: Zone Books, 2007. 59 Åstrand, Universal-lexikon, p. 318; Grafström, Kaffe och Choklad, p. 13. 60 See, e.g., Kaffe-handeln och kafferostning [Coffee trade and coffee roasting], Landskrona, Holländska Kaffe-Ångrostnings-Bolaget, 1896. Uncatalogued material in capsule “Ekonomi, drycker, allm. Choklad, Kaffe & ersättn. Broschyrer Kaffe”, Uppsala University Library (UUB). 61 “Hur skall jag tillaga gott kaffe?” [How shall I cook delicious coffee], Advertisment for Skånsans kaffe from 1936 (?). Uncatalogued material in capsule “Ekonomi, drycker, allm. Choklad, Kaffe & ersättn. Broschyrer Kaffe” (UUB).
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producers, referring to heavily roasted Arabica beans sourced from across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.62 The emergence of regional taste communities in Sweden was further reinforced and made visible in names such as Norrlandskaffe, the prefix referring to the northern part of Sweden.63 Information material from the Cooperative retailing business – written in the 1930s and directed towards their staff while advising them on selling the new Co-op “Circle” coffee range – is an illustrative example of how regional variation in taste were linked to coffee sourced from different parts of the globe. Describing “The White Circle” and “The Competition Blend”, the leaflet states that [t]hese blends have the characteristic Rio coffee flavour and should consequently only be sold to customers who particularly want Rio. Rio coffee sells far greater in some areas of our country, such as in the forest areas of Norrland [in the northern half of Sweden] and in the county of Värmland [in western Sweden], among fishermen, and generally to those working in the outdoors. Rio coffee has its special character, which is well known and appreciated by those who are used to drinking it, but dearly detested by those who are used to milder and more expensive varieties. The White Circle is made out of the best Rio qualities, The Competition Blend by a blend of cheaper types.64
In other words, by the 1930s the sources of different types of coffee from across the world, ranging in taste from bitter to mild and in cost from cheap to expensive, were used to categorize Swedish consumers geographically and socially.
Coffee Surrogates: The Domestic Perspective Like the case with coffee, the topic of surrogates was also part of a discourse with a long European history. As Alix Cooper shows, the Iberian expansion in the sixteenth century generated numerous responses amongst European scholars. Naturalists and doctors in areas with less access to the expansive Atlantic trade, such as in Central Europe and around the Baltic Sea, became engaged in
62 See, e.g., Gevalia, https://www.gevalia.se/vart-kaffe/morkrost/skanerost (accessed 26 September 2018) and Zoegas, https://www.zoegas.se/pm-zoegas-skanerost-100ar (accessed 26 September 2018). 63 “Hur skall jag tillaga gott kaffe?”. 64 “Ett ord till butikspersonalen i kaffefrågan. Aktuellt om kaffe i kampanjtider” [A word on the coffee issue to retailing staff. News on coffee during campaign times], Advertisement for Konsum coffee, 1937. Uncatalogued material in capsule “Ekonomi, drycker, allm. Choklad, Kaffe & ersättn. Broschyrer Kaffe” (UUB). On the preference for Rio coffee in Värmland see also, Kaffe-handeln och kafferostning, pp. 3–4.
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finding local substitutes for exotic ingredients.65 One strong motive was the economic argument; without colonies, imports from tropical areas of the world became particularly expensive. It is thus not surprising that, as we shall see below, publications translated from landlocked areas, particularly Germanspeaking parts, came to influence the Swedish development and examination of surrogates, mainly from the late eighteenth century onwards. Notwithstanding, the initial steps to find a surrogate for coffee was deemed difficult, not to say impossible. A telling example is from the 1746, in the form of a publication produced by the Royal Collegium of Physicians (Collegium medicum) in Stockholm. The pamphlet “The Royal Collegium of Physicians’ announcement on the abuse and abundance tea and coffee drinking” lists numerous tea surrogates, which had been suggested by provincial physicians from across Sweden. While the plan to replace tea imported from China with local plants was thought feasible, the anonymous author of the pamphlet had less hope for coffee: As for coffee, the Royal Collegium of Physicians does not find anything similar to the coffee fruit or so-called beans among Swedish plants. And even though the Collegium is familiar with grains, wheat, peas, beans, acorns, beech- and hazelnuts, breadcrumbs, almonds and more, cooked in certain ways, being used instead of coffee, the Collegium cannot point to any beverage which equals it [coffee] in terms of power and effect.66
The following year, in Almanach för Åhret 1747, Linnaeus stated his preference for beech nuts over other coffee surrogates, including burned bread, fava beans, and acorns. It was, however, not a broad recommendation as “taste and opinion” varied greatly amongst people.67 In Linnaeus’ dissertation from 1761, the list of coffee substitutes is somewhat longer, which adds almonds, Linnaeus describing them as the most “salubrious” of the surrogates. Another alternative was coffee made from sunflower seeds; not only the taste but also the scent from roasting the seeds was reminiscent of coffee.68 As we shall see below, the scents created in the preparation of a surrogate was to become a central criterion in judging the coffee surrogates. The fact that
65 A. Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 66 Kongl. Collegii Medici Kundgiörelse om thet missbruk och öfwerflöd, som thé och caffédrickande är underkastat, samt anwisning på swenska örter at bruka i stället för thé [The Royal Collegium of Physicians’ announcement on the abuse and abundance tea and coffee drinking are subjected to, and instructions on Swedish Herbs to use instead of tea], Stockholm: Pet. Momma, 1746, no page number. 67 “Linnés Almanacksuppsatser”, p. 140. 68 Linnaeus, Kaffedrycken, pp. 11–12.
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numerous senses were employed in judging the potency of surrogates is noticeable as well in the 1755 Åbo dissertation written by Kalm, which lists many of the same surrogates as those presented in the Royal Collegium of Physicians’ pamphlet and in Linnaeus’ early text. A new candidate was oat, which could be used to great effect to produce a drink that looked very similar to coffee in terms of colour; nevertheless, the taste was “a little different from our foreign coffee”. Similarly, at odds with the perceived coffee taste was a coffee brew made from juniper berries, as the source of the coffee was somewhat too “evident”. Maize, another addition, was presented as a North American option and was described as being able to be used “in case of emergency” as it had qualities that “could deceive a less able connoisseur”.69 Linnaeus had as well pointed out that the success of different surrogates depended on the level of consumer experiences.70 One way around the problem of the wrong taste was to blend surrogate with imported coffee. The recommended proportion in the Åbo dissertation was to mix three quarters home-produced coffee with one quarter imported coffee. The end result was a coffee that even “the most able connoisseur” was forced to admit was “almost” as good as coffee made from “foreign beans” alone.71 In other words, blending coffee surrogate with imported coffee suggest that from the start coffee was a highly composite product. Aside from taste, what is notable with the early surrogate discussion in Sweden is the extent to which it focused on products that were visibly similar to unroasted coffee beans, in terms of shape and size. In this respect, development in the last decades of the eighteenth century marks a distinct shift. Perhaps the most successful European coffee surrogate was a root, producing a coffee commonly called chicory. One of the first substantial studies on chicory coffee in Swedish was the 1794 translation – Underrättelse om cichorie-roten (Notification of the chicory root, its planting and use as chicory coffee) – of a Danish treatise, written by the clergyman Otto Ottosen and first published in 1791.72 The shift in surrogate source from seeds, nuts, corns, and grains to a root marked a historical change, something Ottosen was well aware of.73 The publication’s objective is to get people to turn a root vegetable into a brown powder similar to ground coffee, which meant introducing new processing methods. While Ottosen describes the
69 Kalm, Enfaldige tanckar, p. 13. 70 Linnaeus, Kaffedrycken, p. 12. 71 Kalm, Enfaldige tanckar, p. 14. 72 O. Ottosen, Underrättelse om cichorie-roten, dess plantering och anwändande til cichoriecaffe [Notification of the chicory root, its planting and use as chicory coffee], öfwersättning, Stockholm: tryckt hos Johan C. Holmberg, 1794. 73 Ibid., p. 6.
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development of large-scale plantations for chicory coffee making in Prussia, what he had in mind for Scandinavia was household production of surrogate coffee. Aside from incorporating planting and harvesting chicory as part of local farming procedures, such production additionally involved processing the root at home; cleaning, drying, and chopping it; and paying attention to the size and toughness of the dried root cubes.74 Once the chicory had reached this form, it could be processed like coffee beans. Care was needed not to burn the cubes when roasting them in a pan, which, if burnt, produced a bitter tasting brew. After being roasted, the cubes needed to be ground immediately, a process that generated “an intense and pleasant scent, not very different from the scent that roasted and ground ‘Levantine beans’” had.75 By itself, chicory coffee had a “somewhat bitter taste”, which to “the tongue” tasted different from the general coffee taste in several ways. Ottosen, just like others before him, therefore recommended blending equal proportions of coffee and chicory, a mix that would produce a very “palatable drink”.76 Advice on surrogate coffee continued to be published across the nineteenth century, making use of several of the local products identified in the previous century. Om kaffe af råg (On coffee from rye) – published in 1843 and written by Anna Ehrenborg – contains simple instructions on the process of turning rye into coffee. This process consisted of removing any impurities from the rye, rinsing, boiling, and drying it in an oven. The rye coffee could be made after this product had been roasted in “an ordinary coffee roaster” and then boiled.77 The most substantial study on coffee surrogate to appear in Swedish in the nineteenth century was the translation of the second edition of Wilhelm Neuhof’s Der Kaffee und Thee (Kaffe och te), published in 1868. The book contains no less than 58 different single sources of coffee surrogates as well as a number of composite coffee surrogate recipes. Several of the suggested raw materials are recognizable from the eighteenth-century lists, but Neuhof’s book also contains many materials not discussed by eighteenth-century scholars, including chestnuts, peanuts, lupine seeds, carrots, potatoes, and black and red currant seeds, just to mention a few.78 Numerous references to Swedish names for plants as well as
74 Ibid., pp. 25–26. 75 Ibid., p. 31. 76 Ibid., p. 32. 77 A. Ehrenborg, Om Kaffe af råg till winst för hälsa och kassa [On coffee from rye, benefitting the health and the economy], Upsala: Wahlsröm och Lästbom, 1843, p. 7. 78 Neuhof, Kaffe och te, pp. 29–61. Some of these had been introduced to a Swedish audience in the first half of the nineteenth century, see, e.g., Om swenska surrogat för caffe [On Swedish
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known examples of Swedish attempts to use the listed ingredients in surrogate coffee show that the publication had been adapted for a Swedish readership.79 Most interesting is Neuhof’s definition of what constitutes a good surrogate. Firstly, it was the surrogate’s ability to generate a brew that was palatable and similar to coffee, even without the extra addition of imported coffee. Moreover, if used together with coffee the surrogate should in no way “deprive” the coffee from “its fragrance or own taste”. Finally, coffee surrogate should spread a “pleasant aroma” that was as similar as possible to that of imported coffee.80 In his descriptions of how to process the many different types of surrogates, Neuhof returns to the importance of scent. Remarking on how to produce coffee from horse chestnuts, for instance, he highlights “the penetrating coffee scent” roasted horse chestnuts generated.81 While Neuhof listed composite coffee surrogate recipes separately, he did not hesitate to give some initial general advice on how to use multiple ingredients in order to create a balanced taste. Acacia seeds, Chufa sedge, or carrots could be added to give added smoothness to the coffee taste, while seeds of lupine and asparagus could provide bitterness. Adding spices such as cloves, cardamom, and ginger could also improve the taste.82 Another example of how Neuhof sought to maximize the taste and scent of coffee was his advice to mix freshly roasted surrogates and coffee, storing them packed together in the same jar.83 Neuhof’s book constitutes the most elaborate example of a discussion that sought to encourage individuals to produce their own coffee surrogates, guided not only by the author’s advice on what ingredients to use, process, and combine, but also by generic notions of what coffee from the Atlantic, Arabic, and Asian worlds tasted, smelled, and looked like, at least in its brewed form. Surrogate coffee did not disappear, but judging by the growing differentiation of commercial surrogate products, homemade surrogates were subject to a growing competition. The last decades of the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries saw a wide range of different commercial products on the market in Sweden – with names such as “Stjernkaffe”, “Brana”, “Cicla”, “Kathreiner”, “Niebo”, or
coffee surrogates]. Af Södermanlands kongl. hushållnings-sällskap förwaltnings-utskott, Nyköping, P. E. Winge, 1820. 79 Neuhof, Kaffe och te, pp. 2, 38–39. 80 Ibid., pp. 25–26. 81 Ibid., p. 41. 82 Ibid., p. 26. 83 Ibid., p. 27.
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“Postum” – which in different ways were promoted as alternatives and/or supplements to imported foreign coffee.84 Many overlapping discourses help to define these products, drawing on issues concerning both health and political economy; generating a descriptive language that emphasized the mild, healthy taste of the surrogates; as well as underlining, how easily it could be blended with the taste of coffee “from abroad”. Launching the coffee surrogate “Cafi”, a pamphlet produced by the A. B. Fructus Factory in Stockholm described the product as the result of three years of labour to try to answer the question whether it is “possible to manufacture a product from domestic resources, the composition of which is as good as being identical to natural coffee”.85 Not surprisingly, the answer was yes. “Cafi” is described as a drink that does not leave the smallest off-flavour and when mixed with equal amount of the appropriate natural coffee provides a drink that not only seems absolutely genuine and unmixed, but also which, with regard to flavour and fullness, even surpasses the coffee that is obtained when cooking with real coffee of simple and medium qualities.86
In other words, surrogate coffee was no longer a means towards eking out coffee supplies; it was as well a way to improve low-quality imported coffee, giving it a rounder and fuller taste.
Summary: Global and Local Development of Coffee Tastes in Sweden The diffusion of coffee production and consumption might at first come across as a simple process of globalization. It reflects on the European expansion from the early modern period onwards, as coffee cultivation was set up across the tropical zones of the world. Furthermore, it contains a history of consumption and commercialization, as people from across social spectrums started to drink coffee in the Western world. Thinking about coffee as material history does, however, reveal a more complex process of global and local developments. Printed sources regarding coffee published in Sweden from the middle of the
84 Uncatalogued material in capsule “Ekonomi, drycker, allm. Choklad, Kaffe & ersättn. Broschyrer Kaffe” (UUB). 85 Några fakta om Cafi [Some facts on coffee], Stockholm, 1934, Uncatalogued material in capsule “Ekonomi, drycker, allm. Choklad, Kaffe & ersättn. Broschyrer Kaffe” (UUB). 86 Några fakta om Cafi.
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eighteenth century up until the 1930s show that, first of all, tropical coffee came in many different forms, as coffee beans varied in size, colour, and potency. It was not a homogenous product. Moreover, coffee qualities mapped out an increasingly more complex geography. While the Arabian Peninsula, Asia, the West Indies, and America provided a general scheme for labelling different coffee beans, mentioning shipping ports, such as Mocha and Rio de Janeiro, provided further means to distinguish one type of bean from another. Out of this great variety of globally sourced coffee evolved a way to define consumer groups in Sweden, drawing on their spending power and taste preferences. Cheap and bitter Rio coffee were for farmers from Värmland, fishermen, and others making their living working outdoors. In other words, globalized trade and colonialism led not only to an increase in coffee production, but also to a differentiation of coffee consumer groups. Local developments shaped consumers too. Judging by numerous books providing advice on coffee surrogates, imported coffee were regularly blended with surrogates made from various locally sourced ingredients. The selection of raw materials was directed by access to different plants and by the local alternative’s ability to produce coffee-like scents, to look like coffee once brewed, and to blend with the taste of imported coffee. If the global production of coffee generated taste diversity, then the local use of coffee surrogates worked in the opposite direction – it reinforced the notion of one generic coffee taste. This generic coffee taste was not static. If anything, as this chapter on the materiality of coffee has shown, coffee was not a stable consumer good. It might have been dark and hot but in other respects it was a highly diverse brew, in spite of how naturalists, chemists, and other scientists wanted to define it.
Kalle Kananoja
5 Circulating Heterodox Medicine: Globalizing and Localizing Naturopathy in Interwar Finland Finnish national health care was slowly grinding its way to modernity in the opening decades of the twentieth century.1 Traditional folk medicine, which had been the primary way to health for centuries, was steadily becoming marginalized with the rise of biomedicine. However, this slow process over several decades was complicated by the arrival and consolidation of new healing systems in Finland. While historians of medicine have documented in fine detail the internationalization and globalization of scientific Western medicine, they have paid less attention to the transnational nature of other healing systems.2 In Finland, German Naturheilkunde (nature cure) and hydrotherapy (or water cure), popularized by Maalin Bergström and Juho Uoti, proved popular in their different variants. Different forms of spiritual and religious healing similarly attracted followers. In the 1920s, an English spiritual healing practice of the Panacea Society was promoted by Pekka Ervast, and an active movement against vaccinations was led by Sampsa Luonnonmaa.3 North American medical systems
1 This process is traced in the historiography, for example by enumerating the rising number of hospitals, which went from 90 in 1900 to 205 in 1920, and by documenting the spread of new medical knowledge into Finland. Standard accounts include B. von Bonsdorff, The History of Medicine in Finland 1828–1918, Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1975; N. Pesonen, Terveyden puolesta sairautta vastaan: Terveyden- ja sairaanhoito Suomessa 1800–ja 1900-luvulla [For health, against illness: Health care in Finland in the 19th and 20th century], Porvoo: WSOY, 1980; O. Vauhkonen, “Yleiskatsaus Suomen lääkintälaitoksen ja terveydenhuollon kehitysvaiheisiin 1600-luvulta 1970-luvulle” [Overview of Finnish medicine and health care from the 17th century to the 1970s], in: Terveydenhuollon historia [History of health care], Helsinki: Sairaanhoitajien koulutussäätiö, 1992, pp. 187–292, esp. statistical tables on pp. 239–250. 2 Homeopathy being an exception, see, e.g., the contributions in R. Jütte, G. B. Risse and J. Woodward (eds.), Culture, Knowledge, and Healing: Historical Perspectives of Homeopathic Medicine in Europe and North America, Sheffield: European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, 1998; M. Dinges (ed.), Medical Pluralism and Homoeopathy in India and Germany (1810–2010): A Comparison of Practices, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2014. 3 M. Hokkanen and K. Kananoja, “Healers and Empires in Global History: Healing as Hybrid and Contested Knowledge”, in: M. Hokkanen and K. Kananoja (eds.), Healers and Empires in Global History: Healing as Hybrid and Contested Knowledge, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 1–26; U. Piela, “‘Konsti elää Kauwwan’: Parantamien Suomessa varhaismodernilta ajalta nykypäivään” [“The art of living long”: Healing in Finland from the early modern period to the https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-005
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and health reform movements, such as naturopathy and drugless healing, were circulating in Finland in the 1920s and 1930s. These were promoted by healers who had migrated to the United States and returned with novel ideas and practices. Official medicine in Finland followed transnational trends in the second half of the nineteenth century. German influence was significant in Finnish medical training, but Finnish scholars also took inspiration from further afield than just Germany.4 The circulation of new medical knowledge, however, was not limited to official medicine. Heterodox practices circulated within Europe and back and forth over the Atlantic. Paraphrasing Kapil Raj, it is necessary to define circulation as “the processes of encounter, power and resistance, negotiation, and reconfiguration that occur in cross-cultural interaction”.5 In this case, the cultural encounter needs to be understood as an encounter between different medical systems. Just like official medicine, the spread of other healing practices was facilitated by international networks and published literature. From the outset, heterodox healers were in conflict with university-trained medical doctors. Medical knowledge and authority were contested by both sides. These conflicts need to be placed in a social and cultural context where the current global biomedical hegemony was not yet established. Although Western medicine had made significant advances in the second half of the nineteenth century, it did not introduce its most potent drugs, antibiotics and
twenty-first century], in: M. Hokkanen and K. Kananoja (eds.), Kiistellyt tiet terveyteen: Parantamisen monimuotoisuus globaalihistoriassa, Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2017, pp. 111–123; S. Rytty, “Puoskarointia vai puhdasta auttamisen halua? Luonnonparantaja Maalin Bergström ja laittoman lääkärintoimen harjoitus 1900-luvun Suomessa” [Quackery or pure helpfulness: Nature healer Maalin Bergström and illegal medical practice in twentieth-century Finland], in: M. Hokkanen and K. Kananoja (eds.), Kiistellyt tiet terveyteen: Parantamisen monimuotoisuus globaalihistoriassa, Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2017, pp. 130–164; J. Uoti, Kotiopas terveydenhoidossa [Domestic guide for health care], Helsinki: self-published, 1912; A. Lockhart, “Heterodox Healing and Alternative Religion in the 20th Century: An English Spiritual Healing Practice in Finland”, Suomen kirkkohistoriallisen seuran vuosikirja 103 (2013), pp. 74–97. 4 P. Dhondt, “Transnational Currents in Finnish Medical Education (c. 1800–1920), Starting from a 1922 Discourse”, Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education 48 (2012), pp. 692–710. 5 K. Raj, “Beyond Postcolonialism … and Postpositivism: Circulation and the Global History of Science”, Isis 104 (2013), p. 343.
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penicillin, until the early twentieth century, and their breakthrough did not occur until the Second World War.6 In Finnish historiography, there has been little discussion of heterodox or alternative medicine. This perhaps reflects the contemporary situation of a strained relationship between official biomedicine and alternative medicine. Compared to many other European countries and to the United States, where alternative and complementary medicine is contested but openly discussed, Finland appears exceptional. This is also revealed by discursive practices and rhetorical devices. In Finnish, unofficial healing is called “belief medicine” (uskomuslääkintä) instead of using internationally accepted terms used by the World Health Organization, namely complementary and alternative medicine. Until recently, Finnish medical history has focused intensely on institutions and professional organizations. Work on medical pluralism and medical culture has been lacking almost completely in the historiography.7 This chapter brings to light heterodox medicine, especially its North American strand, in Finland before and during the Second World War. It focuses especially on the naturopathic healer Hans Kalm, who practiced in Pyhäranta, in southwest Finland, in the 1930s. Kalm’s practice reveals how heterodox medicine and North American naturopathic healing, not only biomedicine, circulated
6 D. Wootton, Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006; W. Rosen, Miracle Cure: The Creation of Antibiotics and the Birth of Modern Medicine, New York: Penguin Books, 2017. 7 Pesonen, Terveyden puolesta; P. Laaksonen and U. Piela (eds.), Kansa parantaa [People heal], Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1983; Vauhkonen, “Yleiskatsaus”; K. Achte, J. Rantanen and T. Tamminen, Luontaishoidon Isä Tohtori E. W. Lybeck, Elämänmäen Parantaja [Father of natural medicine E. W. Lybeck, healer of Elämänmäki], Nurmijärvi: Recallmed, 1994; A. Halmesvirta, Vaivojensa vangit: Kansa kysyi, lääkärit vastasivat – historiallinen vuoropuhelu 1889–1916 [Prisoners of their ailments: People asked, doctors answered – historical dialogue 1889–1916], Jyväskylä: Atena, 1998; A. Tiitta, Collegium medicum: Lääkintöhallitus 1878–1991 [Collegium Medicum: National Board of Health 1878–1991], Jyväskylä: Gummerus, 2009; T. Saarivirta, D. Consoli and P. Dhondt, “The Evolution of the Finnish Health-Care System Early 19th Century and Onwards”, International Journal of Business and Social Science 3 (2012), pp. 243–257; P. Mustajoki, Mies joka hakkasi halkoja: Terveysapostoli Konrad ReijoWaara [Man who split logs: Health apostle Konrad ReijoWaara], Helsinki: Duodecim, 2013; M. Harjula, Hoitoonpääsyn hierarkiat: Terveyskansalaisuus ja terveyspalvelut Suomessa 1900-luvulla [Hierarchies of access to health care: Health citizenship and health care services in Finland in the 20th century], Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2015. For a sociological view of public medical discussion in Finland, see R. Kärki, Lääketiede julkisuudessa: Prometheus vai Frankenstein [Medicine in public: Prometheus or Frankenstein], Tampere: Vastapaino, 1998; K. Hyry (ed.), Sairaus ja ihminen: Kirjoituksia parantamisen perusteista [Illness and man: Writings on the grounds of healing], Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1994.
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across the Atlantic and became global in the twentieth century. By focusing on Kalm’s clashes with the biomedical establishment in Finland, this chapter shows how the globalization and circulation of medical practices always took place in local contexts, where doctors, healers, and patients had different expectations and ideas about what constituted acceptable and effective healing. Local cultural practices set limits on foreign, imported knowledge. This chapter opens with a short biography of Hans Kalm. It then describes his healing system in detail, placing it in the context of American naturopathic healing and philosophy. The text also discusses Kalm’s conflicts with allopathic doctors and official medical authorities. The overriding question this chapter elucidates concerns the transformation of a foreign medical system in a new local environment. Kalm’s experience shows that, at least in Finnish society, naturopathy had little chance of success and survival.
Hans Kalm’s Short Biography Hans Kalm (1889–1981) was born in the village of Kotsama, Estonia, to a rural family. He moved to Finland in 1911 and worked as an apprentice on farms while studying farming and agriculture in agronomic schools in Päivölä and Mustiala. In 1914, Kalm graduated as an agronomist and moved back to Estonia. However, he was soon called to the military and gradually rose in the ranks during the First World War. Kalm served in the Russian army for approximately three years. In the chaos that ensued after the Russian Revolution, Kalm returned to Finland, where he believed he could best oppose Bolshevik rule. He joined the Finnish Civil War on the White side and took a unit under his command. In 1919, Kalm joined the Estonian Freedom War and led a unit of Finnish volunteers into battle.8 In the summer of 1919, Hans Kalm was an unemployed officer of the Estonian army unwilling to continue his career as a soldier. In Finland, he was both despised and admired because of his involvement in the Civil War, but decided to pursue his agronomic interests there. In 1921, he married dentist Olga Matilda 8 J. Heinämäki, Hans Kalm: Vapaussoturi ja vaihtoehtolääkäri [Hans Kalm: Freedom fighter and alternative doctor], Helsinki: Minerva, 2007. On Kalm’s military career, see also J. Niinistö, Heimosotien historia 1918–1922 [History of tribal wars 1918–1922], Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2005. Kalm’s own account of the Finnish Civil War is contained in H. Kalm, Kalmin pataljoona Suomen vapaussodassa [Kalm’s battalion in Finland’s war for freedom], Helsinki: Ahjo, 1919. He also published a memoir of the Finnish volunteer soldiers in Estonia: H. Kalm, Pohjan poikain retki [Bothnia’s fellows’s expedition], Porvoo: WSOY, 1921.
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Valmari. Still interested in pursuing a career in agronomy, Kalm received private lessons in agricultural chemistry from his brother-in-law, Johannes Valmari, professor at the University of Helsinki, but his lack of a high school diploma closed the doors to universities in Finland and Estonia. Like many other Finns in the 1920s, Kalm and his family decided to move to the United States in 1923 in order for him to pursue agronomic studies. However, his ailing health soon led him to the study of the human body and its functioning. In the early 1920s, Kalm had read an article about naturopathy, which might have provided further inspiration to study medicine.9 Kalm’s time in the United States is shrouded in mystery. His biographer, Jaakko Heinämäki, has not found convincing documentation on Kalm’s studies and occupations in America. In an Estonian officers’ register, it is mentioned that he graduated from a medical faculty in Philadelphia in 1927 and received an orthopathic degree in Oklahoma in 1930. In 1932, he became a Doctor of Naturopathy (ND) in New York and gained a PhD in the same city in 1933. He also worked as a doctor in New York and New Jersey. However, upon his return to Finland in July 1934, Kalm presented the following certificates of his studies: (1) Doctor in Osteopathy, Osteopathic College and Hospital of Philadelphia, May 1927 (4-year course); (2) PhD (dissertation in Naturopathy), Naturopathic College of America, New York, July 1933 (3 years of studies and a dissertation). Apparently, if he had been to Oklahoma, he had not officially concluded his studies there. Kalm’s family, which now included two children, also spent time in Minnesota, where his wife Olga tried to study dentistry in order to practice her trade legally in the United States. However, after this failed, she returned to Finland with the children already in 1931.10 After the departure of his family, Hans Kalm stayed in New York for three more years, returning to Finland in July 1934. Olga and the children had settled in Janakkala, where she practiced dentistry. However, Hans Kalm had neither Finnish citizenship nor a residence or work permit.11 Moreover, ghosts of the past continued to haunt him in Janakkala, where his role in the Finnish Civil War was 9 Heinämäki, Hans Kalm, pp. 244–253. On Finnish migration to the United States, see R. Kero, Suomalaisina Pohjois – Amerikassa: Siirtolaiselämää Yhdysvalloissa ja Kanadassa [Finns in North America: Migrant life in the United States and Canada], Turku: Siirtolaisuusinstituutti, 1997; R. Kero, Suureen länteen: Siirtolaisuus Suomesta Yhdysvaltoihin ja Kanadaan [To the great west: Migration from Finland to the United States and Canada], Turku: Siirtolaisuusinstituutti, 1996; A. Kostiainen (ed.), Finns in the United States: A History of Settlement, Dissent, and Integration, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014. 10 Heinämäki, Hans Kalm, pp. 255–259. 11 Heinämäki’s biography is confusing on the point of Kalm’s citizenship, stating that Kalm was granted citizenship already in 1918 but did not have citizenship in 1934.
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all but forgotten. In applying for a residence and work permit, Kalm announced his intention to practice osteopathy as his primary occupation. Bureaucratic procedures involved several ministries and institutions, which gave statements regarding Kalm’s application. The National Board of Health, and especially its director, Hannes Ryömä, took a hard line against Kalm’s professional claims, arguing that he was not qualified to practice medicine in Finland and therefore should not be granted residence permit. Ryömä, well known for his work as a social democratic member of parliament as well as a minister, might have had political motives for rejecting Kalm’s application. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not support Kalm’s application either but had mixed views regarding a residence and work permit, later adding that it was not against granting a residence permit to Kalm. Meanwhile, the State Police, which clearly had political motives to support Kalm’s former track record as a military officer, did not oppose granting him a residence and work permit. The State Police, although acknowledging that the practice of medicine was not legally under its authority, compared Kalm’s osteopathic practice to the nature cure practiced in Kirvu, which had a long history of contestation with official medicine.12 After deliberations, the officials rejected Kalm’s application for a work permit but granted him a residence permit. He did not, however, give up, instead summoning his old friends to support his application for Finnish citizenship.13 This was granted in late 1935. By this time, Kalm had already left Turenki. He moved to Pyhäranta in coastal south-west Finland, where he established Kalmia, a sanatorium based in a rented, two-storeyed house. His family settled in nearby Rauma, where Olga continued to practice as a dentist and the children went to school. Kalm lived in Pyhäranta for five years, practicing healing and serving patients in Kalmia. Officially, Sanatorium Kalmia was a boarding house. In applying for permission for its establishment, Kalm did not refer to medicine or medical procedures at all. This, however, did not free him from subsequent critique as his sole purpose in Kalmia was to restore people to health.
Kalm’s Naturopathic Medical System Naturopathy emerged in the United States in the late nineteenth century. More than a medical system, it can also be seen as a philosophy for a way of life that
12 Heinämäki, Hans Kalm, pp. 261–267. On nature cure in Kirvu, see Rytty, “Puoskarointia”. 13 These included lecturer Antti Laiho, Lauri Pihkala, professor Antti Tulenheimo, professor Johannes Valmari, and colonel Elja Rihtniemi.
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emphasizes living in harmony with, rather than conquering, the natural world. Its history has been marked by fluid boundaries, diversity, and eclecticism. The pioneers of naturopathy blended diagnostics and treatments from nineteenth-century domestic medicine, Thomsonianism, homeopathy, botanical therapeutics, physical and health cultures, hydrotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractic, vegetarianism, electricity, eclecticism, sun and light cures, fasting, iridology, dietetics, hypnotism, neuropathy, and natural medicine. Ironically, as Cayleff has shown, this was also a weakness of the system, for it offered no single theory and praxis that promised panacea relief.14 The father of American naturopathy was Benedict Lust, who was joined by Louisa Stroeble Lust in popularizing it. The naturopathic medical system was itself born out of the transatlantic migration experience of Benedict Lust, who in 1892 came to New York to seek his fortune but found tuberculosis instead. He returned to Germany and was restored to health in Wörishöfen by Sebastian Kneipp, a well-known water curer. Lust then came back to the New World as an emissary of Kneipp. The word naturopathy, however, was allegedly already coined in 1892 by Drs John and Sophie Scheel, who combined the terms nature cure and homeopathy. The term naturopathy received immediate criticism because its meaning – sickness or suffering by nature – was objectionable. Yet the term stuck, and the Lusts went on to found the American School of Naturopathy and the American School of Chiropractic, producing a stunning array of publications, and founding healing sanatoriums in the states of New Jersey and Florida. Naturopathy’s early history was characterized by wildly diverse practitioners claiming the title “naturopath”. Many of them were against drugging of any sort, equating drugs with sickness. This meant that some of them strove to eliminate the use of all medicines, including herbs, which had been advocated by the founders of the movement.15 One of the first challenges Kalm encountered upon his return to Finland was what to call the medical system he was promoting. Here, one can detect how globally circulating North American healing systems had to be reconfigured in the local Finnish context. Choosing to call Kalmia a sanatorium (terveyshoitola) was in accordance with the naturopathic model in America. More precisely, Kalm defined his sanatorium as a “biologic-physical institute for developing health”. In his own words,
14 S. E. Cayleff, Nature’s Path: A History of Naturopathic Healing in America, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016, pp. 1–4, 15. 15 Cayleff, Nature’s Path, pp. 13–16; J. C. Whorton, Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 191–192.
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it [i.e. Kalmia] does not emphasize disease like pathological institutions do. Its whole function and purpose is to ameliorate and develop, renew and build. Our methods are unique in Finland both in their principles and methodology. We do not fight against disease and “seeds of disease” nor infection and fever as hospitals and sanatoriums generally do. On the contrary, we even harness fever in the work of healing (fever therapy). Our practices are based on the knowledge and experience that The manifestations of poor health – pains and diseases and micro-organisms that appear in metabolism – are the consequences, expressions, and “vegetation” of the body’s poisoning (dysaemy, toxaemy) and weakness of the nerves (enervation), and that Toxemy or dysemy and enervation are caused by and develop because of habits, ignorance and mistakes opposing health, and that Living organisms heal themselves if they are given the opportunity to do so before their constitution has been damaged to the extent that they cannot continue living.16
Kalm went on to underline that Kalmia was a drugless sanatorium. Diet played an important role in healing, and it was complemented by herbs, minerals, and biochemical compounds. In an interview in the local newspaper shortly after his arrival in Pyhäranta, Kalm tried to explain how these differed from drugs. Kalm stated that his “field is biochemistry, which revolves fully around nutritional physiology […] In other words, I diagnose what nutrients the patient is lacking.”17 At the outset, Kalm emphasized his studies and experience overseas but he had problems legitimizing this experience with a professional title. One can see him skirting around this issue on the front covers of his publications. In his first publication, Kalm titled himself “Colonel, PhD in Physiology”.18 Subsequently, he added “American Doctor” and eliminated “Physiology”.19 Then he dropped all titles except his military title “Colonel” and explicated that he was an “American doctor of biochemical-physical school, who has experience in working in several similar sanatoriums and hospitals overseas”.20 Only in 1943, Kalm was prepared to publicly refer to being a “Naturopathic physician”. However, even this was
16 Hans Kalm, Elonilmiöt ja sähkö [Living phenomena and electricity], Pyhäranta: Terveyshoitola Kalmia, 1936, pp. 71–72, original emphasis, all translations from Finnish to English by the author. 17 “Hans Kalm, soturi, joka on pistänyt miekkansa tuppeen ja parantaa Pyhärannassa sairaita ja raihnaisia”, Länsi-Suomi, 15 June 1935. 18 Kalm, Elonilmiöt ja sähkö. 19 H. Kalm, Valon parantava voima [Healing power of light], Self-published, 1938. 20 H. Kalm, Miten Kalmiassa voimistellaan [Physical exercise in Kalmia], Self-published, 1938, title page, p. 5; H. Kalm, Kalmia: Kaipiainen [Kalmia: Kaipiainen], Self-published, 1943.
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stated with qualifications because it seems he was unsure whether he was still allowed to practice naturopathy in the United States.21 While it is understandable that Kalm wanted to eliminate any possibility of prosecution by authorities, at the same time the strategy of using only his military title left the door open for accusations of quackery. One can perhaps read caution in Kalm’s adoption of professional titles, but they also reflect the eclectic and hybrid nature of his healing practice. Kalm drew from many sources and experimented with different methods of nature cure. This must have further complicated his relationship with biomedicine practitioners and university-trained doctors. However, his dodging the issue of professional titles can be seen as a tactic to avoid conflict with medical authorities. In accordance with naturopathic tenets, Kalm believed that the body will heal itself when various components are strengthened through the use of nontoxic, natural therapies. Similar to naturopathy practiced in the United States, Kalm’s medical system was a hybrid consisting of different healing techniques. His naturopathic studies in New York had included courses in anatomy, biology, physiology, chemistry, biochemistry, diagnostics, bacteriology, symptomology, pathology, psychology, toxicology, diagnosis prophylaxis, orthopaedics, comparative medicine, electrotherapy, heliotherapy, aerotherapy, chiropractic, and nutritional science.22 Some of these methods demonstrate that naturopathy did not disdain modern technology. Overall, medicine in the early twentieth century was becoming more technological, and university medical researchers also experimented with new devices.23 Any number of methods could be used by naturopaths, but the three well-established remedies they usually turned to were water cure and modes of hygienic living. They also included variations and applications of botanical, blood washing, fasting, massage, eliminative therapeutics, colour healing, electricity, homeopathy, hypnotism, iridiagnosis, light baths, magnetism, neuropathy, and zone therapy.24 Kalm undoubtedly also included osteopathy in his practice. Osteopathy was founded by Andrew Taylor Still (1828–1917), who, in 1892, obtained a state charter to open the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri. Still valued the laying on of hands and added the manipulative practice of flexion
21 Ibid., p. 3. “Olen ollut ja ehkä vieläkin olen Yhdysvalloissa laillistettu ‘Naturopathic Physician’, luontaislääkäri” (In the United States, I have been and still might be, a legalized “naturopathic physician”). 22 Heinämäki, Hans Kalm, p. 256. 23 C. Thomas de la Peña, The Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built the Modern American, New York: New York University Press, 2005. 24 Cayleff, Nature’s Path, p. 25.
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and extension procedures, rubbing the spine, and restoring bones to the appropriate place in the spinal column. In addition to osteopathy, chiropractic influenced Benedict Lust profoundly before he began operating in the American School of Naturopathy, and in the early development of naturopathy, the three healing systems generally embraced and complemented one another. Therefore, it is not surprising that Kalm turned from osteopathy to naturopathy while living in the United States. Naturopaths embraced the values of physical culture and massage. The latter had the clearest benefits in stimulating the body to heal itself. Shortly after settling in Pyhäranta, Kalm began propagating his ideas to the public. He started publishing articles in the Rauma-based newspaper, LänsiSuomi, which was read mostly in the west coast districts of Vakka-Suomi and Satakunta.25 Beginning in 1936, Kalm also published his articles as booklets. His first venture into book publishing was titled Elonilmiöt ja sähkö (Natural phenomena and electricity). Naturopaths saw electricity as one of the triggers of the body’s immune responses through external stimulus. Electrotherapy, also included in Kalm’s studies, was valued by many authors in the 1930s, and there were several popular devices for its application. His articles on electricity, however, contained very little hints to the naturopathic applications of electricity. They were rather a reflection on the various manifestations of electricity in natural phenomena. Therefore, the first booklet published by Kalm contained very little that would have been considered controversial in medicine. It was apparently a carefully worded set of essays that intended to demonstrate the author’s learning in physics and biology. To challenge the professional authority of allopathic doctors, Kalm referred to several foreign studies on different aspects of electrophysics. He made use of, for example, Arthur E. Baines’ Studies in Electro-Physiology (1918) and studies by the German and American scientists Gustav Theodor Fechner, Fritz Grünewald, and George W. Crile. He also referred to the studies of Dr Sidney Altrutz (Sweden), Dr R. W. Schulte (Germany), and Walter J. Killner (England). These studies would have been known in Finland only by a very select few. Their point seems to have been to prove to the medical establishment that Kalm could and would argue scientifically to defend his practice. The only clear statement on medicine was Kalm’s insistence on the production of fresh vegetables in the Finnish winter. This was to be done in greenhouses under electric light. Referring to his time in the United States, he stated
25 Kalm’s first article, titled “Luontaisruokinta” (Natural diet), appeared on 31 July, 1935, soon after he settled in Pyhäranta.
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that he had witnessed it overseas and had healed people with fresh food, further arguing that it would also be worthwhile in Finland. According to Kalm, this could help cure tuberculate, anemic, chlorotic, rheumatic, and neuralgic patients, who after being treated by regular doctors for several years had lost faith in drugs. Therefore, he recommended “the production of electric light (i.e. electricity) from rapids, and with light healthy food to families from their own vegetable houses even during the darkest parts of the year”.26 In 1938, Kalm self-published three titles, in which his naturopathic philosophy and medical system was more clearly laid out. Valon parantava voima (The healing power of light) had originally appeared as a set of twelve articles in Länsi-Suomi.27 In Miten Kalmiassa voimistellaan (Physical exercises in Kalmia), he articulated a programme for physical culture. Finally, he defended his practice of naturopathy in publishing Mitä Kalmia on ja mitä se ei ole (What is Kalmia and what is it not). In Valon parantava voima, Kalm sought to popularize light cures, another popular tenet of North American naturopathy. For Kalm, this meant both cures based on the natural sun and the use of electric therapeutic lamps. The purpose of light cures was not to get a sun tan, as Kalm clearly explicated in his text. He warned that it was dangerous to burn oneself in hot, windless sunlight, especially during midday. Kalm argued that mortality was highest during March and therefore the use of therapeutic lamps was especially relevant during the long and dark Finnish winter. However, Kalm posited that even in Finland it was possible to get enough sunlight during the winter if one just spent time outdoors. In the United States, light cures were clearly connected to industrialization. Their advocates demonstrated the impact of solar light by contrasting the robust farmer or outdoors worker with the pale and bloodless factory worker. Indoor lights were an important naturopathic adaptation, since they offered urban factory workers the possibility of utilizing natural therapeutics without journeying to a countryside sanatorium. In 1918, one naturopath wrote of the three groups of therapeutic lamps for sale on the market: the arc lamp yielded the same spectral composition as the sun; the Finsen lamp produced almost pure ultraviolet rays; and the incandescent, or Leucodescent lamp, produced mostly thermal and luminous rays. Electric light baths were integral to naturopathic therapeutics and supplemented the income of many practitioners.28 26 Kalm, Elonilmiöt ja sähkö, pp. 31–32 (original italics). 27 ‘Valon parantava voima’, Länsi-Suomi, 29 December 1935; 3, 4, 18, and 23 January 1936; 1, 9, 13, 15, and 23 February 1936; 6 and 11 March 1936. 28 Cayleff, Nature’s Path, pp. 44–45.
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Kalm advocated the use of coal arc lamps. In arguing for their use, he produced a substantial body of evidence, citing foreign authorities and research results on the use of light cures. Starting from the application of sun baths in ancient medicine, Kalm drew extensively from the history of medicine, showing his familiarity with Arnold Rikli’s sun baths in nineteenth-century Austria, amongst other notable examples. Amongst his contemporaries, he paid most respect to Swiss doctor Auguste Rollier, whom Kalm referred to as “one of the most shining stars in light and air therapy during our time” and “my friend”.29 Although Kalm also referred to many American pioneers of hydropathy and nature cure, such as Dr John Harvey Kellogg and Henry Lindlahr,30 the references in Valon parantava voima show that early twentieth-century naturopathy was truly a global enterprise in which therapeutic innovations and applications crossed national borders and oceans, especially in the transatlantic context.31 The naturopathic view of disease was that all sickness originated within the body. They claimed that individuals were not being attacked by alien pathological agents but that each person was responsible for attacking his own body with unnatural habits of life. The first step in the path to healing was the imposition of self-control and the return to nature’s intended mode of life. Kalm slightly modified the early naturopathic disease conception in articulating that “a healthy body is closed to the entry of external seeds of disease”. Early naturopaths further believed that certain foods generated “mucus” inside the body, mucus being considered a factor in the causation of almost all disease. They promoted diets consisting of “unfired” foods because cooked meals supposedly fermented in the digestive tract, producing toxins that leaked into the blood and played havoc with the body. Kalm similarly argued that rotting and fermenting food intoxicated the body and served as a breeding ground for harmful microorganisms. In Finland, this was especially problematic during the winter, when people allegedly consumed more food because of the cold but at the
29 Kalm, Valon parantava voima, pp. 8, 40. Rollier authored La cure de soleil, Paris: Baillière & fils, 1915, translated into English as Heliotherapy, with Special Consideration of Surgical Tuberculosis, London: Oxford Medical Publications, 1923. On Rollier’s therapy, see T. A. Woloshyn, Our Friend, the Sun: Images of Light Therapeutics from the Osler Library Collection, c. 1901–1944, Montreal: McGill University, Osler Library of the History of Medicine, 2011. 30 On Kellogg and Lindlahr, see Cayleff, Nature’s Path, pp. 28, 31. 31 An example of Kalm’s knowledge of other doctors applying light cures: “Bernhard and Rollier in Switzerland, Rickli in Austria, Gauvain, Palm, Saleeby and Lief in England, Kellogg, Lindlahr, Hazzard, Shelton, Hess and Mayer in the United States, Ollier and Poncet in France, Finsen in Denmark, Kocher and Dorno in Germany.” He also cited the following: Albert J. Ochsner, C. S. Neiswanger, W. J. Plank, Quinche, Moleschott (Kalm, Valon parantava voima, pp. 13, 31).
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same time decreased their physical activity. If the “seeds of disease” (causes of disease) entered the human body only when people became sick, the logical conclusion was that the causes of disease were deeper, in the unhealthy dietary practices and the lack of physical exercise.32 To demonstrate the naturopathic way to health, Kalm published a short booklet titled Miten Kalmiassa voimistellaan. Kalm’s physical exercise regime were a hybrid of ideas from different sources. In Kalmia, he had experimented with different regimen before concentrating on a system he called “vibration” (värinä). These were simple movements based on flexing and releasing muscles in the arms and legs. He guided his patients and other readers to adopt a daily practice consisting of movements that made the body vibrate. The movements were supposed to remove metabolic waste from the body while strengthening the heart, lungs, and blood circulation. The regimen also consisted of breathing exercises that massaged the intestines. Kalm recommended these practices to anyone regardless of age or sex and especially to individuals whose metabolism is slow, circulation of fluids obstructed, fluids and tissues poisoned with waste products [and] canals obstructed or about to be obstructed, and to people who are exhausted, irritated, and suffer of insomnia or sleepiness. In other words, to all who are toxemic and enervated, that is sick, about to get sick or in a poor state of health.33
It is noteworthy that Kalm suggested a rather light routine of gymnastics. Swedish and German gymnastics had grown popular in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century and the societal emphasis on exercise and physical activity grew. Most famous and influential proponent of physical culture in America was Bernarr Macfadden (1868–1955), who opened a school of physcultopathy in 1903. Macfadden, whose work was heralded by naturopathic leaders and practitioners, published the magazine Physical Culture and promoted naturopathy. Some Finnish migrants in the United States were drawn to Macfadden’s ideas and translated his work to Finnish. There were also Finns who studied in Macfadden’s school in Chicago. One of them, Alma Hiltunen, returned to Finland and began to promote drugless healing about a decade earlier than Hans Kalm. Similar to Kalm, Hiltunen published several health guides to promote this healing practice in Finland.34 She also taught
32 Kalm, Valon parantava voima, pp. 11, 18; J. C. Whorton, Nature Cures, pp. 194–201. 33 Kalm, Miten Kalmiassa voimistellaan, pp. 22–23. 34 Cayleff, Nature’s Path, p. 43; B. Macfadden, Syöminen voimakkuuden lähteenä: Miten ja mitä on syötävä ja juotava terveyden ja voimakkuuden kehittämiseksi korkeimmilleen [Strength from Eating: How and What to Eat and Drink to Develop the Highest Degree of Health and Strength], E. V. Latvala (trans.), Hancock: Työmies kustannusyhtiö, 1912; B. MacFadden,
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drugless healing and nature cure in Helsinki between 1927 and 1934, despite being criticized at the outset for setting up her practice in the Finnish capital.35 Hiltunen and Kalm were not the only Finns drawn to heterodox healing in the United States. One of the best known Finnish students of naturopathy was Kauko Uoti, whose father Juho (Johannes) Uoti had published in 1912 a self-help manual on nature cures.36 Kauko Uoti first studied medicine at the University of Helsinki before moving to Berlin and Innsbruck to continue his studies. He never got a university degree but instead migrated to the United States and graduated from the American School of Naturopathy in 1933, the same year as Hans Kalm.37 There is no trace in the documentation that Kalm and Uoti knew each other personally, although this is most probable. Overall, naturopathy and drugless healing had many supporters amongst Finnish migrants. Finnish-language newspapers in North America published articles by renowned naturopaths such
Hiustenhoitokirja [Hair Culture], L. Kanto (trans.), Pori: Satakunnan kirjateollisuus, 1927; A. Hiltunen, Terveys ja sairaus 1 [Health and illness 1], Tampere: Lääkkeettömän parannuksen ystävät, 1929; A. Hiltunen, Terveys ja sairaus 2: Reumatismi ja sen lääkkeetön parantaminen [Health and illness 2: Rheumatism and its drugless healing], Lahti: Lääkkeettömän parannuksen ystävät, 1929; A. Hiltunen, Terveys ja sairaus 4: Päänsärky, unettomuus ja hermotaudit [Health and illness 4: Headache, insomnia and nerve diseases], Viipuri: Lääkkeettömän parannuksen ystävät, 1930; A. Hiltunen, Reumatismi, nivelleini, ischias ja niitten parantaminen ilman lääkkeitä sähköä ja suggestiota [Rheumatism, reumatoid arthritis, ischias, and their healing without drugs, electricity and suggestion], Pori: Satakunnan kirjateollisuus, 1930; A. Hiltunen, Vatsataudit ja lääkkeetön parantaminen: käytännöllisiä ohjeita vatsasairauksien parantamiseksi ja ehkäisemiseksi [Stomach diseases and drugless healing: Practical advice for treating and preventing stomach diseases], Helsinki: Kustannusliike Kaleva, 1932; A. Hiltunen, Keuhkotauti, asthma, keuhkokuume, keuhkokatarri, hinkuyskä niiden syyt ja luonnonmukainen parantaminen ilman lääkkeitä, seerumeja ja leikkauksia: kotihoito-opas [Lung disease, asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, whooping cough their causes and natural healing without drugs, serums, and surgery: guide for domestic cures], Helsinki: self-published, 1935. 35 Advertisements by Alma Hiltunen in Suomen Sosiaalidemokraatti, 9 and 22 April 1927; 4, 11, and 18 June 1927; 19 and 23 July 1927; 20 September 1927; 1 October 1927; 8 December 1927; 28 April 1929; 13 October 1929; 6 September 1930; 11 October 1930; 27 August 1931; 17 January 1932; 13 October 1932; 18 November 1932; 28 October 1934; 4 November 1934; LänsiSavo, 22 May 1928; Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, 17 December 1932. A criticism of Hiltunen’s practice was published in A. Salokannel, “Resepti, kylpyamme” [Prescription, bathtub], Suomen Terveydenhoito-lehti 11 (1927). It read: “A certain lady advertised recently in one of the capital’s newspapers that she has graduated in ‘drugless healing in a school in Chicago’ and offers courses on water cure. In a few weeks can anyone become a ‘nature healer’, who can cure any disease. Dear friends: where is the sense?” 36 Uoti, Kotiopas. 37 R. Mäkelä, Vedestä voimaa: Lempäälän Luontaiskylpylä 1926–2001 [Strength from water: Lempäälä’s natural spa 1926–2001], Lempäälä: Lempäälän Luontaiskylpylä, 2001, p. 11.
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as Henry Lindlahr. Healers also advertised their nature cures in these publications. They set up health centres and private practices in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Oregon.38 Besides naturopathy and Macfadden’s system, some Finnish migrants studied osteopathy and chiropractic. For migrants, careers in alternative medicine and heterodox healing offered important avenues for a livelihood. Despite their popularity amongst migrants in the United States, returning healers such as Hiltunen and Kalm struggled professionally in rooting foreign healing systems in Finnish society.
Kalm’s Conflict with Allopaths From the outset, naturopathic practitioners were in open conflict with allopathic medical doctors. Naturopaths, defending the right of a person to his or her own body, disdained public health authorities and physicians. Naturopaths’ fight for medical liberty led to their unwillingness to accept any scientifically based methods that were becoming more common in the early twentieth century. This, in turn, elicited the wrath of organized medicine, public health officials, and the legal system. In early twentieth-century Finland, there were strong precedents that heterodox medicine would be legally persecuted. Traditional folk healers received fines in provincial courts and practitioners of nature cure such as Maalin Bergström similarly had to defend their practice in court. Despite having to pay fines, Bergström continued to practice as a healer, demonstrating that there was a strong popular support for nature cure and no official will to stamp it out completely.39 The situation in Finland resembled, to a large degree, the Swedish medical marketplace in the early twentieth century. As Eva Palmblad and Motzi Eklöf document, nature cure and other healing systems were strongly debated and opposed by the medical establishment in Sweden. The legal apparatus was harnessed to control non-authorized healing. Public education was aimed at not only the masses, but also politicians and state officials. Although Palmblad and Eklöf focus less on the transnational aspects of heterodox medicine, there are 38 “Terveellinen elintapa” [Healthy way of life], Pelto ja Koti 12 (1915), published in Superior, Wisconsin; “Tärkeä Neuvo Terveydenhoidossa” [An important health advice], Industrialistin Joulu 1921, published in Duluth, Minnesota; Tie vapauteen [Road to freedom] 4 (1923), published in Chicago, Illinois; advertisements on drugless healing by Dr O. O. Jurva in Totuus 2 (1925), 4 (1925), 5 (1925), published in Duluth, Minnesota; articles on drugless healing by A. Heino in Veljeysviesti 5 (1929) 2 and 5 (1929) 3, published in Astoria, Oregon. 39 Rytty, “Puoskarointia”.
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indications that North American influences also took hold in Sweden. Circulation of trans-European medical knowledge was especially prominent in the highly contested patent medicines, for which there existed a large and unregulated market.40 One of the reasons provincial courts and local physicians might have been unwilling to take stronger action against folk healers and heterodox medicine was the weak presence of biomedicine in local agrarian communities. This was most obvious in northern Finland. In the 1930s, there were 53 provincial doctors (piirilääkäri) and between 10 and 20 regional doctors in peripheral outposts (for example, in the archipelago). Approximately half of the 600 communes had a communal doctor. The overall presence of medical doctors was less than 4 doctors per 10,000 people.41 Tuberculosis (TB) was a major national health issue in early twentiethcentury Finland.42 Although Kalm’s conflict with allopaths was obvious from the time he returned to Finland and did not obtain permission to practice medicine, it was the treatment of tuberculosis in Kalmia that signalled his open disagreement with the medical establishment. Around the same time that Kalm began his practice in Pyhäranta, a medical doctor named Bror Mikkelä was nominated as the head of the tuberculosis office in Rauma. The Association Against Tuberculosis, which began operating in 1907, divided the country into health districts and nominated a specialist in lung diseases for each district. The first mass examinations were held in Rauma in the spring of 1935 by Dr Toivo Ellilä. Dr Mikkelä arrived in the town a few months later.43 It was no accident that Mikkelä began an intense exchange of views with Kalm on the pages of the Länsi-Suomi newspaper. Following Kapil Raj’s transformative concept of circulation, this highlights the issues of power
40 E. Palmblad, Sanningens gränser: Kvacksalveriet, läkarna och samhället, Sverige 1890–1990 [The limits of truth: Quackery, doctors, and society, Sweden 1890–1990], Stockholm: Carlssons, 1997; M. Eklöf, Läkare och läkekonster [Doctors and medicine], Stockholm: Carlssons, 2010. On patent medicines in Finland, see R. Oittinen, “Health, Horror and Dreams for Sale: Patent Medicine and Quackery in Prewar Finland”, in: R. Jütte, M. Eklöf and M. C. Nelson (eds.), Historical Aspects of Unconventional Medicine: Approaches, Concepts, Case Studies, Sheffield: European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, 2001, pp. 119–138. 41 Tiitta, Collegium medicum, p. 181. 42 Ibid., pp. 156–162; H. Hakosalo, “Tautisia tarinoita: Lääketieteen ja tuberkuloosin historiaa” [Diseased stories: History of medicine and tuberculosis], in: M. Myllykangas and P. Pietikäinen (eds.), Ajatusten lähteillä: Aatteiden ja oppien historiaa [On the origin of ideas: History of ideas and knowledge], Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2017, pp. 299–328. 43 U. Heino, Rauma: Idylliä ja tehokkuutta 1875–2000 [Rauma: Idyll and effectiveness 1875–2000], Rauma: Rauman kaupunki, 2002, p. 395.
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and resistance.44 Kalm’s advocation of light cures and Auguste Rollier’s heliotherapy touched upon the treatment of tuberculosis. Scientifically, however, Kalm and Mikkelä were talking about different diseases. Mikkelä’s main concern was pulmonary TB, which attacks the lungs. In his writings, however, Kalm underlined that Rollier had achieved results in the treatment of all other types of TB (that is to say, extrapulmonary) except pulmonary TB. This shows that the contestation was not so much about the science of medicine but about healing methods and the right to practice medicine. Mikkelä was well prepared to defend official medicine. The training of medical doctors in early twentieth-century Finland took place at the University of Helsinki and followed general European trends. The length of medical studies in Finland was on average 11 years. This originated in the vast geographical expanse of a thinly populated country, which often made it impossible to consult a specialist. Therefore, general practitioners were required to have a good knowledge of all medical fields, including medicine, surgery, obstetrics, and pharmacy. Although it is not possible to re-create the library of Bror Mikkelä, it is well known that German universities had a big influence on medical training in Finland. In the first half of the twentieth century, the majority of Finnish doctoral dissertations in medicine were written in German.45 Although the question of light therapies had already infuriated Mikkelä,46 the question of healthy dietary practices led to further clashes about medical authority. In Länsi-Suomi, Kalm advocated eating unpeeled potatoes and replacing refined sugar with fructose and honey. Sugar, according to Kalm, was especially harmful to human health.47 Although many experts would nowadays agree with Kalm,48 in Finnish society in the 1930s his views did not garner popular support amongst medical doctors. Mikkelä wrote a scathing critique of Kalm’s medical system in Länsi-Suomi and called him “colonel”, underlining Kalm’s professional status as an unofficial healer. In November 1937, he attacked Kalm’s writings about sugar, arguing that it was absolutely necessary
44 Raj, “Beyond Postcolonialism”, p. 343. 45 Dhondt, “Transnational Currents”. On the training of Finnish medical doctors, see also S. Aalto, “‘Ilman kollegiaalisuutta ei ole lääkäreitä.’ – Lääkäriyhteisö ja ammattikunnan kulttuuriin kasvaminen” [“No physicians without collegiality” – Doctors’ association and growing in the profession’s culture], in: S. Nyström (ed.), Vapaus, terveys, toveruus: Lääkärit Suomessa 1910–2010 [Freedom, health, comradeship: Doctors in Finland 1910–2010], Helsinki: Fennomed Oy, 2010, pp. 53–157. 46 Länsi-Suomi, 28 February 1936. 47 “Sokeria muurilaastiin” [Sugar in mortar], Länsi-Suomi, 10 November 1937. 48 J. Walvin, Sugar: The World Corrupted, from Slavery to Obesity, London: Robinson, 2017.
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for human health. He also criticized the newspaper for constantly publishing Kalm’s views when it could easily publish “competent and instructive medical text”.49 To defend his position, Kalm published a detailed explication of his healing methods in Mitä Kalmia on ja mitä se ei ole. The book repeated many focal points from his earlier publications, which were also quoted at length. However, Kalm had now found local scientific authorities to support his arguments. He highlighted and wrote admiringly about the physiological knowledge of A. I. Virtanen, who was to win the 1945 Nobel Prize in chemistry, and George von Wendt, professor in domestic animal science at the University of Helsinki, who had also published extensively on human health and nutrition. Referring directly to Mikkelä’s writings, Kalm argued that Finnish medical doctors had not been trained in the latest breakthroughs in nutritional science, which did not come from Germany but from the United States and England. He had published many newspaper columns on nutrition, which had been attacked by Mikkelä. Kalm wondered what would Virtanen and Wendt, “whose bookshelves are filled with American and British biochemical literature, and who have made study trips to these countries”, say.50 Finally, Kalm’s healing system took another global twist towards South Asia. Breathing exercises, while recommended by Kalm, were not thoroughly explained in the booklet on gymnastics, but Kalm recommended interested readers to turn to two books as additional reading. These were Yogi Ramacharaka’s Hengittämisen taito (The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath: A Complete Manual of the Oriental Breathing Philosophy of Physical, Mental, Psychic and Spiritual Development, 1903) and Edmund Jacobson’s Täytyy höllentää (You Must Relax, 1934).51 Yogi Ramacharaka was thought to be the pseudonym of William Walker Atkinson, an American publisher and occultist, who became interested in Hinduism in the 1890s and popularized yoga in the United States. Kalm also translated G. T. Wrench’s book Wheel of Health in Finnish (Terveyden kiertokulku: Tutkimus erikoisen terveestä kansasta, 1939). Wrench was an English 49 “Muurilaastiinko sokeri?” [Sugar in mortar?], Länsi-Suomi, 11 November 1937. Länsi-Suomi published two more articles by the antagonists: “Sokeria tientekoonkin” [Sugar for road building], 21 November 1937 (by Kalm), and “Loppusanat puoleltani” [My closing words], 24 November 1937 (by Mikkelä). After this, it decided to end the polemic, concluding that it could only interest very few readers. 50 H. Kalm, Mitä Kalmia on [What is Kalmia], Self-published, 1938, p. 10, 13. 51 Y. Ramacharaka, Hengittämisen taito [The Yogi Science of Breath], R. Serlachius (trans.), Porvoo: WSOY, 1935; E. Jacobson, Täytyy höllentää: Miten nykyelämän rasituksia voitetaan [You Must Relax: Practical Methods for Reducing the Tensions of Modern Living], V. HämeenAnttila (trans.), Hämeenlinna: Karisto, 1938.
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physician who, drawing on the work of Dr Robert McCarrison, popularized the drug-free techniques of the Himalayan Hunza people, which allegedly strengthened the immune system. These works point to the multidirectional circulation of ideas between the East and the West, and they would deserve further study.52
Healer and Patients Sanatorium Kalmia, located in the rural village of Pyhäranta, was primarily chosen as a suitable setting for a sanatorium because it provided peace and quiet to patients. Kalm argued that an uninterrupted, long-duration therapy was better achieved in a secluded spot away from the “disturbing effects of business life”. He emphasized that patients who had already tried different hydropathic cures and drugs could not recover in a short time but needed a longer period of care. Citing Rollier and Bernhard, Kalm claimed that “real healing can only be achieved with long-term physiological treatment – if with anything”.53 Patients who agreed to spend enough time to be cured were given preference when Kalm admitted patients to his sanatorium. Patients had to arrange their stay in advance because of limited facilities.54 The treatment cost between 1,400 and 1,800 marks per month, which included not only the treatment but also full board.55 As was common to many other strands of heterodox healing, naturopathy in Finland attracted mainly patients with chronic conditions who had already tried everything else. They usually came to Kalmia with several medical prescriptions and after hospitalization. Having lost hope of finding a cure, Kalmia was their last chance. Heinämäki argues that Kalm succeeded in healing incurable patients “surprisingly often”.56 This was based on Kalm’s subjective claims, some of which were recounted in Mitä Kalmia on ja mitä se ei ole as well as in the minutes of the Pyhäranta municipal council. Kalm reserved a place in Kalmia for Pyhäranta residents, and the individuals who were treated there were generally happy with Kalm’s healing methods. Indications of the patient profiles can also be drawn from the 43 patient histories (abridged summaries) published in Mitä Kalmia on ja mitä se ei ole. In short, patients included men and women as well as boys and girls of
52 On Atkinson, see C. T. Jackson, “The New Thought Movement and the Nineteenth Century Discovery of Oriental Philosophy”, Journal of Popular Culture 9 (1975), pp. 523–548. 53 Kalm, Valon parantava voima, p. 25. 54 Kalm, Elonilmiöt, p. 75. 55 Heinämäki, Hans Kalm, p. 276. 56 Ibid., p. 274.
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all ages (between 7 and 70). Most male patients were farmers or labourers, but given the coastal location of Pyhäranta and Rauma, there were also ship captains. Female patients included housewives and young ladies of diverse occupations. There was nothing exceptional in the list of patients, most of whom could be defined as middle- and working-class individuals or their children.57 Although it had its supporters, Kalm’s sanatory was constantly under criticism during its short existence. The onset of the Second World War ended Kalm’s activities in Pyhäranta, and Kalmia was officially closed in the spring of 1940. He then went to live with his wife in Rauma. During the war, he shortly commanded a prisoner-of-war camp in Naarajärvi in 1941 but was released from duty in September 1941. Heinämäki has not been able to find traces of Kalm’s whereabouts until November 1943,58 when he moved with his family from Rauma to Sippola (Anjalankoski). Kalm’s own writings clearly state that, after returning to civilian life, he tried to make a study trip to Germany in order to learn about food production in the Third Reich. This was finally successful, and Kalm visited not only food factories and research institutes but also hospitals and two conferences on medicine. He thanked the German Medical Board and its experts on dietary studies for granting him the possibility to further his knowledge.59 In Germany, Kalm probably found a welcoming and intellectually stimulating environment. German medical research was much more advanced than in Finland, and of great significance, heterodox healing was much more acceptable there. Germany was home to many nature cures, and Kalm claimed that he was accepted there as a Naturarzt. As a proof of the popularity of Naturheilkunde in Germany, he wrote about the city hospital of Dresden (RudolfHeß-Krankenhaus), a well-known centre for nature cure in Central Europe.60 The
57 Kalm, Mitä Kalmia on, pp. 39–58. 58 Heinämäki, Hans Kalm, pp. 305–306. 59 Kalm, Kalmia, Kaipiainen, p. 2. Heinämäki (Hans Kalm, p. 310) erroneously states that Kalm never referred to working or studying in Germany. 60 Kalm, Kalmia, Kaipiainen, pp. 3, 5. On the Dresden hospital, see M. Lienert, “Das Stadtkrankenhaus Dresden-Johannstadt in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus”, in: A. Scholz, C.P. Heidel and M. Lienert (eds.), Vom Stadtkrankenhaus zum Universitätsklinikum: 100 Jahre Krankenhausgeschichte in Dresden, Cologne: Böhlau, 2001, pp. 105–142. For a recent overview of medicine in the Third Reich, see R. Jütte with W. U. Eckart, H.-W. Schmuhl and W. Süß, Medizin und Nationalsozialismus: Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung [Medicine and National Socialism: Review and perspectives of research], Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011. On medical pluralism in Germany, see also G. Stollberg, “Medical Plurality and Medical Pluralism in Germany (19th and early 20th Century)”, in: R. Jütte (ed.), Medical Pluralism: Past – Present – Future, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2013, pp. 141–151; H. Walach, “Medical Pluralism in Germany”, in: ibid., pp. 153–164.
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stated purpose of Kalm’s trip was to gain knowledge about dietary research in order to help Finland’s military efforts, but, from a personal perspective, it was clearly intended to bolster the legitimacy claims of Kalm’s naturopathic medical system. Upon his return to Finland, Kalm established a new, short-lived sanatorium in Kaipiainen, Sippola. It received mainly wealthy patients, and its mysterious director lived a secluded life with little contact to villagers. In the short pamphlet he published to advertise the new sanatorium (still titled Kalmia), Kalm continued his militant stance against established biomedicine in Finland. Knowing well that he was courting trouble with the National Board of Health, Kalm underlined that Kalmia was not a hospital but a sanatorium. As long as it was not a crime, he promised to continue providing a bed and rest in a heated room for a fee. He also promised to cut his customers’ nails, massage and clean their bodies, listen to them, protect them from poisons, and offer them healthy food. Furthermore, he gave them advice on the way to a healthier life.61 In Kaipiainen, Kalm also responded to criticism over his legal status to practice medicine. He argued that the professional monopoly of universitytrained doctors and the consequent health policies could not accept practices coming from outside the inner circle. The medical systems, especially regarding disease causation, were too far apart. Kalm seems to have been convinced that his naturopathic healing philosophy could never be accepted by allopathic doctors in Finland. In October or November 1944, fearing political persecution after the Second World War, he suddenly disappeared from Sippola. Kalm migrated without his family, first to Sweden and then to the United States and to Mexico, where he studied and practiced medicine. He returned to Finland in 1957 and was conferred the right to legally practice medicine by the National Board of Heath. Kalm was 68 years old at this point. He returned to live for a short while in Pyhäranta, where he treated patients and specialized in mailing medical compounds to patients, especially people living in the Ostrobothnia region. He then reunited with his wife in Rauma and continued practicing medicine. However, in 1969 the 80-year-old Hans Kalm was accused of malpractice and his right to practice medicine was taken away.
61 Kalm, Kalmia, Kaipiainen, p. 5.
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Conclusion Heterodox healing did not fare well in interwar Finland. Attempts to introduce different forms of drugless healing were met with strong criticism from university-trained doctors. This chapter has focused on the challenges of introducing a new medical system in the Finnish society. Hans Kalm studied different forms of heterodox healing in the United States in the 1920 and 1930s. Returning to Finland, he established a naturopathic sanatorium in Pyhäranta, and he was soon on a collision course with Bror Mikkelä, a notable medical doctor practicing in nearby Rauma. Given the strong anti-allopathic stance of North American naturopathy, one must ask what did Kalm expect in importing naturopathy into Finland? How could it have ended up otherwise? The rhetorical battle was carried out in the local newspaper Länsi-Suomi but did not lead to further action, for example in the form of official complaints to the National Board of Health. Kalm’s experience in Finland demonstrates how globally circulating knowledge, not only biomedical science but also other healing systems, had to transform itself to adapt to local culture and social circumstances. The case also points to power, resistance, and reconfiguration as central aspects of circulating heterodox knowledge. Although Kalm’s heterodox healing system was met with criticism from medical doctors, it was accepted and welcomed in the local community of Pyhäranta. The foreign healing system was relatively easily integrated to answer local needs. The community leaders of Pyhäranta welcomed Kalm because official medicine was institutionally underdeveloped and because of the need for health services. The local experience was that patients were helped by staying in the sanatorium Kalmia. As long as there were no complaints from patients, local authorities tolerated the heterodox healer. This shows that patients and doctors had different views of what was acceptable healing. Many found their last hope in naturopathy and Kalm’s medical eclecticism and hybridity.
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6 Stocktaking at Christiansborg: Metals and Slaves in the Danish Atlantic Trade at the Mid-Eighteenth Century Taking Stock During the last days of December 1748, the staff at Christiansborg castle, on the Gold Coast, were busy stocktaking, meaning that they sorted and counted all the goods they had stored in their warehouses, the Packhuus and the Magazin. This stocktaking also included what was stored at the smaller Fredensborg castle and the Ada lodge. Christiansborg was the African stronghold of the Danish West India and Guinea Company (Vestindisk-Guineisk Kompagni), a chartered company formed in 1671. Most likely the order to spend the last days of the year in this way came from Ludevig Rømer, the head bookkeeper at the Danish headquarters. We still find the outcome of their endeavour in the first pages of the Negotie Journal for 1749: an inventory was created, dated the first day of the new year. They had gold in their hold, “elephant teeth”, and parcels of textiles, woollens, linen, cotton, and even silk. All of these goods had been shipped from Copenhagen, but they had much more diverse origins. They came from places in Denmark, Germany, Holland, Britain, and even India. The inventory includes commodities with names such as Long Els, Gingang, Niconeeser, Slaplagen, etc., but the bookkeepers also kept track of goods other than textiles. Tobacco, pipes, alcohol from Denmark, Holland, and France, as well as firearms of different types and from various places, along with gunpowder and bullets, were also stored in the warehouses.1
1 Danish National Archives (DNA), Det vestindisk-guineiske kompagnie (WIGG), box 927. The research for this text began before the Rigsarkivet launched its ambitious scheme of digitalizing source material related to the Danish colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean. Notes taken from the original sources were complemented by searches in the digital archive, but the footnotes still use the original references. For the digital version, see https://www.sa.dk/ ao-soegesider/da/other/other-collection/101. Notes: This text has, in earlier stages, been presented at workshops and seminars in Belfast, Åbo, and Uppsala. We would like to thank the participants at these events and in particular Pepijn Brandon, Holger Weiss, and Irene Molina. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-006
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There were metals and metalwares in the stores as well: goods made out of brass, copper, and tin, as well as bars of both copper and iron; stored in the Magazin were 124 iron bars and 14 copper bars. The inventory also counted 291 pound of lead bullets, flintlocks, and a few pounds of tin- and brassware. In the large storehouse, the Packhuus, there were found more guns, another 79 copper bars, 44 lead bars, more bullets, as well as 3,500 needles, probably made out of brass, and even 143 trumpets (the latter were most likely made out brass). There were metalwares stored at Fredensborg and Ada as well.2 Stocktaking was a common procedure by merchants and other economic actors in the early modern period, and its importance has only grown in modern society. Mary Poovey even links bookkeeping to the advent of modernity; the development of accounting techniques, from the Italian double-entry system, should be seen as a part of the “History of the Modern Fact”. In this understanding, bookkeeping became a way of establishing truth in a world where God was gradually pushed to the fringes. It became the new rule-governed system of knowledge production, a system of abstract “facts”. A “perfect” bookkeeping procedure included different steps, starting with the inventory, where a merchant listed all his belongings as well as monetary, financial, and as material wealth. A second step was taken in the so-called memorial, recording the day-today business in a chronological sequence. These were summed up in a journal before the final step was taken. In the ledger, each entry from the journal was transformed into thematically arranged double-entry accounts, each with a credit and a debit side that balanced each other. In Poovey’s world, this balancing act became a symbol for “virtue” and thus a new version of “God’s order”.3 Pepijn Brandon also discusses elaborate accounting methods with modernity: in his analysis, Dutch early modern state making. Dealing with both the naval administration and the concrete workings at the Admiralty shipyard, he stresses the “ruthless pursuit of managerial ‘neatness and order’ [as a] hallmark” of the Dutch economic development. It was managerial strategies and an elaborate bookkeeping that made these large work sites function. There was a pressing need for synchronicity at the gigantic Amsterdam shipyards, with both the United East India Company (VOC) yard and the Admiralty yard employing well over 1,000 workers each. Accounting allowed bosses to know more about
2 DNA, WIGG, box 927. 3 M. Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact. Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 29–91, quotation at p. 55–56.
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the efforts and output of the workers, and this was the case for both state and private ventures.4 The eighteenth century was clearly a period when bookkeeping procedures developed, and that was also the case in Scandinavia. This is clearly shown by taking a quick look at the sheer number of accounts produced within the state administration or a glance at the accounts of metal-making establishments in the Nordic countries. Karl-Gustaf Hildebrand describes the basic structure of accounting within Swedish iron making, in terms not unlike what Poovey described; there were inventories, journals, and ledgers.5 This period also saw a gradual addition of new journals, with more activities being subjected to the scrutiny by bookkeepers.6 What we see at Christiansborg is a typical eighteenthcentury Scandinavian accounting structure, with thoroughly kept books, aiming to “account” for many different activities. These accounts form an empirical starting point for this chapter. The total value of what the clerks inventoried in the Danish headquarters during the last days of December 1748 amounted to 79,218 riksdaler, but about 25,000 of these consisted of the different buildings, so the amount of trading goods was valued at 54,000 riksdaler. It is difficult to calculate the exact value of the metalwares kept in the warehouses, but a fair estimate is about 3,100 riksdaler, or 6 per cent. These figures indicate that metals only constituted a fraction of the Danish trade on the Gold Coast, but our aim is to highlight the regional significance of these metalwares and the trade surrounding them. There was one aspect of this inventory that would have been unfamiliar to most European bookkeepers, merchants, or state-employed cameralists. The third entry of the inventory, noted below “Gold and Ivory”, read slaves; on New Year’s Day of 1749, there were 26 slaves in the castle’s dungeon. The company kept 15 men, 10 women, and a boy, valued at 2,144 riksdaler.7 Stephanie Smallwood takes up the thread from Poovey and underlines that the slave trade “produced two interrelated but distinct bodies of archival material – one quantitative, and the other largely textual”. Most scholars have used
4 P. Brandon, War, Capital, and the Dutch State (1588–1795), Leiden: Brill, 2015, p. 148. See also as a general introduction to early-modern bookkeeping procedures, T. Boyns and J. R. Edwards, A History of Management Accounting. The British Experience, New York: Routledge, 2013. 5 K.-G. Hildebrand, Swedish Iron in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Export Industry before the Industrialization, Stockholm: Jernkontoret, 1992, pp. 71–76. 6 G. Rydén, “Balancing the Divine with the Private. The Practices of Hushållning in EighteenthCentury Sweden”, in: M. Seppel and K. Tribe (eds.), Cameralism in Practice: The Principles of Early Modern State Administration, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017, pp. 179–202. 7 DNA, WIGG, box 927.
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the former; the figures and numbers acting as a basis for a vast series of accounts. According to Smallwood, this causes a larger problem, compared with the one addressed by Poovey. Double-entry bookkeeping was “concealing the messiness of history, erasing from view the politics that underlay the neat account keeping”. In Poovey’s narrative of European development, accounting concealed the commodification process, but along the Gold Coast, it also concealed the commodification of humans.8 Marcus Rediker touches upon these things, as he talks about a “violence of abstraction” and tries to make us aware that the numerical information created by merchants, bookkeepers, etc. tends to dehumanize the most horrific commerce of the early modern time. An ethnographic perspective, in his study the slave ship, would enable us to better see what really took place in the castle, on the ship, in the African hinterland, on Caribbean plantations, or (why not also) in a distant Swedish iron-making community, which was where the iron bars kept at Christiansborg castle originated from.9 This chapter should be seen taking into account Smallwood’s and Rediker’s discussions, which highlight the clear drawbacks regarding statistical and numerical information in studies on the slave trade and slavery, and the urgency of showing compassion for the Africans shipped to the Americas for a life in servitude. We need to treat them as humans, not as numbers. In doing so, however, we must not disregard recent research on size, duration, timing, etc. of the slave trade; we must not forget the magnitude of African enslavement. Studies must strive to include qualitative as well as quantitative aspects. What is needed is a key to decipher the abstract bookkeeping procedures that can enable us to use these accounts together with narrative sources. New studies on the transatlantic slave trade must, additionally, attempt to incorporate other groups of people, regions, and goods, and we should include places of origin for goods used as barter in the slave trade, and their producers, as well as the places of reception of these goods along the African coast. This chapter is a first attempt in such an undertaking, with a study combining a focus on Scandinavian iron – voyage iron – being shipped to West Africa with an elaborate analysis of the related accounting material.10
8 S. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery. A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 4, 98. 9 M. Rediker, The Slave Ship. A Human Story, London: John Murray, 2008, p. 12. 10 See two recent examples of this: F. Brahm and E. Rosenhaft (eds.), Slavery Hinterland. Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe, 1680–1850, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016; A. Dalrymple-Smith and E. Frankema, “Slave Ship Provisioning in the Long 18th Century. A Boost to West African Commercial Agriculture”, European Review of Economic History 21 (2017), pp. 185–235.
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African Development and European Trade Recent writings on West African development before the nineteenth century paint a brighter picture compared to what a previous generation of scholars had done. In the ongoing discussion on the Great Divergence, John Thornton, for instance, states that not only was Asia similar to Europe in terms of economic development and standard of living, but so too was Africa: “Africans were on par with Europeans.” This resemblance is something that can be seen from a political perspective as well, with African states being capable of mobilizing military resources of strength and warfare. Thornton talks about “African states as having the same fiscal-military structure as was dominating the history of Europe at the time”.11 Views like these are closely connected to the overarching research agenda on early modern Africa, that of slavery and the slave trade. In a previous publication, Thornton declared that “Europe offered nothing to Africa that Africa did not already produce”, and this led him to the question of why an economically and politically strong African society was willing to enslave other Africans in return for goods they did not need. On metals, Thornton notes that Africans were willing to sell slaves for “a relatively minor supplement” of European iron of inferior quality.12 David Eltis takes a similar viewpoint, emphasizing the favourable African terms of trade in relation to Europe: “It is thus hard to imagine that, overall, imports from the Atlantic world made much of an impact on the lives of African residents”. To Eltis, the slave trade only made sense from a European perspective, as they strived to control production of consumer goods, such as sugar, tobacco, and rice in the plantation system they were developing; it was all about controlling “African labour [. . .] by removing it from Africa”.13 Such views point towards two interrelated features that have not been very present in previous analyses of the slave trade: African agency and patterns of African demand. Thornton is clear about African agency: “the slave trade was bad,” he states, but it “was controlled by the political and economic elite of
11 J. K. Thornton, A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250–1820, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 68 and 84. 12 J. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 7 and 44. 13 D. Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 178f. See also D. Eltis and L. C. Jennings, “Trade between Western Africa and the Atlantic World in the Pre-Colonial Era”, The American Historical Review 93 (1988) 4, pp. 936–959.
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Africa”.14 He is as well specific about the impact of European goods, even though he finds some positive regional effects in parts of West Africa.15 Eltis takes a similar position after providing a thorough discussion about regional demand.16 Joseph Inikori takes up a slightly different strand in this discussion, as he rather makes a chronological demarcation instead of analysing regional demand. To him, the late seventeenth century was a watershed. Before that time, AfroEuropean trade was more diverse, in that a wider spectrum of goods left African shores. Europeans demanded gold, ivory, and precious woods beside the growing demand for slaves. In return, they supplied currencies in the form of cowries and metals, which functioned both as currencies and as producer goods. This trade benefitted West Africa by expanding agricultural commercialization, urbanization, and manufacturing. Towards the turn of the century this changed, as African export became all about selling slaves, whereas firearms and textiles dominated incoming goods. What followed was an African decline, with depopulation, deurbanization, and a shrinking internal market.17 Thornton, Eltis, and Inikori might disagree about certain aspects of this development and about the strength of early modern Africa, but they would agree that slave trading had important roots in Africa. These roots must be scrutinized in new in-depth studies of specific African societies, and what is needed is more research about links between European and African agents. Scholars need to adopt an open-ended approach in which one should not assume a European encroachment upon West African society. Instead, as Rebecca Shumway shows, we need to see how “African societies evolved during the era of the slave trade in a wide variety of ways that drew on complex local, regional, and transatlantic histories.” She stresses this fluid approach by noting similarities between urban spaces along the Gold Coast and other Atlantic ports, such as “Bahia, Puerto Rico, New Orleans, and Liverpool”; African development shared many features with Europe and the Americas.18
14 Thornton, A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, p. 63. 15 Thornton, Africa and Africans, pp. 66ff. 16 Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery, chapter 7. For a pioneering work on African demand, see D. Richardson, “West African Consumption Patterns and their Influence on the EighteenthCentury Slave Trade”, in: H. A. Gemery and J. S. Hogendorf (eds.), The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, New York: Academic Press, 1979, pp. 303–330. 17 J. E. Inikori, “Transatlantic Slavery and Economic Development in the Atlantic World, 1450–1850”, in: D. Eltis and S. L. Engerman (eds.), The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3: AD 1420–AD 1804, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 650–675. 18 R. Shumway, The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2011, pp. 7 and 35.
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In recent years, studies with such an agenda have been published, often with a microhistorical approach. To Smallwood’s and Shumway’s studies, one could add Randy Sparks’ book about Annamaboe and Pernille Ipsen’s work on Osu town adjacent to Christiansborg castle.19 In line with the aim of this chapter, centred on metals, one might add that a few studies analyse specific goods brought from Europe to West Africa. Textiles are dominant, as they are in most investigations of global trade, but there are exceptions. Textiles were always the most important commodity brought to the West African coast. Linens and woollens were predominant, but from the seventeenth century onwards Indian-made cotton grew in importance, and during the eighteenth century, cotton textiles, or “Guinea cloth”, were the most important goods shipped from Europe. This did not mean that cotton was a novelty in Africa, as it had been grown and manufactured well before the Europeans turned up on their shores. Cotton production remained important in West Africa; during the early modern period, cotton was actually exported from Africa. This created a complex “African landscape” of cotton production and consumption from the seventeenth century onwards. “Guinea cloths” were, according to Colleen Kriger, “successful not because they were novelties, but because they supplemented the output of similar goods from West African workshops”. African patterns of both supply and demand was thus altered in relation to the European input, as was European supply shaped by what took place in Africa.20 Bronwen Everill considers the influx of textiles to West Africa, dealing with economic growth and an expanding commercialization in the midst of the slave trade. In a study of Senegambia, she highlights how African households became important consumers of imported textiles by generating resources to purchase these imported cloths. Urban slave-owning households were able exploit their intermediary position between the European slave traders and the African hinterland by offering their labour power in the service of the expanding slave trade. Everill talks about an African “Industrious Revolution” and the way urban slaveowning households expanded their labour supply. They exploited their slaves in 19 R. Sparks, Where the Negroes Are Masters. An African Port in the Era of the Slave Trade, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014; P. Ipsen, Daughters of the Trade. Atlantic Slavers and Interracial Marriage on the Gold Coast, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 20 C. E. Kriger, “‘Guinea Cloth’: Production and Consumption of Cotton Textiles in West Africa before and during the Atlantic Slave Trade”, in: G. Riello and P. Parthasarathi (eds.), The Spinning World. A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 105–126, quotation at p. 106. See also C. E. Kriger, “Mapping the History of Cotton Textile Production in Precolonial West Africa”, African Economic History 33 (2005), pp. 87–116.
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order “to access new fashions and consumer goods”. It is very much a story of how African slavery supported the European slave trade.21 Few studies have dealt exclusively with European metals being brought to West Africa, but Walter Hawthorne analyses the influx of iron to Guinea-Bissau and the intricate history of how the Balanta came to rely on iron for both protection and agricultural development. The beginning of rice cultivation in the region was intimately connected to the slave trade and the importation of European iron. The Senegambia coast did not have any iron production of its own and was therefore dependent upon outside supplies. Initially iron might have arrived from interior regions, but European sources dominated during the early modern period. With an argument similar to Everill, Hawthorne shows that the Balanta occupied an intermediary position between European slave traders and slave abductors in their hinterland. They profited from this by taking part in the trade with humans and purchased iron in return. There was, according to Hawthorne, an “iron-slave cycle”, in which the metal was needed for clearing the forests while participation in the slave trade made purchases of iron a possibility: “Balanta farmers turned to paddy rice cultivation because of the availability of greater quantities of iron.”22 In a recent study of the same region, Colleen Kriger adds another important aspect of metals in the African economy, that of serving as currency. She states that from the beginning of the Euro-African trade the Upper Guinea Coast relied on two commodity currencies: one being bars of iron and the other being cotton. The iron bar became a standard unit. She as well stresses that these bars, in the hands of African blacksmiths, could be made “into all sorts of useful tools, blade weapons, and productive agriculture implements”. European iron thus served a multitude of different purposes, as weapons, agriculture tools, and currency. She assumes that imported iron might have ended up in “towns and hamlets far in the interior of West Africa”, but there is little knowledge about exactly where.23 In a previous study, we entered the discussion about European metals brought to West Africa. Our starting point can be regarded as a response to Thornton’s assessment of an economically and politically strong African society
21 B. Everill, “‘All the baubles that they needed’: Industriousness and Slavery in Saint-Louis and Gorée”, Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 15 (2017) 4, pp. 714–739, quotation at p. 727. 22 W. Hawthorne, Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves. Transformations along the GuineaBissau Coast, 1400–1900, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003, quotation at p. 153. 23 C. E. Kriger, Making Money. Life, Death, and Early Modern Trade on Africa’s Guinea Coast, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017, pp. 23, 63, 89.
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not having anything to gain from importing metals from Europe, or Inikori’s views that goods shipped from Europe were not beneficial after the turn of the eighteenth century. We are in agreement with Thornton that Africa had a strong iron-making tradition. Iron production was rising in the early modern period and was of high quality, but based on new empirical material, we can support a counterargument in which imported iron actually constituted a much larger part of available iron in the region than previously believed. In the main production site in the region, Bassar in present-day Togo, the annual output in the eighteenth century was below 100 tons, which must be compared to the 1,000 tons of Swedish iron being brought to West Africa.24 In line with Kriger’s argument about cotton, we declare that the West African iron market was more complex than previously shown, with a competitive, or complementary, situation between African and European iron. Our study does not show in detail how this market worked but presents material that provides a new framework for such a discussion. Having said that, it points in Hawthorne’s direction about the importance of using iron in the hope of improving agriculture. Iron-clad tools, such as the Balanta plough (or kebinde), not only were essential for preparing mangrove swamps for rice cultivation, but were also needed when slash-and-burn technology was used to prepare the ground for maize cultivation.25 An assumption from this is that European iron had a more central role in the development of early modern West Africa than previously presumed, at least in the coastal regions where no, or little, iron was produced. Our goal here is to proceed from these findings and further scrutinize the idea that the slave trade was only “beneficial” to Europeans. If Africa was on par with Europe, we have to assume that we are dealing with a trade on “equal” terms and that at least some Africans got something out of the trade with Europe. Such a viewpoint is strengthened by the political situation along the West African coast, with local rulers in control of their domains. The European trade castles, like Christiansborg, were just trade castles and existed because of political mandates from African rulers. We aim to initiate a discussion on one of these neglected aspects of the transatlantic slave trade, the influx of European metals and metalwares to the Gold Coast. Voyage iron comprises the core of our argument. This chapter is a first attempt to move from the macro perspective in our previous publication to an analysis of the day-to-day workings of the slave trade, 24 Ch. Evans and G. Rydén, “‘Voyage Iron’: An Atlantic Slave Trade Currency, Its European Origins, and West African Impact”, Past & Present 239 (2018), pp. 41–70. 25 See J. McCann, “Maize and Grace: History, Corn, and Africa’s New Landscape, 1500–1999”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 43 (2001) 2, pp. 246–272.
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together with its links to the local iron market. What repercussions did the influx of European iron have on the lives of ordinary people on the Gold Coast, and for what purposes did Africans demand European iron? This is a study based on Danish sources dealing with the trade between Copenhagen and Christiansborg. Denmark might have been a small European player in the early modern Atlantic world, but a substantial amount of goods was nonetheless shipped from Europe on their ships. The chartered company Vestindisk-Guineisk Kompagni was founded in 1671 and existed until 1754. During this time, 87 ships departed from Copenhagen for the Gold Coast. There was a third node attached to Denmark and West Africa, as three Caribbean islands belonged to the company. Most of the ships departing for Africa proceeded to the Caribbean, but there was also a direct trade between Copenhagen and St Amelie and St Croix. In this chapter, we will concentrate on the African angle and the last decade before the demise of the company, in 1754.26 There is a substantial literature on the Vestindisk-Guineisk Kompagni and Christiansborg castle. The works of Per Hernæs and Erik Gøbel provide a detailed illustration of the general development of the trade between Copenhagen, Christiansborg, and the Danish Caribbean as well as the overall development on the Gold Coast. Hernæs’ thesis from the 1990s analyses the structure of the Danish slave trade as well as the goods shipped from the Danish capital to Africa. Gøbel’s main interest is in the field of shipping, and in his works, he deals with the number of ships departing Copenhagen, the length of the journeys, etc., as well as the cargoes leaving for Christiansborg. Neither Gøbel nor Hernæs have analysed, however, the African angle of these goods or their local marketing or consumption. Pernille Ipsen studies the local community outside Christiansborg, the township of Osu, but does not deal with the marketing of European goods. In a recent, impressive study, Vibe Maria Martens returns to the views of Kriger about a complex African cotton market, with not only a complementary position between indigenous and imported cotton, but also a diverse European supply pattern. Ships belonging to the Vestindisk-Guineisk Kompagni carried a higher share of cotton compared to ships from other destinations, so cotton was important at Christiansborg. She does not deal in detail with the African market, apart from indicating that the Danes had a good knowledge about what Africans desired; we still know little about the African transactions, where they took place, and with whom.27 26 For an overview, see E. Gøbel, The Danish Slave Trade and Its Abolition, Leiden: Brill, 2016. 27 P. Hernæs, Slaves, Danes, and African Coast Society, Trondheim: University of Trondheim, Department of History, 1998; E. Gøbel, Vestindisk-guineisk Kompagni 1671–1754 [The West India-Guinea Company 1671–1754], Odense: Syddansk universitetsforlag, 2015; Gøbel, The
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The Journey of Sorgenfrie, 1748/49 Stocktaking was hardly what trade was about; trade, commerce, and economic activities were about change – or at least exchange. With a slight overinterpretation of Poovey’s argument, one might say that the very act of balancing the accounts, in ledgers, was all about creating “balance” and virtue, but, at the same time, it also created an abstract structure of “non-change”. The ledger was to be public as a material sign of static virtue. The journal, on the other hand, was a “secret book” in which traces of economic activities and change were disclosed.28 From a methodological point, an analysis of these journals might be a way of making use of “abstract” accounts as a way of revealing the everyday workings of the slave trade. Christiansborg was a storehouse where the Danish company kept trade goods and slaves, but it was foremost a factory, a location where Europeans traded with African merchants. It existed with the overarching aim of purchasing gold, ivory, and slaves. Soon, however, what was brought to the castle also departed. The inventory from New Year’s Day of 1749 is a frozen moment of time, hiding the activities that took place the rest of the year; the Christiansborg Negotie Journals are tools with which this “traffic” can be uncovered. In the previous autumn, another stocktaking took place in faraway Copenhagen, where the new headquarters of the Vestindisk-Guineisk Kompagni was located, with large warehouses, a shipyard, and a harbour. There was also a new sugar refinery, established in 1733. In May 1748, the company’s frigate Sorgenfrie (Sorrow Free) returned from her maiden voyage from the Gold Coast and the Caribbean. After unloading its cargo of cotton and ivory, the ship was refitted for a new journey. In charge was the Equipage Mester, Christian Friderick Irgens. Together with skilled artisans, he was busy with repairing the ship and making it fit for sailing. In early October, Didrich Boysen signed on as the commander of the ship for her next journey to the Gold Coast.29 Irgens had also supplied the frigate with provisions. Stored in Sorgenfrie’s hull were ox meat, smoked pork, butter, bread, flour, beer, salt, herring, and spices. At the end of Danish Slave Trade and Its Abolition; V. M. Martens, “Indian Textiles in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Denmark. Trade and the Rise of a Consumer Culture”, PhD thesis, European University Institute, Florence, 2017, pp. 109, 122, 128, 132, 137. Recently, research on Danish involvements at the Gold Coast was collected in P. E. Olsen (ed.), Vestafrika. Forterne på Guldkysten [West Africa: The forts on the Gold Coast], Copenhagen: Gads forlag, 2017. 28 Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact, pp. 58ff. Poovey writes that the ledger was a public book, while both the inventory and the journal were “secret books”. In our argument of “static” and “dynamic” we have left out the inventory. 29 See Gøbel, Vestindisk-guineisk Kompagni, pp. 74ff. for a description of both Christianshavn and the tasks of the Equipage Mester (DNA, WIGG, box 482).
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this list of supplies, there was the entry: “Provisions for 300 Slaves”. They were to be fed bread, pork, peas, etc.30 A third major task remained before the ship was ready for departure: to staff the frigate. Boysen began his journey with a crew of 29 men. First in line were the 3 mates that were to share the privilege with Boysen of eating in the cabin. Then followed a group of 11 skilled seamen, including surgeons/barbers, a carpenter, a cook, and a sail master. A third group included 15 regular sailors. Another 7 people, including 3 Drenge (or apprentices), rounded out the crew.31 The last task before departure was to store the trade goods and the supplies at Christiansborg; one chest contained blank pages for future journals that scribes later would turn into accounts. From a folder filled with different documents and bills, it seems that this process had been ongoing for months; different goods began to arrive at the company’s headquarters already in May. Shipments arrived from other Danish ports, but goods also came from Stockholm, Flensburg, Lübeck, and other chartered companies; the Asiatic company supplied textiles. The “Factura över följande Cargasons” (the inventory of trade goods) was signed on 14 October, and everything was settled for departure. Mester Irgens submitted the inventories to the company bookkeeper, who compiled them in the Fakturabøger (cargo ledgers). A few days later, Sorgenfrie left the Copenhagen headquarters, and on 20 October 1748, the frigate cleared the Helsingør toll.32 Sorgenfrie carried a valuable cargo, worth more than 12,000 riksdaler (see Table 1). Her storerooms were filled with textiles (Plattilles, Nicances, Gingangs, Slaplagen, Long Els, etc.), firearms, gunpowder, cowries, alcohol, tobacco, pipes, and metals. She carried 300 bars of Swedish iron, weighing about 3 tons, along with copper bars, brasswares, and pewter. Metalwares made up a smaller share, valued at only 771 riksdaler, but if we add the firearms, valued at 1,433 riksdaler, goods made out of metals amounted to about 18 per cent of the total cargo. Sorgenfrie was a typical ship.33 Erik Gøbel analyses cargoes sent by the company to both Africa and the Caribbean and has calculated that between 1734 and the 1754 demise of the company 25 ships left for the Gold Coast (see Table 2). These vessels carried, on average, a cargo comprising textiles (37%), military goods (41%), foodstuff (10%), and “others” (13%). It is not possible to use these figures to indicate how 30 DNA, WIGG, box 482. See Dalrymple-Smith and Frankema, “Slave Ship Provisioning in the Long 18th Century”, pp. 185–235. 31 DNA, WIGG, box 211. 32 Ibid. 33 For Sorgensfrie’s cargo, see DNA, WIGG, box 211.
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Table 1: The cargo of Sorgenfrie departing Copenhagen, October 1748. Weaponry
Riksd
Textiles
Firearms
, Plattilles
Gunpowder
Perpettes
Lead bullets Flints for firearms
Totals In per cent
Riksd
Metals
Riksd Rest
Bar iron
Bricks
Riksd
Bar copper
Aquavite ,
Long els
Pewter
Tallow
Half Sayer
Brass bowls
Tobacco
Callon
Brass chains
Cowries
Cartuner
Metal armrings
Sitz cartun
Pockwood knives
Tapestry
Copper trumpets
Parcaller
Gingang
Callewap
Forklaeder
Laekens
Copees
Brouls
Cellos
Lemenias
Photaste
Salempuris
Nicanees
Bajutapauts
Assorted Pipes
,
,
Danish National Archives, Det vestindisk-guineiske Kompagni, box 211.
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Table 2: Ships from Det vestindisk-guineiske kompagnie departing Copenhagen, 1745–1754. Departing from Copenhagen Ship
Guns
Iron Bars
Iron Bars
Guns
Iron Bars
No.
No.
Tons
No.
No.
.
,
.
Cronprinsens Ønske
.
Sorgenfrie
Postillionen
Williamina Galley
Pr Sofie Magdalena
,
Sorgenfrie
Cronprinsens Ønske
Pr Sofie Magdalena
,
Jægersborg
Arriving at Christiansborg
,
Jægersborg
,
Pr Sofie Magdalena
,
,
Jægersborg
,
Patienta
,
Cronprins Christian
,
,
Cronprinsens Ønske
,
Sorgenfrie Cronprinsens Ønske
Pr Wilhelmina Caroline
Mercurius
.
.
.
Danish National Archives, Det vestindisk-guineiske Kompagni, box 209–216 and 909 (Note: The quality of these sources is varied, and the table might therefore be inconsistent.).
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much metals and metalwares that were shipped to Africa, as metals were included in all groups.34 However, most ships carried bar iron. Of 19 ships departing Copenhagen between 1733 and 1754, only 2 left without any iron bars. The others carried between 221 and 1,000 bars, weighing between 2 and 11 tons. Concerning other types of metalwares, there was a wide variety. The frigate Grevinden af Laurwigen (Countess of Laurwigen), departing in 1733, had the widest selection of metal goods. She carried 1,000 iron bars, 51 copper bars, and 200 small lead bars as well as small chains and rings of copper and brass. Its Factura as well listed more than 400 knives of different fashions, 50 padlocks, 20,000 fishhooks, and some 60 hoes.35 After being fitted for the long Atlantic journeys and being furnished with commodities needed at the African castle, the company ships started their long journeys. Before departing Copenhagen, Captain Boysen was given long-written instruction. He was ordered to head for the tip of Jutland and then to take the route north of Ireland and swiftly to the African coast. The frigate should approach Africa from the fifth latitude, and as soon as she reached Africa, the captain should do everything he could to supply the ship with water and more supplies for the slaves. Boysen should also trade for slaves, in the way Thornton called “shipboard trading”. The ship dropped anchor at a fair distance from the shore, and African traders were invited to come aboard. This trade was replaced with “factory trade” once the Danish ship reached the Gold Coast headquarters.36 Boysen was instructed to prepare his ship for the “shipboard trading” by “redecorating” his cabin, “and select few items of each sort of the cargo for display [. . .] as if in a Boutique”; his inventory was put on display, and was soon to be “transformed” into a Negotie Journal.37 We have no Negotie Journal for Sorgenfrie’s trade along the coast, but it is recorded that the frigate carried “140-odd slaves” when she finally reached Christiansborg, four months after departing Denmark. Boysen had thus acquired many of the slaves that were to be shipped to the Caribbean, and he had used much of his trade goods. It would be possible to make a complete comparison between what was carried from Copenhagen and what was left when arriving at the Gold Coast, but a few “metal” examples might suffice: the 300 iron bars had
34 E. Gøbel, “Volume and Structure of Danish Shipping to the Caribbean and Guinea, 1671–1838”, International Journal of Maritime History 2 (1990) 2, p. 108; Gøbel, The Danish Slave Trade, p. 20. 35 DNA, WIGG, boxes 300–301. 36 Thornton, A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, pp. 249f. 37 DNA, WIGG, box 211.
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declined to only 44, 500 guns had become 225, and the 108 copper bars had been reduced to 79 when Sorgenfrie arrived at the castle.38 Without any preserved logbook, it is not possible to figure out how the Danish trade goods, including metals, where disposed of along the coast. Other sources can partly compensate for that and reveal how this “shipboard trade” was conducted. The Dutch ship d’Eenigheid (The Unity), for instance, began purchasing slaves on 9 December 1761 as soon as she reached Liberia and kept on adding to the human cargo, sometimes only one at a time, until late February. After almost three months, 274 slaves were assembled, and she could embark on the middle passage. D’Eenigheid carried more metals than Sorgenfrie did, and there was more variety as well. There were 100 bars of Swedish iron and a large assortment of copperwares, including manillas, trumpets, kettles, basins, and bars.39 It is likely that Captain Boysen showed many African traders his cabin, his “Boutique”, and that many slave transactions took place aboard, with the number of slaves increasing while the cargo slowly decreased. Gøbel calculates that it took on average 156 days for the company’s ships to reach Christiansborg, but he says little about the “timing” of these journeys, how long it took to reach Africa, and how much time was spent sailing and trading from the ship before arrival at Christiansborg. Once again, the Dutch material can give us an estimate. D’Eenigheid left Holland on 1 October and purchased its first slave some nine weeks after, on 9 December. As we have seen, she left Africa three months later. It is possible to “translate” these figures to those of Sorgenfrie, as she also departed Europe in early October and reached its goal in late February; the Danish frigate might have been trading along the coast for about ten weeks.
Unloading at Christiansborg After trading along the West African coast for about two months, Sorgenfrie arrived at Christiansborg castle, at Accra, on 16 February 1749. “The stocktaker”, Ludevig Rømer, described in 1756 the Danish “chief castle” as “a massive, very strong building [. . .] a quite regularly shaped fort with four bastions [. . .] with forty cannons”, and his illustration indicates that it was an impressive site that
38 O. Justesen (ed.), Danish Sources for the History of Ghana 1757–1754, vol. 2: 1735–1754, Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2005, p. 758; DNA, WIGG, box 909. 39 “MCC Slavenreis d’Eenigheid 1761–1763”, www.eenigheid.slavenhandelmcc.nl/ (accessed 19 March 2020).
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awaited Boysen and his crew on arrival. A modern writer added that it was “an example of aggrandizement [. . .] unparalleled in West Africa.” Rømer noted that “the warehouses are vaults with [thick] walls”, but still the castle lacked enough space to house all the goods brought from Denmark; the brandy, for example, had to be housed in the servants’ rooms.40 Even if Christiansborg was an impressive site awaiting the Danish frigate, Boysen and his crew had already passed by many other European trading places. There was a string of European forts located on the African coast, from the Senegal River in the north to Whyda in the east, with the highest density on the Gold Coast. From Ankobra to Prampram there was almost thirty forts altogether. Sorgenfrie had passed Elmina, the Dutch stronghold, and Cape Coast, the English stronghold, and the governor at Christiansborg, Platfues, had advised Boysen that he should do his “best at Annamaboe” before proceeding to the Danish headquarters.41 At Accra, Christiansborg had the English James Castle and the Dutch Crèvecœur Castle as neighbours. All these castles and forts were foremost trading places, and not military fortifications. Christopher Decorse indicates that the “principal function [. . .] of these outposts was commercial.”42 Rømer noted, for certain, that they also had defensive functions and that Europeans as well as Africans found shelter there during hostilities. He described Christiansborg as a “strong building” with the warehouses being “vaults”, a kind of fortified warehouses. These castles were constructed and maintained by the good will of the local African rulers, and the Europeans paid taxes or fees to inhabit them. With that in mind, Rømer bragged about the Danish castle as more or less “invincible and impregnable”, as long as they had “food and provisions for war, 30 cannons, and 300 Negroes as manpower”. The Danish Christiansborg was in essence a European enclave, placed as it was on the Gold Coast. Thick walls surrounded it, with only a few gates opened towards the African society.43 Christiansborg had been constructed in 1652 and soon came into Danish hands. Following the establishment of Vestindisk-Guineisk Kompagni in 1671, it became an important node in the Danish Atlantic world. From the beginning,
40 L. Rømer, A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 [1760], pp. 210ff.; A. W. Lawrence, Trade Castles & Forts of West Africa, London: Jonathan Cape, 1963, p. 199. 41 Gøbel, Vestindisk-guineisk Kompagni. 42 Ch. Decorse, “Tools of Empire. Trade, Slaves, and the British Forts of West Africa”, in: D. Maudlin and B. L. Herman (eds.), Building the British Atlantic World. Spaces, Places, and Material Culture, 1600–1850, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016, p. 165. 43 Rømer, A Reliable Account, pp. 211f.
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it was an impressive building, standing as it did on top of a cliff and with a view along the coast, eastwards as well as westwards. By the mid-eighteenth century, it had grown into a massive structure, with new batteries attached to the older square-shaped fort. There were new warehouses being built under a new battery and two large cisterns for storing rainwater (the castle was capable of supplying ships with water prior their departures). There were also workshops in the castle, and an inventory from 1749 describes a smithy, equipped with hammers, bellows, tongs, files, etc. There is no mention of workshops for carpenters and masons, but the same inventory lists a collection of tools for both these trades. There was a church at Christiansborg, with “Ornamentations”. The commercial character is visible in the inventory, with scales and material for packaging as well as items belonging to the office, including paper, ink, quills, account books, almanacs, etc.; the office was the centre of this “fortified warehouse”. The inventory also mentions eight canoes used for transport along the coast.44 Christiansborg was a large work place. In a muster roll from April 1749, 36 people were employed at the castle. Joost Platfues was the governor and Rømer was the main merchant. Peder Hoved was the “over assistant”, and below him worked four “under assistants”. It was the latter who had helped Rømer with the stocktaking a couple of months earlier. Added to these tradespeople were artisans and soldiers. There was a blacksmith as well as a mason, and a corporal was in charge of ten soldiers. The biggest group at the castle was not born in Europe but was African-born slaves and remidors (the latter transported goods and people in the canoes). In 1749, there were 74 slaves, 26 men, 26 women, 14 boys and 8 girls, as well as 28 remidors. The total number at the castle was, thus, about 140 people. Another 18 worked in the smaller Danish lodges (Fredensborg, Ada, and Quitta) along the coast.45 All these workers, including slaves and remidors, had a monthly pay. Platfues had the highest salary, with 66 riksdaler a month, followed by Rømer, with 25 riksdaler. After these two top earners followed the other Europeans down to the regular soldiers, who were paid 6 or 7 riksdaler a month. Male slaves were paid 3 riksdaler and women had half of that, with children being paid even less. The remidors received 2 riksdaler every month. The slaves and remidors received their payments in cowries (“boss” in Danish), whereas the Europeans often received their payments in trade goods. Rømer, for instance, 44 Lawrence, Trade Castles, pp. 204ff.; Rømer, A Reliable Account, pp. 211f. DNA, WIGG, box 953; DNA, Chamber of Revenue, boxes 337 and 712 Christiansborg, projekt, grundplan 1731, tegner uoplyst. 45 DNA, WIGG, boxes 888 and 953.
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was paid in textiles, tobacco, a few brass items, and even seven trumpets in 1749, while the soldiers got textiles and tobacco. These payments created an economic relationship with Osu, the township outside the castle, as cowries and European goods were bartered for food and other necessary goods.46 The arrival of Sorgenfrie was a major event. Denmark was a minor player in the Atlantic world and few ships arrived at Christiansborg. In 1749, there was only one additional ship leaving Copenhagen for the Gold Coast: Cronprinsens Ønske (Crown Prince’s Desire) arrived in September. With Sorgenfrie new supplies appeared, and the cargo had to be taken ashore. This was a tricky business, employing a large share of the workforce, in particular the slaves and remidors. There are no sources indicating how the unloading actually took place, but we know that the frigate arrived on 16 February, and it took about a week before the shipload was noted in the Negotie Journal: “hereby debited Captain Didrich Boysen’s cargo.”47 We get a glimpse of how the unloading took place, from the arrival of a frigate two decades later; Fredensborg dropped anchor in the roadstead outside the Danish headquarters on 1 October 1767. They were greeted by Mr Reimers, the senior official at the castle, who arrived at the ship in a canoe powered by remidors. Then the enslaved Africans began unloading the ship. European sailors did not have the skills to navigate the breakers. The captain of Fredensborg had instructions on how to proceed in order to avoid the cargo getting wet and damaged. To an extent, he disobeyed this as he used his own longboat to take the goods closer to the shore, before transferring barrels and chests to the canoes that brought the goods through the breakers and to the shore. Rømer also noted that Europeans took a sloop “as far as the breakers, where the officer at the fort had [them] picked up in a Negro boat, called a canoe”.48 He further noted: It looks dangerous when you are sitting or lying in these Negroe canoes among these breakers. The waves come rolling as high as bell towers. You can see when the wave will break, and the black remidors must then see to it that the canoes ride on top of the wave before it breaks, or, in all haste, row their canoes back, letting the wave break first.
46 DNA, WIGG, box 947. For a general discussion about the links between these European forts and their African hinterland, see also H. Weiss, “The Entangled Spaces of Oddena, Oguaa and Osu: A Survey of Three Early Modern African Atlantic Towns, ca. 1650–1850”, in: H. Weiss (ed.), Ports of Globalisation, Places of Creolisation. Nordic Possessions in the Atlantic World during the Era of the Slave Trade, Leiden: Brill, 2016, pp. 22–67. 47 DNA, WIGG, box 927. 48 L. Svalesen, The Slave Ship Fredensborg, Oslo: Aschehoug et Co, 2000, pp. 63ff.; Rømer, A Reliable Account, p. 66.
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Should it happen that a wave breaks over the canoe, the vessel will be broken into small pieces, the goods will be lost, and the people, if they cannot swim, will be drowned.49
In the case of Sorgenfrie, we might assume that it took most of the days between the 16th and the 23rd to unload the frigate, as everybody seem to have been busy. No economic activity took place those days, as canoes took the frigate’s remaining goods through the breakers. New activities commenced on the following days, as part of the cargo was transported from Christiansborg to the trading stations eastwards from the castle; canoes that had been busy combatting breaking waves outside the castle went to sea again, transporting goods along the coast.50 Rømer and Platfues did not order another stocktaking to take place once the new supplies had been stored in the Magazin and the Packhuus. Instead, the new cargo was immediately put to work; there was no time for “displaying” any inventory as the new goods had to “perform” the important role as barter for slaves and supplies for the Middle Passage. The transactions that followed on from the arrival of Sorgenfrie can, instead, be traced in the day-to-day pages of the Negotie Journal.
Trading Metals for Slaves and Supplies It was a Monday, 24 February 1749, when Sorgenfrie’s goods had been properly noted in the Negotie Journal. It was the end of an intense couple of days as well as the beginning of another week involving a lot of bookkeeping, but more importantly a lot of carrying and transporting. On Tuesday, the journal records that goods departed the Danish headquarters for the smaller Fredensborg and the lodges at Ada and Quitta, further east; the accountants made notes of what castle slaves and remidors were transporting. The goods carried away from Christiansborg included not only a lot of textiles but also guns and metals. Stacked in the canoes that left for Fredensborg were 100 guns and 40 bars of iron, while the two lodges mainly received textiles.51 To a certain extent, it was as if these last days of February were used to set the stage for what was to come, and as soon as the goods had been placed in Christiansborg’s vaults, as well as redistributed to the lodges, trade resumed. In
49 Ibid., p. 192. 50 DNA, WIGG, box 927. 51 Ibid.
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March, no slaves were purchased, as Rømer and Platfues seem to have concentrated on supplying the castle with grain. In March, 88 chests of millet were bought, paid for with textiles. Two iron bars were also included, along with a few guns. This grain was partly “for the slave’s consumption”. The slave trade began anew in April, with two large transactions: one in Christiansborg and one in Fredensborg. Altogether, 93 slaves were bought, 67 men, 20 women, and 6 children. These two large acquisitions were paid for with a varied assortment of goods, mainly with textiles, but alcohol, guns, copper bars, brassware, and gunpowder were also used.52 There is hardly a coincidence that Rømer and Platfues orchestrated these two major slave transactions when they did. A couple of days later, Sorgenfrie weighed anchor and began the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. Aboard the frigate were already “140-odd slaves”, from the trade along the Windward Coast, and on 17 April another 100 slaves were added.53 Once again, it is fair to say that the remidors and the castle slaves must have had a couple of busy days; slaves were taken through the breakers, and canoes also transported slaves from Fredensborg. The Negotie Journal also reveals that Boysen made sure that the frigate carried enough provision for both crew and slaves. A total of 26 chests of millet, meat, fish, and palm oil were taken aboard. These items had been paid for with cowries, copper bars, and textiles.54 Iron only featured to a limited extent in these April transactions, which lasted another couple of weeks before a lot of iron was taken from the Packhuus. A May entry in the journal reveals that 25 iron bars were removed from the stores. These, together with other goods, were used as payment to the staff at the castle. Whereas the common form of receiving wages and salaries were either in millet or cowries, May 1749 was a month when they also received other goods. Some of these were for personal consumption, such as tobacco, while others must have been used as barter for African produce. Iron bars should be considered a part of the latter practice. The assistant Peder Hoved took one bar, while the soldier Peder Wiberg took out as many as four. We do not know the destination of these bars, but it is plausible that they were traded in the vicinity of Christiansborg. At the adjacent James Castle, bar iron was as well included in the payments to
52 DNA, WIGG, box 909 and 927. 53 For the European traders, it made sense to purchase the slaves as late as possible prior their departure. In this way, the saved money by not needing to support them in captivity (see Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery, pp. 43ff.; Shumway, The Fante, pp. 64–81). 54 DNA, WIGG, box 927.
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Africans, with 40 bars being “Delivered on Blackmen’s Pay”, but it is unclear if it was castle slaves or free persons.55 The initial impression of the activities around Christiansborg during these few months at the beginning of 1749 reveals a few important structural features. For a start, it is clear that the spatial dimension of iron consumption might be difficult to unravel. There was a regional redistribution of iron, with bars canoed from Christiansborg to other destinations. It also seems difficult to disentangle the seasonality of the trade. In supplying Sorgenfrie with slaves, the aim seems to have been to purchase these close to the frigate’s departure, and the largest transactions at the Danish headquarters were related to shipping and not directly to the African economy. Another observation is that European metalwares were dispersed in three distinct ways. Small numbers of iron bars were used in Christiansborg’s smithy, but most of it was used as barter for African goods, slaves, grain, or other supplies. Bars were also included in the payment to the castle staff. European iron was, thus, supplied from Accra to the African market via two channels; large volumes were distributed through the trading of the Vestindisk-Guineisk Kompagni, whereas smaller volumes spread via employees’ petty trading. A tentative hypothesis is that we are dealing with two different markets. When bars were used as barter for slaves and grain, one can assume that European iron penetrated deeper into the African hinterland, while the petty trading only reached the immediate surroundings of Christiansborg. This chapter set out with the aim to show that quantitative sources, such as accounting material, can be utilized for other purposes than merely showing the size and magnitude of goods and slaves being shipped across the Atlantic. A more elaborate use of accounts can give us a better spatial understanding of what took place in and around sites like Christiansborg and the African hinterland, as well as to bring new people, localities, and features into the frame.56 The aim of this chapter was not only to add a discussion about metals to the debate about the transatlantic slave trade, but also to give some preliminary contours of the West African market for European iron. In the following pages, the aim is to go one step further, towards a fuller understanding of the African iron market and its links to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. In order to do so, we will move beyond, to a certain extent, the accounts from the VestindiskGuineisk Kompagni and add more narrative sources to the analysis. This section
55 DNA, WIGG, box 909, 927 and 947–48; National Archives, London [NA], T70/977. 56 Spatial aspects of the transatlantic slave trade have been dealt with before, but mainly from a macro perspective. See D. Eltis and D. Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.
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will foremost examine the role of the African blacksmith, but before this can be achieved, we must briefly introduce African iron. In our previous study of European iron in West Africa, we started from the fact that African iron production has a long history, from the early first millennium BCE. High-quality iron was made in bloomery furnaces with natural draught or with the air supplied by hand-powered bellows. Production was sophisticated and varied, with furnace design being developed and adapted to differing natural conditions. Output grew throughout the early modern period.57 A complete analysis of the spatial development of West African iron production is still missing, but the main production site within the wider Gold Coast area was Bassar in the northern part of modern-day Togo. Iron production in Bassar had long roots, and reached its peak in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Philip de Barros, who has investigated the region, characterizes that period as “large-scale production for supra-regional export”. A complex regional, social, and gender division of labour existed. Women mined ore in shallow pits, using wooden-handled iron picks, and crushed it into small bits. These were smelted in furnaces located in designated smelting villages. Fuel was supplied by other villages specialized in charcoal making. Blacksmiths in smithing villages refined the blooms as well as made iron tools, such as hoes, axes, etc. De Barros estimates the regional annual output to be 80 tons.58 Production rose from the sixteenth century onwards as a response to an expanded market, with hoes as the main commodity. Considering the annual output of iron, it can be estimated that the Bassar blacksmiths could make as a many as 90,000 hoes a year. Trade with “neighbouring populations” began as early as the fourteenth century, but the market for Bassar hoes really expanded in the following centuries. In the eighteenth century, much of present-day Benin, Togo, and eastern Ghana traded for iron products from Bassar. The eastern border of this “supraregional” area reached the important market towns of Salaga and Kete-Kratchi, but Bassar output did not penetrate the coastal regions. This means that places like Accra and Kumasi, the Asante capital, was beyond the reach of the Bassar production, a fact that strengthens our previous results highlighting the importance of European iron along the West African coastline.59
57 Evans and Rydén, “Voyage Iron”. 58 Ph. de Barros, “Bassar: A Quantified, Chronologically Controlled, Regional Approach to a Traditional Iron Production Centre in West Africa”, Africa 56 (1986) 2, pp. 148–174. See also de Barros, “The Bassar: Large Scale Iron Producers of the West African Savanna”, PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1985. 59 de Barros, “Bassar: A Quantified, Chronologically Controlled, Regional Approach”; de Barros, “The Bassar: Large Scale Iron Producers”, pp. 317–364.
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If the African iron market was centred on hoes, as de Barros’ research indicates, then this points to the blacksmith as a crucial figure bridging supply and demand on the African market.60 At Bassar, blacksmiths were integrated into the production chain, turning blooms into commodities wanted by consumers. In regions where European iron was imported, the blacksmiths performed a similar role, but without being integrated with prior iron making. This is as well related to Thornton’s assessment of European iron as being inferior. More research is needed in order to resolve the question of quality differences between different iron, but it is safe to say that an African blacksmith working with African iron faced a different challenge compared to those working with European iron. In the first case, a smith began by refining the crushed blooms, before hoe making could commence. In the latter case, the smith started with wrought iron and could begin making wares immediately.61 Colleen Kriger stresses the crucial position of blacksmiths in Africa as well as the complexity of their work. In a study of nineteenth-century West Central Africa, she states that not only were “[m]etal goods [. . .] well integrated into [. . .] African society”, but also that metalworking was an “almost stupefying web of overlapping and interlocking patterns of change in the workers, their tools, products, and workshops” (raw materials, and especially iron of different origins, should be added to that list.) Kriger makes clear that African ironworking is an undeveloped research field, especially the human side of making iron and metalwares: “Iron metal is produced by people.” In her study, artisans and their knowledge are the focal point, and she traces the production chain from mining and charcoaling to the making of hoes and other implements, via smelting in the furnaces. A substantial part of her analysis deals with blacksmiths, their work, and their relation to the market. The blacksmiths had a varied work. They refined blooms, made hoes and other tools, repaired worn-down tools, and produced “iron currencies” in the form of bars of specific dimensions. This led to a complex market situation in which iron in different stages of refinement was traded; “hoes were valuable” in Kriger’s words, “both as iron and as a useful commodity” as well as a means of exchange.
60 For a similar argument, see also R. Blench, “African Agriculture Tools”, in: Ch. Stevens et al. (eds.), Archaeology of African Plant Use, Walnut Creek: Left Coast, 2014, pp. 243–258. 61 Iron in intermediary form was also traded; Salaga blacksmiths bought “flake iron”, or unrefined blooms, from the Bassar smelters (see de Barros, “The Bassar: Large Scale Iron Producers”, p. 350).
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The workshops were not only production sites as well as repair workshops for recycled goods but also places for exchanging wealth in different forms.62 Previous research and the new data presented here indicate that the wider Gold Coast region was supplied with European iron, rather than with African iron. The main producer region in Bassar made about 80 tons annually, but de Barros’ research indicates that this output did not reach as far as Accra and Kumasi. Ships from Copenhagen brought iron to Christiansborg, and other European forts also received their share of iron. The Danish headquarters received at least 5 tons a year on average, while some figures indicate that as much as 50 tons a year was brought in by the British in the 1730s. James Castle alone imported 5 tons annually in the 1740s. It is safe to assume that blacksmiths along the Gold Coast had a lot of iron to work with. They did that in two different types of smithies, on the one hand in workshops located at the forts and, on the other hand, in workshops in an African setting.63 There was, as we have seen, a smithy at Christiansborg, a small workshop with only a few tools and one hearth. In 1749, one blacksmith, the Copenhagenborn Johan Andreasen, worked there. He might have had an assistant as well. We do not know much about Andreasen’s work; apart from him taking a few iron bars from the vaults.64 We know slightly more about what happened in the Royal African Company’s smithies. The blacksmiths at Cape Coast Castle worked in a special courtyard where other artisans also had their workshops. It was a shared space with the carpenters.65 This was a larger workshop than at Christiansborg; three smiths worked there in 1753. A smaller smithy existed at James Castle, with one blacksmith working in a workshop furnished with “one hearth”, one pair of bellows, and one anvil. The English accounts also provides a small window to the work of these artisans. In 1748, the blacksmiths at Cape Coast Castle were given two bars to “make a hinge for Winnibah and Nails & Staples for Accra Fort”. At James Castle, the sole blacksmith was “Expended in pointing & repairing the Bricklayers & labourers Tools at work upon the Fort ¼ Steel bar”; he added a
62 C. E. Kriger, Pride of Men. Ironworking in 19th Century West Central Africa, Oxford: James Currey, 1999, pp. 12, 30, 37, 99. 63 Hernæs, Slaves, Danes, and African Coast Society, pp. 351–389 and 398. NA, T70/706, 707, 977 and 1231. See also NA, T70/68, a list of “Goods in Demand at Accra”, by the Dutch company, compiled at James Castle. 64 DNA, WIGG, box 909. 65 See the map from 1756 in W. St Clair, The Grand Slave Emporium. Cape Coast Castle and the British Slave Trade, London: Profile Books, 2007, p. 73.
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steel edge to old tools made of iron. Additionally, these blacksmiths had to produce the charcoal they needed in their workshops.66 To a certain extent, these workplaces must be viewed as part of the idea of “European enclaves”, where European workers manufactured goods to be used at the European forts, with European bar iron as raw material. The Danish example is straightforward, with the Dane Andreasen standing in front of the hearth with his hammer in hand, but the English cases are not that obvious. At James Castle, the blacksmith was named Croffie, “a black blacksmith 40 years old and lame”. In 1753, at Cape Coast Castle, the three blacksmiths were also Africans: Suacoe Tome, Coffee, and Suashu. Neither of them were free employees, as Andreasen, but instead belonged to the castle slaves. Still they received a small wage, somewhat higher than most of the other slaves.67 That these slave blacksmiths received a higher wage than other slaves was a recognition of their skills; it was African blacksmiths that turned European bar iron into tools. Other sources point in the same direction, with black artisans considered as skilled, even on par with European workers and even when not attached to smithies at the castles. John Adam, a European visitor, noted that smiths in Ardrah were “industrious, and have acquired some proficiency in the arts, particularly in manufacturing [. . .] iron”. The “three or four smiths in the town” made goods that could be seen as both African and European: “hoes, cutlasses, nails, bolts, hinges, staples, and bits for bridles”.68 In a description from the Gold Coast in 1732, it declares that the Africans “are experts at works in gold and iron, making [. . .] very fine armour and weapons; which they sell along the coast, and particularly at Accra”.69 A decade later, it was said from the Pepper Coast that blacksmiths had learned from the French how to temper steel, something that they had not only retained but also “perfected beyond any Thing of that Kind in Europe”.70
66 NA, T70/424A, 975, 977 and 1007. 67 NA, T70/1007. See also T. Reese, “Facilitating the Slave Trade: Company Slaves at the Cape Coast Castle, 1750–1807”, Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 31 (2010) 3, pp. 363–377. 68 J. Adams, Sketches Taken during Ten Voyages to Africa Between the Years 1786 and 1800, London, 1822, pp. 255f. 69 A. Churchill and J. Churchill (eds.), A Collection of Voyages and Travels, Some Now First Printed from Original Manuscripts, Others Now First Published in English, vol. 5, London 1732, p. 181 (original emphasis). 70 J. Green (ed.), A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels: Consisting of the Most Esteemed Relations, which have been hitherto Published in any Language, 4 vols, London 1745, p. 546 (original emphasis).
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It can hardly be a coincidence that the African blacksmiths on the Gold Coast were considered as skilled as their compatriots working in the European castles, as they were manufacturing metal goods in workshops equipped with a similar set of tools and devices as well as using European bar iron as raw material. In 1732, this iron was described as “such voyage-iron, as called in London, is the only sort and size used throughout at Nigrita, Guinea, and West-Ethiopia”.71 Concerning the blacksmith’s shops, they used “a hard stone instead of an anvil, a pair of tongs, and small pair of bellows”. The latter, “an invention of their own”, was described by Adams while visiting Ardrah72: The bellows used by the smiths are ingeniously contrived, consisting of two rough goatskins set in the ground, two feet asunder, and resembling in form, when inflated, two kettle-drums reversed. A stick about four feet long is introduced into the upper part of each skin, to which it is tied. The sticks serve as handles, and are moved alternately by a man having one in each hand. A pipe leads from each skin, and terminates in another pipe before reaching the fire; at the junction the pipes are not air-tight, so that one skin by this means receives air while the other discharges it.
It was in small workshops like these, with “ingeniously” created bellows and stone anvils, that the skilled West African blacksmiths manufactured the goods demanded by the local societies. They made hoes, cutlasses, and axes for peasants tilling the land, in an intricate agricultural system that implied regular clearings of the forests and fallow land. They as well manufactured the weapons, apart from the guns, used in the constant warfare ravaging the regions throughout the eighteenth century. The only thing these artisans were missing was steel, yet locally made iron was sufficiently steely for them to “make their Simetars and other cutting Instruments”.73 These skilled artisans, in their small workshops, were as attached to their local settings as were the blacksmiths at the European castles. They made goods demanded by their immediate surroundings, and in almost Braudelian terms, we could talk about petty transactions in a transparent market system. However, the African blacksmiths were also integrated into a much wider and more opaque structure that might be called a capitalist system; these artisans were dependent upon a supply of European iron. This structure reached into the Gold Coast hinterland. Ardrah, for instance, was besides a production centre also an important market for channelling European iron further inland. A
71 Churchill and Churchill (eds.), A Collection of Voyages and Travels, p. 45 (original emphasis). 72 Adams, Sketches Taken during Ten Voyages, p. 256. 73 Green (ed.), A New General Collection, p. 648.
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similar pattern was found above Elmina and Cape Coast Castle. From the former place, it is recorded that “the Negroes having no other carriage but Men, employ fifty of these to carry two or three hundred Pounds value in Copper, Iron or Tin to their Habitations Inland.” Above the English headquarters lay the “Territory of Atti [. . .] employed [. . .] in Tillage”.74 They were dependent upon Akkani, with its great marketplace, and “where the neighbouring Natives resort to buy Iron, which the Akkaneze bring from the Coast”.75 In a previous study, we have shown the importance of European iron for the African economy. African producers made iron of high quality, but in volume that did not satisfy the expanding demand. The annual output from the Bassar region, the main iron-producing area along the Gold Coast, only amounted to just below 100 tons, compared with the much larger volumes of so-called voyage iron being shipped from Europe; we have shown that upwards of 1,000 tons of European iron was dispersed along the African coast. This chapter is a first attempt to develop this argument, focusing on a regional perspective that zooms in on the area around Accra. Here we have shown that the Danish VestindiskGuineisk Kompagni exported bar iron from Sweden and Norway, and that ships leaving Copenhagen carried between 2 and 10 tons each. Additionally, we have shown that British ships carried roughly the same volume of iron to James Castle. A fair estimate, adding the Dutch Crèvecœur Castle, is that well over 10 tons of iron arrived in Accra every year. This was much-needed amount, as other scholars have shown that Accra was well beyond the reach of Bassar iron. The main source material used in our “descent” from a more general treatment of iron in the African economy to this regional approach were the accounts left by the Danish West India and Guinea Company. We are aware of the criticism of using quantitative sources in dealing with slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, by scholars like Smallwood and Rediker, as it tends to dehumanize the African victims of this horrific enterprise, but here we have used the accounts as a tool for a wider spatial understanding. The Danish sources not only give us the contours of the Accra iron market, but also point to the links between metals, African slavery, and the transatlantic slave trade; it was the castle slaves and the remidors who transported both the goods coming from Copenhagen and the slaves brought from the African hinterlands to frigates like the Sorgenfrie.
74 Ibid. (original emphasis). 75 Ibid., pp. 459, 593 and 626. For a description of a similar system, but from the early seventeenth century and from the very west of Africa, see R. Jobson, The Golden Trade: or, A Discourse of the River Gambra, and the Golden Trade of the Aethiopians, London, 1623, pp. 120f. (original emphasis).
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The long-term aim of our research of linking European metal trades with African slavery and the slave trade is to comprehend further what happened in Africa. In this chapter, we have taken a first step by underlining the central position of the African blacksmiths. They were the bridges between a Northern European production landscape, in which this voyage iron was manufactured, and an African economy – both demanding iron and supplying slaves for the European slave traders. These skilled artisans turned European iron into useful tools, such as hoes and axes, and arms, such as spears and swords. Inventories, such as the one from Christiansborg in 1749, including both iron bars and African slaves, point to the links between Accra, Copenhagen, and Bergslagen, the Swedish iron-making region. It also directs our attention to the brutality of the “term of trade” that directed the exchanges between European goods and African individuals. The Negotie Journals give a first outline of these negotiations, in time and space.
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7 Copper on the Move: A Commodity Chain between Sweden and France, 1720–1790 Introduction Following the heyday of the late seventeenth century, when Sweden was the dominant provider of copper for the European market, the Falun Mine experienced a dramatic decline during the eighteenth century. The decrease in annual production, from 2,000 tons in 1680 to 1,500 tons in 1710, and less than 600 tons in 1768, was an alarming trend vigorously discussed by contemporary actors. The falling output as such had an impact on several areas of society and affected a very large number of individuals and functions along the copper commodity chain, all the way from the workers in the copper mine, the state authorities, Swedish manufacturers, and merchant houses to the consumers on the domestic and international markets. The decline in copper production forced people involved in the business to find solutions, primarily on the supply side, for finding new copper ore; the decline also implied a growing interest from the demand side, both to renew old business relations and to look for new markets.1 In the midst of this particular transition, at the end of the Great Nordic War (1700–1721) and after the introduction of the Swedish Navigation Act (1724), Sweden began to establish a position as a seafaring trade nation by taking control over the distribution of Swedish products from previous competitors, mainly the Dutch merchant houses. Swedish trading statistics available from 1738 show a slow but volatile increase in the copper and brass trade, and large parts of this export left Sweden mainly for French ports (Table 1).2 France was the main importing country, albeit in competition with the cities of Lübeck, Amsterdam, and Danzig from time to time as well as in addition to occasional deliveries to 60 other destinations, including England, at the beginning and the end of the eighteenth century. The French predominance raises questions about the mechanisms
1 S. Lindroth, Gruvbrytning och kopparhantering vid stora Kopparberget intill 1800-talets början, del I Gruvan och gruvbrytningen [Mining and copper refining at Stora Kopparberg up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, part one], Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1955. 2 S. Carlén, Staten som marknadens salt. En studie i institutionsbildning, kollektivt handlande och tidig välfärdspolitik på en strategisk varumarknad i övergången mellan merkantilism och liberalism 1720–1862 [The state as the salt for the market. A study in institution formation, collective action and early welfare policy in a strategic commodity market in the transition between mercantilism and liberalism 1720–1862], Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1997. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-007
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Table 1: The copper and brass export from Sweden to general destinations, 1738–1791 (in tons). General Destinations
Copper
Brass
Total
France
,
,
,
Lübeck
,
,
Holland
,
,
,
Danzig
,
Russia
Portugal
England
Denmark
Mediterranean Sea
Königsberg
Spain
Pomerania
German States
East Indies
Levant
Holstein
West Indies
.
.
Saint-Barthélemy
Swedish National Archives, Stockholm (SNA), Kommerskollegium, Kammarkontoret, Generalpersedelextrakt Årsberättelser Utrikeshandel Serie 2 1738–1791 [National Board of Trades. Chamber Office. Extract of import and export schedules. Annual report. Foreign Trade 2. 1738–1791].
behind the international copper trade in the eighteenth century, especially in light of the worldwide competition between England and France in all kinds of trade, where England had an abundance of copper, in contrast to France, which had very little and was therefore dependent on imports of copper and brass. One strong contemporary voice for making Swedish copper more attractive on international markets in the 1770s was Bengt Andersson Qwist, deputy in the Bergskollegium (Swedish Board of Mines) and head of the Manufakturkontoret
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(Royal Board of Manufacturing). In a speech held for the nobles and experts in the Kungliga Vetenskapsakademin (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), published in 1776, Qwist argued for a more active Swedish participation in the Atlantic economy, in general challenging the English metal industry and, more specifically, challenging Swedish producers and traders to refine the Swedish copper to make manufactured goods in order to reach new consumers abroad. One possible application for Swedish copper, according to Qwist, was to make boilers for sugar, serving the sugar industry in the West Indies. With reference to plantation owner Mr Riz on Jamaica and his testing of cauldrons made by copper from different mines, Qwist meant that Swedish copper was better suited for this purpose than the copper from England.3 From an analytical point of view, Qwist’s speech can be interpreted from a commodity chain perspective. On the one hand, and in accordance with Hopkins and Wallerstein’s definition of a commodity chain as “a network of labour and production processes whose end result is a finished commodity”,4 Qwist is challenging the Swedish producers to supply refined copper according to the demand from new customers abroad. On the other hand, and in accordance with Gary Gereffi’s view that a commodity chain ought to involve both “forward (marketing) and backward (sourcing) linkages from production, and the kind of learning that occurs across these segments”,5 Qwist’s speech serves as an example of how information was flowing in the opposite direction, from the consumers back to the producers. One aim of this chapter is to emphasize the “backward linkages” in the commodity chain and, more specifically, to analyse how actors on international markets were linked to the supply of Swedish copper. This combination of putting an emphasis on both the commodity chain as such and the information flows within the commodity chain might also allow one, as Jennifer Bair claims, “to conceptualize and study global capitalism as it is manifest in particular interfirm networks that link economic actors across space”.6
3 Benct Qwist Andersson, Tal innehållande några anmärkningar öfver metall- och mineralvaror samt deras afsättning, hållet för Kongl. Vetenskaps Academien vid Praesidii nedläggande derstädes den 31 juli 1776 [Speech containing some remarks on metal and mineral goods and their markets, held at the Royal Academy of Sciences on 31 July 1776], Stockholm, 1776. 4 T. K. Hopkins and I. Wallerstein, “Commodity Chains in the World-Economy Prior to 1800”, Review (Fernand Braudel Center) X (1986) 1, pp. 157–170. 5 G. Gereffi, “International Trade and Industrial Upgrading in the Apparel Commodity Chain”, Journal of International Economics 48 (1999), pp. 37–70. 6 J. Bair, “Global Capitalism and Commodity Chains: Looking Back, Going Forward”, Competition & Change 9 (2005) 2, pp. 153–180. See also J.-F. Abbeloos, “Born with a Copper Spoon: Global Copper and Local Development 1870–2000”, paper presented at Harvard University, 23 November 2009.
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How and why Swedish copper and brass reached France and fit into the French trading system is an unexplored issue. This chapter seeks to examine the structure, organization, and development of the Stockholm copper commerce in the eighteenth century, primarily the mercantile vein leading Swedish copper commodities to the French market. My first aim is to analyse the French import of Swedish copper and brass, and my second is to examine the actual links between the Swedish copper trade and the French Atlantic trade system. The question is to what extent Swedish copper and brass were exported to France and if the copper was included in the outfitting procedure of French vessels intended for the Atlantic trade. To elaborate the notion of the commodity chain and to capture this notion from an empirical point of view, I will structure this text around a number of links through which the metal was finally destined for a defined user. The copper trail starts with the mining and the refining at the copperworks in Falun and Avesta, where copper was shaped for a purchaser and finally moved to domestic users or taken down to the port in Stockholm for further transportation to international markets. In this sense, the notion of the commodity chain can be viewed as a metaphor for the different stages of materiality, the process of transforming the ore into a final commodity. The Falun Mine functioned as the core component of the regional economy, which was based on copper production, and at the same time as a periphery related to economic centres, like Stockholm, and foreign cities, like Amsterdam and Nantes, and to other commercial hubs, which structured the demand on the global market for copper and brass. It is certainly a challenge to undertake research on this topic, and some scholars, like Pedro Vieira, have made ambitious attempts to grasp the fabric of conflated subchains of different commodities crisscrossing the global economy. To cover all subchains involved in the copper commodity chain, there is a need to embrace a complicated conjunction of phenomena also including the slave trade, according to Vieira the pillar of the sugar revolution. He suggests that sugar was the commodity “at the centre of this real net of chains – and which functioned as the driver of local economic activities”.7
7 P. A. Vieira, “‘Brazil’ in the Capitalist World-Economy from 1550 to c. 1800 – An Empirical Demonstration through the Sugar Commodity Chain”, Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 37 (2014) 1, pp. 1–34. Other scholars, like Chris Evans, Göran Rydén, and Holger Weiss, have studied other commodity chains, which show how goods like metals, slaves, and sugar were entangled in complex trade networks. See Ch. Evans and G. Rydén, Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, Leiden: Brill, 2007, and H. Weiss, Slavhandel och slaveri under svensk flagg: Koloniala drömmar och verklighet i Afrika och Karibien 1770–1847 [Slave trade and slavery under the Swedish flag], Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet, 2016.
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Apart from the work by the Swedish historian Eli Heckscher, few scholars have looked in detail into the interface between copper production and international markets. Ragnhild Hutchison, Chris Evans, Olivia Saunders, Nuala Zahedieh, and Ryuto Shimada have produced the most recent works on the global copper trade. In their studies, they identify both global networks supplying copper from European and Asian producers and global markets selling the finished goods in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of knowledge about the practice of the early modern copper trade and how supply and demand came together to pave the way for an era of change, termed as the consumer revolution or the industrial revolution. In this chapter, the emphasis is put on the Swedish copper trade, which targeted the French market, in order to better understand how copper goods fit into a wider system of the international copper trade.8 Since being pointed out by Fernand Braudel that there is a lack of research about the furnishing of trade supplies for ships in The Wheels of Commerce (1979), the issue of copper goods has been given some attention in the history of shipping and trade. Sometimes the procedures of furnishing have been described as the provision strategies or the re-export of goods gathered from different parts of Europe, for further transportation to Africa and the East Indies or the West Indies. Several investigations describe the cargo on the ships intended for different businesses, but few historians have exerted themselves to give a more detailed picture of how goods meant for Africa or the Caribbean colonies first reached the European docks from different parts of Europe.9
8 R. Hutchison, “Exploring an Early Cross-Border Trade System – Norwegian Copper in the 18th Century”, Scandinavian Journal of History, 6 October 2018, https://doi.org/10.1080/ 03468755.2018.1509805; Ch. Evans and O. Saunders, “A World of Copper: Globalizing the Industrial Revolution, 1830–1870”, Journal of Global History 10 (2015) 1, pp. 3–26; N. Zahedieh, “Colonies, Copper, and the Market for Inventive Activity in England and Wales, 1680–1730”, Economic History Review 66 (2013) 3, pp. 805–825; R. Shimada, The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century, Leiden: Brill, 2006; J. de Vries, The Industrious Revolution – Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 9 F. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism: 15th–18th Century, vol. 2, The Wheels of Commerce, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, p. 367; L. Svalesen, The Slave Ship Fredensborg, Oslo: Aschehoug, 2000, p. 33; M. M. Desrosiers, John Banister of Newport: The Life and Accounts of a Colonial Merchant, Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2017; D. Ormrod, The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650–1770, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. For an investigation, which emphasises the provision of the slaves, see A. Dalrymple and E. Frankema, “Slave Ship Provisioning in the long 18th Century. A boost to West African commercial agriculture?”, European Review of Economic History 21 (2017) 2, pp. 185–235.
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One ambitious attempt to picture the outfitting in the French context is Dale Miquelon’s investigation of the eighteenth-century businessman Dugard of Rouen, who was spending months in advance ordering goods from distant markets to equip his merchant ships before crossing the Atlantic. Dugard’s fourteenth voyage is used by Miquelon to exemplify the geographic amplitude of gathering goods from Bilbao in the south, Cork in the west, and Amsterdam in the north, even if many deliveries virtually originated from all parts of France.10 With attention to the French trade system, Kenneth J. Banks shows how the intricate exchange of information knit the coastal cities and a vast hinterland together. Vessels departed with cargo produced in the interior of France or transited from dozens of European coastal towns and afterwards were finally cleared for trips to the Levant, Africa, or the French colonies in Canada, Louisiana, or the islands in the West Indies. On their return, they brought colonial products back to France, products that were re-exported to distant European markets.11 Anka Steffen and Klaus Weber have also made important contributions to this field in the book Slavery Hinterland, showing how distant industrious parts of Europe, like the textile districts in Silesia and the bead factories in Venice, provided goods for the “barter baskets” on British and French slave ships.12 A striking result from Miquelon’s research is, however, that the outgoing cargo, comprising textiles, hardware, etc., and the business carried out with the goods in the colonies were as important for the trade as the colonial products taken in return. If the main part of the outgoing cargoes contained textiles and foodstuff, and if copper and other hardware constituted a minor part of Dugard’s business, then it is interesting to find out how material necessities, even if they were in small quantities, still found their way to the shipside. Herbert Klein stresses the importance of the matter of moving outgoing cargo even further: The goods exported to Africa to pay for the slaves were costly manufactured products and were the single most expensive factor in the outfitting of the voyage, being more valuable than the ship, the wages for the crew, and the food supplies combined. Two-thirds of the
10 D. Miquelon, Dugard of Rouen – French Trade to Canada and the West Indies, 1729–1770, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1978. 11 K. J. Banks, Chasing Empire Across the Sea: Communications and the State in the French Atlantic, 1713–1763, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002, p. 155. 12 A. Steffen and K. Weber, “Spinning and Weaving for the Slave Trade: Proto-Industry in Eighteenth-Century Silesia”, and A. Robinson, “‘Citizens of the World’: The Earle family’s Leghorn and Venetian Business, 1751–1808”, both in F. Brahm and E. Rosenhaft (eds.), Slavery Hinterland – Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe, 1680–1850, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2016, pp. 45–64, 87–108.
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outfitting costs of the French slaves in the eighteenth century, for example, came from the goods used to purchase the slaves.13
A word about the sources. To map the Swedish copper trade and, in particular, to track the French copper import from Sweden, this study relies on a selection of primary sources that specifically relate to the copper production in Falun and the trade emanating from Stockholm – many of those sources are underresearched by previous historians. The analysis throws light on the complex interrelationship between different economic actors in the eighteenth century. This suggests some modifications of Eli Heckscher’s statement about the history of the Swedish copper export in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: “compared to the flourishing seventeenth century, however, copper was unimportant throughout the period.”14 The sources used in the first section of the chapter are contemporary statistics compiled by the Kommerskollegium (the National Board of Trade), which include the destinations of the Swedish copper trade abroad as well as how much copper and brass metal and what types of goods were exported annually from Stockholm. Apart from a few years before 1738, Swedish statistics are missing for the first decades of the century, which means that the Sound Toll Registers are indispensable for displaying the first decades of the eighteenthcentury copper trade. There are two sorts of contemporary statistics compiled by the Kommerskollegium. First, there are the annual reports gathered at the National Archive in Stockholm, which give a brief description of what sorts of copper and brass Sweden exported to certain countries from 1738. Second, the more accurate reports describe trade to each port between 1760 and 1799, assumingly compiled in this period at the request of the Bergskollegium and the Falun Mine.15
13 Miquelon, Dugard of Rouen; H. S. Klein, “Economic Aspects of the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Slave Trade”, in: J. Tracy (ed.), The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World 1350–1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 293; D. Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; E. Gøbel, “Danish Shipping along the Triangular Route, 1671–1802: Voyages and Conditions on Board”, Scandinavian Journal of History 35 (2011) 2, pp. 135–155; Ch. Evans and G. Rydén, “‘Voyage iron’: An Atlantic Slave Trade Currency, its European Origins, and West African Impact”, Past & Present 29 (2018) 1, pp. 41–70. 14 E. F. Heckscher, An Economic History of Sweden, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968 (1954), p. 175. 15 Swedish National Archives, Stockholm (SNA), Kommerskollegium, Kammarkontoret, Generalpersedelextrakt, Årsberättelser, Utrikeshandel Serie 2 [National Board of Trades. Chamber Office. Extract of Import and Export Schedules. Annual Report. Foreign Trade 2.
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The reliability of the Swedish export statistics is an open question. Dutch and Norwegian investigations imply that smuggling could be massive. There is, however, reasons to assume that there was little smuggling in Sweden, mainly because the Swedish state exercised significant control over production and trade throughout the whole commodity chain. At each stage of moving the copper, numbers were carefully noted in main ledgers and annual reports, from the moment the ore was taken out of the mountain, through the refining process to make the finished metal, and finally all the way up to the shipment of the manufactured copper to the Stockholm harbour.16 The way the destinations are labelled in Table 1 follows the categories indicated in the sources. It is unclear why some destinations are precise, like Lübeck and Danzig, whereas others are vague, like France and Holland, not to mention the Mediterranean Sea or the West Indies. On the one hand, it was an administrative measure to account for annual export figures. On the other hand, it was an expression of uncertainty. A plausible explanation is that the sea captains were doing their best to find a market for their cargo. When the customs officers wrote out the certificates for outward clearance, they accepted general statements from the captains about destinations. Categories in the statistics, like “Baltic”, “North Sea”, or “the Western Sea”, can also be interpreted as transport routes to specific destinations, like Germany, Denmark, or France. The wide range of ports and destinations, sometimes vague and sometimes mentioned only once or twice in the reports, raises questions about uncertainty and about the mechanisms that facilitated the copper and brass trade.17 The sources used in the second section of the chapter give a more thorough description of the copper commodity chain, showing evidence of the role Swedish copper and brass played in the French Atlantic trading system. The sources available for this purpose are mainly ship accounts and bills of lading, which provide information about the cargo, the captain, the ship, the port of lading, the outfitter, the destination, the freight rate, the date for departure, and sometimes also the tonnage of the ship. Sources also include the bookkeeping at Falun Mine and
1738–1791]; Bergskollegium HK, D 5:22, SNA. Arkivcentrum Dalarna, Familjegraven F 1:2. For the Sound Toll Registers, see www.soundtoll.nl. 16 Hutchison, “Exploring an early cross-border trade system”, fn. 13. 17 Historical Statistics of Sweden, Part 3 Foreign Trade 1732–1970, Stockholm: National Central Bureau of Statistics, 1972, pp. 91–111; L. Müller, The Merchant Houses of Stockholm c. 1640–1800. A Comparative Study of Early-Modern Entrepreneurial Behaviour, Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1998, pp. 235–236; J. Claire, “The Hero and the Sea: Sea Captains and their Discontents”, Revue de la société d’études anglo-américaines des XVII et XVIII siècles 74 (2017) 1, http://journals.openedition.org/1718/888, DOI: 10.4000/1718.888.
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Avesta Copperworks and at different levels of the Swedish state administration, together with probate inventories and business papers from some of the merchants in Sweden and France who facilitated the trade. Before the analysis of these themes, a brief introduction to the Swedish copper making and copper trade is necessary in order to establish the links between the Swedish copper production and the French copper import.
From the Mine in Falun to the Harbour in Stockholm The first links in the copper commodity chain, extracting the ore from the mountain and refining it into pure metal, involved the most complicated and time-consuming part of the process. The metal production will not be described in detail in this chapter, but the thousands of households producing and transporting mountains of charcoal, firewood, and building material from the entire region should nevertheless be mentioned. The rolling landscape surrounding the mining area in Falun was, and is still, dominated by coniferous forests and scattered with rural areas and some large lakes connected by wild rivers with rapids offering water power to the copperworks. A number of mines in the region outline a major ore body situated next to the city of Falun in the parish of the Stora Kopparberg, and this body includes several smaller outcrops nearby, for example at Garpenberg, 40 kilometres south-east of Falun. The copper mine area in Falun, in the district of Dalecarlia, covers about 700 square kilometres, and it more or less coincides with eight parishes with a great number of villages where the bergsmän (peasant miners18) were living. In exchange for tax exemption, they were obliged to hold shares in the mine and the copperworks, produce copper metal from the ore, and deliver a quarter of the production to the Swedish state. Most shareholders were peasants in the region or merchants in the town of Falun. The bergsmän formed a varied and changing group of rather successful households. Some of them delivered hundreds of tons of raw copper annually, like the entrepreneur
18 A general definition of bergsman (singular)/bergsmän (plural) is someone who combines ore mining with agriculture and charcoal making (see Evans and Rydén, Baltic Iron, p. 315). Some bergsmän who owned shares in the Falun Mine and were responsible for the copper production by owning furnaces were living in the town of Falun as merchants, administrators, or artisans (see Lindroth, Gruvan och gruvbrytningen).
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and restaurant keeper Olof Engström, others just a couple of hundred kilograms, like the bergsman Samuel Jonsson in the village of Uggelviken.19 The miners that brought the ore up to the surface constituted the very first link in the copper commodity chain. In the mining organization of the 1750s, the miners were mainly working all the year for the Falun Mine. In the next link, the ore was distributed to hundreds of bergsmän in relation to how many shares they owned in the mine. Each batch of ore was a mix of qualities from different parts of the mine, with the aim to create conditions as fair as possible for the refining of the ore into pure metal. This procedure took place in furnaces close to the peasants’ homesteads or close to the mines. The localization of the furnaces was decided by the proximity to streaming water, which gave power to the bellows. The process of making raw copper took between 2 and 5 months, depending on the quality of the ore, the supply of coal and waterpower, and the skills of the smelting staff.20 After the initial steps of refining, the bergsmän had a 90 per cent pure raw copper metal that was transported to the våghus (the weighbridge) in Falun, where each piece of metal, weighing between 100 and 750 kilograms, was marked with individual signatures and registered in a weight book. In the book for 1767, the dates and the deliveries show that most raw copper was brought to the våghus in the month of December, followed by May and July. After the weighing and registration, the raw copper was loaded on horse-drawn sleighs or on boats, depending on the season, for transportation to the copperworks at Avesta, about 60 kilometres south-east of Falun.21 At Avesta, the fifth and last step in the copper refining process took place: the making of the gar copper. This process was an additional smelting procedure to facilitate the forging of the metal, the hammering, and the undergoing of other processes. The smelting factory consisted of four furnaces with a capacity of refining around 50 ship-
19 Arkivcentrum Dalarna, Stora Kopparberg, Kopparvågen G 1. 20 Bertil Boëthius, Gruvornas, hyttornas och hamrarnas folk – Bergshanteringens arbetare från medeltid till gustavianska tiden [The people of the mines, the furnaces, and the hammer works], Stockholm: Tiden, 1951; Lindroth, Gruvan och gruvbrytningen; S. Lindroth, Gruvbrytning och kopparhantering vid Stora Kopparberget intill 1800-talets början, del 2: Kopparhanteringen [Mining and copper refining at Stora Kopparberg up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, part two], Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1955. 21 Arkivcentrum Dalarna, Stora Kopparbergs Arkiv, Kopparvågen G 1:193; Lindroth, Kopparhanteringen, pp. 22, 37, 40 and 354.
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pounds per day, and the master smelters purified the metal from 90 per cent raw copper to 99 per cent gar copper.22 Most Swedish raw copper was refined into gar copper at Avesta, and the wellpreserved archive paints a unique picture of both the production and the manufacturing of copper up to 1779, when the company suddenly changed the bookkeeping procedure. The main ledger shows in detail how the gar copper was launched in many different forms to be sold on international markets. It also shows how and when different purchasers set their orders. Less than 20 per cent was sold to Swedish copper smiths, and 80 per cent was sold to producers of brass or other alloys or to the trading houses, which provided manufactured goods for the European market. Most products were hammered or rolled into semi-finished goods at Avesta, which were then sent for further refinement to smaller hammer works in remote places like Hallsta, Tyresö, and Gusum.23 In his remarkable report from the Avesta Copperworks in 1723, Anton von Swab gives an in-depth description of the different types of commodities that the copper smiths were producing – their size (length and width), their weight, and the cost for the manufacturing. The most expensive items to produce were the bottoms – between ten to twenty times more expensive than other products like pipe sheets, extraordinary sheets, ordinary sheets, plates for roofing and minting, and Hungarian sheets. The more expensive the product, the more steps it had been through to become a finished product. After the metal piece was heated in the fire, it was hammered, shaped with shears, again hammered, and so on, and between each step it was put into the fire to keep the malleability. This way of organizing the manufacturing looked almost the same up to the beginning of the 1780s, when a rolling mill was erected at Avesta, with English sheet metal production as a model.24 The next link in the copper commodity chain includes the actors who were demanding the products from Avesta as well as the mechanisms that were operating, such as the actual supply available on the market. To grasp this link, there is a need to expand the geographic scope beyond the region of the Falun and the Avesta Copperworks. The key actors to establish contacts with the
22 P. Norberg, Avesta under kopparbrukets tid, del 1 [Avesta through the era of copper production], Stockholm: Törnqvists bokhandel, 1956. The weight of one ship-pound corresponded to approximately 150 kilograms. 23 Engelsbergs bruksarkiv, Avesta bruksarkiv, G 1:1–80. 24 A. von Swab, Avesta kronobruk [The king’s copperworks in Avesta], Stockholm: Jernkontoret, 1983, pp. 61–65. Norberg, Avesta del 1, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolans Arkiv, Bergsskolan Falun, C 12.
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market was a group comprising the leading merchants in Stockholm with close links to the Swedish state and its institutional framework for trade: I have seen that the non-free copper still has a price between 345 and 350 Daler Kopparmynt. All my correspondents are writing to me that none of them can sell one piece of Swedish copper when they have enough in both Amsterdam and Hamburg of Hungarian, Hartzian and Norwegian copper for a price between 55 and 54 Riksdaler Banco per shippound.25
This sentence (translated from Swedish) is taken from a letter sent from the Swedish merchant Abraham Arfwedson in Stockholm to Berghauptman Per Hedenblad, head of the Falun Mine, on 1 June 1769. It reveals a rather bleak situation for the Swedish copper export, but at the same time, it describes accidental fragments of what, from an analytical point of view, can be termed a link in the copper commodity chain between Sweden and international markets. The Swedish trading system developed in the eighteenth century when new merchants managed to enter into new markets with the help from the Swedish government. This system consisted of several intermediate actors at different levels and in different social, political, and economic positions. One major hub in the system, with great commercial importance, was the capital of Stockholm, which connected the trading houses, like the one run by merchant Abraham Arfwedson, with the markets and the political and administrative systems involved in promoting industry and trade. One important category of intermediate actors was the trading houses abroad, especially in Amsterdam and Hamburg, which offered credits to the Swedes and connections to a wide network of foreign customers. Another category of actors, important for the Swedish traders, was the sea captains who acted as intermediaries between the merchants in Sweden and the agents abroad, implementing the trade on behalf of the merchants. The historians Jari Ojala and Leos Müller stress the importance of the way in which the Swedish government was promoting business. One example was the Copper Trade Company, established in 1732 by a group of distinguished merchants in Stockholm, and to this company the Swedish king offered a monopoly in order to bring the copper to international markets. Another example of governmental promotions for Swedish trade was the network of Swedish consuls at several ports
25 Uppsala Universitetsbibiliotek Carolina, Handskriftsamlingen, Arfwedson 9, p. 16. All translations in this chapter are by the author. Daler Kopparmynt (copper dollars) and Riksdaler Banco were Swedish monetary units in the early eighteenth century.
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around Europe and the Mediterranean Sea as well as the convoy service protecting the Swedish merchant fleet.26 For a more explicit analysis of the copper commodity chain – in order to explore how the copper and brass trade developed during the eighteenth century, which actors were demanding the products from Avesta, and which mechanisms were operating – the French market will provide a heuristic example and delimit the geographical scope.
France Becomes the Prime Destination for Swedish Copper and Brass The French overseas trade showed a threefold increase in volume between 1716 and the 1780s, following a start from a low level after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713), and ending with the tumultuous time following the French Revolution.27 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the copper trade from Sweden to France was also developing from very low numbers, but Sweden delivered copper and brass to France predominantly by Dutch merchants. In his study of the Sound Toll Registers, Willem Sybrand Unger estimates that before 1731 all Swedish exports of copper and brass went to Holland or England. After 1731, about 80 per cent went to France.28 Swedish travellers, like Jonas Alströmer, who visited France in the 1720s, paid attention to the French dependence on foreign imports and identified several niches for Swedish copper manufactures. In 1723, when Alströmer investigated the industry in several French towns, he notices in La Rochelle that “[a] lot of copper is used for sugar refineries as bottoms of large size kettles or pans. They are pre-fabricated and imported from Holland.”29 In Table 2, data from the Sound Toll Register show that some vessels with Swedish copper and brass went straight to France also at the beginning of the 26 J. Ojala, “Approaching Europe: The Merchant Networks between Finland and Europe during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century”, European Review of Economic History 1 (1997) 3, pp. 323–352; Müller, The Merchant Houses; L. Müller, Consuls, Corsairs, and Commerce. The Swedish Consular Service and Long-distance Shipping, 1720–1815, Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2004. 27 Ormrod, Rise of Commercial Empires, p. 67. 28 W.S. Unger, “Trade through the Sound in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”, The Economic History Review, New Series 12 (1959) 2, p. 218. 29 Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek Carolina Rediviva, Handskriftsamlingen [Uppsala University Library, Special Reading Room at Carolina Rediviva], X 377, p. 235.
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Table 2: Numbers of vessels carrying Swedish copper and brass to ports in France, 1700–1799 (in five-year intervals). Bayeux Bordeaux Cette Dieppe Dunkerque France Le Havre Marseille Morlaix Nantes Port Loys Rouen Saint-Malo TOTAL
TOTAL Bayeux Bordeaux Cette Dieppe Dunkerque France Le Havre Marseille Morlaix Nantes Port Loys Rouen Saint-Malo TOTAL
Sound Toll Registers.
century. The trade was not extensive at the time, and the destinations were different from the ports that later became dominant in the trade with Sweden. My selection of data in five-year intervals shows that the traffic was sporadic until the mid-1720s when Rouen, a town located along the river Seine, a few miles upstream from the river’s mouth on the English Channel, appeared for the first time as a destination. From then on, Rouen stands out as the most important
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destination in France, which was challenged by other ports during the last quarter of the century.30 An example at the microlevel that coincides well with the developments noted in the statistics begins on 1 December 1738, when the Manufaktur- och Handelsdeputationen (Standing Committee of Industry and Trade) received a memorandum from a French citizen named LeBlanc.31 This person, who had recently worked with copper in Paris, had now moved to Sweden of his own accord, and applied for financial support to establish himself in Sweden in order to [u]ndertake to prepare unprocessed copper in a different and more profitable way than usual, as well and also to undertake the production according to the demand of the French Empire as well as in the Netherlands and in several other places, as well as teaching Swedish youth in this profession.32
On 10 July 1739, the Bergskollegium sent, as a response, a letter to the bergmästare (chief officer) in Falun regarding the French copper worker’s proposal to prepare the Swedish copper for such templates (champluner) that might be delivered to the French Empire.33 It is reasonable to assume that the Swedish interest in the French artisan’s proposal was particularly strong around 1739. First, Sweden was at that time at the beginning of negotiations with France about the so-called Preliminary Trade and Navigation Convention. Second, the recruitment of foreign craftsmen at this time was also ongoing in several other branches of the Swedish manufacturing industries.34 To obtain more information about the French demand for copper, the Bergskollegium decided to conduct a market survey in France. On 17 July 1742, the Swedish consuls Egmond in Bordeaux, Borchers in Rouen, and Kraft in La
30 W. Scheltjens, “French Imports to the Baltic, 1670–1850: A Quantitative Analysis”, Revue de l’OFCE 140 (2015), pp. 150–155; P. Pourchasse, “Trade between France and Sweden in the Eighteenth Century”, Forum Navale 67 (2011), pp. 92–114. 31 The standing committee was a parliamentary group of people from all four Estates working with political issues of industry and trade during the Diet of 1738–1739, continuing the following diets during the “Era of Freedom”. See P. Karonen, “Swedish Diet as a Forum for Gathering Commercial and Political Information”, in: P. Ihalainen et. al. (eds.), Scandinavia in the Age of Revolution, Farnham: Ashgate, 2011, pp. 229–240. 32 Manufaktur och handelsdeputationen, r2683 (1738–39), SNA. 33 Arkivcentrum Dalarna, Stora Kopparberg, Berghauptmannen, E 144, no. 605 and no. 609. 34 L. Hinners, De fransöske handtwerkarne vid Stockholms slott 1693–1713: Yrkesroller, organisation, arbetsprocesser [French craftsmen at the castle of Stockholm], Stockholm: Konstvetenskapliga institutionen, 2012; M. Jansson, Making Metal Making: Circulation and Workshop Practices in the Swedish Metal Trades, 1730–1775, Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2017; Diplomatica Gallica, A 34:311 (Ambassadören Carl Gustaf Tessins beskickning), SNA.
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Rochelle were requested to deliver “notification of the circumstances of the copper trade”. The consulate of La Rochelle and Ree delivered a report that describes in detail which goods were considered in demand and in what quantities.35 Nevertheless, this effort became quite ineffective. This is apparent from export statistics, which show that copper exports to France fell and almost ceased at the end of the 1740s. After 1742, brass exports began to increase, albeit slowly and unevenly, from 115 tons to 412 tons in 1752.36 An accurate depiction of the position that the Swedish copper had in the French economy during the eighteenth century also requires gaining insight into the relation between France and the other European superpowers, which at the time fought each other over colonial possessions around the globe. The War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) cut the French trade by more than 50 per cent, while the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) reduced the trade by more than 90 per cent.37 The latter war ended with a stunning victory for Britain, which gained control of several islands and ports in the Caribbean, on the African and Indian coasts, and in parts of France’s North American possessions.38 A survey of all Swedish copper and brass shipped to certain regions between 1738 and 1791, displayed in Table 1, shows much variation in the annual deliveries and in the general destinations. An important feature is that France was the largest recipient of Swedish brass and the second of Swedish copper, after Lübeck. If the annual figures of the top four regions – France, Lübeck, Holland, and Danzig – are put along a timeline (Figure 1), the relationship between them shows an interesting dynamic development over time. France and Lübeck are the two main importers, with an upward trend over the period, but the Netherlands shows a slight downward trend from the beginning of the 1740s when their imports of Swedish copper and brass equalled those of France. By the end of the century, Holland imported only a few tens of tons, which was at the same level as Danzig, whose import during the period remains on the same level, except for the year 1762, a strange exception in the statistics. Unlike Lübeck, which mainly imported copper products, the main item in the Swedish imports to France was brass wire. Swedish brass exports to France can be divided into two periods in which the changes in the trade pattern are similar. After the export in 1740, which included 300 tons of brass wire, a
35 Frihetstidens utskotthandlingar, Riksdagen 1742–43, r2829, SNA. 36 D. Kirby, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Baltic World 1492–1772, Boston: Addison Wesley Longman, 1990. 37 R. Stein, “The French Sugar Business in the Eighteenth Century: A Quantitative Study”, Business History 22 (1980) 1, pp. 3–17. 38 Ormrod, Rise of Commercial Empires, p. 67.
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Danzig
Holland
Lübeck
Figure 1: Swedish copper and brass exports to France, Danzig, Holland, and Lübeck, 1738–1791 (in tons). Kommerskollegium, Kammarkontoret, Generalpersedelextrakt Årsberättelser Utrikeshandel Serie 2 1738–1791, SNA.
decline occurred, most likely explained by Swedish foreign policy and the war against Russia in 1741–1743. This was a setback for the Swedish state, which had just landed a trade agreement with France.39 Subsequently, the low figure in 1742 was replaced by a period with regular increases until the year 1758, when 412 tons were exported. From 1759 to 1764, brass exports to France were hit by a sharp and prolonged decline. From 1757 until 1762, Sweden was involved in the Seven Years’ War, and this further delimited Swedish exports to France.
39 Préliminaire handels och navigations convention, emellan kongl. maj:t och cronan Swerige, och hans aller christeligaste maj:t konungen i Frankrike. Afhandlad och sluten i Versailles then 25 April 1741 och ratificerad i Stockholm then 4 Maij samma år [Preliminary Trade and Navigation Convention between the Swedish Majesty the King and the most Christian Majesty the King of France. Negotiated and agreed upon at Versailles on 25 April 1741, and ratified in Stockholm, 4 May, the same year], Trykt uti thet Kongl. Tryckeriet, hos directueuren Pet. Momma, Stockholm 1741.
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The question is why the brass exports did not return directly to the level of 1758 at the end of the war. In 1765, exports increased to 247 tons from 102 tons the year before. Despite this, the export level of 1758 was not to be reached until 1772. The assumption is that the contacts with those who had previously asked for copper had to start all over again. Thus, the Seven Years’ War was a 14-year-long setback for Swedish brass manufacturers and exporters. When Karl-Gustaf Hildebrand pointed out the strong increase in Swedish iron exports to France in the 1770s and 1780s, he believed that the reason was a general economic upturn, primarily due to the population increase in France.40 It is reasonable to believe that the sharp increase in Swedish brass exports during the same period had a similar reason. When it comes to the Swedish copper export, the picture is different. The trends are demonstrated in Figures 2 and 3 below, in which the goods are divided into the five main types of exported copper. The figures show that the copper trade to France was not particularly extensive before the 1780s. Until then, the French imports rarely exceeded 25 tons, and, for a few years at the end of the 1740s and during the Seven Years’ War, there was no copper export
800 700 600 Tons
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Brass
Figure 2: Swedish copper and brass export to France, 1738–1791 (in tons). Kommerskollegium, Kammarkontoret, Generalpersedelextrakt, Årsberättelser Utrikeshandel Serie 2, 1738–1791, SNA.
40 Hildebrand was the grand old man amongst Swedish metal historians. See J. Söderberg, “Karl-Gustaf Hildebrand”, Year Book KVHAA 2006, Stockholm: Kungliga Vitterhets och antikvarieakademien, 2006, pp. 17–21.
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at all. To judge from the figures, uncertainty prevailed throughout the century. There were no deliveries on a regular basis; deliveries rarely reached significant amounts. Sweden barely supplied France with the bulk of the copper they needed for their colonies. The changes that occurred in the 1780s constituted a notable exception. Of the five most important variants of copper products displayed in Figure 3, some of them, such as gar copper and extraordinary plates, left Stockholm for French ports during the 1770s. This general trend continued in 1780–1781, followed by the exceptional years 1782–1784, when unusually large deliveries of extraordinary plates took place. During the years that followed, before the setback during the French Revolution, gar copper was again in high demand, together with smaller deliveries of copper bottoms and extraordinary plates.
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Year Ordinary Sheets
Extraordinary Sheets
Bottoms 1.5–3 qv
Gar Copper
Figure 3: French import of the most important varieties of copper from Sweden, 1738–1791 (in tons). Ibid.
Perhaps the most striking example in Figure 2 is the diversity of the size of Swedish copper and brass exports to the French market. The figure shows 6 destinations in France amongst the top 20 of all the ports that imported copper from Sweden. Some ports had an extensive import of copper and brass, while others demanded either copper or brass, particularly brass wire. Rouen is notable in this regard, followed by the destinations under the label “France”: Havre de
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Grace (nowadays Le Havre), Brest, Bordeaux, and Marseille. Surprisingly, Nantes is missing as an independent port. Perhaps this absence is hidden behind the deliveries just labelled France. Several French towns along the Atlantic coast were particularly active in trading slaves and colonial goods. Between 1727 and 1793, 366 slave ships departed from La Rochelle, around 300 from Le Havre, between 20 and 30 from Marseille, and 1,113 ships from Nantes. Nantes was clearly the central port for the French slave trade.41 From the Swedish perspective, Rouen was the most important place for exports to France. The reason for this was that Rouen was a manufacturing centre for many kinds of goods and a hub for goods gathered from different production sites. In Rouen, vessels were furnished with cargo intended for the French colonies in Canada and the West Indies. Rouen was one of the main textile regions in Europe, producing common textiles and finer qualities of hemp, flax, and linen, which supplied both the domestic market and the French and Spanish colonies. This explanation suggests why large amounts of Swedish brass wire were exported to Rouen. They were especially meant for needle production, in strong competition with the brass industry in Stolberg in the Harz. The French market for Swedish brass experienced a slow growth up until 1758, and after the Seven Years’ War it made another and more rapid increase until 1786, when the trade diminished during the years before the French Revolution. In the 1780s, Rouen was importing almost as much brass and copper as all other French ports together.42 In his notes about his journey to France, Jonas Alströmer describes Rouen as one of the “most powerful and most populous cities in France”, with about 100,000 inhabitants. In the city, he sees a “plethora of clothes makers, painters and weavers that seem to be the successful people in the city”. From a French
41 D. Rinchon, Les armements négriers au XVIIIe siècle d’après la correspondence et la compatibilité des armateurs et des capitaines nantais [Slavery armaments in the 18th century according to the correspondence and compatibility of shipowners and captains of Nantes], Bruxelles: Institut Royal Colonial Belge, 1956, p. 12; R. Stein, “Measuring the French Slave Trade 1713–1792/93”, The Journal of African History 19 (1978) 4, pp. 515–521; J. Meyer, “Le commerce négrier nantais (1774–1792)” [The slave trade in Nantes (1774–1792)], Annales 15 (1960) 1, pp. 120–129. 42 Scheltjens, “French Imports to the Baltic”, pp. 150–154; Pourchasse, Trade between France and Sweden; S. Marzagalli, “The French Atlantic and the Dutch, Late Seventeenth – Late Eighteenth Century”, in: G. Oostindie and J. V. Roitman (eds.), Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680–1800: Linking Empires, Bridging Borders, Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 101–118. About the competition with Stolberg, see Hutchison, “Exploring an early Cross-Border Trade System”, and business correspondence between the agent Lezuriers in Rouen and the owner of Gusum Brass Works, Gusums Bruksmuseums arkiv, vol. 2111, no. 210.
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contact, Alströmer had received a proposal about the types of trade that could be conducted from Sweden to Rouen. After a long list of iron goods, he moves to copper and brass. This list starts with copper plates, and the most requested product was sheets 4 feet long and 3.5 wide, weighing 18 to 35 lispund.43 Then there is a long list of different types of bottoms with different diameters and thicknesses. Especially those with a 9-inch diameter weighing half a lispund are the most wanted ones; Alströmer adds: “This variety is needed here most of all and you cannot barter or ship too much of this product.”44
Swedish Copper in the French Atlantic Trading System As the section above demonstrates, Swedish copper products were delivered to France, and the export increased throughout the eighteenth century. I will now emphasize the copper trade in one decade – the 1770s – as well as how the business was organized and to what extent specific deliveries of Swedish copper targeted the French Atlantic trade, especially with regard to the slave trade and the sugar production. Copper export experienced a different trajectory than brass export. Firstly, the reasons for choosing this decade and leaving brass export aside are largely due to the source material available for this micro study: the applications for copper export premiums. Secondly, the emphasis on the 1770s is also motivated by the timing of the small but distinctive boom in copper export to France, preceding the large one in the 1780s. In order to facilitate the export of Swedish copper and to promote the Swedish economy in the wake of the financial crisis occurring between 1768 and 1769, the king issued a letter on 20 December 1769, in which he invited applications for export refunds that would be paid for “finer copper forging and manufactured goods that were exported to foreign locations”. The king’s letter was followed by an announcement from the Royal Collegium on 9 May 1770 and finally promulgated by the Bergskollegium on 4 September 1771.45 During the following years, from 1771 to 1775, 69 applications were sent to the Bergskollegium from several merchants. All applications are neatly displayed in a bound book. Each individual case contains a standardized document with the
43 The weight of one lispund corresponds approximately to 8.5 kilograms. 44 Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek Carolina Rediviva, Handskriftssamlingen, X 377, p. 413. 45 Bergskollegium, Kammarkontoret, G III 15, SNA.
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name of the applying merchant, the time and place of the manufacture, the type of goods, the number of goods and their weight, the value of the premium, the captain’s name, the ship’s name, and the destination of the goods. To 16 of the applications, there is also a bill of lading attached that contains the names of the buyers at the final destinations.46 As shown in Table 3 below, the annual distribution of applications over the period includes a few applications already in 1770 and 1771. In the third year, the number of applications increased considerably. This suggests that the information about export support reached the exporters gradually. In the years 1773–1775, the number of applications continued at about the same level with 15 to 19 applications per year. In general, these figures also correspond with the entries in the Sound Toll Register for the number of ships destined for different French ports with copper in the cargo (see above). Table 3: Number of applicants for copper export premiums, 1770–1775.
Bergskollegium, Kammarkontoret, G III 15, SNA.
Of the 69 applications, as many as 25 concerned exports of goods to destinations in France (France: 2, Havre de Grace: 1, Marseille: 2, Nantes: 6, Rouen: 11, St Malo: 3). To 4 of those applications, there are also bills of lading attached. They contain the names of French buyers at their final destinations: Babut & Co. and Murphy & d’Havelooze in Nantes, Marchant & Co. and Cochin & Lé Baas in Rouen, and finally Wesenberg & Mollies in Marseille.47 The reading of the applications and the goods ordered indicate that Cochin & Lé Baas was the only one that deviated from the others by ordering “copper engraving plates”. The other three will be discussed in relation to the French Atlantic economy and the need for Swedish copper.
46 Ibid. 47 The copper buyers listed in the bills of lading, apart from those from France, are Christ Rumph and Christian Magnus Schröder in Liebau, the Swedish consul Hans Jacob Gahn in Cadiz, the Swedish consul Daniel Balgueri, Jan and Carl Hasselgren and Joh Herm Meyring in Amsterdam, Fred and Ad Saturgar in Königsberg/Pillau, Jack Jacke junior in Pernau, and, finally, Peter von Mehrem in Lübeck (see Bergskollegium, Kammarkontoret, G III 15, SNA).
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The first example on the list is Wesenberg & Mollies in Marseille. Two orders were recorded in 1772 for this firm. The company was affiliated with Turku in Finland and had settled in Marseille around 1770. They ordered extra copper sheets from merchant Caspar Nettelbladt at Hallsta Hammer Works, 362 pieces on 14 May, and 292 on 31 October, weighing 59 ship-pounds altogether (or just over 8 tons). Who the order was intended for is not recorded in the documents, but it is likely it was for a Mediterranean buyer.48 An order that can be more clearly linked to a colonial context is the second example, ordered by the trading house of Murphy & d’Havelooze in Nantes on 23 May 1772. In this case, the order included 51 pieces of copper sheets and 24 bottoms, altogether weighing 6 ship-pounds. That the order included both sheets and bottoms implies that such products were easy to load and transport overseas, to store in warehouses, and finally to deliver to the copper smiths, who could put the pieces together into vats, basins, or cauldrons in different sizes. This specific order was shipped from Västervik, 265 kilometres south of Stockholm, by Councillor Hans Hultman, who was, amongst other things, a merchant in the city and the owner of Gunnebo Hammer Works. This copper probably originated from the Åtvidaberg Copper Mine. Samples in the Åtvidaberg accounts from 1772 to 1773 show that they had outstanding claims for deliveries to Nantes.49 Unfortunately, this source does not mention who the buyer was. This cargo of copper may have been intended for further transport to the French colonies or the African coast. This can be derived from the fact that the Murphy & d’Havelooze, at least on 19 May 1783, was the primary owner of the slave ship Solitaire, together with Thomas Dobrée. It is not possible to confirm the connection between this load of sheet metal and bottoms and the need for copper vessels in the Caribbean. However, several researchers show that there was a substantial need for copper in sugar production.50 From the mid-seventeenth century, sugar was the most important commodity produced in the Caribbean. This sugar production created a massive demand for both equipment and labour. Studies about other sugar-producing contexts add to the French case and the need for copper metal, both in the sugar factories and in the slave trade. In her study of the British plantations on
48 P. Hernándes Sau, “Merchants between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean – The Bouligny Family Case (1700–1762)”, in: M. Herrero Sánchez and K. Kaps (eds.), Merchants and Trade Networks in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1550–1800, London: Routledge, 2017, pp. 196–218. 49 Brukskultur Åtvidaberg, Åtvidabergs Kopparverk, Huvudbok A I:2, p. 169. 50 R. Stein, “The Profitability of the Nantes Slave Trade, 1783–1792”, The Journal of Economic History 35 (1974) 4, pp. 783–784.
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Jamaica and Barbados in 1700, Nuala Zehedieh estimates that each sugar factory needed at least 4–6 copper boilers of substantial size, four feet in diameter and three feet in depth, weighing as much as 15 tons.51 In his study of Brazilian sugar production, Pedro Antonio Vieira provides a more modest picture and estimates that copper utensils used in the sugar factory (pots, cauldrons and boilers) weighed 2,475 kilos.52 All this means that the demand for copper in the French colonies was large, and it was also large in the sugar refineries in France, Nantes, Rouen, Orleans, and La Rochelle.53 Descriptions of sugar production in the plantations indicate that there was a recurring demand for large copper pans, since the number of sugar plantations increased and because sugar factories constantly needed to replace worn-out pans. The sugar exports from Saint-Domingue increased twice as fast as those from Jamaica in the 1720s. Of the imports to Bordeaux, sugar accounted for 80 per cent, mainly from Martinique, SaintDomingue, and Guadeloupe.54 A report from 1789 states that there were 793 sugar factories in Saint-Domingue, 427 in Guadeloupe, and at least as many in Martinique.55 The third and last example refers to a transport to Nantes at the end of June 1775, carried out by sea captain Petter Lytckies from Stockholm with the ship Hoppet. Again, thanks to the notes in the bill of lading, the French buyers can be identified. On behalf of the Swedish merchant Johan Chr. Pauli, Lytckies delivered two loads with 16 boxes, containing 5,740 copper bars weighing two tons altogether, to the company Babut Junior (Babut Jeune & Cie) in Nantes. The application for the export premium makes clear that the delivery contained 16 boxes of “negros koppar” (Negro’s copper), manufactured at Avesta and transported from there on 21 June 1775. The main ledger for 1775 at the Avesta Copperworks includes both Johan Christian Pauli’s own account and the accounts from the gar maker and the smiths. These accounts indicate that Pauli’s raw copper was refined to gar copper on 12 June, and soon after it was manufactured into “negros tenar” (Negro’s bars), 90 centimetres long and 2.5 millimetres
51 Zahedieh, “Colonies, Copper, and the Market”, p. 810. 52 Vieira, “‘Brazil’ in the Capitalist World-Economy”, p. 31. 53 Ville de Nantes, Inventarie-Sommaire des archives communales Antérieures à 1790, Série HH, p. 83, www.archives.nantes.fr/PAGES/ENLIGNE/inventaires_series . . . /serie_HH.pdf. 54 J. Pritcherd, In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670–1730, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 196–197. 55 Rinchon, Les armements négriers, p. 13.
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thick. On 16 August, the purchase was balanced on credit through the firm Hebbe & Sons in Stockholm.56 That the order from Pauli was called “Negros tenar” implies that his firm and the firm of Babut Junior had a connection with the French slave trade and that the metal was probably used as barter for slaves in West Africa. Anne PérotinDumon’s research confirms that the company of Babut Junior had links to the French Atlantic trading system. They traded with Guadeloupe, perhaps until 1775, when they and several other French merchants stopped their activities.57 An explanation as to the reduced interest in trade with the Caribbean around 1775 may be the economic climate at the time, which apparently affected the French copper market in a negative way. In May 1775, the company Babut Junior wrote a letter to the Swedish merchant Joakim Wahrendorff, who had delivered sheets and bottoms and commented on the market for copper in critical terms: We are angered; just to tell you that there are a lot of these copper plates here at 40 to 42 lisp., as well as bottoms that have also come from Sweden, Lübeck, Hamburg and Holland. The copper plates that are missing today in Nantes are between 120 to 180–190 up to 200 [sic], while all those under 60 can count in trillions and are in excess, just as with the bottoms. A trading house here in Nantes has sold a large batch of copper [. . .] that ended with the destruction of the market for this product. If you had consulted us before sending this batch of copper, we would have asked you to keep it. It would be better for you to send selected steel, which is still the most sought after item.58
In the same year, Wahrendorff also began a more frequent contact with Babut & Fils & Labouchere, another firm in Nantes, which possibly had a link to the first firm. This contact lends insight into one of their projects about an extensive import to Nantes of mostly coffee and sugar with the vessels Usbeck, Castor, Discret, and Muzette. The correspondence also includes information about the stakeholders who invested money in the voyage. The Inventaire Général, dated May 1787, indicates that besides the main owners – Babut & Fils & Labouchere and two major investors, the banker Hope in Amsterdam and the plantation owner Louise Mascou in Guadeloupe – there were another 60 investors and several others who probably charged the project for furnishing the ships with outgoing cargo. Amongst the investors, who came from
56 Bergskollegium, Kammarkontoret, G III:15, pp. 408–409, SNA; Engelsbergs Bruksarkiv, Avesta bruksarkiv, G 1:76. 57 A. Pérotin-Dumon, La ville aux Iles, la ville dans l’île: Basse-Terre et Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, 1650–1820 [The city on the islands, the city on the island: Basse-Terre and Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, 1650–1820], Paris: Karthala 2000, p. 170. 58 Åkers Styckebruks Arkiv, Wahrendorff Arkiv, Utrikeskorrespondens vol. 207.
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several European countries, was also a Swedish company, Bohman, Hassel & Görges, in Stockholm, and amongst the suppliers of inputs there are the merchants Lars Kahre in Gothenburg and “J. C. Pauli” in Stockholm. The latter was one of the largest outfitters in the group, claiming 6,653 livres.59 What Pauli eventually delivered is unknown. The information above in various ways connects Pauli to the orders of copper bars from Swedish Avesta to the French company Babut & Fils & Labouchere’s colonial trade. Thus, it adds interconnected links to the copper commodity chain, whose beginning was the copper mine in Falun and ended at the sugar plantations in Guadeloupe. It is not possible to prove that it was the “negros koppar” Pauli distributed. Nor can it be confirmed that the large numbers of copper plates exported to France during the 1780s were placed on the vessels owned by Babut Fils & Labouchere. Nevertheless, the Swedish copper goods contributed to the French Atlantic trade. In many ways, this copper commodity chain was linked both to the slave and the sugar trade. Thus, we might say that the well-to-do bergsmän in Falun, importing French sugar, were able to use their copper to cook up the sweet smell of success.
Concluding Remarks At the meal that Olof Engström, the most distinguished shareholder in the Falun Mine, probably arranged for his wife’s funeral in 1773, we can assume that the table was furnished with his most valuable pieces of silverware, as well as sugar bowls and a couple of sugar tongs, also in silver, to move the sweets into the coffee and tea cups.60 If anything was discussed in Engström’s party hall, being in the mansion of the county governor of Dalecarlia, it was certainly
59 Chadbourne Antiques & Collectibles, “1787 Nantes finances, Babut et Labouchere, négociant traite négrière” [1787 Nantes finance Babut & Labouchere, merchant slave trade], https://chad bourneantique.com/products/1787-nantes-finances-babut-et-labouchere-negociant-traite-negriere (accessed 12 July 2018). For information about Hope & Co., see M. G. Buist, At Spes Non Fracta – Hope & Co., 1770–1815, Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. For information about Louis Mascou, see M. Fournier, Les Français au Québec 1765–1865 – un mouvement migratoire méconnu [The French in Quebec 1765–1865 – An unknown migration movement], Quebec: Sillery, Éditions du Septentrion, 1995, p. 229. 60 Uppsala Landsarkiv, Falu Rådhusrätt och magistrat, F 2:26. For information concerning the materiality of Swedish sugar consumption, see U. Torell, Socker och söta saker – En kulturhistorisk studie av sockerkonsumtionen i Sverige [Sugar and sweet things – A cultural-historical study of sugar consumption in Sweden], Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag, 2015.
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the future of the town’s copper mine. The perilous Seven Years’ War had ended, resulting in mining production finally beginning to rise again, as had the overall metal market. Perhaps they held discussions in terms similar to those I have tried to relate to in this chapter, the links in the copper commodity chain and its practical applications. The purpose of this chapter has been to study the Swedish copper commodity chain, emphasizing the export of copper and brass to France and the links between the Swedish copper trade and the French Atlantic trade system. Swedish trade statistics have demonstrated that already in the late 1730s, the decade when statistics are available, France was the most important importer of Swedish copper products. In only two periods, exports declined sharply, in the early 1740s with the war, which included Sweden and Russia, and from the late 1750s, during the Seven Years’ War, at the time when the war was mainly between England and France in the colonies. Only Holland, Lübeck, and Danzig competed with France for Swedish brass and copper. All other ports for the import of Swedish copper and brass were far behind, and the overall picture shows how significant the French trade contacts were for Sweden. Conditions during times of war are an important factor to explain the downturns in the Swedish copper trade. It is more difficult to explain how trade recovered and expanded in the periods between the wars. To influence copper production and exports, the Swedish state actively contributed in numerous ways. This survey shows how the state performed market investigations in France, how they helped French craftsmen to practice their industry in Sweden, and how they subsidized copper export for Swedish merchants. Thanks to the information in the applications for export premiums, it has been possible to follow the copper commodity chain further than the port of Stockholm, showing links between French merchants and the producers at the Swedish copperworks. The data about the Swedish manufacture of copper products demonstrate that certain goods were intended for the slave trade and that some deliveries could be linked to several French merchants active in the French Atlantic trade system. An assumption based on the observations in this chapter is that Swedish actors were also investors in French slave and colonial trade expeditions, either as pure speculation or as suppliers of outgoing cargo, such as “negros koppar” (as it was called) and sheets and bottoms for the manufacture of different types of vessels, vats, pots, and pans. The business of supplying copper goods for barter on the African coast as well as for furnishing the sugar refineries in the Caribbean generated profits and promoted the industrial development in Sweden. However, Swedish export premiums for the export of manufactured copper goods did not give rise to the expected increase in the early 1770s. It was not
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until the huge demand for copper plates in the early 1780s that the copper exports to France accelerated. If the sources used in this chapter do not enable studies of the Swedish copper manufacture or the copper export premiums during the 1780s, future studies will probably find sources better suited for this purpose. The graphs presented in this chapter show a dynamic period before and after the French Revolutionary Wars. The 1780s ended with a slight upturn in copper export and a dramatic decline in brass export. Both patterns deserve further investigations. One important question is how the demand for certain copper goods on the global market affected the Swedish copper manufacture industry. Another question is how Swedish brass production was entangled in the industrial domain of Rouen and how the market for brass changed during the end of the eighteenth century. A third issue concerns the structural relationship between the market and the Swedish copper production, where the mine returns in Falun continue to decline throughout the century. The present study suggests that the mechanisms underlying the changes in supply and demand requires a careful study of the entire copper commodity chain.
Part II: Identity, Globalities, and their Local Articulations
Emil Kaukonen and Mats Wickström
8 Encountering Mid-Eighteenth Century Morocco from Below: Slavery, Race, and Religion in two Scandinavian Captivity Narratives I nevertheless want to comment on that which I can recollect from my own experience and that which I managed to write down in some spare moment of my enslavement.1 It would be much too circumstantial to add pious comments to all these [ethnographical, geographical, and historical] matters.2
Introduction Lars Diderich left Norway on Good Friday – 21 March – in 1749 as the captain of the vessel Anne Christine, bound for Marseille. The voyage was the beginning of six years of imprisonment as the personal property of a foreign despot. As Anne Christine passed by the Cape of St. Vincent on Portugal’s southern coast on 30 March, it was approached by a xebec from Tétouan, flying the colours of Algiers in an attempt to trick Anne Christine into allowing them aboard. Diderich and his crew of nine men were fooled and captured by the corsairs, who set a
1 M. Berg, Beskrifning öfwer barbariska slafweriet uti kejsaredömet Fez och Marocco i korthet författad af Marcus Berg, som tillika med många andra christna detsamma utstådt tvenne år och siu dagar, och derifrån blifwit utlöst tillika med åtta stycken andra swenska den 30 augusti 1756 [Description of the Barbary slavery in the Empire of Fez and Morocco, briefly written by Marcus Berg, who with many other Christians endured it for two years and seven days, and who was freed from thence with eight other Swedes on 30 August 1756], Stockholm: Berg, 1757, p. 94. 2 L. Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse om De Christnes ynkværdige Slaverie udi Barbariet, i sær hos den Maroccanske Kayser, med noget angaaende Folkets Religion, Regierings-Form, Skikke og Leve-Maade, ec. Forfattet for enhver Christen, som Et opbyggeligt Speyl, Ved En Samtale Imellem Theophilu Og Timotheum, Hvorudi den første fremstiller den Historiske Sandhed, hvilken Timotheus bruger til Gudfrygtighedens Opbyggelse. Til Trykken befordret af den, som selv ved Sex Aars Tiid har erfaret Slaveriets Bitterhed [Truthful account of the miserable slavery in Barbary, particularly under the Moroccan emperor, with notes on the religion, government, customs, and way of life of the people, etc. Written for every Christian as an educational play, as a dialogue between Theophilos and Timotheus, of which the former presents the historical truth, which Timotheus uses for the improvement of piety. Promoted for print by one who himself for six years experienced the bitterness of slavery], Copenhagen: Diderich, 1756, p. 105. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-008
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course for Morocco with the Norwegian vessel in tow. When Diderich and his men arrived in Tétouan, they experienced a shocking transition from their previous life as free men to subjugated captives. Soon the ten were sent inland to Fez, the seat of power of the sultan of Morocco, where they were put to hard labour as slaves. This captivity lasted until August 1754, when successful ransom negotiations led to the surviving three men – Diderich, his first officer, and one of the able seamen from Anne Christine – being transported to Gibraltar on an English vessel.3 On 4 May 1754, sea captain Marcus Berg set sail from Stockholm on the hooker-yacht Mercurius en route to Dublin with a cargo of iron.4 Berg arrived in Dublin on 25 June, unloaded his cargo and accepted a new freight, 3,000 hides, to be taken to Naples. Berg and his crew on Mercurius were captured by Moroccan corsairs in the Alboran Sea on 23 August (Figure 1), while Diderich was still at Gibraltar waiting for his passage home. Like Diderich and his
Figure 1: Berg’s vessel Mercurius is captured by a “Moorish galley”. Original chalcograph from Berg, Beskrifning. The vessels typically employed by North African corsairs relied on the speed and manoeuvrability afforded by several pairs of oars to overtake sailing ships.
3 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, pp. 64–69. 4 For more on the export of Swedish iron to Britain, see Ch. Evans and G. Rydén, Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, Leiden: Brill, 2007.
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crew, Berg and his shipmates were brought to Tétouan before they were transported to Fez and the sultan’s castle together with other Christian captives. There they were confronted by the sultan and forced to kowtow before him as he inspected the latest capture of the corsairs. The captives were then moved to the prison for Christian captives, “The Corner” as Berg called it, where Berg learned of the fate of Diderich and his crew.5 This chapter locates the global in the local space of enslavement in the Moroccan city of Fez between 1748 and 1756, when two Scandinavian captives, sea captains Lars Diderich and Marcus Berg, inhabited this spatial nexus of proto-globalization and used it as vantage point to observe captivity as well as Moroccan society. The captivity narratives, or travelogues, of Berg and Diderich, offer specifics of unique past experiences of enslavement, intercultural encounters, and entanglements in the multicultural milieu of mid-eighteenth-century Morocco. The testimonies of Berg and Diderich, who were transported to and from Morocco by the expansion of Scandinavian economic and political interests in a global market, are also seemingly small stories that reveal the scope and consequences of eighteenth-century globalization on a personal level. This chapter analyses Berg’s and Diderich’s experiences and observations of three overlapping spaces, beginning with a section on the circumstances of captivity and the parameters of imprisonment, which dovetails into the space of the sultan. This section follows Berg and Diderich into the space of the court and considers the position and rule of the potentate as perceived by his two Scandinavian slaves. The last section considers Berg’s and Diderich’s encounter with Moroccan society at large, focusing on their reflections on religious and racial diversity. As slave labourers for the sultan of Morocco, Berg and Diderich learned about the social and political life of Fez and Morocco in a very different manner from that of free travellers, such as official envoys or travelling scholars – rather than from outside, they learned about it from below. Berg and Diderich experienced Moroccan society as slaves, that is to say as involuntary members of that society, not as educated sightseers: these, as Åsa Karlsson emphasizes in her analysis of eighteenth-century Swedish travellers in the Ottoman Empire, met the Orient with preconceived notions derived from their readings of ancient literature, the Bible, and contemporary travel writing. Such erudite Swedish travellers were also mostly in the company of other learned Europeans when visiting the Orient, reproducing shared European conceptions as well as biases.6
5 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 22. 6 Å. Karlsson, “Den kända och okända Orienten: Svenska resenärer i Osmanska riket under 1700-talet” [The known and the unknown Orient: Swedish travellers in the Ottoman Empire
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In comparison with these voluntary and well-educated travellers, as involuntary visitors Berg and Diderich were able to observe the culture and politics of mid-eighteenth-century Morocco from within, thus becoming privy to the workings of Moroccan society in a unique way. While Berg and Diderich were limited to a restricted and socially subordinated space as Christian captives, their status as the sultan’s slaves placed them in the vicinity of the court – in Diderich’s case also in the court – and thus in one of the defining spaces of power in Morocco of the 1750s. Berg and Diderich horizontally occupied an outsider/insider position as perceptive and note-taking Scandinavians, and this position in turn overlapped with their vertical below/above position as slaves of the court. Berg and Diderich found themselves immersed in local space that we, through the contextual study of their first-hand observation of it, can unveil as a site of the global in the past as well as a vantage point for scrutinizing a historical glocality.
Berg’s and Diderich’s Narratives as Primary Sources and Travelogues Both Berg’s and Diderich’s accounts of their captivity in Morocco were published shortly after they returned home, and their authenticity as historical documents is unquestionable.7 In the following, we will show that the accounts are not only genuine, but also reliable narrative sources, that is to say testimonial tracts composed with the intention of accurately informing contemporaries not only of what had transpired in regard to Berg and Diderich and their crews, but also about Moroccan society. As trustworthy testimonies, the tracts of Berg and Diderich provide us with information about what happened in Morocco during the years they lived there, how and in what circumstances events took place, and even why these events occurred.
during the 18th century], in: H. Hodacs and Å. Karlsson (eds.), Från Karakorum till Siljan. Resor under sju sekler, Lund: Historiska Media, 1999, pp. 221–222. 7 J. Östlund, Saltets pris: Svenska slavar i Nordafrika och handeln i Medelhavet 1650–1770 [The price of salt. Swedish slaves in North Africa and the trade in the Mediterranean 1650–1770], Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2014, pp. 297–299; E. Gøbel, “De algierske søfartsprotokoller, en kilde til langfarten 1747–1840” [The Algerian sea passes, a source regarding foreign shipping 1747–1840], Arkiv. Tidsskrift for arkivforskning 9 (1982), pp. 65–108. Both, Berg and Diderich, are also included in the online directory of captivity narrators and narratives of the CORSO project at the Paris-Sorbonne University, Répertoire Nominatif des Récits de Captivité en Méditerranée (XVIe–XVIIIe), http://www.oroc-crlc.paris-sorbonne.fr/index.php?/visiteur/ Projet-CORSO/Ressources/R.N.R.C (accessed 5 June 2017).
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Berg’s Beskrifning öfwer barbariska slafweriet uti kejsaredömet Fez och Marocco (Description of Barbary slavery in the Empire of Fez and Morocco) was published a year after his homecoming, and Diderich’s Sandfærdig Fortællelse om De Christnes ynkværdige Slaverie udi Barbariet (Truthful account of the miserable slavery of the Christians in Barbary) two years after his return. Both books were therefore written on the basis of Berg’s and Diderich’s recent experiences and observations and not recalled after a long interval. Moreover, both Berg and Diderich kept some sort of journals during their captivity and were able to draw from their notes when writing their accounts. This is evidenced by Berg’s consistent and correct dating of Ramadan, various Muslim and Christian holidays, as well as other events described in his narrative, most notably the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 and its aftershocks.8 The corroborative evidence for the accuracy of Berg’s and Diderich’s statements is in general robust. The authenticity and originality of the documents has been established in previous research, and the authorial authority of Berg and Diderich is generally sound. The distinction between first-hand observations and information derived from others is usually apparent in both narratives. The distinction between observation and interpretation – that is to say, the understanding of what was observed, which range from remarks to explanations – is also mainly clear-cut. The recollections are undeniably interspersed with expressions of piety and sentiments brought about by the torment of slavery in a strange land. However, with the exception of Berg’s conspicuous aversion to the sultan, these personally mediated reflections, focusing on the Christian personhood of Berg and Diderich, are largely divorced from the descriptions of various incidents and phenomena in Fez and Moroccan society in general. The accounts of Berg and Diderich are, of course, not completely free from religious prejudice – in this case Lutheran – or from Euro- and Scandocentrism. They are, however, products of a time before the imperialism, scientific racism, and Orientalism of the nineteenth century. The apparent decline of the Ottoman Empire and the arising of the age of European imperialism in North Africa, with a concomitant mental subjugation of “the East”, did not pick up speed until the end of the eighteenth century. Before this development, the European conception of Muslims was far more multifaceted.9 Consequently, Edward Said dates the beginning of Orientalism – the Western practice of producing and reproducing
8 Berg, Beskrifning, pp. 45–47. 9 J. G. Harper, “Introduction”, in: J. G. Harper (ed.), The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450–1750: Visual Imagery before Orientalism, Farnham: Ashgate, 2011, pp. 1–2.
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denigrating representations of the so-called Orient – to the late eighteenth century.10 The racial and supremacist prejudices that would imbue later European accounts of subjugated states and peoples in North Africa are absent in Berg’s and Diderich’s narratives. Even the pervasive European antiSemitism, which, for example, is evident in the captivity narrative of Thomas Phelps, an English captive in Morocco in the 1680s,11 is non-existent. As Matthew Day points out, European visitors, both willing and unwilling, had exhibited a great degree of fascination with North Africa and the Middle East since the early seventeenth century, producing narratives that were not solely sensationalistic or propagandistic.12 In discussing the genre-transcending nature of different descriptions of journeys and travels, Jan Borm defines a “travel book” as follows: Any narrative characterized by a non-fiction dominant that relates (almost always) in the first person a journey or journeys that the reader supposes to have taken place in reality while assuming or presupposing that author, narrator, and principal character are but one or identical.13
Borm goes on to note that there is reason to differentiate between “travel books” or “travelogues” as works that presuppose a degree of factuality, while “travel writing” or “travel literature” denotes the entirety of literature characterized by the theme of travel.14 Descriptions of involuntary travel through captivity or shipwrecks can be approached as a particular subgenre of travel writing, present in the corpus of European literature since the sixteenth century.15 The veracity of specific instances of travel writing has been debated by contemporary readers
10 E. Said, Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books, 1979, p. 3. 11 Th. Phelps, A True Account of the Captivity of Thomas Phelps at Machaness in Barbary: And of His Strange Escape in Company of Edmund Baxter and Others, as also of the Burning Two of the Greatest Pirat-Ships belonging to that Kingdom in the River of Mamora Upon the Thirteenth Day of June 1685, London: Joseph Hindmarsh, 1685. 12 M. Day, “Western Travel Writing, 1450–1750”, in: C. Thompson (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 168–169. 13 J. Borm, “Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology”, in: G. Hooper and T. Youngs (eds.), Perspectives on Travel Writing, Farnham: Ashgate, 2004, p. 17. 14 Ibid., pp. 18–19. 15 W. M. Sherman, “Stirrings and Searchings (1500–1700)”, in: P. Hulme and T. Youngs (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 27.
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since the event of the genre, both with regard to the truthfulness of the authors and to the reliability of their sources.16 As Linda Colley demonstrates, captivity narratives were not mere reflections of European prejudice: being the products of a varied group of authors with individual worldviews, they present a colourful and varied – though strongly biased and generally intertextual – first-hand view of foreign lands and cultures.17 Beskrifning and Sandfærdig Fortællelse can, like the narratives Colley has analysed with great success, also be studied as original primary sources. As travelogues, they yield new and supplementary information on the history of captivity as well as Moroccan society.
Entering Enslavement and Navigating Captivity When Berg and Diderich entered the power space of the sultan in Fez, they became the personal property of the sultan, that is to say slaves. They were, however, not slaves in the same sense as the black Africans that were enslaved and transported to the New World as a part of the transatlantic slave trade or the black slaves of Morocco enslaved as a part of the trans-Saharan slave trade.18 There were gateways to freedom in the captives’ space of enslavement. Firstly, as Christian captives, Berg and Diderich could be ransomed or exchanged as commodities in the ransom economy of the Mediterranean.19 As Scandinavian captives, Berg and Diderich linked the commodity chain of the mainly Mediterranean ransom economy from Morocco to the kingdoms of Sweden and DenmarkNorway. Scandinavian trade in the Mediterranean not only connected the Nordic states to an expanding global trade network, it also provided the Barbary corsairs with the opportunity to acquire new human goods that could be sold to new buyers – the sovereigns, colleagues, or family of the captives – in the North. Secondly, they could also be freed from their enslavement through conversion to Islam, becoming renegades in the eyes of Christendom.
16 D. Carey, “Truth, Lies and Travel Writing”, in: Thompson (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 3–4. 17 L. Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600–1850, London: Jonathan Cape, 2002, pp. 12–16. 18 G. Weiss, Captives and Corsairs: France and Slavery in the Early Modern Mediterranean, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2011; Ch. El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race and Islam, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 19 J. Clancy-Smith, “Introduction”, in: J. Clancy-Smith (ed.), North Africa, Islam and the Mediterranean World: From the Almoravids to the Algerian War, London: Frank Cass, 2001, p. 6.
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While they were captives held for ransom, they could also have easily died as slaves in this contingently enclosed space of enslavement. The first Moroccan city that Berg and Diderich experienced, Tétouan, had a history as a hub of the Mediterranean ransom economy stretching back to the sixteenth century. Tétouan was one of the key ports for Moroccan corsair activity, and European captives were ubiquitous and widely utilized as galley slaves, labourers, and domestic servants.20 By the time of Diderich’s capture, the Alawi sultans of Morocco were powerful enough to enforce their claim to one-fifth of the spoils of jihad decreed by sharia.21 In addition to this, since the reign of Mouley Ismail (1680–1727) all slaves taken by Moroccan corsairs were the property of the sultan22: this was also the fate of Diderich and Berg. Diderich describes his arrival in Tétouan as a harrowing and violent experience: We were soon taken from the prison and walked, anxious and tortured by the violence and abuse; for they drove us with guns and spears, with drums and pipes, they played, they shot, they waved their banners over our heads, everyone insulted us, many spat in our faces, struck us in the side with staves and asked; where is the one you worship now, so that he could help you.23
Diderich and his crew were not the only captives in the courtyard where they were imprisoned: four Catalonian fishermen were also present. Diderich describes the conditions as exceedingly uncomfortable and difficult: “The hard soil was our bed and mattress, the dark and cold air our blanket under the open sky, the stones of the walls our pillows and the venomous animals our company.”24 Berg and his crew entered Tétouan in a similar fashion to that of Diderich and his party. They were marched to Tétouan in front of the corsairs that had captured them, who in turn were accompanied by the governor of Tétouan – who Berg calls Muhammed Lucas25 – and the governor’s men, who shouted 20 M. El Jetti, “Tétouan, place de rachat des captifs aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles” [Tétouan, place of redemption of captives in the 16th and 17th centuries], Cahiers de la Méditerranée 87 (2013), p. 4. 21 D. J. Schroeter, “Royal Power and the Economy in Precolonial Morocco: Jews and the Legitimation of Foreign Trade”, in: R. Bourqia and S. Gilson Miller (eds.), In the Shadow of the Sultan: Culture, Power, and Politics in Morocco, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999, pp. 77–78. 22 Colley, Captives, p. 52. 23 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, p. 13. 24 Ibid., pp. 14–17. 25 Most likely the same person that Adam Elliot calls “Hamed Lucas” is his own captivity narrative (published in 1770). Quoted in R. C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters. White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, p. 94.
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vociferously. The townspeople, who had gathered in large crowds, also shouted at the Swedes as they made their way into the city. In the captive quarters, Berg met another Swedish captain, Hugo Weili, and his crew of 11 men, as well as 30 Spaniards. A few days later, the crew and passengers of a French ship were added to the captives. Most of the captives, with the notable exception of Weili, who had convinced his captors that he was a useful carpenter, were marched off to Fez. This group consisted of 34 Spaniards, including 2 women and a fiveyear-old child, 13 Swedes, 9 Frenchmen, and 1 Portuguese Jew.26 Diderich describes the journey to Fez as exhausting.27 Similarly, Berg also describes his five-day trail to Fez as “more hard and excruciating than one could imagine”. On top of the hardships of the road, Berg was also robbed of the seven guineas he had managed to conceal.28 When Berg and his companions arrived in Fez, 57 captives were added to the current prison population of 47 captives: 20 Frenchmen, 11 Portuguese, 6 Englishmen, 6 Port Mahonese, and 4 Spaniards. According to Berg, every nation had their own separate rooms in the prison, with the exception of the Swedes and the Danes (including the Norwegians), due to the fact that the only Scandinavian vessel that had previously been captured by the Moroccans was Diderich’s Anne Christine.29 The arrival of Diderich five years earlier has not been any easier, though he does mention the presence of a few Danish and Norwegian captives who had been serving on foreign vessels. Through some of these, Diderich and his crew managed to find lodgings for the beginning of their stay, and with time, he pooled resources with his crew to arrange lodgings for themselves within the prison.30 Scandinavians, who had not sailed the Mediterranean to any great extent before the mid-eighteenth century,31 were an unusual catch for the Moroccan corsairs. Scandinavia was a new market in the ransom economy of Morocco, the markets of which were institutionally manifested in the physical division of the space of the captives in the slave prison of Fez. When Diderich and his men told the sultan that they were subjects of the king of Denmark, the sultan stated that he had never heard of such a kingdom.32 The influx of Scandinavian
26 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 16–20. Weili was ransomed as late as 1764, as part of the peace accord between Sweden and Morocco that same year (Östlund, Saltets pris, p. 137). 27 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, p. 20. 28 Berg, Beskrifning, pp. 20–21. 29 Ibid., p. 22. 30 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, pp. 20–21. 31 See D. H. Andersen, The Danish Flag in the Mediterranean Shipping and Trade, 1747–1807, Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2001; Östlund, Saltets pris. 32 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, pp. 19–21.
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captives was not great during the following years, either: after Berg had been released in 1756, with no new Swedes added to the rolling contingent of captives in Fez, the Swedish quarters the Swedes had established were turned into the sultan’s dog pen.33 Berg writes that he and his fellow captives worked as wall builders at the palace from the break of dawn until a flag was raised in the city, usually around 4 pm. Then they walked back to Fez and bought food with the money they received for that purpose (one blanquin for a hard day’s work). Berg laments the lack of time for recuperation after the taxing work in the heat, but his description of a typical day in the life of a captive shows that the captives had a kind of spare time and some leeway in arranging their personal upkeep. They could interact with the surrounding society without supervision and learn about the societal context of their confinement. The fact that the slaves were expected to purchase their own food and necessities from the market – and the relative autonomy of movement that this required – is exemplified in an anecdote by Diderich. A slave clandestinely fetched lime from one of the sultan’s lime kilns in order to sell it and purchase a pair of shoes, food, and alcohol.34 In comparison to Berg, who toiled in and around the palace, Diderich’s tasks were more varied. In addition to working in the sultan’s fields, Diderich and his crew were soon tasked with duties related to the sultan’s hens and horses as well as the seraglio, the part of the sultan’s palace in which the wives and concubines were secluded. Diderich was, on separate occasions, responsible for the care and feeding of several exotic animals, such as two leopards and “a very large English dog, which was very ferocious and dangerous”.35 Diderich was also a part of the slave detail assigned to watch and tend to the sultan’s 16 horses, each of which was a holy animal by virtue of being a steed of the sultan.36 On occasion, Diderich was even ordered to serve as one of the sultan’s enforcers.37 These types of tasks indicate that Diderich must have risen to a certain level of appreciation at the court, though unlike Berg he makes no mention of any personal interactions with the sultan. However, the fact that Diderich was one of only three survivors from Anne Christine suggests that he was able to manoeuvre himself into positions of lowered risk within the space of enslavement.
33 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 76. Berg refers to a letter sent to him from his former cabin boy Hans Lund, who the Sultan forced to stay in Morocco (see Berg, Beskrifning, p. 23). 34 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, pp. 120–121. 35 Ibid., p. 28. 36 Ibid., pp. 28–30. 37 Ibid., p. 33.
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The Sultan’s Space The Christian captives in Fez were the personal possessions of the sultan of Morocco, who, in the years studied here, was ‘Abu Abbas Mulay ‘Abdu’llah bin Ismail as-Samin, henceforth Mulay Abdallah for the sake of brevity. The first decades after the death of the previous sultan, Mulay Ismail, had been turbulent, with Mulay Abdallah losing the sultanate four times, and his reign was never unquestioned or fully sovereign.38 From their first days in Fez, Berg and Diderich came into close contact with the sultan and his court. A running theme in Berg’s narrative is the wanton tyranny of the old and moody Mulay Abdallah.39 Berg even argues that the sultan’s own people would have murdered him a long time ago were it not for his divine status.40 He witnessed several of the sultan’s acts of cruelty himself, for example the ordered fights between his own officers, in which the officers fought naked with the command to bite one another and “tore large pieces from each other’s bodies”.41 Another incident involved punishment by tossing, which turned into an execution by beating after the tossed party broke wind in the direction of the sultan while getting up.42 According to Berg, the court of Mulay Abdallah generally bore the brunt of the sultan’s mood swings and violent outbursts. In the beginning of April 1755, during the first two weeks of Ramadan, the sultan had most of his finest officers murdered.43 Berg also heard that Mulay Abdallah had two of his wives beaten to death for baking bread that was not to his taste.44 Even the sultan’s act of generosity could have violent consequences. Berg recollects an incident when the sultan had given the captives pomegranates, which the Moors then tried to
38 C. R. Pennell, Morocco: From Empire to Independence, Oxford: Oneworld, 2003, pp. 107–108; J. M. Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 238–239. 39 Berg estimates that Abdallah was close to 80 years old, though the commonly estimated birth year of Abdallah (1694) would make the Sultan roughly 60 years old at the time of Berg’s captivity. 40 Berg, Beskrifning, pp. 94–95. 41 Ibid., pp. 30–31. 42 Ibid., p. 64. In his account of his stay at the court of Morocco as doctor to the women of the harem, the British physician William Lempriere categorizes tossing as one of the modes of punishment practiced in Morocco under the rule of Mohammed Ben Abdallah al-Khatib, the son of Abdallah (W. Lempriere, A Tour from Gibraltar to Tangier, Sallee, Mogodore, Santa Cruz, and Tarudant; and thence over Mount Atlas to Morocco, London: Lempriere, 1791, p. 185). 43 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 32. 44 Ibid., p. 96.
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steal. The outcome of the attempted theft was that one of the Moors was dragged into the slave prison and beaten badly by the captives, as the Moors were not to touch the sultan’s Christian slaves without permission.45 One explanation for the erratic and unpredictable nature of the sultan’s use of authority and violence can be traced back to the late seventeenth century and the first generations of Alawi rule. Due to a chronic lack of resources, the material wealth of the ruler was replaced with a majesty seated in authoritarian actions. Historian Patricia Mercer writes of the father of Mulay Abdallah, Sultan Mulay Ismail: His style of government demanded that he act out a pageant of authoritarianism and terror that implied sweeping political power and yet cost little in terms of worldly goods. [. . .] His pomp lay in grisly ceremonial: the ritual abasement of his attendant subjects. Great officers walked shabby, barefoot, and deeply obeisant in their master’s presence, and attendants contorted their bodies in accordance with his physical movements.46
The precarious political position that characterized the reign of Mulay Abdallah would only have added to the need for such an effect, as his authority as both earthly ruler and religious authority was periodically in question. The pivotal significance of the sultan in and for the lives of Berg and Diderich made him the key figure in their narratives, not only as their master but also as the (formal) ruler of Morocco. A statement related to the political history of Morocco is Berg’s assertion regarding the governance of the sultanate, which according to Berg was not in the hands of the old sultan. The de facto head of the government of Morocco was the son of Mulay Abdallah, Prince Sidi Muhammad, the governor of Marrakesh.47 Berg even witnessed the power dynamics between the sultan and the prince when Mulay Abdallah received a letter on 10 June 1756 from his son in the presence of the Christian slaves, in which the prince requested that all of the Portuguese captives in Fez be released. According to Berg, the sultan at first invoked his father – who had never ransomed a Portuguese, who had to convert or “lose their head” – but then the sultan rescinded and stated that “whatever nation his son requested freedom for, he shall have at once”.48 This first-hand observation of the authority of the prince over the sultan is supported by the historian Abun-Nasr’s argument that 45 Ibid., p. 54. 46 P. Mercer, “Palace and Jihād in the Early Alawī State in Morocco”, The Journal of African History 18 (1977) 4, p. 540. 47 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 67. Prince Sidi Muhammad was appointed governor of Marrakesh in 1746 (A. Boum and Th. K. Park, Historical Dictionary of Morocco, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, p. 335). 48 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 63.
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after 1749, when he lost the support of his Berber allies, Mulay Abdallah remained as sultan due to the refusal of Prince Sidi Muhammad to accept the Black Army’s (see below) recognition of him as sultan.49 During Diderich’s and Berg’s captivity, the authority that the sultan exerted over the Berber peoples of the mountainous regions was strongly connected to interpersonal ties and – when these failed or were broken – to military expeditions with the aim of enforcing taxation.50 Berg comments on the tangled relationship between the Berbers and the sultan several times, most notably when he witnessed a dramatic altercation between Mulay Abdallah and a band of Berbers outside the palace in the summer of 1755. The sultan and the Berbers exchanged words on either side of the pit the captives were working in. The Berbers grew angry with the sultan’s answer, shouted words of abuse, and began to approach the sultan, who rode back to the palace with “a speed none of those that had been enslaved for many years had ever seen the sultan ride”.51 On 22 December 1755, Berg beheld a “great battle” between the Berbers and the army of the sultan near the palace. In the eyes of Berg, the battle was “very confusing” as all combatants were mounted and rode against each other in disarray. According to Berg, the Berbers lost the battle, losing many men and 6,000 of their various animals.52
Meeting Multicultural Morocco Berg and Diderich lived as slaves in a multiethnic and religiously diverse society very different from the Scandinavian cities from which they had embarked. The multicultural milieu Berg and Diderich encountered in Fez is an important element in their narratives, both as a backdrop to their personal stories of slavery and salvation and, more importantly for our purposes, as one of the main subjects of the historical and naturalist parts of their narratives.
49 Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib, p. 239. 50 I. M. Lapidus, Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 423. 51 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 37. 52 Ibid., p. 49.
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Islam The outer manifestations of Islam in the public sphere made an impression upon Berg, who informs his readers that the mosques in Morocco were not only manifold but also large and beautiful. Berg pays attention to the Muslim week, noting that “their Sundays fall on Fridays” and that no Christians or Jews are allowed on the street during Friday prayer at noon. The regularity of the call to prayer and the uneventfulness of the Muslim week were, by Berg, juxtaposed with the chaos of the Muslim holidays, when the Muslims rode around like lunatics, shouting, screaming, and shooting their guns with “inhuman commotion”.53 According to Berg, the sacrifice of the Eid al-Adha, which he correctly dated for 1756, had originally been ordained by Muhammad to be a human sacrifice, more precisely a Jewish one: It is said that Mohammed in the beginning had ordered that each Muslim should sacrifice a Jew on this day, but as his wife shall have been a Jewess, this severe law was modified in such a way that one may slaughter and sacrifice a sheep instead of a Jew.54
This reiteration of hearsay underscores the prevalent Western prejudice of Islam as not only heretical but profoundly barbarous at its core.55 Berg is also keen to point out that as a first-hand observer he soon learned enough of Islam to “condemn it as terrible delusion”, the main elements of which “mostly consisted of certain strained imaginaries of the brain”.56 He even scrutinizes one of these supposed concoctions not from a Christian, theological perspective, but from a social basis. The Muslims believe, according to Berg, that Mohammed would provide them with four beautiful and white maidens as wives when entering heaven. This is deemed silly by Berg on account that not nearly enough of the world’s white women died as virgins to cover the need of the Muslim men in the afterlife.57 Diderich gives a significantly less critical description of the Muslim religious practices he observes. He notes, similarly to Berg, that the Muslims sanctify Friday rather than Sunday and that there are regular times for prayer, observed three to five times per day depending on the individual. However,
53 Ibid., p. 100. 54 Ibid., p. 101. Safiyya bint Huyayy, one of the wives of Muhammad, was Jewish (see B. F. Stowasser, Women in the Qur’an, Traditions, and Interpretation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 87). 55 See Thomson, Barbary and Enlightenment, pp. 18–20. 56 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 102. 57 Ibid.
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Diderich does not emphasize the chaotic and violent aspects of the annual celebrations, noting only that thrice annually crowds of “several thousands of people” gathered outside the city walls and organized games and amusements of different kinds. During this time, the Muslims also abstain from work and commerce for one to six days, depending on the means they have at their disposal. He further describes the practice of fasting during Ramadan in some detail, noting as an aside that the sultan, fasting for three full months to show the extent of his piety compared to the common person, tended to become very irritable and bloodthirsty during this time.58 Berg also remarks on the extreme moodiness of the sultan during Ramadan.59 Diderich seems to have some insight into the religious and political system with regard to the pilgrimages to Mecca and the status of the sultan as sharif, which the Alawi sultans used to great effect.60 He notes that pilgrims, returning after two years or so and bearing “sundry goods from the East Indies”, would offer some of their goods and a number of mules as gifts to the sultan, who would in turn kiss the holy flags and banners that the pilgrims brought from Mecca. Diderich is also aware of the existing culture of gift giving and tribute, noting that anyone who wished to gain the favour of an audience with the sultan – a highly venerated spiritual advisor and judge due to his direct link to divinity – had to be prepared to pay the officials of the court.61 At least since the reign of Mulay Abdallah’s father, Mulay Ismail, the favour of the sultan was expressed through benefits and privileges rather than through regular gifts or payments. This in turn allowed the sultan to delegate tasks and expenses.62
Black Moroccans Berg divides the inhabitants of Morocco into three peoples – blacks, whites, and browns – and designates the browns, or the Moors, as the “true people” of the land.63 The blacks had been brought as slaves to Morocco from Guinea,64 58 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, pp. 96–97. 59 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 32. 60 S. Cory, “Breaking the Khaldunian Cycle? The Rise of Sharifianism as the Basis for Political Legitimacy in Early Modern Morocco”, The Journal of North African Studies 13 (2008) 3, pp. 377–394; Pennell, Morocco, pp. 107–108; Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib, pp. 236–237. 61 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, pp. 97–98. 62 Mercer, “Palace and Jihād in the Early Alawī State in Morocco”, p. 537. 63 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 99. 64 The contemporary European name of the west coast of Africa that extended from Sierra Leone to Benin.
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had subsequently converted to Islam, and had been freed to such an extent that there were now “large families” of free blacks in Morocco, with rights equal to those of the Moors. A part of the black population was still enslaved by the Moors, who, according to Berg, could do as they pleased with their black slaves, as they could with their own wives. Berg also points out that all of the sultan’s soldiers were black slaves, bound to his service.65 ‘Abid al Bukhari, or the Black Army, was established by Mulay Ismail with the aim of creating an army loyal only to him. The Black Army was formed partially by enslaving freed black Moroccans, an act that racialized slavery in Morocco and led to severe criticism from contemporary Moroccan religious scholars.66 Berg writes that the main contingent of the Black Army is stationed at Meknes, and on 12 September 1755 all of the 8,000 soldiers of the Black Army of Meknes came riding to Fez to claim pay from the sultan. According to Berg, they receive 50,000 “pieces of eight”67 – that is to say, 50,000 reales de a ocho (Spanish silver coins worth eight Spanish reales a piece).68 Berg estimates that black soldiers stationed in Fez numbered 1,500.69 These numbers differ slightly from those given by Diderich some years previous: he claims the size of the sultan’s forces at Meknes to be around 20,000 cavalrymen, but he also explains that they are “called Negroes, even though some of them are White, some mulattoes and some Black”.70 This difference of racial demarcation is the most likely reason for the dramatically different number of soldiers in Meknes given by Berg and Diderich. Although free blacks enjoyed, in principle, the same rights as Moors, Moroccan society was far from colour-blind. This is evident in a description, given by Diderich, of a legal feud between a Moor and black. A free black man was engaged to wed a Moorish woman and had already paid her family the requested bride price – 100 ducats – when the brother of the bride-to-be protested against the engagement and wanted it annulled. Though there was no legal issue with the marriage, the brother could not accept it on racial grounds:
65 Berg, Beskrifning, pp. 112–113. 66 A. R. Meyers, “Slave Soldiers and State Politics in Early ‘Alawi Morocco, 1668–1727”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 16 (1983) 1, pp. 39–48; El Hamel, Black Morocco, pp. 155–184; J. Hunwick, “Islamic Law and Polemics over Race and Slavery in North and West Africa (16th–19th Century)”, in: Sh. E. Marmon (ed.), Slavery in the Islamic Middle East, Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2014, pp. 56–59. 67 Berg, Beskrifning, pp. 40–41. 68 L. Allen, The Encyclopedia of Money, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2009, p. 107. 69 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 33. 70 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, p. 125.
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He was greatly angered and swore by his religion, and by the holy prophet Muhammad, that his sister would never take a Black man, since his whole family are all White [. . .] since there were no Blacks in his family from before, he considered the marriage unseemly.71
This objection highlights the way in which the racialized societal order affected social relations in Morocco. It is especially interesting that a Muslim man of means – as indicated by the substantial bride price – was still considered a lower class of person due to the colour of his skin. In Moroccan society, blackness was associated with slavery in a way that, although disagreeable to several contemporary Muslim scholars, had direct consequences for the free black population.72 The elevation of the Maghrebi complexion above others as a marker of civilization and temperance had some historical precedent, not least in the writings of famed fourteenth-century scholar Ibn Khaldûn, who considers both very dark and very pale skin inferior to the “golden mean” of an intermediate skin shade.73 In contrast to Diderich, Berg is acutely interested in difference from the Moorish majority norm. Berg consequently categorizes persons and groups according to religion and nationality and especially according to what we can analytically call race, though Berg does not use this term. One could argue that Berg racializes those persons and groups he called black or Negro through his insistence on ascribing them this categorical characteristic, that is to say when emphasizing that chief Alcaid in Fez, “Bouscheven”, was “of negro extraction”,74 and that the minister of the sultan, “Blemori”, was “a half-negro”.75 However, Berg does not attribute any general or essentialist qualities to this category, not even with regard to the enslaved blacks. Berg’s narrative is void of the kind of racialization that attributed negative characteristics to the category of “black”, which, for instance, the preeminent naturalist of the eighteenth century (and Berg’s contemporary compatriot), Carl von Linné, would express in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae, the first volume of which was published in 1758, a year after the publication of Berg’s book.76
71 Ibid., pp. 99–100. 72 El Hamel, Black Morocco, pp. 182–184; Hunwick, “Islamic Law”, pp. 59–63. 73 Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, F. Rosenthal (trans.), 2nd edn, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967, pp. 168–172. 74 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 24. 75 Ibid., p. 56. 76 See the two following descriptions: “The African: black, phlegmatic, relaxed; black, frizzled hair; silky skin, flat nose, tumid lips; females without shame; mammary glands give milk abundantly; crafty, sly, lazy, cunning, lustful, careless; anoints himself with grease; and governed by caprice” and “The European: white, sanguine, browny; with abundant, long hair;
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There is, furthermore, no evidence of any inter-slave hostility between European (white) and African (black) slaves in the narratives of Berg and Diderich. This contradicts the thesis of English scholar Adam R. Beach that the slave masters in Morocco encouraged hostility between the “white” and “black” slaves.77 In fact, one of the most conspicuous characteristics of the narratives of the two Scandinavians Berg and Diderich is the absence of prejudice towards blacks and, as we show next, Jews.
The Bounded Space of the Jews The Jewish community of Morocco was, like other Jewish communities in the Islamic world, accorded the legal status Islamic law reserved for so-called “People of the Book”. The Jews were tolerated as dhimmis, being granted cultural and administrative autonomy.78 The visible presence of Jewish life in Morocco can be set against the situation in Berg’s and Diderich’s native Scandinavia. In Sweden, Jews were banned from settling and the Secret Committee of the Diet confirmed their deleteriousness to the realm in 1747.79 Some Jews settled in the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway already in the 1620s. By the end of the seventeenth century, small Jewish communities had been established in Copenhagen and Fredericia. By the mid-eighteenth century, the only synagogue in Scandinavia was the one in the multicultural town of Fredericia.80 As Moroccan captives in Fez, the two captains came into close contact with a large and well-established Jewish communal space and witnessed first-hand the vulnerable station of the Jews. Fez was home to Morocco’s first official segregated Jewish quarter, the original mellah.81 Berg was well aware of the mellah in the old town of Fez, which he notes was a “closed” part of town.82 Up to and during the eighteenth century, the Jewish merchant community played an increasingly integral part in
blue eyes; gentle, acute, inventive; covered with close vestments; and governed by laws” (quoted in A. Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London: Routledge, 1998, p. 115). 77 A. R. Beach, “African Slaves, English Slave Narratives, and Early Modern Morocco”, Eighteenth-Century Studies 46 (2013) 3, pp. 333–348. Beach builds his argument on English slave narratives. 78 H. Zafrani, Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Morocco, New York: Sephardic House, 2005, pp. 120–121. 79 H. Valentin, Judarna i Sverige [The Jews in Sweden], Stockholm: Bonniers, 1964, pp. 42–43. 80 T. Liechtenstein, “Jews in Denmark”, in: M. Ember et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World, New York: Springer, 2005, pp. 934–935. 81 Arabic for “salt spring” or “salt marsh”, the area of the first Jewish settlement in Fez. 82 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 27.
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the upholding of the economic basis of the Moroccan state through their overseas connections.83 However, during the eighteenth century the conditions of the common Jewish people of the country were significantly worsened by droughts, epidemics, and harsh treatment from the officials of the sultans, to the point where only one-tenth of the number of Jews present in the country in the seventeenth century remained by the last decades of the eighteenth century.84 According to Diderich, the Jews of Morocco are both numerous and universally reviled: they are not allowed to leave the country without assurances being made about their return.85 Berg, on the other hand, accentuates the religious freedom of the Jews in Morocco and, correctly, notes that there are synagogues in almost all parts of Morocco. He states, furthermore, that the Jews are in charge of the mint and took a certain percentage of the minted coins as commission. Berg muses that the minting of coin for the sultan must be profitable, as the Jews endure “many pains” in Fez.86 Berg and Diderich also give accounts of several imperious initiatives of the sultan that attest to how precarious the position of the Jewish community in Fez was within the immediate sphere of power of the sultan. Diderich describes a typical levying of taxes on the Jewish population almost as a whim of the sultan, performed as a sort of joke at the expense of the wealthier amongst the Jews: They are to pay any amount of tax that the Emperor [the sultan] desires and he holds council with them in person when he desires money; he then orders the most prestigious of the Jews to come to him, and may then have a few empty containers that tea etc. has been stored in, or blue paper with thread that has been used to store sugar, and he says to the Jews: You are salesmen, You shall sell this for me and bring me 50 ducats for it.87
If the Jews – who were compelled to agree to this demand – could not sell the items for the demanded sum, the sultan would order the most prestigious of the Jews to travel the land and act as his tax collector amongst the Jews of Morocco. The tax collector was held accountable for any taxes he could not collect: “Then he will have the Jew put in chains, and he must sit in custody,
83 D. J. Schroeter, The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002, p. 3. 84 H. Z. Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, Leiden: Brill, 1981, p. 292. 85 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, p. 32. 86 Berg, Beskrifning, pp. 106, 122. These statements correspond with modern presentations on the history of the Jews in Morocco. See, e.g., Zafrani, Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Morocco. 87 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, pp. 32–33.
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subsisting on bread and water, until the Emperor is content.”88 Susan Gilson Miller, though arguing that there was a great degree of reciprocity in the taxation practices regarding Jews in precolonial Morocco, nevertheless gives credence to similar anecdotes from different parts of the country. She notes that the ceremony of paying the tax was “a theatrical performance filled with the rhetoric of power” that underscored Muslim predominance over the Jews.89 Berg writes that the sultan imposed an “unusual tax” on the Jews of Fez in the late fall of 1754: they were compelled to pay the sultan 11,000 pieces of gold, and the people of Fez 4,000 pieces of gold, in three days’ time. The Jews pleaded with the sultan for mercy to no avail, and the people of Fez were ordered to enter the Jewish quarter and sequester the money by force. Those that resisted “were manhandled quite badly, as well as their wives and children, and there was dreadful screaming and lamentation among the Jews”. After the plundering, some of the Jews fled Fez for Meknes.90 What Berg observed was a pogrom, an organized and politically sanctioned attack on the Jewish community of Fez. The pogrom was one of the many violent plunders of the Jewish quarters of the Moroccan cities in the eighteenth century.91 A year and a half later, Berg closely witnessed – and probably participated in – a similar event, albeit on much smaller scale. In a similar fashion, Diderich participated in at least one instance of violence against Jews sanctioned by the sultan. On a visit to the sultan to deliver a few thousand Spanish pesos, a Jew was accused of stealing from the sultan, as the count was one peso short of the full sum. Though the accused pledged to repay the coin, as he was not allowed to deny his guilt, the sultan called on his slaves to punish him as a thief: The Emperor shouted for us slaves, and said that the Jew is a thief, and we must grab him and plunge him headfirst into a deep creek that ran close to the castle; we then took the Jew and held him by the feet and plunged him into the water three times, and we were made to hold him underwater until the Emperor commanded us to pull him up again; when he had received his punishment he was brought before the Emperor again, and fell to his knees, and kissed the ground, and promised to pay the following morning, although the Jew was quite innocent.92
88 Ibid., p. 33. 89 S. Gilson Miller, “Dhimma Reconsidered: Jews, Taxes, and Royal Authority in NineteenthCentury Tangier”, in: Bourqia and Gilson Miller (eds.), In the Shadow of the Sultan, p. 108. 90 Berg, Beskrifning, pp. 26–27. 91 Sh. Bar-Asher, “Antisemitism and Economic Influence: The Jews of Morocco (1672–1822)”, in: Sh. Almog (ed.), Antisemitism Through the Ages, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988, p. 206. 92 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, pp. 33–34.
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In the beginning of 1756, Mulay Abdallah ordered Berg and the other captives to themselves collect their daily wage from the Jews. The captives beat and manhandled the Jews who would not pay up and forced them to the prison of the Christian captives. The Jewish men and the captives turned captors were followed through the streets of Fez by screaming and crying wives and children. The Jews were detained until they paid. Like the other captives, Berg had a pressing material interest in partaking in the extorted collection and therefore likely took part in the event rather than only being a witness to it. He expresses sympathy for “the poor Jews, who in this country are a free people, who had to endure being the prisoners of the Christians, who were slaves”.93 The anti-Semitism of the sultan also played a key part in a decisive moment in the personal drama of Berg’s captivity. On the eve of their eventual release, Berg and the other captives were taken to Mulay Abdallah. The captives were paraded before the sultan in groups according to nationality. When the sultan inspected the Swedes, he decided, on a whim, that the two youngest members of Berg’s crew, Hans Lund and Marcus Österman, should remain as slaves at the palace. From a document in the Swedish national archives pertaining to the ransoming of Berg and his crew, we find the ages of these two individuals. Marcus Österman, employed as a ship’s cook and hailing from Finland,94 was 20 years of age when Mercurius set sail, while the cabin boy Hans Lund was 14 years old. In comparison, the oldest member of the crew (excluding Berg) was 53 years old.95 Upon his return to Sweden, Berg attempted to convince the authorities to effect the release of the two crewmembers left behind, but he seems to have been unsuccessful in this endeavour.96 After his decision to keep the two younger men, the sultan looked at all of the captives that were to be released, remarked that he needed an old man to serve at a newly dug well, and pointed at Berg.97 Berg was brought before the sultan, who then said that he did not like Berg because he “looked like a Jew” and chose one of the Spaniards instead.98 In Berg’s retelling of his final and critical encounter with the sultan, the “Jewishness” of Berg in the eyes of the 93 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 53. 94 Most likely somewhere in the modern region of south-western Finland. 95 Följande Manskap har blifwit förhyrde att fara med Skepparen Marcus Berg, som förde Galassen Mercurius, destinerad till Dublin och widare efter ordres den 30 april 1754 [The following crewmen have been hired to go with the captain Marcus Berg, who commanded the galeas Mercurius, destined for Dublin and further by orders given 30 April 1754], nr. 33, vol. 6, Diverse handlingar, Diplomatica Maroccana, Marieberg, Riksarkivet. 96 Östlund, Saltets pris, pp. 303–304. 97 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 71. 98 Ibid., p. 72.
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old anti-Semitic ruler saved him. Neither Berg nor Diderich hold a negative opinion of Moroccan Jews, seeing them rather as fellow victims of the sultan’s tyranny.
Christians and Conversion Berg believes that there were two or three Catholic priests – Franciscan friars – in all of the major cities of Morocco. He comments that the price for the freedom of the priests was a yearly tribute “of presents” presented to the sultan every Easter. Berg doubts that the Franciscans had any success in their proselytizing, and scoffs that they lost their “own sheep”, that is to say captive Catholics, “to Muhammad” more often than not. Berg adds, derisively, that as far as he could tell, the priests are unbothered by this.99 The friars were, however, always equipped with medicine, and Berg believes that they “understand several illnesses better than any quack”.100 Even the sultan was aware of their healing prowess: Berg recounts how the sultan, suffering from syphilitic boils, sent for the priests who treated him with good effect.101 While Berg emphatically names the Franciscans as Catholics, he uniformly categorizes the captives, the Swedes included, as Christians. Berg is highly conscious of the nationalities of his fellow captives in his writing, but he does not distinguish between Christian denominations. The hegemonic Muslim-Christian dichotomy made religious distinctions between captive Christians fluid for Berg and created a new, all-Christian collective category bound together by captivity and the undifferentiating gaze of the Muslim masters. Diderich’s narrative is significantly more specific. In the land of Islam, both Protestant and Catholic suffer, but, according to Diderich, only the former do so with pious fortitude, whereas the latter have a tendency to not only lapse into sin but to also abandon Christianity altogether. Further, he describes attempts by the Catholics to proselytize amongst the Christian captives of other denominations through promises of “better company” amongst the Catholics and material gifts from the Franciscan friars.102 Diderich also speculates that the Franciscans, in his understanding originally tasked with preaching to the local population, do
99 Ibid., p. 106. 100 Ibid., p. 51. 101 Ibid., p. 50. 102 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, pp. 24, 38.
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not dare risk the wrath of the sultan and so focus their efforts only on Protestant Christians.103 Almost all Barbary captivity narratives include the narrator’s account of how the captive was urged to convert to Islam and thus become a renegade in the eyes of Christendom.104 Renegades were Christian captives, escapees from European colonies, deserters, or simply “adventurers”/“migrants” who had converted to Islam and lived in the Maghreb or the Ottoman Empire.105 The Swedish word for renegade, renegat, was adopted into Swedish by the late seventeenth century and specifically denoted Christian converts to Islam.106 Conversion was a way to escape slavery and, as such, loomed over the lives of the captives as an exit option. In Diderich’s narrative, he and his crew are offered this chance at immediate liberation as soon as they meet the sultan. He promises them freedom if they “cast away their Christian faith and become Moors”, to which he receives the answer that Diderich and his crewmen “wish to live as Christians and die as Christians”.107 According to Diderich, none of his fellow Lutherans converted, although several other Christians did. Diderich holds no high opinion of the majority of the captives held in Fez, describing them as “given to lying, thieving, drunkenness and other sinfulness”.108 Berg makes a similar observation when lamenting the lack of mutual trust and love between the Christian captives. He claims many followed their baser instincts without hesitation. From Berg’s account, they also became spiteful towards those who, like Berg, tried to adhere to the word of God, going so far as to question the validity of Christian law in a land that had no law. Even some of the Swedes fell into “nasty behaviour” and ignored the exhortations of Berg, their pious captain.109 Diderich notes that the reasons for conversion could be manifold: some feared a life of hard work in slavery, some were merely opportunistic, and some
103 Ibid., p. 92. 104 G. M. Sayre, “Renegades from Barbary: The Transnational Turn in Captivity Studies”, Early American Literature 45 (2010) 2, p. 330. 105 E. Amster, “Rumor and Revolution: Medicine, Technology, and Popular Politics in Preprotectorate Morocco, 1877–1912”, in: D. Maghraoui (ed.), Revisiting the Colonial Past in Morocco, Oxford: Routledge, 2013, p. 89. 106 Swedish Academy Dictionary, http://www.saob.se/artikel/?seek=renegatandpz=1 (accessed 5 May 2017). 107 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, p. 20. 108 Ibid., pp. 22–24. 109 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 51.
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had lost all hope of ransom after languishing in captivity for years.110 Berg, in turn, describes a typical conversion to Islam in the following way: When the Christians choose to convert to Islam, they let the Emperor [the sultan] know their thoughts, and after they have promised to recognize Muhammad as the highest prophet and pledged to constantly believe in him, in the meantime the Emperor, with few words, recites the content of their fate to the apostates. After that they are sent to their most dignified priests or holy men, who live in Fezvillie [Fez el Bali, Old Fez], who after asking them their business, circumcise them and let them thereafter go where they wish.111
Diderich gives a similar account of conversion to Islam, though his description is more detailed; for instance, he reports that the circumcision is done at the time of a new moon, and that the sultan presents all new converts with a full suit of new clothes and four ducats in coin when they return to him.112 Berg had heard that the renegades were obliged to serve the sultan for about a month after their circumcision but that this rule was not followed strictly, as some of the renegades immediately left to find wives amongst the country folk or went somewhere else, as they found fit.113 Both Diderich and Berg mention a town called Gorree, or Gorr, which was inhabited by married renegades and where around 10,000 people of a variety of nations were said to live.114 In contrast to Diderich’s account, there is no mention of anyone inviting Berg or any of the Swedes to convert in Berg’s narrative. Berg does note, however, that during his stay in Fez 23 Spaniards and 1 captive from Maó-Mahón converted without gaining much esteem amongst the Muslims.115 Neither Berg nor Diderich mention any coercion to convert. Descriptions of forced conversion through beatings and torture are common in Barbary captivity narratives, although they would have made little economic or religious sense to the slave owners.116 The eighteenth-century narratives of Thomas Pellow and Hark Olufs also show that there were clear material benefits to
110 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, pp. 23–24. 111 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 106. 112 Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, pp. 23–24. 113 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 107. 114 Ibid., p. 110; Diderich, Sandfærdig Fortællelse, p. 24. 115 Berg, Beskrifning, p. 107. 116 C. Norton, “Lust, Greed, Torture, and Identity: Narrations of Conversions and the Creation of the Early Modern Renegade”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 29 (2009) 2, pp. 261–264.
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conversion and adaptation to the local culture, especially for those who were young.117 In Diderich’s and Berg’s narratives, aimed at the society that they had returned to and wished to remain a part of, the captives who chose conversion are presented as faithless or broken men and in some instances even as entirely immoral hedonists. While Diderich clearly attains a level of the sultan’s trust, both he and Berg strictly uphold their Christian virtues throughout their narratives.
Conclusions: The Glocality of “The Corner” The voyages that Lars Diderich and Marcus Berg set out on – destined for Mediterranean ports, Marseilles and Naples – were endeavours prompted and enabled by the inclusion of Scandinavia in the expanding networks of trade in the age of proto-globalization. Sweden had already begun to encourage the import of salt directly from ports in the Mediterranean in the mid-seventeenth century,118 while Denmark-Norway had been hesitant to pursue the same course of action before the signing of a peace treaty with the sultan of Morocco in 1753.119 As the merchant navies of Denmark-Norway and Sweden entered the Mediterranean to avoid expensive intermediaries, they encountered an economic network that included captives amongst its articles of trade. In this new environment, Diderich and Berg experienced a violent transition from agents of commerce to human commodities, an experience that Scandinavian sailors had mostly been sheltered from before the extension of Scandinavian trade. Their sovereigns had not yet established a system of protection to safeguard their liberty and the commercial interests of their home nations, so when the Scandinavian seamen were caught in the corsairs’ web, they were left to navigate the space of captivity as best they could. Captivity in the multinational “Corner”, the Christian slave prison in Fez, entailed complicity and collision between enslaved men of various origin and fluctuating mindsets and their slave drivers. Some of the latter were also former captives who had converted to Islam and become, from a Christian view,
117 L. Colley, “Going Native, Telling Tales: Captivity, Collaborations and Empire”, Past and Present 168 (2000) 1, pp. 170–171; M. Rheinheimer, “From Amrum to Algiers and Back: The Reintegration of a Renegade in the Eighteenth Century”, Central European History 36 (2003) 2, pp. 210–213. 118 Östlund, Saltets pris, pp. 46–47. 119 D. H. Andersen and H.-J. Voth, “The Grapes of War: Neutrality and Mediterranean Shipping under the Danish Flag, 1750–1807”, Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History 18 (1997), p. 4.
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renegades. Looming over them all was the shadow of the supreme slave master of Morocco, the sultan. The travelogues of Diderich and Berg illuminate aspects of Moroccan society in a period of change, between the militarily potent rule of Mulay Ismail and the religious power of later Alawi sultans. A striking aspect of both accounts is also the almost absolute power of the sultan within the space of the court and the pattern of violence that perpetuated the unstable rule of the sultan. Their potential commercial value provided the captives with some protection, but life in captivity was nonetheless a struggle for survival that, for many a captive, ended in death or developed into life as a renegade. Berg and Diderich were also induced to partake in the pervasive culture of violent coercion, most notably as perpetrators of violence against Jews. The Jews, while protected by their bound status as dhimmis and not enslaved as the Christian captives, were still vulnerable to the decisions of the sultan, which occasionally included compelling the Christian captives to collect their daily wages from the Jews with the use of force. Particularly interesting are Berg’s and Diderich’s unprejudiced notes on Jews and blacks within Moroccan society. In contrast to the Orientalist attitudes that were materializing amongst the educated elites of the European powers, the travelogues of the two Scandinavian merchant skippers exhibit a striking lack of both racial prejudice and anti-Semitism. While they unquestionably make note of the racial and religious hierarchies that informed social practices in eighteenth-century Moroccan society to the disadvantage of both Jews and blacks, neither Berg nor Diderich chooses to ascribe these groups – or the Moors – any inherent characteristics. The negative descriptions found in their narratives are aimed either at the vices and failings of individuals or at the organization of power in the sultanate of Morocco and its underpinnings: the sovereign and his religious power. Both Berg and Diderich describe the acts of Sultan Mulay Abdallah with distaste and horror, with Berg especially giving many examples of violence on the sultan’s part. Islam, though described quite accurately when it comes to the dating of holidays and the forms of religious practices outside the mosques, is discredited as a collection of fantastical beliefs and as clearly inferior to the authors’ Lutheran faith. Berg and Diderich not only endured their ordeal but returned home to testify to the nature and setting of it in two travelogues. Taken together, the two texts form an exceptional take on enslavement and the sultanate of Morocco around the 1750s. Through the forced travels and travails of the two Scandinavian survivors, a spot on the historical underbelly of the global is located and the vista from that corner uncovered.
Patrik Hettula
9 Eurafrican Mobility and Encounters with Race, ca. 1880–1920 Introduction African sojourners and their experiences abroad helped West Africa come into much closer contact with international developments and a global world from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth centuries. When looking at the British Gold Coast people and their connections with the outer world, it is apparent that among the things influencing them were international news, notions of ethnicity and race, science and technology, economy, and foreign political ideas and concepts. These influential factors acted as different bases for networks and organizations that included Eurafricans as well as other cosmopolitan actors across the globe. Connectivity, as one of global history’s central themes,1 supports the notion that increased contacts and shorter travel times overseas made the world more accessible and Africans participants in the processes of making the world global. Gold Coast sojourners started out from the comforts of their local homes and entered regional spaces consisting of towns within a conceptual “national” space that was the Gold Coast colony proper. Later they continued to access “international” West African colonial spaces. Moving overseas to Europe or other continents meant that the sojourners crossed transnational and global boundaries. In many instances, however, colonial subjects only moved within their empires, such as anglophone Africans within the British Empire and francophone Africans within the French Empire, all the while travelling between continents. Nevertheless, the pan-African movements connected and elevated ideas and concepts from the overseas Afro-American communities into debates in Europe. Eventually, when Gold Coast sojourners returned home, their localities had become abidingly global as a consequence of colonials having become agents of global transformations and connectivity. This chapter focuses on the importance of sojourns by colonized Africans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for the emergence of Africanization movements and nationalist awakening. It was the Eurafrican elite in particular,
1 H. Schulz-Forberg, “The Spatial and Temporal Layers of Global History: A Reflection on Global Conceptual History through Expanding Reinhart Koselleck’s Zeitschichten into Global Spaces”, Historical Social Research 145 (2013) 38, p. 47. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-009
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sometimes called the intelligentsia, that undertook most of these sojourns. Their experiences with the identity, race, and role of the colonized in the age of colonialism would come to shape the intelligentsia’s position upon their return to the coast. For some, issues dealing with racism became especially distressing during the sojourns and should be discussed in the light of racial theory. Racism assumed different shapes often motivated by specific conjunctures in different parts of the world. Between 1890 and 1910, racist attitudes found support in academic theory, and at the turn of the century, the terms “racist” and “racism” were being created. However, it was not until the 1920s and 1930s that the use of the words targeted and became hostile towards racial groups.2 Eurafricans found themselves at the intersection of race and class during a time of great uncertainty regarding the future of their position and influence in the colony.
Eurafrican Educated Elite The colonial period initially made it possible for different groups on the Gold Coast to advance to better positions. Tribes and chiefs from different geographical, ethnic, and sociocultural backgrounds found themselves in positions previously unimaginable. The power was still distributed by the British, but a restructuring of the Gold Coast created new social relations within the colony. Eurafricans were a particularly interesting group, who during the creation of the British Gold Coast colony found ways of participating in its political affairs. Peculiar to this numerically small group was that a majority of them stemmed from an ethnically mixed Eurafrican descent. In many cases, their European ancestor had been a merchant who had visited or migrated to the Gold Coast a few generations earlier and married a local wife from the coastal community. Eurafricans, who were descendants of these interracial relations, usually also inherited the trade and wealth of the merchant families. Their children were educated and privileged inhabitants in urbanized spaces on the Gold Coast. They orientated themselves in between spaces – on the one hand, African and, on the other hand, European. In the long course of the British presence and increasing colonial rule, the relations between the British and the Eurafricans changed from friendly or ambivalent in the middle of the nineteenth century to suspicious and hostile in the early twentieth century. I want to acknowledge in advance that the Eurafrican
2 F. Bethencourt, Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013, p. 373.
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community was far from homogenous or ethnically rigid. It was possible through different affiliations to be regarded as a Eurafrican either through education or through the level of “enlightenment” and “civilization”, which was expressed through Western tastes in fashion, language, and lifestyle. The political discussions between Eurafricans were also a palette of different views and beliefs regarding the present state of the colony as well as its future. From the perspective of identities, Eurafricans had an outlook that incorporated a lot of influences from many different cultures and societies. They, however, strived to be regarded as equals to the white colonizers, which drove the Eurafricans to anglicize their lives to considerable lengths. This was, above all, a reaction to and a consequence of the formalization of British rule on the Gold Coast, which occurred from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, as well as the anglicization of the judicial system that led to a Western-modelled restructuring of the society. The deepening racial divide that grew between the British and their colonial subjects was another factor.3 This can be illustrated by the mockery with which the British often reacted to Europeanized Africans. A case in point is the utterance by the Brit Reginald Bosworth Smith commenting on the pure and impure races he observed on his travels: [Swarthy] Moors from the desert, and Negroes from the Soudan – not such sickly and cringing hybrids as you see in Oxford Street, clad in European dress and aping European manners – but real downright Negroes, half naked, black as ebony.4
This did not go unnoticed by the Gold Coast press. It reported on these instances and reflected on the identities of Europeanized Africans, sometimes with somewhat convoluted reasoning: The so-called civilized negro is hard at work at what is sure to redound to his destruction and ultimately utter extinction. After all, when everything is said and done, the negro should think seriously of his race and ask the questions, “Where are we” and “Where shall we be”.5
Applying Pierre Bourdieu’s methodological approaches, we can study the sojourns as a means of acquiring social and symbolic capital in order to become a person of considerable status on the Gold Coast. Bourdieu helps us further understand Eurafrican choices through his analysis of taste. According to him,
3 R. S. Gocking, Facing Two Ways: Ghana’s Coastal Communities under Colonial Rule, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999, p. 5. 4 R. Bosworth Smith, Carthage and the Carthaginians, London: Longman, Green & Co., 1897, p. 395. 5 See article by “J. P. K.”, Gold Coast Leader, 19 September 1903.
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taste applies to social groups as a classificatory system. Taste is necessary in order for individuals to establish their positions in social groups and to strengthen the groups’ perceived identity. Bourdieu elucidates: Taste is the basis of the mutual adjustment of all the features associated with a person, which the old aesthetic recommended for the sake of the mutual reinforcement they give one another; the countless pieces of information a person consciously or unconsciously imparts endlessly underline and confirm one another, offering the alert observer the same pleasure an art-lover derives from the symmetries and correspondences produced by a harmonious distribution of redundancies.6
Thus, for Eurafricans, who were caught in-between European and African influences in Gold Coast social spaces, it became apparent that education was crucial and could make or break the possibilities of advancement in society. Most of the students that left to study abroad were already well positioned in their respective Eurafrican communities. Ray Jenkins notes that those who visited Britain between 1880 and 1919 belonged to the second and third generations of converts of the Basel and Wesleyan missions in the 1830s and 1840s.7 Nevertheless, without a higher education they were restricted in taking up a number of higher appointments within the colony. This was recognized very early on by the Gold Coast elite, who struggled to overcome this hindrance and consequently encouraged their children to pursue higher degrees overseas. The Gold Coast colony was the only British colony in West Africa that lacked a higher education institute. Sierra Leone had Fourah Bay and Lagos had the Wesleyan High School. So, as a first step, in order to pass the college entrance exams in Britain, the Eurafrican students usually became acquainted either with Sierra Leone or Nigeria first or with both, as was the case with Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford (hereinafter J. E. Casely Hayford).8 This relationship with either colony is important when trying to determine what kind of spatial orientations these students would have had as they ventured overseas to Europe. There is reason to believe that a wider West African sentiment grew among these students during their time at one of these British colonies. They would have been influenced by the teachings of people like Edward Wilmot
6 P. Bourdieu, La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement [Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste], R. Nice (trans.), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984 (1979), p. 174. 7 R. Jenkins, “Gold Coasters Overseas, 1880–1919: With Specific Reference to their Activities in Britain, Immigrants and Minorities: Historical Studies”, Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora 4 (1985), p. 6. 8 He first attended Wesleyan High School in 1877 until 1882 and then spent two years studying at the Fourah Bay (Gold Coast Leader, 2 February 1918).
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Blyden, who vigorously advocated cultural ethnocentrism,9 or others who tried to promote alternative futures for Africans living within an imperial system. The educational situation on the Gold Coast changed in the beginning of the twentieth century as a collegiate school joined the Wesleyan Mfantsipim School to form the new second-degree school. It was situated in Accra, and among the first pupils who were enrolled was W. Esuman-Gwira Sekyi (later Kobina Sekyi).10 This consequently meant that Gold Coast students, having attended Mfantsipim, had not necessarily ventured outside the Gold Coast by the time they went to study in London, as the students earlier would have done.
A World in Turmoil The First World War was a historical event that changed the structure and understanding of the world. Attitudes regarding race and equality were redefined by those who had served side by side with black soldiers in the war. Another momentous event that preceded this was the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), which formally ended in favour of the Japanese with the Treaty of Portsmouth (5 September 1905). This led Eurafricans, among others, to re-evaluate racial hierarchies and debates that argued that subaltern races were uncivilized and inferior to the Western civilized whites. The reaction in the Gold Coast press was almost immediate, as reports on the Japanese defeats and advancements were evaluated and discussed. One article in the Gold Coast Leader in March 1905 praised the Japanese on becoming a country of recognition. The article explains that it had been the adaptation and mimicry of Europeans that had eventually led the Japanese to further develop their technology and methods and become superior to the Europeans: “They learnt the methods of the European, improved upon them, and eventually came to do the thing better and cheaper than the European” and thus “The world to-day looks upon Japan and wonders.”11 The emergence of a new empire in the East had come as a surprise to the rest of the world. The Japanese Meiji Restoration had been a long-fought state-run endeavour to catch up with the rest of the industrialized world. When Japan initially defeated China in 1894/95 and then Russia ten years later, Japan proved that it
9 H. R. Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pan-Negro Patriot 1832–1912, New York: Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 240. 10 A. Boahen, Mfantsipim and the Making of Ghana, Accra: Sankofa Educational Publishers, 1996, p. 102. 11 Gold Coast Leader, 18 March 1905.
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was a force to be reckoned with. Japan became accepted within the Western/ global international sphere as the first great non-white, non-Western power.12 The Meiji Restoration (also called the Meiji Renewal), which had begun in 1868, was preceded by the Edo period, an over two-century-long isolationist policy that began in the early 1600s. Partly due to the long period of isolationism and the country’s exceptionally homogenous culture, it developed an extremely integrated society. As the reforms began, it exploited the country’s tightly run internal market with the help of large state funding. Thus, in the beginning of the 1900s Japan was still highly centralized and unified. Its internal market was booming and regional authorities executed orders effectively.13 I use Japan as an example here because colonized people and the Eurafricans in particular entertained the idea that Japan could build a cultural bridge between the East and the West. In newspapers, such as the Japan Weekly Mail, the Japanese insisted that Japan might educate Europe with the knowledge that a coloured race was capable of matching the achievements of white races.14 J. E. Casely Hayford also elevated his strong support for the Japanese way in his influential literary piece Ethiopia Unbound, published in 1911,15 as did John Mensah Sarbah in his Fanti National Constitution, published in 1906. Both writers were influential Eurafrican intellectuals on the Gold Coast.16
12 B. Buzan and G. Lawson, The Global Transformation. History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 203. 13 J. Osterhammel, The Transformation of The World – A Global History of The Nineteenth Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, pp. 414–415. 14 M. Lake and H. Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line. White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 274. 15 Joseph E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930) is well known for his involvement in Gold Coast politics as the president of the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society (ARPS) and founder and spearhead of the pan-African-influenced National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA) as well as for his productivity as a lawyer, activist, editor, public servant, author, and philosopher, together with his religious conviction. Among his publications are The Truth About the West African Land Question (1898, reprinted 1913), Gold Coast Native Institutions (1903), and Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation (1911) (see M. R. Doortmont, The Pen-Pictures of Modern Africans and African Celebrities by Charles Francis Hutchison: A Collective Biography of Elite Society in the Gold Coast Colony, Leiden: Brill, 2005, p. 245). 16 John Mensah Sarbah (1864–1910) was a Gold Coast lawyer, author, educationist, statesman, organist, and the co-founder of Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast. He was an extraordinary member in 1900 and unofficial member from 1901 to 1910 of the Legislative Council as well as a member of the Cape Coast Town Council and the co-founder of the ARPS. His most notable works are the Fanti Customary Laws (1897) and Fanti National Constitution (1906) (see Doortmont, Pen-Pictures, pp. 387–388).
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Japan soon became one of the countries Eurafricans wanted to associate with. It was the leading power in the East and as such something to boast about. The main protagonist in Ethiopia Unbound visits Japan, Germany, and America in his attempt to study their methods. He later cites a passage from the Japanese House of Peers, stating: The sacred duty is incumbent upon us, as the leading state of Asiatic progress to stretch a helping hand to China, India, and Korea, to all the Asiatics who have confidence in us, and who are capable of civilisation. As their more powerful friend, we desire them all to be free from the yoke which Europe has placed upon them, and that they may hereby prove to the world that the Orient is capable of measuring swords with the Occident on any field of battle.17
Globally, Japan did not get the recognition that it had hoped for. Immigration laws in California and stricter race attitudes meant that the Japanese’s ambition to bridge the East and West had little response in Western countries. The “yellow peril” from the East, as it was seen by the West due to racist connotations, provoked a global disturbance rather than harmony between civilizations. The alienation of Japan became the focus of Western nations. Papers published editorials explaining the importance of keeping the white blood pure from intermingling races.18 The often-cited passage in Okakura Kakuzō’s Book of Tea, published in 1906, sheds light on the contradiction in the way the West treated Japan: He was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilised since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields.19
This phrase symbolizes a Japanese view of the reforms; in other words, the Meiji period had to take place in order for Japan to be viewed as civilized in the eyes of the West. However, becoming an imperial actor demanded the restructuring of Japan’s domestic social order and foreign policies. Barry Buzan and George Lawson call this the “dual emulation” and argue that it was a state-led development with a vengeance.20 In the early twentieth century, the ideas and concepts of the Meiji reforms were promoted not only in Gold Coast literature, as mentioned, but also in the
17 J. E. Casely Hayford, Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation, London: C. M. Phillips, 1911, pp. 109–110. 18 Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, p. 275. 19 O. Kakuzō, The Book of Tea, London: Putman’s sons, 1906, p. 7. 20 Buzan and Lawson, The Global Transformation, p. 202.
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local papers. The Gold Coast “Gone Fantee” movement started in the 1880s, gained popularity for its activism, which could be described as early nationalistic and anti-colonial. It was a reaction to the strengthening colonial policies and increasingly racist attitudes of the West. Major efforts were made to gather folktales and traditions from the Gold Coast. It caught the attention of several Gold Coasters through newspapers such as the Gold Coast Leader, the Gold Coast Times, the Western Echo, and the Gold Coast Echo, which published extensively on the subject and created a debate about the politics and the traditional cultural life that they considered threatened by the anglicization and Westernization of the Gold Coast.21 The newspapers’ interpretations of the Japanese developments were rather mundane, in the sense that they focused on the cultural aspects of the Meiji state, instead of the expansionist agendas. The Eurafrican editors of the papers, in relation to the situation in the Gold Coast, scaled the matter down to issues of wearing traditional clothes instead of modern European ones, reforming education to cater more for local demands instead of the English curriculum, as well as changing European-derived names to African-derived ones. As the Eurafricans had observed, the Japanese had based their success on the continued existence of their ancient traditions and societies. This attracted Gold Coasters, especially those involved in the Africanization movements such as the “Gone Fantee”, to look towards the East in their attempt to contest global colour lines.
Sojourners in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries As represented in the verses from the poem “The Sojourner” by Sekyi, travelling and sojourning abroad changes the travellers’ initial perceptions of the world. Travelling overseas to Britain meant crossing both physical and mental boundaries. Africans – who had not seen or experienced Britain, London, or any other place from where the colonizers came from – recognized them generally as places that symbolized British power. For many, London represented the cradle of modern civilization and a model city worth striving toward. This image was contributed to in the colonial spaces on the Gold Coast, where British subjects appropriated colonial discourses of power relations. Sekyi writes in “The Sojourner”: And so, you see how loyal a Britisher I’ve grown, How very proud and zealous a subject of the crown
21 Boahen, Mfantsipim, pp. 61–62.
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I soon shall go to England, where, I’ve been often told, No filth, and nothing nasty, you ever may behold.22
The British Empire methodically enforced the image of Britain as the pinnacle of human intelligence and capability, which exercised their power over their colonial subjects. The capital of the empire had built its city spaces (buildings, streets, historical memorials, parks, and open spaces) to represent, recall, and visually prove its power, dominance, and wealth vis-à-vis its own people and the rest of the world. However, in contrast to those who could only visualize Britain but never visit it, sojourners had the advantage of experiencing it and making their own conclusions by being physically present. Jenkins’ study of 140 Gold Coasters who visited Britain between 1880 and 1919 is an invaluable resource, as it is a unique study on travellers from the region as well as the motives they had for venturing abroad. In his database of people, however, he only lists a modest portion of all Gold Coast sojourners during this time period. The study focuses on the activities of the elite minority of Eurafricans, which in turn means that the persons mentioned are almost entirely males who were preoccupied with educational, commercial, political, or confessional endeavours.23 Jenkins also provides a variety of further clues on the composition of this group. For instance, he refers to them as “the educated elite” and as the sons of merchants, preachers, teachers, lawyers, and doctors related to a small number of Gold Coast families.24 This, however, should be countered with his own criticism of this categorization, which he associates with the “historiographical amnesia” that the independence of Ghana resulted in, which led historians to ignore research on coastal communities. The lack of serious analysis of the structures of Eurafrican societies had, according to Jenkins, limited the production of a conceptual framework within which to conduct research. During Jenkins’ research, he found that Eurafrican societies were described as “the curse of the West Coast”, “deluded hybrids”, or collaborationist members of the “petty bourgeoisie”.25 Furthermore, these elite Eurafrican men, along with a few women, had in tow people to aid them during their sojourns. Sometimes these were wives, families, and extended family members
22 “The Sojourner” by Kobina Sekyi, located at the Central Regional Branch of the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD) at Cape Coast, see Acc. Series “The Papers of W.E.G. (Kobina) Sekyi”. 23 Jenkins, “Gold Coasters Overseas”, p. 5. 24 Ibid., p. 6. The mentioned families were the Bannermans, the Brews, the Sarbahs, the Pietersens, the Hutchisons, the Fergusons, the Quartey-Papafios, the Hutton-Mills, and the Reindorfs. 25 Jenkins, “Gold Coasters Overseas”, p. 7.
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and at other times they were friends or servants. For instance, Willem Essuman Pietersen, the grandfather of Sekyi, is not included in Jenkins’ database, although he followed his grandson to London when he began his studies in 1910.26 What still remains to be carried out is a thorough study of passenger lists of ships arriving in Britain to establish a better understanding of the whole entourage. Jenkins’ study highlights trends that, according to him, had been neglected but nevertheless constituted the fabric of Eurafrican societies. These trends can be exemplified by the motives that the Eurafricans had for travelling to Britain, but before elaborating on them, it is noteworthy to mention that there had been, and has been, a disregard of serious research on African sojourners before, and since, Jenkins’ article was published. However, Kwadwo Osei-Nyame writes that a number of famous African writers have used the voyage as a theme to tell the story of self-discovery. These are, for instance, J. E. Casely Hayford’s Ethiopia Unbound (1911) and Sekyi’s The Anglo-Fanti (1918), and more recently Ayi Kwei Armah’s Osiris Rising: A Novel of Africa, Past, Present, and Future (1995). Desai Gaurav also writes about travels, referring notably to Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford (the wife of Joseph Ephraim), when writing that “travels are oftentimes also trials – physical and emotional – but that they can also be liberatory”.27 This sentence mainly refers to the life of Adelaide, whose many journeys and cosmopolitan upbringing characterized her life. According to her autobiography, she undertook 21 voyages across the Atlantic during her lifetime.28 Michel R. Doortmont and John Comaroff, among others, argue that travels to Europe or beyond were an inherent part of belonging to the Eurafrican society.29 Jenkins speaks about an educational exodus, pointing to the surge of colonial 26 Doortmont, Pen-Pictures, p. 394. 27 D. Gaurav, “Gendered Self-Fashioning: Adelaide Casely Hayford’s Black Atlantic”, Research in African Literatures 35 (2004), p. 148. 28 Gaurav, “Gendered Self-Fashioning”, p. 146; Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford (1869–1960) was the daughter of a distinguished Sierra Leonean family that emigrated to the Isle of Jersey in the 1870s and lived there throughout her early years. She studied in Germany and later became known as an educationist who campaigned in the US for a Girl’s Vocational and Industrial Training School in Freetown (Sierra Leone). She lived in Cape Coast for a time while married to J. E. Casely Hayford with whom she had a daughter, Gladys. Adelaide knew several notable people such as Victoria Davies (the protégée of Queen Victoria), the famous composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and pan-Africanists such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Maud Cuney Hare, Nannie H. Burroughs, and Mrs Booker T. Washington. For more, see A. M. Cromwell, An African Victorian Feminist: The Life and Times of Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford 1868–1960, London: Frank Cass, 1986; and R. Okonkwo, “Adelaide Casely Hayford, Cultural Nationalist and Feminist”, Phylon 42 (1981) 1, pp. 41–51. 29 M. R. Doortmont, “Producing a Received View of Gold Coast Elite Society? C. F. Hutchison’s Pen Pictures of Modern Africans and African Celebrities”, History in Africa 33 (2006), p. 476.
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subjects travelling to Europe at the turn of the century to pursue a better education than their parents.30 It was part of the Eurafricans’ cosmopolitan status to be familiar with transcontinental travels as well as the modern life that could be experienced and to some extent purchased abroad. The kind of conspicuous consumption that accommodated the tastes of Westernized Africans became a fundamental part of the travels to Europe.31 Another possible reason for travelling abroad was the civilizing mission that Dr James Africanus Horton32 repeatedly spoke about. It was crucial for Africans to go to foreign countries and “seek after wealth” as well as find alternative governing practices. Pieter Boele van Hensbroek states that, for Horton, Africa’s task was “to educate, Christianize, industrialize, and acquire wealth”.33 Horton became exceptionally famous among the educated Eurafricans on the Gold Coast, and it is not impossible to imagine that these tasks were in the back of the minds of the young generations who, inspired by the awakening pan-African sentiments, hoped to take part in a positive change on the Gold Coast by networking abroad with Africans and like-minded Westerners. Similar to Horton, panAfricans in America talked about bringing Christianity and civilization to the continent, but it was more a pretence than actual conviction that drove these thoughts. In a sense, as Justin Williams points out, early pan-Africanist thoughts in America resembled dominant European colonial thoughts at the time, or, to paraphrase Valentin-Yves Mudimbe in the Invention of Africa, discourses on racial purity, missionary Christianity, and racial uplift were often viewed as part of civilization and contrasted with tropes of African degeneracy.34 Including the already mentioned educational exodus, Jenkins’ study listed another seven motives. The second motive was the drive to search employment from abroad. This was usually an additional component of the training and education they received at foreign institutions and colleges. The third motive was
30 Jenkins, “Gold Coasters Overseas”, p. 13. 31 Doortmont, “Producing a Received View”, p. 481. 32 Dr James Africanus Horton (1833–1883) was an influential West African who was born in Sierra Leone. He studied medicine at King’s College London to become a surgeon for the Army Medical Service. He was also a Gold Coast official when he acted as civil commandant of Accra in 1862 and of Sekondi in 1873. As a political activist, Horton was invested in the Fante Confederation from 1867 to 1871 and later published extensively on medical and political matters. He later retired to Sierra Leone as a businessman and founder of the Commercial Band of West Africa (see Doortmont, Pen-Pictures, p. 444). 33 P. Boele van Hensbroek, “Some Nineteenth-Century African Political Thinkers”, in: K. Wiredu (ed.), A Companion to African Philosophy, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004, p. 85. 34 J. Williams, Pan-Africanism in One Country: African Socialism, Neoliberalism, and Globalization in Ghana, PhD thesis, Stony Brook University, 2011, p. 9.
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the pursuit of professional advice or aid, most prominently in the matter of legal litigation as Eurafricans used British courts and British lawyers on a regular basis. The fourth, promoting mission work, and the fifth, seeking refuge, or solutions to local difficulties, were very rare motives. However, the sixth motive, the pursuit of business interests, was a deeply rooted motive for most of the travellers, and Eurafricans usually tended to family business interests even when they had professional employments or other personal activities to attend to. The seventh motive was the presentation of petitions to the Colonial Office. During the years between 1895 and 1912, five deputations from the Gold Coast visited the Colonial Office in London. Two of them, the Railways Bill and the Lands Bill deputations, were successful, while the others received poor reactions. And the eighth motive Jenkins listed visits to archives, libraries, and publications outlets. Prominent intellectuals and political writers from the Gold Coast studied extensively in London in preparation for their publications. Especially during the early twentieth century, young students and the core of the Eurafrican elite in London worked on securing publication outlets in Britain for their books and articles.35
Local and Overseas Destinations Europe was the main destination for Gold Coasters, especially Britain, but certain localities in West Africa were also attractive destinations. Jenkins provides a threeset spatial configuration of the “pulling” influences that attracted Gold Coasters. The first set of influences were those of the local (the pre- or proto-Fante; the Fante; the Ga-Andangme; the Akuapem), the second were the lateral (the anglophone West African), and the third were the overseas (European; West Indian).36 Some regional differences existed between the strength of these influences. In the Danish and the German-Swiss spheres, the core of which were located in the Basel Mission localities at Christiansborg and Akropong, the local influences were stronger, possibly owing to the relaxed relations to the few Europeans who lived in these areas and the missionaries’ objectives to strengthen traditional artisan skills as well as local culture and language while teaching them the Bible. Thus, fewer Gold Coasters sojourned overseas from there. The reverse was true in the anglophone Wesleyan sphere, primarily the Cape Coast locality and James Town in Accra, where Eurocentric assimilationist
35 Jenkins, “Gold Coasters Overseas”, pp. 13–22. 36 Ibid., p. 9.
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ideas and policies pulled stronger. From these localities, an overwhelming portion of Eurafrican families sent their offspring abroad. This led Jenkins to consider the following point about different Gold Coast localities, which has not been repeated enough in research: “There was, therefore, a degree of cultural diversity and different degrees of ‘Euro-African-ness’ within the ‘ethno-cultural constellation’ described here as ‘Euro-African Society’.”37 The shipping routes between the British colonies along the West African coast were well established and busily travelled, which is why it made sense for many young Eurafricans to study in Freetown (Sierra Leone) or Lagos (Nigeria). Personal contacts along the coast were also easier to maintain than contacts with the West African hinterlands. Moreover, the emerging British imperialism from the mid-nineteenth century onwards changed the relationship between coastal towns and rural hinterlands in the Gold Coast vicinity. British efforts to develop the rural hinterlands led to the decline of the Cape Coast locality after 1880, which had also been hastened by the shift of the British colonial government from Cape Coast to Accra in 1877.38 America was not really a destination for sojourners until the 1920s and 1930s, but in 1898 both James E. K. Aggrey39 and Samuel Richard Brew Solomon (later Attoh-Ahuma)40 famously travelled to North Carolina for educational purposes, becoming inspirational examples for several other Africans who were to follow suit, such as Kwame Nkrumah in 1935.41 Others who also travelled to America were
37 Ibid., p. 10. 38 Ibid. 39 Dr James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey (1875–1927) was an intellectual, educationist, printer, translator, and interpreter as well as a pioneer for higher education for Africans and one of the earliest Gold Coasters to study in the USA. He was an active participant in West African affairs and Gold Coast campaigns as a member of the ARPS. Though he never published a book, he left behind sayings that are often quoted (see L. H. Ofosu-Appiah, “Aggrey, J. E. K.”, in: L. H. OfosuAppiah [ed.], The Encyclopaedia Africana, Dictionary of African Biography, New York: Reference Publications, 1977, pp. 189−191). 40 Reverend Samuel Richard Brew Attoh-Ahuma, alias Samuel Solomon (1863–1921), was a pupil and student at Wesleyan School and Wesleyan High School in Cape Coast, started religious studies in 1886, and continued them at Richmond College in London. He returned to the Gold Coast in 1888 and preached until 1897. After leaving the ministry and the church under a cloud, he preached in Britain and studied at the British Museum. Returning to the Gold Coast, he worked as a principal, was engaged in writing, and presented a thesis to the University of Livingston (USA) and acquired a degree of master of arts. He edited the Methodist Times and the Gold Coast Nation, worked as the secretary of the ARPS, and was readmitted and appointed a minister at the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1914 (see Doortmont, Pen-Pictures, p. 110). 41 Ofosu-Appiah, “Aggrey, J. E. K.”, pp. 189−191.
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Reverend Mark Hayford42 and Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford. The former attained a doctor of divinity degree in 1902 from the University of Pennsylvania and later returned in 1912 to attend the International Conference on the Negro (also known as the Tuskegee Conference)43 while the latter (the reverend’s sister-in-law) was accompanied by her niece Kathleen Easmon on two widely publicized fundraising campaigns to the United States in the 1920s. Although Japan circulated in debates and thoughts of Eurafricans after 1905, I have not been able to find evidence of Japan as a destination. Asia and countries outside the British Empire were uncommon destinations, especially outside the Western spheres.
Activities in London London, the main destination of the sojourns, was the central node of the British Empire and of many other global networks of political, economic, and social conglomerations. Thus, reaching the metropolis meant that the global became very accessible. Libraries, publishing houses, and the editors of both British and pan-African influential newspapers were easily accessible as were academic journals, like the Journal of African Society.44 Even though education was the main motivation to go overseas to Britain, there were still many other activities that Gold Coasters were taking part in besides university courses. Partly because black residents in Britain belonged to a small minority and stood out in British society, they sought each other out and established small communities in the city. The educated elite were not unfamiliar with holding banquets, subsidizing book publications or newspapers, or attending conferences. It is easy to imagine that friendship networks were forged in the universities they attended or the cities they lived in. The Bloomsbury area in London was a melting pot for students from abroad, and performers, writers, and poets also inhabited the space because of its lively cultural scene.
42 Mark C. Hayford (1863?–1935) was the younger brother to J. E. Casely Hayford. He studied at the Wesleyan High School in Cape Coast and Fourah Bay in Freetown (Sierra Leone), after which he studied in the US at the University of Pennsylvania to receive a degree of doctor of divinity. He was a registrar in the Lagos Judiciary Service and ordained as a minister in the Wesleyan Methodist Church at Cape Coast in 1892. He later founded the African Baptist Church and the Christian Army of the Gold Coast (see Doortmont, Pen-Pictures, p. 253). 43 Boahen, Mfantsipim, p. 253. 44 Jenkins, “Gold Coasters Overseas”, p. 27.
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The British Museum also provided an important social and political space for many foreigners who carried out research in its reading room. Radical anticolonial, pan-African, or left-wing political activists also presided in Bloomsbury, such as George Padmore and the Indian independence campaigners Devendra Nath Bannerjea and Hilda Margaret Bannerjea. Another important meeting place for the interwar black Bloomsbury population was the Student Movement House set up by the Student Christian Movement in Russell Square. The Trinidad-born historian Cyril Lionel Robert James reported from Bloomsbury to the Trinidadian Port of Spain Gazette and made a note about the place: We walked over to the Student Movement House, which is a club for London students, white and coloured, but with its chief aim giving coloured students in London an opportunity to meet together and fraternize with English students, and with one another. The atmosphere of the place is decidedly intellectual, in intention at least.45
Jenkins suggests that it was during these sojourns that some of the Gold Coast cultural differences between anglophone Accra and the Basel Mission Ga and Twi districts were bridged.46 During social events in London, Eurafricans established links with major pan-Africanist personalities, like Edward Wilmot Blyden or Dusé Mohamed Ali, as well as sympathetic British individuals and agencies. These contacts and the emergence of an African community abroad led to the creation of informal societies that would later evolve into official clubs and associations. Consequently, during the early post-war years, there were several active organizations in London. One of them was the Union of Students of African Descent, founded in 1917 with the intent to provide opportunities for social and intellectual contact for “young men and women of African race and heritage, resident in London for educational purposes”. Other organizations were the Coterie of Friends, established in 1919; the African Progress Union, established in London in 1918; and the Gold Coast Students’ Union which combined its efforts with the Nigerian Progress Union in 1925 to form the West African Students’ Union (WASU).47 Therefore, African activism in London depended mostly on students. The importance and popularity of these African associations in Britain becomes apparent when considering the attendance of nearly 40 students at a conference organized in London in April 1913 by the African Society and the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society (ASAPS). Likewise, when Ernest
45 G. Romain, Race, Sexuality and Identity in Britain and Jamaica – The Biography of Patrick Nelson, 1916−1963, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017, p. 81. 46 Jenkins, “Gold Coasters Overseas”, p. 23. 47 D. Kimble, A Political History of the Gold Coast 1850–1928, London: Oxford University Press, 1963, p. 549.
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Hayford (the older brother of Joseph Ephraim and Mark Hayford) died later that same year, 30 West Africans in London attended his funeral.48 At another occasion, following the death of Edmund Bannerman, J. E. Casely Hayford arranged a dinner commemorating him. It was attended by Dr Schomerus, Attoh-Ahuma, Mark Hayford, Vidal Buckle, Charles Clinton, J. Fowell Boston, Brown Pobee, J. G. Halm, O. K. Quarde, William Ward Brew, E. J. P. Brown, Edgar Brew, M. F. Ribiero, and H. F. Riberio as reported in the Gold Coast Leader.49 Jenkins describes London as “a microcosm of Euroafrican Gold Coast society”, where ideologies were integrated and pan-African sentiments fostered.50 In the early twentieth century, various organizations and projects were contending for African members, and those who were alarmed by growing discontents and radical wings tried to alleviate them by removing certain social disabilities and fostering a more sympathetic spirit towards African students. Imperialists such as Sir Harry Johnston, wanted nothing less than to extinguish anti-colonial sentiments. The government as well as religious and humanitarian organizations throughout the colonial period worked through organizations such as the ASAPS and the Universal Races Club to shield African students from untoward or subversive influences.51 Assuming that ideologies were integrated and cultural divides bridged like Jenkins argues, it is worth reflecting on how these ideologies were discussed. One argument is that Eurafricans actually drew on a quite narrow and biased discourse when pondering colonial issues. This is based on the supposition presented by Sekyi in his essay “The Meaning of the Expression ‘Thinking in English’”,52 in which he openly criticizes anglicized Africans for being brought up and educated in the English language. According to Sekyi, this led them to adopt a mindset that accepted English values and colonialism while rejecting local Gold Coast culture.53
48 Jenkins, “Gold Coasters Overseas”, p. 23. 49 Gold Coast Leader, 11 July 1903. 50 R. Jenkins, “Gold Coast Historians and their Pursuit of the Gold Coast Pasts: 1882–1917”, PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1985, p. 503. 51 H. Adi, West Africans in Britain 1900–1960: Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and Communism, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998, p. 13. 52 K. Sekyi, “The Meaning of the Expression ‘Thinking in English’”, located at the Central Regional Branch of the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD) at Cape Coast, see Acc. Series “The Papers of W.E.G. (Kobina) Sekyi”. 53 K. K. Saah and K. Baku, “‘Do not Rob Us of Ourselves’: Language and Nationalism in Colonial Ghana”, in: H. Lauer, N. Aba Appiah Amfo, and J. Asabea Anderson (eds.), Identity Meets Nationality: Voices from the Humanities, Accra: African Books Collective, 2011, p. 87.
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The historian David Kimble also maintains a similar perspective, although coming at it from a different angle. He supposes that Eurafricans in Britain were influenced by reading European history and geography in school, which introduced them to the way of structuring the world into nation-states. Furthermore, he suggests that they were “inevitably influenced by nationalist thought and activity in other countries” while sojourning in them as expatriates.54 By many sojourners, this orientation, which can also be viewed as a spatial orientation towards the West, was nevertheless contested and perhaps abandoned to some degree following their personal experiences abroad. Dropping their English-derived names and opting for African robes instead of European suits were only some of the measures Eurafricans took to liberate themselves from “thinking in English”.55 In addition, as mentioned, they had much admiration for the Japanese and thus started more or less to orientate themselves towards the East.56 This redefinition of taste, returning to the term Bourdieu uses, was an elongated process that meant that the anglophone tastes were replaced by the taste for Africa or Africanness. Notwithstanding, in the early 1900s the cultural Africanization movement as well as the concept of Africanness were still in early development. Therefore, if we maintain that most Eurafricans were quite unfamiliar with criticizing the colonial government back home, then they became quite accustomed to it in London as their activities became more and more focused on anti-colonial politics. However, the most stressing issue affecting sojourners in London was racial abuse and intolerance. It was an issue that related not only to Eurafricans personally, but also to the whole enterprise of colonialism. Therefore, anti-colonial activism would, to a large degree, be preoccupied by a discussion on race prejudice and the British Empire’s systematic discrimination of its subjects. The ASAPS conference in 1913 was duly convened to discuss this in front of a West African audience in London.57 These activities also provided a common ground for the integration of West African ideas, which took inspiration from pan-African movements. Sojourners from Africa and the African diaspora, in discussions with each other in London, became very conscious of being black. As a result, the ambiguity of the Euroafricanness was replaced with a more pronounced African identity.58 Jenkins
54 Kimble, A Political History, p. 560. 55 Jenkins, Gold Coast Historians, p. 361. 56 The Japanese Meiji Restoration found many admirers among African intellectuals and early nationalists, especially after the Russo-Japanese War, which ended with a Japanese victory in 1905. 57 Adi, West Africans in Britain, pp. 12–13. 58 Jenkins, “Gold Coasters Overseas”, p. 26.
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indicates that due to a transition towards more prevalent racial ideas and attitudes in Britain, London was a hostile and abusive city for black residents in the last decade of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth centuries.59 Raymond E. Dumett supports the notion that in the 1890s “colour prejudice” or “Negro phobia” became more virulent than earlier in that century and affected Africans both overseas and back home.60 On the Gold Coast, this deteriorating relationship between the educated Eurafrican elite and the British colonial government resulted in many African-appointed careers ending in disgrace.61 However, I want to maintain the supposition that experiences of racism varied, as did the experiences of class struggles.
Experiences of Race and Racism Racism based on scientific theories was taken very seriously in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the West. Compared to the discourses and attitudes prevalent up until the mid-1800s, seafarers and conquerors were inclined to show respect and admiration for non-European humans rather than expressions of racist prejudice.62 Therefore, it is quite remarkable how rapidly the ideas of scientifically justified racism spread among academics and the public, particularly in North America and Europe. A distinction between racialists and racists, as presented by Kwame Anthony Appiah, might provide us with an explanation as to how the attitudes moved towards the radical end of racial prejudice. Racialism, by one definition, differentiates people of our human species into different small sets of races that share certain traits and tendencies with each other. These principles were fairly commonly accepted in the nineteenth century and supported by many Africans and European thinkers who were not necessarily invested in the scientific development of racial difference.63 Racialists were not inherently racist, and the doctrine on racialism in itself was not dangerous. But with the introduction of such works as Arthur de Gobineau’s Essai sur l’ingégalité des races humaines (An essay on the inequality of the human races, 1853–1855), theories of innate
59 Jenkins, Gold Coast Historians, p. 502. 60 R. E. Dumett, “African Merchants on the Gold Coast, 1860–1905: Dynamics of Indigenous Entrepreneurship”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 25 (1983) 4, p. 691. 61 Gocking, Facing Two Ways, p. 72. 62 Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, p. 857. 63 K. A. Appiah, In My Father’s House, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 13.
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and immutable races and inequality rooted in nature started to have resonance among people.64 As Appiah explains it: racialism is “a presupposition of other doctrines that have been called ‘racism,’ and these other doctrines have been, in the last few centuries, the basis of a great deal of human suffering and the source of a great deal of moral error”. Extrinsic racists, on one hand, believe that members of a race encompass different moral qualities, thereby justifying different treatments of members of different races. Intrinsic racists, on the other hand, differentiate races irrespective of their moral characteristics. They hold that the bare fact of belonging to the same race is a reason for preferring one person to another. Therefore, it can be argued that the establishment of a discourse and vocabulary on race, with time, developed into doctrines that were more sinister in nature.65 Interestingly, the different methods and theories that were put in motion in order to biologically determine the differences between races diverged in the US and Europe. In the US, the aim for academics was to justify the inferiority of black people, while in Europe writers were more interested in justifying inequality among white people.66 These differences were based on the two continents’ historically different sociopolitical contexts, and, thus, the outcome of racial attitudes for ordinary people in their everyday lives was different. It meant that Eurafricans, coming from upper-class societies, were not necessarily the victims of these theories aiming at proving the inferiority of ethnic immigrants from Europe to Britain. Nevertheless, soon after de Gobineau’s publication, works arguing for racial hierarchies started to emerge. Louis Agassiz introduced the classification of races into eight groups in the 1850s and 1860s. He is also credited for the harsh criticism against mixed-race people, which became a cornerstone of scientific racialism. The Jim Crow segregation laws, imposed from 1876 onwards in the Southern United States, relied on the theoretical outlines of Agassiz’s work.67 As the scientific racialism grew and increased its prejudice against black people, there was still a strong stratification of classes in the United Kingdom, effectively contributing to the increasing number of poorer people in the bottom classes, regardless of their race. Against this background, it is not that surprising that young students at the end of the nineteenth century reacted with disbelief when they were faced with racist attitudes. As was the case with young Samuel Solomon, who, upon arriving in England in 1886, wrote: “Coming to 64 65 66 67
Bethencourt, Racisms, p. 280. Appiah, In My Father’s House, pp. 13–14. Bethencourt, Racisms, p. 285. Ibid., p. 287.
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England is certainly not all beer and skittles. This unexpected reception made us sigh for the leeks and the onions of Egypt.”68 He and his accompanying friends had been greeted with such insults as “Blackie”, “Blackamoor”, “Black Nigger”, and “Pudding face”. Surprised by these events, Solomon reasoned that it was the lack of or inefficiency of proper schools and education that had led to this “human depravity”, but nowhere did he recognize a spreading racist discourse as the reason behind his experiences. However, Solomon’s experiences support the assertion by Dumett and Jenkins that hostility towards black residents at this time period had become a concern. Solomon, who to the public became known as Samuel Richard Brew Solomon and later as a Gold Coast celebrity, changed his surname to AttohAhuma and was personally acquainted with the pan-Africanist writer Blyden and his ideas on racialism. As one of the founders of the tradition of panAfricanism, Blyden based his thinking on race along the same lines as Queen Victoria, Gladstone, Dickens, and Sumner as well as another pan-Africanist, named Alexander Crummell, noting that “each of the races of mankind has a specific character and specific work”.69 He, however, did not support the idea of race hierarchies but did state and maintain the unpopular opinion that mulattos (read: Eurafricans) did not qualify as “Negros”. He had come to this conclusion after his personal involvement in Liberia’s conflicts between blacks and mulattos as well as after his experiences in the United States of mulattos, who acted superior to the black population.70
Racism in Europe Activating Africanization Movements On the one hand, scientific racialism was making headway in the Western parts of the world; on the other hand, the British Empire had to deal with its vast geographical outreach and colonial subjects, who, as a labour force loyal to the queen, constituted a crucial framework for the continuation of the colonial system. Furthermore, in the midst of scientific racialism challenging the view of social hierarchies as being part of a divine or natural order, the Christian civilizing mission lost its rhetoric and the idea of betterment was dropped from racial
68 Gold Coast Leader, 16 September 1905. 69 Appiah, In My Father’s House, p. 21. 70 Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden, pp. 58–60.
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thinking.71 This affected the British attitudes towards Eurafricans and educated Africans, who, until then, had been seen as proof of the importance of civilizing work. The tendency for Eurafricans to pursue Western anglophone tastes by mimicry, as well as their inherent hybridity, came under harsh criticism. Race was the topic of discussion also among Africans such as Blyden, who up until then had not seen mimicry in the light of racial categories, but rather as a classbound aspiration for a higher African civilization. Blyden retained the idea that Africa, in many ways, was backwards and barbaric, sharing with many other thinkers the distaste for the traditional or “pagan” cultures of Africa. At the same time, he saw Africa as the “proper home of the Negro,” and argued that, eventually, Africans should adopt Christianity (or Islam) as their religion and republicanism as their form of government. He also considered the English language suitable for bridging the differences between tribes.72 In this sense, it is understandable that, from a mere sociopolitical point of view, European tastes set a standard for Africans to follow. The clear correlation between white skin colour and an elite position was also accepted on the Gold Coast. However, Eurafricans seldom or never experienced full-blown racism and prejudice on the Gold Coast. Rather, this was something they started to report on while sojourning overseas, which supports the argument that their experiences were ones that crossed boundaries and broke from their earlier lives. Things were changing on the Gold Coast during the century as African racial inferiority was starting to justify the imposition of formal colonial rule; all the while, more Europeans fared well in the tropics thanks to improvements in medicine. These factors, as Carina E. Ray notes, “made it physically possible and ideologically necessary to exclude Africans from high office”.73 The British Empire, contrary to many other nation-states, had rather liberal border controls for its own citizens as well as for foreigners. Until the First World War, colonial subjects could travel between British colonies without any passport formalities or decide to migrate to the United Kingdom without the inconvenience of having to register with the police.74 Migration and sojourns led quite naturally to increased encounters between Africans and common white people in the United Kingdom. Consequently, these encounters relativized the white man in the eyes of the Eurafricans, who, in turn, started to develop a stronger belief in their own capabilities for self-governing in the Gold Coast colony.
71 72 73 74
Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, pp. 858–856. Appiah, In My Father’s House, pp. 21–22. C. E. Ray, Crossing the Color Line, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2015, p. 198. Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, p. 861.
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This was also prompted by the empire’s change of view on the issues of nativeness, colour, and race, which affected the Colonial Office’s governing principles. From promoting the idea of assimilation, they transitioned to the idea of separate development. This was a hard blow to anglicized Eurafrican elite, who had expected the British to honour the promise of a colour-blind empire. From this betrayal sprung a new wave of anti-colonial reformist critique of the empire’s racialist ideology, and this critique formed the base for colonial nationalism.75 New Africanization movements emerged from the debates on racialism and the changed government attitudes towards colonies. Leading figures of these movements had also experienced racial attitudes on their sojourns overseas. Solomon, who, as is mentioned above, was insulted in England when he travelled there to attend the Richmond College, which trained and educated ministers, from 1886 to 1888. He had an unpleasant experience again in 1898, when he was, together with Aggrey, headed outbound to study in the US. On board the ship across the Atlantic, there had been occurrences of racial abuse and taunts that Solomon wanted to address in a sermon. In an obituary issue in the Gold Coast Leader in 1922, following Solomon’s death, Reverend James Reynolds recalls the incident on the ship: The atmosphere was hostile with negrophobies underneath; but notwithstanding this he encouraged himself by preaching on board a sermon which held the audience spellbound and to suit the occasion he styled the sermon “All’s Well.”76
Soon after, as a result of the unpleasant experiences on board the ship, he started to use the name Attoh-Ahuma. Isaac Ephson offers us a further explanation, stating that one of the passengers on board criticized him for his Anglo-Saxon name of Samuel Solomon. Consequently, “[h]e immediately changed it to Attoh-Ahuma, and never regretted the change.”77 AttohAhuma’s adoption of an African name gained much attention and spurred a movement to Africanize Western names. It was incidentally a movement that encouraged a debate within the Christian communities over the necessity of giving Christian names to baptized Africans to begin with. This practice had been accepted as a custom throughout the Christian world, but as the Africanization movement grew on the Gold Coast, there were those who
75 D. A. Lorimer, Science, Race Relations and Resistance: Britain, 1870–1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 10. 76 Gold Coast Leader, 28 January 1922. 77 I. Ephson, Gallery of Gold Coast Celebrities 1632–1958, Accra: Ilen Publications, 1969, p. 77.
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argued convincingly against it and encouraged baptizing new generations with native names.78
The Repercussions of the First World War and Trains as Metaphors In 1919, the Gold Coast was shocked by news that race riots had taken place in British port cities due to competition over jobs. Reports, furthermore, disclosed that black men had been violently targeted by locals for “consorting with white women”.79 Worse yet were the reactions by local authorities, who drew up plans to repatriate these black men. In the years after the First World War, it had become clear that Africans had to validate their positions within the British Empire, although they had served Britain in the Great War and acquired the tastes and ways of the world through travels. The hardened attitudes affected especially sojourning Eurafricans, a new generation of educated subelite and maritime labourers.80 Contrary to some popular belief, Africans were not just objects from the colonies, but also, as Ray argues, Gold Coasters and “in their roles as seamen, soldiers, political activists, union members, writers, pressmen, and consumers of news from around the black world, [they] were far from marginal actors in the dynamic networks that constituted the early twentiethcentury Black Atlantic.”81 One of these agents, Sekyi, was probably prompted by the experiences of the First World War and its effects on the colonies to write the satirical commentary on Africans’ mimicry of the West on the Gold Coast, depicted in his The Anglo-Fanti. It was first published in 1918 as a series in the newspaper West Africa and later as a book. Supported by the remarkable number of publications, Kimble notes that the war led to a “notable revival of cultural nationalism” of which Sekyi played an active role. Sekyi supported a sentiment expressed in the press that “if they were good enough to fight and die in the Empire’s cause, they were good enough [. . .] to have a share in the Government of their countries.”82 While the war did not directly spread to the Gold Coast soil, some 3,000 men were recruited to fight
78 M. Sampson, Makers of Modern Ghana, vol. 1, Accra: Anowuo Educational Publications, 1969, pp. 164−165. 79 Ray, Crossing the Color Line, p. 190. 80 Ibid., p. 196. 81 Ibid., p. 197. 82 The Gold Coast Independent, 22 October 1921.
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abroad, and funds were collected for the military cause. This was arguably the first time that many Africans, besides those who had studied abroad, got to experience being away from their home country and to see the impact of global conflicts. Kimble argues that this led them to develop a sense of a common cause and demand equal status between races.83 In Sekyi’s The Anglo-Fanti, there is an interesting description of the voyage from the Gold Coast to London, which contradicts Sekyi’s own experiences of the transition from his home to England. It depicts a reconfiguration of the young travellers’ mind as he moves through space towards the metropolis London. The passenger and protagonist in Sekyi’s story is a student called Kwesi, who has just arrived by boat in Plymouth from where he then boards a train to London. During the train ride, Kwesi’s mental map of England changes dramatically. At first, he encounters the picturesque countryside that initially confirms his idealized image of Britain, but soon thereafter he closes in on the urban areas, passing town after town, turning gloomier the closer they come to London. The description of this experience is very detailed and points to the writer’s ambition to depict it as a symbolic and dramatic change in the story of the young student’s life: At last, after passing through the worst neighbourhood he has yet seen, the train enters and stops at a tremendous, very black station, where there is more bustle than he has ever seen. By this time his ideas of England as a paradise are menaced.84
What is interesting, and maybe surprising, is that Sekyi describes this destruction of the idealized England as an almost instantaneous event. For Kwesi, it was merely the spatial relocation and surroundings that determined his changed opinion of England. Seemingly, there had been no personal contact with anyone that could have influenced this transformation of his mental image of the country. This metaphor, however, is incompatible with Sekyi’s own experience upon arriving in England, because instead of having an instant epiphany as Kwesi had, Sekyi maintained a positive attitude of England for most of his first year in London.85 Sekyi’s contemporary, the Eurafrican writer and intellectual J. E. Casely Hayford, also applies the train symbolism for the setting in a chapter of his book Ethiopia Unbound. His way of applying the train and the railway in his
83 Kimble, A Political History, p. 545. 84 K. Sekyi, The Blinkards: A Comedy and the Anglo-Fanti – A Short Story, Accra: Readwide Publishers/Heinemann Educational Publishers 1997 (1918), p. 229. 85 K. Baku, An Intellectual in Nationalist Politics: The Contribution of Kobina Sekyi to the Evolution of Ghanaian National Consciousness, Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 1987, p. 97.
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narrative is not as a metaphor of transformation, but as a demonstration of the stratification of people into different social classes or races. Trains notoriously differentiate people by allowing them into first-class coaches or referring them to second-class seating. In his chapter, the train consists of a composite carriage that is described as “the kind of thing on this particular railway in which the whites travel at one end, their servants and the black élite at the other end, while the ordinary blacks are packed like sardines in a detached carriage, labelled ‘second-class’.”86 The train ride is also used in the narrative by Solomon in his reports from England in 1886. However, in his case it does not symbolize the movement through space while the image of England is transformed and destructed, and neither does he comment on the social stratification that took place on trains. Rather, it represents the convenience and thrill of modern transportation, presented in a joyful manner: The transformation scenes delighted us beyond measure − now in the thick darkness of a tunnel, then in an open country studded with hamlets, farms, and pastures where cattle grazed unconscious of the bellowing monster; again underneath a river, and then above it, on and on we flew on the wings of the wind; again and again stopping at different stations to discharge and receive visitors and travellers; for hours and hours we kept the noisy terror of our way until we had done fully four days’ journey according to our rate of travelling at home.87
It bears pointing out that Solomon’s reports are non-fictional, written down at least 30 years before Sekyi and J. E. Casely Hayford wrote their fictional depictions. Nevertheless, Solomon had indeed experienced a rude awakening when he had laid his eyes on the British shores for the first time: I had been all along under the delusion that houses in England gleamed with the dazzling whiteness of English lime; with the moon dimly shining, therefore, I waited patiently for the entrancing vision of pearly brightness I had conjured in my own mind.88
Solomon had been used to whitewashed colonial buildings on the Gold Coast and anticipated that all houses in England would be of equal elegance: My disappointment was intensified at dawn when after my broken slumbers I came up again to see bleakness and dullness as far as the houses were concerned. Except the
86 J. E. Casely Hayford, Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation, London: C. M. Phillips, 1911, p. 122. 87 Gold Coast Leader 16 September 1905. 88 Ibid.
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white cliffs of Albion there was absolutely nothing to remind me of the white-washed houses I had left behind in Africa.89
Although this proves that images of Britain were put to the test for sojourners upon arrival in the country, it does not automatically mean that the sojourners were devastated or that their taste for the British lifestyle was brought to an end. It could, however, function later as a metaphor for the arguments that Africans were disillusioned by the myth of the fantastic West as demonstrated by the likes of Sekyi. A concluding verse in his poem “The Sojourner” summarizes the break that he himself had with the West, and the British in particular: I loved thee Albion, as a child, Thinking thee honest, upright, true, Until I saw thee all defiled As to maturity I grew.90
Concluding Notes Arguably, from a spatial point of view, sojourns and especially the journeys from the Gold Coast were more than just a transition over geographical space and time. They were more importantly mental transitions. In London, Eurafricans developed a sense of being part of a larger global community. Networks, ideas, and movements could be discussed at formal meetings by African societies as well as at informal dinner parties. These meetings encompassed very broad spatial orientations and perspectives and were channelled to the Gold Coast press, which started to report on increasingly diverse issues around the globe. This was especially felt “laterally” along the West African coast, where regional views of common issues were expressed as a means of impacting this whole region. Furthermore, at the focal point of Eurafricans’ experiences were the increasing instances of racism, which led to intensified selfexaminations among the returning sojourners. As Jenkins puts it: “Their consciousness of being black and African ‘sons of the soil’ was heightened, as was their sensitivity to the existence of an extensive intellectual and political panAfrican regional and global network.”91
89 Ibid. 90 K. Sekyi, “The Sojourner”, PRAAD Cape Coast, Acc. Series “The Papers of W. E. G. (Kobina) Sekyi”. 91 Jenkins, Gold Coast Historians, p. 505.
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Consequently, Eurafricans returned to the Gold Coast experienced, educated, but exasperated. They were eager to lead a generation of reactionaries against the felt exploitation of British colonialism. These sentiments were, however, double-edged as debates concerning grievances against the government, on the one hand, and debates concerning identity and race, on the other hand, broke the opposition into several factions. For example, those supporting the more extreme ethnocentric views of Blyden were opposed by younger generations in the 1910s who were fascinated by technological advancements in the West. Blyden, who himself manifested a Westernized African, supported national African traditions while simultaneously encouraging Africans to submit to European political rule. These paradoxes, embodied in the Africanization of traditional culture and Europeanization of political tradition, created an enormous tension between Eurafricans.92 Thus, persons such as J. E. Casely Hayford and Sekyi fell into rival factions, the former being accused of cooperating with the British and the latter of ethnocentric extremism. Their writing, provoked by colonial circumstances, was later used in Ghana mainly for purposes of nationbuilding as it highlights issues on race, the nation, and colonialism. These instances of political reorientations would, however, not have been possible without the changes in what Bourdieu called taste. These sometimes subtle and sometimes crude distinctions and signs of taste that individuals and groups identified with helped change the habitus and aims of Eurafricans. Africanization movements relied on these changes and actively persuaded Gold Coasters to adopt African names as well as to start wearing African robes and using native languages in all affairs. The objectives were to remove foreign elements from the Gold Coast. However, in this multiethnic coastal society, intersecting issues of class and race did not easily create an opposition ready to overthrow the British colonial government. In the 1920s, political restructuring and changes in colonial social relations on the Gold Coast forced the elite Eurafricans to step down from the political scene, rendering them almost obsolete. A policy of indirect rule, following a new Gold Coast constitution (the Guggisberg Constitution [1924]), created conditions for traditional rulers and chiefs, invested with power and representation, to become paramount agents in local politics.93 It was not until the nationalist awakening in the 1930s, especially in the post-war years in the 1940s and 1950s, that political campaigns and parties supported by the masses were able to force a new page to be turned in the country’s history. Following
92 Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden, p. 242. 93 Boahen, Mfantsipim, pp. 242−243.
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the success of Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party and their motto “Selfgovernment Now”, Ghana became independent in 1957. The elite Eurafricans, the so-called intelligentsia, had at this point been absent from the general discourses in the post-war Gold Coast for a long time, but they continued to play influential roles as agents behind the scenes.
Holger Weiss
10 Muslim Scholars Living in Three Worlds: West African Muslims and the Imposition of the European Colonial Order Introduction The quest to search for local narratives of colonialism stems from the postcolonial critique of Eurocentric descriptions of modernization and globalization. Such presentations have usually focused on the effects and consequences of the advancement of Western capitalism and civilization. These developments have been captured in a dominant master narrative of the expansion of the Atlantic world economy and the second wave of European imperialism and colonialism that affected societies and communities in Asia and Africa since the second half of the nineteenth century. One effect of this process was the – usually forceful – integration of non-European localities into a complex and stratified colonial order controlled by the colonial state in the colonies and the colonial metropoles in Europe. The exercise of power and the collection and dissemination of information as well as the flows of goods and ideas was hegemonic, that is to say controlled by and enabled through Western, non-local actors and technology.1 Nevertheless, the local actors responded, adapted, transformed, or rejected in various ways to colonial cultures, which were shaped by global exchange.2 Colonialism, at times violent and traumatic for local actors, was never a onesided process; on the contrary, it eventually created a “colonial globality” at the beginning of the twentieth century. Rather than resulting in the forceful imposition of external ideas, habits, and modes of interaction, local agents, be they Asian or African, had a long history of response and adaption to Europeans. Local rulers had not only cooperated with Europeans but also fought against them. Local middlemen had tried to adapt to changing demands by European companies and traders. None of the localities in the Atlantic, Indian, or Pacific oceans, where European trading posts had been established, remained pristine –
1 For a critical discussion, see R. Drayton and D. Motadel, “Discussion: The Futures of Global History”, Journal of Global History 13 (2018) 1, pp. 1–21. 2 S. Hazareesingh and H. Maat (eds.), Local Subversions of Colonial Cultures: Commodities and Anti-commodities in Global History, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-010
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untouched by external material culture, technologies, or ideas. Consequently, the “colonial globality” at the beginning of the twentieth century was as much a world of hybridization and creolization, albeit dominated by a hegemonic Eurocentric colonial space.3 The “colonial globality” of the Eurocentric colonial space is usually visualized through a dominant centre – the European colonial metropoles – and a subjugated colonial periphery. A counter reading of the “colonial globality” challenges this perception of a simple hegemonic model. Subaltern studies in India as well as investigation on local reactions and adaptions to the colonial condition in Africa have highlighted the roles and strategies of local agents and actors, be they part of the local elite or even commoners and various kinds of unfree/bonded individuals.4 A further challenge to the simple hegemonic model comes if one shifts the focus away from European actors and spaces and instead chooses to focus on simultaneous transnational flows of ideas and goods that involved non-European ones.5 The most dominant of these non-European “globalities” was (and is) the Muslim oecumene, or Muslim world (ummah), that existed parallel to the premodern/modern European/Western world.6 The objective of this chapter is to localize the global by identifying multiple histories of parallel globalities, namely a European/colonial one and a Muslim one. The focus will be the “three worlds” of Muslim scholars in the late precolonial and early colonial Voltaic Basin, that is to say the northern parts of present-day Ghana in West Africa. One of these scholars was al-Hājj ‘Umar ibn
3 C. Newbury, Patrons, Clients, and Empire: Chieftaincy and Over-rule in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 4 D. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000; D. R. Wright, The World and A Very Small Place in Africa, 2nd edn, Armonck, NY: M.E. Sharpe 2004 (1997); S. Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. 5 B. Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination, London: Verso, 2005; C. Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007; E. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-determination and the International Origins of Anti-colonialism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009; S. Bose and K. Manjapra (eds.), Cosmopolitan Thought Zones: South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; D. Motadel (ed.), Islam and the European Empires, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014; K. Bystrom and J. R. Slaughter (eds.), The Global South Atlantic, Fordham University Press, 2017. 6 The term Islamic or Muslim oecumene was introduced by M. G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. See also J. O. Voll, “Islam as a Special World System”, Journal of World History 5 (1994) 1, pp. 213–226; A. K. Bennison, “Muslim Universalism and Western Globalization”, in: A. G. Hopkins (ed.), Globalization in World History, New York: W.W. Norton, 2002, pp. 73–98.
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Abū Bakr ibn ‘Uthmān ibn ‘Alī al-Kabbawī al-Kanawī, known as Imam Umar or Alhaji Umar (Umaru/Imoru) (ca. 1858–1934). He was born in Kano in Hausaland but moved to Salaga in Gonja in 1892, where he established a makarantar manya (advanced school) in Islamic sciences. After the (second) Salaga Civil War in 1892, Imam Umar moved to Kete in German Togoland in 1896, where he became the imam of the Friday Mosque in 1907. During the period of German rule, he closely collaborated with the German colonial administrator and Hausa expert Adam Mischlich, who commissioned and translated Imam Umar’s texts on Hausa social and economic conditions.7 In 1913/14, he went to Mecca, returning in 1918. Thereafter he lived in Kete-Krachi, then British-mandated territory, until his death in 1934.8 Resident and itinerant Muslim scholars lived in Muslim communities in the Voltaic Basin, which were part of the Muslim oecumene or Muslim globality. This was the Muslim sphere and constituted the “first world” of the Muslim scholars. The “second world” included the surrounding pre-colonial non-Muslim polities and societies. Muslim settlements were established within the realms of the non-Muslim polities but were regarded as outsider communities and Muslims constituted a minority of the population of an entity. Muslim scholars established personal links with local rulers; some of them could even become members of the local courts, forming a “third estate” in local non-Muslim societies.9 However, although Muslim and non-Muslim communities existed side by side, their religious spheres were set apart from each other. Instead, as a Muslim community that was located within the realms of a non-Muslim African polity, members of the community tried to establish an internal religious and cultural autonomy. Also, it made little sense to challenge local political and religious conditions as the Muslim outsider communities were in a minority position in the pre-colonial Voltaic Basin. However, as will be discussed in the first part of the chapter, ideological changes in the “first world” and the dissemination of calls for religious revivalism and orthopraxis were 7 See further A. Mischlich, “Über Sitten und Gebräuche in Hausa, I–III”, Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen x–xii (1907–1910); A. Mischlich, Über die Kulturen im Mittel-Sudan, Berlin: D. Reimer, 1942. 8 See further I. Abdul-Razaq, “Alhaj Umar of Kete-Krachi: A Muslim Leader, a Teacher, a Poet, and a Social Commentator of his Time”, M. Phil thesis, University of Ghana, Legon, 1996; “cUmar b. Abî Bakr b. cUthmân al-Salghawî al-Kabawî al Kanawî”, in: J. Hunwick (compiled), Arabic Literature of Africa, vol. 4, The Writings of Western Sudanic Africa, Leiden: Brill 2003, pp. 586–587. According to Hunwick, Imam Umar made a second pilgrimage in 1918. 9 J. R. Goody, “The Over-kingdom of Gonja”, in: D. Forde and P. Kaberry (eds.), West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press for the International Africa Institute, 1967, pp. 179–205.
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to challenge the cohesion of local Muslim communities in the Voltaic Basin during the late pre-colonial period. Also, frictions within the “second world” affected Muslim communities, possibly leading to its dissolution. The second part of the chapter focuses on the establishment of colonial rule in the Voltaic Basin. Both Muslim and non-Muslim communities were affected when a new global order – the European one – forcefully attempted to integrate the region into the Atlantic world economy. On the other hand, the colonial authorities needed the collaboration of local middlemen if they wished to establish a controlled space. The colonial space was therefore to become the “third world”, where some Muslim scholars chose to interact with the colonial authorities while others rejected any accommodation with the new rulers. Imam Umar wrote several texts in Arabic and Hausa, where he critically comments and reflects upon the political and societal changes of his time. His texts on the imposition of the colonial order provides insight into a Muslim discourse on the manifestations of the “colonial globality” and how Muslim scholars tried to accommodate and adapt to it without distancing themselves from the two other worlds they were living in.
A Non-European Globality: The Muslim Oecumene The Muslim oecumene, or ummah, was – and is – as much a reality as a state of mind. It consisted of a myriad of translocal linkages, networks, and flows that connected Muslim agents, notably scholars and traders, with each other.10 Muslim scholars applied a Islamocentric reading to the world as much as Europeans had applied a Western-cum-Christian one. The centre was the Dar al-Islam, the “Land of Islam” dominated by Muslim societies, ruled by Muslim rulers, and governed – at least in theory – through Islamic law. The mental centre of the Dar al-Islam were the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, in addition to the prestigious centres of Muslim learning in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. The pilgrimage to the holy cities and travels to the centres of learning created information networks and connected scholars both within and outside the Dar al-Islam.11
10 R. Loimeier (ed.), Die islamische Welt als Netzwerk. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Netzwerkansatzes im islamischen Kontext, Würzburg: Ergon, 2000. 11 D. F. Eickelman and J. Piscatori (eds.), Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990; G. Sood, India and the
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The opposite to the Dar al-Islam was the Dar al-Harb, the “Land of War”; the Dar al-Kufr, the “Land of Unbelievers”; and the Dar al-Sulh, the “Land of Treaty”.12 In theory, lasting peace could not exist between Muslims and nonMuslims as it was incumbent upon every Muslim to propagate the spread of Islam into the realms of unbelievers.13 In praxis, however, the situation was much more complicated both within the Muslim oecumene as well as with regard to the relationship to non-Muslim communities. The Dar al-Islam was shattered by internal friction and intra-fractional conflicts, most notably the split of the Muslim world into three major interpretations of political-cum-religious authority: the Sunni, or “traditionalists”, as well as the various branches of Shi’a and Kharijite sects. Further, Islamic mysticism, or Sufism, divided the Sunnis; Sufism and Sufi scholars were criticized by Sunni scholars for sidestepping orthopraxis and absorbing local traditions, most notably the veneration of the Prophet and Holy Men.14 The Dar al-Islam was not a fixed container or demarcated territory. Military expansion had expanded the Dar al-Islam into North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian sub-continent, but the spread of Islam into subSaharan Africa and the Indonesian archipelago was, by and large, a peaceful process.15 The ideal model of a clear-cut duality between believers and nonbelievers proved a chimera, especially for Muslim traders and scholars living outside the Dar al-Islam. Islam was per se the religion of merchants and traders, a “portable religion” that was not fixed to a specific place while containing a set of
Islamic Heartlands: An Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 12 See further G. Calasso and G. Lancioni (eds.), Dār al-islām/dār al-harb: Territories, People, Identities, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017. 13 N. Levtzion (ed.), Conversion to Islam, New York: Holmes & Meier, 1979; M. Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955; R. Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History, The Hague: Mouton, 1979. 14 R. S. O’Fahey, The Enigmatic Saint: Ahmad Ibn Idris and the Idrisi Tradition, London: Hurst & Co, 1990; E. E. Rosander and D. Westerlund (eds.), African Islam and Islam in Africa: Encounters between Sufis and Islamists, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1997; F. De Jong and B. Radtke (eds.), Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics, Leiden: Brill, 1999; I. Weisman, The Naqshbandiyya: Orthodoxy and activism in a worldwide Sufi tradition, London: Routledge, 2007. 15 K. N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe. Economy and Civilization of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; N. Levtzion and R. L. Pouwels, “Patterns of Islamization and Varieties of Religious Experience among Muslims of Africa”, in: N. Levtzion and R. L. Pouwels (eds.), The History of Islam in Africa, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000, pp. 1–18.
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rules for everyday life and commercial transactions that were encapsulated in the Qur’an as well as in written interpretations of doctrine and jurisprudence. Local Muslim scholars interacted with Muslims scholars in the wider Islamic world,16 Muslim traders criss-crossed the Dar al-Islam and the lands of unbelievers, and they settled in localities ruled by non-Muslim rulers and engaged with non-Muslims. Constituting a religious (and usually also ethnic) minority in non-Muslim societies resulted in an adaptive approach to local conditions while at the same time remaining connected to the Islamic oecumene.17 Local religious and political conditions posed a challenge to Muslim scholars. Some of them laid stress on orthopraxis and condemned the mixing of local traditions with Islamic ones as unbelief. Their norm was dogmatic purity. In contrast, mainly Sufi scholars had a more inclusive perspective on local traditions and thus advocated integrating local cultural practices.18 As a result, the Muslim world was time and again shattered by revivalist movements that, by and large, condemned syncretism and the “disbelief” of local Muslims.19 This was also a noted feature throughout the West African Sudanic savannah, where critical Muslim reformers accused Muslim rulers of suppressing Muslims and attacked Muslim scholars at the courts who sided with the rulers. Some of the reform movements in West Africa became militant and, if victorious, ended with the establishment of Muslim political entities ruled by Muslim scholars
16 E. Simpson and K. Kresse (eds.), Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean, London: Hurst & Co., 2007; R. Loimeier, Eine Zeitlandschaft in der Globalisierung: Das islamische Sansibar im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012; R. Loimeier, Muslim Societies in Africa: A Historical Anthropology, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. 17 S. Alavi, Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. 18 G. E. von Grunebaum (ed.), Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1955; L. Sanneh, The Crown and the Turban: Muslims and West African Pluralism, Boulder: Westview Press, 1997; J. O. Voll, “Afrikanischer localism und das islamische Weltsystem”, in: R. Loimeier, D. Neubert, and C. Weißköppel (eds.), Globalisierung im lokalen Kontext. Perspektiven und Konzepte von Handeln in Afrika, Münster: LIT Verlag, 2005, pp. 277–310. 19 A. Dallal, “The origins and Objectives of Islamic Revivalist Thought, 1750–1850”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 113 (1993) 3, pp. 341–359; H. A. Ibrahim, “Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb and Shāh Walī Allāh: A Preliminary Comparison of Some Aspects of their Lifes and Careers”, Asian Journal of Social Science 34 (2006) 1, pp. 103–119; A. Saeed, “Salafiyya, Modernism, and Revival”, The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics, http://www.oxfordislamic studies.com/article/opr/t9001/e040#Notes (accessed 17 October 2019).
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and their descendants during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as the imamates of Futa Jallon and Futa Toro, the Sokoto and Hamdallahi caliphates, as well as the Tukoloor state of Al-Hajj Umar Tal.20 The intrusion of European colonial powers into the Muslim heartlands of West Africa during the latter half of the nineteenth century posed a challenge to Muslims scholars. Muslim savannah states were part of the Muslim oecumene, and European imperialism was regarded as an attack on the Dar al-Islam. One solution was rejection, another accommodation. Both ways integrated a variety of strategies. A Muslim scholar could openly protest with or without a call for violent rejection, such the calls for militant opposition (jihad) of Al-Hajj Umar Tal and Samori against the French.21 Others could issue verbal condemnation of the Christians as oppressors, issuing open proclamations for undertaking a collective emigration (hijra) to retreat into lands still controlled by Muslim rulers or for making a personal decision to deny any cooperation with the Christians as a kind of internal emigration into a self-controlled space.22 Accommodation, too, listed a wide range of strategies. Some Muslims chose to cooperate with the Christians, while others negotiated a modus vivendi with the colonial state whereby the cultural and religious autonomy of a Muslim community was guaranteed by the colonial state. In compensation, Muslim leaders refrained from challenging the colonial order and would, if needed, cooperate with the
20 D. Robinson, “Reflections on Legitimation and Pedagogy in the ‘Islamic Revolutions’ of West Africa on the Frontiers of the Islamic World”, Journal of West African History 1 (2015) 1, pp. 119–132; P. Lovejoy, Jihād in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2016; R. Loimeier, Islamic Reform in 20th Century Africa, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. 21 Y. Person, “Guinea-Samoru”, in: M. Crowder (ed.), West African Resistance: The Military Response to Colonial Rule, New York: Africana Publishing Corporation, 1970, pp. 111–143; D. Robertson, The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985; J. R. Willis, In the Path of Allah: The Passion of al-Hajj ‘Umar. An Essay into the Nature of Charisma in Islam, London: Frank Cass, 1989; J.-L. Triaud and D. Robinson (eds.), La Tijâniyya: Une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l’Afrique, Paris: Karthala, 2000. 22 R.A. Ayandele, “The Dilemma of the Wazir: The Place of the Risâlat al-Wazîr ’ila ahl al-‘ilm wa’l-tadabbur in the History of the Conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate”, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 4 (1968) 2, pp. 285–311; D. Robinson, “The Umarian Emigration of the Late Nineteenth Century”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 20 (1987) 2, pp. 245–270; R. Loimeier, “Patterns and Peculiarities of Islamic Reform in Africa”, Journal of Religion in Africa 33 (2003) 3, pp. 237–262.
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colonial authorities and establish working relations with the colonial officials, as was the case in British, French, and German West Africa.23 However, European imperialism also transformed the Muslim oecumene. European colonial empires in Asia and Africa created new spaces for Muslim scholars to interact with representatives of other religious and cultural traditions. This was a noted feature not only in India, where Muslim cosmopolitans engaged in conversations about universal religious values across cultural boundaries, but also in British West Africa, such as the Fante Muslim community and the Ahmadiyya on the Gold Coast or the Afro-Brazilian Muslim communities in Lagos and Accra. As John H. Hanson notes, the Ahmadi Muslims emerged as Muslim cosmopolitans in the Gold Coast, whereas traditional Muslim scholars of the West African savannah, such as Imam Umar of Kete-Krachi, did not participate in religious exchanges with Christians.24
23 Ayandele, “The Dilemma of the Wazir”; L. Villalón, Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; A. Christelow, “In Search of One Word’s Meaning: Zaman in Early Twentieth-Century Kano”, History in Africa 24 (1997), pp. 95–115; D. Robinson, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Officials in Senegal and Mauretania, 1880–1920, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000; H. Weiss, “German Images of Islam in West Africa”, Sudanic Africa. A Journal of Historical Sources 11 (2000), pp. 53–94; L. Brenner, Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power, and Schooling in a West African Muslim Society, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001; J. Reynolds, “Good and Bad Muslims: Islam and Indirect Rule in Northern Nigeria”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 34 (2001) 3, pp. 601–618; L. Brenner, West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal, London: Hurst & Co., 2005; A. Hampaté Ba, A Spirit of Tolerance: The Inspiring Life of Tierno Bokar, Bloomington, IN: World Vision, 2008; R. Seesemann and B. Soares, “‘Being as Good Muslims as Frenchmen’: On Islam and Colonial Modernity in West Africa”, Journal of Religion in Africa 39 (2009) 1, pp. 91–120; S. Hanretta, Islam and Social Change in French West Africa: History of an Emancipatory Community, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009; D.E. Skinner, “The Incorporation of Muslim Elites into the Colonial Administrative Systems of Sierra Leone, The Gambia and the Gold Coast”, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 29 (2008) 1, pp. 91–108; S. Hanretta, “Formal Care: Islam and Bureaucratic Paperwork in the Gold Coast/Ghana”, in: F. Becker, J. Cabrita, and M. Rodet (eds.), Religion, Media, and Marginality in Modern Africa, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2018, pp. 38–69. 24 J. H. Hanson, The Ahmadiyya in the Gold Coast: Muslim Cosmopolitans in the British Empire, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. On the Afro-Brazilians in West Africa, see S. Strickrodt, “The Brazilian Diaspora to West Africa in the Nineteenth Century”, in: I. Phaf-Reinberger and T. de Oliveira Pinto (eds.), Afrika Amerika: Atlantische Konstruktionen, Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2008, pp. 36–68.
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The First and the Second World: Muslims Communities in the Late Pre-colonial Voltaic Basin The Voltaic Basin was not part of the Dar al-Islam.25 The region was known by colonial authorities as the Asante (Ashanti) hinterland and was formally integrated into British and German colonial spaces by 1900 as “The Northern Territories of the Gold Coast”, respectively northern Togoland. Muslim scholars and merchants, on the other hand, had a different mental map of the region. The region was not a hinterland of the coast but had evolved as the core area of two long-distance trade networks that linked the Sudanic and the Guinea savannah. One was the northsouth trade route of Muslim Wangara, or Juula, traders, who had opened the route as part of their expansion from the Mali Empire to the Akan gold fields since about the fourteenth century.26 The other one was the east-west trade route of Hausa traders, linking the Voltaic Basin with Hausaland and the Lake Chad region. The prime target of Hausa traders was Gonja, the land where they could buy kola nuts. Although the Gonja route was opened as early as the fifteenth century, the expansion of trade along this route occurred during the eighteenth and especially during nineteenth centuries.27 This was, by and large, due to political-cum-religious changes in Hausaland at the turn of the nineteenth century and the establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1812. The Sokoto Caliphate evolved as the major Muslim empire in West Africa during the nineteenth century; kola nuts were the only stimulant allowed to be used by local Muslim, thus creating a huge market for a product that could not be locally produced.28 The Juula and Hausa Muslim scholars were the custodians of a Muslim tradition that their ancestors had maintained for centuries. Organized into Muslim scholarly families, they travelled along the trade routes and crossed cultural frontiers. They spoke West African languages but were specialists in Arabic and
25 F. Zappa, “Une appartenance controversée: trois moments dans le débat autour du statut du bilād al-sûdān”, in: G-Calasso and G. Lancioni (eds.), Dār al-islām/dār al-harb: Territories, People, Identities, Leiden: Brill, 2017, pp. 265–291. 26 I. Wilks, “The Juula and the Expansion of Islam into the Forest”, in: N. Levtzion and R. L. Pouwels (eds.), The History of Islam in Africa, Athen: Ohio University Press, 2000, pp. 93–116. 27 K. Arhin, West African Traders in Ghana in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, London: Longman, 1979. 28 P. E. Lovejoy, Caravans of Kola: The Hausa Kola Trade 1700–1900, Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1980; E. Abaka, Kola is God’s Gift. Agricultural Production, Export Initiatives & the Kola Industry of Asante & the Gold Coast, c. 1820–1950, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005.
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used their knowledge of the Qur’an and other Islamic texts to provide a variety of religious, pedagogical, and social services. They all followed the Maliki interpretation of sharia and shared an interest in esoteric practices. Scholarship and learning was hierarchical, students travelled to renowned scholars and established chains of religious authority in the transmission of Islamic texts.29 Autonomous Muslim communities had emerged all throughout the Voltaic Basin at the end of the nineteenth century. Muslim traders were engaging with non-Muslim rulers and traders, establishing local Muslim communities amongst non-Muslim societies, especially in the savannah kingdoms of Dagbon, Nanun, Mamprugu, Wala, and Gonja. Muslim scholars soon settled in these communities. The most prominent of the Muslim communities was located at Salaga in eastern Gonja which had been established by Muslim traders at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Salaga quickly developed into the major trade hub for the Hausa Gonja trade as well as into a regional centre of Muslim learning.30 The Juula as well as the Hausa settlements were outsider communities, which made few attempts to mix with the rest of the local population. Only their leaders, usually the imam and other scholars, served as a link between the Muslim community and the local court in the various kingdoms. In most cases, the relationship between the Muslim leaders and the local ruler and his court was a reciprocal one: the scholars performed religious services in exchange for the community’s cultural and religious autonomy. The Muslim communities formed culturally, legally, and religiously autonomous spaces. Juridical affairs within the Muslim community were handled by the Muslim scholars, in most cases with the imam acting as judge (qadi). This was also the case among the Muslim community in Kumase, the capital of the Asante Empire. However, while Islamic family law and law of contracts and transactions were at least applied in cases involving Muslims, Islamic penal law, constitutional law, and laws on taxation and warfare were certainly not
29 I. Wilks, “The Transmission of Islamic Learning in the Western Sudan”, in: J. Goody (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp. 162–197; R. T. Ware III, The Walking Qur’an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. 30 J. Goody and I. Wilks, “Writing in Gonja”, in: J. R. Goody (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp. 241–258; I. Wilks, N. Levtzion, and B. M. Haight (eds.), Chronicles from Gonja: A Tradition of West African Muslim Historiography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; I. Wilks, J. Hunwick, and M. Sey, “Writers of the Greater Voltaic Region”, in: J. O. Hunwick (comp.), Arabic Literature in Africa, vol. IV, The Writings of Western Sudanic Africa, Leiden: Brill, 2003, pp. 539–630; H. Weiss, Between Accommodation and Revivalism: Muslims, the State and Society in Ghana from the Precolonial to the Postcolonial Era, Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 2008, pp. 110–112.
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applied. Thus, if Islamic law was applied, it was only in its rudimentary and community-centred form and did not necessarily involve the state or the local political authorities.31 The degree of Muslim influence was uneven. No doubt some local individuals converted to Islam, but Islamization as a societal process – that is to say, the transformation of a society or a state into an Islamic one – was effectively blocked in the Asante Empire as the conversion of a ruler or a member of the Asante state hierarchy was unthinkable. A different situation prevailed in the savannah kingdoms. Due to the expansion of Juula and Hausa long-distance trade and influx of Muslim traders and scholars, it is very likely that the number of Muslims in the savannah kingdoms was on the rise in the Voltaic Basin. However, although Islamization was never blocked per se, few, if any, members of the local ruling body ever converted to Islam, not to speak of the commoners.32 Muslim scholars and leaders had a rather influential position in the northern savannah kingdoms. Although the Muslim community was separated from the local society, their leaders were included in the local court hierarchies.33 The performance of rituals and religious services at the court and for the wellbeing of both the ruler and the host society made Muslim scholars visible and influential as religious experts. However, their position had to be constantly negotiated as a critical attitude of Muslim scholars towards the non-Muslim rulers could endanger the operations of long-distance Muslim traders. Therefore, Muslim scholars usually applied an accommodationist approach towards nonMuslim societies in the Voltaic Basin, as Ivor Wilks notes for Juula scholars.34 Hausa scholars applied a similar approach in their relationships with the nonMuslim rulers and societies.35
31 See further I. Wilks, “The Position of Muslims in Metropolitan Ashanti in the Early Nineteenth Century”, in: I. M. Lewis (ed.), Islam in Tropical Africa, London: Oxford University Press for the International Africa Institute, 1966, pp. 318–339; I. Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. 32 D. Owusu-Ansah, Islamic Talismanic Tradition in Nineteenth Century Asante, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991; D. Owusu-Ansah, “Islamization Reconsidered: An Examination of Asante Responses to Muslim Influence in the Nineteenth Century”, in: T. Falola (ed.), Ghana in Africa and the World: Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen, Trenton: Africa World Press, 2003, pp. 249–268. 33 P. Skalnik, “Early States in the Voltaic Basin”, in: H. J. M. Claessen and P. Skalnik (eds.), The Early State, The Hague, Paris, and New York: Mouton Publishers, 1978, pp. 469–494. 34 I. Wilks, “‘Mallams Do Not Fight With the Heathen’: A Note on Suwarian Attitudes to Jihad”, Ghana Studies 5 (2002), pp. 215–230. 35 Weiss, Between Accommodation and Revivalism, pp. 100–104.
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The working relationship between the Muslim community and the nonMuslim ruler in the Voltaic Basin was challenged by militant Muslim reform movements in West Africa during the nineteenth century. The accommodation was questioned and came under attack from scholars that had been influenced by Torodbe (Fulbe) and other “radical” scholars in the Sudanic savannah who highlighted orthopraxis and condemned forbidden innovations (bid‘ah) as well as the “mixing” of Islam and local traditions and customs (‘urf).36 The arrival of “radical” scholars did not always lead to conflict. Scholars from the Sokoto Caliphate were the most likely to follow a strict Islamic praxis, but none of the Hausa scholars who arrived in the southern Voltaic Basin are known to have propagated a break in the relationship between the Muslims and the rulers. Instead, much of their objections concerned local Muslim practices and the low standard of Muslim knowledge and learning of the local scholars. Further, their critique was mainly directed at those scholars who allied themselves too closely with the local rulers. However, their condemnation was declared in the community, not in public. Hausa scholars, such as Imam Umar, would criticize the scholar, never the ruler.37 This was the case in one of Imam Umar’s poems that he wrote after the Salaga Civil War in 1892, when he criticized those Muslims who backed the attacker.38 However, most of the Muslims had little interest in changing the religious and political structures in the Voltaic Basin. Instead, the interest of Muslim merchants and traders was concentrated on the safety of the markets and trade routes and in making a good profit out of their activities. As long as the inner autonomy of the Muslim communities was not questioned by the non-Muslim society, there was little need to attack local customs or to be involved in local quarrels. This was the benefit of an outsider community: the links to the host society and its order were limited, if not minimal. As merchants and traders, they knew that it was not the religion of the ruler but his ability to promote peace and stability that counted most.
36 J. R. Willis, “Jihâd Fî Sabîl Allâh – Its Doctrinal Basis in Islam and Some Aspects of its Evolution in Nineteenth-Century West Africa”, Journal of African History 7 (1967) 3, pp. 395–415; M. Last, “Reform in West Africa: The Jihâd Movements of the Nineteenth Century”, in: F. Ade Ajayi and M. Crowder (eds.), History of West Africa, vol. 2, 2nd edn, Harlow: Longman, 1987, pp. 1–47. 37 Weiss, Between Accommodation and Revivalism, pp. 104–107. 38 Imam ‘Umar, Tanbīh al-ikhwān fī dhikr al-ahzān (A warning to the brethren concerning afflictions, ca. 1894), translated in: J. A. Braimah and J. R. Goody, Salaga: The Struggle for Power, London: Longmans, 1967, p. 201.
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The Coming of the Europeans and the Muslim Scholars The Voltaic Basin witnessed a decade of political instability and insecurity at the end of the nineteenth century. Military incursions by African and European armies put pressure on the savannah kingdoms as much as they posed a challenge for the Muslim communities. Muslim leaders and scholars had to ask themselves with whom they should side – with the local rulers or the intruders? The external African threat came from the Muslim leaders Samori and Babatu, who said they fought for a just cause and defined their military expeditions as a jihad against infidels. On the other hand, French, British, and German colonial powers promised to bring peace and stability but attacked Muslim leaders as well as local rulers.39 Some Muslim scholars decided to side with the colonial powers. In 1898, the German expeditionary force made use of the help of a Muslim from Salaga, Yusuf Bamba. After their second arrival in Yendi in 1900, the Germans wanted Yusuf Bamba to again serve as their intermediary, but this time Yusuf declined the invitation. In fact, Yusuf was not the only (foreign) Muslim scholar who, at least officially, worked with the German colonial authorities: during German rule, several influential Hausa scholars also worked with the Germans. The Muslim community in Yendi, on the other hand, sided with the ruler of Dagbon, producing for him protective charms and prayed for his success. Their decision was a logical one: had they not been tied to the ruling elite over the last centuries and were they not (to some extent) part of the local political system? But it was all in vain: the army of the Ya Na was defeated, and Dagbon was sliced up between the imperial powers in 1900.40 One of the few available local comments on the establishment of colonial rule in the Asante hinterland are Imam Umar’s three poems on the arrival of the Europeans.41 When writing his first poem, “Mashrac mā’ al-khabar li-wārid wāriduhā bi’l-nazar” (On the comings of the Europeans), in ca. 1898/99, the
39 See further M. Staniland, The Lions of Dagbon: Political Change in Northern Ghana, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975; P. A. Ladoceur, Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana, London and New York: Longmans, 1979. 40 Weiss, Between Accommodation and Revivalism, pp. 158–161. 41 Imam ‘Umar’s three poems are discussed in T. Hodgkin, “The Islamic Literacy Tradition in Ghana”, in: Lewis (ed.), Islam in Tropical Africa, p. 455, Goody and Wilks, “Writing in Gonja”, p. 251; S. Pilaszewicz, “‘The Arrival of Christians’: A Hausa Poem on the Colonial Conquest of West Africa by Al-Hâji ‘Umaru”, Africana Bulletin 22 (1975), p. 56, and Hunwick, Arabic Literature of Africa, vol. 4, p. 587. I have made use of the new critical translations of and comments to the three texts by Muhammad al-Munir Gibrill, available at Discourses of Muslim
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Europeans had not yet arrived in the Voltaic Basin, but Imam ‘Umar was well informed about their advance elsewhere in West Africa. Imam Umar describes the advances of the French colonial troops from Senegal to Timbuktu and the British push on the lower river Niger and laments the subjugation of the Muslim rulers in Futa Toto, Futa Jallon, Futa Bundu, Masina, and Nupe. His advice to the Muslims is to show submission outwardly but to keep a distance to the Europeans; Muslims should not despair as “the religion of God [i.e. Islam] shall not be destroyed by them” and warned that “any apostate shall come to regret”. Imam Umar especially directs his warning at the Muslims in the Sokoto Caliphate, he himself was at a loss: “All abodes have become unsettling for us, [. . .] what was built is destroyed, and I am confused about the situation.” Still, he preferred to remain in Kete instead of deserting his community.42 The commentary and description of the European advances in West Africa are much more detailed in Imam Umar’s second poem, “Nazm al-la’ālī’ bi akhbār wa tanbīh al-kirām” (Lamenting the coming of the Europeans) than in his first poem. The second poem was written in ca. 1900/01 and vividly describes the atrocities and devastations caused by the French Voulet-Chanoine Mission or Central African-Chad Mission in the Sudanic savannah.43 His intention is to warn his audience and readers of the coming of the Christians: “The sun of calamity has risen in the west.” The advancing Christians turned out to be deceitful – they promised peace and to promote trade and justice but brought warfare, destruction, and injustice. In contrast to his first poem, Imam Umar had himself witnessed the thrusts of British, French, and German troops into the Voltaic Basin, defeating Muslim rulers and warlords such as Samori and Babatu and had occupied and divided the territory between themselves. “Their real intention is to fight Muslims,” he cries, “Truth has become a bitter pill in these days and propagating lies has become commendable.”44
Scholars in Colonial Ghana homepage, African Online Digital Library, http://aodl.org/islamic pluralism/goldcoast/documents (accessed 22 June 2018). 42 English translation of al-hâjj ‘Umar b. Abî Bakr historical poem: colonial rule 1, http://aodl. org/islamicpluralism/goldcoast/object/6F-2B5-E/b/ (accessed 22 June 2018), quotes: verses 40–41 and 52–54. 43 On the Central African-Chad Mission and its devastations in the central Sudanic savannah, see further A. S. Kanya-Forstner, The Conquest of the Western Sudan 1879–1899. A Study in French Military Imperialism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969; H. Weiss, Babban Yunwa. Hunger und Gesellschaft in Nord-Nigeria und den Nachbarregionen in der frühen Kolonialzeit, Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1997, pp. 155–156. 44 English translation of al-hâjj ‘Umar b. Abî Bakr historical poem: colonial rule 2, http://aodl.org/islamicpluralism/goldcoast/object/6F-2B5-F/b/ (accessed 22 June 2018), quotes: verses 14, 164, 175.
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The background of his third poem, “Labarin Nasaru” (The story of the Christians) is different from the two earlier poems. The Sudanic savannah as well as the Voltaic Basin were under colonial control. The British had conquered the central emirates of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1902/03 while the Germans had pushed to Lake Chad and conquered the Muslim emirates (lamidats) in Adamawa, which had been part of the Sokoto Caliphate. The Voltaic Basin was divided among the British, French, and Germans in 1900, and Kete had come under German colonial rule. Soon, however, colonial rule was seriously challenged when Mahdist movements were reported throughout British, French, and German West Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Especially British colonial officials viewed Mahdism, or “Muslim fanatics”, as a kind of archenemy, especially after the traumas created by the Indian Mutiny in 1857 and the fall of Khartoum in 1885. More so, Mahdism usually challenged established authority. Therefore, Mahdists, or “radical” itinerant Muslim preachers, were closely watched by the colonial officials after the Mahdist uprisings in northern Nigeria and adjacent regions (French Niger and German Adamawa) between 1905 and 1907.45 The arrival of itinerant Muslim preachers raised a new problem that earlier colonial officials usually had not taken into account when dealing with the Muslim population in West Africa, namely the existence of differences among Muslims in their interpretation of Islam. Although Mahdism, Panislamism, and “Islam Arabe” had been identified by European scholars as posing a threat to the colonial order, such movements and ideas were believed to be more or less absent in sub-Saharan Africa. What was noted was the “mixing” of Muslim and non-Muslim practices and traditions, which colonial French scholars called “Islam Noire”. Furthermore, both British and German scholars had noted the generally positive impact and influence of Hausa merchants and Muslims in the Voltaic Basin. However, Mahdist movements at the beginning of the twentieth century made it clear to the colonial officials that some Muslims were not in favour of the colonial order and could – as in the rest of the Muslim world – become the archenemy of the colonial state. Interestingly, the overall conclusion reached by British, German, and French colonial officials was that the negative, potentially troublemaking, element always came from abroad: “foreign”
45 P. E. Lovejoy and J. S. Hogendorn, “Revolutionary Mahdism and Resistance to Colonial Rule in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1905–1906”, Journal of African History 31 (1990) 2, pp. 217–244; Th. Büttner, “Die Mahdi-Erhebung 1907 in Nordkamerun im Vergleich mit antikolonialen islamischen Bewegungen in anderen Regionen West- und Zentralafrikas”, in: P. Heine and U. van der Heyden (eds.), Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Kolonialismus in Afrika, Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1995, pp. 147–159.
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Muslims. Local, “native”, or “our” Muslims were “peace loving”, that is to say they were believed to have accommodated to the colonial order.46 In the Northern Territories as well as northern Togo, too, Muslim itinerant preachers began to be viewed with suspicion – if not fear – by the colonial officials. At first, the arrival of Muslim itinerant preachers did not cause much anxiety among the colonial authorities. The mobility of Muslim literati was a known fact; Muslim teachers and their students would travel in search of jobs that they could perform, such as teaching the Qur’an, praying for people, divination, preparing charms, and preaching at special occasions. As long as these itinerant preachers did not cause troubles with the local political authorities or challenge local religious conditions, they would receive little attention. Such an influx of Muslim preachers (who usually combined their religious activities with trade) was already an old-established process in the Voltaic Basin at the beginning of the twentieth century.47 However, in 1906 colonial authorities in the Voltaic Basin became increasingly anxious about the straightforward demand for renewal and repentance by these preachers. When arriving in the villages, the preachers gathered the population and revealed their message about the future coming of the Mahdi. The message was simple but, from a colonial perspective, highly critical: “[The Mahdi] would punish all non-believers, white or black and have generally conveyed the idea that the white man would be exterminated in the country.”48 Similar reports were also handed in by German and French officials. Such reports definitively caused alarm among the colonial governments. They threatened the fabric of the existing society as well as the recently established colonial order. As a consequence, more or less drastic measures were applied to curb the threat of an imminent Mahdist rebellion.49
46 Weiss, Between Accommodation and Revivalism, pp. 193–195. 47 Mahdist movements and their impact in the Northern Territories are discussed in J. Goody, “Reform, Renewal and Resistance: A Mahdî in Northern Ghana”, in: Ch. Allen and R. W. Johnson (eds.), African Perspectives: Papers in the History, Politics and Economics of Africa Presented to Thomas Hodgkin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 143–156; I. Wilks, Wa and Wala. Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 152–157; J. Goody, “Establishing Control: Violence along the Black Volta at the Beginning of Colonial Rule”, Cahiers d’études africaines 38 (1998) 2–4, pp. 227–244, and Weiss, Between Accommodation and Revivalism, pp. 171–174, 201–210. 48 Letter from the Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories to Acting Colonial Secretary, 18 May 1906, quoted in: Weiss, Between Accommodation and Revivalism, p. 204. 49 See further Goody, “Reform, Renewal and Resistance”, pp. 153–154; Weiss, Between Accommodation and Revivalism, pp. 207–210.
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Not only the colonial authorities were troubled by the advent and agitation of the Mahdist preachers but also local Muslim scholars were critical of their message. The most well-known case was the position taken by Imam Umar. He was regarded by the German officials as one of the most influential Muslim scholars in the region and at that time had been working closely with one of the German district commissioners, Adam Mischlich. However, Imam Umar’s position is somewhat unclear and gives a good picture of the complex situation the local Muslim scholars were facing. At first, he treated the itinerant preachers with great respect, but after interrogating them, he announced that the two Mahdist preachers were both lying. Like other established Muslim scholars, he resented the intrusion of outside preachers into his community. Therefore, when the Mahdist preacher Malam Musa arrived in the Salaga area, Imam Umar refused to join in his attempt to reform the locals and expel the whites. In fact, Imam Umar publicly denounced the agitation of the Mahdist preachers in a pamphlet that he wrote to his disciples. In his poem on Muslim revival, “Ya Khalilayya”, he declares Malam Musa and his followers to be charlatans, distancing himself from them.50 Imam Umar conducted his third poem on the arrival of the Christians and the establishment of colonial rule, “Labarin Nasaru”, at the height of the Mahdist crisis. In 1906, the British, French, and Germans had crushed Mahdist uprisings in Niger, northern Nigeria, and northern Cameroon. The Mahdist supporters of the revolt, who wanted to restore the Dar al-Islam, were disgruntled peasants, fugitive slaves, and radical clerics who were hostile both to indigenous authorities and Muslim scholars and to the colonial regimes.51 However, Imam Umar does not make any reference to the Mahdist uprisings in “Labarin Nasaru”. Instead, the poem comments upon the aggressive policy of the Europeans and the inability of local rulers to come to terms with the changing political and economic situation, especially the collapse of Asante domination of Gonja and Dagbon after the sacking of Kumasi in 1874. The main section in the first part of the poem deplores the fate of the Muslim rulers in the savannah, who one after the other had to flee: Seku Ahmadu from Masina, Sarkin Muslimin (meaning ruler of the Muslims) Attahiru from Sokoto. He asked his listeners what evil these rulers had done, but finds no answer to the question – apart from the treacherous acts and brutality of the Europeans. Whatever the Muslim rulers tried to do, their actions were wrong in the eyes of the Europeans. Resistance proved 50 See further Goody, “Reform, Renewal and Resistance”, p. 143. A critical translation of Imam ‘Umar’s poem on Muslim revival by Muhammad al-Munir Gibrill is found at http://aodl. org/islamicpluralism/goldcoast/object/6F-2B5-4/b/ (accessed 23 August 2018). 51 Lovejoy and Hogendorn, “Revolutionary Mahdism”.
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disastrous, and Imam Umar’s conclusion was that open rebellion was fruitless and doomed to fail and that only destruction and suffering would follow – as the Asante rebellion in 1900 had shown him. However, apart from being a lamentation, Imam Umar’s work is also highly critical of the local rulers. In his view, local rulers engaged in warfare and slave raids and had only brought destruction and fear. Yet, the European conquest, at first, brought little comfort for the downtrodden: the destruction caused by local armies was only replaced by that of the colonial ones. At first, European rule was a double-edged sword: for some the European expansion was a threat, and for others it provided unforeseen possibilities. The abolition of the slave trade and closure of slave markets, sometimes even the emancipation of slaves, was the most obvious case. This was a severe blow for some Muslim merchants as the slave trade had been greatly under their control. Even worse, many slaves were said to have run away from their masters.52 According to Imam Umar, on their liberation, the slaves in Asante rejoiced. Former slaves now became their own masters and regained their former dignity: “The slave-master will be sentenced to prison. Indeed, slaves can see the [effectiveness] of Christian authority.”53 However, this social transformation – if not structural change – was at full pace when Imam Umar wrote his poem. In another text, on the social and economic structures of Hausaland, which he wrote for Adam Mischlich, Imam Umar’s position towards slavery is clearly outlined.54 Slavery is not regarded as a problem or even immoral from the perspective of a Muslim scholar. On the contrary, for him slavery is part of the social order and he has little understanding of the moral arguments of the Europeans about abolition and emancipation. Other Muslim scholars, such as Shehu Na Salga in Hausaland, were even openly critical about the actions of the Europeans in this regard. In his poem “Bakandamiya” (Hippopotamus-hide whip), Shehu Na Salga complains that the liberation of slaves had led to the worsening of his living conditions. For
52 On the abolition of slavery and the reactions of Muslims, see further P. E. Lovejoy and J. Hogendorn, Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897–1936, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; W. Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, London: Hurst, 2006. 53 English translation for al-hâjj ‘Umar b. Abî Bakr poem number ISA.AR.109 (v), http://aodl.org/islamicpluralism/goldcoast/object/6F-2B5-10/b/ (accessed 23 June 2018), quote: verse 218. 54 Mischlich, “Über Sitten und Gebräuche in Hausa, II”, pp. 45, 258–261; D. E. Ferguson, “Nineteenth-Century Hausaland. Being a Description by Imam Imoru of the Land, Economy and Society of His People”, PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1973, pp. 223–233.
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example, because of the lack of female slaves, he had had to abandon the religious obligation of keeping his wives in seclusion (purdah) – instead, they had to work in the fields.55 Whereas the first part of “Labarin Nasaru” is a lamentation, the tone in the second part of the poem changes towards a critical, sometimes sarcastic, hymn to European rule. One can read his poem as a comment directed at the critical texts of Muslim scholars in Hausaland who had criticized Muslims who cooperated with the Europeans, such as the Wakar Zuwan Annasara (The Coming of the Christians): “There are hypocrites among us who support the way of the Europeans.”56 In Imam Umar’s mind, some of the changes that had been introduced through colonial rule were positive ones, such as the improvements in infrastructure for trade and transportation. For him, “[s]afety reigns here, and there is no plundering and there is no deception in what the Christians do.”57 Imam Umar’s assessment comes as no surprise. He himself was a Muslim scholar with close connections to Muslim merchants. If the new – Christian – rulers promised to guarantee political peace and stability and the freedom of religion, then Muslims should accept the new order. Imam Umar’s decision to reach an accommodation with the new rulers was not unique. On the contrary, all Muslim scholars faced the same dilemma after the colonial conquest: should one capitulate to the “infidels” or should one emigrate as prescribed in sharia? For Imam Umar and other Muslim literati who already in the pre-colonial period had subjected themselves to non-Muslim rulers, the question was not a problematic one and they chose to stay. Nevertheless, Imam Umar perceived the new colonial conditions as totally novel and sometimes even frightening. The world was turned upside down; the old order was being eroded: The dog eats up the hyena, thanks to the Christians. The female cat walks unafraid in the way of the wildcat. She taunts him, thanks to the authority of Christians. [. . .] The mice also gather to celebrate
55 S. Pilaszewicz, “Literature in the Hausa Language”, in: B. W. Andrejewski, S. Pilaszewicz, and W. Tyloch (eds.), Literatures in African Languages: Theoretical Issues and Sample Survey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 207. 56 Muhammad Tukur Usman, “Intellectual Tradition in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1903–1960”, PhD thesis, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, 1998, p. 117. 57 English translation for al-hâjj ‘Umar b. Abî Bakr poem number ISA.AR.109 (v), http://aodl.org/islamicpluralism/goldcoast/object/6F-2B5-10/b/ (accessed 23 June 2018), quote: verse 202.
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Their wedding moment, in the Christians era. Their bride-washer was but the cat, imagine that!58
Even worse, the Muslim judges were corrupt, so it was better for a Muslim to go to a Christian judge. On the other hand, the behaviour of the Europeans was presumptuous and local people were discontented. Imam Umar, critical of those who tried to please the new rulers as much as he, lamented that a person’s wealth, status, or learning mattered much in the eyes of the Christians. At the end of his poem, Imam Umar gives an account of his own relationship with the Europeans, namely the Germans in Togo. Rather surprisingly for his listeners, Imam Umar declares that he himself had nothing against the new rulers. Instead, in his view, the rule of the Christians could be forever: For my part, I am thankful to God, in their era For they have treated me well, these Christians. As much as I am concerned, may their rule last forever! Because I live a life of prosperity, under Christian rule.59
However, such a positive perception should not fool the listener. In the next line of the poem, Imam Umar declares: “Preserve us from Christian tyranny!” Thus, whereas his personal situation had improved during German rule and without any doubt he had individually benefited from his contacts with the Europeans, especially with Adam Mischlich, he was fully aware that his personal situation did not reflect the general state of affairs where colonial rule was perceived with mixed, if not negative, feelings. Imam Umar’s decision and position was not unique. In fact, one could argue that his case exemplifies that of many Muslim scholars in the Voltaic Basin: on a personal level, they would accept the new rulers and would serve as intermediaries. This was, for example, the case of two influential Hausa Muslim scholars in Dagbon: Malam Yaqub and his son Halidu60 worked for and with the German colonial authorities in Yendi. Similar to Imam Umar, they also
58 English translation for al-hâjj ‘Umar b. Abî Bakr poem number ISA.AR.109 (v), http://aodl. org/islamicpluralism/goldcoast/object/6F-2B5-10/b/ (accessed 23 June 2018), quote: verse 220–221, 229–230. 59 English translation for al-hâjj ‘Umar b. Abî Bakr poem number ISA.AR.109 (v), http://aodl. org/islamicpluralism/goldcoast/object/6F-2B5-10/b/ (accessed 23 June 2018), quote: verse 254–255. 60 Khâlid b. Yacqûb b. Muhammad Bawa al-Kashnâwî (1871–1937).
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claimed that local conditions had improved under European administration and that there was justice and material improvement.61 In a certain way, the imposition of colonial rule and the introduction of modern communication infrastructures and technologies did have a profound impact on the lives of Muslims, especially Muslim scholars. This was the case of the hajj (or the pilgrimage to Mecca). In West Africa, the tradition of making the hajj had never been a very widespread one during the pre-colonial era. This was mainly due to the very long distance to travel and the dangers encountered en route to Mecca, and in some Muslim polities, such as the Sokoto Caliphate, the hajj was regarded by Muslim rulers and court scholars as a sign of dissidence, if not open rebellion.62 The British, French, and German colonial authorities, too, contested at first the hajj as they identified itinerant Muslims to be potential Mahdists. Soon, however, it was clear to the colonial authorities that not every itinerant Muslim preacher was a potential troublemaker. On the contrary, the colonial authorities were overwhelmed with the sheer number of Muslims travelling east on their way to Mecca, although, at times, the colonial authorities would suspect these travellers of being both disguised slave traders and secret antagonists. On the other hand, too restrictive policies would hurt long-distance trade. Therefore, the various colonial governments were not able to come up with a common policy. Instead, they would, at times, reward cooperative Muslim leaders and scholars by providing them with assistance in performing the hajj but would simultaneously be extremely suspicious of “foreign” pilgrims trespassing on “their” territory.63 The British policy towards the hajj in the Northern Territories is unclear. In fact, it seems as if the hajj never developed into a serious problem or a question that needed special consideration. Consequently, no records were kept on permission for Muslims to go to Mecca or matters concerning the issuing of passports for Muslims who wanted to perform the pilgrimage.64 Notwithstanding, Muslims certainly tried to go on the hajj whenever possible. The common denominator was the involvement of the colonial authorities in one way or 61 P. Lubeck, “Patterns of Assimilation of Hausa Families in Dagomba”, Field Notes: Yendi Project, Report No. 4, Legon: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana and Program of African Studies, Northwestern University, 1968, p. 51. 62 See further U. al-Naqar, The Pilgrimage Tradition in West Africa, Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, 1972. 63 U. Ryad (ed.) The Hajj and Europe in the Age of Empire, Leiden: Brill, 2016. On British policies in Northern Nigeria, see Lovejoy and Hogendorn, Slow Death for Slavery. 64 Therefore, one looks in vain as the information on the hajj from the Northern Territories in the seminal work on the topic by J. Slight, The British Empire and the Hajj 1865–1956, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.
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another. In some cases, the permission to perform the hajj was seen by the colonial authorities as a kind of reward or thanks for their services. Another aspect of the hajj was the use of modern means of travelling – by boat – instead of walking along the savannah towards the Red Sea. What seems to have been taking place was a profound change in the opportunities for a West African Muslim to perform the hajj. The pre-colonial and traditional argument was no longer valid as modern means of transportation and, in fact, the pax colonia, transformed the pilgrimage from a decade-long journey to a one-year, if not shorter, trip. Such a development paved the way for a social transformation within the Muslim community, when an increasing number of Muslims could perform the hajj and return to their communities and hometowns as an Alhaji or Hajia. As during the old days, the social status and sometimes even spiritual position of being an Alhaji meant a rise in social rank and order within the community and sometimes even gaining increased influence in the affairs of the community.
Conclusion The establishment of European colonial rule neither marked a break nor the end of the transnational connections of Muslim scholars in West Africa. Although the European colonial powers controlled the Muslim oecumene on the surface, old established scholarly networks and flows of information continued to exist. While the conquest phase of European imperialism posed a challenge to local Muslim scholars, they soon adapted to the new situation. Outright militant resistance proved useless and many scholars chose to accommodate to the new overlords; some even started to work with and for them. Adaption and limited cooperation was the preferred strategy of most Muslim scholars in the Voltaic Basin. Such a strategy followed the established model by Muslim scholars in pre-colonial societies in the region when they interacted with non-Muslim rulers and lived in predominantly non-Muslim societies. By establishing a modus vivendi with the colonial administration, Muslim scholars were capable of continuing their model of coexistence and non-integration. One the one hand, by recognizing the colonial sphere as the new political suprastructure and declaring their wilfulness of cooperation with the new non-Muslim rulers, Muslim scholars and their communities strengthened the Muslim sphere in the Voltaic Basin. As in the pre-colonial era, the Muslim sphere was religiously and culturally autonomous and, via the networks of the Muslim scholars, a part of a Muslim globality existed parallel to the colonial Western/modern globality.
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On the other hand, cultural and religious autonomy demarcated a border between the Muslim and the colonial sphere in the Voltaic Basin. Muslim traders would opt to make use of colonial peace and the modernization efforts of the colonial state, not least in terms of improvement in infrastructure and transportation. The colonial state, in turn, was in need of literate persons whom they would make use of in local administration. However, the expertise of the Muslim scholars was of restricted use for the colonial state as their educational system, the Qur’anic schools, could not provide Western-educated administrative personnel who were fluent in a European language. The colonial state, therefore, started to replace Muslim scholars with Western-educated local clerks. These clerks had been trained in either government or missionary schools and were products of the Western/modern globality. Muslim scholars rejected the Western/modern educational system; instead, Muslim parents were urged to send their children to the Qur’anic schools. Still, cultural and religious non-integration was not equivalent to a total rejection or boycott of Western modernity. Muslim scholars would, if they could afford it, invest in modern technologies such as lorries and cars. They would make use of modern transport networks when performing the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Part III: Spatial Approaches to Politics
Ivan Sablin
11 Russia in the Global Parliamentary Moment, 1905–1918: Between a Subaltern Empire and an Empire of Subalterns Introduction The establishment of the legislative State Duma (17 October 1905)1 and the adoption of the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire (23 April 1906) by Tsar Nicholas II during the Revolution of 1905–1907 seemed to make Russia a constitutional state. In 1907, Vladimir Matveevich Gessen and Boris Emmanuilovich Nol’de, two prominent liberal legal scholars, listed Russia, together with Persia and Montenegro, as the new constitutional states in their comprehensive collection of contemporary constitutions. Articulating a popular progressive view, they claimed that the failures of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) unmasked the inefficiency of bureaucratic autocracy, spreading the critical attitudes to the ancien régime beyond intellectual circles and transforming them into a broad liberation movement across the whole country.2 Few intellectuals, however, viewed the Duma as a parliament equal to its Western counterparts. It occupied a subordinate position to the State Council, which was reformed into a partly appointed upper chamber, and did not control the cabinet, which contributed to the term “sham constitutionalism”.3 The non-universal, indirect, and unequal elections were further limited with the
1 All dates are given in the Old Style, which is according to the Julian calendar. 2 V. M. Gessen and B. E. Nol’de (eds.), Sovremennye Konstitutsii: Sbornik Deistvuiushchikh Konstitutsionnykh Aktov [Contemporary Constitutions: A Collection of Constitutional Acts in Force], vol. 2: Federatsii i Respubliki [Federations and Republics], Saint Petersburg: Pravo, 1907, pp. 565–566. 3 M. Weber, “Russlands Übergang zum Scheinkonstitutionalismus”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 23 (1906) 1, Beilage, pp. 165–401. Note: The research for this chapter was done as part of the project “ENTPAR: Entangled Parliamentarisms: Constitutional Practices in Russia, Ukraine, China and Mongolia, 1905–2005”, which received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 755504). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-011
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dissolution of the Second Duma on 3 June 1907. Nol’de nevertheless stressed that the Russian Empire could be called a constitutional state and termed the State Duma the first normally functioning parliament in Russia, implying the country’s connection to Western constitutional modernity.4 Indeed, the Duma not only became an important part of the empire’s governance and politics but also reconfigured the political topology of the empire by bringing non-Russian and non-elite deputies into the government.5 Despite their criticism of the Duma, liberal and moderate socialist and nationalist thinkers generally supported parliamentarism. Right and left radicals, by contrast, questioned the very necessity of a parliament. The right argued that Russia was self-sufficient and did not need Western democracy; the left rejected parliaments, claiming them a part of class exploitation and oppressive state machinery, and called for direct rule of the toilers to represent an alternative democratic modernity. In Osnovy Konstitutsionnogo Prava [Foundations of Constitutional Law], his 1916 dissertation, Gessen juxtaposed democratization, understood as the maximization of popular participation, and contemporary parliamentarism. Suggesting that the latter contradicted the idea of popular sovereignty, which he rejected, Gessen remained optimistic about the capacity of European constitutionalism to safeguard against democratic despotism.6 The Bolshevik–Left Socialist Revolutionary (SR) coup (25–26 October 1917) and the dissolution of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly after its first meeting (5–6 January 1918), however, marked a halt in Russia’s participation in global parliamentary developments, which institutionally encompassed, inter alia, Persia, the Ottoman Empire, and the Qing Empire (and the Republic of China) in the 1900s/1910s. Conceptually, it marked an end of the global parliamentary moment, as the Bolshevik–Left SR regime became the first practical
4 Although he did treat the Finnish Diet as a parliament by practices since 1863, see B. E. Nol’de, Ocherki Russkogo Gosudarstvennogo Prava [Essays on Russian State Law], Saint Petersburg: Pravda, 1911, pp. 10–11, 13–14, 49, 545. 5 K. Solov’ev, Samoderzhavie i Konstitutsiia: Politicheskaia Povsednevnost’ v 1906–1917 Godakh [Autocracy and Constitution: The Political Everyday Life in 1906–1917], Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2019; A. Semyonov, “‘The Real and Live Ethnographic Map of Russia’: The Russian Empire in the Mirror of the State Duma”, in: I. Gerasimov, J. Kusber, and A. Semyonov (eds.), Empire Speaks out: Languages of Rationalization and Self-Description in the Russian Empire, Leiden: Brill, 2009, pp. 191–228. 6 V. M. Gessen, Osnovy Konstitutsionnogo Prava [Foundations of Constitutional Law], Petrograd: Izd. iurid. kn. sklada Pravo, 1917, pp. 438–439.
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take on a non-parliamentary modernity. The subsequent development of the Soviet regime into a dictatorial one – which since 1936 was nevertheless accompanied by a nominal parliament (the Supreme Soviet) – conformed to the global anti-parliamentary developments. The 1920s and 1930s witnessed numerous authoritarian and totalitarian regimes across the world – in Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, China, Mongolia, Thailand, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil, and elsewhere. Although some of them retained nominal parliamentary institutions, confirming in a way that political modernity required a parliament, they favoured consensus over dissensus, avoided any genuine public debates and political competition, and relied on party and personal governance. Some of these regimes fell during the Second World War, but new non-parliamentary regimes emerged in the 1940s and 1950s: these regimes included the new dependencies and the Cold War allies of the Soviet Union (Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, China, North Korea, and North Vietnam), the allies of the USA (including South Korea and South Vietnam), and neutral states (including Indonesia). Over the ensuing decades, the non-parliamentary approach to modernity has continued to thrive despite a new major wave of democratization in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Between 1905 and 1917, however, the opinion that Russia needed a parliamentary regime comparable to or even more democratic than its Western counterparts was dominant in the country’s intellectual circles, like in other Eurasian contexts. Although the Western system was largely perceived as universal, there was a critical reception of Western models rather than a simple “import”, together with suggestions within the discussions among Eurasian intellectuals that the Eurasian empires were not yet ready for such popular participation as in Western Europe and America.7 Focusing on the intellectual and political discourse surrounding the Duma, including academic works, pamphlets, and party programmes, the current chapter outlines the main positions on parliamentarism that accompanied Russia’s imperial transformation and locates it in the global intellectual landscape. The arguments in favour of parliamentarism were context-specific but still rooted in two major global developments: the attempts either to modernize empires or establish post-imperial nation-states. The discussions of parliamentarism hence foregrounded the subalternity of specific Eurasian empires, which were 7 Ch. Kurzman, Democracy Denied, 1905–1915: Intellectuals and the Fate of Democracy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008; E. Moniz Bandeira, “China and the Political Upheavals in Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Persia: Non-Western Influences on Constitutional Thinking in Late Imperial China, 1893–1911”, Transcultural Studies 8 (2017) 2, pp. 40–78.
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politically and conceptually marginalized in a Western-centred world, and specific social groups, which were disenfranchized within imperial hierarchies. In contemporary debates at the time, Russia was understood as both a “subaltern empire” that needed to boost its efficiency to be globally competitive and an “empire of subalterns” that needed a major reconfiguration or complete demolition of its inner hierarchies.8 Although the interpretations of subalternity and the suggestions on how to escape it differed greatly, a parliament as a globally circulating concept and the State Duma as its concrete institutional form became an assemblage point for imperial nationalism, a heterogeneous discourse, and a political programme on how the imperial society could improve the performance of the imperial state.9
Parliamentary Universalism Over the nineteenth century, liberal and socialist intellectuals discussed the idea of introducing representative government in Russia. Together with the activities of underground and émigré intellectuals, the introduction of elected, albeit property-based, zemstvo (local) self-government in 1864 and its restriction in 1890 stimulated interest in constitutionalism, but it was not until the Revolution of 1905–1907 when the discussions became widespread – thanks to popular rallies, short-lived freedom of press, the formation of a legislative assembly, and the legalization of political parties. Although the first fundamental theoretical works on constitutionalism and parliamentarism by Russian authors were already published in the nineteenth century,10 during the Revolution of 1905–1907 the debates became especially intense, with a number of new works being published across the empire. Despite the official pressure on the public discussions, they continued during the “Years of Reaction” (1907–1917) and
8 I. Gerasimov, “The Great Imperial Revolution”, Ab Imperio 2 (2017), pp. 21–44; V. Morozov, Russia’s Postcolonial Identity: A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 1, 40–41. 9 I. Gerasimov et al., “Do the ‘Assemblage Points’ Exist?”, Ab Imperio 1 (2014), pp. 16–21; Semyonov, “The Real and Live Ethnographic Map of Russia”, pp. 191–228; R. Tsiunchuk, “Peoples, Regions, and Electoral Politics: The State Dumas and the Constitution of New National Elites”, in: J. Burbank et al. (eds.), Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007, pp. 366–397. 10 The dissertation of Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin was arguably the most influential work on parliamentarism by a Russian author before 1905, see B. N. Chicherin, O Narodnom Predstavitel’stve [On Popular Representation], Moscow: Tip. Gracheva i K°, 1866.
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loomed large during the “democratic” period of the second revolution, between March and October 1917. The discussions concerning a parliament in Russia were deeply connected to international, predominantly European, scholarship. Russian legal scholars were acquainted with the works by contemporary Western scholars of constitutionalism and parliamentarism; these Western works were also translated and published in Russian, often with introductions by Russian scholars. The works of the liberal Heidelberg professor Georg Jellinek, who developed a dualistic approach to studying the state as both a social and legal phenomenon, circulated widely, and those of William Anson, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, and Julius Hatschek were familiar to Russian scholars as well.11 Although both Russian and Western authors relied on country-specific data and acknowledged differences between different European states, parliaments were part of the normative modern universalism for many of them.12 Jellinek, for instance, described a parliament as “the organized people” and the institution that enabled the people itself to become the primary body of government.13 In the introduction to Woodrow Wilson’s The State, which in its Russian edition had the subtitle The Past and Present of Constitutional Establishments, Maksim Maksimovich Kovalevskii, a historian, a legal scholar, and a deputy of the First Duma and the State Council, stressed that participation of citizens in political power was the main feature of the modern constitutional state, with local self-government playing a pivotal role in its stability. Even though societal self-government developed in the West, according to Kovalevskii, the political past of Western Europe and Russia had similarities, which could act as a premise for its establishment in Russia. Together with Kovalevskii’s conviction of the evolution of the state and humanity at large, this all contributed to his idea that the Russians had to learn from the achievements of the “Romano-Germanic” world, albeit not uncritically.14
11 K. N. Sokolov, Parlamentarizm: Opyt Pravovoi Teorii Parlamentskogo Stroia [Parliamentarism: A Legal Theory of the Parliamentary Regime], Saint Petersburg: Pechantnyi Trud, 1912, pp. vii, 6–7, 59, 379, 390. 12 E. Flanden, Politicheskie Uchrezhdeniia Sovremennoi Evropy: Angliia, Bel’giia [Political Institutions of Contemporary Europe: England, Belgium], Saint Petersburg: Izdanie V. I. Iakovenko, 1906, pp. ii. 13 G. Ellinek, Obshchee Uchenie o Gosudarstve [The General Theory of the State], ed. S. I. Gessen, 2nd edn, Saint Petersburg: N. K. Martynov, 1908, pp. 429–33. 14 M. M. Kovalevskii, “Predislovie k Russkomu Perevodu [“Introduction to the Russian Translation”]”, in: V. Vil’son, Gosudarstvo: Proshloe i Nastoiashchee Konstitutsionnykh Uchrezhdenii: S Prilozheniem Teksta Vazhneishikh Konstitutsii [The State: The Past and Present
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Sergei Andreevich Kotliarevskii, a historian, a legal scholar, and one of the founding members of the liberal Constitutional Democratic (KD) Party supported the argument of parallel development of Russia and the West toward the same goal. Reminding his readers that in Russia all “liberation traditions” were democratic, Kotliarevskii asserted that when it came to the reconfiguration of the state, “the democratic principle” was unquestioned. Hence the slogan of universal suffrage did not mimic the Western model but articulated the “genuine needs” of the Russian society and was, according to Kotliarevskii, in the state’s interest. Although Kotliarevskii favoured “democratic parliamentarism”, the notion of political evolution and Russia’s inferiority compared to the West helped him justify the existence of the “Prussian regime” of a unanswerable cabinet as a transitional stage. Despite his scepticism of the Duma’s “parliamentarism”, he urged Russia’s progressives to set parliamentarism – rather than radical republicanism – as their ultimate goal.15 In practical terms, this translated into the KD programme of constitutional monarchy, featuring a potent universally elected “popular representation” – the term usually used for a parliament.16 The fundamental work Constitutional Law: The General Theory of the State (in its Russian edition) by Léon Duguit, a French legal scholar, which had an introduction by Pavel Ivanovich Novgorodtsev, himself a legal scholar and a KD deputy of the First Duma, offered a moderate interpretation of parliamentarism, suitable for the KDs. Duguit opposed the literal understanding of the separation of powers, which engendered conflict between different bodies claiming to represent the national will, and suggested the notion of cooperation of representative bodies with separate functions. According to Duguit, monarchy could not be considered representation in theory, but England’s political practice justified the existence of constitutional monarchy, with old and new social forces cooperating in the interest of the country. Furthermore, according to Duguit, in large countries the dominance of a parliament under a republican regime could make it tyrannical. The takeaway was, however, not that monarchy was a of Constitutional Establishments: With an Annex of the Texts of the Most Important Constitutions], Moscow: Izd. V. M. Sablina, 1905, pp. xxix, xxxiii–xxxv, xliii. 15 S. A. Kotliarevskii, “Problema Demokratizatsii Gosudarstva [1906] [“The Problem of State Democratization”], in: I. B. Borisov et al. (eds.), Politicheskie Instituty, Izbiratel’noe Pravo i Protsess v Trudakh Rossiiskikh Myslitelei XIX–XX Vekov [Political Institutions, Electoral Law and Process in the Works of Russian Thinkers of the Nineteenth–Twentieth Century], Moscow: Tsentral’naia izbiratel’naia komissiia Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 2008, pp. 568–570, 572. 16 G. F. Shershenevich, Programma Partii Narodnoi Svobody (Konstitutsionno-Demokraticheskoi) [The Programme of the Party of People’s Freedom (Constitutional Democratic)], Moscow: Tipografiia G. Lissnera i D. Sobko, 1906, p. 6.
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superior form. Instead, Duguit favoured strong presidential rule and decentralization. The equality between the cabinet and the parliament – like in the USA – and their ability to influence each other was an important check and a guarantee of freedom. For Duguit, under a parliamentary regime, the head of state appointed the cabinet, which was collectively and politically answerable to the parliament, but also had the right to summon, delay, and dissolve the parliament. Duguit was nevertheless convinced of the unidirectional political evolution, with universally elected parliaments to be eventually adopted by all civilized peoples. Duguit therefore had an optimistic prognosis for Russia, since “the reactionary movements” did not prevent it from joining the “great democratic current, inevitably carrying all civilized peoples away”. Despite the dissolution of the First Duma on 8 July 1906, the tsar approved universal suffrage in Finland the day before.17 Konstantin Nikolaevich Sokolov, a legal scholar and a member of the KD Party, theorized that there was no contradiction between parliamentarism and monarchism in his Parlamentarizm: Opyt Pravovoi Teorii Parlamentskogo Stroia [Parliamentarism: A Legal Theory of the Parliamentary Regime]. For Sokolov, the cabinet, answerable to the majority of the lower house of the parliament, was the main feature of parliamentarism, yet the system also required a oneman head of state (monarch or president), bound by constitutional norms but not answerable to the parliament. In this respect, a parliamentary republic did not correspond to parliamentarism, as a neutral head of state was needed for representing the “eternal” interests of the state. Although he admitted that parliamentarism was not the summit of the whole democratic evolution, Sokolov celebrated parliamentarism as being capable of meeting the political needs of a country seeking a democratic regime but not desiring to give up monarchy. Notwithstanding, Sokolov repudiated the view that states could be divided into capable and incapable of parliamentary development, stressing the unidirectional political evolution. Appealing to the example of the German Empire – where Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow had to resign due to a change in the ruling coalition in the parliament, who acted without any legal reasons to do so – Sokolov highlighted the inevitable evolution of dual monarchies (in which the cabinet was not answerable to the parliament) into parliamentary ones. At the same time, parliamentarism could not simply be established through codification; it required a parliamentary tradition corresponding to “popular legal
17 L. Diugi, Konstitutsionnoe Pravo: Obshchaia Teoriia Gosudarstva [Constitutional Law: The General Theory of the State], Moscow: Tipografiia T-va I. D. Sytina, 1908, pp. 431, 438, 440–441, 450–452, 454, 456–458, 475, 491, 503–504, 506–507, 542–547, 549, 553–554, 560–561, 566–578.
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consciousness”, a concept Sokolov borrowed from Lev Iosifovich Petrazhitskii’s psychological theory of law.18 The KDs included parliamentarism, being understood as the answerability of the cabinet to the parliament’s majority, into their programme in 1905. The other two largest opposition parties – the Party of Socialists Revolutionaries and the Russian Social Democratic (SD) Labour Party – supported the slogan of a democratic republic. The 1903 SD programme included a democratic republic – an “autocracy of the people” with the concentration of all state power in the hands of a legislative assembly – only as an immediate task, with a social revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat being its ultimate goal. The SRs also included the slogan of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, if it became necessary, into their draft programme in 1905 but ultimately dropped it in favour of a democratic republic ruled by the people through their elected representatives and referendum.19 Polemicizing with the socialists, Pavel Nikolaevich Miliukov, a historian, a founding member of the KD Party, and a deputy of the Third and Fourth Duma, stressed in his speech at the KD’s 1905 constituent congress that the party did not support the slogans of a democratic republic and the nationalization of the means of production, since some of its members did not support them at all, while others did not see them as part of “practical politics”. Miliukov then drew a direct parallel between his party and Western intellectuals, claiming that it was especially close to “social reformists”.20 Although for socialists parliamentarism was not a goal but a means of achieving socialism, they did view the spread of the institution as a marker of global progress. Commenting on the Xinhai Revolution and the developments in the Republic of China in 1912, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin celebrated the awakening of the “four hundred million backward Asians” to political life and stressed the
18 Sokolov, Parlamentarizm: Opyt Pravovoi Teorii Parlamentskogo Stroia, pp. v–vi, 2, 7, 19, 60, 104, 122, 352–355, 378, 395–397, 403, 405–406, 408, 410–411, 414–416, 421–423, 425–430, 432. 19 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov [Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries], Nasha Programma: Obshchedostupnoe Izlozhenie [Our Programme: A Commonly Accessible Version], Saint Petersburg: Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov, 1908, pp. 24–26; Programmy Russkikh Politicheskikh Partii [The Programmes of Russian Political Parties], Saint Petersburg: Izdanie V. Kharitonova, 1905, pp. 54–55, 64–65; Shershenevich, Programma Partii Narodnoi Svobody (Konstitutsionno-Demokraticheskoi), pp. 9–10. 20 P. N. Miliukov, “Vstupitel’naia Rech’ Na Uchreditel’nom S’ezde K.-D. Partii, 14 Oktiabria 1905 Goda” [“Opening Speech at the Constituent Congress of the KD Party, 14 October 1905”], in God Bor’by: Publitsisticheskaia Khronika 1905–1906 [The Year of Struggle: A Publicist Chronicle of 1905–1906], Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia t-va “Obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1907, pp. 100–101.
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importance of the convocation of the Chinese parliament – “the first parliament in a former despotic country”.21 Returning to the issue in 1913, Lenin called the Chinese parliament “the first parliament of the [a] great Asian country” and praised Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party (Guomindang) for bringing the broad masses of Chinese peasants into politics and calling it “a great factor of progress of Asia and progress of humanity”.22 During the Revolution of 1917, the KDs amended their programme, calling for a “democratic parliamentary republic” instead of a constitutional monarchy. The executive branch was to be headed by a president to be elected by the parliament and to govern through the cabinet, which would be answerable to the parliament.23 In this respect, the party opted for a more radical parliamentary regime than either Duguit or Sokolov suggested for a country like Russia. In Osnovy Konstitutsionnogo Prava, Gessen also understood political answerability of the cabinet to the parliament as the main feature of parliamentarism but did not see the equality between the two bodies as necessary. On the contrary, the independence of the cabinet would, according to Gessen, lead to dual power. He also supported the strict separation of powers, which was best done in republics. At the same time, Gessen saw the readiness of particular countries for a republic as unequal. Until a monarch no longer was considered an embodiment of the state idea in the “consciousness of the popular masses”, a republic was impossible and would be seen as anarchy.24 Gessen rejected, however, the notion of popular sovereignty. For him, the people were the source of legislative authority in a representative republic but were not seen as capable of exercising it due to the lack of a deliberate unity of wills. Legislative authority was exercised by the parliament on behalf of the people and in its interests, but the election of deputies was not a delegation of legislative competence since the people did not have it in the first place. A citizen was a voter, and not a lawmaker, who adopted legislation through his or her representatives. According to Gessen, the parliament received its competence from the constitution and not from the people, but the elections were still 21 V. I. Lenin, “Obnovlennyi Kitai” [1912] [“Renewed China”], Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii [Collected Works], 5th edn, vol. 22, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1968, pp. 189–191. 22 V. I. Lenin, “Bor’ba Partii v Kitae” [1913] [“The Struggle of Parties in China”], Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, 5th edn, vol. 23, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1973, pp. 138–140. 23 Konstitutsionno-demokraticheskaia partiia [Constitutional Democratic Party], Programma Partii Narodnoi Svobody (K.-D.) [The Programme of the Party of People’s Freedom (KD)], Odessa: Konstitutsionno-demokraticheskaia partiia, 1917, p. 3. 24 Gessen, Osnovy Konstitutsionnogo Prava, pp. 23, 32–34, 140–141, 417–419.
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needed for the will of the parliament to correspond to popular interests. Gessen concluded that popular representation implied the incapacity of the people. In his view, a parliament was not and could not be a cliché of the popular masses; it organized and created the general will, turning the anarchy of circulating opinions into one.25 Socialists did not share such a view on popular representation, with Mark Veniaminovich Vishniak, a legal scholar and a member of the SR Party, insisting that according to the idea of democracy (narodopravstvo), as initially formulated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, only the people were the source of public opinion, that is to say of the will directed at the common good. A parliament, according to Vishniak, was only a secondary institution articulating but not creating popular will, which very much corresponded to Jellinek’s interpretation of the people as the primary body and the parliament as the secondary body.26
Right and Left Anti-Parliamentarisms The debates on parliamentarism featured many critical voices focusing on the deficiencies of the State Duma and other contemporary parliaments as well as the inadequacy of the parliamentary system as such. The issue of subalternity was prominent in the works of both radical left and far right intellectuals. The former focused on class subalternity and the failure of Western parliamentarism to address it, with the anarchists campaigning against the state as such. The criticism of the latter foregrounded Russia’s self-sufficient greatness, endangered, inter alia, by parliamentary ideas and other aspects of Westernization, decrying the perceived violation of the interests of the ethnic Russians by political parties and non-Russians. The idea of Russia’s conceptual subalternity in a Western-centred world dates back to the Slavophiles and the Pochvenniks (“those calling to return to the soil”) and the conservative elites, which facilitated the official state-centred Russian nationalism of the nineteenth century. The Revolution of 1905–1907 intensified the criticism of Russia’s conceptual dependency on the West. Vasilii Vasil’evich Rozanov, a conservative philosopher, refused to admit that a constitution and a parliament were introduced in Russia, maintaining that the Duma
25 Gessen, Osnovy Konstitutsionnogo Prava, pp. 138–141. 26 M. V. Vishniak, Uchreditel’noe Sobranie i Proportsional’nye Vybory [The Constituent Assembly and Proportional Elections], Petrograd: Tip. Ts. K. Partii Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov, 1917, p. 16; Ellinek, Obshchee Uchenie o Gosudarstve, pp. 429–433.
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was a product of Russian history – produced by the Russian soul, enthusiasm, patience, and work – and not a “foreign novelty”. Although Rozanov admitted that the Russian people also moved to liberation like elsewhere, this movement was parallel to those of the others. For Rozanov it did not have the same direction. The Duma did not mimic Western institutions and was not a place for representing difference, and Rozanov called for unity amongst Russia’s political groups, directed at mitigating the splits in the Russian society.27 Aleksandr Petrovich Liprandi, a right-wing monarchist political writer, cited the experience of Western empires when rejecting Russia’s need for parliamentarism. Countering the argument that autocracy resulted in the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, he asserted that the initial failures of the British in the Boer Wars (1880–1881 and 1899–1902) and the loss of the Spanish-American War (1898) by Spain demonstrated that a parliament did not boost the state’s military efficiency (albeit he did not comment on the USA having a parliament of its own). Furthermore, Liprandi claimed that parliamentarism was the reason why empires failed, pointing to Spain and Sweden, which lost their great power status after political liberalization, and to the crisis in Austro-Hungary. According to Liprandi, the German Empire, by contrast, came to prominence due to the efforts of Otto von Bismarck and Wilhelm II as well as minimal parliamentary influence. Liprandi concluded that Russia was self-reliant. Although he did see Russia as subaltern and in need of catching up with the West, in his opinion it lagged behind due to being under the Mongol yoke from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.28 Other right-wing writers dismissed the role of parliamentarism in the global leadership of the British Empire. Vladimir Ivanovich Ger’e, a historian, an appointed member of the State Council, and a member of the centre-right Union of October 17 (Octobrists), acknowledged England’s political mechanism. Yet, in his opinion, this mechanism was based on the country’s aristocratic regime and deteriorated together with it. Parliamentarism, according to Ger’e, meant transferring state power to parties. Given that their members were “slaves to party discipline” rather than citizens, parliaments turned into “fairs”. Ger’e stressed that a popular representation, consisting of many sporadic parties and
27 V. V. Rozanov, “Gosudar’ i Gosudarstvennaia Duma” [1906] [“The Tsar and the State Duma”], in: I. B. Borisov et al. (eds.), Politicheskie Instituty, Izbiratel’noe Pravo i Protsess v Trudakh Rossiiskikh Myslitelei XIX–XX Vekov [Political Institutions, Electoral Law and Process in the Works of Russian Thinkers of the Nineteenth–Twentieth Century], Moscow: Tsentral’naia izbiratel’naia komissiia Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 2008, pp. 607–608. 28 A. P. Liprandi, Nuzhen Li Rossii Parlamentarizm? [Does Russia Need Parliamentarism?], Kharkov: Mirnyi Trud, 1910, pp. 9–10, 18, 35–36, 60.
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groups, could not rule “a great empire” due to their mutual hate and lack of experience and traditions.29 Vladislav Frantsevich Zalesskii, a legal scholar, an economist, and a rightwing Black Hundred activist in the Kazan Province, and Liprandi explicated partisanship, engendered in parliamentarism, in their criticisms. They heavily relied on contemporary academic and public discussions of parliamentarism in Russia and in the West, citing Josef Schöffel, Ettore Lombardo Pellegrino, Alfred Offermann, Karl Walcker, and other authors. According to Zalesskii, contemporary deputies represented partisan rather than state interests at the expense of common good. He called parliamentary rule many-headed tyranny and tyranny of the majority, dismissing both the very principle of majority rule as erroneous and pointing that a minority claiming to be the majority could impose its will through parliamentarism, depending on electoral constellations. Sharing such views, Liprandi added that partisanship was also detrimental for deliberation, as everything was decided within factions.30 For the far right, the threat to the “greatness” of the state was intertwined with the supposed threats to the ethnic Russians. Rozanov’s aspiration for unity in the State Duma was shattered by the oppositional majorities of the first two Dumas, which triggered their dissolution. Anticipating the convocation of the Third Duma, based on the limited electoral law, Rozanov expected the new Duma to finally become one of the “state” and not one of the “society”, thereby rejecting the liberal notion of societal self-organization. Rozanov expressed hope that the Duma would be a “national Russian” representation and personally attacked the Armenian Arshak Gerasimovich Zurabov and the Georgian Isidor Ivanovich Ramishvili, the SD deputies in the Second and First Duma respectively. What progressives and non-Russian nationalists saw as the ethnic non-Russians finally gaining a voice through the Duma,31 Rozanov saw as a clear indication that the Russian state and the ethnic Russians (who in practice made up some 44.3 per cent of the imperial population in terms of language but legally also included the 17.8 per cent speaking Ukrainian and 4.7 per cent speaking Belarusian, thereby becoming a majority)32 could become subaltern;
29 V. I. Ger’e, “O Konstitutsii i Parlamentarizme v Rossii” [1906] [“On the Constitution and Parliamentarism in Russia”], in: Borisov et al. (eds.), Politicheskie Instituty, pp. 595–597. 30 Liprandi, Nuzhen Li Rossii Parlamentarizm?, pp. 13–14, 18–19; V. F. Zalesskii, Parlamentarizm i Ego Otsenka Na Zapade [Parliamentarism and Its Evaluation in the West], Moscow: Russkaia pechatnia, 1909, pp. 10–13, 15–17. 31 Semyonov, “‘The Real and Live Ethnographic Map of Russia’”. 32 Institut demografii Natsional’nogo issledovatel’skogo universiteta Vysshaia shkola ekonomiki [The Institute of Demographics of the National Research University Higher School of
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he claimed that the “grey-haired old Rus’”, embodied by the people of “serious positions and professions”, had to listen to the “nonsense” of the deputies from the Caucasus.33 Ger’e also specifically attacked the SDs, calling them “a party of the liberation of Caucasus from Russia, rather than the liberation of Russia from capitalists”.34 Similar to Rozanov, Zalesskii supported the state in the dichotomy between state and society, which was crucial for contemporary debates, and claimed that parliamentarism contradicted the idea of the state by allowing the society to take it over. The society, for Zalesskii, was a people divided by access to moral and material goods and a means for achieving selfish individual interests. It could not overcome the divisions by itself, and only the state, as a force above the society, could subordinate all individual interests to one goal – the goal of the good for the whole people. Parliamentarism, which allowed groups to form based on their own interests, hence undermined the capacity of the state to do so. Agreeing with Ger’e’s opinion that England’s experience was unique, Zalesskii dismissed the notion of parliamentarism’s natural spread through the civilized world over the nineteenth century as blind copying of the English system.35 In a similar manner, Liprandi asserted that institutions could not simply be copied due to the ubiquitous, different conditions. Russia, according to Liprandi, was incomparable to England, and constitutionalism contradicted the character and the worldview of the Russian people.36 Citing the experience of the Habsburg Empire, Zalesskii claimed that parliamentarism was specifically dangerous for multiethnic states, since deputies did not represent the whole people but only their national groups.37 Liprandi supported this line of argumentation, claiming that in multiethnic states like AustroHungary and Russia the combination of national and party struggle was against the very idea of empire, threatening to fragment the state. Like other rightists, he combined chauvinism with conspiracy theories, which saw European majorities as subalterns, claiming that the French people were victimized by the “Free Masons, Jews, and socialists”, who pretended to be popular representatives, Economics], “Pervaia Vseobshchaia Perepis’ Naseleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii 1897 g.” [“The First General Census of the Russian Empire of 1897”], http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/census. php?cy=0 (accessed 1 December 2015). 33 V. V. Rozanov, “Chastnyi i Obshchestvennyi Interes v Gosudarstvennoi Dume” [1907] [“Private and Public Interest in the State Duma”], in: Borisov et al. (ed.) Politicheskie Instituty, pp. 616–617. 34 Ger’e, “O Konstitutsii i Parlamentarizme v Rossii [1906]”, pp. 595–597. 35 Zalesskii, Parlamentarizm i Ego Otsenka Na Zapade, pp. 5–10, 37–38. 36 Liprandi, Nuzhen Li Rossii Parlamentarizm?, p. 66. 37 Zalesskii, Parlamentarizm i Ego Otsenka Na Zapade, pp. 39–40.
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during the separation of the church from the state. In a similar manner, “Masons, Jews, and aliens [inorodtsy, the domestic ‘foreigners’]”38 supposedly invented the Revolution of 1905–1907. Liprandi, nevertheless, decried the lack of proportional representation of Slavic population in the Habsburg Empire and claimed that the Slavic majority in Hungary was victimized by the Hungarians.39 Despite their rejection of societal self-organization, rightists also participated in mass politics. Speaking at the Third All-Russian Congress of the Russian People (Kiev, 2–7 October 1906), Zalesskii maintained that Russia had to get rid of parliamentarism as the “mediastinum” that prevented unity between the tsar and the people. Presenting constitutionalism and minority rights as a Western conspiracy, the Russian National Union of Archangel Michael, a radical right-wing monarchist party, went further and cautioned the representatives of the Inter-Parliamentary Union from visiting Russia in 1910. Accusing them of pushing Russian state life onto the “constitutional course” and pressuring Russia in its relations with the ostensibly oppressed Finland, the organization called for monarchist and nationalist organizations to protest, suggesting that if during such protests the visitors were harmed, then they only had themselves to blame.40 The First World War and the formation of the Progressive Bloc in the Duma and the State Council in 1915 – a liberal and moderate nationalist parliamentary majority that demanded liberal reforms, including a “cabinet of popular trust” – stimulated anti-parliamentarism of the far right. In October 1915, the Union of the Russian People, the largest right-wing monarchist organization, issued a proclamation claiming that the “inner enemies” of the motherland – “constitutionalists, parliamentarians, revolutionaries, and especially Germans and Jews” – used the temporary problems with military supplies to deceive the Russian people. According to the proclamation, demanding that the tsar appointed ministers from among them, the “Judeo-Masons” sought to seize the power and limit the rights of the tsar under the guise of patriotism. It once again rejected the argument that autocracy was responsible for the failures regarding war and pointed to the defeat of Belgium and the failures of France, which had answerable cabinets, as well as to the strength of Germany, which did not have one.41 Speaking at the All-Russian Monarchist Conference (Nizhny Novgorod, 26–29
38 This was a legal social estate including many representatives of ethnic non-Russians. 39 Liprandi, Nuzhen Li Rossii Parlamentarizm?, pp. 11, 66–67. 40 Iu. I. Kir’ianov (ed.), Pravye Partii, 1905–1917 gg.: Dokumenty i Materialy [Right-Wing Parties, 1905–1917: Documents and Materials], vol. 1: 1905–1910 gg., Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998, pp. 220, 570. 41 Ibid., vol. 2: 1911–1917 gg., Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998, pp. 474–475.
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November 1915), Nikolai Evgen’evich Markov, a deputy of the Third and Fourth Duma and one of the leaders of the Union of the Russian People, added that the Russian SDs were misguided and spiritually enslaved by the “Jew-German” Karl Marx.42 Right-wing writers backed their anti-parliamentary views with numerous examples of how parliamentarism failed, or supposedly failed, in the West. Zalesskii offered sporadic cases of corruption and inefficient spending in Europe and the USA as a proof of parliamentarism’s inefficiency. Liprandi asserted that in free countries corruption was freer, as corrupted administrators were protected by their parties, which would not risk losing an election by exposing their own members. Both Zalesskii and Liprandi maintained that the West itself was disenchanted with parliamentarism. Citing Schöffel, Liprandi claimed that parliamentarism resulted in the fall of popular morality through, for instance, the conduct of electoral campaigns, falsification of elections, as well as threats to and bribery of the voters. Citing Friedrich Nietzsche and other European intellectuals, he called liberalism the victory of the “herd” principle, as it brought people to one poor standard, and suggested that Russia was to play a special role in the future, given the spiritual decay of Western Europe. When discussing the corruption of parliaments in the West, Liprandi used the arguments of socialist intellectuals, claiming that, for example, in Sweden and the USA the parliaments were owned by capitalists. Furthermore, he even cited Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin, a leading anarchist writer, when criticizing the corruption of Western parliaments and the lack of expertise among the deputies.43 Indeed, for anarchists, parliaments were unacceptable in any form. In the Russian translation of Words of a Rebel, which was first published in French in 1885, Kropotkin formulated his stance on parliamentarism. According to Kropotkin, representative regimes were not a source of freedom but a mere acknowledgement of the rights that the people conquered through rebellions. As institutions, parliaments remained representatives of the propertied class. Besides, they would always remain an institution of subordination of the majority to a ruling minority, and hence their membership was irrelevant.44 Kropotkin’s position was taken up by other Russian anarchists. A 1906 proclamation of the Moscow AnarchistsCommunists, for instance, called the working people to boycott not only the “tsarist” State Duma but also a possible “revolutionary” constituent assembly. The 42 Ibid., pp. 497–498. 43 Liprandi, Nuzhen Li Rossii Parlamentarizm?, pp. 1–4, 5, 8, 11–12, 31–35, 57–59, 68–70; Zalesskii, Parlamentarizm i Ego Otsenka Na Zapade, pp. 1–5, 22–23. 44 P. A. Kropotkin, Rechi Buntovshchika [1885] [Words of a Rebel], Saint Petersburg: Redaktor-izdatel’ Valerii Brodskii, 1906, pp. 89, 101.
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toilers were to “lose any faith in their liberation through the parliament (from above) and believe only in the might of their organizations”. According to the proclamation, when the moment was ripe, the toilers were to liberate themselves by seizing the means of production and organizing communal economy.45 Kropotkin himself reaffirmed the radical anti-parliamentary view at the congress of Anarchists-Communists (London, 17–18 September 1906). He rejected the idea of dividing the struggle into two steps – a political coup and economic reforms ostensibly to be implemented by a Russian parliament. The struggle against autocracy and capital was to be simultaneous. Any parliament was a deal between the parties of the past and those of the future and hence would never introduce revolutionary measures. The most revolutionary parliament would only be able to legalize what the people would have already achieved by then. Presenting Russia’s uniqueness from a different angle, Kropotkin maintained that the Russian people had a historic chance to take power into their own hands and surpass the stages that the West went through. According to Kropotkin, the workers were to self-organize into unions to fight against capital and to rule themselves later and avoid parliamentary gradualism.46 On the far right, the notion of class subalternity was combined with that of the Russian people, producing right-wing populism. The Union of the Russian People explicated the differences between sobornost’ (roughly meaning spiritual community) and Western parliamentarism and constitutionalism from an anti-Semitic and conspiratorial standpoint in their programme documents in 1912. Parliamentarism ostensibly served God, the state, and popular needs in word only, whereas in truth it served “Mammon”, revolution, and “the monstrous cosmopolitan Hydra, sucking the wealth from the Russian people into the international Jewish banks, enslaving the holy Russian land and its people to the global union of the Free Masons and the ‘intelligentsia’ leading it”. Sobornost’, according to the organization, was led by the tsars, embodied in the Russian Assemblies of the Land (Zemskie Sobory),47 and fed by the unity and mutuality of all estates. European parliaments, by contrast, emerged out of enmity towards supreme authority and the desire to take this authority for themselves.
45 V. V. Kriven’kii (ed.), Anarkhisty: Dokumenty i Materialy 1883–1935 gg. [Anarchists: Documents and Materials of 1883–1935], vol. 1: 1883–1916 gg, Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998, pp. 202–203. 46 Ibid., pp. 230–234, 241–242. 47 This term uniting different early modern gatherings under one concept was a nineteenthcentury invention, see N. Shields Kollmann, The Russian Empire, 1450–1801, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 137.
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Every member of parliament always defended individual or group profit and the interests of the capital, deceiving the popular masses.48 Nestor Nikolaevich Tikhanovich-Savitskii, a businessman, a regional leader of the Union of the Russian People, and later the founding chairman of the Astrakhan People’s Monarchist Party, combined far right attitudes with leftist economic slogans. Criticizing Russia’s unionist movement during the First World War – the broad self-organization into zemstvo, municipal, cooperative, industrial, and other groups as both a means of social participation in the war effort and a substitute for the inefficient Duma – and calling for its suppression in his appeal to Nicholas II in March 1916, Tikhanovich-Savitskii suggested to dissolve and abolish the Duma for spreading panic among the population and calling for a coup d’état at a time of war. Dismissing the “dirt of European parliamentarism” as incompatible with Russia’s future, he called it a servant of “capitalists and bourgeois intelligentsia”, enslaving the people. Consequently, Russia’s future was in the “Russian autocracy”, relying on the “popular masses”. In the Osnovnye Polozheniia Narodnykh Monarkhicheskikh Soiuzov [Points on People’s Monarchist Unions], which he developed by May 1916, Tikhanovich-Savitskii made even greater use of socialist discourse. Claiming that “the rich needed the constitution and the parliament”, he explained that it was “the banks, syndicates, [and] rich industrialists”, supported by the “bourgeois classes of the society”, that wanted to limit the authority of the tsar through the establishment of an answerable cabinet. The supposed goal of the rich was also discussed from a socialist standpoint. The document claimed that such a cabinet was to adopt such laws that would support their interests at the expense of the interests of the “middle and lower classes of the toiling population”.49 It was, however, neither the rightists nor the anarchists who led the antiparliamentary movement during the Revolution of 1917. The SD slogan of the “autocracy of the people” took a non-parliamentary shape in April 1917, after Lenin returned to Russia and consolidated his leadership among the Bolsheviks. The latter’s conference adopted a resolution calling for the transfer of authority to the soviets (councils) as bodies of direct workers’ and peasants’ rule during the second phase of the revolution. Even though the resolution did not fully reject the institution of parliament, suggesting that state power could also be transferred to the Constituent Assembly or local self-government bodies, it marked the formal departure of the Bolsheviks from the 1903 SD programme. The conference resolved to amend the party programme, replacing the demand for a
48 Kir’ianov (ed.), Pravye Partii, vol. 2, pp. 212–213. 49 Ibid., pp. 546, 553.
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“bourgeois-parliamentary republic” with the demand for a “democratic proletarian-peasant republic”, that is to say “a state without police, army, and privileged bureaucracy”.50 Lenin’s ideas during the period were more radical than the resolutions of the April 1917 conference and reflected the popularity of anarchist slogans, especially in the Russian army. He practically took over the anarchist idea of Russia being capable of surpassing the stages of Western development and embodying an alternative modernity. As summarized in the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda (Truth), for Lenin the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies were a “new unique organization of state power”. Such organizations, according to Lenin, were radically different from all previously existing ones and were “in no way suitable for the establishment of bourgeois institutions, for the establishment of a bourgeois parliamentary republic”. With the formation of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and local soviets, the power was already in the hands of organized armed people. At the same time, Lenin claimed that a socialist revolution, which he anticipated in the West, was not to be immediately expected in Russia, although Russia had entered the transition to it.51
Competing Designs Moderate nationalists and socialists, together with liberals, still viewed a parliament as a possible means of achieving their goals. The theoretical approaches to parliamentarism, the notions of subalternity, the experience of the State Duma and foreign parliaments, and the confluences of party and broader revolutionary politics framed the debates on the specific forms a Russian parliament could take. Parties began to design a future parliament during the Revolution of 1905–1907, but it was the fall of the monarchy in 1917 and the anticipation of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly that made the debates especially intense.
50 Sed’maia (Aprel’skaia) Vserossiiskaia Konferentsiia RSDRP (Bol’shevikov); Petrogradskaia Obshchegorodskaia Konferentsiia RSDRP (Bol’shevikov): Aprel’ 1917 Goda: Protokoly [The Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks); The Petrograd City Conference of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks): April 1917: Minutes], Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1958, pp. 258–260. 51 “Newspaper Report on the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP(b)”, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, 5th edn, vol. 31, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1969, pp. 359–360.
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Iulii Osipovich Martov, who after the split of the SDs in 1903 was one of the Menshevik leaders, stressed in a popular booklet that the struggle between different parties during the elections, in the parliament, and in the press was the same class struggle. Yet he did not call for boycotting parliaments as such and urged voters to determine what class interests a party represented.52 After the boycott of the elections to the First Duma by socialist parties brought little result, many SDs agreed to use the Duma as a rostrum for revolutionary propaganda. Defending such a position, the Menshevik Fedor Il’ich Dan stressed the need to direct popular attention at specific issues through the elections under party programmes and the discussions in the Duma, disregarding its nature as a non-parliament and contributing to the future uprising.53 During the Years of Reaction, some SDs also considered broader participation in the Duma. Speaking at the Vienna Conference of the SDs, which united the Mensheviks and other non-Bolshevik factions in 1912, Mikhail Isaakovich Liber, a Menshevik and a so-called Liquidator (seeking to confine the SD activities to legal forms), maintained that the slogan of a democratic republic did not contradict the slogan of a potent Duma. The SDs therefore could also facilitate the popular movement through parliamentary activity. Moderate SDs disagreed with Lenin, who claimed earlier that year that the period of peaceful parliamentarism in Western Europe was coming to an end and reiterated the slogan of the dictatorship of proletariat and peasantry in Russia, although the forms of the latter were yet to be set.54 Moderate liberal, socialist, and conservative discourses were not monolithic and suggested different solutions to the issue of class subalternity. For Gessen, it lay in parliamentarism. Although, according Osnovy Konstitutsionnogo Prava, there were many deputies in contemporary parliaments who represented class interests, the character of contemporary elections resulted in the election of one deputy by different social classes and hence held narrow class politics in check.55 Ger’e viewed the solution in “constitutional” rather than “parliamentary” monarchy. Unlike the latter, it represented not the rule of parties but the rule of the government above them. Accordingly, constitutional monarchy kept the benefits of monarchist rule, such as the unity of will in the state. Because of
52 L. Martov, Politicheskie Partii v Rossii [Political Parties in Russia], Saint Petersburg: Novyi mir, 1906, pp. 29–31. 53 S. V. Tiutiukin (ed.), Men’sheviki: Dokumenty i Materialy, 1903–Fevral’ 1917 gg. [The Mensheviks: Documents and Materials, 1903–February 1917], Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996, p. 182. 54 Iu. N. Amiantov (ed.), Konferentsii RSDRP 1912 Goda: Dokumenty i Materialy [Conferences of the RSDLP of 1912: Documents and Materials], Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008, pp. 569–570, 809. 55 Gessen, Osnovy Konstitutsionnogo Prava, p. 193.
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being independent from classes and parties, monarchy could mitigate the differentiation between them and observe the general interest – that being the interest of the state.56 Whereas the far right also boycotted the elections of the First Duma and occasionally obstructed its activities later, some right-wing intellectuals suggested using it as a proper institution. Mikhail Osipovich Men’shikov, a political writer and a founding member of the moderate right All-Russian National Union, acknowledged the benefits of political modernization for Japan. According to Men’shikov, in modern times it was impossible to be a great power without the moral participation of the people who would elect their best people. Men’shikov claimed, however, that one could never vote for the “criminal parties”, implying the socialists, and those aliens who were the “enemies” of Russia, meaning those minority groups that had their own caucuses in the Duma – the Jews, Poles, Lithuanians, Tatars, and others. The elections were therefore supposed to boost the resistance of the ethnic Russians to the “alien pressure”, which he compared to a war with foreigners.57 Unlike the SDs, the SRs, and socialist nationalist parties, which declared the need for universal (for both men and women) suffrage, the KDs and other liberal groups did not immediately support women’s suffrage. Initially, zemstvo liberals backed universal male suffrage, whereas the first programme of the KD Party noted that a minority within the party, which was against female suffrage, was not bound by the programme’s provision on universal suffrage.58 Since 1906, however, the KDs formally supported women’s suffrage. In order to make the future republic democratic, the SRs suggested not only the universal right to vote but also broad participation of the population in legislation through referendums and the right to initiate legislation for groups of people.59 Socialists overwhelmingly supported proportional representation through voting by lists. The SR Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Magerovskii explained that only the proportional system ensured that a parliament was “a mirror of the country” by granting parties the number of seats that corresponded to their
56 Ger’e, “O Konstitutsii i Parlamentarizme v Rossii” [1906], pp. 589–591. 57 M. O. Men’shikov, “Kogo Vybirat’ v Parlament” [1912] [“Who Should be Elected to the Parliament”], in: Borisov et al. (eds.), Politicheskie Instituty, pp. 688–693. 58 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov, Nasha Programma: Obshchedostupnoe Izlozhenie, pp. 24–25; Programmy Russkikh Politicheskikh Partii, pp. 26, 43, 50, 55; Shershenevich, Programma Partii Narodnoi Svobody (Konstitutsionno-Demokraticheskoi), p. 8. 59 D. A. Magerovskii, Uchreditel’noe Sobranie i Ego Zadachi [The Constituent Assembly and Its Objectives], Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Burevestnik, 1917, pp. 20, 22.
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influence in the country.60 The KD programme did not demand proportional elections. Gessen rejected their necessity, arguing that since the parliament could not be a “mechanical cliché” of the masses, then the only condition was that the majority in the parliament reflected the majority in the country. According to Gessen, the proportional system represented only formally organized groups.61 Vasilii Vasil’evich Vodovozov, a moderate socialist educator and a legal scholar, openly supported a majoritarian system for Russia, claiming that the country was too large, that the proportional system would increase the fragmentation of political parties, and that it did not suit Russia’s regional and ethnic diversity, as deputies elected through party lists would not be connected to particular localities and ethnic groups.62 The issue of representing minority, regional, and local interests made parliamentary designs dependent on the different approaches to decentralization, which between 1905 and 1917 were of utter importance for the SRs, KDs, and especially minority nationalist and regionalist groups.63 Zemstvo liberals suggested forming the State Duma with two chambers: the Chamber of Popular Representatives and the Zemstvo Chamber. Whereas the former was to be elected directly, the latter was to be formed by provincial zemstvo assemblies and municipal dumas of large cities. The KDs allowed for pluralism of opinions on the matter, with the option of the second chamber of self-government bodies in place.64 Kotliarevskii defended the idea of such a chamber and bicameralism in general, maintaining that a unicameral parliament would focus on narrow class interests and threaten with excessive centralization. Accompanied by local and regional decentralization, based on potent universally elected local self-government, the second chamber would serve as a safeguard against radicalism and embody democratic decentralization.65 Duguit offered a different approach to forming the second chamber. Suggesting that a nation was made up of both individuals and groups based on
60 Magerovskii, Uchreditel’noe Sobranie i Ego Zadachi, pp. 20, 22. 61 Gessen, Osnovy Konstitutsionnogo Prava, pp. 290–291, 308, 311, 314, 317–318, 322. 62 V. V. Vodovozov, Kakaia Sistema Dolzhna Byt’ Priniata Dlia Izbraniia Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia [What System Should Be Adopted for the Election of the Constituent Assembly], Petrograd: Zemlia i trud, 1917, pp. 11, 29–30. 63 I. Sablin and A. Semyonov, “Autonomy and Decentralization in the Global Imperial Crisis: The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union in 1905–1924”, Modern Intellectual History, https:// doi.org/10.1017/S1479244318000252 (accessed 18 June 2018). 64 Konstitutsionno-demokraticheskaia partiia, Programma Partii Narodnoi Svobody (K.-D.), p. 3; Programmy Russkikh Politicheskikh Partii, pp. 26, 43. 65 S. A. Kotliarevskii, “Predposylki Demokratii” [1905] [“Prerequisites of Democracy”], in: Borisov et al. (eds.), Politicheskie Instituty, pp. 559–560, 572–573.
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common interests and labour, he put forward the idea of the second chamber elected by professional groups, such as large industrial and art groups.66 During the Revolution of 1917, some socialists and liberals in fact viewed the soviets as “legislative chambers of deputies” and the Petrograd Soviet as “a surrogate people’s Duma”, which replaced the State Council in a two-house parliament of new Russia.67 The KD Party did not adopt a single position on the number of chambers by August 1917, postponing the resolution of the issue. Fedor Fedorovich Kokoshkin, a legal scholar and a deputy of the First Duma, supported the benefits of the second chamber for safeguarding local interests but suggested to wait until the forms of decentralization were decided upon.68 Gessen opposed the idea of a chamber of self-governments, insisting that local and minority interests would be ensured by broad self-government on site, and of a chamber of professional groups, since important collective interests often were not organized.69 Socialists, including those coming from the imperial peripheries, also overwhelmingly opposed the second chamber. The SDs had already specified unicameral parliamentarism in their programme in 1903.70 The Armenian SD Bogdan Mirzadzanovich Knuniants maintained that even elected second chambers, such as the Senate in France, continued to represent the interests of the propertied classes and would hence slow down the legislation in favour of the toiling people.71 Although most of the SRs supported unicameralism, there were voices in favour of bicameralism within the party, and the issue did not make it into their first programme. Speaking at the first SR congress (Imatra, 29 December 1905–4 January 1906), Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov, one of the party’s leaders, suggested
66 Diugi, Konstitutsionnoe Pravo: Obshchaia Teoriia Gosudarstva, pp. 530–534. 67 I. Sablin, The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Far Eastern Republic, 1905–1922: Nationalisms, Imperialisms, and Regionalisms in and after the Russian Empire, London: Routledge, 2018, p. 88. 68 D. B. Pavlov (ed.), Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta i Zagranichnykh Grupp KonstitutsionnoDemokraticheskoi Partii, 1905–Seredina 1930-kh gg. [The Minutes of the Central Committee and Foreign Groups of the Constitutional Democratic Party, 1905–the middle of the 1930s], vol. 3: Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta konstitutsionno-demokraticheskoi partii, 1915–1920 gg. [The Minutes of the Central Committee of the Constitutional Democratic Party], Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998, pp. 396–401. 69 Gessen, Osnovy Konstitutsionnogo Prava, pp. 356–358, 360–365. 70 Programmy Russkikh Politicheskikh Partii, p. 55. 71 B. Radin [B. M. Knuniants], Kakoe Izbiratel’noe Pravo Nuzhno Rabochemu Klassu [Which Electoral Law Does the Working Class Need], Saint Petersburg: Trud, 1906, p. 15.
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that a non-privileged second chamber representing the country’s autonomous parts was possible in a federative system.72 Others, however, insisted that the autonomy of regions and minorities – to be realized through their own universally elected parliaments, which was put forward by the SRs and socialist nationalist parties – was sufficient. Speaking at the party’s third congress (Moscow, 25 May 1917–4 June 1917), Vishniak advocated unicameralism, claiming that regional legislation, referendums, and the right to initiate legislation were sufficient.73 In the Labour People’s Socialist Party, which was a successor of the moderate socialist Labour faction in the State Duma, there was also no single opinion on the matter, with some suggesting in the summer of 1917 a federal court instead of the second chamber.74 The Mensheviks retained a pluralism of opinions until the convocation of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, with some in their faction tolerating the creation of a possible federal chamber. The party, however, refrained from initiating the discussion of autonomy and hence a possible federal parliament in the assembly.75 On 20 October 1917, the KD legal scholars Aleksandr Mikhailovich Kulisher and Boris Evgen’evich Shatskii presented a summary of approaches to the number of chambers to the Special Committee for Drafting the Fundamental Laws under the Provisional Government, which was chaired by Gessen and included Vishniak, Vodovozov, Kotliarevskii, and other liberal, socialist, and nonpartisan moderates. In their opinion, a possible second chamber could include both the representatives of autonomous territories and local self-government bodies and the representatives of the most important “organized social and cultural forces of the country”, such as representatives of trade and industry,
72 N. D. Erofeev (ed.), Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i Materialy, 1900–1925 gg. [The Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries: Documents and Materials], vol. 1: 1900–1907 gg., Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996, p. 405. 73 N. D. Erofeev (ed.), Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i Materialy, 1900–1925 gg., vol. 3, Part 1: Fevral’-oktiabr’ 1917, Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996, pp. 418–419. 74 A. V. Sypchenko and K. N. Morozov (eds.), Trudovaia Narodno-Sotsialisticheskaia Partiia: Dokumenty i Materialy [The Labour People’s Socialist Party: Documents and Materials], Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003, pp. 242, 244–246. 75 Z. Galili, A. Nenarokov, and L. Kheimson (eds.), Men’sheviki v 1917 godu [The Mensheviks in 1917], vol. 3. Ot kornilovskogo miatezha do kontsa dekabria [From the Kornilov Mutiny to Late December], Part 2: Ot Vremennogo Demokraticheskogo Soveta Rossiiskoi Respubliki do Kontsa Dekabria (Pervaia Dekada Oktiabria – Konets Dekabria) [From the Provisional Democratic Council of the Russian Republic to Late December], Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1997, pp. 580–581.
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cooperatives, trade unions, and academic institutions. The committee resolved in favour of bicameralism, with a majority of 11 against 7 votes.76 Unlike the number of chambers, a cabinet answerable to the parliament was part of the moderate consensus. Yet the status of its head and the head of the Russian republic (after the KDs abandoned the slogan of constitutional monarchy in 1917) remained contested. Even though liberal legal scholars tended to see a republic with a president elected by the people and not the parliament as more democratic,77 the KD Party unanimously included the institution of a president to be elected through the parliament and governing through an answerable cabinet into its programme in March 1917.78 The president’s own answerability remained unclear. Nol’de, for instance, was campaigning for a politically non-answerable head of state as late as August 1917.79 The SRs Magerovskii and Vishniak rejected the institution of a president altogether, suggesting a collegial body fully answerable to the parliament instead. The former viewed the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies as such bodies, while the latter appealed to the example of Switzerland in which canton councils (sovety)80 were answerable to assemblies.81 Although official discussions of Russia’s parliamentary system continued in the city of Petrograd until the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the establishment of a Bolshevik–Left SR government in late October 1917 reflected the growing popularity of leftist anti-parliamentarism. The discussions at the first Congress of the Left SRs (Petrograd, 19–28 November 1917), the new radical socialist party, were emblematic. The congress rejected the draft resolution, which called for a federative republic with a universally elected, unicameral 76 A. N. Medushevskii (ed.), Konstitutsionnye Proekty v Rossii XVIII – Nachala XX Veka [Constitutional Projects in Russia of the Eighteenth – Early Twentieth Century], Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010, pp. 587–591. 77 Kotliarevskii, “Predposylki Demokratii” [1905], pp. 559–560. 78 O. N. Lezhneva (ed.), S’ezdy i Konferentsii Konstitutsionno-Demokraticheskoi Partii, 1905– 1920 gg. [Congresses and Conferences of the Constitutional-Democratic Party], vol. 3, Part 1: 1915–1917 gg., Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000, p. 400. 79 B. E. Nol’de, Uchreditel’noe Sobranie i Ego Zadachi: Rech’ v Sobranii Grazhdan Goroda Rannenburga, Riazanskoi Gubernii 14 Avgusta 1917 goda [The Constitutent Assembly and Its Objectives: Speeach at the Gathering of Citizens of the Town of Rannenburg, Ryazan Province, 14 August 1917], Petrograd: K-vo Ogni, 1917, pp. 23–24. 80 Sokolov described the Swiss system as non-parliamentary and approaching direct democracy, see Sokolov, Parlamentarizm: Opyt Pravovoi Teorii Parlamentskogo Stroia, pp. 411, 414–416, 421–423. 81 Erofeev, Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i Materialy, 1900–1925 gg., vol. 3, Part 1: Fevral’–oktiabr’ 1917 [February–October 1917], pp. 412–414; Magerovskii, Uchreditel’noe Sobranie i Ego Zadachi, pp. 24–25.
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parliament. Instead, it adopted the resolution proposed by Magerovskii, which foregrounded the messianic role of the Russian people in facilitating alternative modernity by “destroying the yoke of class slaughter and struggle among modern people”. In order to do so, the toiling people had to take the power without sharing it with other classes, thereby establishing its dictatorship both in the centre and locally and rule the country through its class organizations during the continuous social revolution. The Central Executive Committee of Representatives from the Congress of All Soviets was to be recognized as the supreme legislative authority, while the Council of State Commissars, which it formed, would become the executive body responsible to the committee.82 Such a system, with some changes in the names of the bodies and formal distribution of competence, was soon formally established in Soviet Russia. Yet the main anti-parliamentary parties – the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs – did not make up a majority in the All-Russian Constituent Assembly even after their government ensured the exclusion of non-socialist deputies. Chernov, who was elected chairman, defended the slogan of a federative democratic republic in his opening speech on 5 January 1918. The Bolshevik Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, who defended Soviet rule, claimed that the Bolsheviks declared “war on the bourgeois-parliamentary republic” and aspired to create the “great Soviet Republic of Toilers” in Russia. Responding to the Menshevik declaration on establishing a democratic republic based on universal and proportional elections, put forward by Iraklii Georgievich Tsereteli, the Bolshevik Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov-Stepanov asserted that for a Marxist there was no popular will but only that of a class and called parliamentary bodies mere idols. The moderate socialist majority, however, predominated and did not recognize Soviet rule. After the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs staged a walkout, the Constituent Assembly proclaimed the Russian Democratic Federative Republic early on 6 January 1918, yet the Soviet government dissolved the assembly the same day.83
82 Ia. V. Leont’ev (ed.), Partiia Levykh Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i Materialy, 1917–1925 gg. [The Party of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries: Documents and Materials], vol. 1: Iul’ 1917 g.–mai 1918 g. [July 1917–May 1918], Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000, pp. 148–150. 83 T. E. Novitskaia, Uchreditel’noe Sobranie, Rossiia, 1918 g.: Stenogramma i Drugie Dokumenty [The Constituent Assembly, Russia, 1918: Verbatim Report and Other Documents], Moscow: Izd. Rossiiskogo otkrytogo un-ta, 1991, pp. 75, 77–78, 90, 115, 160.
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Conclusion The discussions among Russian intellectuals demonstrated that there was no single understanding of a parliament’s main functions and hence also its role in the country’s government and design. At the same time, they demonstrated several points of connection between otherwise distant political positions. The importance of the state connected both liberals and rightists, with the establishment (or non-establishment) of a parliament presumably boosting the state’s efficiency. Increasingly, a state-centred version of Russian nationalism was also adopted by socialists, with the ultimate slogan of turning Russia into a nationally defined, albeit ostensibly class-based, avant-garde of alternative modernity. Diversity management and decentralization proved especially important for liberals and socialists, who nevertheless did not agree on how a parliament could feature in them. The non-parliamentary approach to decentralization proved victorious, as the Bolshevik–Left SR government did create a Russian federative republic, featuring national autonomy, despite rejecting parliamentarism and the Bolsheviks’ earlier suggestions for a unitary state.84 Ironically, the importance of the state eclipsed the need for a representative government even among parliamentarism’s once vocal supporters. Although during the Russian Civil War (1918–1922) the slogan of reconvening the AllRussian Constituent Assembly was repeatedly voiced by various anti-Bolshevik groups – with plans for Ukrainian, Siberian, and other constituent assemblies as well as practices of delegated and elected “parliaments” in Transcaucasia, Ukraine, Siberia, and the Russian Far East – no major parliamentary developments occurred in the territories controlled by the Whites from 1918 to 1920. Many of the anti-Bolshevik leaders came to support one-man rule, be it reinstated monarchy or temporary dictatorship, and Sokolov himself joined the government of Anton Ivanovich Denikin, one such dictator. The Soviet anti-parliamentary system also proved short-lived. Anarchists and soon the Left SRs refused to recognize the Bolshevik-dominated regime as class dictatorship. Furthermore, anti-parliamentarism was formally abandoned in 1936 with the adoption of the new Soviet Constitution, which introduced a Soviet “parliament” – the Supreme Soviet with two chambers. Although few had illusions about the party control over the institution, in the 1950s the delegation of the Supreme Soviet was admitted into the Inter-Parliamentary Union, marking the formal participation of the Soviet Union in the global parliamentary modernity. 84 For more on the subject, see T. Penter and I. Sablin, “Soviet Federalism from Below: The Soviet Republics of Odessa and the Russian Far East, 1917–1918”, Journal of Eurasian Studies 11 (2020) 2, pp. 40–52.
Fredrik Petersson
12 A Neutral Place? Anti-Colonialism, Peace, and Revolution in Stockholm, 1917 When the Dutch-Scandinavian social democratic committee was established in the beginning of this year [1917] with the noble intention of discussing in what way and what means to use to end the war in general [. . .] this aroused lively expectations among the suffering and oppressed nations across the world as you deployed the use of such soothing words as internationalism, humanity, freedom, democracy, and “a permanent world peace”.1
In 1917, leaders of the European socialist movement selected the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, as the logical place to discuss how socialism could contribute to find a solution to end the war on the European continent by convening the Stockholm Peace Conference. The First World War (or as it is written in the British historical tradition, the Great War) had assumed the character of an “imperial war”, bringing about cooperation or conflict between former and new power alliances. The widespread belief amongst the involved nations was that the conflict would be “a war to end all wars”, aiming to put an end to historical power disputes amongst the nations of Europe, an issue connected to global factors, such as claims of power through the geography of colonialism and imperialism.2 In this context appeared and acted a parallel movement in Stockholm, consisting of numerous delegates travelling to Stockholm to represent the “oppressed nations” of the colonial world at the proposed peace conference; for example, two members of a Persian delegation, Sayyed Hasan Taqizadeh and Wahid-ul-Mulk claimed that “we have arrived here [. . .] to put forward our, the Persian people’s cause. Our ambition is that the socialist movement, which
1 Letter from the “India Committee” to the Dutch-Scandinavian committee, Stockholm, 16 November 1917, Stockholm City Archive (SCA), Carl Lindhagen (CL) collection 820, B5, vol. 12. 2 The abundance of research literature on the First World War is vast; however, for the perspective of colonialism, imperialism, and global power politics, see, e.g., D. Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2009 (1989); Z. Steiner, The Lights that Failed, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; E. S. Rosenberg (ed.), A World Connecting, 1870–1945, Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2012; A. Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-012
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declares its support of national self-determination, shall reconsider the Persian case.”3 A second example is the statement from Virendranath Chattophadyaya (commonly known as Chatto), – an Indian nationalist revolutionary and representative of the European Central Committee of Indian Nationalists (also known as the India Committee, active from 1914 to 1919) who demanded “fairness, consistency, and impartiality” from the socialist movement on the question of India’s future independence.4 From a longer chronological perspective, the encounter of anti-colonialism in Stockholm is connected to the history of twentieth-century anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism. It is part of a history that stretches forward and retracts backwards, highlighted by epochal events such as the Afro-Asian Conference, held in Bandung in 1955; the First International Congress Against Colonialism and Imperialism, held in Brussels in 1927; and the five pan-African congresses that took place between 1900 and 1945, to mention a few.5 Other events developed in concurrence with the war, foremost with the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in February 1917, which the European socialist movement welcomed as positive as it yielded political and social change in Russia. Further, the idea of organizing a peace conference was part and parcel of the European socialist movement’s need of revitalizing its disputed and damaged political credo in connection to the war. Pivotal for this was the establishment of the Zimmerwald movement in neutral Switzerland in 1915 and the ensuing work of the International Socialist Bureau (ISB), which organized three conferences between 1915 and 1917, events that focused on how the socialist parties should consolidate the impaired status of the socialist movement. The first was held in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, the second convened in 1916 at two locations in Switzerland, Bern and Kienthal, and the final conference took place in Stockholm in September 1917.6 One crucial development in the political
3 “Persien under ryskt-engelskt förtryck. En intervju med Taqizadeh, persisk delegerad i Stockholm” [Persia under Russian-British oppression. An interview with Taqizadeh, Persian delegate in Stockholm], Aftonbladet, 29 June 1917. 4 Social History Portal (SHP), Stockholm 1917 collection, document: P/55, Sitzung des Holländisch-skandinavischen Komitees mit der Delegation aus Indien, 12 July 1917. 5 F. Petersson, “From Versailles to Bandung: The Interwar Origins of Anticolonialism”, in: L. Eslava, M. Fakhri, and V. Nesiah (eds.), Bandung, Global History, and International Law. Critical Pasts and Pending Futures, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 66–80; Ch. J. Lee, “Introduction”, in: Ch. J. Lee (ed.), Making a World After Empire, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010, pp. 9–10. 6 D. Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, London: I. B. Tauris, 1996, pp. 28–29; B. Lazitch and M. M. Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern, vol. 1, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1972, pp. 11–22.
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activities of the socialist movement, running parallel with the work of the ISB, was the formation of the Dutch-Scandinavian committee, a joint initiative between the leaders of the Belgian, Dutch, and Swedish social democratic parties, Camille Huysmans, Pieter Jelles Troelstra, and Karl Hjalmar Branting. The primary aim of the committee was to convene the Stockholm Peace Conference, a place and location perceived as a logical venue to meet because of Sweden’s outspoken neutrality in the war. On 3 May 1917, the committee announced its formal establishment by issuing a communique, which declared the primary focus of the committee: to arrange the Stockholm Peace Conference and for it to be a part of “a general action of the working class” leading to “lasting peace”.7 In Sweden, and despite its outspoken neutrality, the political and social setting in the country was one of unrest in 1917, partly influenced by what had unfolded in Russia. Fredrik Ström, a Swedish socialist and contemporary observer, writes in his memoir, I stormig tid (In stormy times), that Sweden was on the brink of collapse as liberals, social democrats, and leftist socialists wanted to create controversy and political conflict. The reason was rooted in the consequences of the war (besides the Russian situation), for instance the German sinking of Swedish naval ships, the lack of goods coming from England and the US, an increased housing shortage, the prevalent German anti-British propaganda in Sweden, the postponed discussion on electoral rights, and a shortage of food as well as the rations system.8 Nevertheless, the peace conference was connected to the tremors and efforts of the European socialist movement to resurrect the political credibility of the Socialist International (SI). At the onset of the war, most of the socialist parties who belonged to the SI legitimized the war by supporting their national governments in power. Thus, by doing so, the parties went against the statutes of the SI, a principle that stipulated that the socialist movement should do anything possible to avert war. In 1916, the Zimmerwald movement declared its position vis-à-vis the war on the European continent, stating that it was “the outcome of imperialistic antagonisms” and that the “real aim of the war is to bring about a new partition of colonial possessions and to ensure the
7 SHP, document: P/06c, Pressekommuniqué zur Sitzung der holländischen und schwedischen ISB-Delegationen, Stockholm, 3 May 1917. SHP is a digital archive that contains a collection of key documents linked to the Stockholm Peace Conference in 1917. For the resource, see Social History Portal, https://www.socialhistoryportal.org/stockholm1917/docu ments (accessed 23 August 2018). 8 F. Ström, I stormig tid [In stormy times], Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Söners Förlag, 1942, p. 192.
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submission of countries”.9 These statements were included in a resolution, issued by the ISB after the second Zimmerwald conference in 1916, and its message must have reverberated amongst thriving anti-colonial movements present in Europe during the war. Thus, the Stockholm Peace Conference not only is a narrative of European political history, but also is a history that contains other perspectives and national ramifications. Parallel to the efforts of the DutchScandinavian committee to realize the Stockholm Peace Conference, Stockholm turned into a place that witnessed the arrival of several delegates representing the “oppressed nations” – meaning the colonial world. Travelling from various locations in Europe and known of having been present in Stockholm in 1917 were individuals and delegations from Egypt, Persia, Ireland, Flanders, Finland, India, Estonia, Poland, the Balkans, Armenia – which highlighted the oppression and atrocities committed against the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire – as well as the Jewish socialist association Bund and representatives of the Muslim faith.10 The delegates expected to use the conference as a way to declare their demands of national independence and the right to self-determination. Stockholm therefore evolved briefly into a hotbed of political and social activity that connected national, transnational, and international agendas, all located within the vicinity of the Swedish capital. Furthermore, the encounter of anti-colonialism revealed frictions and conflicts in the European perception of the world. The scenery was later described as an “international concentration of representatives of national liberation movements of various peoples”, and it was a city where “foreign political activists” believed they could carry out their political work “unhampered and the atmosphere for work [was] far more pleasant and agreeable than in Switzerland”.11 Ole Birk Laursen suggests that the Russian Revolutions in 1917 and the conclusion of the First World War in 1918 are “connected through the abandoned Stockholm Peace Conference and, given their anti-imperialist narratives, how
9 Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek (ARAB; Labour Movement Archive and Library), 256/4/6/1, Handlingar rörande Internationella socialistiska kommissionen (ISK), Second International Socialist Conference of Zimmerwald: Resolutions, Bern, 1916. 10 A review of documents in the SHP collection on the Stockholm Peace Conference and published articles in Swedish newspapers from May to November 1917 reveal the presence of these delegations in Stockholm. 11 Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Horst Krüger files, Box 21. Nr. 116 b–120, (Manuscript) Indian Revolutionaries’ quest for “Golden Fleece” from abroad, by M. N. Roy, Amrita Bazar Patrika Independence Supplement, 15 August 1950. Manabendra Nath Roy, the renowned Indian communist, was though not present in Stockholm; N. K. Barooah, Chatto. The Life and Times of an Indian Anti-Imperialist in Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 101.
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they impacted the colonial world”.12 Hence, the history of the Stockholm Peace Conference can be explained, in nature and scope, as a transnational space that witnessed the gathering of numerous individuals and national agendas, limited to an incentive not only of the socialist movement, but also of other actors, motivated by an agenda to protest against oppression, colonialism, and imperialism. To probe further into the latter is the focus of this chapter, as the outcome of the former has been described as a well-known bagatelle in the history of twentieth-century socialism. What does this imply? This calls into question a couple of crucial contextual factors. First, let us begin with a statement made by Chatto, which reveals the reason for travelling to Stockholm from Germany in May 1917. According to Chatto, it was to enlighten the public regarding the national oppression of India by the British Empire, not only seeking to gain support from the “peace manoeuvres” of the Dutch-Scandinavian committee to be included in the conference, but also to create connections with other delegations present in Stockholm, for example from Ireland and Egypt in their demands for “a better future”.13 Second, the war had seriously altered the functional and structural conditions of anti-colonialism as an idea and movement as it had emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century, especially after Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905. A new global political geography had created new political spaces for anti-colonial activists in Europe, Asia, and the USA, which, during the war, was fuelled by antiBritish propaganda against British imperialism emanating from Germany. For this reason, the Stockholm Peace Conference suddenly appeared as one of the few available opportunities for anti-colonial activists to put forward their demands of national independence. Anti-British propaganda was categorized by the German Foreign Ministry (Auswärtiges Amt, AA) as “oriental”, directed from anti-imperial centres in Berlin and Constantinople during the war as well as approved by and published with the consent and financial support of the AA.14 Third, the reason for perceiving the peace conference as a bagatelle is the fact that it never happened. Instead, it was frequently postponed in the summer of 1917, and as the German, French, and British socialist parties declared their
12 O. B. Laursen, “Revisiting the 1917 Stockholm Peace Conference”, in: Imperial & Global Forum, CIGH Exeter, 11 April 2017, https://imperialglobalexeter.com/2017/04/11/revisiting-the -1917-stockholm-peace-conference-indian-nationalism-international-socialism-and-antiimperialism/. 13 “På indiska byrån” [At the Indian bureau], Aftonbladet, 13 July 1917. 14 P. Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire, New York: Picador, 2012, pp. 187–92; ZMO, Horst Krüger files, Box 64, (Secret) Memorandum on German literary propaganda as regards India and the Orient (Compiled by the War Office, London), 1917.
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intention of not attending either due to patriotic alignments of the war or not receiving passports and visas, the idea petered out.15 The sole outcome of the discussions and provisional alignments taking place in Stockholm was the third Zimmerwald conference, held from 5 to 12 September,16 resulting in a draft manifesto issued by the ISB in October. Further, as the Bolsheviks’ assumed power in Russia in November, a new direction and focus for the socialist movement emerged, which would leave a long-lasting impact on the future trajectory of anti-colonial movements, particularly after the establishment of the Communist International (Comintern or Third International) in Moscow in 1919. In these different contexts, anti-colonial activists initially perceived the initiative of the peace conference as something completely different, and rather than seeking to contribute to finding a political solution to end the war, Stockholm functioned as a place to put forward the colonial question in a political milieu that hopefully would support their demands of national independence and the right to self-determination once the war had ended. Stockholm’s Mayor Carl Lindhagen (Figure 1), a Swedish socialist and pacifist, had a leading role in connecting overlapping anti-colonial networks in the city 1917. Driven by an idea that “the nationalist struggles are connected with the world’s population question”, and as chairman of the pacifist 1916 Peace Committee, Lindhagen was an individual motivated by humanistic values. Using his political position, Lindhagen was influential in creating spaces for delegates of the “oppressed countries”. The 1916 Peace Committee had been established in Stockholm to support the work of the Ford Peace Expedition, organized at least in name by US industrialist and philanthropist Henry Ford.17 The committee’s outspoken aim was to support “the rights of oppressed nationalities in every part of the world”,18 which, in 1917, gave assistance to and provided colonial delegates
15 See D. Kirby, War, Peace and Revolution. International Socialism at the Crossroads 1914– 1918, Aldershot: Gover, 1986. 16 SCA, CL collection 820, C3D, vol. 9, Internationale socialistische Kommission, “Nachrichtendienst”, Nr. 23, Stockholm, 24 September 1917. Attending the conference were delegates from Germany (Independent Social Democratic Party), Austria, Russia (Central Committee of the SDAP, Organisational Committee of the SDAP, and “Menshevik Internationalists”), Poland, Finland, Rumania, Switzerland, the US, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. 17 SCA, CL collection 820, C2, vol. 25, Allmän klippsamling, 1915–17, “Krig eller fred?”, Fredsfanan, 24 February 1917. The Ford Peace Expedition organized a public meeting in Stockholm on 29 December 1916. 18 “Lindhagen. – 4. Karl (Carl)”, Nordisk familjebok, Stockholm, 1925, pp. 211–212; Lindhagen’s quote was taken from a speech that he delivered in 1928 on the Kellogg–Briand Pact. In the speech, he referred passim to his “personal experiences” of meeting spokespersons of the North
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Figure 1: Mayor Lindhagen outside of Grand Hotel on his way to the Ford congress, December 1926. Stockholm City Archive, B5, vol. 4, Pacifism och internationella förhållanden, 1910–39.
with spaces to meet and discuss demands of national self-determination. This culminated with the convening of a “peace meeting of the Muslims” at Viktoria Hall in Stockholm on 9 November 1917, an event that has been given different names in hindsight, for example “The Oppressed Peoples’ Congress” or “The Oppressed Mohammedi Countries Conference with the Programme Africa for the Africans – Asia for the Asians”. The event is crucial as it delineates the culmination of Stockholm as an anti-colonial space in 1917. This chapter addresses a reversal of the reading and understanding of historical processes in localized settings. Stefan Rinke and Michael Wildt’s discussion on “1917 and its aftermath” includes a perspective that is worth assessing in the context of the Stockholm Peace Conference. According to Rinke and
African tribes in Stockholm in 1917 (see SCA B5, vol. 2, Handlingar om pacifism och internationella förhållanden, 1912–1942, (Manuscript) Nationalitets- och rasstriderna, undated (1928)).
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Wildt, “contemporary observers” were aware of global connections (journalists, activists, and intermediaries), and their interconnectedness. By assessing and analysing a broad range of different archival sources and material, it is possible to understand the activities of members from colonial delegations, Swedish intermediaries of the political left, the national press in Sweden, or the foreign security agencies in Stockholm.19 The last refers to the accumulation of intelligence by British security agencies on individuals from India and Persia. Further, national historiographies have ignored “these global connections” for decades, and it is not until recently this has changed. Thus, novel and empirical research has analysed and generated a new understanding of the transnational links between revolts, rebellions, and revolutions connected to the unfathomable and symbolic year of 1917.20 The aim is to map out, assess, and analyse the locality of Stockholm as an anti-colonial space in 1917 as well as to analyse the level of activity taking place in the city. Was it through formal or informal meetings, and, if so, what do these encounters tell about anti-colonialism as a movement, for example the circulation of ideas in a fixed and localized setting? How did anti-colonial delegates anticipate the opportunity provided by the Stockholm Peace Conference, and to what extent was the city used as a cross-cultural venue to introduce demands of national independence? It is therefore revealing to interpret Stockholm as a transnational crossing of ideas, peoples, and relations that have been lost or misplaced in former historical analysis. This is connected to an understanding of what “lost history” represents as well as the reasons for this ignorance.21 The perspective of “lost history” aims first at locating Stockholm as an anti-colonial space in 1917 and second at questioning whether it was neutral to analyse the scope and
19 This chapter is based on primary sources, located in several archives, digital and physical. Key documents related to the Stockholm Peace Conference are retrieved from the digital collection Social History Portal (see introduction above). Contemporary newspapers in the study are extracted from the holdings at the Royal Library in Stockholm. Archival collections that contain traces of the colonial delegates have been found in, for example, Horst Krüger Papers at LeibnizZentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin; Carl Lindhagens collection at Stockholm City Archive (SCA); Labour Movement Archive and Library (ARAB), Stockholm; files of the “Swedish-Indian Society” at the Royal Library; National Archives/Riksarkivet (RA), Stockholm. Besides the archival documents, pamphlets, recollections, and memoirs written by some of the involved actors constitute useful sources. 20 S. Rinke and M. Wildt, “Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions: An Introduction”, in: S. Rinke and M. Wildt (eds.), Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions. 1917 and its Aftermath from a Global Perspective, Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2017, pp. 12–18. 21 J. Fowler, Japanese and Chinese Immigrant Activists. Organizing in American and International Communist Movements, 1919–1933, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007, pp. 12–13.
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outcome of these encounters from a spatial and temporal perspective. The reason for why is that the Stockholm Peace Conference offered anti-colonial activists a chance to formulate an understanding of colonialism and imperialism and then to introduce it to a political and social audience commonly defined as “the West”. The Stockholm Peace Conference and the reasons for why it never took place has been covered extensively in previous research22; however, the activities, demands, and connections of the colonial delegations and their representatives are, to a large extent, unknown and excluded from an historiographical tradition that has been defined either by methodological nationalism or has focused on depicting the history of Swedish and European labour movements. The influx of colonial delegates in Stockholm and their connection to the conference have not been a part of the general narrative. Karl-Michael Chilcott proposes a deeper discussion on the historical aspects of the Swedish social democratic party and its tentative engagement with the anti-colonial struggle in the twentieth century, a departure that should involve aspects of humanitarian and general democratic traditions.23 In spite of this call, the peculiarity of the anti-colonial influx and their movements in Stockholm has not entirely been ignored. A constructive example of this is Ole Birk Laursen’s interpretation on the Stockholm Peace Conference,24 and Martin Grass’ analysis of the delegates “for the Islamic peoples” in Stockholm. The latter was written within the project “Sweden and the Islamic World”, in which Grass observes Stockholm as a centre for international politics. While Grass highlights the religious agenda of the delegates, which culminated in the “peace meeting of the Muslims” on 9 November, a deeper discussion on the agendas and behaviour of other anti-colonial activists is not mentioned, for instance Indian, Irish, or Finnish delegates. However, Grass’ article remains one of few detailed interpretations of Stockholm as a place that highlights a connection between peace, revolution, and national self-determination.25
22 See, e.g., A. Kan, Hemmaboljsevikerna. Den svenska socialdemokratin, ryska bolsjeviker och mensjeviker under världskriget och revolutionsåren 1914–1920 [Home bolsheviks: Swedish Social Democrats and Russian Bolsheviks and Mensheviks during the First World War and the revolutionary years], Stockholm: Carlsson, 2005; M. Nishikawa, Socialists and International Actions for Peace 1914–1923, Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2010; Kirby, War, Peace and Revolution. 23 K.-M. Chilcott, “Historische Aspekte im Verhältnis der Sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterpartei Schwedens (SAP) zum antikolonialen Kampf” [Historical aspects of the relationship of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Sweden (SAP) to the anti-colonial struggle], Nordeuropa. Studien der Wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift der Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald 20 (1986), p. 91. 24 Laursen, “Revisiting the 1917 Stockholm Peace Conference”. 25 M. Grass, “‘Tio muselmän redogöra för sina nationers slaveri.’ Representanter för islamska folk i Stockholm 1917” [Ten Muslim men explicate on the slavery of their nations. Representatives of the Islamic peoples in Stockholm in 1917], Arbetarhistoria 25 (2001) 97, pp. 42–49.
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Nirode K. Barooah’s reading of Stockholm and the peace conference is, similar to Grass’, framed along the international perspective, but the focus is essentially placed on analysing the internationalization of the Indian question in Stockholm, particularly through the undertakings of Chatto and the India Committee. Yet, the contributions from Barooah, Laursen, and Grass are central as they situate a transnational history that links together the peace conference in Stockholm in 1917 with anti-colonialism.26 The Stockholm Peace Conference was foreshadowing things to come in the arena of power politics, future international relations, and the colonial question. This connects explicitly to the treatment of the colonial question at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, which, in hindsight, has been highlighted as a forum that practiced prejudice against and exclusion of colonial delegates present at the conference by the victorious nations (US, France, Great Britain, and, to some degree, Italy). Erez Manela shows in The Wilsonian Moment that the spatial scenery of how the question of self-determination and the colonies was treated and largely ignored at Versailles and, in turn, how this contributed to establishing the international origins of anti-colonial nationalism. The US president, Woodrow Wilson, introduced the idea of liberal internationalism at Versailles, together with how this would gradually transfer national independence to the colonies over time, which would be administered through a system of mandate states by existing colonial empires, thus allowing France and Great Britain to carve up a new global imperial structure after 1919. For the colonial delegates present in Versailles, the idea of national self-determination proved to be a mirage as they were treated with silence and indifference.27 The socialist initiative to convene a peace conference in Stockholm is therefore foreshadowing what happened in Versailles, meaning similar patterns of ignorance vis-à-vis the colonial delegates were on display in
26 Barooah, Chatto. Other examples of previous research that touch upon the topic of Stockholm and anti-colonialism, though with an explicit focus on the activities of Indian national revolutionaries, can be found in H. Ch. Aspengren, “Indian Revolutionaries Abroad: Revisiting their Silent Moments”, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 15 (2014) 3; H. Ch. Aspengren, En dag i Delhi, om viljan att slå rot [One day in Delhi: About the will to take root], Stockholm: Norstedts, 2014; B. Zachariah, “Indian Political Activities in Germany, 1914–1945”, in: J. Miyang Cho et al. (eds.), Transcultural Encounters between Germany and India, Oxon: Routledge, 2014, pp. 1–11; N. Kuck, “Anti-Colonialism in a Post-Imperial Environment. The Case of Berlin, 1914–33”, Journal of Contemporary History 49 (2014) 1, pp. 134–159; F. Petersson, “Subversive Indian Networks in Berlin and Europe, 1914–1918. The History and Legacy of the Berlin Committee”, in: R. T. S. Chhina (ed.), India and the Great War, 1914–1918, New Delhi: United Service Institution of India, 2018, pp. 124–157. 27 E. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment. Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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Stockholm despite that the organizers professed that the city in itself was “a neutral” place that made it possible to hold open discussions on how to achieve a just peace. The anti-colonial encounters in the Swedish capital in 1917 reveal a global locality that intertwined separate identities from colonized states and nations sharing similar objectives amongst people and associations regardless of nationality.28 Thus, this calls for discussing the specific question of who can be identified as an anti-colonial activist.
Who is an Anti-Colonial Activist? The definition of an anti-colonial activist can be linked to a broader discussion on what anti-colonialism constitutes and represents. Pankaj Mishra’s and Robert J. C. Young’s definitions of anti-colonialism and what inspires anti-colonial activities are grounded in a political, social, and cultural milieu that concerns itself less with class or race and more with values connected explicitly to a questioning of colonial oppression. In the context of the First World War, and by connecting it to the Stockholm Peace Conference, the questioning of Europe as a leading imperial centre for the anti-colonial movements is central here. Further, Stockholm embodied a locality that consisted of individuals from “a diasporic production” that represented “the indigenous and the cosmopolitan”, resting here on Young’s suggestion.29 In Stockholm, the diasporic production was situated in a local setting that expressed radical and universal principles, and the city witnessed the construction of limited anti-colonial networks that facilitated political and social encounters between different national revolutionary and anti-colonial associations. Ultimately, the primary aim of these anti-colonial encounters was to generate attention on the national liberation struggle and to disseminate information about this struggle in radical and intellectual circles in Stockholm. But what does this imply about who can be identified as an anti-colonial activist in Stockholm in 1917? The anti-colonial activist was (and remains) anyone who identified him/herself as coming from, belonging to, and representing an “oppressed nation”. Thus, this is connected to nationalism and how this can be linked to international anti-colonialism. For an anti-colonial activist in Stockholm, national agency and identity mattered; however, the city made it possible to organize 28 A. Iriye, Global and Transnational History. The Past, Present, and Future, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, p. 15. 29 Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire, pp. 1–11; R. J. C. Young, Postcolonialism. An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001, p. 2.
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meetings, share experiences, and express ambitions, adopting a common political platform to address the “oppressed nations”. Hence, it did not matter whether the subject identified him/herself as “Finn”, “Pole”, “Jew”, or “Egyptian”, “Indian”, “Persian”, or “Irish”. Further, Samuel Moyn states in The Last Utopia that “anticolonialist ideology” originates in tiny groups “on the far left” that are often linked to student or immigrant networks, all expressing their own understanding of internationalism and nationalism in metropoles.30 Migration and migratory patterns are therefore crucial. These perspectives sheds light on and explains the global spread of anti-colonialism in the first decades of the twentieth century, which in the interwar period culminated and changed trajectory. Understanding this dissemination involves mapping transnational encounters by analysing how the experience of travel amongst anti-colonial activists changed their perception of the world. At the core, this involves a tracing of and locating flows and movements of “intellectual migrations” that took place from the colonies to imperial centres in the West and, sometimes, back again to the first decades of the twentieth century.31
Place, Transnational Currents, and Anti-Colonial Interconnectivity The landscape of anti-colonial activities in Stockholm was local and enacted in closed and confined networks. However, these networks were transnational in character as they overlapped with each other, sharing common interests and physical spaces. By perceiving Stockholm as an anti-colonial locality, characterized by, as Doreen Massey suggests in her discussion of place, “particular bundles of activity spaces, of connections and interrelations, of influences and movements”,32 this makes it possible to devise a mental map based on chronology and a thematic approach. The mapping of Stockholm as an anti-colonial space can also be interpreted as a “contact zone”, a theoretical framework that draws inspiration from the transnational notion and networked interactivity of individuals, regardless of nationality, race, or class identity. Essentially, the notion and idea of the contact zone is, as Mary Louise Pratt introduces in Imperial Eyes, to grasp the functions of “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and
30 S. Moyn, The Last Utopia, Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2010, p. 156. 31 F. Petersson, “‘A Man of the World’. Encounters and Articulations of Anti-Imperialism as Cosmopolitanism”, Twentieth Century Communism: A Journal of International History 10 (2016), pp. 84–111. 32 D. Massey, “The Conceptualization of Place”, in: D. Massey and P. Jess (eds.), A Place in the World? Places, Cultures, and Globalization, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 59.
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grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power”. However, and as Emily S. Rosenberg suggests, for us to interpret and understand the spatiality of a contact zone, the tracing of currents, interconnectivity, and frictions occurring in the contact zone is decisive.33 That being said, the focal point in this chapter is to map the nature and character of the anticolonial contacts, relations, and meetings that took place in Stockholm in 1917, and, it is essential to note that this precedes any ambition of interpreting Stockholm as an anti-colonial contact zone. Rather, the objective is to uncover previously unknown patterns and currents that occurred in Stockholm as a place and space of anti-colonialism. Fundamental to this analysis is “the city”, meaning Stockholm turned for a short while into a “world city”. This implies that Stockholm was an international centre of activities that transcended national boundaries, connecting people who shared similar ideological values and goals. The Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, described how Stockholm “for the first time has become a name in the world”.34 Thus, by mapping the anti-colonial scenery of Stockholm from a transnational perspective, this fits well with Karl Schlögel’s suggestion in his seminal study of Moscow in the year of the Great Terror in 1937, which strives towards unifying what has been separated across time from a historiographical and scientific division of labour.35 The anti-colonial panorama in Stockholm was not static in 1917. It shifted its contextual character in shape and content as novel networks were created, overlapped, and transformed over an intense period, and it was a process that radicalized some of the actors, such as the members of the India Committee. From a chronological perspective, colonial delegates can be seen from May to August as wanting to gain ground within the socialist movement and be included in the plans of the Dutch-Scandinavian committee. However, a second phase emerged between September and November, characterized by exclusion, radicalization, and new relations. The latter phase included some of the delegates monitoring the events that unfolded in Russia with the events leading up to the Bolshevik coup d’état on 7 November 1917 and also the presence of
33 M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation, London: Routledge, 2008, 2nd edn., p. 8; E. S. Rosenberg, “Transnational Currents in a Shrinking World”, in: E. S. Rosenberg (ed.), A World Connecting, 1870–1945, Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2012, pp. 819–820. 34 D. Stevenson, The City, Cambridge: Polity, 2013, pp. 122–123; “Stockholm för första gången ett världsnamn” [Stockholm is for the first time an international name], Svenska Dagbladet, 16 August 1917. 35 K. Schlögel, Terror och dröm. Moskva år 1937 [Terror and dream: Moscow 1937], Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 2011, p. 18.
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Russian Bolsheviks in Stockholm.36 By uniting what has been separated over time and taking into consideration how contemporary observers were aware of global connections, Stockholm in 1917 and anti-colonialism coalesce into a temporal and spatial context, defined by the tensions of the ideological landscape in the city and the war on the European continent.
Mapping the City: Stockholm as an Anti-Colonial Venue, 1917 [T]hey drift around in Stockholm, having as an excuse that they fight for the oppressed.37
The encounters of anti-colonial activists in Stockholm challenged the heuristic and structural understanding of empire, but even more importantly, the activists strived at putting forward the question of the struggle between colonizers and colonized in public settings. And for some, this was a personal journey. The case of Thomas St. John Gaffney was typical of this. As a former US consul general in Munich and Dresden, Gaffney had been forced to resign during the war after expressing anti-British views and declaring a pro-Irish position and having a personal relation to the well-known British pacifist Roger Casement. In 1917, Gaffney travelled to Stockholm as a representative of the association The Friends of Irish Freedom and established upon arrival in the capital in June “cordial terms with representatives from India, Persia, Egypt, and the Ukraine Nationalist Parties who had established bureaus in the Swedish capital”.38 Indicative of the transnational interconnectivity was that Gaffney’s Irish association shared an office with the India Committee at Artillerigatan 28 B in Stockholm (Figure 2). The bureau of the India Committee opened in the beginning of July and resumed the work of connecting itself with similar Indian bureaus in Europe and the US. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet sent a journalist to the bureau and interviewed Chatto on 13 July 1917. The report describes that it was located on the first floor in a “modest apartment” and on the doorpost one could read, beside the printed name India Committee, written in hand: The Friends of Irish Freedom. Chatto explained that “we cannot afford at
36 According to the Gregorian calendar in Russia, the Bolshevik coup took place on 7 October. 37 Th. St. John Gaffney, interview with Aftonbladet, 6 July 1917. 38 Th. St. John Gaffney, Breaking the Silence. England, Ireland, Wilson and the War, New York: Horace Liveright, 1930, pp. 209, 220.
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this stage a classier place, but we might join the Irish and Egyptians to get a better place in the future”.39
Figure 2: The locality of anti-colonialism in Stockholm, 1917. 1. Artillerigatan 24b: Bureau of Indian Committee and The Friends of Irish Freedom 2. Humlegården: The Royal Library 3. Tunnelgatan 19b: Viktoria Hall 4. Regeringsgatan 67: Angelica Balabanov’s home, and office of the International Socialist Bureau (ISB) 5. Mäster Samuelsgatan 27: Egyptian delegation, Mohammed Farid Bey 6. Klara Västra kyrkogatan 3: Office of the Dutch-Scandinavian committee “Karta över Stockholms stad med omnejd. Upprättad av H. Hellberg och A. E. Påhlman, 1917–1934” [Map over Stockholm city and its vicinity. Created by H. Hellberg and A. E. Påhlman, 1917–1934], https://stockholmskallan.stockholm.se/post/31519.
Similar transnational exchanges of hospitality took place at other locations in Stockholm. Angelica Balabanov, the Russian Bolshevik delegate, arrived in Stockholm in May to partake in the negotiations between the ISB and the Dutch-Scandinavian committee. Fredrik Ström met Balabanov and described her later as “a linguistic genius” and one of the “noblest and best socialists” he 39 “På indiska byrån. Brantings nådasol har börjat skina” [At the Indian bureau. Branting’s sympathy shines through], Aftonbladet, 13 July 1917.
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had ever met. Her apartment at Regeringsgatan 67 in Stockholm functioned as a shelter for “poor refugees” from India, Persia, the Arabic nations, and Hungary as well as disillusioned Jews, persecuted Italians, Quakers, anarchists, and beggars. Further, the apartment was the office for the ISB, which functioned as a connective centre between the Bolsheviks, left-wing socialists, and the socialist movement. The Swedish security agency observed that the ISB received funding from affiliated associations across Europe, but any contacts with colonial delegates in Stockholm are not mentioned.40 According to Balabanov, nonetheless, Stockholm was littered with “spies, agents of different governments, disappointed journalists, indiscrete individuals from many countries”.41 The mapping of transnational encounters of anti-colonial movements in Stockholm in 1917 illustrate a terrain consisting of several individuals and associations engaged in putting forward demands of national freedom and the right to self-determination. Aside from the India Committee and The Friends of Irish Freedom, other associations frequented the city, for example the Ukrainian Information Bureau, the Estonian Information Bureau,42 delegates representing the Islamic faith in the “oppressed nations”, and the Jewish socialist association Bund, to mention a few. Likewise, charismatic figures arrived in Stockholm, for example the “distinguished cosmopolite” Georg Matchabelli, an émigré Georgian nationalist and later perfume entrepreneur in New York43; and émigré
40 Ström, I stormig tid, p. 206; Swedish National Archives (SRA), SE/RA/420640.02, F2: Stockholmspolisens kriminalavdelning 6:e roteln; Kommunistiska handlingar, Del 7, 1918–1930, Förtroligt P.M., 1918. According to Swedish police, the ISB disseminated “revolutionary propaganda” in the publication Internationale Kommission. 41 A. Balabanoff, Minnen och upplevelser [Memories and experiences], Stockholm: Tidens förlag, 1927, p. 157. Balabanov stated that in Stockholm, and even more than in other “neutral countries”, there was an abundance of “adventurers and spies” in 1917. According to a confidential report of the Swedish security agency, Balabanov left Sweden for Russia on 23 September. During her stay in Sweden, she frequently travelled in the country and visited other countries (Germany and Denmark). 42 The Estonian Embassy in Stockholm published a pamphlet of the legation’s history in the city in 2010, describing Stockholm in 1917 as an “important step” in the national independence struggle as it provided political space for the nascent nation’s network, connecting with Estonian bureaus in Copenhagen and Kristiania (nowadays Oslo) (see T. Valmet, A House in Lärkstaden, Stockholm: Estonian Embassy, 2010, p. 9). 43 The emigration protocols of the Stockholm police recorded that Matchabelli arrived in Stockholm on 12 May, SCA, SE/SSA/0022/1, Överståthållarämbetet för Polisärenden 2. Poliskammaren, Nummer 164. Matchabelli had, prior to arriving in Stockholm, travelled extensively, visiting Constantinople, Petrograd, Japan, the US, Kristiania (Oslo), and Berlin (see H. Gummerus, Jägare och aktivister [Hunters and activists], Helsingfors: Söderström & Co, 1927, p. 343).
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political activists from Finland, who were organized in an “illegal Finnish legation central bureau”, where some convened political sessions under the name Pelikan-Klubben (Pelican Club).44 Finnish resistance against tsarist Russia has been extensively covered in the writing of Finland’s national history; however, to perceive this as an anti-colonial struggle against tsarist Russia is a perspective rarely touched upon.45 The Finnish nationalist Herman Gummerus was a character of a different kind in this context. Founder of the militant association Jägarrörelsen (Hunter Movement), Gummerus assumed a leading role to coordinate the Finnish nationalist network in Stockholm in 1917. Gummerus later depicted his experience of Stockholm in the autobiography Jägare och aktivister (Hunters and activists), describing the organization of meetings with the League of Oppressed Peoples in Russia in his apartment, an association that was distinctly anti-colonial in its political disposition, consisting of members from Finland, the Baltic nations, Belarus, Poland, the Caucasus region, and the Jewish diaspora.46 Further, not only was Gummerus in contact with Lindhagen on the question of the national liberation struggle, but also he was acquainted with anti-colonial activists “from far and wide”, and the most prolific one was Chatto. According to Gummerus, Chatto’s hatred towards the British Empire and its rule over India was “so glowing and irreconcilable that it sent shivers down your spine when you listened”.47 Chatto was the leading representative of the India Committee in Stockholm (Figure 3), and he established close contacts with leading persons in the Swedish left-wing socialist movement, such as Lindhagen, Ture Nerman, Zeth Höglund, and Otto Grimlund, but also with intellectuals. A scholar on the Middle and Far East, the archaeologist Ture J. Arne at the History Museum in Stockholm, became a close friend to Chatto, with the latter sharing his experiences of the Middle East with Arne.48 Arne observed that the first decades of the twentieth century in Stockholm witnessed an influx of “strangers from Asia” in Stockholm, all
44 F. Petersson, “Mot det ryska förtrycket: en finländsk socialistisk självständighetskamp i Stockholm 1917” [Against Russian oppression: A Finnish socialist independence struggle in Stockholm in 1917], Svenska Yle, 26 November 2017, https://svenska.yle.fi/artikel/2017/11/26/ langlasning-mot-det-ryska-fortrycket-en-finlandsk-socialistisk. 45 H. Meinander, Finlands historia: Linjer, strukturer, vändpunkter [History of Finland: Trajectories, structures, turning points], Stockholm: Atlantis, 2010. 46 Gummerus, Jägare och aktivister, pp. 288–289. 47 Ibid., p. 344. Original quote in Swedish: “glödande och så oförsonligt, att det gick kalla kårar genom en då man lyssnade därtill”. 48 Material on Chatto’s relation to Arne is filed in the archive of the Swedish-Indian Association, which was established in Stockholm 1949. The documents are located at the Royal Library in Stockholm, Kungliga biblioteket (KB), Svensk-indiska föreningens arkiv Acc 2013/35.
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Figure 3: Virendranath Chattophadyaya (Chatto) at the Indian bureau in Stockholm. Kungliga biblioteket, Acc 2013:35.
“dressed in European fashion, except from Indian women and sometimes the men”.49 For Chatto, Stockholm also functioned as a place to further his education. Aside from keeping himself busy at the bureau of the India Committee, within a walking distance was the Royal Library, which he frequently visited to study Sanskrit literature and read Karl Marx and the published works of the Swedish author August Strindberg.50
A Place of Meetings, Making Voices Heard Delegates of the “oppressed nations” expected to meet the Dutch-Scandinavian committee after arriving in Stockholm. Yet, the crux of the matter was that 49 T. J. Arne, Svenskarna och Österlandet [The Swedes and the lands to the east], Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1952, p. 365. 50 KB Acc 2013/35, Brev från Sven Strömgren till K. V. Padmanabhan, Legation of India, Stockholm 2/4 (1955).
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invitations to attend the third Zimmerwald conference had been dispatched to specific national parties belonging to the Socialist International.51 The invitation was distinctly Eurocentric in character and would leave a lasting impression on those excluded and those included in the deliberations with the leaders of the socialist movement in Stockholm. The committee emphasized that the peace conference was directed towards “affiliated parties”, and three principal issues would be addressed: (1) The world war and the Socialist International; (2) The peace programme of the Socialist International; (3) The road and means to realize this programme and put an end to the war.52 Thus, this made it evident for the delegates representing the “oppressed nations” of the need to make their voices heard within the political space in Stockholm. One such space was the Swedish national press. The sudden increase of delegates representing other objectives and areas in comparison to what the DutchScandinavian committee addressed had an effect. On 29 June, Aftonbladet published an interview with Taqizadeh and Wahid-ul-Mulk of the Persian delegation, which depicted how British imperialism and the expansionist tendencies of tsarist Russia had subjugated Persia over time, claiming that it was not only a privilege of the European people to govern themselves and that this should also be a right of the Asian people. The journalist noted that Taqizadeh’s “fluent English” expressed faith in the goodwill of the socialist movement to organize a peace conference; notwithstanding, this would not solve the conundrum of achieving peace – it was only a step towards it.53 Distrust of the motifs and capacity of the Dutch-Scandinavian committee to deal with the colonial question were accentuated at an early stage. The reaction of The Friends of Irish Freedom, after wanting to meet the committee, to discuss the prospect of “raising awareness about the Irish situation” exhibited the dilemma. The committee refused to meet the Irish association; thus, Gaffney and George Chatterton-Hill went public and accused the committee of being “a squire of the Entente”, ignoring to deal with “people oppressed by British imperialism”, in reference to Ireland, India, Persia, and Egypt. The main reason for the committee not wanting to meet the Irish delegation was related to the origin of their departure: Berlin. Prior to leaving Berlin for Stockholm, Gaffney and Chatterton-Hill considered the idea of presenting the Irish question at the peace conference as positive. However, as they were “enemy foreigners” residing in Germany, 51 ARAB 256/4/6/1, Einladung zu der dritten Zimmerwalder Konferenz, 1917. 52 “Den internationella socialistiska fredskonferensen” [The International Socialist Peace Conference], Aftonbladet, 14 July 1917. 53 “Persien under rysk-engelskt förtryck” [Persia under Russian-British oppression], Aftonbladet, 29 June 1917.
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according to Gaffney, he consulted the German Foreign Office if it was a good idea to travel to Stockholm, wondering if they would be able to return to Germany. The latter could not be guaranteed by the German authorities. Accordingly, the committee rejected the Irish delegation’s affiliation with Germany, and, as Gaffney assumed, they were perceived as “suspicious German agents” by the committee, a dilemma that would not have happened if they had arrived from Paris, London, or Petrograd in “neutral” Stockholm. Thus, Gaffney questioned the outspoken principle of neutrality and the attitude of the socialist movement towards neutrality and peace.54 The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet highlighted the situation of European national minorities. For example, the Flemish social democrat Edward Joris travelled to Stockholm to put forward the argument that it was crucial to solve “the Flemish question, if not, the seed to a new war would be sown”. Still, Joris claimed that the Flemish had no intention of separating from Belgium; rather, they wanted to receive a degree of cultural, economic, and political self-rule. On 12 July, the Dutch-Scandinavian committee met Joris and recommended that the Walloon workers lead the Flemish question, and since Brussels was “a mixed city, not a pure Flemish city”, then it was up to the Belgian government to decide if the Flemish should receive some form of self-rule.55 A second account was the ambiguity in and controversy surrounding the Ottoman Empire’s treatment of the Armenian population. After the deportation and ensuing massacres of Armenians in 1915, the question gained international attention,56 and in 1917, it was connected to the agendas of national independence in Stockholm. The leader of the Dashnaktsutium (Armenian Revolutionary Federation, established in 1890), the socialist Stepan Zorian, arrived in Stockholm to discuss the situation of the Armenian population with the Dutch-Scandinavian committee. Yet the situation of the Armenian population had already been addressed at a public meeting in Stockholm earlier in 1917. On 27 March, Lindhagen and the 1916 Peace Committee organized a public meeting on the “terrible situation of the Armenians”, where the social democratic leader Hjalmar Branting
54 “Stockholmskonferensen – ententens vapendragare” [The Stockholm Conference – The Squire of the Entente], Aftonbladet, 6 July 1917; Gaffney, Breaking the Silence, pp. 202, 221. The Dutch-Scandinavian committee included the Irish question on the “peace programme” on 10 October 1917 (SHP, document nr. P/72a, Entwurf zu einem Friedensprogramm). 55 “En flamländsk delegation till Stockholm. Dess ledare, Joris, uttalar sig” [A Flemish delegation to Stockholm. The leader, Joris, makes a statement], Aftonbladet, 8 July 1917; SHP, document nr. P/57, Sitzung des Holländisch-skandinavischen Komitees mit der flämischen Delegation, 12 July 1917. 56 Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, pp. 212–215.
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and Swedish author Marika Stjernstedt delivered speeches.57 Rumours of the event travelled across Europe; for instance, the Délégation Nationale Arménienne (Armenian National Delegation) in Paris sent a letter to Lindhagen, thanking him as well as Branting and Stjernstedt for addressing “the fate of the oppressed minority people” – a question that should be solved “in accordance with the principles of nationalities, law and justice”.58 Branting was aware of the Armenian situation, and on 26 July, Zorian met the Dutch-Scandinavian committee. He presented the Armenian-Turkish question as “an international question” that deserved a solution considering the massacres of the Armenian people on Turkish soil. To partly solve this, Zorian demanded “complete independence” based on the principles of national self-determination. Nevertheless, the committee had no clear answer; instead, the Dutch socialist Troelstra concluded that the Armenian struggle seemed to be “very complicated”. On the one hand, it was geographically divided between Russia and the Turkish parts, and on the other hand, if Armenia was “a single state of 4 million, it would be easier”, Troelstra stated.59 The concept of nationality and ethnicity was, however, an attitude of the Dutch-Scandinavian committee in the contacts with delegates of the “oppressed nations”. At four separate meetings on 12 July, as noted in Aftonbladet, “the wishes of four new delegations [. . .] and not members of the International” – the Egyptian nationalist party Wafd and its leader Mohammed Farid Bey60; Taqizadeh from Persia; Chatto and Mandayam Parthasarathi Tirumal Acharya of the India Committee; and a delegation of Turkish workers’ organizations – declared some level of independence. According to Bey, the Dutch-Scandinavian committee had to recognize the historical right of Egypt to achieve national independence, and it
57 SCA, SE/SSA/0023/01, Överståthållarämbetet. Polisärenden 3, Anteckningsböcker rörande möten, 1912–17, Tisdagen den 27 mars 1917, “Armeniernas fruktansvärda ställning”. 58 SCA, CL collection 820, A2, vol. 3, Mottagna brev, 1896–1942, Letter from Délégation Nationale Arménienne, Paris, to Carl Lindhagen, Stockholm, 4/4-1917. 59 SHP, document P/59, Sitzung des Holländisch-skandinavischen Komitees mit der armenischen Delegation, Stockholm, 26 July 1917. Stepan Zorian (pseudonym: Rosdom, 1867–1919), based in Geneva, travelled extensively in the Balkans and Caucasus during the war. He died in Baku in 1919 (see “Zorian, Stepan”, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/ D45415.php (accessed 17 September 2018)). 60 Farid Bey travelled extensively and published his views on British imperialism and its effect on Islam. In March 1917, he argued in the pamphlet Les Intrigues Anglaises contre l’Islam (English intrigues against Islam) that the Arab movement was an invention of the English and the mere continuation of British “anti-Islamic politics”, rooted in a geographical explanation due to the broad inclusion of Muslims in the British Empire, especially as it controlled India, the Middle East, and Egypt (see M. F. Bey, Les intrigues anglaises contre l’Islam, Lausanne: Librairie Nouvelle, 1917, p. 6).
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was a nation comprising 13 million citizens. A realization of this reform would allow Egypt to become “a truly modern” nation, Bey stated. In response to Bey, Branting made it clear that the conference had no intention of authorizing the participation of “other parties than socialist parties”; notwithstanding, it was still possible to listen to “native parties having their own wishes” and for the delegates “to make a memorandum” and submit it to the organizers of the peace conference.61 The 12 July meetings yielded no distinct results, leaving the delegations with no solution to the question if national independence for the “oppressed nations” would be an issue at the conference. Some delegates did not take this situation lightly. After the India Committee had left the meeting, Chatto was interviewed by Aftonbladet at the Indian bureau. Accordingly, the personal relation between Chatto and Branting was tense since the establishment of the India Committee’s bureau in the beginning of July. Branting had been “dismissive”, and the journalist took notice of Chatto’s “disappointment” of not getting any positive response. However, and despite the poor outcome of the 12 July meeting, Chatto had noticed that Branting and the committee “had been much friendlier” and listened to the demands of the India Committee.62 The colonial question and the situation of the “oppressed nations” was never the central issue in July. It was a peripheral topic in comparison to other issues, the foremost being the daily development of the Russian Revolution and the difficulty of securing passage of socialist representatives in Europe to Stockholm.63 Yet, occasionally the colonial question was mentioned, particularly in the context of positing British imperialism in an international framework. On 20 July, a joint group of Russian Bolsheviks; socialists from Poland, Lithuania, and Bulgaria; and the left wing of the Swedish social democratic party claimed that the peace conference functioned as a venue for “social patriots”, wondering what the factual purpose of the event was. Regardless of the Dutch-Scandinavian committee expressing words about “a peace without annexations” and the right to national self-determination, the joint group questioned why the committee had not levelled any criticism against “the rule of English world capital” over India and Egypt. Notwithstanding, the group had no intention of expressing solidarity with the anti-colonial struggle; instead, it
61 “Stockholmskonferensen”, Aftonbladet, 20 July 1917; SHP, documents P/53-56a. British intelligence in Stockholm notified the Foreign Ministry in London on 13 July that the DutchScandinavian committee had received Egyptian, Persian, and Indian nationalist delegates (National Archives, Kew Gardens FO 3449, The War Stockholm Peace Congress). 62 “På indiska byrån”, Aftonbladet, 13 July 1917. 63 “Stockholm för första gången ett världsnamn”, Svenska Dagbladet, 16 August 1917.
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was to highlight the need of overthrowing British imperialism through revolution, thereby achieving world peace.64 Nevertheless, other voices tried to raise awareness of the situation of the “oppressed nations” without mentioning “revolution” as the key. Aftonbladet referred to an article published in the British journal Contemporary Review and authored by missionary John Hobbis Harris that stated that the future of “the coloured peoples” was crucial to solve “at the next peace congress” after the war had ended. Harris questioned the quintessence of European imperialism, wondering “who had given the European nations the right to regard” the people in the colonies as “trading goods”.65 Other points of concern were highlighted, for example news of Ukrainian nationalists demanding independence from Russia or the hopes of the Jewish socialist association Bund that the Socialist International would fulfil its obligation to unite the people and act as “the spokesperson for the oppressed people”.66 Thus, circulation of knowledge of the colonial question and the situation in the “oppressed nations” existed. However, for the delegates residing and waiting in Stockholm for any kind of response from the Dutch-Scandinavian committee, this gradually vanished when Troelstra declared that the peace conference’s focus was twofold: on the war and on the right to vote, excluding any reference to the “oppressed nations”.67
Infinite Postponement and a Peace Manifesto The Stockholm Peace Conference never materialized; it was postponed frequently in July and August, and in September, the third Zimmerwald conference convened in Stockholm. For the Dutch-Scandinavian committee, the single outcome of this process was the release of a press communique on 3 September, which declared that it had been impossible to convene the peace conference on 9 September, thus “a new date has to be decided and communicated to adhering parties”. The committee explained that due to difficulties of attaining visas and passports for delegates travelling from England and France, it was recommended to postpone the
64 A. Balabanoff, Die Zimmerwalder Bewegung 1914–1919, Frankfurt: Verlag Neue Kritik, 1969 [1928], pp. 77–78. 65 “De färgade folkens framtid” [The coloured peoples’ future], Aftonbladet, 21 July 1917. 66 “Ukrajnska nationalisternas krav” [The demands of the Ukranian nationalists], Svenska Dagbladet, 10 August 1917; “De judiska socialisternas krav på freden” [The Jewish Socialists demands on the peace], Svenska Dagbladet, 16 August 1917. 67 “Krigsmålen och fredskonferensen” [The goals of War and the Peace Conference], Aftonbladet, 29 July 1917.
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conference.68 Furthermore, the committee had met with Russian delegates to discuss the progression of the Russian Revolution, an issue that assumed a central position in the committee’s deliberations. On 15 September, the committee published a manifesto that declared that the peace conference would “usher in a new era in the struggle of the proletariat against imperialism”, and it should demarcate “one step on the march of international socialism”.69 The delegates of the “oppressed nations” bided their time, waiting for any clear-cut opinion from the committee on the colonial question while continuing to raise awareness. For example, the India Committee issued a statement in Aftonbladet on behalf of “the oppressed peoples’ of Asia and Africa”, a message connected to the proceedings of the Second All-Russia Muslim Congress, held in Kazan from 21 July to 2 August 1917. Authored by Chatto, the statement showed an increased disbelief in the capacity and willingness of the organizers behind the proposed peace conference to “act in solidarity with the people of the Orient”, declaring that “we Indians, alongside the other delegations of the East, have been received by the conference’s organizational committee and have been convinced that the committee have no intention of actually wanting to give any assistance.”70 On 10 October, the Dutch-Scandinavian committee made known its position on the colonial question. According to a draft for a peace programme of the committee, the document was void of any references to India and Egypt but mentioned Persia’s need to receive “economic restoration”. The committee suggested that groups belonging to the population in the colonies “that have reached a certain cultural level” should receive “at a minimum, administrative autonomy”. Further, the committee concluded that the “fundamental aim” of the draft was to introduce the political attitude of the socialist movement on how to achieve permanent peace, implying that peace was impossible if annexations were allowed; territorial issues and war indemnities had to be solved, and the principle of nationality issues and the recognition of the right to self-determination
68 SHP, document P/65, Pressekommuniqué des Holländisch-skandinavischen Komitees, 3 September 1917. The peace conference had at first been scheduled to commence on 3 August and then it was postponed to 10 August, and finally, to 3 September. 69 SHP, document P/70b, Manifest des Holländisch-skandinavischen-russischen Komitees, 15 September 1917. The manifesto must also be linked to the outcome of the Third Zimmerwald Conference. 70 “Asiens och Afrikas undertryckta folk” [The oppressed peoples of Asia and Africa], Aftonbladet, 6 September 1917.
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was central.71 However, the last remark, if applied to the colonies, denoted an attitude that presupposed that the colonies should be evaluated along Western cultural principles. Therefore, the essence of the draft was the continuation of a European discourse towards the colonial question and the “oppressed nations”. This, however, did not mark the end amongst the delegates of the “oppressed nations” in Stockholm to continue building relations. Instead, it opened up a new direction that no longer relied on standing in contact with the DutchScandinavian committee. According to a report from the British intelligence representative in Stockholm, Esme Howard, six delegates of the Muslim faith had arrived in Stockholm in September. The delegates declared the aim of the visit as “purely nationalistic”, that is to say Stockholm would be used as a venue to emphasize “nations oppressed by the Entente”.72 To do so, other connections in Stockholm were deployed to assist in orchestrating a demonstration of anticolonial nationalism: the Viktoria Hall congress on Islam.
“A Most Original Meeting at Viktoria Hall” Carl Lindhagen and the 1916 Peace Committee proved to be pivotal as the intermediary the colonial delegates needed, especially as the primary focus of the Dutch-Scandinavian committee was Europe, and not the “oppressed nations” and the colonial question. For Lindhagen, the endeavours of the delegates were comparable to pilgrims, describing the convening of the Subject Muslim Countries Conference at Viktoria Hall in Stockholm on 9 November 1917 as one of the most “specific episodes” during his political career. Moreover, the committee had previously raised awareness of the “oppressed nations” of Jutland, Poland, Lithuania, and Armenia, but this time it was curious to see “guests from far away reach our country to bring word about the world”. The “pilgrims” contacted the committee in October to see if they could assist in organizing a meeting to raise the question of the “liberation of oppressed nationalities”, something the Swedish press later would describe as “a most original meeting”.73 The heart of the matter was that foreigners were
71 SHP, document P/72a, Entwurf zu einem Friedensprogramm des Holländisch-skandinavischen Komitees, 10 October 1917. The draft was printed in Stockholm 1918; however, rumours about the content circulated immediately after it had been drafted in October. 72 TNA, FO 3449, Report from Esme Howard, Stockholm, to A. J. Balfour, London, 16 October 1917. 73 C. Lindhagen, Memoarer. Första delen [Memoirs. First part], Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1936, pp. 67–68.
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prohibited by law to deliver speeches in public74; hence the 1916 Peace Committee acted as the formal organizer, inviting “representatives of the oppressed Muslim nations” to put forward their demands at a private meeting, something the police could not prohibit. Therefore, the congress was organized with a peculiar twist, having the committee send invitations to people in Stockholm who might be interested, and as Lindhagen perceived it, the issue was not religious but rather focused on national independence.75 Swedish press observed that it had been “a novel meeting” that conveyed an understanding of “the oppressed Islam”, and it had succeeded in exhibiting the aims of “the unfree Oriental peoples”.76 The auditorium at Viktoria Hall had been “utterly characteristic”, having Lindhagen seated on the stage surrounded by “a circle of Orientals, some dressed in turbans and loosely fitting kaftans”. The “circle” consisted of Farid Bey of Wafd and Abd al-Aziz Shawish, a journalist and pan-Islamic activist from Egypt; Salih al-Sherif al-Tunisi and Ismail el-Safaihi of the Committee for Tunisian and Algerian Independence; Yussuf Bey Shatwan as the delegate of Benghazi and Mohamed ben Salih of Tripoli; Ahmed Saib Kaplan Zade, a professor from Caucasus; the Turkestan delegate sheik Abdul Aziz Khairi; and the brothers and professors Abdul Jabbar Khairi and Abdul Sattar Khairi from India.77 Other guests attending the congress were Chatto and his friend Ture J. Arne; the Swedish socialist Ture Nerman; Herman Gummerus; the editor of Svenska Dagbladet, Viktor Söderberg, and journalist Oscar Wieselgren. Based on the reports in the newspapers, the meeting was a linguistic challenge, especially as several of the delegates only spoke their native language. Speeches
74 This is explained by a decision by the Swedish government to partly curb and control the flow of immigrants coming to Sweden during the war because, to some extent, of the radical political view expressed by some foreigners living in or passing through the country. In the summer of 1917, the Swedish Foreign Department implemented the decision that every foreigner residing in the country should be in the possession of a valid passport (see “Främlingar i Sverige under passtvång” [Strangers in Sweden subjected to passport coercion], Aftonbladet, 25 July 1917). 75 SCA, CL collection 820, B5, vol. 12, “De Förtryckta mohamedanska länders konferens med program Afrika åt afrikanerna-Asien åt asiaterna” (undated). 76 “Hos det förtryckta Islam” [At the oppressed Islam], Svenska Dagbladet, 10 November 1917; “Muselmännens fredsmöte. Ombuden i Stockholm för ofria orientaliska folk” [Peace meeting of the Muslim men. Delegates of the unfree oriental peoples in Stockholm], Dagens Nyheter, 10 November 1917. A transcript of Svenska Dagbladet’s article on the Viktoria Hall meeting was published in Göteborgs Aftonblad on 13 November 1917. 77 Grass, “Tio muselmän”, p. 47; “Hos det förtryckta Islam”, Svenska Dagbladet, 10 November 1917.
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given in Arabic were translated first to French by Bey and then translated “in third hand by a lady” to Swedish, and Zade, from Caucasus, spoke a language no one could understand. Thus, the lack of interpreters made it difficult for the audience to understand what was really happening on the auditorium; nonetheless, it was evident that feelings were strong, and the main tendency was “violently hostile against Europe”. Moreover, Nerman enthusiastically declared the successful seizure of power by Lenin’s government in Russia on 7 November, only to be succeeded by a short programme of songs performed by “a Swedish gentleman” about “the East”. However, and regardless of these curious episodes, the meeting succeeded in procuring a demonstration against colonialism and imperialism. According to Svenska Dagbladet, every speaker declared total unity for the same goal, that is to say the ending of the war would lead to the “total liberation” and end of oppression across the world. The meeting therefore did not function as a rallying point to emphasize Islam’s position in the world; rather, it was a gathering that repeated the demands that the colonial delegates had stated earlier to the Dutch-Scandinavian committee. Further, the reports in the newspapers observed that a discussion of “national existence” revolved around issues of culture and history, comparing the democratic structure of Islam with the European state system, where the former was still striving towards freedom. As chairman of the congress, Lindhagen concluded the event with the prosaic remark that “it is a sad world that forces strangers to travel long distances to remote places in order to open up their hearts”, hoping that the delegates soon would be able to fulfil the wish of national liberation.78 The congress had an effect on the attending individuals. Lindhagen thought of it as a memory that obligated respect for the “pilgrims”, particularly his encounter with the Indian delegate Abdul Jabbar Khairi. At the congress, Khairi delivered an “eloquent speech” on the situation in India, which then was printed in a pamphlet ending with the words “peace to the belligerent peoples, love for all, India for the Indians”. Lindhagen believed that the congress at Viktoria Hall had been a positive experience for the delegates, mainly because it received attention in the national press on the issue of national self-determination for the colonies.79 Gummerus described the event as “a strange conference” that had taken on an overtly socialist character, and therefore, considering his nationalist disposition, he questioned why Finland really had to get involved with Indians,
78 Svenska Dagbladet, 10 November 1917; Dagens Nyheter, 10 November 1917. 79 Lindhagen, Memoarer, pp. 67–68; SCA CL collection 820, B5, vol. 12, “De Förtryckta mohamedanska länders konferens med program Afrika åt afrikanerna-Asien åt asiaterna” (undated).
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Persians, and Egyptians.80 For Arne, the congress assumed the most “curious character”, reflecting on Chatto’s noticeable speech, which had explicitly aimed “fierce hatred” at the British Empire,81 an account not included in the Swedish newspapers. Arne’s recollection of the congress is mentioned in his memoir, a book reviewed by Oscar Wieselgren in Svenska Dagbladet in 1953, who also attended the Viktoria Hall congress. Remembering Chatto, Wieselgren thought he was a “mild and calm” person; notwithstanding, once at the rostrum, Chatto transformed into a “violent fanatic” against the British Empire. In comparison, Wieselgren established a relation to Bey, where the latter described how Egypt’s national independence would be accomplished after the war, especially as Europe would be “too exhausted” to prevent this from happening.82 The Viktoria Hall congress, on the one hand, succeeded in highlighting the agenda of pan-Islam,83 and, on the other hand, through the connective endeavours of the 1916 Peace Committee, it created a space of anti-colonialism in Stockholm. The event was novel from the perspective as it united nationalities across borders, sharing similar values, ambitions, and aims in the anticolonial struggle for freedom and national independence, and furthermore, the aftermath confirmed a new direction.
“We Have Fortunately Never Held Any Illusions . . . ” Representatives of the Muslim delegation wanted to raise awareness of the results of the Viktoria Hall congress. On 10 November, the Dutch-Scandinavian committee received a memorandum on Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Tripoli, Benghazi, India, Caucasus, and Turkestan, addressing the need of the socialist movement to discuss “effective means of liberating [the oppressed nations] from foreign subjection” and the hope that this would be tackled “at the next congress of peace”. It is not known if the delegation visited the committee to hand over the memorandum or if it was dispatched after the congress on 9 November. According to the archival notes of the Social History Portal, any other sources to confirm whether a meeting with the committee ever took place has not been found. What is known, however, is that the memorandum was circulated at Viktoria Hall, and then published in the Wafd paper, Bulletin du Parti national égyptien, in November. Thus, any response from the Dutch-Scandinavian committee has not been found; accordingly, 80 Gummerus, Jägare, p. 346. 81 Arne, Svenskarna och Österlandet, p. 365. 82 O. Wieselgren, “Svenskarna i Orienten”, Svenska Dagbladet, 8 February 1953. 83 Grass, “Tio muselmän”, p. 49.
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the act of passing on the memorandum must therefore be seen as a symbolic finale of the activities of the Muslim delegation in Stockholm.84 The India Committee was more explicit in its opinion to the proposed peace programme of the Dutch-Scandinavian committee. On 16 November, the India Committee sent a letter to the committee, criticizing it for “its lack of sincerity, which apparently exists within the Western European social democratic parties”. The length of the letter (eight pages) was a harsh criticism of the India Committee and its disappointment of having realized that the socialist movement had no intention of including India in the programme. Furthermore, the letter is symbolic from the perspective that it demonstrated the definitive position of the India Committee vis-à-vis the Dutch-Scandinavian committee. According to the India Committee, it was obvious that “for Western social democracy, as for every European imperialist, the word humankind equals Europe”. Accordingly, the “oppressed nations” were left out of the equation, especially those under the control of France or England. The letter highlighted a transnational perspective, comparing and questioning why the Dutch-Scandinavian committee treated other regions and “oppressed nations” differently from India. For example, Armenia, the Free State of Congo, Persia, Afghanistan, and China were given a more positive description. Clearly, it was a letter written with care; nevertheless, it declares the severing of ties to any allegiance of the India Committee to socialism as a political movement. Instead, the letter implied a radicalization of the committee, that is to say a deeper bond with Swedish left-wing socialists, and the creation of a relation to the Bolshevik regime in Russia. Further, the letter was written by Chatto, who concluded that “we have fortunately never held any illusions about the honesty of West European social democracy”; nevertheless, he expected of “international socialists to, at least, abide to the principles which they themselves have confessed” to achieve world peace. If India or other “oppressed nations” were not included in this framework, it would not be possible to achieve a permanent peace, Chatto stated.85 To confirm the dissociation with the Dutch-Scandinavian committee, the India Committee published two brochures in November. The first included statements of British socialists on England’s rule over India, and the second, De internationella socialistiska kongressernas tal och resolutioner angående Indien (Speeches and resolutions of the international socialist congresses on India), emphasized a historical background of the international socialist movement 84 SHP, document P/75-75a, Zusammenfassung der Forderungen der islamischen Gruppen, November 1917. 85 SCA, CL collection 820, B5, vol. 12, Letter from India Committee, Stockholm, to the DutchScandinavian committee, Stockholm, 16 November 1917.
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in the Indian liberation struggle. Yet the definite break was communicated in January 1918, with the publication of the brochure Indien och världsfreden. En protest mot den Holländsk-skandinaviska socialdemokratiska kommitténs fredsprogram (India and world peace. A protest against the peace programme of the social democratic Dutch-Scandinavian committee). According to the India Committee, it was an act of resignation, stating “that our protest can be of interest to others, especially the suppressed and oppressed nations”. Because of the “illogical and hypocritical” treatment of the Indian question by the DutchScandinavian committee, the India Committee put its faith in Russian revolutionaries and their methods of wanting to create world peace by “giving the broadest attention to the principle of nationality”.86 Thus, the hope and expectancy of the India Committee, which had been invested in the European socialist movement to take an active position against colonialism and imperialism, was transferred to Lenin’s Bolshevik regime in Soviet Russia.
Anti-Colonialism in Stockholm, 1917: A Limited Space Stockholm as a locale of and for transnational anti-colonial encounters in 1917 comes across as a vibrant place; but foremost, it was a limited space. The encounters of delegates – representing the “oppressed nations” and the variety of different nationalistic agendas by, first, being introduced to the Dutch-Scandinavian committee; second, being published in the Swedish press and printed material (brochures, pamphlets); and thirdly, by being presented at the Viktoria Hall congress on 9 November – exhibit a “lost history” of the portrayal of colonialism and imperialism in a politicized setting in Stockholm. Enacted at crucial time, as the war raged on the European continent, and with the uncertainties surrounding the Russian Revolution, movements against colonialism sought support from socialist movements to highlight the political aims of national independence and the right to self-determination once the war ended. From a longer perspective, despite the post-war era of decolonization and Sweden’s international role in declaring solidarity with the struggles of the Third World, by emphasizing the brief temporal and spatial role of Stockholm in 1917 in shaping and connecting anti86 “Englands herravälde i Indien” [England’s domination over India], Aftonbladet, 28 November 1917. The brochures have been located in Carl Lindhagen’s “brochure collection” at SCA. For further on the publications of the India Committee, see Barooah, Chatto, pp. 116–125.
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colonialism as a political movement, this is, by and large, a forgotten history. For a short period, Stockholm facilitated a perspective that enabled encounters of anti-colonialism while observing how these movements and agendas were perceived and treated, as in this case, by the socialist movement. Yet, the capacity of the delegates of the “oppressed nations” to advocate their agendas was restricted in the end; thus, Stockholm was a limited space to introduce ideas and arguments that questioned the current system of colonialism and imperialism. Moreover, it did not matter that the delegations wanted to enlighten the Dutch-Scandinavian committee about the “oppressed nations” – the question of political affiliation and bureaucracy pervaded the matter. This forced the delegates to not only create connections and relations that cut across national identities, but also to act with perseverance in order to gain access to the Dutch-Scandinavian committee as well as the Swedish press. The former confirmed membership to the European socialist movement as a credential for inclusion, and the latter perceived the presence of colonial delegates as something novel in the Swedish capital, particularly as it underscored insight into “the Oriental” and the situation in Africa and Asia. Thus, it contributed to conveying an understanding of the world outside of Europe, while, at the same time, depicting Stockholm as the centre of international politics for a short moment. Yet, the movements of the colonial delegations became limited over time. This was partly based on practical factors (lacking finances, denied visas, and surveillance); but it was mostly because of the perception of some delegates as being suspicious “German agents” due to their point of arrival from Berlin to Stockholm. Despite the socialist movement perception of Stockholm as a neutral place, it was not neutral from the perspective of the ongoing war, as some of delegations received financial support from Germany, such as the Indian and Irish associations. Furthermore, after having invested time to establish a dialogue with the Dutch-Scandinavian committee, events unfolded leading to other promising connections, particularly with the arrival of a Bolshevik delegation in Stockholm and the willingness of the left-wing socialist movement in Sweden to assist in providing political spaces for colonial delegates. Hence, the development of an anti-colonial presence in Stockholm in 1917 reveals a process of gradual radicalization, foremost for the India Committee. It also confirmed how the European socialist movement treated the colonial question from a European cultural perspective, and therefore the undertakings of the delegates of the “oppressed nations” in Stockholm foreshadowed what later would take place at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. The idea of a gradual transference of liberation to the colonies after the Great War, shaped by
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Wilson’s agenda of liberal internationalism, holds a similar bearing as the one that was coined in 1917 by the Dutch-Scandinavian committee, where the latter explicitly referred to cultural values. In 1917, Stockholm was an international centre of global politics. However, it was also a space of anti-colonialism in the history of twentieth-century resistance movements, and therefore it is connected to a protracted history that distinguishes how individuals shape their understanding of the world in times of migration and change, either voluntarily or through force.
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13 Ethiopia in Swedish Press in the Run-up to the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935/36 Introduction Solidarity with the peoples of the Global South is an important ingredient in the Swedish self-image as a modern, non-aligned, and internationalist country. In relation to Africa, this was manifest in widespread popular support for the anticolonial struggle and the anti-apartheid movement. Sweden was the first country in the West to extend direct official assistance to the Southern African liberation movements and the first country Nelson Mandela visited after his release from prison. This heritage is particularly evident today when documentaries and biographies commemorate an era that began to fade away with the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986. Correspondingly, Sweden’s entry into the European Union (EU) in 1995, which implied a shift in its foreign policies now coordinated with the EU, can be seen as the beginning of a new era. The question is where do we find the roots of this internationalist tradition? Literary scholar Raoul Granqvist is frank in his analysis, using Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as an example. Conrad’s book was published in 1902 and translated into many languages. However, it was only in 1949 that it was translated into Swedish, then to be published as an adventure story for boys: Granqvist’s conclusion is that Sweden up until then had missed out on the entire anti-colonial debate.1 Political scientist Tor Sellström, in a study of Swedish support for the liberation movements in Southern Africa, declares it was only with the war in Algeria in 1954–1962 that colonial conflicts were introduced to
1 R. Granqvist, “Virvlande lemmar’ och ’goda svenskar’ i Kongo i hundra år. Om svensk rasism i vardande” [“A whirl of black limbs” and “good Swedes” in Congo during a hundred years. On Swedish Racism in the making], in: M. McEachrane and L. Faye (eds.), Sverige och de andra. Postkoloniala perspektiv [Sweden and the others. Postcolonial perspectives], Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 2001, pp. 107, 117, 129–130. See also R. Granqvist, “Romance and Racism: One Hundred Years with Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ in Sweden”, in: G. Finchham and A. de Lange with W. Krajka (eds.), Conrad at the Millennium: Modernism, Postmodernism, Post colonialism, Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 2001. Literary scholar Helena Forsås-Scott provides another example. In spite of Sweden being a member of the League of Nations since 1920, she says that by the 1930s this had not contributed to the raising of citizens’ international consciousness (H. Forsås-Scott, Women in Context: An International Series: Swedish Women’s Writing, 1850–1995, London: Continuum International Publishing, 2000, p. 94). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-013
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the Swedish public opinion. With Algeria, and with the Cold War background, ideological and moral aspects were for the first time seen as parts of these conflicts, where awakened public opinion was, essential to his claim, the first also to influence a Swedish government.2 Before that, Sweden was “far from the political awakening of the colonized peoples in Africa and Asia”,3 and “it could be assumed that the general perception of the developing world was no different from that in other European countries.”4 This chapter argues that the origins of Swedish popular solidarity with colonized peoples go beyond the Algerian war, namely to the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935/36), one of the formative events in the anti-colonial history. The Italian victory over Ethiopia in May 1936 gave rise to peace movements in many countries. It became a reminder not only that the heyday of colonialism was not far away but also that the conquering of other peoples was not acceptable in the modern era.5 In Sweden, it as well ignited broad public opinion against fascism, racism, and colonialism in solidarity with Ethiopia. By analysing major Swedish daily newspapers, the objective of this chapter is to demonstrate that the run-up to the war was a major turning point in Swedish history. I shall attempt to demonstrate that it also brought Sweden into a new, international, and global community, challenging a prevailing world view and thereby contributing to a new self-image of Sweden as a modern and democratic society. An overarching perspective comes from Mattias Middell and Katja Naumann, who point out that interaction between societies, instead of internal evolution, is increasingly seen as the most important dynamic for development and modernity.6 Present-day globalization invites us a questioning of geographical units in
2 T. Sellström, Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa, vol. 1, Formation of a Popular Opinion (1950–1970), Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999, pp. 97–99. On the role of the state and foreign policies, Sellström refers to the study of political scientist M. Demker, Sverige och Algeriets frigörelse 1954–1962: kriget som förändrade svensk utrikespolitik [Sweden and the liberation of Algeria 1954–1962: The war that changed Swedish foreign affairs], Stockholm: Nerenius and Santérus, 1996. 3 Sellström, Sweden, p. 58. 4 Ibid., p. 64. 5 Ethiopians’ resistance inspired the anti-colonial struggle, and the defeat of Italy in Ethiopia in 1941 paved the way for the liberation of other colonized peoples of Africa and Asia. Amongst the campaigners for Ethiopia’s cause were both Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah. B. Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia 1855–1991, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001, p. 82. 6 M. Middell and K. Naumann, “Global History and the Spatial Turn: From the Impact of Area Studies to the Study of Critical Junctures of Globalization”, Journal of Global History 5 (2010), p. 158.
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the past while challenging established spatial as well as chronological dimensions.7 A longue durée analysis may very well demonstrate that the Swedish anticolonial and radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the Cold War, and the Palme era had a forerunner in a previous generation’s call for solidarity with Ethiopia. The present chapter, however, limits itself to an analysis of the press during the long spring and summer prelude to the conflict and the massive popular demonstrations that erupted in the late summer of 1935, immediately before the outbreak of war in early October. For Sweden, a small and industrializing country in the north of Europe, without a direct colonial past and largely isolated from the debate on the colonial world order, Ethiopia ought to have been very far away. This was not so, for mainly two reasons. Firstly, Sweden was dependent on trade and peace for its industrial production and the government’s ambitious social welfare programme had been funded by a radical disarmament of the defence forces. The upholding of collective security and international law was crucial and, like Ethiopia, Sweden was a member of the League of Nations. The Italo-Ethiopian conflict therefore served as a touchstone for the quality of the League, especially with Finland, the Baltic states, and Stalin’s Soviet Union in the east, and Hitler’s rearming of Germany to the south.8 Secondly, and specific to Sweden, was that many Swedes for half a century had participated in or closely followed developments in Ethiopia.9 Swedish missionary work, begun in the 1860s, had impressed Ras Tafari Makonnen, later Emperor Haile Selassie. In his 1924 tour of Europe, he paid a special visit to Sweden, a country with no colonial ambitions, asking for support for his modernization policies.10 This led to a number of Swedish key specialists being sent to Ethiopia, such as physicians, civil servants, and military experts. It resulted in the appointment of a military advisor to the emperor, General Eric Virgin, the founding of a cadet school for officers and, an official visit by the Swedish crown prince and princess in January 1935. The highpoint of Swedish-Ethiopian relations was the signing of the Peace and Friendship Treaty (August 1, 1935). This happened against the advice of the Swedish envoy in Rome, who warned against endangering the trade with Italy – and only two
7 E. Vanhaute, “Who is afraid of Global History? Ambitions, Pitfalls and Limits of Learning Global History”, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 20 (2009), p. 24. 8 See E. Lönnroth, Den svenska utrikespolitikens historia V, 1919–1939 [The history of Swedish foreign affairs V, 1919–1939], Stockholm: Nordstedt, 1959. 9 V. Halldin Norberg, Swedes in Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia 1924–1952: A Study in Early Development Co-operation, Uppsala: Studia Historica Upsaliensia, 1977. 10 Norberg, Swedes, pp. 121–154.
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months before the outbreak of war.11 All this was most provocative to Mussolini. One of his claims, besides a revenge for Adwa, was that the Italian occupation was needed for Ethiopia to modernize, while, in fact, Ethiopia was already busy modernizing, albeit without Italian help.12 The existence of early, broad Swedish public opinion in support of Ethiopia is overshadowed by the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the Second World War and is a largely unexplored subject. A still relevant overview of the Swedish foreign policy debate in interwar years is Herbert Tingsten’s book, first published in 1944.13 The Ethiopian conflict, he claims, gave rise to a general indignation in Sweden: “such an active opinion in a question of foreign policy did not arise at any other time during the interwar period.”14 In newspapers of all political persuasions, from left to right, the tone was definite and bitter over the unprovoked assault on a small nation without modern weapons.15 On Swedish-Ethiopian relations, the most important research is Viveca Halldin Norberg’s Swedes in Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, 1924–1952.16 As indicated by the title, though, developments
11 M. Cantera Carlomagno, Ett folk av mänsklig granit. Sverige i den italienska utrikespolitiken 1932–1936 [A people of human granite. Sweden in Italian foreign affairs 1932–1936], Lund: Historiska media, 1995, p. 142. Interestingly, the emperor emphasized the importance of the intensified Swedish-Ethiopian relations. In his autobiography, he claims that the planned visit by the Swedish crown prince and princess sparked the Italian aggression at Walwal: “But Italy never ceased to look jealously upon any act of civilization that was being carried out in Ethiopia; and when there remained only some 20 days before the arrival at Addis Ababa of Our guest, it appeared to her [Italy] that she could prevent the reception of Our guest. On 26th Hedar 1927 (= 5 December 1934) she entered Our realm at Walwal, launched a surprise attack and killed many of our men” (My Life and Ethiopia’s Progress, 1892–1937: The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Selassie I, E. Ullendorff [trans. and annot.], Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976, p. 208). 12 Already in the early 1930s, Italian colonial officials and the minister of foreign affairs, Dino Grandi, had claimed that Italy had a civilizing mission to carry out on the Dark Continent and that it needed to seize its rights. At that time, however, the costs of invading Ethiopia were considered too high. Instead, Italy continued with the so-called peripheral policy, aimed at weakening Haile Selassie’s plans to centralize state authority (G. B. Strang, “‘Places in the Sun’: Social Darwinism, Demographics and the Italian Invasion of Ethiopia”, in: G. B. Strang [ed.], Collision of Empires: Italy’s Invasion of Ethiopia and its International Impact, Farnham: Ashgate 2013; S. Rubenson, “Sweden and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis 1935”, Scandia 51 [1985] 1–2, p. 138). 13 H. Tingsten, Svensk utrikesdebatt mellan världskrigen [Swedish foreign policy debate between the world wars], Stockholm: Bonniers, 1964 (1944). 14 Tingsten, Svensk utrikesdebatt, p. 198 (own translation). 15 Ibid., p. 199 (own translation). 16 Halldin Norberg, Swedes.
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in Sweden largely fall outside the framework of her study.17 A different perspective is provided by Carol Adamson in a study focusing on the Swedish government, its foreign policy, and relations to the League.18 To her, the debate in the press and the formation of public opinion is of secondary importance and is rather seen as an obstruction to what the government tried to achieve. By not giving in to idealistic demands from the populace and the press on the eve of Munich, the government brought Sweden to a position of relative strength.19 The Swedish government remained neutral in relation to Nazi Germany, refused to take sides in the Spanish Civil War, and did not strain its relations with fascist Italy. By 1939, Sweden had “a coalition government which was dedicated to the preservation of Sweden and which was unimpressed by the ideals of solidarity”.20 In contrast, Sven Rubenson is more concerned with the formation of public opinion.21 The fact that the public and government in some 50 countries took an interest in the crisis was entirely due to Ethiopia’s membership in the League, he says. In Sweden, however, the situation was different and the interest in the League negligible.22 Instead, he emphasizes the importance of long-term Swedish-Ethiopian contacts and especially the role of the two Swedish mission societies. His analysis is that Swedish sympathies for the Ethiopians developed to an extent that hitherto had not existed with regard to any other African or Asian people.23 Rubenson’s conclusion is that the Swedish involvement in the conflict was strongest in the missionoriented sections of the population and that the government was more concerned with the fate of the League than with Ethiopia. The press too, Rubenson claims, was mostly concerned with the European dimension of the conflict.24
17 Halldin Norberg makes an exception where a Swedish popular mobilization had immediate effects in Ethiopia: the huge public response to the Swedish Red Cross–national fund-raising campaign for an ambulance brigade to Ethiopia (Halldin Norberg, Swedes, pp. 144–150). 18 C. A. Adamson, Sweden and the Ethiopian Crisis 1934–1938, PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987. 19 Ibid., p. 310. 20 Ibid., pp. 311–312. 21 Rubenson, “Sweden and the Italo-Ethiopian War”. The article, slightly modified, was also published in D. Eeckaute and M. Perret (eds.), La guerre d’Éthiopie et l’opinion mondiale 1934– 1941 [The Ethiopian war and world opinion 1934–1941], Paris: INALCO, 1986, pp. 85–112. 22 Rubenson refers to Tingsten to emphasize the insignificance of the Swedish League of Nations Association. In 1925, the association had 335 members but in 1932 only 150 which can be compared to its British equivalent which in the late 1920s had some 800,000 members (Rubenson, “Sweden and the Italo-Ethiopian War”, p. 131). 23 Ibid., p. 132. 24 Ibid., p. 144.
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In recent years, there has been a noticeable interest in the interwar period, the time before the Cold War parenthesis in history. One example is Collision of Empires: Italy’s Invasion of Ethiopia and Its International Impact,25 where 11 historians analyse the conflict from the perspective of the reactions of different states. By making use of new archival sources, a number of articles provide an update on the conflict and on familiar issues such as the British, French, or American positions on sanctions against Italy as well as the role of international security and the League. Others shed new light on the presence of Social Darwinist and racist thought amongst political leaders and public opinions. On Canada, for instance, Francine McKenzie writes most people “accepted European expansion at the expense of African people. Beliefs about [. . .] the dominance of white people over blacks [. . .] contributed to the unwillingness to condemn Italy’s actions.”26 Even if several of the articles confirm previous research, although in an updated form, critics, amongst them Molly Tambor, have pointed out that the methodology does not reflect a similar updating. The analysis, she writes, is most frequently at the level of high formal international relations. Most authors have relied on the 1960s and 1970s secondary sources of diplomatic history they seek to update, with few seeking out new inspiration in other fields; the archival work has been done almost exclusively in various national archives of Ministries of Foreign Affairs, which tends to result in arguments that emphasize the naturalness of the nation-state and of the point of view of elite white men.27
Such a reliance on older, secondary, sources is predominant in Remco van Diepen’s take on Sweden in “The Former European Neutrals, the Ethiopian Crisis and its Aftermath, 1935–1938”, where most of the references depend on the 1945 translation of Tingsten’s book into English.28 The source materials are remarkably rich concerning national, local, and organizational press and, as noted by Halldin Norberg, “could be made the topic of a complete research project”.29 The present chapter is based on Swedish daily papers from the far right to the far left, with the Stockholm-based national papers having
25 Cf. Strang (ed.), Collision of Empires. For an earlier study, see: Perret (eds.), La guerre, 1986. 26 F. McKenzie, “‘The Last Ditch Defender of National Sovereignty in Geneva’: The Realities behind Canadian Diplomacy during the Ethiopian Crisis”, in: Strang (ed.), Collision of Empires, p. 172. 27 M. Tambor, Review Essay on G. B. Strang (ed.) Collision, in: H-Diplo, 21 February 2014, http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/essays/ (accessed 1 May 2018). 28 R. van Diepen, “The Former European Neutrals, the Ethiopian Crisis and its Aftermath 1935–1938”, in: Strang (ed.), Collision, pp. 315, 319, 325, 327 and 334. 29 Halldin Norberg, Swedes, p. 20.
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by far the largest circulation.30 A general concern about developments in Ethiopia and the corresponding status of the League gave the Italo-Ethiopian conflict considerable attention in 1935 and 1936.31 The largest newspapers had correspondents in Europe’s major capitals from where they could report how the colonial powers stood the conflict and how the press and public opinion positioned themselves as the conflict evolved. The editors of the leading newspapers closely followed the public debate in Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. The outbursts from the regime-controlled Italian press provided many opportunities for comments on world politics. These were directed firstly against Japan, seen as the champion of all colonized peoples; then against Britain, because of the country’s attempts to restrain Mussolini and the very strong anti-war public opinion; and lastly against Sweden, believed to be secretly colonizing Ethiopia.32
30 By tradition, the largest and most influential Swedish papers were Liberal. In 1935, Dagens Nyheter (Liberal) had the largest circulation with 100,000 copies daily; Stockholmstidningen (Liberal) was second with 118,000, and the conservative Svenska Dagbladet 72,100 copies. Social-Demokraten (Social Democrat) distributed 43,000 copies daily, Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, the major Liberal paper in Sweden’s second city Göteborg, 24,000 copies. All the other major papers, from Nya Dagligt Allehanda (far right) to Arbetaren (Syndicalist), Folkets Dagblad (non-Comintern Communist), and Ny Dag (Comintern Communist) accounted for smaller circulations (see S. Tollin, Svensk Dagspress 1900–1967. En systematisk och kommenterad kartläggning [Swedish Daily Press 1900–1967. A systematic and commented survey], Stockholm: TUs förlag, 1967). 31 Tingsten, Svensk utrikesdebatt, p. 195. When the threat of sanctions against Italy in case of war became an issue, Liberal and Social Democratic papers, especially the latter, were the main defenders of the League and of sanctions, readily identifying themselves with the massive peace movement in Britain. The far right considered the conflict as an imperial business with little concern for Sweden. The far left was split. Anarchists and the displaced majority of the Communists – the Socialist Party – regarded the League and, behind it, the victors of the First World War, the colonial powers of France and Britain, as instruments of capitalism and imperialism with limited pity for Ethiopia. They advocated boycotts and strikes instead of sanctions, which were considered leading to war and siding with Britain. The Swedish Comintern Communists had difficulties in positioning themselves because of the silence from Moscow, with the Soviet Union allied with France and friendly with Italy. It was not until early September that Social Democrats and Comintern Communists marched together against the war and fascism in support of Ethiopia and sanctions. 32 Cf. Stockholms-Tidningen-Stockholms Dagblad, 1 August 1935, Nya Wermlands-Tidningen, 2 August 1935, Nya Dagligt Allehanda, 6 August 1935, Arbetet, 6 August 1935, Gefle Dagblad, 6 August 1935. On the Italian view, see Cantera Carlomagno, Ett folk.
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Sweden and the Colonial World Order The Swedish self-image and the portrayal of colonialism developed considerably from the time of the first Italo-Ethiopian border incident in November 1934 to the outbreak of war in October 1935, introducing new ideological and moral aspects. In December 1934, the Social Democratic foreign minister, Rickard Sandler, complained about a general disinterest in international affairs for a large part of the public. Many, he said, were content with Sweden as a backwater country on the periphery of Europe, at a safe distance from world politics. Nevertheless, when he, in the major Uppsala newspaper, under the headline “Foreign policy popular education”, urged students and public opinion to learn more about world politics and to become more involved, he received a positive response.33 In a similar vein, in February 1935, the Social Democratic parliamentarian Carl Lindhagen criticized the lack of interest and compassion for Ethiopia’s cause, although he recognized the usefulness of the recent Swedish crown prince visit in giving attention to the distant country.34 Furthermore, by early 1935, a certain naïveté concerning colonial conditions was still to be found. One of Sweden’s leading liberal papers wrote about Italy’s “only natural” desire to assert its right in the “scramble for Africa” and that it was not until now that “a true colonial consciousness had begun to pervade the [Italian] nation”.35 The state of affairs was nevertheless rapidly changing. During spring 1935, with Mussolini’s delaying tactics at negotiations in Geneva and parallel military mobilization,36 everyone realized that war was drawing near. By July, most Swedish papers had a very different understanding both of Sweden’s isolation and the colonial situation.37 The world had become much smaller and developments both near and far were seen as intertwined. Links were readily drawn between the battle of Adwa 1896, the Japanese victory against Russia in 1905, the following radicalization of Indian nationalism, and the events of 1935.38
33 Uppsala Nya Tidning, 17 December 1934. 34 Social Demokraten, 21 February 1935. 35 Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, 10 January 1935 (own translation). 36 See Z. Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark. European International History 1933–1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 105. 37 This did not include the papers of the far right. They continued to maintain that the Ethiopian issue was “a colonial issue” that only concerned the imperialist great powers. Tingsten, Svensk utrikesdebatt, p. 200. 38 For an early analysis of the importance of Adwa and Port Arthur for the anti-colonial struggle, see Svenska Dagbladet, 14 February 1935. Cf. Stockholmstidningen, 2 June 1935; Eskilstunakuriren, 8 August 1935; Fabian Månsson in Social-Demokraten, 7 August 1935; Upsala Nya Tidning, 27 August 1935.
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Readers in Sweden learned not only that the role of their countrymen in Ethiopia was discussed worldwide but also that they were not alone in their sympathies with the people of Ethiopia.39 The Swedish public had every reason to feel part of the wider world, together with African-American organizations in the US, black activists in Guyana, dockworkers in Cape Town and Durban, one of the peoples of Natal in South Africa volunteering to fight for Ethiopia, Muslim organizations in Egypt, Turkish generals, and the British Labour movement.40 Substantial space was given to Swedish editorials analysing and commenting on the colonial world order, racism, fascism and the anti-colonial formation of opinion in Sweden and the rest of the world. In this, the Scandinavian countries had a special responsibility, one editor argued. With Social Democratic governments in all three countries and rank-and-file members animated by international solidarity and universal brotherhood, international justice must be defended, even in faraway Africa: justice and its vindication was not to be confined to geography.41 Inspiration also came from beyond the Nordic countries. The International had reached the Nordic countries late, as one of the prominent Social Democratic editors, Sven Backlund, put it. Nevertheless, through the League and because of the acute world situation, new links were being forged: “It is perhaps not so pleasant for French and British imperialists, but so much more welcome for the socialist movement in France and England.”42 A common theme amongst Liberals and Social Democrats was to interpret the Italian aggression in terms of a threat against the development towards modern society. For several centuries, the liberal Karlstads-Tidningen wrote, the European so-called “civilization” had destroyed peoples in other parts of the world. The colonies had almost invariably been acquired by a policy of looting and robbery. However, if olden times altogether were more brutal, the presentday situation required higher claims. All the signatories of the Kellogg-Briand Pact had promised not to use war to resolve disputes or conflicts, and, for this reason, an armed assault of the old type would be a disgraceful relapse into barbarism.43 In the leading Social Democratic paper, Backlund expressed a similar
39 Cf. Svenska Morgonbladet, 25 August 1935. 40 Dagens Nyheter, 3 August 1935; Svenska Dagbladet, 6 August 1935 and 6 September 1935; Dagens Nyheter, 9 September 1935. 41 Eskilstunakuriren, 8 August 1935. A few years later, J. A. Selander, the liberal editor of the paper, became known as an outstanding and fierce critic of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Not less than three times did the authorities confiscate his newspaper editions in order to not displease neighbouring great powers. 42 Sven Backlund in Örebrokuriren, 17 September 1935 (own translation). 43 Karlstads-Tidningen, 19 September 1935.
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view. If Ethiopia was given to Italy as a protectorate, as one of the alternative compromises stated, this would be against the tides, and the process towards modern society would be turned around. A good example was instead the British colonial administration. This, he claimed, was under constant development because it was inspired by the British Labour movement: no British citizen would defend the colonial world order with less than British administration giving the impulses to freedom.44
Sweden and Ethiopia For the first time in Swedish history and for a prolonged period, the fate of an African people dominated daily front pages, headlines, and news material.45 The image of the Italo-Ethiopian conflict was unbalanced in favour of Ethiopia already in its infancy. This was for two reasons. One was the above-mentioned visit by the Swedish crown prince and princess to Ethiopia in January 1935 and a resultant news coverage and positive curiosity about the country.46 The second was that sympathies were almost entirely on the side of the emperor already when the first news of the budding conflict reached Sweden but long before the details were known. His visit to Sweden ten years earlier and his positive impact on the Swedish public opinion seem to have had a lasting effect. In January 1935, the leading conservative paper in Stockholm commented on the Italian accusation that Ethiopia had been responsible for the first clashes. Ever since his visit to Sweden in 1924, the Svenska Dagbladet wrote, the emperor was remembered as a most intelligent and earnest ruler, inspired by the call to develop his country to
44 Sven Backlund in Social-Demokraten, 30 September 1935. On the British public opinion and “Imperial adventures of the Italian variety” simply no longer acceptable to many sections of the British electorate, see Steiner, The Triumph, p. 106. 45 The South African War 1899–1902 or the Second Anglo-Boer War was in the Swedish press dealt with as a struggle between the white powers, i.e. the two republics of the interior and Great Britain, with a limited interest in black African society. Cf. J.-G. Rosenblad, Nation, nationalism och identitet: Sydafrika i svensk sekelskiftesdebatt [Nation, nationalism and identity: South Africa in Swedish turn of the century debate], Nora: Nya Doxa, 1992. An interesting study by Tore Furberg accounts for how Swedish missionaries’ reports about Afrikaner treatment of black South Africans turned Swedish public opinion sympathies in favour of the British side. T. Furberg, “De svenska missionärerna och hemmaopinionen under boerkriget” [The Swedish Missionaries and the Swedish Public Opinion during the Boer War], Svensk Missionstidskrift 50 (1962), pp. 157–164. 46 Cf. the Conservative Svenska Dagbladet, 8 January 1935, 4 June 1935, and left-leaning Social Demokraten, 21 February 1935.
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protect its independence: “Nothing is more absurd than [the accusation] that he would stir up any such troubles.”47 During spring and summer of 1935, several full-page interviews with the emperor were published in a number of leading newspapers.48 In almost all the interviews, the image of the emperor was that of the modernizer, a view that was shared by commentators from left to the right. An example is the Social Democratic parliamentarian and editor Fabian Månsson, who described the emperor as a man with three passions: the League, schools, and hospitals.49 In addition, other prominent Ethiopians were given considerable attention in Swedish papers, such as Heruy Wolde Selassie, minister of foreign affairs50; Täklä-Hawaryat, Ethiopian ambassador to the League51; and Emmanuel Abraham, the undersecretary at the Ethiopian embassy in London. In Aftonbladet, Abraham expressed his view of the conflict: “The Italians claim they need room for expansion. But what has that to do with us?” and “The Italians wish to be the protector of the white race against all the coloured races. We [Ethiopians] don’t go about with any such fantastic ideas of trying to dominate the white races.”52 As negotiations in Geneva dragged on, the Italian mobilization continued unabated during the spring and summer of 1935. The outbreak of war was delayed while waiting for the rainy season to end, and the reports of Swedes living in Ethiopia were accompanied by the arrival of correspondents of major Swedish newspapers. While waiting, there was a lot of time to report about the country. Much of this was coloured by a romantic picture of Ethiopia and an unrealistic optimism about Ethiopia’s chances of resisting an Italian invasion. The passion for the country and the urgency of the situation produced an
47 Svenska Dagbladet, 24 January 1935 (own translation). For a similar evaluation but at the other end of the political spectrum, see Fabian Månsson in Social-Demokraten, 8 August 1935. 48 See Dagens Nyheter, 15 February 1935, 4 June 1935, 20 August 1935, and 31 August 1935; Stockholms-Tidningen-Stockholms Dagblad, 5 March 1935; Svenska Dagbladet, 12 August 1935; Aftonbladet, 12 August 1935 and 15 August 1935. 49 Social-Demokraten, 8 August 1935. Cf. Dagens Nyheter, 4 August 1935, 20 August 1935, and 1 September 1935. 50 Dagens Nyheter, 14 September 1935. On Heruy, see L. F. Berge, “The Swedish Evangelical Mission and the Formation of Reformist Elite in Ethiopia c. 1868–1935”, in: I. Taddia and T. Negash (eds.), State Institutions and Leadership in Africa, Padova: Libreriauniversitaria.it edizioni, 2017. 51 Folkets Dagblad, 15 August 1935. Admiration for Täklä-Hawaryat, see Dagens Nyheter, 5 September 1935 and Svenska Dagbladet, 6 September 1935. See also B. Zewde, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia. The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century, Oxford: James Currey, 2002, p. 210. 52 Emmanuel Abraham in Aftonbladet, 18. September 1935 (own translation). Emmanuel Abraham is the author of Reminiscences of My Life, Trenton: The Red Sea Press, 2010. On Abraham, see Berge, “The Swedish”.
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image that appears to have been different from that of the press in the colonizing powers. There is a huge gap between the Swedish observations and the parodies and condescending views conveyed by authors such as Evelyn Waugh.53 Particularly concerning the media image of Ethiopia, and, by extension, a Swedish understanding of a hitherto faraway Africa, there was an intensified production and reproduction of new knowledge and new insights that challenged prevailing conditions and worldviews. Overall, the increased presence in Ethiopia meant that Swedish editors’ and columnists’ frames of reference widened considerably. Ethiopia and Africa came much closer.
Public Opinion and Demonstrations In Geneva, intensive mediation efforts continued until the very last, and there was a lot of campaigning awaiting the decision in the League. In the unusually hot late summer of 1935, there were demonstrations against war and fascism and in support of Ethiopia all over Sweden. One of the first big meetings was that of the Swedish League of Nations association in August 30. The purpose was to urge the government to support the League and not hesitate to impose sanctions against Italy in the event of war. The participants represented a remarkably broad range of Swedish civil society: peace, temperance, and women’s movements, churches, teachers’ organizations, trade unions, and political parties. The speakers were prominent pillars of official Swedish society: a former foreign minister, the mayor of Stockholm, representatives of the established Church of Sweden, leading Social Democrats, trade unionists, and intellectuals. The main reason for opposition, a Church of Sweden clergyman argued, was not that Ethiopia’s destiny could soon enough become the fate of Sweden. Rather, the reason for protest concerned a breach of righteousness that had a bearing on all humankind.54 The meeting was the start of a series of demonstrations in several major cities. A huge demonstration by Social Democrats and Communists in
53 Swedish author K. Arne Blom believes the Swedish crime novelist Stieg Trenter (1914–1967) was the model for the Swedish newspaper correspondent in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop. Blom claims Trenter was the only Swedish journalist in Ethiopia at the time of the Italian onslaught, and he knew Waugh. At that time, Trenter was known as Stig Johansson, a correspondent of Stockholms-Tidningen (K. A. Blom, “Crime Story in Sweden”, The Mystery Fancier 7 (1983) 5, p. 20). 54 Dagens Nyheter, 31 August 1935. See also Svenska Dagbladet, 31 August 1935. For a critical remark: “Pacifists argue for sanctions, equal to war”, see the Syndicalist paper Arbetaren, 31 August 1935.
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Stockholm took place on 4 September, demanding peace, socialism, and support for the League. The demonstration gathered no less than 12,000 people, remarkably numerous at that time. Most participants were youths, waving red flags. Ten bands were playing as the masses marched through Stockholm protesting against war and fascism as well as support for Ethiopia.55 On September 13, almost the whole first page of Göteborgs-Posten reported of 20,000 people marching through the city demonstrating against Mussolini and the war. Up to 40,000 were attending the following outdoor meeting, the largest demonstrations ever in Sweden’s second largest city. Harald Åkerberg, the editor of the Social Democrat Örebrokuriren, opened his speech with this statement: “Anyone who says that Ethiopia’s fate does not concern us has no idea of the course of history.”56 The Swedish-Ethiopian relationship had begun with the missionaries’ educational and medical work and continued with Ras Tafari Makonnen’s visit to Sweden and his request for help to modernize his country. But the question is who learned from whom? With only a little more than a week until the outbreak of war and by referring to statements, such as those by Täklä-Hawaryat, the Ethiopian delegate to the League (by this time well-known to Swedish public opinion), and the probability of Mussolini using mustard gas to spread Western civilization to African “barbarians”,57 Göteborgs-Posten wrote: Many Swedes have worked in Ethiopia. They have been well received, perhaps because they have come as humans to humans. In our missionaries, physicians, and advisors, they have seen friends and helpers. The [Ethiopians] say they have much to learn from us. That is probably right. But the question is if not we and the Europeans primarily have to learn from this distant country. Maybe Europeans would gain more if they, instead of sending poison gas and warplanes to “civilize” and big business to exploit [Ethiopia], dispatched experts to study these “barbarians” who, much further, may have reached what is essential in life: these “barbarians” who only wish to be humans and who up to the end refuse to sell their souls for oil, tanks and warplanes.58
55 Social-Demokraten, 5 September 1935 and 6 September 1935; Ny dag, 5 September 1935; Folkets dagblad, 6 September 1935. 56 Göteborgs-Posten, 13 September 1935 (own translation). Cf. a different emphasis in Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning 13 September 1935. 57 See Interview with Täklä-Hawaryat in Dagens Nyheter, 17 July 1935. On Täklä-Hawaryat, see Zewde, Pioneers, pp. 57–62. 58 Göteborgs-Posten, 21 September 1935 (own translation).
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Concluding Remarks The strong Swedish public opinion and the sympathies for Ethiopians during the Italo-Ethiopian conflict provides a fruitful base for further studies. Rubenson’s conclusion about the press mostly being concerned with the European dimension of the conflict can be discussed. For some of the Liberal and Social Democrat papers, a concern for the League overshadowed the fate of Ethiopia, but there was also a change over time with war delayed and, while waiting for the rain to stop, increasing new knowledge about Ethiopia. My general impression is that the self-image of Sweden and the view of the colonial world order went through substantial changes during the spring and summer of 1935. Sweden became a part of a larger world. At the same time, Ethiopia came closer. For Swedish commentators, who interpreted the times as a development towards modern society, it was easy to recognize a kinsman in the modernizing emperor. Swedish commentators had limited previous contacts with the colonial world. However, with a long-standing built-up appreciation for Ethiopia and with a sudden and considerable influx of new knowledge, they were predisposed to look at Ethiopian society with a fresh look. Ethiopia could count on the sympathies of different groups: the mission supporters, as claimed by Rubenson; the conservative press because of the Swedish-Ethiopian royal connections; the Liberal and Social Democratic press due to the cause of Ethiopia being linked to the quality of the League; and, in the end, the radical left because of the struggle against fascism. In this respect, the Swedish press and public opinion was remarkably united, a stark contrast to the divided loyalties during the Spanish Civil War. The outbursts of public opinion in September 1935 and the continued developments during 1935/36 can shed further light on the plurality of transnational networks that appears to have been at work. An assignment for future studies can therefore be to try to identify and analyse how political parties, trade unions, churches, peace and women’s movements all contributed to the formation of a new, modern, and global society.
Part IV: Temporal and Spatial Forms of Knowledge Organization
Johanna Skurnik
14 Cartographic Histories of the Western Territorialization of Northern Australia, 1840s–1900s: Global Circuits of Knowledge and the Mapmakers’ Craft Introduction During the nineteenth century, commercial cartographers were instrumental in recording and communicating information concerning the changes in Western physical and political geographic knowledge. Much of these developments resulted from exploration and surveying activities in different parts of the globe, such as those undertaken by the British in the southern hemisphere. Cartographic practices and maps were an important aid in visualizing the territorial claims the British made in Australia and in expressing the ideals of sovereignty. Even though the Dutch had made landings on the northern coast of what for them was Terra Australis Incognita in the seventeenth century, they had made no territorial claims and instead left their mark on the first European name of the continent – Nieuw Hollandia (New Holland).1 Consequently, the role of maps in visualizing territorial claims only became dominant as the British invaded Australia in the wake of James Cook’s voyages along the eastern coast of the continent in 1770.2 The occupation advanced with the establishment of new colonies as the nineteenth century unfolded, ending with British claims to sovereignty over the whole continent in 1829. British legal instruments rejected the rights of the aboriginal people by defining the lands as having been unoccupied,3 even though the
1 Sh. Konishi and M. Nugent, “Newcomers, c. 1600–1800”, in: A. Bashford and S. MacIntyre (eds.), The Cambridge History of Australia, vol. 1, Indigenous and Colonial Australia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 43–44, 46–49. 2 For a detailed account of the foundations of British sovereignty over Australia, see S. Belmessous, “The Tradition of Treaty Making in Australian History”, in: S. Belmessous (ed.), Empire by Treaty: Negotiating European Expansion, 1600–1900, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 186–213. 3 Treaties were not made with the Indigenous peoples of Australia, but the matter was discussed especially in the 1830s and 1840s (see Belmessous, “The Tradition of Treaty Making”, pp. 186–213). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-014
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southern continent had been inhabited by aboriginal Australians for some 65,000 years prior to British invasion.4 The expansion of the British Empire in the southern hemisphere coincided with the unprecedented momentum that Western maps gained to communicate and mediate geographic knowledge in the nineteenth century. This development occurred as a result of the growth in the number of different types of printed maps due to advances in printing technologies, cheaper map production, and the advent of mass literacy. Higher volumes increased the potential impact of cartographic products in shaping peoples’ world views as they reached the hands of more diverse audiences, including school children and the working class, and developed into handy tools for daily governmental practice. Consequently, nineteenth-century maps of Australia that were laid on tables; perused in atlases, periodicals, and travel books; and hung on walls in scientific societies, state departments, schools, and in homes facilitated the denial of space by enabling people to hold representations of large landmasses, even the whole world, in their hands.5 For example, an article published in 1845 in Penny Magazine, a British publication for the working class, discusses “map-travelling”, which enabled readers to acquire knowledge of places they had never visited if they only learned to interpret what the map communicated by training with the familiar landscapes. Thus, maps seemingly translated (and still do) the world into a uniform language that enabled knowing from a distance.6 The widespread circulation of British territorial divisions of Australia contributed to visual empire building and knowledge practices. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, maps were widely used to construct comprehensible geographies based on explorations and topographical surveys undertaken in the colonies and in Europe.7 Through their work, commercial mapmakers helped popularize
4 Archaeological research has recently pushed the date back to 65,000 years ago. See Ch. Clarkson et al., “Human Occupation of Northern Australia by 65,000 Years Ago”, Nature 547 (19 July 2017), p. 306. See also P. Veth and S. O’Connor, “The Past 50,000 Years: An Archeological View”, in: Bashford and MacIntyre (eds.), The Cambridge History of Australia, vol. 1, pp. 17–42. 5 M. H. Edney, “The Irony of Imperial Mapping”, in: J. Akerman (ed.), The Imperial Map. Cartography and the Mastery of Empire, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 24; M. H. Edney, “Bringing India to Hand. Mapping an Empire, Denying Space”, in: F. Nussbaum (ed.), The Global Eighteenth Century, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, pp. 65–78. 6 The Penny Magazine, 2 August 1845, pp. 298–299. 7 M. H. Edney, Mapping and Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997; R. B. Craib, Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes, Durham: Duke University Press, 2004; A. Prior, British Mapping of Africa: Publishing Histories of Imperial Cartography c. 1880–c. 1915, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 2012; D. Foliard, Dislocating the Orient : British Maps and the Making of
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the abstract spaces of colonial governance created through British legislation by making them visible. Doing so, the maps contributed to the structural work of settler colonialism. They helped cement Western territorial ideas and settler colonial geographies that affected the conceptualization of the continent and the sense of belonging of the settler colonialists. Thus far, however, the histories of the mapping and the territorialization of the Australian continent have not been told side by side. Instead, the developing shapes and sizes of the colonies have been examined from the perspective of legal history. Even though at times outline maps have been used to illustrate these developments, links have not been drawn to the historical maps published at the time the changes were made.8 Similarly, map historians documenting the transnational mapping of the continent have not critically investigated its connections to the shaping of colonial territoriality.9 A particularly complex cartographic history relates to the global cartographic life of the short-lived colony of North Australia from the 1840s until the 1900s. This colony was originally designed as the entire northern area of New South Wales, from the 26th parallel in the north until the 129th eastern meridian, thus incorporating the territory in present-day Queensland and the Northern Territory, centring on a settlement at Port Curtis, some 600 kilometres north of present-day Brisbane on the east coast. The founding of North Australia in February 1846 related to the plans of the administration of the Secretary of State William Gladstone (1809–1898) to establish a new penal colony that would function as a depot for conditionally pardoned convicts from Van Diemen’s Land (present-day
the Middle East, 1854–1921, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017; J. Skurnik, Making Geographies: The Circulation of British Geographical Knowledge of Australia, 1829–1863, Turku: University of Turku, 2017. 8 The most recent and comprehensive review of these processes is G. Carney, “A Legal and Historical Overview of the Land Borders of the Australian States”, Australian Law Journal 90 (2016) 8, pp. 579–602. For cartographic representations of these developments see, e.g., J. C. R. Camm and J. McQuilton (eds.), Australians: A Historical Atlas, Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates: Broadway, 1987, pp. 251–253; National Archives of Australia, “Places”, https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/places.html, 2011. 9 For existing accounts of maps of Australia, see G. Williams and A. Frost (eds.), Terra Australis to Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988; M. Richards and M. O’Connor, Changing Coastlines: Putting Australia on the World Map, 1493–1993, Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1993; M. O’Connor and T. Birtles, Australia in Maps: Great Maps in Australia’s History from the National Library’s Collection, Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2008.
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Tasmania).10 However, due to a change of government, the plan was revoked, and before the end of 1846, a letter was penned at the Colonial Office in London and sent to Sydney in New South Wales ordering that all plans and works should be cancelled. This order became official in December 1846 when Queen Victoria revoked the letters patent and confirmed that the territory of approximately 2.8 million square kilometres – over one-third of the total area of the Australian continent – was ceded back to New South Wales.11 The cartographic consequences of this series of events were extensive: Even though the colony only existed for less than a year in 1846, it was mapped by major commercial mapmakers across the world in a variety of ways for several decades. Indeed, the territory only disappeared from printed maps after the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. These historical map developments have not been noted in extant research concerning British colonization and exploration of the northern coast.12 As North Australia was a shortlived plan, it has received even less attention and is often only mentioned as
10 A. Twomey, The Constitution of New South Wales, Sydney: The Federation Press, 2004, p. 39; G. Carney, “A Legal and Historical Overview”, p. 598. Gladstone was in office from December 1845 until June 1846. In addition, the colony was established in order to experiment with a more flexible mode of administration. It was envisaged that North Australia would be governed by a superintendent who would act under the command of the governor of New South Wales instead of directly with the secretary of state in London, as was the case with other Australian colonies. 11 Carney, “A Legal and Historical Overview”, p. 598. The decision to dissolve the colony as a unified entity had already been made when Charles Fitzroy, the governor of New South Wales, wrote a reply in November 1846 in which he announced that he had started to execute the instructions he had received from London (see minutes by civil servants in Fitzroy to Grey 7 November 1846, no. 2, CO 201/369, The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA); Fitzroy to Grey 7 November 1846, no. 3, CO 201/369, TNA; Fitzroy to Grey 7 November 1846, no. 4, CO 201/369, TNA). 12 An informative overview of the British attempts to colonize the north is J. M. R. Cameron, “The Northern Settlements: Outposts of Empire”, in: P. Statham (ed.), Origins of Australia’s Capital Cities, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 271–291. See also J. Allen, “Port Essington – A Successful Limpet Port?”, Australian Historical Studies 15 (1972) 59, pp. 341–360; J. Allen, “The Archaeology of Nineteenth-Century British Imperialism: An Australian Case Study”, World Archaeology 5 (1973) 1, pp. 44–60. The most well-known exploratory expeditions were those led by Ludwig Leichhardt, an explorer of German origin, from Moreton Bay to Port Essington in the 1840s; the North Australian Expedition led by the surveyor Augustus C. Gregory in the mid-1850s; and expeditions by Robert O’Hara Burke, William Wills, and John McDouall Stuart to cross the continent from South Australia in the beginning of the 1860s. See N. Etherington, “Recovering the Imperial Context of the Exploration of Northern Australia”, in: A. M. Scott et al. (eds.), European Perceptions of Terra Australis, Farnham: Ashgate, 2011, pp. 233–246; D. Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces. Exploring Africa and Australia, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013.
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part of these developments if brought up at all.13 As such, the curious case of North Australia offers a starting point to examine the making of territories on maps in a transnational framework. It helps question the complex relationship between print products and the locality and globality of knowledge. These processes can be investigated by directing attention to the circuits of territorial knowledge, the places in which maps were produced, and the materiality of mapmakers’ craft that underpinned the production of maps. Indeed, what did “map-travellers” in different parts of the world see when they looked at maps of Australia? How common was North Australia on these maps? What does this tell us about the mobility and globality of territorial knowledge about Australia? This chapter sets out to examine the maps of the continent from the 1840s up to the first decade of the twentieth century to answer these questions. I take a quantitative, contextualizing approach. The chapter is based on an analysis of some 780 maps prepared in Great Britain, continental Europe, the United States, and the Australian colonies, which are housed at various institutions.14 The maps examined by the author include wall maps, atlases, sheet maps, as well as maps printed in periodicals and books. The chapter consists of two analytical sections. First, I will examine how the colonial projects of the late 1830s and 1840s were visualized on maps, with special attention paid to the origins and prevalence of two different types of North Australia on maps. Second, I will analyse the increasing heterogeneity of mapping the north that emerged in the 1860s in the wake of the founding of the colony of Queensland and the expansion of South Australia.
The Heterogeneous Mapping of North Australia(s) North Australia is a defining feature in approximately 46 per cent of the maps examined in this study that were produced between the 1840s and 1900s. North 13 The most comprehensive account focusing on North Australia is J. F. Hogan, The Gladstone Colony: An Unwritten Chapter of Australian History, London: Fisher & Unwin, 1898. See also R. Evans, A History of Queensland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 59–60; R. Johnston and H. Gregory, “Choosing Brisbane”, in: P. Statham (ed.) The Origins of Australia’s Capital Cities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 249; Carney, “A Legal and Historical Overview”, p. 598. 14 The majority of maps studied in the present article are from the collections of the National Library of Australia (NLA) and the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (DRHMC). Other important collections used by the author are held by the National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA) and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF). The author has combined a database of these maps, and it is in her possession.
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Australia found its way onto wall maps, atlases, individual sheet maps, pocket maps, and maps in periodicals and books, appearing on maps depicting the continent, the region of Oceania, and maps of the world. Consequently, North Australia became a globally circulating feature and reached a diverse and widespread map-reading audience. This occurred at a time when large amounts of maps that did not record the name or boundaries of the colony were also printed. How and why did this happen? In this section, I will examine the different ways in which mapmakers represented North Australia on their maps in relation to the mapping practices of the time. I will also consider how the territorial developments that took place in the 1850s and 1860s affected these mappings. Figure 1 displays the temporal variation in the production of maps in different countries between the 1840s and 1900s, including information whether the maps contain an entity called North Australia or not. The figure includes information from the biggest production areas examined in this study: the Australian colonies, France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. 15 I have excluded the maps without accurate publication years. As the figure demonstrates, the amounts of maps vary greatly between area and decade, and they cannot be compared as such. Instead, the figure can be read as a tentative indicator of the diversity of territorial divisions on maps printed in different parts of the world and the temporal changes that occurred. It demonstrates that maps with North Australia were published in all areas until the end of the nineteenth century. For example, the figure demonstrates how the majority of maps printed in the United States between the 1850s and 1880s studied for this research depicted an area called North Australia. To understand how and why mapmakers documented territories on the Australian continent in a particular manner, it is necessary to refer to the sources of information they had at their disposal. The construction of new maps involved the compilation of numerous sources of information. The information inserted into maps might well have been the result of intensive comparison and critical examination of various sources, depending on the data and map in question. Even though it is often impossible to determine the exact material used by mapmakers, especially when dealing with transnational knowledge exchanges, we can identify two main groups of sources: legal instruments, and their announcements in government gazettes, newspapers, and literature as well as maps.
15 Lower numbers of maps were from the following areas identified by publication locations: Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Holland, Italy, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
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Figure 1: Relative proportions of maps including North Australia (NA) or not (by area and decade), figure by Henrikki Tenkanen.
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Technically for the British government, the establishment of new colonies relied on different types of legal instruments. The establishment of the Australian colonies, with the exceptions of Western Australia and South Australia, was based on the Act for the Government of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, which recognized the sovereignty of Great Britain via the power of letters patent and designated that the colonial power had the power to form separate territorial units within New South Wales.16 The extent of the new territories was described in textual forms in the legal instruments, often with reference to specific latitudes and longitudes. No other option was possible, as the interior of the continent remained practically unknown for the British. In the case of North Australia, the letters patent described the territory as “all those parts of the Territories heretofore comprised within the said Colony of New South Wales which lie to the northward of the 26th degree of south latitude.”17 Similar patents were issued when Victoria and Queensland were established as colonies in the 1850s, and when alterations were made to the position of western and northern boundaries of South Australia in the 1860s.18 In addition to these written sources, mapmakers could turn to maps when inserting North Australia on their maps for the first time. As Daniel Foliard notes, “maps are the result of multitude of circulations.” By this, he means that nineteenth-century mapmakers copied each other’s work without hesitation.19 Copying constituted a typical mapmaking practice, although restrictions to prevent blatant plagiarizing of other peoples’ contributions – which copying the outline of the colony could not be considered – did emerge on national levels. For example, an act that enabled mapmakers to protect against the production and sale of unauthorized copies was passed in Britain in the mid-eighteenth
16 The colony of Western Australia (also known as Swan River Colony) was founded by Britain in 1829 and was never part of New South Wales. The colony of South Australia was authorized by an Act of Parliament in 1834 (see An Act to provide until the Thirty-first Day of December One thousand eight hundred and thirty-four, for the Government of His Majesty’s Settlements in Western Australia, on the Western Coast of New Holland, 10 Geo. IV No. 63, 1829; An Act to empower His Majesty to erect South Australia into a British Province or Provinces, and to provide for the Colonization and Government thereof, 4 and 5 Wm IV C.95 1834. See also An Act for the Government of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, 5 and 6 Vic. C.76). The act names refer to the name of the reigning monarch, which are George IV, William IV, and Queen Victoria. 17 “Proclamation”, New South Wales Government Gazette, 13 November 1846, p. 1422. 18 See Carney, “A Legal and Historical Overview”, pp. 590, 593–594, 599. 19 Foliard, Dislocating the Orient, p. 9.
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century, thus safeguarding their commercial interests.20 However, it was far from straightforward to determine whether a copyright infringement had occurred: it was a case-by-case business. Furthermore, copyright legislation was limited to the domestic sphere, with an international agreement not emerging until the 1880s.21 The availability of the latest maps in different locations was the result of transnational correspondence networks, commercial map trade, and systematic trading between scientific societies. In general, map firms accumulated extensive reference libraries of other publishers’ maps and sought opportunities to acquire the latest information regarding, for example, the exploration and surveys of extra-European territories by forging close links with travellers and explorers. The establishment of specialized geographical societies from the 1820s marked the beginning of many institutional map collections that mapmakers could refer to.22 Some mapmakers sent out public circulars in order to gather relevant topographical and geographical information.23 Furthermore, some map companies had transcontinental agreements that allowed them to copy maps for publication in different locations. As the British government did not have a centralized mapping agency that would have effectively visualized the territorial decisions that were made, the most authoritative and detailed maps of Australia that compiled the data arriving from the colonies together were produced by commercial mapmakers. In fact, until the early 1860s this was the task of particularly one cartographer, John Arrowsmith (1790–1873), who was the semi-official cartographer of the Colonial Office as the department did not have its own geographers on the payroll.24 Consequently, the amount of detail regarding the physical geography of
20 See I. Alexander, “Cartography, Empire and Copyright Law in Colonial Australia”, Law and History 5 (2018) 1, pp. 24–53. 21 The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works was adopted in Switzerland in 1886. 22 For example, the map collections of the British Royal Geographical Society started to notably develop in the 1850s, with the acquisition of convenient storage space and the employment of a map curator (see G. R. Crone and E. T. Day, “The Map Room of the Royal Geographical Society”, The Geographical Journal 126 (1960) 1, pp. 12–17). 23 F. Herbert, “The ‘London Atlas of Universal Geography’ from John Arrowsmith to Edward Stanford: Origin, Development and Dissolution of a British World Atlas from the 1830s to the 1930s”, Imago Mundi 41 (1989), pp. 99–123; Foliard, Dislocating the Orient, p. 143. 24 Creating a centralized mapping division was often discussed but only became an acute issue in the late 1850s in the wake of the Crimean War (1853–1856). Consequently, the Topographical Department was established at the War Office. Prior to this, the Colonial Office, for example, had employed a geographer in the 1820s. However, the post was discontinued
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the continent as well as the founding of new colonies, counties, districts, and parishes on Arrowsmith’s maps of Australia was unparalleled in Britain. In addition to the latest information, the work for the government provided Arrowsmith income to be able to invest in the production of his own maps.25 Due to his authoritative position in British colonial cartography, it is highly probable that the work of many mapmakers became entangled with Arrowsmith’s. With this in mind, it is worthwhile to enquire how Arrowsmith mapped North Australia. Arrowsmith was probably one of the first cartographers to document the new colony in the spring of 1846.26 Arrowsmith continued to depict the colony on many of his maps for at least 15 years after the revocation of the colony in the same year. His works of the time included not only the map of the continent that was published in the cartographer’s magnum opus – The London Atlas of Universal Geography27 – but also maps that were sold separately, which depict either the whole continent or half of it.28 On maps issued separately, Arrowsmith adopts special measures in order to present the name of the colony: the western sheet bears the word “north” and the first two letters of Australia. The “stralia” is printed in smaller letters in the margin. This convention can be seen in the first
and thereafter the department relied on the work of commercial cartographers, such as Arrowsmith. For more on the topographical department, see J. Black, The Power of Knowledge. How Information and Technology Made the Modern World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014, pp. 297–298. 25 The Arrowsmith’s company produced hundreds of maps for publications issued by the Houses of Parliament in Britain up until 1863. In addition, he was also one of the main contributors to the publications of the Royal Geographical Society. Indeed, he produced an unspecified number of maps for a variety of travel books published by many British publishers, most importantly the prestigious John Murray (see Herbert, “The ‘London Atlas of Universal Geography’”, p. 105). For existing carto-bibliographies of Arrowsmith’s maps, see C. Verner, “Maps by John Arrowsmith in the Publications of the Royal Geographical Society”, The Map Collectors’ Circle 8 (1971) 76, pp. 3–35; A. McGeaghaen and C. Verner, “Maps in the Parliamentary Papers by the Arrowsmiths. A Finding List. Part 1, 1–263”, Map Collectors’ Circle 9 (1973) 89, pp. 1–38; A. McGeaghaen and C. Verner, “Maps in the Parliamentary Papers by the Arrowsmiths. A Finding List. Part 2, 264–462”, Map Collectors’ Circle 9 (1973) 89, pp. 39–68. 26 J. Arrowsmith, Australia from Surveys Made by Order of the British Government, 1846, MAP NK 10749–2, The National Library of Australia (NLA). 27 For the development of the atlas, see Herbert, “The ‘London Atlas of Universal Geography’”. 28 J. Arrowsmith, Eastern Portion of Australia, 1847, MAP RM 4384, NLA; J. Arrowsmith, Eastern Portion of Australia, 1850, MAP T 85/2, NLA; J. Arrowsmith, Australia from Surveys made by Order of the British Government, 1858, MAP T 1441/1, NLA; J. Arrowsmith, Eastern Portion of Australia, 1858, MAP T 1441/2, NLA; J. Arrowsmith, Australia from Surveys made by Order of the British Government, 1862, MAP T 86, NLA.
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map depicting the colony in 1846.29 Arrowsmith’s maps of the continent document the colony until 1863, even though the cartographer updated the map with the other territorial developments that occurred, such as the founding of Queensland.30 North Australia also appears on the inset map of Arrowsmith’s The South Eastern Portion of Australia, which focuses on the colony of New South Wales.31 Arrowsmith published editions of this map until 1858, and it was utilized at the Colonial Office and was also printed in the British parliamentary papers.32 Dorothy Prescott argues that Arrowsmith continued to depict the colony after 1846 because he was unaware of its revocation.33 This seems extraordinary considering his close connection to the British government, but it might be true given Arrowsmith’s rather systematic depiction of the territory throughout the decades. When considering this point, it is worthwhile to take note of how the revocation of the colony was enforced. After orders had been dispatched to Australia to abandon the plan, Governor Charles Fitzroy (1796–1858) contacted London and reported local concerns over the jurisdictional consequences of such actions. Fitzroy stated that the abandonment of the project had led to the creation of a territory without an official sovereign. Indeed, the proclamation relating to the establishment of North Australia stated that inhabitants in the
29 J. Arrowsmith, Australia from Surveys made by Order of the British Government, 1846, MAP NK 10749–2, NLA. See also J. Arrowsmith, Australia from Surveys made by Order of the British Government, 1850, MAP T 85/1, NLA. J. Arrowsmith, Australia from Surveys made by Order of the British Government, 1858, MAP T 1441/1, NLA. 30 Dorothy Prescott, who has scrutinized the different states of Arrowsmith’s maps of Australia principally from the different editions of London Atlas of Universal Geography, identifies an 1862/63 version as one of the last made by the cartographer. For a detailed description of the map, see D. Prescott, “Eastern Portion of Australia, East 1863/1 (1862/1),” Arrowsmith’s Australian Maps From the London Atlas of Universal Geography by John Arrowsmith and later Edward Stanford, 2012, http://www.asmp.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/biogs/E000115b.htm. For the map, see J. Arrowsmith, Australia from Surveys made by Order of the British Government, 1862, Z/MC 804/1862/1, Mitchell Map Collection, State Library of New South Wales. 31 See, e.g., J. Arrowsmith, The South Eastern Portion of Australia, 1848, MAP T 97, NLA; J. Arrowsmith, The South Eastern Portion of Australia, 1852, MAP T 98, NLA; J. Arrowsmith, The South Eastern Portion of Australia, 1858, MAP T 1446, NLA. 32 D. Prescott, “The South Eastern Portion of Australia,” Arrowsmith’s Australian Maps From the London Atlas of Universal Geography by John Arrowsmith and later Edward Stanford, 2015, http://www.asmp.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/biogs/E000092b.htm. 33 See D. Prescott, “Eastern Portion of Australia, East 1860/1 (1858/2),” Arrowsmith’s Australian Maps From the London Atlas of Universal Geography by John Arrowsmith and later Edward Stanford, 2012, http://www.asmp.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/biogs/E000113b.htm.
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territory would be subject to laws enforced in the new colony.34 To rectify the situation, civil servants at the Colonial Office thought it best to prepare an additional commission in order to officially assert that British sovereignty extended to the previous boundaries of New South Wales. Consequently, the revocation was only made public in New South Wales in January 1849.35 This peculiar chain of events might explain why the news about the revocation did not reach Arrowsmith and other mapmakers in Britain and elsewhere. Still, the annulment of the colony was not a secret in Britain, judging by how the discussions conducted in the British Parliament were printed in local newspapers.36 Furthermore, the maps by Arrowsmith that depict the colony were employed at the Colonial Office and in government publications into the 1850s.37 Consequently, it is evident that maps depicting the colony were utilized by those in London who were most directly involved in the colonial administration of the southern continent. It is likely that they could have easily pointed out the error to the cartographer as he often visited the Colonial Office map library and borrowed manuscript material that arrived from the colonies. However, based on the material I have examined, the civil servants in London did not comment on the cartographic prevalence of North Australia in any way, even though the map library at the Colonial Office also contained maps that did not record the colony. Perhaps it was irrelevant, considering that North Australia, even though not a political entity anymore, prevailed on the mind maps of the government officials: it is how the northern parts of the continent were often referred to in everyday parlance of colonial governance.38 To further complicate the situation, it should be noted that Arrowsmith also produced maps that did not name the colony.
34 “Proclamation”, New South Wales Government Gazette, 13 November 1846, p. 1422. 35 The public were informed of the reabsorption of Northern Australia back into New South Wales via an announcement in the New South Wales Government Gazette in May 1849 (see “Proclamation”, New South Wales Government Gazette, 23 January 1849, p. 117; “Legislative Council”, New South Wales Government Gazette, 19 May 1849, p. 814). For details about these developments, see Skurnik, Making Geographies, pp. 203–204. 36 Ibid., p. 208. 37 For maps in the Colonial Office Map Library, see the Colonial Office Map Catalogue 1910, TNA. 38 This surfaces in discussions in reference to explorer Augustus C. Gregory’s (1819–1905) North Australian Expedition in the 1850s as well as when discussing the territorial changes to the area in the early 1860s. See the printed parliamentary papers: PP 1857–1858, xli (171) Papers relating to an expedition recently undertaken for the purpose of exploring the northern portion of Australia; PP 1863, xxxviii (813), North Australia. Copy or extracts of correspondence between the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the governors of the Australian colonies, respecting the annexation of the crown lands around the Gulf of Carpentaria.
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These include a huge map of Eastern Australia that Arrowsmith prepared in the 1850s, which depicts the 26th parallel as the northern boundary of New South Wales. However, this depiction leaves the northern half of the continent unnamed.39 What is more, an 1858 map of the Pacific region, which was prepared for the London Atlas of Universal Geography, documents the names of the colonies but only demarcates the boundaries of South Australia.40 Even though Arrowsmith exerted great influence in the mapping of Australia, it is impossible to deduce what role his maps played in the work of other mapmakers. For example, some direct references to the work of the cartographer can be found in maps produced in France and Britain, but there is no clear way to ascertain whether they derived their territorial information from these maps.41 Nevertheless, it is clear that many mapmakers depicted the territorial divisions of the continent in a similar manner as Arrowsmith (see Map 1). Maps that depict the continent with North Australia appear in atlases produced in different parts of
39 See, e.g., J. Arrowsmith, Map of the Eastern Provinces of Australia, 1851, MAP RM 790 (Copy 1), NLA; J. Arrowsmith, Map of the Eastern Provinces of Australia, 1855, MAP RM 1947, NLA. 40 J. Arrowsmith, Pacific Ocean, 1858, MAP T 1450, NLA. 41 In France, the geographer Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun (1816–1899) prepared a map depicting the Australian continent that was accompanied by another that showed the recent results of the North Australian Expedition by the surveyor and explorer Augustus C. Gregory (1819–1905). The map depicted North Australia as a separate territory and the map of Gregory’s route noted that it documented the exploration route in North Australia after Arrowsmith’s work (see V. A. MalteBrun, Carte de l’Australie indiquant ses dernières divisions et les plus récentes découvertes, 1857, ark:/12148/btv1b53081425m, Bibliothèque Nationale de France [BNF]). Malte-Brun also introduced Arrowsmith’s map that depicted the route of the expedition at the council meeting of the Société de Géographie in 1857. See the account of the proceedings of 19 June 1857 in Bulletin de la Société de Géographie 7 (1857), p. 79–82. The map is bound together with other maps at the end of the volume. Further examples that refer to Arrowsmith include maps by the German cartographer Augustus Petermann (1822–1878), who resided in Britain and referred to Arrowsmith by entitling his maps, which depicted North Australia and were printed in The Royal Illustrated Atlas of Modern Geography in 1860 and 1862 as “Australia and New Zealand according to Mitchell and Arrowsmith” (see A. Petermann, Australia and New Zealand according to Arrowsmith and Mitchell, Edinburgh, London, and Dublin: A. Fullarton & Co., 1860, MAP RM 2177, NLA; A. Petermann, Australia and New Zealand according to Arrowsmith and Mitchell, Edinburgh, London, and Dublin: A. Fullarton & Co., 1862, MAP RM 2647, NLA). North Australia is no longer visible in the 1870s edition of the atlas. Sir Thomas L. Mitchell was the long-term surveyor general of New South Wales and was famous for the map of the 19 counties he constructed. He also conducted expeditions in the south-east of the continent in the 1840s. For Mitchell, see A. E. J. Andrews, Major Mitchell’s Map 1834: The Saga of the Survey of the Nineteenth Counties, Hobart: Blubber Head Press, 1992; W. C. Foster, Sir Thomas Livingston Mitchell and his World 1792–1855, Sydney: Institution of Surveyors N.S.W., 1985; Alexander, “Cartography, Empire and Copyright Law”.
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Map 1: A typical example of a map depicting North Australia from the 1850s, almost a decade after the colony was revoked. J. H. Colton, Colton’s Australia from G. W. Colton’s Colton’s Atlas of the World, New York: John Hutchins Colton & Co., 1855, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:1855_Colton_Map_of_Australia_-_Geographicus_-_Australia-colton-1855.jpg.
the world. Some maps simply contain the name of the colony without the western boundary,42 whilst some lack all boundaries.43 The extent of the territory on
42 C. F. Weiland, Das Austral-Continent oder Neu Holland: Nach Krusenstern, King, Flinders, Freycinet, Oxley, Sturt, Mitchell in Mercators Projection entworfen [The Austral-Continent or New Holland: Designed according to Krusenstern, King, Flinders, Freycinet, Oxley, Sturt, Mitchell in Mercators Projection], 1848, MAP RM 798 (Copy 2), NLA; J. M. Ziegler, “Oceanien” [Oceania], probably 1865, MAP RM 3517, NLA; A. Stieler, “Festland von Australien und benachbarte Inseln” [Mainland of Australia and neighbouring islands], in: Hand-Atlas Uber Alle Theile Der Erde Nach Dem Neuesten Zustande Und Uber Das Weltgebäude, Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1851, David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (DRHMC). 43 See, for example, the following maps of Oceania: “The Pacific Ocean” probably from G. Cox, General Atlas. Published under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of
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coloured maps is often highlighted with a different colour than the other colonies.44 A similar way of dividing the continent also applies to different types of maps, such as single-sheet maps, wall maps, and pocket maps.45 This is noteworthy, as it means that this type of territorial information was available to diverse audiences, who were able to learn from and to refer to this data when using maps in a variety of contexts. As Martin Brückner notes, the reading and use of different types of maps differed radically, largely due to their material characteristics. Large wall maps that were usually displayed in public spaces, such as scientific societies, government offices, and schools, were gazed upon from a distance, whereas pocket atlases and maps that were carried close to one’s body were often inspected and discussed in private.46 A systematic examination of the way North Australia is depicted on Western maps from the 1840s up until 1910 demonstrates that there were two different “North Australias” simultaneously in circulation. The British had made numerous attempts to colonize the northern coast of Australia since the 1820s for commercial and political reasons. In the 1830s, influential parties in London once again lobbied for the re-establishment of settlements on the northern coast, including a colony at Port Essington on the Coburg Peninsula. The Colonial Office agreed to such a policy after lengthy discussions, which subsequently operated under the auspices of the Admiralty. In February 1838, a
Useful Knowledge, London: G. Cox, 1853, MAP T 1171, NLA; “The Pacific Ocean Including Oceanica with its several Divisions, Islands, Groups and c.” from S. A. Mitchell, A New Universal Atlas Containing Maps of the Various Empires, Kingdoms, States and Republics Of The World, Philadelphia: Cowperthwait, Desilver & Butler, 1855, DRHMC. 44 See, e.g., the following atlas maps: S. Hall, Australasia, 1850, MAP T 181, NLA; G. Philip and Son, Australia, probably 1850, MAP RM 793, NLA; J. Van Wijk Roelandszoon, Australie, naar de beste bronnen vervaardigd onder toezigt van [Australia, made to the best sources under the supervision of], 1851, MAP RM 3241, NLA; “Australasia”, from Ch. Black and A. Black, Atlas of Australia with All the Gold Regions: A Series of Maps from the Latest and Best Authorities, Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1853, DRHMC; “Australia” from J. H. Colton, Coltons Atlas of the World, New York: John Hutchins Colton & Co., 1856, MAP NK 11350, NLA. 45 See, e.g., G. Philip and Son, Australia, probably 1848–1851, MAP RM 800 (Copy 2), NLA; H. G. Collins, Map of the South Oceanic colonies of Great Britain, probably 1850, MAP RM 500, NLA; C. Graf, Australien, 1859, MAP RM 3335, NLA; H. Kiepert, “Continent von Australien und Neuseeland” [Continent of Australia and New Zealand], Neuer Hand-Atlas über alle Theile der Erde, Berlin: D. Reimer, 1860, MAP RM 3969, NLA; H. James, Geometrical Projection of Two Thirds of the Sphere: Pacific Ocean Central, probably 1860, MAP RM 4286, NLA. 46 See M. Brückner, The Social Life of Maps in America, 1750–1860, Williamsburg, VI: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, and Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
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fleet set sail from London to establish the settlement. However, Port Essington never achieved the status of a colony. Instead, it remained a naval station that was abandoned in 1849 after only a decade in use.47 As a result of these colonial plans and processes, maps depicting Australia, the Pacific, and even the whole world that were prepared in the 1840s began to document a colony of North Australia on the northern coast. Some of these maps, which were printed in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, mark the location of the territory with the phrase “colony of North Australia established 1838”.48 These maps represent each other in their layout, especially in terms of how the names of the colonies are printed and how some maps include a common statistic regarding the populations of each colony.49 These publications, however, were relatively infrequent as it was more common to print maps that only bore the names of the existing colonies: Western Australia, New South Wales, and South Australia. Arrowsmith’s maps, for example, do not feature such a “colony”, but he did prepare a map of Port Essington that was printed in
47 Cameron, “The Northern Settlements”, pp. 287–288. The chains of events leading from the foundation of the station in the 1820s up until the 1830s was complex and involved many interested parties, such as the Admiralty, the Colonial Office, the Royal Geographical Society, and the naturalist George Windsor Earl. The commercial versus political motives for the establishment of Port Essington have been extensively debated by historians (see, e.g., Allen, “Port Essington”, p. 341). 48 See, e.g., F. P. Becker, Australia, London, 1840, MAP RM 3111, NLA; Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Australia in 1839, London, 1840, MAP T 1147, NLA; G. Thomée, Australien [Australia], Sweden, 1840, MAP RM 3923, NLA; Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, A Colonial and Missionary Church Map of the World, London, 1842, MAP RM 3746, NLA; C. Smith, The World Engraved for Smiths Atlas, London: Chas. Smith, 1842, MAP RM 2376 NLA; E. Tappan, Australia and Settled Part of New South Wales, Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1845, MAP T 1355, NLA; “Pacific”, from Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, vol. 1, London: Chapman and Hall, 1844; Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Australia in 1846, c. 1846, MAP T 1149, NLA; K. Sohr, “Australland” [Australia], in: Vollständiger HandAtlas der neueren Erdbeschreibung über alle Theile der Erde in 80 Blättern herausgegeben von Dr. K. Sohr, 1847, DRHMC; G. F. Cruchley, The Eastern Hemisphere, London: G. F: Cruchley, 1853, MAP RM 2643, NLA; A. J. Johnson, Johnson’s China East Indies Australia and Oceanica, New York: Johnson & Browning 1860, P6140, DRHMC. 49 Compare, e.g., C. Flemming, Australland [Australia], Glogau: C. Flemming, 184?, MAP RM 4886, NLA; E. Tappan, Australia; Settled part of New South Wales, Philadelphia, 1845, MAP T 1355, NLA; J. and C. Walker, Australia in 1846, London: SDUK, probably 1846, MAP T 1149, NLA; J. Sharpe and J. W. Lowry, Australia and New Zealand, London: Chapman and Hall, 1848, P4327, DRHMC.
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the parliamentary papers of 1843.50 This makes it clear that Arrowsmith’s maps, however influential they might have been, were simply one amongst many sources for mapmakers. This coastal colony was also mentioned in geography books and public talks as part of the political geography of the continent in the 1840s.51 Furthermore, the establishment of the colony of North Australia centred on Port Essington was discussed in the press, although in a limited manner, in the late 1830s.52 Discussions regarding the new colony in the 1840s focused on a hurricane that was reported to have devastated Port Essington.53 In addition, the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners put forward statements in 1843 regarding how the site was unfit to serve as a settlement for European colonists and anticipated its eventual abandonment.54 The territorial extent of the colony was not discussed, nor was its cartographic representation. This also corresponds to the
50 J. Arrowsmith, Part of the North Coast of Australia Shewing the Situation of Port Essington Compiled from Official Documents by J. Arrowsmith, London: James & Luke Hansard, 1843 MAP T 103, NLA. 51 See J. Bonwick, Geography for the Use of Australian Youth, Hobart Town, 1845. In a different book, Bonwick describes the other “North Australia” covering the large area above the 26th parallel (see J. Bonwick, Geography of Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne: George Robertson, 1856). A speaker at the Mechanist Institute in Melbourne in June 1846 presented a similar division during a talk on the progress of discovery in Australia (see “Melbourne”, Geelong Advertiser and Squatters’ Advocate, 13 June 1846, p. 3). 52 See, e.g., “Sunday’s Post”, Hereford Journal, 5 December 1838, p. 2; “North Australia”, Caledonian Mercury, 5 January 1839; “Miscellaneous. North Australia”, Reading Mercury, Oxford Gazette and Berkshire County Paper, etc., 5 January 1839, p. 4; “Port Essington”, The Morning Post, 9 April 1839, p. 2; “News”, The North Devon Journal, 12 September 1839, p. 4; “News”, The Leicestershire Mercury and General Advertiser for the Midland Counties, 24 July 1841, p. 2. 53 “The Colonies”, The Era, 6 September 1840; “New South Wales”, The Morning Post, 5 September 1840; “Hurricane at Sydney”, Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 7 September 1840; “Hurricane at Port Essington, Western Australia”, The Newcastle Courant etc., 11 September 1840; “Multiple News Items”, The Bury and Norwich Post, and East Anglian, 16 September 1840. Similar references to the destructive hurricane surface in geography books as well (see, e.g., A. Balbi, Elémens de géographie générale, Paris: Jules Renouard, 1843, p. 529). The articles testify to the misplacement of the settlement and of places in Australia in general. They refer to Port Essington at Swan River, which is located on the western coast. The article printed in Freeman’s Journal places the hurricane at Sydney, occurring at Port Essington, Swan River. These instances of misplacement reflect an ignorance of Australian geography that was not uncommon at the time. 54 “Report of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners”, Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 6 November 1843; “London, Friday, Nov. 3”, Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 6 November 1843, p. 2.
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manner in which the extent of the territory of North Australia was not discussed in newspapers. Consequently, at the time when North Australia was established in 1846, a number of maps that were printed in different parts of the world were already transmitting information about a northern colony. Some mapmakers seem to have adapted their representations when the new colony was established. The map production of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) in Britain provides a representative example. The SDUK was founded in 1826 in order to educate “the millions” by means of inexpensive printing products, which included the likes of an encyclopaedia, a magazine (The Penny Magazine), monographs, and maps. The work of the SDUK was part of a general development whereby many publishers began to prepare products that were within the budgetary means of different income groups instead of merely targeting the most affluent class. This was based on the development of cheaper production techniques, such as lithography and steel-plate engraving and shifts from artisan production to manufacturing. The availability of these cheaper maps altered the circulation of colonial cartographic knowledge as these maps incorporated imperial products and ideology into the lives of the working class.55 Even though the SDUK ceased publishing in 1846, many maps bearing the society’s name still entered circulation in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s. These derived from the work of many different engravers and publishers, as the plates of the society changed owners on a regular basis after 1844.56 What is relevant for us is that these maps communicated several territorial conceptualizations of Australia and that the depiction of North Australia underwent alterations between the 1840s and the 1850s on maps bearing the SDUK’s name. An SDUK map of Australia printed in 1840 is one of the earliest examples of how the society documented a colony on the northern coast.57 Later maps printed in the same decade replicate the depiction of the colony.58 The maps associated with the SDUK published in the 1850s and 1860s through the work of different individuals differ in their representation of the colony. These maps, which include a map based on the plate used in the 1840s and another based on a different
55 M. T. Cain, “The Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: A Publishing History”, Imago Mundi 46 (1994), pp. 151–154; I. J. Barrow, “India for the Working Classes: The Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge”, Modern Asian Studies 38 (2004) 3, pp. 677, 683, 687. 56 Cain, “The Maps of the Society”. 57 J. and C. Walker, Australia in 1839, London: Charles Knight, 1840, MAP T 1147, NLA. 58 See, e.g., Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Australia in 1846, London, probably 1846, MAP T 1149, NLA.
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plate, explicitly name the territory established in 1846 and provide clearly defined boundaries.59 Consequently, the SDUK maps exemplify how the situated practices of mapmaking shaped the contents of the maps and how the representation of the northern colony developed from a coastal enclave to an entire territorial entity. For example, a map of Australia printed in the 1860s by Edward Stanford, a British publishing house that acquired most of the plates after 1846, effectively demonstrates this. The name of the colony continues to be printed on the map using very light lettering even though it is otherwise used to depict a completely different territorial division, corresponding with the developments that took place in the late 1850s and the 1860s. Consequently, the map simultaneously communicates something old and new, and it exposes how the material practices of mapmaking converged with the desires to publish updated maps.60 The contradiction between the past and present depictions of the area is evident in the few documented discussions regarding the way the SDUK mapped North Australia. The matter is referred to in passing in the evening meetings of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London, which was an important hub for discussing exploration, mapping, and colonization. In 1862, the president of the RGS, scientist Roderick I. Murchison (1792–1871), referred to the colony as something that never came to be: “Although a great many years ago they had marked upon a map of the Society of Useful Knowledge the colony of ‘North Australia’, no such colony had ever been formed.”61 It is not clear which North Australian colony Murchison was referring to, but it might have been the 1838 colony. These discussions reflect the fact that North Australia as a political entity was understood as a thing of the past. However, as I will demonstrate in the next section, North Australia continued to feature in many maps of Australia printed in different parts of the world until the very end of the nineteenth century.
59 The map printed based on the 1840s plate is J. and C. Walker, Australia, London: George Cox, 1853, MAP T 1548, NLA. Also see J. and C. Walker, The Pacific Ocean, London: Charles Knight, 1853, MAP T 1170, NLA; Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, The Australian Colonies, London: Edward Stanford, 1859, MAP T 1153 (Copy 1), NLA; Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, The Australian Colonies, London: G. Cox, 1855, MAP T 1151, NLA. 60 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, The Australian Colonies, London: Edward Stanford, 1863–1867 (?), MAP T 1154, NLA. For Stanford, see P. Whitfield, The Mapmakers: A History of Stanfords. London: Compendium, 2003, p. 19. 61 Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society 7 (1862) 3, p. 91. For a similar reference, see also ibid., p. 116.
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Increasing Diversity: Mapping North Australia, Queensland, Northern Territory, and Alexandra Land The ways to represent the northern area of Australia multiplied as the decades passed in the nineteenth century. In addition to the dual existence of the northern colony, cartographical depictions that were printed in different parts of the globe demonstrate numerous other ways of dividing the north and, consequently, the whole continent. These developments occurred in the wake of the separation of Queensland from New South Wales in 1859 and the expansion of the territory of South Australia in 1863. In this section, I analyse the developments that took place after the establishment of Queensland and then turn to discuss the case of South Australia. Port Phillip was separated from New South Wales in 1851 and became the independent colony of Victoria. Subsequently, discussions to separate the northern district of Moreton Bay from New South Wales intensified. Eventually the Colonial Office favoured the idea; the separation went ahead in 1859, and a new colonial territory was created.62 The letters patent for the new colony was published in June 1859 in London, becoming public in New South Wales and Queensland later the same year.63 This document proved troublesome for cartographers, however, as the legal mechanisms of this change allowed different interpretations regarding the western boundary of the colony.64 This led geographers from Stanford’s Geographical Establishment to make affirmative enquiries to the Colonial Office in order to ascertain the exact meaning of the description in the letters patent. Making enquiries to the secretary of state was a convenient option for London-based map companies when they required information about the colonies. The first governor of Queensland, George Bowen (1821–1899), was similarly confused and made enquiries to London to settle the limits of his jurisdiction.65 The assumption in Australia seems to have been that Queensland would occupy the same area as previously given over to North Australia. The vague phrasing led to interesting cartographical decisions by mapmakers around the globe, as they were able to document the new colony in diverse ways. In atlas maps prepared in Edinburgh, London, Paris, and New York,
62 A. Curthoys and J. Mitchell, “The Advent of Self-Government”, in: Bashford and MacIntyre (eds.), The Cambridge History of Australia, vol. 1, pp. 163–164. 63 Letters Patent erecting Colony of Queensland, 6 June 1859. 64 Carney, “A Legal and Historical Overview”, p. 600. 65 Skurnik, Making Geographies, pp. 214–216.
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for example, mapmakers chose to depict Queensland as a stripe-like territory that occupied an area of approximately 5 degrees of latitude from south to north and 10 degrees of longitude from east to west in the immediate proximity of New South Wales (Map 2). The rest of the northern territory was reserved for North Australia. Often the name “Queensland” is printed in slightly smaller lettering than North Australia.66 These depictions of the new colonial territory suggest that the information regarding its establishment was known to many mapmakers, although no clarity regarding its actual extent existed. This solution has also a very material basis: making only small changes to the printing plates and waiting for more accurate information was economically wise. As Tony Campbell reminds us, most of the mapmakers were businessmen first and geographers only second, if at all. This affected the engraving of maps significantly, leading to the persistence of older territorial designs.67 Furthermore, North Australia continued to occupy a place on maps even when Queensland was depicted as a more extensive colonial territory. Queensland extends over the north-eastern corner of the continent in these maps, whilst North Australia occupies the area of the present-day Northern Territory without a clearly assigned boundary. This division is prevalent on maps printed in atlases as well as maps constructed for school education and booklets prepared for prospective emigrants to the Australian colonies.68 A further variant of these maps, which depict North Australia and Queensland as separate territories, mark a boundary between the territories and at times assign them specific colours in order to clearly demarcate the territories. This can be seen, for example, in the map of Oceania by Sarah S. Cornell, which was printed in an extensive school geography book series called Cornell’s High
66 See, e.g., J. Bartholomew, Australia, 1860, MAP RM 2034, NLA; Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, The Australian Colonies, c. 1859, MAP T 1153 (Copy 1), NLA; E. AndriveauGoujon, Carte générale de l’Oceanie, c. 1862, MAP RM 3175, NLA; C. Smith and Son, Map of Australia Constructed for the Use of the National Schools of Ireland under the Direction of the Commissioners, 1863, MAP RM 935, NLA; J. Wyld, The Basin of the Pacific, 1862/1863, MAP T 1412, NLA; L. Schonberg, Australia and New Zealand, c. 1864, MAP RM 2039, NLA; J. H. Johnson, Oceania, or Islands in the Pacific Ocean, c. 1870, MAP T 1497, NLA. 67 T. Campbell, “Understanding Engraved Maps”, The Map Collector 46 (1989), pp. 2–10. 68 See, e.g., A. Vuillemin, Carte de la Melanesie, 1860, MAP T 1308, NLA; P. Cassell and T. Galpin, Australia, between 1859 and 1861, MAP NK 11339, NLA; F. A. Garnier, Australie et Nouvle Zelande [Australia and New Zealand], 1862, MAP T 665, NLA; J. Dower, Australia, c. 1862, MAP RM 864, NLA; Verlag von F. A. Brockhaus, Australien [Australia], 1863, MAP RM 3889, NLA; P. Cassel and T. Galpin, Cassel’s Emigrants Map of Australia, 1863, MAP RM 867, NLA; A. Ravenstein, Australie et Oceanie [Australia and Oceania], 1865, DRHMC.
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Map 2: A map showing North Australia and the new colony of Queensland as a stripe-shaped territory. L. Schonberg: Australia and New Zealand, c. 1864, MAP RM 2039, NLA.
School Geography in 1864 in the United States.69 At times the name “North Australia” extends over the western boundary of Queensland, hinting at how
69 S. S. Cornell, Oceania. Designed to accompany Cornell’s High School Geography, New York: Appelton and Co., 1864, 0197.026, DRHMC. For similar examples, see J. Dower, Australia, London, c. 1862, MAP RM 864, NLA; J. Bartholomew, Australia, Edinburgh, c. 1863, MAP RM 3329, NLA; C. Perigot, “Oceanie Centrale” [Central Oceania], probably from Atlas général de géographie physique et politique ancienne, du moyen-âge et moderne, c. 1870, MAP T 941, NLA. It should be noted that some maps, however, seem to testify to a confusion regarding the position of North Australia. A map published by the Scottish Bartholomew Company, for example, places the name of North Australia across the territories of Western Australia and Queensland in a slightly lighter tone than the names of the other colonies. See J. Bartholomew, Australia, London; Liverpool: George Phillip & Son, 1862, MAP RM 872, NLA. Compare with J. Bartholomew, Australia, Edinburgh, c. 1863, MAP RM 3329, NLA. For Sarah Cornell’s geography books, see E. Taketani, U.S. Women Writers and the Discourses of Colonialism, 1825–1861, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003, p. 41.
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the mapmakers had transformed their printing plates. Here the boundary and the name of the colony has been added, without amending the position of North Australia at all. Yet, the multiplicity of ways of representing North Australia and Queensland is not unique. This becomes evident if we examine how the territorial expansion of South Australia is recorded on maps. Indeed, if one considers how mapmakers documented the other territorial changes that occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century, it becomes clear that mapmakers had a lot to keep up with to record the changes. In 1861, for example, the western boundary of South Australia was moved further west to the 129th eastern meridian, which thereafter included the tract of land caught in-between the said colony and Western Australia since the founding of South Australia.70 Moreover, in 1863, after a series of discussions with the governing authorities of Queensland and South Australia, the Colonial Office decided to recognize South Australia as the legitimate possessor of the territory between Queensland and Western Australia, naming it as the Northern Territory.71 The cartographic response to the territorial developments described above was increasing diversity. A territory known as North Australia persisted on the maps in one shape or another until the turn of the twentieth century and only ceased to appear on maps after the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. As mapmakers recorded the information concerning the territorial developments, most of them simply combined it with their existing understanding of the political divisions of the continent, which included North Australia. In addition to Queensland, North Australia was combined with the Northern Territory and Alexandra Land, an appellation that began to be used in the mid-1860s for part of the Northern Territory. The explorer John McDouall Stuart gave this name to the area, which he discovered as the first British man, and announced the name to the governor of South Australia in honour of the princess of Wales. According to McDouall Stuart, his actions were based on “the exercise of the usual right of the explorers”.72 70 Carney, “A Legal and Historical Overview”, p. 590. Until annexation, the tract of land was according to the British jurisdiction part of the territory of New South Wales. 71 Carney, “A Legal and Historical Overview”, p. 593. 72 McDouall Stuart first made this suggestion at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society in 1864 (see J. McDouall Stuart, “On the New Country of North Australia discovered by Mr. John MacDouall Stuart”, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London 9 [1864–1865] 1, pp. 21–23). Stuart’s proposal and announcement to the governor via a dispatch from the Colonial Office was reported extensively in the Australian press (see “Topics of the Day”, The South Australian Advertiser, 16 March 1865, p. 2; “Epitome of General News”, Kapunda Herald and Northern Intelligencer, 17 March 1865; “Das Nord-Territorium” [The
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The naming of the area was reported widely in the Australian newspapers after the governor of South Australia affirmed “that all that portion of the South Australian territory, forming the central portion of the continent, and lying to the south of the 16th and north of the 26th degrees of south latitude shall henceforth bear the name of ‘Alexandra Land’.”73 The area also appears in geography books published in the same year, although the designation of the area is not uniform. A book for “young Australians” published in 1865, for example, describes a division of the continent into “New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland, and Alexandra or North Australia”.74 Thus, “Alexandra” is identified as North Australia: similar crossreferences between North Australia and Alexandra Land appear in newspaper articles that discussed the development of the area.75 If we look at the map products that followed, we see that the designation of Alexandra Land had important cartographical consequences. Maps that merged the different territorial elements represent a particularly remarkable set of combinations. For example, in the work of German mapmaker August Petermann (1822–1878) and publishing house Justus Perthes we see how the maps appearing in journals and hand atlases from the late 1860s up to the 1890s combined together on one map all the designations that had been assigned to the north since the 1840s. Alexandra Land occupies the area in the mid north, whilst North Australia is used either on its own or beside the name Northern Territory that is placed on the mid-northern coast.76 Similar combinations can be found
Northern Territory], Süd Australische Zeitung, 17 March 1865, p. 6; “South Australia”, The Australasian, 25 March 1865, p. 11; “Literary Gossip”, The Australasian, 25 March 1865, p. 2). 73 “Arrival of the European December Mails”, The Herald, 11 February 1865, p. 3; “South Australia”, The Ballarat Star, 17 March 1865, p. 2; “Great Britain”, The Perth Gazette and West Australian Times, 21 April 1865, p. 3; “The Government Gazette”, South Australian Register, 28 April 1865, p. 3; “Alexandra Land”, Adelaide Observer, 29 April 1865, p. 4; “South Australia”, Geelong Advertiser, 29 April 1865, p. 2; “Adelaide”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 April 1865, p. 7; “Adelaide”, Bendigo Advertiser, 29 April 1865, p. 2; “South Australia”, Launceston Examiner, 6 May 1865, p. 5; “South Australia”, The Cornwall Chronicle, 6 May 1865, p. 5; “Epitome of News”, The Armidale Express and New England General Advertiser, 13 May 1865, p. 4. 74 J. Bonwick, Geography for Young Australians, Melbourne: Fergusson & Moore, 1865, p. 14, JAFp BIBLIO F7208, NLA. 75 See “The Advertiser Monday, September 25, 1865”, The South Australian Advertiser, 25 September 1865, p. 2; “The Northern Territory”, South Australian Weekly Chronicle, 30 September 1865, p. 4; “Local notes and events”, Queanbeyan Age and General Advertiser, 27 April 1865, p. 2; “Arrival of the mail”, South Australian Register, 11 February 1865, p. 2. 76 See A. Petermann, Australien [Australia], Gotha: J. Perthes, 1869, MAP RM 3307, NLA; A. Petermann, Australien [Australia], Gotha: J. Perthes, 1877 (?), MAP RM 3268, NLA;
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on some maps printed in Scotland, France, and the United States around 1880, and even on a map accompanying Jules Verne’s adventure novel Mistress Branican, published in 1891 in France (see Map 3). In total, I have been able to locate 15 different maps with such a division. This number rises to 29 if we include maps that exclude Alexandra Land but display North Australia, Northern Territory, and Queensland on the same map. At times, maps with diverse divisions appear in the pages of the same publication. For example, three maps of a school atlas published in Melbourne in the 1890s all communicate different territorial information. One map has North Australia alongside Queensland. The other depicts a transcontinental South Australia. And the third names the central north Northern Territory or Alexandra Land. Although not much is known of the making of the atlas, the preface provides us with some clues. The author of Pearson’s Australasian School Atlas partly addresses the mixed situation by pointing out that some school atlases in use are blatantly ignorant of the divisions of the continent and of the position of the colony of Victoria as well as communicate outdated territorial information. The author continues and notes that the atlas at hand takes “the utmost pains to set forth, in a clear and methodical manner, the various divisions of Australasia”. This note hints that at a local level the simultaneity of the different territorial divisions was understandable but does not explain how the author understood the status of these different divisions in comparison to another.77 These observations make clear that information about Alexandra Land (in a similar manner as that of North Australia) probably did not reach all cartographers, or they chose to ignore it. They also point to the simple fact that the inclusion of Alexandra Land was something that was often fitted on the map with North Australia and the Northern Territory. Indeed, the ways in which the area was described in geographical texts published between 1865 and the beginning of the twentieth century reflect that there were multiple understandings of the
A. Petermann, Karte von Australien zur Übersicht der neuesten Reisen ins Innere, sowie der Eisenbahnen und Telegraphen [Map of Australia showing the latest inland travel, railways and telegraphs], Gotha: J. Perthes, 1880, MAP RM 4187, NLA; A. Petermann, Australien, Gotha: J. Perthes, 1886, MAP RM 3187, NLA; A. Petermann and R. Luddecke, Australien, Gotha: J. Perthes, 1890, MAP T 955, NLA. 77 The exact date of publication is unknown (See plates 2,3 and 10 in J. W. Pearson & Co., Pearson’s Australasian School Atlas, J. W. Pearson & Co.: Melbourne, 189?), MAP RaA 41 (Copy 1), NLA. An earlier example of different territorial divisions in the same atlas is Johnson’s new illustrated (steel plate) family atlas in which the territorial divisions are different in the map of the world than in the map depicting the eastern hemisphere and the continent (see plates 5, 6, and 93 in J. H. Colton and A. J. Johnson, Johnson’s new illustrated (steel plate) family atlas, New York: Johnson & Ward, 1862, G1019.J5 1862, Library of Congress).
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Map 3: “Terre Alexandra” and “Australie Septentrionale” occupy central Australia and the northern coast on this map that accompanied Jules Verne’s adventure novel Mistress Branican (Paris: Pierre-Jules Hetzel, 1891). Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Mistress_Branican%27_ by_L%C3%A9on_Benett_65.jpg
political geography of the area as well as of the precise names of different areas. Local geographical publications in France, for example, referred to the territories in a variety of ways. The Revue de géographie, published in 1866, refer to Alexandra Land as a name referring to the Northern Territory. What is more, a commercial atlas of Oceania, dating from 1878, notes how the area was comprised of “l’Australie du Nord” and that Alexandra Land had not yet been colonized.78 General atlases by Pierre Foncin (1841–1916), who was a geography and history teacher based in Paris, which were published from 1891, refer to
78 “L’Australie” [Australia], Revue de géographie 7 (1866), p. 12; R. Cortambert, Géographie commerciale et industrielle des cinq parties du monde [Commercial and industrial geography of the five parts of the world], Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1878. A similar division appears in E. Cortambert, Géographie physique, politique et économique de l’Asie, de l’Afrique, de l’Amérique et de l’Océanie [Physical, political and economic geography of Asia, Africa, America and Oceania], Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1881.
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Alexandra Land as a new establishment that existed alongside “l’Australie septentrionale” (northern Australia). However, the 1899 edition only uses the names Alexandra Land and Territoire du Nord (Northern Territory).79 Consequently, these maps and descriptions of Australia’s political geography demonstrate how knowing what the territorial knowledge in circulation meant was a challenge.
Conclusions From the 1840s up to the first decade of the 1910s, many people examined Western cartographical depictions of Australia, with its varying territorial divisions, in atlases, schoolbooks, and scientific journals as well as by looking at wall maps hung at public meetings, schools, and state departments. An examination of the mapping of northern Australia on a global scale demonstrates that it was often possible to purchase maps from a variety of outlets in a city, whether it be, for example, in London, New York, Paris, Melbourne, or Edinburgh, which featured differing territorial divisions. Sometimes it was even possible to note these discrepancies within the pages of a single atlas. Consequently, the investigation into the cartographic histories of northern Australia shows how differently the history of Western territorialization of the Australian continent unfolds on maps in comparison to those communicated by written legal instruments. The prevalence of North Australia challenges the idea of maps as cumulative records of the development of territorial or geographic knowledge. Instead of a straightforward narrative where maps reflect the territorial developments, the continent unfolds as a patchwork of territories that are visualized on maps in almost every imaginable combination due to the choices made by people producing maps as well as the mobility and immobility of territorial information. In this case, this diversity is symptomatic of ignorance and a lack of a clear authoritative source of territorial information, which could have been used as a reliable source and as an incentive to map the continent in a particular manner on a global scale. The diversity of territorializations is also, to a certain extent, indicative of the level of global interest in keeping up with these regions. Had discussions of northern Australia or the boundaries between the colonies been more topical or of more importance internationally, the diversity of divisions might have been affected. Indeed, it is almost ironic – considering the complex global cartographic lives of the colony of North Australia that this
79 See P. Foncin, Géographie Générale [General geography], Paris: Armand Colin, 1887; P. Foncin, Géographie Générale [General geography], Paris: Armand Colin, 1899.
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chapter has traced – that in 1926 the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia passed an act that reintroduced this political entity on the map of Australia. The Northern Australia Act (1926) divided the Northern Territory into North Australia and Central Australia in order to develop the administration of this area. Although repealed already in 1931, the new division was quickly acknowledged by mapmakers and geographers.80 This chapter has moved between different localities and materials in order to examine the processes that contributed to the emergence of cartographic knowledge of Australia that was available in different parts of the world. Thus far, the investigation has focused on how Australia was mapped on Western maps, and the results presented here encourage the tracking down of mapping work conducted in different cultural spheres as a continuation of this research. Furthermore, more detailed enquiries into the contexts of using and receiving these maps would enlighten us of how the territorial divisions were understood. This would generate a broader understanding of how the global mobility of territorial knowledge of Australia was not a process of simple dissemination, but rather one of appropriation, modification, and adaptation.
80 The Northern Australia Act 1926 (Cth [Commonwealth]); The Northern Territory (Administration) Act 1931 (Cth). See “Subdivision of the Northern Territory of Australia”, The Geographical Journal 72 (1928) 1, pp. 61–63.
Laura Hollsten
15 National History and Big History: Väinö Auer, the Finnish Nationalist and the Global Environmentalist The purpose of this chapter is to study the spatial scales that can be observed in the Finnish geographer and geologist Väinö Auer’s writings and to consider them in relation to the discussion of scales in global history. While doing so, it explores the conflicting ways in which Auer relates to various scales. His views with regard to the various scales differ, and in this respect, he reminds of most people who, depending on their world view, ideological outlook, and self-interest, consider issues differently on a local and national scale than on a global scale. Accordingly, a study of Auer’s texts shows that a very different world view and ethical standpoint emerges when we compare his texts that address, firstly, the national level (the nation of Finland); secondly, those dealing with a regional level (Patagonia); and, thirdly, the Earth in its totality. Väinö Auer (1895–1981) is amongst Finnish historians best known for his small book Finnlands Lebensraum (1941). The book, written together with historian Eino Jutikkala and ethnographer Kustaa Vilkuna, explains the historical and geographical reasons for claiming Eastern Karelia for Finland after, as it was hoped, Germany would win the Second World War. Consequently, Auer is often mentioned in the context of Finnish nationalism, and he has gained amongst historians notoriety in his capacity as a nationalist scientist and member of the group of Finnish scientists to embrace the idea of “Greater Finland”.1 Auer’s activities as a geologist in Argentina have received less attention, with the notable exceptions of the comprehensive biography by Pentti Alhonen and Antero Alhonen. In addition, film director Mikko Piela’s documentary about Auer, Väinö Auer 1895–1985 (2006), focuses on Auer’s time in Argentina.2 Alhonen and Alhonen stress Auer’s importance as an environmental thinker, but they have not pursued the question from the point of view of global history.
1 The idea of Greater Finland was a nationalist concept involving the ambition of the territorial expansion of Finland according to the boundaries encompassing nations who spoke Finnish or languages related to Finnish. 2 P. Alhonen and A. Alhonen, Vaakavarren ratsastaja. Tutkimusmatkailija Väinö Auerin elämä [The rider of Vaakavarsi: The life of the explorer Väinö Auer], Helsinki: Edico Oy, 2006. Jukka Kuosmanen’s popular radio series about Finnish explorers devotes an episode to Auer’s expeditions in Argentina. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-015
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In contrast to Auer’s nationalist interpretation of questions concerning the economic geography of his native Finland, his world view appears to be different when he writes about regions he explored in his professional capacity and even more so when he considers the Earth in its totality. Because of his geological study of various regions, Auer developed a great concern for global environmental problems in the years after the Second World War. The argument put forward in this chapter is that Väinö Auer was one of the first Finnish scholars to cultivate an awareness of global environmental questions and to develop what can be termed as a global consciousness. Such a view, as will be evidenced, stems from Auer’s geological travels and from his increasing knowledge about the Earth’s strata. An investigation into Auer’s ideas shows that he became – thanks to his profession, research topics, and methods – a vocal proponent of a global view of the world. Moreover, it is argued that Auer’s thinking can be linked to a strand of global history known as big history, a subfield of global history that focuses on the planet in its entirety. Such a view is visible in Auer’s “global rhetoric”, developed both in his scientific treatises and in his popular writings.
Scales in Historical Research The methodologic and theoretical background of the study is the discussion on spatial scales that has taken place amongst global historians in recent years.3 Typically, four scales of analysis can be identified in global history: a local, a national, a regional, and a global one. This study seeks to contribute to the methodology of global history in that it critically considers the various scales that may be used in the study of global history. The ambition here is to consider sociospatial relations on three scales: the national, the regional, and the global. In doing so, the aim is primarily to study human-scale history, albeit with an awareness of the presence of a deeper time perspective. Bob Jessop et al., in their theorizing of sociospatial relations, question the privileging of a single dimension, whatever the form, of scalar sociospatial relations. They warn about the danger of concentrating on one territory or scale, for instance in state-centric approaches to globalization studies.4 While taking into account multiple scales, however, it is important
3 See AHR Conversation, “How Size Matters: The Question of Scale in History”, American Historical Review, December (2013), pp. 1431–1472. 4 B. Jessop, N. Brenner and M. Jones, “Theorizing sociospatial relations”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26 (2008), pp. 389–391.
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to note that the scales are not inherent but a result of spatial constructions.5 The scales also overlap – the difference between a nation and a region is not always clear-cut. Most pertinent to the case at hand is that Väinö Auer’s values appear to change depending on which scale he is operating. Auer’s texts will therefore be studied, firstly, for their contribution to Auer’s view of Finland as a nation with, ideally, geologically defined borders; secondly, for Auer’s investigation into the ecological conditions of the region of Patagonia; and, thirdly, for Auer’s view of the Earth as a spatial arena for global history. A further objective of the chapter is to discuss the usefulness and value of a big history perspective in historical research. Hence, although this study makes no claim of being a study in big history, it discusses how such a perspective contributes to global history and maintains that historians might do well to consult geologists when considering a big history perspective.
The Grand Scale: Big History Big history is, categorically, interdisciplinary history, relying heavily on the natural sciences. In one sense, the recalibrating of the spatial and temporal scales of the historian is a continuation of the expanding of scales that began with global history. But while global historians have been concerned with comparative approaches, trade networks, and commodity chains, some global historians have begun contextualizing their topics on an even bigger scale.6 Such an approach is an attempt to respond to the proposition put forward by scholars from the humanities who wish to take global environmental questions seriously. Some historians have radically expanded the scales of their analysis, focusing on the links and interconnections that bring together seemingly separate phenomena – peoples, natural resources, places, and processes – and letting them fall into larger patterns of change.7 Big history and the idea of planetarity puts human history into the perspective of planetary and cosmic evolution.8
5 R. Keill and R. Mahon, Leviathan Undone? Towards a Political Economy of Scale, Vancouver, Toronto: UBC Press, 2009. 6 D. Olstein, Thinking History Globally, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 7 Th. G. Andrews, Coyote Valley: Deep History in the High Rockies, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. See also J. L. Brooke, Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 8 A. Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
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Some of this work can be related to the actuality of the concept of Anthropocene. Big history takes the concept of Anthropocene seriously and embraces a long time span and a synthetic view on the history of humankind.9 With the discussion of the new geological epoch Anthropocene, the lithosphere has become an increasingly important factor in the human sciences. Dipesh Chakrabarty observed in 2009 that the Anthropocene is merging human history with the history of the planet and that human history is embedded in the rhythm of the Earth.10 If, as some researchers such as Kathryn Yusoff claim, the Anthropocene is axiomatic of new understandings of time, matter, and agency for the human, as a collective being and as a subject capable of geomorphic acts, then scholars from the humanities should engage with the idea of Anthropocene.11 For historians, the Anthropocene metaphor offers an opportunity to consider temporality in a new light. In addition to historical time, the deep time perceived by Earth scientists becomes, if not the subject of study, at least a powerful presence intertwined with human society and culture. Spatially, the Anthropocene presupposes a global perspective and view that could be termed as a “global gaze”. Such a view is reflected in big history, which focuses on the planet in its entirety, embracing a long time span and a synthetic view on the history of humankind.12 How then does a scholar from the humanities, a historian, engage in such an endeavour? Is it possible (or even necessary) to reflect on history on a truly grand scale? If such a scale is to be taken seriously, it would be helpful, for a representative of the humanities, to gather insights from people who consider the past from a long perspective. While the present study is not big history, the approach taken here is to look at how geologists, with their long-time perspective, think and write about human history. As geologists, in addition to studying vast time spans, also function in a social and political context involving
9 F. Spier, Big History and the Future of Humanity, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 10 W. Schäfer, “Global History: Historiographical Feasibility and Environmental Reality”, in: B. Mazlish and R. Buultjens (eds.), Conceptualizing Global History, Ann Arbor: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library, 1993, pp. 47–69; D. Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses”, Critical Inquiry 35 (2009) 2, pp. 197–222. 11 K. Yusoff, “Politics of the Anthropocene: Formation of the Commons as a Geologic Process”, Antipode 50 (2018), pp. 255–276. 12 Alexander von Humboldt’s Cosmos, Robert Chambers’ Vestiges of Natural History, and H. G. Well’s The Outline of History (1920) are some of the works leading to a global view of the Earth. The idea of the intertwined fate of humankind and the Earth has been developed for instance by George Perkins Marsh in The Earth as Modified by Human Action (1874), by Eduard Seuss’ The Face of the Earth (1885–1909), and by Vladimir Vernadsky’s Biosphere and Noosphere (1926).
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other scales than the deep time global scale, they offer an interesting possibility for studying the mechanisms of scale. For instance, Finnish geologists, like other scientists who were active in the decades before and after Finland’s independence, were often strongly engaged in the Finnish national project.13 Many of them also had, because of their field research, an interest in particular regions, often located abroad. It is, consequently, possible to observe their activity on at least three spatial scales: a national, a regional, and a global scale.14 All these scales are exhibited in the focus of this study: Väinö Auer.
Väinö Auer Väinö Auer was born in Helsinki in 1895 into the family of Senator Kyösti Fabian Auer. His father’s roots were in the province of Häme in Finland, while his mother’s family came from Sweden. Auer went to school in Turku and Kokkola. Upon entering the University of Helsinki, Väinö Auer initially studied botany. He quickly became involved in student politics as a Fennoman (the Fennomans were a political movement promoting the Finnish language and culture). As a result of the so called “language struggle” between Finnish and Swedish speakers in the bilingual university,15 Auer was not allowed to participate in the botanical exercises – instead he chose a career in geology and geography.16 Geology, as an academic discipline, had been established at the Imperial Alexander University in 1852 while geography was established in the early 1890s. After Finnish independence in 1917, the Imperial Alexander University became the University of Helsinki. Auer became a docent in geography at the university in 1922 and gained a position as a researcher in 1925, eventually receiving a professorship in geography at the university in 1929.17 Moreover, he 13 O. Manninen, Suur-Suomen ääriviivat: Kysymys tulevaisuudesta ja turvallisuudesta Suomen Saksan-politiikassa 1941 [The countours of Greater Finland: Matters of future and security in the Finnish-German politics in 1941], Helsinki: Kirjayhtymä, 1980; S. Näre and J. Kirves (eds.), Luvattu maa. Suur-Suomen unelma ja unohdus [The promised land: Dreaming and forgetting about Greater Finland], Helsinki: Johnny Kniga, 2015. 14 In addition, there is in some cases a local scale at play. On the role of the national in global history, see S. Conrad, What is Global History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016, pp. 79–82. 15 A power struggle between the Finnish and Swedish language groups that was particularly notable at the University of Helsinki. See J. Kortti, “Ylioppilaslehti and the University’s LanguageStruggle in the 1920s and 1930s”, Kasvatus ja Aika 4 (2009), pp. 7–23. 16 Alhonen and Alhonen, Vaakavarren ratsastaja. 17 L. Aario, “Professori Väinö Auer 7.1.1895–20.3.1981”, Terra 93 (1981), pp. 80–82.
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held a professorship in geology and palaeontology from 1957 until 1963. One of Auer’s special areas became swamp research. His doctorate thesis Über die Entstehung der Stränge auf den Torfmooren (1920) was a comprehensive study on the paludification features in the mires of Ostrobothnia and Lapland.18 Auer was the first to use pollen analysis in Finland as a relative timing method. He also studied the geohistorical periods of Vanajavesi, a lake near Hämeenlinna in the south of Finland, regarding the layout order of beach swamps. Auer’s study Über die Entstehung der Stränge auf den Torfmooren laid the foundations for Finland’s limn geologic lake research.19 Moreover, Auer is known for his pioneering studies on the method of tephrochronology, a geochronological technique that uses discrete layers of tephra (volcanic ash from a single eruption) to create a chronological framework in which paleo-environmental or archaeological records can be placed. The phenomenon of desertification was a later interest, one that came to occupy Auer increasingly during his later years. It was (and is) necessary to participate in research expeditions and field trips in order to conduct geological research. Väinö Auer travelled widely both in Finland and abroad, for instance in Central Europe. Thanks to a scholarship from the International Education Board in 1925, he was able to investigate the relationship between forests and paludification events in Canada, where he focused on peat profiles ranging from Nova Scotia to the Niagara Falls.20 However, the main body of Auer’s scientific work was to focus on Argentina, where he spent a large part of his professional life. While holding his professorship, Auer launched expeditions to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego from 1928 to 1929 and from 1937 to 1938. Overall, Väinö Auer made fourteen expeditions to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. The main purpose of the trips was to practice studies of stratigraphy (the study of rock layers and layering) in the swamps and the connections between this and the climate changes of the Holocene period. During the Finnish Winter War (1939/40), Väinö Auer served as volunteer in the battlefield against the Soviet Union. After the war, Auer went back to Argentina to work for the Argentinian government. He returned to Finland in 1953. In the last years of his professional career, he served as a professor of geography
18 Paludification is a process by which peatlands in the boreal zone are formed. 19 V. Auer, “Über die Entstehung der Stränge auf den Torfmooren” [On paludification on mires], Acta Forestalia Fennica (1920), pp. 1–145; V. Auer, “Die postglaziale Geschichte des Vanajavesisees” [The post-glacial history of Lake Vanajavesi], Bulletin de la Comission géologique de Finlande 69 (1924), pp. 1–132. 20 V. Auer, “Some future problems of peat bog investigation in Canada”, Commentationes Forestales 1 (1928), pp. 1–32.
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(1953–1957) and as a professor of geology and palaeontology (1957–1963) at the University of Helsinki. Väinö Auer passed away in 1981.
The Nation and the Earth The relation between global and national scales is often problematic. Nationstates try to maintain the constructions built to strengthen their national identity and this often means harnessing scientific research to nationalist projects, such as defining “natural borders”. In addition, it lies in the interest of nation-states to maximize the gain from their natural resources, often with the aid of scientific research. While the priorities of nation-states tend to be self-serving, nationstates cannot afford to neglect global environmental questions. However, their possibilities of solving global environmental problems remain limited, partly due to restricted jurisdiction and partly because of the transnational character of the problems. As Bsumek et al. argue, this dilemma is not new but has challenged nation-states for at least 200 years. They characterize nation-states as doubly challenged “by environmental problems that defy their control and by globalizing trends that often limit their capabilities”.21 When it comes to Finland, the nation-state that concerned Väinö Auer, its main priority during the period up to the 1950s was to survive economically and to maintain its independence. The transnational aspect of Finnish history has mainly been concerned with trade, diplomacy, and political alliances.22 However, from the point of view of geology – and from the perspective of big history – Finland is not only part of a global system of trade networks and diplomatic relations. Finland is also part of a geological entity, the Earth. The Finnish crust of the Earth was (and remains) connected to that of all other areas on the globe, just as the Finnish ecosystem was (and remains) connected to the surrounding ecosystems. Scientists, geologists and geographers, are in a particularly good position to perceive these connections and to employ a variety of methods so as to better understand these interdependencies. The already mentioned tephrochronology is one of these methods. Using tephrochronology,
21 E. M. Bsumek, D. Kinkela and M. A. Lawrence, Nation-States and the Global Environment: New Approaches to International Environmental History, Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2013. 22 J. Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World. A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.
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Väinö Auer studied the paleo-ecological groundwork in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia for more than four decades.23 In addition, he studied the central, post–ice age layers of Earth’s climate history in Canada, Finland, Tierra del Fuego, and Patagonia. Hence, the scientific knowledge gathered by one geologist created a network connecting several areas, thereby producing a synthetic form of knowledge. In consequence, it can be argued that geological knowledge about the Earth have been one of the factors contributing to the emergence of a global consciousness. This knowledge has slowly accumulated during the past 300 years as natural historians have measured, studied, and classified the Earth. More often than not, the intentions behind the creation of knowledge about the Earth has been concerned with the available natural resources and the economic usefulness of them. Besides the methods used in studying the soil and the Earth’s crust, climatic conditions, often understood in latitudinal terms, have been an important part of the accumulated body of knowledge about the Earth.
Greater Finland Väinö Auer came from a Fennomanic family with strong nationalistic ideals.24 As mentioned in the introduction, he was a student at the University of Helsinki at the time when Finland became independent, in 1917, and at a time when the atmosphere at the university was marked by a conflict between the Finnish and Swedish language groups. He was engaged in student politics, serving as the first Finnish-speaking chair of the Students’ Union. Moreover, Auer was an honorary member of the Academic Karelia Society (Akateeminen Karjala-Seura, AKS), a nationalist activist organization aiming at the improvement and expansion of the newly independent Finland, founded by academics and students of the University of Helsinki. In addition, Auer was, together with a number of scientists, an advocate of the expansion of Finland’s borders that would incorporate what became known as “Greater Finland”. The idea of Greater Finland was a nationalist notion involving the ambition of the territorial expansion of Finland according to the boundaries encompassing nations who spoke Finnish or languages related to Finnish. At the beginning of the so-called Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1941, Finland fostered the optimistic idea of reconquering areas that were lost to the Soviet Union in the previous
23 C. J. Heusser, “Ice Age Southern Andes: A Chronicle of Palaeoecological Events”, Developments in Quaternary Science 3 (2004), pp. 1–250. 24 The Fennomans were a political movement promoting the Finnish language and culture.
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war, the Winter War, and even of expanding its borders further to what was understood to be Greater Finland. The concept of Greater Finland was a mixture of geographical boundaries and cultural features. The most common conception of Greater Finland was defined by what could be understood as natural borders encompassing territories inhabited by Finns and Karelians. It ranged from the White Sea to Lake Onega and along the rivers Svir and Neva or, more modestly, the river Sestra to the Gulf of Finland. Some proponents of Greater Finland also included the Kola Peninsula, Ingria, and Estonia, some extremists even Finnmark in Norway and Torne Valley in Sweden. Politically, the Finnish border shifted after Russia’s recognition of Finland’s independence with the Treaty of Tartu (1920), which stipulated that the northern area of Petsamo was to be incorporated into Finland, while Finland ceded the Karelian districts of Repola and Porajärvi to Russia. Finnish nationalists in the 1920s and 1930s strongly advocated either the independence or incorporation (into Finland) of Baltic Finnish peoples – “kindred peoples” – within the borders of the Soviet Union. However, after the Second World War, Finland had to cede to the Soviet Union areas in Karelia, the Petsamo area, and parts of the Salla and Kuusamo areas. The idea of the “natural geographical boundaries” was based on the so-called three-isthmus border defined by the White Isthmus, the Olonets Isthmus, and the Karelian Isthmus, which dates back to the time when Finland was part of Sweden (until 1809). For instance, in 1837, the botanist Johan Ernst Adhemar Wirzén outlined Finland’s wild plant distribution according to the eastern borderlines of the White Sea, Lake Onega, and the river Svir.25 The scientific support for the location of the eastern border was founded on the idea of Fennoscandia, the Nordic geological region that included the Scandinavian Peninsula, Finland, Karelia, and the Kola Peninsula. It also encompassed Sweden and Norway, the Murmansk area, and part of the northern administrative area belonging to Leningrad. The term Fennoscandia is a geological term, coined by the Finnish geologist Wilhelm Ramsay in 1898. It is based on the area’s characteristic bedrock of Archaean granite and gneiss, in contrast to adjoining areas in Europe that contain more limestone.26 Wilhelm Ramsay was Väinö Auer’s teacher, mentor, and friend. Finnish intellectuals and scientists engaged in what can be termed as “the natural history of Greater Finland” and “the Greater Finland of natural 25 Manninen, Suur-Suomen ääriviivat; H. Väre, “Johan Ernst Adhemar Wirzén – the last Demonstrator in Botany at Alexander University”, Memoranda Societatis pro Fauna et Flora Fennica 890 (2013), pp. 35–41, https://journal.fi/msff/article/view/40886. 26 A. Leikola, “The Geo-Ecological Finland: Natural History Defining the Boundaries of a Nation”, Mokslo Ir Technikos Raida/Evolution of Science and Technology 1 (2009) 2, pp. 146–216.
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scientists”, involving botanical, zoological, geographic, and geological research and all aimed at strengthening the idea of the “natural borders” of Finland.27 Väinö Auer, together with several Finnish scientists of the day, amongst them the rector of the University of Helsinki, Kaarlo Linkola, took active part in this research. Auer had been engaged in patriotic and nationalist activity since his days as a student in the Academic Karelia Society. Most notably, Auer was the chair of a committee initiated by the Geographical Society of Finland and appointed by the ministry of internal affairs to conduct research that supported the cause of Greater Finland.28 For instance, Auer published an article about “the future Finland” as an economic-geographic unit in 1941.29 In his article, Auer evaluates the economic potential of the southern parts of Finland and discusses the possibility of inhabiting wilderness areas. Here he notes that the old state border has served as a barrier for the “pioneering spirit” of the Finnish people. With the Greater Finland, the country would gain a good portion of new land suitable for agriculture.30 Auer’s engagement in the nationalist project of Greater Finland went further than mapping the economic geography. He is infamously known for his participation in the writing of a Finnish propaganda book called Finnlands Lebensraum, written at the beginning of the Continuation War, published to support the Greater Finland ideology. The authors were Väinö Auer, the historian and ethnographer Eino Jutikkala, and the ethnographer Kustaa Vilkuna. It was a work commissioned by President Risto Ryti and Finland’s state propaganda and information department. The purpose of the book was to demonstrate scientifically that East Karelia was a natural part of Finland by its geography, history, and culture and to legitimize its integration into Finland after the anticipated German victory in the war. The original title of Finnlands Lebensraum was Das geographische und geschichtliche Finnland (The geographic and historic Finland), but it was changed by the German publisher to be more compatible with the Nazi ideology. Indeed, National Socialist ideas were later added to the manuscript by the anthropologist Yrjö von Grönhagen, who worked for the Finnish propaganda department. Hence, although
27 A. Laine, “Tiedemiesten Suursuomi” [The Greater Finland of scientists], Historiallinen arkisto 103 (1993), pp. 129, 177–184. 28 Auer was the chair of the Finnish state’s scientific committee for Eastern Karelia (Valtion tieteellinen Itä-Karjalan toimikunta), founded in 1941 with the task of coordinating scientific research about the occupied Eastern Karelia. 29 V. Auer, “Tuleva Suomi talousmaantieteellisenä kokonaisuutena” [The future Finland as an economic-geographic unit], Terra 53 (1941) 4, pp. 206–217 (a map of the Greater Finland, see p. 214). 30 Ibid., p. 214; See also Alhonen and Alhonen, Vaakavarren ratsastaja, p. 247.
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by no means a national socialist, Auer was a keen advocate of a strongly nationalist ideology, and he readily put his scientific skills at the service of the Finnish state. In addition to his work, aimed at defining and defending Finland’s natural borders, Auer held an essentialist, organic view of the nation, comparing it to an organism. In a textbook on geography from 1937, Auer and geographer Arvi Poijärvi give their view on a nation: The Republic of Finland is thus, as far as its structure and functions are concerned, a gigantic uniform organism, just as a human being is a uniform organism. A specific human being, animal or plant, which has a living organism, is called an individual. In the same manner a state can be regarded as an individual, since it is in many respects similar to a living organism in its structure and function.31
It is easy to see that such an organism would have natural borders. The question whether there are any scientific bases for the natural borders of Greater Finland is open for debate, as is the concept of natural borders. Overall, researchers in borderline studies agree that the concept of natural borders has not always been informed by a consciousness of geographical living spaces.32 Moreover, as Antti Paasi observes, based on geological evidence it would be just as easy to justify the expansion of Finland to the west instead of the east, as most proponents of Greater Finland most usually suggested.33 The idea of Greater Finland with its natural borders can therefore be regarded as a construct that served a political and ideological purpose at a certain time in Finnish history. The scientific term of Fennoscandia is, however, still in use.
A Region and a Nation: Patagonia and Argentina The regional scale in Auer’s thinking could be represented by any of the several areas where he did fieldwork. Argentinian Patagonia is chosen for this
31 V. Auer and L. A. P. Poijärvi, Suomen maantieto [Geography of Finland], Helsinki, 1937, p. 12 (own translation). 32 E. Vallet, Borders, Fences and Walls. State of Insecurity, London: Routledge, 2016, p. 121. 33 A. Paasi, “Maantiede, geopolitiikka ja Suomen itärajan muuttuvat representaatiot” [Geography, geopolitics and the changing representations of Finland’s eastern border], Alue ja Ympäristö 24 (1995) 2, pp. 28–49. Similarly, any scales used in historical research should be problematized.
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study since Auer devoted a great part of his professional life to Patagonia and particularly Tierra del Fuego in southern Argentina. Patagonia is a large region, situated in both Chile (10 per cent) and Argentina (90 per cent). The Patagonian desert is three times larger than Finland, but it is a substate region, and it corresponds to a constructivist definition of a region, where regions are seen as imagined spaces generated and transformed through social and political processes across time, or as spatial and ideological practices.34 Patagonia is a semiarid scrub plateau, covering an area of about 260,000 square miles (673,000 square kilometres). The region encompasses the greater part of the southern portion of mainland Argentina, and it extends from latitude 37° to 51° south. On its western borders are the Patagonian Andes, the Colorado River to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Strait of Magellan to the south. The region of Tierra del Fuego is often included in Patagonia.35 Until 1885, when Argentina conquered the region of Patagonia with its indigenous population, it had been under the control of indigenous groups. In 1885, Argentina had been independent for 70 years, and there was a great interest in both modernizing and expanding the economically growing nation.36 The military expedition whereby Patagonia was conquered was termed as “the conquest of the desert”.37 The peripheral region of Patagonia with its inhabitants became subjected to immigration, development, and modernization. Incentives were offered to immigrants who were willing to settle in Patagonia, such as subsidies for their ship passage as well as services to help find a place where to live
34 P. Kramer, “Region in Global History”, in: D. Northrop (ed.), A Companion to World History, Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2012. 35 E. F. G. Díaz and K. E. Webb “Patagonia”, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britann ica.com/place/Patagonia-region-Argentina (accessed 16 March 2020). 36 M. Dimant, “The Neighborly Relations between Middle Eastern Migrants and Indigenous People in Patagonia: Rethinking the Local Experiences in the Study of Ethnic-Migrant Minorities”, Asian Journal of Latin American Studies 30 (2016) 1, pp. 1–25; M. Langfield, The Welsh-Patagonian Connection: A Neglected Chapter in Australian Immigration History, https://on linelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-2435.00034 (accessed 24 May 2020). 37 G. Nouzeilles, “Patagonia as Borderland: Nature, Culture, and the Idea of the State”, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 8 (1999) 1, pp. 35–48; C. Lois, Mapas para la nación. Episodios en la historia de la cartografía argentina [Maps for the nation: Episodes in the history of Argentinian cartography], Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2014; A. Barreiro, C. Wainryb and M. Carretero, “Power Struggles in the Remembering of Historical Intergroup Conflict: Hegemonic and Counter-Narratives About the Argentine ‘Conquest of the Desert’”, in: C. Psaltis, M. Carretero and S. Čehajić-Clancy (eds.), History Education and Conflict Transformation, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 125–145.
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and work. Although the living conditions were challenging, the period between 1890 and 1930 was a time of intense migration to Patagonia.38 Part of the modernization of Argentina involved a geological mapping of the country. This created an opportunity for European geologists to conduct fieldwork. Not only Väinö Auer but also other Finnish (as well as Swedish) geologists were engaged in geological expeditions in Argentina. The groundwork was laid by Otto Nordenskiöld’s first Antarctic expedition, from 1901 to 1903, when Swedish and Argentinian geologists cooperated. Amongst the Swedish geologists who worked in Argentina were Thore G. Halle, Percy D. Quencel, and Carl Caldenius who participated in Carl Skottberg’s expedition to southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Helge Backlund, a professor of geology at Åbo Akademi University from 1918 to 1924 and the University of Uppsala from 1924 to 1943, worked as a state geologist at the General Directorate of Mines in Buenos Aires in the 1910s, as did Backlund’s successor at Åbo Akademi University, Hans Hausen, a professor at Åbo from 1927 to 1951 and state geologist in Argentina from 1914 to 1917.39 The General Directorate of Mines had employees from other European countries as well – Argentina was a vast country and there was much substrata to survey. Both Swedish and Finnish geologists were interested in Argentina because of the corresponding latitudes to the Nordic countries (in relation to the equator). For instance, the ice sheet that covered Finland intermittently during the Quaternary period grew out from the Scandinavian Mountains, or the Scandes, a mountain range that runs through the Scandinavian Peninsula. The ice fields of Andean Patagonia are considered to be the best modern analogues to this early glaciation.40 Southern Argentina thus not only offered work for geologists surveying the land area but also enabled them to make comparisons on a global scale. Väinö Auer had been fascinated by Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego ever since he gave a presentation on this region as a student at a geography seminar. Auer writes in his popular travel account Tulimaata tutkimassa (Investigating Tierra del Fuego, 1929) that, as the years went by, he appeared to have adopted gloomy and deserted regions as his topic of research.41 He describes how walking through the soft, wet, and sludgy turf swamps in Lapland awoke in him a longing for distant areas and wild nature. Here he learned to read the turf layers and
38 Dimant, “The Neighborly Relations”, p. 4. 39 J. Rabassa and M. L. Borla, Antarctic Peninsula and Tierra del Fuego: 100 Years of SwedishArgentine Scientific Cooperation at the End of the World, London: Taylor and Francis, 2007. 40 O. Fredin, “Glacial Inception and Quaternary Mountain Glaciations in Fennoscandia”, Quaternary International (2002), pp. 95–96, 99–112. 41 V. Auer, Tulimaata tutkimassa [Investigating Tierra del Fuego], Helsinki: Otava, 1929, p. 14.
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to estimate changes in the climate as well as to observe extinct plants and certain regularities, phenomena that could be witnessed all over the world.42 The purpose of Auer’s first trip was to practice studies of stratigraphy (the study of rock layers and layering) in the swamps and the connections between these and the climate changes of the Holocene period. According to Auer, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego was one of the few places on Earth where, because of corresponding latitudes, it was possible to study phenomena parallel to those in Finland and thus verify research conducted in Finland. However, although there may have been latitudinal similarities in the Earth’s strata, the Patagonian ecosystem was radically different from that of Finland. Large areas of Patagonia consist of desert. The Patagonian desert is the seventh largest in the world, occupying 673,000 square kilometres. Life conditions are challenging. Auer studied the paleo-ecological groundwork in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia for more than four decades and concluded that much of it was lifeless and eroded.43 Auer eventually went on to become an expert on the Patagonian desert. As a result of this expertise, Argentina’s president Juan Perón invited Väinö Auer to Argentina in 1945 to resolve the problems of erosion and dryness in the farming fields of the country. Auer subsequently travelled to Argentina in 1946 and stayed on until 1953. The country’s economy was at the time strongly influenced by the politics of Perón. Argentina was practicing an economic system called the “third position”, neither socialism nor capitalism.44 This isolated Argentina during the years of the Cold War and made it necessary to intensify all kinds of domestic production of goods. Patagonia was considered a problematic area because of its progressively increasing aridity and desertification. One might ask what motivated Auer to spend years of his life in Patagonia, often travelling under challenging circumstances late into his middle years. The possibility to continue with his research was one obvious factor. Neither the Finnish state nor the University of Helsinki could afford to send out geological expeditions to the other side of the globe. Another reason may have had to do
42 Ibid., p. 15. 43 V. Auer, “The Quaternary History of Fuego-Patagonia”, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 152 (1960), pp. 507–516; V. Auer, “The Pleistocene of Fuego-Patagonia” I–V, Annales Academiae Scientarum Fennicae A III (1956–1970), passim. 44 See, e.g., L. Zanatta and J. Evans, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Position: Bolivia, Perón and the Cold War, 1943–1954”, Desarrollo Económico (Buenos Aires) 1 (2006), pp. 1–2, http://social sciences.scielo.org/pdf/s_rde/v1nse/scs_a04.pdf (accessed 24 May 2020); F. J. McLynn, “The Ideology of Peronism: The Third Way and the Law of the Excluded Middle”, Government and Opposition 19 (1984), pp. 193–206.
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with a sense of duty. President Juan Perón first approached the president of Finland Juho Kusti Paasikivi with the enquiry whether Auer would be willing to work for the Argentinian government. Paasikivi reputedly told Auer that since the president of Argentina was asking him to come, there was no other option than to go.45 Auer’s position was that of a “consultant on matters concerned with Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia to the Ministry of Agriculture” from 1946 to 1957 while he was employed by the Central Bank of Argentina from 1950 to 1953. The cause behind the erosion and drought in Patagonia was the intensive use of farmland and grazing, mostly by sheep. Auer’s solution was to estimate the production capacity of the pasture and thus calculate the amount of sheep that could graze there in a sustainable way. He subsequently drafted detailed plans for the agricultural development of Patagonia. He gave recommendations on the size of farms that would be run as cooperations, he calculated how many sheep each farm could sustain and estimated where the best areas for herding sheep were situated. He writes in his report: In my inhabitation plan, inhabitation has to be planned so that each family can support itself by intensively cultivating their farm. The buildings are planned according to the climatic conditions. The only really suitable places are the river valleys with their alluvial soil. [. . .]. When Patagonia’s and Tierra del Fuego’s worst enemy, the wind, can be controlled with the planting of trees, it is possible to go far with animal farming in the southern areas as the energy of the sun in these latitudes is still fairly strong.46
In his detailed plan, Auer even recommends that the buildings should be built so that they would be suited to the challenging climatological conditions. He presented a short summary of the report he drafted for Perón at the meeting of the Geographical Society of Finland in 1954.47 However, the plans were not realized because of the volatile political situation. 45 Alhonen and Alhonen, Vaakavarren ratsastaja, p. 271. 46 A short summary of Auer’s inhabitation plan is cited in Alhonen and Alhonen, Vaakavarren ratsastaja, p. 403 (own translation). See also V. Auer, “Conciderationes cientificas sobre la conservación de los recursos naturals de la Patagonia” [Scientific considerations on the conservation of natural resources in Patagonia], Idia 40–41 (1951), pp. 1–36. 47 The report is not published, but some of the notes are to be found at the Finnish National Archive. Parts are published in Finnish as a presentation given by Auer at a meeting at the Geographical Society of Finland on 15 January 1954. See also V. Auer with D. A. Cappannini, “La erosion en la region de los lagos San Martin y Tar” [Erosion in the region of the lakes San Martin and Tar], Instituto de Suelos y Agrotéchica 54 (1957), pp. 7–27. See also V. Auer, The Finnish Expedition to Tierra del Fuego in 1928–1929, Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura, 1934; V. Auer, “Verschiebungen der Wald- und Steppengebiete Feuerlands in postglazialer Zei” [Shifts in the forest and steppe areas of Tierra del Fuego in the post-glacial period], Acta Geographica 5 (1933) 2, pp. 1–313.
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Patagonia was a region that Auer was interested in professionally, but it did not invoke the same kind of emotional attachment in him as his native Finland did. His methods of study were nevertheless comparatively similar in both cases. Auer had studied Finland and the envisioned Greater Finland from the perspective of economic geography, and his approach towards Patagonia was similar. As in the case of Finnlands Lebensraum, Auer again put his scientific skills at the service of a nationalistic regime. From Auer’s writings, it is not clear how he felt about the politics of President Perón. However, Auer’s letters indicate that Perón tried to make him stay in Argentina and he writes that he practically had to “flee from Perón”.48
A Global View of the Earth If the conditions in Patagonia did not inspire the kind of national ethos in Auer as his native Finland did, the region still appears to have influenced his world view in a profound way. Auer’s experiences in Patagonia are likely to have increased his awareness of the human global predicament, living on a planet with finite resources that needed to be carefully managed in order to sustain human development. The long-time perspective of a geologist made Auer a firm realist in this respect. Once, when asked when the fertile soil in an eroded part of Patagonia would be restored, Auer pointed at a 70 cm soil profile sample and replied that it might improve after 4,000 or 9,000 years.49 This may stand as an example of a clash between the time span of the socioeconomic sphere and geological deep time. A geologist has to cultivate a long-time perspective and an ability to understand deep time. Thanks to his work in Patagonia, Auer became increasingly interested in the phenomenon of desertification, a development he had the opportunity to observe in Patagonia. He coined the term “desert devil” (aavikkopaholainen, el diablo del desierto) to describe the phenomenon.50 According to him, desertification was one of the most serious global problems faced by humankind. He states in an interview that “[t]he soil is not inexhaustible but its nutrition can
48 Alhonen and Alhonen, Vaakavarren ratsastaja, p. 351. 49 Alhonen and Alhonen, Vaakavarren ratsastaja, p. 401. 50 Auer, “Aavikkopaholainen” [The desert devil], Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian kokous [Meeting of the Finnish Academy of Sciences], 12 March 1971; See also L. Koutaniemi, “Aavikkopaholaisen Isä Väinö Auer” [The father of the desert devil Väinö Auer], Terra 199 (2007), pp. 178–179.
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quickly be depleted. The survival of the living soil is the basis for the existence of human life, the destruction of it has caused greater damage than the world wars together. Nature should be protected in every possible way, also here in Finland.”51 Auer often quoted Franklin Roosevelt’s famous appraisal of the importance of the soil: “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself.”52 Americans who had witnessed the Dustbowl understood that living soil is the precondition for the further existence of the entire humanity and that the destruction of it has caused more damage than the world wars.53 Auer identified a number of causes for the desert devil, one of them being alternating wet and dry seasons where the dry seasons were intensified as a result of human activities. And if the desert devil did not cause enough problems, Auer identified its “twin brother, the polar devil” (napapaholainen).54 The polar devil had, according to Auer, caused the Eurasiatic tundra. The development of the tundra showed that the northern forest could not reclaim the area that had been lost during an unfavourable climate phase.55 Auer’s conclusion was that nature must be protected by all possible means, not only in areas prone to desertification but also in his native country of Finland. Even in Finland, Auer cautioned, the desert devil might win terrain. He warned about the drying of swamps (a common practice in Finland ever since the eighteenth century) and the cutting down of forests as measures that in the long term threatened to lead to desertification. As Auer turned 75, he gave an interview where he admitted that he was very pessimistic indeed when considering the future of humans on this planet: “I am an incredible pessimist and I don’t try to hide it. A researcher of the natural world is a pessimist.”56 In Auer’s opinion, humankind had ravaged nature without giving anything back. Moreover, he voiced the opinion that humans were steering their planet straight towards a disaster. The ecological risks he foresaw could, in Finland as well as in other countries, be fought only by combining everybody’s efforts.57
51 Uusi Suomi, 18 September 1977 (own translation). 52 See, e.g., D. H. Hall and J. Six, “Give soils their due”, Science 347 (2015) 6223, p. 695. 53 See D. Worster, Dust Bowl. The Southern Plains in the 1930s, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. 54 L. Aario, “Napapaholainen ja ilmaston paraneminen” [The polar devil and the improvement of the climate], Terra 53 (1941), pp. 57–69. 55 Auer, “Aavikkopaholainen”. 56 Aamulehti, 6 January 1970 (own translation). 57 Ibid.
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From a National Perspective to a Global View Väinö Auer’s writings offer interesting insight into how a scientist perceives different scales: a national, a regional, and a global one. Auer’s world view, at the different stages of his career, and with regard to the areas where he was active, changed over time. His early writings, before the Second World War, deal mainly with swamps and peat bogs in Finland, Canada, and Patagonia and partly with other geological phenomena. In the late 1930s and during the Second World War, Auer put his professional skills as a geologist and a geographer at the service of his country. His research on the economic geography of Finland was particularly prominent in this period. There is a strong ideological, patriotic, and nationalist ethos in some of Auer’s writings from this time. A further forum for expressions of nationalism appear in the popular travelogues that Auer and other members of his expeditions published – such as naming “discovered” places as Fjordo Finlandia or the Runeberg, Lönnrot, and Kivi glaciers after iconic Finnish writers, when mapping “unknown” territory in Tierra del Fuego.58 When President Juan Perón invited Väinö Auer to Argentina to resolve the problems of erosion and dryness in the farming fields of Patagonia in 1945, Auer could use the previous expertise from his long and extensive research in the area, together with his experience of Finnish economic geography, in order to find ways of making a region useful and productive. If we look for an ideological component in Auer’s report to the Argentinian government, it is that of a professional trying to develop a nation or a region in a sustainable way with the aid of economic geography. When it comes to the global scale, there is in Auer’s writings a strong sense of the vulnerability of the Earth and a perception of the Earth’s resources as finite. It was because of his wide and synthetic view of the world that he was able to understand and perceive the ecological threats facing the Earth. More specifically, the understanding of the Earth’s vulnerability came through Auer’s investigations into the mechanisms of drought and desertification, phenomena that he could study and observe in Patagonia. It was easy to see the same phenomenon in operation at other places and indeed around the entire globe. Auer writes in a paper from 1958 that the atmosphere links all the continents, as does the oceans.59 He expressed his synthetic view of the Earth in a number of metaphors, for instance in devising the idea of “the clock of the Earth”, where the movement 58 Auer, Tulimaata tutkimassa, p. 243. 59 V. Auer, “Etelä-Amerikan jääkausista” [About the ice ages of South America], Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Esitelmät ja Pöytäkirjat, 1958, pp. 129–176; V. Auer, “Miten syntyi tulivuorten purkauksiin perustuva geologinen ajanlasku” [How the geologic timing method based on
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of the sea level functioned as the “pointer”.60 The metaphor stems from his research at the Misión swamp on the east coast of Tierra del Fuego. It was possible there to observe seven layers of material from volcanic eruptions (tephra). Into this stratigraphy, Auer placed the variation pattern of the ocean and connected to it the results from research on pollen and silicon in algae. Based on these strata, reaching as far as ten meters into the swamp, Auer gained an understanding of the development of the biota and changes in climate. Another global metaphor describes volcanoes as the “canons of the Earth”. The synthetic and anthropocentric metaphors, such as the clock and canons of the Earth, are examples of how a thinker might take into account the links and interconnections that create a relationship between humans and nonhumans, places, and processes. The “global rhetoric” used by Auer is in fact reminiscent of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis where the Earth is viewed as a self-regulating organism. Such an organism could perhaps survive but not necessarily in a form inhabitable for humans.61 However, Auer, although a geologist, was deeply concerned about the human species. Even though he was aware of the processes that unfold during vast stretches of time, he called for any small things that the humans could do in order to preserve their habitat. Although Väinö Auer’s views underwent changes during his long career, he continued to be a patriot even as his focus expanded to encompass a global view. When taking the scales Auer is using as a point of reference, we can observe different, at first sight even contradictory, views of the world: on the one hand, a self-serving patriotic ethos and, on the other hand, a standpoint that could be termed as an environmental citizenship or stewardship of the Earth. Auer approaches the nation of Finland from the point of view of a patriot interested in economic geography and the region of Patagonia from the point of view of his profession and economic geography. By contrast, he views the Earth, certainly from the perspective as a geologist but also from an ecological point of view. It is possible to interpret this as a discrepancy between his views on the national and regional scales, on the one hand, and the global scale, on the other hand. However, such controversies are typical for most people, and it is particularly widespread when there is conflicting interest between the regional, national, and global.
volcanic eruptions was developed], Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Esitelmät ja Pöytäkirjat, 1958, pp. 62–73. 60 Ibid., pp. 408–410; Alhonen and Alhonen, Vaakavarren ratsastaja. 61 See J. E. Lovelock and L. Margulis, “Atmospheric Homeostasis by and for the Biosphere: The Gaia Hypothesis”, Tellus. Series A 26 (1974) 1–2, pp. 2–10.
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In conclusion, Väinö Auer must be regarded as the first Finnish scholar to foster a global consciousness and to develop what can be termed as a “global gaze”. His global consciousness was the result of the various places around the globe that he studied as well as his training as a geologist. Auer’s research had a comparative element, which is likely to have contributed to the emergence of his synthetic, global view of the world. His ideology is that of an environmental thinker, marked by the concern about the human activities towards the natural environment, coupled with an urge to preserve and conserve nature. Is there anything global historians can learn by investigating the national, the regional, and the global scales of analysis of history as read in a geologist’s work? If global historians are interested in a long-time perspective and we want to engage with the concept of Anthropocene, I would say we do. However, because of the focus on documents produced by human societies, historians are not particularly well equipped to operate on a truly grand scale, and few historians actually do big history. A method where several spatial scales are investigated simultaneously, with big history being one of them, would arguably be a more comfortable way for a historian to approach the grand scale. For historians interested in the different scales operating in the human and non-human pasts, and particularly on the scale of big history, Väinö Auer’s views are therefore highly interesting. Geologists are well equipped to deal with the scale of big history, and Väinö Auer’s global scale comes close to the big history perspective. By approaching the subject through a geologist, it is possible to embrace a “deep view” of the Earth while at the same time considering other scales where historical developments are at play. Still, it should be noted that the scales are not inherent and they can be seen as embedded into and overlapping each other. And, finally, if phenomena being perceived on a national scale and a global scale appear to adhere to different ethical positions, the overlapping of the scales may open up the possibility of widening the ethical consideration of a nation into that of the global and vice versa.
Part V: The Construction of Temporary and Permanent Representational Spaces and Memory Spaces
Taina Syrjämaa
16 Global Hubs on the Move: NineteenthCentury World’s Fairs as Spaces of Imagining the World China, and India, and Egypt, and Algiers, and Africa, to the Cape of Good Hope; and Persia, and Turkey, and Italy, and Austria, and Prussia, and Germany, and Denmark, and Russia, and France, and Spain, and Portugal, and England, and Scotland, and Ireland, and America, from Newfoundland to California, and from Bhering’s Straits to Cape Horn, and from the Sandwich Islands to Japan and New Holland, are all here represented by their products and their people. It is, indeed, the World Daguerreotyped. What a spectacle!1
An American observer, William Drew, extolled the “Great Exhibition” in London by declaring that all corners of the world were visible in one place, namely in the glass-and-iron Crystal Palace that had been specially erected in Hyde Park in London. The 1851 exposition in London as well as subsequent events in cities such as Paris, Vienna, and Chicago were temporary hubs on an epic scale. They were often described as condensed representations of the world. The Crystal Palace exposition, described by Drew, attracted some 6 million visitors during its half-year existence. The peak attendance for such an event was achieved in Paris in 1900 with over 50 million visits.2 The raison d’être of the expos was to display, assess, and accelerate the muchcherished notion of progress in relevant fields of life, ranging from science, technology, and industry to art, culture, and morals. The main emphasis in expositions was on the most up-to-date achievements, but they also contained ambitious retrospective displays with a long temporal arch as well as captivating glimpses of the future.3 The aim was to improve the overall education of the attendees and to
1 W. A. Drew, Glimpses and Gatherings, during a Voyage and Visit to London and the Great Exhibition, in the Summer of 1851, Augusta & Boston: Homan & Manley, Abel Tompkins, 1852, p. 336. 2 These numbers refer to the total number of visits. As it was common to visit a huge fair over more than a single day, the number of individuals who visited the fairs were lower. 3 On the history of international expos see, e.g., P. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, 1851–1939, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000; P. Greenhalgh, Fair World. A History of World’s Fairs and Expositions from London to Shanghai 1851–2010, Winterbourne: Papadakis, 2011; J. E. Findling and K. D. Pelle, Historical Dictionary of World’s Fairs and Expositions, 1851–1988, New York: Greenwood Press, 1990; A. C. T. Geppert, Fleeting Cities: Imperial Expositions in fin-de-Siècle Europe, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-016
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simultaneously offer the most up-to-date information to specialists.4 In practice, the agendas of expositions promoted multiple political and economic interests: they were arenas for competition between nation-states and peoples aspiring to sovereignty, for presenting imperial projects as well as spaces to capture new clients and markets for companies. A key method for producing this global spectacle was to exhibit material objects that had been transported from all the continents. Thus, expositions consisted of a record-breaking number of exhibits that were displayed in extravagant, temporary constructions for the benefit of millions of visitors. They were ephemeral nodes of the flow of things and people, whose routes intersected for a moment and then soon diverged. Hence, expositions epitomized the revolutionized forms of mobility of the era: new transportation and communication technologies and a drastic increase in the volume and speed of travel and transportation.5 They contemporaneously promoted the all-encompassing belief in progress by seemingly verifying – and eulogizing in grand style – the human capacity to overcome what had previously seemed like insurmountable challenges.6 In their ephemerality and constant movement, expositions differed from sedentary institutions of display, such as museums and department stores. A single expo typically lasted for six months, after which time not only were the collections dismantled and dispersed but also the pavilions were usually demolished. Different organizers were employed at each exposition, and no international body was established in the nineteenth century in order to coordinate the activities. For this reason, it was always far from certain where and when the next expo would take place. Yet, exhibitions did display a certain sense of consistency when understood as a mass medium, which consisted not only of the
4 T. Syrjämaa, “At Intersections of Technology and a Modern Mass Medium: The Engineer Robert Runeberg and Exhibitions, 1867–1900”, Scandinavian Journal of History 42 (2016), pp. 71–95. 5 J. Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, pp. 712–724; W. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. 6 For a more detailed discussion of the belief in progress in expos, see T. Syrjämaa, Edistyksen luvattu maailma. Edistysusko maailmannäyttelyissä 1851–1915 [The promised world of progress. The belief in progress in great exhibitions 1851–1915], Helsinki: Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2007; T. Syrjämaa, “Experiencing Progress. Technology as Entertainment in World Exhibitions at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”, in: A. Cardoso de Matos, I. Gouzévitch and M. C. Lourenço (eds.), World Exhibitions, Technical Museums and Industrial Society, Lisbon: Colibri, 2010, pp. 169–186.
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mammoth-sized world’s fairs, but also of other more geographically and thematically limited events.7 Diverse exhibitions popped up like mushrooms in a large network, which connected different localities that temporarily enjoyed a very special degree of visibility and attention. In addition to those who attended in person, the media, especially the thriving newspapers, as well as stereo images and photographic souvenir albums ensured that the expositions became familiar to a much wider audience.8 Thus, their significance and influence on the “Western” imagination of the globe can hardly be overestimated. William Drew, along with many other contemporaries, had great faith in the comprehensiveness and truthfulness of the spectacles found at the world’s fair. His comparison to a daguerreotype is flattering as it was considered to be the most accurate and unerring technology for reproducing the world. Yet, from the perspective of recent times, it is obvious that expos were European visions of the world in which other peoples and cultures had a subordinate place at best. Indeed, world’s fairs incarnated the inequality and disparity of the colonial world order.9 Yet, at the same time, expositions were focal events in promoting a global dimension into the everyday world views of millions of people, especially in Europe and North America. For example, James Gilbert questions the utterly political and imperial interpretation of expositions that has prevailed in historical research since Robert Rydell’s influential book on American expos, published in the 1980s. In his study on the 1904 world’s fair in St. Louis, Gilbert shows that visitor experiences and memory were radically different from the official political rhetoric promoted at the event.10 In a similar vein, in his study on midVictorian exhibitions at the Crystal Palace, Alexander Chase-Levenson argues that these presentations of the world were not mere imperial propaganda. He has compared the consumption of foreign cultures to virtual tourism and points
7 M. Filipová (ed.), Cultures of International Exhibitions 1840–1940: Great Exhibitions in the Margins, Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. 8 P. Snickars, “Mediearkeologi: Om utställningen som mediearkiv” [Media archaeology. Exhibition as a media archive], in: A. Ekström, S. Jülich and P. Snickars (eds.), 1897 Mediehistorier kring Stockholmsutställningen [Mediahistories of the Stockholm exposition], Stockholm: Statens ljud- och bildarkiv, 2006, pp. 125–163. 9 P. Young, Globalization and the Great Exhibition: The Victorian New World Order, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 10 J. Gilbert, Whose Fair? Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 57–60, 190–194.
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out that such an experience was considered to be instructive and, for example, was thought to improve visitors’ taste and skills.11 In this chapter, I examine mobilities that essentially contributed to how the globe and global connections were imagined at a time of rapid change. I examine intersecting flows of things and people that worked together in order to assemble, perform, and eventually dismantle the fairs. I take as a starting point the new mobility paradigm, formulated by Mimi Sheller and John Urry, which focuses on the complex interconnections between mobilities, materialities, and socialities. Whilst social studies have traditionally focused on (seemingly) permanent elements and institutions, Sheller and Urry draw attention to how mobilities play a core role in social life. Their propositions regarding the contemporary world are also inspiring when looking into the history of globality, fluid space, and mass media, such as expositions. In this chapter, I, first, show how such mobility was essential for creating a sense of global reach in these temporary hubs. Second, I explore simulated mobility in expositions from the point of view of virtual tourism, which added an important dimension to the experiences of global connectivity.
(Dis)Ordering the Material World Most world’s fairs took place in cosmopolitan metropolises in which there were already long traditions of transcultural encounters and where many kinds of knowledge, goods, and attractions from distant places were available.12 Without doubt, London and Paris were major international hubs even without expositions. Furthermore, Paris was the prime example of a modern city, with its huge urban renovation projects that did not simply entail new infrastructure with larger streets, but also included new kinds of sociability. They were fashionable cities with many kinds of attractions, but even in these metropolises, it was far from ordinary to witness such conglomerations of different countries and cultures that were on display in expositions. The organizers of the expositions proudly boasted about the huge quantity and diversity of objects displayed on the ever-expanding expo grounds whilst commentators overwhelmingly marvelled at the exhibitions. Geoffrey Cantor shows how the vastness and variety of the first world’s fair was met with
11 A. Chase-Levenson, “Annihilating Time and Space: Eclecticism and Virtual Tourism at the Sydenham Crystal Palace”, Nineteenth-Century Contexts 34 (2012), pp. 461–475. 12 See, e.g., A. Bandau, M. Dorigny and R. von Mallinckrodt (eds.), Les mondes coloniaux à Paris au XVIIIe siècle. Circulation et enchevêtrement des savoirs [Colonial worlds in Paris in the 18th century. Circulation and entanglement of knowledges], Paris: Karthala, 2010.
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sentiments of wonder.13 Although the medium gradually became established and thus more predictable, it is evident that wonder continued to be an essential element and attraction of the world’s fairs, as each expo aimed to set new records in terms of size and variety. Wonder was an equally palpable attribute of expos 50 years after the Great Exhibition in London: What strikes the visitor here immediately is the immensity of the work and the incredible dimensions of the constructions. Never before has an exhibition united so much will and effort or been more cosmopolitan. All the peoples of the Earth have worked there: in grand palaces, in picturesque pavilions, they have accumulated their marvels and their treasures.14
Faithful to the rhetoric of expositions, a 500-page guidebook for visitors to the 1900 exposition universelle in Paris (the fifth held in the city) highlighted the enormity of the expo as well as its global reach. Flowery words were accompanied by a series of maps showing the centrality of Paris. The first map celebrates Paris as the centre of the world (see Map 1), connected with cities and regions situated in all continents, including, for instance, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Zanzibar, Bombay (Mumbai), Sydney, and Yokohama. The following map indicates routes from dozens of “principal European cities” to Paris. It displays a wide conception of Europe, including Astrakhan in the East and Tunis in the South. The third map focuses on itineraries from various French towns to the capital. In each map, place names are accompanied with information regarding the distance to Paris, calculated in three ways: in length (kilometres), duration (days and hours), and price (francs).15 The new transportation technologies, which had radically changed conceptions of distances, not only made connections speedier, but the duration of journeys also became more predictable. Steamships and trains had much more exact timetables than sailing ships or horse-powered traffic. These new forms of transportation were crucial in enabling the construction of the gigantic mobile hubs; they were able to transport a multitude of objects across borders and, in many cases, across oceans and continents, which were then transformed into exhibits in the heart of metropolises. As Mimi Sheller and John Urry note, any mobility requires immobile infrastructure. To use their concepts, the mobility of the world’s fair was based on such “interdependent systems of ‘immobile’ material worlds” as
13 G. Cantor, “Emotional Reactions to the Great Exhibition of 1851”, Journal of Victorian Culture 20 (2015), pp. 230–245. 14 1900 Paris Exposition. Guide pratique du visiteur de Paris et de l’exposition [1900 Paris Exhibition. Practical guide for visitors to Paris and the exhibition], Paris: Hachette & Cie, 1900, p. 171 (own translation). 15 Ibid.
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Map 1: Paris as the centre of the globe. 1900 Paris Exposition [1900], p. 171.
railways, telegraph cables, and modernized urban infrastructure, including boulevards and sewage systems. Thus, this mobility was fundamentally based on new “extensive systems of immobility”.16 The huge construction projects of railways, railway stations, galleries, bridges, port facilities, and canals, for example, made it possible to create the spectacles of the modern world. The latest achievements in transportation technology and the boldest projects in infrastructure were also featured in the expos. At the 1867 expo in Paris, for instance, the Suez Canal, then under construction, was presented with a pavilion of its own.17 In some spectacular cases, the transportation of single exhibits was also glorified, such as in the case of the biggest (and heaviest) cannons. The German armament foundry Krupp, for example, displayed its record-breaking cannons on a number of occasions. The transportation of these gigantic armaments was depicted as heroic achievements.18
16 M. Sheller and J. Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm”, Environment and Planning A. 38 (2006), p. 210. 17 A. Nour, “Egyptian-French Cultural Encounters at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867”, MDCCC 1800 6 (2017), p. 35. 18 The Columbian Exposition Album Containing Views of the Grounds, Main and State Buildings, Statuary, Architectural Details, Interiors, Midway Plaisance Scenes, and Other
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Conversely, the transportation of ordinary exhibits to and from a world’s fair usually remained unnoticed. A glimpse into these practices of mobility is offered by a Finnish commissioner for the 1878 exposition universelle in Paris. He complained that nine wagonloads of exhibits had been detained by bureaucratic and logistic challenges in St. Petersburg on their way from Finland to France. The customs procedures were not only expensive but also tortuously pedantic; ultimately the fate of the transportation depended on the availability of bast to wrap up the parcels and pieces of lead used for sealing them.19 When the cargo eventually arrived in Paris, the Finnish commissioner confessed that handling the exhibits and overseeing their display, which was spread across a total of 42 different localities in the large exhibition ground, exhausted him and took much more time and effort than he had anticipated.20 After the closure of the expo, another arduous task was to dismantle the displays and pack the objects for the homeward-bound journey. In a manner similar to contemporary scientific principles, which organize and rank flora, fauna, and human cultures, exhibits were classified according to a multilevel hierarchical system. Exhibits at the 1878 exposition universelle in Paris (the third one held in the city), for example, were categorized into 9 groups and 90 classes.21 In 1900, the expo consisted of 17 groups and 120 classes.22 Classification was a highly cultural and historical practice, but it was perceived as an indispensable technique for producing knowledge, which was, in turn, fundamental for the promotion and acceleration of progress. The practical implementation of displays and the deficiencies of some sections were frequently criticized, but the paradigm of classification and categorization was not questioned. Its fundamental credibility was not undermined, even by a most
Interesting Objects which had Place at the World’s Columbian Exposition Chicago, 1893, Chicago: Rand, McNally & Company, 1893, p. 61. 19 R. Runeberg, “Från verldsutställningen i Paris” [From the world’s fair in Paris], Helsingfors Dagblad, 24 March 1878. 20 Syrjämaa, “At Intersections of Technology and a Modern Mass Medium”, p. 82. 21 The groups were as following: art, education, furniture, textiles, raw materials, mechanical industries, foodstuffs, agriculture and fishing, and horticulture (see Guide de l’Exposition universelle et de la ville de Paris [Guide to the exposition universelle and the city of Paris], Paris: Société La publicité, 1878, pp. 45–49). 22 Världsutställningen i Paris år 1900. Utdrag ur de af franska regeringen för utställningen utfördade allmänna stadgarna. Utdrag ur reglerna för utställare inom ryska afdelningen vid utställningen. Särskilda bestämningar för Finlands deltagande i utställningen [World exhibition in Paris in 1900. Extract from the general rules made by the French government for the exhibition. Extract from the rules for exhibitors in the Russian section of the exhibition. Special definitions for the Finnish participation in the exhibition], Helsingfors 1898.
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obvious fact: exhibitions had varying classification systems. They shared basic features but differed in many details. The system that was supposed to guarantee the functionality of the universal knowledge production process was anything but coherent. In the age of nationalism, the scientific taxonomical paradigm was readily connected to categorization by way of national origin. Thus, any exhibit had two fundamental characteristics: a thematic category in a presumably universal system and a national attribute. These two coordinates were considered to be necessary for handling any object as they enabled objects, which ranged from sculptures and searchlights to canned meat and hairpins, to be located and displayed. In principle, both characteristics seemed to refer to self-evident and permanent properties of any given object. However, in practice the boundaries were ambiguous, dynamic, and inconsistent, thereby fostering numerous political tensions. Furthermore, the twofold definition proved to be difficult to manage as a single object could only be displayed in one place at a time. In the 1867 exposition universelle in Paris, an ambitious attempt was made to spatially merge the two systems. When walking in a pavilion, it was possible to “read” the very same exhibits in connection to either a thematic category or a nationality. If a visitor walked along the lanes that followed the elliptic shape of the pavilion, he or she could peruse exhibits of different national origins belonging to one and the same thematic category. Otherwise, he/she could peruse one national section at a time, walking from one department to another and could feasibly see all the exhibits of different categories that had been imported from one country at one time.23 This creative solution, however, did not prove to be successful. The paths of innumerable objects intersected at the expositions and randomness churned behind the seeming order. As the exhibitions were temporary, it was not possible to arrange systematic or long-term collection projects, or, for example, to replace lost, delayed, or broken objects. There were also no depots to conceal the items that were deemed either unnecessary or ungainly. The journey each object underwent in order to be placed in an expo was long and complicated. In the first place, commissioners seemingly had overwhelming power in constructing displays, but actually they sought to fit available objects into available premises (plus lobbying for better places and prizes).24 Classifications were
23 L’Exposition universelle de 1867 illustrée. Publication international autorisée par la Commission impériale [The 1867 exposition universelle illustrated. International publication authorized by the Imperial Commission]. Redacteur en chef M. Fr. Ducuing. Tome I & II, Paris [1867], t. I, pp. 6–11; t. II, pp. 52–54, 205–206. 24 Syrjämaa, “At Intersections”, pp. 79–82, 84.
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published in advance that guided the process of choosing exhibits to some degree, but the end result was uneven. The first step was to recognize a potential exhibit and to submit it. Such decisions were taken far away from the sites of the expositions and long before the gates were opened to the public. This required a diffuse concept of the exhibition medium and exhibits: potential exhibitors had to have an idea of the worthiness of a local or national artefact in the context of a world’s fair as well as the desire and means to contribute. The path required of an object before it arrived at an exposition included essential recontextualizations. Ultimately, exhibits that contained items from highly divergent backgrounds and previous functions were temporarily juxtaposed. They were set side by side in physical terms, but there was also a significant, yet more abstract, proximity, such as being listed together in various catalogues and prize lists. In such a context, an object of national and regional origin could be incorporated into a system of apparent global dimensions. In the ever-enlarging expos, the establishment of a spatially rigid narrative path, such as the chronological itineraries of many museums,25 was unattainable. Yet, the locations of exhibits on the sites as well as in catalogues suggested the context in which they were meant to be interpreted. Instructions contained within guidebooks and catalogues as well as on maps, ground plans, signs, and labels were regarded as an essential feature in order to make comprehensible what could otherwise be perceived as a dizzyingly variegated expo. However, visitors are never passive recipients because they always have agency and act creatively. This situation accords with Michel de Certeau’s theory of everyday life and practices. The exhibition ground was an institutional, organized, and regulated space. The administration of expositions put into effect strategies designed to govern the area, which included fencing off spaces, the establishment of opening times, the sale of tickets at entrance gates, and the enactment of various rules for exhibitors and visitors. These were “others” who unofficially and with small banal practices – or tactics as de Certeau calls them – appropriated and transformed the space. Organizers could not create a ready-made expo. Instead, visitors played an important role in producing the expo, for example by choosing what to see and in which order. Visitors could be guided by professional factors, for instance, as well as national and regional bonds.26 As de Certeau notes,
25 T. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum. History, Theory, Politics, London: Routledge 1995, pp. 36, 177–208. 26 On creative practices in general, see M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988, pp. xviii–xxii, 30–39. On exhibition visitors, see T. Syrjämaa, “Näyttelypaviljonki uudenlaisena kansainvälisenä toiminnan ja tulkinnan tilana Kaivopuistossa vuonna 1876” [Exhibition pavilion as a new space for
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consumption is “another production”.27 In other words, consumers and walkers in a city or, in this case, expo-goers themselves, are able to create something different and new. Expos were characterized by heterogeneity and vastness as they were versatile spaces and could therefore be dotted with divergent paths and agendas. While walking in an expo, visitors were actually able to create a (virtual) collection of their own by directing their attention to certain objects (in differing order) and by ignoring most of what was being exhibited. It was hoped global recognition could be achieved by displaying wagonloads of things in an expo. Yet, attracting attention was anything but guaranteed as the size of expositions grew and a bewildering cornucopia of things were on display.
An Immersive Global Patchwork The unique attraction of world’s fairs was to see a representation of the world in one city. Expos created a fascinating three-dimensional but rather peculiar global geography. At the 1878 expo in Paris, for instance, visitors were greeted by the following facades that were closely located next to each other: Great Britain, Canada, the USA, Sweden and Norway, Italy, Japan, China, Spain, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Switzerland, Belgium, Greece, Denmark, Central America, Tunisia, Annam, Persia, Siam, Morocco, Luxembourg, Monaco and San Marino, Portugal, and the Netherlands.28 Such a rue des nations (street of nations) became an integral part of how expos grew in extent and in extravagance towards the end of the nineteenth century. Although many expositions were held under the shadow of international crises and wars, the rhetoric of each world’s fair emphasized their importance in securing and maintaining peace.29 The densely built street of nations epitomized how expos sought to be peaceful competitions between nations and an embodiment of the fraternity of nations. Exhibits and premises were essential materialities when knowledge about different countries and cultures was presented. They offered countries an opportunity to define themselves, and this chance was readily utilized. During the heyday of nationalism, the definitions usually stemmed from the past. In the
international activities and interpretation in Kaivopuisto Park in 1876], Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 108 (2010), pp. 29–46; Gilbert, Whose Fair?, pp. 153–194; Cantor, “Emotional Reactions”, pp. 230–245. 27 De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p. xii. 28 Chromo-guide à l’Exposition universelle 1878 [Chromo guide at the exposition universelle 1878], Paris: Librairie de l’Écho de la Sorbonne & Bouillon-Ryvoire et Cie, 1878, p. 17. 29 Syrjämaa, Edistyksen luvattu maailma, pp. 125–146.
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1878 expo, the British section, for example, consisted of three facades that replicated the gothic Westminster Abbey, a sixteenth-century castle, and a Scottish cottage. The group was complemented by a novelty: a house entirely made of concrete. Indeed, any expo consisted of seemingly contradictory elements that not only hailed from different corners of the world, but also drew on a variety of epochs and styles.30 A supposed sense of authenticity was highlighted but, in practice, accurate replicas were combined with fanciful (re)productions. Expos created strange neighbourhoods by mixing great and small powers and by ignoring the cardinal points of the compass. They turned geographical positions and distances upside down. There were certainly pragmatic causes for such juxtapositions, yet there is a fascinating contradiction between the oftrepeated praise of verisimilitude in these fantastic spectacles. In addition to the rows of official pavilions for different countries, numerous expos also had a less official and more commercialized area for foreign cultures. A guide to the 1878 exposition, for instance, ironically notes that a cod lover would have been in seventh heaven as a Norwegian kiosk offered cod and cod liver oil in a great variety of products. If a visitor did not fancy cod, the adjoining kiosk exhibited Sicilian wines. Moreover, nearby it was possible, amongst many other things, to taste Russian horse milk drinks, to purchase Japanese souvenirs, and to buy artefacts and textiles from Portuguese colonies.31 The role of gaze in experiencing expositions has been emphasized by both contemporary commentators and by historians,32 but, as this example shows, exhibitions were also multisensory experiences. The palates of the visitors were exposed to new tastes and the ears were treated to the music and sounds of foreign languages. Whilst virtual travelling has long historical roots, its popularity in the nineteenth century grew rapidly as technologies multiplied. Many different panoramas and dioramas offered the possibility to gaze – spatially and even temporarily – at distant places. Some technologies required massive permanent structures, whilst others were portable.33 Expositions were the sites where many kinds of virtual travel technology and media came together and merged.34 Furthermore, the inherent idea of the exhibition medium was that each event had to surpass the achievements of the previous expos. In other words, the battle for new ideas and clous
30 Chromo-guide à l’Exposition universelle, pp. 17–19. 31 Ibid., pp. 107–110. 32 Syrjämaa, Edistyksen luvattu maailma, pp. 71–95. 33 V. della Dora, “Putting the World into a Box: A Geography of Nineteenth-Century ‘Travelling Landscapes’”, Geografiska Annaler, Series B. Human Geography 89 (2007), pp. 287–306. 34 Snickars, “Mediearkeologi”, pp. 125–163.
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(highlights) was continuous. At the turn of the twentieth century, the visitors to the largest Paris exposition universelle, for example, could enjoy the spectacle of “Le Tour de Monde” (Tour of the world) or “Mareorama”, a panorama that could take spectators on a trip on the Mediterranean Sea or another depicting a railway journey through Siberia. These tours not only consisted of visual and audible elements, but also contained kinaesthetic special effects.35 A London-based entrepreneur of French origin, Eugène Rimmel, was one of the many who marvelled at the global experiences of the 1867 spectacle: Without undertaking long and perilous journeys, without running the risk of being frozen in the North, or melted in the South; we have seen the Russian drive his troika drawn by Tartar steeds, the Arab smoke the narghilé or play the darbouka under his guilt cupolas, the fair daughters of the Celestial Empire sip their tea in their quaint painted houses; we have walked in a few minutes from the Temple of the Caciques to the Bardo of Tunis, from the American log-hut to the Kirghiz tent.36
To highlight both authenticity and spectacularity, humans were also displayed in addition to objects. Human shows have a long and varied history, but they gained further impetus and massive popularity in expos. From a few individuals and small-scale choreographies, these spectacles gradually expanded to so-called habitat displays, which were professionally arranged and aimed to showcase everyday life in “villages”.37 Curiosity and subordination were justified by trendy sciences: ethnography and anthropology. Historical research has especially focused on the presentation of colonized peoples, which are shocking from the viewpoint of posterity: the shows reflected and maintained ethnic inequality and produced tragedies. More recently, however, more varied aspects have been proposed by research. Catherine Baglo, for example, challenges the victimization of Sami performers and highlights their agency.38 Eric Ames, in his investigations, notes that the performances actually became moments and places of intercultural encounter. He claims that contrary to the earlier emphasis on difference and separation, they represented moments
35 Syrjämaa, “Experiencing Progress”, pp. 169–186. 36 E. Rimmel, Recollections of the Paris Exhibition of 1867, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1868, pp. 1–2. 37 See, e.g., Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, pp. 82–109. On the habitat displays, see E. Ames, Carl Hagenbeck’s Empire of Entertainment, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008, pp. 63–102. 38 C. Baglo, På ville veger? Levende utstillinger av samer i Europa og Amerika [Living exhibitions of Sami in Europe and America], PhD, University of Tromsø, 2011, https://munin.uit.no/ handle/10037/3686, accessed February 24, 2018.
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that invoked “a powerful sense of commonality”.39 The supposed ideological uniformity of visitors has also been questioned by highlighting the differences in the outlook of the attendees, from keen interest to dislike and from sympathy to repugnance.40 Sadiah Qureshi argues that such displays should not be simply and automatically equated with freak shows, but should instead be analysed within the wider contemporary context of human displays.41 Indeed, the glaring exoticized villages of colonized peoples were not even the only human displays at the expos. European countries and cultures were also presented with ethnographical and anthropological interests. Earlier dioramas of human-sized mannequins were replaced by living human displays towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. At the huge 1900 expo in Paris, for instance, a Swiss village was built in the centre of the city with 300 Swiss in national costume, including shepherds who herded sheep and cows in order to amuse the visitors. The Swiss villagers were presented against a reproduction of the Alps, which was 40 metres high and 600 metres long. The scene also featured a 30-metre-high waterfall, which helped to power a sawmill.42 It was in many ways a perfect example of a habitat display, with people depicted amidst their traditional livelihoods, domestic animals, and natural environment. Yet, there are also obvious and important differences in portraying different peoples. Visitors probably did not expect the Swiss to wear the same costumes and to stay with their cows and sheep all the time. Stricter roles were reserved for non-Westerners. Japanese teahouses and pavilions, for example, were a common and highly praised sight in numerous exhibitions, and they contributed to an outbreak of Japanomania. Women and men in kimonos aroused curiosity and admiration, but those Japanese who moved through the exhibition grounds in European-style clothes were criticized. Adopting Western customs was seen as an inappropriate transgression, in some cases even as a peril.43
39 Ames, Carl Hagenbeck’s Empire, pp. 88–94. 40 C. M. Hinsley and D. R. Wilcox, Coming of Age in Chicago: The 1893 World’s Fair and the Coalescence of American Anthropology, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. 41 S. Qureshi, Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, pp. 4–5. 42 H. A. Ring, Paris och världsutställningen 1900 [Paris and the world’s fair 1900], Stockholm: Fröléen & Comp., 1900, pp. 624–628. 43 Deroy et al., Les merveilles de l’Exposition de 1878 [The wonders of the 1878 exposition], Paris: Librairie M. Dreyfous, 1878, p. 230; A. F. Henningsen, “Producing and Consuming Foreignness. ‘Anthropological-Zoological Exhibitions’ in Copenhagen”, in: A. F. Henningsen, L. Koivunen and T. Syrjämaa (eds.), Nordic Perspectives on Encountering Foreignness, Turku: General History, University of Turku, 2009, pp. 63–67.
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The many souvenir albums that describe the Midway at the 1893 world’s fair in Chicago, which was one of the largest ever bazaar areas of foreign cultures at any expo, show degrees of “otherness” and cultural hierarchies in practice. The Midway was occupied by a wild array of commercial entertainment and an assortment of displays of exoticized peoples. At this point, people from the Middle East were placed on the highest ladder. In this context, a man depicted in oriental fashion, who was resting and smoking, was identified by name. Most other groups, such as Sami or Inuit families, remained anonymous. The most extreme case were the Dahomeians, with an overtly racist caption presenting two young men sitting on a lawn. One is smiling directly at the camera, while the other is placidly looking beyond the photographer: The Dahomeyans and their village proved to be one of the most attractive features in the Midway Plaisance at the World’s Fair. They are an extremely cruel and brutal race, and it is to be hoped that they will carry back to their West African home some of the influences of civilization with which they were surrounded in Jackson Park. The two members of the tribe pictured above are about average specimens. The great height and muscular power they possess is hardly shown in their attitude of repose.44
No identity and individuality were recognized, nor was there any sign of respect towards them or their culture. Actually, in this extreme example, it is not the foreign culture that should be studied at the expo; instead, the surrounding fair should be able to provide a positive impetus to enact change and improvement amongst the people on display. Fear could be aroused not only by people that were being exhibited, but also by the crowd of visitors. In anticipation of the Crystal Palace exhibition, for instance, it was feared that London would become too international. It was assumed that terrifying foreigners would soon arrive from afar, carrying epidemics and endangering the livelihoods of local merchants. Rebels were expected to rush from the European continent – the revolutions and upheavals of 1848 were still fresh in people’s memory – and the French were once again blamed for their presumed immorality.45 However, more distant visitors were often imagined to be even worse. A humorous fictive story of the exhibition excursion of a British family who meet diverse foreigners at the Crystal Palace, including “Africans”, “Bedouins”, and “Cossacks”, shows a deep level of suspicion and distrust of others. Foreigners
44 The Columbian Exposition Album, pp. 94–95, quotation at p. 95. 45 J. A. Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851. A Nation on Display, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 187–188.
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were depicted as uncivilized and dangerous: the inhabitants of the imaginary Cannibal Islands even dreamt of having little Johnny Brown for their meal.46 World’s fairs were far from innocent places, but this does not reduce their importance. Millions of visitors were able to imagine and experience faraway places and peoples. A global dimension was unmistakable, albeit in many ways distorted and biased. As one of the visitors to the Midway in Chicago emphasized, he had seen and learned more of the world than he could probably ever do again in one single day.47 In his opinion, the foreign bazaar had far exceeded the charm and utility of the official White City, with its pavilions dedicated to industries and arts and with neatly categorized and catalogued exhibits. Virtual tourism greatly added to the fascination of expositions and essentially contributed to a spectacular globality.
Conclusion The wide geographical and cultural scope of the expos has been highlighted in innumerable visitors’ comments and in the official rhetoric of the expositions. The first expo was famously titled the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations”, and although the motto of the following ones may not have achieved an equally iconic status, they embraced the same ambition of comprehensiveness. The multitude of objects, edifices, and people seemed to create a condensed world in which visitors could wander from one end to the other. In his recent magnum opus, Jürgen Osterhammel identifies the increase in the transfer of cultural contents as one of the key characteristics of the nineteenth century, alongside the asymmetry of the process. West-East and NorthSouth interactions were manifold but highly biased. Furthermore, Osterhammel reminds us of the unevenness of power and influence inside the “West” between centres and peripheries.48 World’s fairs were at the very centre of this epoch, the consequences of which continue to be evident in our own time. As the most spectacular mass medium of their age, they gave forcible impetus to conceptions of globality. They introduced a global dimension into the everyday world views of 46 The story, published by artist and illustrator Thomas Onwhyn, was titled “Mr and Mrs Brown’s visit to London to see the grand exhibition of all nations. How they were astonished at its wonders, inconvenienced by the crowds, and frightened out of their wits, by the foreigners”. The image has been reproduced in Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851. 47 “A Yankee’s Impressions of the World’s Fair”, The Manufacturer and Builder 25 (1893) 7, pp. 160. 48 Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World, pp. 911–914.
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millions of people, not only by introducing exotic faraway cultures and countries, but also by incorporating visitors’ own countries and familiar cultures into a wider – imagined – global context. World’s fairs are an excellent example of a powerful system with no permanent institutionalized space: the geography of expositions consists of a series of points or stops in time and space. Yet, there are also important continuities. Whilst technologies changed and practices were modified, expos continued to merge physical and virtual mobilities in an unprecedented and spectacular manner. Expos were dependent on new transportation and communication technologies, which revolutionized the systems of mobilities of the era. In their turn, however, they eulogized and celebrated new mobile materialities. Mimi Sheller and John Urry emphatically note that “mobility is always located and materialised”.49 Expos were ephemeral but essential global hubs, in which the new mobilities of the nineteenth century were manifested. The spectacularity of expos and the high-flown ambitions of representing the globe were, in fact, all based on mobility and materiality. Things and people were continuously departing and arriving, circulating and zigzagging – they were on the move.
49 Sheller and Urry, “The New Mobility Paradigm”, p. 210.
Christina Romlid
17 Visualizing Sweden at the 1937 World Fair in Paris Sweden became the epitome of modernity during the 1930s mainly due to the book Sweden: The Middle Way, written by the American journalist Marquis Childs. Published in 1936, it contributed to the American debate on the New Deal and economic state interventions. Childs’s thesis was that Sweden had found the “golden middle way” between capitalism and absolute socialism. He describes the reform policies of the Swedish social democratic government, while pointing out that Sweden had succeeded in addressing social and economic problems through a combination of strong cooperative movement, active state intervention in the market economy, and a powerful trade union movement. Childs’s book influenced how the world viewed Sweden, and Sweden became a model.1 Or as the Swedish historian Martin Kylhammar formulates it: It was at this time that Sweden became a model country, a paradise [. . .] The significance of this internationally sanctioned image of Sweden cannot be overestimated. The most important aspect, in addition to its exemplary image in general, was that Sweden became definitely and intimately intertwined with modern times and modernity. In our own eyes, we became the mindset of modernity and the good future.2
1 C. Marklund, “The Social Laboratory, the Middle Way and the Swedish Model: Three Frames for the Image of Sweden”, Scandinavian Journal of History 33 (2009) 3, pp. 268–269; K. Musial, Tracing Roots of the Scandinavian Model: Images of Progress in the Era of Modernisation, Berlin: Humboldt Universität, 1998, p. 56; K. Musial, Roots of the Scandinavian Model: Images of Progress in the Era of Modernisation, Baden Baden: Nomos, 2002, pp. 153–154, 178; J. Werner, Medelvägens estetik: Sverigebilder i USA, del 1 [The aesthetics of the middle way: Images of Sweden in the United States, part 1], Hedemora: Gidlund, 2008, p. 281–284. 2 M. Kylhammar, “Sveriges andra stormaktstid: Från världsstat till folkhem” [Sweden’s second great power: From welfare state to folk home], in: P. Elmlund and K. Glans (eds.), Den välsignade tillväxten: Tankelinjer kring ett århundrade av kapitalism, teknik, kultur och vetenskap [The blessed growth: Thought lines around a century of capitalism, technology, culture and science], Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1998, p. 72–73 (own translation). Notes: I would like to thank Lars Berge, Lars Båtefalk, Hanna Hodacs, Peter Reinholdsson, and Holger Weiss for valuable support and comments. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-017
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Sweden also has, at least for most of the twentieth century, perceived itself to be “the world’s most modern country”.3 In order to understand the processes that contributed to this, it is necessary to examine the construction of “Sweden” as an image of modernity and progressivity in a global context. Such a study requires a focal point in the form of a place, or a space, where cultural meetings took place in a regulated and organized form, or, in other words, what the historians Matthias Middell and Katja Naumann call a “portal of globalization”: By such portals, we mean those places that have been centres of world trade or global communication, have served as entrance points for cultural transfer, and where institutions and practices for dealing with global connectedness have been developed. Such places have always been known as sites of transcultural encounter and mutual influence.4
Perfect globalization portals are the world fairs that were organized by the Bureau International des Expositions (Bureau of International Expositions, BIE). The BIE was founded in Paris on 28 November 1928, when 31 countries signed an international agreement that regulated the organization of world fairs.5 This chapter analyses the self-representations of Sweden at the 1937 world fair in Paris. It was the first BIE exhibition to take place after the publication of Childs’s book.6 The theme of the world fair was art and technology in modern life (Exposition internationale des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne). It took place from 24 May 1937 to 2 November 1937, welcoming about 34 million visitors. The Popular Front, which came into power in early June 1936 after a landslide victory, invested in inexpensive trains and buses in order to make it possible for ordinary people to attend the exhibition. They also established the right to statutory paid holiday.7
3 J. Andersson and M. Hilson, “Images of Sweden and the Nordic Countries”, Scandinavian Journal of History 33 (2010) 3, p. 220; Musial, Tracing Roots, p. 23; Musial, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, pp. 235–237. 4 M. Middell and K. Naumann, “Global History and the Spatial Turn: From the Impact of Area Studies to the Study of Critical Junctures of Globalization”, Journal of Global History 5 (2010), p. 162. 5 Bureau International des Expositions, http://www.bie-paris.org (accessed 22 March 2018); J. Findling and K. D. Pelle (eds.), Historical Dictionary of World’s Fairs and Expositions 1851– 1988, New York: Greenwood, 1990, pp. 372–373. 6 A. Jackson, Expo: International Expositions 1851–2010, London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2008, pp. 122–125. 7 Findling and Pelle (eds.), Historical Dictionary, p. 378; K. Waldén, “Paris 1937”, Form: Svenska slöjdföreningens tidskrift 84 (1988) 2, p. 24.
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I will not discuss whether Childs’s book Sweden: The Middle Way influenced the designing of the socioeconomic section in the Swedish pavilion. As such, the chapter focuses on the planning, not on how the section was designed at the end. As Childs’s book was published in January 1936 and Swedish planning took place between January 1936 and January 1937, it is possible to find out if the plans were changed during the period when most attention was on Childs’s book, although whether any changes came as a consequence of Childs’s book may, of course, be difficult to determine. However, what is to be investigated is what the geographer David Harvey, in his theory of space, calls “representations of space” – a space that is visualized, a space under construction, where nothing yet is decided. This space can in turn, according to Harvey, be understood according to three different dimensions of space: the absolute space, the relative space, and the relational space.8 In the absolute space, the fixed, immobile, and measurable can be found; in the relative space, the processes and movements; and in the relational space, “forces” that are “creating their own time and space”. In this chapter, this means that in the absolute space are the design plans for the socioeconomic section in the Swedish pavilion. In the relative space there is Childs’s book, and in the relational space are the forces that created the space-time that dominated the 1937 world fair in Paris, that is to say fascism and communism. This chapter begins with a presentation of the planning process and its results. In this section, the men who designed the Swedish exhibit, the planners, are also introduced. Childs’s book is presented thereafter. The three plans involving the socioeconomic section, which was presented before the world fair in Paris and which are documented in writing, are described in the next sections. What the plans state about Sweden and Swedes should not be read as truths, but as what the designers considered important to show visitors to the Swedish pavilion. Class struggles, political struggles, and cultural contestation are, for instance, mainly suppressed. It is a simplified picture of Sweden, which also hid the fact that there were people living in Sweden who spoke different languages and had different cultural backgrounds. The chapter ends with a discussion about the different dimensions of space and with the answer to the question if Childs’s book influenced the planning process.
8 D. Harvey, Ojämlikhetens nya geografi: Texter om stadens och rummets förändringar i den globala kapitalismen [The new geography of inequality: Texts on the city and space’s changes in global capitalism], Stockholm: Atlas, 2011, pp. 21–51; D. Harvey, Den globala kapitalismens rum: På väg mot en teori om ojämn geografisk utveckling [Spaces of global capitalism: Towards a theory of uneven geographical development], Hägersten: Tankekraft, 2009, p. 132.
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The 1937 World Fair in Paris The original idea of the 1937 world fair in Paris was that it would be a decorative arts exhibition and “a humanistic and cultural manifestation in the pursuit of peace”. For France, it was about consolidating, as in previous international exhibitions, its position as the capital of culture. But the Great Depression, inflation, and unemployment forced the government to change plans. It was hard to justify large sums of money being spent on a decorative arts exhibition at a time of economic crisis. The world fair therefore came to be launched as an opportunity for France to support its economy and create jobs for the unemployed. The French government and Paris city administration employed more than 2,000 artists to decorate the pavilions and also ordered 718 murals.9 Although the world fair took place during the depression, 44 countries participated and more than 300 French and foreign pavilions were exhibited. The exhibition area covered 105 hectares, from the Field of Mars at the Eiffel Tower across the Seine to the Palais de Chaillot, along both banks of the Seine from the Place de la Concorde to the island Île des Cygnes. The budget for the exhibition was FRF 789 million. The deficit amounted to FRF 495 million.10 The event was held during a politically and socially unstable time characterized by antagonism and polarizing camps “between Paris and the provinces, between France and her colonies, between art and science, between socialism and capitalism, between Fascism and Democracy”.11 Political tensions were also obvious during the world fair. Countries like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy, and Spain clearly demonstrated their own political ideals. Picasso’s painting Guernica, for instance, was displayed in the pavilion of the Spanish Republic in order to illustrate the horror of the Spanish Civil War.12 At the exhibition, the pavilions of Germany and the Soviet Union were placed opposite each other. The result was a brutal architectural confrontation.
9 A. Chandler, “Confrontation. The Exposition internationale des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne 1937” (Expanded and revised from World’s Fair Magazine VIII (1988) 1, pp. 1–19), http://www.arthurchandler.com/paris-1937-exposition/ (accessed 22 March 2018), pp. 2–4; Jackson, Expo, p. 32; Waldén, “Paris 1937”, pp. 24–25 (own translation). 10 Findling and Pelle, Historical Dictionary, p. 378; S. Peer, France on Display: Peasants, Provincials, and Folklore in the 1937 Paris World’s Fair, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998, p. 42; Waldén, “Paris 1937”, p. 24. 11 Chandler, “Confrontation”, p. 2. 12 P. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World Fairs, 1851–1939, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988, pp. 133–135.
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The Nazi pavilion, designed by Albert Speer, consisted of a 54-metre-high tower. At the top stood a giant eagle on a huge swastika (9 metres high). At the top of the Soviet pavilion was a monumental statue that symbolized the unification between workers and peasants. The statue depicted an industrial worker and female kolkhoz farmer swinging the Soviet symbols: the hammer and the sickle. As the Soviet pavilion was only 24.5 metres high, the German eagle looked down upon the Soviet couple and the Soviet pavilion.13 According to the visitors, the world fair was characterized by an unpleasant feeling of tension, suspicion and hostility [. . .] No one could mistake the brute confrontation between the Russian and German buildings. And there were other tangible evidences of mistrust. Almost none of the major nations distributed information about the materials and processes used in the industrial exhibits. Knowledge was the hoarded property of the nation that discovered and applied it. Guards in every pavilion were posted to stop visitors from photographing the exhibits. Even apparently public displays were to be appreciated, not studied.14
World fairs are popular in research. Research on the 1937 world fair in Paris is extensive. The exhibition was discussed extensively in its time and marked a new phase in how France viewed its exhibitions.15 The Paris exhibition is thus discussed in overviews of world fairs, some of which are generally descriptive,16 others more thematic (architecture, gender, food, national identity, etc.).17 There is also research that deals with the interwar exhibitions more generally and with the way in which countries competing for world leadership used the world fairs to demonstrate their power through propaganda and
13 Chandler, Confrontation, p. 15; Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, pp. 130–132; D. UdovičkiSelb, “Facing Hitler’s Pavilion: The Use of Modernity in the Soviet Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition”, Journal of Contemporary History 47 (2012) 1, p. 22. 14 Chandler, “Confrontation”, p. 16. 15 Ibid., p. 3. 16 See, e.g, J. Allwood, The Great Exhibitions: 150 Years, rev. edn. by T. Allan and P. Reid, London: Exhibition Consultants, 2001; Findling and Pelle, Historical Dictionary; Jackson, Expo; Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas. 17 For architecture, see, e.g., R. Devos, A. Ortenberg and V. Paperny (eds.), Architecture of Great Expositions 1937–1959: Messages of Peace, Images of War, Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. For gender: T. J. Boisseau and A. M. Markwyn (eds.), Gendering the Fair: Histories of Women and Gender at World’s Fairs, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010. For food: N. Teughels and P. Scholliers (eds.), A Taste of Progress: Food at International and World Exhibitions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. For national identity: J. D. Herbert, Paris 1937: Worlds on Exhibition, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.
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cultural achievements.18 Of course, there are also monographs and articles that only deal with the Paris exhibition.19 Some of these concentrate on the German pavilion and the Soviet pavilion.20 Overall, research on Swedish contributions to world fairs is uncommon; most attention has been directed to the Stockholm exhibitions from a national perspective. There is, however, some research on Sweden’s participation and the Swedish pavilion at the 1937 world fair in Paris. It is mentioned in Elias Cornell’s architectural dissertation on the major world fairs and in Richard Tellström et al.’s study of the food in the Swedish pavilions at the various world fairs that took place from 1867 to 2005. Iréne Winell-Garvén discusses it in an article about the selection of female artists for the world fair and the Women’s Art Exhibition in Paris in 1937.21 In addition, Katrin Fagerström, in a conference paper, discusses the colour of the Swedish pavilion in Paris in 1937.22 Also, a thesis by Andreas Mørkved Hellenes was published in 2019, in which he, amongst other things, uses the exhibition in Paris to discuss the circulations of images of Sweden within France.23
18 R. Kargon et al., Science, Technology, and Modernity, 1937–1942, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015. 19 See, for example, Peer, France on Display; D. Udovički-Selb, The Elusive Faces of Modernity: The Invention of the 1937 Paris Exhibition and the Temps Nouveaux Pavilion, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994. 20 See, e.g., Udovički-Selb, “Facing Hitler’s Pavilion”, pp. 13–47; Chandler, “Confrontation”; K. Fiss, Grand Illusion: The Third Reich, the Paris Exposition, and the Cultural Seduction of France, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 21 E. Cornell, De stora utställningarnas arkitekturhistoria [The architectural history of the major exhibitions], Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1952; I. Winell-Garvén, “Tävla i kultur för Sverige: Konstens allrum och konstens kvinnorum i Paris 1937” [Competing in culture for Sweden: Art’s living room and art’s women’s room in Paris 1937], in: M Björk and M. Flisbäck (eds.), I sitt sammanhang: Essäer om kultur och politik tillägnade Rolf Törnqvist [In its context: Essays on culture and politics dedicated to Rolf Törnqvist], Eslöv: Östlings bokförlag Symposion, 2005, pp. 117–131; R. Tellström, I.-B. Gustafsson and H. Lindgren, “Constructed National Food and Meal Archetypes at International Exhibitions from Paris 1867 to Aichi 2005”, National Identities 10 (2008) 3, pp. 313–327; R. Tellström, The Construction of Food and Meal Culture for Political and Commercial Ends: EU-summits, Rural Businesses and World Exhibitions, Örebro: University of Örebro, 2006. 22 K. Fagerström, “Brutal Colours – The Swedish Pavilion at the Paris Expo 1937”, in: K. Fridell Anter and I. Kortbawi (eds.), Colour – Effects and Affects: Book of Abstracts, Stockholm: Swedish Colour Centre Foundation/AIC, 2008, pp. 41–42. 23 A. Mørkved Hellenes, Fabricating Sweden: Studies of Swedish Public Diplomacy in France from the 1930s to the 1990s, Oslo: University of Oslo, 2019.
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The World Fair as a Space-Time A world fair is an artificially staged world in miniature. It is carefully planned and constructed, or as the anthropologist Penelope Harvey expresses it, it is: “the material outcome of the intentions, beliefs and values of many designers”.24 What is presented is the result of many discussions and decision-making processes about what should be included and what should be excluded. The 1937 world fair in Paris was also based, like all other international exhibitions, on the notion that it was possible, as the historian Anders Houltz writes, “to bring together and summarize a whole world in one and the same place, bounded in space and time”.25 This was also perceived by visitors. For example, the French author André Warnod writes in an essay about the 1937 world fair in Paris that “[a]s soon as you pass through its gates [. . .] you are [. . .] in a land that is located nowhere and everywhere at the same time. A land where all notions of distance and time are confounded”.26 The 1937 world fair in Paris was also, like other international exhibitions, a global space and a hyper portal consisting of several national spaces. It was a seat for global communication and exchange aimed at giving countries opportunities to compare themselves with other countries and to find their comparative advantages. In this way, technological and scientific development was to be promoted through contests, competition, and rivalry. The general commissioner at the Paris exhibition, Edmond Labbé, expressed this clearly when he stated at the 1937 world fair that the purpose of international exhibitions was to “allow nations to become aware of their resources, to take stock of their strengths and weaknesses, to realize the prospects open to them, too see what their competitors have done, and to learn, if need be, how they have been left behind”.27 The world fairs were constructed in a specific context of space. Not surprisingly, the Paris exhibition was strongly influenced by the political and economic context of the 1930s. The political element was therefore significantly more pronounced than before. This also had an impact on what was exhibited.
24 P. Harvey, Hybrids of Modernity: Anthropology, the Nation State and the Universal Exhibition, London: Routledge, 1996, p. 3. 25 A. Houltz, “Inledning: I världsutställningarnas tid” [Introduction: In the time of the world fairs], in: G. Alm et al (eds.), I världsutställningarnas tid: Kungahus, näringsliv och medier [In the time of the world fairs: Royal houses, business and media], Bromma: Förlaget Näringslivshistoria, 2017, p. 23 (own translation). 26 Herbert, Paris 1937, p. 16. 27 Peer, France on Display, p. 6.
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It was no longer mainly commercial products that were displayed, but nations and political messages. The objects that were exhibited were not included for their own sake, but as props for something bigger, primarily aimed at showing a country’s economic, social, and political ambitions.28 World fairs also played an important role in displaying and defining different versions of modernity.29 The Paris exhibition was thus also a space-time for modernity and the modern project that involved building a new society. There were, however, different views on how to shape the new, modern society. Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union represented, for example, as historian Charlotte Tornbjer formulates it, “different paths into the future”. They represented different ways of modernization, both of which focused on ideas as to how a good society could be created.30 France also tried to launch its version of modernity. According to assistant general commissioner Paul Léon, the Paris exhibition intended to position France as an alternative, a third way, between the Asian and American production methods – between the primitive, artisan, and far-driven mechanized, standardized mass production.31 Sweden was launched at this world fair as an old cultural country, “displaying rapid progress in technical, cultural and social domains [. . .] but not lacking in difficulties to surmount and problems demanding solutions”. Furthermore, the exhibit in the Swedish pavilion consisted of three different sections: a social section, which included an information hall and a socioeconomic exhibition hall; a fine art section; and a decorative arts and handicrafts section.32 It differed from how Sweden was presented at the 1935 world fair in Brussels. The world fair in Brussels had been dominated by Swedish export goods, big industry, tourist organizations, and presentations of Swedish agriculture. Arts and crafts had been present at the exhibition in Brussels, but a socioeconomic section had not.33 This change corresponded with the reduced emphasis on commercial
28 A. Houltz, “Det krönta varumärket” [The crowned brand], in: Alm et al (eds.), I världsutställningarnas tid, p. 165; Peer, France on Display, p. 6–7. 29 Kargon et al., World’s Fair on the Eve of War, p. 3. 30 Ch. Tornbjer, “Modernity, Technology and Culture in Swedish Travel Reports during the 1930s”, in: K. G. Hammarlund and T. Nilsson (eds.), Technology in Time, Space and Mind. Aspects of Technology Transfer and Diffusion, Halmstad: Halmstad University Press, 2008, p. 97. 31 Kargon et al., World’s Fair on the Eve of War, p. 11. 32 Å. Stavenow (ed.), Sweden: Illustrated Official Guide. Paris International Exhibition 1937: Arts and Crafts in Modern Life, Stockholm: Publisher is unknown, 1937, pp. 11–43. 33 “Sverige på Brysselutställningen” [Sweden at the Brussels exhibition], Svensk Export, 9 February 1935, pp. 29–30; http://runeberg.org/svda/1935/0111.html (accessed 13 August 2018). For a reconstruction of the decision to include a social welfare section in the Swedish exhibit at
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products and the increased emphasis on propagating one’s nation as being a collective entity with a collective national identity, factors characteristic of the 1937 world fair in Paris.34
The Planning Process and Its Results In December 1934, Sweden received an official invitation from the French government to participate in an international art and industrial exhibition that was to take place in Paris in 1937. The invitation was very general. Sweden did not take any major actions until the Bureau of International Expositions decided, in November 1935, that countries that participated had the right to build national pavilions. When this had been clarified, the National Board of Trade requested that the National Museum, the General Export Association of Sweden, and the Swedish Society of Arts and Crafts make a statement as to whether or not Sweden would participate in the exhibition. All of them advocated Sweden’s participation.35 In January 1936, a committee of enquiry was appointed by the Swedish government to investigate the prerequisites for, and suitability of, Sweden’s participation in the Paris exhibition. The members of the committee included ten men (and no women). They represented different areas of activity in society. The government administration was represented by the councillor of commerce pro tempore, Harald Carlborg. Three of the members were representatives of cultural institutions: the professor pro tempore of figurative painting at the Institute of Art, Otte Sköld; the CEO of the Swedish Society of Arts and Crafts, Åke Stavenow; and the director of the National Museum, Axel Gauffin. Four were representatives
Paris and a discussion about how the disparity can be explained between how Sweden was presented at the Brussels world fair in comparison to the Paris exhibit, see C. Romlid, “Promoting Sweden – the Socioeconomic Section of the Swedish Pavilion Display at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris”, in: J. Leerssen and E. Storm (eds.), World Fairs and International Exhibitions: National SelfProfiling in an International Context, 1851–1940, The National Cultivation of Culture, Leiden: Brill (forthcoming). 34 Peer, France on Display, p. 7. 35 Riksarkivet [The Swedish National Archives] (RA), Kommerskollegium. Huvudarkivet. Stora dossierserien [National Board of Trade, The main archive. The large file series], FI aa, vol. 715. Letters from the Ministry of Commerce to the National Board of Trade, 17 January 1935 and 22 November 1935; RA, Utställningsbestyrelsens arkiv. Komm. U13. Bestyrelsen för Sveriges deltagande i konst- och industriutställningen i Paris 1937 [Archive of the organizing exhibition committee. Komm U13. The organizing committee for Sweden’s participation in the Art and Industrial Exhibition in Paris 1937] (UBA), vol. 1, Committee of enquiry minutes, 14 January 1936.
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of the business community: former consul general and the founder of the department store NK, Josef Sachs; director of the Nobel Foundation, Ragnar Sohlman; the CEO for the Swedish Transport Association, Edward Wilhelm Peyron, and the director of the Orrefors glass mill, Edward Hald. Almost all of them had previous experience planning international exhibitions. Sachs, Sohlman, Sköld, Stavenow, and Peyron had been on the organizing committee that planned the Swedish exhibit at the 1935 world fair in Brussels, and Sachs and Sohlman had also been members of the organizing committee that planned the Sweden’s participation at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris in 1925. Two of the members of the committee were different from the others. They had not been on any previous organizing committee and did not come from cultural institutions or from business life. One of these was Gunnar Myrdal, a professor of economics, who, in the spring of 1936, became a social democratic member of parliament.36 The other was the manager of city planning in Gothenburg, Uno Åhrén, one of the most radical architects in Sweden and a strong representative of functionalism. They both belonged to a new generation of people who emerged around 1930 and who came to be referred to as social engineers. As they could demonstrate new solutions to social problems, they received strong support from the social democratic government that came to power after the 1932 election. Myrdal and Åhrén knew each other very well. They had, for instance, worked together on the book Bostadsfrågan såsom socialt planläggningsproblem (The question of housing as a social planning problem), published in 1933. They had both been members of a commission that investigated housing statistics in 1933, of which Myrdal was chairman, and they were both members of the Housing Social Investigation, which lasted between
36 RA, Kommerskollegium. Huvudarkivet. Stora dossierserien [National Board of Trade, The main archive. The large file series], FI aa, vol 715. Letter from the Ministry of Commerce to the National Board of Trade, 9 January 1936; RA, UBA Committee of enquiry minutes, 14 January 1936, appendix 2, Organizing committee minutes, 18 March 1936. Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (SBL) [Dictionary of Swedish national biography], vol. 32, Stockholm 2006, “Sköld, Joseph”, pp. 539–544; vol. 33 (2011), “Stavenow, Ludvig”, p. 172; vol. 16 (1966), “Gauffin, Axel”, pp. 756–759; vol. 31 (2002), “Sachs, Josef”, pp. 209–212; vol. 32 (2006), “Sohlman, Ragnar”, pp. 632–635; vol. 29 (1997), “Peyron, Edward Wilhelm”, p. 280; vol. 26 (1989), “Myrdal, Gunnar”, pp. 144–160; “Sverige på Brysselutställningen” [Sweden at the Brussels exhibition], 9 February 1935, p. 29–30; A.-M. Ericsson, “Parisutställningen 1925: Den svenska tolkningen av det moderna” [The Paris exhibition 1925: The Swedish interpretation of the modern], in: K. Wickman (ed.), Formens rörelse [Movement of form], Stockholm: Carlsson, 1995, p. 88.
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1933 and 1947. Both of them played a central role in the formulation of the Swedish welfare policy and social-democratic housing policy.37 The committee of enquiry held eight meetings between 14 January and 5 March 1936. The committee also proposed that Sweden should participate. They also felt that an organizing committee should be appointed that would further investigate Sweden’s participation. However, this did not prevent the committee of enquiry from submitting a plan for the Swedish pavilion. The Swedish exhibit in Paris in 1937 should, according to them, be a “collective and uniform exhibit in its own pavilion with emphasis on the country and the people, the national culture and social life”. Furthermore, “the emphasis should be placed on a general section” that would “give an image of Sweden’s country and people, our working and social relationships, and the lives and aspirations of different groups”.38 The government decided in March 1936 that Sweden would participate in the Paris exhibition and that the cost was not to exceed SEK 325,000. At the same time, they established an organizing committee for coordinating and handling Sweden’s participation and that was to have “the right to decide on the [. . .] programme for participation, the scope of the various exhibitions, and the choice of exhibits”. The committee consisted of nine of the men who had been in the former committee of enquiry and five new members, again all of them men.39 This meant that the government administration came to be represented by the permanent undersecretary pro tempore of the Ministry of Commerce, Gösta Engzell, instead of Carlborg and another architect was added – Hakon Ahlberg, who is most famous for having founded the Swedish Architectural Association in 1936 – as well as an 37 Y. Hirdman, U. Lundberg and J. Björkman, Sveriges historia: 1920–1965 [History of Sweden: 1920–1965], Stockholm: Norstedt, 2012, p. 208; E. Rudberg, “Rakkniven och lösmanschetten: Stockholmsutställningen 1930 och ‘Slöjdstriden’” [The razor and the loose cuff: the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition and the craft battle], in: Wickman (ed.), Formens rörelse, p. 131; Kylhammar, “Sveriges andra stormaktstid”, p. 83; O. Svedberg, Planerarnas århundrade: Europas arkitektur 1900-talet [Planners’ century: Europe’s 20th-century Architecture], Stockholm: Arkitektur, 1988, p. 93; G. Myrdal and U. Åhrén, Bostadsfrågan såsom socialt planläggningsproblem: under krisen och på längre sikt: en undersökning rörande behovet av en utvidgning av bostadsstatistiken [The question of housing as a social planning problem during the crisis and in the longer term: A study on the need for an expansion of housing statistics], Stockholm: Statens Offentliga utredningar, 1933, p. 4; “Myrdal”, SBL, 26 (1989), pp. 144–160. 38 RA, UBA, Letter from the committee of enquiry to the Government, 28 February 1936 (own translation). 39 RA, Kommerskollegium. Huvudarkivet. Stora dossierserien. FI aa, vol 715. Letter from the Handelsdepartementet to Kommerskollegium, 13 March 1936; RA, UBA, Organizing committee minutes, 18 March 1936 and Kungl. Maj:ts resolution 29 May 1936 (own translation); “Sverige på Parisutställningen” [The Paris exhibition 1925], Svensk Export, 21 March 1936, p. 68.
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artist – Baron Erik Fleming, who was a royal silversmith. It also meant that the business sector was strengthened with the addition of two new representatives: the director of the porcelain factory Gustafsberg, Axel Odelberg; and the CEO for the Swedish ball bearing factory SKF and chairman of the General Export Association of Sweden, Björn Prytz. Two of the new men, Prytz and Odelberg, had previously been involved in the planning of international exhibitions.40 The organizing committee had 21 meetings between 18 March 1936 and 24 November 1937. They also had a meeting on 12 September 1939, during which they discussed, amongst other things, the report on the Swedish exhibit in Paris that they were obliged to submit to the minister of trade and the National Board of Trade. The organizing committee decided that the exhibit would consist of three sections, just as the committee of enquiry had advocated. In June 1936, the organizing committee reported to the government that its intention with the social section41 was for it to be “a general section designed to provide a picture of Sweden as a country and its people, our working and social conditions, and the lives and aspirations of different groups”.42 The organizing committee, in other words, agreed with the suggestions of the committee of enquiry. In October 1936, the organizing committee also approved Myrdal’s proposal to engage Mauritz Bonow to draw up a programme for the social section. Bonow was employed by the Cooperative Union (Kooperativa Förbundet, KF) and worked as an assistant to KF’s organizational manager, Axel Gjöres. As well, Bonow had, at least in the early 1930s, participated in the economics seminar at Stockholm University and also presented a couple of papers about the cooperation movement as an economic and political factor. It is therefore possible that Myrdal, who became a professor of economics at the university in 1933, knew Bonow. However, Bonow also wrote about the agricultural policy. In 1935, he published the book Staten och jordbrukskrisen (The state and the agricultural crisis) in which he argued for the need for a more planned agricultural policy. But as the historian Per Lundin writes, it was “however, Gunnar Myrdal 40 Svenska män och kvinnor: Biografisk uppslagsbok 2 [Swedish men and women: Biographical reference book 2], (1944), “Engzell, Gösta”, pp. 422; 1 (1942), “Ahlberg, Hakon”, p. 36; 2 (1944), “Fleming, Erik”, pp. 532–533; 3 (1946), “Hald, Edward”, p. 244; SBL: 28 (1994), “Odelberg, Axel”, pp. 29–32; 29 (1997), “Prytz, Björn”, pp. 497–500; Ericsson, “Parisutställningen 1925” [The Paris exhibition 1925], p. 88. 41 During the exhibition planning stage, the socioeconomic section was referred to as the “social” section. It was only in the final report of the Paris organizing committee that it was referred to as the socioeconomic section. 42 RA, UBA, Organizing committee minutes, 8 March 1936, 12 June 1936, 12 September 1939; Committee of enquiry minutes, 17 February 1936 (own translation).
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who would give the criticism a more programmatic character, while also providing the crucial impetus to a review of the current support policy”. In the end, the minister of agriculture instigated an agricultural investigation in 1938. Two of the experts involved in the investigation were Myrdal and Bonow.43 Bonow did, however, present three proposals for the organizing committee. The first was presented on 30 October 1936 and was an outline of how the social section could be designed. The second was a revised proposal presented orally on 19 December 1936, and the third was a written compromise proposal submitted 2 January 1937. The Swedish pavilion opened on 6 June 1937, which was later than planned. Most of the other pavilions were also delayed as the construction work in Paris was affected by strikes, the introduction of a 40-hour workweek, prohibition of overtime work, etc. The pavilion was located on the west bank of the Seine, near the Pont d’Iena and the Eiffel Tower. The closest neighbours were Great Britain and Czechoslovakia. It was designed by Sven Ivar Lind and had a floor area of over 1500 m2. When it closed on 25 November 1937, it was estimated to have received about 4 million visitors.44
Marquis Childs’s Book Sweden: The Middle Way Marquis Childs’s book should, as pointed out by the historian Jeff Werner, rather “be regarded as a product of the great interest in Sweden” not as “its cause”. During the interwar period, an image of Scandinavia and the Nordic region had emerged as the “happy countries” and the “happy communities”. European writers wrote in French, German, Italian, and Spanish about the happy Nordic democracies. According to the historian Peter Stadius, these types of descriptions reached their peak in the late 1930s. It was pointed out that these countries had managed to find solutions to both the economic and democratic crises, without abandoning democracy and without falling into
43 RA, UBA, Organizing committee minutes, 7 October 1936; L. Eronn, Boken om Bonow: Grundare av kooperativ samhällspolitik [The book of Bonow: Founder of cooperative social policy], Stockholm: Kooperativa institutet, 1989, pp. 6, 14–15; M. Bonow, Staten och jordbrukskrisen [The state and the agricultural crisis], Stockholm: Kooperativa förbundets bokförlag, 1935; P. Lundin, Lantbrukshögskolan och reformerna: Från utbildningsinstitut till modernt forskningsuniversitet [The College of Agriculture and the reforms: From educational institute to modern research university], Uppsala: Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2017, pp. 94–95 (own translation). 44 RA, UBA, Organizing committee minutes, 12 June 1936, 15 September 1937, 9 December 1939; Findling and Pelle (eds.), Historical Dictionary, p. 285.
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communism or fascism.45 This, in combination with, as the historian Kazimierz Musial expresses it, “the spectacularly quick economic recovery of Sweden was seen as proof of their progressiveness” (Sweden had overcome relatively quickly the international crisis that followed the stock market crash in 1929). The Nordic countries were therefore seen as modern role models. European writers highlighted them so to demonstrate alternatives to fascism, whereas North American authors did so to showcase political alternatives during the depression era.46 It was not only Childs who contributed to the American debate on the New Deal. There were also other articles in US newspapers and magazines in which Sweden was highlighted as being a positive example for the Roosevelt administration. In spring 1934, what is also known as the first modern American book about Sweden was published: Sweden: The Land and the People by Agnes Rothery. Childs also published a long article titled “Sweden: Where Capitalism is Controlled” in Harper’s Magazine in 1933.47 Childs visited Sweden for the first time in 1930. He had, like one hundred other journalists, been invited to visit the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition. It was an exhibition that “played an important role as a symbol of a new national selfidentification of Sweden as a “modern” and “progressive” country”. He then made several trips to Sweden during the 1930s. Most of them were funded by the state and the business community in Sweden.48 In his book, Childs describes the specific economic conditions that enabled the Scandinavian countries, and Sweden in particular, to manage the economic crisis better than other countries. In these countries, capitalism had been controlled and curtailed through cooperatives and state industries. The private sector had thereby been exposed to competition. The growth of monopoly and monopolistic price policy as well as the concentration of capital had thereby
45 These writers were in other words not put off by the brutal civil war of 1918 in Finland, fought between the conservative “white” and socialist “red” factions, portraying the region as one marked by peace, compromise, and democracy. 46 Werner, Medelvägens estetik, p. 280 (own translation); Musial, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, pp. 10–11; P. Stadius, “Happy Countries: Appraisals of Interwar Nordic Societies”, in: J. Harvard and P. Stadius (eds.), Communicating the North: Media Structures and Images in the Making of the Nordic Region, Farnham: Ashgate, 2013, pp. 242, 244, 259. 47 Marklund, “The Social Laboratory”, pp. 267–268; Werner, Medelvägens estetik, pp. 281–282; Musial, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, pp. 144–148, 153, 176, 178–179. 48 J. Chrispinsson, Stockholmsutställningar [Stockholm exhibitions], Stockholm: Historiska Media, 2007, p. 79; C. Marklund and P. Stadius, “Acceptance and Conformity: Merging Modernity with Nationalism in the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930”, Culture Unbound 2 (2010), p. 614; Werner, Medelvägens estetik, p. 470, fn 177.
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been prevented, together with hindering capitalism’s inherent self-destructive forces from having free rein. A strong “all-powerful trade union movement” had also played a major role in keeping capitalism in check. To illustrate this, Childs mainly used descriptions from Sweden as he considered Sweden to be “almost the only country in the world in which capitalism has ‘worked’ during the last decades”.49 Child’s book has a 6-page introduction and twelve chapters totalling 173 pages, including illustrations. In the introduction, Childs gives different explanations as to why Scandinavia was so progressive and thus successful in dealing with the economic crisis. He mentions, amongst other things, that it may have been because the Scandinavian countries were small and because the people in Scandinavia had characteristics such as “patience, intelligence, perseverance, courage” while the population was “remarkably” homogeneous. Childs also gives a brief description of the historical development in Scandinavia from Viking times to industrialization, with emphasis on Swedish development. He mentions, amongst other things, that a crude form of democracy had arisen at an early stage in Sweden and that there had been peace in Scandinavia for more than a hundred years. Almost half of the book is devoted to cooperative movements. In five of the twelve chapters (a total of 82 pages), the cooperation movement is analysed. Four of these chapters are devoted to the cooperation of Swedish consumers and producers, and the fifth chapter to the Danish agricultural organization. One-third of the book deals with the Swedish state (four chapters, totalling 53 pages). In these chapters, the tradition of state ownership in forestry, mining, power production, etc. is highlighted. State competition with regard to, for example, transportation, public communication, and state control, such as alcohol control and state monopolies as well as the pension system and the national power system are also discussed. The three other chapters consist of a chapter about the relationship between the Swedish socialists, the king, and capitalists (16 pages), in which the culture of consensus and cooperation is highlighted. There is also a chapter (16 pages) about how Sweden recovered from the depression. The final chapter (6 pages) is titled “Direction for the future”. In this chapter, one thing is pointed out: “The wisdom of the Swedes lies above all in their willingness to adjust, to compromise”.50
49 M. Childs, Sweden: The Middle Way, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936, see, e.g., pp. xv, 50, 158, 161. 50 For the quote, see Childs, Sweden: The Middle Way, p. 161.
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Childs’s book quickly became a sales success.51 It also inspired President Roosevelt to commission an enquiry on cooperative enterprise in Europe in 1936/37. The commission went to Sweden in July 1936 and interviewed two members of the organizing committee: Josef Sachs on 13 July and Gunnar Myrdal on 17 July.52
The First Plan: The Plan of the Committee of Enquiry The plan of the committee of enquiry, presented on 28 February 1936, was that the Swedish exhibit in Paris in 1937 would be, as stated above, a “collective and uniform exhibit in its own pavilion with a focus on the country and the people, the national culture and social life”. Furthermore, “[t]he emphasis should be placed on a general section” that would “give an image of Sweden’s country and people, our working and social relationships, and the lives and aspirations of different groups”. The image of Sweden would be designed in such a way that it would inspire “goodwill and interest in Sweden” without rejecting “objectivity and honesty”. In this way, it would be able to “represent tourist propaganda”. It would further “present an image of Sweden as being a free, old country of culture that finds itself in a state of rapid technological, cultural, and social progress”. This meant that Swedish nature, housing, population conditions, living standards, and how the living standard had changed over time would be highlighted. The situation concerning housing supply, education, health care, etc. would also be presented. A significant part would also be devoted to presenting popular movements, popular education, and intellectual life.53 The committee of enquiry also highlighted the exhibit of the Swedish realm (Svea rike) that was presented at the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition, as a model.54 The exhibit of the Svea rike, which Childs had visited, had described the development in Sweden from ancient times to modern times, with an emphasis on
51 Werner, Medelvägens estetik, p. 281, p. 470, fn 177. 52 M. Hilson, “Consumer Co-operation and Economic Crisis: The 1936 Roosevelt Inquiry on Co-operative Enterprise and the Emergence of the Nordic ‘Middle Way’”, Contemporary European History 22 (2013) 2, p. 192. 53 RA, UBA, Letter from the committee of enquiry to the Government, 28 February 1936 (own translation). 54 Ibid.
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industrialization. It contained descriptions of, for example, the population, age distribution, income, household budgets, housing market, housing standard, industries, occupational groups, racial types, popular movements, major companies, export industries, the tourist association, and owner-occupied home movements.55 It wanted above all to show the enormous progress that Sweden had made since the beginning of the twentieth century.56 The planners had also made an effort to “emphasize the continuity between the Swedishness of the past with the Swedish community of the future, using a narrative which compares past achievements on the European battlefield with present-day victories on the global market”.57 The committee of enquiry felt that an exhibit about modern Swedish city planning art and architecture should also be organized in order to show how these were linked to Sweden’s current housing problem. Such an exhibit, the committee further proposed, should be part of the general section and, amongst other things, should use models to show the production of housing that had been achieved through state and municipal support. In connection with this, it should also show what had been done to “create more beautiful and more appropriate household goods and furniture”.58 The committee of enquiry also referred, when discussing the content of the general section, to a memorandum that Gauffin had submitted in which he had underlined the significance of museums “as limbs in modern society”. According to the committee, Sweden was also a pioneering country in this area. Therefore, the social significance of museums should be displayed using photos. In addition, a museum hall should be reconstructed to show how technologically advanced Sweden was in modern museum technology.59 Finally, it was pointed out in the letter that the major export industries should be included in the pavilion as a reminder of the central role they played in Sweden’s economic development. With the help of some items, which, for example, could be exhibited in the entrance hall, one could be reminded of the “the notable deeds of Swedish inventors, which led to the development of
55 E. Rudberg, Stockholmsutställningen 1930: Modernismens genombrott i svensk arkitektur [1930 Stockholm Exhibition: Modernism’s breakthrough in Swedish architecture], Stockholm: Stockholmia, 1999, pp. 137–139. 56 Svea Rike [Swedish realm], Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1930. 57 Marklund and Stadius, “Acceptance and Conformity”, p. 630. 58 RA, UBA, Letter from the committee of enquiry to the Government, 28 February 1936 (own translation). 59 RA, UBA, Letter from the committee of enquiry to the Government, 28 February 1936 (own translation).
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safety matches, the telephone, AGA lighting, ball bearings, and the proud popularity of other Swedish inventions throughout the world”.60 Attached to the letter was a report in which the design of the general section was specified.61 It is not clear who wrote it; however, there is reason to believe that it was written by Myrdal as it. Childs wrote in the edition of Sweden: The Middle Way published in 1961 about the discussions regarding the Swedish pavilion at the Paris exhibition: Certain members of the commission appointed to plan it favoured a display which would show the country’s very real social advance – evidence of the “middle way” that is so closely in accord with the Swedish temperament. But Gunnar Myrdal [. . .] led a faction that took another point of view. Professor Myrdal said: “No, we cannot afford to do that; we can show the achievement, but it must be merely as the dynamic element by means of which we hope to raise standards which are still far too low”. This was the line finally adopted by the commission.62
The memorandum that the committee submitted was written in a way that Myrdal felt to be appropriate. According to the final Swedish report that was written about the world fair in Paris, the social exhibit was also drafted by Bonow “mainly in accordance with the guidelines that professor Myrdal commissioned”.63 In the memorandum, which was probably submitted by Myrdal, some guidelines were initially given to how Sweden should be portrayed. According to the memorandum, the presentation should be honest and not demonstrate that the conditions were better than they really were. On the matter of Swedish housing standards, for example, new types of houses, such as cottages (småstugor), would be presented. But this would be done without concealing the low standards in terms of Swedish housing. It was important that changes over time were shown and that the attempts to improve the average standard were demonstrated so that the dynamics of Swedish society were noted and the problems and endeavours highlighted. In addition to the exhibit, films would be shown, and there would be a brochure in which all the material from the exhibit was presented.64 It was suggested that the general section would consist of five parts. In the first part, “The land and the People”, Sweden’s geography, natural resources,
60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 M. Childs, Sweden: The Middle Way, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961, p. 170. 63 RA, UBA, Organizing committee minutes, 9 December 1939, p. 6 (own translation). 64 RA, UBA, Letter from the committee of enquiry to the Government, 28 February 1936.
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and possibly means of transport would be presented. Demographic conditions such as race, religion, nativity, mortality, migration, marital status, and age pyramids would be displayed. In particular, the Swedish population statistics, which were the oldest in the world, would be highlighted. In addition, “Lundborg’s portrait album” could “get its first correct use”.65 In other words, the mapping of the different races in Sweden, which had been conducted at the Swedish State Institute for Racial Biology under the leadership of the physician Herman Lundborg, was to be presented. Probably, it was meant to show how far ahead Sweden was in the field of eugenic research. During this time, eugenic research was a concern for social engineers and “an element of the general progress thinking”.66 Besides this, social mobility could also be presented, together with data showing the level of education, the number of telephones and newspaper subscriptions, as well as how, for example, occupations, income, and wealth were distributed.67 The second part, “Society”, would present how Swedish society was governed. Parliament, local self-governments, as well as Swedish organizational life, with its trade unions, industry associations, and popular movements (such as religious movements, the temperance movement, and cooperative and educational movements) would be presented.68 In the third part, the change in working life would be described through the inclusion of, amongst other things, national income, income distribution, income development, unemployment statistics, and real wage development. The different industries (agriculture, heavy industry, trade, and communications) would be further elucidated on the basis of different variables. Problems would also be addressed, such as urban-rural issues, export industry versus the home market industry, and challenges related to Norrland. The social point of view would also be treated, such as the state’s role as a mediator in the labour market, legislation on the 8-hour workday, occupational protection, and labour inspection.69 In the fourth part, facts about family demography and family economics would be presented, as would different types of help that families could receive,
65 Ibid. (own translation). 66 O. Sigurdson, Den lyckliga filosofin: Etik och politik hos Hägerström, Tingsten, makarna Myrdal och Hedenius [The happy philosophy: ethics and politics at Hägerström, Tingsten, spouses Myrdal, and Hedenius], Eslöv: B. Östlings bokförl. Symposion, 2000, pp. 198–199 (own translation). 67 RA, UBA, Letter from the committee of enquiry to the Government, 28 February 1936. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid.
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such as financial maternity aid, public childbirth care, preventive maternity and infant care, and child welfare centres, along with schools, educational institutions, colleges, vocational counselling, vocational education, social assistance, and public pensions. The housing policy would be highlighted in a major part in which, amongst other things, the work to improve housing in rural areas and the project initiated by the Housing Social Investigation to build for large families would be presented. In addition, housing inspection, slum sanitation, etc. would be addressed. Health care (outpatient clinics and district nurses would be mentioned specifically) and financial security measures, such as social insurance, would be presented. Current problems would also be highlighted, such as the issues surrounding salt and vitamin deficiencies by children living in northern climates, as evidenced in the Norrland investigation and noted by the new Nutrition Council. The population crisis and social and economic family problems, stressed by the Population Commission and the Women’s Workers Committee, would also be presented.70 In the fifth part, “The Lives and Aspirations of Individuals and Groups” was to be the focus. Facts would be presented concerning the popular movements (the popular education movement, the temperance movement, religious movements, sports movements, and political movements), including information on libraries, radio, and press. In addition, the popular education movement with its lecture activities, study circles, and folk high schools would constitute a large component, as they were something “that can be shown with pride abroad”. Additionally, the liquor control system in Sweden (the Bratt System) was to be given place in the exhibit.71 The entire exhibit ought to “conclude on a few broad chords: A free, old country of culture – American, technical, modernistic, with burning social problems, which we seek to resolve in conflict or cooperation in accord with a democratic basis”.72
The Second Plan: Bonow’s First Outline Bonow’s outline, presented on 30 October 1936, consisted partly of a suggestion as to the design of certain parts of the entrance way and entrance hall and a proposal as to how the social section would be designed. In the entrance from
70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. (own translation). 72 Ibid. (own translation).
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the portico (outside the entrance hall of the pavilion), Bonow suggested that there should be a heading saying “Sweden’s people in work and cooperation”. Below three revolving texts would appear: I. We are a free and therefore happy people. We have – according to the International Labour Office’s investigations – the highest standard of living in Europe. But we are aware that certain groups amongst our people still live in pitiful conditions. II. We are not a “satisfied” folk. We are fighting for new social and cultural progress. We have life issues to solve. On the original basis of self-government, we are creating our own future. III. But we are not self-sufficient. We have a united will to work in peace with all people. We learn humbly from other nations. We, the people of Sweden, invite you to see some testimonies about our work results and endeavours.73
On the south wall of the entrance hall, there would be a text that read: “These are the foundations for the material and spiritual culture of our country.” The text would run across five different parts. With each part, there would be different types of illustrations, and the texts would say: I. Uninterrupted external peace for 130 years. Undisturbed, all forces have been able to work together building the cultural and the material world. On fields and seas, in workshops and laboratories [. . .] the creative work has been achieved without being interrupted. These are the words – the creative work is the melody of peace in the Song of Songs. II. Internal peace: Countries are to be built by law – it is an ancient principle for the cohabitation of the Swedish people. However, there are political and social contradictions in our country. But they are not devastating. On the way to cooperation and negotiation or in the form of strict disciplinary power measurement, opposite interests are triggered or equalized. We have inner peace in our community building. III. Nature’s wealth and international commodity exchange: Nature has given us some of its riches in abundance: the vast forests, the treasures of iron ore from the mountains, the waterfalls’ energy masses – the white coal. We exchange our abundance with goods from your countries. But for our agriculture, the soil is often barren. Growth and maturity time short. But the difficulties have already been overcome through intensive plant breeding and tireless cultivation flux. IV. Folk material and technology: in our country lives one people with one mother tongue and one common cultural heritage. In rural areas, a large proportion of the peasants are farmers on ancestral farms and land. These people have never known serfdom. In cities and industrial societies, the population is primarily derived from the secure, earthbound peasantry. But our spiritual character is not only characterized by the mentality inherited
73 RA, UBA, Organizing committee minutes, 30 October 1936 (own translation).
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from peasants. The development has actualized the latent push to create. From the masses of the population, there comes wave after wave of technically talented individuals. As inventors and engineers and perhaps primarily as skilled specialists, they create it, which is our pride: Swedish quality production. V. People’s self-government: In our country people’s self-government has prevailed since ancient times. Our first parliament gathered 500 years ago, yet the beginnings of selfgovernment go even further back in time – back to pagan times. In modern times, municipal self-government was created. The efforts of organizations and associations have been designed according to the principles of self-government. Our cultural heritage includes religious freedom, freedom of thought, freedom of expression and freedom of the press. This legacy is essential for our statutory social order.74
In the entrance hall, there would also be a glass wall that would consist of three parts. In the first part there would be a monumental image of “The Unknown Ploughman”, which would symbolize prehistoric times. Below the picture, the text would read: “Before the dawn of history lit, there was the unknown ploughman. He is one in the endless line of those who broke the countryside for us.” Next would follow pictures of “Gustaf Wasa (the builder of the kingdom), Linnaeus, John Ericsson (the creator of the propeller), Nobel (the promoter of world culture).” On a frieze below, there would be a whole series of names. In the second part, the following would be stated: We bow in gratitude and reverence for the life work of past generations. We rejoice, but do not brag over deeds that are ours. For we know that in spite of all our endeavours, our children inherit work that has yet to be completed.75
After that, some of Sweden’s distinguished people from modern times would be listed. These were “Hjalmar Branting (leader for workers’ rights, peace fighter, European), Dalén (AGA lighthouses), De Laval (the steam turbine, the separator), Elsa Brändström (the war prisoner’s sister of mercy).” On a frieze beneath, this information would be supplemented by a whole series of names. In the third part, there would be an image that would symbolize the future, together with a title: “This is our people’s material development programme.” Under this, the following text would be found, illustrated by contrasting images: Sufficient and appropriately composite nutrition for all citizens, especially children. Spacious and healthy housing, primarily for agricultural and forestry workers.
74 RA, UBA, Organizing committee minutes, 30 October 1936 (own translation). 75 Ibid. (own translation).
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Security for the people (for example, the needs resulting from unseen unemployment).76
Alternatively, the third part could consist of an image that symbolized the future and had the heading “Youth of today will carry on the work.”77 Bonow’s proposal for the design of the social section was similar to the proposal from the committee of enquiry in so far as it would consist of five main parts. In the first part, production life and possible working life would be presented. Swedish business life would be presented by showing what was collected from nature: the soil, forests, mountains, and waterfalls. Bonow also explained in detail what he thought about the design of the respective production branch with as few facts as possible, rotary devices, and many illustrations. He also thought that the communication system and population development would be presented in this part and also indicated how it could be visualized. The development of the railway network could, for example, be displayed on a map that would be lit up and used as a symbol of the development of industrialization. In the second part, organizational life would be presented. It would show how the Swedish people were layered into different interest groups and how these interest groups had built up economic and trade union organizations. In addition, the different markets in Swedish society would be illustrated and around them the different associations would be grouped: the labour market, where employer associations and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen i Sverige, LO) were the major organizations, and it was these organizations that set the price of labour; the domestic market, where the pricing was balanced through trusts and cartels, on the one hand, and the Cooperative Union, on the other; the food market, where there were many different sales organizations and competition-determined price fixing; and finally the rental and housing market, where real estate owners and tenants and housing cooperatives affected prices. According to Bonow, it was important to pay attention to the fact that Sweden “in this area probably has reached the farthest in the world”. The other three parts were presented in the outline without any concrete proposals on how to design them. They would deal with social life (socioeconomic enterprises and social power), cultural life (the free adult education movement [bildningsrörelsen] pursued by popular movements and organizations), and some current and great problems, such as “nutritional problems, housing issues, population issues, our aspirations to influence and mitigate cyclical changes”.78
76 Ibid. (own translation). 77 Ibid. (own translation). 78 Ibid. (own translation).
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The Third Plan: Bonow’s Compromise Proposal According to the compromise proposal presented by Bonow on 2 January 1937, the main heading on both the facade against the Seine and the portico wall at the entrance would read: “The Swedish people united in work.” On the portico wall at the entrance, there would also be the following text: We build our national life on spiritual freedom, democracy, (voluntary) cooperation. We want outer peace, inner peace. We fight for work for all and better living conditions. We invite you to see some testimonies about our work results and our endeavours.79
According to the new proposal, the section would have thirteen parts. In the first part, “The Foundations of Swedish Society” would be presented. It would be noted how 130 years of peace had enabled peaceful construction work; how inner social peace had contributed to the construction of society; how there were indeed internal contradictions but how these were settled through negotiation and cooperation; how Sweden was rich in natural resources; how foreign trade was important; how the Swedes were a people of peasants and that amongst them could be found a great deal of technical talent that contributed to quality within Swedish production; how democracy had a long tradition, since the first parliament had been constituted in 1435; how self-government had its basis in pagan times; and how an indispensable part of the country’s cultural heritage lay in freedom of religion, freedom of research, and freedom of thought.80 In parts two to five, Swedish natural resources (soil, forest, iron, and water) would be treated with regard to variables such as production, employment, technical development, and export figures.81 In part six, the rationalization and renewal of business in the form of modern workplaces would be given focus, with demonstrations as to how these had led to increased production and -improved living standards.82 National income and living standards would be included in part seven, indicating how national income, foreign trade, and living standards had grown; how Sweden had been transformed from an agricultural society into an industrial society; how the occupational composition had changed; how the various
79 RA, UBA, Organizing committee minutes, 2 January 1937 (own translation). 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid.
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markets for goods, housing, and work had occurred; and how consumption had increased as had the purchase of books and magazine subscriptions.83 In part eight, the trade unions and economic associations would be highlighted: how they had emerged, together with what they signified and how they worked as well as how they either measured “their powers in disciplined forms” or agreed by negotiation; how the state had given them “great freedom” even if the state sometimes acted as mediators; and how the organizations rested on the right of association, which applied in the “free society” of Sweden.84 In part nine, there would be emphasis on the Swedish government, and it would be noted, amongst other things, that Sweden had had self-government for a thousand years; that there had never been any serfdom; that Sweden had the second oldest parliament in the world; that a modern parliament was created in 1866; that in the society of that time, everyone had equal political rights; and that the secret ballot was inviolable.85 In part ten, the focus would be on the Swedish state, and it would be stressed that it had never been a night-watchman state but had far back in time tended the country’s commodity assets; that its importance and business activity were increasingly expanding; that it was a modern welfare state; and that state wealth was greater than the central government debt. In addition, it would be illustrated how assets, liabilities, expenses, incomes, and social spending had changed since 1913.86 In part eleven, facts about how Sweden had successfully fought the crisis would be presented and how this had been done by way of monetary policy, agricultural protection, and public works.87 In part twelve, the Swedish school system as well as the free adult education movement would be described. With regard to the school system, the different pathways from kindergarten to universities and colleges with its academic freedom, would be described. It was also considered important to highlight that the folk high school had been mandatory for all children since 1842. The area of the free adult education movement would be exhibited as if it fought a cultural battle in Sweden. The battle was about culture as the people’s property and most importantly about freedom of research and freedom of thought. The enemy was the routine. The army consisted of hundreds of thousands who volunteered to partake in systematic studies conducted in the form of study circles. Part twelve
83 84 85 86 87
Ibid. Ibid. (own translation). Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.
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would further describe, amongst other things, what a study circle was; what different study associations there were (such as the study circles of workers, cooperatives, farmers, and the temperance movement) and how many participants they had; and how they had used radio technology to reach out to participants.88 In part thirteen, the low housing standard would be raised as being Sweden’s greatest problem. How this problem had developed and what was being done to address it would be discussed.89
Conclusion The space that was visualized – “representations of space” – as the socioeconomic section in the Swedish pavilion at the 1937 world fair in Paris has, in this chapter, been understood from three different dimensions of space: the absolute space, the relative space, and the relational space. In the absolute space, I have focused on the three design plans for the socioeconomic section of the Swedish pavilion. Childs’s book has been discussed as part of the relative space while conflicts between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany has been analysed as an expression of the relational space. Without doubt, the plans – the absolute space – were influenced by the forces in the relational space. The geopolitical relations in Europe were tense. Fascism and communism were seen as threats to the survival of the social democratic movement and parliamentary democracy.90 This influenced plans since they emphasized Sweden as being a free, peaceful, and democratic country as well as a safe country where development was positive. Freedom was reiterated in different ways (plan 1, 2 and 3). Different types of liberties that existed in Sweden were also mentioned (plan 2 and 3). Peacefulness and cooperation were something that was depicted as a foundation of Swedish society (plan 2 and 3). According to plan 3, the battle that took place in Sweden was not military in character but instead cultural, focusing on culture as the property of the people and ultimately on freedom of research and freedom of thought. The image that was constructed in the plans was the image of Sweden as being a country with no major contradictions and where consensus existed. In
88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 J. Kurunmäki, “Nordic Democracy in 1935”, in: J. Kurunmäki and J. Strang (eds.), Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010, pp. 37–38.
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Sweden, people worked together in order to improve living standards and to increase prosperity. Regarding democracy, the proposal was that Sweden would be described as being a country that solved its problems “in accord with a democratic basis” (plan 1). Plan 3 proposed that the declaration on the portico wall at the entrance would be: “We built our national life on [. . .] democracy” and accordingly would be a statement that was one of the first things that the visitors saw. The plans also suggested that Sweden should be viewed as a country under modernization and transformation (plan 1 and 3). Moreover, it would be shown how Sweden successfully fought the economic crisis (pan 3). But Sweden would not only be portrayed as a country in progress but also as a safe country that had stood on solid ground. Security rested on a historical legacy and long traditions (plan 2 and 3). The Swedish people would also be described as a homogeneous people with roots in “the secure, earthbound peasantry”, marked by a hereditary peasant mentality. From these people, technical talent had emerged, which helped with Swedish quality production (plan 2 and 3). It was, in other words, the people combined with old traditions and rich natural resources that would be highlighted as being the basis on which the country and its development rested (plan 2 and plan 3). Undoubtedly, the plans in the absolute space were also affected by the movements and processes that were taking place in the relative space. That is, Childs’s book influenced the planning of the design of the socioeconomic section in the Swedish pavilion. In plan 1, the model was the exhibit of the Svea rike, which was presented at the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition, not Childs’s book. The Svea rike exhibit also influenced the designs of plan 2 and plan 3. But there is a big difference between the three plans with regard to the space that the cooperative movement gets especially in plan 2 and the way in which the state is presented in plan 3. Childs devoted almost half of his book to the cooperative movement and one-third to the state. The organizing committee also hired Bonow, who worked at the Cooperative Union secretariat, to design the socioeconomic section. Childs’s book undoubtedly affected the Swedish plan, but to what extent is open for discussion.
Leila Koivunen
18 National Museums and the Wider World: The Exclusion of Non-Western Collections at the National Museum of Finland The National Museum of Finland opened its doors to the public in a purposemade monumental building in the centre of Helsinki in January 1916 – a little less than two years before Finland became independent from the Russian Empire. At the time of the opening of the museum, Finnish newspapers and journals published articles and commentaries that emphasized the importance of the new institution for the Finnish nation. It was described as a shrine that united a young nation and strengthened national cohesion amongst Finnish people.1 Similar characterizations had been heard from the late eighteenth century onwards when the museum as a public institution first took shape in France and Britain and, in the following century, spread rapidly throughout the Western world. Indeed, museums – and particularly those designated to serve a national purpose – have been generally regarded as playing an instrumental role in negotiating, articulating, promoting, and preserving identities, values, and material evidence that are considered essential to a given nation-state and its citizens. Museums encourage people to experience themselves as members of ordered geographical and political entities.2 As the Finnish example shows, establishing
1 U. T. Sirelius, “Suomen kansallismuseo, sen synty, kehitys ja nykyiset laitokset” [Finnish National Museum, its origins, development, and current institutions], Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 1 (1916), p. 34; J. Lukkarinen, Suomen museot. Muinaistieteellis-kansatieteelliset ja historialliset kokoelmat [The museums of Finland: archaeological, ethnographical, and historical collections], Helsinki: Muinaistieteellinen toimikunta, 1917, pp. 7–8; “Kansallismuseotamme awattaessa” [As our national museum opens], Helsingin Sanomat, 29 January 1916 and 30 January 1916; “Suomen kansallismuseo” [The National Museum of Finland], Uusi Suometar, 30 January 1916. See also D. Fewster, Visions of Past Glory. Nationalism and the Construction of Early Finnish History, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2006, p. 304. 2 Sh. J. Macdonald, “Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities”, Museum and Society 1 (2003) 1, pp. 1–2, 5. See also S. Knell, “National Museums and the National Imagination”, in: S. J. Knell et al. (eds.), National Museums. New Studies from Around the World, London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 11–13; A. Meyer and B. Savoy, “Towards a Transnational History of Museums. An Introduction”, in: A. Meyer and B. Savoy (eds.), The Museum is Open. Towards a Transnational History of Museums 1740–1940, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014, pp. 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-018
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a museum is also an essential part of the procedure of becoming a nation: it was – and still is – one of the core public institutions that a nation is expected to have.3 By definition, then, national museums are involved in preserving and presenting nations and their cultural heritage. Yet, this classical notion downplays the fact that museums, in particular national museums, have strong and complex connections to what is and what comes beyond national borders. Today, national museums face the challenge of engaging and portraying increasingly multiethnic societies. There is nothing new, however, in the manner in which they balance between what is conceived as domestic and foreign – or local and global. The museum concept itself, for instance, was a result of intense transnational borrowing and copying. Certain early institutions, especially the Louvre and the British Museum, became influential models, which were widely imitated in other Western countries.4 The idea of a museum building also evolved as a result of transnational interactions. Museum professionals subscribed to foreign scholarly journals; they travelled widely and were frequent visitors to other museums. The National Museum of Finland, for example, sent members of its staff to various institutions all around Europe in order to look for good practices and recent innovations in museum technology that could also be utilized in Finland.5 This cross-border transfer and appropriation of knowledge, ideas, and practices led to the formation of the widely recognized museum concept in the Western world and assisted in its dissemination. Similar to the ideology of nationalism, which was highly international in nature but was repeatedly harnessed to promote local aspirations, national museums were a paradoxical mixture of domestic and foreign ingredients.
3 C. A. Kratz and I. Karp, “Introduction. Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations”, in: I. Karp et al. (eds.), Museum Frictions. Public Cultures/Global Transformations, Durham: Duke University Press, 2006, p. 3. 4 Macdonald, “Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities”, p. 2. See also Th. Adam, “Cultural Excursions. The Transnational Transfer of Museums in the Transatlantic World”, in: Meyer and Savoy (eds.), The Museum is Open, pp. 103–116; M. Prösler, “Museums and Globalization”, in: Sh. Macdonald and G. Fyfe (eds.), Theorizing Museums. Representing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1996, pp. 22–25, 36. 5 L. Koivunen, Eksotisoidut esineet ja avartuva maailma. Euroopan ulkopuoliset kulttuurit näytteillä Suomessa 1870–1910-luvuilla [Exotisized objects and the widening world. NonEuropean cultures on display in Finland 1870s–1910s], Helsinki: Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2015, p. 154; M. Härö, “Maan museotoimen kivijalka eli museoviraston ja Suomen kansallismuseon historiaa” [The Foundation of Museum Activies in Finland: History of the Heritage Agency and the National Museum of Finland], in: S. Pettersson and P. Kinanen (eds.), Suomen museohistoria [Finnish museum history], Helsinki: Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2010, p. 137.
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Furthermore, as the museum concept evolved in close connection to Western imperialism and colonialism, national museums often held huge collections of artefacts that originated from all over the world. In many instances, museums inherited artefacts of foreign origin from princely or private collections. However, later additions were also received as a result of international trade, diplomatic relations, expansionist policy, migration, and other forms of mobility. Indeed, it was not uncommon that a newly established national collection had a strong foreign flavour. Although Finland was not an independent colonial actor and its foreign relations were limited, the new Finnish museum likewise had to cope with the fact that a significant part of its collection originated from outside Finland and even the Western world. As Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius suggest, national museums balance between particularism and universalism as well as between national representation and questions regarding regions, cultures, and nations elsewhere in the world.6 In recent scholarship, attention has increasingly turned to the ways in which familiar and foreign elements coexist and are entangled in national museums. Ayse H. Koksal, for example, suggests that museums can serve as sites in which national distinctiveness and transnational resemblances are presented simultaneously.7 Yet, the variation of responses and solutions within the museum field has also been emphasized. As Simon Knell points out, no museum is an exact copy of another, but each nation’s national museum is the product of national history and local circumstances at a certain historical moment.8 Thus, the international concept of national museums is always locally adopted and configured.9 Sharon Macdonald remarks that this
6 P. Aronsson and G. Elgenius, “Making National Museums in Europe – A Comparative Approach”, in: P. Aronsson and G. Elgenius (eds.), Building National Museums in Europe, 1750–2010, Linköping: Linköping University, 2011, pp. 5–6. See also Macdonald, “Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities”, pp. 2–3; Meyer and Savoy, “Towards a Transnational History of Museums”, pp. 1–3. 7 A. H. Koksal, “Museum as a Transnational Space for National Identities”, in: Meyer and Savoy (eds.), The Museum is Open, p. 233. See also E. C. Thompson, “The World beyond the Nation in Southeast Asian Museums”, Journal or Social Issues in Southeast Asia 27 (2012) 1, pp. 54–83; C. Wintle, “Visiting the Empire at the Provincial Museum, 1900–50”, in: S. Longair and J. McAleer (eds.), Curating Empire. Museums and the British Imperial Experience, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012, pp. 37–55. 8 Knell, “National Museums and the National Imagination”, p. 4. See also Kratz and Karp, “Introduction”, pp. 4–8; Prösler, “Museums and Globalization”, p. 27. 9 Knell, “National Museums and the National Imagination”, p. 6.
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phenomenon, which she refers to as the “global localization” of museums, produces heterogeneity in the museum field.10 In the second edition of his influential Imagined Communities (1991), Benedict Anderson includes a chapter in which he highlights the role of museums – together with censuses and maps – for nation-states in imagining their dominion and depicting themselves as guardians of a national heritage. Anderson refers to “museumizing imagination” as an activity that often seems self-evident and ordinary but that is always profoundly political.11 Indeed, the limited and selective character of national imagining, which Anderson sees as fundamental for nations as social constructions, becomes obvious and visible in the museum context. Even when aiming to present a particular strictly defined territory, the leadership of national museums has to be selective and make decisions about how to portray different ethnic, religious, and language groups that are to be found within the territory in question. Inevitably, museum displays provide partial or biased truths, and because of this they are in a powerful position in terms of defining nations. From this point of view, it might seem logical to assume that national museums are automatically discriminatory as regards other nations and cultures, which are not part of the imagined community. This is, however, far too simple a conclusion. As will be demonstrated in this chapter, various examples exist as to how the world beyond the nation-state can also be imagined and depicted in the context of national museums. During the last two decades, questions relating to the possession and display of artefacts in Western museums that emanate from other cultures have frequently been dealt with in museum and exhibition studies. As Daniel J. Sherman points out, museums have always been sites for the negotiation of difference.12 Museums can help visitors understand difference and reflect their place in the world, but they can as well become powerful actors in producing classifications and discriminatory hierarchies, which contribute to broader practices of forming biased or purpose-oriented knowledge about other cultures.13 Ivan Karp and 10 Macdonald, “Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities”, p. 2. 11 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 2006 (1983), pp. 163–164, 184–185. See also I. Karp and C. A. Kratz, “Reflections on the Fate of Tippoo’s Tiger: Defining Cultures Through Public Display”, in: E. Hallam and B. V. Street (eds.), Cultural Encounters. Representing ‘Otherness’, London: Routledge, 2000, p. 194. 12 D. J. Sherman, “Introduction”, in: D. J. Sherman (ed.), Museums and Difference, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008, p. 2. 13 Ibid., pp. 2–3; R. Sandell, “Constructing and Communicating Equality. The Social Agency of Museum Space”, in: S. Macleod (ed.), Reshaping Museum Space. Architecture, Design, Exhibitions, London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 185–187; T. Bennett, “Exhibition, Difference, and the Logic of Culture”, in: Karp et al. (eds.), Museum Frictions, pp. 46, 58–59.
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Corinne A. Kratz argue that simultaneous processes of assimilating and exoticizing play a fundamental part in almost all cultural displays.14 Richard Sandell, for instance, notes that by assembling artefacts and arranging them in particular ways museums privilege and promulgate certain ways of viewing and relating to difference while occluding or silencing others.15 Building on this scholarly work, this chapter examines the ways in which the National Museum of Finland took the wider world into consideration at the time of its establishment. The Finnish example represents one extreme: when the museum was opened to visitors in 1916, after decades of waiting, its departments showed no sign of the large non-Western collections that the museum held. Thus, the construction of a national narrative meant silencing other voices, especially those associated with non-Western cultures. This represented a significant break with an older tradition of collecting and displaying artefacts of foreign cultures. The chapter contributes to discussions on national museums as particular sites for formulating – or overlooking – knowledge about the globe and shows how the Finnish museum ended up making this decision. The chapter proceeds in two steps. The first part discusses the material legacy that the National Museum of Finland inherited from its predecessors, especially from the university museum. This latter institution housed a wide collection of non-Western artefacts that had accumulated during the previous one hundred years. The second part of the chapter examines traditions of exhibiting this collection. It further addresses developments and pressures that led to it being excluded from the new museum display. The Finnish case will be examined by taking other Western examples into consideration. In this manner, it is possible not only to shed light on common features and practices within the Western museum field, but also to demonstrate local particularities characteristic of the Finnish situation.
Global Randomness: From Scattered Fragments to a Collection When Finland was separated from Sweden in 1809 and became incorporated into the Russian Empire, it gained a special status as an autonomous grand 14 Karp and Kratz, “Reflections on the Fate of Tippoo’s Tiger”, pp. 194, 199. 15 R. Sandell, Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference, London: Routledge, 2007, p. 3. See also Karp and Kratz, “Reflections on the Fate of Tippoo’s Tiger”, pp. 194–199; Macdonald, “Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities”, pp. 3–5.
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duchy with its own central administration and a great deal of economic freedom. In addition to administrative and political organs, a range of cultural and educational institutions were established during the nineteenth century to manifest Finland’s special position within the empire. New monumental buildings were erected in central Helsinki, including the Finnish State Archive, the Finnish National Theatre, and the Finnish Opera, to testify to the vitality of Finnish culture.16 The National Museum of Finland as well took shape in this context: its establishment was ensured in 1893 when a number of existing historical and ethnographic collections were consolidated.17 Thus, in a similar manner to many other national museums, the National Museum of Finland was founded on the basis of inherited collections. The institution was first named the State Historical Museum. When independence was secured in 1917, it was renamed the National Museum of Finland. This name had already been in unofficial use since the late nineteenth century.18 Similar museum initiatives also emerged in other parts of the Russian Empire at this time, including in the nearby regions of Estonia and Latvia.19 Thus, in all of these regions, the establishment of museums dedicated to particular nations preceded their formal recognition as sovereign states. Together with other non-Russian populations and regions within the Russian Empire, Finland was subjected to a severe policy of Russification in the late 1890s. At this time, the decision to establish a museum to present the history of the Finnish people had already been made and planning was under way. Yet, the fact that the planning was still in an early phase and the museum building did not yet exist protected the new institution during the subsequent years of political turbulence. The State Archive, which had been established earlier, experienced strong pressure from the Russian authorities, who attempted to prevent
16 R. Knapas, “Kansallisten kulttuurilaitosten syntyminen” [The Foundation of Cultural Institutions in Finland], in: S. Itkonen and K. Kaitavuori (eds.), Kansalliset kulttuurilaitokset [Cultural institutions in Finland], Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2007, pp. 9–10, 12. 17 The new museum was established by uniting previous collections held by the Historical and Ethnographical Museum at the Imperial Alexander University, the Ethnographical Museum of the Finnish Students’ Union, as well as the collections of the Finnish Literary Society and the Finnish Antiquarian Society (Härö, “Maan museotoimen kivijalka”, p. 135; Fewster, Visions of Past Glory, p. 146). 18 J. Kostet, “Onko suomalaisella museolla aatteellista perustaa?” [Does the Finnish museum have an ideological foundation?], in: Pettersson and Kinanen (eds.), Suomen museohistoria, p. 25; Härö, “Maan museotoimen kivijalka”, pp. 134–135. 19 K. Kuutma, “National Museums in Estonia”, in: Aronsson and Elgenius (eds.), Building National Museums in Europe, pp. 232–235, 243; T. Kencis and K. Kuutma, “National Museums in Latvia”, in: Aronsson and Elgenius (eds.), Building National Museums in Europe, pp. 498, 509.
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the preservation of certain historical documents, thereby affecting interpretations of Finnish history.20 The purpose-built museum was the last of the new cultural institutions to open to the public in 1916 (see Figure 1). As Derek Fewster points out in his research on the history of ethnic self-imaging in Finland, the museum represented a towering ideological monument for the young nation.21 Yet, plans had also been made at the museum to display foreign material in addition to the Finnish collection. In 1914, two years prior to the long-awaited opening of the museum, a department of foreign ethnography, or the exotic department as it was dubbed, had been assembled in the attic floor of the building. A journalist at the local Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, who was allowed to visit the halffinished museum building, described how the attic floor department consisted
Figure 1: The building of the National Museum of Finland was completed in 1910, but the museum remained closed to the public until 1916. Photograph from the 1950s. Helsinki City Museum.
20 J. Nuorteva and P. Happonen, Suomen arkistolaitos 200 vuotta [200 years of the Finnish archives], Helsinki: Kansallisarkisto, 2016, pp. 93–101. 21 Fewster, Visions of Past Glory, p. 304.
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of African, Australian, American, and Asian sections. She wrote that it portrayed the entire world in miniature.22 The idea that museums were capable of providing an accurate microcosmic representation of the world as a whole had been vitally important for the institution since the emergence of Renaissance curiosity cabinets. These collections were characterized by the encyclopaedic aspirations of the collectors, who displayed a desire to organize everything that was known to mankind. The often scant and fragmentary assemblage of artefacts originating from both near and far came to represent the complex and wide-ranging phenomena to which they were believed to be related.23 Museums were seen as places in which artefacts, many from faraway places, are gathered together and arranged. Thus, they interrupted global flows of objects and provide a number of items with a new, immobile future. The assemblage of objects was organized in order to present preconceived assumptions regarding the global connections and relations between human populations. Sharon Macdonald suggests that the possession of artefacts from other cultures remain of essential importance for later museums: it is regarded as a sign of the capacity of a nation to gather and master material cultures beyond political and cultural boundaries.24 Young nations also wanted to collect foreign material cultures in order to be able to refer to ancient civilizations – the Greek and Roman antiquity in particular – as a starting point for their own histories and identities.25 It was additionally important for national art museums and galleries to collect foreign artwork in order to incorporate local art into a grand narrative.26 At its opening in 1916, the National Museum of Finland held a collection of approximately 115,000 objects.27 A considerable part of this collection consisted of artefacts that originated from outside Finland, including a large proportion from Alaska, China, the Pacific region, and Africa. The above-mentioned journalist saw some of these artefacts arranged in the attic hall when she visited
22 A. M. Tn, “Ulkomainen etnografia Kansallismuseossamme edustettuna” [Foreign ethnography represented in our national museum], Helsingin Sanomat, 18 January 1914. 23 P. Findlen, Possessing Nature. Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, pp. 50–51; L. J. Daston and K. Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750, New York: Zone Books, 2001, pp. 23–24. 24 Macdonald, “Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities”, p. 3. 25 P. Aronsson, “Explaining National Museums. Exploring Comparative Approaches to the Study of National Museums”, in: Knell et al. (eds.), National Museums, pp. 30–39. 26 Knell, “National Museums and the National Imagination”, pp. 15–16; S. Pettersson, “National Museums in Finland”, in: Aronsson and Elgenius (eds.), Building National Museums in Europe, p. 272. 27 Sirelius, “Suomen kansallismuseo”, p. 17.
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the museum in 1914. The museum had inherited this material from the Historical and Ethnographical Museum at the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki. The university collection had grown since the late 1820s, when the university moved to Helsinki from its previous location in Turku. An earlier collection had been destroyed by fire. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the university museum did not have any nationalistic agenda or preference. The museum allowed its collection to grow organically in many directions by welcoming artefacts from all over the world. This was in accordance with classic academic ideals concerning the collection and organization of the world in its entirety: a broad material foundation was regarded as being crucial for the production of generalizable knowledge. The growth of the collection was also closely connected to the fact that the university museum could not actively build up and develop its possessions due to a lack of regular financial resources to buy artefacts. Consequently, the acquisition was dependent on donations. In other words, the museum staff had little or no control at all over strategic planning. During the early nineteenth century, most of the items that were donated were of non-Western origin, and this emphasis affected the collection profile for many decades. The university museum received three kinds of non-Western material from donors.28 First, sailors, traders, officers serving in the Russian army, and other Finns who had the possibility to travel often brought home small and affordable souvenirs, such as pipes, fans, or textiles. These items were typically collected in order to be kept at home as personal souvenirs, but they were given to the museum by relatives after the owner of the artefact(s) passed away. Second, donations included separate luxury artefacts, such as porcelain dishes and ivory or lacquerware boxes, which had typically belonged to upper-class families for
28 On donations, see object catalogue of general ethnography, Museum of Cultures, The National Museum of Finland; “Förteckning öfver den tillväxt, som Kejsarl. AlexandersUniversitetets Ethnographiska Museum erhållit 1842”, Consistory Archives, Bg 4, The Central Archives of the University of Helsinki; W. Lagus, Numismatiska Anteckningar. I–II. Historik öfver Finska universitetets Mynt- och medaljkabinett [Numismatic notes, I–II. The history of the numismatic cabinet of the Finnish University], Helsingfors: Finska Litteratur-sällskapet, 1885, 1888. See also L. Koivunen, “Henkilökohtaisesta muistosta kansalliskokoelmiin. Esineiden virta Kongosta Suomeen 1900-luvun alkupuolella” [From personal souvenirs to national collections. Itineraries of artefacts from Congo to Finland in the early twentieth century], in: K. Kananoja and L. Tähtinen (eds.), Pohjola, Atlantti, maailma. Ylirajaisen vuorovaikutuksen historiaa 1600–1900-luvuilla [The north, the Atlantic, the world. The history of transnational interaction 1600–1900], Helsinki: Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2018, pp. 280–288, 294–299; T. Talvio, Suomen kansallismuseo. Ikkuna menneeseen ja tulevaan [The National Museum of Finland. A window to the past and future], Helsinki: Museovirasto, 2016, pp. 28–33.
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many generations before they were donated to the museum. As far as these two categories of donations were concerned, it seems that the reasons for donating the artefacts was mainly based on the rarity of the item in question in the Finnish context and the supposed value attached to foreign objects or material. The university museum was clearly regarded as a suitable public institution in which to gather and preserve such unusual, scattered material. The idea of concentrating all non-Western objects to be found in Finland in one place can also be seen in the manner in which other cultural institutions, especially the Finnish Literary Society, decided to transfer all non-Western artefacts in their possession to the university museum.29 The third category of donations consisted of a wider assemblage of objects that had been amassed by Finns who had spent long periods abroad. This was especially the case with the collection of Alaskan objects donated by Arvid Adolf Etholén, an administrator and the chief manager of the RussianAmerican Company in Alaska. Etholén was born in Helsinki, and he contributed to the development of a modern scholarly collection in Finland by making three significant donations to the university museum between 1829 and 1847.30 Although money was rarely used to acquire objects, the museum director occasionally applied for extra resources in order to purchase collections of non-Western artefacts for the museum.31 The acquisition of new artefacts was deemed to be a significant undertaking for two reasons: the artefacts had been collected in an increasingly systematic manner, and they documented the involvement of Finnish travellers in the production of knowledge about other cultures. Thus, the possession of collections of non-Western origin was associated with the capability of Finns to understand and organize the diversity of the world. A global collection at the university museum in Helsinki evolved primarily on the initiative of local people – traders, mission workers, other travellers, and their families – who felt the need to transfer rare artefacts in their possession to a public institution. Although the museum staff had very limited means to actively develop the collection of foreign artefacts, they played a role as well in
29 Object catalogue of general ethnography, acquisition numbers 565–568, 570–614, Museum of Cultures, The National Museum of Finland. See also Koivunen, Eksotisoidut esineet, p. 49. 30 P. Varjola, The Etholén Collection. The Ethnographic Alaskan Collection of Adolf Etholén and his Contemporaries in the National Museum of Finland, Helsinki: National Board of Antiquities, 1990, pp. 26–28. 31 This was especially the case with an African collection that was bought by the missionary Martti Rautanen. Koivunen, Eksotisoidut esineet, pp. 133–138.
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the process by accepting the objects as part of the museum collection and, thereafter, handling and organizing the material. With the strengthening of national sentiment towards the end of the nineteenth century, the museum staff began to organize campaigns to amass Finnish and Sami material at the museum. In order to supplement the existing collection, they published announcements in newspapers in order to engage people to in an effort to find and donate certain types of objects that were still not owned by the museum.32 It should be noted, however, that the active development of the collection was highly selective: it did not include the material culture of ethnic or religious minorities residing in Finland, for example, such as Roma, Jews, or Tatars. Thus, already at this early stage there seemed to be a clear understanding of what the imagined nation consisted of. At the same time, the foreign collection continued to grow on the basis of occasional donations. Paradoxically, despite the haphazard manner in which it grew, this part of the collection came to be regarded as increasingly exhaustive and all-encompassing. Most of the donated items were not part of any broader or systematic whole that could have been described as a collection. Yet, in the museum context they automatically became part of a broader collection and were categorized according to the prevailing system. From the early nineteenth century, the university museum adopted a practice of arranging objects on the basis of their supposed geographical origin. In the 1850s, when the first handwritten object catalogue was compiled, objects were divided into two main categories one being Finnish and Sami objects and the other “foreign” objects (see Figure 2). In the first printed catalogue from 1859, the Sami objects were subsumed under the Finnish category and other artefacts were listed under the names of the nation-states to which they belonged.33 At this point, the museum collection consisted of approximately 530 Finnish and 910 foreign objects. A great majority of the items in the latter category originated from outside the Western world. All Finnish material was dated and chronologically arranged, whereas foreign artefacts lacked such information, which made them appear more timeless, stagnated, and fragmented. The geographical classification meant that an individual donated porcelain cup or teapot, for example, was catalogued under the heading “China” and
32 See the advertisements “Från finska Fornminnesföreningens” [From the Finnish Antiquarian Society], Helsingfors Dagblad, 6 November 1872; “Fornminnesföreningens” [The Antiquarian Society], Åbo Underrättelser, 11 November 1872. 33 H. J. Holmberg, Katalog öfver Kejserliga Alexanders-Universitetets Etnografiska Samlingar [Catalogue on the ethnographic collections of the Imperial Alexander University], Helsingfors: H. C. Friis, 1859.
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Figure 2: The first handwritten object catalogue divided “foreign” objects from Finnish and Sami objects. Handwritten object catalogue “Kejs. Alexanders Universitetets Ethnografiska Museum 1828– 1857”, Department of Archaeology, Finnish Heritage Agency.
arranged in proximity to other Chinese objects, particularly cups and pots. A cup that had remained detached from Chinese material culture for a long time could thus be reconnected with other objects that were apparently similar. In this manner, the museum collection incorporated separate items and made them appear necessary and invaluable parts of the whole. A collection had the potential to absorb an unlimited number of objects that were associated with a particular region. A collection could always be supplemented, but it was also considered representative and useful as it was at a given moment. Collections often grew slowly and consisted of numerous historical layers, each of which carried the legacy of earlier practices and collection preferences. With the passage of time, however, random donations received in the past merged into the whole – a collection that came to be considered and labelled as national.
The Finnish Alternative: The Gradual Silencing of Foreign Voices The classical objective of museums is twofold. On the one hand, they collect artefacts – more or less actively and purposefully – and preserve the material
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they hold. On the other hand, they present the collection to the public by arranging permanent and temporary exhibitions of various extent and thematic scope. As discussed above, museum collections often took shape organically without any strong involvement or direction on the part of the museum staff. As collections typically developed over the course of long periods, they were also influenced by changing practices, ideals, and individuals. This had the potential to lead to severe mismatches: the material collection owned by a museum did not necessarily correspond to its profile and objectives. Even if exhibitions were typically selective and were not intended to reflect a collection in its entirety, museums had to take strong and lasting decisions on what to display – and what to keep in storage. National museums found themselves in a peculiar situation: as leading national organizations in the field of cultural heritage, they often received many objects from all over the world, while their own mission was much narrower and focused. Thus, they had to make decisions concerning the extent and manner in which foreign materials were exhibited in relation to objects that derived from within the national borders. In other words, national museums had and still have to determine whether and how to integrate the heritage of other nations and the global past into their own story of an imagined nation. Considerable variation occurred vis-à-vis the ways in which national museums coped with this challenge in their exhibition practices. One might even argue that this particular issue separated them from each other so that different solutions and practices existed simultaneously in neighbouring countries. In addition to the content of existing collections, decisions were affected by a variety of other factors, such as local expressions of nationalism, political stability, the depth of involvement in imperial affairs, and the extent of other foreign connections.34 Thus, depending on the museum in question, the world beyond the national borders of a country could be lavishly presented and tightly integrated into a national narrative, or it could be completely ignored and excluded. Furthermore, even if museums sought to create displays that could potentially stand the test of time, the role and visibility of foreign material often varied significantly over time. The practices of displaying other cultures are linked with spatial conditions at museums and decisions concerning the allocation and use of space. Richard Sandell identifies three spatial strategies that are deployed by museums in order to marginalize or exclude particular ethnic groups or other cultures. The
34 On the different backgrounds of national museums, see Aronsson, “Explaining National Museums”.
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first strategy regards how display planners in a museum could produce differentiated use of space by placing other cultures in discrete spaces, such as in separate dioramas or galleries.35 Ivan Karp and Corinne A. Kratz argue that this kind of placement is neither arbitrary nor inconsequential. Hence “the invented Other is often placed downstairs from the upstairs domicile of European and American art ‘traditions’ which museums and exhibitions invent and claim”.36 The second mode of display Sandell identifies is the practice of presenting other cultures in shared spaces but within an interpretive framework that reproduces social inequalities. The third aspect concerns the marked absence of difference within museum spaces.37 Thus, cultural difference could either be completely omitted or explained from the point of view of a strongly biased, purpose-oriented, or integrating interpretive framework. Spatial considerations, combined with other nation-specific conditions and aspirations, led to a situation whereby foreign cultures were presented quite differently in various national museums in Europe. Imperial powers, especially Britain, France, and Germany, received huge quantities of ethnographic objects, raw material samples, and natural specimens from colonies. These items were sent to museums and other research institutions in order to be documented, analysed, and displayed. The British Museum, for instance, acquired an unparalleled collection of material from around the globe. From the late eighteenth-century onwards, it sought to create extensive displays of various world civilizations in addition to telling the story of the British Empire. In fact, as Chris Wingfield remarks, the British Museum, throughout its history, has shied away from presenting a purely national narrative, preferring instead the identity discourse of civilization.38 In recent years, the museum has faced critical voices and heightened demands to return artefacts in its possession to cultures and ethnic groups to which they once belonged. Consequently, the British Museum has increasingly claimed to be a universal institution. Thus, as Sarah A. Hughes notes, it encourages the public to reimagine its collections as the global heritage of mankind.39
35 Sandell, “Constructing and Communicating Equality”, pp. 186–188. 36 Karp and Kratz, “Reflections on the Fate of Tippoo’s Tiger”, p. 194. 37 Sandell, “Constructing and Communicating Equality” pp. 188–189, 191. 38 Sh. Watson and A. Sawyer, “National Museums in Britain”, in: Aronsson and Elgenius (eds.), Building National Museums in Europe, pp. 99–103, 116–117; Ch. Wingfield, “Placing Britain in the British Museum. Encompassing the Other”, in: Knell et al. (eds.), National Museums, p. 123. 39 S. A. Hughes, “The British Museum in Print. From National to Universal Museum”, in: Knell et al. (eds.), National Museums, pp. 192–204.
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Similar developments occurred in Germany, although the political situation was quite different. Before the unification of the country in 1871, political tensions and competition between German states led to a situation whereby nonWestern objects were not directed to one particular museum. Instead, competing ethnographic museums were established in a number of cities. In his research, H. Glenn Penny demonstrates how these museums, influenced by the strong cosmopolitan and universalistic character of the Humboldtian tradition, competed in their aspirations to generate theories about the essential nature of human beings through their collections. In order to document and present long chains of development and moments of cultural contact, museums sought to collect a multitude of artefacts – both from colonies and elsewhere. Objects of German and European origin were also an obvious part of these all-encompassing presentations.40 An enormous expansion of museums occurred after German unification, and fresh attempts were made in new national museums to stabilize the representation of the German Empire in the world.41 In many other European countries, such as Sweden and Denmark, national museums were actively involved in collecting non-Western and other foreign objects. However, this material was stored and displayed separately from the domestic collection. Thus, it became common for the national collection to be divided and presented in several buildings, one of which was dedicated to foreign ethnography.42 This alternative was discussed as well in Finland during the early stages of planning the country’s national museum,43 but the architects and other planners soon obtained approval for a monumental palace-like building, which would encompass the national collection in its entirety. As already described, this collection was diverse and allowed for several possibilities concerning the display. There would have been a strong material basis for presenting Finnish culture within a global framework.
40 H. Glenn Penny, Objects of Culture. Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002, pp. 2–3, 14, 18–26. 41 P. Aronsson and E. Bentz, “National Museums in Germany: Anchoring Competing Communities”, in: Aronsson and Elgenius (eds.), Building National Museums in Europe, pp. 330, 334–336, 339. 42 H. Zipsane, “National museums in Denmark”, in: Aronsson and Elgenius (eds.), Building National Museums in Europe, pp. 213–229; B. Gundestrup, “From the Royal Kunstkammer to the modern Museums of Copenhagen”, in: O. Impey and A. MacGregor (eds.), The Origins of Museums. The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe, London: House of Stratus, 2001, pp. 183–185. 43 The minutes of the meeting, 1 January 1888, § 5, Archaeological Commission, Finnish Heritage Agency.
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The decision not to display other cultures at the National Museum of Finland was not taken quickly or by mistake. It occurred as a result of a combination of contemporary decisions and longer historical traditions and developments. In fact, many steps had already been taken in this direction before the official establishment of the museum in 1893. When the non-Western collection was still part of the university museum, it was displayed alongside other material. In the 1870s, for example, when the university museum moved to new premises, it arranged and displayed its collection in two sections. The largest and finest rooms were dedicated to Finnish material, whereas foreign artefacts formed another section in the exhibition.44 This section was intended to provide visitors with a background narrative for the Finnish display. As visitors headed towards the Finnish section, they walked through the foreign section and encountered artefacts from various parts of the world. This was intended to help them contextualize what they saw at the Finnish section and to be able to conceive it as a homogenous entity.45 This setting also suggested the progress of Finnish material culture and set an evolutionist overtone for the exhibition (see Figure 3). The organization of a separate foreign section was also determined by the extent of such material in possession of the university museum. It was traditionally considered important to display non-Western material as it formed the majority of the collection and contained valuable artefacts. This was significant from the perspective of occasional foreign visitors whom the museum wished to serve. A number of esteemed scholars, such as Augustus Wollaston Franks, a keeper at the British Museum, visited the foreign section during study trips.46 The tradition of exhibiting non-Western material was greatly affected by the strengthening nationalistic atmosphere in Finland as well as by ideas concerning the role of the university museum as a basis for the future national museum. The non-Western material owned by the museum also began to appear increasingly unscientific, random, and outdated – especially when contrasted to the Finnish collection that was being actively and systematically developed. This contradiction led to new arrangements at the university museum: the
44 Z. Topelius, “Ethnografiska Museum”, Morgonbladet, 4 May 1872. See also Koivunen, Eksotisoidut esineet, pp. 67–73. 45 Cf. Karp and Kratz, “Reflections on the Fate of Tippoo’s Tiger”, p. 196. 46 “Den berömde engelske arkeologen Franks” [The famous English archaeologist Franks], Hufvudstadsbladet, 29 August 1874; “Twenne utländske wetenskapmän” [Two foreign scientists], Hufvudstadsbladet, 13 September 1874. See also V. Immonen, “‘The tedious and expensive journey’. Augustus Wollaston Franks’s travels through Finland in 1874”, Journal of the History of Collections 18 (2006) 2, pp. 250–251.
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Figure 3: Museum staff arranging the national collections, c. 1890. Archaeological Commission, Finnish Heritage Agency, Picture Collection. Image: N. Salmi.
foreign section was first moved to smaller premises and, in the mid-1880s, all objects of non-Western origin were packed away and moved to a depot outside the museum in order to better display the rapidly expanding Finnish collection.47 A decade later, when the national museum was officially established by consolidating existing collections, the material that had been dismissed became part of the national collection. When the concrete planning of the new institution began, the role and placement of foreign collections was occasionally discussed. Two brothers who had worked at the university museum were especially active and influential in formulating general outlines. In 1887, Eliel Aspelin, an art historian, wrote how Finns should not spend their energy in collecting ethnography of the whole world but should instead focus on what they really know better than anyone
47 On the growth of the collection, see Redogörelse från Kejserliga Alexanders-Universitetet för rektoratstriennium 1884–1887 [Proceedings from the Rectorat of the Imperial Alexander University], p. 63, The Central Archives of the University of Helsinki.
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else, that is, Finnish history. He referred to the situation in Denmark, where the curator of the National Museum, Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, decided to collect ethnography from all over the world for the institution. According to Aspelin, the Danish case should not be copied in Finland. He argued that Finland was too poor and peripheral a country to compete in terms of the collection and presentation of general ethnology. In his opinion, such activities should be left to other, richer European nations. He suggested that everything foreign and unconnected to Finland should be excluded from the planned museum.48 This opinion was shared by Aspelin’s elder brother, Johan Reinhold Aspelin. As the leading proponent of Finno-Ugrian scholarship, he also brought further considerations to the table. Finno-Ugrian scholarship, which flourished in the late nineteenth century, aimed to trace the broader ancestry of the Finnish population by looking for evidence of its cultural and linguistic connections to populations living in faraway Siberia, mainly in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains.49 Johan Reinhold Aspelin promoted the idea that the National Museum of Finland should become a leading global institution of Finno-Ugrian culture and history. He suggested that it should concentrate on collecting artefacts from the entire Finno-Ugric region and should take the lead in preserving the cultural heritage of disparate groups in a huge area that included modernday Hungary, Estonia, and Finland as well as northern Russia and Siberia. This plan did not receive much support, but Aspelin’s work at the museum strongly influenced the ways in which objects of supposedly Finno-Ugrian origin were separated from other Asian material and rearranged as part of the Finnish past.50 This was a radical change and shifted the border between what was previously conceived to be domestic and foreign. At the same time, other Asian artefacts – as well as other material that was considered to be unrelated to the
48 E. Aspelin, Suomalainen kansallismuseo. Asiasta, joka on päivän kysymykseksi tuleva [The Finnish National Museum: On a topical issue], Helsinki: Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistys, 1887, pp. 3–5, 8–9, 22; H. Selkokari, Kalleuksia isänmaalle. Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä taiteen keräilijänä ja taidehistorijoitsijana [Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä, an art collector and art historian], Helsinki: Suomen muinaismuistoyhdistys, 2008, pp. 135–136. 49 T. Salminen, Suomen tieteelliset voittomaat. Venäjä ja Siperia suomalaisessa arkeologiassa 1870–1935 [Russia and Siberia in Finnish archaeology 1870–1935], Helsinki: Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistys, 2003. 50 See J. R. Aspelin to Georg Zacharias Forsman, 4 November 1872, Yrjö-Koskinen collection, National Archives of Finland; J. R. Aspelin, “Ett Finskt Nationalmuseum” [A Finnish national museum], Morgonbladet, 11 November 1874. See also Salminen, Suomen tieteelliset voittomaat, pp. 45, 56–57.
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Finnish population – were categorized as “foreign tribes”.51 As with his brother, Johan Reinhold Aspelin regarded all this material as “alien” to the Finns and demanded that it should be excluded from the prospective national museum.52 When the architectural planning of the museum began in the late 1880s, it became obvious that although the national collection consisted of both Finnish and foreign material, the new museum would concentrate primarily on the Finnish past. However, as the opening of the museum was severely delayed by a lack of resources and the outbreak of the First World War, different and contrasting opinions about the fate of the non-Western collection also emerged. As the above-mentioned newspaper article from 1914 shows,53 extensive work had been carried out in order to arrange the collection on display only two years prior to the final opening of the institution (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: The museum informed the public in four languages that interior work was continuing. Archive of the Archaeological Commission, Finnish Heritage Agency.
There were several reasons why, after having been in storage for three decades, non-Western objects were unpacked and arranged in the new department of foreign ethnography on the attic floor of the museum building at the turn of the
51 See “Katalog öfver Kejserliga Alexanders Universitetets Historiskt-Etnografiska Samlingar, utarbetat af F. I. Färling” [Catalog of the Imperial-Historical Ethnographic Collections of the Imperial University of Alexandria, compiled by F. I. Färling], Department of Archaeology, Finnish Heritage Agency. 52 J. R. Aspelin to an unknown recipient, 15 August 1875, Aspelin, Coll 15.1, Manuscript Collections, National Library of Finland. See also Salminen, Suomen tieteelliset voittomaat, pp. 64, 68. 53 Tn, “Ulkomainen etnografia” [Foreign ethnography], Helsingin Sanomat, 18 January 1914.
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twentieth century. Most importantly, certain members of the museum staff, especially the curator Uuno Taavi Sirelius, felt that the collection was of great significance in terms of the presentation of the Finnish nation. Sirelius was an ethnologist who was in charge of organizing the large department of Finnish ethnography in the museum. He was influenced by German universalistic thinking and promoted the idea of displaying human development in all of its variety in a Finnish context. Sirelius taught ethnology at the university and, as part of his lecture courses on world cultures, brought students to visit the museum, which was otherwise closed to the public.54 His vision acted as a key influence in determining the organization of the department of foreign ethnography: it was considered to be important that students, foreign experts, and other special visitors should be granted access to the collection. Sirelius worked in close cooperation with another ethnologist, Axel Olai Heikel, who was responsible for planning the department of foreign ethnography. He played an active role as well in negotiating new acquisitions for the department. A temporary improvement in acquisition resources occurred from 1893 onwards, when Herman Frithiolf Antell, a Finnish medical doctor who had devoted his life to collecting, died in Paris and bequeathed all of his personal collections and a significant sum of money to the prospective national museum. This speeded up the process of completing the plans for the museum by providing substantial funds for the development of existing collections. In addition to a number of important acquisitions of Finnish art and ethnographic material, the museum also bought numerous collections of foreign artefacts.55 Consequently, the department of foreign ethnography received its first items from Australia and New Zealand as well as new additions to its existing collections of Japanese, North American, and African artefacts. A special focus was placed on objects collected by Finnish anthropologists, ethnologists, mission workers, and other intrepid individuals during their foreign travels. Thus, these acquisitions were not merely intended to augment the non-Western collections at the museum, as they also documented the involvement of Finns in international undertakings associated with science and new knowledge.
54 J. U. E. Lehtonen, U. T. Sirelius ja kansatiede [U. T. Sirelius and ethnology], Helsinki: Oy Weilin Göös Ab Helsinki, 1972, pp. 94–95. Also see Koivunen, Eksotisoidut esineet, pp. 215–218, 221–222. 55 S. Pettersson, “Art Collector Herman Frithiolf Antell. At Home in Paris, Abroad in Japan”, in: G. P. Weisberg et al. (eds.), Japanomania in the Nordic Countries 1875–1918, Helsinki: Ateneum Art Museum, 2016, pp. 112–119; T. Talvio, H. F. Antell ja Antellin valtuuskunta [H. F. Antell and the Antell Delegation], Helsinki: Museovirasto, 1993, pp. 128–131, 146–147.
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Yet, the department of foreign ethnography never opened, despite the progress made at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as the easy availability of non-Western artefacts at the museum and the efforts already carried out to put them on display. The first permanent display of 1916 consisted solely of Finnish historical and ethnographic material, and museum visitors remained uninformed about the rest of the national collection. The final moments before the opening of the museum were hectic and decisions had to be made regarding the primacy and urgency of various simultaneous plans. In this situation, all resources were concentrated on finalizing the Finnish departments. This decision was in many ways obvious. The main goal was to create a museum that would portray the history of the Finnish nation. Members of staff had been recruited on the basis of their expertise in Finnish cultural heritage. They were the best specialists in the world of Finnish material culture, but most of them had little if any knowledge of foreign material that was owned by the museum. The exclusion of foreign collections from the final display was also due to the significant growth of the Finnish collection in the years when the museum remained closed.56 The museum building turned out to be too small to display the national collection in its entirety, and earlier plans concerning the use of the premises had to be reconsidered. The investments made to augment the foreign collection did not change the fact that it remained of secondary importance to the national narrative and did not appear to be sufficiently representative from a scientific point of view. Yet, the decision to prioritize Finnish history in all museum planning also encountered some criticism amongst the staff of the museum. A couple of days before the opening of the museum, a number of employees sent an appeal to the central museum authority, the Archaeological Commission, in which they expressed dissatisfaction with the plans for the opening festivities at the museum. They wrote that having spent years planning the design of the museum, they felt annoyed that the half-finished institution should now be celebrated as if it were ready and complete. They remarked that several departments, including that devoted to foreign ethnography, were still unfinished.57 During the course of the next decade, however, the departments of archaeology, Finno-Ugrian ethnography, and numismatics were opened to the public.58 The establishment of the
56 On the size of various collections, see Sirelius, “Suomen kansallismuseo”, p. 17. 57 A. Hackman, A. Tavastjerna, A. M. Tallgren and B. Cederhvarf to the Archaeological Commission, 26 January 1916, Finnish Heritage Agency. 58 Annual reports of the Archaeological Commission, Analecta archeologica Fennica, vol. 6 (1920), p. 159; vol. 7 (1923), p. 90; vol. 8 (1927), p. 70.
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department of foreign ethnography was occasionally discussed, but, due to chronic lack of resources it was repeatedly postponed.59
Conclusion Today, Western museums face many challenging questions, including who owns the foreign artefacts in the collections, how should they be presented, or who has the right to do so? A further question, which has hitherto not been frequently asked or dealt with in scholarly literature could be do museums have a responsibility to exhibit artefacts of other cultures in their possession? In his classic book The Predicament of Culture (1988), James Clifford describes the power of Western museums to make strong and lasting judgements of value in regard to foreign material cultures. While Clifford especially emphasizes the role of Western classifications,60 it is clear that practices of display also include strong aspects of power. Although most national museums hold significant collections of foreign material, they are not obliged to share them with a wider global audience in a similar manner as they are expected to showcase and explain their domestic collection. Thus, depending on local circumstances, museums end up taking different decisions: some consider other cultures and global connections as essential in telling the story of a nation, whereas others regard references to the wider world as being of secondary importance or entirely irrelevant. Besides, even within the framework of a specific national museum, collections of foreign cultures were, and are, subject to shifting meaning. The way in which the National Museum of Finland ended up organizing and displaying its collection in its new premises was unique but not unexpected. The first priority of the museum staff was to construct a display fitting for a young nation that was able to firmly stand on its own feet. In order to distance Finns from the overarching historical narrative of the Russian Empire, an emphasis was placed on the independent and self-sufficient development of the nation. This narrative was needed to present Finland as a Western nation with its own identity, history, and right to self-determination. As far as the Finnish case is concerned, the construction of a national narrative meant silencing other voices and separating the story of the nation from the wider world
59 Koivunen, Eksotisoidut esineet, pp. 230–231. 60 J. Clifford, The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp. 198–200, 205, 223–224.
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and global histories. As discussed above, numerous individuals with different motivations lay behind this development. They had to make concrete decisions and prioritize various simultaneous plans and projects in narrow conditions. In many ways, the decision to concentrate on the Finnish past alone was easy and expected. It met the expectations of the general public and the expert audience alike in portraying a modern European nation as it was imagined at that moment. Since Finland was populated by people with different or mixed ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds, this necessitated selection and emphasis. The inclusion of a foreign collection would have entailed difficult decisions to be made, especially in determining how such artefacts should be explained in relation to the Finnish departments. The museum staff developed a different interest in foreign cultures with the passing of time, as the department of foreign ethnography remained closed and its collection was left in abeyance in the institutional exhibition space. Aarne Michaël Tallgren, an archaeologist and long-term employee of the museum, describes the twofold meaning of the institution in an article published in 1924. In addition to the significance of the museum in fostering a sense of historical awareness and identity amongst Finns, Tallgren regards it as essential for foreigners. He explains that they could easily observe the level of civilization in the country by first visiting the national museum.61 His comment reflects his regard for the domestic collection as also being essential for the promotion of the new nation amongst visiting foreigners: getting to know Finland did not necessitate observing the national collection in its entirety. The situation described above continued at the National Museum for more than a century. In 1999, a separate museum, named the Museum of Cultures, was established to present non-Western artefacts within the national collection. It received spacious premises in the centre of Helsinki in a separate building, where the first permanent exhibition was opened in 2004. However, the museum was closed in May 2013, only 15 years after opening, and its collections were moved to the central depot of the Finnish Heritage Agency outside Helsinki. The Museum of Cultures still exists in name and is part of the National Museum as an institute, but it only arranges occasional temporary exhibitions. Only a few weeks after the closure of the Museum of Cultures, another major historical collection of non-Western ethnography in Finland closed its doors. This was a collection of artefacts assembled primarily from Africa and 61 A. M. Tallgren, Museomiehen työpöydältä. Kirjoitelmia muinaistieteellisten ja antikvaaristen harrastusten historiasta Suomessa [From the desk of a museum officer. Writings on the history of archaeological and antiquarian activities in Finland], Helsinki: Tietosanakirja-osakeyhtiö, 1924, p. 109.
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Asia by the workers of the Finnish Missionary Society (currently the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission). A small mission museum had been established in the early 1930s in order to display this collection, and in the 1990s the museum was given a unique name, Kumbukumbu, which means memory in Swahili. When this museum closed in 2013, its collection was incorporated into the national collection. As with other non-Western artefacts within it, the artefacts were placed in a depot. Museums are sites of remembrance, but they also act as a force of oblivion. At a time when Finnish society has become profoundly and openly multiethnic, foreign material cultures are nearly invisible in Finnish museums, and extensive collections of artefacts have been hidden in remote depots. The global flow of objects, ideas, and people that once brought these collections to Finland is currently erased from national memory.
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19 A Contested Global Memory Space: The Establishment of the National Museum of Ghana On 5 March 1957, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent opened the first exhibition gallery on display in the brand-new National Museum of Ghana. The opening ceremony was part of the larger independence celebrations, which marked the transition in the early days of March from colonial rule to an independent Ghana, formerly the British colony known as the Gold Coast. For the museum staff, the opening marked the end of a hectic period: the museum had received extra funding to finish the new building and two exhibitions in time for independence in order to show visitors from far and near the history and culture of Ghana. It also marked the end of a bitter struggle between members of the museum staff, a struggle that addressed key issues related to the creation of the new memory space. In the research literature, the term memory space is vague, carrying several meanings. In his introduction to the multivolume edited work titled Realms of Memory, Pierre Nora defines a memory space, or “lieux de mémoire”, as “the place in which memory is crystallized”. These places can take many forms: “natural and artificial, simple and ambiguous, concrete and abstract”.1 The new National Museum of Ghana was a concrete physical “memory space”, defined more narrowly by Jay Winter as a site “where commemorative acts take place”.2 These acts are, as John R. Gillis states, always social and political since they involve “the coordination of individual and group memories”.3 The texts, places, persons, artefacts, and myths that become parts of a groups’ memory and commemorative activities have therefore, in the words of Aleida Assmann, “passed rigorous processes of selection” or “canonisation”.4 Thus, although commemorative acts might appear consensual, they are often products of “intense contest,
1 P. Nora, “General Introduction: Between Memory and History”, in: P. Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 1, 14. 2 J. Winter, “Sites of Memory and the Shadow of War”, in: A. Erll and A. Nünning (eds.), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010, p. 61. 3 Ibid. 4 A. Assmann, “Canon and Archive”, in: Erll and Nünning (eds.), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, p. 100. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-019
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struggle, and, in some instances, annihilation”.5 The commemorative activities of museums, including both collecting and displaying, must therefore be seen as part of wider political and social processes.6 In the existing research literature, the National Museum of Ghana is generally understood as a national memory space. The museum is presented as part of the efforts of successive Ghanaian governments, particularly the first independent government headed by the Convention People’s Party (CPP), to foster and develop a national consciousness.7 Mark Crinson, for instance, describes the museum as part of a “wider project of nation-state building”, particularly as an institution that “offered itself as the embodiment of a new political settlement [...] presenting the past in a way that helped to identify a new entity in the present”. Although Crinson notes that the “museum’s display have had an ambivalent and changing relation to the cultural project of nation-building”, it is nevertheless first and foremost interpreted as a national space.8 However, Arianna Fogelman emphasizes the important foreign policy and international economic functions of Ghanaian museums, particularly as “venues to bolster and develop foreign and financial relationships” and thereby “help support the nation’s socio-economic development”.9 In other words, the 5 J. R. Gillis, “Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship”, in: J. R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 5. However, these contests and struggles do not necessarily take the form of a zero-sum competition. In the process, different memories also interact with, borrow from, and influence each other (see M. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009). Yet, in a museum, where room is limited, some memories might struggle to be included and could, in the process, be annihilated. 6 S. Longair and J. McAleer, “Curating Empire: Museums and the British Imperial Experience”, in: S. Longair and J. McAleer (eds.), Curating Empire, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012, pp. 1–16. 7 For examples of the CPP’s efforts to foster a national consciousness, see H. Fuller, Building the Ghanaian Nation-State, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; J. B. Hess, “Imagining Architecture: The Structure of Nationalism in Accra, Ghana”, Africa Today 47 (2000) 2, pp. 35–58; K. Schramm, “The Politics of Dance: Changing Representations of the Nation in Ghana”, Africa Spectrum 35 (2000) 3, pp. 339–358. 8 M. Crinson, “Nation-building, Collecting and the Politics of Display”, Journal of History of Collections 13 (2001) 2, pp. 231–232. See also J. Hess, “Exhibiting Ghana: Display, Documentary, and ‘National’ Art in the Nkrumah Era”, African Studies Review 44 (2001) 1, pp. 59–77; S. Mew, Rethinking Heritage and Display in National Museums in Ghana and Mali, PhD thesis, University of London, 2012; and P. Basu, “A Museum for Sierra Leone? Amateur Enthusiasms and Colonial Museum Policy in British West Africa”, in: Longair and McAleer (eds.), Curating Empire, pp. 145–167. 9 A. Fogelman, “Colonial Legacy in African Museology: The Case of the Ghana National Museum”, Museum Anthropology 31 (2008) 1, pp. 19, 22.
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National Museum can also be considered as a global space. This chapter will expand on the work of Fogelman by further exploring how the museum was intended, from its inception, as a global as well as a national space while discussing the implications and consequences of this regarding commemorative activities, both in terms of collecting and displaying. As archival material found in the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD) in Accra as well as the National Archives in London reflect, the creation of the museum was not consensual but strongly influenced by contemporary political and social processes and consequently characterized by struggles and contests focusing on the purpose of and control over the new museum.
Colonial Plans for a National Museum The idea of establishing a national museum for the Gold Coast was mooted by Sir Alan Burns, governor of the colony, in 1943.10 At the time, one archaeological museum existed in the colony, established in 1927 by the British archaeologist Charles Thurstan Shaw and located at Achimota College in the outskirts of Accra. This museum initially housed artefacts excavated by Shaw, but as word spread, artefacts were donated from other parts of Africa.11 Yet, the scope of this museum remained limited: it existed only to serve educational purposes at the college. Burns, on the contrary, envisaged a museum that would be of “general interest”. The governor had recently been in the museum of the RhodesLivingstone Institute in Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia), and he was eager to establish a similar institution in the Gold Coast. According to his personal notes, the museum should cover several themes, including geology, forestry, agriculture, animal and fish, tribal marks, maps, and “Medici prints”, the latter meaning colour reproductions of classical European art.12 The museum would, in other words, serve as a global space: a meeting place for Europeans as well as Africans with the necessary Western education to understand the exhibitions.13
10 Alan C. Burns, 1 November 1943, CSO 21/9/23, Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD), Accra. 11 Fogelman, “Colonial Legacy in African Museology”, p. 20. 12 Alan C. Burns, 1 November 1943, CSO 21/9/23, PRAAD. For information about Medici prints, see The Medici Society Limited, www.medici.co.uk (19 March 2020). 13 As Friday Mufuzi notes, the museum in Northern Rhodesia was also partly set up as a “liaison institution” between Europeans and Africans (F. Mufuzi, “Establishment of the Livingstone Museum and its Role in Colonial Zambia, 1934–1964”, Historia 56 (2011) 1, p. 26).
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Julian Huxley – a member of the Elliot Commission, set up in 1944 to make recommendations for the establishment of universities in British West Africa – supported the colonial government’s plans for a national museum. During his tour of British West Africa as part of the Elliot Commission, Huxley was troubled by the state of archaeological and ethnographic artefacts in area.14 On his return to Britain he submitted a memorandum to the Colonial Research Committee of the Colonial Office with proposals for “Research and Development in Archaeology, Ethnology, African Art and Museums in West Africa”.15 Huxley argued that museums should be established in the British West African colonies, museums that contributed to the “conservation, study and exhibition of important elements of any local cultures”.16 Huxley, like Burns before him, envisaged museums that were of “cultural and political value to the peoples of West Africa” rather than narrow educational institutions. In these museums, the dissemination of history would play important political and social functions. According to Huxley, “knowledge of and interest in the history and cultural achievements of the region [i.e. West Africa] will be of great importance in fostering national and regional pride and selfrespect”. Furthermore, the museums could become institutions that contribute to future relations between Africans and Europeans “in providing a common ground on which educated Africans and Europeans can meet and cooperate”.17 The museums, in this manner, would be both a national and global space that, on the one hand, contribute to the growth of a national consciousness and, on the other hand, foster international networks and relationships. Other than emphasizing the need for museums in British West Africa, Huxley offered few concrete proposals regarding, for instance, funding. In London, officials in the Colonial Office were more concerned with the preparation of plans for
14 Letter from Rev. R. W. Stopford, Principal at Achimota College, to Private Secretary to the Governor, Sir Alan Burns, 24 February 1944, CSO 21/9/23, PRAAD. 15 See memorandum by Professor Huxley to the Colonial Research Committee, copy sent to the Gold Coast, May 1944; and Letter from Rev. R. W. Stopford, Principal at Achimota College, to Private Secretary to the Governor, Sir Alan Burns, 24 February 1944, CSO 21/9/23, PRAAD. 16 According to Mark Crinson (“Nation-building, Collecting and the Politics of Display”), Huxley recommended one central museum for British West Africa. Apparently, Crinson mistakenly attributes the memorandum “Suggestions for a Central Museum of West African Ethnology and Archaeology” to Huxley. The memorandum was in fact written by H. H. Meinhard, who at the time worked at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. His memorandum was forwarded to the Colonial Office by Meyer Fortes (see Gerald Creasy, Colonial Office, to Sir Alan Burns, 19 March 1945, CSO 21/9/23, PRAAD, as well as the signature on the memorandum in question, found in CSO 21/9/23, PRAAD). 17 Memorandum by Professor Huxley to the Colonial Research Committee, 1944, CSO 21/9/23, PRAAD, and CO 927/31/4, the National Archives (NA), London.
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the economic and social development of colonies in the empire and agreed that there was “little justification for embarking on an expensive programme of archaeological investigation and museum building, when there are other more pressing claims on our funds”.18 Nevertheless, it was agreed that an expert should be sent to West Africa to examine how best to preserve known antiquities and archaeological sites before they disappeared. The British Museum was contacted and arrangements were made for Hermann Justus Braunholtz, who was the head of the museums newly established department of ethnography, to come to West Africa to investigate the needs and possibilities regarding the establishment of museums.19 Braunholtz’s tour of British West Africa in 1946 and subsequent report laid the foundations for the establishment for the National Museum of Ghana. His tour lasted for approximately 2 months, most of which was spent in Nigeria. He stayed in the Gold Coast for 12 days, 5 in Accra and the remaining days on tour through Asante and along the coast. In his opinion, measures were required urgently to preserve antiquities in all the four British West African colonies. These measures included new museums that collected, conserved, and displayed archaeological and ethnographic artefacts. For the Gold Coast, he proposed a national museum situated in Accra and three regional museums that would cover the Northern Territories, Asante and the Western Region of the colony. However, for the immediate future, he suggested that the government should focus on the central museum in Accra. In addition, he noted the need for a university museum for teaching purposes at the newly established Gold Coast University College at Legon, outside Accra.20 Braunholtz’ report was not the only suggestion concerning West African museums in circulation in the Colonial Office at the time. In 1946, the Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu, who was attending Slade School of Art at University College London, also wrote a report forwarded by Huxley to the Colonial Office.21 In this report, Enwonwu suggests a museum that breaks with traditional European museology. In general, he argues that West African museums should be adapted to
18 Gerald Creasy, Colonial Office, to Sir Alan Burns, 19 March 1945, CSO 21/9/23, PRAAD. 19 Telegram from Secretary of State of the Colonies to the Gold Coast, 10 January 1946, CO 927/31/4, NA. 20 H. J. Braunholtz, Report on the Preservation of Antiquities and on the Establishment of Museums in British West Africa, 1948, sheet 25 with specific recommendations for the Gold Coast, CO 927/31/4, NA. 21 Ben Enwonwu (1917–1994) was a Nigerian painter and sculptor. For more about his life and career, see S. Okwunodu Ogbechie, Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist, Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2008.
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local artefacts and local perceptions attached to them. West African artefacts in European museums, he states, “look dead [...] not because they are miles away from their native land [...] but because they are placed in the wrong atmosphere in which they are exposed to the ordinary eyes of men and women”. West African museums, he concludes, should mix the modern with the traditional by creating museums out of modern materials that nevertheless should “take the style and shape of the old shrines” with interior that was “gloomy and at some dark [sic] in order to revive that ghostly atmosphere in which the old works dwelled”.22 While Enwonwu’s report was circulated in the Colonial Office as an interesting example of “an indigenous African who is a good artist and knows about the art of his country”, it was nevertheless considered “wild” and unrealistic.23 Braunholtz, who commented at length on the report, stated that Enwonwu’s “conception of the function of Museums differs from ours”. A museum, in Braunholtz’s opinion, should provide “instruction & pleasure for students & the general public” by, for instance, displaying artefacts “clearly and in a good light”. A museum should not “produce a mystic or religious atmosphere by reducing light or concealing specimens from ordinary eyes”. This would be to confuse the “functions of a museum and a church”.24 Consequently, Enwonwu’s suggestions had no impact on the future Gold Coast museum. Braunholtz’ report was scrutinized by the Gold Coast Monuments and Relics Commission, which had been set up by the colonial government after the Second World War to enforce the Monuments and Relics Ordinance. The commission was in general agreement with Braunholtz, with exception of his views on the need for separate university and national museums. The commission found the cost of two museums “excessive in view of all the other educational commitments under the development proposals put forward by the Government”. Conveniently, the Gold Coast University College had recently established a new museum and the commission proposed that this should be a combined national and university museum. However, in order to safeguard public interests and avoid academic dominance, the commission proposed that the new museum should come under the control of an autonomous management committee consisting of representatives of the university as well as the
22 Ben Enwonwu to Julian Huxley, no date, 1946, CO 927/31/4, NA. 23 Julian Huxley to C. Y. Carstairs, 10 April 946, CO 927/31/4, NA. 24 H. J. Braunholtz to C. Y. Carstairs, 30 July 1946, CO 927/31/4, NA.
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general public.25 The colonial government accepted this proposal and at the turn of the decade, the Gold Coast National Museum was established.26 In 1951, Arnold Walter Lawrence was appointed professor in archaeology at the University College. Part of his responsibilities was to be curator and director of the new National Museum.27 Lawrence had previously been professor of classical archaeology at Cambridge University and had published books on Greek sculptures and architecture. After taking up his appointment in the Gold Coast, he focused on the documentation and restoration of the old European coastal fortifications.28 At the same time, he started developing the museum’s collection and exhibition. Although an autonomous management committee was supposed to control the museum, this never materialized, and Lawrence became the driving force of the new institution. A note prepared by Lawrence in 1951 sheds light on his plans and ambitions for the museum. As far as he understood its purpose, it should “represent and explain the nation and its territory”. Initially, he wanted the museum to combine “geological, botanical, zoological, ethnological and archaeological material” in order to explain the territory as well as nation. While other scientists at the university were tasked with the geological, botanical, and zoological parts that would explain the territory, Lawrence took charge of the ethnological and archaeological section that would explain the nation.29 His ambition was to “represent the culture of the Gold Coast from the earliest times to the present day, against the background of what Man has achieved throughout the rest of Africa”.30 Later, it was decided to exclude natural history from the new museum in the initial period. According to Lawrence, “the immediate need was to illustrate human progress, and so to encourage the development of a historical sense among the people of the Gold Coast”. The development of this “historical sense” was, in his opinion, essential and urgent because of the recent growth of national consciousness, in which the museum had an important
25 Leslie McCarty, Chairman of the Monuments and Relics Commission, to the Officer Administering the Government, Accra, 11 May 1949, RG 11/1/246, PRAAD. 26 Executive Council Memorandum, 14 November 1949, RG 11/1/246, PRAAD. 27 J. Anquandah, B. Kankpeyeng and W. Apoh, “Archaeology of Ghana: An Introduction”, in: J. Anquanda, B. Kankpeyeng and W. Apoh (eds.), Current Perspectives in the Archaeology of Ghana, Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2014, pp. 1–17. 28 This resulted in the book Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa, London: Jonathan Cape, 1963. In addition, Lawrence is known for being the younger brother of Thomas Edward Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia. 29 Note by A. W. Lawrence, Professor in Archaeology, 28 January 1951, BW 90/439, NA. 30 First annual report of the National Museum of the Gold Coast for the year ending 31st December 1951, A. W. Lawrence, 23 February 1952, BW 90/439, NA.
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function. As Lawrence argued, “You cannot have a nation without Ancestors”. Yet, these “ancestors” were not sufficient to “explain” the nation: Prolonged contact with European maritime peoples – especially the Portuguese, Dutch, Danes and English – has provided yet another type of influence. If the Museum were to represent and explain the nation of today, these external relations could not be ignored.31
Thus, during the 1950s, the museum collected several European artefacts that illustrated “the history of the European connection with the Gold Coast”.32 However, the history of the European relationship with the territory, which in the Gold Coast was increasingly referred to as Ghana, was a highly contested and politicized issue.
Conflicting Narratives of “Ghana’s” Global Past By the late 1940s, it had become a largely accepted theory in the Gold Coast that the Akan-speaking people inhabiting large parts of the colony originated from the ancient kingdom of Ghana. Reverend William Turner Balmer of the Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast was amongst the first proponents of this theory, which he presented in lectures and in his school textbook A History of the Akan Peoples of the Gold Coast, published in the 1920s. The theory was later made “scientific” by Eva L. R. Meyerowitz and popularized by Joseph Kwame Kyeretwie Boakye Danquah.33 Importantly, Danquah also politicized the theory of Ghana ancestry by making parallels between the history of Ghana and the colonial situation in the Gold Coast. In speeches and writings, he emphasized how the ancient Ghanaians had been “free” and how their movement to the Gold Coast had been undertaken to maintain that freedom. These circumstances, as he argued in a speech delivered at the inaugural meeting of the United Gold Coast Convention in August 1947, were an important lesson for the present: Love of freedom from foreign control has always been in our blood. 870 years ago, we struck against the attempt of the Arabs to impose a religious slavery upon us in Ghana. We left our homes in Ghana and came down here to build for ourselves a new home. But
31 A. W. Lawrence and R. Merrifield, “The National Museum of Ghana”, Museums Journal 57 (1957), pp. 88–89. 32 Note by A. W. Lawrence, Professor in Archaeology, 28 January 1951, BW 90/439, NA. 33 J. Goody, “The Myth of a State”, The Journal of Modern African Studies 6 (1966) 4, pp. 461–473. Other early proponents included F. Shaw, A Tropical Dependency, London: James Nisbet, 1905.
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there is one thing we brought with us from ancient Ghana. We brought with us our ancient freedom.34
But while most Gold Coast inhabitants in the 1940s agreed on the Ghanaians’ “love of freedom”, competing political groupings presented contrasting narratives or collective memories of the historical relationship between the descendants of ancient Ghana and people from other parts of the world, particularly from Europe. In the 1940s, two main narratives of Ghana’s global past, particularly the colonial period, can be identified through various types of historical narratives. Although these narratives overlap, for instance in their belief in the inherited longing for “freedom”, they are based on opposing understandings of the historical relationship between the Gold Coast and the outside world. While one emphasized the positive effects of global interaction and colonial rule, the other emphasized the negative effects, particularly the exploitative nature of the colonial relationship. The narrative focusing on the positive effects of global contact and interaction was, amongst others, advocated by politicians who saw themselves as conservative and moderate and who sought, in the period following the Second World War, to achieve independence and “freedom” through negotiations and gradual reforms.35 These politicians and their supporters generally belonged to the educated elite. Although several educated Gold Coasters were critical of European influence, many believed, as Alexander Baron-Holmes notes, in the “missionary-bred doctrine of progress – a view that the development of supposedly backward parts of the world should emulate the example of the supposedly advanced nations in Europe”.36 One such example can be found in the writings, at the turn of the century, of Carl Christian Reindorf of the Basel Mission, who, in 1895, published a History of the Gold Coast and Asante. According to Reindorf, the Gold Coast should be “fully content to be under the sway of our most blessed sovereign, because, when we cast our glance on all the colonies under England, we see great improvement”.37 In the 1940s, many
34 J. B. Danquah, Historic Speeches and Writings on Ghana: Compiled by H. K. Akyeampong, Accra: Georgie Boakie Publishing Company, 1966, p. 48. 35 For more on conservative politicians in the Gold Coast, see J. O. Hove and K. Baku, “Conservativism in Gold Coast Politics: From Ku Hee (New Party) to the National Democratic Party, 1943–1951”, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana New Series 17 (2015–17), pp. 27–62. 36 A. B. Holmes, Economic and Political Organizations in the Gold Coast, 1920–45, PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 1972, pp. 407–408. For examples of educated Africans critical of the European connection, see Chapter 9 in this volume. 37 C. Ch. Reindorf, History of the Gold Coast and Asante, Basel: The Author, 1895, p. 283.
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subscribed to the sentiment expressed by Reindorf and insisted that the colonial relationship was voluntary and mutually beneficial. Marking the centenary of the Bond of 1844, for instance, Danquah noted how saluting the Union Jack was an act of self-determination: It was as if we were saying: “A 100 years ago our time-honoured fathers affirmed in a written document our determination to have the British and not the Dutch, nor the Brandenbourgers [sic], nor the Danes nor the Portuguese, as the international friends and protecting Power of this country. Today, we of the present generation, of our own free will and accord, come forward to affirm that determination and to dedicate ourselves afresh to our friendship with Britain.”38
However, the voluntary nature of the relationship between the Gold Coast and United Kingdom had important political implications. In the 1940s, prominent politicians called attention to the many treaties entered into by representatives of the African population and the British government since the nineteenth century and argued that it had “never been admitted nor can it be proved beyond all doubt that the peoples of these territories [of the Gold Coast] have lost their right to determine their ultimate destiny, though they have enjoyed benefits from the British connection”.39 In other words, the Gold Coast relationship to Britain was voluntary, and local political leaders could renegotiate this relationship at any time.40 In contrast to the positive narrative of European contact and interaction, many in the Gold Coast saw the arrival of Europeans on the coast of West Africa as the start of a period of stagnation and decline.41 In the 1940s, this narrative was further developed by anti-colonial politicians who focused on the involuntary
38 Danquah, Historic Speeches and Writings on Ghana, p. 37. 39 Report of the Committee on Constitution Reform, 1949, p. 6, ADM 5/3/69, PRAAD. 40 See, for instance, B. M. Edsman, Lawyers in Gold Coast Politics c. 1900–1945, Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1979, p. 244. 41 The notion of decline following the emergence of Europeans has a long history on the Gold Coast. In 1822, for instance, Hans Christian Monrad refers to a “dim tradition [amongst the Africans] about ‘a happier time’ before the arrival of the Europeans” (H. C. Monrad, A Description of the Guinea Coast and its Inhabitants, S. Axelrod Winsnes [trans.], Accra: SubSaharan Publishers, 2008, p. 38, fn. 28). Similarly, in the mid-eighteenth century, the Danish slave trader Ludevig Ferdinand Rømer noted how some Africans argued that the arrival of Europeans had brought about moral decline: “‘It is you, you Whites’, they say, ‘who have brought all the evil among us. Indeed, would we have sold one another if you, as purchasers, had not come to us?’” (L. F. Rømer, A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea, S. Axelrod Winsnes [trans.], Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 35). Even older notions of decline, both morally and politically, and consequent loss of a “golden age” have been identified by R. Law, “The ‘Golden Age’ in the History of the Pre-Colonial Gold Coast: The Era of Gold
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and exploitative nature of the colonial relationship between Europeans and Africans. Kwame Nkrumah, who was instrumental in the organization of the anti-colonial Pan-African Congress, held in Manchester in 1945, argues in a pamphlet circulated in the 1940s that “[b]eneath the ‘humanitarian’ and ‘appeasement’ shibboleths of colonial governments, a proper scrutiny leads one to discover nothing but deception, hypocrisy, oppression and exploitation.”42 According to Nkrumah, the primary objective of colonial powers is perpetual exploitation: “Colonialism is, therefore, the policy by which the ‘mother country’, the colonial power, binds her colonies to herself by political ties with the primary object of promoting her own economic advantages.”43 Similar ideas were spread, amongst others, by Bankole Awoonor-Renner, who argued that the “determined effort of [...] imperialist powers to hold down the progress of the people of West Africa cannot be doubted”.44 In contrast to the conservative politicians, Nkrumah and Awoonor-Renner did not believe in a negotiated solution. Instead, the only way to end the exploitative relationship was liberation by any means. In the late 1940s, the narrative focusing on colonial exploitation found fertile ground and became widespread in the Gold Coast. The British officer administering the colonial government in 1949, Sir Robert Scott, reported to London how stories of “Ghanaland” had been transformed by Nkrumah and his supporters into a powerful political tool. Scott’s description of this story gives an interesting insight into the anti-colonial popular narrative of the past: [U]ntil 105 years ago, Ghanaland enjoyed idyllic freedom under its own governance; it was enslaved (although never conquered) by the “imperialists” for their selfish ends; in the intervening period, the “imperialists” have reduced the people to poverty and misery; they intend to keep the people in that condition and every action which may have a con45 trary appearance is but an artifice.
This anti-colonial narrative scared colonial authorities in both London and Accra. In 1948, for instance, the British historian Freda Wolfson applied for funds from the Colonial Office to travel to the Gold Coast to complete her
Exports (15th to 17th Centuries) Re-Examined”, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana New Series 17 (2015–17), pp. 109–136. 42 K. Nkrumah, Towards Colonial Freedom, London: Heinemann, 1963, p. xvi. This manuscript was first published and circulated in London in 1947. 43 Nkrumah, Towards Colonial Freedom, p. 2. 44 B. Awoonor-Renner, West African Soviet Union, London: Wans Press, 1946, p. 3. 45 Robert Scott to Arthur Creech Jones, 10 March 1949, CO 537/4638, NA.
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research on “British relations with the Gold Coast”. the colonial government is revealing:
46
The initial reaction from
[I]t is very questionable whether her visit [...] would be either convenient or political advisable. In view of the recent disturbances [i.e. Accra Riots] & of the challenging title of her investigations, it is submitted that [...] Miss Wolfson’s visit should be postponed at least until 1949.47
Another example is found in the colonial government’s decision in 1949 to ban George Padmore’s book titled Africa: Britain’s Third Empire, a study that propped up the narrative of exploitation and decline in a more academic form.48 Yet, it was unable to stop the CPP from utilizing this narrative, as illustrated by the party’s 1951 election manifesto: If you believe that imperialism is a hindrance to our national progress. [...] If you believe that our natural resources must no longer be exploited mainly for the benefit of Aliens, but for our benefit too. [...] Above all, if you believe that Self-Government is the only solution to the evils that plague us, and therefore must be fought for and won now, then your duty is clear [...] VOTE C.P.P. AT THE GENERAL ELECTIONS.49
The popularity of this narrative in the Gold Coast is illustrated by the results of the elections held in February 1951.50 The CCP’s victory was overwhelming, and the leader of the party, Nkrumah, was invited to form a new government together with British colonial officials.51 In the period leading up to the attainment of independence in 1957, the CPP and British officials would continue to govern the colony together. From this point, the CPP was largely responsible for the establishment of the new National Museum.
46 Application by Freda Wolfson to the Social Science Research Council, Colonial Office, 20 March 1948, RG 3/5/1403, PRAAD. 47 Note by A. W. Russel, Accra, 16 June 1948, RG 3/5/1403, PRAAD. In the end, Wolfson was able to travel to Ghana in late November 1948. Her PhD thesis was submitted to the University of London in October 1950 (see Wolfson, British Relations with the Gold Coast, 1843–1880, PhD thesis, University of London, 1950). 48 G. Padmore, Africa: Britain’s Third Empire, London: Dennis Dobson, 1949. See the discussion of the prohibition in the Gold Coast Legislative Council, 27 July 1950, ADM 14/2/61, PRAAD: ACCRA, particularly the speech by the CPP representative Kwesi Plange, on p. 290ff. 49 Convention People’s Party, “Towards the Goal”, 1951, CO 537/7233, NA (original emphasis). 50 See M. D. I. Gass, Report of the First Elections to the Legislative Assembly of the Gold Coast, 1951, MSS.Afr.s.1679, Weston Library (formerly Rhodes House Library), Oxford. 51 See, amongst others, D. Austin, Politics in Ghana, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970; R. Rathbone (ed.), Ghana: British Documents on the End of Empire, London: HMSO, 1992.
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The New National Museum and Independence Even prior to the CPP’s election victory in 1951, Lawrence and his staff at the National Museum had begun the work to commemorate the history and culture of the Gold Coast against a background of what “Man has achieved throughout the rest of Africa”, a project often referred to as “Man in Africa” (see Figure 1).52 This theme did not come in conflict with the CPP and Nkrumah’s panAfricanism and the available archival sources does not reflect any tensions between the anti-colonial government and the emerging National Museum. Throughout the 1950s, the museum staff worked undisturbed to acquire objects, through purchase and donations: amongst other things, pieces representing ancient Egypt, Roman art from Morocco, and “masterpieces of Nigerian and early
Figure 1: Artefact from “Man in Africa” exhibition. The small note beneath the statue reads: “Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, Reproduction of Marble Portrait found at Syrene, Lybia [sic] (Roman, about 170 AD)”. Photo by the author.
52 First annual report of the National Museum of the Gold Coast for the year ending 31st December 1951, A. W. Lawrence, 23 February 1952, BW 90/439, NA.
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Bantu sculpture”, the latter including “two original Benin bronze heads”.53 Several objects illustrating the relationship between the Gold Coast and Europe were also acquired, such as “dated European objects” that were “likely to have been used in the Gold Coast during the past few centuries”.54 However, the majority of the artefacts in the collection came from the Gold Coast. Importantly, in 1953, the National Museum was augmented with the gift of Achimota Museum, which, according to Lawrence’s estimations, contained no less than 10,000 items, mainly from local excavations.55 In order to manage and further expand the rapidly growing collection, a small nucleus of staff was employed at the museum. This included the curator Herbert Dennis Collings, who was employed as the museum’s curator in 1951 and Richard B. Nunoo, who became the assistant curator in 1953.56 In addition, in 1952, the museum hired its first authorized collector, John Osei Kufuor, who primarily focused on the Asante region.57 With the growth of the collection, the building that the National Museum occupied at Achimota College became overcrowded. The University College therefore started constructing a new building at the Department of Archaeology at Legon. In addition, the university set up an interim council with members representing national, regional, and educational interests, tasked to frame the future policy of the National Museum. This council concluded that two buildings were required: in addition to the building at Legon, which was storage for objects “of little interest to the public”, a new exhibition gallery should be built in Accra closer to the public. The University Museum and National Museum would continue to coexist, but at different locations.58 The following year, a site was obtained in Accra for the new museum build59 ing. The area, located near the junction of Barnes Road and Castle Road, had
53 Ibid. 54 Second Annual Report of the National Museum of the Gold Coast for the year ending 31st December 1952, by A. W. Lawrence, 18 February 1953, BW 90/439, NA. 55 Third Annual Report of the National Museum of the Gold Coast for the year ending 31st December 1953, A. W. Lawrence and H. D. Collings, 7 May 1954, BW 90/439, NA. 56 Collings was originally from Britain. Before arriving in the Gold Coast, he was curator at the Raffles Museum in Singapore. Nunoo was from the Gold Coast and had had a long career at Achimota College as the assistant and later curator at the Achimota College before joining the National Museum. Nunoo had also spent time in Britain, taking courses in archaeology at the University of London as well as participating in and leading several archaeological excavations. 57 Second Annual Report, by A. W. Lawrence, 18 February 1953, BW 90/439, NA. 58 Third Annual Report, 7 May 1954, RG 11/1/269, PRAAD. 59 Fourth Annual Report of the National Museum of the Gold Coast for the year 1954, 28 April 1955, RG 11/1/269 PRAAD.
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been specially regulated for buildings of “national and cultural significance”.60 Later, the National Archives and the Museum of Science and Technology were built in the vicinity, but in the early 1950s, the area was largely undeveloped. The museum was intended to have a dominant position in this area of Accra as the first stage in the development of a larger building complex.61 In 1954, parallel with the construction of the new museum, the Gold Coast government started preparing the independence celebrations. Nkrumah, the prime minister of the Gold Coast government, insisted that in addition to demonstrating “the energy and capacity of the people of the Gold Coast for running their own affairs”, the celebrations should lay the foundations for future international cooperation, something that would benefit the country’s economic development. Themes to be emphasized in the celebrations were the preservation of the traditional Gold Coast in the changing pattern; the co-operation of all sections of the community with other races; [...] the evident fund of international goodwill towards the Gold Coast; the Development projects; and the co-operation of the Gold Coast with other countries for the purpose of trade.62
These themes would be communicated through functions and festivities at different sites in Accra and other provincial centres. Since few suitable sites existed, the government initiated a considerable building programme that consisted of, amongst other things, a new hotel and a stadium in Accra.63 Initially, the new building for the National Museum in Accra was not included in the independence celebrations. The director of the museum, Lawrence, was under the impression that independence would be introduced and celebrated before the new building could be finished. However, when informed that independence would not come earlier than November 1956, he applied for funding to finish an exhibition in the new building in time for the celebration. In his opinion, the museum would be a natural arena in the celebrations with its “large collection illustrative of Gold Coast culture past and present”.64 Both the Ministry of 60 “National Ghana Museum, Accra, for the Public Works Department; Architects: Drake & Lasdun”, Architecture and Building (1957), pp. 338–343. See also “Accra: A Plan for the Town”, The Report for the Ministry of Housing, Accra: Government Printer, 1958. 61 See also Crinson, “Nation-building, Collecting and the Politics of Display”, p. 232. 62 Extract from the minutes of a meeting of the Cabinet, held 26 November 1954; and letter from Secretary to the Prime Minister to F. A. Evans, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Works, 1 December 1954, RG 3/5/1912, PRAAD. 63 Cabinet Memorandum by the Minister of Works: Buildings required for Independence Day Celebrations, February 1955, RG 3/5/1912, PRAAD. 64 A. W. Lawrence to Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, 17 August 1955, RG3/5/1912, PRAAD.
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Education and the working party specifically set up to plan and coordinate the independence building programme agreed with Lawrence. As the latter noted, the museum would be a suitable place where “visitors to the country could visit the Museum and learn something of its history.”65 Funds were accordingly provided to bring in necessary staff and materials to prepare the opening exhibition.66 Parallel with the hectic preparations for the independence celebrations, two further events took place at the museum. First, as part of the establishment of the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB) to replace the colonial Monuments and Relics Commission, the National Museum and University Museum were separated. While the latter remained in the hands of the university, the former became part of the GMMB.67 Second, a dispute erupted between staff members at the National Museum. While ostensibly focusing on status and salary, this conflict addressed, on a more fundamental level, key issues concerning the control of the new museum and its commemorative activities.
Struggle for the Control of the National Museum In 1956, a dispute erupted at the National Museum between Museum Secretary Kufuor and Director Lawrence. The two had been colleagues for several years: as mentioned above, Kufuor was amongst the first to be employed at the museum as a collector in 1952. Due to health reasons, however, he was retrained and became museum secretary in 1953. As part of his training, he went to Nigeria to work at the newly opened Jos Museum, an institution described at the time as the “First National Museum of Nigeria”.68 On his return to Accra, he participated in various projects, such as the restoration work on traditional buildings in Asante.69 In 1955, he was sent on a study trip to the United Kingdom for four months to broaden his 65 Note by G. D. Lintott, representing the Ministry of Education on the Independence Building Programme Working Party, October 1955; and Letter from G. D. Lintott to the Secretary for the Prime Minister, Kwame Nkrumah, 8 October 1955, RG 3/5/1913, PRAAD. 66 J. N. Matson, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education to Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Works, 21 September 1955; and Independence Building Programme Working Party Progress Report, September 1955, RG 3/5/1913, PRAAD. 67 Memorandum on an ordinance to establish a Ghana Museum and Monuments Board, 1956, RG 11/1/261, PRAAD. 68 A. W. Lawrence to Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, 22 November 1956, RG 11/1/372, PRAAD; and “144. Nigeria’s First National Museum of Antiquities”, Man 52 (1952), pp. 107–108. 69 Minutes of a meeting of the Monuments and Relics Commission, 3 March 1955, RG 11/1/260, PRAAD.
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experience and knowledge of museum collections, exhibitions, and Gold Coast artefacts located in British museums.70 Although his stay was interrupted by sickness, he was able to study the commemorative activities of several museums, including the Horniman Museum and Gardens, which held a collection of African musical instruments, and the British Museum, which held a considerable collection of Gold Coast beads.71 By 1956, therefore, Kufuor had extensive experience with museums in Europe as well as West Africa. On his return to Accra, Kufuor clearly felt entitled to an elevated and more influential position at the museum, illustrated, for instance, by his application for a promotion and an increase in his salary. To strengthen his application, he identified four employees at the University College who had had similar applications accepted following training in the United Kingdom. He also pointed out his length of service at the museum: “[I] undoubtedly come foremost among all the staff in matters of experience and length of service.”72 However, in April 1956, Kufuor had been disciplined by the principal of the University College, David Mowbray Balme, for unauthorized use of a departmental vehicle.73 Although the National Museum had been separated from the university in July that year, Kufuor was still technically a university employee and informed that his application would be considered in light of his disciplinary case. He would, in other words, not get a promotion and wage increase in the immediate future. Kufuor did not take this news lightly and immediately accused both Lawrence and the museum’s curator, Collings, of also using departmental vehicles without authorization. He furthermore alleged that Lawrence sought to lower his status at the museum in order to appoint “expatriates” and that the treatment he was receiving amounted to “racial discrimination”.74 The conflict between Lawrence and Kufuor quickly escalated. Kufuor interpreted the rejected promotion as a move to marginalize him in the museum despite his new qualifications. As he notes in a letter to Lawrence; “Since my return from the United Kingdom, I have observed that you, as Director, and Mr. Collings (the other expatriate senior member) have been uncheerful to me and also very unco-operative [sic] in your attitude.”75 As a result, he sought out alternative means not only to influence the museum but also to move control of
70 Letter from A. W. Lawrence to H. D. Collings, 17 September 1955, Collings Collection (CC) 2089/2/4/1/3/15, Suffolk Record Office (SRO), Lowestoft. 71 Letter from John O. Kufuor to H. D. Collings, 26 September 1955, CC 2089/2/1/3/3/32, SRO. 72 John O. Kufuor to A. W. Lawrence, 20 August 1956, RG 13/1/34, PRAAD. 73 D. M. Balme to John O. Kufuor, 25 April 1956, RG 13/1/34, PRAAD. 74 John O. Kufuor to A. W. Lawrence, 24 September 1956, RG 13/1/34, PRAAD. 75 Ibid.
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the museum away from Lawrence and the University College. As he threateningly wrote to Lawrence, it was his right “as a citizen of this country” to make known to a higher authority “every act of maladministration and flagrant waste of public funds that will cripple the good function of such an important Institution as the National Museum”.76 Kufuor had a powerful political network at his disposal: he was a member of the Convention People’s Party and had access to members of the Legislative Assembly as well as Prime Minister Nkrumah. In the second half of 1956, he mobilized this network in an effort to shift control of the museum from the University College, represented by Lawrence, to the CPP. Sometime in June or July 1956, he sent an extensive “Outline of the state of affairs” at the National Museum to Nkrumah. This outline included well-known tropes from the anticolonial narrative of colonial exploitation to describe the museum. Lawrence was presented as the successor of the “old imperialist Government” that had originally set up the National Museum. The director was further described as “a negrophobist [sic] who does not seek the interest of Africa” and “anti-C.P.P. of the highest order”. Finally, just like the imperialist government, Lawrence’s main objective was to exploit the museum through “reckless waste of public funds”.77 In addition to the many alleged complaints, the outline described the present state of the museum and offered views on its future development. According to Kufuor, the museum was characterized by “Europeanisation”, meaning an influx of too many overseas employees.78 A similar “Europeanisation” also applied to the museum’s acquisition of objects considered by Kufuor “of little or no interest to African society”. This included “European paintings etc at fantastically exhorbitant [sic] costs” and other unspecified “uninteresting specimens from overseas museums at abnormally high prices”.79 Kufuor wanted the museum to focus on local artefacts, such as traditional regalia from, amongst other places, Asante. These traditional objects would be used to disseminate the CPP’s narrative of how the party was transforming the country from a traditional and agricultural society to a modern and industrial one. For instance, Kufuor wanted the new museum to include a separate room for “Stool Regalia” from Asante since, as he confidently asserted, “Chieftaincy is ultimately going to die”.80 In order to ensure that the museum communicated an appropriately anticolonial narrative, Kufuor suggested that the museum should be controlled by
76 John O. Kufuor to A. W. Lawrence, 17 December 1956, RG 13/1/34, PRAAD. 77 Memorandum by J. O. Kufuor to Kwame Nkrumah, no date, RG 17/1/60, PRAAD. 78 Note by John O. Kufuor to Kwame Nkrumah, 7 October 1956, RG 17/1/60, PRAAD. 79 Memorandum by J. O. Kufuor to Kwame Nkrumah, no date, RG 17/1/60, PRAAD. 80 Note by John O. Kufuor to Kwame Nkrumah, 7 October 1956, RG 17/1/60, PRAAD.
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the CPP rather than academics from the University College – who were largely British. He proposed the formation of a new governing body for the museum, in which members of the CPP “completely outnumber representatives of other cooperate bodies such as the U.C.G.C. [University College of the Gold Coast] or the M&R. [Monuments and Relics] Commission”. Kufuor was not thinking about moderate party members. As an example of a suitable candidate, he specifically suggested Krobo Edusei, a high-profile CPP politician known for his uncompromising anti-colonial rhetoric.81 While Kufuor wrote three reports to Nkrumah, which can be found in PRAAD, we only know that Nkrumah had knowledge of the first. This letter received a reply from Nkrumah’s private secretary, Erica Powell, stating, “Dr. Nkrumah has asked me to acknowledge receipt of the memo you sent him and to say that the contents have been noted. Dr. Nkrumah has also asked me to thank you very much for bringing the matter to his notice.”82 However, the prime minister did not become personally involved. Kufuor’s letters and reports were passed on to the Ministry of Education, where British and African officials dismissed the many allegations against Lawrence.83 Thus, Kufuor’s reports to Nkrumah did little to influence the direction of the museum. Yet, Kufuor’s network included other high-profile CPP members. When the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board bill was read for the second time in the Legislative Assembly, in January 1957, Alfred Jonas Dowuona-Hammond (a CPP member representing Awutu) questioned the minister of education, John Bogolo Erzuah, “about certain rumours we have been hearing [...] that the Secretary to the Museum [John Osei Kufuor] has been victimized”. He went on to air some of the allegations Kufuor had made against Lawrence, including financial irregularities.84 However, the minister of education, also representing the CPP, refuted these allegations and informed the Legislative Assembly that a committee had been set up by the National Museum to investigate Kufuor’s case. Since Kufuor was an employee of the university, the committee’s recommendations had been transmitted to the principal of the University College and the matter was sub judice.85
81 Memorandum by J. O. Kufuor, no date, RG 17/1/60, PRAAD. 82 E. Powell, Private Secretary to Kwame Nkrumah to John Osei Kufuor, 9 August 1956, RG 17/1/60, PRAAD. 83 Available in file RG 11/1/327, PRAAD. 84 Extract from Legislative Assembly Debates, 22 January 1957, RG 3/5/2095, PRAAD. 85 Extract from Legislative Assembly Debates, 24 January 1957, RG 3/5/2095, PRAAD.
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Kufuor’s case was investigated by a special committee in January 1957.86 This committee recommended a reduction in both rank and salary.87 The principal of the University College, Balme, adhered to this recommendation and gave Kufuor the choice between resignation and demotion.88 However, this did not end the Kufuor case. Lawrence objected strongly to what he considered to be a too lenient punishment. He warned the Ministry of Education that unless Kufuor was dismissed then he and Collings would resign immediately from the museum. This put the ministry in a difficult position: the new National Museum was only days away from its opening ceremony. While officials understood the “embarrassment of a Head of Dept. in the possibility of the return to his staff of a subordinate whose conduct has been so disgraceful”, they nonetheless thought that “in fairness to everyone, the two Chief Officers of the Museum may well be asked to give reasonable notice, so that the opening ceremony can proceed.”89 In the end, Minister of Education Erzuah had to intervene to prevent the cancellation of the opening ceremony. The fact that Kufuor was not fired might illustrate the strength of his connections in the CPP. Instead, Erzuah assured Lawrence that he would personally inform Kufuor of “how displeased he was with his conduct & warn him as to further conduct”.90 However, though Kufuor could stay on in the GMMB, he was posted to the newly established Monuments Section located in Elmina, where he would work at a different location separate from Lawrence and Collings.91 With Kufuor removed, the struggle for control over the National Museum ended and the new memory space could be opened without further conflicts.
86 The committee was chaired by Nene Annorkwei II and consisted of CPP member of the Legislative Assembly Kofi Baako, the politicians and lawyer Danquah, Dr. O. Davis representing the University College, the government archivist Akita, R. B. S. Alton representing the Ministry of Education, and B. G. White representing the director of public works. Lawrence was in attendance but had no vote in the committee. 87 Report on proceedings of inquiry, RG 11/1/372, PRAAD. 88 D. W. Balme to John Osei Kufuor, 20 February 1957, RG 11/1/372, PRAAD. 89 E. B. S. Alton to Minister of Education, 21 February 1957, RG 11/1/372, PRAAD. 90 Note by R. B. S. Alton, 25 February 1957, RG 11/1/372, PRAAD. 91 E. B. S. Alton to A. W. Lawrence, 11 March 1957; and E. B. S. Alton to Nene Annorkwei II, 12 March 1957, RG 11/1/372, PRAAD.
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Opening of the New Memory Space and the Commemorative Activities of the National Museum On 5 March 1957, the National Museum of Ghana was officially opened. The new museum building was designed by Denys Lasdun, a partner of the British architect partnership of Fry, Drew, Drake & Lasdun. This firm was known for their practice of modernist tropical architecture, and the museum was one of several projects in British West Africa.92 In their presentation of the building, planned measures to mitigate the warm, humid climate were emphasized, including “highly reflective waterproof roof surfaces for heat and rain protection; overhanging roofs to provide wall-shade and storm protection; maximum openings for cross ventilation at all levels”.93 To achieve these measures, the building was constructed with modern materials; walls with openings for natural light and airflow were constructed in concrete, and a large aluminium dome covered most of the building. The new building did contain elements that were traditional in a museological context, particularly the dome. In this regard, the museum followed the precedent of other similar institutions familiar to the educated elite, not least the British Museum, where many Gold Coast students had spent hours in the reading rooms.94 Yet, the new building was not enthusiastically welcomed by all. In a speech to the Legislative Assembly, a representative of the Anlo Youth Organisation, Modesto Kwasi Apaloo, disapproved of the new museum for its “unimaginative” design. His main criticism was directed at its size: “it is so small that I am sure that within the next ten or fifteen years it will have to be scrapped and built up again.” In particular, the museum did not compare well with the newly built Catholic cathedral nearby in Adabraka, a comparison that made “a complete disgrace of the whole architecture of the museum”.95 In general, however, the building was “modern”. As Crinson points out, the new museum was “alien to Accra’s architecture and building traditions”. Both
92 R. W. Liscombe, “Modernism in Late Imperial British West Africa: The Work of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, 1946–1956”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 65 (2006) 2, pp. 188–215. 93 “National Ghana Museum, Accra, for the Public Works Department; Architects: Drake & Lasdun”, Architecture and Building (1957), pp. 338–343. 94 See chapter 9 in this volume. 95 Extract of M. K. Apoloo, Anlo Youth Organisation, Legislative Assembly Debates, 21 January 1957, RG 3/5/2095, PRAAD.
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building materials and location made it “a separate and special kind of building, a pantheon of the new nation [...] a symbol of modernization and image without an indigenous history, the preserve of an educated urban elite”.96 The building was, in other words, pointing towards the future, echoing the CPP slogan, “forwards ever, backwards never”. At the opening ceremony, two temporary exhibitions were unveiled. One was prepared by Ralph Merrifield of the Guildhall Museum in London and his wife Lysbeth Webb, which constituted the nucleus of the museum’s future permanent exhibition. The other was a temporary exhibition prepared by the government archivist, Jeremias Mama Akita and consisted of documents that illustrated the history of the Gold Coast, in particular its relationship with Britain. As a background note prepared in advance for the opening ceremony states, the two exhibitions were intended to “illustrate by means of original works and reproductions the culture, history and art of this country, of other parts of Africa and the European peoples [...] who have had contact with Africa”.97 The exhibition prepared by the Merrifields was a traditional European museum presentation: different artefacts were presented in 25 showcases dispersed around the museum. It could generally be divided into two parts. The first focused on Ghana and contained local artefacts. The second was more international in outlook and included artefacts intended to illustrate not only the origins of West African culture but also “influences which have affected its development”.98 Artefacts were ordered chronologically, starting with “Ancient Egypt, that great source of civilization whose influence still seems to be recognizable in West African culture” and ending with “Europeans in West Africa [...] the latest cultural influence which has been brought to bear on the peoples of the West Coast”.99 In this manner, the exhibition presented a narrative of ordered progress and development resulting from the interaction between the people of West Africa and other parts of the world. While the colonial period received marginal attention in the Merrifields’ exhibition, the temporary exhibition prepared by the government archivist, Akita, explicitly addressed this part of Ghana’s past through the “Exhibition
96 Crinson, “Nation-building, Collecting and the Politics of Display”, p. 233. 97 Background note prepared for the visit of the Duchess of Kent, no date, RG 11/1/266, PRAAD. 98 A. W. Lawrence and R. Merrifield, “The National Museum of Ghana”, Museums Journal 57:4 (1957), p. 91. 99 Lawrence and Merrifield, “The National Museum of Ghana”, pp. 92–93.
19 A Contested Global Memory Space
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of Documents illustrating the Constitutional Growth of the Gold Coast”.100 It consisted of 55 annotated documents that told the story of the relationship between Britain and the Gold Coast from the fifteenth century up to the attainment of independence. The first 9 documents were related to the formation in the seventeenth century of the Company of Adventurers of London and subsequent companies that laid the foundations for the appointment, in 1830, of George Maclean as governor. This marked the beginning of the constitutional development of the colony, followed by documents such as a copy of the Bond of 1844, dispatches related to the creation of the Gold Coast Colony in 1874, documents defining the borders and annexation of Asante and the Northern Territories in 1901, and documents illustrating the attainment of independence in 1957. The narrative presented by the annotated documents was characterized by peaceful political and economic coexistence. Of the 55 documents on display, only 3 reflected some sort of tension or conflict: a copy of the Treaty of Fomenah, drawn up at the end of the “sixth war with Ashanti”, and 2 documents from 1920 concerning the National Congress of British West Africa. Important events that featured prominently in anti-colonial narratives, including the slave trade and various riots, were completely absent.101 Both exhibitions at the National Museum told the story of Ghana’s global past with an emphasis on ordered and peaceful development leading to independence in 1957. The narration of this story was not only intended to increase knowledge of the past but also its bearing on the present and future. As the chairman of the GMMB, Nene Annorkwei II stated shortly prior to the opening of the museum: We are fortunate that our past is being brought to our gaze at this stage of our development and hope the lesson sought to be taught by the Museum will readily find active response from the public both of today and hereafter.102
Thus, through commemorative activities that emphasized the positive aspects of Ghana’s global past, particularly during the colonial period, the museum created a space where present and future global relationships could be imagined, both by Ghanaians and by foreign visitors. Anti-colonial narratives could not be part of this space. Instead, other spaces in Accra and Ghana
100 J. M. Akita to Secretary to the Governor, 3 January 1957, RG 13/1/57, PRAAD. 101 See catalogue by the Ghana National Archives titled “An Exhibition of Documents on Ghana’s Constitutional Development”, 1957, RG 13/1/57, PRAAD. 102 Address by Nene Annorkwei II, Q. M. C., Mantse of Prampram, on the Occasion of the first meeting of the Interim Council of the National Museum, 4 December 1956, RG 13/1/34, PRAAD.
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generally were devoted to this narrative, such as the Black Star Square and monuments of known and unknown soldiers.103
Conclusion From the outset, the National Museum of Ghana was conceived of in the late colonial period as a global memory space where future relations could be established and promoted. The envisaged space was based on European conceptions of a memory space. While Enwonwu’s report, suggesting an alternative African memory space, was considered interesting, it was easily discarded and shelved. The emergence of the anti-colonial Convention People’s Party in the late 1940s did not include a break with the colonial notions of the museum. On the contrary, the new National Museum provided the CPP government with a suitable arena for the planned independence celebrations, a memory space where foreign visitors could be received and learn something of the country’s history through its commemorative activities. However, the establishment of the new memory space was not a consensual process. Different understandings of Ghana’s global past existed, understandings we can term collective memories. While some “remembered” a past characterized by peaceful and constructive development, others “remembered” conflict and exploitation. Even though this latter collective memory had been a crucial part of the CPP’s anti-colonial platform and campaign, it did not feature in the National Museum. Even though John Osei Kufuor, the museum secretary and a CPP member, struggled to steer the museum towards a political and anticolonial direction, narratives of colonial conflict and exploitation were absent. Indeed, Kufuor was also removed from the museum shortly before its opening. Instead, the opening exhibition presented a narrative of Ghana’s global past characterized by ordered and peaceful coexistence and development. Both in form and content, the new National Museum of Ghana was characterized by a focus on the future. The building, particularly through its design and materials, was symbolic of the government’s efforts to develop and modernize the country. The museum’s commemorative activities also focused firmly on the future. Through its collections and exhibitions, it provided a global memory space that narrated the past in a way that provided a precedent for present and future cooperation and development.
103 Fuller, Building the Ghanaian Nation-State, pp. 120–123. The latter includes a marble slab commemorating “the unknown Ghanaian who died in the cause of freedom and justice for Ghana”.
List of Contributors Lars Folke Berge, Assistant Professor, Dalarna University, Sweden, [email protected]. Recent publications: “The Swedish Evangelical Mission and the Formation of Reformist Elite in Ethiopia c. 1868–1935”, in: Irma Taddia and Tekeste Negash (eds.), State Institutions and Leadership in Africa, Padova: Libreria Universitaria, 2017, pp. 75–105; “Den bortglömda Afrikasolidariteten. Svenska manifestationer inför det italiensk-etiopiska kriget 1935–36” [“The forgotten Africa solidarity. Swedish manifestations before the Italian-Ethiopian War 1935–1936”], in: Urban Claesson and Dick Åhman (eds.), Kulturell reproduktion i skola och nation. En vänbok till Lars Petterson [Cultural Reproduction in School and Nation. A Festschrift for Lars Petterson], Hedemora: Gidlunds förlag, 2016, pp. 149–168. Chris Evans, Professor of History at the University of South Wales, UK, chris. [email protected]. His research focuses on the history of Atlantic slavery and the global history of metals. Recent publications: (with Göran Rydén) “‘Voyage iron”: An Atlantic Slave Trade Currency, its European Origins, and West African Impact”, Past & Present 239 (2018) 1, pp. 41–70; (with Louise Miskell) Swansea Copper: A Global History, 2020. Patrik Hettula, Ph.D. Student at Åbo Akademi University, Finland, [email protected]. His work focuses on hybrid manifestations in colonial West Africa during the turn of the twentieth century. He is currently working on his dissertation titled: Contesting the Empire – Fighting the Inevitable: Eurafrican Spaces on the British Gold Coast. Hanna Hodacs, Associated Professor, University of Dalarna, Sweden, [email protected]. Recent publications: (with Mathias Persson) “Globalizing the savage: From stadial theory to a theory of luxury in late-18th-century Swedish discussions of Africa”, History of the Human Sciences 32 (2019) 4, pp. 100–114; “The price of Linnaean natural history – materiality, commerce, and change”, in: Hanna Hodacs, Kenneth Nyberg, and Stéphane Van Damme (eds.), Linnaeus, Natural History and the Circulation of Knowledge (Oxford History of the Enlightenment), Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2018, pp. 81–111; Silk and Tea in the North – Scandinavian Trade and the Market for Asian Goods in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. She is currently working on the projects “Intoxicanting Spaces” (funded by HERA 2019–2021) and “Nordic naturalists as fashionistas – interpreting taste and substituting global goods with local in the long 18th Century (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2020–2023). Laura Hollsten, University Teacher and Docent in Environmental History at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. [email protected]. Her research focuses on environmental history, global and Atlantic history, and the history of science and knowledge. Recent publications: “Public, Private, and Experience-based Knowledge”, in Johan Östling, Erling Sandmo, David Larsson Heidenblad, Anna Nilsson Hammar, and Kari Nordberg (eds.), Circulation of Knowledge. Explorations into the History of Knowledge, Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2018, pp. 38–55; (with Holger Weiss and Stefan Norrgård), “Cotton and Salt: Swedish Colonial Aspirations and the Transformation of Saint Barthélemy in the Eighteenth Century”, Environment and History, published online 4 September 2018.
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Jon Olav Hove, Associate Professor in Cultural Heritage Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), [email protected]. His research focuses on Atlantic and West African history, memory and cultural heritage, with a special focus on the transatlantic slave trade and the colonial period. Recent publications: (with John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu) “Regulating Oil Concessions in British West Africa: The Case of Nigeria and the Gold Coast during the Colonial Period”, in: Andreas R.D. Sanders, Pål Thonstad Sandvik, and Espen Storli (eds.), The Political Economy of Resource Regulation: A Global History, 1850–2015, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019, pp. 165–185; “Forts and Castles in the Colonial Period: Uses and Understandings of the Pre-colonial Fortifications” in: John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu (ed.), Forts, Castles and Society in West Africa: Benin and Ghana, 1450–1960, Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 243– 264; (with Kofi Baku) “Conservativism in Gold Coast Politics: From Ku-hee (New Party) to the National Democratic Party, 1943–1951”, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana New Series 17 (2017), pp. 27–62. Måns Jansson, Researcher at the Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, mans. [email protected]. His current research project is funded by Handelsbankens forskningsstiftelser (P2017-0114:1). Recent publications: Making Metal Making: Circulation and Workshop Practices in the Swedish Metal Trades, 1730–1775, Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2017. Kalle Kananoja, Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland, [email protected]. Recent publications: (ed. with Markku Hokkanen) Healers and Empires in Global History. Healing as Hybrid and Contested Knowledge, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; “Melancholy, Race and Slavery in the Early Modern Southern Atlantic World”, in: Tuomas Laine-Frigren, Jari Eilola, and Markku Hokkanen (eds.), Encountering Crises of the Mind. Madness, Culture and Society, 1200s–1900s, Leiden: Brill, 2019, pp. 88–112; “Infected by the Devil, Cured by Calundu. African Healers in Eighteenth-century Minas Gerais, Brazil”, Social History of Medicine 29 (2016) 3, pp. 490–511; “Bioprospecting and European Uses of African Natural Medicine in Early Modern Angola”, Portuguese Studies Review 23 (2015) 2, pp. 45–69. Emil Kaukonen, Ph.D. Candidate in General History at Åbo Akademi University, Finland, emil. [email protected]. His research interests include the circulation of knowledge, cultural intermediaries, and cross-cultural diplomacy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His doctoral dissertation focuses on the Swedish consulate in Morocco during the period 1787– 1822. Recent publications: “Blicken från norr – Nathanael Gerhard af Schultén och fregatten Dianas expedition till Medelhavet 1786–1787” [“The View from the North – Nathanael Gerhard af Schultén and the Expedition of the Frigate Diana to the Mediterranean 1786–1787”], Auraica 9 (2018), pp. 9–20. Leila Koivunen, Professor of European and World History at the University of Turku, Finland, [email protected]. Her research focuses on the history of European imagination and representation of the non-Western world, the culture of display, and the processes of knowledge formation. Recent publications: Visualizing Africa in Nineteenth-Century British Travel, London and New York: Routledge, 2009; Eksotisoidut esineet ja avartuva maailma. Euroopan ulkopuoliset kulttuurit näytteillä Suomessa 1870–1910-luvuilla [Exotisized Objects and the Widening World. Non-Western Cultures on Display in Finland 1870s–1910s], Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2015.
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Sven Olofsson, Assistant Professor, Mid Sweden University, Sweden, [email protected]. Recent publications: “Till ömsesidig nytta – entreprenörer, framgång och sociala relationer i Rödöns tingslag i centrala Jämtland ca. 1810–1850” [“For Mutual Benefit: Entrepreneurs, Success, and Social Relations in the County of Jämtland, 1810–1850”], Studia Historica Upsaliensia, Västerås 2011; “En gränslös samvaro – Det tidiga 1800-talets affärsrelationer på Levangermarknad” [“Being together without borders – early 19th-century business relations at the Levanger market”], in: Jan Brendalsmoe and Frans-Arne Stylegar (eds.), Levangerhistorier [Levanger Stories], Oslo: Novus AS, 2013, pp. 123–132; “Långivaren, låntagaren och intermediären. Ett tillitsfullt vardagsdrama på 1800-talets kreditmarknad” [“Lender, Borrower, and Intermediary: An Everyday Drama of Confidence at the 19th-century Credit Market”], in: Peter Ericsson et al. (eds.), Allt på ett bräde. Stat, ekonomi och bondeoffer: En vänbok till Jan Lindegren [All in One go: State, Economy and Pawn Sacrifice. Studies in Honour of Jan Lindegren], Studia Historica Upsaliensia 249, Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2013, pp. 129–142. Edgar Pereira, Ph.D. Candidate at Leiden University, the Netherlands, e.f.cravo.bertrand. [email protected]. Recent Publications: “The Ordeals of Colonial Contracting: Reactions to and Repercussions of Two Failed State-Private Ventures in Habsburg Portugal (1622–1628)”, Itinerario 43 (2019) 1, pp. 63–87. Fredrik Petersson, Associate Professor in Colonial and Postcolonial Global History at Åbo Akademi University and Lecturer in History at Södertörn University, [email protected]. His research focuses on global and transnational encounters of twentieth century anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism with emphasis on experiences, migrations, and transfers. Recent publications: “From Versailles to Bandung”, in: Luis Eslava, Michael Fakhri, and Vasuki Nesiah (eds.), Bandung, Global History and International Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 66–80; “Willi Münzenberg: A Propagandist Reaching Beyond the Party and Class”, in: Norman Laporte and Ralf Hofrogge (eds.), Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933, Chadwell Heath, UK: Lawrence and Wishart, 2017, pp. 240–259; “Antiimperialism and Nostalgia: A Re-assessment of the History and Historiography of the League Against Imperialism”, in: Holger Weiss (ed.), International Communism and Transnational Solidarity. Radical Networks, Mass Movements and Global Politics, 1919–1939, Leiden: Brill, 2017, pp. 191–255; “‘We will fight with our lives for the equal rights of all peoples’: Willi Münzenberg, the League Against Imperialism, and the Comintern”, in: Michele Louro, Carolien Stolte, Heather Streets-Salter, and Sana Tannoury-Karam (eds.), League Against Imperialism: Lives and Afterlives, Leiden: Leiden University Press (forthcoming 2020). Christina Romlid, Senior Lecturer, Högskolan Dalarna, Sweden, [email protected]. Recent publications: “Promoting Sweden – the Socioeconomic Section of the Swedish Pavilion Display at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris”, in: Joep Leerssen and Eric Storm (eds.), World Fairs and International Exhibitions: National Self-Profiling in an International Context, 1851–1940, Leiden: Brill (The National Cultivation of Culture series, forthcoming). (forthcoming). Göran Rydén, Professor in Economic History, Institute for Housing and Urban Research, Uppsala University, [email protected]. Recent publications: (with Chris Evans) Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2007; Sweden in the Eighteenth-Century World: Provincial Cosmopolitans, Farnham: Ashgate, 2013;
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(with Chris Evans) “‘Voyage Iron’: An Atlantic Slave Trade Currency, its European Origins, and West African Impact”, Past & Present 239 (2018) 1, pp. 41–70; “Balancing the Divine with the Private. The Practices of Hushållning in Eighteenth-Century Sweden”, in: Marten Seppel and Keith Tribe (eds.), Cameralism in Practice: State Administration and Economy on Early Modern Europe, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017, pp. 179–201. Ivan Sablin, Research Group Leader, ERC Project “Entangled Parliamentarisms: Constitutional Practices in Russia, Ukraine, China, and Mongolia, 1905–2005,” Department of History, University of Heidelberg, Germany, [email protected]. Recent publications: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Far Eastern Republic, 1905–1922: Nationalisms, Imperialisms, and Regionalisms in and after the Russian Empire, London: Routledge, 2018; “Parliaments and Parliamentarism in the Works of Soviet Dissidents, 1960s–80s”, in: Parliaments, Estates and Representation, published online 10 May 2019; “Soviet and Buddhist: Religious Diplomacy, Dissidence, and the Atheist State, 1945–1991”, The Journal of Religion 99 (2019) 1, pp. 37–58. Johanna Skurnik, Postdoctoral Researcher, currently Visiting Research Fellow, University of Sussex, United Kingdom, [email protected]. Recent publications: Making Geographies. The Circulation of British Geographical Knowledge of Australia, 1829–1863, Turku: University of Turku, 2017. Taina Syrjämaa, Professor, University of Turku, Finland, [email protected]. Recent publications: “Monilajinen kaupunkiyhteisö. Koiria, kissoja ja ihmisiä 1800- ja 1900-luvun vaihteen Uudessakaupungissa” [“Multispecific Urban Society. Dogs, Cats and Humans in Uusikaupunki at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries], Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 2 (2019), pp. 157–168; (with Tarja Ketola and Tuomas Räsänen) “The Long History of Unsustainability: Inter-Species Relations since the 1850s, in: Karl Johan Bonnedahl and Pasi Heikkurinen (eds), Strongly Sustainable Societies. Organising Human Activities on a Hot and Full Earth, London and New York: Routledge, 2018, pp. 23–39; (ed. with Tuomas Räsänen) Shared Lives of Humans and Animals. Animal Agency in the Global North, London and New York: Routledge, 2017; “Spectacles of Modern Companionship. Men, Dogs and Early Finnish Dog Shows”, in: Räsänen and Syrjämaa (eds.), Shared Lives, pp. 63–77; “At Intersections of Technology and a Modern Mass Medium. The Engineer Robert Runeberg and Exhibitions, 1867–1900”, Scandinavian Journal of History 1 (2017), pp. 71–95. Holger Weiss, Professor of General History at Åbo Akademi University, Finland, and Guest Professor of History at Dalarna University, Sweden, [email protected]. His research focuses on global and Atlantic History, West African Environmental History, and Islamic Studies (with a special focus on Islam in Ghana). Recent publications: Framing a Radical African Atlantic: African American Agency, West African Intellectuals and the International Trade Union of Negro Workers, Leiden: Brill, 2014; Slavhandel och slaveri under svensk agg: Koloniala drömmar och verklighet i Afrika och Karibien 1770–1847 [Slavery and Slave Trade under the Swedish Flag: Colonial Dreams and Reality in Africa and the Caribbean 1770–1847], Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2016; För kampen internationellt! Transportarbetarnas globala kampinternational och dess verksamhet i Nordeuropa under 1930-talet [For International Struggle! The Global Fighting Interrnational of Transport Workers and its Activities in Northern
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Europe during the 1930s], Työväen perinteen ja historian tutkimuksen seura/The Finnish Society for Labour History, Helsinki 2019. Mats Wickström, Postdoctoral Researcher in Minority Studies at Åbo Akademi University, Finland, [email protected]. His research interests are minorities and multiculturalism in Nordic history, nationalism, and the intersections of class and ethnicity. Recent publications: (with Jonas Ahlskog and Matias Kaihovirta) “Minority nationalism and visions of socialist unity in the post-war Finnish labour movement, 1944–1949”, Labor History, published online 22 September 2019; (with Matias Kaihovirta) “An anti-fascist minority? Swedish-speaking Finnish responses to fascism”, in: Kasper Braskén, Nigel Copsey, and Johan A Lundin (eds.), AntiFascism in the Nordic Countries: New Perspectives, Comparisons and Transnational Connections, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019, pp. 55–71; “Nordic brothers before strange others: pan-national boundary making in the post-war naturalization policies of the Nordic countries”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 40 (2017) 4, pp. 675–693. Kaarle Wirta, Postdoctoral Researcher, Tampere University, Finland, Faculty of Social Sciences/History, [email protected]. Recent publications: “Rediscovering Agency in the Atlantic: A Biographical Approach Linking Entrepreneurial Spirit and Overseas Companies”, in: Hans Renders, Binne de Haan, and Jonne Harmsma (eds), The Biographical Turn Lives in History, New York: Routledge, 2016, pp. 118–129.
Index aboriginal people 331, 332 see also Australia Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society (ARPS) 208 Abraham, Emmanuel 325 Academic Karelia Society (AKS) 366, 368 Accra 11, 12, 133, 138, 140–142, 144, 145, 207, 213–215, 217, 238, 451, 453, 459, 460, 462–465, 469, 471 Adamson, Carol 319 Adelman, Jeremy 1, 2, 4 Adwa (Ethiopia) 318, 322 Africa 13, 87, 117, 120, 124, 127, 128, 130–132, 134, 135, 151, 152, 162, 169, 193, 194 – British West Africa 204–206, 208, 210, 215, 238, 239, 243, 245, 247, 251, 452, 453, 469, 471 – Horn of Africa 73, 81 – North Africa 180–182 see also Morocco – West Africa 11, 12, 36–39, 49, 120–126, 133, 138–140, 143, 171, 203, 206, 214, 215, 217, 219, 228, 232, 236–239, 242, 244, 245, 251, 252, 452–454, 458, 459, 465, 469–471 see also Gold Coast and Ghana African blacksmiths 139–143, 145 African hinterland 120, 123, 124, 138, 139, 144, 215, 239, 243 African Progress Union 217 Africanization movements 203, 210, 219, 224, 229 Africanness 219 Afro-Asian Conference, Bandung (1955) 284 Agassiz, Louis 221 Aggrey, James E. K. 215, 224 Ahlberg, Hakon 407 Åhrén, Uno 406 Åkerberg, Harald 327 Akita, Jeremias Mama 468, 470 Alexandra, Princess of Wales 353 Algeria 310, 315,316 Algiers 177, 381 Alhonen, Antero 359 Alhonen, Pentii 359 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670714-021
Ali, Dusé Mohamed 217 allopathy 98, 104, 109, 110, 115, 116 see also naturopathy Alströmer, Jonas 53, 54, 159, 166,167 Altrutz, Sidney 104 American School of Osteopathy 103 see also osteopathy 100, 101, 103, 104, 109 Ames, Eric 392 Amsterdam 19, 24, 28, 32–35, 38, 39, 50, 51, 59, 63, 65, 118, 147, 150, 152, 158, 168, 171 Anderson, Benedict 428 Angerstein, Reinhold R. 41 Annorkwei II, Nene 468, 471 Anson, William 261 Antell, Herman Frithiolf 444 Anthropocene 362, 378 anti-colonialism 12, 13, 210, 218, 219, 224, 283–299, 304, 310, 312–314, 315, 316, 322, 323, 458, 472 anti-colonial narratives 459, 467, 471 Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society (ASAPS) 217–219 Antwerp 17, 31 Apaloo, Modesto Kwasi 469 Appiah, Kwame Anthony 220, 221 Arfwedson, Abraham 158 Argentina 359, 364, 369–374, 376 Arkhangelsk 33, 34 Armah, Ayi Kwei 212 Armenia 286, 302, 303, 307, 311 Armenian Revolutionary Federation 302 Arne, Ture J. 299, 308, 310 Aronsson, Peter 427 Arrowsmith, John 339–343, 346, 347 Asante (Ashanti) 140, 239, 241, 243, 248, 453, 457, 461, 464, 466, 471 see also Voltaic Basin Asante Empire 240, 241 Asia 50, 74, 85, 87, 91, 93, 121, 151, 209, 216, 231, 234, 238, 265, 287, 289, 299, 301, 306, 313, 316, 319, 432, 442, 448 – Central 235 – South 112
480
Index
– Southeast 73 Hanson, John H. 238 Aslanian, Sebouh David 2 Aspelin, Eliel 441–443 Aspelin, Johan Reinhold 442, 443 Assmann, Aleida 449 Åstrand, Johan Julius 84, 86 Atkinson, William Walker (Yogi Ramacharaka) 112 Atlantic Ocean 49, 96, 98, 152, 212, 224, 231, 370 – Black Atlantic 225 Atlantic world 11, 12, 37, 77, 81, 91 Atlantic world economy 12, 149, 231, 234 Attoh-Ahuma, Samuel Richard Brew 215, 218, 222, 224 Auer, Kyösti Fabian 363 Auer, Väinö 13, 359–378 Australia 13, 331–333, 431, 444 – Alexandra Land 350, 353–357 – New South Wales 333, 334, 338, 341–343, 346, 350, 351, 353, 354 – Northern Territory 333, 350, 351, 353–358 – Queensland 333, 335, 338, 341, 350–355 – South Australia 334, 335, 338, 343, 346, 350, 353–355 – Victoria 338, 350, 354, 355 – Western Australia 338, 346, 352–354 Austria 106, 288, 336, 381 Austro-Hungary 267, 269, 390 Avesta 150, 155–157, 159, 170, 172 Awoonor-Renner, Bankole 459 Backlund, Helge 371 Backlund, Sven 323 Baers, Henry 37 Baers, Martin 37 Baglo, Catherine 392 Baines, Arthur E. 104 Bair, Jennifer 149 Balme, David Mowbray 465, 468 Balmer, William Turner 456 Baltic Sea 20, 24, 25, 31–33, 51, 66, 87, 154 Bamba, Yusuf 243 Banks, Kenneth J. 152 Bannerjea, Devendra Nath 217 Bannerjea, Hilda Margaret 217
Bannerman, Edmund 211, 218 Baron-Holmes, Alexander 457 Barooah, Nirode K. 292 Bassar (Togo), iron production 125, 139, 141, 142, 144 Beach, Adam R. 194 Berch, Anders 48, 49 Berg, Marcus 11, 178–202 Berg, Maxine 47 Berge, Lars 13 Bergström, Maalin 95, 109 big history 359–362, 365, 378 Bilbao 152 biomedicine 95–98, 103, 110, 115, 116 Birmingham 46, 47, 53 Bismarck, Otto von 267 Blyden, Edward Wilmot 207, 217, 222, 223, 229 see also pan-Africanism Bolshevik-Left Socialist Revolutionaries 258, 280–282 see also Socialist Revolutionary Party under Russia Bolsheviks 273, 281, 288, 296–298, 304, 311–313 Bonow, Mauritz 408, 409, 414, 415, 417, 419, 420, 423 Bordeaux 59, 160, 161, 166, 170 Bosworth Smith, Reginald 205 Bourdieu, Pierre 205, 206, 219, 229 Bowen, George 350 Boysen, Didrich 127, 128, 131–133, 135, 137 Brandon, Pepijn 117, 118 Brändström, Elsa 418 Branting, Hjalmar 285, 302–304, 418 Braudel, Fernand 143, 151 Braunholtz, Hermann Justus 453, 454 Brazil 259 – coffe from 74, 84 – sugar from 17, 32, 170 Breitholtz, Claës Didrik von 50 Bremen and Verden, bishopric 21 Bremer, Gerhard 37 Brenner, Neil 8, 9 Brest 166 Brisbane 333 Britain 46, 47, 51, 67, 72, 74, 75, 78, 117, 162, 206, 210, 211, 212, 214–217, 219–221, 225, 226, 228, 321, 338, 340,
Index
342, 343, 346, 348, 425, 438, 452, 458, 461, 470, 471 – African associations 12, 217, 228 see also under sojourners British Empire 203, 211, 216, 219, 222, 223, 225, 267, 287, 299, 310, 332, 438 British Museum 215, 217, 426, 438, 440, 453, 465, 469 Brückner, Martin 345 Brussels 302 – First International Congress Against Colonialism and Imperialism (1927) 284 – World Exhibition (1935) 404–406 Bsumek, Erika Marie 365 Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich 281 Bülow, Bernhard von 263 Burawoy, Michael 7 Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) 398 Burns, Alan 451, 452 Caldenius, Carl 371 Cambridge University 455 Campbell, Courtney 8 Campbell, Tony 351 Canada 152, 166, 320, 364, 366, 376, 390 Cantor, Geoffrey 384 Cape Coast 133, 208, 212, 214–216, 456 see also Gold Coast – Castle 141, 142, 144 see also Carolusborg under trade castles Caribbean 50, 67, 73, 117, 126–128, 132, 162, 169, 171, 173 – colonies 151 – plantations 38, 49, 120 Carlborg, Harald 405, 407 Casely Hayford, Adelaide Smith 212, 216 Casely Hayford, Joseph Ephraim 206, 208, 212, 218, 226, 227, 229 Casement, Roger 296 Casey, Edward S. 6 Catholic League 23 Caucasus 269, 299, 308–310 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 362 Chase-Levenson, Alexander 383 Chatterton-Hill, George 301
481
Chattophadyaya, Virendranath (Chatto) 284, 287, 292, 296, 299, 300, 303, 304, 306, 308, 310, 311 Chernov, Victor Mikhailovich 279, 281 Chicago 107, 108, 381, 394, 395 Childs, Marquis 14, 397–399, 409–414, 422, 423 Chile 370 China 50, 207, 209, 259, 264, 311, 381, 390, 432 – tea from 7, 80 Christian IV, King 18, 20, 21, 23–25, 28, 31, 34, 35, 40 Christiansborg (Accra) see under trade castles Civil War – Finnish 98, 99, 410 – Russian 282 – Salaga 233, 242 – Spanish 318, 319, 328, 400 Clason, John 53, 54 Clifford, James 446 coffee production 11, 73, 74, 82–85 coffee surrogates 11, 76–79, 81, 87–93 coffee 11, 73–93 – bans on coffee consumption 75 Cold War 259, 316, 317, 320, 372 Colley, Linda 183 Collings, Herbert Dennis 461, 465, 468 Colonial Office (Britain) 214, 224, 334, 339, 341, 342, 345, 346 350, 353, 452–454, 459 colonial space 203, 210, 232, 234, 239 colonial trade see under trade colonialism 13, 93, 204, 218, 219, 229, 231, 283, 287, 291, 309, 312, 316, 332, 427, 451 – settler 333 colonies 30, 38, 88, 151, 173, 199, 224, 225, 231, 292, 294, 305, 306, 307, 309, 313, 323, 332, 438, 439, 459 – Australian 333–336, 338, 342, 345, 346, 350–352, 357 – British 83, 206, 215, 223, 331, 338–340, 452, 453, 457 – Dutch 74, 83
482
Index
– French 74, 83, 152, 165, 166, 169, 170, 400 – Portuguese 74, 83, 391 – Spanish 166 colonization 12, 204, 205, 208, 210, 293, 296, 316, 321, 326, 334, 345, 349, 392, 393 Comaroff, John 212 Communist International (Comintern) 288, 321 commodity chain(s) 11, 40, 147, 149, 150, 154–159, 172–174, 183, 361 Commonwealth of Australia (1901) 334, 353, 358 communism 14, 288, 321, 399, 410, 422 connectivity 203, 294–296, 384 Conrad, Sebastian 2, 4 contact zones 45, 46, 52, 59, 69, 71, 294, 295 continental blockade 77 Convention People’s Party see under Ghana Cook, James 331 Copenhagen 11, 23, 37, 38, 117, 126–132, 135, 141, 144, 145, 194, 298 copper trade see under trade Copper, Alix 87 copyright legislation 339 Cork 152 Cornell, Elias 402 Cornell, Sarah S. 351 Coutinho, Francisco 32 Coymans, Balthasar 35 Coymans, Jan 35 Crile, George W. 104 Crimean War (1853–1856) 339 Crinson, Mark 450, 469 Crummel, Alexander 222 culture 74, 116, 179, 183, 191, 201, 202, 205, 208, 214, 218, 223, 229, 231, 232, 295, 309, 362, 363, 368, 381, 383, 384, 387, 407, 412, 416, 417, 421, 422, 427, 432, 439, 442 – foreign, other 14, 390, 391, 393, 394, 396, 428, 429, 430, 434, 437, 438, 440, 446, 447 – material 435, 436, 440, 445, 448 – physical 97, 101, 104, 105, 107 – West African 449, 452, 455, 461, 463, 470 Czechoslovakia 259, 409
Dan, Fedor Il’ich 275 Danish West India and Guinea Company (Vestindisk-Guineisk Kompagni) 38, 117, 126, 127, 134, 138, 139, 144 Danquah, Joseph Kwame Kyeretwie Boakye 456, 458, 468 Danzig 30, 67, 147, 148, 154, 162, 163, 173 Dar al-Islam (“Land of Islam”) 234–237, 239, 247 Day, Matthew 182 de Barros, Philip 139–141 de Certeau, Michel 389 De Laval, Carl Gustav Patrik 418 de Roy, Gabriel 23, 30, 31 Decorse, Christopher 133 Delft 76 Denikin, Anton Ivanovich 282 Denmark 20–23, 25, 30, 34–40, 57, 75, 106, 117, 125, 126, 131, 133, 135, 148, 154, 288, 298, 336, 381, 390, 439, 442 Denmark-Norway, kingdom 20, 21, 183, 185, 194, 201 diaspora 31, 219, 299 Diderich, Lars 11, 177–202 Diercks, Peter 37 Dietze, Antje 9 Dínís, Álvaro 23, 31, 40 Dirlik, Arif 1 Dobrée, Thomas 169 Doortmont, Michel R. 212 Dowuona-Hammond, Alfred Jonas 467 Drayton, Richard 4 Drew, William 381, 383 Duchess of Kent see Katharine Duguit, Léon 262, 263, 265, 278 Duma see under Russia Dumett, Raymond E. 220 Dutch Republic 23, 24, 28, 30, 32, 35, 75, 78 Dutch-Scandinavian Committee 283, 285–287, 295, 297, 300–314 East India Company, Dutch (Vereenigde OostIndische Compagnie, VOC) 36, 118 East India Company, Swedish (Svenska Ostindiska Companiet, SOIC) 50 East Indies 74, 151, 191 Eastern Karelia 359, 366–368
Index
Edinburgh 350, 357 Edusei, Krobo 467 Egypt 83, 222, 286, 287, 294, 296, 297, 301, 303, 304, 306, 308, 310, 323, 381, 461 Ehrenborg, Anna 90 Eklöf, Motzi 109 Elbe river 21–23, 25, 26, 30, 32–35, 40 Elgenius, Gabriella 427 Elliot Commission 452 Eltis, David 121, 122 Engberg, Eric 53–55, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 69 England 41, 53, 57, 67, 69, 86, 104, 106, 112, 147–149, 159, 173, 262, 267, 269, 285, 305, 311, 323, 381, 457 Engström, Olof 156, 172 Engzell, Gösta 407 enslavement 120, 177, 202 – space of 11, 178, 183, 184, 186 Enwonwu, Ben 453, 454, 472 Ephson, Isaac 224 Epple, Angelika 3, 7 Erasmus, Jacob 33 Ervast, Pekka 95 Erzuah, John Bogolo 467, 468 Eskilstuna 46, 69 Estonia 98, 99, 286, 298, 367, 430, 442 Ethington, Philip J. 6 Ethiopia 13, 316–328 ethnography 392, 431, 433, 439, 441–447, 453 Etholén, Arid Adolf 434 Eurafricans 12, 203–230 see also Gold Coast and sojourners eurocentrism 1, 5, 214, 231, 232, 301 Europe – Central 17, 87, 114, 364 –Northern 23, 25, 29–32, 73, 145 India Committee (European Central Committee of Indian Nationalists) 284, 292, 295, 296, 297–300, 303, 304, 306, 311, 312 see also Chatto European expansion 87, 92, 178, 248, 320, 325, 332 Evans, Chris 11, 45, 47, 151 Everill, Bronwen 123, 124
483
Fagerström, Katrin 402 Falck, Daniel 54 Falun 155, 156, 172 Falun Copper Works, Mine 147, 150, 153–158, 161, 172, 174 Farid Bey, Mohammed 297, 303, 308, 310 Faroe Islands 22 fascism 13, 14, 316, 321, 323, 326–328, 399, 400, 410, 422 Fechner, Gustav Theodor 104 Fennoscandia 367, 369 Ferdinand III, Emperor 18 Ferris, Kate 6 Fewster, Derek 431 Fez 11, 178, 179, 181, 183, 185–189, 192–197, 199–201 Fillafer, Franz 1–3 Finland 13, 14, 50, 95, 96–102, 104–107, 109–111, 113–116, 169, 197, 263, 270, 286, 288, 299, 309, 317, 336, 359–361, 363, 364–376, 387, 410, 415–448 see also Greater Finland – National Board of Health 100, 115, 116 – National Museum 14, 415–448 – Russification 430 Finnish Winter War (1939–1940) 364, 367 Finnmark 34, 367 Finno-Ugrian scholarship 442, 445 Fitzroy, Charles 334, 341 Flanders 17, 286 Fleming, Erik 408 Fogelman, Arianna 450, 451 Foliard, Daniel 338 Foncin, Pierre 356 France 11, 46, 57, 65, 67, 74, 75, 86, 106, 117, 147, 148, 150, 152, 154, 155, 159–168, 170, 172, 174, 270, 278, 292, 305, 311, 321, 321, 336, 343, 346, 355, 356, 381, 387, 400–402, 404, 425, 438 Frederick I, King 50 Frederick III, King 20 28, 35, 37 Free Masons 269, 272 French Revolution 159, 165, 166 Friends of Irish Freedom 296–298, 301 Fusaro, Maria 26, 39
484
Index
Gaffney, Thomas St. John 296, 301, 302 Gauffin, Axel 405, 13 Gaurav, Desai 212 Geneva 322, 325, 326 geographical societies 329 – Geographical Society of Finland 368, 373 – Royal Geographical Society 339, 340, 346, 349, 353 – Société de Geographie 343 Ger’e, Vladimir Ivanovich Gereffi, Gary 149 German Empire 263, 267, 439 Germany 46, 53, 67, 96, 101, 104, 106, 112, 114, 117, 154, 209, 212, 259, 270, 287, 298, 301, 302, 313, 317, 319, 321, 323, 336, 346, 359, 381, 400, 404, 422, 438, 439 – Northern Germany 21, 22, 31 Gessen, Vladimir Matveevich 257, 258, 265, 266, 275, 277–279 Ghana 139, 211, 229, 230, 232 see also Gold Coast – Convention People’s Party (CPP) 450, 460, 461, 466–468, 470, 472 – Monuments and Relics Commission 464, 467 – National Museum 14, 449–472 Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB) 464, 468, 471 Gieselbrecht, Frantz 37 Gilbert, James 383 Gillis, John R. 449 Gladstone, William 222, 333, 334 Glenn Penny, H. 439 global historians 1–6, 360, 361, 378 global history 1–5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 78, 203, 359, 361 – scales of study 359–361 global scale 3, 357, 359, 363, 371, 376–378 globalization 2, 3, 5–7, 9, 11, 76, 92, 95, 98, 178, 201, 231, 316, 360, 398 glocalization 5, 6 Glückstadt, Fortunate City 10, 17–40 – Glückstadt Company 37, 38 – Portuguese Sephardim 18, 23, 28, 29, 31, 33, 38–40 Glücksburg, fort 21
Gøbel, Erik 126, 128, 132 Gobineau, Arthur 220, 221 Gold Coast 12, 35, 127, 119, 120, 122, 125–128, 131–135, 203–230, 238, 239, 449, 451, 453–471 see also African blacksmiths; Africanization movements; Bassar iron production; sojourners; trade castles – Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society (ARPS) 208, 215 – Bond of 1844 458, 471 – Guggisberg Constitution (1924) 229 – Wesleyan Mfantsipim School 207, 208, 456 – United Gold Coast Convention (1947) 456 – University College 453–455, 462, 463, 465–468 Gold Coast Students’ Union 217 Gothenburg 20, 41, 47, 50, 51, 172, 406 Grandi, Dino 318 Granqvist, Raoul 315 Granroth, Elias 81 Grass, Martin 291, 292 Great Britain 292, 324, 335, 336, 338, 390, 409 Great Nordic War (1700–1721) 147 Greater Finland 359, 366–369, 374 Greenland 34 Gregory, Augustus C. 334, 342, 343 Grönhagen, Yrjö 368 Grünewald, Fritz 104 Guadeloupe 170–172 Guinea 35, 37–39, 123, 124, 191, 239 Gummerus, Herman 299, 308, 309 Gusum see under knife works Guzmán, Gaspar de, Count Duke of Olivares 24, 25, 31 Gyllenhaal, Hans Reinhold 49 Habsburg Empire 269, 270 Habsburgs, Spanish 17, 23, 25, 30, 32, 33 Haile Selassie, Emperor 317, 318, 324, 325, 328 see also Ras Tafari Makonnen hajj 251, 252 Hald, Edward 406 Hall, Petter 61 Halldin Norberg, Viveca 318–320 Halle, Thore G. 371
Index
Hallenius, Johan 51, 61, 62, 66 Hamburg 17–19, 26, 29, 30, 33, 35, 37, 38, 40, 50, 59, 158, 171 Harvey, David 8, 14, 399 Harvey, Penelope 403 Hatschek, Julius 261 Hat Party 43, 69 Hausa 233, 234, 239, 240, 245, 248–250 – scholars 241–243 see also Muslim scholars Hausen, Hans 371 Hawthorne, Walter 124, 125 Hayford, Ernest 218 Hayford, Mark 216, 218 healing, medical systems 11, 95–98, 100–104, 106–109, 111–116 Heckscher, Eli 151, 153 Hedenblad, Per 158 Heikel, Axel Olai 444 Hellenes, Andreas Mørkved 402 Helsinki 20, 108, 363, 425, 430, 431, 434, 447 – Imperial Alexander University, University of Helsinki) 99, 108, 111, 112, 363–366, 368, 372, 433 Henriques, Moses Joshua 38, 39 Hernæs, Per 126 Herod, Andrew 5, 6 Hettula, Patrik 12 Hildebrand, Karl-Gustaf 119, 164 Hiltunen, Alma 107–109 Himalayan Hunza people 113 history from below 2 Hodacs, Hanna 11, 397 Holland 40, 67, 117, 132, 148, 154, 159, 162, 163, 171, 173, 312, 336 Hollsten, Laura 13 Hopkins, Anthony 5, 149 Horniman Museum and Gardens 465 Horton, James Africanus 213 Houltz, Anders 403 Hove, Jon Olav 14 Hoved, Peder 134, 138 Howard, Esme 307 Hughes, Sarah A. 438 Hultman, Hans 169 Hunt, Lynn 5
485
Hutchison, Ragnhild 151 Huxley, Julian 452, 453 Huysmans, Camille 285 hydrotherapy, water cure 95, 101, 103, 108 Iberian Inquisition 18 Iberian Peninsula 24, 25, 30–33, 35 Ibn Khaldûn 193 Iceland 22, 34, 35 Ile Bourbon (La Réunion) 83 Imam Umar, Alhaji Umar (Umaru/Imoru) 233, 234, 238, 242–244, 247–250 imitation 5, 44, 46–49, 51, 52, 57, 61, 63, 64, 66, 69, 70–72, 76 imperialism 12, 13, 181, 215, 231, 237, 238, 252, 283, 287, 291, 301, 304, 305, 306, 309, 312, 313, 321, 427, 460 independence, national 286, 287, 288, 290, 292, 298, 302, 303, 304, 308, 310, 312 India 209, 217, 231, 232, 235, 238, 284, 286, 287, 290, 292, 296, 298, 299, 301, 303, 304, 306, 308–313, 322, 381 industrialization 105, 411, 413, 419 Inikori, Joseph 122, 125 interconnectedness, interconnected world 1, 2, 3, 5, 19, 63, 172, 290 International Socialist Bureau (ISB) 284–286, 288, 297, 298 see also Zimmerwald movement Ipsen, Pernille 123, 126 Islam 183, 190, 192, 194, 198–202, 223, 234–236, 241, 242, 245, 291, 298, 303, 307–309 Islamic law 194, 234, 240, 241 Israel, Jonathan I. 31 Italo-Ethiopian War (1935/36) 315, 316 see also Ethiopia and Italy Italy 259, 292, 316–322, 324, 326, 336, 381, 390, 400 Izmir 67 Jachia, Samuel 23 James, Cyril Lionel Robert 217 Jansson, Måns 10, 11 Japan 207–210, 216, 219, 276, 287, 298, 321, 322, 326, 381, 390, 391, 393, 444 Java coffee 74, 82, 83, 85, 86
486
Index
Jellinek, Georg 261, 266 Jenkins, Raymond 206, 211–215, 217–219, 2222, 228 Jerram, Leif 8, 9 Jessop, Bob 8, 9, 360 Jews see under Glückstadt and Morocco Johnston, Sir Harry 218 Jones, Martin 8 Jonsson, Samuel 156 Joris, Edward 302 Jos Museum (Nigeria) 464 Jürgensen Thomsen, Christian 442 Jutikkala, Eino 359, 368 Kakuzō, Okakura 209 Kalm, Hans 11, 97–116 see also naturopathy Kalm, Pehr 81, 82, 85, 89 Kalmia 100–102, 105, 107, 110, 112, 113–116 Kananoja, Kalle 11 Karlsson, Åsa 179 Karp, Ivan 428 Katharine, Duchess of Kent 449 Kaukonen, Emil 11 Kellogg, John Harvey 106 Kellogg-Briand Pact 288, 323 Kenyatta, Jomo 316 Ketscher, Jacob Christopher 57 Killner, Walter J. 104 Kimble, David 219, 225, 226 Klein, Herbert 152 Kloß, Sinah Theres 4 Kneipp, Sebastian 101 Knell, Simon 427 knife works, cutlery making 47, 48, 53, 55, 61, 63, 66, 67, 69 – Gusum 41, 61–70, 157, 166 – Tunafors 41, 56, 61, 62, 64–66 Knuniants, Bogdan Mirzadzanovich 278 Kokoshkin, Fedor Fedorovich 278 Koksal, Ayse H. 427 Königsberg 148 Könsberg, Carl Magnus 83 Koselleck, Reinhart 7 Kotliarevskii, Sergei Andreevich 262, 277, 279 Kovalevskii, Maksim Maksimovich 261 Koivunen, Leila 14 Kratz, Corinne A. 429, 438
Kriger, Colleen 123–126, 140, 141 Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich 271, 272 Krupp 386 Kufuor, John Osei 461, 464–468, 472 Kulisher, Aleksandr Mikhailovich 279 Kylhammar, Martin 397 La Rochelle 159, 162, 166, 170 Labbé, Edmond 403 labour movements 291, 323, 324 Lagerquist, Marshall 42, 51, 59 Lapland 364, 371 Lasdun, Denys 469 Latham, Alan 6 Latin America, coffee from 73, 74, 75, 84, 87 Laursen, Ole Birk 286, 291, 292 Lawrence, Arnold Walter 455, 456, 461, 463–468 League of Nations 315, 317, 319–321, 323, 325–328 League of Oppressed Peoples in Russia 299 Lefebvre, Henri 8 Lehnberg, Carl 57 Leichhardt, Ludwig 334 Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich 264, 265, 273, 274, 275, 309, 312 Leningrad 367 Léon, Paul 404 Levant 30, 51, 65, 67, 148, 152 – Levantine coffee 81, 83, 85, 90 Liber, Mikhail Isaakovich 275 Lind, Sven Ivar 409 Lindhagen, Carl 288, 289, 299, 302, 303, 307–309, 322 Lindlahr, Henry 106, 109 Linkola, Kaarlo 368 Linnaeus, Carolus (Carl von Linné) 78, 79, 81, 82, 88, 89, 418 Liprandi, Aleksandr Petrovich 268–271 Lisbon 32, 33 Livorno 26–28, 39, 67, 68 London 12, 19, 35, 41, 50, 51, 53, 54, 60, 63, 143, 207, 210, 212–220, 226, 228, 272, 302, 304, 325, 334, 341, 342, 345, 346, 349, 350, 357, 392, 394, 451, 452, 453, 459, 461, 470, 471
Index
– Great Exhibition, Crystal Palace (1851) 381, 383, 385, 394 Long, Pamela 46 Lopes Coutinho, Gonçalo 32, 33 Louisiana 152 Lovelock, James 377 Low Countries 24, 25, 35, 36, 74 Lowell, Abbott Lawrence 261 Lower Saxony 21, 23 Lübeck 30, 67, 128, 147, 148, 154, 161, 163, 168, 171, 173 Lundborg, Herman 415 Lundin, Per 408 Luonnonmaa, Sampsa 95 Lust, Benedict 101, 104 Macdonald, Sharon 427, 432 Macfadden, Bernarr 107, 109 Maclean, George 471 Madrid 17 Magerovskii, Dmitrii Aleksandrovich 276, 280, 281 Mahdi 246 Mahdists 247, 251 Mahdist movements 245–247 Maister, William 60, 63 Makonnen, Ras Tafari 317, 327 Malineus, Petter 62 Malte-Brun, Victor Adolphe 343 Mandela, Nelson 315 Månsson, Fabian 325 mapping 13, 79, 294–296, 298, 333, 335, 336, 339, 343, 349, 357, 358, 368, 371, 376, 415 mapmakers 13, 331–358 Marchant, Jacob 35 Markov, Nikolai Evgen’evich 271 Marridon, Eduard 60 Marseille 67, 160, 166, 168, 169, 177, 201 Marselis, Gabriel 34, 37, 40 Martens, Vibe Maria 126 Martinique – coffee from 82–84 – sugar from 170 Martov, Iulii Osipovich 275 Marx, Karl 271, 300 Massey, Doreen 6, 294
487
Matchabelli, Georg 298 material history 11, 73, 76, 79, 92 McCarrison, Robert 113 McDouall Stuart, John 334, 353 McKenzie, Francine 320 Mecca 191, 233, 234, 251, 253 medicine, Western 95, 96 Medina 234 Mediterranean Sea 27, 32, 35, 51, 66, 67, 148, 154, 159, 201, 392 Meiji Restoration 207–210, 219 see also Japan memory space 13, 449, 450, 468, 472 see also Ghana, National Museum Men’shikov, Mikhail Osipovich 276 Mensah Sarbah, John 208 Mensheviks 275, 279, 281, 288 Merrifield, Ralph 470 metal commodities, metalwares 10, 41, 46, 47, 48, 51–53, 57, 59–61, 65–67, 71, 118, 119, 125, 128, 130, 138, 140 see also metal trade under trade Meyerowitz, Eva L. R. 456 Mfantsipim School see under Gold Coast Middell, Matthias 9, 316, 398 middle class 74, 114, 273 Middle East 73, 81, 82, 85, 182, 234, 235, 299, 394 Mignolo, Walter D. 4 migration 36, 52, 96, 101, 108, 115, 204, 209, 212, 223, 237, 294, 314 Mikkelä, Bror 110–112, 116 Miquelon, Dale 152 Mischlich, Adam 233, 247, 248, 250 mission, mission societies 214, 222, 434, 444 – Basel 206, 214, 217, 457 – Central African-Chad Mission 244 – Finnish Missionary Society 448 – Swedish 319, 324, 327, 328 – Voulet-Chanoine Mission 244 – Wesleyan 206 Mitchell, Thomas L. 343 modernization 5, 231, 253, 276, 317, 370, 371, 404, 423, 470 Monrad, Hans Christian 458 Montenegro 257 Morocco 177–202
488
Index
– Jews 190, 194–198, 202 – ransom economy 178, 183–185, 188, 197, 200 Motadel, David 4 Moucheron, Balthasar de 33 Mudimbe, Valentin Yves 213 Mulay Abdallah, sultan 187–189, 191, 197, 201, 202 Mulay Ismail, sultan 187, 188, 191, 192, 202 Müller, Leos 158 Munich 296, 319 Murchison, Roderick I. 349 Murray, John 340 museums 14, 382, 389, 413, 425–448, 449–472 Musial, Kazimierz 410 Muslim oecumene (ummah), globality 12, 232, 233–238, 252 Muslim preachers 254–247 Muslim scholars 231–253 Mussolini, Benito 318, 321, 322, 327 Myrdal, Gunnar 406, 408, 409, 412, 414 Nantes 150, 160, 166, 168–170, 171 National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA) 208 nationalism 1, 12, 224, 225, 260, 266, 282, 292–294, 307, 322, 359, 376, 388, 390, 426, 437 nation-building 14, 450 nation-state 12, 14, 219, 223, 259, 320, 365, 382, 425, 428, 435 naturopathy 11, 95–116 see also allopathy – American School of 101, 104, 108 Naumann, Katja 9, 316, 398 Nederveen Pieterse, Jan 3 Nerman, Ture 308 Netherlands 161, 162, 390 Neuhof, Wilhelm 90, 91 New Deal 397, 410 New York 99, 101, 103, 298, 350, 357 Nicholas II, Tsar 257, 263, 270 Nietzsche, Friedrich 271 Nieuw Hollandia, New Holland 331, 381 Nigeria 215, 218, 245, 247, 253, 461, 464 – Wesleyan High School, Lagos 206 Nigerian Progress Union 217
Nkrumah, Kwame 215, 230, 316, 459–461, 463, 466, 467 Nol’de, Boris Emmanuilovich 257, 258, 280 Nora, Pierre 449 Nordenskiöld, Otto 371 Norman, Eric 65 Norrköping 55, 62, 63, 67 Norrmalm 53, 57, 64 Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) 451 North Sea 20, 21, 24–26, 31, 39, 154 Norway 20–22, 34, 144, 177, 183, 288, 367, 390 Novgorodtsev, Pavel Ivanovich 262 Nunes da Costa, Jerónimo 33, 40 Nunoo, Richard B. 461 O’Hara Burke, Robert 334 Odelberg, Axel 408 Offermann, Alfred 268 Öhrnbeck, Anders 63 Ojala, Jari 158 Olofsson, Sven 11, 62 Olstein, Diego 5 Olufs, Hark 200 Oporto 32, 33 Osei-Nyame, Kwadwo 212 Osnabrück, bishopric 21 osteopathy 100, 101, 103, 104, 109 Östergötland 41 Osterhammel, Jürgen 9, 395 Ottoman Empire 80, 179, 181, 199, 258, 286, 302, 336 – treatment, massacres of Armenians 286, 302, 303, 307, 311 Ottosen, Otto 89, 90 Paasi, Antti 369 Paasikivi, Juho Kusti 373 Padmore, George 217, 460 Palmblad, Eva 109 Palme, Olof 315, 317 Pan-African Congress (1945) 459 pan-African congresses 284 pan-Africanism 203, 212, 213, 216–219, 222, 228, 461 Paris 161, 302, 303, 350, 356, 357, 381, 384, 444
Index
– International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts (1925) 406 – Women’s Art Exhibition (1937) 402 – World Exhibition (1937) 14, 400–423 – expositions universelles (1867) 386, 388 (1878) 387, 390, 391 (1900) 385, 389, 392, 393 parliamentarism 12, 258–282 Patagonia 13, 359, 361, 364, 366, 369–374, 376, 377 Pellegrino, Ettore Lombardo 268 Pellow, Thomas 200 Pereira, Edgar 10 Perón, Juan 372–374, 376 Pérotin-Dumon, Anne 171 Persia 257, 258, 283, 284, 286, 290, 294, 296, 298, 301, 303, 304, 306, 310, 311, 381, 390 Perthes, Justus 354 Petermann, Augustus 343, 354 Petersson, Fredrik 13 Petrazhitskii, Lev Iosifovich 264 Petrograd 274, 278, 280, 302 Peyron, Edward Wilhelm 406 Phelps, Thomas 182 Philip IV, King 23, 24 Picasso, Pablo 400 Piela, Mikko 359 Pietersen, William Essuman 212 Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) 452 plantation colonies see under colonies Platfues, Joost 133–137 Poijärvi, Arvi 369 Poland 23, 30, 268, 299, 304, 307, 336 Poovey, Mary 118–120, 127 Popular Front, France 398 Portugal 24, 25, 32, 65, 148, 177, 259, 381, 390 Powell, Erica 467 Prescott, Dorothy 341 proto-globalization 11, 178, 201 Prytz, Björn 408 Quencel, Percy D. 371 Qureshi, Sadiah 393 Qvarnström, Georg 62 Qwist Andersson, Bengt 148, 149
489
race 9, 193, 203, 204, 205, 207–209, 217, 219, 221–224, 225, 229, 293, 294, 325, 394, 415 racialism 220–222, 224 racism 13, 181, 204, 220–223, 228, 316, 323 Raffles Museum (Singapore) 461 Raj, Kapil 7, 45, 96, 110 Ramishvili, Isidor Ivanovich 268 Ramsay, Wilhelm 367 Ray, Carina E. 223, 225 Rediker, Marcus 120, 144 Reindorf, Carl Christian 457, 458 Revel, Jacques 6 Reynolds, James, Rev. 224 Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (Northern Rhodesia) 451 Riello, Giorgio 60 Riga 67 Rikli, Arnold 106 Rimmel, Eugène 392 Robertson, Roland 3 Rome 67, 317 Rømer, Ludevig Ferdinand 133–137, 458 Romlid, Christina 14 Roosevelt, Franklin 375, 410, 412 Rosenberg, Emily S. 295 Roth, Johan Friedrich 64 Rothery, Agnes 410 Rouen 51, 65, 152, 160, 161, 165–168, 170, 174 Roy, Manabendra Nath 286 Rozanov, Vassilii Vassil’evich 266–269 Rubenson, Sven 319, 328 Runefelt, Leif 42, 44 Russia 12, 33, 98, 148, 163, 173, 207, 257–282 – All-Russian Constituent Assembly 274, 279, 281, 282 – Constitutional Democratic Party (KD) 262–265, 276, 277 – Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR) 258, 264, 266, 276–282 – Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (SD) 264, 268, 273, 275, 278–280 – State Duma 12, 257, 258, 260, 266, 268, 271, 274, 277, 279 Russian Empire 257, 258, 425, 429, 430, 446
490
Index
Russian Revolution (1905–1907) 257, 260, 266, 270, 274 Russian Revolution (1917) 98, 265, 273, 278, 284, 286, 304, 306, 312 Rydell, Robert 383 Rydén, Göran 11, 45, 46 Ryömä, Hannes 100 Ryti, Risto 368 Sablin, Ivan 12 Sachs, Josef 406, 412 Saint Barthélemy 75, 148 Saint Petersburg 67, 387 Saint-Domingue 170 Sandell, Richard 429, 437, 438 Sandler, Rickard 322 São Tomé 17 39 Saunders, Olivia 151 Saxony 23, 76 scales 2, 3, 5–8, 13, 19, 26, 357, 359–378 – global 3, 357, 359, 363, 371, 376–378 – spatial 9, 13, 359, 360, 361, 363, 378 Scheel, John 101 Scheel, Sophie 101 Schleswig-Holstein 18, 20, 22, 23, 29, 31–33, 39, 40 Schlögel, Karl 7, 295 Schmals, Jacob 55, 56 Schnack, Johan Erland 55, 57–70 Schöffel, Josef 268, 271 Schröder, Samuel 41, 43, 44, 46, 51, 54–67, 69, 70, 72 Schulte, R. W. 104 Schürer, Josef 58–60, 65 Scott, Robert 459 Seine river 160, 400, 409, 420 Sekyi, William Esuman-Gwira (Kobina Sekyi) 207, 210, 212, 218, 225–229 Sellström, Tor 315 Senegal 244 Setúbal 32 Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) 162–164, 166, 173 Seville 34 Shatskii, Boris Evgen’evich 279 Shaw, Charles Thurstan 451 Sheffield 46, 47, 53
Sheller, Mimi 384, 385, 396 Sherman, Daniel J. 428 Shimada, Ryuto 151 Shumway, Rebecca 122, 123 Siberia 282, 392, 442 Sierra Leone 191, 212, 213, 215, 216 – Fourah Bay College, Freetown 206 Silander, Johan 82 Sirelius, Uuno Taavi 444 Sköld, Otte 405, 406 Skottberg, Carl 371 Skurnik, Johanna 13 Skvortsov-Stepanov, Ivan Ivanovich 281 slave trade, transatlantic 11, 119–125, 127, 132, 137, 139, 144, 145, 150, 166, 167, 169, 171, 173, 183, 248, 251, 458, 471 slaves 11, 38, 119, 121–123, 127, 128, 131, 132, 134–137, 138, 142, 144, 145, 152, 153, 166, 171, 178, 179, 183, 184, 86, 188, 191, 192, 194, 196, 197, 247–248 Småland 55 Smallwood, Stephanie 119, 120, 123, 144 Smith, Pamela 45, 46 Socialist International 285, 301, 305 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) 348 Söderberg, Viktor 308 Sohlman, Ragnar 406 Soja, Edward 8 sojourners, Gold Coast/West African 12, 13, 203–205, 210, 211, 215–219, 221–224, 226–228 Sokolov, Konstantin Nikolaevich 263–265, 280, 282 Sokoto Caliphate 239, 242, 244, 245, 251 Solingen 53 Solomon, Samuel Richard Brew 215, 221, 222, 224, 227 see also Attoh-Ahuma 215, 218, 222, 224 Soviet Russia 281, 312 Soviet Union 259, 282, 317, 321, 323, 364, 366, 367, 400, 404, 422 Spain 23–25, 30–32, 148, 259, 267, 336, 381, 390, 400 Spanish Netherlands 31, 32, 36 see also Low Countries Sparks, Randy 123
Index
Spary, Emma 80 spatial turn 6 spatiality 8–10, 295 Speer, Albert 401 Sri Lanka 74 St Barthélemy 75, 148 Stadius, Peter 409 Stanford, Edward 349 Stavenow, Åke 405, 406 Steensgard, Niels 28, 29 Steffen, Anka 152 Still, Andrew Taylor 103 Stjernstedt, Marika 303 Stockholm 10, 13, 41, 42, 44, 47, 48, 50–55, 57, 59–67, 69, 70, 71, 75, 88, 92, 128, 150, 153, 154, 158, 165, 169, 170–173, 178, 283–314, 324, 326, 327, 402 – as anti-colonial space 284, 290–298, 312, 313 – Viktoria Hall congress on Islam 289, 307–310, 312 Stockholm Exhibition (1930) 410, 412, 423 Stockholm Peace Committee (1916) 288, 302, 307, 308, 310 Stockholm Peace Conference (1917) 13, 283–293, 301, 302, 304–306 see also Zimmerwald conferences Stolberg (Harz) 166 Stroeble Lust, Louisa 101 Ström, Fredrik 285, 297 Ström, Johan 67 Struck, Bernhard 6 subalternity 12, 259, 260, 266, 272, 274, 275 substitution, substitutes 42, 76, 78, 79, 88 – import substitution 66, 74, 76, 77 Suez Canal 386 sugar revolution 150 Sumner, William Graham 222 Sun Yat-sen 265 Surinam, coffee from 82, 83 Swab, Anton von 157 Sweden 11, 13 – Cooperative Union (KF) 408, 419, 423 – public opinion 316, 318–324, 326–328 – Royal Academy of Sciences 82, 149 – Trade Union Confederation (LO) 419 Swedish consuls 65, 67, 158, 161, 162, 168
491
Swedish-Ethiopian relations 318, 319 – Peace and Friendship Treaty (1935) 317 – solidarity with Ethiopia 13, 316, 317, 319 Swedish Navigation Act (1724) 147 Switzerland 106, 280, 284, 286, 288, 336, 339, 390 Sybrand Unger, Willem 159 Synnerberg, L. N. 83, 84 Syrjämaa, Taina 13 Täklä-Hawaryat 325, 327 Tallgren, Aarne Michaël 447 Tambor, Molly 320 Taqizadeh, Sayyed Hasan 283, 284, 301, 303 taste 11, 41, 72, 78, 80, 81, 87, 88, 205, 206, 213, 219, 223, 228, 229, 384, 391 – of coffee 11, 79, 83, 85, 89–93 see also coffee – of the surrogates 90–92 Teixeira de Sampaio, Diogo 17, 18, 40 Teixeira, Abraham Senior 18 Tellström, Richard 402 territoriality 13, 333 territorialization 10, 333, 357 – Western territorialization, Australia 13, 331, 333, 356 Thirty Years’ War 20, 21, 23 Thornton, John 121, 122, 124, 125, 131, 140 Tierra del Fuego 364, 366, 370–373, 376, 377 Tikhanovich-Savitskii, Nestor Nikolaevich 273 Tingsten, Herbert 318, 319, 320 Togo 233, 239, 246, 250 Topik, Steven 78 Tornbjer, Charlotte 404 trade – Atlantic trade system 40, 75, 87 – colonial 20, 29, 40, 172, 173 – Danish Atlantic, overseas trade 30, 37–39, 117–145, 159 – French Atlantic trade 11, 150, 154, 166, 167–173 – Swedish copper trade 11, 148, 150, 151, 153, 155, 159, 162, 164, 167 – Swedish metal trade 10, 11, 41, 43, 45, 47, 51, 55, 69, 72, 145 trade castles, Gold Coast
492
Index
– Carolusborg, Danish (Cape Coast Castle) 37, 141, 142, 144 – Christiansborg Castle, Danish 11, 117, 119, 120, 123, 125–128, 130–138, 141, 145 – Crèvecoeur Castle, Dutch 133, 144 – Fredensborg Castle, Danish 117, 118, 134–137 – James Castle, British 133, 138, 141, 142, 144 trade dictionaries 79, 82–86 trade unions 280, 326, 328, 397, 411, 415, 419, 421 Treaty of Fomenah (1874) 471 Treaty of Lübeck (1629) 23 Treaty of Portsmouth (1905) 207 Treaty of Tartu (1920) 367 Troelstra, Pieter Jelles 285, 303, 305 Trybom, Isac 70, 71 Tsereteli, Iraklii Georgievich 281 Tunafors see under knife works Turkey 57, 381 Turku 169, 363, 433 Tuskegee Conference (International Conference on the Negro, 1912) 216 Union of Students of African Descent 217 Union of the Russian People 270, 272, 273 United Kingdom 221, 223, 335, 458, 464, 465 United Provinces of the Netherlands 24, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36 see also Dutch Republic United States of America 11, 96, 97, 99, 100, 103–105, 107–109, 112, 115, 116, 212, 215, 216, 221, 222, 224, 259, 263, 267, 271, 285, 287, 288, 292, 296, 298, 323, 335, 336, 346, 352, 355, 390, 410 University College London 453 Uoti, Juho (Johannes) 95, 108 Uoti, Kauko 108 Uppsala 117, 322 Uppsala University 48, 371 Urry, John 384, 385, 396 Valmari, Johannes 98 Valmari, Olga Matilda 99 Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) 333, 338 van Diepen, Remco 320 van Hensbroek, Pieter Boele 213
van Nut, Isaac 32 Västmanland 54 Venice 67, 152 Verne, Jules 355, 356 Victoria, Queen 212, 222, 334, 338 Vieira, Pedro Antonio 150, 170 Vienna 275, 381 Vilkuna, Kustaa 359, 368 Virgin, Eric 317 Virtanen, Artturi Ilmari 112 Vishniak, Mark Veniaminovich 266, 279, 280 Vodovozov, Vasilii Vasil’evich 277, 279 Voltaic Basin 12, 232–234, 239–246, 250, 252, 253 Wafd Party 303, 308, 310 Wahid-ul-Mulk 283, 301 Wahlbom, Anders 59 Wahlbom, Magnus 54 Walcker, Karl 268 Wallerstein, Immanuel 149 War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) 162 War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713) 159 Warnod, André 403 Waugh, Evelyn 326 Webb, Lysbeth 470 Weber, Klaus 152 Weiss, Holger 12, 117, 150, 397 Wendt, George von 112 Wenzlhuemer, Roland 9 Werner, Jeff 409 Weser river 21 West Africa see under Africa West African Students’ Union (WASU) 217 West India and Guinea Company (VestindiskGuineisk Kompagni), Danish 38, 117, 126, 127, 134, 138, 139, 144 West India Company, Dutch (WIC) 35, 36 West Indies 74, 93, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154, 166 Westerberg, Eric 41, 61–67, 69 Westerberg, Nathanael 66 Westerman, Johan 67–69 Westernization 210, 266 Wetterblom, Eric Magnus 54 Wickström, Mats 11
Index
Wieselgren, Oscar 308, 310 Wilhelm II, Emperor 267 Wilks, Ivor 241 Williams, Justin 213 Wills, William 334 Wilson, Woodrow 261, 292, 314 Windsor Earl, George 346 Winell-Garvén, Iréne 402 Wingfield, Chris 438 Winter, Jay 449 Wirta, Kaarle 10 Wirzén, Johan Ernst Adhemar 367 Wismar 59, 67 Withey, Alun 47 Wittenberg, Anders 62, 70 Wittenberg, Olof 62 Wolde Selassie, Heruy 325 Wolfson, Freda 459, 460 world fairs 13, 394, 398, 401–404 World Health Organization (WHO) 97
493
World War, First 98, 207, 223, 225, 270, 273, 283, 286, 293, 321, 443 World War, Second 97, 114, 115, 259, 318, 359, 360, 367, 376, 454, 457 Wrench, Guy T. 112 Yusoff, Kathryn 362 Zahedieh, Nuala 151 Zalesskii, Vladislav Frantsevich 268–271 Zihlfeldt, Johan 54, 55 Zimmerwald conferences – first 284 – second 284, 286 – third 284, 288, 301, 305, 306 see also Stockholm Peace Conference Zimmerwald movement 284, 285 see also International Socialist Bureau (ISB) Zorian, Stepan 302, 303 Zurabov, Arshak Gerasimovich 268