Enlightenment, Scientific Exploration and Abolitionism: Anders Sparrman's and Carl Bernhard Wadström's Colonial Encounters in Senegal, 1787–1788 and the British Abolitionist Movement
2012; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 34; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0144039x.2012.734113
ISSN1743-9523
Autores Tópico(s)Caribbean history, culture, and politics
ResumoAbstract By the late eighteenth century, leading British abolitionists credited two Swedish scholars – Anders Sparrman and Carl Bernhard Wadström – with important contributions to the breakthrough of the British abolitionist movement. After witnessing the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade during a journey to Senegal, both scholars came to be explicit critics of this trade. In this article, I argue that the two Swedes contributed to the abolitionist cause particularly because of their status as academic scholars. This enabled a science-based rhetoric to complement the sentimental rhetoric of most other abolitionists at the time. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Kenneth Nyberg and Lisa Hellman, as well as the anonymous readers of this journal, for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Notes Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 17. Brycchan Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760–1807 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Sverker Sörlin and Otto Fagerstedt, Linné och hans apostlar (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 2004), 175. 'Anders Sparrman', Biographiskt lexicon, vol. 15 (1848); Sörlin and Fagerstedt, Linné och hans apostlar, 152–83; Kenneth Nyberg, 'Anders Sparrman', Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon, vol. 33 (Stockholm: Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon, 2007); Tony Rice, Voyages of Discovery: A Visual Celebration of Ten of the Greatest Natural History Expeditions (London: Natural History Museum, 2010 [1999]), 172–3. 'Carl Bernhard Wadström', Biographiskt lexicon, vol. 19 (1852); Ellen Hagen, En frihetstidens son. Carl Bernhard Wadström (Stockholm: Gothia, 1946); Robert Rix, William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 91–8. Hagen, En frihetstidens son, 122–3; 'Carl-Bernhard Wadström', Biographiskt lexicon, vol. 19 (1852); Jakob Christensson, Lyckoriket: Studier i svensk upplysning (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1996), 192; Philip Nelson, Carl Bernhard Wadström. Mannen bakom myten (Norrköping: Föreningen Gamla Norrköping, 1998), 37–9. 'Carl-Axel Arrhenius', Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon, vol. 2 (1920). House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 19. Ronny Ambjörnsson, '"Guds republique". En utopi från 1789', Lychnos (1975–1976), 12–6; Nelson, Carl Bernhard Wadström, 40; Nyberg, 'Anders Sparrman'. Economic motives were of central importance behind many of the journeys of Linnaeus' disciples, see, for example, Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), chap. 6; Sörlin and Fagerstedt, Linné och hans apostlar, 48. B. Wadström, 'C.B. Wadström's resa ifrån Stockholm genom Danmark, Tyskland och Frankrike till Senegal-länderna i Afrika, åren 1787 och 1788', Archiv af nyare resor till lands och sjöss, vol. 6 (1811–1812), 4. 'Carl-Axel Arrhenius', Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon – ny följd (1857–1858). Thomas Clarkson. 'The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-trade by the British Parliament', in The Making of the Modern World, Gale, Cengage Learning (2010), vols. 1–2 (London: Gothenborg University Library, 1808), 489. Thomas Clarkson. 'An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African, Translated from a Latin Dissertation, which was Honoured …' , in The Making of the Modern World, Gale, Cengage Learning (2010) (London: Gothenborg University Library, 1786), 50–3. A number of the primary sources used in this article have been accessed through the digitized collections in the database The Making of the Modern World, Gale, Cengage Learning (2010), Gothenborg University Library. These include: Thomas Clarkson. An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African (London, 1786); Board of Trade, Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council Appointed for the Consideration of All Matters Relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations ([London], 1789); Thomas Clarkson, The Substance of the Evidence of Sundry Persons on the Slave-trade, Collected in the Course of a Tour Made in the Autumn of the Year 1788 (London, 1789); Carl Bernhard Wadström, Observations on the Slave Trade, and a Description of Some Part of the Coast of Guinea, During a Voyage, made in 1787, and 1788, in Company with … (London, 1789); William Wilberforce, The Speech of William Wilberforce, Esq., Representative for the County of York, on Wednesday the 13th of May, 1789, on the Question of the … (London, 1789); Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, vol. 1. (London, 1789); House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence Taken Before a Committee of the House of Commons … Appointed … to Take the Examination of the Several Witnesses (London, 1790); An Abstract of the Evidence Delivered Before a Select Committee of the House of Commons in the Years 1790 and 1791; on the Part of the … 2nd ed. (London, 1791); Extracts from the Evidence Delivered Before a Select Committee of the House of Commons in the Years 1790 and 1791, on the Part of the Petitioners … (London, 1791); John Ranby, Observations on the Evidence Given Before the Committees of the Privy Council and House of Commons in Support of the Bill for Abolishing the … (London, 1791); Thomas Clarkson, Letters on the Slave-trade, and the State of the Natives in those Parts of Africa Which Are Contiguous to Fort St. Louis and Goree, Written at … (London, 1791); Abridgment of the Minutes of the Evidence, Taken Before a Committee of the Whole House, to Whom It Was Referred to Consider of the Slave Trade, … ([n.p.], [1792]); House of Commons, The Parliamentary Register; or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons [and House of Lords] …, vol. 26. (London, 1782–1796); Thomas Clarkson. The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-trade by the British Parliament, vols. 1–2 (London, 1808); Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British West Indies. With a Continuation to the Present Time, 5th ed., vol. 4 (London, 1819); Prince Hoare, Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Esq. Composed from His Own Manuscripts, and Other Authentic Documents in the Possession of His Family and of the … (London, 1820). Board of Trade, Report of the Lords; House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence. House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 18. All translations from this source from Swedish into English are made by the author of this article. On the early cities and European settlements in West Africa, see Bill Freund, The African city. A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 51–5. House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 39; Board of Trade, Report of the Lords; Wadström, 'C.B. Wadström's resa', vol. 6, 57, 62. House of Commons. Minutes of the Evidence, 22. Wadström gave evidence concerning the same thing before the Board of Trade, see Clarkson, Substance of the Evidence, 110. House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 23; Ranby, Observations on the Evidence, 146. Wadström, Observations on the Slave Trade, 9, 14–15; Clarkson, Substance of the Evidence, 112. The same stories also figure in Wadström's travel account: Wadström, 'C.B. Wadström's resa', vol. 6, 61. Wadström, Observations on the Slave Trade, 11–12. House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 23. Board of Trade, Report of the Lords. House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 23. See also Clarkson, Substance of the Evidence, 113; Abstract of the Evidence, 18. Clarkson, Substance of the Evidence, 110–11; Wadström, Observations on the Slave Trade, 16–17. Board of Trade, Report of the Lords; Clarkson, Substance of the Evidence, 114; Wadström, Observations on the Slave Trade, 2–4; House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 27; Abridgment of the Minutes, 8; Abstract of the Evidence, 18; Ranby, Observations on the Evidence, 147; Edwards. The History, Civil and Commercial, 334–5. Wadström, Observations on the Slave Trade, 4; Abridgment of the Minutes, 8–9; Clarkson, Letters on the Slave-trade, 31–2. House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 29. Ibid. Clarkson, Substance of the Evidence, 114. House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 30. Wadström, Observations on the Slave Trade, 29. Ibid. Board of Trade, Report of the Lords. Carl Bernhard Wadström gave a very similar witness on the same issue. Wadström 'C.B. Wadström's resa', vol. 6, 65. House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 31–2. Wadström, 'C.B. Wadström's resa', vol. 6, 56. Clarkson, Substance of the Evidence, 107–8; Board of Trade, Report of the Lords. House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 32. Ibid., 34. Abstract of the Evidence, 97; Extracts from the Evidence, 20; Abridgment of the Minutes of the Evidence, 9–11. House of Commons, Minutes of the Evidence, 40. Ibid., 35–6. Wadström, 'C.B. Wadström's resa', vol. 5, 15, 54–55; vol. 6, 65, 73. Ibid., vol. 6, 78. Board of Trade, Report of the Lords. Wilberforce, The Speech of William Wilberforce, 10–1; House of Commons, The Parliamentary Register, 133. Clarkson, History of the Rise, vol. 1, 491. Ibid. Ester Copley has in her history of the abolitionist movement, A History of Slavery and Its Abolition (London, 1839), 269–70, recapitulated Clarkson's description almost literally. Hoare, Memoirs of Granville Sharp, 513; Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, Subscriber's list. Clarkson, History of the Rise, vol. 2, 151. Wadström, Observations on the Slave Trade, vii. Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. List of the Society (London, 1788); Clarkson, History of the Rise, vol. 2, 27. Wadström, Observations on the Slave Trade, iv. Ibid., vi. Clarkson, History of the Rise, vol. 1, 565. Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780–1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965), 14–6. Ranby, Observations on the Evidence, 146. Clarkson, History of the Rise, vol. 1, 489. Estimates of the TSTD2, The trans-Atlantic slave trade database online, http://www.slavevoyages.org (accessed October 4 2012). Philip Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), chap. 4; James Searing, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, 1700–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), chap. 5; Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), chap. 8; Martin Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 37–42; For an example of a part of Senegambia where the slave trade is claimed to not have had the effect of an increase in violence, see Donald Wright, The World and a Very Small Place in Africa: A History of Globalization in Niumi, the Gambia (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2004), chap. 4. See, for example, Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972); Barry, Senegambia, chap. 8; Nathan Nunn, 'The Long-term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades', Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, no. 1 (2008): 139–76. See, for example, Timothy Garrard, African Gold (London: Prestel, 2011). For a study of life at the British forts in Africa, including life for the castle slaves, see William St Clair, The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Bluebridge, 2007). Searing, West African Slavery, 44–52; Barry, Senegambia, 112–21; Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule, chap. 1; Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 281–3. Searing, West African Slavery, 63–71; Curtin, Economic Change, chap. 7–8. Searing, West African Slavery, 38. P.J. Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: British Perceptions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Dent, 1982), 33–7, 227–57. Marshall and Williams, Great Map, 37. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 24. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 38–9. Ibid., 48–52. Ibid., 49–53. Ibid., 52. For a study of naturalist expeditions, see, for example, Rice, Voyages of Discovery. Sverker Sörlin, Världens ordning: Europas idéhistoria 1492–1918 (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 2004), 618. William Beinart, 'Men, Science, Travel and Nature in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century Cape', Journal of Southern African Studies 24, no. 4 (1998): 775–99. Quote on p. 778. See also William Beinart and Lotte Hughes, Environment and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 78–9. Brown, Moral Capital, 51. The only exception being that Wadström, in his travel accounts, complained that he was unable to bring 'my good Negro Amargalle' when returning home to Europe, see Wadström, 'C.B. Wadström's resa', vol. 6, 7. Curtin, Image of Africa, 36–8; Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: The Science of Freedom (New York: Norton, 1969), 174–5, 319–23. Curtin, Image of Africa, 23; Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Penguin, 1995 [1978]), 49–73; Marshall and Williams, Great Map, 239; Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999 [1982]); Mary Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 28, 42, 177, 260; Anothony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 60; Philip Morgan, 'Encounters Between British and 'Indigenous' Peoples, c. 1500–c. 1800', in Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850, eds. Martin Dauton and Rick Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 42–78. Beinart, 'Men, Science, Travel and Nature', 778, 781. C.B. Wadström, An Essay on Colonization particularly Applied to the Western Coast of Africa with Some Free Thoughs on Cultivation and Commerce (New York: Kelley, 1968 [1794]). See also Curtin, Image of Africa, 103–16. For analyses of Linnaeus classification of the human races see Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Williamsburg: University of North Carolina, 1968), 218–23; Sten Lindroth, Svensk Lärdomshistoria: Frihetstiden (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1978), 210–12; Curtin, Image of Africa, 36–8; Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 9; Sörlin and Fagerstedt, Linné och hans apostlar, 116–29; Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (ed.), Race and Enlightenment – A Reader (Malden: Blackwell, 1997), chap. 1; Marshall and Williams, Great Map, 245; Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2000), 354–58. Hanna Hodacs and Kenneth Nyberg, Naturalhistoria på resande fot. Om att forska, undervisa och göra karriär i 1700-talets Sverige (Stockholm: Nordic Academic Press, 2007), 21–4; Nyberg, 'Anders Sparrman'; Beinart, 'Men, Science, Travel and Nature', 786; Sten Selander, Linnélärjungar i främmande länder (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1960), 78–80; Sörlin and Fagerstedt, Linné och hans apostlar, 174. Hagen, En frihetstidens son, 122–23; 'Carl-Bernhard Wadström', Biographiskt lexicon, vol. 19 (1852); Nelson, Carl Bernhard Wadström, 37–9. For a description of Swedenborg's portrayal of Africans, see Curtin, Image of Africa, 26–7; Rix, William Blake, 96. Hodacs and Nyberg, Naturalhistoria på resande fot, 213. Quote from Brown, Moral Capital, 211. For some of the other more important works in a long scholarly debate, see Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London: Deutsch, 1964 [1943]); David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966); Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 1760–1810 (London: Macmillan, 1975); David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975); Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010 [1977]); Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1986); David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (London: Verso,1988); John Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: Mobilisation of Public Opinion Against the Slave Trade, 1787–1807 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995); Selwyn Carrington, The Sugar Industry and the Abolition of the Slave Trade 1775–1810 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002); David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), chap. 12; David Beck Ryden, West Indian Slavery and British Abolition, 1783–1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), chap. 8; Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard. Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). Drescher, Abolition, 209. Curtin, Image of Africa, 53–7, 68. Quote on 57. Ernst Ekman, 'Sweden, the Slave Trade and Slavery, 1784–1847', Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, vol. 62 (1975): 221–31; Ingegerd Hildebrand, Den Svenska Kolonin S:t Barthélemy och Västindiska Kompaniet fram till 1796 (Lund: Lindstedts, 1951). See, for example, Gay, Enlightenment, 407–23; Davis, Problem of Slavery, chap. 13–14; Louis Sala-Molins, Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006); Christopher Miller, The French Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), chap. 3; Laurent Dubois, 'An Enslaved Enlightenment: Rethinking the Intellectual History of the French Atlantic', Social History 31, no. 1 (2006): 1–14; Porter, Enlightenment, 359–60. See also Ambjörnsson, 'Guds republique', 39–40. Gay, Enlightenment, 126–8; Porter, Enlightenment, chap. 6. See also Sörlin, Världens ordning, 324; Tore Frängsmyr, Sökandet efter upplysningen: Perspektiv på svenskt 1700-tal (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 2006), 62–9. Carey, British Abolitionism. Brown, Moral Capital, 297. See also Sarah Thomas, '"On the Spot": Travelling Artists and Abolitionism, 1770–1830', Atlantic Studies 8, no. 2 (2011): 213–32, for a study of the contribution of visual representations of slavery. Pagden, European Encounters, 54–6. Additional informationNotes on contributorsKlas RönnbäckKlas Rönnbäck is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economic History, University of Gothenburg, Box 720, SE-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden.
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