“Children of the Chain and Rod”: The Evolution of Christianity and German Slaveholding in Eweland, 1847-1914 by John Gregory Garratt B.A. in History, May 2009, Elon University A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 31, 2017 Andrew Zimmerman Professor of History and International Affairs The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that John Gregory Garratt has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of December 9, 2016. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. “Children of the Chain and Rod”: The Evolution of Christianity and German Slaveholding in Eweland, 1847-1914 John Gregory Garratt Dissertation Research Committee: Andrew Zimmerman, Professor of History and International Affairs, Dissertation Director Dane Kennedy, Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs, Committee Member Nemata Blyden, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2017 by John Garratt All rights reserved iii Acknowledgments The completion of this dissertation is a testament to my dissertation director, Andrew Zimmerman. His affability made the academic journey from B.A. to Ph.D more enjoyable than it should have been. Moreover, his encouragement and advice proved instrumental during the writing process. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee. Dane Kennedy offered much needed writing advice in addition to marshalling his considerable expertise in British history. Nemata Blyden supported my tentative endeavors in African history and proffered early criticism to frame the dissertation. Eve Rosenhaft and Jessica Krug provided significant feedback to conceptualize how the case study of German Togoland fits within the Atlantic world. Moreover, the dissertation would not have been possible without the financial support from The George Washington University and the German Academic Exchange Service. Within The George Washington University’s History Department, I was privileged to participate in seminars led by Marcy Norton and Katrin Schultheiss. My colleagues within the graduate program deserve special mention: Matt Bias, Holly Polish, Kate Densford, Bob Isaacson, Martin Margolis, Matt Gibson, Andreas Meyris, Zayad Bangash, Lauren Jeanette, Chelsea Davis, and Naz Yucel. The Diplomacy games were instrumental in learning the origins of the First World War. Finally, Kelsey Flynn provided constant friendship and support throughout the years. Thank you to my mother and father, Sandra and Donald Garratt. They supported me in each endeavor I have undertaken and thoughtfully inquired about my research in German slaveholding. I completed this doctoral program, because my loving and iv understanding wife, Sarah Garratt, believed in my abilities as a historian. v Abstract of Dissertation “Children of the Chain and Rod”: The Evolution of Christianity and German Slaveholding in Eweland, 1847-1914 This dissertation reassesses abolition within the German Empire. Germany’s West African colony, Togoland, was paradoxically both a haven for slavery and a model for manumission for the Empire’s African protectorates. Prior to colonization, the protestant North German Mission established a presence in the region where the trade in human chattel was largely unhindered. The mission embraced slaveholding, purchasing approximately 150 children and dispossessing them of their family and lineage. The mission benefited from the children’s labor and their orphaned status, which made them receptive to Christianity. After the colony’s establishment in 1884, the colonial governor denied the slave trade’s existence. Public agitation by German scholar Gottlob Adolf Krause and his subsequent petitions in the Reichstag instigated colonial reform. The governor issued multiple decrees ending aspects of the slave trade in the region. Consequently, the Foreign Office ordered that German East Africa and Cameroon emulate Togoland’s modified abolition. Despite the de jure measures, German use of indentured labor continued. In Lomé, West Africans organized a political campaign in 1913 demanding an end to slaveholding under German colonialism. Whereas German East Africa has received the most attention from scholars who study German abolition, I question this privileged position in the field. German slaveholding began in the 1850s under religious auspices and continued until the beginning of the First World War. Advocated by G.A. Krause, abolition in the West African colony was secular. The dissertation revises the historical assumption that vi missionaries and colonial states cooperated to end the domestic slave trade in the late nineteenth century. Moreover, with the impetus to expand conceptions of German colonialism and its antecedents, this project is at once an investigation that highlights how Germans interacted with the “exploitable world” that Geof Eley discussed in German Colonialism in a Global Age , and also an attempt to highlight the modest, albeit significant, efforts to resist German colonialism, slaveholding, and Christianity. vii Table of Contents Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................ iv Abstract of Dissertation ................................................................................................ vi List of Figures....................................................................................................................ix Chapter 1: Introduction.......................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: The Ransomed Children: The North German Mission’s Participation in the West African Slave Trade, 1847-1884 ................................................................. 40 Chapter 3: The Suffering Servants and the Heathen’s Heart: The Ideology of the North German Mission in West Africa .......................................................................... 77 Chapter 4: “He himself held the quill and made the cross”: Ewe and Missionary Resistance to German Colonial Expansion ................................................................... 118 Chapter 5: Slave Den and Model Colony: Slavery and Colonial Reform in Togoland and the Kaiserreich ...................................................................................................... 159 Chapter 6: “Children of the Chain and Rod”: German Alienation and Togolese Resistance to Colonialism ........................................................................................... 196 Chapter 7: Conclusion...............................................................................................228 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 240 viii List of Figures Map of Eweland and its surrounding territories in 1905....………...................……….…54 The North German Mission’s Register of Ransomed Children and Renounced Names, 1863………….............................................................................................………………..56 Survey of Nyambo by the German Togo Company, 1903…………….......……………..146 Survey of Nyambo by Hans Gruner, Director of the Land Commission, 1904...............147 Map of Lomé in 1896......................................................................................................204 ix Chapter 1: Introduction In 1847, the North German Mission arrived in Eweland, currently in southeastern Ghana and southern Togo. The mission evangelized among the disparate Ewe communities, which had migrated from eastern West Africa in the seventeenth century and settled in the region east of Lake Volta. To expand the mission congregation, the North German Mission (NGM) purchased enslaved children and educated them to become lay preachers. From the 1850s to the early 1900s, the NGM transitioned from an institution that depended on slaveholding to a missionary society proclaiming itself as a protector of Ewe communities. The NGM was not a successful enterprise until the successful implementation of the so-called ransoming program in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The mission “spliced” itself onto existing slave trade networks to further its institutional expansion, because it failed to initially attract converts through evangelizing. Furthermore, the NGM did not actively attempt to end slaveholding as the mission frequently baptized both slaveholders and enslaved individuals. After the NGM’s expansion in Eweland, Germany embarked on creating an overseas empire in 1884. Sending academic and military expeditions to sign treaties across the continent, Germany established four colonies in Africa: Cameroon, German South West Africa, German East Africa, and German Togoland. German officials in Togoland coordinated their efforts with the NGM to establish and administer the colony; however, the NGM’s opposition to new merchant companies that threatened Christian congregations divided the cross and the flag. Nevertheless, both the colonial state in Togoland and the NGM relied on slavery as cornerstones for their respective institutions. While colonial officials ostensibly supported abolishing slavery based on the Treaty of 1 Berlin and the Brussels Act, they resisted addressing it until Gottlob Adolf Krause, a German linguist who