Natures of Conduct Governmentality and the Danish West Indies Sielemann, Rasmus Basse Publication date: 2015 Document license: CC BY-NC-ND Citation for published version (APA): Sielemann, R. B. (2015). Natures of Conduct: Governmentality and the Danish West Indies. Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet. Download date: 03. Oct. 2021 UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN FACULTY OF HUMANITIES PhD Dissertation Rasmus Sielemann Natures of Conduct Governmentality and the Danish West Indies Advisor: Søren Ivarsson Submitted: 26/09/2015 Natures of Conduct Governmentality and the Danish West Indies PhD Dissertation By Rasmus Sielemann SAXO Institute University of Copenhagen 26 September 2015 Advisor: Søren Ivarsson Secondary Advisor: Gunvor Simonsen Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Analytics of Governmentality 44 3 Slavery, Security, Population 65 4 Punishment, Natures, Race 124 5 Market, Community, Progress 182 6 Conclusion 240 Archival Sources 247 Bibliography 248 English Abstract 264 Dansk Resume 265 Chapter One Introduction In 1917, the three Caribbean islands of St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John that made up the colonial possessions known as the Danish West Indies were sold to the United States of America for the sum of 25 million US dollars. The transaction put an end to Danish colonial authority in the West Indies that had been present since the settlement of St. Thomas in 1666. In the year prior to the sale, in 1916, a parliamentary commission had been established with the objective of ascertaining whether or not it would be beneficial to sell the West Indian colonies on the terms that had been negotiated with the United States. If the commission found that it could not agree to the terms of the sale, it was to consider what measures should be taken to bring the colony’s state of affairs in order.1 On 3 November 1916, former Governor of the Danish West Indies, Lars Christian Helweg-Larsen, was called to give testimony at the legal hearings conducted by the parliamentary commission. Helweg-Larsen was an experienced official in the Danish West Indian administration. He had served as a colonial officer since 1888 and held the position as Governor during these final years of Danish colonial rule in the West Indies (from 1911 to 1916). He had resigned his office only a month before his appearance at the hearing.2 When asked by the hearing committee how the state of the Danish islands was judged by their American and British neighbors, Helweg-Larsen recalled a conversation that he had allegedly had with former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, during a visit to St. Croix. During the conversation, President Roosevelt was supposed to have given the 1 ("Lov Om Nedsættelse Af En Rigsdagskommission Og Afholdelse Af En Folkeafstemning Angaaende Konventionen Mellem Danmark Og De Amerikanske Forenede Stater Om Overdragelse Til De Nævnte Stater Af Øerne St. Thomas, St. Jan Og St. Croix I Vestindien," 1916, p. 13) 2 (Larsen 1940, p. 74) 1 following diagnosis of the governmental condition of the Danish West Indies: There could only be one explanation to the state of the Danish West Indian Islands, namely … that the conditions of the negro race was unknown to those in the Mother Country and as such was not aware that it [the negro race] has to be ruled and governed by different rules than a white race is ruled by in Europe.3 Given Helweg-Larsen’s career within the colonial administration, it must have felt very convenient for him to be able to invoke the authority of a United States President pointing the finger of blame for the colony’s unsustainability at the Danish Home Government rather than local colonial officials. Accordingly, questions could be raised as to the veridicality of Helweg-Larsen’s rendering of Roosevelt’s comment. The commission majority, nevertheless, concurred in their report with the assertions made by Helweg-Larsen, via President Roosevelt, and concluded that “Danish rule had by no means been exemplary” and that “the Mother Country had been too removed and too alienated from the islands’ conditions”.4 The maybe-quote by President Roosevelt and the conclusions of the parliamentary commission provide an entrance to some central concerns of this dissertation. The hearings and the report of the parliamentary commission amounted to a veritable trial of Danish colonialism’s legitimacy and justification, but also its efficacy and progress. The verdict was quite clear, as shown in the quote above. Danish rule over the tropical islands and its inhabitants had been a failure. But what was it that had brought on this failed development? Was it due to unfavorable climatic conditions? Did external economic developments in European and World markets render the islands’ sugar production and commercial trade unprofitable and thereby destabilized the colony’s fiscal foundation? Were governmental activities blocked or even threatened by anti-colonial movements? These were all mentioned by the commission report as contributing factors to the unsustainable state of the Danish colony. But the real culprit in this trial was 3 (Rigsdagskommissionen angaaende de Dansk Vestindiske Øer 1916, Bilag B. Kommissionens Vidneafhøringer, p, 138) 4 (1916, Betænkningen, p. 38) 2 the inability of ‘government,’ colonial and metropolitan, to manage these factors in a way that would procure a favorable outcome. Furthermore, as the Roosevelt quote alludes to, the favorable government that Danish rule had failed to install in its Caribbean colonies was directed by rules that were discernibly different from favorable government in a Western European context. The populations of the two distinct political constructions required particular types of management. The inability of Danish colonial government to recognize this crucial factor was the primary cause of its failure. A more explicit articulation of a similar criticism of Danish government in the West Indian colonies, was voiced in the same period. Following the failed sale negotiations with the United States in 1902, a group of technical experts, academics, industrial and commercial representatives, politicians and government officials formed the association De Danske Atlanterhavsøer (The Danish Atlantic Islands). Through their journal, Atlanten (The Atlantic), the association campaigned for increased integration between Denmark’s Atlantic colonies and the general administration of the Danish State, and the cultivation of the different populations’ interwoven identities and commercial interests. In 1916 a contributor to Atlanten wrote a piece with the ominous title: “Each Nation has the Negroes it Deserves” (“Ethvert Land har de Negere, det fortjener”). The author of the piece, A. Paludan- Müller, launched a staunch criticism of the Danish government’s inability to ascertain the local preconditions for a proper colonial government. Like Roosevelt, Paludal-Müller argued that it was the disinterestedness towards knowledge of the “negro race” that had created the social and political crisis that the colonial government was facing in the shape of ongoing labour disputes: “Had the government gained close knowledge of the Negro’s character, it would probably not had entered a downward path, leading towards inevitable trouble.”5 The “negro’s character,” as Paludal-Müller saw it, was a product of governmental neglect; a product of the residual effects of slavery and a subsequent “lack of understanding” on the part of 5 (Paludan-Müller 1916, p. 448) 3 government.6 What colonial government had failed to accomplish in the post-emancipation period was to comprehend the natural conduct of “the black field laborer.” Colonial government had forgotten the ease with which that “giant, good-natured, docile wool head” would unleash the ferociousness that his tropical nature sustained, if his respect for authority was not maintained. The black field laborer was “the incomplete man,” lacking the ability to reflect and who’s actions were determined by the spur of the moment.7 In his tour de force of racial stereotyping, Paludan-Müller provided an explicit formulation of the recipe for governing the black race that Roosevelt and Helweg-Larsen had merely alluded to: “We do not cultivate a man of such character with the help of democratic institutions; he requires a particular treatment, without necessarily constituting a policy of oppression.”8 A contemporary description of Danish colonial government as “one of the best examples of a liberal colonial policy developed to meet difficult conditions and maintained with unfaltering resolution by the home government, even in the face of an inevitable financial loss”9 would not have impressed Palludan-Müller. He viewed the liberal cultivation of the black race as a dangerous endeavor and a main cause of current predicaments. Paludan-Müller made that clear by making reference to the labor riots on St. Croix in 1878, known as ‘the Fireburn,’ as well as the general crises that the political project of liberalism had encountered when enacted in the context of the black race: It was the French Revolution’s ideas about freedom, equality and fraternity that the undeveloped, primitive brains did not comprehend, but thought that the path to such ideal conditions was paved by the murder of all whites in the colony [of St. Domingue (Haiti)], men, women and children; it was the British liberalism transferred to the unclear, dark minds on Jamaica that caused the Gordon riots, and those ideas that during this new era have proliferated in our little, democratic nation can 6 (1916, p. 446) 7 (1916, p. 447) 8 (1916, p. 447) 9 (Tooke 1900, p. 144) 4 not yet be ascertained by our black children's imperfect brains; their system is not yet capable of digesting such heavy diet.10 Here, Palludan-Müller evoked the principles of a benevolent racism, a despotic paternalism that in patronizing terms disenfranchised and incapacitated the capability of the colony’s Afro-Caribbean population to embrace the progress of liberal civilization. There was an inherent danger in the project of educating the Afro-Caribbean population that would have to be counteracted.