Peter Thonning and Denmark’s Guinea Commission Atlantic World Europe, Africa and the Americas, 1500–1830 Edited by Benjamin Schmidt University of Washington and Wim Klooster Clark University VOLUME 24 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/aw Peter Thonning and Denmark’s Guinea Commission A Study in Nineteenth-Century African Colonial Geography By Daniel Hopkins LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013 Cover illustration: View of the plantation Frederiksberg, near Fort Christiansborg, early 1800s. RAKTS, Rtk. 337,716 (Courtesy the Danish National Archives [Rigsarkivet]). Library of Congress Control Number: 2012952821 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual "Brill" typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1570-0542 ISBN 978-90-04-22868-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-23199-3 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. CONTENTS List of Illustrations ...................................................................................................vii Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................ix List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................xi Introduction: On the Geography of Colonialism ..............................................1 PART I EARLY COLONIAL EXPERIMENTS 1. The Guinea Commission Commences Its Investigation: Isert’s Colonial Expedition of 1788............................................................... 19 2. Denmark’s Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1792: The African Colonial Alternative ................................................................... 49 3. Africa in the Atlantic World: Guinea Plantations on the West Indian Model ............................................................................................ 69 PART II SCIENCE AND COLONIALISM: PETER THONNING’S EXPEDITION 4. Peter Thonning’s African Sojourn and the Formation of His Colonial Views ........................................................................................ 95 5. Reports and Reverberations: Thonning’s Early African Writing .................................................................................................149 6. The Atlantic Triangle Stood on Its Head: African Undertakings after the Cessation of the Danish Slave Trade in 1803 ..........................215 PART III COLONIAL DEVELOPMENTS DURING THE NAPOLEONIC WARS AND THE ENSUING DEPRESSION 7. “For Colonization, A More Desirable Country Cannot Be Found”: Plantation Experiments during the War Years .........................................251 vi contents 8. An Eye to the Future: Colonial Ambitions in a Time of Retrenchment ..............................................................................................271 PART IV RENEWED INTEREST IN AFRICAN COLONIALISM IN COPENHAGEN 9. Fresh Colonial Momentum in the Early 1820s ....................................301 10. Conflicting Colonial Schemes in the Late 1820s .................................343 11. The Literary Impulse: A Young Colonial Officer’s Essays on Denmark’s African Future ....................................................................377 PART V CONFLICTING VIEWS OF THE COLONIAL WORLD: THE GUINEA COMMISSION AND THE CLOSING OF AN ERA 12. Plumbing the Archives: The Commission Frames Its Debate ..........435 13. The Guinea Commission in a Changed Colonial Climate .................545 14. The Tide Again Turns: New African Colonial Impetus.......................629 15. The Colonial Dénouement, Denmark’s Withdrawal from Africa, and the Colonial Upshot .....................................................673 Bibliography ...........................................................................................................695 Index .........................................................................................................................711 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Peter Thonning’s map of the territory around the Danish establishments on the Guinea Coast ........................................................xiv 2. Peter Thonning’s map, detail, showing the area around Tubrekue [Togbloku], not far from Fort Kongenssteen on the Volta River............................................................................................ 44 3. Peter Thonning’s map, detail, showing the area favored by Jens Flindt for cultivation, around the plantation Friderichstæd, on the upper reaches of the Laloe, the stream reaching the sea near Ponny.................................................. 47 4. Exceedingly schematic eighteenth-century pen-and-ink representation of the Guinea Coast from diplomatic archives, detail .................................................................................................................. 83 5. Watercolor view of Fort Prindsenssteen, 1799..................................... 108 6. Early version of Thonning’s map, detail, showing his journeys to the eastern forts .......................................................................................136 7. Early version of Thonning’s map, detail, showing his routes with Christian Schiønning and Jens Flindt ...........................................137 8. Peter Thonning’s map, detail, showing the mouth of the Volta. ......282 9. Thonning’s rough sketch of the layout of plantations. .......................318 10. P.L. Oxholm, Charte over den danske Øe St. Croix i America, detail, showing the rectangular layout of plantations on St. Croix .....................................................................................................319 11. Peter Thonning’s map, detail, showing the area Thonning favored for plantation cultivation, north of Fort Christiansborg, “between Jadosa and the River Sakumo Fyo” .......................................323 12. Lithographed school map, 1820s, of the area around the Danish forts on the Guinea Coast, drawn from Thonning’s map...................328 13. School map of the area around the Danish forts on the Guinea Coast, with the place-names removed, for examinations .................329 14. Views of Forts Kongenssteen and Prindsenssteen, 1817, with, on same sheet, a map of the lower Volta, 1825, by Philip W. Wrisberg ..................................................................................350 15. Lieutenant Lind’s map of the Volta, 1828, detail, showing the mouth of the river .................................................................................363 16. A rather heavily annotated version of Peter Thonning’s map, detail, with newly inserted features along the Volta. ..........................457 viii list of illustrations 17. A later draft of Thonning’s map, detail, with the lower course of the Volta missing, to allow for the incorporation of Lind’s 1828 map of the Volta River .....................................................458 18. Another later version of Thonning’s map, detail, with Lind’s rendering of the Volta drawn in. ...............................................................459 19. Lt. Gandil’s map of the area north of Fort Christiansborg, 1833, detail ....................................................................................................482 20. A sample of fibers sent in from the coast preserved among the archived colonial correspondence .....................................505 21. A lithographed portrait of Peter Thonning at about the time of his retirement from the Chamber of Customs, 1840. ....................543 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is gratifying to acknowledge the support of the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Carlsberg Foundation, the University of Missouri Research Board, and the Office of Research Services at the University of Missouri—Kansas City, as well as of the College of Arts and Sciences there and of my own Department of Geosciences. It has been a pleasure over the years to work with the collections and to be able to rely on the expert assis- tance of the staffs of the Danish National Archives and the Royal Library in Copenhagen. I am exceedingly grateful also to Erik Gøbel, Ole Justesen, Per Hernæs, Ray Kea, Svend Holsoe, Peter Wagner, Poul Olsen, Philip Morgan, the late Brian Harley, David Buisseret, Palle Sigaard, and Marty Ross. Some of this material was originally published in Nordisk Museologi,1 Cartographica,2 Archives of Natural History,3 Itinerario,4 the William and Mary Quarterly,5 and Geographies of the book,6 and is incorporated here with the kind permission of the editors of those publications. 1 Daniel Hopkins, “Peter Thonning and the natural historical collections of Denmark’s Prince Christian (VIII), 1806–07”, Nordisk
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