Swedish slave trade

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The Swedish slave trade is known from early Swedish history until well into the 17th century when Swedish colonies were established in North America (1638) and Africa (1650). Slavery remained legal in Sweden until 1813 .

Slavery before and in the Viking Age

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Sergey Vasilievich Ivanov (1864–1910), slave trade in early medieval Eastern Europe

Before and during the Viking Age , Swedish tribes regularly enslaved members of neighboring tribes. Viking society was structured as a stratified caste system. According to Viking mythology, the thrall ( serfs ) were descended from a god of the same name and represented the lowest caste. Serfs could be born into slavery or enslaved as punishment for breaking the law. This was common throughout Scandinavia and the area of ​​application of the Danelaw in England.

Swedish Vikings traveled east to Gardariki and traded intensively with slaves. Slaves in Sweden also came from Germanic, British and other northern European tribes and were sometimes also sold to Arab and Jewish traders who then also sold them far away.

Slavery after the Viking Age

Slavery was first abolished in Sweden in 1335 by Magnus II of Sweden for serfs born to Christian parents in Västergötland and Värend .

There were contractual agreements between Sweden and England and France on the slave trade, which Sweden also operated in ships as part of the transatlantic slave trade .

Furthermore, large quantities of the iron chains used in the slave trade at that time were manufactured in Sweden.

In 1847 slavery was finally completely abolished in Sweden and its colonies, and the groundbreaking decisions were made in 1846.

Trade bases in Africa

In 1650 Sweden began to set up trading posts along the West African coast in an area called the Swedish Gold Coast . During this period, Sweden and Denmark competed with each other as regional powers in Scandinavia, which is why the Swedes were followed by the Danes to Africa, where they began building stations for a few years. In 1663 the Swedish Gold Coast was incorporated into the Danish Gold Coast by Denmark . This area later became the British Gold Coast colony and is now part of Ghana . There is no known historical documentation that proves that the 13-year-old Swedish occupation of these African bases carried out the slave trade from there, but this is likely to be assumed.

Swedish trade bases in Africa were re-established in the 18th century when Sweden established colonies in the Caribbean .

Caribbean colonies

Gustavhafen, Saint-Barthélemy today
Saint Barthélemy; NASA NLT Landsat 7 satellite photo

Between 1784 and 1878, Sweden held small colonies in the Caribbean . The Swedish island of Saint-Barthélemy acted as a duty-free port as one of the centers of the Caribbean slave trade.

1771 Gustav III. King of Sweden. He also pursued his goal of re-shaping Sweden into a major European power with the establishment of overseas colonies as a contemporary symbol of national strength. Denmark at that time was already making big profits with colonies in the West Indies . In 1784 Gustav acquired the Caribbean island of Saint-Barthélemy from France.

On August 23, 1784, the king informed the putsch Gustav III. to introduce an absolutist monarchy weakened Swedish Imperial Council , that Sweden was now the owner of an island in the West Indies, which apparently many of the council members had not expected at that time. The first report on the island came from the Swedish consul general on the island, Simon Bérard, who was based in L'Orient, the only city: Saint-Barthélemy “is a very unimportant island with no strategic position. It is very poor and arid and has a small population. Only salt and cotton are produced here. Much of the island consists of bare rock. The island has no fresh water of its own and the wells on the island only provide brackish water. Water therefore has to be obtained from neighboring islands. There are nowhere roads. "

From Bérard's report it followed that because of the poor soil there was no possibility of larger agricultural cultivation. The island therefore only had future prospects as a good harbor. Bérard also made the island a free port . At the time, France was struggling to provide enough slaves for its colonies in the region. So Sweden could try to close this gap and export slaves to French colonies in the region. If the Saint-Barthélemy project was successful, plans were made on the Swedish side to expand their own colonial territory to other islands in the region. Gustav was also known that the leading slave trade nations made a lot of money with the slave trade, which is why he followed Berard's recommendation to make Saint Bartholome a center of the slave trade.

In autumn 1786 the Svenska Västindiska Kompaniet (Swedish West India Company) was founded on the island. Gustav promised investors great future profits. Anyone who could afford it was allowed to buy shares in the company, Gustav himself kept 10% of the shares and thus remained the largest shareholder. The king received a quarter of the profits, the other shareholders the rest. On October 31, 1786 a privilege was issued for the company, which gave it the right to operate slave trade between Africa and the West Indies. Paragraph 14 of the letter of privilege read: "The company is allowed to trade in slaves in Angola and on the African coast, provided it is permitted there."

On March 12, 1790, a new constitution including a tax system was introduced on the island. Both were designed with the aim of making Saint-Barthélemy an attractive port for slave traders. The new laws gave traders of all nationalities an astonishing equality of opportunity for the time. Slaves could be imported tax-free by ships of all nationalities and were taxed low on export, whereby this export tax was halved again for slaves that were imported from Africa on Swedish ships. The new constitution promised: "Freedom for all for all ships living and arriving on Saint Bartholomew to arm and send out and to undertake deliveries to Africa to buy slaves in all places where this is permitted for all nations." from all over the Caribbean interested in buying slaves. Slavery was administered and regulated in Saint-Barthélemy through special legislation and a police force for slaves and free colored persons.

In 1813, Sweden was granted control of Guadeloupe , a nearby French colony that was temporarily under British occupation, but which it sold back to France for 24 million francs after the fall of Napoleon in 1814 , as Sweden had in the meantime banned the slave trade and placed the colonies under under these circumstances had largely lost their economic meaning.

The last 523 legally owned slaves in the Swedish colony of Saint-Barthélemy were ransomed by the state on October 9, 1847 for 80  riksdalers each.

abolition of slavery

1788 sent the British Society for the Abolition of Slavery with Anders Sparrman a Swedish opponents of the slave trade to Gustav III., As the Society feared other nations would expand its slave trade when Britain would set their own slave trade. Books and letters brought on the subject encouraged the Swedish king to stop the unfortunate slave trade in his sphere of influence. In a reply from the king, delivered through Sparrman, the king wrote that no one in his country was involved in the slave trade and that he would do everything in his power to keep it that way.

Movements to abolish slavery grew stronger during the early 19th century, particularly in Britain, where the slave trade was banned in 1807 and subsequently in the United States in 1808 , which became a model for other states. The slave trade was banned in Sweden in 1813, and slavery was allowed until October 9, 1847.

Then the British Navy patrolled the African coast to catch illegal slave traders. The Swedish ship Diana was intercepted by the British near the African coast during this time when she was driving freshly loaded with slaves towards Saint Bartholomew. In this case, there was a trial in court to determine whether the slave trade could be prosecuted in this way as a violation of universal human rights. However, the ship was returned to the Swedish owners, as Sweden at that time had not yet banned the slave trade and practically allowed it.

Eventually the slave trade became a sensitive issue as the Swedish government also banned slave trade in the Caribbean, but initially not slavery itself. The West Indian colonies then became a financial burden. Guadeloupe was sold back to France in 1814, the sales proceeds of 24 million francs went to the Guadeloupe , which had the task of promoting the Swedish crown prince and regent Charles XIV. John of Sweden and was previously Marshal of France under Napoleon I as Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte . His house received 300,000 Riksdalers annually until 1983 as compensation for his loss of prestige in France, when Sweden joined the United Kingdom against France in the third Napoleonic coalition war.

It is not yet known exactly how many Africans were deported to America as slaves on Swedish ships, but it is possible that this will change because the existing documents have never been seriously evaluated, and due to their poor condition are not directly accessible or on microfilm be made. At least some data, especially those relating to Saint-Barthélemy , are now available online.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Träldom . In: Theodor Westrin, Ruben Gustafsson Berg, Eugen Fahlstedt (eds.): Nordisk familjebok konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi . 2nd Edition. tape 30 : Tromsdalstind – Urakami . Nordisk familjeboks förlag, Stockholm 1920, Sp. 160 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).
  2. ↑ Traité d'Alliance Entre Sa Majesté Le Roi de Suede et Sa Majesté Le Roi du Royaume Uni de la Grande Bretagne et de l'Irlande (1813). 'Comité de Liaison et d'Application des Sources Historiques', Saint-Barthélemy. Mémoire St Barth | History of Saint-Barthélemy (French).
  3. ↑ Traité, Pour la répression de la Traite des Noirs, entre Sa Majesté le Roi de Suède et de Norvège d'une part, et Sa Majesté le Roi du Royaume uni de la Grande Bretagne et de l'Irlande de l'autre (1824 ). 'Comité de Liaison et d'Application des Sources Historiques', Saint-Barthélemy. Mémoire St Barth | History of Saint-Barthélemy (French).
  4. ↑ Traité pour la répression de la Traite des Noirs entre Sa Majesté le Roi de Suède et de Norvège et Sa Majesté le Roi des Français (1836). 'Comité de Liaison et d'Application des Sources Historiques', Saint-Barthélemy. Mémoire St Barth | History of Saint-Barthélemy (French).
  5. ↑ Integrations- och jämställdhetsdepartementet. Dir. 2007: 114 (PDF; 100 kB) Kommittédirektiv: Tilläggsdirektiv till Delegationen föränkekliga rättigheter i Sverige (Ju 2006: 02), s. 2. In Swedish.
  6. ↑ Thomas Read Rootes Cobb: An Inquiry Into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America To which is Prefixed An Historical Sketch of Slavery . 1858, p. Cxcii.
  7. ^ Swedish "Black Code". Original, dated June 30, 1787
  8. ^ "Code Noir" Suédois. dated June 30, 1787 (French)
  9. ↑ Herman Lindqvist . In: Aftonbladet , October 8, 2006
  10. ↑ 9 October 1847 et Abolition de l'esclavage à Saint-Barthélemy (French).
  11. ↑ Mike Phillips: Migration Histories: Caribbean. Origins. Slavery: Catalog reference (PRO) FO 84/1310. Moving Here, United Kingdom; Retrieved November 29, 2007.
  12. ↑ James Kent: Commentaries on American Law. 4 vols. New York, 1826-30. The Founders' Constitution, Volume 3, Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1, Document 26. The University of Chicago Press, 1987; Retrieved November 29, 2007.
  13. ↑ La longue agonie des archives suédoises de Saint-Barthélemy (In French)
  14. ^ "Repertoire" des expéditions négrières: Saint-Barthélemy (Suède)