The Danish colonial project on the Gold Coast

The multiplicity of hopes and dreams vested in Britain’s Sierra Leone project would carry on into the mid- and late 1790s. One of the strongest voices in favour of African colonisation in this period was a Swede, Carl Bernhard Wadstrom, who belonged to the Swedenborgian religious community and who had settled in England in the late 1780s and then in France in the 1790s.

In fact, not only was the Danish government supporting the venture, it was also its direct sponsor. Before turning to this case in more detail, it is important to introduce the two men behind the Danish effort, Ernst Schimmelmann and Paul Erdmann Isert. Schimmel­mann is well known to historians. Coming from one of the wealthiest families in Denmark, both Ernst and his father, Heinrich Carl, before him held the post of Danish Minister of Finance. The Schimmelmanns had amassed a vast fortune from the colonial trade on the Elbe (with bases in Hamburg and Dresden).

One of the aspects that Schimmelmann wished to improve was the Danish slave trade. After the abolition of the Danish West India Company in 1754, the forts on the African coast had come under royal administration. Investors in the company had been delighted to see the Crown take over since their African trade was a liability. Over the next ten years the Crown managed the enterprise, but only ever broke even on earnings. The Bargum Trading Society then held the slave-trading monopoly from 1765, but it, too, failed to improve results. Thus, from 1777, the African trade was again placed in royal hands. Intending to make the trade more profitable than in the past, Schimmelmann decided to create the Ostersoisk-Guineisk handelsselskab (Baltic-Guinea Trading Company). He obtained a royal charter on 5 July 1781, receiving the right to the Baltic and the African trade, as well as both the African and Greenland fleets (amounting to a total of thirty-seven ships). However, even with such favourable conditions the African trade continued to be unprofitable, and Schimmelmann began considering selling the Danish forts to the British. At the same time, however, he was also becoming increasingly critical of the slave trade and slavery. Thus, in 1786 he set up a commission to examine the possibilities for the suppression of the slave trade.

Schimmelmann’s plans, however, would have a new component added to them, based on his encounter with Paul Erdmann Isert, a German student of medicine who had entered service as a surgeon in Danish Guinea.

Must we thus forego the sugar, coffee, chocolate & so many other products that our European luxury has made both necessary and indispensable? No—that would make as many Europeans unhappy as the number of Negroes that we would raise out of their misery. But how have our predecessors not had the wisdom to see that plantations of all commodities could be established in Africa itself? It is there that we could find abundant labour, & at the lowest cost, without mistreatment and making no one unhappy.

This letter was the last one sent by Isert prior to his departure for Denmark in mid-July 1787. Back in Copenhagen, he came into contact with Schimmelmann. In the following months, the two laid plans for establishing a colony in Africa, which, as the manifesto for the colony and the envisioned plantations stated, should be worked by means of free labour.¹⁹ Should this prove impossible, however, slaves could be acquired, though they should be treated with the utmost kindness and respect. On 14 July 1788, less than a year after his return to Denmark, Isert, along with his young wife, his brother and a handful of carpenters and helpers, set sail on board the ship Fredensborg to arrive off the fort of Christiansborg one month later.

While en route, Isert had passed the British possessions in Sierra Leone, and witnessed how they were preparing for a new colony there. According to Christian Degn, it was this encounter that led Isert to contemplate going against the instructions he had been given which ordered him to found a colony in the mountains, and instead seek out a safer place for the colony closer to the mouth of the River Volta.²⁰ After having surveyed the Sierra Leone colony he initially decided on the island of Malfi, 50 kilometres from the mouth of the Volta River. In the end, however, Isert returned to the idea of a colony in the mountains, more particularly those of Akwapim.

To obtain land, Isert contacted his friend Attiambo, with whom he had enjoyed close relations during his previous stay in Africa. Pleased to see the German again, Attiambo assembled the elders of his tribe, who, after discussion, agreed to offer Isert some land. The treaty between Attiambo and Isert shows that the land in question was called Krobbo, slightly further away from Akwapim. Isert paid 1,600 Danish kroner for the land (paid in commercial goods). Attiambo, moreover, would receive 5 kroner monthly, and the elders 1 krone monthly in rent.

On 21 December 1788 Isert could celebrate the construction of his house. Attiambo and two of the elders came to the residence, planted the Danish flag in front of the door and swore eternal faithfulness and friendship between them and the King of Denmark. Isert named his colony Friderichsnopel to honour the Danish crown prince (later Frederick VI). He began clearing space for a road towards the coast and for cultivation. Tobacco, indigo and vegetables were the first crops to be planted. Locals were invited to establish themselves in the colony alongside European settlers, should they so desire. While locals could settle freely, Europeans would have to obtain permission. To protect it from attack, Isert saw to the construction of a wall around the colony. He added twenty-four cannon, estimating this defence would be enough to keep the colony safe.²¹

Unfortunately, Isert was not to experience the further development of his colony. While taking a letter to the coast, he died on 21 January 1789. One month later, his young wife succumbed, as did their new-born daughter. Back in Copenhagen, Isert’s death was seen as a tragic loss both by family members and Schimmelmann. F. Plum, brother of Isert’s wife, commemorated his friend Isert in the Danish journal Minerva in elegant and poetic terms. As part of this commemoration, Plum let his readers know just how tragic Isert’s death was to a possibly better future for the African population:

You read what our noble Isert wrote about these oppressions; your heart began to race for the human cause, and often you wished with me that he who wished the best for this poor people, and intimately knew of its misfortunes, could be of use to ease their sufferings. And when he was sent there to buy land and found a town, then you envisaged a better destiny for Leona’s black sons. In that hope you envisaged productivity and hard work to spread from his colony and idleness to disappear from culture, and the products of India to flourish along the banks of the Volta.

Although Plum’s eulogy sounded almost apocalyptic, Isert’s sudden death only put a temporary stop to the Danish attempts at cultivation and colonisation in Africa. Jens Nielsen Flindt took over the settlement and continued clearing land for cultivation. Soon, however, he would clash with the incoming governor, Andreas Riegelsen Biorn, who believed it better to cultivate the land closer to the coast. A few Danes had already begun experimenting with such plantations. Peder Meyer had founded ‘Frydenlund’ and planted 12,600 cotton bushes. Another plantation, called Jagerslyst’, was founded by the commander of Kongensten, Niels Lather. The latter plantation, however, was worked by means of slave labour. Both Meyer and Lather eventually gave up, also due to clashes with Biorn, who seems to have been an individual of a difficult nature.

Back in Copenhagen the news that plantation cultivation in Africa was indeed possible provided the context for a serious consideration of the abolition of the slave trade. Inspiration for such an initiative also came from England, where Wilberforce was leading an attack on this institution. Schimmelmann followed such discussions with great interest. Once he heard that the proposition to abolish the slave trade was rejected by the British Parliament on 18 April 1791, he decided to work out a plan for a Danish decree. At this point, he had already reformed slavery on his own plantations at St Croix. The result of Schimmelmann’s abolitionist labours was the royal decree of 16 March 1792 abolishing the Danish slave trade at the start of the new year of 1803. With this decree, too, the Danish possessions in Africa were returned to the Danish Crown. It took a couple of years, however, before any attempts at cultivation would successfully take off again, with two of the most flourishing experiments undertaken by Johan P.D. Wrisberg, Peter Thonning and Flindt. Separately, they managed to found large cotton and coffee plantations, and cultivate indigo and sugar. These projects, however, were not carried out at Isert’s Fridericksnopel, which was closed down in 1802.²³