Why the Danes Got There First – A Trans-Imperial Study of the Abolition of the Danish Slave Trade in 1792

Abstract

This article explores the causes and timing of the abolition of the Danish slave trade in 1792. While the existing historiography highlights economic and humanitarian considerations behind the decision to decree abolition of the slave trade and situates such concerns within a Danish context, this article looks at ways in which trans-imperial influences on the Danish government and commercial ties between the Danish colonial empire and other slave trading polities were equally important factors in the move towards abolition.On 16 March 1792, Christian VII of Denmark-Norway decreed the abolition of the Danish slave trade. In a brief announcement, the King declared that 'From the beginning of the year 1803 we wish that the slave trading of our subjects cease on the African coast and wherever else it may take place off our West Indian possessions.' 1 With this resolution, Denmark became the first European colonial empire to officially commit to the abolition of its trans-Atlantic and inter-Caribbean slave trades. Revolutionary France abolished slavery on 4 February 1794, but Napoleon notoriously reinstated both slavery and the slave trade eight years later. 2 In Britain, abolitionists had agitated for the abolition of the slave trade since the early 1780s, but Parliament only decreed the abolition of the British slave trade on 25 March 1807, with effect from 1 January 1808. 3 Other European powers followed more hesitantly, beginning with a pledge to cooperate against the slave trade during the Congress of Vienna. 4 The focus of this article is to revisit the question of why Denmark, a relatively obscure colonial empire on the periphery of Europe, became the first European empire to abolish its slave trade. Unlike Britain, Denmark had seen no parliamentary debates on the slave trade (it was an absolute Monarchy), nor had there been a storm of petitions requesting abolition. Unlike France, Denmark had also not had a group of

From abolition of the slave trade to protection of immigrants: Danish colonialism, German missionaries, and the development of ideas of humanitarian governance from the early eighteenth to the nineteenth century

“…The Danish declaration of abolition of the slave trade from the Danish colonies on the West African Gold Coast (or Slave Coast) to the sugar plantations of the Danish West Indies in 1792 was ambiguous, though, as it would only take effect from 1803, and in the meantime -from 1793 to 1802 -an acceleration took place in the importation of slaves to the Danish West Indies, which brought approximately 25,000 new slaves on to their sugar plantations. 27 Røge emphasised also the "transnational and transimperial" nature of both the plantation industry in the Danish islands and of the slave trade through which it acquired slaves from West Africa, as well of the processes that about the eventual abolition of slavery itself by 1848. 28 In the context of the efforts of abolition in India, preceding those in the Atlantic, something similar seems to have been the case, with multinational interactions playing a no less significant part, and the pioneering role of the Danish colonial establishments in Tranquebar and Serampore being perhaps even more significant.…”

Tratando de gobernar lo ingobernable. Leyes y proyectos esclavistas en Santo Domingo durante la centuria ilustrada

“…De manera contemporánea, desde Europa, la discusión en torno al mantenimiento de la esclavitud o de la trata negrera parecía ganar terreno. Así parecían indicarlo una serie de hechos, como la abolición del comercio de esclavos por parte de Dinamarca en 1792 (Roge, 2013), las encendidas discusiones en el parlamento británico sobre la persistencia del comercio de esclavos y las proclamas de la convención francesa contra la esclavitud y contra todos los países que decidieran mantener tan oprobiosa institución. Estos debates, que ponían sobre la mesa la viabilidad de la esclavitud en el hemisferio occidental, chocaban frontalmente con la política que la monarquía hispánica había desarrollada para América, con especial intensidad desde la década de 1770 (Kuethe, 1986).…”

'Shrewd Sirens of Humanity': the changing shape of pro-slavery arguments in the Netherlands (1789-1814)

“…9 Denmark, a small player in the Atlantic world, for reasons connected to its transimperial connections became the first European nation to formally phase-out the slave-trade, while holding on to slavery itself. 10 But the most radical blow to Atlantic slavery was dealt by the slaves themselves, in the Haitian Revolution of 1791, which eventually was the decisive factor in forcing the French government to implement the first full abolition of both the slave-trade and slavery in 1794. 11 While the issue of slavery and the slave-trade was thus pushed to the center of legislative and constitutional debates in one country after the other, the only form in Dutch States General was that of a discussion on economic measures to restore the slave-trade from its at that time depressed state.…”