Daughters of the Trade by Ipsen Pernille;

Author:Ipsen, Pernille;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2014-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 10. Christiansborg and Osu, ca. 1802. Peter Thonning’s drawing of Christiansborg seen from north with a few of the houses in Osu in the foreground. Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen.

We see the strength of these family ties in the way the private traders in Osu responded to the abolition of the trade. First they tried to ignore it, when the ban on slave trade was supposed to take effect from January 1, 1803. Then in September 1804 four of the private Danish traders in Osu sent an official request to the king of Denmark for permission to continue slave trading. Their request, which argued that the slave traders would be “ruined” if the Danish slave trade was abolished, was passed on to the Chamber of Customs in Copenhagen by the Secret Council. The Secret Council supported the private traders and agreed that the king’s “Declaration of March 16, 1792” would ruin the private traders. The Secret Council acknowledged that it might be too much to expect that the decree from 1792 would be overturned but suggested that the king at least would allow the trade to continue for another ten years.9

The private traders’ and the Secret Council’s best argument for continuing the trade was that if it stopped, the Danes would have no reason to stay in Africa, and perhaps no way to do so in safety, which in turn would mean the end of any Danish colonial ambitions in Africa. “The forts either have to be abandoned or the trade must be continued until the colonies are established,” the council argued.10 Establishing Danish plantations on the Gold Coast had been part of the plan to abolish the slave trade since the earliest discussions. In acknowledgment that the Danish population had become dependent on colonial products like sugar, cocoa, and coffee, the Danish state wanted to keep the production of these goods within their control, so as to avoid having to import them from other nations. The reasoning was that if the Danish plantations in the West Indies were to suffer from the abolition of the slave trade, then the Danes could develop a new plantation colony in Africa. Now, as the Secret Council pointed out, this part of the plan was put at risk by ending the slave trade. If the Danes were to keep the forts, it could be done only through friendship with Africans. Friendship in turn was obtained only through trade, and hence the slave trade had to be allowed, if not forever, then at least until the plantations were well established.

Clearly the private traders—and presumably most of the members of the Secret Council—had other things than colonial aspirations at stake in continuing the slave trade. If and when the slave trade actually ended they would lose their purpose and even their right to be in Africa. They would, they argued, be put in an awkward and even dangerous position. “The trade is the most important reason for the Africans to tolerate the presence of Europeans on the

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