Slavery, Abolition and Archipelagic Connections in the Swedish Caribbean

Introduction

Surveys and datasets of the trans-Atlantic slave trade do not include Swedish slave trade and colonial history. Yet, when Sweden acquired the Antillean island Saint Barthélemy in 1784, it became a slaving nation that traded and smuggled captive Africans and punished the enslaved population using draconic slave laws until the abolition of Swedish slavery in 1847.

Project Overview

The project is the first investigation of new sources and it situates Swedish colonialism in the Caribbean archipelago. By shifting the emphasis of the previous historiography from the European colonizers to building knowledge on the enslaved and free Afro-Caribbean majority population, the project shows how the Swedish Caribbean society can only be understood in a larger setting where single-nation historical narratives have little explanatory power.

Subprojects

Five subprojects create new knowledge that will build a critical mass of data on hitherto unstudied facets of Swedish Caribbean history:

1. Slave law and justice
2. Slave trade
3. Abolition of slavery
4. Colonial demography
5. Colonial governance

Methodology

The project uses the Swedish governmental colonial archive held in France, which for the first time has been made accessible in the PI’s preceding project.

Outputs

By scholarly publications and the creation of datasets covering:

• Legislation
• Biographies of the majority Black population
• Slave trade data

These will be published online in both project-owned databases and by contributing to major international datasets. The project develops new methods within digital Caribbean and colonial history.

Reparation Context

The Caribbean intergovernmental organization CARICOM has included Sweden in its claims for reparations for “genocide, slavery, slave trading, and racial apartheid.” The project builds a firm basis to evaluate Swedish participation in Caribbean slavery and colonialism.