On Race, Rights and Resources: Adam Afzelius in London and Sierra Leone, 1789 - 1799

Contents

On Race, Rights and Resources: Adam Afzelius in London and Sierra Leone, 1789 - 1799

My Background

Adam Afzelius

The Saints and Swedenborg

The Sierra Leone Company

Freetown in the 1790s

Where does Afzelius the official naturalists, the Linnaean expert situate himself politically and professionally as a naturalists?

Politically in re. to Freetown politics, Swedenborg and Anti-slavery

Professionally as a naturalists

Conclusion

SLIDE1

On Race, Rights and Resources: Adam Afzelius in London and Sierra Leone, 1789 - 1799

Hanna Hodacs

Thanks for invitation!

My Background

I would like to start with a short note on my background and how my research interests relate to the questions at the forefront at this workshop.

In 2003 I defended my PhD thesis Converging world views: the European expansion and early-nineteenth-century Anglo-Swedish contacts. It was concerned with early nineteenth century British evangelicalism, which, fuelled by millennialism, promoted missionary endeavours directed towards Scandinavia. I discussed the intellectual and organisational backdrop to this European continental-Scandinavian missionary project, and related it to parallel projects organising “heathen mission” and home mission, but also how behind the British approach rested an anticipation of a future Scandinavian protestant contribution to a universalising project of converting and awakening the population of the globe to true Christianity. I used the terms objects and potential allies to describe the British evangelical approach to Sweden, and to compare it to similar projects at home and in Africa and India. My external examiner Catherine Hall, who then just recently published her big monograph, Civilising Subject, had one big question that I failed to respond to regarding my contextualisation of the Anglo-Swedish contacts, namely what role did ideas of race play?

I left this question behind as I moved on to new areas of research. After my PhD I did a post doc in Uppsala on Linnaean natural history focusing particularly on travelling as a form of education. Together with Kenneth I wrote a book, the title in English would something along the line of Natural History on the Move. Exploration, Education and Advancement in 18th Century Sweden.

I did also move geographically, I emigrated to Britain where I since 2010 work on part time on a project on Scandinavian East India trade in Warwick and, more importantly in this context, on a Swedish Research Council funded project on Swedish naturalists in London.

SLIDE 2

The latter project “Westward Science Between 1760-1810 – on Social Mobility and the Mobility of Science” is concerned with Swedish naturalists, most of them students of Linnaeus,who visited London between 1760 and 1810.

Some of the most important I have listed on this slide. My starting point is that these individuals were central in bringing Linnaean nomenclature and taxonomy to Britain and beyond. So far I have mainly focused on what these naturalists did in London and how it can contribute to our understanding of how Linnaean natural history became a global science. London being a Centre of Calculation for late eighteenth century natural history. Inspired by my work on Asian material culture, one of my topics is the logistics of tea trade, moving chests of tea around,I have come to focus on the materiality of systematic taxonomic work, the constructions of card catalogues, archives, libraries, the physical side to system building but also the role of Linnaean experts providing immediate taxonomic services to London naturalists, as a sort of human resources.

Drawing on previous work that Kenneth and I did on the role of careers in early modern naturalist scholarship I have also considered what drove these naturalist away from Sweden, a discussion which takes into account changing political circumstances, and a changing political economy framework. Mercantilism, or cameralism, if one wants to, that speared Linnaeus when he was attempting to replace the exotic goods with home grown and homemade alternative lost legitimacy in the second half of the eighteenth century, making his naturalist students somewhat redundant too. In contrast Britain and the British empire offered ample opportunities, particularly if one was willing to take on subordinated positions as an in house naturalists to naturalists gentlemen in London, as librarians, secretaries etc.

The main patron and force major in the British development was Joseph Banks. President over the Royal Society, with a history of travelling; him and Solander, famously participated in Captain Cooks first circumnavigation of the globe 1768-1771. Banks, like Linnaeus, saw natural history play an important economic role. Naturalists were experts with whose help he could orchestrate plant transfers across the globe. In addition to that, natural history was highly fashionable among London high society. In other words, there were many reasons for why experts on Linnaean natural history made London their short or long term home, in the late eighteen century.

Now, as you can tell, I kept the issue of race at an arm length distance although one central reference point in this has been Linnaeus, the father of a modern notion of race.

The invitation to take part in this workshop has, I am glad to say, got me to move back to questionsconcerned with the role of race in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century European history.

SLIDE 3

Adam Afzelius

In this paper I will mainly be drawing on the example of one of the Swedish naturalists in London, namely Adam Afzelius. Born 1759, he was a late student of Linnaeus, he use London as a base during the ten years he spent abroad, on leave from his job as “Demonstrator” at the Uppsala Botanical garden. During his 10 year leave Afzelius also travelled to the west coast of Africa on behalf of the Sierra Leone Company, doing an inventory of the natural history around Freetown.

In this paper, drawing on the example of Afzelius,I will look at the relationship between Linnaean natural history and notions of race, anduniversal claims relating to the rights of men, but also on the identity ofAfzelius; how he viewed his own role as a naturalist in Africa, London and Sweden.

The Saints and Swedenborg

What singles out Afzelius is his connection to two set of ideas, both which became popular in the late eighteenth century, ideas associated to two transnational movements namely one building on the teachings of the Swedish spiritualist EmmanuelSwedenborg, and one concerned with the evangelical fuelled anti-slavery movement.

And before I start I would like to point out that I will largely overlook the philosophical and theological backdrop of Swedenborg, not at least because I am largely ignorant of it. But for those who know even less than me, Swedenborg was a mineralogist turned spiritualists who crisscrossed Europe publishing his revelations on the relationship between the spiritual and the material world. In Sweden Swedenborg’s followers formed the Exegetical Society, later the Exegetical and Philanthropic Society, in 1786, an association largely devoted to diffusing Swedenborg’s ideas to a Swedish public at a time when the increasingly harsh censorship came to dictate the Swedish debate.

No more on the Swedish political context, what is more relevant here is the Anglo-Swedish Swedenborg-abolitionist connections.

SLIDE 4

In 1787 three Swedish Swedenborgare set out to explore the possibilities for a Swedish colony on the West Coast of Africa, it was part of a general scheme to establish Sweden in the Atlantic trade involving sugar and slaves. The purchase of St. Bartholomy in the West Indies in 178? was another closely related project. The Swedenborg Swedes, Carl Bernhard Wadström, Carl Axel Arrhenius, and Anders Sparrman had however other motives too, they shared an interest in Africa that reflectedon Swedenborg thoughts on Africans as profoundly innocent, as a people who could guide Europeans in the pursuit of knowledge.[i] A draft of a mapby Swedenborgthey believed to indicate where an African congregation who had been taught by Angles existed was referred to in this and the later plans to establish colonies on the West Coast of Africa within the Swedenborg network.

The journey in 1778 did not produce any encounters with Africans enlightened in a Swedenborg manner, but it did leave at least Wadström with a strong opposition towards the European slave trade.Returning from Africa Wadström went to England where he join forces with British evangelicals, the Saints, or the Clapham sect. Wadström and Sparrmantestifies to the British parliament and became deeply involved in the British anti-slavery movement and Swedenborg networks in London.Wadström wrote An Essay on Colonization, particularly applied to the Western Coast of Africa, with some Free Thoughts on Cultivation and Commerce (1794-95) and became a prominent person in the British antislavery movement.

SLIDE 5

London, where Swedenborg died in 1772, was also the place where the first the first Swedenborg congregation, The Church of New Jerusalem was established in 1787. Wadström and August Nordenström, made their way to London to the first General conference, held in May 1789. A few months later Afzelius leaves Sweden, arriving in London in November 1789, it would be 10 years before he returns to Sweden.

I am currently investigating the contacts between Wadström, Nordeskiöld and Afzelius, who was closely affiliated with the nephew of Swedenborg, Göran Ulrich Silverhielm, also part of the Swedish embassy in London. The relationship between the Swedes were ridden with conflicts, it is clear that Afzelius foundWadström and Nordenskiöld too radical, and sometimes mad. He calls them “phantaster”. Some of the conflict are over access to and ownership of the Swedenborg manuscripts, which Silverhielm had deposited with Afzelius before a journey in the autumn of 1790.

The Swedenborg connection forms however just one dimension to Afzelius life, the second is his connections to Banks and a network of English naturalists. Afzelius, in his diaries and letters, writes regularly about going to Banks house on Soho square for breakfasts, a tradition of naturalists visiting London. He also had regular have contact with John Edward Smith, who bought the Linnaeus collections and brought them to London, where they became the corner stone in the establishment of the London Linnaean society.

SLIDE 6

At first glance Afzelius London world come across as deeply divided, on the one hand they were made up of, at least in parts, quite a radical environment, connected to individuals ideologically affiliated with the French Revolution and Thomas Paine.It also involved visiting literary salons, including that of Harriet Matthews, the debut salon of William Blake. Afzelius also socialised with artists, such as the painter Carl Fredrik von Breda, (1759-1818), who also painted his portrait, and the picture of Wadström. It involved living sometimes on the a margin, scraping a living of translations and scientific commissions. On the other, we have the conservative world centred around Banks, involving gentlemen naturalists,the fine tuning of Linnaean taxonomy, working in collections, archives and libraries dedicated solemnly to the study of nature.

The Sierra Leone Company

These two worlds met however, via Joseph Banks. Banks, who was not objecting to slavery was a member of the African Association,the aim of which was to explore the natural resources in Africa to the benefit of Britain. It was in conjunction with the African Association, that the Clapham Sect, or the Saints, came to establish the Sierra Leone Company in 1792, in spite of the fact that many of the African Association’s members were pro slavery.[ii]Here idealism and economics met. The objective was to set up an economically viable colony, providing West Africa with an alternative economy to slave trade, as a source of inspiration.

The Sierra Leone Company was in fact just one of several different overlapping projects with overlapping although by far identical objectives set in motion in the late 1780s and early 1790s. The first one was the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, which later became the George Bay Company, set up a few years earlier (1787 and 1790) and dedicated to move poor black people and other unwanted people, including prostitutes, away from London. It formed a parallel project to the deportation program set up for Australia. In 1787 300 of London’s black poor and 60 women departed for Sierra Leone.

A second project was that which involved the relocation of former slaves in North America who fought on the side of the British in the American war of independence. After the war a group of around 3000 people were left in desolate conditions on the west coast of American, in Nova Scotia. One of their leaders, made their way to London asking for help. The Nova Scotians were incorporated into the plan to turn Sierra Leone into an alternative economy in Africa. Fifteen ships brought 1100 former slaves to what was to become Freetown in 1792, under the leadership of John Clarkson, brother to the more prominent abolitionist Thomas Clarkson.

A third project was the Bulama project with closer connections to the Swedeborg group, Bulama was an island close to Freetown which was presented as an ideal place for an Utopian project involving members of the Swedenborg church and others to settle to create an anti-modern, alternativecommunity to the corrupt European society. Next to introducing ideas close to heart to the followers of Swedenborg, including labour division[iii] but also a mixed race society, where “natives” in the form of “simple and untutored Africans” would mix with “simple and virtuous Europeans” producing a society characterised by “ancient simplicity” and “patriarchal innocence”[iv]. Investors flocked to the plan, paying for £30 per 500 acresof land on an island no one of them had ever seen. With a few months of arriving to Bulama more than 60 of the original settlers had died, most of the rest made their way back to Europe.

Of the three project it was only the Sierra Leone Company’s that survived, although it came to involved a lot of hardship for those involved, not at least the Nova Scotians.It was also the Sierra Leone Company that brought Afzeliusand Nordenskiöld to Africa, as the official naturalists and mineralogists of the company. The reasons for Nordenskiöld to go to Sierra Leone can be traced in his extensive writing and his utopian visions about Africa. Afzelius reasons are harder to establish in the material he left behind. It is clear from his letters that he had his mind set on leaving London and going on a journey of exploration and he was looking into different alternative, he was e.g. invited to the McCarthy embassy going to China in 1793, but declined. In the case of Sierra Leone Company we can see that , Banks recommended him but his Swedenborg connection is likely to have mattered too.

In fact, there is a document form May 1788, written by Granville Sharp who was in close contact with Wadström, speaking of 12 Swedenborg gentlemen, identified with initials, planning to go out to Africa of which Adam Afzelius is believed to be with one, others were the Nordenskiöld brothers, August, Ulric and Carl Fredrik, and James Strand, a close friend of Afzelius in London.

In the end Afzelius, August Nordenskiöld and James Strand went. The latter two died, Nordenskiöld died in December 1792, 11 months after arriving. Afzelius survived, all in all he did two stints in Sierra Leone between May 1792, to August 1793, and then back to London, to return in April 1794, staying until May 1796, spending all in all 3 and a half year in Sierra Leone. During this time he gathered material from the area around Freetown. Material that he wrote extensive reports on for the Sierra Leone Company, although it is worth underlining that he seemed not to have been paid by the company. Who did payAfzelius, if indeed he was paid I have not established. What is clear is that the company provided Afzeliuswith land and resources to establish an experimental garden. Afzelius also wrote a diary and letters to his brothers in Uppsala and to Silverhielm in London. Material of which I am in the process of working through and comparing to the very rich material in the form of published travel accounts from Sierra Leone by people who were engaged in the different projects.[v]

One of them is Anna Maria Falconbridge’s Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone, During the Years 1791-1792-1793, published in three editions between 1793 and 1795, which is particularly interesting since it is a highly critical account of Freetown and the Sierra Leone Company written by a woman traveller who sets out to Africa as the wife of a commercial agent of the Company, Alexander Falconbridge. He was an abolitionist, but died on his post. Although Anna Maria Falconbridge by all accounts were devoted to antislaveryat the outset, over the cause of a few years she becomes a defender of slavery and in her account she writes mockingly about the colony and the ideas behind it. This critique reflects the conflict she had with the Sierra Leone Company on returning from London, whenshe was refused her husband’s outstanding salary and pension.

Freetown in the 1790s

Reading Falconbridge and other accounts, which have been used in previous research, maybe most prominently by Deirdre Coleman, in her book Romantic Colonialism, it becomes more than clear that the Freetown to which Afzelius arrives 1792 is ridden with tensions, for all different sorts of reasons.