Oldendorp's Contribution to the Study of Africa1
Adam Jones, Leipzig
For historians of Africa Oldendorp is primarily an important source because
he recorded information received from African slaves about their home. A
central feature of his approach is the distinction between different African
"nations", each with its own language, beliefs and customs. This aim was
shared by many twentieth-century scholars;2 but Oldendorp's work can best
be compared with a work of the nineteenth century - the Polyglotta Africana of Sigismund W. Koelle, a missionary of the Church Missionary Society. 3
Koelle too collected information from persons who had been shipped as
slaves, though in his case they had then been taken by the British Navy to
Sierra Leone and liberated there. His linguistic tables are much more extensive than those of Oldendorp: he used a wordlist of 300 words and obtained
information on more than 100 languages. Oldendorp's achievement in this
respect was more modest: 667 words (including 335 numerals) from 27
languages, together with the translation of the Bible quotation "Christ has
loved us and washed us from sins with His blood" into nineteen languages.
Koelle also offers more information on the way in which his informants
were enslaved, and he was able to locate their geographical origins more
accurately. (The geographical study of Africa had made considerable progress in the interim.) On the other hand, Koelle's book contains few data on
the beliefs and customs of the different African groups. This is where the
particular strength of Oldendorp's work lies, and it is to be regretted that his
statements in this field were so radically cut by Bossart.
1. Subject matter
Like some of his seventeenth- and eighteenth-century predecessors, Oldendorp appears to have employed - if only unconsciously - a sort of question-
1
This is a translation of my article "Oldendorps Beitrag zur Afrikaforschung" in Gudrun
Meier et al. (eds.), Christian Georg Andreas Oldendorp, Historie der Caraibischen Inseln
Sanct Thomas, Sanct Crux und Sanct Jan: Kommentarband. = Unitas Fratrum, Beiheft 19
(2010), 181-190. My attention was originally drawn to Oldendorp by the late P. E. H. Hair,
who mentions him briefly in several of his articles.
2 e.g. Hermann Baumann (ed.), Die Völker Afrikas und ihre traditionellen Kulturen. 2 vols.,
Wiesbaden 1975/1979; George Peter Murdock, Africa. Its Peoples and their Culture History.
New York 1959.
3 London 1854; Reprint Graz 1963.
2
ADAM JONES
naire when compiling information for §§ 74–79. The topics on which he
questioned his informants may be summarised as follows:
1) the informants themselves
2) their scarification
3) the geography of the place where they came from, notably
the neighbouring countries, whether their language could be
understood and whether wars had been waged against them
4) forms of money
5) beliefs / knowledge about God, the soul, the Creation, the
Flood, the Devil
6) places of worship
7) magicians, diviners and ordeals
8) justice
9) women
10) cannibalism
11) funerals
12) the slave trade and enslavement
A final category (§ 80) adds further information on religious practices.
Oldendorp ends Book 3 with his famous study of African languages.
Additional information on Africa may be found in Book 4, especially in §
82 on the Atlantic slave trade, where Oldendorp reproduced statements by
many slaves about how they were captured. Here too he leads us systematically through his list of "nations" (from Senegambia to West Central Africa)
and gives us only the name and sex of the informant; i.e. the informants
remain more or less anonymous.
2. The "nations"
In order to make use of Oldendorp's data in studying the history of Africa,
it is important to localise them as precisely as possible. The main aids for
this are:

Similarities between the names of the nations and recent ethnonyms
etc.

his linguistic material (wordlists, numerals, sentences, single words)

his geographical references (neighbouring or enemy nations, rivers,
distance from the sea, contact with Europeans).
The languages discussed by Oldendorp are not identical with today's African
languages, but can at least be classified in terms of today's language families.
OLDENDORP'S
CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF AFRICA
3
Appendix I combines the results of Istvan Fodor's analysis4 of the linguistic
data (Columns 1-2) with a tentative attempt to find contemporary ethnolinguistic equivalents.
With regard to the relative strength of the nations on the Danish islands
Oldendorp writes (p. 486):
After [the Creioles] the Amina are the most numerous, followed by the
Karabari and Ibo, then the Sokko, Watje, Kassenti and Congo, and after
these the Kanga, Papaa and Loango. The others are less numerous, there
are very few Angola, and the Fula are the fewest.
This statement may be compared with the number of informants named by
Oldendorp when he deals with each nation in turn (Appendix II).
We may conclude that the Danes, whose principal bases in Africa lay in
Accra and Fredensborg (in what is now southeastern Ghana), drew most of
their slaves from the Gold Coast (the Amina) and the Niger Delta (the
Karabari and Ibo), whilst slaves from what are today northern Ghana, Togo
and the Loango-Congo region were likewise well represented. Only a small
number came from west of Elmina (in today's Ghana): a few from Senegambia, others from southern Liberia or neighbouring areas of Côte d'Ivoire. It is striking that fewer slaves came from the far interior than was the
case with the persons interviewed by Koelle in Sierra Leone in the nineteenth century: 5 Only in the case of the "Mandingo", "Sokko" and "Kassenti" (as well as with some of the "Fula") is it conceivable that they had lived
more than 300 km from the coast.
Appendix II also makes it easy to understand why Oldendorp says considerably more about certain nations (with "good" informants), particularly
the Amina (11 pages) and Watje (8 pages) than about others.
3. The ethnographic information
Unfortunately it is only possible in a few cases to compare Oldendorp's
statements on the tattoos of each group with twentieth-century ethnography. As he himself sometimes recognised, it was possible for a single ethnic
group to have more than one form of tattoo.
His information on the religion of individual groups, on the other hand,
is valuable. Some of his questions were from today's perspective rather odd
4 The table is my own, but rests to a considerable extent upon István Fodor's book, Pallas
und andere afrikanische Vokabularien vor dem 19. Jahrhundert. Ein Beitrag zur
Forschungsgeschichte. Hamburg 1975, pp. 167f. Cf. idem, Zur Geschichte des Gã (Accran):
Protten (1764) und Oldendorp (1777), in: W. Möhlig, F. Rottland and B. Heine, eds., Zur
Sprachgeschichte und Ethnohistorie in Afrika. Berlin 1977, pp. 47–56.
5 Cf. Philip D. Curtin / Jan Vansina, "Sources of the nineteenth century Atlantic slave trade",
Journal of African History 5 (1964), pp. 185–208.
4
ADAM JONES
and probably had the effect of leading questions. It would be unwise to
assume that every statement about cannibalism was meant literally. The
answers to his repeated questions about the Flood can at best be viewed as
an indication for the diffusion of biblical narrative motifs. Even the questions about a High God and a Devil could easily have led his informants
(who in the meantime had been baptised) to present their former beliefs in a
form which made them comprehensible for Europeans. 6
Nevertheless Oldendorp offers a wealth of interesting information about
religion and mythology.
4. Oldendorp's sources for Africa
Not all of his testimony, however, came from his interviews. Unlike some of
his contemporaries (and some German politicians today), Oldendorp always
tells us when he draws upon a written source, for example on page 452:
"Concerning the Fida nation I have found in the written characterisations of
the negro nations that they, the Papaa and the Atja have a name for God in
Heaven…" Although his source references are often very concise, he seems
to have made use of five printed works when writing about Africa:

Allgemeine Historie der Reisen zu Wasser und Lande. Vols. III–IV.
Leipzig 1749.

Bosman, Willem, Nauwkeurige beschryving van de Guinese Goud-,
Tand- en Slavekust. Utrecht 1704 (probably the German translation of
1709).

Labat, Jean Baptiste, Voyage du Chevalier Des Marchais en Guinée,
isles voisines et à Cayenne, fait en 1725, 1726 et 1727. 2 vols., Paris 1730.

Römer, Ludwig Ferdinand, Tilforladelig Efterretning om Kysten
Guinea. Kopenhagen 1760 (the German translation of 1769).

Snelgrave, William, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the
Slave Trade. London 1734 (the French translation of 1735).
In addition we can identify three unpublished sources:
 He evidently used the manuscript Diarium of Christian Jakob Protten
Africanus (1715-1769), whom he had known, although he does not name
6 Cf. Olabiyi Babalola Yai, "From Vodun to Mawu: monotheism and history in the Fon
cultural area", in: Jean-Pierre Chrétien et al. (eds.), L'Invention religieuse en Afrique: Histoire
et religion en Afrique Noire. Paris 1993, pp. 241–265; Paul Landau, "'Religion' and Christian
conversion in African history: A new model", Journal of Religious History 23 (1999), pp. 8-30
OLDENDORP'S
CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF AFRICA
5
him. Protten was a valuable source for "Rio Jonk" on the coast of what
is today Liberia, where he had spent three and a half months in 1757. 7
 For religion in Accra he seems not to have relied upon Protten, who
had grown up there and later worked there by arrangement with the Moravian Brethren. Instead, on p. 422 he cites - again without naming his
source - a letter sent in 1770 by the missionary Johann Schenck from the
Danes' Fort Fredensborg. The tone alone ("… If one sees such a thing
for the first time, one is overcome with horror…") makes it clear that
the description cannot be from neither Oldendorp nor Protten. Oldendorp modified the wording of this paragraph, but retained the content.
 In describing Congo Oldendorp (p. 482) mentions news received
from a "Missionarius", who had spoken to a son of "the King of his
country" in St. Croix. I have been unable to identify this source.
In his general description of religion (§80) Oldendorp makes considerable
use of Protten's Diarium, i.e. both for Accra and for "Rio Jonk". Snelgrave
and Römer are briefly cited, and the oral testimony of a "Kramanti black"
(presumably from the Gold Coast - interestingly, this term does not occur
among the "nations") is reproduced.
In order to assess the importance of Oldendorp's research, it is worth
comparing it with an earlier description of some of the same nations, written by another Moravian brother, Nathanael Seidel, in 1753 but never published and apparently not consulted by Oldendorp.8 Nathanael wrote of
"about 60 nations" on St. Thomas and St. Croix, but named only twelve of
them: Criol, Amina, Popo (Oldendorp's „Papaa“), Loango, Calabary
(Oldendorp's „Karabari“), Queda (? = „Whydah“, mentioned by Oldendorp
once in the form „Fida“), Congo, Mandingo (Oldendorp's „Mandinga“),
Watjee (Oldendorp's „Watje“), Mandongo9 Ybo (Oldendorp's „Ibo“) and
Cahsanty (Oldendorps „Kassenti“). Whereas Oldendorp wrote several pages
on almost every nation, Nathanael limited himself for 2-3 sentences each. In
contrast to Oldendorp's differentiated and scientific approach, his remarks
on the "character" of these nations consist almost entirely of stereotypes
typical of those held by slave owners: some nations (Popo, Watjee, Queda,
7 Unitätsarchiv Herrnhut, R.15.N.8.1a, Prottens Reise-Diarium 1756–1761. I hope to publish
a critical editiion of this source one day.
8 Unitätsarchiv Herrnhut, R.15.B.a.No.18. „Relation von Br. Nathanaels Besuch in den
Caribischen Eilanden [...] Ao. 53 [...], pp. 190–201. Seidel (1718–1782) had worked for the
Moravians in Pennsylvania in the 1740s and 1750s and had visited the West Indies from
there in 1753 (Beck, Brüder in allen Völkern, S. 82, 170f.). Oldendorp mentions him a
number of times.
9 In the same source Nathanael writes that the Mandongo were „often captured by the Aminas“, but this may have been a mistake: according to Oldendorp, the Mandongo did not live
on the Gold Coast but in West Central Africa.
6
ADAM JONES
Congo) were "industrious", "intelligent", "loyal" and "one does not hear of
any theft among them", but the majority were „lazy“ (Loango), cannibals
(Mandingo, Calabary) or – the worst possible attribute from the point of
view of a slave owner – „often commit suicide“ (Calabary, Mandongo, Cahsanty). Only in the case of the Ybo does Nathanael provide interesting
information on religious customs.
Thus Oldendorp certainly had predecessors, but his relatively objective
tone and above all his insatiable ethnographic curiosity made it possible for
him to write a work which was ahead of its time and remains extremely
valuable for scholars today.
OLDENDORP'S
CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF AFRICA
7
Appendix I
Language
Family
Mande
Gur
Kru**
Kwa
Benue-Kongo
Bantu
[unidentified]
Ethnolinguistic Identification of the „Nations“
Subgroup
Name given
Identification*
by Oldendorp
Mandinga
Manding, Mandinka,
Malinke
Jalunkan
Yalunka
Sokko
(Nsoko)
Kassenti
/ Kasem, Chamba
Tjamba
Tembu
Temba [12.35], subgroup
of Tem
Gien
Gien [33:6], subgroup of
Kran
Kanga
Akan (Twi)
Akkim
Akyem
Amina
Akan (Guang)
Akripon
Akropon(g)
Gã
Akkran
Accra (Gã)
Tambi
Adangbe / Adangme
Ewe
Atja
Aja /Adja
Watje
Wachi / Watji
Papaa
Popo
Wawu
Ibo (Igbo)
Ibo
Igbo
Karabari
Kalabari (subgroup of
Ijo)
Efik
Mokko
Kongo group
Loango
Kongo
Kongo
Sundi
Camba
Kamba / Wakamba
Mbete
/ Mandongo
(Ndongo?)
Kimbundu (?)
Mangree
Ngere [33:24]
Okwa
/
Okwoi
Wawu II10
* Names of dialects / ethnic groups / places resembling the names given by Oldendorp. In square brackets: references to George Peter Murdock, Africa. Its Peoples
and their Culture History. New York 1959.
** For some linguists the Kru languages belong to the Kwa family.
10 Cf. p. 456: „He spoke of two kinds of Wawu, namely on the coast and in the interior.“
8
ADAM JONES
Appendix II
Number of Informants from Individual "Nations"
Page
in
Manuscript
392
395
398
402
403
404
415
420
421
421
425
425
431
436
440
443
451
452
456
458
463
468
471
477
478
482
the Nation
Fula
Mandinga
Kanga
Mangree
Gien
Amina
Akkim
Akripon
Okwa / Okwoi
Akkran
Tambi
Tembu / Attembu
Kassenti / Tjamba
Sokko / Asokko
Papaa
Watje
Atja
Fida
Wawu
Karabari
Ibo
Mokko
Loango
Camba
Mandonga
Congo
Number of Male and Female Informants
1 M (in St. Croix)
a few + 1 F
4M+2F
1F
1M
5M
1M
1M
1M
1M
1M
2M+1F
3M+1F
3M
1 M (in St. Croix, from Arrada) + 3 F
4M+3F
1F
1 Criole (his father was from Fida)
1F
3M+2F
4 M + 1 M in Pennsylvania
2M+1F
1M
1F
3M+1F
2M
OLDENDORP'S
CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF AFRICA
9
AppendixIII
Neighbours and Enemies of Individual "Nations"
Nation
Fula
Mandinga
Neighbour
„
Kanga
Jalunkan
Mandinga
Fula
Mangree (understand
their language)
Kanga
Mandinga*
Mangree
? Bibi (cannibals)
Mangree
Gien
Amina
Fula
Enemy
Remarks
Sorua
Bandi (King
pays tribute to
the King of
B.)
extends to the coast
Amina*
Fante, Akkim,
Akkran,
Beremang,
Asseni,
Kifferu, Atti,
Okkau,
Adansi
Akkim
Understands Amina
language, Kommu,
Assin, Fante,
Agumma, Tjuvu,
Wamwi, Dantjela
[Denkyera], Akkran
+ Watje
Akripon
Amina
Okwa
/ Obtains gold from
Okwoi
Akkim
Akkran
Amina, Fante
Tambi
/ Amina
Adampe
Tembu
Pari
Amina
„
„
Kassenti
(proper
name:
Anta / Attem
Page
511–12
3
9
6
Kassenti
Watje
Amina
far from the coast
1 = day from the
404;
coast, 1 = 14 days, 405, 419;
1 = 1 day from the 514
English fort; Quahu
+ Kanverdi =
peoples belonging
to A.
2 days from Danish
fort
420
on the coast
421, 516
425, 426
further inland than
Amina; use arrows
in war; 1 lived 4
days from Accra
425f,
430,
518
431
10
ADAM JONES
Tjamba)
Sokko
Asokko
Papaa
Bombra
Amina
/ Uwang
Amina,
Watje
Akkran,
Watje
Kassenti, Sokko
Atja
Watje
(similar
language)
Tofa, Jani, Taku,
Akisa, Fo, Dahomee,
Fida
Frau [= Pla = Grand
Popo?], Bente [=
Bante?], Nanna, Gui,
gurraa, Guaflee, No
Ibo (similar language), Apur, Bibi /
Biwi
Karabari
Igan, Ero
Wawu (1)
Wawu (2)
Karabari
Ibo (1)
Ibo (2)
Mokko
Loango
Camba
Mandonga
Amina
6–7 weeks from the 436
coast; islamicised
a) Apossu /
441-2
Apeschi [= Kpesi],
Nagoo / Anagoo,
Arrada [= Allada],
Attolli [= Toli] +
Affong belong to
Papaa; b) Affong
have subjugated the
others; c) Allada
belongs to Papaa
Some are not far
443
from the Danish
fort, some far;
name children after
weekdays, like the
Amina.
451
456
456
459, 520
far from coast
Bibi = an Ibo state
Karabari, Bobumda
Loango, Sundi
* not direct neighbours
Civil war:
Macongo vs.
Maluango
Mandongo
King (Areffan
Congo) = in the far
interior
very far from coast.
3 parts: Colambo,
Cando, Bongolo
464
465
469
471
477
478