Contents
On Race, Rights and Resources: Adam Afzelius in London and Sierra Leone, 1789 - 1799 .................... 2
My Background ................................................................................................................................... 2
Adam Afzelius ..................................................................................................................................... 3
The Saints and Swedenborg ................................................................................................................ 3
The Sierra Leone Company ................................................................................................................. 5
Freetown in the 1790s ........................................................................................................................ 7
Where does Afzelius the official naturalists, the Linnaean expert situate himself politically and
professionally as a naturalists? ........................................................................................................... 7
Politically in re. to Freetown politics, Swedenborg and Anti-slavery ............................................. 7
Professionally as a naturalists ......................................................................................................... 9
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 10
SLIDE 1
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 earlynineteenth-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 continentalScandinavian 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 questions
concerned 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, and universal claims relating to the rights of men, but also on the
identity of Afzelius; 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 Emmanuel Swedenborg, 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 reflected on
Swedenborg thoughts on Africans as profoundly innocent, as a people who could guide Europeans in
the pursuit of knowledge.i A draft of a map by Swedenborg they 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 Sparrman testifies 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 found Wadström 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, alternative
community to the corrupt European society. Next to introducing ideas close to heart to the followers
of Swedenborg, including labour divisioniii 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 acres of 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 Afzelius and 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 pay Afzelius, if indeed he was paid I have not established. What is clear is that
the company provided Afzelius with 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 antislavery at 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, when she 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.
SLIDE 7
One has to do with resources. The Nova Scottians arrived with little prepared for them, with the
rainy season emerging they had few resources in the form of food and shelter. There were also
political issues, the Nova Scottians, were articulated, aware and diverse religiously. They had been
promised their own lands, and self-governance, by John Clarkson before they left Nova Scotia. As
this was refused the, the Sierra Leone Company was designed to be a commercially viable venture,
discontent spread, the Nova Scottians even sent representatives to London to complain about the
running of the colony. This also reflected the general discontent with the governor who had replaced
John Clarkson as the head of the colony, Zachary Macauley and his council of administrators. These
men were by several accounts quite incompetent and a lot of tension was generated between them
and the Nova Scottians. One reasons for the discontent was the delay with surveying the land
Freetown was settled on. Macauley redirected the surveyors to focus on defence instead of land
plots. This reflected the changing political circumstances and the threats posed by Revolutionary
France’s. To no awail, in September 1794 Freetown is attached by the French Navy, causing heavy
destruction to the colony.
SLIDE 8
A final cause for tension was the close proximity to slave trading factories, and the slave trade that
went on all around Freetown. The white community of Freetown had frequent contact with the
slave traders, the latter providing passage and post, and social entertainment to the Freetown
people of white colour.
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
Afzelius letters and diary are surprisingly silent on the tensions around him, there are no explicit
statements on where his loyalties were. The fact that he dines with the governor Macaulay, who
when he arrives sends greeting from Silverhielm’s fiancé, suggest that Afzelius took a different view
to the Nova Scottians and Anna Maria Falconbridge on the incompetence of Macaulay and his
officers. Macaulay’s governorship is in fact described by Afzelius as the beginning of an era of order,
suggesting he was critical of Clarkson. The diary paints a white context in which Afzelius socialise,
something that corresponded with what seemed to be the established racial hierarchies in the
colony.
The diary is not complete so we do not know how his Swedenborg inclinations made Afzelius
responds to Nordeskiöld’s death, or his relationship to other Swedenbogare in Sierra Leone. The
original ideas to find Africans enlightened as Swedenborg predicted seemed to have survived
however. For example once back in London Afzelius tells a fellow Swedenborgare, Henry Servante,
that he thought he had identified Africans taught by Angles, these were people Afzelius had met and
which he described to Servantes in the following way (and these are Servantes words):
SLIDE 9
“three persons who came from a much more interior part of that continent, and from the
conversation he had with them by means of an interpreter, he found the assertions of Swedenborg
confirmed. Mr. A. assured me that the countenances of these men were beautiful and camely (very
different from the negroes on the coast), their voices were sweet and sonorous, their gestures and
manners mild and engaging, and that they had frequent and open communication with the spiritual
world and its inhabitants; even at the time Mr A. was with them they declared they saw angelic
spirits, which it seems was not uncommon case with these men.”vi
In general Afzelius seem very apolitical, he is concerned with what his superior thinks of him. When
Wadström, without his permission’s quotes his descriptions of Sierra Leone, in his relations to the
French Assembly in 1795, Afzelius, still in Freetown, is angry because it might cause problems for
Afzelius in his dealings with the directors of the Sierra Leone Company. Of course this was at a time
when the relation between France and Britain was very sensitive.
This does not mean that Afzelius did not care about slavery but his objects are expressed only in
certain contexts. His diary, particularly the section covering his excursion outside Freetown,
excursions in which he and his companions used the network of slave factories and slave traders to
find lodging and food, contain a number of accounts of slavery, underlining Afzelius horror at what
he sees.
SLIDE 10
These are not only eyewitness accounts, some of his comments suggest a familiarity with the
discourse of anti-slavery in more generally. At one occasion, being sick on an excursion he was
helped by slave traders who provided him with three slave girls to fan him, but Afzelius wrote “I
could not suffer it, and he quotes a verse by the writer and abolitionist William Cowper, “I wound
not have a slave to till my ground, To Carry me, to fan me while asleep”
In his letters to his brothers the slave trade is however almost invisible. At one occasion, laying out
his plans to leave Sierra Leone to his brother Pehr, Afzelius explains he cannot take a slave vessel
back to England, via the West Indies, because he hates them so much, but he also adds he could not
afford it. That is the only comment I found so.
It is also worth noticing that while expressing a strong objection to slave trade and slave traders in
his diary, Afzelius do also elaborate extensively on the internal African slave trade and how social
and political systems generated slavery. These are discussions stemming from discussions of a more
ethnological kind, incorporating traditions and customs of the different people, including the
Mandingo, Limba, Koranko, Mende and Temme people living in and around Sierra Leone. There is
also a strong physical anthropology strand here, perceived physiological differences between
different people, facial features, skin colours, height and built are regularly commented on.vii
In fact, some of this language seem at least partially to stem from a slavery discourse, estimating the
value of a slave, due to his physique. Afzelius pay witness to a slave trader to performing a mock
inspection of slaves, on the request of his travel companion, so as to see how this was done.
Although it is a process that Afzelius by all account finds very distressing,viii nonetheless, in terms of
language and focus on physical features it is one not too distant from his own discourse.
I think the example of Afzelius is one that strengthens Bruce and Linda’s approach, that Linnaeus
notion of race made its way into ethnological descriptions written by naturalists or ethnological
colonialists. Although Afzelius by all account believed in the universal rights of men, in terms of not
being turn into a goods of trade, his taxonomic eyes could not refrain from highlighting differences.
But there were also other discourses at work, including one coloured by the slave trade, and by
religion. Swedenborg ideal African, had according to Afzelius, physical features that made him more
beautiful. In fact Swedenborg had also written that white skin as something desirable to black
people, suggesting a racial hierarchies that existed parallel but possibly not in contradiction to
notions of Africans (or at least some Africans) as guides in seeking divine knowledge.
Professionally as a naturalists
SLIDE 11
What about Afzelius role as a naturalists in a more traditional sense, as an expert on Linnaean
classification system to be applied to plants, insects and animals, including humans? Afzelius ended
up publishing very little from his work in Sierra Leone. To some extent this had to do with the loss of
his collection following the French attach in 1794, although he came to replace some material. The
foundational work Afzelius did, in Freetown and on excursions is reflected in his diary and
manuscripts, in preliminary descriptions of animal and plants following the standards elaborated by
Linnaeus, focusing on different parts of the plants, outlining numbers, shapes of features, and in the
naming of the species, including synonyms in older pre-Linnaeus botanical works, Afzelius by all
account had library of floras and faunas with him. Creating an overview of the plant material Afzelius
had gathered, he used the Sexual System of Linnaeus to categorise the material.
Afzelius was by all account the expert naturalists in Sierra Leone, this is visible in the assistance of for
example Thomas Winterbottom, one of the physicians in the colony. Winterbottom provided
Afzelius regularly with samples of material, indicating that Afelius was the authority in the area. It is
worth underlining that early modern medical degrees usually meant studying natural history, it is
hence unlikely Winterbottom was a total novis.
Winterbottom was only one of the people who assisted Afzelius with his work. Judging by the diaries
Afzelius house in Freetown saw a regular traffic of natural history material. The individual
performing this trade are largely known only by their first name, Peter and Duffa were some of the
most prolific gatherers of material, they and other provided Afzelius also with local names in one or
several of the local languages.
One of the few individuals, providing Afzelius with this sort of information, that we know more
about is Miss Heard, who another source, describes like “A Mulatto lady, mistress of a large town in
the Mandingo country. She had been to England in her youth, and her English name is Miss Betsy
Heard.” ix
According to Afzelius Miss Heard or Calmina, as she was also called was a sought after source of
information providing the physicians in Freetown with information on African diseases. Her
movements were recorded, when she visited Freetown she was tended to.x For example When she
stayed in Freetown in January 1796, Afzelius was granted a breakfast with her and “as soon this was
done, she, the Doctor, I and an old respectable women Nammonamoodu’s sister, went so far as to
the next brook on the different roads, and collected a number of plants, which we brought home in
the Doctor’s room and there Miss Herd shewing her skill and knowledge of Africa’s Medical Plants
and at the same time her politeness to us in telling us without reserve the medical uses of the
following plants”xi
In this respect Afzelius work is reminiscent of the inventory work Linnaeus and his students did in
Sweden. As I have argued elsewhere, a prominent strand in Linnaeus education of his students was
his emphasis on learning to scan nature outdoors, a skill he laid the first foundations of in and
around Uppsala on the excursions he regularly organised for his students, the Herbationens
Upsalienes. The excursion protocols and Linnaeus own travel account illustrates the weight Linnaeus
attached to interviewing people who could provide the naturalists with local knowledge on names
and use of flora and fauna.
In the case of Afzelius in is not unlikely that material and sometimes names were exchanged in
return for money. In that respect the natural history investigations of Afzelius fed into the local
economy, as did his work on his garden, in which he employed many of the Nova Scottians as
workforce, as this documents illustrate.xii
How is this work, building a garden, collecting material and names reflected in Afzelius view on
himself and his role? Although Afzelius letters rarely contains reflections on the more everyday
aspects of his work, which his diary does, the letters do contain thoughts on who he was, and the
role he played. What becomes clear is that it is in relation to an economic, scholarly and national
context, rather than in relation to the antislavery and utopian projects, that he projects himself to his
friends and family.
In his writing to Sweden, on his work in Africa and in London, Afzelius describes himself as a man of
science, a lover of science who sacrificed himself for science, on behalf of his home country and the
Republic of Letters. To his brothers and friends, he describes himself as a potential Mungo Park, a
famous traveller sponsored by the African Association who not only made huge profit on his
published travel account but who also travelled far inland on the African continent. There also is a
notion of a projector in Afzelius self perception, someone who can make money out of nature, a
finder of resources. Afzelius boasts about what novelties he was in the process of bringing home in
terms of new medicinal material, and dye material. The same dimension, although with a toned
down personal dimension can be found in reports to the Sierra Leone Company.
Conclusion
So to conclude, maybe Afzelius did not highlight his connections to the anti-slavery cause because
Freetown was so ridden with problems, conflicts and tensions. Maybe anti-slavery with its
connections to Evangelicalism, and Swedenborg groups were too radical and alienating, to make
sense to his friends and patrons at home in Sweden, to where planned to return to reap the benefits
of his years abroad studying and working.
Another reason, and not mutually exclusive was that Afzelius put an emphasis on his role as an
naturalists, who promoted the exploration of nature, because it was an identity that bridged Europe
and Africa, it connected up with the project Linnaeus had in mind for Sweden, and the one the Sierra
Leone Company had in mind for Freetown.
There are of course important contextual differences separating the project Linnaeus and Afzelius
were part of. The inventory of Swedish natural resources Linnaeus championed was part of a project
which ultimately was about isolating Sweden from the growing global trade by for example
orchestrating the transfer of tea plants from China to Sweden, or by finding import substitutions for
e.g. Chinese tea in Sweden. And in this latter case he draw on local knowledge from individuals who
were subjects of the same state and active in the same economy Linnaeus tried to make
independent of global trade. As subjects they had a stake in the economy of the state, they shared a
language and to a certain extent a public sphere.
Sierra Leone Colony was an entity with a much shorter history and complex legacy. The directors in
London hoped it would provide the West coast of Africa with an alternative economy to that of the
slave trade; it would succeed by multiplying in an organic way. It was also a place where to deport
unwanted people, poor black people living in London, and prostitutes, and deserving black people,
that Britain felt that they needed to compensate for their loyalty in the American war of
independence, while also keeping at an arm’s length distance. And to the Swedenborg people the
Sierra Leone projected represented the realization of an utopia, a possibility to create an alternative
community to the corrupt European civilisation and as a platform on which to launch a mission to
make contact with Angle tutored Africans, located at the centre of the continent.
Both project however needed a working economy independently if it was to work in isolation or as
part of a global trade, an economy which in both cases needed raw material to sell or refine, raw
material that came from the exploration and cultivation of plants, animals and minerals. I suggest it
was this economic “common denominator” which Afzelius used to define his remit, as he moved
from a Swedish context to a British, to an African and back. He facilitated an economic exploration
that could be used for many different purposes. In that respect resources trumped racial issues,
independently if they were approached from a point of view of universal rights, or from a point of
view of defending slavery and segregation, or taking both into account, as seems to be the case of
Afzelius.
i
Note that Swedenborg also wrote that Black people inherently wanted to be white, see his spiritual diary,
Coleman p. 104
ii
Se Drayton Nature’s Government, p. 110 ”In 1791, Banks, who opposed neither the slave trade nor chattel
slavery, allied the African Association wiht their evangelical opponents in the Sierra Leone Company, to
enlarge the purposes of African exploration. In order to fulfil its charters’s intention ’that it might prove highly
benefifical to the Manufactureres and other Trading Interests of these Kingdomes,’ the Company apoonted, on
Banks’s advice, a botanist, the Swede Adam Afzelius and a mineralogist ’to explore the Company’s districct and
its vicinity.”
iii
Coleman p. 70 ff
iv
Coleman 87
v
Falconbridge, Alexander, An account of the slave trade on the coast of Africa, London : Printed and sold by
James Phillips, 1788, 2nd ed.; Matthews, John, A voyage to the river Sierra-Leone on the coast of Africa
[electronic resource] : containing an account of the trade and productions of the country and of the civil and
religious customs and manners of the people, London : Printed for B. White : J. Sewell, 1791.; Nordenskiöld,
August, et al, Plan for a free community upon the coast of Africa [electronic resource] : under the protection of
Great Britain ; but intirely independent of all European laws and governments : with an invitation, under
certain conditions, to all persons desirous of partaking the benefits thereo 1754-1792, London : Printed by R.
Hindmarsh, 1789.; Wadström, Carl Bernhard, An essay on colonization particularly applied to the western
coast of Africa: with ... brief descriptions of the colonies ... in Africa, including those of Sierra Leona and
Bulama, 1746-1799, London : Printed for the author by Darton and Harvey, 1794-1795. Winterbottom ,
Thomas Masterman, An account of the native Africans in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone : to which is
added, an account of the present state of medicine among them , 1803 (London : Printed by C. Whittingham),
Bref til en vän i Sverige innehållande historisk och geographisk beskrifning öfver colonien Sierra Leona i Afrika,
Beaver, African Memoranda,
vi
(Coleman 79)
vii
Afzelius diary 137, 130 See also “In the afternoon went to Dumbia or Dumboja, where we saw a white Negro
called by the Natives, Fangsee. It was a woman, whose skin was rather whiter than ours but 123 mottled with
brown spots, and whose features and shape besides were like the black’s – Her parents were both black – She
had one brother of the same colours as herself and another quite black – She had a child with a black man
which also was black now sucking his mother – she was very ugly and old and her skin hard and rough as a
crocodile- How could any man fall in love with such an horrid creature. 124
viii
“Being desirious to to see in what manner the slave traders behaved in examining the Salves they were
going to buy the Doctor begged Capt. Mighee to shew us, which he willingly undertook going rank from rank
and examining them from head to bottom often in a very indecent manner particularly the women and
mentioning Picture, (prime), possible and bad. And still he had the impudence after having gone through them
all, to say that as he would not hurt their modesty in presence of strangers, he had now only slightly looked at
them” (107)
ix
Berira, Substance of the Report delivered by the Court of Directors of the S. Leone Company 1794, p.76
writes), “A Mulatto lady, mistress of a largw town in the Mandingo country. She had been to England in her
youth, and her English name is Miss Betsy Heard. We talked much about the slave trade, she said she disliked
it… since she never knew when she lay down at night, whether she might not be assassinated before the
morning. This had not stopped her from going to Bunce Island. In 1802 she had helped Dawes to persuade the
Mandinka and Susu chiefs in the north to stop encouraging King Tom who had fled to that part after his
unsuccessful attack on Freetown in November 1801.”
x
(Afzelius diary p. 43, 46)
xi
(52)
xii
Note I think Falconbridge use this as an example of costly dimension to Sierra Leone comp.