Nowherelands: Lost Countries of the 19th and 20th Century
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- DANISH WEST INDIES
- Panic Sale of Slave Islands
- Henrik Cavling (1984)
- VAN DIEMEN’S LAND
- Penal colony with fearful stamps
- Sidsel Wold (1999): Warra! Warra! Da de hvite kom til Australia Olav Idsøe (1978)
- Alfred Edward Chalon (1837)
- ELOBEY, ANNOBON AND CORISCO
- Anti-imperialism and nervous missionaries
Christopher Bruun (1964): Soldat for sanning og rett. Brev frå den dansk-tyske krigen 1864 Gustav Smedal (1938): Nordisk samarbeide og Danmarks sydgrense Gottfried Piefke (1864): Düppel Storm March When I sought cover from a shell or the fragments of a shell that had exploded, I often did so with a feeling no different from when I duck to avoid a snowball…. We hurled ourselves down behind an earth embankment and once it was all over, we often couldn’t help laughing at each other. CHRISTOPHER BRUUN
Panic Sale of Slave Islands They only saw that here, out in the middle of an ocean so enormous that they couldn’t have dreamt it up in their wildest nightmares, and on which they had, besides, been sailing for month after month, there were some small islands with houses so smart and elegant that they had never seen anything like them in Africa.… The crooked, busy narrow streets of Charlotte Amalie. The long, straight, bright streets of Christiansted, which crossed one another at right angles, the arcades and paved squares. Noble mansions, several storeys high, churches with towers and spires, horse-drawn coaches. And everywhere, these slight creatures clad in silk and muslin that only a very few people had seen in Africa: the white women. But even so, most of the inhabitants on these distant islands were black, just like at home.32 It all started when the Danish West India Guinea Company staked a claim on a group of islands just east of Haiti over a period from the middle of the 1600s. The three islands in question were unusually fertile: Saint Thomas and Saint John were volcanic in origin, with mountains and hilly terrain, while Saint Croix was formed by a coral reef and was fairly flat in appearance. They had a combined area of close to 350 km2 and the Indian population had already vanished: the Spanish had transported them all as slaves to their colonies further into the Caribbean. On board the first ship were 190 voluntary settlers. They were men and women from Denmark and Norway, the latter taken on board in Bergen. After six months, 161 of them had died, mainly of various tropical diseases. Even so, some small family farms gradually took shape, but more hands were needed to set up profitable plantations and exploit the islands’ full potential. An interim solution was to use prison inmates and convicts from Denmark, who were promised freedom in return for a few years’ work on the islands. But few of them lived long enough to claim their reward. The first boatload of more robust manpower arrived from Guinea in Africa in 1673. They were slaves bought from local chiefs who had captured them in tribal wars. The project proved a success. And after just a few years, the slave trade really took off. To facilitate the export of slaves, a couple of forts were established on the western coast of Africa. From here, frigates were loaded with up to 500 slaves and sent across the sea to Saint Thomas, which rapidly became one of the most important slave-trading centres in the whole of the Caribbean. Many of the slaves remained on the islands, and soon they accounted for such a large share of the population that the whites felt threatened. Consequently, strict and detailed regulations were introduced whereby participation in rebellions was punishable by death, while escape and theft resulted in a brand on the forehead or the amputation of a limb whose absence would not restrict the person’s ability to work. And ‘should anybody tire of working, a whip will soon cure him of this sickness’33 The West India Guinea Company had been quick to see the potential of what was termed triangular trade. Put briefly, this involved exporting weapons and other industrial goods to Africa in exchange for slaves, who were then shipped to the West Indies to provide manpower for the sugar plantations. The third and last stage was the transport of sugar, rum and other plantation products back home to Europe. It was a brilliant concept. Nonetheless, the company did poorly and was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy when the Danish state bought up the entire group of islands in 1754, and turned it into a colony. There were 208 free whites and just over one thousand slaves on the islands. The ruthlessness of the Danish state is evidenced by a census at the turn of the century, which shows that the number of slaves had risen to 35,000. In addition, the white population was around 3,500. Private traders were still running the whole business. The state was merely the administrator, although it took care to collect the property tax on slaves in the same way as it did on animals and equipment. And the governor, Erich Bredal, complained about the large number of tax evaders who hid their slaves in the forest when census time came round.34 Until the end of the 1700s, the colony brought great prosperity to Denmark-Norway, but its commercial success was entirely dependent on slavery, which had already involved 100,000 slaves by then. When Denmark-Norway became the first country in Europe to prohibit the import of slaves in 1803, things looked bad. But slave trading was still permitted internally among the islands, as was some transport of slaves to other islands in the Caribbean. Here, the Danish ships played a significant role. Only after a large group of slaves threatened a rebellion in 1848 was all slavery officially abolished. That made the colony unprofitable overnight and the Danish parliament quickly started to discuss its sale. The pressure to get the business over and done with was exacerbated by domestic problems in Slesvig, which were taking up a steadily increasing share of the national treasury. The USA was poised to buy in 1867, but the islands were struck by a severe hurricane halfway through the bargaining, rapidly followed by a series of earthquakes and fires. The USA lost interest at once. A few years earlier, the archipelago has begun to issue its own stamps. They are printed in Denmark and a couple of local pharmacists are responsible for the gum. My stamp shows the schooner Ingolf outside the harbour of Saint Thomas, with smoke coming from its galley, and has Danish post horns in the corners. The postmark tells us it was sent from Christiansted on Saint Croix. This must have happened some time after 1905, since this type is one of the colony’s last issues. The sailing ship motif looks old-fashioned and is difficult to interpret as anything but a paroxysm of pure nostalgia. In the meantime, the colony slowly wastes away. The government officials take corruption and alcohol abuse to new heights. Things aren’t much better for the freed slaves either. Once they’ve become simple wage earners, it’s no longer so important for the plantation owners to keep them in good health, or even alive. It all culminates in a spontaneous uprising in 1878. We can picture for ourselves the landlady at one of the local taverns lying prostrate on her bed after yet another late night among boorish sailors and world-weary bureaucrats. She has just had a tray of tea and cakes brought in by the maid. Her lace curtains slowly waft to and fro in the breeze. Through the open window she sees the ocean. ‘The seabed of white coral sand makes the water seem as clear as the air. It winks in the sunlight, sometimes with blue and sometimes with green eyes.’35 She is woken by raised voices down below, but only realizes how serious things are when she smells smoke. In a matter of hours, swathes of the buildings in Fredriksted are plundered and set on fire. Many plantation owners are lynched. [1905: The training ship, the Ingolf, outside the harbour in Saint Thomas.] The uprising prompted the colonial administration to clean up its act, and the plantation owners slackened the reins a bit. Some years of calm followed until, in 1915, the land workers formed their own union. They announced at once that they were prepared to strike for higher wages and better working conditions. This sent Denmark off in search of buyers once again, if possible more frantically than before. In 1917, the USA finally agreed to buy, for twenty-five million dollars. Since the previous time, a new argument in favour of the purchase had emerged: Germany was still enjoying tailwinds on the European battlefields, and it was vital to prevent it from gaining a foothold in the seaward approach to the newly opened Panama Canal. A U-boat base here could be fatal. The USA rechristened the islands the Virgin Islands, but retained the Danish street names. The Danish holidays were also preserved, so that the inhabitants now observe both these and USA holidays – highly appropriate, seeing as the islands have since become a veritable tourist ghetto. Meantime, a mere stone’s throw away from the hotels, the last remnants of the plantation buildings are being slowly but surely swallowed up by the increasingly impenetrable rainforest. Henrik Cavling (1984): Det Danske Vestindien Thorkild Hansen (1990): Slavenes øyer Should anybody tire of working, a whip will soon cure him of this sickness ANONYMOUS, ABOUT LIFE ON THE PLANTATIONS
Penal colony with fearful stamps ‘We were driven by a violent storm to the northwest of Van Diemen’s Land. By an observation, we found ourselves in the latitude of 30 degrees 2 minutes south. Twelve of our crew were dead by immoderate labour and ill food; the rest were in a very weak condition,’ writes Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels.36 A few paragraphs later, the ship is wrecked and the hero, Gulliver, manages to save himself, making his way to a shallow shoreline in the country of Lilliput, which is populated by people who are only 15cm tall. The northwest coast of Van Diemen’s Land was both unknown and mysterious enough to provide the setting for Swift’s book when it came out in 1726. At that time, people didn’t realize it was an island. Until the end of the 1700s, only a handful of European ships had visited the place – and then only far to the southeast. With cold polar winds blowing on the back of their necks, the crews had peered at its rugged landscape, which ended in mountaintops towering to heights of over 1,600m. Between them lay a network of river valleys, overgrown with sombre and impenetrable forest. It was hardly a cheerful sight. After sailing around the island and confirming that it was the size of Ireland, the British nonetheless decided to colonise. It offered a favourable location on one of the busiest shipping routes to and from the southern Pacific Ocean, and the inlets to the south offered good harbour conditions. The first expeditions inland from the coast revealed that the island was fertile, with considerable soil resources. But it needed to be cleared. This is how Van Diemen’s Land became one of Britain’s largest penal colonies. Many of the convicts had been sentenced for rebellion against the British authorities in Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Others were ordinary criminals. The worst were placed in closed institutions, while the rest were set to work in road-gangs or loaned out as manpower to a growing group of English settlers.
Port Arthur quickly became the most notorious of the institutions. It stood on a forested peninsula in the inlet outside the capital of Hobart to the southeast, and was connected to the main island by a sandy isthmus known as Eaglehawk Neck. The penal settlement was built on a grassy hill that ran down towards a sandy beach, and was made of natural stone and reddish-yellow bricks. Inside the walls lay quays, administrative buildings, a hospital, a church and a grain mill, in addition to a huge four-storey penitentiary building. This was organised as a Panopticon, in which a single centrally placed guard post sufficed to monitor four prison wings laid out in a cross shape. Although Eaglehawk Neck was regularly patrolled by soldiers and dogs, escape attempts still took place. The former actor George ‘Billy’ Hunt tried to make a break for it disguised as a kangaroo. Just a few steps short of freedom he was discovered by the guards who set off in hot pursuit, hoping for fresh meat – until Hunt fell to the ground, shouting out, ‘Don’t shoot! I’m only Billy Hunt.’37 His attempt earned him 150 lashes. And not with any old whip either. According to John Frost, who was imprisoned for leading a miners’ rebellion in Wales in 1840: The knot was made of the hardest whipcord, of an unusual size. The cord was put into salt water till it was saturated, it was then put in the sun to dry; by this process it became like wire, the eighty-one knots cutting the flesh as if a saw had been used.38 Those who were serving their sentence at the homes of the settlers had an easier time of it. Most were treated well and with a degree of respect. And in what little free time they had, many would go out kangaroo hunting. The meat was lean, with the consistency of pork and tasted like an unusual but subtle blend of chicken and fish. The kangaroo rapidly became extinct in large areas around Hobart, and eventually further inland too. Up until then, the British had not been especially bothered about the small group of Aboriginal people who had been living on the island for several thousand years. They pursued a nomadic existence as hunter-gatherers in groups of fifty to sixty people and generally remained inland. Here they lived in simple huts made of branches thatched with flakes of bark. The kangaroo was an absolutely crucial part of their basic diet and was not just used for food. Every part of the animal was used: the skin for clothes, and the bones for tools and hunting weapons. In 1820, there were between three thousand and seven thousand Aboriginal people. And they were in a state of panic. Out of sheer self-defence, a number of farms were set on fire and the occupants murdered. The British responded in a forthright manner: a huge human chain conducted a battue the length and breadth of the island. The Aboriginal people who survived were imprisoned in concentration camps where they soon wasted away. By the beginning of the 1850s, only sixteen remained.
Naturally, they involved yet another portrayal of Queen Victoria. She has already turned thirty, but for some reason or another, the engraving is based on a portrait painted nearly twenty years before by the Swiss artist Alfred Edward Chalon. The painting is a full-figure portrait of the queen on the uppermost step of a white marble staircase. She is wearing the George IV State Diadem and has a beautiful, shy smile on her face. Although the diadem is still there on the stamp, she is no longer smiling but cowering. Her gaze is frightened and shifty – perfectly consistent with the island’s increasingly fiendish reputation. [1855: Queen Victoria of England, based on a painting from 1837 by Swiss artist Alfred Edward Chalon] The governor, William Denison, is frustrated: ‘There is a feeling here that to the name Van Diemen’s Land a certain stigma attaches.’40 And he proposes a solution: a name change. Van Diemen’s Land is renamed Tasmania in 1856. The last Aboriginal inhabitant, a woman called Trucanini, dies in 1876. The next year, the penal settlement is closed down, and in 1901 the island ceases to be a separate colony and is placed under Australian rule. Today, the prison in Port Arthur is Tasmania’s leading tourist attraction.
Screenplay Jonathan auf der Heide and Oscar Redding; directed by Jonathan auf der Heide
Queen Victoria The knot was made of the hardest whipcord, of an unusual size. The cord was put into salt water till it was saturated, it was then put in the sun to dry; by this process it became like wire, the eight-one knots cutting the flesh as if a saw had been used. JOHN FROST
Anti-imperialism and nervous missionaries In contrast to the ring of green-black forest, the little sandy beach looks as white as chalk, with just a hint of a pinkish dove colour in the curving strip dampened by the waves that roll in continuously from the South Atlantic. We are on the island of Corisco, where British traveller Mary Kingsley comes ashore from the cutter Lafayette in 1895, travelling the last stretch to shore in a rowing boat. She is wearing light men’s clothes: elegant, slim and stately. Although her gaze is clear, her face is marred by a touch of severity around her thin lips. Along with a couple of men from the crew, locals, she sets off through the mangrove-like forest, then over a grassy plain and into another forest – this time of wild fig trees, whose bark is grey white like the beech trees at home – which climbs sharply upwards until they reach a plateau where a little village stands in front of a cluster of coconut palms. The bamboo huts would blend in with their surroundings if it weren’t for the doors. They are painted cobalt blue and white, in chequered patterns and horizontal or diagonal stripes. All of them are different. The village is empty but for an elderly woman who asks for tobacco.41 Corisco lies in the southern part of the Gulf of Guinea, just off the western coast of Africa. Portugal had already laid claim to the island by the end of the 1400s, and retained possession until 1777, when it was exchanged, along with some neighbouring islands, for a collection of Spanish islands off the coast of Brazil. This resulted in the Spanish colony of Elobey, Annobon and Corisco. Furthest out to sea lies Annobon. Although it is the largest of the three, it is still no more than 6.4 km long north to south, and is 3.2 km wide at its broadest point. The island is very hilly, with extinct volcanoes encircled by dense forests and undergrowth that extend all the way down to the seashore. The Creole population is descended from slaves and Portuguese settlers. At the beginning of the 1500s, they chopped down the best timber, so there is little of value here. The Spanish aren’t too impressed. And Corisco is not much better. The main thing that tempted the Spanish was the Elobey Islands or, more precisely, just Little Elobey. It barely covers a couple of square kilometres but lies very close to the coast, and offers good harbour conditions. A trading station is quickly established here to handle exports of ivory, palm oil, rubber, mahogany and ebony from the mainland around the Gulf of Guinea. At the same time, weapons, ammunition, textiles and liquor are brought in. So it is not by chance that my stamp bears a well-used postmark from Elobey. The other islands barely had any mail delivery at all. The motif is the child king Alfonso XIII of Spain – strong-willed but angelic nonetheless to judge by his expression. He was monarch from his birth in 1886: his father, Alfonso XII, had only just managed to impregnate his mother, Maria Christina, before keeling over from tuberculosis. Little Elobey was also on the route the missionaries took on their way over to the mainland. Many died after a short time, mostly of sleeping sickness, which is caused by a parasite transmitted by the tsetse fly. Gradually, the perception emerged that the risk must be lower in the fresh sea air out on the islands. The American Presbyterian mission moved its base to Corisco in 1850. From here, the missionaries could still make shorter trips into the mainland, but they were mostly interested in training and equipping the locals to take over the longer evangelizing expeditions.42 The move proved to be a mistake. The tsetse fly was just as aggressive on Corisco and after a few years, the Presbyterians gave up. When Mary Kingsley comes to Corisco in 1895, there are two Catholic priests and three nuns on the island. They live in the Misión Claretiana, a short walk from the village with the colourful doors. In a neat avenue of mango trees, she is met by a group of children in school uniform. For a moment, it feels as if she’s in an English park. The cluster of houses wouldn’t look out of place in Europe either. There is a little church, a shop and a school, as well as a large mission building. Everything is painted white, but again with the cobalt blue colour on the doors and windows. She is served tea and avocadoes in the drawing room. The furnishings are haut-bourgeois: nine chairs around a dining table, scent bottles on the table and lithographs of English landscapes on the walls. Mary Kingsley, who has already spent long periods with the indigenous tribes in the jungle on the mainland, is feeling a dawning sense of disdain for all this. After returning home to England, she writes a book about her experiences.43 She addresses herself directly to the reader: In reading this you must make allowances for my love of this sort of country, with its great forests and rivers and its animistic-minded inhabitants, and for my ability to be more comfortable there than in England. Your superior culture-instincts may militate against your enjoying West Africa, but if you go there you will find things as I have said…. The worst enemy to the existence of the African tribe, is the one who comes to it and says: Now you must civilize, and come to school, and leave off all those awful goings-on of yours, and settle down quietly.44 This wouldn’t be especially controversial nowadays, but at the time it caused an outcry. The Anglican Church was in despair and the larger newspapers refused to review Kingsley’s book, which they saw as undermining British interests. In 1909, Elobey, Annobon and Corisco was merged with the other Spanish territories around the Gulf of Guinea and eventually renamed Spanish Guinea. By the time the region gained its independence in 1968 as Equatorial Guinea, the mission station on Corisco had already been left in ruins by a fire. This was started by Father Andreas Bravo when he set a pile of coconut bark on fire while he was clearing the English garden in preparation for the Easter festivities. The priest left the same night, never to return. 45 [1905: Alfonso XIII, crowned king of Spain at birth in 1886.] Even Little Elobey became irrelevant long ago. After nearly half a century as the administrative centre, all business there was discontinued in 1927. Today, the island is one great ruin. Beneath the canopies of the trees – which look almost like one continuous mass from the air – lie the remains of the administrative buildings, trading houses and factories, all crowded together. Closer examination shows that all the organic material has long since crumbled to dust, but here and there, you may stumble across rusty Singer sewing machines and children’s cribs in what used to be homes. In the ruins of the more elegant residences there are misshapen fountains, Art Deco windows, wrought-iron staircases and banisters, and everywhere masses of tableware and empty bottles of liquor of European origin.46 On Annobon, time has stood still. The population, which totalled 20,000 in 2013, is still poor. In the 1990s and 2000s, British and American companies dumped large quantities of poisonous and radioactive waste on the island. All the compensation paid out for this ended up in the pockets of the ruling elite on the mainland.47 Yüklə 463,42 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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