18th
Century Alternative to Slavery A plan by Dr. Paul Erdmannn Isert
Dr. Paul Erdmann Isert, a German national who had studied and
lived in Denmark, came to the west coast of Africa in 1783. He
was appointed Chief Surgeon at the fortified Danish settlement
of Christianborg, which today would be in the nation of Ghana.
He obtained this position even though he was very young, because
it was a job no one wanted.
After a few years in Christianborg, Isert signed on as a physician
aboard a slave ship.
Sickened by the horror and human misery he saw, both in the
slave-processing bins of Christianborg and aboard the ship, Isert
came up with an alternative to the abhorrent practice of slavery.
Following the discovery of the New World, Europeans came to
the West Indies in order to make their fortunes as masters of
plantations exporting valuable tropical products.
These West Indian plantations required a great number of laborers.
Europeans would not consider relocating to this hot and unhealthy
part of the world, working long hours (from sunup to sundown)
all to be paid an abysmally low wage. The answer to this labor
problem was slavery.
Africans, captured by slave traders, were chained and shackled,
and brought to European slave-processing stations on the west
coast of Africa. These unfortunates were then crammed into slave
ships under the most horrible conditions imaginable, and transported
across thousands of miles of ocean to labor in a strange land
controlled by cruel and barbaric overseers.
Isert found this state of affairs not only inhumane, cruel and
immoral, but also absurdly stupid. In a letter sent from St.
Croix in 1787 to his father, Isert asked these questions:
"Why did our forefathers not have the sense to found plantations
right there on the fertile continent of Africa; plantations for
sugar, coffee, cacao, cotton and other articles that had become
so necessary in Europe.
"Had we gone to Africa with the leaf of the olive tree
in our hands rather than weapons of murder, willingly would the
natives have given us access to the best and most fertile parts
of their lands, areas which for untold years had been lying desolate.
Why was not our approach more Christian, more intelligent and
humane? Why?
"These African people would have helped us in freedom and,
for low wages would have given us greatness and riches with no
offense against nature, or our personal and national consciences.
"Why did we have to uproot vast numbers of people from
their homelands, subject them to agony, torture, humiliation,
and death; transplant them to alien continents, Caribbean islands,
big and small? Why?"
Isert wanted to demonstrate that the establishment of working
plantations on the continent of Africa could be practical and
profitable. To this end, he enlisted the aid of Ernest Schimmelmann
who was then the Danish Minister of Finance. Schimmelmann, a
well-known and well-off liberal, who was instrumental in the
passage of the law ending the Danish Atlantic slave trade, agreed
to finance Isert's endeavor.
Isert sailed to Africa in the summer of 1788 and established
a plantation at the base of the Awapim Mountains, purchasing
the land from the Asante king, Osei Kwame, on behalf of the king
of Denmark. Isert had once tended the king's sister and subsequently
the African and the European had become good friends.
With the help of Osei Kwame, who shared Isert's enthusiasm about
the plan, paid workers cleared the land and began cultivation
of sugar and coffee.
On January 16, 1789, Isert wrote a report for the King of Denmark
in which he expressed the fine initial success that he was enjoying.
Isert died on January 21, 1789, just five days after writing
the report.
At first it was believed that Isert had passed away from a tropical
fever. Other information that surfaced later indicated, however,
that he had been murdered in a conspiracy that was instigated
by European financiers of the slave trade and powerful plantation
owners in the Danish West Indies. Isert's actual assassination
was said to have been carried out by corrupt government officials
at Christianborg and their henchmen.
