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Thirty-Two Lashes at Quatre Piquets: Slave Laws and Justice in the Swedish
Colony of St. Barthélemy ca. 1800
Fredrik Thomasson
Introduction
In 1802 an enslaved man named Jean-Pierre was accused of beating a white man
named François Barthélemy in front of a bakery in Gustavia, the capital of
Sweden’s Caribbean colony of St. Barthélemy. Witnesses claimed that it was the
white man who had attacked Jean-Pierre, and no one had actually seen the slave
returning the blows. However, as it was strictly forbidden for slaves to lay a hand on
white people, Jean-Pierre was convicted for his insubordinate behavior. He had
answered insolently, the court maintained, and was guilty of having ‘intentions’ to
hit a white person.1 The five Swedish members of the court did not agree on the
number of lashes he deserved, and after a vote an average number was calculated
(figure 10.1). Jean-Pierre was whipped 32 times à quatre piquets, i.e., strung up
between four poles on the ground in front of the guard house in Gustavia. This
judgement, motivated by what was often referred to as the ‘colonial law,’
contradicted two important tenets of Swedish metropolitan law: first, that
insufficient proof required acquittal; and second, that when a court could not agree
on a sentence, the more lenient punishment was to be chosen.2
[INSERT fig. 10.1 HERE]
[CAPTION TEXT: Figure 10.1 The list of votes deciding Jean-Pierre’s punishment, 13 August 1802, vol. 147, FSB. Image from microfilm held at Swedish National Archives, Stockholm.]
Serfdom had been abolished in Sweden in the 14th century, but with the
acquisition of St. Barthélemy in 1784 Sweden became a slaveholding nation. The
1 13 August 1802, vol. 147, Fonds Suédois de Saint Barthélemy [hereafter FSB], Archives nationales d’outre mer, Aix-en-Provence [hereafter ANOM], France. All translations are by the author. 2 The Code of 1734, Book on Judicial Procedure [Rättegångsbalk], ch. 17 § 20 & ch. 18 § 3–4.
government in Stockholm instructed that Swedish law was to apply on the island.
However, colonial officials soon realised that metropolitan law was insufficient to
control a slave society. Local decrees were immediately issued and in 1787 the
governor proclaimed an ordinance that regulated in detail the lives of the enslaved
and free black population. It was proclaimed in French and English, no Swedish
version was ever issued. The law was a shortened adaptation of a French ordinance,
issued at Martinique in 1783 and part of the extensive body of French colonial law
that often goes under the collective name of Code noir, the Black Law.3 This
chapter is a brief analysis of how a mixed judicial system vis-à-vis the black
population was developed and implemented on the island.
The governmental archive created during the Swedish administration, the
Fonds Suédois de Saint Barthélemy, which contains some 330 volumes, was handed
over to the French authorities when the island was sold back to France in 1878. It is
now held in the French colonial archives – Archives nationales d’outre mer – in
Aix-en-Provence.4 Parts of the archive were microfilmed in the 1970s, but with
varied results in terms of legibility. Many documents are extremely fragile, and the
Fonds Suédois has been closed for consultation – hors communication – for several
decades. A digitization project with the aim of making the entire archive publicly
accessible is now underway by the author.
The Fonds Suédois presents many challenges. With regard to the court
protocols, for example, most documents from the colony’s first fifteen years are
missing. These papers were probably destroyed during the British occupation of the
island 1801–1802. Nevertheless, considering the common problems of archival
survival in the Caribbean, it is an extremely rich source of information for the
Swedish period and more generally the period’s intertwined Caribbean history.
Limited research has been conducted concerning the almost century-long
(1784–1878) Swedish possession of St. Barthélemy. Tellingly, only two doctoral
dissertations exist that examine the Swedish period, the first from 1888 and the
second from 1951.5 The lack of new research becomes especially evident in the
3 25 Dec. 1783, Ordonnance du gouvernement, concernant la Police générale des Nègres & Gens de couleur libres, Jacques Petit de Viévigne (éd.), Second supplément au Code de la Martinique (Saint Pierre: Pierre Richard, 1786), pp. 324–334. 4 Anne Lebel, ‘Saint Barthélemy et ses archives: une connaissance historique éclatée,’ Bulletin de la société d’historie de la Guadeloupe 159 (2011), pp. 91–102. 5 E.O.E. Högström, S. Barthelemy under sven[s]kt välde (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell 1888); Ingegerd Hildebrand, Den svenska kolonin St. Barthélemy och Västindiska kompaniet fram till 1796
debates concerning Swedish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Many
theories are proposed, old facts are incessantly repeated, but no new research is
presented. Indeed, the present is the first investigation of the Swedish St.
Barthélemy court of justice protocols, even though these were among the parts of
the archives that were microfilmed in the 1970s.
If one wishes to claim that Swedish modern historiography suffers from a
colonial amnesia – an important discussion but beyond the scope of this chapter – it
must be underlined that in the past it was possible for Swedes to inform themselves
about the situation in the colony and about transatlantic slavery in general. In the
second half of the 18th and the early 19th centuries slavery was frequently described
and discussed in Swedish newspapers and travel accounts. For example, during the
years 1802–4 the revolution in Haiti was reported upon in 276 articles and news
items in Stockholms posten, one of the capital’s newspapers. These events were
world news and a Stockholm reader had ample opportunities to learn of the situation
in the Caribbean.6
Similarly, it was not difficult in the early 1800s to find out how justice was
administered in the Swedish colony. The Swedish natural scientist Bengt A.
Euphrasén visited the island in the late 1780s and published a book in 1795 that
included a detailed description of the legal system: ‘The law, that was applied, was
Swedish; there are some cases that are judged according to West Indian law, or after
agreements with the surrounding islands, or customary law. […] The law used to
judge Negroes, is that of every owner, he has the right to treat his slaves as he
pleases and as his conscience dictates.’ Some of the ‘West Indian laws’ Euphrasén
referred to were slave laws and a number of more or less explicit customary rules
that regulated the treatment of the Afro-Caribbean populations. He went on to
describe in detail how slaves were punished, leaving little to the imagination: (Lund: PH. Lindstedts universitetsbokhandel, 1951). For an overview of Scandinavian colonial bibliography see Gunvor Simonsen, ‘Northern Europe and the Atlantic World,’ in the Atlantic History section of Oxford Bibliographies Online: http://www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com. The most comprehensive bibliography and archival inventory on St. Barthélemy is found in a thorough study of the colony’s religious history: Jan Arvid Hellström, ‘...åt alla christliga förvanter...:’ En undersökning av kolonial förvaltning, religionsvård och samfundsliv på St. Barthélemy under den svenska perioden, 1784–1878 (Uppsala: Erene, 1987), with brief summaries in English and French. 6 It was only later that Haitian independence disappeared from historical debate. Carl Ferdinand Philippi’s history of Haiti was published in a Swedish translation in 1833: Fristaten St. Domingos (Haytis) historia (Kristianstad: C.W.K. Gleerups förlag, 1833). On the reception of Haiti’s independence see e.g.: Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995); Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).
The criminal is placed on the ground face down, his hands are tied to the wheels of a canon and the legs are stretched out and the feet tied to two poles driven into the ground, the clothes are removed so that the body is bare, he who hits him has a whip with a short handle but the lash is 6 or 7 ells long [c. 4 meters] and stands some distance away with the whip and hits the slave’s bare body and the whip cracks every time sounding like a pistol shot and often it takes away large pieces of skin and flesh. The slaves are made to suffer 30, 50 or a 100 such lashes, according to major or minor crimes.7
Lawmaking and Court of Justice
It is impossible to understand the jurisprudence of St. Barthélemy within a Swedish
context. Comparisons with neighboring colonies are more revealing, as the Swedish
form of government and justice system in many respects were copied from Dutch,
Danish and French Caribbean islands. Some geographical and economic conditions
were also fundamental. St. Barthélemy is a small and arid island that was unsuitable
for plantation agriculture (figure 10.2).
[INSERT fig 10.2 HERE]
[CAPTION TEXT: Figure 10.2 An early Swedish map of St. Barthélemy. Sven Dahlman, Beskrifning om S. Barthelemy, Swensk Ö uti Westindien (Stockholm, 1786). Uppsala University Library.]
Upon the arrival of the Swedes there were around 700 inhabitants. A
commercial boom during the wars following the French Revolution resulted in a
rapid rise in population. In 1800 the capital Gustavia became, with circa 5000
inhabitants, the fifth to sixth largest Swedish town, about the size of the university
town Uppsala. The black population formed approximately half of the total at the
turn of the century. The enslaved worked in small-scale farming, as servants and
craftsmen, in the harbour and as seamen (figure 10.3).
[INSERT fig. 10.3 HERE] 7 Bengt Andersson Euphrasén, Beskrifning öfver svenska vestindiska ön St. Barthelemi, samt öarne St. Eustache och St. Christopher (Stockholm: Anders Zetterberg, 1795 [German translation Göttingen, 1798]), pp. 51–54.
[CAPTION TEXT: Figure 10.3 ’Utsigten af staden Gustavia på ön S:t Barthélemy.’ Gustavia and its harbour around 1800. Note the black people in the foreground. The town was predominately built using slave labour. (By courtesy of Uppsala University Library.)]
The government in Stockholm only had vague ideas about how to govern a
West Indian colony. The instructions to the first governor stressed that no radical
changes were to be undertaken in judicial matters.8 However, in consideration of the
slow speed of transatlantic communications, colonial officials were soon given
extensive legislative powers. New laws and regulations needed to be confirmed by
Stockholm, but nevertheless became valid immediately upon proclamation on the
island. The introduction of the Swedish 1787 version of the Code noir can be seen
as both a new brutal aspect of Swedish legislation and as a confirmation of St.
Barthélemy’s pre-existing French law, as well as the customs of the surrounding
archipelago.
The composition of the island’s court of justice varied somewhat during
early Swedish rule. It normally consisted of seven to eight members, three or four of
whom were Swedes: the governor, a so-called justitiarie (judge) and other public
officials. The intentions seem to have been that the judge should be a legal
professional, though this was not always the case. In addition to these fixed
members, three to four members were elected from the island’s cosmopolitan
merchant and property-owning classes. The elected members of the court were
usually Swedish, French or English-speaking merchants, who often had conflicting
opinions. This is mirrored in the court protocols, which are trilingual. In any given
case the testimonies might be in English, the court’s deliberations in Swedish, and
the sentence in French. The criteria for election were freedom and ownership of
property. In spite of this, free black people – who in the Swedish archives are called
fria kulörta, i.e., free coloured – could not vote or be elected. As on many other
islands the number of free black people increased during the late 18th and early 19th
centuries. Many of them were craftsmen, shopkeepers and merchants, and thus
fulfilled the criteria for voting rights and electability. The court sought advice from
Stockholm when this thorny question came up in 1811–12. The option of electing
8 Kongl. May:ts nådiga instruction för [...] Friherre Salomon Rayalin [...] Commendant på öen S:t Barthélemy [... ] 22 September 1784, vol. 1 A, S:t Barthélemysamlingen [hereafter SBS], Swedish National Archives [hereafter SNA], Stockholm.
free black people was rejected by the authorities in Stockholm: ‘To deny free
coloured in possession of houses or land voting rights might seem unjust, however,
West Indian customs might presently require this rule, and a deviation from it
might, even if it would not lead to the horrors that took place on Santo Domingo
[Haiti], it might in due course lead to a situation where all property will end up in
the hands of the coloured.’9
To allow free black people to vote and participate in the governance of the
island was too great a step to take in the 1810s. The events of the Haitian
Revolution were, as mentioned above, well-known in Sweden, and used as a
deterrent. Free black people were admitted to St. Barthélemy’s government in 1822
and finally given the same political rights as the white inhabitants only when slavery
was abolished in 1847.
One of the major challenges in understanding the court’s practice in St.
Barthélemy is the difficulty in surveying the legal situation. The mix of
metropolitan Swedish law, local decrees, proclamations, ordinances and more or
less explicitly stated customary law, often makes it impossible to follow the court’s
way of reasoning. This is similar to the situation on many other islands. On the
Danish Caribbean islands the metropolitan Danske Lov was applied in principle. But
local regulations took precedence and the situation became chaotic: ‘The West
Indian legislation had thus by 1830 become an impenetrable jungle of colonial
proclamations, government rules, published and unpublished royal decrees.’10 Legal
confusion was a common colonial trait; when a collection of French colonial laws
was published on Martinique the editor remarked that ‘most [of the laws] are
unknown even to those whose profession it is [to apply them].’11 The same lack of
knowledge was underlined when Spanish authorities proclaimed a summary of the
laws governing the treatment of slaves in 1789.12
Many of the local laws were published in the island’s newspaper, The Report
of St. Bartholomew (1804–1819). The editor sometimes remarked that there was
9 11 Mar. 1812, Statsrådsprotocoller, Handels och Finance Expeditionen, SNA. 10 Poul Erik Olsen, ‘Danske Lov på de vestindiske øer,’ in Ditlev Tamm (ed.), Danske og norske lov i 300 år(Köpenhamn: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets forlag, 1983), p. 302. See also Gunvor Simonsen, Slave Stories: Law, Representation and Gender in the Danish West Indies (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, forthcoming). 11 Jacques Petit de Viévigne (ed.), Code de la Martinique (Saint Pierre: Pierre Richard 1767), p. i. 12 31 May 1789, Real Cédula de Su Majestad sobre la educación, trato y ocupaciones de los esclavos en todos sus dominios de Indias e islas Filipinas... Published and discussed in: Manuel Lucena Salmoral, Los códigos negros de la América española (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 1996), ch. 5.
insufficient public knowledge of the islands’ laws. This was also the case of the
1787 Code noir ordinance, which was printed in 1804 with the introduction: ‘As the
following Ordinance is of a very old Date, but Still a Standing Law of the Island, We
think useful, if not necessary to make the same a little better known, than daily
experience proves it to be.’13
It was not only the island’s population that showed a lack of knowledge of the
legislation. The court sometimes vacillated on what laws to apply. An example of this
insecurity is a list of 67 questions compiled by the justiciary in 1802.14 A government
secretary was sent to the Danish island of St. Thomas to get answers to the inquiry. An
important part of the queries dealt with judicial matters, and especially the treatment of
the enslaved and free black population. The 1787 Swedish Code noir had divided the
island population into three distinct juridical classes: slaves, free black persons and
whites. As was the case in many other Caribbean territories, the legal position of free
black people was closer to that of the enslaved than the whites’. Their freedom was quite
different to whites’ freedom, something the St. Thomas enquiry made clear: Question 11
asked ‘Can a free coloured person in any way forfeit his freedom and be sold as slave?’
Several court cases prove that this indeed happened on St. Barthélemy. Indebted free
black men were sold into slavery and the proceeds used to pay their debts.
The 1787 law also stipulated different punishments for enslaved and free black,
while the Swedish Code of 1734 specified the whites’ penalties. But as the importance
of the free black population grew, to sell free black people into slavery, or to corporally
punish them when whites got off with a fine became increasingly difficult. The justiciary
thus wanted to know how the Danes solved the issue: ‘12. Can a free coloured person be
punished by flogging or whipping in any other circumstance than a white?’
Ironically, as historians we face some of the same issues as the members of
the court. It is often impossible to understand what law to apply, or what law was
applied. The local legislation was most often never printed and can now only be
accessed through court protocols and other judicial papers in the archives. With the
exception of the Dutch case, there are few published collections of Caribbean
colonial law.15 In the French case efforts are being made towards a collection of
13 Ordinance of Police relative to the Treatment of Black and Coloured Persons, Free or Slaves, and Other Matters, The Report of St. Bartholomew, no 5, 30 April & no 6, 7 May 1804. Reprinted in no 60, 20 July 1805, entitled: Ordinance Concerning the Treatment & Police of Negroes & Coloured People. 14 Vol. 147, FSB. 15 J.T. Smidt et al., (eds.), West Indisch plakaatboek, 3 vols. (Amsterdam: Emmering, 1978–79).
Caribbean law; such collections would greatly enhance our comprehension of
colonial legal history in the Caribbean, as well as make it possible understand the
constant legal interaction between the many islands.
In addition to the explicit borrowing of laws from other territories – as in the
case of the Swedish adaptation of the French 1783 ordinance on St. Barthélemy –
there is a large amount of overlap between legal regimes with regard to the enslaved
population on the islands. The colonial powers did, for instance, compete fiercely
when it came to trade and commercial matters, and civil law therefore did
sometimes differ substantially. However, as the black population was mobile, there
was a common interest in maintaining similar slave laws, otherwise the enslaved
population could have exploited any differences to its own advantage.
I have come to see the non-Spanish islands as a kind of legal archipelago,
especially when considering the treatment of the enslaved population. This is akin to
several historiographical trends that underline the highly interconnected polities and
histories of Caribbean territories. What Euphrasén perceptively called ‘West Indian
law, or after agreements with the surrounding islands, or customary law,’ is
certainly one of the constitutive elements of this archipelago.16
Criminal Cases
The following cases have been selected to give an impression of the range of issues
that were treated in St. Barthélemy’s court at the turn of the century. I concentrate
on cases where enslaved or free black persons were involved in some capacity. The
exposition is mainly geared towards criminal cases, but as the following two early
divorce proceedings prove, civil law also showed some of the mixed aspects of
criminal law. In a 1788 case the court referred to the Coutume de Paris, the civil
law on the French islands before the Revolution: ‘Whereas the Swedish law and the
Coutume de Paris authorises a Wife to take such steps for the recovery of the
Property [...] is agreeable to what in particular said Coutume de Paris in like matters
direct.’17 In another case a white married woman had given birth to a black child.
16 For an attempt to define such a region see Jeppe Mulich, ‘Microregionalism and intercolonial Relations: The Case of the Danish West Indies, 1730–1830,’ Journal of Global History 8 (2013), pp. 72–94. 17 19 Sep. 1788, vol. 140, FSB.
The skin colour of the child was presented as an aggravating circumstance in the
divorce case: ‘the child to be of a dark complexion (almost black).’18 There was of
course no such distinction in Swedish law.
The burden of proof in cases against slaves was different than for free
persons; sometimes no proof at all was needed to keep enslaved people in jail
indeterminately. Tom and Joe, two slaves working in the port, were accused in 1798
of stealing while they were unloading a ship. Several testimonies were heard but no
evidence for their guilt was found. The court declared:
However, the two accused being slaves, and as the court does not want to lose the possibility to apprehend the thieves [...] nor encourage slaves to believe that they can steal with impunity when proof against them is lacking, these two negroes Joe and Tom are to be kept in jail until further information is found.19
The most surprising thing about the following case is that it was the slaves
themselves who took their employer to court for payment. This was according to
both the Code noir and customary law not possible, as slaves could not sue.
Nevertheless, Marie Anne and Cecile sued the white man Joseph Chausse because
he had not paid them for the laundry they did for him on their free day. Chausse
refused to pay, claiming reasons that even the court found laughable. But what the
court found worse than this was that Chausse had become so upset at Marie Anne
and Cecile’s demands that he had hit one of them in the street:
the Council finds it just that Joseph Chausse is fined the sum of 16 piastres gourdes, as well as the court fees, for having infringed on the protection that our Gracious Sovereign guarantees all his subjects.20
The protection of the Swedish king was obviously also extended to his enslaved
subjects in this case. Marie Anne and Cecile must have thought it meaningful to turn
to the court, and they were to a certain extent proven right. Chausse was sentenced
to pay their salaries, the court fee and a fine, though this was only half of what he
would have needed to pay if he had hit a white person: ‘The reason that the Council
has reduced the fine so much is because the plaintiffs are slaves.’
18 14 July 1791, vol. 140, FSB. 19 24 Apr. 1798, vol. 142, FSB. 20 5 Apr. 1799, vol. 142, FSB.
There are frequent cases whereby the sentence was changed from what was
prescribed in law. In 1798 the slave Kitty was sentenced to whipping and
transportation; in the case of slaves this meant being sold to a different owner
outside of the island. However, the court explained that:
considering her advanced pregnancy [the court] condemns her to be exposed three hours at the pillory, with an iron neck ring and shaved head, on three different days, thereafter she is banished from the island, this punishment replaces the thirty whiplashes on three different days that she would have undergone had not the pregnancy had prevented it.21
Exile was a common punishment, thereby breaking up families, relationships and
separating children from their parent/s. Manuel was condemned for theft in 1799
and sentenced to 60 lashes and transportation, but before selling him away he was
also branded.22 We do not know with what, on the French islands thieves were
branded with V for voleur, and runaway slaves with an M for maroon. Branding had
long since fallen out of use in metropolitan Sweden.
The extent to which slave law actually safeguarded slaves is debated. When
the governor sent the Swedish adaptation of the Code noir to Stockholm for
confirmation he stressed that it was important to staunch the worst aberrations by
slave owners: ‘It is urgent to prevent many tyrannical owners’ abuse of the powers
an unfortunate necessity has awarded them over the wretches [the slaves], that are
often the victims of their [owners’] fierce passions.’23
There were several paragraphs that offered protection to slaves in the
Swedish adaptation of the Code noir. Slave law in general specified for instance
minimum food rations, clothing, the right to one work-free day each week, the
maximum punishment owners were allowed to administer, etc. How to interpret
these rules – and to what extent they were followed by masters – is a matter of
sometimes fierce historical debate.24
The St. Barthélemy court had problems with how to deal with owners who
did not fulfil their obligations. This is demonstrated in the protocols and the St.
21 19 June 1798, vol. 142, FSB. 22 18 June 1799, vol. 143, FSB. 23 6 July 1787, Governor Rosenstein’s report, vol. 1B, SBS. 24 Malick Ghachem, The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), especially chapters 3-4; Jean-François Niort, Le Code Noir: Idées reçues sur un texte symbolique (Paris: Le Cavalier bleu, 2015). For the debate around Niort’s book see e.g. Paul-François Paoli’s article, ‘Esclavage: nouvelle offensive contre un historien,’ Le Figaro, 8 May 2015.
Thomas enquiry, for example in questions 13 (‘What is prescribed for the
maintenance of slaves?’) and 14 (‘Is it necessary for the owner to provide security
for a freed slave, or are there laws that prevent freed slaves’ misery?’). The St.
Barthélemy officials wanted to prevent old or infirm slaves from being freed simply
in order to decrease the cost to the owners, and instead becoming a burden on the
poor relief fund of the colony.
The court protocols constantly invoke reactions from our contemporary
moral convictions. Slavery is of course a terrible system, but within this framework
the slave laws were rational. The only punishment that was believed to have a
deterring effect was corporal punishment. Slaves were not allowed to own anything,
even though there were slaves who owned property and actively participated in the
economy. Penal servitude was not an option either, as the slaves already found
themselves in precisely such a situation. On the one hand, it is easy demonise the
court, which sometimes sentenced slaves to dreadful corporal punishments without
evidence. On the other hand, it is too simple to focus on those cases where the court
appears to sentence slaves more leniently than the law prescribed. The court must be
seen as a function that preserved the slavery system, and when it produced
judgements which conflicted with the slave laws this is rather a function of the
impossibility of following the laws without upsetting more important social and
economical circumstances. Many historians of Caribbean law and justice agree that
the slave laws were often not followed (luckily so, one might add). The dichotomy
between the letter of the law and what happened in the courts is, of course, not a
specifically Caribbean experience. When the Code of 1734 was introduced in
Sweden a new range of crimes were added to the list of offenses requiring capital
punishment. This list grew and within a few decades 68 crimes were punishable by
execution. Nevertheless, the number of executions in Sweden decreased throughout
the 18th century. As yet there is no definitive answer to the law–practice conundrum
in the Caribbean; this requires further analysis. However, it cannot be understood
solely from within a slave law context limited to the Caribbean and the Americas.
Possibly more controversial is the contradiction between our ideas
concerning the relationship between judicial systems in the colony and the
metropole. The legal historian Tamar Herzog, who specializes in Spanish America,
states this explicitly: ‘[The] dichotomy between an allegedly virtuous center and a
corrupt colony is too easily asserted. Indeed, today, as in the past, the assumption is
still that the Spanish American domains were different, somehow worse than Spain.
How different, and in what way, we still barely know.’25 I am convinced that the
justice system on St. Barthélemy was indeed more arbitrary and contained less
safeguards than in the metropole. Nevertheless, if research is based on these
presumptions then scholars’ questions will certainly foreshadow such a conclusion,
and the questions of why and how will fade into the background.
Magic, Medicine and Masks
An example of a law that was not followed to the letter was article 6 in the Swedish
Code noir. It prohibited the enslaved and free black population from practising
medicine in any manner:
No Negroes or Coloured people of any kind whatsoever, be they either free or slaves, shall be in any measure permitted to practise medicine or surgery, nor make any preparations for sick people either in Town or Country, in house or on plantations, under what pretext soever [...] and slaves shall be condemned to Chains, and the Master loose the price or value of said slave; not having prevented him.26
Even before the Swedes arrived in St. Barthélemy in 1785 the local surgeon there
was the almost 70 year-old slave Coq d’Inde: ‘a Negro slave is the island’s doctor,
everyone trusts him, he administers bloodletting, and cures fractures and wounds.’27
Coq D’Inde seems to have been left in peace, but one of the earliest proclamations
made by the new governor, only two months after the Swedes’ arrival in 1785,
ordered the expulsion of a slave: ‘I order him [the owner] to send away a negro
named Charles [...] who is a poisoner [...] and I prohibit him from staying on the
island, to avoid unfortunate accidents resulting from such an evil man’s presence.’28
25 Tamar Herzog, ‘Judges in Colonial Spanish America,’ in Bernard Durand & Martine Fabre (eds.), Le juge et l’outre-mer: Phinée le devin ou les leçons du passé (Lille: Publication du Centre d’histoire judiciaire, 2005), p. 189. 26 Quoted from the English 1787 MS version, vol. 134, FSB. 27 Baron de Clugny, Remarques sur l’isle de S. Barthélemy par le gouverneur de la Guadeloupe, écrites le 6 août 1784, Fonds Moreau de Saint-Méry, F/3/54, ANOM; 13 Feb. 1787, Dénombrement du Vent, vol. 28, SBS. 28 13 May 1785, Order book 1784–1787, vol. 1A, SBS.
The fear of slaves poisoning whites or their slaves was a common
anxiety throughout the Caribbean.29 But the distinction in the court protocols
between the application of traditional medicine – today often referred to as Afro-
Atlantic healing practices30 – and what is called magic or poisoning is not clear. In
Sweden the capital punishment for magic [trolldom] was abolished as part of
judicial reforms during the late 1770s, and the last execution took place in 1704.
King Gustav III was personally involved in the reforms and declared in a 1778
parliamentary debate that witchcraft was ‘a preposterous crime fancied in Papist
imaginations, and not even mentioned in the legislation of all Enlightened
Governments. It cannot and shall not remain in Swedish law, as it brings disgrace
upon the nation and its legislation.’31 In principle it was thus difficult to prosecute
black people for magic, even in St. Barthélemy, as it would then have to be proven
that they had administered medicine. Nevertheless, a few cases did reach the court.
In 1806 the French-speaking merchant Bernard Lion petitioned the court to
prosecute two slaves – Jean-Baptiste and Gabriel – for magic and poisoning. The
court ordered a thorough investigation of this ‘baffling case.’32 It turned out that
several of Lion’s slaves had recently died and that Lion himself had hired the slaves
he accused of poisoning to try to cure a slave who later died. Jean-Baptiste was a
‘coastal-slave,’ i.e., he was born in Africa. When inquiring the court learned that he
was already well-known on the island as what the Swedes called a ‘drink-mixer’
[dryckesblandare], that is, a traditional healer. However, Lion eventually became
suspicious about the slaves he paid to heal his own slave. He was informed that on a
neighbouring island a certain Rosalie was capable of identifying ‘poisoners’ in her
magical mirror. Lion went to St. Martin and brought Rosalie to St. Barthélemy, after
having paid her value as security to her French plantation owner. Rosalie identified
Jean-Baptiste and Gabriel in her mirror, and Lion believed her. They had
administered herbal concoctions to Lion’s slave, and also used magical items such
as amulets, and possibly also buried objects in Lion’s yard. The accused slaves and
29 There is a large range of literature on both Caribbean magic – often called obeah – and the legislation attempting to contain it. For an extensive bibliography see Gunvor Simonsen’s contribution in the present volume. 30 James H. Sweet, Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). 31 Sten Landahl (ed.), Sveriges ridderskaps och adels riksdagsprotokoll från och med år 1719, D. 32, 1778–1779 (Stockholm: Riksdagens tryckeriexp., 1982), p. 454. 32 13 August 1806, vol. 150, FSB.
many witnesses were interrogated. Jean-Baptiste admitted to dispensing medicine
but defended himself by stating that he had, according to what the ‘African custom,’
prescribed, also drunk the potions himself. Both he and Gabriel denied using
amulets or other magical items.
The court had obvious problems hearing the case, but the sentence is still
somewhat surprising. Rosalie, who had subsequently also been arrested, was
immediately set free, along with Jean-Baptiste and Gabriel, and they were made to
promise that they would never again ‘meddle in drink-mixing or medical matters,’
or ‘perform superstitious rituals and fraudulent acts.’ Rosalie was commanded to
leave the island within eight days – something she would have to do anyway when
her owner demanded her return – and Jean-Baptiste was threatened with a whipping
of 29 lashes if he was ever caught administering medicine again. Bernard Lion
himself was reprimanded for having turned to the slaves for help, as he should have
employed the assistance of the island’s licensed physicians. Lion was certainly a
Catholic and, despite being a merchant and owner of small ships, he was at least
partly illiterate, as he signed his petitions with the customary cross. The court
obviously wanted to signal to the islands’ white inhabitants that it was not a good
idea to hire slaves as doctors. It is also possible that a rejection of ‘Papist
imaginations’ played a role in the Lutheran officials’ mindset.
But here again a comparison with the situation in the metropoles may be
fruitful. As any standard work on European 18th-century medicine proves, Europe
was full of quacks, charlatans, wise men and women, etc., plying both cities and
countryside offering their services. An interesting facet in the Caribbean and Latin
America is that these professions seemed to be largely filled by recently arrived
African slaves, who sometimes also won the trust of the white inhabitants.
Be that as it may, skin colour was the constitutive juridical category in the
Caribbean. Two young white men were arrested in 1806 for a street brawl.33 They
were both in costume, one in women’s clothes and the other with a blackened face.
West Indian laws prohibited black people from wearing masks, including the local
Code noir: ‘All Negroes or other Coloured persons, (Slaves,) that are apprehended
in the Streets being in any manner either masked or otherwise disguised, shall be
33 28 Mar. 1806, vol. 150, FSB.
whipped, marked and pillory’d during one hour.’34 The wearing of masks was
associated with religious and cultural expressions, and was also perceived as
threatening, as it hid the identity of the slaves. But these young men were white and
were thus released the next day on the order of the court. However, the court
observed that wearing a disguise in itself was a danger: ‘considering the
irregularities, which might result from such conduct.’ A few days later the court
issued an ordinance ‘to prevent such disguisings and do in consequence thereof
Order, that whosoever is found [...] masked or disguised after sun set, shall be liable
to a fine of Twenty Five Spanish Dollars, or imprisonment in proportion.’
The social life of enslaved and free black people was minutely regulated.
Permission was needed to organise dances and to move about at night, gambling and
drinking in public were prohibited, etc. Was a prohibition for whites from wearing
masks meant to stop white and black people from socialising together, or was it
meant to prevent carnival-like acts that turned established structures of power
upside-down?
The following year, Gabriel, who had been released in the poisoning case,
was arrested for theft. The evidence in the protocols look convincing. Private
Thoreson, the soldier who guarded the prison, fell asleep, and Gabriel managed to
escape, even though he was handcuffed. According to Swedish law Thoreson should
have been whipped for his negligence, but instead the court reduced the sentence to
sixteen days on bread and water in jail. This was motivated by the lack of a white
person who could whip him, as all punishments on the island were carried out by
slaves. The court stated that: ‘the execution of the punishment by a slave would in
this part of the world be both unusual and imprudent and it would lead to a
reduction of the reputation [...] that is necessary for the garrison to be able to uphold
order.’35 To let a slave punish a white soldier was impossible. Thoreson was thus
more leniently punished on St. Barthélemy than in Sweden as a result of his skin
colour.
Slave Testimony and the Supreme Court
34 Quoted from the English 1787 MS version, vol. 134, FSB. 35 2 June 1807, vol. 148, FSB.
An issue that was discussed in courts all over the West Indies was whether slaves
should be allowed to testify in court. Slave testimonies were necessary to prosecute
crimes within the slave communities, but when whites were involved it immediately
became more complicated. According to the original 1685 French Code noir slaves
were not allowed to testify in cases concerning whites, but no rule of this kind was
yet included in the local St. Barthélemy regulations. The issue was also included in
the St. Thomas inquiry: ‘10. Can slaves give witness against whites and in what
cases? Are the slaves baptised?’ A case from 1800 is illustrative.
In that year, Italian sailor Matteo Antonetti killed a Swedish carpenter
named Eric Hellström with a knife in a street brawl (figure 10.4). The only people
present were slaves and the court needed their testimony to be able to condemn
Antonetti. The character and religion of the slaves were investigated. The witness
Victor belonged to a local merchant, and surprisingly owned a bar (he turns up in
other cases with the same epithet). His owner told the court that he was: ‘a good
natured servant who does not drink, nor gamble, has never been found to steal, he is
born my slave at Guadeloupe and I have no reason to complain about him, he is
reasonable and intelligent.’36 Eventually the court admitted his testimony, according
to a French 1738 colonial ordinance that allowed slaves to testify when there were
no white witnesses and, importantly, so long as they did not testify against their
owners.37
[INSERT fig. 10.4 HERE] [CAPTION TEXT: Figure 10.4 Drawing of the murder weapon used by Antonetti from the case file sent to the Supreme Court in Stockholm. The court records are usually trilingual: Swedish, English and French. Sometimes the language changes from phrase to phrase; Case no. 77 ½, 16 Sep. 1801, Utslagshandlingar, Besvärs & ansökningsmål, Justitierevisionen, Swedish National Archives, Stockholm.]
Three members of the court – merchants from respectively England,
Scotland and Naples – appealed against this decision and claimed that according to
the Code noir slaves could never testify against a white person, and that they were
never allowed as witnesses on the surrounding islands. They preferred to acquit
Antonetti for the murder rather than allow slaves to testify. Nevertheless, when the
36 Case no 77 ½, 16 Sep. 1801, Utslagshandlingar, Besvärs & ansökningsmål, Justitierevisionen, SNA. 37 15 July 1738, Ordonnance du Roi, Sur le témoignage des Negres contre les Blancs, in de Viévigne, Code de la Martinique, p. 298.
court voted, with the presence of another French member who voted with the three
Swedes, the testimony was allowed. Antonetti was sentenced to death. All death
sentences had to be reviewed by the Supreme Court in Stockholm and it was sent to
Stockholm for confirmation. When the confirmed sentence eventually returned to
the island almost a year later Antonetti had already died in prison.
It is difficult to say whether the merchants who opposed slave testimony
actually believed in what they claimed. However, the Supreme Court noted the vote
when reviewing the case, and sternly instructed the St. Barthélemy court to follow
the French 1738 regulation without further discussion. The Stockholm Supreme
Court thus upheld not only the local Swedish Code noir but also the rule that the
entire preceding French colonial legislation was to be applied in relation to the black
population in the Swedish colony. Ironically, the French Code noir was not valid on
the neighbouring French islands during this time, with the exception of Martinique,
which was occupied by the British. French Caribbean slavery had been abolished
after the French Revolution, but was re-introduced in 1802, the year after the
Supreme Court instructed the colonial officials to follow the French slave laws.
In Stockholm it was eventually realised that the local government had
become independent lawmakers. In addition to capital sentences, which needed to
be confirmed in Stockholm, certain other cases could be appealed. A drawn-out
process involving several major merchants led to appeal. The Supreme Court
acquitted the merchants who had been condemned by the St. Barthélemy court and
criticised its autocratic tendencies: ‘[the justiciary] dared to entertain and express
the utterly erroneous opinion and conviction that he and the council [the island’s
government] are subordinate legislators.’38
Considering the relatively few cases that went to appeal in Stockholm it is
noteworthy how many sentences were overturned or criticised by the Supreme
Court. The island’s court was probably the most frequently reprimanded lower court
in Sweden in this period.39
It is apparent that there was a great deal of insecurity concerning the
legislative power on the island, and several questions in the St. Thomas inquiry
confirm this. Question 3 read: ‘Can the governor alone institute laws without
38 Birger Wedberg, Konungens högsta domstol, vol. 1 (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1922), p. 136. 39 Birger Wedberg, Tärningkast om liv och död: Rättshistoriska skisser (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1935), p. 95.
consulting the inhabitants or other civil servants, if so in which circumstances, or
does he have unlimited legislative powers?’ and question 8 read: ‘Can capital
sentences be executed without the king’s or another high judge’s confirmation?’
The rule that capital sentences needed to be confirmed in Stockholm was the
first law that was repealed during the British occupation of the island in 1801–2.
The British governor wanted to able to execute criminals without a long
transatlantic correspondence. This legal change was in conflict with the articles of
capitulation, whereby the British had promised that ‘[r]eligion, laws and customs
shall remain in same state they now are.’40
There are also cases in which the court explicitly did not follow the law, and
explained why. In 1798 a group of seven seamen of different nationalities attempted
to steal a ship in Gustavia’s harbor. They were tried for piracy, a crime that
demanded capital punishment.41 Instead of being sentenced to death, however, they
were whipped and deported from the island. The court justified this deviation from
the letter of the law with a list of reasons. The first was that the required
correspondence to Stockholm was so slow that the punishment would lose its
deterrence. The second was that the prison was in a terrible state and that the
garrison, already reduced through illness, had more important tasks than guarding
the jail. The third reason was likewise pragmatic: it was feared that the prisoners
might fall ill in jail and become objects of pity in the eyes of the inhabitants. The
sentence should also be viewed in light of the extensive privateering by especially
French and British ships during this period. In this climate of state-sanctioned
piracy, the theft of a small ship may have seemed a lesser crime. By not
condemning the seamen to death the court also avoided supervision from the
Supreme Court in Stockholm.
Brutality Against Slaves
The Swedish slave laws gave, as Bengt Euphrasén noted in his book, masters the
right to treat their slaves according to their conscience. The law permitted owners to
punish their own slaves with a maximum of 29 lashes. Crimes that required a more
severe punishment were to be handled by the court. The court often observed that it 40 7 July 1801, FSB 146; Capitulation at St Bartholomew the 20 March 1801, ADM 1/323, The National Archives of the UK, Kew. 41 1 May 1798, vol. 142 FSB.
was not allowed to punish other owners’ slaves, as this would be causing damage to
somebody else’s property. Maltreatment of slaves was certainly widespread, but it is
impossible to assess the extent. Some cases did, however, reach the court.
Suzanna served in a merchant household in Gustavia. In 1802 she was found
in the street beaten so badly that the government doctor feared for her life. The
prosecutor took the case to court even though slaves could not testify against their
owners. However, Suzanna was heard in court and, though she was not allowed to
take the oath, her story made an impression. She told the court how her mistress
whipped her at every minor offence – such as for using too much soap – far
exceeding the limit of 29 lashes. This was confirmed by several white witnesses.
Suzanna’s owner instead claimed that her slave was disobedient and needed to be
punished. The court observed that even if this was the case the mistress had grossly
overstepped the 29 lashes permitted by law. Despite this, the only standard
punishment for battering a slave was the confiscation of the said slave and a
prohibition for the owning family from ever repurchasing their former slave.
Suzanna was subsequently sold and taken off the island. The final paragraph of the
sentence starts:
Lastly and whereas Mrs Francena Charlotte [the mistress] in this present case constitutes the only provoker and the only particular object of the revenge reserved in law, and it is but just to make a striking distinction between the innocent and the guilty, the court thinks it proper to make Mrs Charlotte the following representation.42
This ‘representation’ is a long condemnation of Francena Charlotte’s violence
against Suzanna: ‘Is this the way of gaining respect amongst white and black free
and slaves? Is this the manner of conducting for making slaves usefull – Can it be
unknown to You that to inflict pain even on a slave is only justified by its use and
necessity, and where those motives fail, the infliction turns into frivolous cruelty.’
The court was highly critical of the treatment of Suzanna, and at the same
time paternalistic. In Sweden the relationship between employers and servants was
regulated through a servants’ statute [Tjänstehjonsstadgan], first proclaimed in
1664. It went through several revisions and was finally abolished in 1926. It was
certainly not a Code noir but it did give the employer authority to physically punish
servants in certain cases. Just like the Code noir it also contained paragraphs 42 17 Sep. 1802, vol. 147, FSB.
drawing limits on how servants were to be treated. Such judicial tradition was the
legal luggage Swedish officials brought with them to the Caribbean.
That private punishment was not an exception is also evident from question
15 in the St. Thomas enquiry: ‘Does the law allow the owner, at his own discretion,
to shackle and parade his slave in the streets or to throw in him in a private jail or to
shackle him to his house or to have him flogged without restrictions or to kill him
without punishment?’ One wonders whether owners referred to customs on
neighbouring islands when they justified violence against slaves – similar to the
arguments of the three merchants who wanted to stop slaves from giving witness in
court?
Suzanna’s case is also interesting as both the perpetrator and the victim were
women. The court protocols are a rich source of social and gender history. The
voices of the enslaved and free black population are more audible in the protocols
than in any other source from the Swedish period in St. Barthélemy. Their stories
and testimonies have obviously been rewritten, changed and adapted; nevertheless
the protocols are the only source where they appear in direct speech. It is also the
only source with a significant female presence. The importance of female
participation in the island’s life becomes abundantly clear in the court papers. It is,
for instance, obvious how important free black women were in commerce,
especially in food and lodging businesses (figure 10.5). [ INSERT f ig . 10 .5 HERE] [CAPTION TEXT: Figure 10.5 A street seller of alcoholic beverages, an important business on the island to this day. Photograph, probably by Carl Constantin Lyon in the 1850s. (By courtesy of the National Maritime Museums, Stockholm.)]
Widespread prostitution also becomes visible. In 1800 a ‘Frenchman’
accused Jenny Holland, a twenty-year-old enslaved woman, of having hit him. He
had offered three dollars for her services but she declined and was, according to her,
beaten for this refusal. She told the court that: ‘if she would not have refused, she
would have been a whore, but if a gentleman like you [the judge] required her
services she would not refuse, as she is not for the rabble.’43
43 17 Mar. 1800, vol. 144, FSB.
There are many examples of refractory slaves in the archives, so believing
that all slaves were submissive is wrong. Of course, those who wrote down the
stories in these cases often wanted to exaggerate slave insubordination in order to
prosecute the culprit; nevertheless, it is clear that there often was little harmony
guiding relations between whites, slaves and free black people.
Cases of brutality against slaves rarely reached the court. But there are other
indications that it was not uncommon. A letter to the editor signed Antibarbarian
was published in the local newspaper in 1804 (figure 10.6). The brief text is highly
critical towards how owners treated their, and others’, slaves: ‘the white skin of
these monsters includes the very blackest moral stuff.’44 The accusation of a
‘Diabolical Rage of beating, bruising, main[m]ing and torturing’ that was spreading
throughout the colony is a good description of Suzanna’s treatment. The court
protocols confirm that the Antibarbarian had reasons for his or her critique. [INSERT fig. 10.6 HERE] [CAPTION TEXT: Figure 10.6 ‘Antibarbarian’ letter to the editor. The Report of St. Bartholomew, no. 6, 7 May 1804. Uppsala University Library.]
Swedish Colonial History?
The aim of this chapter has been to introduce my research concerning law and
justice in Swedish St. Barthélemy. I wanted to show how a mixed legal system was
instituted and how Swedish jurisprudence was immediately adapted to Atlantic
slavery and the neighbouring islands’ customs. In this context it is important to
stress that such an adaption does not mean that Sweden was not fully responsible for
what was going on in St. Barthélemy, which in all senses was a Swedish territory.
That Sweden did what many other nations were doing in the Caribbean does not
decrease the metropole’s responsibility for the conditions of the black population
until slavery was finally abolished in 1847. As mentioned above, the legal
circumstances on the island, and the usage of the Code noir, were discussed and
sanctioned by the Supreme Court in Stockholm.
As many historians working with slavery know, it is difficult to avoid
questions of responsibility and guilt when investigating bondage. This is very much 44 The Report of St. Bartholomew, no 6, 7 May 1804.
the case in contemporary Sweden, where awareness of Swedish slavery in St.
Barthélemy remains largely unknown. There are a range of unanswered questions
concerning Sweden’s role in the Caribbean, including economic, political and social
issues.
As noted above there is very little academic research on the Swedish period
of the island’s history. There are a number of popular history books and articles, but
these are generally of a nostalgic kind and almost without exception based on
superficial archival work.45 Until now the St. Barthélemy period was largely looked
upon as a quaint but insignificant episode, with little or no importance in the larger
national history narrative. One example is the important economic historian’s Eli
Heckscher’s 1949 summation of the Swedish Caribbean enterprise: ‘and it does not
need to be said that all this [St. Barthélemy] was insignificant.’46 One would
imagine that recent works were more prone to question such conclusions.
Nevertheless, in a new extensive (1103 pp.) university textbook, colonialism and
slavery are thoroughly treated, but St. Barthélemy is never mentioned.47
However, this is now slowly changing. The access to the Swedish documents
in the French colonial archives is already leading to new research, as this chapter
testifies. Several graduate students are working with the digitized Fonds Suédois de
Saint Barthélemy volumes. There is also new work being conducted on other
Swedish overseas ventures – such as the 17th-century Swedish Africa Company and
the ‘New Sweden’ colony on the North American seaboard. The expansion in the
Baltic and the inclusion of Sápmi (Lapland) in the Swedish state apparatus are now
also partly discussed within frameworks of colonial history.48
How, and to what extent, these episodes shall be considered significant in a
Swedish national historical narrative remains to be discussed. This issue can hardly
be decided until further work has been done. Swedish colonialism most obviously
goes against a Swedish self-image that may or may not prove justified. To state that
45 One interesting exception is the journalist Göran Skytte’s book Det kungliga svenska slaveriet (Stockholm: Askelin & Hägglund, 1986). 46 Eli F. Heckscher, Sveriges ekonomiska historia från Gustav Vasa. D. 2, Det moderna Sveriges grundläggning (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1949), p. 667. 47 Maria Sjöberg et al., (eds.), En samtidig världshistoria (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2014). 48 See two recent anthologies for contributions and bibliographies: Magdalena Naum & Jonas Nordin (eds.), Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena (New York: Springer, 2013); Göran Rydén (ed.), Sweden in the Eighteenth-Century World: Provincial Cosmopolitans (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
Sweden only did what other colonial powers did is not enough, however, neither as
an explanation, nor as an excuse.
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