Background
In 1500-1867, 11-12 million Africans crossed the Atlantic as slaves (Eltis, Behrendt, Richardson and Klein, 1999). To date, however, despite growing awareness of cultural aspects of the African diaspora and the impact of African agency on the slave trade and on plantation life, there has been almost no attempt to investigate the relationship between African and western medicine in shaping American (even Creole) medical practice, much less to determine and evaluate trends in such practices and/or their potential impact on slave demography. This is a major omission in slavery studies. This project seeks to rectify it.
Our proposed study will focus on the hitherto unexamined, yet arguably vital, component of African agency, in the form of African healing practices. Specifically, it will examine how healing (based on plants) by slave " doctors" was actually being performed and how the non-Western and Western healing traditions interacted and how their varying contributions impacted on the lives and survival of enslaved Africans, particularly pregnant and birth-giving women, in the Danish West Indies. In this the present project will be able to draw on Bierlich’s research experience in present-day healing in Ghana (e.g., Bierlich, 1994 and 2005d) which constitutes part of the former "Gold Coast", the area from whence many of the islanders were imported, as well as in records of Danish surgeon’s journals held on slave ships in 1767-76. The last afford exceptionally detailed data on how surgeons diagnosed and treated sick slaves en route to America (Wellcome, 2003), and this is a benchmark against which to investigate and analyse continuities and compare differences in shipboard and land-based, plantation-centred medical practice.
The research will also draw on the considerable collective experience of both Bierlich and Richardson of work in European, including Danish, archives as a result of research for an earlier project on Medicine and the Slave Trade (Wellcome 2001-4), which has allowed the creation of datasets/bases directly relevant to the current project. The project will entail add itional research in Copenhagen (in particular in Rigsarkivet), as well as in Washington D.C. (where Danish West Indian records are kept) and in the Danish West Indies themselves. In the beginning (where data are being collected) and towards the end (where the collected data are being analysed) the project will also draw on the medical and epidemiological advice of a medical doctor. The outcome of the project will be the first comprehensive history of African healing practices, western medicine and their impact in any of the American slave societies. Considering the scale and significance of the Atlantic slave trade in 1660-1807, it will also help place medical history at the heart of on-going research on the history of the West Indies and its slave populations. Given the importance of situating the findings within the museum, human rights, educational and Galathea 3-contexts, the project will help make the Danes more aware of their colonial past as well as show them the significance of the hitherto suppressed discourse by slaves, in particular in the realm of healing.
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