Abstract. Engelsk version.

The project is innovative and is considered to be of Danish as well as international interest. It investigates the health of slaves and associated healing practices in the former Danish West Indies (the present US Virgin Islands). The project is premised on the relatively new and exciting notion that the healing practices of the slaves, primarily plant-based and of African origin, deserve to be studied in their own right and as they intact with the dominant model of Western (and Danish) medicine. It emphasizes the relevance of African culture when studying healing in the islands and subjects the usually underexposed direct correlation between Africa and the West Indies to a critical examination. In this connection the perspective of the slaves themselves, a perspective that is generally ignored, comes to the fore.

 In writing the narrative of healing, the project ‘oscillates’ between 2 groups of data connecting it to past and contemporary (present-day) African and Caribbean-based healing discourses, as seen from the perspective of the slaves and Afro-Caribbeans. Constituting a bridge between the past and the present are current studies of healing in Africa as well as the knowledge and practices of healing with plants preserved in the memories of a few living descendants (so-called ‘weed women’) of slaves in the Danish West Indies (George Tyson, personal communication). These data contain much of the novel and stimulating approach to Danish colonial history and the appreciation of different ways and cultures which deserve full representation in our rendition of European and non-European interactions. It may come as a surprise to some that formerly (17th-19th century) the Danes were the 7th largest slave trading nation and transported about 100,000 Africans (about the same number perished along the way) to its West Indian possessions.

The emphasis of this project is on encouraging - through its oscillating and narrative method – interest and making the subject matter of slavery, health, the African factor, other cultures, as they are embedded in Danish colonial history and the relationship between the Danes and their slaves, relevant to the general public and students in Danish high schools.

 The project positions itself centrally with regard to the aim and initiatives of the National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet) and its research activities concerning former Danish tropical colonies, cf. the other Galathea 3 projects mentioned under ‘Kultur og Historie’, including the ‘Tranquebar Initiative’ and the researches by Bente Wolff and Inger Schellerup.

The aim of the project is to publish the results as articles and a book-length study. Various publishers, in the UK (James Currey Publishers) and Denmark (Gyldendals Forlag), are currently being contacted. The book is intended to describe and analyze various key areas and represent an important resource and work of reference that may guide the National Museum of Denmark, The Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Danish educational sector in its representation of (Danish) colonial history in the tropics (see also Danish abstract).

Preface

This project has the support of the National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet), UNESCO and is also based on an agreement of cooperation between the Department of History at the University of Copenhagen and The Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE) at the University of Hull (please see www.hull.ac.uk/05/media/research/Wilberforce Leaflet.pdf).

The project wishes to disseminate its findings to the public, first of all, through the unit of the "Modern History of Denmark" at Nationalmuseet and with a number of significant research questions to contribute significantly to the Danish understanding of its Caribbean past and its West Indian colonial history. Moreover, and with the backing of The Danish Institute for Human Rights, the intention is also to contribute to the development of an appropriate understanding in the Danish population of its past as traffickers and owners of slaves as well as messages that may be incorporated in the curricula, text books and in the teaching of the relationship between the Danes and slaves in Danish high schools (cf. Larsen et al., 2003).

Summary of proposed research

 The project intends to be an innovative research project and examine the spread of cultural traits from Africa and the influence of the ‘African factor’ (culture, religion and concepts and practices of healing) among slaves in the former Danish islands. In order to uncover the ‘muted’ discourse of slaves and write the narrative of healing from their point of view (which is unconventional), the project ‘oscillates’ between 18-19th centuries historical descriptions by Danes and others of the African continent and African healing and the culture and healing practices of the slaves taken to the Danish tropical islands as well as contemporary anthropological descriptions and analyses of African healing and Caribbean practices o f healing contained in the memories of so-called ‘weed women’, being direct descendants of former slaves. Supporting this narrative is the great similarity of the plants growing in West Africa and the Danish West Indies and used widely in healing.

To accomplish the objective of examining the African impact on healing and curing measures, the project inserts itself in the ‘demographic debate’. Slave demography has emerged as a major feature of slavery studies relating to post-Columbian America. Particular interest has focused on the failure of slave populations to sustain themselves by natural reproduction. This has been an issue for scholars working on the Danish Caribbean islands, the records for which are extremely rich. This project will complement existing work on slave demography in the Danish territories by investigating the impact of medicine and medical practice in the islands, African and western, on slave survival rates before 1802/48. Specifically, it will

1 determine the nature of local healing practices by slaves, by examining who the healers were (normally seen as women), the treatments they offered, and the discourse of healing among slave healers, an issue almost totally ignored in the literature

2 This study will depart from a description by Bierlich of the local African medical culture and female therapy management in contemporary Africa, 1980-2005 (Bierlich, 2005e and f) and then proceed to look at practices of slave healing contained in the memories of so-called ‘weed women’, direct and living descendants of slave healers, in the Caribbean islands (George Tyson, personal communication). It will then tie these two discourses together and push the implications of the African data and the memories of slave healing further and look at the evidence of their healing discourse in the 18-19th centuries sources. When further examining relevant sources the project will explore an existing database (Jensen, 2002) regarding the surgeons who settled in the Danish West Indies, 1755-1830, and examine how the surgeons came to draw nearer to the practices of the enslaved by appropriating African remedies and local, empirical knowledge ("the West learns from Africa"). In this connection the project will pay particular attention and compare how they treated/neglected pregnant and birth-giving slave women with the attention shown them by their own healers. The question of the health of pregnant and post-partum women is, of course, a critical issue in the context of low reproduction rates of slaves.

3 construct databases of slave remedies and medical treatments and evaluation of their medical efficacy to ascertain the impact, by age of sex, of care-giving on slave populations across different plantations. One obvious difficulty is to determine what "efficacy" is, since what slaves may have thought of as culturally effective may not necessarily have produced a cure and contributed to demographic improvements and lowered the morbidity- and mortality rate. Thus, in order to determine the issues of efficacy and care-giving convincingly one must problematize the concept of efficacy and evaluate treatments case-by-case or according to groups of people. This problematization will distinguish between cultural efficacy and biomedical outcomes. The methods to be used derive from anthropology, history and epidemiology and will be administered by Bierlich, Richardson and a senior medical doctor.

Since some of the shipboard surgeons identified by Bierlich (Bierlich 2005a) also operated in the islands we intend in our investigations of the approach and practice of Western medicine in the islands also to compare the detailed dataset describing diagnoses and medicines administered to slaves on board ship that we created for an earlier project on Medicine and The Slave Trade (Wellcome, 2003) with the practice of land-based medical ways and procedures.

So as not to repeat, but to complement and enhance the significance of on–going work on the Danish West Indies that basically examines the interaction from the point of view of the surgeons and the Western colonial power, the emphasis in this project is the opposite, to examine the relationship from the perspective of the Afro-Caribbean slaves. A thorough examination of the ‘African factor’ and its interaction with the dominant Western-medical approach is unexamined and remains to be studied. Jensen devotes only a few pages in his recent master’ s thesis to the subject of slave healing (Jensen, 2002, pp. 46-49). We argue that via our combined anthropological and historical approach and experience (Bierlich is an anthropologist, Richardson is a historian) we are in a position to contribute to knowledge and understanding of the neglected discourse by slaves, especially in the realm of healing. This constitutes the justification for this project and applying for support for it. We think that we have the needed expertise in African culture and healing, the study of slavery and in the construction of relevant datasets to begin unravelling the healing approaches of slaves. The rationale for approaching the difficult question of healing by slaves relates to a narrative that assembles various groups of data, historical and modern, African and Caribbean-centred, as well as analyzes, compares and shows the relevance of present-day healing and memories for the evaluation of past healing measures by the slaves taken across the Atlantic.

This project confronts previous research and seeks to avoid a one-sided Danish perspective and wishes to promote a ‘multicultural’ understanding. In this it explores an unexamined discourse, the one of slave healers. This project focuses therefore first and foremost on the African (and African-American ) perspective and the impact of African traits in healing on the islands and not primarily on how Danish colonial history and related healing was played out from a Danish point of view. In the final analysis, however, both narratives or perspectives should speak to and enrich one another and the basic intention is thus that all researches complement each other. The two narratives contribute each in its way to what is meant by multiculturalism.

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.

Work, timetable and financing of the project

Research is spread out over 3 years (2006-2008), i.e. about one year in Copenhagen before participation in the expedition in about February-April 2007, and continuing rese arch in Copenhagen and Washington in the National Archives in 2007 and 2008. Various budgetary options have to be considered. At the moment, a private foundation is being contacted in a bid for finances.

Output

Articles, Book and Dissemination: The project will generate a number of co-authored publications of article length during or shortly after the completion of the project as well as a joint study of book length in 2009 (The English book sellers, James Currey Publishers, have already indicated a strong interest in publishing the work. Gyldendals Forlag will soon be contacted as well). Since this is a research as well as a dissemination project the afore-mentioned publications as well as the book will function as important resources and guides that can advise Nationalmuseet, the Danish Institute for Human Rights and the educational sector in how to represent the Danish colonial past in the tropics where slavery was an integral part (see also our popular article regarding the Danish ship surgeons in the slave trade published by Kristeligt Dagblad, 9.3.2005). In this connection the project intends to contribute to the development of appropriate curricula, when the topic of Danish colonial history and slavery is being taught (refer e.g., to Leif Calundann Larsens [2003], Danskernes slaver, written for use in Danish high schools, gymnansier og HF)

 Capacity Building: Beyond strengthening research through the collaboration between the Department of History at the University of Copenhagen and WISE in Hull (as outlined above), this project also seeks to ensure the significance of the research results by working with inter alia the Danish Institute for Human Rights and Mr. Shelley Moorhead, the leader of the Reparations Committee in the Virgin Islands, towards supporting the local research capacity in the Virgin Islands with a scholarship so that a Virgin Islands Ph.D. student (specializing in human rights and slavery) can undertake his/her studies – in agreement with the topics of the research proposal - for a semester in Copenhagen at the Danish Center for International Studies and Human Rights.

 Research in this Area: We hope with this project to make a significant contribution to Danish and international scholarship and through the newly-established cooperation between WISE in Hull and History in Copenhagen to further stimulate research, possibly through an exchange of students and scholars, in this important area. Moreover, we consider this project as part of the wider effort by Nationalmuseet to explore the Danish colonial history in the tropics (consult also the project by Bente Wolff and Inge Schjellerup as well as the ‘Tranquebar Initiative’ presided over by Esther Fihl – for these projects see  www.galathea3.dk under ‘Kultur og Historie’ ).