Reform Project 1: Plantation Colonies and Abolition of the Slave Trade
Sources relating to the Danish plans for plantation colonies in West Africa and the related abolition of the Danish slave trade can be found in several contemporary publications. Several of these were also referenced in Schegel’s Statistics.
In the late 1780s, the Danish minister of finance Ernst H. Schimmelmann financed and authorised attempts at creating plantation colonies on the Gold Coast in West Africa (today’s Ghana). This was in the first instance attempted by the former surgeon on the coast Paul Erdmann Isert. For both Schimmelmann and Isert, the plantations were conceived as an alternative to the immoral and unsustainable transatlantic slave trade.
Sources relating to Isert’s (failed) venture were published in a contemporary journal, no doubt with the intention to drum up further interest in the scheme:
- Thaarup, Frederik, ed. ‘Nogle Bidrag til Kundskab om den Danske Kyststrækning af Guinea’. In Archiv for Statistik, Politik og Huusholdnings-Videnskaber, 3:161–268. Kiøbenhavn: Soldin, 1797. It can be found here.
The commission report of of 28.12.1791 leading to the 1792 edict abolishing the Danish slave trade effective 1803 were published in slightly redacted versions in Danish and German journals.
- Danish: Kirstein, Ernst Philip. ‘Udtog af Forestillingen til Kongen angaaende Negerhandelens Afskaffelse’. Minerva 2 (1792 April, May, June): 43–86. It can be found here.
- German: Kirstein, Ernst Philip. ‘Auszug aus der Vorstellung an den König wegen Abschaffung des Negerhandels für die Dänischen Staaten’. Deutsches Magazin 3 (1792): 626–84. It can be found here.
Reform Project 2: The Greenland Trade Commission of 1788
The report by the Greenland Trade Commission of 1788 authored by C. U. D. von Eggers was published in the journal Minerva (which also published the report on the abolition of the slave trade).
- Eggers, Christian Ulrich Detlev von. ‘Indberetning om den kgl. grønlandske Handel og de nyeste ved samme foretagne Forandringer’. In Minerva, 3 vols, 1791-1793.
In addition, suggestions for reform submitted by a former Greenland trader were also published:
- Pontoppidan, Carl. ‘Betænkning om den grøndlandske Handel og dermed forbundne Hval- og Robbefangst. Med Bielage’. In Magazin for almeennyttige Bidrag til Kundskab om Indretninger og Forfatninger i de Kongelige Danske Stater, vol. 1. Kiøbenhavn: Popp, 1792. It can be found here.
Reform Project 3: The Indian Establishments and the Nicobar Islands
The sources relating to the proposed reforms of the Danish Indian Establishments and the colonisation of the Nicobar Islands by H. M. Engelhart were not published at the time. However, they did circulate in manuscript in leading circles, as evidenced by Schlegel’s Statistik. They have now been edited in a modern critical edition:
- Engelhart, Henning Munch. Videnskab, oplysning og historie i Dansk Ostindien: udvalgte skrifter. Edited by Niklas Thode Jensen, Lise Grosmeyer, and P. S. Ramanujam. København: Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie, 2020. It can be purchases here.