The Transregional Dynamics of the Duchy of Courland's Participation in the Slave Trade

• In Event: Violence and Politics in the Early Modern Baltic

Abstract

During the reign of Duke Jakob Kettler of Courland (reigned 1642-1682) and his sons Friedrich Casimir and Ferdinand, the small vassal of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth sought to acquire colonial outposts. These ambitions were conceived to aid the growth of economic output, continental prestige and dynastic ducal wealth. The duchy briefly held areas in the River Gambia, River Sierra Leone, Tobago and southern Norway as part of this process. Like many early modern colonial enterprises, the Couronian plans included a heavy reliance on slave labour and trade. Slavery has been an overlooked component of an already seldom-studied episode of Baltic history. Previous accounts have often downplayed its effect. Nevertheless, Couronian slaving ships did exist and were deemed essential to Courland’s colonial success. The dukes’ attempts to enter the slave trade reveals the transregional and transnational dynamics of the project. In Courland, there was a drive to produce iron and textiles for the African market. Baltic Sea networks of diplomats, factors and merchants planned slaving journeys in important Northern European trading centres. In Africa itself Couronian ships entered a vibrant arena of negotiation, cooperation and conflict with African polities and European ships in order to penetrate the slave trade. In the Caribbean, Couronian actors largely understood slavery in a similar way to their contemporaries but also possessed a Baltic context of serfdom, as a comparable form of enforced labour. The paper will briefly set out the ways in which Courland’s slaving attempted to operate and the regional contexts it brought together.

Short Bio

John Freeman is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Warsaw Center for Global History in the University of Warsaw. He is researching the Atlantic entanglements of the Duchy of Courland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the wider Baltic Sea region, particularly in colonial and slaving enterprises. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2022 where he also worked for the Centre for Geopolitics. He has previously been a visiting researcher at The Interdisciplinary Centre for Baltic Sea Region Research in Greifswald and is co-convener of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies Baltic States Study Group.

Author

• John Freeman, University of Warsaw