St. Barthélemy : Skrivningen om den forna svenska kolonin

Sammanfattning: The aim of this essay is to see how various texts, both Swedish and foreign, have described the former Swedish colony of St. Bartholomew. The focus has been on the slaves on the colony, and here how they were treated and how the analyzed authors portray the slaves lives. The literature has been divided up into two different categories, based on when they were published. The distinction has been made by dividing them up into a contemporary cluster, that were published before the 1900’s, as opposed to the more recent literature, from after the 1900’s. This division also enables us to see a difference not only between authors, but also between time periods. The research shows a difference within the focus of the contemporary and the recent literature, where the contemporary focused more on the slave trade per se whereas the slaves lives are discussed more in the recent literature. This can be ascribed to the differing discourses, where the actuality of abolishing the slave trade was prominent when the contemporary authors were active. The recent authors have all had access to the same resources in the different archives, but most of them differ in their usage of said resources. By looking at these texts with the theory of historiography in mind we can ascribe these differences to many different reasons, some of being the differing discourses as well as the aim of the text.  Whereas there has been research conducted about St. Bartholomew as a Swedish colony, the subject has not caused a great stir within the academic world of history.