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De Achttiende Eeuw. Jaargang 44 (2012)

De Achttiende Eeuw. Jaargang 44

(2012)– [tijdschrift] Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Visions of a new colonial system
The Van Hogendorp brothers' utopian ideas
Edwin van Meerkerk

As early modern colonialism started developing into modern imperialism, the debate on the treatment of slaves and indigenous peoples also took on momentum by the end of the eighteenth century. During this period, Dirk and Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, two Dutch statesmen, developed their own ideas on colonial policy and slavery. Their ideas on the ideal colony and the relationship between European and non-European peoples differed from the mainstream thought of their time. This article analyses their ideas and describes their sources for the first time.

Introduction

As his ship sailed from the harbour of Saint Nazaire to Rio de Janeiro to spend his remaining years in exile, Dirk van Hogendorp's last statement was still in print. After the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo, the emperor's former aide de camp had had to resign as governor of the city of Nantes. While staying with the in-laws of his only remaining son in Paris, he wrote an astonishing proposal for the reform of the French colonial system, Du système colonial de la France. In the book, Van Hogendorp (1761-1822) drew on his personal experiences as employee of the Dutch East India Company in Bengal and on Java in the years between 1784 and 1798. He gives many details of the British and Dutch systems of colonial administration in order to provide a theoretical foundation for an expansion of the French colonial empire. The book ends with a description of the ‘perfect’ colony, which Van Hogendorp imagined would be founded on the island of Madagascar.

The most striking element of the book, then as now, is his vision of a future colony without slavery and even without racial differences. His ideal colony was one where hybridization, the amalgamation of different races, was to be official policy. Such a proposal might have been expected regarding the West Indies, but Van Hogendorp aims his proposals at the East, where he could draw from his own experiences.1 His anomalous statement is the starting point of this article. Dirk van Hogendorp's proposed colonial policy of structural hybridization must be understood within three contexts. It appeals to specific ideas on race, as it presupposes the fertility of multiracial couples. It also implies a rejection of slavery and, finally, has the clear intention of

changing the relationship and hierarchy between motherland and colony. In what follows, I will first sketch the positions in the debate on slavery in the late eighteenth century. Then, I will outline the background of the views on slavery and colonialism of Dirk van Hogendorp and his brother Gijsbert Karel. Finally, I will try to position them in the debate that took place on slavery and colonialism at the turn of the century.

Religious and secular abolitionism

The latter half of the eighteenth century gave rise to heated debates over issues of race and slavery. This increased attention to non-European peoples was due to progress made in the natural sciences by scholars like Buffon and Linnaeus and to Enlightenment ideas on human rights. Against the backdrop of these scholarly and ethical debates on slavery and the treatment of slaves, European nations rapidly expanded their colonial empires. The competition between colonial powers, sparked by an increased commercial involvement, led to bloody wars in both the Americas and in Asia. The relationship between Europe and the rest of the world thus became a political and economic issue. Although it may seem to be a matter of trade and commerce, this was not the case for the people in the eighteenth century. Nature and society, race and economy, were interconnected. An opinion on one issue was always connected to an opinion on the other.2 The basic question was that of the unity of the human species. In the end, adherents of monogenism, the thesis that all of mankind stems from one source, would dominate, but in the eighteenth century the matter was by and large still open to debate.

Adherents of monogenism, such as Buffon, underlined the fact that different human races could interbreed and yet foster healthy offspring, as opposed to horses and donkeys for instance. This opened the way for discussions on hybridity and racial differences. With regard to horse breeding, Buffon wrote:

Le produit de deux animaux, dont les défauts se compenseroient exactement, seroit la production la plus parfaite de cette espèce: or ils se compensent d'autant mieux, qu'on met ensemble des animaux de pays plus éloignés, ou plustôt de climats plus opposés; le composé qui en résulte est d'autant plus parfait, que les excès ou les défauts de l'habitude du père sont plus opposés aux défauts ou aux excès de l'habitude de la mère.3

Other authors opposed Buffon's definition of a species based on the healthy-offspring criterion and sought either to come up with other arguments to support monogenism, or reject the theory altogether and adhere to the opposite position, polygenism. A different approach to the species debate was environmentalism, the theory that climate caused the visible differences between the human races. If this were true, some stated, skin colour ought to change after migration to a different climate. This idea was attacked by both monogenists and polygenists. Although some authors reportedly claimed to have witnessed such changes, this thesis lost its appeal around the turn of the century.4 All of these debates took place before the abolition of slavery (apart from the brief period of French abolition during the revolution) and must be understood within a rather different context than later, nineteenth and twentieth century racial debate.5 For instance, it was possible for a monogenist and abolitionist such as James Cowles Prichard to state that the difference between the races was a matter of civilization.6 Similarly, Petrus Camper's ‘facial angle theory’ was interpreted by many as an argument supporting racism, whereas Camper himself was a declared monogenist and anti-racist - if such a typology may be used for the eighteenth century.7

Ideas on race and slavery were obviously linked to ideas on colonialism, though the way in which standpoints in one field relate to those in the other is often hard to determine. One area where both paradigms came together was missionary activity. The debate on slavery was not just a matter of Enlightenment human rights. For many authors, slavery was fundamentally incompatible with Christianity. For others, Christianity formed a justification for white dominance and slavery. Long before slavery was abolished by the French revolutionary government, missionaries, trying to find the best way to spread the gospel among the heathens, took an interest in the general treatment of non-Europeans. Many concluded that slavery was fundamentally incompatible with Christianity. Thus, abolitionism was supported by two arguments: a primarily religious one, with an emphasis on the unethical aspect of slavery, and a secular, enlightened argument, in which human rights played a central role. Dirk van Hogendorp took the latter perspective. His younger brother Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp (1762-1834) supported the former, missionary argument. Although they both came to the same conclusion, their

starting points were different.

The hopes held by European missionary societies and governments regarding the potential conversion of non-European peoples were dependent on the form in which and the extent to which colonial power was asserted by the nation. Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp became one of the directors of the Nederlandsch Zendeling Genootschap (Dutch Missionary Society, NZG) in 1803, a missionary society modelled on the London Missionary Society. In both countries a strong and vociferous group of ministers and laymen took initiatives to convert non-European peoples to the Christian faith. This widespread, non-denominational current was very influential in the colonial policies of both Great Britain and the Netherlands. The ideals of the NZG received wide support. The Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen in Haarlem issued an essay prize on the question ‘What are the best means to spread the gospel among the inhabitants of our colonies?’8 Especially in the early years, the ideas of the Dutch missionary society were strongly millenarian. Mass conversion of the gentile peoples was expected to be a direct foreboding of the second coming of Christ and expectations of success were very high.9 As a consequence, the plans developed by NZG members tended to be very utopian in nature, as we shall see in the case of Gijsbert Karel's plans for South Africa.

Not all authors addressing the issue of slavery and colonialism based themselves on religion. Enlightenment discourse on tolerance and equality provided ample arguments on the issues that were at stake in the colonial and the slavery debates. Willem van Hogendorp for instance, the father of Dirk and Gijsbert Karel, was one of the founding members of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences in 1778.10 The elder Van Hogendorp served as administrator to the Dutch East India Company on the island of Onrust near Batavia. Like many others, his aim in the east was to amass as many wealth as he could in the service of the company and then to return home to lead a life of leisure. Van Hogendorp, in many respects an unscrupulous man, wrote two enlightened novels. The first, Sophronisba, addresses vaccination against smallpox.11 The other, Kraspoekol, is an appeal for better treatment of slaves by the colonial

elites.12 The latter novel carries a motto from Voltaire's Alzire (act 1, scene 1): ‘Nous seuls, en ces climats, nous sommes les barbares!’

The protagonist of his novel, Kraspoekol (literally ‘hit hard’), is the sister of a Dutch colonial landlord, who treats her slaves badly. She provokes her brother, who protests against her excessive and unsubstantiated punishments, by torturing one of her slaves in front of his house. In the end she is killed in amok by one of her slaves, whom she had refused permission to live with his wife. The message of the book is that bad treatment of slaves will turn against their owners. For Willem van Hogendorp, slaves ought to be treated justly, but nowhere does he question the idea of slavery as such. When his eldest son Dirk adapted the novel into a play in 1800, he changed the plot on crucial points so as to make the play a cry against slavery in general. It was performed only once, at the theatre in The Hague, but the performance was disturbed by Dirk's political opponents during the first act.13

In spite of essential differences between the American and the Asian colonial possessions regarding colonialism and abolitionism, and the significantly larger body of contemporary and scholarly literature on slavery and abolitionism in the Western hemisphere, the two versions of Kraspoekol show both similarities to and significant differences from the literary discourse on ‘American’ slavery in the Enlightenment. From Montesquieu onwards, French authors had raised objections against slavery and the slave trade in their works. However, while the excesses were condemned, the institution as such remained untouched. Voltaire's Alzire, used by Willem van Hogendorp to pose as a philosophe himself, remains painfully tacit on the slave trade.14 Slavery, in other words, was generally opposed in theory, but seldom in practice. It is here that Dirk's adaptation of Kraspoekol makes a significant step in explicitly calling for the abolition of not only the slave trade, but slavery in general. In this respect, he follows in the footsteps of Olympe de Gouges, in her 1792 play L'esclavage des noirs, although unlike Dirk, Gouges does not allow the slaves in her play to speak out against slavery.15

Philosophical arguments

Before the actual proposals on colonial government and the position of slaves can be discussed, the education and early career of the Van Hogendorp brothers

must be described in some detail. Both brothers had received their first formal education as cadets in the Prussian army between 1773 and 1779. After the Kartoffelkrieg or War of Bavarian Succession of 1778-1779, Dirk was admitted to the new Prussian academy for military engineering at Königsberg. According to his own memoirs, Dirk was an excellent student at the academy. This may have inspired him to take up his studies and follow courses at the regular university in the city and there to follow the courses of Immanuel Kant. Kant and Van Hogendorp regularly met at the dinner table of the Von Keyserling family, who had been engaged by Dirk's mother to keep an eye on her son. Which classes he attended cannot be established, but a letter by Kant to Biester on Dirk's departure from Königsberg in 1783 proves that he was there - and that he held a rather high opinion of himself as a student, something which Kant did not so readily concur with.

Between 1779 and 1783, Kant taught on Logic, Metaphysics, Logic and Anthropology. The latter subject was his main subject matter at the time, apart from the work on his first Critique. Having published his first work on races in 1775 (Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen) and working on a second study, to appear in 1785 (Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace), Kant appears to have been strongly occupied by the issue of race in these years.16 There has been heated debate on the nature of Kant's early anthropology, that is to say: his views on race before the 1790s. From his early writings it has become clear that Kant held strong prejudices against non-white races, especially blacks. His essay On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy, while supporting the monogenist cause, contains very negative images of other races. For instance, when describing the original inhabitants of the American continent and comparing them with Africans, Kant writes:

Da aber ihr Naturell zu keiner völligen Angemessenheit mit irgend einem Klima gelangt ist, läßt sich auch daraus abnehmen, daß schwerlich ein anderer Grund angegeben werden kann, warum diese Race, zu schwach für schwere Arbeit, zu gleichgültig für emsige und unfähig zu aller Cultur, wozu sich doch in der Naheit Beispiel und Aufmunterung genug findet, noch tief unter dem Neger selbst steht, welcher doch die niedrigste unter allen übrigen Stufen einnimmt, die wir als Racenverschiedenheiten genannt haben.17

It still remains a puzzle how to combine Kant's cosmopolitan and universal ethics with such a racist point of view. Kant's lectures must have set Dirk thinking on the subjects of race and slavery, as well as on Kantian ethics. In Königsberg, however, the topic was still very abstract for Dirk. That would change very soon. After he was honourably dismissed from service in 1782, Dirk was enlisted as a captain aboard a military expedition to Malacca. Shortly after arriving in the East Indies, he quit military service and embarked on a career as a civil servant with the VOC.

Dirk van Hogendorp would serve with the Dutch East India Company for many years. He had started as a merchant in Patna, Bengal in 1784, where he observed the British colonial system, and ended up as governor of the eastern part of Java between 1793 and 1798. His experiences with the Dutch colonial system were very negative. Inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, he started to oppose the Dutch colonial government and was imprisoned. He fled and returned to Holland, only to find himself entangled in a legal process during the course of which he felt obliged to publish his ideas. Under King Louis Napoleon Dirk was appointed minister of war and ambassador to Petersburg and Vienna, and afterwards served as a general and aide-de-camp under Napoleon.

Before coming to Patna, Dirk had briefly met his own father in Batavia on arriving in the Dutch East Indies. They had not seen each other in eleven years. Willem van Hogendorp had gone to Java to make his fortune, after losing everything in the financial crisis of 1773. He had gained a fortune with illegal trade (as did nearly everyone else) and was about to return home. On the way to the Cape of Good Hope, however, his ship sank and he was never seen again. Dirk blamed the East India Company for implicitly inciting their employees to corruption and allowing private trade. Home bound ships tended to be heavily overloaded with private trade cargo. According to Dirk, many of the shipwrecks were caused by this corruption and he blamed the company for the death of his father.

After the successful raid on Malacca, Dirk was appointed as an ‘onderkoopman’ in Patna, a key post in the Dutch linen and opium trade. It was customary for Dutch officials to set up a private trade alongside the company lines, and Patna was considered to be a very lucrative post. On his arrival, he discovered that the British had just monopolised the opium trade, in which he had hoped to make his fortune. He tried to set up a private production line for

textiles, but hardly anything came of that.18 The wealth he had been promised was nowhere to be obtained, and as a Company official he had hardly anything to do. So he started gambling, exploring local culture, and studied the British colonial system.

A Patna, je fus étonné de la solitude qui regnoit dans cette vaste factorerie où l'année passée tout étoit vivifié par un commerce actif. [...] Pour éviter l'ennui, je me mis à étudier le système commercial des Anglais.19


illustratie
Fig. 1 Charles Oyly, ‘View of the ruins of the Dutch Factory in the W. suburbs of Patna City (Bihar) showing the great revetments on the River Ganges. 17 November 1824’


Dirk's later writings, in which he explicitly and repeatedly refers to the British system, have been criticised for simplifying the policy of the VOC. In his defence, it must be said that at the time, there simply was no ‘system’ of colonization at all. Rules and regulations changed continuously, as did political and moral opinions. Moreover, the international balance of power was considered far more important than the coherence of colonial policy. What Dirk did, was derive a system from his personal observations in India. These observations led him to conclude that a colony can only be successful if all inhabitants are treated equally as economic citizens. The idea that non-western

peoples were less able or intelligent was dismissed as presumptuous. If the Javanese did not work as hard as the Dutch would want them to, the system was to blame, not the people, he claimed.

The revolution of 1795 offered Dirk the chance he had been waiting for. As governor of Eastern Java he abolished all feudal laws and started to reform the local economy. This, and his continuing criticism of the Governor General in Batavia caused great alarm and he was arrested and imprisoned. Dirk fled and back in the Netherlands tried to defend his position. Forced by the lawsuits to publicly express his ideas, he developed his first complete vision of the Dutch colonial system in his apologetic Berigt van den tegenwoordigen toestand der Bataafsche bezittingen in Oostindiën (An Account of the Present State of the Batavian Colonies in the East Indies) of 1799. In this book he advocated a fundamental change in Dutch colonial policy. The local population was to be given landownership and freedom of trade was to be established throughout the colony. There were no slave plantations in the Dutch East Indies. Local peasants were obliged to deliver specific crops to the authorities, but remained free. Slaves, of both local and West African origin, were however employed in Dutch households. Slaves made up about half of the population of the city of Batavia.20 The image of the Javanese people as idle and ignorant could, Van Hogendorp claimed, be explained from the colonial system rather than from any innate character. Dirk van Hogendorp was not alone in his economic argument against slavery and the exploitation of Javanese farmers. From the seventeenth century onwards, various authors had expressed the same argument. Still, opinions varied and for many years the issue of slavery was hardly discussed at all.21 Land ownership, on the other hand, was a topic of debate. On this issue Dirk took a firm stance:

Wie toch kan meerder en een nader recht hebben tot het eigendommelijk bezit van landen, dan hij, die dezelve bearbeidt en vruchtbaar maakt? En is er een land in de waereld bekend, waar de landman gelukkig, vrij, en wél gezeten is, zonder eigendom van land te hebben?22

Dirk's younger brother Gijsbert Karel had had no personal experience in the colonies, apart from having visited the former British colonies in North-America in 1784. Instead, his unsuccessful attempts in the international trade inspired

him to develop ideas on a more integrated approach to the trade relationship between Europe and the rest of the world. His plans show some similarities with his brother's ideas, but their backgrounds account for important differences as well. Gijsbert Karel's plans for the development of a new colony in South Africa were evidently inspired by the political developments in Europe in the last decades of the eighteenth century. His own, very promising political career had been broken off by the French invasion of 1795. His South African utopia was intended to be the starting point of the resurrection of Holland as a colonial power.

The ideas developed by the Van Hogendorp brothers on the future of the European colonies are part of an important phase in the development of colonialism and the relationship between Europe and the rest of the world. Although Dirk and Gijsbert Karel were on opposing political sides for the greater part of their lives, their ideas on the future of Dutch and French colonialism and slavery are almost identical. Around the turn of the century, they were both back in Holland and joined their efforts in proposing a new approach to colonial policy. Gijsbert Karel wrote: ‘Il paroît que les écrits de mon frère aîné ont fait impression sur quelques personnes, que les miens ont persuadé d'autres, et que leur effet réuni sera avantageux au public’.23 In the eyes of both brothers the colonies were an integral part of their future nation. This implied, in their view, not an uncompromising European supremacy, but rather the integration of the other and the self. The population of the colonies should, they both argued, become one with the people of the motherland, in every aspect.

These proposals show a great contrast to the development of colonial theory later in the nineteenth century. In their books they managed to break out of a pattern of thought that had been developed in the eighteenth century and that was to dominate the nineteenth for many decades. In what follows, I will analyse the ideas laid down by Dirk and Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp in their Verhandelingen over den Oost Indischen handel (Treatises on the Trade with the East Indies, Gijsbert Karel 1801) and Du système colonial de la France (Dirk 1817). I will then clarify their ideas by demonstrating the roots of their thought in the personal history of both authors and place their work in the context of other research on eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century colonialism.

Verhandelingen over den Oost Indischen Handel

Shortly after the turn of the century the two brothers published their views on the future of Europe's colonial system. In their writings, they used their experiences in local and colonial government in the years between their early careers in public service in the early 1770s and the invasion of the Netherlands by France in 1795. Gijsbert Karel' treatise was published in 1801. He draws on his brother's ideas, developed during Dirk's lawsuits against the Dutch government in the years immediately preceding the publication of the Treatises on the East Indies Trade, and laid down in Dirk's Account of the Present State of the Batavian Colonies. His personal experience with colonialism and slavery was acquired during his visit as a member of the first official Dutch embassy to the United States in 1783. After an eventful voyage across the ocean Gijsbert Karel left the delegation and travelled by himself from Boston to Philadelphia. One of the first things that struck him, were the great social differences in the American population. Rather than the egalitarian society he had expected, the Americans still upheld the old class division under the guise of equality. He saw three classes: the ‘persons in lower life’, ‘gentlemen’ and the ‘genteel company’, formed by the higher members of the second group. To Gijsbert Karel's astonishment, all members of the ‘genteel society’ held slaves, even such enlightened figures as Thomas Jefferson, who, Van Hogendorp wrote, ‘did not have very clear ideas’ on the matter of slavery.

Jefferson found it hard to make up his mind on slavery and race. Abolishing slavery would, he feared, lead to social unrest. Besides, while being a slave owner himself, he protested against the institution of slavery very early in his career and maintained a long relationship with an African American woman.24 In his influential Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson emphasises the inferiority of African Americans. Even though he opposes the principle of slavery, he fears the liberation of American slaves. White prejudice and black resentment would, he felt, lead to bloodshed. Moreover, if abolition would succeed, the mixture of races might cause serious degeneration: ‘When freed, he [the African American] is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture’.25 Gijsbert Karel met Jefferson several times, and kept confronting him with the divide between theory and practice, even after Jefferson had left for Europe later that same year. Slavery turned out to be Gijsbert Karel's biggest problem with American society. He could not understand why slavery was not abolished,

not just for reasons of human dignity, but also for economic reasons. In his view, free men simply worked harder than slaves. If one upheld philosophical or economic principles that conflicted with slavery, he concluded, these should be implemented immediately and without restraint.

After his return to the Netherlands, Gijsbert Karel embarked on a political career as pensionary (secretary, counsellor and representative) of the city of Rotterdam. After being ousted for his allegiance to the House of Orange in 1795, his next career was as head of the mercantile house he had inherited from his father-in-law. In association with his younger brother Willem, who had been set aside as pensionary of Haarlem for the same reason, he traded in coffee, sugar and indigo. The house performed an intermediary role in the trade between the Dutch colonies in Asia and the German lands.26 Due to the continuing wars, international trade was low and the Van Hogendorp firm was constantly looking out for new markets, both for supply and demand. Gijsbert Karel went on a business trip to Germany in the summer of 1798, hoping to enlarge the company's network. In Hamburg he was confronted with the fact that Amsterdam was rapidly losing its advantage as a commercial centre to that city.27 Something had to be done. On his return to the Netherlands, Van Hogendorp feverishly started to make up new plans to restore the former balance, first setting up a tea trade with China that cost him a fortune, and then directing his attention to South Africa, the pivotal point in the trade with the East Indies. By then, he had left the company to his brother. In 1801 he had completed his Treatises on the East Indies Trade, providing him with a basis for new plans.

Gijsbert Karel structures his book around three important moments in the history of the Dutch East India Company or VOC. The first is 1785, at the end of the Anglo-Dutch naval war, when many people first came to face the deplorable situation of the VOC. The second moment was 1791, when a national committee on the future of the VOC published its report. 1800, finally, was the year in which change had become inevitable with the publication of Dirk van Hogendorp's first essays on the Dutch colonies. Gijsbert Karel scrutinizes the financial situation of the VOC in the latter half of the eighteenth century to conclude that its profitability had diminished significantly. The cause of this, he argued, was the obsolete company structure, which had been maintained by the Dutch long after it had ceased to be an advantage in the competition with

the British. The solution to this, according to Gijsbert Karel, was a reduction of the role of the VOC from colonial sovereignty to privileged trading company and the transfer of land ownership to the local population. He even went as far as to stress the inevitability of colonial independence, although he foresaw that this would take several centuries.

Gijsbert Karel takes a uniquely economic view on the colonial issue, immediately laying bare the crucial problem of colonial trade around 1800. The Asian trade simply cost too much, both absolutely and in comparison to the American trade. Gijsbert Karel, who had never been to the East himself, was speechless at the figures he retrieved from all the reports and travel accounts he read. The profits made on each individual good might be astronomical, the lands fertile and the trading routes secure, and still the Company did not manage to make a reasonable overall profit. Corruption and mismanagement threatened the entire system. Within two centuries, the VOC's profits had been reduced to a bare minimum, whereas in half that time, the American colonies had become a prospering nation. In Gijsbert Karel's view the solution was simple: the VOC should adopt the American system.

In his research for the Treatises, Gijsbert Karel had closely studied the Dutch colony on the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. Originally a small post for the refreshment of ships headed for Java, Cape Town and its surroundings had developed into a small colony of settlers. His description of the nature, population and economy of the small colony reveals Gijsbert Karel's burgeoning love for this distant part of the Dutch colonial empire. He had never been there, but like many other countrymen in the near and distant future, South Africa fascinated him. South Africa, he hoped, would be the ideal place to establish a ‘perfect’ colony, roughly based on the English system, with the addition of the abolition of slavery. Only after this had been tried, would it be feasible to change the much larger colonies on Java and beyond.

Nieuw Nederland zal in Afrika opryzen zonder voorafgaanden oorlog en gelyk de Noord Amerikaanen nog gehegt zyn aan Engelland zo en nog veel meer zal de Kaap onze vrindinne en bondgenoote worden.28

Gijsber Karel's outlines for the future Cape colony contain a remarkable proposal. After having described the indigenous peoples of the region,

Hottentots, Caffers, Europeans and slaves from elsewhere, he envisions a mixed population, sprung from the ‘wenschelyke ineensmelting’ of these groups. This ‘sublime’ new race would live under the same laws, with equal rights.29 The key word here is ‘wenschelyk’, desired. Gijsbert Karel implicitly proposed amalgamation as part of colonial policy. That was a revolutionary idea, and one that might almost have come true.

By sheer coincidence, or perhaps as a consequence of his newly declared but clearly uninformed love for South Africa, Gijsbert Karel was visited by an old comrade from the Prussian army only shortly after he had published his Treatises on the East Indies Trade. This Friedrich von Bouchenröder had served in the military since the 1770s and had recently retired. He now planned to found a new colony in South Africa, for which he was looking for financial back up. Gijsbert Karel lost his ordinary prudence and immediately pledged his support. Together they made plans to send several ships with colonists, cattle and equipment to Plettenberg Bay, south east of Cape Town, halfway to present day Port Elisabeth. Gijsbert Karel didn't hesitate a moment and invested 15,000 guilders in the project. His hopes were high, and the initiative was looked upon with enthusiasm by others. The missionary society, having plans of its own, tried to combine their efforts in establishing a wool trade from the Cape.30

Von Bouchenröder was the first to leave for the new colony, together with his family and personal staff. Even before they arrived, things started to go wrong. Von Bouchenröder and his wife got into a terrible argument that was to end with lawsuits in Cape Town and the imprisonment of their son. Of the twenty colonists that were to start developing the land, only eight fitted on board and they were unable to cope with the infertile soil they found on arrival. The ships Van Hogendorp had sent after them met even worse fates. One sank, one ended up in Germany, another in America. The man who had been appointed as the leader of the farming colony went into a depression and committed suicide on the way. After it had become clear that he could no longer count on Von Bouchenröder, Gijsbert Karel became obsessed with the project. He invested another 45,000 guilders in a new location, nearer to Cape Town, but nothing could turn the tide. The last colonist that actually arrived found only two remaining farmers and handed in his resignation. By then, the British had conquered the Cape and had started to prosecute the two

remaining colonists for chopping wood that officially belonged to the crown. All in all, Van Hogendorp lost nearly 100,000 guilders and would spend years in lawsuits against both the Dutch and British governments for refunding of his investments, all of which was in vain.

What is of interest here is the description Gijsbert Karel gave of the colony he dreamed about. In a letter to his children, written a decade later, Gijsbert Karel looks back on his enterprise. It is the closest thing to prose fiction he has written, a utopian vision of a colony with strong similarities to fictional utopias of the eighteenth century and before.31 The colony was destined, he wrote, to ‘acquire an ever greater value every year, its products exported to Europe and the Indies, its necessities brought from every direction’. Its inhabitants, ‘while multiplying, were to establish trade and navigation, enough to support the largest possible enterprise’. As the founder and benefactor, all Gijsbert Karel had to do was provide the colonists with a loan and the basic means, consisting of a wood mill and sheep. In due course, they would be able to pay him back easily. The lands he had purchased were, he thought, extraordinarily fertile, and capable of producing both grain, grapes and tobacco, as well as wood lands and pasture for the sheep. Within a few years, the colony would export fruit, ivory, cotton, tea and ostrich feathers all over the globe, writes Gijsbert Karel, evidently still not quite awoken from his dreams. The selection of colonists he would have made in Europe would enable them to work in every craft, from weavers to rope- and barrel-makers, masons, painters, carpenters, tailors and cobblers, each of them provided with the best tools available.

Gijsbert Karel gave special thought to the issue of slavery and the relationship with the indigenous peoples. The main reason for his choice of location (the whole of South Africa in his mind being equally fertile and deserted) was the distance from Cape Town, thus shielding his population against the defects of traditional colonial society, especially slavery. In a moderate climate, he held, slaves were unnecessary - a thought he does not develop: does this mean the climate was cool enough for the Europeans to work the land, or for the Africans to work voluntarily? In any case, Gijsbert Karel planned to christen the Hottentots, and thus ‘form a race of diligent men’. This first generation of inhabitants would then result in ‘a stronger population’, eventually spreading over the entire Cape and ‘transforming deserts into populated lands’. Apart from these typical images of an idyllic paradise, one thing stands out in his vision of the South African colony, and that is the strong emphasis on the creation of a

new ‘race of men’. Such a proposal may seem proof of the alienated mind of this desk top coloniser, but there is more to it than that. It is the same idea that was conceived by his brother Dirk in his Du système colonial de la France.

Gijsbert Karel's colonial plan has strong similarities to the one developed later in the novel Aardenburg by the Dutch poet and novelist Petronella Moens. In the book, she describes a colony in Chile, where ‘a number of free families, consisting of Europeans, Negroes and Americans [enjoy] the quiet blessings of life in a new society’.32 In Aardenburg, too, races intermarried, even leading to social rise. Moens's utopia was, as with all of her other works, strongly religious in character. She had not kept up with scientific views on race, claiming even that ‘black Africans procreating in Europe become white in the fifth generation’33 - that is, without racial interbreeding. This illustrates to what extent the debate on race and slavery remained a matter of beliefs and principles, rather than a discussion on matters of fact.

Du système colonial de la France

In the same year in which Dirk van Hogendorp published his Du système colonial de la France, 1817, another book on the future of the European colonies appeared. Dominique de Pradt's two-volume Des colonies et de la révolution actuelle de l'Amérique questions the future of the colonial system in America in the light of the independence wars in southern America following the Napoleonic wars. After the American and French revolutions, De Pradt holds, the balance between the metropolis, the colonizing power, and the colonies was permanently disturbed. As a result, the best solution for both colonies and European nations was the independence of all colonies. In De Pradt's view, freedom was the solution to all the evils of the colonial past: wars between the European powers would cease to occur, all European nations would share in the profits of colonial trade, and in the colonies themselves, ‘government, police, education, morale, arts, commerce, [and] culture’ would thrive instantly.34 Slavery, too, should be abolished in all former American colonies, for the former slaves could easily perceive their economic benefit in contributing to their new nation.35

Dirk van Hogendorp follows a similar argument, combining enlightened principles and economic arguments, and comparing the different colonial

systems in order to come up with new solutions. In contrast to De Pradt, Van Hogendorp does not focus on the American colonies, but rather on Asia, though he also incorporates Africa and America in his system. In his book he starts by distinguishing three forms of colonial relations. The first are colonies, the second trading posts and the third territorial possessions. All European nations had started off by establishing trading posts, in which they traded with local merchants or princes for the goods they wanted to obtain. In order to secure the trade, European nations established companies that monopolised this trade. A trading post might consist of a simple ‘factory’ where local goods were bought for shipment to Europe. In other cases, trading posts had been fortified and armed, becoming small territorial possessions. A further step was to control the production of trading goods, leading to the establishment of colonies. Van Hogendorp describes three types of colonies: pure establishments, consisting solely of (European) colonists; mixed colonies, in which the indigenous population had adapted to the religion and customs of the European colonizers; and, finally, slave colonies. Any kind of colony, according to Van Hogendorp, is a property governed exclusively in the service of the economical profit of the colonising nation. Territorial possessions on the other hand are much more than that: they are part of the nation and serve political, social and cultural goals as well. Almost all previous authors, Van Hogendorp claims, had failed to make these distinctions, as a result of which they had not understood the colonial system at all.36

Dirk van Hogendorp then makes a clever point by summarising the anti-abolitionist argument that without slaves colonies would cease to exist and stressing that that would be a splendid idea, as colonies are, in the long run, far less profitable for the homeland than territorial possessions would be. And so, after a detailed examination of the present situation of the French colonies, Van Hogendorp proposes to establish a new colony, or rather, territory, to fulfil France's economic and strategic needs. Such a colony, he argues, should be one with a mixed population. Only then would the people in the colony feel at home where they live, while at the same time remaining loyal to their homeland. Ideally, France should find an island, somewhere between the tropics, fertile and populated, and start building Van Hogendorp's dream. To his mind, Madagascar would be such a place. In the final part of Du système colonial de la France, he sketches the outlines of that colony. And although his plans would never materialise in the strict sense (Madagascar would

actually become a semi-independent kingdom in the very year Van Hogendorp published his book), they did anticipate the idea of the ‘territoires d'outre mer’ later developed in France.

In contrast to De Pradt, Van Hogendorp refuses to claim universal value for his system. He wrote: ‘Il s'ensuit qu'un bon système colonial ne doit pas appliquer les mêmes principes à tous les genres de possessions qui peuvent appartenir à un Etat, ni vouloir modeler leur organisation et leur administration sur les mêmes formes’.37 This relativism reveals Van Hogendorp's broad experience in colonial practice. At the same time, such practical intelligence contrasts sharply with his utopian call for hybridization. In all European colonies, the mixing of colonists with the local population had been seen as a threat; Van Hogendorp applauds the future amalgamation of ‘les indigènes’ with their colonizers.38 The permission and even encouragement of hybrid marriages could do nothing but foster lawfulness and equality, Van Hogendorp states.39

Conclusions

The late eighteenth-century debate on slavery and colonialism was the final phase of what Stuurman has called ‘modern equality’. This concept brings together various cultural and philosophical developments of the Enlightenment, including its internal contradictions.40 Many of these can be recognized in the influences on the thought of Dirk and Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp. Together they developed very explicit ideas on promoting hybridization among the colonial population. According to Robert Young, the late debate on race and hybridity in the early years of the nineteenth century involved five basic points of view:

 

1.The species argument, according to which different peoples cannot mix at all
2.The amalgamation thesis, which claims ‘that all humans can interbreed prolifically [...] sometimes accompanied by the “'melting pot” notion that the mixing of people produces a mixed race’.
3.The decomposition thesis, holding that ‘any mixed breeds either die out quickly or revert to one or other of the permanent parent “types”’.
4.‘The argument that hybridity varies between “proximate” and “distant” species’.
5.‘The idea that miscegenation produces a mongrel group that makes up a “raceless chaos”’.41

There are a few other examples of authors addressing this issue. James Cowles Prichard, in his 1813 book Researches into the Physical History of Man, devotes considerable attention to mulattoes and the properties of hybrid races.42 Prichard was trying to translate Buffon's ideas to human races and free his theory from absurd interpretations by later eighteenth-century authors on human race. His ideas were supported by the former governor-general of Saint-Dominique, Gabriel de Bory, who laid down elaborate plans for the ‘manufacture’ of specific race mixtures in the colonies, based on labour demands. Both authors, however, do not so much think of race mixture as a means to create one new, colonial population, but rather intend to create an in-between race along the lines of Plato's theory of the state. At the other extreme, Edward Long, in his History of Jamaica. Or, General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of that Island of 1774, states ‘that the white and the negroe had not one common origin’, and even ‘that the white and the negroe are two distinct species’.43 According to Long, and many others, hybridization was utterly impossible. Long was fighting a lost battle, however. Since the 1760s the idea that all of mankind belonged to the same species had gradually come to dominate the debate.44 In contrast to both extremes, the Van Hogendorp brothers did not promote new hierarchies, but rather the annihilation of hierarchy by hybridization in the colonies.

Clearly, the Van Hogendorp brothers, especially Dirk, belong to the adherents of the amalgamation thesis. Apart from the authors mentioned, I have found no others who support this idea, especially not any who share the emphasis both Gijsbert Karel and Dirk van Hogendorp place on the economic and political advantages of such an approach to colonial possessions. Their personal experiences and the people who influenced their ideas had set them on a course towards an unprecedented proposal: to create a colony in which hybridization was the official policy, thus closing the gap between centre and periphery. It is obvious that none of these ideas were ever put into practice in either Holland or France. What remains intriguing, however, is the fact that these two men, who, though no great philosophers, were knowledgeable and influential men in their time, came up with such utopian notions.

About the author

Edwin van Meerkerk is a cultural historian. Among his previous publications is Willem V en Wilhelmina van Pruisen. De laatste stadhouders (Amsterdam 2009). His biography of the Hogendorp brothers will appear in November 2013. He currently teaches in the Cultural Studies programme at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Email: e.vanmeerkerk@let.ru.nl.

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