Research Associate on the project ‘German Slavery’ and Doctoral Candidate

Email: jas_hag(at)uni-bremen.de
Office: GW2, Raum B1440
Tel.: +49 421 218-67222

Current Project

Bremen as part of the atlantic slave economy. Overseas exports and the discourse on slavery in the city 1780 – 1860

This project focuses on the personal and economic links between Bremen merchants and plantation regions in the Americas as well as on the discourse on slavery in the city and how state officials dealt with it.

The Bremen overseas trade rose from the Treaty of Paris in 1783 to the beginning of the First World War in 1914 with only brief disruptions. Bremen merchants imported plantation products such as coffee, tobacco, sugar or cocoa. Linen was the most important and nowadays most widely known export product. A detailled analysis of the exports will show the diversity of export products and the close integration of the Bremen merchants in the Atlantic slave economy. The research project will carry out a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the Bremen exports using the certificates of neutrality and bills of lading recorded in the State Archive of Bremen. How often did merchants export goods that were unambiguously produced to be used in slave labour such as `plantation knives`or `negro hatchets`? What proportion of the overall exports did these goods comprise? Which trading houses exported the most of these goods?

These trade links are especially significant when combined with the debate in Bremen about slavery. Although the public discourse in the nineteenth century generally opposed the slave trade and slavery, Bremen merchants owned slaves themselves in overseas regions. To shed light on the ambivalent relationship of Bremen’s elite to atlantic slavery, the project examines  Bremen plantation owners overseas as well as Bremen’s often reluctant cooperation in the international effort to suppress the slave trade. The goal is to identify biographical patterns of Bremen's overseas slave trade profiteers and to examine the discourses and practices in dealing with the transatlantic slave trade in their hometown. 

Vita

Since September 2019 Research Associate on the ERC Consolidator Grand project  ‘The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and its Slaves’, University of Bremen

Since April 2019 Doctoral Candidate, University of Bremen

2019 Project employee at the Focke-Museum Bremen for the exhibition „Hans Saebens. Pictures for Bremen (1930-1969)“

2017 Study abroad semester, California State University Los Angeles

2016 – 2018 Master’s Degree in History with emphasis on Public History, University of Bremen, thesis: “European Trading Companies and Indigenous People at the African Gold Coast“

2015 – 2019 Student assistant on the ERC Consolidator Grand project  ‘The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and its Slaves’, University of Bremen

2013 – 2016 Bachelor’s Degree in History, University of Bremen, thesis: “Batpism of Coloured People and Muslims: Representations of the Other around the Year 1700“