Switzerland and Slavery
After some five years of research, Hans Fässler's book on Switzerland's links with slavery and the slave trade was published in 2005 under the title "Reise in Schwarz-Weiss. Schweizer Ortstermine in Sachen Sklaverei" (Rotpunkt-Verlag, Zurich). It has since been translated into French and been published in France under the title "Une Suisse esclavagiste. Voyage dans un pays au-dessus de tout soupçon" (Duboiris, Paris) with a preface by Doudou Diène, special rapporteur to the UN on contemporary forms of racism.
After some five years of research, Hans Fässler's book on Switzerland's links with slavery and the slave trade was published in 2005 under the title "Reise in Schwarz-Weiss. Schweizer Ortstermine in Sachen Sklaverei" (Rotpunkt-Verlag, Zurich). It has since been translated into French and been published in France under the title "Une Suisse esclavagiste. Voyage dans un pays au-dessus de tout soupçon" (Duboiris, Paris) with a preface by Doudou Diène, special rapporteur to the UN on contemporary forms of racism. The book has launched a debate on the responsibility which Switzerland shares with other European nations: towards reparations for the crime against humanity which slavery has been defined in Durban. I am now looking for an editor in the UK, the US or another anglophone country interested in publishing an English translation of my book, which contains a fair number of subjects related to an English or American historical context of slavery and the slave trade:
- emigration from the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden to the US, the import of cotton from Georgia and Louisiana.
- investments made by families from the canton of Thurgau in the Mississippi Company of John Law, founder of New Orleans.
- a trip to the US of industrial magnate Adolf Guyer-Zeller from the canton of Zürich on the eve of the US civil war, and his trip on the Mississippi and encounters with slavery.
- emigration of Swiss nationals to the US at the beginning of the 18th century, including emigration to Carolina (the so-called Carolina fever), the founding of New Berne and Purrsyburg, and the presence of painter and slave owner Jeremias Theus, from the canton of the Grisons, in Charleston.
- Louis Agassiz, the naturalist and specialist in glaciers, who emigrated to the US from Switzerland and there became one of the leading racists and one of the earliest proponents of apartheid. The daguerrotypes of Swiss-born Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) are well-known in the US literature on slavery.
- Swiss emigration to South Africa.
- the State of Berne's major investment in the South Sea Company (1719–1734) as well as Carl Ludwig von Haller's "Digression on Slavery" of 1818, which made a deep impact on Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle and his polemical Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question.
- "La Belle Chocolatière", a symbol which the US chocolate corporation Baker made into the first ever logo in industrial history.
- the defeat of the Dutch army against the rebellious slaves in Surinam compared to American defeat in Vietnam.