The Iconography of Death in the Logbooks of the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Atlantic Slave Trade

ABSTRACTWhen deaths among the enslaved and crew occurred during the eighteenth-century voyages of the vessels of the Middelburg Commercial Company, many of the officers who kept logbooks aboard drew skulls and crossbones, crosses, hourglasses, and other icons to mark those deaths. While some scholars have previously noted those icons preserved in the margins of 109 logbooks in the Zeeuws Archive in Middelburg, the Netherlands, this first comprehensive description and analysis of that iconography of death contributes a novel dimension to our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade. Many of the icons relate to memento mori symbolism that emerged during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Dutch vanitas paintings and quotidian objects to emphasize the evanescence of mundane existence lived without spirituality, helping to reconcile the conspicuous consumption of material goods extracted from a global colonial empire with a Calvinist piety that abjured earthly possessions. The iconographical analysis reveals seventeen types of icons, ranging from basic marks such as an X to combinations of skulls, crossbones, hourglasses, and wings. Moreover, it reveals which icon types appear most commonly, how they changed over time, how they varied among logbook authors, and how they differed for deaths among the enslaved and crew.KEYWORDS: Atlantic slave tradedeatheighteenth centuryiconographylogbooksMiddelburg Commercial Company AcknowledgmentsI thank Bailey Landry, who worked diligently as an undergraduate intern on this project in 2021 to search logbooks for death icons, as well as the incredible staff at the Zeeuws Archive for answering queries and granting permission to reproduce the death icons.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Zeeuws Archive (Middelburg, the Netherlands), ascension no. 20, Middelburgsche Commercie Compagnie (hereafter MCC) preserves the documents related to the voyage of the Haast U Langzaam, including the logbook (MCC 537) and other volumes that record trades, payroll, muster roll, equipment, trade goods, and return cargo (MCC 538, 539, 540, 541.1, 541.2, 541.3). The quote is on MCC 537, 32; all translations are by the author.2 Phillip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (hereafter TSTD), https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/database.3 David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 2.4 Joseph C. Miller, ‘Mortality in the Atlantic Slave Trade: Statistical Evidence on Causality’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 11 (1981): 385–423; David Eltis, ‘Mortality and Voyage Length in the Middle Passage: New Evidence from the Nineteenth Century’, The Journal of Economic History 44 (1984): 301–8; Raymond L. Cohn, ‘Deaths of Slaves in the Middle Passage’, The Journal of Economic History 45 (1985): 685–92; Johannes M. Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Johannes M. Postma, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003); Simon Hogerzeil and David Richardson, ‘Slave Purchasing Strategies and Shipboard Mortality: Day-to-Day Evidence from the Dutch African Trade, 1751–1797’, The Journal of Economic History 67 (2007): 160–90; Eltis and Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 22, 30, 162, 175, 179, 204; Karin Lurvink, ‘Underwriting Slavery: Insurance and Slavery in the Dutch Republic (1718–1778)’, Slavery and Abolition 40 (2019): 472–93.5 Emma Christopher, Slave Ship Sailors and their Captive Cargoes, 1730–1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Eric R. Taylor, If We Must Die: Shipboard Insurrections in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006); Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York: Viking, 2007); Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); James Walvin, The Zong: A Massacre, the Law, and the End of Slavery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); Sowande’ Mustakeem, Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016).6 Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade (New York: Basic Books, 2002); David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., The Image of the Black in Western Art, vol. 3, From the ‘Age of Discovery’ to the Age of Abolition, 3 parts (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2010–2011); Allison Blakely, Blacks in the Dutch World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing, eds., The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem (London: The Warburg Institute, 2012); Eltis and Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 173.7 An Boord van de Eenigheid 1761–1763, project manager Hannie Kool-Blokland, https://eenigheid.slavenhandelmcc.nl. The primary sources for the project include MCC 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389.1, 389.2, 389.3, 390.8 An Boord van de Eenigheid 1761–1763, Bemanning, https://eenigheid.slavenhandelmcc.nl/trajecten-van-de-reis/oversteek/bemanning-oversteek.9 An Boord van de Eenigheid 1761–1763, Epilogue, https://eenigheid.slavenhandelmcc.nl/trajecten-van-de-reis/thuisreis/epiloog.10 MCC 1368, 44, Letter of 21 May 1767 by Adriaan Visser to his father.11 Simone Koster, ‘God zij geloofd voor de behouden vaart: De rol van godsdienst aan boord van de slavenschepen van de Middelburgse Commercie Compagnie, 1730–1807’ (unpublished paper available from the Zeeuws Archive, 2013), 12–14.12 Koster, ‘God zij geloofd voor de behouden vaart’, 27–8.13 Andrew Sluyter, ‘Death on the Middle Passage: A Cartographic Approach to the Atlantic Slave Trade’, Esclavages et post-esclavages (2020): 3358; Andrew Sluyter, Atlantic Commodity Networks, https://sites.google.com/site/Atlanticnetworksproject; Charlotte S. Sussman, Remembering the Middle Passage, https://sites.duke.edu/middlepassage; Phillip J. Turner, et al., ‘Memorializing the Middle Passage on the Atlantic Seabed in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction’, Marine Policy 122 (2020): 104254.14 The 67 logbooks for slave voyages are MCC 185, 187, 215, 333, 383, 390, 391, 398, 429, 430, 455, 461, 486, 487, 511, 518, 523, 537, 542, 775, 781, 787, 793, 800, 801, 808, 823, 830, 837, 858, 896, 903, 910, 916, 922, 962, 968, 973, 978, 984, 989, 994, 999, 1004, 1013, 1018, 1077, 1092, 1097, 1125, 1153, 1189, 1193, 1217, 1222, 1228, 1234, 1239, 1246, 1252, 1302, 1307, 1312, 1385, 1397, 1405, 1411.15 MCC 962. Of the 67 logbooks for slave voyages, only this one lacks a summary record in TSTD.16 The 42 logbooks for non-slave voyages are MCC 204, 261, 264, 269, 278, 303, 320, 363, 467, 481, 556, 561, 566, 579, 584, 594, 599, 629, 632, 636, 640, 649, 744, 752, 765, 891, 952a, 1026, 1030, 1035, 1058, 1139, 1160, 1166, 1172, 1179, 1184, 1202, 1208, 1271, 1276, 1376.17 Roelof van Straten, An Introduction to Iconography (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1994), 3; Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching Visual Materials (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2016), 198.18 Rose, Visual Methodologies, 200.19 Straten, An Introduction to Iconography, 4–17.20 Alicia Faxon, ‘Some Perspectives on the Transformation of the Dance of Death in Art’, in The Symbolism of Vanitas in the Arts, Literature, and Music: Comparative and Historical Studies, ed. Liana DeGirolami Cheney (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 33–66.21 Michael Brennan, ed., The A-Z of Death and Dying: Social, Medical, and Cultural Aspects (Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2014), 44–5, 127–8.22 Corinna Ricasoli, ed., The Living Dead: Ecclesiastes Through Art (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2018), 13–6.23 Ricasoli, The Living Dead, 126–7, 180–1.24 Sarah Tarlow, Bereavement and Commemoration: An Archaeology of Mortality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 71, 77, 88; Jaak Nijssen and Jan Nyssen, ‘Pre-industrial Headstones Across the Continental North Sea Plain’, Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011): 273–87; Brennan, The A-Z of Death and Dying, 307–8.25 Liana DeGirolami Cheney, ‘Dutch Vanitas Paintings: The Skull’, in The Symbolism of Vanitas in the Arts, Literature, and Music: Comparative and Historical Studies, ed. Liana DeGirolami Cheney (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 113–76.26 Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), xi, 214.27 Straten, An Introduction to Iconography, 60–6.28 Gabriel Rollenhagen, Selectorum Emblematum: Centuria Secunda (Utrecht: Crispiani Passaei, 1613), 77.29 Brandon Richards, ‘Hier Leydt Begraven: A Primer on Dutch Colonial Gravestones’, Northeast Historical Archaeology 43 (2014): 1–22.30 Straten, An Introduction to Iconography, 37–9.31 Ibid., 45-55.32 Cesare Ripa, Nova Iconologia (Padua: Pietro Paulo Tozzi, 1618), 354; James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art (Boulder: Westview Press, 2008), 97.33 Ripa, Nova Iconologia, 521; Straten, An Introduction to Iconography, 38; Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, 123.34 Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, 97, 123.35 Ibid., 300–1.36 Brennan, The A-Z of Death and Dying, 307–8; Tarlow, Bereavement and Commemoration, 76–9, 127–31.37 Ibid; Ibid., 131–2.38 Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, 80–1.39 Jason Farago, ‘Close Read: A Messy Table, a Map of the World’, The New York Times (8 May 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/08/arts/design/dutch-still-life.html.40 William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (New York: Oxford university Press, 1988).41 Tarlow, Bereavement and Commemoration, 79–82; Nijssen and Nyssen, ‘Pre-industrial Headstones’, 283–84; Christine Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics during Holland's Golden Age: Heretics and Idolaters (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).42 Hans Knippenberg, De Religieuze Kaart van Nederland: Omvang en Geografische Spreiding van de Godsdienstige Gezindten Vanaf de Reformatie tot Heden (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1992), 23.43 Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, ‘Introduction’, in Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age, eds. Ronnie Po-chia Hsia and Henk F. K. van Nierop (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 5–6; Knippenberg, De Religieuze Kaart van Nederland, 23.44 David Barringer, There is Nothing Funny about Design (New York City: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009), 75.45 Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter, Death in Documentaries: The Memento Mori Experience (Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2018), ix.46 MCC 858. Other logbooks with similar unintentional variation include MCC 808, 896, and 903.47 MCC 215, 383, 390, 430, 486, 487, 518, 523, 787, 793, 800, 801, 823, 830, 922, 973, 984, 999, 1004, 1013, 1193, 1222, 1228, 1234, 1239, 1246, 1302, 1307, 1385.48 MCC 185, 391, 429, 455, 511, 537, 775, 781, 808, 837, 916, 1018, 1097, 1125, 1411. Note that this list assumes one errant type 10 for the first crew death in the logbook of the 1764–1766 voyage of the Haast U Langzaam, in which the author used type 15 for 5 subsequent crew deaths (MCC 511, 27).49 Harms, The Diligent; Eltis and Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 173.50 MCC 187, 542, 858, 910, 968, 978, 989, 994, 1077, 1092, 1312, 1405. Note that this list assumes one errant type 7 for the first enslaved death in the logbook of the 1779–1780 voyage of the Nieuwe Hoop, in which the author used type 10 for the other 14 enslaved deaths (MCC 858, 25).51 MCC 333, 398, 461, 896, 903, 962, 1153, 1189, 1217, 1252, 1397, 1411.52 Koster, ‘God zij geloofd voor de behouden vaart’, 27; MCC 429, 903, 962, 1092, 1222, and 1312 use heads, and MCC 429, 1092, and 1222 depict them with kinky hair.53 MCC 429, 1092.54 MCC 1092.55 The terms used were variations of manslaaf for men, vrouweslaaf for women, jongeslaaf for boys, and meisjeslaaf or meijdslaaf for girls.56 MCC 333, 391, 398, 511, 858, 896, 903, 962, 1092, 1153, 1217, 1252, 1312.57 MCC 383, 391, 429, 461, 511, 808, 962, 1004, 1092, 1097, 1153, 1189, 1217, 1246, 1252, 1312, 1397, 1411.58 MCC 1246, 7, 38, 47, 69.59 MCC 1189, 14, 67.60 MCC 429, 46, 47, 48, 50.61 Brennan, The A-Z of Death and Dying, 307–8; Tarlow, Bereavement and Commemoration, 131–2.62 L.J. Joosse, ‘Zeeuwse predikanten en hun visie op slavernij en slavenhandel, 1640–1740’, Archief: Mededelingen van het Koninklijk Zeeuwsch Genootschap der Wetenschappen (1 January 2005): 77–98.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Louisiana State UniversityNotes on contributorsAndrew SluyterAndrew Sluyter is a Carnegie Fellow and Professor of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70808 U.S.A. Email: asluyter@lsu.edu.