Severine Brock's first language was Ga, yet it was not surprising when,
in 1842, she married Edward Carstensen. He was the last governor of
Christiansborg, the fort that, in the eighteenth century, had been the
center of Danish slave trading in West Africa. She was the descendant of
Ga-speaking women who had married Danish merchants and traders. Their
marriage would have been familiar to Gold Coast traders going back
nearly 150 years. In Daughters of the Trade, Pernille Ipsen follows
five generations of marriages between African women and Danish men,
revealing how interracial marriage created a Euro-African hybrid culture
specifically adapted to the Atlantic slave trade.
Although interracial marriage was prohibited in European colonies
throughout the Atlantic world, in Gold Coast slave-trading towns it
became a recognized and respected custom. Cassare, or "keeping house,"
gave European men the support of African women and their kin, which was
essential for their survival and success, while African families made
alliances with European traders and secured the legitimacy of their
offspring by making the unions official.
For many years, Euro-African families lived in close proximity to the
violence of the slave trade. Sheltered by their Danish names and
connections, they grew wealthy and influential. But their powerful
position on the Gold Coast did not extend to the broader Atlantic world,
where the link between blackness and slavery grew stronger, and where
Euro-African descent did not guarantee privilege. By the time Severine
Brock married Edward Carstensen, their world had changed. Daughters of
the Trade uncovers the vital role interracial marriage played in the
coastal slave trade, the production of racial difference, and the
increasing stratification of the early modern Atlantic world.