SweCarCol’s digitized archive brings together the most important archival holdings relating to the Caribbean island of St. Barthelemy which was a Swedish colony from 1784 to 1878. The archival documents accessible through the search function were, with few exceptions, created during this period. As with other colonial archives, it was produced in the context of a colonial society that perpetuated certain hierarchies of power. These hierarchies pertained to among other categories property, sex and nationality, but above all, race. The archival documents therefore contain the language of prejudice, subjugation, and violence typical of a colonial society based on slavery. Words and terms contained within these records should be used and cited with care. The Swedish colonial archives provide evidence of how Sweden participated in the transatlantic slave trade and how the Swedish state acted towards the enslaved and other vulnerable groups in the colonial society. The aim of the project is to facilitate research on this period in Swedish history by making the Swedish government archives from the colony available for the first time. The searchable archive contains both the documents produced by the Swedish state in the Caribbean and those created in Sweden in connection with the administration of the colony. When you search in SweCarCol’s digitized archive, you search in several archival collections related to Swedish St. Barthélemy. The archives are physically located in different places and the overview below briefly introduces the holdings. More information on the content and history of each archive can be found here.
Quoting and referring to documents in SweCarCol
The instructions here concern only the information required to find the referenced document, not the format or style of the citation. A reference to a document from SweCarCol should identify the document and its author (if stated), date (if applicable), image number in the archive volume (found on the search engine’s hit page), archival volume number, collection name, and archive. A link to the digitised version in SweCarCol should also be included. Links should be directed to the document in the Alvin repository. This is where SweCarCol's image files are permanently stored. To find the correct link, select “image viewer in Alvin” on the document’s hit page. In Alvin’s image viewer mode, select “Link to image” to copy the link to the image file. The link to the image file contains the archival volume’s Alvin record number and the image number within the archival volume (in the example Alvin record 354795 and image number 207 respectively). It is advisable to include these as they are permanent identifiers. The Alvin record and image numbers are always included in the link. In the following citation, the format can be abbreviated according to the chosen citation format. More information on citations and image downloads from the Alvin repository can be found here.
The example document is an application for the respite of customs duties for enslaved Africans transported across the Atlantic by Swedish merchants in 1809. A reference to the document can look like this:
- Application to defer payment of customs, signed by merchants Röhl and Hansen, 1809-11-24, image number 207, volume 159, Fonds suédois de Saint-Barthélemy, Archives nationales d'outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence. https://www.alvin-portal.org/alvin/imageViewer.jsf?dsId=ATTACHMENT-0207&pid=alvin-record:354795
Licenses
The archive material from the Swedish National Archives (Riksarkivet) in SweCarCol is covered by the so-called Public Domain Mark, which means that image files from Riksarkivet can be used freely. However, the image source should always be stated. More information about rights here. The use of the image files in SweCarCol that originate from French archives is regulated by French archive legislation, which does not use the licenses drawn up within international cooperation. The legislation authorises the user to publish images of French archival documents free of charge, as long as they do not contain information subject to other restrictions (copyright, information on living persons, etc.), which is not the case for the documents made available by SweCarCol. French law requires that the source of the image is indicated when published. If images from the Aix-en-Provence archive made available in SweCarCol are published, the image source must always be indicated: Fonds suédois de Saint-Barthélemy, volume number, Archives nationales d'outre-mer. If the document is dated and/or has an author, this should be indicated.
Archival holdings in SweCarCol
Fonds suédois de Saint Barthélemy (FSB), Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence
The largest digitized archival deposit was created during the Swedish rule of the colony 1785–1878. The archive is called Fonds suédois de Saint Barthélemy [roughly The Swedish S:t Barthélemy collection], abbreviated FSB. When Sweden relinquished the colony in 1878, the archive was left in Gustavia. FSB is now situated in the French national archives colonial section, Archives nationales d’outre-mer in Aix-en-Provence. FSB is the Swedish administrative archive created by the Swedish state in St Barthélemy, and covers the entire Swedish period. It has been frought with material losses and contains many damaged documents. Despite these conditions, the archive gives scholars a great opportunity to examine the Swedish colonial rule in detail. FSB was organized during the 1960s in a number of series, which created a cursory categorization of the documents.
S:t Barthélemysamlingen (SBS), Riksarkivet, Marieberg
The Swedish National Archives S:t Barthélemy Collection (SBS) consists primarily of documents sent from the colony to the administration in Stockholm. Within this archive you can find for example the Governor's reports, excerpts from court cases, financial reports, and more. Based on the principle of provinence, FSB and SBS are both parts of the same archive, since the documentation was created by the local administration in the colony.
Svenska västindiska kompaniet (SVIK), Riksarkivet, Marieberg
Svenska Västindiska Kompaniet (The Swedish West Indian Company) was founded in Stockholm in 1785 and dissolved in 1805. The company was closely connected with the colonial rule, and it's activities can in many senses be considered a part of the government administration of the colony. The company archives contain primarily bookkeeping and administrative reports, but also contains correspondence and reports pertaining to colonial interests. The company archive is part of the larger thematic collection Handel och Sjöfart.
Kolonialdepartementet, Riksarkivet, Marieberg
Kolonialdepartementet (The Colonial Department) was established in the 1810:s, and was primarily assigned to govern the state management of S:t Barthélemy. The digitized material contains minutes concerning the rule of the colony from 1812 to 1844, the year when the administration of the colony was granted to the Finance Department.
Archives on St Barthélemy
SweCarCol contains documents from the Collectivité de Saint-Barthélemy and from private collections. Among these you can find Gustavia's Swedish cadastre, the 1878 French census and a collection of council minutes from 1792–1797.