The Man Who Stole Himself
The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonathan
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- 27,99 €
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- 27,99 €
Publisher Description
The island nation of Iceland is known for many things—majestic landscapes, volcanic eruptions, distinctive seafood—but racial diversity is not one of them. So the little-known story of Hans Jonathan, a free black man who lived and raised a family in early nineteenth-century Iceland, is improbable and compelling, the stuff of novels.
In The Man Who Stole Himself, Gisli Palsson lays out the story of Hans Jonathan (also known as Hans Jónatan) in stunning detail. Born into slavery in St. Croix in 1784, Hans was taken as a slave to Denmark, where he eventually enlisted in the navy and fought on behalf of the country in the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen. After the war, he declared himself a free man, believing that he was due freedom not only because of his patriotic service, but because while slavery remained legal in the colonies, it was outlawed in Denmark itself. He thus became the subject of one of the most notorious slavery cases in European history, which he lost. Then Hans ran away—never to be heard from in Denmark again, his fate unknown for more than two hundred years. It’s now known that Hans fled to Iceland, where he became a merchant and peasant farmer, married, and raised two children. Today, he has become something of an Icelandic icon, claimed as a proud and daring ancestor both there and among his descendants in America.
The Man Who Stole Himself brilliantly intertwines Hans Jonathan’s adventurous travels with a portrait of the Danish slave trade, legal arguments over slavery, and the state of nineteenth-century race relations in the Northern Atlantic world. Throughout the book, Palsson traces themes of imperial dreams, colonialism, human rights, and globalization, which all come together in the life of a single, remarkable man. Hans literally led a life like no other. His is the story of a man who had the temerity—the courage—to steal himself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Scandinavia and slavery are rarely connected in the public imagination, but in this intriguing work of microhistory, Palsson, professor of anthropology at the University of Iceland, reminds readers that Denmark possessed Caribbean sugar plantation colonies as he shares the tale of Hans Jonathan, a mixed-race man born into slavery on St. Croix in 1784. Jonathan was brought to Copenhagen in 1792 and treated humanely by the standards of the era, being taught to read and write and allowed to spend his evenings out of the house with friends. But when his owner, Henriette von Schimmelmann, refused to allow him to fight against the attacking English in 1801, Jonathan ran away. Schimmelmann won a court case confirming ownership of the young man, but Jonathan was allowed to depart Denmark and head to Iceland, where he established himself as a farmer and businessman, married a local woman, and founded a family line that persists in Iceland today. Through this engaging tale of one man's attempts to find a home as a man of color in 19th-century Scandinavia, Palsson uses Jonathan's previously obscure but picaresque life as a lens through which to examine questions of imperialism, slavery, race, and cultural identity.