Sugar and slaves: The Augsburg Welser as conquerors of America and colonial foundational myths

ABSTRACT In her 1883 collection of biographies of the most famous conquistadores of the Americas, Colombian writer Soledad Acosta de Samper noticeably included two German representatives of the Augsburg-based Welser trading company. Her depictions demonstrate that German finance and investment has been constitutive for the early colonial endeavor in the Americas of which the enslavement of Amerindians and the trade in enslaved Africans formed an integral part from the outset. This essay pursues a twofold aim: Firstly, it employs Acosta de Samper’s account of the Augsburg traders as a lens for elaborating on the little-studied German activities in the Spanish colonies. Secondly, the essay is interested in how early colonial endeavors such as the Welser’s have been serving as a showcase example for German colonial fantasies ever since. Both arguments refute the dominant discourse of the “late” or “insignificant” German role in the colonial enterprise, the transnational slave trade, and the trade in enslaved Amerindians. This essay will pursue and promote a perspective that focuses on the entangled histories and processes of conquest and colonialism, thus broadening the claim of the structural involvement of German-territorial actors such as the Welser company whose activities were transnational in scale to begin with. A relational entanglement perspective brings into view the transnational flows of capital, goods, people, and ideas; the essay thereby raises questions concerning the acknowledgement and confrontation of a German responsibility for colonization and enslavement.