- ISSN: 0167-0441
- E-ISSN: 3051-3634
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OADe slavernijplantage van dominee Deknatel en de Hernhutterse zending onder de heidenen
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, Volume 51, Issue 1, Sep 2025, p. 151 - 174
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- 01 Sep 2025
Abstract
Three eighteenth-century Amsterdam Mennonites were owners of a slave plantation on the Danish Caribbean island of St. Thomas: pastor Joannes Deknatel, his sister-in-law Susanna van Almonde and her brother Daniel van Almonde. The plantation pops up in the division of the estate of Joannes and in the estate inventory of Susanna. It turns out to be The Trumpet Hill with thirteen enslaved people, which they had bought in 1739 from Johan Laurens Carstens, director of the Danish West India Company. He himself had bought the plantation a year earlier and granted the right of use to the missionaries of the Hernhutian or Moravian Church, a pietistic movement of Nicolaus Ludwig Count of Zinzendorf. Carstens’ condition that he would be compensated was met by the three Mennonite buyers, who were followers of Zinzendorf. In Amsterdam his supra-denominational movement had followers from almost all religions, who at the same time remained members of their own church. An overview is given of the leading Mennonite Moravian Brethren there and of their meeting places in and outside the city. Keeping enslaved people in itself was not a problem for the Moravian Brethren, but they were deeply concerned about the cruel conditions they saw, for example on St. Thomas, where their first missionaries were sent in 1732. Deknatel was a great supporter of their mission among the enslaved. As owners of The Trumpet Hill the three Mennonites had no profit motive and left the management entirely to the missionaries, for whom the plantation was an economic basis of their missionary activities. In 1761 the Moravian Church purchased the plantation from Deknatel’s widow and the Van Almonde brother and sister.
