Virtual Seminar recorded on Zoom, 4th of November 2020.
Title: Censuses of Gustavia 1835-1872: Digital Mapping of Diversity and Division in the Swedish Caribbean
Speaker: Ale Pålsson, Department of History
In recent years, renewed interest in the Swedish-Caribbean colony of St Barthélemy has sparked new research, as well as digitalization efforts to organize and make accessible the Swedish colonial archives via the SWECARCOL project. As a member of this project, I have reviewed censuses of the main city of the colony Gustavia, and recreated a graphical representation of the censuses via digital mapping. By examining both the changing dimensions of the city, as well as the changing categorizations, we can illustrate how Caribbean cities evolved during this formative period, as the colony moved from being part a slave society, to emancipation of the enslaved and an end of racial categorization.