The Theologian Slave Trader explores the life of Fredericus Petersen, a mulatto adopted in 1710 by a Danish Lutheran Priest at Christiansborg Fort in what is now Ghana and who was subsequently brought back to Denmark as a teenager. Fredericus Petersen wrote a compelling autobiography which for many years has been largely ignored until now.
A Personal commentary on Fredericus Svane Africanus' autobiography
The Theologian Slave Trader explores the life of Fredericus Petersen, a mulatto adopted in 1710 by a Danish Lutheran Priest at Christiansborg Fort in what is now Ghana and who was subsequently brought back to Denmark as a teenager. The Danish king, no less, Frederik IV, was his godfather. Fredericus Petersen wrote a compelling autobiography which for many years has been largerly ignored. In The Theologian Slave Trader, Dr Christiana Oware Knudsen, herself a Ghanaian who for 50 years has lived in Denmark, brings this autobiography, The General Declaration, to life and contemporary relevance by contextualising Africanus' experience within a personal commentary on her personal family history in Ghana. Dr Knudsen approaches this historical material with the lively and engaging approach of an African story-teller, interweaving historical facts with family legends and documented impressions of the period. In so doing, she also poses a number of challenging contemporary questions about aspects of our understanding of slavery and inter-cultural relations.
Christiana Oware Knudsen was born and brought up in Ghana. As a young, newly trained schoolteacher, she met the Danish, medical doctor, Peder Christian Kjaerulff Knudsen, at Koforidua, Ghana in 1955. They married and had three children. Later on they moved to Denmark to settle. However, her family connection with Denmark goes back long before she met her husband. As her book, THE THEOLOGIAN SLAVE TRADER shows, her mother’s family legend is interwoven in the affairs with the Danish slave-trading fortress, Christiansborg, over three hundred years ago. Also, over one hundred and fifty years ago, Christiana Oware Knudsen’s grandfather, Nana Kwaku (O)Ware, a regional chief, the ‘Gyasehene’, of the kingdom of Akyem Abuakwa, traded with the Danes for Danish guns, gunpowder and schnapps in his young days. This family trade continued with the British, after Christiansborg Fortress was sold to the British in 1850. Christiana Oware Knudsen holds a Cand Phil. degree in Social Anthropology from Aarhus University, Denmark. She has carried out research and [...]
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