7 Black Hamburg: People of Asian and African Descent Navigating a Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Job Market

Abstract

In 1821, an advertisement appeared in a Hamburg newspaper stating that “James Thomson, the Negro baptized here some years ago, born in Congo, twenty-six years of age,” was “currently seeking a new position.” The text asserted that Thomson had since “served in Harburg and Cöthen” – the former a town neighboring Hamburg, the latter the seat of a far-removed principality near Leipzig – and could “provide very laudable attestations from both masters.” He was a capable man who knew “how to handle horses, and he dr[ove] reliably.” Upon his return to Hamburg, Thomson had reconnected with people he had known for at least four years: Georg Bernhard Grautoff, the pastor of the local Church of St. Catherine who had baptized him in 1817 and now provided him with a recommendation, and Anna Margaretha Kasang, Thomson’s godmother and an innkeeper with whom he stayed during his search for a job. Although the advertisement consisted of only a few lines, it made clear that Thomson knew his way around and was acquainted with people he could rely on. Thomson was not the only person of African descent in search of a paying occupation. Within five decades, from 1788 to 1839, at least twenty-one other people of non-European descent sought employment through Hamburg newspapers in similar