Fabrics and Monkeys: The Moravian Church’s Account Books and Protestant Religious Economies (Suriname, Second Half of the Eighteenth Century)

Abstract This article discusses the account books of the Suriname Mission of the Moravian Church, a Protestant denomination. It focuses on the goods traded by the missionaries and the embedding of this trade in local, regional, and global networks. It also explores the underlying economic and colonial discourses. The missionaries recorded a wide range of different goods in their account books, including textiles, food, monkeys, and birds. The Moravians traded collectively as a group; only in a few cases are individual missionaries and members of the mission listed as having conducted business on their own. Although the main focus of the trade was on the transatlantic region, the missionaries were connected to local and regional networks and traded with various social and ethnic groups. The trade was embedded in a moral and religious framework: It was considered part of a God-pleasing and industrious life. Even when small mission stations were unable to contribute much economically, the image of industrious trade was maintained. In all mission stations, the local economy was based on the enslavement of human beings. In the account books, enslaved people appear as a standardised item. The practice of accounting thus contributed to the normalisation of transatlantic slavery