Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

From Germany to the Caribbean: The Baring Bank of London’s Involvement in the Slave Plantation Economy

Along with Barclays, RBS, and Lloyd’s,1 the Baring Bank of London was one of the most influential financial institutions in shaping the Atlantic economy in the 1800s. Although the bank was famous for its government bonds, investments in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803,2 and the silver transfer from Mexico to Spain in 1805,3 little is known about its involvement in the Caribbean slave plantation economy. Therefore, this blog post sheds light on the investments of London’s oldest merchant bank in the plantation economy of English Jamaica, Danish St. Croix, and Dutch–English Suriname and Berbice, and argues that the bank, owned by the brothers Francis and John Baring, played a crucial role in sustaining the Caribbean slave plantations during the 1800s by providing mortgages, credits, and loans to the European owners of exploitative, high-risk, and capital-intensive slave plantations, who often repaid their instalments in the form of slave-grown produce such as sugar, coffee, cotton, and rum. Combining scattered archival documents from England, the Netherlands and Germany, this blog post examines, in particular, the financial flows between Baring, its partner financial institutions, and plantation owners in the Caribbean and comes to the surprising conclusion that the slave plantation business, despite the boundary-crossing movement of capital and investors of various origins, remained nationality-bound by colony until the produce-based repayment model of the Dutch negotiatie was replaced by the monetary repayment mode of English mortgages from the year 1820.

The Baring Bank between the Dutch and English Finance Model for Slave Plantations in Danish St. Croix and English Jamaica

Established in 1762, the merchant bank of the Baring brothers John and Francis, whose father Johann had migrated from Bremen to England as a wool trader in 1717,4 began its financial involvement in the Caribbean plantation economy in Danish St. Croix in 1797. The mediator between the London bankers and the plantation owners in the Caribbean was none other than Hermann Albrecht Insinger of Meinsen (in the German county of Schaumburg-Lippe, in modern-day Lower Saxony), who had moved to Amsterdam in 1768 at the age of eleven and quickly risen to become one of the most influential investment bankers in the financial capital at that time. In 1786, Insinger’s firm was hired by the large investment fund of Frederik Berewout, who in 1770 had loaned the enormous sum of fl. 426,700 to four planters on St. Croix’: Martin Meyer Heyliger, Godfried Krause, Fredrik Christian Moth, and Jan Tatman.5 Since they had struggled to repay the loan, Insinger was brought in to solve the problem, and by 1805 he was the director of the Berewout negotiatie.6

The Baring bank had started funding slave plantations on Danish St. Croix in May 1797, and Insinger opened his own account with Baring, depositing the large sum of fl. 102,202 (£8,545) for the delivery of sugar. Most likely, the sugar originated from slave plantations in St. Croix, as Insinger had also served as the agent for the St. Croix negotiatie of Baring’s partner bank Hope & Co. after the Hope family fled to London in 1794 due to the threat of a French invasion. In addition, Hope shareholder Pierre Labouchère had married Francis Baring’s daughter Dorothy in 1796. The St. Croix planters included Sara Beekman and Henry Cruger of the firm Beekman & Cruger, who repaid their negotiatie loan by the delivery of sugar between 1797 and 1815, which Insinger had sold in Copenhagen.7 After the Baring bank finally merged with Hope in 1811 under the new leadership of Francis Baring’s son Alexander, the renowned bank also lent financial backing to the heavily indebted Krause and Heyliger families of St. Croix. Since Baring had most likely taken over the negotiatie, the Heyligers repaid their debts by delivering sugar and rum on the account of the Baring bank between 1811 and 1818. The Krause family had sent sugar and rum in 1805, 1811–14, 1817, 1823 and 1824. While the debt-free Krauses were named ‘proprietors’ of the sugar estate Mon Bijou in 1823, the Heyliger family took a mortgage of £40,937 with Baring in 1825.8

Baring had also been involved with the Bogue sugar and coffee plantation in Jamaica since granting a mortgage of £40,000 to the estate in 1798. The plantation was owned by the nephew of Francis Baring’s long-time friend and fellow director of the English East India Company, Richard Atkinson, who had died in 1786.9 The loan was repaid in sugar, coffee, and rum by 1827, and this was mainly shipped to London by the firm Atkinson, Hanbury & Co. in the years 1802, 1809, 1811–14, 1820–2 and 1826–7,10 whereupon the Atkinson heirs remained the owners of the plantation until slavery was abolished in the English Atlantic in 1833.11 Finally, the Baring bank was also involved in financing coffee plantations in Suriname, most notably the estates Cliffortkoegshoven (1801)12 and Vriendsbeleyd en Oudersorg (1802) in the Commewijne13 where Hermann Albrecht Insinger had co-owned the two large negotiaties with Johanna Charlotta Vogt (whose father was born in Frankfurt), Hamburg-born Georg Nicolaas Linck, and Dorothea Maria Kulenkamp of Celle.14 However, Baring’s largest financial involvement in Caribbean slave plantations was in Dutch–English Berbice, which also accounts for the transition from the Dutch financial model of plantation credits (negotiatie) to English mortgages.

The Baring Bank Mortgage with Slave Plantation Owner Wolfert Katz in Berbice

From 1801, the Baring bank also financed the largest slave plantation owner in Dutch–English Berbice.15 Originally from Prague, Wolfert Katz had, in September 1792, bought his first three plantations, a total of 1,500 acres, on Dutch negotiaties: the Abary plantation (fl. 15,000),16 Catoen Boom on the north-west coast, and Gebroeders on the Berbice river (fl. 249,656), which were financed by the Swiss firm Charbon & Zoon of Amsterdam.17 In August 1794, Katz added another north-west-coast plantation, which he and his partners James Fraser and Spencer Mackay bought on loan from Martinus van Vlooten.18 Thereafter, the Bohemian also acquired the Vryheid plantation on the Canje river in March 1799 on the basis of a negotiatie of fl. 280,00017 and quickly expanded his new site. By 1802, Katz had fifteen slave plantations in his name, amounting to 7,420 acres. Among them was the Catoen Boom plantation, which was situated next to that of his in-laws, the Scottish Fraser family.19 In 1826, Wolfert Katz married Susan Fraser, the daughter of Simon Fraser and Maria Barclay. By the time they divorced in 1829, the couple had one daughter, Maria Barclay Katz, who was Wolfert Katz’s seventh child. Before that, Katz had already fathered six children, namely William (b. 1797), Eliza (b. 1799), George (b. 1804), Ellen, Elizabeth, and Susan, who were mainly educated in England.20

Fig. 2 The Gebroeders slave plantation of Wolfert Katz in 1802. NA, VEL, Inv.-No. 1585 ‘Kaart van Canaal en Ostsee Kust van Berbice (A. Ampt)’, 1803). From the Dutch National Archive. Public Domain.

In 1801, the Baring bank became closely involved in the Bel Air plantation, situated on the north-west coast of the Berbice colony. At that time, the estate was still owned by the Swiss Johannes Georg Rausch on the basis of a negotiatie with Baring’s partner bank Hope & Co. Wolfert Katz was appointed plantation director in 1801. Insinger (Hope’s agent) arranged for Baring to pay for Wolfert Katz’s transportation of large amounts of coffee from Bel Air in 1801/2, 1804, 1817, and 1820, as well as cotton in the period 1806–8.21 A single ship-load of cotton in 1806 was worth £22,152.10 By 1818, Bel Air and the majority of the Katz plantations, such as Gebroeders and Catoen Boom, still had residual negotiatie debts.17 Katz found it challenging to ship the slave plantation produce to London—for example, the sugar from Catoen Boom—as the British Customs Office blocked its entry between June 1820 and September 1821 on the basis that Katz had an outstanding balance on a residual loan from the plantation’s Dutch proprietors Charbon & Zoon. Declared, therefore, as ‘Dutch sugar’, Katz’s produce had to be stored in warehouses once it landed at the West India docks in London. Despite repeated objections from the Baring bank that the sugar could not be shipped to Holland, as Dutch vessels were only taking coffee from plantations which were still bound to Dutch negotiaties,22 permission was finally granted, in September 1821, for the sugar to be imported to London ‘for Home Consumptions as British Plantations Produce’, including the eighty-five barrels that had arrived off the ship The Georgiana in July of that year.23

The shift to the English mortgage system began in 1821, when Wolfert Katz bought the coffee plantation Vrijheid and the Philadelphia coffee estate on the Canje river from Dirk and Abraham van Vlooten on the basis of a mortgage of £16,653 from the Baring bank in London.24 By 1823, Katz owned seven mortgaged plantations and 1,361 slaves, to the extraordinary value of fl. 2,582,850—namely, Vryheid (380 slaves), Catoen Boom (261 slaves), Philadelphia (240 slaves), Gebroeders (178 slaves), Gravenhage (146 slaves), Overwinning (91 slaves), and Bel Air (65 slaves),25 from where the Bohemian continued to ship sugar, coffee, and rum until shortly before his death in 1832.10

Compensation Payments for the Abolition of Slavery

Nevertheless, from 1827 onwards, Katz faced several lengthy legal proceedings in Neustettin and London, one of which pertained to an unpaid promissory on the Baring account, dated 20 March 1820, to the merchant Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Ungerer, for the initial amount of £893, which increased to £2,190 in August 1826 due to interest and protest charges. The case remained unresolved in November 1832, whereupon Ungerer’s London agent Christoph Behrends travelled to Berbice to demand the debt from Katz in person. Behrends reported that Katz had ‘promised’ him he would deliver ‘coffee in September next’ to his German creditor, but also complained that Katz’s rates were about two per cent ‘higher than the real cash prices’.26 At that time, Wolfert Katz was also involved in legal proceedings with the Baring Bank of London, since the announcement of the compensation payments for plantation slaves due to the abolition of slavery in Great Britain in 1833 required clarity on the ownership of the slaves on Katz’s mortgaged plantations.27 As a consequence, Francis Baring and his silent partner and brother John were each awarded compensation for the plantation slaves of Katz’s oldest plantations Gebroeders (£483, 9 slaves) and Catoen Boom (£3,421, 64 slaves), as well as for Gravenhage (£7,306, 146 slaves), Overwinning (£4,849, 88 slaves), Bel Air (£2,995, 56 slaves), Hagen (£8,297, 155 slaves), and Vryheid (£17,766, 234 slaves).28 Wolfert Katz, represented by the Austrian law firm Lowenfeld & Briant, received much less compensation than the Barings: he received the same amount for Bel Air (£ 2,995, 58 slaves), and his children George and Eliza were compensated for the Philadelphia plantation (George £2,153 for 38 slaves; Eliza £2,811 for 48 slaves).20 This means that the Baring Bank of London, like the Insinger fund in the Netherlands in 1863,29 was one of the largest beneficiaries of compensation payments for freed slaves after the abolition of slavery in Great Britain.


Fig.1 (feature image): Land deed of Plantation Philadelphia on the Canje river, 1792. NA, VELH, Inv.-No. 581A ‘Kaartboek van de navolgende gronden uitgegeven in de kolonie Berbice, met acten van meting (1790–93)’, No. 22 ‘Kaart van een half perceel aan de Canjekreek’. Jan van Schoonenbeek, 1792. From the Dutch National Archive. Public Domain.

  1. Jasper Jolly, ‘Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds among UK banks that had links to slavery’, The Guardian, 18 June 2020. []
  2. The Baring Archive, London (BA), A4, ‘Louisiana Purchase Papers’ (1803–66). []
  3. Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, ‘Vincent Nolte: Global Player and Bankrupt Entrepreneur, 1779–1856’, Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German–American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present. []
  4. Philip Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power: Barings 1762–1929 (London, 1988). []
  5. Bram Hoonhout, ‘Subprime Plantation Mortgages in Suriname, Essequibo and Demerara, 1750–1800: On Manias, Ponzi Processes and Illegal Trade in the Dutch Negotiatie System’ (unpublished MA dissertation, Leiden University, 2012), 30. []
  6. Stadsarchief Amsterdam (AmsCA), Archief van Insinger (AVI), Inv. No. 1384 ‘Akte van Aanstelling waarbij H. A. Insinger benoemd wordt tot directeur van de negotiatie Berewout’ (1805). []
  7. BA, Ledger of American Merchants. See also AmsCA, Archief van de Firma Hope & Co. (735) Inv. No. 517 ‘H.A. Insinger te Amsterdam’ (1797–98). []
  8. BA, Client Ledger American Merchants (CLAM), Inv.Nos. 100742- 100752, ‘Account Books’, 1801–31. See also AmsCA, Archief van de Firma Hope & Co. (735) Inv. No. 517 ‘H.A. Insinger te Amsterdam’ (1797–98) and AmsCA, AVI, Inv. No. 1386 ‘Ingekomen brief afkomstig van de gebroeders Krause te St. Croix inzake de vrachtbrieven van 20 vaten suiker’ (1805). In contrast, fellow negotiatie debtor Peter Appleby of St. Croix was instructed by the Court of Holland to pay his remaining debts of fl. 72,079 to Insinger on 30 April 1808 (AmsCA, AVI, Inv. No. 1389 ‘Stukken betreffende de reizen van F.A. Gaertner ter behartiging van de belangen van de houders van plantageleningen op de Deens-Amerikaanse eilanden St. Croix, St. John en St. Thomas’ (1808–14). []
  9. UCL Legacies of British Slavery Database, ‘Alderman Richard Atkinson’ []
  10. BA, CLAM, 1801–31. [] [] []
  11. UCL Legacies of British Slavery Database, ‘Alderman Richard Atkinson’. []
  12. TNA, High Court of Admiralty (HCA) 32/925, ‘Plantation Account Book Cliffortkoegshoven’ (1801–2). []
  13. TNA, HCA 32/918/3 ‘Plantation Account Book Vriendsbeleyd Oudersorg’ (1802). []
  14. Constanze Weiske, ‘German Participation in Dutch Atlantic Slavery: Plantation Owners in Suriname, 1695–1863’, Globalgeschichte/Global History, 2/2 (2024), 123–60. []
  15. Constanze Weiske, Lawful Conquest? European Colonial Law and Appropriation Practices in Northeastern South America, Trinidad, and Tobago, 1498–1817 (Berlin, 2021). []
  16. AmsCA, NA 5075, Inv. No. 14378, ‘Koop Contract’ (12 Sept. 1792), fol. 75/318. []
  17. TNA, CO 111/28, ‘Lists of Dutch Proprietors of Plantations in Demerara, Essequebo and Berbice’ (1818–19). [] [] []
  18. AmsCA, NA 5075, Inv. No. 17730, ‘Attestatie’ (18 Aug. 1794). []
  19. Nationaal Archief (NA), Verzameling Buitenlandse Kaarten Leupe (VEL), Inv. No. 1576, Kaart van de Colonie de   Berbice alsmeede van de rivier Corantyn met deszelfs Oostzeekust en de rivier de Nickerie (Ruerlach/Wiedenman),  1802 (Blad 2/2). []
  20. UCL Legacies of British Slavery Database, ‘Wolfert Katz’. [] []
  21. BA, CLAM, 1801–31; AmsCA, 735, Inv. No. 420, ‘Wolfert Katz te Berbice en Londen’ (1804–10). []
  22. TNA, Board of Customs Papers Relating to Plantations (CUST) 34/259, Report Baring Brothers (6 Feb. 1821). []
  23. TNA, CUST 34/259, Letter of Custom House Berbice (18 July 1821). []
  24. TNA, HCA 04-07, Mortgage of Philadelphia (W. Katz to J. Douglas) (25 May 1821). []
  25. BA, HC 04-07-1, folio 34, ‘Summary of Appraisement in 1823 of the Properties, belonging to W. Katz’. []
  26. GStA-PK, III. HA Ministerium der Auswärtigen Angelegenheiten, Inv. No. 14742. []
  27. UCL Legacies of British Slavery Database, ‘Bel Air’. []
  28. UCL Legacies of British Slavery Database, ‘Francis Baring’. []
  29. Weiske, ‘German Participation in Dutch Atlantic Slavery’. []

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Constanze Weiske (April 16, 2025). From Germany to the Caribbean: The Baring Bank of London’s Involvement in the Slave Plantation Economy. German Historical Institute London Blog. Retrieved May 21, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/13rc4


Published by

Constanze Weiske

Constanze Weiske is a postdoctoral researcher and guest lecturer at the Global and European Studies Institute (GESI). She holds a PhD in global history from the DFG Research Training Group ‘Critical Junctures of Globalization’ at Leipzig University and is currently working on her second book (Habilitation) about the 'Rise of Financial Capitalism: The German Slave Trade and Slaveries in the Anglo-Dutch Atlantic, 1598–1863'.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.