Paul Erdmann Isert

Paul Erdmann Isert (1756 – 21 January 1789) was a German botanist. Isert was born in Angermünde/Brandenburg, but educated in Berlin. He was the first scientist to identify the bird Red Bishop (Euplectes orix franciscana (Isert)'. He is also known for his attempts to end the Danish-Norwegian slave trade.

He was appointed Chief Surgeon to Christiansborg (Osu, Accra) in Danish Guinea, arriving there in 1783. He sought this position because of his burning desire to collect plant specimens from West Africa. Once there, realizing that the inhabitants had no written language, he felt it his duty to record – for future generations – details of all aspects of life on the Gold Coast, as he observed them, thus creating an ethnographic, as well as botanical, work.

After nearly three years on the Gold Coast Isert abruptly determined to leave the country on the first possible ship back to Europe. This was due to his extreme frustration at being hindered from exploring in Ashanti. It was on this ship, a slave ship en route from Danish Guinea, on the second day at sea, that he witnessed a slave rebellion on the open sea, which almost cost him his life. The cargo of 452 blacks rose against the whites, with a resulting loss of 34 of their number and 2 of the crew wounded after a heated battle. In the West Indies, he visited Saint Croix, Saint. Thomas, Saint John, Guadeloupe and Martinique. Sickened by the horror and human misery he saw, both in the slave-processing dungeons of Christiansborg, aboard the ship, and on the sugar plantations, Isert came up with an alternative to the abhorrent practice of the transatlantic slave trade. He found it not only inhumane, cruel and immoral, but also absurdly stupid. In a letter sent from Saint Croix in 1787 to his father, Isert asked questions:

These African people would have helped us in freedom and, for low wages would have given us greatness and riches with no offense against nature, or our personal and national consciences.

Why did we have to uproot vast numbers of people from their homelands, subject them to agony, torture, humiliation, and death; transplant them to alien continents, Caribbean islands, big and small? Why?

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