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.
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.
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?
Schimmelmann, a well-known and well-off liberal, who was later instrumental in the passage of the law ending the Danish-Norwegian transatlantic slave trade, agreed to finance Isert's endeavour.
Isert's assistants attempted to carry on the project at Frederiksnopel, as did some others, but it failed due to various factors; such as distance from the sea, lack of support, and competition from Christiansborg.
Convinced of the feasibility of the plantations, an edict was issued in the name of King Christian VII by his son Prince Frederick (who was then Regent because of his father's mental illness) on 16 March 1792, which came into effect on 1 January 1803.