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Danish Empire: A Visual History

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Visual history of an empire

Small country, wide reach: sugar islands, Indian trading posts, Gold Coast forts, and Greenland, which Denmark still keeps.

Existed
1536 to 1953
Duration
417 years
Existed
1536 to 1953 (Greenland's colonial status ended)
Peak area
About 3 million km2, almost all Greenland
Capital
Copenhagen
Slave trade
About 100,000 Africans on Danish ships
Last sale
Danish West Indies to the US, 1917, for 25 million dollars

Denmark-Norway's overseas empire began with the Danish East India Company's post at Tranquebar in 1620 and grew to include the Danish West Indies (St Thomas, St John, St Croix), forts on the Gold Coast, Serampore in Bengal, and the North Atlantic possessions of Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland. It was built on sugar and the slave trade; Denmark banned the trade in 1803, sold its Indian posts to Britain in 1845 and Gold Coast forts in 1850, and sold the Virgin Islands to the United States in 1917. Iceland became independent in 1944; Greenland remains part of the Danish realm.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Danish colonial empire. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

15001550160016501700175018001850190019502000Danish colonial empire (1536 to 1953)Open: Northern WarsNorthern Wars (1554 to 1721)Open: French Wars of ReligionFrench Wars of Religion (1562 to 1598)Open: British EmpireBritish Empire (1583 to 1997)Open: Dutch EmpireDutch Empire (1602 to 1975)Open: Swedish EmpireSwedish Empire (1611 to 1721)Open: Maratha EmpireMaratha Empire (1674 to 1818)Open: Deccan warsDeccan wars (1680 to 1707)Open: Great Northern WarGreat Northern War (1700 to 1721)Open: Sikh EmpireSikh Empire (1799 to 1849)Open: Sokoto CaliphateSokoto Caliphate (1804 to 1903)Open: American Civil WarAmerican Civil War (1861 to 1865)Open: World War IWorld War I (1914 to 1918)

Danish possessions by area

Greenland dwarfs everything else; the tropical colonies were tiny but produced most of the revenue.

0625125018752500Greenland: 21662166GreenlandIceland: 103103IcelandFaroes: 1.41.4FaroesWest Indies: 0.350.35West IndiesTranquebar and Serampore: 0.060.06Tranquebar and SeramporeGold Coast forts: 0.010.01Gold Coast fortsthousand km2

Timeline of the Danish colonial empire

  1. 1620
    Tranquebar acquired
  2. 1661
    Christiansborg on the Gold Coast
  3. 1672
    St Thomas settled
  4. 1721
    Egede in Greenland
  5. 1733
    St Croix bought
  6. 1803
    Slave trade banned
  7. 1848
    Emancipation in the West Indies
  8. 1917
    West Indies sold to the US
  9. 1944
    Iceland independent
  10. 1953
    Greenland integrated into Denmark

Trading posts and islands

Christian IV chartered a Danish East India Company that in 1620 acquired Tranquebar on the Coromandel coast; Serampore near Calcutta followed in 1755. On the Gold Coast Denmark took Christiansborg (Osu) castle in 1661 and built a chain of forts. St Thomas was settled in 1672, St John in 1718 and St Croix bought from France in 1733: sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans made them the empire's economic core.

The North Atlantic

Norway's old dependencies, Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland, came under Copenhagen with the union of 1380 and stayed with Denmark when Norway was lost to Sweden in 1814. Hans Egede refounded the Greenland colony in 1721; the Royal Greenland Trade held a monopoly until 1950.

Selling up

Denmark was the first European state to abolish the slave trade, by decree in 1792 effective 1803, though slavery itself lasted in the West Indies until a revolt forced emancipation in 1848. Bankruptcy after the Napoleonic Wars and the loss of Norway prompted the sale of the Indian posts (1845) and Gold Coast forts (1850) to Britain, and after decades of negotiation the West Indies to the US in 1917. Iceland gained home rule and then independence; Greenland's status was changed from colony to county in 1953 and it has had home rule since 1979.

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

Wars of the same era and region

8 surprising things about the Danish colonial empire

  1. Denmark was the first European country to ban the transatlantic slave trade, in 1792, though it gave planters a ten-year grace period.
  2. The US bought the Danish West Indies in 1917 mainly to stop Germany getting a submarine base in the Caribbean.
  3. Serampore's Danish status let British Baptist missionaries print Bengali Bibles there beyond East India Company reach.
  4. The Danish fort of Christiansborg in Accra was the seat of Ghana's government until 2013.
  5. Greenland is the world's largest island and makes the Kingdom of Denmark the twelfth-largest state on earth by area.
  6. Denmark also briefly held the Nicobar Islands and tried to colonise them four times.
  7. Iceland declared independence in 1944 while Denmark was under German occupation.
  8. The 1848 emancipation in St Croix followed a mass slave uprising led by General Buddhoe.

Sources

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