Ole Feldbæk

Denmark in the Napoleonic Wars: A Foreign Policy Survey

For 87 years Denmark had enjoyed virtually uninterrupted peace and prosperity. But in 1807 the far-flung conglomerate state consisting of the twin kingdoms of Denmark and Norway with their North Atlantic possessions, the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig and valuable overseas colonies was whirled into the global conflict between France and Britain. Denmark was forced to enter the war on the side of its eventual loser: Napoleon, ending up as the greatest loser of the Napoleonic Wars in terms of population and territory. After seven years of war on land and sea, Denmark was tied in an economically crippling support of the Emperor’s Continental System, which resulted in the state bankruptcy of 1813, and furthermore was involved not only in fierce competition for the succession to the Swedish throne but also in a desperate effort to uphold the political loyalty of the Norwegians towards the king and the state. Efforts that towards the end of the war were also directed at the dubious political loyalties of the German population of Holstein and Schleswig. It is this, admittedly, complicated net of relations woven into one foreign policy conducted by one absolute ruler for the ultimate benefit of one conglomerate state which will be analysed on the background of the wildly fluctuating conditions of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Danish trading companies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Abstract The great trading companies form one of the characteristic features of the economic history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is true of Europe generally, and of Denmark in particular. The charter for the first Danish trading company, the East India Company, was issued by king Christian IV on 17 March 1616. And on 21 March 1792, king Christian VII appended his signature to the last company charter, that for the Asiatic Company. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thus form a well-defined period with regard to the trading companies as far as Denmark is concerned. There were simply no companies prior to 1600. And when the Asiatic Company was wound up in 1843 after a death struggle which had lasted for more than a generation, the last of the companies vanished. But within this 200-year period there had existed at least twenty Danish trading companies - depending on how trading companies are defined and how their founding and reconstruction are interpreted. At all events the numb...

Danish East India trade 1772–1807 statistics and structure

Abstract The period from the outbreak of the War of American Independence until Danish involvement in the Napoleonic Wars in 1807 was regarded by contemporary observers as ‘the golden age of trade’. They perceived a close connection between the policy of neutrality and the extraordinary growth of commerce and shipping under the Danish flag. It was common knowledge that the trade beyond the Cape of Good Hope was less extensive than the West India trade or the carrying trade in European waters and the Mediterranean; all the same, the trade with the East Indies carried with it a special prestige. The ships were the biggest, the cargoes were the richest, and the East India merchants and shipowners represented the aristocracy of trade.

Dutch Batavia trade via Copenhagen 1795–1807. A study of colonial trade and neutrality

Abstract European states in the eighteenth century were always concerned to tighten the economic bonds with their colonies: they attempted to do this, with varying success, by means of a closed ‘mercantilist’ system. In wartime, states which were weak at sea therefore suffered severely if communications with their colonies could be cut effectively. They usually reacted by trying to liberalise their ‘mercantilist’ systems so as to maintain communications with the aid of neutral shipping. Their adversaries on the other hand would have a vital interest in preventing this challenge to their command of the sea: parallel with the actual war a serious conflict would often develop between the belligerent powers and neutral maritime nations.

Danish North Atlantic Shipping, 1720–1814

The eighteenth-century North Atlantic was a free sea: a mare liberum where whaling, sealing and fishing vessels from the Netherlands, Britain, northern Germany and Denmark operated without restrictions. The islands of Svalbard and Jan Mayen were not claimed officially by any European power. Iceland, the Peroes and Finmark the present-day districts of Troms and Finmark in northern Norway were in 1720 parts of the Danish state. Denmarks authority over Greenland was recognised de facto by the other European powers. The extension of the sea territories of the North Atlantic islands was, however, in dispute. The Danish state was one of the many conglomerate states of the time. The King ruled over the Kingdom of Denmark and the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Since 1380 he was also King of Norway, which also brought him the old Norse possessions of Iceland, the Peroes and Greenland. As well, the eighteenth-century Danish state included small colonies in the West Indies, present-day Ghana, and India. Since 1660 the kings had ruled as absolute monarchs, with Copenhagen as the political, administrative and economic centre of this far-flung state. The aim of this article is to present a general overview of North Atlantic shipping under the Danish flag during the long period of peace beginning in 1720 and the short war from 1807 to 1814, when the King was forced to cede Norway to Sweden. The four areas have hitherto been treated for the most part as separate entities, but as we shall see, it might

The Danish trade in Bengal 1777–1808. An Interim Account

Abstract On 1 August 1777 the transfer of the Asiatic Companys Indian possessions to the Danish Crown was duly signed. The principal possessions surrendered were the Companys former headquarters at Tranquebar on the Coromandel coast, the settlement at Serampore, Bengal, some smaller factories on the Coromandel and Malabar Coasts, and the factories at Patna and Ballasore in Bengal.1 Under the terms of the transfer all these places, some of which had been under Danish management since the beginning of the seventeenth century, were placed under the administration of the Danish Crown. And there they remained until their final cession to the British East India Company in 1845.