Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CoDaCo (Constructing the Danish Colonial State in Global Contexts)
Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2025-08-31
Scandinavian countries are often neglected in the history of colonialism and globalisation, and colonialism and globalisation in turn written out of these countries’ earlier history. Countries such as Denmark are often perceived as homogenous, confronting the global world only relatively recently. So, histories of Denmark are often written as national histories, with histories of colonialism added as addenda or supplementary topics. This has had important consequences for conceptions of our societies’ place in the world, how they got there, and for notions of national and civil belonging. While this picture is slowly changing, the history of Danish colonialism is still often seen as piecemeal, haphazard, and with little significance for Danish state building or intellectual history. Furthermore, in contrast to recent scholarship on the colonial and global history of other countries such as Britain, Spain, and France, Danish colonial history has largely been written from primarily economic administrative, and social perspectives with no regard for intellectual history. Conversely, Danish intellectual history has also had a predominantly domestic focus, with little regard for how colonialism shaped Danish intellectual history.
Against this background, CoDaCo has aimed to write a first intellectual history of Danish colonialism. To do so, it has focused on a series of colonial reform plans (failed and successful) between 1784 and 1807: plantation colonies in West Africa, the abolition of the Danish slave trade, the colonisation of the Nicobar Islands, and reforms of the Greenland trade. Through in-depth analysis of contemporary published and archival sources for these colonial reforms, CoDaCo addressed three specific objectives: first, to describe the networks and locations in and through which knowledge of the Danish state and its colonies were formulated and circulated; second, to identify and analyse the political discourses and key concepts which motivated and informed the colonial reform projects; third, to explain how this knowledge and these discourses informed the conceptualisation and construction of Denmark as a colonial state.
Against this background, CoDaCo has aimed to write a first intellectual history of Danish colonialism. To do so, it has focused on a series of colonial reform plans (failed and successful) between 1784 and 1807: plantation colonies in West Africa, the abolition of the Danish slave trade, the colonisation of the Nicobar Islands, and reforms of the Greenland trade. Through in-depth analysis of contemporary published and archival sources for these colonial reforms, CoDaCo addressed three specific objectives: first, to describe the networks and locations in and through which knowledge of the Danish state and its colonies were formulated and circulated; second, to identify and analyse the political discourses and key concepts which motivated and informed the colonial reform projects; third, to explain how this knowledge and these discourses informed the conceptualisation and construction of Denmark as a colonial state.
The project was conducted through three work packages: 1) analysis of contemporary works on “natural law”, the predominant theory of law and politics, and “Statistics”, that is, empirical political science. 2) collection and analysis of published and archival sources relating to the colonial reform projects. 3) a synthetic analysis of how these amounted to a conceptualisation and construction of Denmark as a colonial state.
Work package 1 analysed Danish works of theoretical and empirical political science from the years 1784-1897, yielding several important results. First, surveying the predominant “statistical” works provided an overview of the body of knowledge (printed and manuscript works) on the Danish colonies available to contemporary readers about. Second, analysis of these works demonstrated that the “Danish states” were indeed conceptualised as a coherent polity comprising also the colonies in the Caribbean, West Africa, Asia, and the Arctic. The prominent empirical works of political science also noted the significance of contemporary colonial reforms and published information and contemporary sources on these, particularly relating to the endeavours to reform slavery. Third, these endeavours were explicitly cast in natural jurisprudential discourse, and a further outcome was to show how Danish works of natural law contained extensive discussions of slavery.
Building on these findings, work package 2 analysed in detail the colonial reform projects based, first, on contemporary published sources and, second, on targeted studies of archival sources from the reform projects. This further detailed the use of common discourses and aims in several of the reform projects. This also showed that the reform projects for the Danish colonies in the Caribbean and West Africa were carried out with significantly greater government support and with greater success. WP2 here resulted in in a detailed analysis of the discourses informing two central colonial reform projects based on sources from Finance Minister Ernst von Schimmelmann’s extensive private and professional archives: the abolition of the slave trade and the proposed alternative of plantation colonies in West Africa. Both projects sought to analyse the feasibility and desirability of reform based on a combination of empirical knowledge drawn from contemporary colonial reports and published works analysed and evaluated using natural jurisprudence as a normative framework.
WP3 conducted a synthetic analysis of findings from WPs 1 and 2. This showed that the reform projects were formulated in similar natural jurisprudential discourses and with similar aims, notably a concern with reforming or abolishing slavery and despotism, as well as promoting free trade, formulated using the discourse of natural law, as well as significant overlap and connections between historical actors involved. Particularly in the case of the Caribbean and West African colonies, Denmark was depicted as a leading example to “humanity” of how justice and utility could be combined to the benefit of both Europeans and indigenous people. These reforms were aimed at deepening the integration between Denmark and the colonies in political, legal, and moral terms as a single polity.
Project results were disseminated in eight papers presented at seminars, workshops, and conferences, as well as in the organisation of a conference and workshop. The project’s findings have also resulted in manuscripts for peer-reviewed forthcoming publications: 1 journal article and 3 chapters in edited volumes. In addition, the project findings have informed the formulation of new research projects.
Work package 1 analysed Danish works of theoretical and empirical political science from the years 1784-1897, yielding several important results. First, surveying the predominant “statistical” works provided an overview of the body of knowledge (printed and manuscript works) on the Danish colonies available to contemporary readers about. Second, analysis of these works demonstrated that the “Danish states” were indeed conceptualised as a coherent polity comprising also the colonies in the Caribbean, West Africa, Asia, and the Arctic. The prominent empirical works of political science also noted the significance of contemporary colonial reforms and published information and contemporary sources on these, particularly relating to the endeavours to reform slavery. Third, these endeavours were explicitly cast in natural jurisprudential discourse, and a further outcome was to show how Danish works of natural law contained extensive discussions of slavery.
Building on these findings, work package 2 analysed in detail the colonial reform projects based, first, on contemporary published sources and, second, on targeted studies of archival sources from the reform projects. This further detailed the use of common discourses and aims in several of the reform projects. This also showed that the reform projects for the Danish colonies in the Caribbean and West Africa were carried out with significantly greater government support and with greater success. WP2 here resulted in in a detailed analysis of the discourses informing two central colonial reform projects based on sources from Finance Minister Ernst von Schimmelmann’s extensive private and professional archives: the abolition of the slave trade and the proposed alternative of plantation colonies in West Africa. Both projects sought to analyse the feasibility and desirability of reform based on a combination of empirical knowledge drawn from contemporary colonial reports and published works analysed and evaluated using natural jurisprudence as a normative framework.
WP3 conducted a synthetic analysis of findings from WPs 1 and 2. This showed that the reform projects were formulated in similar natural jurisprudential discourses and with similar aims, notably a concern with reforming or abolishing slavery and despotism, as well as promoting free trade, formulated using the discourse of natural law, as well as significant overlap and connections between historical actors involved. Particularly in the case of the Caribbean and West African colonies, Denmark was depicted as a leading example to “humanity” of how justice and utility could be combined to the benefit of both Europeans and indigenous people. These reforms were aimed at deepening the integration between Denmark and the colonies in political, legal, and moral terms as a single polity.
Project results were disseminated in eight papers presented at seminars, workshops, and conferences, as well as in the organisation of a conference and workshop. The project’s findings have also resulted in manuscripts for peer-reviewed forthcoming publications: 1 journal article and 3 chapters in edited volumes. In addition, the project findings have informed the formulation of new research projects.
CoDaCo has resulted in significant new perspectives on Danish and Scandinavian colonial history. One is to show that contemporary writers and reformers sought to construe the Danish colonial state as a whole, for which an overall perspective and specific role in a global context could and should be formulated. Another key finding is the demonstration of the significance of natural law and natural rights as a predominant political discourse and how this was combined with colonial knowledge and empirical political science in in formulating colonial reform projects. This further highlights the importance of an intellectual history perspective for understanding the contexts and intentions for Danish colonial reforms, which otherwise could appear haphazard, piecemeal, and fragmentary.
The dissemination of CoDaCo’s findings through seminar and conference presentations, as well as the organisation of the project’s conference and workshop has led to the formation of new research networks informed by the project’s findings. This includes a network of junior and senior scholars from all the Nordic countries working on the significance of natural rights for reform projects across global Scandinavia in the eighteenth century.
The dissemination of CoDaCo’s findings through seminar and conference presentations, as well as the organisation of the project’s conference and workshop has led to the formation of new research networks informed by the project’s findings. This includes a network of junior and senior scholars from all the Nordic countries working on the significance of natural rights for reform projects across global Scandinavia in the eighteenth century.