History
The first Danish East India Company was chartered in 1616 under King Christian IV and focused on trade with India. The first expedition under Admiral Gjedde took two years to reach Ceylon, losing more than half their crew. By the time they arrived, the island had been claimed by Portugal; by the end of 1619, a small Danish fleet had arrived at Trincomalee on the island's east coast; occupying the colossal Koneswaram temple in May 1620 to begin fortification of the peninsula before being defeated. The expedition instead established Dansborg in Tranquebar on the mainland coast and installed Captain Crappe as the first governor (opperhoved) of Danish India. During its heyday, the Danish East India Company and Swedish East India Company imported more tea than the British East India Company, smuggling 90% of it into Britain, where it could be sold at a huge profit. The company dissolved in 1650.
In 1670, a second Danish East India Company was established, before it too was dissolved in 1729. In 1730, it was refounded as the Asiatic Company (Asiatisk Kompagni) and opened trade with China at Canton. The first expedition went badly, with Den gyldne Løve lost with its cargo of silver off Ballyheigue, Ireland, on the outbound journey. The local landowners held the silver at their estate and pursued a salvage claim, but a gang of locals overpowered the Danish guard and made off with the hoard, causing a diplomatic row between Denmark-Norway and Britain. With the royal licence conferred in 1732, the new company was granted a 40-year monopoly on all Danish trade east of the Cape of Good Hope. Up to 1750, 27 ships were sent, with 22 surviving the journey to return to Copenhagen. In 1772, the company lost its monopoly and, in 1779, Danish India became a crown colony.
During the Napoleonic Wars, in 1801 and again in 1807, the British Navy attacked Copenhagen. As a consequence of the last attack, Denmark (one of few West European countries not occupied by Bonaparte) lost its entire fleet and the island of Helgoland (part of the duchy of Holstein-Gottorp) to Britain. Denmark finally sold its remaining settlements in mainland India in 1845 and the Danish Gold Coast in 1850, both to British.
Read more about this topic: Danish East India Company
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)