ideological developments that determined the course of events at the centre of Northern Europe. Missionary Hans Egede would not have set off for Greenland in 1721 had the absolute monarchy in Denmark not acquired overseas territories in quite different parts of the world in the 17th century. Denmark’s imperial past, which has only recently been retrieved from the murkiness of the nation’s collective oblivion by Danish historians, comprises the colonisation of the West Indies (the present-day Virgin Islands), the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) and Tranquebar (present-day Tharangambadi) as well as a robust Danish slave trade, which ranked seventh-biggest among all the colonial powers.5 With Greenland’s west coast colonised up to Upernavik in the north of the island, 18th-century Denmark was an empire that extended over the overseas territories, Norway, Schleswig, Holstein, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
However, the Danish colonisation of Greenland hardly resembled the manner in which colonies were administered in hotter parts of the world. As the geographical conditions were challenging in the extreme and revenues depended heavily on the raw materials which could only be delivered by the indigenous population of the colonised areas, Danish colonial rule of Greenland did not involve a ruthless exploitation of its people and natural resources. Rather, it was founded on holding a monopoly on Greenland’s trade throughout the 19th century and on keeping Greenland’s traditional, hunting-based economy in place ←16 | 17→at all costs, while at the same time Denmark itself was gradually disposing of its other colonies, the monopoly on trade with Iceland and the Faroe Islands was being abolished, liberalism and the market economy were on the rise in Europe, and the world superpowers were asserting their imperial ascendancy in the non-western parts of the world. Moreover, the Royal Greenland Trading Company, which was charged with administering Greenland, came to prioritise self-maintenance rather than financial revenues, with potential profits redirected to improve the education and living standards of Greenlanders.6
A distinctive feature of the colonisation of West Greenland was that it was non-violent and did not meet a lot of resistance from Greenlanders themselves.7 Importantly, the Christianisation of Greenland proved effective largely because the new religion was preached in the language of the indigenous population. It was in the interest of the Trading Company to make Greenlanders stick to hunting and to keep them from adopting the European ways, yet changes precipitated by the colonial system could not be stopped. As a result, Greenland’s society faced considerable impoverishment in the 19th century, the population grew more and more dependent on European commodities, the sedentary mode of life spread, and social stratification increased significantly.8
The 19th century saw Denmark suffer two military losses. One of them was related to an enforced alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte’s France and resulted in the Treaty of Kiel in 1814, which stripped Denmark of Norway, handing it over to Sweden. The other took place in 1864, when Denmark, overpowered by the Prussian-Austrian coalition, lost Schleswig and Holstein. In the long run, these defeats were not only to determine the current topography of the Kingdom of Denmark but also to permanently transform the self-perception of Danes, who came to think of themselves as citizens of “a small country threatened by the powerful German neighbour from the south.”9 The society of what had once been an ←17 | 18→empire (and which still possessed the West Indies and Atlantic territories) came to focus on domestic development, following the popular slogan that “what was lost on the outside must be won on the inside” [Danish: hvad udad tabes, skal indad vindes].10 The catchphrase did not affect Denmark’s actions vis-à-vis Greenland, a fact that has gone unmentioned or ignored for decades in line with the narrative of Denmark’s history as a small and poor country. Towards the end of the 19th century, an interest in East and North Greenland, areas that had remained outside the Danish colonial system till then, emerged and grew in Denmark. This was closely linked to an increasing preoccupation on the part of the world’s powers, as well as of neighbouring Sweden and Norway (which worked hard to manifest its national separateness), with those territories, which had until then escaped Western colonisation. Denmark made its first important move in this regard when the so-called Danish Umiaq Expedition [Danish: Konebådsekspeditionen] was dispatched to East Greenland in 1883. Led by Danish naval officer Gustav Holm (1849–1940), the expedition resulted in the founding of a Danish trading station at Ammassalik on the east coast in 1894, which fell under the trade monopoly covering the entirety of West Greenland. Denmark’s slightly later interest in North Greenland was associated with the world-famous feats of American polar explorer Robert Edwin Peary (1856–1920), who chose the surroundings of present-day Thule as a base for his expeditions to the North Pole.11 In 1909, Greenland-born Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen set up a mission station and, a year later, a Cape York Thule Trading Station [Danish: Kap York Handelsstation Thule], whose establishment should be construed as a strategic step of on the part of the Danish state, which had no intention of engaging in any explicit attempts at expanding its sovereignty over the entire territory of Greenland before selling the West Indies to the US in 1916. Only after the US government had officially declared that it would not object if Denmark extended its political and economic influence to include the whole of Greenland did other ←18 | 19→countries accept Denmark’s rule of Greenland, which was formally announced by Denmark’s Minister of Interior on 12th May 1921.12
Denmark’s actions towards validating its political sovereignty over the entirety of Greenland clashed with the aspirations of Norway, which – independent since 1905 – laid claim to Erik the Red’s Land, a part of its former colony on the east coast of the island. The dispute between Denmark and Norway, an unprecedented development in 20th-century intra-Scandinavian relationships, escalated throughout the 1920s, culminating in Norway’s occupation of East Greenland in the early 1930s. The contention was settled by the Permanent Court of Justice in the Hague, whose verdict of 5th April 1933 ultimately granted Denmark sovereignty over the entire area of Greenland. The territorial expansion of a country whose official motto espoused domestic development became a reality.
Danish policy vis-à-vis Greenland changed after a period of isolation caused by the outbreak of the Second World War and the American occupation of the island. Both Danish state officials and the Greenlandic elite demanded the abolition of the trade monopoly, opening the country to external influences and implementing a process of modernisation. As Denmark’s constitution was amended in 1953, the status of Greenland as a Danish colony was lifted and the island became an integral part of Denmark. However, the accelerated modernisation of Greenland, which involved the development of the infrastructure, industry, housing, health care, courts of law and education and was effected mainly through the efforts of a mass workforce from Denmark, did not bring about equality between the “South Danes” and the “North Danes” [Danish: norddanskere], as Greenlanders came to be referred to in official Danish discourse. Consequently, Greenlandic society grew more and more frustrated, the disgruntlement combining with the increasing population and better means of mass-communication to spark the rise of the first organisations that advocated the urgent need for any further development to follow guidelines and priorities set by the Greenlanders themselves.
Despite the efforts of Danish reporters and film directors,13 general public opinion in Denmark is still inclined to pass over some of the post-war decisions ←19 | 20→which Danish cabinets made without consulting or seeking consent from the representatives of Greenland. The building of an American air base in Thule, in the wake of which local residents were forcefully displaced 130 kilometres north of Qaanaaq, and the seizing of twenty-two Greenlandic children, who were separated from their families, brought to Denmark and then placed for many years in an orphanage in Nuuk as a social experiment
