The Danish East India Company [1] (Danish : Ostindisk Kompagni [2] ) refers to two separate Danish-Norwegian chartered companies. The first company operated between 1616 and 1650. The second company existed between 1670 and 1729, however, in 1730 it was re-founded as the Asiatic Company (Danish : Asiatisk Kompagni).
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. The island had been claimed by Portugal by the time they arrived but on 10 May 1620, a treaty was concluded with the Kingdom of Kandy and the foundation laid of a settlement at Trincomalee on the island's east coast. [3] They occupied the colossal Koneswaram temple in May 1620 to begin fortification of the peninsula before being expelled by the Portuguese. [4] After landing on the Indian mainland, a treaty was concluded with the ruler of the Tanjore Kingdom, Raghunatha Nayak, who gave the Danes possession of the town of Tranquebar, and permission to trade in the kingdom by treaty of 19 November 1620. [3] In Tranquebar they established Dansborg and installed Captain Crappe as the first governor ( opperhoved ) of Danish India. [5] The treaty was renewed on 30 July 1621, and afterwards renewed and confirmed on the 10 May 1676, by Shivaji the founder of the Maratha Empire. [3]
During their 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 England, where it could be sold at a huge profit. Between 1624-36, Danish trade extended to Surat, Bengal, Java, and Borneo, with factories in Masulipatam, Surat, Balasore and at Java, but subsequent European wars in which Denmark participated ruined the Company, and trade in India ceased entirely between 1643–69, during which time all previous acquisitions were lost except Tranquebar, which held out until aid from Denmark arrived in 1669. [3]
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 and opened trade with Qing 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. 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. [6] 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. Before 1750, it sent 27 ships; 22 survived the journey to return to Copenhagen. [6] 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 Royal Navy attacked Copenhagen. As a consequence of the last attack (in which the entire Dano-Norwegian navy was captured), Denmark (one of few Western European countries not occupied by Napoleon), ceded the island of Heligoland (part of the Duchy of Holstein-Gottorp) to Britain. In the east, when news of Anglo-Danish hostilities reached India, the British immediately seized seven Danish merchant ships on 28 January 1808 that were in the Hoogli. [7] Denmark finally sold its remaining settlements in mainland India in 1845 and the Danish Gold Coast in 1850, both to the British.
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Dutch Republic). Elephant was on a voyage from Tranquebar, India to Copenhagen. [10] [11] 
Tharangambadi, formerly Tranquebar, is a town in the Mayiladuthurai district of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu on the Coromandel Coast. It lies 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) north of Karaikal, near the mouth of a distributary named Uppanar of the Kaveri River. Tranquebar was established on 19 November 1620 as the first Danish trading post in India. King Christian IV had sent his envoy Ove Gjedde who established contact with Raghunatha Nayak of Tanjore. An annual tribute was paid by the Danes to the Rajah of Tanjore until the colony of Tranquebar was sold to the British East India Company in 1845.
The Danish West India Company or Danish West India–Guinea Company was a Dano-Norwegian chartered company that operated out of the colonies in the Danish West Indies. It is estimated that 120,000 enslaved Africans were transported on the company's ships. Founded as the Danish Africa Company in 1659, it was incorporated into the Danish West India Company in 1671.
Danish India was the name given to the colonies of Denmark in the Indian subcontinent, forming part of the Danish overseas colonies. Denmark–Norway held colonial possessions in India for more than 200 years, including the town of Tharangambadi in present-day Tamil Nadu state, Serampore in present-day West Bengal, and the Nicobar Islands, currently part of India's union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Danish and Norwegian presence in India was of little significance to the major European powers as they presented neither a military nor a mercantile threat. Dano-Norwegian ventures in India, as elsewhere, were typically undercapitalised and never able to dominate or monopolise trade routes in the same way that British, French, and Portuguese ventures could.
Fort Dansborg, locally called Danish Fort, is a Danish fort located in the shores of Bay of Bengal in Tranquebar (Tharangambadi) in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Fort Dansborg was built in the land ceded by Thanjavur king Ragunatha Nayak in an agreement with Danish Admiral Ove Gjedde in 1620 and acted as the base for Danish settlement in the region during the early 17th century. The fort is the second largest Danish fort after Kronborg. The fort was sold to the British in 1845 and along with Tranquebar, the fort lost its significance as the town was not an active trading post for the British. After India's independence in 1947, the fort was used as an inspection bungalow by the state government until 1978 when its archaeology department took control of the fort. The fort is now used as a museum where the major artifacts of the fort and the Danish empire are displayed.
Ove Gjedde was a Danish nobleman and Admiral of the Realm (Rigsadmiral). He established the Danish colony at Tharangambadi and constructed Fort Dansborg as the base for Danish settlement. He was a member of the interim government that followed the death of King Christian IV and which imposed restrictions (Haandfæstning) on his successor King Frederick III.
Denmark–India relations, also referred to as Danish-Indian relations, are the bilateral relations between Denmark and India. Denmark has an embassy in New Delhi, and India has an embassy in Copenhagen. About 15,595 NRIs reside in Denmark.
The Bungalow on the Beach is a 17th-century Danish colonial house which has belonged to the Governor of Danish India, who was styled Opperhoved, and after their exit in 1845, to the British administrator of the colony. Built in the 18th century, opposite the Fort Dansborg, by the Danish East India Company in what was once a pepper trading post of Tranquebar, now known as Tharangambadi, in Tamil Nadu, India. Tranquebar is a Danish term and came from the native Tamil word Tarangambadi, meaning 'place of the singing waves'.
Zion Church is one of the oldest churches in Tharangambadi (Tranquebar), a Danish settlement in Nagapattinam district in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is in the premises of Fort Dansborg, built in the land ceded by Thanjavur king Ragunatha Nayak in an agreement with Danish Admiral Ove Gjedde in 1620 and acted as the base for Danish settlement in the region during the early 17th century. The Church was built in 1701 A.D by Rev. Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg and has records from the 18th and 19th centuries. He is believed to be the first Protestant missionary in India and the Church is believed to be the first Protestant Church in India.
Warren Hastings was a three-decker East Indiaman, launched in 1802. The French captured her in 1805 during her second voyage for the East India Company and sold her to Danish owners. The British recaptured her in January 1808, and within a year thereafter she was again in her former owner's hands. She then made several more voyages for the company.
Danish Asiatic Company was a Danish trading company established in 1730 to revive Danish trade on the Danish East Indies and China following the closure of the Danish East India Company. It was granted a 40-year monopoly on Danish trade on Asia in 1732 and taken over by the Danish government in 1772. It was headquartered at Asiatisk Plads in Copenhagen. Its former premises are now used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
David Brown was a Scottish-Danish merchant and shipowner. His trading house, established in a partnership with his brother John Brown (1723–1808) was active in overseas trade. He served as Lord Governor of Tranquebar in Danish India from February 1774 to January 1779.
Wolf Henrik von Kalnein was a Prussian noblemen in Danish service. His most notable contributions were as acting governor of the Danish colony Tranquebar in India, and as colonel in the Danish Auxiliary Corps in Ireland, where he was killed in action at the siege of Limerick.
HDMS Det Store Bælt was a frigate of the Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy, launched in 1782. In 1800, she was sold to the Danish Asiatic Company and renamed Holsteen.
Hermann Abbestée was Danish governor of Tranquebar from 1762 to 1775 and the first royal governor of Danish India from 1779 to 1788. He served as one of the seven directors of the Danish Asiatic Company from 1775 to 1778 and was also active as a trader.
Dokken was an East Indiaman of the Danish Asiatic Company, built at Andreas Bodenhoff's Dockyard in 1742. She vanished on the way back from her fourth expedition to Tranquebar in Danish India, in 1751, between the Cape of Good Hope and Europe.
HDMS Fridericus Quartus, launched at Royal Danish Naval Dockyards in 1699, was a three-deck, 110-gun ship of the line designed to be the flagship of the Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy. She soon proved difficult to navigate, and unsuited for the shallow Danish waters. She was later used as an East Indiaman, first by the Danish East India Company and then by the Danish Asiatic Company. She was wrecked at Skagen in November 1736, shortly after embarking on her second DAC expedition to Tranquebar. She co-existed with another ship by the same name, a slave ship owned by the Danish West India Company, which wrecked off Costa Rica's coast in 1710.
The Dano-Mughal War, formally Danish East India Company's War against the Mughal Empire was a colonial and maritime conflict between the Mughal Empire and the Danish East India Company over trade commerce in the Bay of Bengal. Lasting from 1642 to 1698. The conflict has also been referred to by historians as the Dano-Bengali Thirty years' war
The Cattle War also commonly referred to as the Perumal War or the Perumal Naik-War was a colonial conflict between the Danish East India Company and the Thanjavur Maratha kingdom over the Danish governor Hans Georg Krog's expansionistic foreign policy. The conflict started over the raiding of Danish cattle by the local supervisor of a small land district, Perumal Naik.
The Action of 19 Febuary 1619 was a naval engagement between Denmark-Norway, under the leadership of Ove gjedde, and French privates, which took place on 19 Febuary 1619, during the first Danish expedition to India. Two French vessels were taken and incorporated into the Royal Danish Navy.
The loss of the St. Jacob also referred to as the seizure of St. Jacob was a destruction and seizure of the Danish merchant ship, St. Jacob, by local Bengali authorities. The loss and destruction of the ship and its crew, led to the Dano-Mughal War, which would last for 56 years.
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