Being a historian means travelling a lot, although primarily in the dimension of time. By working long enough with a topic, place or person, a feeling of familiarity arises, one a feeling of having actually visited the places or met the persons arises, even though the only contact has been through images and text.
But there is still value to travlling in person and experiencing the places where the historical events took place.
For the vast majority of the hundreds of merchants and trading officers of the Danish Asiatic Company, their history is shrouded in darkness with only scattered pieces of information, which makes it difficult to get an overview of the mercantile landscape in Copenhagen and the rest of the Oldenburg Monarchy.
To help attain such an overview, a Business Encyclopedia of the Oldenburg Monarchy has been created as part of this project in the shape of a wiki . Here, a page can be published for each business person and other relevant persons to collect information about their life and work from a number of diverse sources.
The Chinaman FREDENSBORG SLOT from the Danish Asiatic Company. Built in Copenhagen 1763-64. From gouache by Clement Mogensen Clementsen, about 1765. Photo: Maritime Museum of Denmark.
For the last several months have been sending in homework every tenth day for an interesting PhD-course in Social Network Analysis.
Next week I am going to attend the course in France, and I have just finished the last assignment, which used my own data, so I thought I would share the results here.
The Danish Asiatic Company, which sent ships to Asia for trade from 1732 to 1833, was in many ways a quite modern company.
The funds for the company came from stocks on the open market and although corruption and general swindling seemed more common than today, the company was generally driven after rational principles.
Therefore, a number of practices stand out as being pre-modern or at least in contrast to a business of the 21st century.
In 1735, the young Danish nobleman Count Otto Thott wrote a report, a so-called promemoria, about the economic status and challenges of the Oldenburg Monarchy, especially Denmark and Norway.
Titled Allerunderdanigste uforgribelige Tanker om Commerciens Telstand og Opkomst or “Most humble and personal thoughts about the condition and growth of business”, the report gives an overview of the state of farming, of production and of trade in Denmark and Norway, along with several recommendations for improvement.
One of my favorite depictions of Copenhagen in the 18th century is this wonderful gouache of the city in 1786, painted by M. Bang.
While the tower and spires are immediately recognisable for anyone familiar with the city skyline today, everything else has been through an 18th century Photoshop-edit. Almost all houses appear freshly chalked in pure white and everything is generally in great order.
At the moment I am diving into the wonderful archive of the Danish Asiatic Company, which is preserved at the Danish National Archives in Copenhagen.
So far the most interesting part is the roll books, where the crew of seemingly all ships in service of the Company is listed. Since I am investigating the merchants, I am especially interested in the section called Negotien, meaning the traders section of the crew.
Between Copenhagen & Canton 1730-1833 