Polycoloniality by Bhaduri Saugata;

Author:Bhaduri, Saugata;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd.

5

The Other Colonial Europeans in Bengal—the Danes, the ‘Germans’, the Swedes, the Greeks

Let me now discuss the other European nations who had colonial ties with Bengal, but whose military or trade exploits were not as successful as that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, or the French (or, of course, the English, who I do not take up in this book), but who also contributed to the heady polycolonial mix. I begin with the Danish, move on to the ‘Germans’ (the Austrians and the Prussians), and conclude with the Swedish and the Greek.

The Danes, known as Dinemār in Bengali, started their trading activities in India when King Christian IV of Denmark–Norway1 founded the Dansk Østindisk Kompagni, the Danish East India Company by a charter issued on 17 March 1616. For the first two years, this Company made no voyages ostensibly due to lack of capital, but in 1618 the first voyages of the Company were commenced with the main fleet setting sail under Admiral Ove Gjedde, and the trade director of the Company, Robert Crappe (or Grape, as per an alternate spelling in O’Malley and Chakravarti, for instance), setting sail on the scouting freighter Øresund one month before the main fleet. While the main fleet reached Sri Lanka in May 1620 after losing more than half its crew, Crappe’s ship was sunk off the coast of Karaikal on the Coromandel Coast by Portuguese vessels, and though Crappe and 13 of his crew members survived, they were taken prisoners by the Nayak of Tanjore (Fihl 2009). Interested in establishing trade relations, the Nayak released Crappe and signed a treaty with him on 20 November 1620, granting the Danes the right to construct a settlement in the village of Tranquebar (today’s Tharangambadi in Tamil Nadu) and the permission to levy taxes, thus founding the first Danish colony in India, Fort Dansborg in Tranquebar (Bredsdorff 2009, 13; O’Malley and Chakravarti 1912, 74). While the Danish thus set their first colony in southern India in 1620, their arrival in eastern India, closing in towards Bengal, which is our point of interest here, was in 1625 when Robert Crappe set up a factory at Pipli which was however abandoned by 1643. Soon in 1636, another Danish factory was set up in Balasore, which also had to be given up by 1643, following a brush with the local Mughal governors and a new factory could be started by the Danes in Balasore only in 1676. As O’Malley and Chakravarti describe in detail about the Danish factory in Balasore:

It remained their chief factory till 1643 or 1644, when they became involved in a quarrel with the Governor of Balasore, Malik Beg, who, it is said, poisoned the Danes, seized their goods, and demolished their factory. The Danes declared war, but, having neither a fleet nor an army, could do little […] In 1674 the arrival of a ship of 16 guns and one sloop enabled them to seize five vessels in the Balasore Roads. Thereupon the Governor, Malik

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