They ‘Submitted Themselves with their Lands to his Majesty … for Ever and Always’
Natural Law and Danish Colonialism on the Eighteenth-Century Guinea Coast II
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 17828126 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mads Langballe Jensen (0000-0002-6155-5419, University of Copenhagen, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 209-228 |
| Publication date | 2021-12-28 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Global Intellectual History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2380-1883 • E-ISSN: 2380-1891 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/23801883.2021.2012180 |
| OpenAlex | W4200601897 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
Drawing on archival material from the Danish Guinea Company and central administration, this article discusses the uses of the discourse of the law of nature and nations in the Danish-Dutch war of 1776–1778 on the Guinea Coast and its aftermath. It shows how Danish and Dutch administrators drew on the law of nature and nations to justify their competing claims in the war, which in turn hinged on claims to territorial and sovereign rights on the coast, grounded on occupation, conquest, and subjection by treaty. It also shows how the discourse was further used to reconceptualise African political relations in the service of these claims in different ways by the Danish and the Dutch. Further, an ability to use natural jurisprudential discourse was important not just in pursuing present claims, but also in formulating evidence that could be used in later controversies. Finally, the article argues that the use of natural jurisprudential discourse on the coast encouraged European governments, especially the Danish, to pursue their territorial claims there as a basis for further colonisation
Colonialism · Danish · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · Treaty · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law
The Routledge History of Western Empires
Palavers and Treaty Making in the British Acquisition of the Gold Coast Colony (West Africa)
Slave Trade, Slave Plantations and Danish Colonialism
A Search for Sovereignty
‘An Undisputable Right … to Appropriate … the Propriety, and Dominium of this Coast’
Acquiring Empire by Law
Danish Settlements in West Africa, 1658-1850
The Danish Ban on the Atlantic Slave Trade and Denmark's African Colonial Ambitions, 1787–1807
Afro-European Trade in the Atlantic World
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |