In November 1618, a Danish fleet sailed from Copenhagen on what was, at the time, the most ambitious overseas expedition ever attempted by the Danish crown. The destination was Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), where the Kandyan ruler sought an alliance with another European power to counter Portuguese dominance on the island.

The plan, however, unravelled soon after the expedition reached South Asia. Instead of securing a foothold in Ceylon, the Danes eventually established their first trading post in India at the small coastal town of Tranquebar (now Tharangambadi) in present-day Tamil Nadu.

Tranquebar marked the beginning of a brief and largely forgotten chapter of Danish colonialism in India. Beyond this small Tamil enclave, Danish influence extended — if only fleetingly — to Serampore in Bengal, to Balasore and Pipli in Odisha, and to the distant Nicobar Islands. It is in Tranquebar, however, that the faded imprint of Denmark endures most visibly: in the town’s austere colonial architecture and in the quiet presence of India’s first Protestant church.

Denmark’s motivation for travelling to India was no different from that of other European powers, as it was a land of fabled riches back then. Trade and the desire to position themselves internationally were the key objectives, as with the Dutch, Portuguese, and English who had preceded them. “However, Denmark did not succeed to the extent to which these other European powers did, simply on account of being a marginal country,” explains historian Helle Jørgensen in an interview with Indianexpress.com.

The establishment of the first Danish trading station in Tranquebar, too, was more of an accident than a well-thought-out colonial design.

The accidental making of Danish Tranquebar

Danish interest in the Indian subcontinent was initiated by a Dutch merchant named Marcellus de Boschouwer. He was formerly a trade assistant with the Dutch East India Company, and had heard of the Danish efforts to initiate trade in the East Indies. In the spring of 1618, he appeared at the court of the Danish king Christian IV to negotiate on behalf of the emperor of Ceylon, who was seeking alliances against the Portuguese, who were becoming too powerful on the island.

Consequently, in March 1618, a treaty was signed in Copenhagen between the emperor of Ceylon and his Danish counterpart. It stipulated that the Danes would support the Ceylonese with a warship and 300 soldiers for seven years, during which they would, in essence, drive out the Portuguese. In return, the Danes would receive a complete monopoly on all foreign trade in Ceylon for 12 years.

With this glorious prospect in mind, the Danish king began preparing for the expedition. He was aware of the lucrative trading activities taking place in the East Indies, from which the Portuguese had already prospered, and that the Dutch and English had recently embarked upon the same path.

Christian IV wanted his own kingdom to benefit from these international developments as well. Accordingly, he spent large sums on equipping the ships and invested a substantial amount as a shareholder in the newly established Danish East India Company. Most Danish merchants were not convinced about the risk of investing in this modern share-holding company. The king, therefore, went about asking noblemen, academics, and other outstanding citizens to join as shareholders and even offered them private loans to aid the process.

Anthropologist Esther Fihl, in her research paper, ‘Shipwrecked on the Coromandel: The first Indo-Danish contact, 1620,’ says the Danish company was practically a copy of the Dutch East India Company, “since a couple of Dutch merchants dissatisfied with the Dutch company assisted the Danish king and also invested in it.”

The expedition, led by Admiral Ove Gjedde, took roughly a year and a half to reach South Asia. By the time parts of the fleet arrived near Ceylon in 1620, disease, particularly scurvy, had taken a heavy toll. One vessel was wrecked along the Coromandel Coast. “That the first Indo-Danish contact should begin with a shipwreck is not without symbolism,” Fihl writes.

According to her account, Portuguese forces captured or killed several members of the crew, and the heads of two were displayed on poles along the beach as a warning.

When the Danes finally reached Ceylon, they discovered that circumstances had changed. The Kandyan ruler had come to terms with the Portuguese, and Danish military assistance was no longer required. As Jørgensen puts it, “So there they were, far away in South Asia, with nothing to show for their efforts.”

It was by chance that one of the ships in the fleet ran aground in present-day Tamil Nadu. And there, the ruler of Tanjore, Raghunatha Nayak, agreed to allot Tranquebar to the Danish for trading. He had already granted the Portuguese the rights to settle and trade there.

From his perspective, having two European trading powers in the same region would give him more opportunities for negotiation and to play one foreign trading interest against another. Jørgensen explains, “Remember this was the time when the Vijaynagar Empire had broken up, and lots of little states were trying to establish themselves as independent powers.”

Right from its early days, though, the Danes remained a marginal power among the European traders. Jørgensen points out that there was, in fact, a period of nearly three decades, from 1639 to 1669, when Denmark was unable to send a ship to India at all. “The Danish were literally holding on by their fingernails to their territories until then. This just says something about Denmark being a very minor power,” she says.

In fact, one of the biggest ways the Danes profited was by using Danish vessels and flags to transport goods for other European powers. For example, if the French and the English were at war, they would be aiming to capture each other’s vessels. Whereas the Danes, being seen as a minor and neutral power, could carry their goods without being noticed.

For that matter, the Danish presence in Tranquebar was not even a source of concern to the other European powers, who were constantly competing or fighting over their possessions. “From the perspective of the other European powers, it was not half bad that a weak power like Denmark was hanging on to a strong trading post like Tranquebar, as long as the competitors who were an actual threat to their commercial interests did not get it,” Jørgensen says.

The insignificant nature of the Danish trading presence is evident from the fact that their territories were sold off to the British as early as 1845. By the turn of the 18th century, the British had established their domination in India to such an extent that it was not possible for the Danes to turn a profit on their trading colonies.

A lasting legacy

Although Danish history in India is largely forgotten, their legacy in Tranquebar has endured. Among its most visible legacies is the Fort Dansborg, founded by the Gjedde. Designed in the typical Danish style with large halls, columned structures and high ceilings, Fort Dansborg served as the official residence of the governor and other officials of the Danish East India Company.

It remains the most imposing among the local buildings today. It was restored in 2005 through the efforts of the Tranquebar Association, the Tamil Nadu State Archaeological Department, and the Danish royal family. It is now a protected monument and also a museum, drawing both Indian and foreign tourists.

Other physical traces of Indo-European cultural contact include a large town gate and several functioning churches and schools built during the Christian mission. Then there is the very townscape, with its straight lines that follow the old town plan and continue to carry European names such as King Street, Queen Street, and Admiral Street. The city’s urban planning is very similar to what it would have been like at the time it was sold to the British.

Jørgensen says it is not so much that people have been enamoured of the architecture, but rather that, over the years, Tranquebar saw little economic development, so people lacked the wealth to replace the old buildings and streets with more modern ones. As a result, in recent years the Tamil Nadu government has been developing the town’s potential as a tourist destination and, in 1980, declared it a heritage town.

For literary historian and theorist of creolisation Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Tranquebar’s built legacy furnishes one of the most interesting examples of what she calls ‘fort creole heritage’ in Asia. The imposing Fort Dansborg, which is in fact the largest Danish fort anywhere in the world after Kronborg Castle, Helsingør, and the gridded streets and town wall with the still-standing gates, together exemplify what she sees are three concentric zones of creolisation, or the creation of new material cultures and tastes, through the Danish-Tamil encounter: “the town outside the fort, the space inside the fort, and the fort itself, executed by Indian builders and artisans from local materials who interpreted in their own ways the European blueprint for fortification,” says Kabir, who teaches English Literature at the King’s College, London.

The most enduring Danish legacy in India may be religious and linguistic. In 1706, the Danish King Frederick IV sent two Protestant missionaries, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau. “It was part of a larger effort to bring the new(er) Protestant faith to his colonies,” explains historian Astrid Anderson in an email interview with Indianexpress.com.

She notes that previously, the missionaries sent to Tranquebar were mainly concerned with the Danes alone. But Ziegenbalg and Plütschau were German missionaries from Halle and part of a larger network that also included Hans Egede, the Norwegian missionary sent to Greenland in the same period. “It counted to this group of missionaries that they wanted to preach the Bible in the languages of the local population. The reason why Ziegenbalg learned Tamil (and Hans Egede the Inuit language),” adds Anderson.

Ziegenbalg and Plütschau are widely regarded as pioneers of Protestant mission work in India. They established schools and a seminary, studied Tamil language and literature, and oversaw the establishment of a Tamil printing press. Ziegenbalg produced one of the earliest Protestant translations of the New Testament into Tamil. As Jørgensen observes, “The church established by the mission remains the seat of the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church. Among the Tamil Lutheran Protestants, in fact, Tranquebar is frequently compared to places of significance in the Bible.”

Commercial and cultural connections extended beyond India. Andersen notes that a type of checked cotton cloth known as “Madras,” produced in the region, became part of the dress of enslaved Africans in the Danish West Indies and continues to feature in traditional attire there.

Remembering a marginal empire

Today, Danish colonial activity in India occupies a relatively small place in public memory in both Denmark and India. Andersen argues that the Indian colonies are the least remembered of Denmark’s overseas possessions. One reason, she suggests, is geographical distance. “Few Danes have been to Tranquebar, although the number has increased a little within the past 20 years.”

Another factor is demographic: relatively few Danes lived in Tranquebar compared to territories such as Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which remain within the Kingdom of Denmark.

Temporal distance also matters. Tranquebar was sold in 1845, whereas the Danish West Indies were sold to the United States in 1917. Greenland and the Faroe Islands, now self-governing territories within the Danish realm, remain politically connected to Denmark. “Kalaallisut (the Greenlandic language) and Faroese are distinct from Danish, but the majority of the population in both countries speaks Danish, which means that they can take part in public discussions in Denmark. This is very different both from people in the US Virgin Islands (the former Danish West Indies) and in Tharangampadhi that do not have this possibility to intervene in Danish public discussions on the colonial past,” Andersen explains.

Jørgensen similarly notes that in Danish national self-understanding, the tropical colonies have not occupied a central place. Until renewed scholarly attention in the early 21st century, many Danes were only faintly aware of their country’s colonial presence in India. In contrast, territories such as Greenland were long regarded not merely as colonies, but as integral parts of the Danish state.

In Tranquebar, however, the material traces remain, quiet reminders of a small northern European kingdom’s short-lived experiment with empire on the Coromandel Coast.