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Danish overseas colonies and Dano-Norwegian colonies (Danish: De danske kolonier) were the colonies that Denmark–Norway (Denmark after 1814) possessed from 1537 until 1953. At its apex, the colonies spanned four continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.
Denmark–Norway's possessions c. 1800. Danish intervention on France's behalf during the Napoleonic Wars ended with the severing of Denmark–Norway under the 1814 Treaty of Kiel, which granted mainland Norway to Sweden but retained the former Norwegian colonies under the Danish crown.
After the eventual cession of Norway in 1814, Denmark retained control of the old Norwegian colonies of the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland. During the 20th century, Iceland gained independence, Greenland and the Faroes became integral parts of the Kingdom of Denmark and North Schleswig reunited with Denmark in 1920 after a referendum.
Caribbean colonies, in turn, exported sugar, rum and molasses to Denmark. The economy of the Danish West Indies depended on slavery. After a rebellion, slavery was officially abolished in 1848, leading to the near economic collapse of the plantations. In 1852, the Danish parliament first debated the sale of the increasingly unprofitable colony.
The Danes colonized many areas including holdings in Africa, the Americas, the Atlantic, and Asia. The medieval Norwegians colonized much of the Atlantic, including Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands, which were later inherited as colonies by Denmark–Norway. However, both of these nations gradually gained independence and are now fully ...
A contemporary drawing of Fort Christiansborg, now Osu Castle.The outpost to the right is Fort Prøvestenen. The Danish Gold Coast (Danish: Danske Guldkyst or Dansk Guinea) comprised the colonies that Denmark–Norway controlled in Africa as a part of the Gold Coast (roughly present-day southeast Ghana), which is on the Gulf of Guinea.
By the 1700s, Denmark–Norway revived its former colonies in Greenland, and Russia began to explore and claim the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California. Violent conflicts arose during the beginning of this period as indigenous peoples fought to preserve their territorial integrity from increasing European colonizers and from hostile ...
Denmark-Norway then developed trading colonies along the coast and imposed a trade monopoly and other colonial privileges on the area. During World War II , when Nazi Germany invaded Denmark, Greenlanders became socially and economically less connected to Denmark and more, though informally, connected to the United States .