Political Impact of Sweden on Danish Expansion

Denmark's Economic Decline and the Rise of Swedish Military Power

Jun 14, 2009

Sweden's belligerence, confined to the upper quarters of Protestant Europe, prompted Denmark to further its own empire in India, Africa, and the Caribbean.

The Kingdom of Denmark-Norway in the Seventeenth Century

In the seventeenth century, Denmark-Norway was an erstwhile powerful and fluctuating kingdom; the rule of Christian IV (1596-1648), the paramount “Great Builder,” reestablished a series of economic and military thrusts into political arena of Europe, a Europe splintered by reviving castes of Protestantism and loose, Germanic states against the contending Habsburg dynasty. The effects were short-lived. Denmark, long known as the guardians of the Sound and, thus, the Baltic, fell into a series of battles and wars that, in the end, cost them greatly. By 1648 Denmark-Norway had lost the territory of Halland to Swedish forces and the important area of Schleswig-Holstein to Imperial forces under General Wallenstein. Christian IV’s son Frederick III took the throne in 1648, ruling until his death in 1670. During his reign, a series of Swedish-led attacks on Copenhagen and the relative economic decline of Danish commerce gave the young king precedence for establishing absolute monarchy, thereby abolishing the Rigsråd or state council.

Absolute Monarchy under Christian V

This precedent for absolute rule continued with Christian V, who preserved the king’s dominion with the Dansk Lov (Danish Code) in 1683. The Scanian War (1675-1679), however, further crippled Denmark’s vital economic resources. It was under these conditions that Christian V continued Denmark’s colonial interests (outside of Greenland, Iceland and the Faeroes), granting royal charter for the Danish West India Company to settle St. Thomas in the Caribbean, following the example of his grandfather, Christian IV, with the small colonial outpost in Tranquebar, India, in 1616, and his own father, Frederick III, by the small African Company expeditions to the Gold Coast in 1649. (Norregard 12)

Sweden's antithetical relationship with Denmark-Norway had begun the in early sixteenth century, under the reign of Christian II (1513-1523). Christian II’s series of executions of Swedish nobles in 1520, known infamously as the Stockholm Bloodbath, effectively ended the Kalmar Union, which had begun in 1397 under King Valdemar Atterdag’s daughter, Queen Margaret, who declared the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden to be united under one king (a union which was to last with Norway until 1814). (Lauring 107) A series of armed insurrections against Denmark steadily disrupted this union with Sweden intermittently in the fifteenth century, and lastly culminated in the complete succession of Danish claim to the throne of Sweden in 1523, making way for the Vasa kings. The Vasa house continued with four separate kings until the seventeenth century, when Sigismund I (Zygmunt III of Poland) abdicated the throne to his paternal uncle, Karl IX.

After Karl IX’s death in 1611, the beginning of an era known the Swedish Empire took command under the young Gustavus Adolphus, a brilliant military tactician and king of Sweden until 1632. Gustavus Adolphus’ achievements in the Thirty Years’ War, such as the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631 and his heroic battle at Lützen in 1632, where he died in combat, earned him the styled name Gustavus Adolphus the Great in Swedish history, for it was Gustavus’ decisive defeats of Imperialist forces in Bavaria and Saxony that drastically altered the course of the war for the Protestant cause. (Kirby 156) Queen Christina ruled the Swedish realm after his death, directing foreign and national policy under the auspices of Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna until her dethronement in 1654, ceding the kingdom to Karl X, who ruled the Swedes until 1660. Denmark in this intermittent period was threatened by the causal series of territorial wars with the now powerful Swedish empire, and in attempts to both meet Sweden commercially and answer the dwindling economic situation, embarked on a more prosperous series of African and Caribbean colonial company enterprises under the Danish flag, culminating in the purchase of St. Croix in 1733.

Derry, T.K. A History of Scandanavia: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1979, pp. 110-164

Friedrich, Carl J. The Rise of Modern Europe: The Age of Baroque 1610-1660. Harper & Row: New York. 1952

Kirby, David. Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Baltic World 1492–1772. Longman Publishers: London. 1990

Lauring, Paulle. A History of the Kingdom of Denmark. Translated by David Hohnen. Høst & Søn: Copenhagen. 1960

Nørregård, Georg. Danish Settlements in West Africa 1658–1850. Translated by Sigurd Mammen. Boston University Press: Boston. 1962

The copyright of the article Political Impact of Sweden on Danish Expansion in Scandinavian History is owned by Adam C'DeBaca. Permission to republish Political Impact of Sweden on Danish Expansion in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.