Ghana. Denmark achtualy had colonies in Ghana, before selling them to the British.
en.wikipedia.org
Eastern and northern Ghana and Togo likely also Burkino Faso, it would simply called the Danish Gold Coast. If I remember correctly Denmark also had mission in Cameroon, so that’s another place we could see a Danish colony.
I knew about the Danish Gold Coast (and I think it would be awesome if the Dutch, Brandenburger-Prussian and Swedish Gold Coasts all existed in different parts of that section of west Africa at the same time, rather than all being sort of "on top of one another" - but that's a matter for a different thread), not about Cameroon. Any ideas for how to expand the region?
A lot of Frederiks- and Christians- names - maybe also some female names from whatever queen or princess is around at the time of founding, probably also Kongs- (King's) and the like. Endings would likely follow the -stad, -bjerg, -by, -borg etc. One thing that might be a bit unique is that Danish colonies could borrow from local names - as happened in India with the town of
Frederiksnagore. Denmark was also surprisingly willing to construct more complex building and institutional structures in their colonies - Frederiksnagore contained the third-oldest Danish university for example.
So, regarding names, sort of like the Portuguese with Sao [whatever] de [local name] then?
And the infrastructure part is interesting. Britain established universities in the 13 colonies (College of WIlliam and Mary), but I'm unaware that they replicated this feat in say, Canada or India or South Africa (IIRC all of the South African universities founded pre-1910 were founded by Afrikaaners anyway, even if they were in British territory - like Stellenbosch).
orry for being pedantic, but Helstat nationalism is a bit of an oxymoron. The Danish unitary state was tied to the concept of state patriotism where the various German, Norwegian (1773-1814) and Danish parts of the state were held together by loyalty to the king and not by “ethnic nationalism” as emerged after the 1830s.
My apologies, was going off the title of
another thread:
Certainly is an odd place by the look of it,
@Zulfurium . The Wikipedia page claims the governor was trying to make it a tourist town, though it doesn’t cite sources on that. As others mentioned, I would say Ghana would be good because, like with this Indian town, there would be an ample consumer base around. Well, assuming they didn’t get too intense with exporting slaves. As those were usually brought from further inland though, the coast probably wouldn’t have as much of a problem. Still, the colonies were a money sink, so having one or multiple compact ethnic groups who can run the show as protectorates would be best for the Danes. Really though, they didn’t have the money needed to get ships and soldiers over there. Seems the Danish Gold Coast was mostly abaondned due to the Ashanti taking out Danish trading partners, though not sure how bad I feel on that if they were trading in slaves. Also seems the Danes failed making plantations down there. If they managed to get coastal plantations they should at least manage to get some cash from it, though other empires probably would have provided all the Danes might need by the time of the Berlin Conference. The Danes need to have something on the ground then if they want to get any land. Sure Belgium got some second hand, but that was because Leopoldo managed to fool people into thinking he actually wanted to protect Africans.
Slaves need a market to be exported to. Denmark's colonial empire was nowhere near as expansive as the British, French, Portuguese or Spanish, so while I could
see Danes serving as middlemen, I think those powers would have their own slaving expeditions - except in times of war when à la the Austrian Trieste Companies they'd likely be able to pick up the slack. Which means slavery would likely be to local allies or fellow Danes. And, since, as you point out, the Danes (much like the Dutch) didn't have much of a European demand for slaves in Denmark/Netherlands, only use for slaves would be in Danish India or the Danish Virgin Islands (which IIRC, likewise lack a plantation economy like Haiti or Brasil). So, they'd need something "more", like ivory, coffee, gold, rubber in the area