English abstract
The article focuses on Sophie Petersen’s book Danmarks gamle Tropekolonier (Denmark’s old Tropical Colonies) from 1946: an outstanding example of the Danish narrative about Denmark as a benevolent and thoroughly humanistic midget nation, which ironically sacrificed its imperial potentials for the sake of justice, but hereby gained the greater honor on a moral and ethical level.
The narrative seems to have found its final form after the sale of the Danish West Indies, the last Danish tropical colony; maybe as a sort of compensation and explanation for the “loss” of colonial empire. However, at the same time the narrative played an important part in the conflict of sovereignty between Denmark and Norway over East Greenland, legitimizing Denmark’s claim on all of Greenland in the name of the Greenlandic people – (the International Court of Arbitration at the Hague voted in Denmark’s favour on April 5, 1933). The narrative again gained relevance in connection with the German occupation of Denmark and the decolonization following World War II. Petersen’s book was received with great enthusiasm by critics and readers, and the book was quoted again and again over the following decades. Even in the present day, the narrative of the benevolent Danish empire is still reproduced – also when the explicit goal has been to create a contra narrative. A possible explanation is found in theories of nation, remembering and narration. Finally, the article discusses, whether the ongoing interest in the former colonies and the history of past Danish empire should be seen (only) as a sign of postcolonial melancholia: a reaction against globalization, migration and altered
geopolitical and racial balances of power, or if it could (also) be seen in a more positive light as a an effort to appreciate history and create new and more equal meetings across borders.