Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity

This book presents case studies that focus on the scope and impact of Scandinavian colonial expansion in the North, Africa, Asia and America as well as within Scandinavia itself.

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                 ​In Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena, archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians present case studies that focus on the scope and impact of Scandinavian colonial expansion in the North, Africa, Asia and America as well as within Scandinavia itsself. They discuss early modern thinking and theories made valid and developed in early modern Scandinavia that justified and propagated participation in colonial expansion. The volume demonstrates a broad and comprehensive spectrum of archaeological, anthropological and historical research, which engages with a variation of themes relevant for the understanding of Danish and Swedish colonial history from the early 17th century until today. The aim is to add to the on-going global debates on the context of the rise of the modern society and to revitalize the field of early modern studies in Scandinavia, where methodological nationalism still determines many archaeological and historical studies.

                Through their theoretical commitment, critical outlook and application of postcolonial theories the contributors to this book shed a new light on the processes of establishing and maintaining colonial rule, hybridization and creolization in the sphere of material culture, politics of resistance, and responses to the colonial claims. This volume is a fantastic resource for graduate students and researchers in historical archaeology, Scandinavia, early modern history and anthropology of colonialism

​Introduction Colonialism and Swedish history – unthinkable connections?   Black on white: Danish colonialism, Iceland, and the Caribbean   Icelandic archaeology and the ambiguities of colonialism   Circumventing colonial policies – consumption and family life as social practice in the early 19th century Disco Bay, Greenland Colonial education and Saami resistance in early modern Sweden   The Forrest Finns in the 17th century Sweden and America   Sweden in Delaware Valley: everyday life and identities in New Sweden   Borderland in the Middle: The Delaware Colony on the Atlantic Coast   There and back again – the material culture of New Sweden. Towards an archaeology of hybridity of seventeenth century colonialism Sweden and the Atlantic: The dynamics of the Swedish colonial projects in the eighteenth century   African Ethnic Identities in a creolized world The Scandinavian outposts, forts, and plantations of West Africa   Portals of ’proto-globalization’: Material culture and consumption of commodities on the Gold Coast with special reference to the Danish enclaves   Danish heritage tourism in Tranquebar: Colonial nostalgia or postcolonial encounter?   Post scriptum: from Scandinavian colonialism to global questions of colonialism, modernity and materiality