"Danish-Armenian Trade in the Indian Ocean around the Turn of the Nineteenth Century"

In this paper, I aim to explore the business strategies of Danish and Armenian maritime agents, who cooperated in Indian Ocean commercial ventures come the turn of the nineteenth century. While the literature since long have noted neutral Danish tonnage serving French, Dutch, and Spanish Asiatic colonies cut off by the British command of the seas during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, little attention has been payed to Danish commercial activity outside of their chartered company. In turn, Armenian trading enterprises has seen sparse treatment when dealing outside of their own merchant communities, and their 19th century pursuits are largely described as a period of decline. Nevertheless, Danish-Armenian cross-cultural cooperation moved goods between Tranquebar, Batavia, and Manilla, engaged in long-term credit relations, and remitted Anglo-Indian capital through Canton to Europe, all pertaining to the legal manipulation of Danish neutrality. Employing hitherto unused court material and business correspondence taken off seized Danish ships by British privateers, and now kept at the High-Court of Admiralty collection in Kew, London, I argue that business practices involving such disparate and comparatively small actors highlights the complexity of the global trade system. Mercantile actors could, and would, utilize early modern state capacity while pursuing independent economic activity. Consecutively, early modern states could follow suit and benefit from trading network not under official purview.