Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig Thomas Riis (Ed.) Urbanization in the Oldenburg Monarchy, 1500–1800 Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig URBANIZATION IN THE OLDENBURG MONARCHY, 1500–1800 Edited by Thomas Riis Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig Bibliografische Information Der Deutschen Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar. Das Werk ist in allen seinen Teilen urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung durch elektronische Systeme. © 2012 by Verlag Ludwig Holtenauer Straße 141 24118 Kiel Tel.: 0431–85464 Fax: 0431–8058305 [email protected] www.verlag-ludwig.de Gestaltung: Daniela Zietlow Gedruckt auf säurefreiem und alterungsbeständigem Papier Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-86935-191-9 Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig CONTENTS PREFACE 7 THE CENTRAL PARTS OF THE MONARCHY 9 Ole Degn: Urbanization of the North, 1500–1800: Denmark 11 Finn-Einar Eliassen: The Heyday of the Small Town. Norwegian Urbanization, 1500–1800 27 Thomas Riis: The Urbanization in Schleswig-Holstein, 1500–1800 39 THE TROPICAL COLONIES 61 Martin Krieger: Serampore around 1800 63 Jesper Kurt-Nielsen: Urbanization on the Danish Gold Coast, 1658–1850 81 Thomas Riis: The Urbanization of the Virgin Islands 103 THE NORTH ATLANTIC ISLANDS 113 Anna Agnarsdóttir: The Urbanization of Iceland in the 18th and early 19th centuries 115 Elin Súsanna Jacobsen: Urbanization in the Faroe Islands. The Case of Tórshavn 141 Thorkild Kjærgaard: A Forgotten Urban Revolution: Urban Settlements and Urbanization in Greenland, 1721–1814 149 Thomas Riis: Conclusions 165 Addresses of contributors 176 Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig PREFACE Despite the fact that several works deal with the relations between in- dividual parts of the Oldenburg Monarchy, notably the general history »Danmark-Norge, 1380–1814« I–IV (1998), a comprehensive view is still lacking which considers every part of the Monarchy, not only Denmark, Norway or Schleswig-Holstein, but also the Faeroes, Greenland, Iceland and the tropical colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, or India. A conference on the Oldenburg Monarchy about 1800 took place in 2003, it became clear that the comprehensive approach to the history of the Monarchy had proved fruitful, cf. the conference volume »Der dänische Gesamtstaat. Ein unterschätztes Weltreich ? / The Oldenburg Monarchy. An Underestimated Empire ?« ed. Eva Heinzelmann, Stefanie Robl & Thomas Riis (2006). In connection with an exhibition at Flensburg in 2006 on this town’s relations with the Danish Virgin Islands an international conference was arranged at Flensburg on »The Oldenburg Monarchy and its Colonial Heritage in the Danish West Indies«. About 50 specialists from Den- mark, Germany, and the USA attended the conference. During the conference the idea emerged to found an association, »Historians of the Northern Commonwealth«, whose task it should be to spread the knowledge of the Oldenburg Monarchy on a comparative basis, e.g. through publications, the organization of conferences and ex- cursions. In 2010, the Association’s General Assembly decided to hold an in- ternational conference on Urbanization in the Oldenburg Monarchy, 1500–1800. The scope was to discover the nature of urbanization in the Monarchy’s individual parts, but also to identify, if possible, lines of de- velopment common to more provinces. As in Denmark and Schleswig- Holstein the main urbanization had taken place during the Middle Ages, and as it elsewhere in the Monarchy belonged to the period after 1500, it was obvious that urbanization had to be seen on the background of the Monarchy’s general economic policy. Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig In order to stimulate interest for the general history of the Oldenburg Monarchy, we wanted the conference to take place in Norway, prefer- ably at Lysebu, the Danish Institute at Oslo. Fonden for Dansk-Norsk Samarbejde accepted this idea, covering most of the participants’ ex- penses during their stay at Lysebu. Also A.P. Møller og Hustru Chastine Mc-Kinney Møllers Fond til almene Formaal and the Nordisk Kultur- fond gave their generous support to the conference and to the publica- tion of the papers read at Lysebu on June 14th and 15th, 2011. To these three foundations I express our sincere gratitude. All participants agreed that the friendly and competent staff of Lysebu had made the confer- ence a pleasure. The publisher of the first conference volume, Dr Steve Ludwig, accepted to publish this volume as well, and this within a rather short time, also to him and his collaborators I send my warmest thanks as well as to the participants in the conference, whose papers have been collected in this volume. Kiel, in September 2012 Thomas Riis Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig THE CENTRAL PARTS OF THE MONARCHY Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig URBANIZATION OF THE NORTh, 1500–1800: DENMARK By Ole Degn, Regional Archives, Viborg I. Degree of urbanization The main urbanization partly ended with the Middle Ages At the beginning of the 16th century Denmark with Jutland, the islands and the Scanian provinces had in all 79 chartered towns, it is towns with privileges of trade and crafts. It was a relatively big figure, not least com- pared with the other Nordic countries and it might also have been the level the country could bear in view of the technological development of the time and the low production level in agriculture and crafts. Exact population figures for the Danish towns are not known until a making up from 1672, but tax assessments allow us to see that also in the first half of the 16th century there were big differences in the population figures of the chartered towns. With a starting point in the making up from 1672 and with involve- ment of a series of factors it is possible to get an overview of the Danish town system at that time. Besides the capital Copenhagen there were 65 chartered towns in Denmark that with the Scanian provinces in 1660 had lost no less than 18 chartered towns. Based on the population figu- res the towns can be accurately placed in relation to each other. Of the 57 chartered towns with known population figures only 22 had more than 1,000 inhabitants and no less than 12 had less than 500 inhabit- ants. Only one town had more than 5,000 inhabitants, the dominating capital Copenhagen, that with 41,000 inhabitants could weigh up the 49 smallest chartered towns. The biggest towns after the capital were Aalborg with 4,181 inhabitants, Elsinore with 4,033, Odense with 3,808 and Aarhus with 3,474. Small towns were a predominant feature in the Danish townscape. Leseprobe © Verlag Ludwig 12 OLE DEGN Ill. 1. The chartered town system of Denmark 1672 and the Scanian provinces about 1655. Map based on Ole Degn, 1991, in Ole Degn, 2008. With population figures at only 272, 343 and 343 the three smallest chartered towns even were surpassed by several of the largest villages. Presumably there in the three chartered towns have been respectively 55, 70 and 70 residences, as an average of five persons in a household is seen for the period. With this 29 villages with a number of between 55 and 70 farms in respect to population figures presumably have been in line with the smallest chartered towns. Furthermore about 20 villages stood up between the smallest chartered towns, the biggest, Store Magleby near Copenhagen, with 117 farms presumably in line with the 18th smallest chartered town. But were the villages in reality like towns, they were yet without privileges and functions as chartered towns, they were farmer villages. (Ill. 1).