The Question of Rights in a Colour-Conscious Empire: The Danish West Indies and the Global Age of Revolutions (1800-1850)

Publikation: Kapitel i bog/rapport/konference-proceedingKapitel i bogForskningpeer review

Abstract

This essay discusses how ideas of rights circulated both within and beyond the borders of the small Danish empire-state after Napoleonic wars and until the abolition of slavery in 1848. It examines the emergence of a key political concept and the changing bases of political legitimacy in the world crisis of the revolutionary age. The essay shows how various actors mobilised a rights discourse – formulated in and by the transatlantic revolutions – that addressed the principles governing the relationship between the empire and its coloured inhabitants, and how this discourse impacted the political imagination in the metropolitan 'core' and the Danish Guinean 'periphery'. It thereby hightlights some of the many sites within and beyond the imperial borders where the meaning and extent of certain rights were worked out and disputed. The essay is thus merely the beginning, rather than the end, of a larger reflection on the global history of rights and Danish citizenship in an imperial context.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TitelPorts of Globalisation, Places of Creolisation : Nordic Possessions in the Atlantic World during the Era of the Slave Trade
RedaktørerHolger Weiss
UdgivelsesstedLeiden
ForlagBrill
Publikationsdato2015
Sider154-190
StatusUdgivet - 2015
Udgivet eksterntJa
NavnStudies in Global Slavery
Vol/bind1
ISSN2405-4585

Fingeraftryk

Dyk ned i forskningsemnerne om 'The Question of Rights in a Colour-Conscious Empire: The Danish West Indies and the Global Age of Revolutions (1800-1850)'. Sammen danner de et unikt fingeraftryk.

Citationsformater