BOOK: The islands of dreams - Nicobar-Chronicle (danish text)
There is interest in Danish colonial history and the slave deer - here is the story of an archipelago that few people today know about: the Nicobars in the Indian Ocean. The islands were under Danish sovereignty for more than 100 years ...
Why read about some distant, now almost forgotten tropical islands, which you must not visit? Because these lush islands close to the Equator for more than a century played a role in the consciousness of the Danes and in our colonial history.
The Nicobars (Fredericks Islands, East India) were occupied by Danish-Norwegian troops in 1755 with a dream of creating a counterpart to the Danish West Indies - just much bigger. But it should not be easy ... Some of the citizens who were sent there tried to do their best to make dreams come true. They would create a safe base for travel between Europe and China - and return. Often their efforts were futile. Occasionally tragicomic. But it never got boring.
The Nicobaric Islands store many accounts carried by idealism, rock faith and struggle for survival. And descriptions of the indigenous people, "Frederick's Eylenans," whom we quickly learned to toast, but never really understood. Here all the good people met: forest people, Indian sepoys, African slaves and Chinese workers; handsome Norwegians, creeping Danes, etat roots and barons; faithful servants, power officials. And missionaries who fought devils, mosquitoes and mad ants and were constantly tested in the faith; surrounded by pirates, feverish sailors and doctors who did their best but rarely had anything in the medicine box that helped. The backdrop was monarchical kings and ancient imperialists who blew out golden soap bubbles and dreamed of transforming our colony into a significant trading center, a new thriving Singapore.
The book is illustrated with contemporary connectors and photos - i.a. drawings found at the University of Kiel and samples from a collection of partially unknown photographs at the National Museum.
About Søren Koustrup
Born 1. sept. 1944 in Copenhagen. Publishing bookstore with distinct travel gene. Since 1998 freelancer editor and author. Has written children's, school and travel books, often at a geographical or discovery-historical angle, including. GALATHEAS PREVIOUS TRAVEL, THE MAMMUTMAN AND THE FLAMBOYANT - on New Guinea's discovery.
Koustrup's great-grandfather, the cartoonist Christian Thornam, worked at the Nicobars in February 1846.
336 pages.
Staple with flaps.