Danish Asiatic Company
Danish trading company 1732-1844
Danish Asiatic Company (Danish: Asiatisk Kompagni) was a Danish trading company established in 1730 to revive Danish-Norwegian trade on the Danish East Indies and China following the closure of the Danish East India Company. It was granted a 40-year monopoly on Danish trade on Asia in 1732 and taken over by the Danish government in 1772. It was headquartered at Asiatisk Plads in Copenhagen. Its former premises are now used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
History
The Danish East India Company was dissolved in 1729. Some of Copenhagen's leading merchants responded to its dissolution by creating two trading societies, one for the Indian trade and another one for the new and promising China trade. On 20 April 1730, the two societies were merged to form the Danish Asiatic Company. The reformed interim company opened trade with Qing China at Canton. The first expedition went badly, with Den gyldne Løve lost with its cargo of silver off Ballyheigue, Ireland, on the outbound journey. Local landowners held the silver at their estate and pursued a salvage claim, but a gang of locals overpowered the Danish guard and made off with the hoard, causing a diplomatic row between Denmark-Norway and Great Britain.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Danish Asiatic Company” is danish trading company 1732-1844. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Danish, Asiatic and Company, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2492041. Authority coordinates are 55.675, 12.589. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1730, 1732, 1772 and 1729.
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This entry incorporates text from “Danish Asiatic Company” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.