Britain and Denmark

Book excerpt: Since 1815, Denmark and Britain have lived in peace with each other. From the last half of the 19th century, massive British imports of Danish agricultural products gave Britain a central role in the Danish economy, likewise in the 20th century, British efforts in the two world wars became of crucial importance to Denmark's position in relation to Germany and, later, the Soviet Union. In the same period, the emergence of English as the first foreign language in Denmark facilitated the increasingly closer human and cultural contacts between the two countries. Britain and Denmark, written by Danish and British historians, constitutes the first attempt to provide a comprehensive picture of the roles that these two neighbouring countries have played in the lives of each other during the last two centuries. They are different in size and have had very different global and regional orientations. So, naturally, Britain has always loomed larger in Danish life and politics than the other way round. In many areas, however, relations have been close. The book covers contacts relating to trade, security policies and social and political theory, but also touch on mutual influences within the areas of literature, music, design etc. Most treatments of Danish political and cultural relations with the outside world in this period concentrate on Germany for the period up to 1945, and on the Soviet Union and the USA in the post-war world. In the same way, works on British contemporary history rarely devote much space to relations with the Nordic countries. The aim, therefore, of this book is to provide a supplement, and perhaps corrective, to the existing literature on the international positions of Britain and Denmark in the modern world.