Nordics in Motion: Transimperial Connections of Nordic Colonialism

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K Nordic Colonialism

Nordics in Motion: Transimperial Connections of Nordic Colonialism

Event Details

Date

II. Thursday, 11th September, 08:30-10:30
Location
K1073
Theme
K Nordic Colonialism

Convenor

Janne Lahti (Linnaeus University)

Chair

Malin Gregersen (Linnaeus University)
John Hennessey (Lund University)

Panelists

Raita Merivirta (University of Turku)
Janne Lahti (Linnaeus University)
Aleksi Huhta (University of Helsinki)
Diana Natermann (University of Utrecht)

Papers

Raita Merivirta

Nordic Settler Identities and Networks in Colonial Kenya: Bror and Karen Blixen's Transimperial Lives

Nordic Settler Identities and Networks in Colonial Kenya: Bror and Karen Blixen's Transimperial Lives

This paper focuses on the Nordic settler identities and networks of Bror and Karen Blixen in colonial East Africa in the 1910s, when they shared ownership of a coffee farm near the Ngong Hills. Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke was related to the Swedish royal family, his wife and future author Karen Blixen a member of a wealthy Danish family, whose money was used to purchase the coffee farm in 1913. The Blixens socialised with the wealthy and powerful and were central persons in the white upper-class circles of Kenya. Natives of the Nordic countries, their livelihoods were based on transnational and transimperial transactions and activity. This paper examines how the Blixens as a Nordic couple fitted in the white settler colonial community and how they related to their African servants, farm workers and neighbours. It also investigates the Nordic and British colonial networks they formed in Kenya and other parts of Africa and ponders the significance of the Nordic perspective in examining transimperial spaces and colonial practices.
Janne Lahti

A Finn on a Safari: Akseli Gallen-Kallela and White Colonial Lives in British East Africa

A Finn on a Safari: Akseli Gallen-Kallela and White Colonial Lives in British East Africa

The famous Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela and his wife Mary sojourned to the colonial terrain of British East Africa to reinvent and rediscover themselves, actively absorbing the colonial cultures and habits. Gallen-Kallelas socialized with the white colonizers, wrote about the white man’s burden and rights on the land, and othered the Natives as wild savages. They also went on extensive safaris. They stayed for over a year before returning to Finland. This paper examines the makings and trajectories of transimperial lives and of shared, yet diverging and contested global colonial cultures by foregrounding the Gallen-Kallelas as examples of the kind of Nordic connectors and mobile transmitters of knowledge who crossed imperial boundaries, addressed inter-imperial questions, and wrote to national and transnational audiences. Taking on the role of travelers, amateur scientists, authors, and a bourgeois family, the Gallen-Kallelas lived experience transcended the space of any single empire or nation, and they actively partook in inter-imperial circulations of peoples and commodities and transfers of knowledge production. This is less an investigation of the Gallen-Kallelas but rather a study of the workings and limitations of a globally connected colonial culture that centers the experiences and writings of one family to understand how this world operated. It is about uncovering connections and tracking exchanges that are plural, diverse, and intricate, and often uneven.
Aleksi Huhta

Fragile Connections. Finnish Settlers and U.S Power in Cuba, c.1904-1959

Fragile Connections. Finnish Settlers and U.S Power in Cuba, c.1904-1959

In the early twentieth century, around forty Finnish families settled in Cuba as part of a larger settler migration from North America and Northern Europe. The Finns mostly settled in two American farming colonies, one near Itabo (Matanzas province), the other in Omaja (Oriente). The prominently working-class Finns usually came to Cuba from the U.S., where they had lived as labourers. In Cuba, they hoped to establish themselves as export-oriented farmers, shipping fruits and vegetables to U.S. markets. Through diverse sources, including newspapers, correspondence, and consular records, this paper explores the experiences of Finnish settlers in Cuba from the early years of their settlement (1904–1908, when the Finnish population peaked) to the departure of the last elderly settlers after the revolution of 1959. The article argues that while the Finnish experience in Cuba largely paralleled that of other settlers from North America, the Finns’ dearth of social and economic capital, as well as their citizenship status (most were not U.S. citizens), exacerbated their troubles as farmers and settlers. Together with U.S. protectionism, low start-up capital frustrated their attempts at farming, while their noncitizen status impeded their mobility in the 1920s, when the U.S. introduced restrictive immigration laws.
Diana Natermann

Negoitiating Whiteness: Swedes in the Congo Free State

Negoitiating Whiteness: Swedes in the Congo Free State

During the era of High Imperialism, it was common for Nordic Europeans to assume colonial roles in African territories. This paper focuses on the significant presence of Swedish citizens in the Congo Free State (CFS), analysing written and visual ego-documents produced by Swedes who worked there as missionaries, soldiers, steamboat captains, or traders. The sources examined include diary entries, letters, and a photograph.
The paper aims to determine the extent to which Swedish men sought to uphold or adapt their status as white men and how they navigated their participation in an inherently racist colonial system that perpetuated white supremacy. Key questions include the role of ego-documents and a micro-historical approach in understanding how Swedish colonisers perceived and articulated their identities as representatives of white culture. The paper also explores how these men communicated their identities to themselves and others, the efforts they made to practice "whiteness" in the CFS, and the moments when contact zones led to acculturation or adoption of local practices. Additionally, it examines the significance of white identity to these individuals.
To achieve these objectives, the paper employs a combination of private document analysis, micro-history, and theoretical frameworks from whiteness and masculinity studies. By analysing a selection of transimperial agents and their sources, the study illustrates how whiteness often outweighed citizenship and how masculinity intersected with racial identity in the colonial context.

Abstract

What can a Nordic perspective bring to the study of transimperial connections and mobilities in global history? How can the study of transimperial connections and movements in turn recontextualize Nordic national histories? What role, if any, did these individuals’ ‘Nordicness’ or more specific national origins play in different colonial settings? Were such identities an asset or were Nordics’ national identities an encumbrance or even stigma that caused other colonisers to look down on them or view them with distrust? Were such identities even relevant, or were Nordics in motion assimilated into broader categories such as ‘white’ or ‘European’? This panel investigates Nordic individuals in transimperial spaces by tracking Nordics on the move in the era of high empire, as they crossed imperial boundaries, and connected, networked, and operated in different spaces around the world within the framework of European global expansion. It continues the discussion started in the special issue of Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth history in 2023 by charting Nordic mobilities through different spatial scales and analytical layers, examining the techniques of colonial reimagining of geographicdomains, ethnic boundaries, and national identities. Though coming from countries with few or no formal colonies of their own, Nordic people were not distant observers but actively participated in the co-production of colonial ideology, knowledge, and rule from North America to Africa. Aligning with the recent imperative to blur distinctions between national and colonial histories to better comprehend the legacies of Western colonialism in the modern world and within a genuinely global perspective, these articles build on and connect to global histories of transimperial connections and Nordic colonial history, fields that have expanded more or less concurrently but in relative isolation from each other.