In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Navigating Colonial Orders. Norwegian Entrepreneurship in Africa and Oceania ed. by Kirsten Alsaker Kjerland and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen
  • Magdalena Naum
Navigating Colonial Orders. Norwegian Entrepreneurship in Africa and Oceania Edited by Kirsten Alsaker Kjerland and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen. New York: Berghahn, 2015.

In the last decade there has been increased effort, shared across the humanities and social sciences, to critically reexamine the Nordic colonial past. Navigating Colonial Orders is a new and valuable contribution to this developing field of research.

The anthology, consisting of fourteen thoroughly researched chapters written by an interdisciplinary group of scholars, stems from a project, In the Wake of Colonialism: Norwegian commercial interests in colonial Africa and Oceania, conducted at University of Bergen. The volume discusses Norwegian ventures in Africa and the Pacific in the period 1850–1950, focusing primarily on their maritime, economic and entrepreneurial aspects. The authors examine a range of subjects: the impact of mid-nineteenth-century free trade policies on the growth of shipping industry and the rapid ascendance of Norway to a leading position in a profitable cross-trade (Nygaard); the Norwegian niche in a lucrative if intricate long-haul tramp trade interconnecting the colonies and Europe (Sætra); and political interests in colonial expansionisms expressed in the establishment of numerous consular offices in the colonial areas assessed as strategic for the Norwegian economy (Angell). Zooming in on Africa, several authors analyze the development of and involvement in commercial ventures and plantations built and made profitable thanks to existing colonial labor relations, multiple personal and professional networks and skillful maneuvering between dominant colonial powers (Eidsvik, Bang, Børresen, Reiersen, Bertelsen, Alsaker Kjerland, Wæhle). They document the processes of translation of Norwegian commercial success into administrative careers and political influence on colonial affairs (Eidsvik, Reiersen, Bertelsen, Wæhle). Other chapters discuss Norwegian exploration of the Pacific that paved a way to permanent settlement and varied economic engagements and that engendered complex identity dynamics and racial discourses (Hviding, Tikivanotau Michael Jonassen, Rio).

All these studies illustrate the surprising scale, depth and scope of the Norwegians’ involvement with the colonial project and prove the validity of their characterization as “noncolonial colonials.” The concept, elaborated on in an excellent introduction by Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, captures the fact that despite of Norway’s lack of colonial possessions in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, its government and a sizeable group of its citizens were eager to participate in and profit from colonial trade and exploitation. They were able to penetrate the colonial systems in Africa and the Pacific to establish opportunistic ventures and they shared Western exploitative, racially-colored attitudes towards the colonies. These studies also demonstrate the importance of networks—personal and professional, local and global—that were relentlessly pursued by Norwegian entrepreneurs in order to connect to and navigate the colonial economic systems.

Navigation is one of the key processes explicitly and implicitly evoked by the authors. It refers to both history of shipping and sailing, geographical transoceanic movement between various states and their colonial possessions mastered by the Norwegians, as well as to sociopolitical and economic navigation through different colonial power constellations and between the colonizers and the colonized. Most illustrative examples of these navigations are presented in the chapters of Erlend Eidsvik and Edvard Hviding. In the study of the Norwegian Thesens, successful timber merchants and venture capitalists in South Africa’s Cape Colony, Eidsvik shows how the family’s success depended on maritime trade and shipping, including carefully maintained links with Norway and how it was entangled with the fragile political landscape of the colony. The family moved through dangerous political waters during the Anglo-Boer conflict by variously retreating to a liminal and seemingly neutral position as neither British nor Afrikaners or strategically siding with and appropriating Afrikaner and British identities and their material ways of performing status and power. Navigating through different power systems was also a necessity in the Solomon Islands studied by Edvard Hviding. The author argues that the Norwegian settlers, who mastered the rouge trade and sailing routes in the Pacific, developed an ambiguous stance sometimes allying with the Indigenous peoples against the British administration, sometimes supporting the colonial power...

Share