General Trade Company

The General Trade Company (Danish: Det almindelige Handelskompagni) was a Dano-Norwegian trading company charged with administering the realm's settlements and trade in Greenland. The company existed from 1747 to 1774 and managed the government of Greenland from 1749.

History[]

The General Trade Company was founded on 4 September 1747. Learning from the mistakes of the earlier Bergen Greenland Company and the relative success of Jacob Severin's operation on the island, the company received a full monopoly on trade around its settlements and armed ships flying the Danebrog to prevent better-armed, lower-priced, and better-quality Dutch goods from bankrupting the enterprise. It focused its operations on getting seal skins and whale oil from the native hunters for resale in Europe.^[1]

The GTC received Hans Egede's Godthaab; the Moravian missions Neu-Herrnhut and Lichtenfels; and Severin's trading stations at Christianshaab, Jakobshavn, and Frederikshaab. The General Trade Company was granted a monopoly only within a certain radius around its settlements and therefore undertook a campaign to expand the number of trading posts along the west coast^[2] as swiftly as it could profitably do so: Claushavn in 1752, Fiskenæsset in 1754, Ritenbenck and Egedesminde and Sukkertoppen in 1755, Holsteinsborg in 1756, Umanak in 1758, Upernavik in 1771, Godhavn in 1773, and Julianehaab in 1774.^[1]

The same year as the foundation of Julianehaab, 1774, the [General Trade Company] folded, although for reasons unrelated to the profitability of its operations in the colony.^[1] It was replaced by the Royal Greenland Trade Department (Kongelige Grønlandske Handel, KGH), a state company which maintained control of the colony for the next century and a half.

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