Dealing with a Difficult Past – How Danish and British museums disseminate the international colonial trade and its present legacies

The awareness in the Danish population of the problematic aspects of the colonial past has been limited for a long time. Although much has changed within recent years to change the general public awareness of Denmark’s role in the international colonial trade, this article argues that improvements can still be made. Through fieldwork at some of the biggest and most influential museums in the field of cultural, imperial and maritime history in Denmark and the United Kingdom the author analyses the different ways Danish and British museums are disseminating their countries’ involvement in the international colonial trade. The article argues that the differences observed in the museums can be seen in relation to the two countries’ different levels of multiculturalism in their populations, but also as a result of the fact that the international colonial trade was a bigger part of British history and therefore arguably has had a larger impact on the national identity in the United Kingdom than in Denmark.

Keywords: Museums, dissemination, colonialism, national identity, multiculturalism.