Danish enterprise and Mauritius Ebony, 1621–1624

Abstract

In 1618 the newly established Danish East India Company, conjointly with King Christian IV, sent out an expedition to Ceylon and India, and in the following year Danish ships for the first time rounded the Cape and entered the Indian Ocean. It has generally been assumed that until 1775 the ships belonging to the various Danish East India Companies, together with those which were occasionally sent out by the king himself, were the only Danish vessels that navigated south of Africa, and that the Danes traded only with India and the territories further east. From the evidence of several historical sources it appears, however, that a few years after the establishment of the first East India Company a Danish ship was sent to the Indian Ocean, not by the Company, and not to the Company's ports of call in India, but to the island of Mauritius between the Cape and India.