Danish banking, speculation and the European Great Northern Telegraph Company

Abstract

In the course of his research at the Public Record Office in London on the China Trade (1839-65) Ole Lange was in 1966 accidentally handed some volumes of Foreign Office correspondence from the 1880s labelled ‘Telegraphs in China’. They referred to C. F. Tietgen, and Lange's curiosity was aroused. As a financier and promoter Tietgen (1829–1901) had been a key figure in the vigorous economic and commercial growth which took place in Denmark in the second half of the nineteenth century. Among the many enterprises he ‘founded’ or reorganised in his role as head of Priovatbanken were DFDS (The United Shipping Company), Burmeister and Wain, KTAS (Copenhagen's Telephone Company), De danske Sukkerfabrikker (The Danish Sugar Factories), De danske Spritfabrikker (Danish Distillers), and Tuborg Breweries, most of them founded in 1872–73. What was regarded as his greatest achievement however was the Great Northern Telegraph Company with its world-wide network. Tietgen and this company were the principal subjects of the volumes mistakenly handed to Lange.