The Tranquebar Initiative of the National Museum of Denmark

In the year 1845, the corvette Galathea visited the Danish colony Tranquebar. On that occasion Captain Steen Bille at an official ceremony lowered the Danish flag Dannebrog from the flagpole of the Fort Dansborg. The visit took place in connection with the transfer of the Danish colonial properties in India to England. During the visit, the expedition members travelled inland, registering daily life in the villages on the former Danish territory and collecting objects for The Ethnographical Museum in Copenhagen, which is now a part of the National Museum of Denmark.

On the modern Galathea3, the Tranquebar projects have been given a land-based platform, from where they will transmit to the ship about various forms of activities. The goal of the Tranquebar Initiative is to strengthen the ongoing Indo-Danish efforts to preserve the intercultural heritage and to explore the colonial Indo-Danish cultural encounters. Also restoration of building structures from the Danish period (1620-1845) is taking place as well as investigations related to the social and cultural processes of transformation taking place in modern Tranquebar within almost all sectors.

The Tranquebar Initiative of the National Museum of Denmark is an interdisciplinary endeavour and prepared in close collaboration with a number of Indian authorities and Indian and Danish research institutions.The Initiative ranges from various research projects to restorations of buildings from the colonial time and the collecting of ethnographical items to elucidate present daily life, as well as historical and ethnographical exhibit activities in Denmark and India.

The plan is in the various projects to involve a number of PhD-projects and also master students and trainees from both Denmark and India.