Book chapter
Cranz Revisited: Greenland in Greenland
Legacies of David Cranz's 'Historie von Grönland' (1765), pp.263-288
Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, Springer International Publishing
18/02/2021
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Abstract
In her contribution, Claire McLisky examines reasons for the limited awareness of Cranz’s book in Greenland. In particular, McLisky charts the impact of a scathing book-length response to the Historie von Grönland published by Henric Glahn in 1771. This work influenced the attitudes of not only contemporary Dano-Norwegian missionaries and colonial administrators, but multiple generations of Danish historians, and meant that Cranz’s work was barely known or discussed in Greenland until very recently. In the intervening centuries, the limited engagement with the Historie von Grönland that has taken place in Greenland has been continued to be driven by religious, nationalist and historiographical concerns. In current-day Greenland, calls for a decolonization of Greenlandic history have led to the Cranz’s work being dismissed by some, reframed by others and celebrated by others still as an early, and in many ways unique, source of information on eighteenth-century Greenland and a window onto non-Danish European views of Greenland. The changing status of Cranz’s book in both Greenland and Denmark reminds us that the writing and shaping of history is political, with many other of the contributions in this volume underscoring this point.
Details
- Title
- Cranz Revisited: Greenland in Greenland
- Creators
- Claire McLisky
- Contributors
- F Jensz (Editor of compilation)C Petterson (Editor of compilation)
- Publication Details
- Legacies of David Cranz's 'Historie von Grönland' (1765), pp.263-288
- Series
- Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World
- Publisher
- Springer International Publishing; Cham
- Identifiers
- 991012932297102368
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Business, Law and Arts
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Book chapter