ABSTRACT
Denmark abandoned its African colonial ambitions much earlier than the other colonial powers. Far-flung commercial and colonial ventures were inseparably connected to the apprehension and understanding of geography. The literature of colonialism travel narratives, geographical and historical accounts, natural histories, handbooks on the management of plantations, exhortatory colonial tracts, atlases, pilots, all manner of books and pamphlets rapidly became a vital and inseparable element in Europe's expansion into the world. Colonialism was as much an intellectual construction as a tangible affair of territories, guns and ships. While von Rohr undoubtedly regarded the expedition as a great scientific and colonial opportunity, it may also be that the undertaking appealed to him for religious reasons. Most specifically, the assessment of the suitability of the Danish African enclave's locally varying soils and climates for the introduction of tropical plantation crops from around the world was one of the main concerns of the Danish state as it approached the agricultural colonization of West Africa.
