From Harbor to Harbor: Postcolonial Relations and Agencies

Abstract

Port cities potentially have a particular, cosmopolitan culture which needs to be analyzed in the context of multiple scales. Harbors receive input from spaces far away and spread their local products, people and ideas on a global level. Hence, harbors are important knots in networks of exchange, connecting to large-scale and close-by environments. These aspects need to be read relationally. Flensburg and Charlotte Amalie are two very different and spatially distant harbor cities. However, they are connected by a shared history that still powerfully shapes their cultural and physical spaces. The agency of their past as two poles in the Danish colonial empire is analyzed under the lens of cultural theories from the Caribbean and post-colonial urban theories. As a case study this research frames a cosmopolitan view on the past and present relation of Europe and the Caribbean with a particular focus on the ports as spaces of interaction and potential hybridization.

Keywords

• charlotte amalie
• danish west indies
• flensburg
• historic urban centers
• post-colonial