Denmark: 1814 to the Present

In the early 19th cent., Denmark's modern system of public education was started, and there was a flowering of literature and philosophy (led by Hans Christian Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard). As a result of plans for a liberal, centralized constitution, Frederick VII (reigned 1848–63) became involved in a war with Prussia (1848–50) over the status of Schleswig-Holstein. Denmark was defeated and agreed in the London Protocol of 1852 to preserve a special status for the two duchies. In the meantime, a new constitution was promulgated (1849), ending the absolute monarchy and establishing wide suffrage.

The new government attempted (1855) to incorporate Schleswig into the Danish constitutional system, and soon after the accession (1863) of Christian IX war broke out again (1864), this time with Prussia and Austria. Denmark was defeated badly and lost Schleswig-Holstein. This loss of about one third of the Danish territory was, however, offset by great economic gains that transformed Denmark, in the second half of the 19th cent., from a land of poor peasants into the nation with the most prosperous small farmers in Europe. This change was achieved largely by persuading the farmers to specialize in dairy and pork products rather than in grain (which was more expensive to produce than the grain imported from the United States). The folk high schools, originated by N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783–1872), played an important role in reeducating the Danish farmers. At the same time, the cooperative movement flourished in Denmark. Electoral reforms (1914–15) granted suffrage to the lower classes and to women and strengthened the lower chamber of the legislature.

Denmark remained neutral in World War I and recovered North Schleswig after a plebiscite in 1920. In the interwar period and after World War II, Denmark adopted much social welfare legislation and a system of progressive taxation. Although the Social Democratic government of Denmark had signed a 10-year nonaggression pact with Germany in 1939, the country was occupied by German forces in Apr., 1940. Christian X (reigned 1912–47) and his government remained, but in Aug., 1943, the Germans established martial law, arrested the government, and placed the king under house arrest.

Most of the Jewish population (including refugees from other countries) escaped, with Danish help, to Sweden. Among the escapees was Neils Bohr, the Danish physicist who went on to the United States and worked on the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos. The Danish minister in Washington, although disavowed by his government, signed an agreement granting the United States military bases in Greenland. Danish merchant vessels served under the Allies, and a Danish resistance force operated (1945) under the supreme Allied command. Denmark was liberated by British troops in May, 1945. After the war, Denmark recovered quickly, and its economy, especially the manufacturing sector, expanded considerably.

Denmark became (1945) a charter member of the United Nations and, breaking a long tradition of neutrality, joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Frederick IX became king in 1947. In 1960, Denmark became part of the European Free Trade Association, which it left in 1972 in order to join the European Community (now the European Union). Denmark granted independence to Iceland in 1944 and home rule to the Faeroe Islands in 1948 and to Greenland in 1979. Frederick IX died in 1972 and was succeeded by Margaret II. In 1982, the first Conservative-led government since 1894, a center-right coalition headed by Poul Schlüter, came to power.

Having initially rejected (June, 1992) the European Community's Maastricht Treaty, an agreement that represented a major step toward European unification, Danish voters approved the treaty with exemptions in May, 1993. In 1993, Schlüter resigned; Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, a Social Democrat, became prime minister, heading a center-left coalition that was returned to office in 1998. In a blow to Rasmussen, Danish voters rejected adoption of the euro (see European Monetary System) in a referendum in Sept., 2000. Parliamentary elections in 2001 brought a Liberal party–led conservative coalition to power, and Anders Fogh Rasmussen became prime minister in the minority government. The government remained in office after the 2005 elections.

The publication of cartoons with images of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper in Sept., 2005, brought protests from Danish Muslims and ambassadors from Muslim nations, because of Islamic prohibitions on any representation of Muhammad. The protests initially drew tepid responses from the newspaper and Danish officials. The subsequent distribution by Muslim clerics of the cartoons combined with even more offensive images, and the republication of the original cartoons in some other Western and non-Western papers, sparked sometimes violent anti-Danish and anti-Western protests and boycotts of Danish goods in many Muslim nations in early 2006, and led to apologies from the newspaper and Denmark.

After snap parliamentary elections in Nov., 2007, the Liberal-led government remained in office. Rasmussen stepped down in Apr., 2009, to become NATO's secretary-general (beginning in August); Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the finance minister, succeeded him as prime minister. Parliamentary elections in Sept., 2011, resulted in a narrow victory for a three-party center-left alliance led by the Social Democrats, and Social Democratic leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt subsequently became prime minister (and the first woman to hold the post). The June, 2015, elections were won by the Liberal-led center-right coalition, but after Lars Løkke Rasmussen failed to reach an agreement with other center-right parties, he formed a Liberal party minority government; it became a three-party center-right minority government in Nov., 2016. In the June, 2019, elections the Social Democrats won a plurality and formed a minority government with Mette Frederiksen as prime minister.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• 1814 to the Present
• Denmark and Norway
• Ancient History to 1448
• Government
• Economy
• Land and People
• Bibliography

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