Exploring the Quellerflächen: Knowledge production on Danish internal colonial expeditions to Schleswig's west coast, 1859–1863

Abstract

Abstract

Between 1859 and 1863, Danish government official Arthur Earl of Reventlow traveled to North Frisia several times to explore possible ways to develop new agricultural areas in the Wadden Sea. Although expeditions have become a focus in the history of science, little research has addressed the journeys of officials into state peripheries. While these did not travel to "exotic" landscapes like conventional expeditions, their goals were nearly identical: to expand knowledge and increase control over areas where state authority was weak. Reventlow's expeditions into the borderlands were driven by Danish aspirations to transform the Quellerflächen [areas where the saltmarsh plant Salicornia grows], through the application of environmental knowledge, into embanked agricultural land and therefore an internal colonial space that could be controlled and exploited for resource extraction. To do so, Reventlow emphasized the importance of Salicornia for land reclamation. His use of the plant and the Quellerflächen as an argument for extensive internal colonial intervention offers a new perspective on knowledge produced during internal colonial expeditions. Unlike typical botanical specimens, Salicornia was not collected or classified; instead, it was used conceptually as an argument to justify large-scale embankments in a landscape that was made legible through maps produced in the context of the expedition. Therefore, I propose distinguishing the knowledge production in the context of internal colonial expeditions from that of conventional expeditions by closely examining their treatment by historical actors. Through this differentiation, science historians can better understand how different types of knowledge were produced and used during and after these journeys.