The rapid transition of Greenlandic society from the near stone-age of the Inuit to a modern western-style society in less than a century seemed to be much more influenced by the US, US-military presence on Greenland and direct US-Greenland diplomatic relations in certain periods of the twentieth century than by ...
(Show more)The rapid transition of Greenlandic society from the near stone-age of the Inuit to a modern western-style society in less than a century seemed to be much more influenced by the US, US-military presence on Greenland and direct US-Greenland diplomatic relations in certain periods of the twentieth century than by Danish or other European influences. US companies operating on Greenland (for example and most important the cryolite-mining in Ivituut) provided a lion’s share of the financing for the economic development of Greenlandic society as well as cultural exchange. US investment in military bases on Greenland, an endeavor that the Danish colonial administration tried to limit at least until the 1950s while the Greenlandic government favored, had similar effects.
Most historical research on Greenland has focused on the traditional Inuit culture and the Danish influence on Greenland since early modern times. Some studies exist on the military history of US engagement on Greenland, but the actual influence of the US presence on Greenland since the 1940s on societal developments and material culture is still uncharted scholarly territory.
The proposed paper will introduce first the traditional colonial Danish policy of keeping the Greenlandic people away from all foreign influences as a policy bound for the protection of the traditional Inuit culture.
In the following it will described how during the early days of World War II the US established military presence on Greenland and consequently first time ever average Greenlanders came in contact with the modern material culture of the western world while Danish/Greenlandic government tried to reduce these contacts at the same time.
The main part of the paper will analyzes, based on field studies in Greenland in recent years, how nevertheless western style material culture was introduced to the Inuit society and how this material culture was adopted by the Greenlandic society. Identification of real and perceptible changes in everyday life on Greenland due to US-influence via a documentation of today still existing evidence of US presence, especially buildings, industrial structures, means of communication and transportation, etc. will be presented as well as they will be discussed under the question whether or not they were utilized in the same way by the US and Greenland or if Greenlanders adopted new usages based on Greenlandic traditions.
Finally it will be analyzed up to what degree the development of today’s material culture on Greenland has been mainly influenced by the colonial mother nation Denmark or the US. Altogether this paper will, hopefully, help to understand the mechanisms that determined the development of material culture in the context of the process of de-colonization and more important if automatically this process was dominated by the colonial mother nation or if and why other nations might have take the lead in such developments.
Although the paper will mainly deal with the Greenlandic example it is designed as a key-study for the development of material culture in all former colonial areas that faced such rapid transitions in the material culture like Greenland did and the mechanisms identified should be applicable more or less globally.
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