Agreement with Danish merchants

The British chronology of the war records under 24 November 1915 an agreement between Danish merchants and industrialists and the British government, intended to limit supplies to Germany. The British official history of the blockade and Danish historians state that the agreement was signed in London on 19 November. The parties were two Danish business organisations: the old merchants’ guild, the Grosserer-Societetet, and the Industrial Council (Industrirådet). They undertook that goods imported under their guarantee would be consumed in Denmark and would not reach Germany.

A country without a trust

Neutral Denmark was particularly difficult for the British blockade. It bordered Germany, and its agriculture and industry depended on trade with both sides. The foreign minister, Erik Scavenius, knew from the German minister, Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, that Berlin would regard an organisation supervising imports on the model of the Netherlands Overseas Trust as Denmark’s passing into the British sphere of influence. The government in Copenhagen therefore did not create such an institution. Instead, guarantees were given by business organisations. As early as February 1915 the Industrial Council, headed by the engineer Alexander Foss, concluded a first agreement with the British. Some firms, however, broke their undertakings, and after the British Reprisals Order of March the Royal Navy increasingly detained cargoes for Denmark. Danish merchants were losing goods and money, so they began themselves to look for a general solution.

The merchants’ guild had something special to offer. It could impose penalties on its members that the Danish courts recognised. It did not admit merchants suspected of trading with Germany, and it could expel a dishonest member, which in practice meant his ruin. The British commercial attaché in Copenhagen assured London that the local merchants knew far more about what their competitors were doing than British intelligence did. In August a representative of the guild came to London, and in the autumn the negotiations proper began.

Negotiations in London

On 1 November a Danish delegation, which included Foss and C.C. Clausen, presented a lengthy memorandum at the Foreign Office. The Danes regarded the British draft of 9 October as “highly unsatisfactory”. They argued that Danish industry also worked for the Allies, especially for Russia, and that harsh restrictions would provoke German retaliation, which would hit supplies of Danish food to Britain. The foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, passed the memorandum to the Board of Trade for assessment, and within a few days the British softened their position. According to the Danish historian Steen Andersen, the agreement was signed on 19 November by Foss and Clausen and by Sir Eyre Crowe of the Foreign Office. It carried a confidentiality clause and both sides undertook not to publish it. The Danes wanted to protect their neutrality, and the British did not want Sweden and Norway to demand similar terms.

The guild and the Industrial Council guaranteed that cargoes they certified would be consumed in the country. A list was agreed of goods that might be re-exported from Copenhagen to Sweden and Norway, among them cocoa and coffee, but with additional guarantees from the consignees and only in normal quantities. A short list of minor products, such as printing ink, stoneware and dairy machinery, could go to Germany in limited quantities. The Danes also obtained a broader interpretation of “home needs”: it covered industrial production for export as well, provided it was not made from goods regarded as contraband. At the same time the agreement introduced the principle of rationing: Britain reserved the right to stop imports above Denmark’s normal needs, and the actual quantities were to be fixed by separate agreements. The most important of these was concluded at the end of February 1916. The British official history of the blockade later observed that the Danish route for trade with Germany had thus been really closed only in the last weeks of 1915.