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The Danish West Indies (), also known as the Danish Virgin Islands () or the Danish Antilles, were a Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas with , Saint John () with , Saint Croix with , and Water Island.
Water Island was sold in 1905 to the Danish East Asiatic Company. The islands of St Thomas, St John, and St Croix were purchased by the United States in 1917 and became known as the United States Virgin Islands. Water Island was bought by the US Government in 1944, and became part of the US Virgin Islands in 1996.
Prince Frederick organized a trading mission to Barbados in 1647 under Gabriel Gomez and the de Casseres brothers, but it and a 1651 expedition of two ships were unsuccessful. It was not until Erik Smit's private 1652 expedition aboard the Fortuna was successful that interest in the West Indies' trade grew into an interest in the creation of a new Danish colony.Dookhan, Isaac. A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States. Canoe Press, 1974. .
Smit's 1653 expedition and a separate expedition of five ships were quite successful, but Smit's third expedition found his two vessels captured for a loss of 32,000 Danish rigsdaler. Two years later, a Danish flotilla was destroyed by a hurricane in August. Smit returned from his fourth expedition in 1663 and formally proposed the settlement of St. Thomas to the king in April 1665.
After only three weeks' deliberation, the scheme was approved and Smit was named governor. Settlers departed aboard the Eendragt on 1 July, but the expedition was ill-starred: The ship hit two large storms and suffered from fire before reaching its destination, and then it was raided by English privateers prosecuting the Second Anglo-Dutch War, in which Denmark was allied with the Netherlands.
Smit died of illness, and a second band of privateers stole the ship and used it to trade with neighboring islands. Following a hurricane and a renewed outbreak of disease, the colony collapsed, with the English departing for the nearby French colony on Saint Croix, the Danes fleeing to Saint Kitts, and the Dutch assisting their countrymen on Tortola in stealing everything of value, particularly the remaining Danish guns and ammunition.
Den forgyldte Krone was ordered to run ahead and wait but ended up returning to Denmark after the Færøe under Capt. Zacharias Hansen Bang was delayed for repairs in Bergen. The Færøe completed her mission alone, establishing a settlement on St. Thomas on 25 May 1672. From an original contingent of 190 12 officials, 116 company "employees" (indentured servants), and 62 felons and former prostitutes only 104 remained, 9 having escaped and 77 having died in transit. Another 75 died within the first year, leaving only 29 to carry on the colony.
In 1675, Iversen claimed St. John and placed two men there; in 1684, Governor Adolph Esmit granted it to two English merchants from Barbados but their men were chased off the island by two British sloops sent by Governor Stapleton of the British Leeward Islands. Further instructions in 1688 to establish a settlement on St. John seem not to have been acted on until Governor Erich Bredal made an official establishment on 25 March 1718.
The islands quickly became a base for pirates attacking ships in the vicinity and also for the Brandenburg African Company. Governor Johan Lorensen raised enormous taxes upon them and seized warehouses and cargoes of tobacco, sugar, and slaves in 1689 only to have his actions repudiated by the authorities in Copenhagen; his hasty action to seize Crab Island prohibited the Brandenburgers from establishing their own Caribbean colony, however. Possession of the island was subsequently disputed with the Scottish in 1698 and fully lost to the Spanish in 1811.
Saint Croix was purchased from the French West India Company in 1733. In 1754, the islands were sold to king Frederick V, becoming royal Danish-Norwegian colonies.
The second British invasion of the Danish West Indies took place during the Napoleonic Wars in December 1807 when a British fleet captured St Thomas on 22 December and Saint Croix on 25 December. The Danes did not resist and the invasion was bloodless. This British occupation of the Danish West Indies lasted until 20 November 1815, when Britain returned the islands to Denmark.
By the 1850s, the Danish West Indies had a total population of about 41,000 people. The government of the islands was under a governor-general, whose jurisdiction extended to the other Danish colonies of the group. However, because the islands formerly belonged to Great Britain, the inhabitants were English in customs and in language. The islands of that period consisted of:Stewart, K. J., (1864). A Geography for Beginners. Richmond, Va: J W Randolph.
The United States had been interested in the islands since at least the 1860s, when President Andrew Johnson came close to obtaining St. Thomas and St. John. Denmark agreed to sell in 1867 for $7.5 million and the local population approved the transfer in a plebiscite, but the US Senate never voted on the treaty and it expired. In 1889, there were rumors of negotiations between the Danish and the Germans for sale of the islands. In 1902, the Danish Parliament rejected both a convention and a treaty with the United States. Dänisch-Westindien (Amerikanische Jungferninseln), 9. Januar 1868 : Abtretung an die USA Direct Democracy
The United States acted again in 1915 because of the islands' strategic position near the approach to the Panama Canal, and because of a fear that Germany might seize them to use as U-boat bases during World War I. A referendum was held in Denmark on the future of the islands, which had become both a financial burden and strategic concern. On 17 January 1917, according to the Treaty of the Danish West Indies, the Danish government sold the islands to the United States for $25 million ($ in current prices) when the United States removed its objections to Denmark taking control of the whole of Greenland, and the U.S. and Denmark exchanged their respective treaty ratifications. Danish administration ended on Transfer Day, when the United States took formal possession of the territory and renamed it the United States Virgin Islands. Rear Admiral James H. Oliver was the first American governor of the Danish West Indies.
At the time of the US purchase of the Danish West Indies in 1917, the colony did not include Water Island, which had been sold by Denmark to the East Asiatic Company, a private shipping company, in 1905. The company eventually sold the island to the United States in 1944, during the German occupation of Denmark in the Second World War.
Freedom of religion was partially granted to the colonies to help settle the islands, as there was a shortage of willing settlers from Europe. This resulted in a large proportion being Dutch and British natives fleeing religious persecution. "History: St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands Retrieved On 14 January 2012
Jews began settling the colony in 1655, and by 1796 the first synagogue was inaugurated. In its heyday in the mid-19th century, the Jewish community made up half of the European population. One of the earliest colonial governors, Gabriel Milan, was a Sephardic Jew.
In spite of a general tolerance of faiths, many African religions were not recognized because they typically revolved around belief in animism and magic, beliefs that were consistently met with scorn, and were regarded as immoral and inferior. It was widely believed that if slaves could be converted to Christianity they could have a better life, and effort was made to do so.
There was no state-sponsored religion in Denmark until 1849, and authorities required that all citizens observe Danish holidays.
By 1900, with a population of 30,000, a fourth of the people were , while most of the rest were Anglican, Moravian, or other Protestant, including former slaves. For decades, the Moravians had organized missions and also taken charge of the educational system.
By 1778, it was estimated that the Danes were bringing about 3,000 Africans to the Danish West Indies yearly for enslavement. These transports continued until the end of 1802, when a 1792 law by Crown Prince Regent Frederik that banned the trade of slaves came into effect.
In 1733, differentiation between slaves and other property was implied by a regulation that stated that slaves had their own will and thus could behave inappropriately or be disobedient. There was a general consensus that if the slaves were punished too hard or were malnourished, the slaves would start to rebel. This was borne out by the 1733 slave insurrection on St. John, where many plantation owners and their families were killed by the Akwamu people, including Breffu, before it was suppressed later the following year. In 1755 Frederick V of Denmark issued more new Regulations, in which slaves were guaranteed the right not to be separated from their children and the right to medical support during periods of illness or old age. However, the colonial government had the ability to amend laws and regulations according to local conditions, and thus the regulations were never enacted in the colony, on grounds that it was more disadvantageous than advantageous.
Planters regained control by the end of May 1734, after the Akwamu were defeated by several hundred better-armed French and Swiss troops sent in April from Martinique, a French colony. Colony militia continued to hunt down maroons and finally declared the rebellion at an end in late August 1734.
King Christian VIII supported the gradual abolition of slavery and ruled in 1847 that every child born of an unfree woman should be free from birth, and that slavery would end entirely after 12 years. That ruling satisfied neither the slaves nor the plantation owners.
Meanwhile, on 27 April 1848, France passed a law to abolish slavery in its colonies within two months, but a slave insurrection on Martinique led to immediate abolition there on 22 May, and on Guadeloupe on 27 May.
The slaves in the Danish West Indies did not want to wait for their freedom either. On 2 July 1848, freedman John Gottlieb (also known as "Moses Gottlieb" or "General Buddhoe") and Admiral Martin King, among others, led a slave rebellion, taking over Frederiksted, Saint Croix. That evening, hundreds of slaves gathered peaceably outside Fort Frederik refusing to work the next day and demanding freedom. By 10 a.m. the following morning, about 8,000 slaves had joined.
On the afternoon of 3 July 1848 (now known as Emancipation Day), Peter van Scholten went to Frederiksted. To end the rebellion and prevent further bloodshed and damage, he announced an immediate and total emancipation of all slaves. He then went to Christiansted, where a second rebellion had formed and some fires had been set, and had notices proclaiming emancipation disseminated to the other islands. General Buddhoe worked with the governor and other officials to end the riots and violence that had broken out on a few estates.
In the aftermath, Buddhoe is said to have been jailed and exiled to Trinidad. Governor von Scholten also fared poorly. As governor, he did not have the authority to end slavery, but had found himself in a situation where he needed to take immediate action that could not be delayed while he communicated with Denmark. For his actions, he was called back to Denmark to face a trial for treason. At first, he was denied his pension, but was later cleared of the charges.
When Denmark abolished slavery in 1848, many plantation owners wanted full reimbursement on the grounds that their assets were damaged by the loss of the slaves, and by the fact that they would have to pay for labor in the future. The Danish government paid plantation owners fifty dollars compensation for every slave they had owned and recognized that the slaves' release had caused a financial loss for the owners.
The Fireburn labor riot, considered to be the largest labor revolt in Danish colonial history, took place on 1 October 1878. The revolt began because the formerly enslaved continued to live and work in slave-like conditions even though three decades had passed since the abolition of slavery. Mary Leticia Thomas, today referred to as Queen Mary of St. Croix, spearheaded the revolt alongside three other women: Axeline ‘Agnes’ Elizabeth Salomon, Matilde McBean and Susanna ‘Bottom Belly’ Abrahamsson. The Fireburn uprising and its leaders continue to have a meaningful role in St. Croix.
2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the sale of the colony by Denmark to the United States. With this centennial, conversations on the legacy of Danish–Norwegian colonization and slavery were reignited in the Scandinavian mainstream. For example, the artists Jeannette Ehlers and La Vaughn Belle unveiled Denmark's first statue of a black woman, I Am Queen Mary, to memorialize Denmark's colonial impact.
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