Danish West Indies

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Location in the Caribbean Sea

Danish West Indies ( Danish Dansk Vestindien ) was a Danish colony in the Caribbean ( Lesser Antilles , Virgin Islands ). Over time, it included the islands of Saint Thomas , Saint John and Saint Croix (now the American Virgin Islands ), and from 1682 to 1689 also the Crab Island (now part of Puerto Rico ). The first permanent Danish settlement was established in 1666, in 1754 the colony passed from the Danish trading company to the Danish crown, and in 1917 the islands were sold to the USA .

Danish influences can still be seen on the islands today, for example the Dannebrog in the seal of the American Virgin Islands . Some Danish words can be found in the local English dialect, for example Velkommen (English: Welcome) In addition, road signs are often bilingual, and since the late 20th century there has been a growing interest in the islands as a travel destination for history buffs Danes and Norwegians. Danish influences can also be seen in colonial architecture and furniture design.

history

View over Charlotte Amalie , Saint Thomas , formerly the capital of the Danish colony.

Indigenous population

The first settlers of the islands belonged to the tribe of the Arawak counting Taíno . They came from South America around AD 300. The Taino had an advanced culture with agriculture , cotton and gold processing . They operated subsistence farming and used simple tools. Their ceramics were sophisticated. They decorated their objects with colors and wore a lot of jewelry and makeup themselves, but were otherwise unclothed. They lived in villages with tall, round mud huts with thatched roofs woven around a pole in the middle.

Around 1000 the Caribs invaded the islands.

The European

Columbus

In 1493, on his second voyage , Christopher Columbus discovered the islands inhabited by indigenous people. On November 14, 1493 he first set foot on an island, which he gave the name Santa Cruz ( Saint Croix ). It was there that the first violent clash between Europeans and indigenous people took place.

Then Columbus sailed the 70 km north to the islands of Saint Thomas and Saint John . Because of the large number of smaller islands and their beauty, he called them, according to the legend of St. Ursula and her 11,000 companions, "the 11,000 virgins of St. Ursula" ( Santa Ursula y las Once Mil Vírgenes , short: Las Vírgenes , "the virgins" ). Saint Croix was only later included in the Virgin Islands.

After attempts by the English and Dutch to settle on St. Croix from 1625, the Spanish and French took possession of it from 1650. In 1653, St. Croix was taken over by the Order of Malta , and in 1665 it was repurchased by France.

Denmark's departure into the New World

Høgensborg plantation on St. Croix (1833)

In the 17th century, Denmark was also considering acquiring colonies in the New World. King Christian IV sought his own trade connections, but was initially bound by the conflicts in Germany and with his rival Sweden.

It was not until Friedrich III. was able to take a closer look at the colonial plans in the Caribbean and provided a consortium of merchants led by Erik Niels Smit with tariff concessions. In April 1665, Smit proposed the occupation of St. Thomas to the king. This island was largely deserted at the time after Spain had expelled the indigenous people there. It also offered a natural harbor. Only a few Dutch lived here who had nothing to object to a Danish protective power against the frequent pirate attacks. On May 6, 1665, Friedrich III appointed. Smit to the governor of St. Thomas. On July 1st, Smit left Copenhagen for the Caribbean with the Eendracht .

St. Thomas and St. John

First settlers

In February 1666 Smit sent a ship back to Denmark. It was laden with tobacco , guaiac wood , cane sugar , cocoa , cinnamon, and a few turtles . He may have bought these goods on other islands as well. On March 30, 1666, Smit hoisted the Dannebrog on St. Thomas, which from then on belonged to Denmark-Norway.

Smit died about six months later, and pastor Kjeld Jensen took over the command. At that time, nine English and three Dutch settlers lived on St. Thomas. They swore allegiance to the Danish crown and in return were assured religious freedom as long as no attempts were made to convert the Danish Lutherans and they respected the Danish public holidays.

However, the first settlers failed due to a lack of supplies and the pirates. In 1668 the last Danes left St. Thomas.

West India Company

Fort Christian was built from 1671.

In 1670 Christian V ascended the Danish throne. He saw great potential in the Caribbean trade and in 1671 secured a larger share of the West India Company ( Dansk Vestindisk Kompagni ) founded by merchants . The king made the warship Færø available to the company. With Jørgen Iversen Dyppel they found an experienced West Indian driver as future governor.

In 1671 the Færø set sail with 190 exiles on board. Most of these men and women had committed themselves to three years of labor service in order to be given land of their own in the New World. Among them were some Norwegians who had been taken on board during a stopover in Bergen . Also on board were 62 prisoners and enough material to build a small provincial town. The crossing took seven months instead of the planned three months, and 77 people died on the way. After a few months on St. Thomas, only 29 were left alive. The gaps were filled by the English and Dutch , mostly on the run or exiles from the other islands, but the Danes needed every man and did not ask about their past.

In 1672, Danish settlers established the first permanent settlement on St. Thomas. At the same time the first slaves came to the island. The governor bought a mulatto , two Indians and six Africans. In 1675 Dyppel took possession of the neighboring island of St. John (Sankt Jan). He established his official residence with Fort Christian . Dyppel is said to have been a tyrant . He turned the settlers against him by banning them from trading with other ships. Many slaves committed suicide. These and other stories got to Denmark and it was difficult to get people to leave for the Caribbean.

Population 1679-1830
year white slaves Free
1679 156 175
1688 148 422
1733 208 1,087
1764 1,200 9,000
1791 2,600 27.608
1800 3,500 35,000
1830 3,700 26,000 13,000

In 1679 there were 156 whites in the colony, 175 slaves, three free blacks and a native by the name of Jan Henrichsen. Dyppel's reign ended on July 4, 1680.

Danish pirate nest

Dyppel's successor as governor was Nicolaj Esmit from Holstein. Allegedly, he is said to have had over 30 years of Jamaica experience. He named the settlement on St. Thomas Charlotte Amalie after the Danish Queen Charlotte Amalie of Hessen-Kassel . Otherwise he was active as a pirate , which was probably his real experience. For example, he confiscated ships of friendly nations in the port of Charlotte Amalie on the pretext that they had lain there too long. At some point it became too much even for his brother Adolph Esmit , whereupon he took power in 1682. Nicolaj had to return to Denmark but escaped charge by claiming to be insane .

But piracy was continued under Adolph Esmit. In 1683 he offered protection to the dreaded pirate ship Trompeuse . However, an English warship soon arrived and Esmit could not explain why it was harboring these "terrorists". England turned to the Danish government directly and threatened to take over St. Thomas if piracy was not stopped immediately. In 1684 Copenhagen sent Gabriel Milan, a new governor, to the West Indies. Milan came from a distinguished family, but he was just as incompetent as his predecessors. He behaved like an absolute king and tormented his subordinates with unnecessarily harsh punishments. As early as 1686 he was deposed and executed in Copenhagen . Adolph Esmit then got a second chance as governor when he promised to know a great treasure that is said to have been hidden here nearby. When the treasure was not found, it was sold again in 1688.

In 1685, Benjamin Raule , General Director of the Brandenburg Navy, signed a contract with representatives of the Danish-West Indian-Guinean Company to lease part of St. Thomas to Brandenburg (see St. Thomas ). In 1689 Brandenburg occupied the crab island between Saint Thomas and Puerto Rico .

In 1693 the Danes confiscated the Brandenburg factories without resistance . On August 13, 1720, the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I signed a document in which he spoke to the Dutch trading company on all former Brandenburg areas in Africa ( Arguin , now Mauritania , and Groß Friedrichsburg on the Gold Coast , now Ghana ) and St. Thomas ( Virgin Islands , USA ) waived. In 1694 the Danish settlers also spread to Saint John .

Saint Croix

Saint Croix, in French possession since 1674, was acquired by Denmark in 1733. This started sugar cane production on a larger scale. In 1734 the West India Company obtained the sugar trade monopoly in Denmark and Norway. From a German point of view, the sugar trade with the Danish West Indies was of particular importance for the then Danish city of Flensburg . As the main port of the Danish West India Fleet, it flourished in the 18th century. The imported cane sugar was refined here and later processed into rum . At times there were more than 20 rum houses in Flensburg, including Hansen , Pott and A. H. Johannsen .

Crown colony from 1754

20 bit postage stamp from 1905 for the Danish West Indies postal area.

On January 1, 1803, the ban on the Danish slave trade, passed in 1792, came into force. In 1848 there was a slave revolt against the Danes in the West Indies, and slavery was abolished altogether. Even today, the people of the Virgin Islands are aware of the legend that Denmark treated its slaves better than other countries and that Denmark was the first to abolish slavery.

Despite the abolition of slavery, sugar production in Danish West India initially remained at a high level, but soon faced competition from domestic beet sugar in Denmark.

British occupation

Britain occupied the islands twice during the Napoleonic Wars.

The first invasion and occupation of the Danish West Indies took place during the second coalition war in late March 1801 in response to the second Nordic Convention on Armed Neutrality . A British fleet of 4,000 men of regular troops reached St. Thomas on March 28, 1801 and on March 31, 1801 Saint Croix. The Danes signed a deed of surrender submitted by the British and the islands were occupied without a single shot being fired. This military action was co-ordinated with the British attack on Copenhagen on April 2nd, 1801. The Peace of Amiens changed the political situation and in April 1802 the British left the Danish West Indies again.

The second invasion and occupation of the Danish West Indies took place in December 1807 after the Peace of Tilsit and the British bombardment of Copenhagen : British marines occupied St. Thomas on December 23, 1807 and Saint Croix on December 25, 1807. The Danes did not resist and the actions took place without bloodshed. On November 20, 1815, after the Congress of Vienna ended , the British troops withdrew.

During the occupation, economic life ran its usual course, but the products were no longer allowed to be delivered to Denmark, but had to be sold in England.

Selling to the USA

Danish-West Indian coin with the portrait of King Christian IX. (1905). Coins had two denominations of value: Franc / Daler and Bit / Cent .

At the beginning of the 20th century, sugar production in West India was more frequently hit by storms and drought. At the end of the 1890s, the German Empire showed interest in the Danish Antilles Islands. This was opposed by US interests, which sought as much control as possible over their own hemisphere .

In 1902 there was a preliminary agreement between the US and Denmark to sell the islands for five million dollars. The plan found a large majority in the Folketing , but in the upper house, the Landsting , it failed due to a stalemate: the conservative forces were of the opinion that Denmark was already small enough.

During the First World War it was difficult for neutral Denmark to maintain contact with the Caribbean colony. In 1915 there was general social unrest among the black population, so that in December Denmark reluctantly sent the cruiser Valkyrien to the West Indies to restore peace and order. In January 1916, however, a general strike broke out. In the same month, the US and Denmark again agreed to sell Danish West Indies. When the secret negotiations became known in Denmark in the summer of 1916, there was a storm of protest by the nationalists.

On September 30, 1916, it was agreed that the matter should be submitted to the Danish people for a vote . It was the first referendum in Denmark. A majority voted on December 14, 1916 to sell Danish West India to the USA.

On April 1, 1917, the islands changed hands for $ 25 million . In return, Denmark was able to extend its sovereignty over all of Greenland . Notwithstanding the sale of the colony to the USA, the Danish currency in Franc / Daler or Bit / Cent remained the only valid means of payment until July 1, 1934, when it was replaced by the US dollar. Left-hand traffic has remained to this day, although left-hand drive vehicles are used exclusively. The islands are the only left-hand traffic in the United States.

literature

  • Kenneth Bo Jørgensen: Turen går til Dansk West India. Politics Forlag, Copenhagen 2006, ISBN 87-567-7333-1 (current Danish travel guide with a focus on history).
  • Kristina Neuhaus: Flensburg's economic development against the background of trade with the Danish West Indies. In: Eva Heinzelmann, Stefanie Robl, Thomas Riis (eds.): The entire Danish state - an underestimated world empire? = The Oldenburg Monarchy - an underestimated empire? Ludwig, Kiel 2006, ISBN 3-937719-01-6 , pp. 177-202.
  • Jan Schlürmann : The Danish-West Indian military system 1678-1917. In: Eva Heinzelmann, Stefanie Robl, Thomas Riis (eds.): The entire Danish state - an underestimated world empire? = The Oldenburg Monarchy - an underestimated empire? Ludwig, Kiel 2006, ISBN 3-937719-01-6 , pp. 273-302.
  • Benito Scocozza, Grethe Jensen: Politics étbinds Danmarkshistorie. 3rd edition. Politics Forlag, Copenhagen 2005, ISBN 87-567-7064-2 , pp. 174f., 198, 289f.
  • Neville AT Hall: Slave Society in the Danish West Indies: St. Thomas, St. John and St Croix . Edited by BW Higman. With a foreword by Kamau Brathwaite . Mona, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 1992.

Web links

Commons : Danish West Indies  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Jørgensen: Turen går til Dansk Vestindien. 2006, p. 23.
  2. a b Jørgensen: Turen går til Dansk West India. 2006, p. 24.
  3. a b Jørgensen: Turen går til Dansk West India. 2006, p. 25.
  4. a b c Jørgensen: Turen går til Dansk West India. 2006, p. 26.
  5. a b Scocozza, Jensen: Politikens étbinds Danmark history. 2005, p. 289.
  6. a b c Scocozza, Jensen: Politics étbinds Danmarkshistorie. 2005, p. 290.
  7. Scocozza, Jensen: Politics étbinds Danmarkshistorie. 2005, p. 175.
  8. Jørgen Sømod: Coins from the Danish West Indies (Danish) danskmoent.dk, accessed on November 6, 2015.

Coordinates: 18 °  N , 65 °  W