Caribbean Beat — January/February 2017 (#143)

Among the also-rans of Caribbean
colonialism was another unlikely
European contender, but this one had
greater staying power than those above.
From 1672 until 1917, a small part of the
Caribbean — the Virgin Islands — was
ruled by another Scandinavian nation,
Denmark, until in January of that year,
exactly one hundred years ago, the Danes
decided to sell up and move on.
Back in the seventeenth century,
though, every self-respecting European
country wanted a tropical colony, mainly
because domestic demand for sugar
was seemingly insatiable, and the best
way to ensure supply was to establish
sugarcane plantations and import
what they produced. The problem for
Denmark, however, was that most of
the Caribbean was already colonised.
Several exploratory missions
ended in failure, but the
Danes persevered, and in May
1672 founded a settlement
on the island of St Thomas,
dislodging a small contingent
of Dutch traders (or pirates).
To ensure the commercial
viability of the venture, King
Christian V had formed the
Danish West India Company in
1671, a state-backed business
that would manage the settlement and
its plantations. It very nearly collapsed
even before it had started. Of the 190
people on board the frigate Færøe, which
sailed from Denmark — twelve officials,
116 company “employees” and sixty-two
released criminals and ex-prostitutes —
only 104 made it, seventy-seven dying
en route and nine escaping. Another
seventy-five died within a year, leaving
just twenty-nine souls in the colony.
From this unpromising start, the
Danish venture not only survived,
but even began to expand. In 1675
the neighbouring island of St John was
annexed (the third territory, St Croix,
would be purchased from the French
in 1733, bringing the entire area of the
three-island group to 133.73 square miles).
But life was still precarious, with frequent
pirate raids and inadequate manpower
to make the plantation system viable.
The solution was slavery, and the Danes
initially leased part of St Thomas to a
slaving company based in Brandenburg
(later Prussia), but in 1693 confiscated all
the company’s assets and began importing
slaves from Danish trading posts on the
west coast of Africa, principally presentday
Ghana. This initiated the classic
“triangular trade” system, practised by
other European powers: manufactured
European goods were sent to Africa, where
they were exchanged for slaves, who were
brought to the Caribbean to produce sugar
that was then shipped back to Europe.
The heyday of Denmark’s Caribbean
empire was probably at the end of the
eighteenth century, when St Croix’s
dynamic sugar industry depended on some
twenty thousand enslaved Africans. The
two-thousand-strong white population
consisted of many European nationalities,
Back in the seventeenth century,
every self-respecting European
country wanted a tropical colony,
mainly because domestic demand
for sugar was seemingly insatiable
and English was more widely spoken
than Danish. But after a series of slave
revolts was met with harsh repression,
the French Revolutionary Wars resulted
in the British occupying St Thomas
for a year from 1801. The subsequent
upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars led to
another period of British occupation, with
St Thomas and St Croix ruled from
London between 1807 and 1815.
These events ended the distinctively
Danish identity of the islands. Some
aspects of Scandinavian culture might
have survived in architecture and food,
but new settlers, particularly after the
abolition of slavery in 1848, included
indentured Indian plantation workers
and others who made St Croix more
cosmopolitan. St Thomas, meanwhile,
was almost a British colony, with its
bustling free port — “the emporium of the
Antilles” — home to the Royal Mail Steam
Packet Company. Abolition, however, had
effectively crippled the sugar industry,
already under pressure from European
beet production. Exports and prices
plummeted, while the formerly enslaved
were forced to work for a pittance as
“free” labourers.
What had started as a dream of cheap
sugar and prosperity now turned into an
economic nightmare, where the Danish
government was subsidising its failing
and rebellious colonies. Eager to cut its
losses, Denmark entered into negotiations
with the United States over the islands’
sovereignty in 1867. Several agreements
were reached and then abandoned, but
the Americans’ desire to increase their
presence in the region (Puerto Rico had
been acquired from Spain in 1898) was
matched by Denmark’s wish to withdraw
gracefully.
The tipping point came with the
First World War and the
sinking by Germany of the
Lusitania in May 1915. The
US administration was fearful
that Germany could use the
Danish Virgin Islands as a
base for submarine operations
in the Caribbean and Atlantic.
Secretary of State Robert
Lansing made his feelings
clear to the Danish authorities:
if they were unwilling to
agree to a peaceful transition, the US
would simply occupy the territories. Not
surprisingly, a deal was quickly struck.
Signed by President Woodrow Wilson
on 16 January, 1917, the agreement came
into force three months later, with the
transfer to Denmark of US$25 million
in gold coin (nearly US$550 million in
current value). Five days later, the United
States declared war on Germany.
So began a new chapter in the history
of what were now the US Virgin Islands,
whose people are technically American
citizens but cannot vote in presidential
elections. Support for independence is
minimal, even though poverty remains
stubbornly prevalent. But with the advent
of the mass tourism industry, financial
services, and a growing high-tech sector,
the worst days of these islands are long
in the past. And Denmark, today a model
of liberal European values, can now also
forget its less than glorious foray into
empire-building. n
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