U.S. Virgin Islands - Danish Colony
The demise of the islands’ first residents, the Indians, was evident when the first Europeans after Columbus arrived in the late 1500s. Many countries expressed interest in the islands in the 1600s, including Holland, France, England, Spain, Denmark and the Knights of Malta. But it was the Danes who established the first settlement on St. Thomas in 1672, expanding to St. John in 1694. St. Croix was added to the Danish West India Company in 1733, and plantations soon sprung up all over the islands.
A treaty with the Dutch of Brandenburg in 1685 established St. Thomas as a slave-trading post. More than 200,000 slaves, primarily from Africa’s west coast, were forcibly shipped to the islands for the backbreaking work of harvesting cane, cotton and indigo. St. John and St. Croix maintained a plantation economy, while St. Thomas developed as a trade center.
In the year 1733 St. John reached the height of its prosperity under slavery, sugar and cotton being the principal products. In November of this year there was a ruious uprising of the slaves which resulted in the death of probably 50 whites and three or four times that number of blacks before the insurrection was put down. Stripped of their dignity and freedom and fed up with the harsh conditions, slaves attacked St. John’s Fort Frederiksvaern in Coral Bay, crippling operations for six months.
St. Croix was purchased by the Danish West India & Guinea Co. from France for 750,000 livres. The treaty providing for the transfer was ratified June 15, 1733. St. Croix was occupied as early as 1625 by Dutch and English settlers, who were joined by some French refugees from other West Indian Islands, principally from St. Christopher (St. Kitts). Shortly before 1650, as a result of a civil war between the factions, the Dutch and French were expelled from the island. The Spaniards from Porto Rico in August, 1650, drove off the English but only retained possession for a very short period, as de Poincy, the lieutenant general of all the French islands in America, sent a force of 166 men from St. Christopher and succeeded in ousting the Spanish.
The settlement of St. Croix was begun by the French in 1651 when 300 colonists were sent there. From 1651 to 1664 St. Croix was owned by the Knights of Malta who governed it in the name of Louis XIV. In 1695 the colony moved to San Domingo, and from that time until the purchase by the Danish company in 1733 St. Croix does not appear to have been inhabited. In 1734 Gov. Frederick Moth took possession of the island and began the work of laying out plantations for the cultivation of sugar and cotton After seven years the first census showed 122 cotton plantations, 120 sugar plantations, and over 1,900 slaves.
Uprisings of the slaves occurred in St. Croix in 1746 and 1759. The first was speedily put down, but more serious results followed the second, which resulted in the kiUing of about 25 of the slaves before order was restored. Denmark was one of the first countries to take steps to curb the African slave trade. In 1792 Denmark announced the cessation of the trade in humans.
Freedom was not granted to slaves until 1848, when Moses “Buddhoe” Gottlieb led a revolution on St. Croix, 17 years before emancipation in the United States. In 1848 slavery was abolished in the islands.
The executive power was vested in a colonial governor appointed by the Crown, who resided from April 1 to September 30 of each year in Christiansted, the capital of St. Croix, and the other half of the year in Charlotte Amalie, the capital of the municipality of St. Thomas and St. John. Legislative authority in each municipality was vested in a colonial council consisting of 18 members for St. Croix — 5 nominated by the Crown and 13 elected — and 11 members for the municipality of St. Thomas and St. John — 4 nominated by the Crown and 7 elected. Of those elected in the latter municipality, 4 were from the town of Charl6tte Amalie, 1 from the rural districts of St. Thomas, and 2 from the island of St. John.
St. Thomas and St. John were early given unrestricted privileges of trade with the other American colonies (1764), and in 1782 this was extended to trade with all nations; yet it was not until 1833 that St. Croix enjoyed the privilege of having all trade restrictions removed. In 1780, of the 516 vessels entered at St. Croix, 82 entered from ports of the United States and 123 from Porto Rico, while only 16 came from Danish possessions in Europe. It is interesting to note at this early period the comparatively slight commercial intercourse with the mother country and the extent of shipping from the United States.
Following the period in which St. Thomas increased its importance as a shipping center and distributing point it declined in importance as an agricultural community. During the period from 1821 to 1830 an average of 2,809 ships of a tonnage of 177,444 called there annually.
During this decade St. Thomas experienced its greatest prosperity, being a distributing center for merchandise and commodities for the other islands of the West Indies. Very shortly thereafter the influence of steam navigation was to cause a decline in the commercial importance of the island. With the advent of steam the merchants of Porto Rico and those of the Lesser Antilles and of South America were able to import goods direct from Europe and America.
Later the West India & Panama Telegraph Co. established headquarters on St. Thomas and their submarine cables cover all the West Indies and connect at Jamaica with cables from Europe and the United States. The value of the Virgin Islands now lay in their geographic location and exceptional harbor facilities rather than in their commercial and agricultural activities.
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