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Danish West Indies
Dansk Vestindien
1672–1917
The Flag of Denmark
Status
Colony of Denmark–Norway (1672–1814) Colony of Denmark
Capital
Charlotte Amalie (1672–1754,1871–1917) Christiansted (1754–1871)
Common languages
Danish English English Creole Dutch Dutch Creole
Governor-General
• 1756–66
Christian Leberecht von Prøck (first)
• 1916–17
Henri Konow (last)
History
• Danish West India Company takes possession of Saint Thomas
1672
• Brandenburger Company-St. Thomas lease
1685–1754
• Saint John colonized and claimed
1717–1718
• Danish West India Company purchases Saint Croix from French West India Company
1733
• Treaty of the Danish West Indies
31 March 1917
Area
[1]
400 km2 (150 sq mi)
Population
• 1911[1]
27,000
Currency
Rigsdaler (1754–1849) Daler (1849–1917) From 1905, the currency of the Latin Coin Union was used Danish krone-DKK (1875-1917)
Succeeded by
United States Virgin Islands
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Royal coat of arms of Denmark
Part of a series on the
History of the United States Virgin Islands
Dutch Virgin Islands
Danish West Indies
Danish slave trade
Danish West India Company
1733 slave insurrection on St. John
Invasion of the Danish West Indies
Treaty of the Danish West Indies
Transfer Day
United States Portal
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The Danish West Indies (Danish: Dansk Vestindien) or Danish Virgin Islands (Danish: Danske Jomfruøer) or Danish Antilles were a Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas with 32 square miles (83 km2); Saint John (Danish: St. Jan) with 19 square miles (49 km2); and Saint Croix with 84 square miles (220 km2). The islands have belonged to the United States as the Virgin Islands since they were purchased in 1917. Water Island was part of the Danish West Indies until 1905, when the Danish state sold it to the East Asiatic Company, a private shipping company.
The Danish West India-Guinea Company annexed uninhabited St. Thomas[2] in 1672; annexed St. John in 1718; and bought St. Croix from France (King Louis XV) on June 28, 1733. When the Danish West India-Guinea Company went bankrupt in 1754, King Frederik V of Denmark–Norway assumed direct control of the three islands. Britain occupied the Danish West Indies in 1801–1802 and 1807–1815 during the Napoleonic Wars.
Danish colonizers in the West Indies aimed to exploit the profitable triangular trade, involving the export of firearms and other manufactured goods to Africa in exchange for slaves, who were then transported to the Caribbean to work the sugar plantations.
Caribbean colonies, in turn, exported sugar, rum and molasses to Denmark. The economy of the Danish West Indies depended on slavery. After a rebellion, slavery was officially abolished in 1848, leading to the near economic collapse of the plantations.
In 1852, the Danish parliament first debated the sale of the increasingly unprofitable colony. Denmark tried several times to sell or exchange the Danish West Indies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: to the United States and to the German Empire, respectively. The islands were eventually sold to the United States for $25 million (equivalent to $594,550,000 in 2023) which took over the administration on 31 March 1917 and renamed the territory the United States Virgin Islands.
^ ab"Dansk Vestindia". Caplex. Retrieved 21 May 2010.
^
Dookhan, Isaac (1994) [1974]. "Danish Colonial Expansion". A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States. Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe Press. p. 40. ISBN 9789768125057. Retrieved 7 September 2017. The Danes found no one living on St. Thomas when they landed. The English settlers who had occupied the island after the end of the first Danish settlement, had left six or seven weeks before, though the reason for their departure is not known. [...] Denmark's long association with the Virgin Islands began with this occupation of St. Thomas in 1672.
and 27 Related for: Danish West Indies information
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Global Information
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