Danish West Indies

Who Ended Slavery in the Danish West Indies, and Does it Matter?

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Peter von Scholten became the Governor-General of the Danish West Indies in 1827. Under his leadership there were reforms that eased conditions for the free-Blacks and for the enslaved laborers. These included free-Blacks having largely the same civil rights as Europeans in the islands (1834), and having some schools…
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St. John to BVI, Running away to “Freedom”

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The Danish West Indian archives contain a vast amount of documentation about police matters, including correspondence, reports, and cases that demonstrate unrelenting resistance to enslavement, as well as actual crimes. Although most of it is rendered in the Danish gothic script, some of the correspondence, like these two letters,…
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Running Against the Odds, Sarah of St. Croix

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During the time of slavery in the Danish West Indies enslaved Africans regularly attempted to escape. At times, they succeeded. Danish West Indian authorities issued laws, such as the slave code of 1733, to sanction and punish such behavior. Slave owners used island newspapers to notify the community that…
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Analyzing Church Records, Female Baptisms, Friedensthal Moravian Church, St. Croix 1764

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Records of baptisms, marriages and deaths of free and enslaved congregational members have been compiled since the Eighteenth Century by the officially sanctioned churches in the Danish West Indies, specifically the Lutheran Church, the Moravian Church, the Anglican Church, the Dutch Reform Church, and the Roman Catholic Church. The…
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Census Record of Free Blacks from 1803

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Proceedings and Register of Free Blacks is a census conducted in 1803 on St. Thomas. It counted and listed the islands’ free people of color. The census contains age, occupation, where the person was from, how they got to St. Thomas, how they came to be free, and other…
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Mary’s Fancy Sugar Plantation, Queens Quarter, St. Croix, ca. 1850

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Sugar was the mainstay of the Crucian economy until the 1960s. The crop was also cultivated throughout St. Thomas and St. John until the second half of the nineteenth century. This painting depicts the primary physical features of a typical sugar plantation estate: laborers in the cane fields, the…
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Manumission by Will, St. John, November 2, 1796

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Prior to the general emancipation of all people who were unfree on July 3, 1848, enslaved people in the Danish West Indies gained their individual freedom legally through a legal process of manumission, whereby they were freed in writing by their owner and then issued a Free Letter by…
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Emancipation Proclamation July 3, 1848

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Slavery ended in the Danish West Indies on July 3, 1848, when thousands of enslaved protesters assembled in Frederiksted, St. Croix and forced Governor-General Peter von Scholten to verbally proclaim “all unfree are now free”. That momentous event was largely peaceful, but disturbances broke out the following day. The…
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Analyzing a Record of Ship Arrival from 1804

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Since the 1760s, St. Thomas, benefiting from free port status and one of the finest natural harbors in the world, has been a hub of Atlantic maritime trade and commerce. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a vast variety of trade goods from the far reaches of the Atlantic…
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Map of part of Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas

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Bluebeard’s Castle is the name given to a historic Danish period watchtower that was built around 1689, on St. Thomas. It is located on a small hill, overlooking Charlotte Amalie harbor. Originally the watchtower was part of a fortification system used to watch over and protect the harbor. The…
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