The sale of the Danish West Indies was a process of political maneuver and vulnerability, and, as the post-emancipation years loomed irreparably on in the colony, a result of economic stagnation. Caribbean historian Isaac Dookhan cites an “economic decline” as a primary condition following the proclamation of emancipation in 1848, but Danish historian Peter Jensen shows that the economy, as far as agriculture was concerned, suffered small fluctuations due to weather and drought conditions but overall benefited from the conglomerations of plantation estates after emancipation. In addition, government expenditures increased dramatically, Dookhan writes, which may be a reason for the eventual sale of the islands. However, a new type of economy was taking shape, one without proscriptive slave labor, and government expenditures, as well as population, were naturally increasing in the West Indies due to this shift. The sale must have been motivated by other inherent factors, despite the perceptions of the islands as “economic liabilities.”
The Rise of the German Empire and the US Navy
Denmark, for one, had exhausted itself in war with Germany and the great power of Prussia on the question of Schleswig-Holstein beginning in 1848, and began to sell its other possessions in India and the African coast to Britain in the 1850s, revealing a declining Scandinavian presence in colonial world affairs as the German Empire began an extensive occupation of African land. The question naturally shifted to the probable sale of the West Indian islands, which, though invariably prosperous economically, were administratively unstable. The “precedent” to sell the islands to the United States then came to the Danish West Indies in 1867. The United States had a trading relationship with the free port of the Danish West Indies since the American Revolution. In 1867 the United States looked into buying the islands as a military and navy harbor; as early as 1865 United States Secretary of State William H. Seward approached Danish foreign minister Waldemar Raasloff to negotiate a possible purchase of the islands, but ill health and Lincoln’s assassination temporarily halted conversations. When in 1867 conversations did reach the Danes, progress was aggravated by relations with Prussia and stoppages by the Conservative government.
The Treaty of 1867 finally reached the floor at Copenhagen on October 24, which outlined the provisional government in place should the United States complete the purchase. The United States Senate, however, after much delay in pressing for ratification by both parties, finally rejected the treaty in 1870.
United States’ Territorial Succession
The sale of the islands was brought up again on diplomatic levels throughout the 1890s, when the proposal for the Panama Canal was discussed, and rumors began about the island’s possible transfer to Germany. After the Spanish-American War, which ceded Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the United States, the question of the sale of the Danish West Indies was brought up again in congressional sessions.
The Treaty of 1902 for the sale of the entire Danish West Indies was approved and ratified in the United States in February and signed by President Theodore Roosevelt in May. Denmark’s lower and upper houses, however, were divided, and a split vote was vetoed against the purchase. This aristocratic stalemate from the Danish Landsting halted the purchase of the islands until 1916, when the United States’ military “urgency” was prompted by German naval aggression before the outbreak of World War I. Denmark’s own constrained bursary, under a threatened position from the encroachment of the German Empire in the south, undoubtedly facilitated the purchase.
The official transfer ceremony of the rechristened United States Virgin Islands occurred on March 31, 1917, with the previous register of using the islands primarily as a “military base.” A week following the transfer, the United States entered World War I, for which the islands, despite their intent, served no direct purpose. The sale of the islands was, preparedly, a retention of diplomatic fears of foreign nations, and one that proved to be unfounded, and the islands remained under military occupation until the 1930s, gradually assuming their semi-autonomous territorial status in the following decades.
Sources:
Dookhan,Isaac. A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States. 3rd ed. Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe Press, 1994.
Jensen, Peter. From Serfdom to Fireburn and Strike : the History of Black Labor in the Danish West Indies, 1848-1916. Christiansted, St. Croix [V.I.]: Antilles Press, 1998.
Lauring, Paulle. A History of the Kingdom of Denmark. Translated by David Hohnen. Høst & Søn: Copenhagen. 1960.
Westergaard,Waldemar. The Danish West Indies under Company Rule (1671-1754): with a supplementary chapter, 1755-1917. Facsim. of: 1917 ed. New York: Macmilllan, 1917. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1973.
Adam C'DeBaca - Adam C’DeBaca is a graduate of the University of North Texas with a degree in English and Spanish language and literature, ...
