Maritime Maroons: "Grand Marronage" from the Danish West Indies

Abstract

T THE islands of St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. Jan-now the Virgin Islands of the United States-were Denmark's outpost of empire in the Caribbean. Denmark was a late entrant in the seventeenthcentury scramble for West Indian colonies. Its colonization of St. Thomas, beginning in i 67i, and of St. Jan in I 7i8, occurred at a time when England, France, and Holland had long since broken, de facto and de jure, Spain's monopoly in the hemisphere and were consolidating their New World gains. Denmark's choice was limited in the extreme; its acquisition of St. Thomas and St. Jan was determined not by choice but by lack of feasible alternatives. St. Croix, bought from France in I 7 3 3, was the last of the Lesser Antilles to come under European rule, and the purchase has the dubious distinction of bringing to a close the first century of non-Hispanic colonization in the Caribbean. The acquisition completed Denmark's territorial empire in the New World. Apart from two British occupations during the Napoleonic Wars, in i 8o i and again from i 807 to i8I5, the islands remained in Denmark's possession until I 9I7, when they were sold to the United States.'