Danish West Indies

The Danish West Indies were the Caribbean colony of Denmark, the islands of St Thomas, St John and St Croix, held from the first Brandenburg landing through the royal colony proclaimed in 1754 until the sale to the United States in 1917. From Charlotte Amalie, one of the great free ports of the West Indies, Danish governors ruled sugar islands worked by enslaved Africans, whose rebellions in 1733, 1848 and 1878 each forced concessions from Copenhagen. The colony lived by trade and by looking the other way: pirates, privateers and neutral bottoms filled its harbours in every war. Emancipation came in 1848 at the governor's gunpoint; hurricanes, beet sugar and abolition emptied the profit after it. In the First World War Denmark, fearing a German seizure the Americans would not tolerate, sold the islands after referendums on both sides, and in 1917 the Stars and Stripes rose over St Thomas for twenty-five million dollars.