scholarly journals Ancestral Queendom

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
La Vaughn Belle ◽  
Tami Navarro ◽  
Hadiya Sewer ◽  
Tiphanie Yanique
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
100Th Anniversary ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Online Databases ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Danish West Indies

This article is written in what can be described as the “post-centennial” era, post 2017, the year marked by the 100th anniversary of the sale and transfer of the Virgin Islands from Denmark to the United States. 2017 marked a shift in the conversation around and between Denmark and its former colonies in the Caribbean, most notably the increasing access of Virgin Islanders to the millions of archival records that remain stored in Denmark as they began to emerge in online databases and temporarily in exhibitions. That year the Virgin Islands Studies Collective, a group of four women (La Vaughn Belle, Tami Navarro, Hadiya Sewer and Tiphanie Yanique) from the Virgin Islands and from various disciplinary backgrounds, also emerged with an intention to center not only the archive, but also archival access and the nuances of archival interpretation and intervention. This collaborative essay, Ancestral Queendom: Reflections on the Prison Records of the Rebel Queens of the 1878 Fireburn in St. Croix, USVI (formerly the Danish West Indies), is a direct engagement with the archives and archival production. Each member responds to one of the prison records of the four women taken to Denmark for their participation in the largest labor revolt in Danish colonial history. Their reflections combine elements of speculation, fiction, black feminitist theory and critique as modes of responding to the gaps and silences in the archive, as well as finding new questions to be asked.

Digital Resources: Study of Danish Activities in the Caribbean

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunvor Simonsen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Us Virgin Islands ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Danish West Indies

From the 1670s to 1917, Denmark (until 1814 Denmark–Norway) maintained colonies in the eastern Caribbean. The island of St. Thomas was colonized in 1672, St. John in 1718, and St. Croix was bought from the French in 1733. Racial slavery soon came to dominate the Danish islands and was only abolished in 1848. Most people arrived to the islands as captive Africans, while most Europeans were of either Dutch or British origin. In 1917, the islands, constituting the Danish West Indies, were sold to the United States of America and became the US Virgin Islands. As part of the centennial of 2017, commemorating the transfer of the Virgin Islands to the United States of America, major Danish cultural institutions, such as the National Archives, the Royal Library, and the National Museum, digitized large collections concerning Danish activities and Danish rule in the Caribbean, including the archive of the Danish West India and Guinea Company, the archives of local government agencies in the Caribbean, large collections of photos, drawings, and maps, as well as a significant part of the written works concerning the Danish West Indies published prior to 1917. In combination with older digital platforms, new online resources facilitate the triangulation of many different kinds of evidence, which in turn promises to generate fascinating new histories of the people who lived in the US Virgin Islands while they were under Danish rule.

The Danish Ban on the Atlantic Slave Trade and Denmark's African Colonial Ambitions, 1787–1807

Itinerario ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 154-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
United States Virgin Islands ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
Danish West Indies ◽  
Crown Prince ◽  
Slave Population

On 16 March 1792, King Christian VII of Denmark, his own incompetent hand guided by that of the young Crown Prince Frederik (VI), signed decree banning both the importation of slaves into the Danish West Indies (now the United States Virgin Islands) and their export from the Danish establishments on the Guinea Coast, in what is now Ghana. To soften the blow to the planters of the Danish West Indies and to secure the continued production of sugar, the law was not to take effect for ten years. In the meantime, imports of slaves, and of women especially, would actually encouraged by state loans and favourable tariffs, so as, it was hoped, render the slave population capable of reproducing itself naturally thereafter.

Caribbean Commission

1947 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 368-368
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
The West ◽  
Rules Of Procedure ◽  
The Caribbean

The Caribbean Commission, formally established on October 20, 1946, by the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands and France, held a third meeting of its four national sections consisting of representatives of the above mentioned countries at Curacao, Netherlands West Indies, in December, 1946. Particular items on the agenda included 1) discussion of the activities of the Commission's Secretariat, 2) rules of procedure for the Commission and the West Indian Conference, and 3) appointment of the budget. Attention was directed to the implementation of the recommendations of the second session of the West Indian Conference, which was held in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands of the United States, in February, 1946. Such recommendations reflected the effort of the member powers to coordinate their activities with a view to improving the economic and social well-being of Caribbean inhabitants.

Caribbean Organization

1965 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 1070-1073
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
French Guiana ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
Netherlands Antilles ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Caribbean

The Caribbean Council held its fifth and last meeting in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, from November 30 to December 4, 1964. Attending the meeting were delegates from France on behalf of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, and Martinique; the Netherlands Antilles; Surinam; the British Virgin Islands; the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; and the United States Virgin Islands. Representatives of Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, and St. Vincent, countries enjoying special observer status, attended the meeting. Also at the meeting were observers from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

scholarly journals Notions of Home: Re-Locations and Forging Connections in Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashma Shamail
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Paule Marshall ◽  
Parental Home ◽  
The West ◽  
Caribbean Immigrants ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
African Caribbean ◽  
The Caribbean

Focusing on the African Caribbean Immigrants in the United States, this paper examines the work of novelist Paule Marshall, whose narratives document issues of migration, displacement, home, return, and community bonding. Paule Marshall’s first novel Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), focuses on Selina Boyce, a second-generation Barbadian immigrant from the United States, whose search for her roots is informed by an inherent link to the Caribbean through an articulation of the dynamics of belonging. The notion of ‘home’ as a contradictory and contested trope is vital, for the writer’s foremost concern is on the overarching effect it has on the diasporic subject. Marshall grants her protagonist the space to challenge familial struggles, and reclaim her voice by re-locating to Barbados, her parental home. The protagonist’s enigmatic journey through ambivalent interspaces enables her to reconstruct bridges to the West Indies. Marshall’s examination of her young protagonist’s ‘return to the Caribbean’ reflects wider issues of diasporic identity and belonging connected to ‘home’ spaces, ancestral lands, regions, and origins.

Caribbean Commission

1960 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-216 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
The West ◽  
British Guiana ◽  
Netherlands Antilles ◽  
The Caribbean

A special session of the West Indian Conference convened on July 28, 1959, in St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, to consider revision of the agreement which established the Caribbean Commission in October 1946. The delegates were welcomed by Mr. John Merwin, Governor of the Virgin Islands, who referred to the proposed revision for the transfer of control to local governments as an exciting new concept which would witness the withdrawal from active membership of the metropolitan powers and the taking over of these functions by the non-self-governing territories and possessions. Before starting deliberations on the successor body, delegates went on record in support of a continuation of regional cooperation in the area through some machinery similar to the Caribbean Commission, the good work of which was unanimously acclaimed. After several days of discussion and working in committees, the Conference accepted a Statute for a new Caribbean Organization to succeed the present Caribbean Commission, agreeing that it should be submitted to the governments concerned. The statute gave the Organization consultative and advisory powers and defined the areas of its concern as being those social, economic, and cultural matters of common interest in the Caribbean area. Eligible for membership were the Republic of France for the Departments of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, and Martinique; the Netherlands Antilles; Surinam; the Bahamas; British Guiana; British Honduras; British Virgin Islands; the West Indies; Puerto Rico; and the Virgin Islands. The governing body of the new organization would be the Caribbean Council, which would hold annual meetings and to which each member would be entitled to nominate one delegate. The Organization was to come into being after an agreement with the members of the present Caribbean Commission—namely, the governments of France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States—for its establishment had been ratified. Following an offer from the government of Puerto Rico to contribute 44.3 percent of the total budget on the understanding that the new Organization would have its headquarters in that country, the Conference agreed on the following apportionment of costs to cover its proposed budget: France, $50,560; Netherlands Antilles, $24,490; Surinam, $19,750; British Guiana, $11,760; the West Indies, $44,240; Puerto Rico, $140,000; and the Virgin Islands, $25,200. As an interim step designed to facilitate the transition, the Conference recommended that the Commission appoint a working group of experts to examine the problems which would arise from the change-over, and to give its attention as well to the task of formulating guiding principles for the work of the Organization.

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