Danish West Indies

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Danish West Indies Dansk Vestindien
1672–1917
The Flag of Denmark Coat of arms of Denmark
Status	Colony of Denmark–Norway (1672–1814) Colony of Denmark
Capital	Charlotte Amalie (1672–1754,1871–1917) Christiansted (1754–1871)
Common languages	Danish (official) English Virgin Islands Creole Negerhollands Other Languages
Governor-General
• 1756–66	Christian Leberecht von Prøck (first)
• 1916–17	Henri Konow (last)
History
• Danish West India Company takes possession of Saint Thomas	1672
• Brandenburger Company-St. Thomas lease	1685–1754
• Saint John colonized and claimed	1717–1718
• Danish West India Company purchases Saint Croix from French West India Company	1733
• Treaty of the Danish West Indies	31 March 1917
Area
[1]	400 km2 (150 sq mi)
Population
• 1911[1]	27,000
Currency	Rigsdaler (1754–1849) Daler (1849–1917) From 1905, the currency of the Latin Coin Union was used Danish krone-DKK (1875-1917)
Succeeded by United States Virgin Islands

Part of a series on the
History of the United States Virgin Islands
Dutch Virgin Islands Danish West Indies Danish slave trade Danish West India Company 1733 slave insurrection on St. John Invasion of the Danish West Indies Treaty of the Danish West Indies Transfer Day
United States Portal
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The Danish West Indies (Danish: Dansk Vestindien) or Danish Virgin Islands (Danish: Danske Jomfruøer) or Danish Antilles were a Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas with 32 square miles (83 km²); Saint John (Danish: St. Jan) with 19 square miles (49 km²); and Saint Croix with 84 square miles (220 km²). The islands have belonged to the United States as the Virgin Islands since they were purchased in 1917. Water Island was part of the Danish West Indies until 1905, when the Danish state sold it to the East Asiatic Company, a private shipping company.

The Danish West India-Guinea Company annexed uninhabited St. Thomas^[2] in 1672; annexed St. John in 1718; and bought St. Croix from France (King Louis XV) on 28 June 1733. When the Danish West India-Guinea Company went bankrupt in 1754, King Frederik V of Denmark–Norway assumed direct control of the three islands. Britain occupied the Danish West Indies in 1801–1802 and 1807–1815 during the Napoleonic Wars.

Danish colonizers in the West Indies aimed to exploit the profitable triangular trade, involving the export of firearms and other manufactured goods to Africa in exchange for slaves, who were then transported to the Caribbean to work the sugar plantations. Caribbean colonies, in turn, exported sugar, rum and molasses to Denmark. The economy of the Danish West Indies depended on slavery. After a rebellion, slavery was officially abolished in 1848, leading to the near economic collapse of the plantations.

In 1852, the Danish parliament first debated the sale of the increasingly unprofitable colony. Denmark tried several times to sell or exchange the Danish West Indies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: to the United States and to the German Empire, respectively. The islands were eventually sold to the United States for $25 million (equivalent to $594,550,000 in 2023) which took over the administration on 31 March 1917 and renamed the territory the United States Virgin Islands.