Edelgaard Christensen, Kristoffer. Governing Black and White: A History of Governmentality in Denmark and the Danish West Indies, 1770-1900. (2023). [PDF]

Edelgaard Christensen, Kristoffer. Governing Black and White: A History of Governmentality in Denmark and the Danish West Indies, 1770-1900. Dissertation. Department of History, Lund university, 2023.

This dissertation explores and compares the rationalities through which Danish state officials sought to govern the colonized Afro-Caribbean population in the colony of the Danish West Indies and the state’s Danish subjects living in the metropole of Denmark in the period 1770-1900. Theoretically, it relies upon Michel Foucault’s conception of ’governmentality’ and the way this approach to governing, and to state power more generally, has been employed in various colonial and European settings, particularly within the field of colonial governmentality studies. This dissertation distinguishes itself from this field, however, by comparing metropole and colony in a more even, in-depth, and open-ended way; one which is sensitive to changes over time. The aim of this mode of comparison is to explore on a more solid foundation what was unique (and what was not unique) about colonial governing at particular points in time and space.The dissertation is split into two parts. The first deals with the period 1770-1800 and offers an in-depth comparative account of the Danish state’s governing of seigneurial relations at home and master-slave relations in the colony; the state’s attempts to reform the criminal laws; its investment in the maintenance of racial and social hierarchies; its regulation of the everyday public lives of slaves and peasants; and lastly, its governing of the productive lives of enslaved and unpropertied laborers. In the second part, which deals with the period 1840-1900, the focus is on the making of a free labor market in metropole and colony and the associated apparatuses of poor administration and policing.Essentially, the comparative analyses of the governmentalities, which were at the heart of these projects and domains of governing, point to a profound historical shift in the relationship between metropole and colony. In the late eighteenth-century, colonial officials in the Danish West Indies could still draw upon the governmentalities, which were essential for their peers back home. Thus, although colonial and metropolitan governmentalities were far from identical, there were significant points of overlap and commensurability in the governing of ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’. Over the course of the nineteenth century however, these points of overlap and commensurability all but vanished. After the abolition of slavery in 1848, colony and metropole had become ‘worlds beyond compare’, each requiring each own particular ‘handbook’ of governing. On this basis, the dissertation points to the importance of exploring not only the distinction between colonial and non-colonial governing, but also the history of the distinction itself.

PDF: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/publications/governing-black-and-white-a-history-of-governmentality-in-denmark

Rud, Søren, and Søren Ivarsson, eds., Globale og postkoloniale perspektiver på dansk kolonihistorie. (2021)

Rud, Søren, and Søren Ivarsson, eds., Globale og postkoloniale perspektiver på dansk kolonihistorie (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2021)

Danmarks fortid som kolonimagt og slavenation er mere aktuel end nogensinde. Det globale opgør med racisme og kontroversielle symboler fra kolonihistorien har bredt sig til Danmark, hvor politiske aktivister malede ”DECOLONIZE” på statuer af grønlandsmissionæren Hans Egede både i Nuuk og København, og kunstgruppen Anonyme Billedkunstnere smed ”slavekongen” Frederik V’s buste i Københavns havn.  Mens aktivisterne og mange indbyggere i tidligere danske kolonier anser Danmarks fortid som arnestedet for nutidens racediskrimination opfatter andre postyret som en selvpinerisk og proportionsløs dyrkelse af Danmarks fortidssynder. Ikke mindst derfor er det vigtigt, at forskere forholder sig kritisk til dansk kolonihistorie og kvalificerer fortidens rolle i aktuelle diskussioner om Danmarks kolonihistorie.  I Globale og postkoloniale perspektiver på dansk kolonihistorie præsenterer ni forskere udvalgte postkoloniale og globalhistoriske strømninger. Hver især tager de udgangspunkt i konkrete eksempler fra enten Dansk Vestindien, Grønland, Indien, Island, København, Sápmi eller Siam. Bogen åbner nye perspektiver på Danmarks fortidige engagement i verden, som trænger sig på i aktuelle debatter om eksempelvis identitetspolitik, rigsfællesskab og racisme.

Indholdsfortegnelse 

søren rud Introduktion Postkoloniale og globale perspektiver på dansk kolonihistorie 

niels brimnes Offer, subjekt, aktør Refleksioner over de koloniseredes position i nyere analyser af dansk kolonihistorie 

johan heinsen Stemme og flugt Tvangsgeografier i koloni og metropol 

kristoffer edelgaard christensen At sammenligne metropol og koloni Problematiseringen af ’despotisk magt’ i Danmark og Vestindien i 1700-tallets sidste årtier 

simon mølholm olesen Kolonial styring i Sydgrønlands Inspektorat, 1782-95 Institutioner, selvledelse og modstand 

kirsten thisted ’En lille Smule til Gavn for Grønland’ Intime relationer og følelser mellem Danmark og Grønland 

mathias danbolt Grænsen går her Metodisk nationalisme og omfordeling af ansvar i historieskrivningen om koloniseringen af Sápmi 

ann-sofie n. gremaud Festtid, krisetid og kolonitid Fortællinger om islandsk selvstændighed 

gunvor simonsen Racisme, slaveri og marked Afrikanere i 1700-tallets København 

søren ivarsson Gendarmer, dokumenter og papirstaten Danske officerer i semikoloniale Siam

https://unipress.dk/udgivelser/g/globale-og-postkoloniale-perspektiver-p%C3%A5-dansk-kolonihistorie/

White, William A., Remembering Queen Mary: Heritage Conservation, Black People, Denmark, and St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. (2022)

White, William A., Remembering Queen Mary: Heritage Conservation, Black People, Denmark, and St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage, 0.0 (2022), 1–24

On October 1, 1878, Afro-Crucian laborers on the Danish colonial Caribbean island of St. Croix launched a historic protest that resulted in extensive damage to the sugar industry. Known locally as “Fireburn,” this was a formative event in the relationship between Afro-Crucian people and plantation owners, who were mostly of European descent. Histories of Fireburn cite four women, Queen Mary, Queen Agnes, Queen Mathilda, and Susana Abramsen, as the uprising’s leaders. Fireburn, the Queens, and other forms of resistance continue to be sources of pride for Afro-Crucians and are part of Black heritage conservation efforts in St. Croix. Community-based archaeological work conducted by the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA) dovetails with the ways Afro-Crucian heritage is created, maintained, and discussed by Afro-Crucian people, but contrasts with prevailing Danish narratives of history. This work has also found a home with anticolonialism scholars in Denmark working to create a more reparatory history.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2022.2034365

Weiss, Holger, editor. ‘Ports of Globalisation, Places of Creolisation: Nordic Possessions in the Atlantic World during the Era of the Slave Trade’. (2021)

Weiss, Holger, editor. ‘Ports of Globalisation, Places of Creolisation: Nordic Possessions in the Atlantic World during the Era of the Slave Trade’. Ports of Globalisation, Places of Creolisation, Brill, 2021

This anthology addresses and analyses the transformation of interconnected spaces and spatial entanglements in the Atlantic rim during the era of the slave trade by focusing on the Danish possessions on the Gold Coast and their Caribbean islands of Saint Thomas, Saint Jan and Saint Croix as well as on the Swedish Caribbean island of Saint Barthelemy. The first part of the anthology addresses aspects of interconnectedness in West Africa, in particular the relationship between Africans and Danes on the Gold Coast. The second part of this volume examines various aspects of interconnectedness, creolisation and experiences of Danish and Swedish slave rules in the Caribbean.

https://brill.com/view/title/32240.

Thisted, Kirsten. ‘“Where Once Dannebrog Waved for More than 200 Years”: Banal Nationalism, Narrative Templates and Post-Colonial Melancholia’ (2009)

Thisted, Kirsten. ‘“Where Once Dannebrog Waved for More than 200 Years”: Banal Nationalism, Narrative Templates and Post-Colonial Melancholia’. Review of Development and Change, vol. 14, Dec. 2009, pp. 147–172.

https://tors.ku.dk/ansatte/?pure=da%2Fpublications%2Fwhere-once-dannebrog-waved-for-more-than-200-years(1ee47602-51ea-4843-be2a-b986d05ecebf)%2Fexport.html

‘Slagmark #75: Koloniale Aftryk’. (2017)

‘Slagmark #75: Koloniale Aftryk’. Slagmark #75: Koloniale Aftryk, 2017.

 Indhold:

Myter og realiteter i Jomfruøernes historie af Arnold Highfield 

Dansk Vestindiens helte og heltinder af Rikke Lie Halberg & Bertha Rex Coley 

Toldbodens nye dronning – den danske kolonialismes im/materielle aftryk af Emilie Paaske Drachmann 

Tingene sat på plads: Om afrikaneres bidrag til etableringen af byen Christiansted på St. Croix af George F. Tyson 

Museale formidlinger af fortiden som kolonimagt på danske og britiske museer af Vibe Nielsen 

 ”Let’s Put the Background to the Foreground!” – nostalgi, turisme og iscenesættelse af en dansk kolonial fortid på de tidligere vestindiske øer af Pernille Østergaard Hansen 

I kølvandet – levedygtighed og koloniale økologier ved havnen på St. Thomas af Nathalia Brichet & Frida Hastrup 

Kærligheden og de druknedes land – interview med Tiphanie Yanique af Astrid Nonbo Andersen & Sine Jensen Smed 

https://www.slagmark.dk/slagmark75

Abstracts: https://www.slagmark.dk/abstracts-75  

Forord: https://www.slagmark.dk/koloniale-aftryk

Simonsen, Gunvor. ‘Sovereignty, Mastery, and Law in the Danish West Indies, 1672–1733’. (2019) [PDF]

Simonsen, Gunvor. ‘Sovereignty, Mastery, and Law in the Danish West Indies, 1672–1733’. Itinerario, vol. 43, no. 2, Cambridge University Press, Aug. 2019, pp. 283–304.

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, officers of the Danish West India and Guinea Company struggled to balance the sovereignty of the company with the mastery of St. Thomas’ and St. John’s slave owners. This struggle was central to the making of the laws that controlled enslaved Africans and their descendants. Slave laws described slave crime and punishment, yet they also contained descriptions of the political entities that had the power to represent and execute the law. Succeeding governors of St. Thomas and St. John set out to align claims about state sovereignty with masters’ prerogatives, and this balancing act shaped the substance of slave law in the Danish West Indies. Indeed, the slave laws pronounced by and the legal thinking engaged in by island governors suggest that sovereignty was never a stable state of affairs in the Danish West Indies. It was always open to renegotiation as governors, with varying degrees of loyalty to the company and at times with questionable capability, strove to determine what sovereignty ought to look like in a time of slavery.

doi:10.1017/S0165115319000275.

PDF: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/itinerario/article/sovereignty-mastery-and-law-in-the-danish-west-indies-16721733/E6792A8F99E5AFE16418CF2663C6A8A0.

Simonsen, Gunvor. Slave Stories: Law, Representation, and Gender in the Danish West Indies. (2017)

Simonsen, Gunvor. Slave Stories: Law, Representation, and Gender in the Danish West Indies. Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2017.

In the Danish West Indies, hundreds of enslaved men and women and a handful of Danish judges engaged in a broken, often distorted dialogue in court. Their dialogue was shaped by a shared concern with the ways slavery clashed with sexual norms and family life. Some enslaved men and women crafted respectable Christian self-portraits, which in time allowed victims of sexual abuse and rape to publicly narrate their experiences. Other slaves stressed African-Atlantic traditions when explaining their domestic conflicts. Yet these gripping stories did not influence the legal system. While the judges cunningly embraced slave testimony, they also reached guilty verdicts in most trials and punished with extreme brutality. Slaves spoke, but mostly to no avail.  In ‘Slave Stories’, Gunvor Simonsen reconstructs the narratives crafted by slaves and traces the distortions instituted by Danish West Indian legal practice. In doing so, she draws us closer to the men and women who lived in bondage in the Danish West Indies (present-day US Virgin Islands) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

https://unipress.dk/udgivelser/s/slave-stories/

Simonsen, Gunvor. ‘Skin Colour as a Tool of Regulation and Power in the Danish West Indies in the Eighteenth Century’. (2003)

Simonsen, Gunvor. ‘Skin Colour as a Tool of Regulation and Power in the Danish West Indies in the Eighteenth Century’. Journal of Caribbean History, vol. 37, no. 2, 2003, pp. 256–276.

This article focuses on the process of “encolouring” social reality in the Caribbean. This is done by investigating how connections between status and colour were created in the Danish West Indies by using certain strategies and techniques of power. Essential to the regulatory efforts of planters and officials were three variables: time, space and body. By the manipulation of these phenomena colonial masters managed to make skin colour represent something other than itself. It came to be associated with a web of ideas concerning the constitution of society and its subjects – their status, condition and opportunities in life.

https://cadmus.eui.eu//handle/1814/6835

Simonsen, Gunvor. ‘Legality Outside the Courtroom:: Practices of Law and Law Enforcement in the Danish West Indies at the End of the Eighteenth Century’. (2004) [PDF]

Simonsen, Gunvor. ‘Legality Outside the Courtroom:: Practices of Law and Law Enforcement in the Danish West Indies at the End of the Eighteenth Century’. Quaderni Fiorentini per La Storia Del Pensiero Giuridico Moderno, vol. 33, no. 2, A. Giuffrè, 2004, pp. 921–961.

PDF: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5189287.

Sielemann, Rasmus Basse. Natures of Conduct: Governmentality and the Danish West Indies. (2015) [PDF]

Sielemann, Rasmus Basse. Natures of Conduct: Governmentality and the Danish West Indies. Dissertation. University of Copenhagen, 2015,

This dissertation analyzes the processes of governmentality in the Danish West Indies from the late eighteenth century to the end of Danish rule in 1917. The theoretical framework of the analysis is constructed from a reading of Michel Foucault’s work in the late 1970s on the problematics, techniques, and rationalities of government in Western Europe. Foucault’s investigations took the form of a historical genealogy that he referred to as “the history of governmentality.” He argued that governmentality deployed itself as a configuration of dispositions of power in the form of “economies of power.” This theoretical framework is applied in three chapters that analyses the biopolitics of slavery, the government of penal techniques, and the political economy of labor after slavery respectively. The dissertation argues that parallel to the development of governmental practice in Europe, programs of government in the Danish West Indies were increasingly premised on the reality and sanctity of the nature of “population,” “society,” and “economy” that would have to be respected and taken into consideration. This principle also extended to a conception of the nature of the Afro-Caribbean colonial subjects. The conformity and adherence to the perceived naturalness of colonial subjects had the unintended effect of stifling projects of social progress in the area of penitentiary reform as well as the organization of labor. In the weighing of utility and freedom, the “nature of the negro” tipped the scale towards prioritizing utility. As a result, the freedom of former slaves was limited to the extent that they manifested their disscontempt in violent riots and strikes. To interpret this development simply as a retreat to repressive forms of power and the failure of liberal principles in the colonial context, clouds the complex character of liberal governmentality in general. The limitation of Afro-Caribbean freedoms was not installed in spite of liberal rationalities, but in conformity with an ambivalent logic of improvement inherent in liberalism itself. 

Denne afhandling analyserer de dansk vestindiske øers guvernementalitets- processer fra slutningen af attenhunderedetallet til afslutningen af det danske herredømme i 1917. Analysens teoretiske ramme bygger på en læsning af Michel Foucaults arbejde i slutningen af 1970’erne med ledelsesproblematikker, -teknikker og -rationaliteter i Vesteuropa. Foucaults undersøgelser udformede sig som en historisk genealogi, hvilket han omtalt som “guvernementalitetens historie.” Han hævdede, at ledelsesrationalitet indsatte sig selv som en konfiguration af dispositioner af magt i form af ‘magt-økonomier.’ Denne teoretiske ramme anvendes i tre kapitler, der henholdsvis analyserer slaveriets biopolitik, ledelsen af straffeteknikker og arbejdskraftens politisk økonomi efter slaveriets ophævelse. Afhandlingen argumenterer for, at parallelt med udviklingen af ledelsespraksis i Europa, blev begreberne ‘befolkning’, ‘samfund’ og ‘økonomi’ tildelt en naturlig virkelighed og hellighed, som politiske programmer i Dansk Vestindien i stigende grad var nødsaget til at respektere og tage højde for. Dette princip var også gældende for opfattelsen af de afro-caribiske subjekters natur. Den forudfattede tilpasningen af ledelsesteknikker til de koloniale subjekters naturlighed, havde den utilsigtede effekt, at sociale fremskridtsprocesser i forhold til reformer af straffevæsenet, samt organiseringen af arbejdskraft, blev bremset. I afvejningen af ‘nytte’ i forhold til ‘frihed,’ havde “negerens natur” den effekt at nytte blev prioriteret højest. Som følge heraf blev de tidligere slavers frihed begrænset i en sådan grad, at de manifesterede deres modstand i form af voldelige optøjer og strejker. At fortolke denne udvikling blot som en tilbagevending til repressive former for magt og mislykkede liberale principper i den koloniale kontekst, skygger for den liberale ledelsesrationalitets kompleksitet. Begrænsningen af afro-caribiernes friheder blev ikke installeret på trods af liberale ledelsesprincipper, men i overensstemmelse med en ambivalent forbedringslogik, indlejret i selve liberalimens ledelsesrationalitet.

PDF: https://curis.ku.dk/ws/files/149081650/Ph.d._afhandling_2015_Sielemann.pdf.

Røge, Pernille. ‘Why the Danes Got There First – A Trans-Imperial Study of the Abolition of the Danish Slave Trade in 1792’. (2014)

Røge, Pernille. ‘Why the Danes Got There First – A Trans-Imperial Study of the Abolition of the Danish Slave Trade in 1792’. Slavery & Abolition, vol. 35, no. 4, Routledge, Oct. 2014, pp. 576–592.

This article explores the causes and timing of the abolition of the Danish slave trade in 1792. While the existing historiography highlights economic and humanitarian considerations behind the decision to decree abolition of the slave trade and situates such concerns within a Danish context, this article looks at ways in which trans-imperial influences on the Danish government and commercial ties between the Danish colonial empire and other slave trading polities were equally important factors in the move towards abolition.

doi:10.1080/0144039X.2013.852709.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2013.852709.

Peters, Rikke Alberg, Peter Yding Brunbech, Christina Louise Sørensen, and Jens Aage Poulsen. Da Danmark var en slavenation: om slaveriet og De Vestindiske Øer fra 1600-tallet til nu. (2016) [PDF]

Peters, Rikke Alberg, Peter Yding Brunbech, Christina Louise Sørensen, and Jens Aage Poulsen. Da Danmark var en slavenation: om slaveriet og De Vestindiske Øer fra 1600-tallet til nu. 1. udgave, 1. oplag, Jelling: HistorieLab, 2016.

PDF: https://historielab.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/370253_NV_vestindienbog_216x259mm_WEB-1-1.pdf.

Olsen, Poul Erik. ‘I alle Maader i Lighed med den blanke Slægt : danske overvejelser om de vestindiske frikulørte 1815-18’. (2010)

Olsen, Poul Erik. ‘I alle Maader i Lighed med den blanke Slægt : danske overvejelser om de vestindiske frikulørte 1815-18’. Danske magazin, 2010, pp. 193–239

Rettigheder og militærpligt for frigivne eller frikøbte slaver samt efterkommere af frifødte farvede.

https://danskeselskab.dk/vare/danske-magazin-bind-51-haefte-1/

Nielsen, Per. Fra slaveri til frihed: det dansk-vestindiske slavesamfund 1672-1848 : symposium den 3.juli 1998 på Nationalmuseet i anledning af 150-året for slaveriets ophør på de dansk-vestindiske øer. (2001)

Nielsen, Per. Fra slaveri til frihed: det dansk-vestindiske slavesamfund 1672-1848 : symposium den 3.juli 1998 på Nationalmuseet i anledning af 150-året for slaveriets ophør på de dansk-vestindiske øer. Kbh.: Nationalmuseet, 2001.

Indhold:

Jens Erik skydsgaard: Den antikke baggrund for det europæiske slaveri.

Erik Gøbel: De danske mennesketransporter over Atlanten.

Poul Erik Olsen: Fra ejendomsret til menneskeret.

Inge Mejer Antonsen: Slavesamfundet gengivet i tegninger og malerier.

Per Nielsen: Slaver og frie indbyggere 1780-1848.

Karen Fog Olwig: Privilegier og rettigheder som slave og fri – emancipationen på St. Jan. S

vend Einer Holsoe: A view of the emancipation rebellion on St. Croix : 150 years later.

Ole Justensen: Slaveri og emancipation på Guldkysten 1830-1850.

https://bibliotek.dk/linkme.php?rec.id=870970-basis%3A23608634.

Körber, Lill-Ann. ‘Danish Ex-Colony Travel: Paradise Discourse, Commemoration, and (Not Quite) Dark Tourism’. (2017) [PDF]

Körber, Lill-Ann. ‘Danish Ex-Colony Travel: Paradise Discourse, Commemoration, and (Not Quite) Dark Tourism’. Scandinavian Studies, vol. 89, no. 4, [Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, University of Illinois Press], 2017, pp. 487–511.

doi:10.5406/scanstud.89.4.0487.

PDF: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/scanstud.89.4.0487.

Jensen, Niklas Thode. ‘Safeguarding Slaves: Smallpox, Vaccination, and Governmental Health Policies among the Enslaved Population in the Danish West Indies, 1803-1848’. (2009)

Jensen, Niklas Thode. ‘Safeguarding Slaves: Smallpox, Vaccination, and Governmental Health Policies among the Enslaved Population in the Danish West Indies, 1803-1848’. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 83, no. 1, 2009, pp. 95–124.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, a unique system of vaccination against smallpox was developed in the island of St. Croix in the Danish West Indies. The primary intention was to protect the population of enslaved workers, which was of fundamental importance to the economy of the colony. However, because the Danish abolition of the slave trade in 1803 had stopped the imports of new enslaved workers from Africa, the population was also decreasing. The vaccination system’s success was due to a high degree of governmental control of the enslaved population that was virtually unseen anywhere else in the Caribbean.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19329843/

Hopkins, Daniel P. ‘The Danish Ban on the Atlantic Slave Trade and Denmark’s African Colonial Ambitions, 1787–1807’. (2001)

Hopkins, Daniel P. ‘The Danish Ban on the Atlantic Slave Trade and Denmark’s African Colonial Ambitions, 1787–1807’. Itinerario, vol. 25, no. 3–4, Cambridge University Press, Nov. 2001, pp. 154–184.

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.

doi:10.1017/S0165115300015035.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/itinerario/article/abs/danish-ban-on-the-atlantic-slave-trade-and-denmarks-african-colonial-ambitions-17871807/C940EE47F9E130847768DE9740DC8910

Jensen, Peter Hoxcer. From Serfdom to Fireburn and Strike: The History of Black Labor in the Danish West Indies 1848-1916. (1998)

Jensen, Peter Hoxcer. From Serfdom to Fireburn and Strike: The History of Black Labor in the Danish West Indies 1848-1916. Christiansted, St. Croix: Antilles Press, 1998.

This book appears at a time when there is tremendous local, regional and international interest in 19th century emancipation in the West Indies. That event occurred in the U.S. Virgin Islands – the erstwhile Danish West Indies – on July 3, 1848. Peter Hoxcer Jensen’s fascinating new book takes up where the story of slavery leaves off and where the hard road to freedom begins. Employing previously unused materials form Danish archival and administrative sources, Jensen traces the ex-slaves’ journey from servitude, through neo-serfdom and revolt on the sugar- and cotton-producing estates where they had previously been slaves, to their emergence as an autonomous labor movement in the early 20th century. In the middle years of World War I, the disenfranchised laborers formed a labor union and struggled for recognition from the colonial government and the plantocracy, both of which continued to regard them narrowly through the distorting lens of race, color and class interests. The successful strike of 1916 played a significant role in the development of a cohesive labor movement, the nurturing of local leadership, the granting of freedom of the press and, eventually, the sale of the Danish islands to the United States in 1917. Jensen has provided us with the first scholarly study of this important period, in a treatment that is both broad and deep. From Serfdom to Fireburn and Strike is destined to take its rightful place alongside earlier ground-breaking works of Waldemar Westergaard, Isaac Dookhan, N. A. T. Hall, C. G. A. Oldendorp, and John Knox as an original, seminal study that advances Virgin Islands and Caribbean historiography.

https://antillespressvi.com/serfdom-fireburn-strike/

Lingner, Björn Hakon. ‘Dansk kolonialisme og race – repræsentationer af den ikke-hvide anden i Vore gamle Tropekolonier’. (2018) [PDF]

Lingner, Björn Hakon. ‘Dansk kolonialisme og race – repræsentationer af den ikke-hvide anden i Vore gamle Tropekolonier’. Kult, vol. 15, 2018, pp. 70–86.

Diskussionen om dansk racisme er tæt knyttet til diskussionen om Danmarks fortid som europæisk kolonialmagt. Både fordi Danmark deltog i det racialiserede slaveri i trekantshandelen, men også fordi dansk identitetsdannelse er foregået i en bredere kontekst af europæisk kolonialisme og de medfølgende racediskurser. I denne artikel analyseres og diskuteresen række udvalgte passager fra bind I –IV af Vore gamle tropekolonier, som i sin 8-binds billigudgavefra 1966-67 (oprindeligt i to bind 1953) har været det sidste sammenhængende populærhistoriske fagværk om den danske kolonialisme, i hvert faldindtil Gads Forlag udgav sit 5-binds værk i 2017, som bliver behandlet andetsteds i denne udgave. Passagerne undersøges med henblik på de repræsentationer af den ikke-hvide del af kolonisamfundet i Dansk Vestindien, og med teoretisk inspiration i en række postkoloniale tænkere, først og fremmest Achille Mbembe.

PDF: http://postkolonial.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/9_Bjorn-Hakon-Lingner_artikel_final.pdf.

Nygaard Jensen, Kasper, and Ida Marie R. Skielboe. Vores Historier Et Undervisningsmateriale Om Dansk Kolonialisme i Vestindien. (2017) [PDF]

Nygaard Jensen, Kasper, and Ida Marie R. Skielboe. Vores Historier Et Undervisningsmateriale Om Dansk Kolonialisme i Vestindien. Museum Vestsjælland,

Den 31. marts 2017 rungede lyden af stemmer i den store forhal på Københavns Rådhus. Rundt omkring i hallen stod udstilling efter udstilling med fotografier, tekst og kreative udtryk, alle sammen skabt af gymnasieelever. De havde deltaget i en dyst om at skabe den bedste formidling af den dansk-caribiske kolonihistorie under temaet ”Billeder fra fortiden for fremtiden”. Rundt omkring på rådhuset foregik debatter, workshops, filmfremvisninger, musik og optrædener, alt sammen om US Virgin Islands og Danmarks kolonihistorie. Dette arrangement fandt sted, fordi det d. 31 marts 2017 var 100 år siden, at øerne St. Thomas, St. Croix og St. John blev solgt af den danske regering til USA. Til stede på rådhuset var de mange danske gymnasieelever, som udstillede i rådhushallen, sammen med high school elever fra US Virgin Islands. Deres oplevelser af hver især at have udforsket de samme historier førte dem og deres udstillinger ind i samtaler og diskussioner om, hvordan historie opleves, erindres, bruges og fortælles. Det er med disse spørgsmål som udgangspunkt, at du skal arbejde med dette materiale.

PDF: https://www.vestmuseum.dk/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fSkoletjenesten%2fVORES+HISTORIER+DK+(enkelte_sider_FINAL).pdf.

Odumosu, Temi. ‘What Lies Unspoken’. (2019) [PDF]

Odumosu, Temi. ‘What Lies Unspoken’. Third Text, vol. 33, no. 4–5, Routledge, Sept. 2019, pp. 615–629.

This article provides a reflective overview of What Lies Unspoken: Sounding the Colonial Archive, a sound intervention which I initiated and produced in collaboration with curators at the Statens Museum for Kunst and Royal Library of Denmark, whilst conducting artistic research within the Living Archives Research Project at Malmö University. The project was part of commemorative activities during 2017, marking the centennial of the sale and transfer of Denmark’s former Caribbean sugar colonies (St Croix, St Thomas, and St John) to the United States. The intervention aimed to address the uncomfortable silences surrounding institutional and societal engagements with colonial history in Denmark. In the article I describe how and under what particular cultural conditions this project was developed, share some of the thinking that underpinned its making, and finally reflect on the realities of what it takes for cultural heritage institutions to share interpretive power.

doi:10.1080/09528822.2019.1654688.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2019.1654688.

Olwig, Karen. ‘Narrating Deglobalization: Danish Perceptions of a Lost Empire’ (2003)

Olwig, Karen. ‘Narrating Deglobalization: Danish Perceptions of a Lost Empire’. Global Networks, vol. 3, June 2003, pp. 207–222.

According to Ulf Hannerz, globalization, viewed as a historic process of increasing interconnectedness, implies the possibility of an opposite process of deglobalization involving a delinking of interconnectedness. This study of Danish engagement in the Danish West Indies, a colony sold to the United States in 1917, exemplifies deglobalization. This case shows that while globalization can be reversed in terms of interconnectedness, it may continue unabated in stories of former global ventures. Indeed, the delinked Danish West Indian past has offered a rich, imagined resource for Danish narratives of past achievements on the global arena that bear little relation to the modest Danish contribution to colonial history. Globalization therefore does not just involve actual interconnectedness, but cultural interpretations of global engagement, past or present.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1471-0374.00058

Roopnarine, Lomarsh, Indian Indenture in the Danish West Indies, 1863-1873.

Roopnarine, Lomarsh, Indian Indenture in the Danish West Indies, 1863-1873. Springer International Publishing AG. 2018.

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Denmark’s solitary experiment with Indian indentured labor on St. Croix during the second half of the nineteenth century.  The book focuses on the recruitment, transportation, plantation labor, re-indenture, repatriation, remittances and abolition of Indian indentured experience on the island. In doing so, Roopnarine has produced a compelling narrative on Indian indenture. The laborers challenged and responded accordingly to their daily indentured existence using their cultural strengths to cohere and co-exist in a planter-dominated environment. Laborers had to create opportunities for themselves using their homeland customs without losing the focus that someday they would return home. Indentured Indians understood that the plantation system would not be flexible to them but rather they had to be flexible to plantation system. Roopnarine’s concise analysis has moved Indian indenture from the margin to mainstream not only in the historiography of the Danish West Indies, but also in the wider Caribbean where Indians were indentured.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319307091