Literature and collections on the Danish West Indies

The vast majority of historical documents about Denmark’s time in the West Indies are today housed in the Danish National Archives, and 5 million of these documents have been digitised. Go to the theme on the Danish West Indies. However, there are also significant collections elsewhere that provide insights into the history of the Danish colony in the West Indies.

Below, you will find overviews of the most important sources, publications, and collections outside of the Danish National Archives.

National Museum of Denmark

The National Museum’s collections include artefacts from the colonial period in the West Indies, primarily archaeological finds from indigenous settlements at Salt River on St. Croix, Danish West Indian coins, furniture, paintings, and other objects. There are also written sources, such as letters, maps, drawings, photographs, surveys, and documentation of buildings and furniture, as well as transcriptions of gravestones.

• Search photos from the Danish West Indies (In Danish).

Maritime Museum of Denmark

The Maritime Museum in Helsingør has several important collections, including items from the colony and an extensive image collection consisting of photographs, drawings, and paintings, as well as a few manuscripts, such as logbooks and reports.

• Search all of the museum’s collections In Danish).

The Whim Plantation Museum on St. Croix

The Whim Plantation Museum on St. Croix is the most significant museum on the U.S. Virgin Islands in this context. It provides insight into what a sugar plantation looked like and how it operated. The museum also houses the island’s local archives and a collection of historical literature.

• Go to the webpage of the Plantation Museum at Whim on St. Croix

The following is a small selection of recent literature on the history of the Danish West Indies.

Karen Fog Olwig, Cultural adaptation and resistance on St. John, three centuries of Afro-Caribbean life (Gainesville, FL.: University of Florida Press, 1985)

Neville A. T. Hall, Slave society in the Danish West Indies, St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix (Mona: University of the West Indies Press, 1992)

Peter Hoxcer Jensen, From serfdom to fireburn and strike, the history of black labor in the Danish West Indies 1848-1916 (Christiansted, St. Croix: Antilles Press, 1998)

Arnold R. Highfield and George F. Tyson, eds., Negotiating Enslavement: Perspectives on Slavery in the Danish West Indies (St. Croix. Antilles Press, 2009)

Niklas Thode Jensen, For the health of the enslaved, slaves, medicine and power in the Danish West Indies, 1803-1848 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2012)

Erik Gøbel, The Danish Slave Trade and Its Abolition (Leiden: Brill, 2016)

Niklas Thode Jensen & Vibe M. Martens (eds.), Slavery, Servitude and Freedom: New Perspectives on Life in the Danish-Norwegian West Indies, 1672-1848, Special Issue of Scandinavian Journal of History, Volume 41, issue 4-5, 2016.

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

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

C.G.A. Oldendorp, C.G.A. Oldendorp’s history of the mission of the Evangelical Brethren on the Caribbean Islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Karoma Publ. 1987)

George F. Tyson & Arnold R. Highfield, eds., The Kamina Folk: Slavery and Slave Life in the Danish West Indies (St. Thomas: Virgin Islands Humanities Council, 1994)

Arnold R. Highfield, ed., Description of the Island of St. Croix in America in the West Indies by Reimert Haagensen (St. Thomas: Virgin Islands Humanities Council, 1995)

Arnold R. Highfield, ed., Observations upon the state of Negro slavery in the Island of Santa Cruz, 1829 (Antilles Press, 1996)

Arnold R. Highfield, ed., J.L. Carstens’ St. Thomas in Early Danish Times. A General Description of all the Danish, American or West Indian Islands (St. Thomas: Virgin Islands Humanities Council, 1997)

Svend E. Holsoe, ed., Various Remarks collected on and about the island of St. Croix in America by Johan Christian Schmidt (St. Thomas: Virgin Islands Humanities Council, 1998)

Arnold R. Highfield, ed., Hans West’s accounts of St. Croix in the West Indies (St. Thomas: Virgin Islands Humanities Council, 2004)

Arnold R. Highfield & Kristoffer F. Bøegh, eds., George Hjersing Høst’s Account of the Island of St. Thomas and its Governors, recorded there on the Island from 1769 until 1776 (Antilles Press, 2018)

Arnold R. Highfield, ed., Charles Vanderbourg’s report to Ernst Schimmelmann on the Present Conditions of the Negroes on the Schimmelmann Plantations and the Means of Ameliorating Them (Antilles Press, 2018).

Glossary

• Glossary with explanations for the most important archival words and concepts in Danish and English.

Erik Gøbel: A Guide to Sources for the History of the Danish West Indies (U. S. Virgin Islands), 1671-1917 (Odense, 2002).

In 2024, Erik Gøbel wrote an annotated bibliography as a supplement to the 2002 Guide. It contains a commented overview of literature on the Virgin Islands published during the period 2002-2024: