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A Postcolonial Dilemma Tale from the Harbour of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2019

Nathalia Brichet
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Abstract

The port of Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas has long been a vibrant centre for ship trafficking in the Caribbean, as it was during Danish colonial rule starting in 1672. In 1917, Denmark officially sold and left what became the US Virgin Islands. Not everybody left, though. The Danish-owned West Indian Company, which owned the majority of the St. Thomas port and its attendant facilities, stayed until 1993. At that point the harbour was sold to the Virgin Islanders, who for some time had complained about the fact that a Danish company still profited from the islands. The harbour of Charlotte Amalie, which is my central analytical unit here, thus provides a lens through which to approach Danish colonial imprints.

The harbour is and has been characterised by activities of a temporary and opportunistic kind: industries blossom, people and crops from far away get uprooted and replanted in the Caribbean, businesses provide work for locals, goods are shipped out to be consumed in other places. The transitory nature of projects designed by people elsewhere, I argue, is part of what colonialism is. As I will show, the traces of such projects appear not only as particular ecologies but also as dilemmas to be grappled with long after the foreign decision-makers have left. My approach to colonial legacies on the Virgin Islands, then, mobilises the shifting flows of people, commodities, and interests shipped in and out of Charlotte Amalie to leave behind altered landscapes that are continuously debated.

Keywords

Colonial legaciesharbourecologyDenmarkWest Indian Companycruise-ship tourism
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 43 , Special Issue 2: Colonial Entanglements: Crossroads, Contact Zones and Flows in Scandinavian Global History , August 2019 , pp. 348 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Research Institute for History, Leiden University 

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Footnotes

*

Nathalia Brichet holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Copenhagen. Brichet is a postdoc working with industrial and colonial legacies, landscape histories, and environmental concerns in former Danish colonies (Ghana, US Virgin Islands, and Greenland). As a part of her fieldwork, Brichet has designed and managed several collecting projects and curated exhibitions together with colleagues in Denmark, England, Ghana, Greenland, and the USA.

References

Bibliography

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Westphall, Povl. Aktieselskabet det Østasiatiske Kompagni. Copenhagen: Egmont Petersen, 1972.Google Scholar
Danish National Archives, Copenhagen, Denmark (DNA)Google Scholar
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)Google Scholar
- Gruppeordnede sager 0002, 1909–1945 (GS)Google Scholar
- Available online: https://www.sa.dk/ao-soegesider/da/billedviser?epid=20204061#294542,59841172Google Scholar
- Dessau, Axel Carl Julius, Private Papers (DP)Google Scholar
- Danish National Tourist Office (DNTO)Google Scholar
- Møller, Holger Christian Valdemar, Private Papers (MP)Google Scholar
- HCV Møller som havnebygmester, senere havnedirektør i København (MHK)Google Scholar
Andersen, H. N. Tilbageblik. Copenhagen: Hertz's Bogtrykkeri, 1914.Google Scholar
Andersen, H. N. Udvikling. Copenhagen: Hertz's Bogtrykkeri, 1929.Google Scholar
Gjessing, Helen. “Coalition Urges More Public Space at Long Bay.” St. Thomas Source, March 10, 2003. https://stthomassource.com/ accessed 23 March 2017.Google Scholar
Graham, Cynthia. “Quality of Life Tops List as Reason for Long Bay Project Suspension.” The Virgin Islands Consortium, 12 March 2017. http://viconsortium.com/business/quality-of-life-tops-list-as-reason-for-long-bay-project-suspension/, accessed 23 March 2017.Google Scholar
H. H. “Foreningen ‘De danske Atlanterhavsøer.’” Nationaløkonomisk Tidsskrift 12 (1904): 202–4.Google Scholar
US Virgin Islands (USVI) Bureau of Economic Research. www.usviber.org, accessed 22 December 2016.Google Scholar
Andersen, Astrid Nonbo. “Vore gamle tropekolonier?: Tropekolonierne som danske erindringssteder.” Slagmark 57 (2010): 81–91.Google Scholar
Andersen, Astrid Nonbo. Ingen Undskyldning. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2017.Google Scholar
Bascom, William. African Dilemma Tales. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975.Google Scholar
Brichet, Nathalia. An Anthropology of Common Ground: Awkward Encounters in Heritage Work. Manchester, UK: Mattering Press, 2018. Available online: https://www.matteringpress.org/books.Google Scholar
Brichet, Nathalia, and Hastrup, Frida. “In the Wake: Liveability and Colonial Ecologies around the Harbour of St Thomas.” Slagmark (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 [1986].Google Scholar
Danbolt, Mathias. “Retro Racism: Colonial Ignorance and Racialized Affective Consumption in Danish Public Culture.” Nordic Journal of Migration Research 7:2 (2017).Google Scholar
Gøbel, Erik. “Shipping through the Port of St Thomas.” International Journal of Maritime History 6:2 (1994): 155–73.Google Scholar
Gøbel, Erik. “Sankt Thomas havn i det 19. og tidlige 20. århundrede.” In Handels- og Soefartsmuseet paa Kronborg Aarbog, (2001): 23–64. Available online: https://tidsskrift.dk/mfs_aarbog/article/view/96524.Google Scholar
Hansen, Pernille Østergaard. Our Tropical Home: Danish ‘Empire Migrants’ in the U. S. Virgin Islands, 1917–1945. PhD diss., European University Institute, 2016.Google Scholar
Leibowitz, Arnold H. Defining Status: A Comprehensive Analysis of United States Territorial Relations. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.Google Scholar
Nixon, Dennis W. “The Filling of Long Bay: The Legacy of a Colonial Past.” Ocean & Shoreline Management 15 (1990): 1–23.Google Scholar
Olwig, Karen Fog. “Hvad skal vi med dansk kolonihistorie?” Fortid og Nutid 32 (1985): 68–71.Google Scholar
Schoonover, Bruce. “Caneel Bay Estate before Laurance Rockefeller.” St. John Historical Society 7:4 (2005). Available online: http://stjohnhistoricalsociety.org/vol-no-vii-no-4-dec-2005-caneel-bay-estate-before-laurance-rockefeller-contributed-by-bruce-schoonover/Google Scholar
Sebro, Louise. “Danmark og den koloniale fortid.” Arkæologisk Forum 14 (2006): 2–6.Google Scholar
Sheller, Mimi. Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies. New York: Routledge, 2003.Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann L. “Introduction, ‘The Rot Remains’: From Ruins to Ruination.” In Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination, edited by Stoler, Ann L., 1–38. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna, et al. eds. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Tyson, George F. The St. Thomas Harbor: A Historical Perspective. Charlotte Amalie: St. Thomas Historical Trust, 1991.Google Scholar
Westphall, Povl. Aktieselskabet det Østasiatiske Kompagni. Copenhagen: Egmont Petersen, 1972.Google Scholar