About
In 2017 it is 100 years ago Denmark sold the Danish West Indies to the USA. With the support of the A.P. Møller and Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation for General Purposes and the Danish Ministry of Culture, the Danish National Archives has commemorated the centennial by presenting the original records and the history of the colonial period. The Danish National Archives’ digitization project “The Danish West Indies – Sources of history” lasted four years and here you can learn more about the structure of this website, the scanning of the archival material, which records from the colony is held at the Danish National Archives and elsewhere, and about volunteers working to transcribe the records and make them searchable.
Why this website?
Denmark was a colonial power in the West Indies for almost 250 years. Quite uniquely, a huge number of descriptions, records, letters, and illustrations that provide extraordinary insight into history have been preserved. On the 1st of March 2017, the records became available to the public through this website.
Use the site
This thematic website conveys the history of the Danish colony in the West Indies. At the same time, the website is the access point to millions of original records, which were digitized in the years 2013-2016 and made available on this website in 2017.
The records
The Danish National Archives has digitized five million pages from the local and central administration of the Danish West Indies that you can browse through this website. But there are also archive groups and cases concerning the Danish West Indies in the archives of other authorities.
Damages & scanning
The Danish National Archives houses millions of documents, maps, photographs and much more, which relate the history of the Danish West Indies in words and pictures. Most of this material is in good condition and is accessible on this website. A small part is, unfortunately, in such bad shape that scanning is not possible.
Other collections
Today the great majority of historical documents about the Danish era in the West Indies are located in the Danish National Archives. However, significant collections that communicate the history of the Danish West Indies can also be found elsewhere.
Crowdsourcing
In June 2015 the Danish National Archives launched a pilot project about crowdsourcing records from the Danish West Indies.