Slavery

Life as an enslaved laborer in the Danish West Indies was not only characterized by hard work, brutal punishment and powerlessness. But also by diseases, incapacitating work injuries and death’s constant presence.

The enslaved laborers’ daily life was characterized by hard and dangerous work, abuse and tremendous frustration. This is evident from the injuries they suffered, either because of work accidents or because their existence became so unbearable that they chose to injure themselves.

Denmark was the first nation that prohibited transatlantic slave transport, in 1803. But Denmark was far from the first to abolish slavery itself. It continued for decades in the Danish colony in the West Indies for those who had already been shipped there and for their children after them.

The concept that all human beings are born with fundamental rights was not prevalent in the 1700s. If you were born at the bottom of society, you lived a life in poverty and with hard work and toil. Other people could be owned just like goods and money. This was a view of humanity that made life hard for servants all over the world – and not least for the enslaved laborers that worked under inhuman conditions in colonies in Africa, Asia, and America. The view of humanity that allowed for slavery is difficult to understand in our time.

When enslaved children had been directly or indirectly involved in a crime, they ended up in the records of the Police Court. In fact, it is one of the few types of records that provide a glimpse of the enslaved children’s lives on St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John. Mind you, a very gloomy picture of how brutally the colonial power also treated enslaved children.

As soon as the children were big enough, they had to work for their owner. There was very little time for play, and it was not until 1841 before there was public schooling. The historical sources about life in the Danish West Indies do not really tell much about what it meant to be an enslaved child, but still they pop up in glimpses.

Life as an enslaved laborer on the plantations was hard. The field work was tough, and especially during dry periods, the enslaved laborers, who had to survive on vegetables from their own small plots of land, starved. There were not many opportunities to resist. Some enslaved laborers became maroons, i.e. ran away, others rebelled, and still others saw no way out other than to take their own lives.

In addition to Europeans and enslaved laborers, a third population group lived in the Danish colony in the West Indies: the so-called free coloreds. These were people of African or African-European descent who were not enslaved but free. Formally, the free coloreds had the same rights as Europeans, but in practice they encountered many restrictions.

From the 1650s onward, Denmark participated in the transatlantic slave trade. A total of approximately 120,000 enslaved Africans were transported from Africa to the West Indies on ships flying the flag of Denmark. On the other hand, Denmark was the first slave-trading nation that prohibited the barbaric traffic.

Something the Europeans in the West Indies always feared was rebellion among enslaved laborers and free agricultural workers. It happened in 1733 on St. John, when the enslaved laborers controlled the island for nearly a year, and again in 1848 on St. Croix – and yet again among the free agricultural workers on St. Croix in 1878. As a deterrent to others, any sign of rebellion was punished hard and barbarically by the Danish colonial rulers. That also applied to the planned slave rebellion on St. Croix in 1759.

Every free citizen in the colony was required to prepare a list each year of the persons who lived on his or her property. The lists were used to calculate taxes and were to include both free persons and enslaved laborers. Today the lists are important sources for knowledge about the enslaved laborers’ circumstances, about colonial society, and not least about the differences in society – between town and country and between large and small plantations.